Walt Takes A Closer Look At Global Warming

Friend Walt Kubilius received an E-Mail from a friend urging complacency in the face of Global Warming warnings (reproduced below, in full):

Relax, the planet is fine
Money is partly to blame for the global warming hysteria, Professor Richard Lindzen says.

Linda Frum, National Post
THE NATIONAL POST, CANADA
Published: Saturday, April 21, 2007

This Earth Day , Professor Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist and the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, wants you to calm down. The Earth, he says, is in good shape. "Forests are returning in Europe and the United States. Air quality has improved. Water quality has improved. We grow more food on less land. We've done a reasonably good job in much of the world in conquering hunger. And yet we're acting as though: "How can we stand any more of this?"

A leading critic on the theory of man-made global warming, Professor Lindzen has developed a reputation as America's anti-doom-and gloom scientist. And he's not, he says, as lonely as you might think.

Q. - You don't dispute that the globe is warming?
A. - It has never been an issue of whether the Earth is warming -- because it's always warming or cooling. The issue is: What are the magnitudes involved? It's a big difference if it's warming a degree or two or 10, or if it's warming a few tenths of a degree.

Q. - And it's inconclusive how much it's warming?
A. - Sure it's inconclusive. It's a very hard thing to analyze because you have to average huge fluctuations over the whole Earth, and 70% of the Earth is oceans where you don't have weather stations. So you get different groups analyzing this. And they're pretty close. One group gets over the last century a warming of about .55 degrees centigrade. Another group says it's .75 degrees.

Q. - Is there any scenario in which global warming could be beneficial for the planet?
A. - Of course.

Canada looks like it will benefit considerably if it were to happen. And it might very well happen -- but it won't be due to man.

Q. - You charge that the hysteria that's been created around global warming is an enormous financial scam. It's all about money?
A. - Well, how shall I put it? It's not all about money, but boy, there's a lot of money floating in it. I mean, emissions trading is going to be a multi-trillion dollar market. Emissions alone would keep small countries in business.

Q. - Are you suggesting that scientists manipulate their findings to get in on the gravy train?
A. - You have to differentiate the interests of different groups. In the scientific community, your interest is for your field to be recognized so that it will have priority in government funding.

Q. - So you are not accusing your scientific colleagues of corruption?
A. - No, I'm accusing them of behaving the way scientists always behave. In other words, some years ago, when Richard Nixon declared war on cancer, almost all the biological sciences then became cancer research. I mean, I don't call that corruption, I'm saying you orient your research so that it has a better chance to get resources.

Q. - And it helps if your findings suggest something catastrophic is about to happen?
A. - In this case it certainly has helped. First of all, the funding increased so greatly that it exceeded the capacity of the existing field to absorb it. You'll notice that Working Group 2 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came up with lots of scary things, but everything was always preceded by could, might, may, all these qualifiers. And the reason it was is those studies start out assuming there's a lot of warming. They assume all the science is in, and then they say, 'Well, how will this impact my field of insect-borne diseases, or agriculture, or health?' So they are almost, by definition, going to generate catastrophic scenarios, but they will never be based on anything other than the hypothesis that this will already happen.

Q. - I read that you bet one of your colleagues that the Earth will actually be colder 20 years from now?
A. - I haven't bet on it, but I figure the odds are about 50-50.
If you look at the temperature record for the globe over the last six years, it's gone no place. That's usually the way it behaves before it goes down. In fact, I suspect that's why you have this tsunami of exposure the last two years, with Gore's movie and so on. I think that this issue has been around long enough to generate a lot of agendas, and looking at the temperature records there must be a fear that if they don't get the agendas covered now, they may never get them.

Q. - Did you watch Al Gore get his Academy Award?
A. - No! Bad enough I watched his movie.

Q. - He would appear to have the support of the majority of your scientific colleagues.
A. - Not really. This is an issue that has hundreds of aspects. The very thought that a large number of scientists all agree on everything is inconceivable. Among my colleagues, I would say, almost no one thinks that Gore's movie is reasonable. But there will be differences. Some believe it is possible that warming could be a serious problem. Others think it's very unlikely. People are all over the place.

Q. - Some suggest that Roger Revelle, Gore's scientific mentor, would not have agreed with the movie?
A. - Well, he's dead.

Q. - Yes. So that makes it harder for him to speak out.
A. - It's a horrible story. Before he died, Roger Revelle co-authored a popular paper saying, 'We know too little to take any action based on global warming. If we take any action it should be an action that we can justify completely without global warming.' And Gore's staffers tried to have his name posthumously removed from that paper claiming he had been senile. And one of the other authors took it to court and won. It's funny how little coverage that got.

