Global Cooling ... what the?

I received the following article in a forward that outlines supposedly why global warming is not real. It cites some research and appears at first glance to offer a compelling reason for why we shouldn't get too worked up. Here is my rebuttal, complete with a little intro about how to read these kinds of pieces that crop up on the net.

1) Be very careful about things written by people with extremely biased views. Lorne is not in the business of unbiased reporting or scientific reasoning. He pretty much only writes opeds about politics for a right wing paper. This isn’t someone you want to take pointers from on anything unless of course you are a conservative looking for misinformation that just fits with your mindset.

2) Be very careful about buying into highly scientific claims you know nothing about. It is one thing when a Nobel Laureate who is a climate expert conveys key information about his research. You may not have the knowledge or expertise to understand the why involved, but you can generally accept that if it is coming from a noted scientist (someone who is not affiliated with industry or a right or left wing group, and someone who is published in peer reviewed journals), it can probably be accepted as true. On the other hand, hearing a bunch of random scientific mumbo jumbo thrown around in an op-ed is probably not only unreliable (where are the real sources here? Any published papers?) but also totally misinformed. I often see climate skeptics hijacking some small piece of scientific inquiry to display it for all to see as if one fact somehow causes all of climate science to crumble. They also tend to get these details wrong because, surprise, they are not really scientists, nor do they care about the underlying science. They simply use these assorted facts as a shotgun effect where hopefully, taken together, this random sampling of “science-sounding” stuff will sway the undecided, who are open to either side, towards skepticism.

3) Science is open-source. I love these types of pieces because they give me a great starting point to inform myself about the topics they are discussing. Medieval Warm Period, Positive Pacific Decadal Oscillation, percent of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and of course a few key “experts” in the field. I find that Wikipedia is an amazing place to look these things up and learn about the actual science behind the claims. Often Wiki will have the points that are in question and provide some context for why they are being questioned. Most information is footnoted so you can go directly to the source.

4) Fodder for the ill-informed, confusing for the un-informed. Articles like this generally serve two purposes. One is to become cited by the ‘skeptics’ who already have their minds made up on the matter and are simply looking for stuff that fits with their warped view of the world. The other is to confuse the issue and create a sense of debate among the people who don’t really know much about climate science. It’s a tactic known well by the Heartland Institute, Exxon Mobil, Greening Earth Society and the array of oil-backed (or simply head-in-the-sand) message repeaters who write these op-eds and appear on ‘debates.’

5) Is there really any debate? Yes, on very specific, highly scientific issues, there is indeed some question as to how much global warming will occur, which models are most accurate, etc. There is NO debate on whether or not it is human-induced, if indeed we are experiencing climate change, and any of the other mainstream science that cannot be refuted by conservatives no matter how many opeds or non-peer-reviewed papers they write. You might be led to believe there is because occasionally items pop up in the “hippie-controlled” media that allows a so-called scientist to weigh in on the matter. These are few and far between, and no, the fact that it’s one guy against all the big bad scientists is not what makes the one guy wrong. Surely, he can be a lone Einstein or Copernicus, and have a brilliant conclusion where he somehow disproves all we know about climate science in his research paper and sees something that a thousand other people didn’t see. Unfortunately, none of these conclusions ever hold up to scrutiny. You don’t need to be a scientist to read and learn about chemistry, the gases in the atmosphere, how much CO2 is emitted by humans, what observations from Antarctica to the Great Barrier Reef tell us, why ice cores are important for telling us historic temperatures, and about a million other pieces of indisputable fact.

6) Junk Science. A funny irony is that the term ‘junk science’ was made popular by people who don’t want to believe the actual underlying science. Read the book “The Republican War on Science” for a more detailed account.

Let’s begin…

Lorne Gunter: Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof

BEFORE reading any nonsense about global warming skeptics who have no credentials, read this: http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics “how to talk to a climate skeptic”.

Lorne is a conservative columnist for a Canadian paper. He is not a scientist and has no credentials. You can find some of his ‘facts’ refuted here:

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/8836.html

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Clearly this is written by an unbiased, balanced author who really is weighing all the facts. Yes, the climate journals are obviously controlled by those tyrannical environmentalists… or maybe you mean scientists who do not publish uninformed, nonscientific papers.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures -- they're going down, not up.

Interesting… to go against all the nobel laureates and thousands of climate scientists, libraries filled with research supporting ever more detailed accounts of how CO2 from people is causing a few little problems around the world. Tackle away. Let’s see your proof.

On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to "a negative PDO" or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs -- El Ninos -- produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones -- La Ninas -- produce below average ones.

Fair enough. More information on this here:

http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/pdo.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation

Global warming does not predict everything gets hot. It predicts on average things get warmer, but more notably, extreme weather becomes more common. So a particularly cold winter is well within the predictions of global warming, as are increased flooding, drier summers, longer droughts, (possibly) more large-scale hurricanes, etc.

