WHAT WARMING TREND?

An email to Benny Peiser from David Whitehouse [david@davidwhitehouse.com] below

Ever missed a story? Seems to me that the BBC has: "2007 data confirms warming trend"

These figures show that the global average temperature 2007 was statistically identical to 2006, which was statistically identical to 2005, which was statistically identical to 2004, to 2003, to 2002, and to 2001 as well. The BBC does not report figures for 1999 and 2000 which were lower than 2001.

Statistically the data set 2001 - 2007 is a constant with a miniscule 0.03 deg variation. Taken separately the chances that the data for 2001 - 2007 comes from the same population distribution as the data points for 1979 -1998 (which showed a rapid warming) is less than 1%.

During 2001 - 2007 the concentration of man-made CO2 going into the atmosphere increased by roughly 10% from about 370 ppm to 383 ppm (pre-industrial level 280 ppm).

Who knows what will happen in the future but for now scientists have established beyond doubt (indeed at a higher level of statistical confidence than any expression of confidence in the recent IPCC Synthesis report) that Global Warming has halted. Of course the world's ecosystems are reacting to the overall warmth of the past decade.

The headline should therefore be: "Scientists confirm Global Warming standstill"

It will be interesting to see what other sources of global temperature data say in the new year.




LIMITS ON CLIMATE SENSITIVITY DERIVED FROM RECENT SATELLITE AND SURFACE OBSERVATIONS

An email from Petr Chylek [chylek@lanl.gov] below:

I thought you might be interested in reading the attached paper (at least the abstract). The climate sensitivity of 0.29 to 0.48 K/Wm ~ 2 translates to warming between 1.1 and 1.8 deg C for doubling of CO2, supporting values close to the lower end of the IPCC range of 2 to 4.5 deg C.

Limits on climate sensitivity derived from recent satellite and surface observations

Petr Chylek et al.

Abstract

An analysis of satellite and surface measurements of aerosol optical depth suggests that global average of aerosol optical depth has been recently decreasing at the rate of around 0.0014/a. This decrease is nonuniform with the fastest decrease observed over the United States and Europe. The observed rate of decreasing aerosol optical depth produces the top of the atmosphere radiative forcing that is comparable to forcing due to the current rate of increasing atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Consequently, both increasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and decreasing loading of atmospheric aerosols are major contributors to the top-of-atmosphere radiative forcing. We find that the climate sensitivity is reduced by at least a factor of 2 when direct and indirect effects of decreasing aerosols are included, compared to the case where the radiative forcing is ascribed only to increases in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. We find the empirical climate sensitivity to be between 0.29 and 0.48 K/Wm?2 when aerosol direct and indirect radiative forcing is included.

FULL PAPER here




POST-BALI MANIC DEPRESSION

Following Bali, as with all such climate-change meetings, we have now entered the post-summit manic depressive phrase, where participants and reporters swing between despair and delight. While UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is reported as being "delighted", Christian Aid is "dismayed", and, according to The Sunday Times, Bali has left the "greens in despair". Individuals and newspaper editorials internally move from bright optimism to realistic pessimism, and then back to facile optimism. We have seen it all before, classically following the Montreal summit in 2005. Accordingly, there is little objective reporting and comment. Some newspapers, like the Independent on Sunday and The Observer, just appear to want to engage in naive America-bashing, while others try to prescribe rose-tinted spectacles for us all.

The only decent analysis of Bali has been provided by Environment Correspondent, Richard Black, at BBC Online (`Analysis', December 15). Here, for example, is an excellent and realistic passage from Richard:

"However, the EU must concede - and some European delegates did concede - that they have got far less than they demanded. The Bush administration is not for turning. But it is difficult to accuse it of inconsistency. In Bali it deployed positions and tactics which were totally in keeping with previous years.

And there is a case for saying that Europe played a poor hand here, demanding something it was never going to get. Its counter-arguments are that it proposed targets based on the latest scientific findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which the US, Canada, Japan and so on have all endorsed; and that it needs to confront opposition in those other nations, not just in the US. Given Japan's enthusiasm for the Kyoto accord, its stance here must have hurt.

At home, the US administration has been keen to promulgate the politically convenient view that climate change is now really China's fault; hence the desire to wring some kind of commitment from the Chinese."

Black is entirely correct about Europe. Indeed, it could be argued that Europe is really the `villain of the piece' because of its ridiculous insistence on 1950's style targets and central planning, something to which a number of countries have deep ideological objections (as do I), including Australia, Canada, Japan, and the US (including many Democrats), as well as some former communist states. Europe's `purity' and sanctimoniousness, while still hypocritically failing widely over the Kyoto Protocol, is a pretty unpleasant mix to have to swallow. I must also point out that Michael Bloomberg, the Republican Mayor of New York, stresses that Congress, not Bush, remains the real opposition to `targets'. No American wants to provide free cash and a competitive edge to either China or Russia.