Q. - How cynical do you think Gore is?
A. - It's hard for me to tell. I think he's either cynical or crazy. But he has certainly cashed in on something. And 'cash in' is the word. The movie has cleared $50-million. He charges $100,000-$150,000 a lecture. He's co-founder of Global Investment Management, which invests in solar and wind and so on. So he is literally shilling for his own companies. And he's on the board of Lehman Brothers who want to be the primary brokerage for emission permits.

Q. - That sounds more cynical, less crazy.
A. - I think his aim is not to be president. It's to be a billionaire.

Q. - What do you find to be the attitude among your MIT undergraduates on global warming?
A. - I find that they realize they don't know enough to reach judgments. They all realize that Gore's book was a sham. They appreciate that Michael Crichton at least included references.

Q. - That's encouraging. Because I find the indoctrination at schools to be pretty relentless. On a recent Grade 7 test my daughter was asked something to the effect of, "How are you going to educate your parents about global warming?"
A. - I know. It's straight out of Hitlerjugend.

Q. - Having said that, are there any behaviours we should be changing, as a society, in order to protect our planet?
A. - Yes. We should learn math and physics so we don't get fooled by this idiocy.

Now, Walt often finds himself in sympathy with Bush Administration's positions and ideology, but he also is well-educated in the natural sciences, and sensitive to the concerns of scientists. Which way would his understanding guide him on Global Warming? As might be expected, he is guided, first and foremost, by the numbers. Walt's response is reproduced below.

(note: the 'PhD-level atmospheric physicist' cited below is myself, Marc Valdez).

Walt:
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L: Thank you for sending that Global Warming (GW) article. I think it is important for each of us to stay informed about this stuff, and it is good for you to stay interested. It is also good for me to read these articles. I get so caught up in my own work and outside interests, that sometimes I need prompting from someone else to keep up. Obviously you are inviting me to comment on the Lindzen article, so I will do so here.

Of course on the highest level, the impact of the article is “here is a professional atmospheric physicist who doesn’t believe in global warming”, with the implication that since this MIT professor isn’t worried about it, then we don’t have to either. I’ve seen a lot of this approach on FoxNews – they will point out some expert somewhere who doubts global warming, and treat that simple fact as some sort of compelling reason to disregard GW.

If you think about this argument for a minute, I believe you will see how weak of an approach it really is. Identification of some individual who disbelieves X is not a valid argument against X. I read about some neo-Nazi who denies the Holocaust. Since he denies it, should I doubt it, too? On the other hand, if a physicist doubting GW is an argument against GW, then a physicist believing GW must be an equally strong argument for it.

A friend of mine from high school is now a PhD-level atmospheric physicist. His day job is modeling atmospheric processes, and he meets other physicists all the time, and reads atmospheric physics research all the time. I asked him how many atmospheric physicists agree with Lindzen. Here is his reply:

If I had to guess, about 95% of the Atmospheric Physics community is concerned about Global Warming, and only about 5% think it is overblown. It's about as close to unanimity as is possible to get any group of scientists to regard any open question. The main reason it wins such approval is because the effect of CO2 in trapping infrared radiation is reasonably well-understood, and because ambient CO2 levels are increasing, seemingly inexorably. The basic idea of Global Warming was first advanced in the 1880's, and has never faced effective counterargument. There's plenty of squabbling about the rate at which temperatures might change, when, and where, however.

I hope the contrarians persist, however, because it is important never to have unanimity on any open question. Nevertheless, the academics are largely of a settled mind, and it's the various other elites in society who insist the question must remain open, if only to delay or derail expensive regulatory efforts.

So, for every MIT professor who is not concerned about GW, there are 19 MIT or Harvard or Yale professors who are worried about it. Based on this reasoning, the GW-believing team dominates thoroughly, and wins.

Actually, the fact that an MIT professor is not worried about GW cuts absolutely no ice with me at all. The important thing is his reasons for doubting GW. So what does he say in the article?

Astonishingly, a full two-thirds of his conversation in the article is devoted to personal slights against other scientists, and Al Gore. Why is he doing this? The questions of whether GW is occurring or not occurring, or whether GW is bad or not bad, or whether GW is manmade or natural, or whether we can or should do anything about it, are completely independent of whether Al Gore is a good person. Why would an MIT professor, who is perfectly capable of addressing the matter in a technical fashion, decide instead to make ad hominem attacks of the sort which any journalist or blogger can manage? Lindzen’s only claim to relevance regarding the GW issue is his technical expertise, but he chooses not to apply it in this article. What’s up?

A big ad hominem point of his is the assertion that GW scientists are in it for the money. Well, it is true that all scientists want to be funded, but if “they just want to be funded” is taken as a valid argument against a scientific opinion, then there is no point doing any scientific research at all because, like I said, they all want to be funded. Why should we try to cure cancer, if all those cancer scientists are just looking for funding?