Interestingly, the skeptics bring in to play obscure facts, like a PDO, which the average person knows nothing about and so cannot possibly refute. If you don’t really understand PDO, then how do you know if this connection to solar minimums even exists, or if it does, how it is even related to climate change from CO2.

Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as "solar minimums" magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.

So one meteorologist has ‘discovered’ a link between two graphs and decides to correlate the two. The original paper is here:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/TheGreatSouthAmericanMayColdSpell.doc

here is a fuller explanation of the link between PDO and global warming – basically, it’s nonsense:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Is-Pacific-Decadal-Oscillation-the-Smoking-Gun.html

But the source of the quote is here:

http://www.metsul.com/secoes/visualiza.php?cod_subsecao=33&cod_texto=947

Basically this guy is specifically refuting Al Gore’s claim (which is indeed under a lot of debate) that global warming will cause more El Ninos. That extremely specific prediction is something to question because of the underlying causes of El Nino and La Nina that does indeed have to do with the solar cycle, but by no means does this remotely disprove any of the many many other irrefutable points that are well understood. This is a theme in these types of articles: to cherry pick a specific thing that someone said (not even a scientist, sorry Al) and use it as a straw-man to knock down, thereby toppling the entire edifice of scientific research in the field. Not going to be that easy.

Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.

Ah, a new scientist. First question: who is he?

http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org/expert.cfm?expertId=389

He is actually part of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, which represents the paper industry. Fine.

is this even a credible ‘finding’ published in a real journal? Yes published. You can read it here: http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025 No, not exactly a respected journal. Let me elaborate:

There are actually very few players in the climate skeptic world. Very few scientists quoted, very few so-called “published” papers, and very few scientific journals that accept anything like this non-science rubbish. So if you look a bit deeper, you find the whole ‘anti-climate change’ arena to be filled with familiar faces. It’s like a low-budget movie where they reuse actors for different parts.

So… this “Energy and Environment” journal that is supposedly peer reviewed? Not exactly. It is a publication, but it is NOT on the ISI (Institute of Scientific Information)’s Journal Citation Report. This is essentially a cross-reference tool to assess scientific journals and how seriously they should be taken.

Journal Citation Reports® offers a systematic, objective means to critically evaluate the world's leading journals, with quantifiable, statistical information based on citation data. By compiling articles' cited references, JCR Web helps to measure research influence and impact at the journal and category levels, and shows the relationship between citing and cited journals.

http://www.thomsonreuters.com/products_services/scientific/Journal_Citation_Reports

Every major journal is on this list. None of the crappy ones are. Guess which one is not on it. The EE journal that seems to publish tons of anti-climate change, poorly researched papers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_and_Environment)

Ok, I hear you say. But what if his paper is correct and he’s just been pushed out by those damn hippies pulling the strings behind Big Science. Here is one scientist’s critique of Loehle’s work:

http://thatstrangeweather.blogspot.com/2007/11/open-letter-to-craig-loehle.html

Here’s another review of it. It’s a tough read for the layperson.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2389

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2380

It seems like this guy has tried to do an honest analysis of warming in the middle ages by taking out tree-rings entirely and coming to his own conclusion. Fine. That is a fair assessment, but as you can see, there is a LOT of debate over what it means, how the analysis/model was done, etc etc. The main point to take from this is this single piece of information DOES NOT upend everything else we know about global warming and previous warming in the year 1005. Also, here’s what this study says:

*based on 18 non-tree-ring samples of 2000-year-long temperature sets, there is a warming trend in the middle ages.

IT DOES NOT SAY:

* Carbon doesn’t cause global warming

* humans have not had an impact on climate change

* anything else that would cause one to question climate change.

Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather -- even harvest totals and censuses --confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.

Prior to the past decade? I’m not sure this author has a clue how much research has been accumulated over the last decade on climate change.

But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's "hockey stick," in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies. Dr. Loehle's work helps end this deception.

There is no supporting evidence for the author’s claims. Interesting that the author believes all of climate science rests on this one hockey stick graph. True, it may not be completely accurate, but it is just one of probably thousands of pieces of information that connect observed warming with industrial revolution greenhouse gases. This is a typical skeptic tactic – they take one piece of the entire claim, attempt to refute it, and then somehow by refuting that, they’ve caused all of science to come crumbling down.

Here is an in depth look at this so-called “hockey stick” graph. Basically, it’s hard to figure out what happened a long time ago, so they reconstruct temperatures based on a variety of data. Then they got attacked by a few guys in the mining industry and all hell broke loose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."