And, as The Sunday Telegraph (`In Bali climate deal, US appears to backtrack') is at pains to point out, one mustn't underestimate the role of Russia at Bali: "Russia is to blame for the fact that the agreement contained no figure for the `deep cuts' needed in carbon emissions, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. In tense negotiations late on Friday, officials of a smaller group of just 12 countries almost agreed a footnote that would have referred to the need for a 50 per cent cut by 2050. A western official said: `We got to the phrase `long-term goal' and the Russians set on the whole thing. They would not accept any target, not even in a footnote referring to the science.' Fearful that the Russians were prepared to scupper the whole agreement, other countries backed off."

Moreover, as in previous years, Bali is starting to unravel (`US sets terms for climate talks', BBC Online Science/Nature News, December 15): "The text of the roadmap refers to `common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities' and calls for `nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing country Parties'.

However, the US said it felt the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities had `not yet fully been given effect'. `The problem of climate change cannot be adequately addressed through commitments for emissions cuts by developed countries alone,' the statement said. `Major developing economies must likewise act.'

Developing states, the US also argued, had to be differentiated according to the size of their economies and energy use. Any new climate goals had to `take into account the legitimate right of the major developing economies and indeed all countries to grow their economies, develop on a sustainable basis, and have access to secure energy sources'."

Thus, in the end, Bali has followed, to the letter, the course I outlined for it on December 3 in: `GW, Bali, and Mass Sociogenic Illness'. The final stages of mass manic depression by proxy and political back-tracking are already well underway, and more quickly than even I had anticipated.

Bali itself offered, as Richard Black intimates, a few crumbs for all, but no loaf was baked in the heated oven of the summit. This is inevitable. The big lessons have still not been grasped. We cannot control climate predictably, and we mustn't try to change the whole world economy in the hubristic belief that we might be able to do so. Until we understand these simple truths, we will be doomed to long-term manic depression over our ecochondria about `global warming'. In the bitter end, we can do nothing predictable about climate change.

Luckily, Bali has done nothing that will wreck world economies. As Lord Mountararat sings with respect to the House of Lords in Gilbert and Sullivan's evergreen Iolanthe: it "Did nothing in particular, And did it very well." We may not be so blessed in the future. We therefore have time to stand back from the brink of our foolish arrogance to focus, as of old, on adaptation to climate change, hot, wet, cold, or dry.

Source





CHINA SYNDROME: THE REALITY OF EMISSIONS GROWTH

According to this paper by two researchers at the University of California carbon dioxide emissions in China are projected to grow between 11.05% and 13.19% per year for the period 2000-2010. What does this mean? I hope you are sitting down because you won't believe this.

In 2006 China's carbon dioxide emissions contained about 1.70 gigatons of carbon (GtC) (source). By 2010, at the growth rates projected by these researchers the annual emissions from China will be between 2.6 and 2.8 GtC. The growth in China's emissions from 2006-2010 is equivalent to adding the 2004 emissions of Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia to China's 2006 total (source). The emissions growth in China at these rates is like adding another Germany every year, or a UK and Australia together, to global emissions.

Think about that.

Source




ENERGY CRUNCH: BRITAIN LIKELY TO SURRENDER ON EMISSIONS TARGETS

In the proposed coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, Gordon Brown is facing his first test since pledging to put Britain at the forefront of efforts to combat climate change. A proposal to build the UK's first coal-fired power station in more than 30 years will land on his desk in the next few weeks.

New coal would fly in the face of advice from the UN's top climate scientists, who warn that global emissions must peak and then fall dramatically within the next 100 months to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change. Even Mr Brown's "special adviser" on climate change, Al Gore, said in August: "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power stations." Greenpeace couldn't have put it better. The only question remaining is if the Prime Minister is listening.

Mr Brown's decision on new coal will determine in large part whether Britain can meet its global warming targets, which the Prime Minister suggested would be revised upwards to an 80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050. Giving the green light to Kingsnorth - and other stations - will lock Britain into huge carbon emissions for decades and signal Mr Brown's surrender on the 80 per cent target.

E.on is planning to build a plant at Kingsnorth that will emit more than 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year; and waiting behind Kingsnorth are proposals for at least seven further new coal stations. This generation of coal-fired power stations will account for half of Britain's permissible carbon emissions in 2050 if Mr Brown goes for a 80 per cent target. The hope that the Kingsnorth plant will be "ready" to adopt Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology in the future is a triumph of hope over experience. A UN report into the viability of CCS predicted that it won't be able to play any significant role for decades.

Source

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