Personally, when forming opinions on technical questions, I am not interested in ad hominem attacks, or conspiracy theories. I just want to look at the data. What did Lindzen say about the data? He did say that the earth has been warming over the last century. Well, that’s what the other 95% of atmospheric physicists say, too. The only other statement he made regarding the actual data was that global temperature has been steady for the past 6 years. To my knowledge, no theory of GW will be disproved by a 6-year steady stretch. He didn’t actually refer to any data which contradicts the GW hypothesis.

FIGURE 1
Enough about Lindzen. Let’s look at some data. Figure One shows temperatures over the past 2000 years, as reconstructed by 10 different research groups. Figure 2 is the same data, for the past 1000 years, so you can see the reconstructions more clearly.









FIGURE 2
So what should we make of this? First, they don’t agree precisely with each other. This is not surprising, since each group used different methods, and applied them to different locations. However, they do agree with each other with respect to trending. They all agree that the 11th century was warm, and that the 17th century was cool. This is in accordance with historical weather records from Europe, indicating that the researcher’s methods are basically sound. Furthermore, they all agree that the 20th century is also warm – in fact it is either tied for warmest (with the 11th century), or it is the warmest, in the last 2000 years.

Two important points: first, although the 11th and 20th centuries as a whole are similar, the last 20-25 years (since 1980) are definitely warmer that any previous time since 1 AD. Second, starting around 1900, the rate of warming has been accelerating. It is evident to me, as a scientist, that some process has been affecting climate in the 20th century, which was not important previously. What process could that be?

Emission of CO2 into the atmosphere is a process which has been accelerating since the 19th century, due to human burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been increasing at a corresponding rate, and the amount of the increase is within the known amount of manmade loading. Let’s spell out some points numerically:

1. It is well established that CO2 in the atmosphere will warm the earth due to the greenhouse effect.

2. It is well established that human emissions of CO2 were insignificant prior to the mid-1800s, but have been accelerating at an increasing rate since then.

3. Measured CO2 air concentrations are also increasing, at an accelerating rate.

4. Temperatures have been rising since the late 1800s, at an accelerating rate.

Figure 3 shows atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1000 AD, as reconstructed from air bubbles in the Law Dome Antarctic ice core. This core has annual layers, like tree rings, which make it possible to measure atmospheric CO2 content directly for any year in the past 1000 years or so.

FIGURE 3
Compare Figure 3 with Figure 2. It looks to me like there is a very good correlation between global temperature and atmospheric CO2.

Now, nobody is saying that manmade CO2 is the only variable affecting climate. There are several natural phenomena which can affect it, such as sunspots; and yes, scientists want to be funded to study these processes. There also may be presently undiscovered phenomena, and yes, scientists want funding to look for those, too.

The sunspot theory is an interesting one. When the sun has a lot of sunspots, it gives off a little more energy than it does during quiescent periods. There is an 11-year cycle in sunspot numbers, but beyond this, there are longer-term fluctuations which appear to affect earth’s climate.

Figure 4 shows the sunspot counts collected since 1609, when the telescope was invented.

FIGURE 4
The blue lines represent annual counts, varying according to the 11-year cycle. The black line is a running average; when the black line goes up, solar energy output goes up. Compare Figure 4 with Figure 2. The Maunder Minimum, in the 17th century, corresponds to the Little Ice Age. The Dalton Minimum, centered around 1810-20, corresponds to a dip in temperature in Figure 2. It looks like sunspot numbers have an effect on earth’s climate, just like atmospheric CO2 does. But which is affecting our climate now, and which will affect it in the 21st century?

Figure 5 shows global temperature since 1860, along with atmospheric CO2 concentration, and sunspot numbers.

FIGURE 5
What does this Figure tell us? First, temperature between 1860 and 1960 rose moderately. CO2 concentrations also rose during this period, but sunspot numbers also rose during that same period. So we can’t really tell which phenomenon – sunspots, or manmade CO2 emissions – was more important in controlling climate during that period. However, since 1960, something different happened. The number of sunspots, and hence solar brightness, has declined, but CO2 concentrations continued to go upward, and at an accelerating rate. Furthermore, global temperature also continued to climb upward, also at an accelerating rate. Since 1960, the observed accelerating temperature increase cannot be explained by solar activity, but it is consistent with an accelerating level of CO2 in the air. I find this graph to be convincing evidence that manmade CO2 emissions are making the earth get hotter.

What will happen in the future? As earth’s population grows, and as China and India become more developed, and as deforestation continues, will humans emit more CO2, or less? If we extrapolate the CO2 curve, and the temperature curve, for the next 100 years, how hot will it get?

EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING

So what will be the effects of GW? I don’t believe there will be any important changes in the next 20 or 30 years, but if nothing is done to reduce CO2 emissions, my guess is that there will be hell to pay in 50 to 100 years from now. The main thing to remember is that is it not the magnitude of the temperature increase which is the problem – the earth has been warmer than today many times in the past – it is the rate which will make trouble. Species and ecosystems can adapt to change, only if they have sufficient time to adjust. See Figure 1 for the wildly accelerated rate of warming which the 20th century saw. Here are some things which may happen:

1. Ocean pH has decreased by 0.1 units since 1900, due to carbonic acid derived from increasing atmospheric CO2. If carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced, the ocean’s pH will be lowered by an additional 0.2 units by 2100. That is a total change of 0.3 units in a 200 year period. Now, salt-water aquariums are notorious for the difficulty in keeping the animals alive – owners must constantly measure chemical parameters and make adjustments to various concentrations; if they don’t, most things in the aquarium die. The reason for this is that marine invertebrates and plankton can only live within a very narrow range of chemical conditions. If that range is exceeded, the plankton die, and then the animals which feed on the plankton die, and so on. The ocean’s chemical properties are changing due to manmade CO2 emissions, and the rate of change is increasing. At some point, the capacity of plankton to cope with acidity will be exceeded, and there will be a general worldwide dying of marine life quickly after that. Once it starts, there will be nothing we can do about it. My guess is that the first ecosystem to go will be coral reefs.

2. Most of the world’s wheat is grown in semiarid climates, like the western US Great Plains. These areas get 15-20 inches of rain per year. What will they be like in 100 years, when the earth is several degrees warmer? Will places which are now semi-arid become wetter, or drier? We don’t know; but if they become drier, then wheat production and cattle production will not be possible at current levels.

3. In many predator/prey relationships (like swallow/mosquito, or shorebird/horseshoe crab), or ecological producer/consumer relationships (like flower/bee), the life cycles of the species involves are synchronized so that the producer (or prey) is most available at the time when the consumer (or predator) is raising young. As climate changes, the timing of these cycles will also change. If one cycle moves forward during the spring, but the other cycle is unable to change fast enough to keep up, then mass starvation of the consumer/predator species will occur. For example, many songbirds migrate to northern Canada and Alaska in late May, in order to raise their young on mosquitoes which are abundant there for a 3-week period in early-mid June. Suppose that because of earlier arctic springs, mosquitoes maximize their numbers in May instead of June. When the songbirds hatch their young, the mosquito peak would then have already passed, and most chicks will starve. Things would work out OK if the songbirds changed their migration time accordingly, but it is believed that they mostly won’t be able to adjust fast enough. It would only take a 5 to 10-year delay in adjustment for the songbird population to crash. Many species which are abundant and successful today will probably be endangered or nearly extinct in 100 years.

4. As the earth warms, Virginia will develop a climate like Georgia has now, and Georgia’s climate will resemble Puerto Rico’s later in the 21st century. Tropical parasites and disease vectors which cannot now survive in the US, will be able to thrive in the Gulf Coast states in perhaps 30 to 50 years. Malaria, dengue fever, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, tapeworms, amebic dysentery, etc., will become well known here. Not all of these diseases are curable – for example, malaria is not. Furthermore, it will be not only humans who will be affected by tropical diseases, parasites, and fungi; but also our native animals, farm animals, native plants, and crops. These diseases currently hit Africans badly enough, but when people, crops, and farm animals of American or European descent become exposed, the mortality will be much worse, because we/they don’t have the partial immunity which is present in Africa. It will be like when smallpox was introduced to America – it made Europeans sick, but it killed native Americans.

5. The economic effects of GW in the US and Europe will not include starvation, but merely economic disruption. However, in the third world, which is barely able to feed itself now, starvation is a possibility. Economic consequences will be worldwide, and even Canada, which you might think would benefit from GW, will be caught up in the global reduction in standard of living (as it got caught up in the worldwide economic disruption of the 1930s). Since the US is currently the largest producer of CO2 in the world, and since we are conspicuously wasteful, and conspicuously uncooperative in GW legislation, everyone in the world who is hurt by global warming will blame the United States.

One more thing about Lindzen. Although I won’t devote 2/3 of this letter to discrediting him, I will mention that he is, or has been, a paid consultant for OPEC, oil companies, and coal companies. He takes money from organizations with a vested interest in putting more CO2 into the air.

Well, L., This is perhaps more of a comment than you expected. If you have read this far, I thank you for your time.

Walt Kubilius

All figures are from the Wikipedia articles on Global Warming and Solar Variation. References for the original raw data are given there.