Then, when you least expect it, a guy with no ties to oil companies, no ties to Republicans… just a scientist who is WAY outside the realm of accepted science.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfCFZ7zNWbs

He believes we will enter a COOLING period in a few years. He thinks global warming is real but there’s nothing we can do about it because, uh, it’s not caused by CO2. Hmm. He seems like a very nice guy, but kind of in that grandpa sort of way where he doesn’t know what’s flying anymore. He is essentially refuting the concept that CO2 warms the earth and the very simple connection that more CO2 (a lot more) causes the earth to warm more. This is pretty well documented at this point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ... This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."

I especially love it when writers first proclaim that no, CO2 has nothing to do with warming, there is no warming, hell, we’re in a cooling period, according to some fringe scientist. And then in the very next paragraph proclaim that, well, even if CO2 does cause global warming, and human are producing a lot of CO2, well, that doesn’t really matter anyway. A good debate would stop a bit earlier because, assuming you’ve correctly asserted that CO2 doesn’t mean anything anyway, there would be NO REASON to try to argue this. It’s the shotgun effect again – an attempt at overwhelming you with a dizzying array of proof against the science. Let’s see if it works…

First, if you search for this so-called “Michael J. Myers” and google him like so:

+”Michael J. Myers” +”Hilton head”

You will uncover his one quote (boldfaced above), from this article over and over again, reprinted in dozens of sites… but what you won’t find is an actual link to the real person. Finally, at listing # 14, you find a PDF of a paper by Mr. Myers, which talks about a nifty device that you can use to detect environmental pollutants. (http://www.stellarnet-inc.com/public/download/Final%20Draft%20LIBS.pdf ) Anything about global warming? Nah. A quote remotely similar to what is in this article? Nope.

Now, I don’t really understand the point of this quote (which cannot be found no matter how much google-ing you do), because it is a) not true b) not even close to true c) not even presented in a way that is useful.

a) It is not true. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has risen from roughly 260-280 parts per million over the last 10,000 years… UP TO about 365 ppm. That’s an increase of about 85ppm, or 32%. I’d say that’s a big increase.

b) I have no idea where that .00064% stat came from. Usually things like that kind of appear from nowhere and magically do not have a source, and thus are hard to refute. Making up information is a great tactic to win debates.

c) If you read anything about global warming gases and atmospheric concentration, you find that they are almost always presented as “parts per million” or “per billion”, but never as percentages, since, as you can see, tiny percentages don’t convey useful information in this field. It’s the same idea when someone says “global warming will ONLY cause an increase by 3 degrees… big deal! That’s nothing.” What they don’t understand is that this is a global average, not an absolute number, and so context is completely lost. It’s also like saying “your body temperature only went up 3 degrees, or 2%, that’s nothing!” This doesn’t convey any sense of context for how large or small a variation needs to be in order to be significant. It’s misinformation.

Other international scientists have called the manmade warming theory a "hoax," a "fraud" and simply "not credible."

Again, a favorite tactic is to a) claim that lots of other renowned scientists agree and b) quote them without actually quoting their names, sources, context or anything that might be checked. The probable source for all of this is in the author’s head.

While not stooping to such name-calling, weather-satellite scientists David Douglass of the University of Rochester and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville nonetheless dealt the True Believers a devastating blow last month.

This is actually the only piece of useful data in this article, as it is correct, comes from a real journal… but does not deal a devastating blow. In fact, it again brings up a very minor detail in the big picture. A curious discrepancy, to be sure, but far from a fatal blow to the science, it just brings up a piece of information that needs to be looked into more.

The same tactics are used by the “9-11 conspiracy” people who try to bring up little discrepancies in the narrative of what happened on 9-11, as if a handful of unresolved facts are going to point to a massive conspiracy. So too these handful of unresolved global warming facts do nothing to sway the general scientific consensus of what’s going on.

Take a look at a discussion of Christy’s publication: (I believe this is the one the author is quoting from… though the actual author of the paper DOES NOT say any of the stuff

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf - this one published by Energy and Environment, our old friend.

This is the actual publication, I believe: http://www.atmos.uah.edu/atmos/christy/2007_Dougless_etal.pdf

There is not a single mention of the quote below. It explains that temperature observations made by satellites do not correspond at certain altitudes above the earth with the model predictions. Ok, so the models are off for those altitudes. It doesn’t

And a discussion of it.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/

For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, "variations in global temperatures since 1978 ... cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide."

Moreover, while the chart below was not produced by Douglass and Christy, it was produced using their data and it clearly shows that in the past four years -- the period corresponding to reduced solar activity -- all of the rise in global temperatures since 1979 has disappeared.

This chart stuff is nonsense. A very basic fact about global warming is that CO2 doesn’t have an immediate impact. It is like a train. It has momentum and takes a while to pick up speed. So what we’re seeing now is actually from CO2 that entered the atmosphere years ago – not this year. This momentum effect (and the persistence of CO2 in the atmosphere) is why we should be concerned about doing something NOW rather than later, because even if we cease all CO2 production today, we will continue to see the earth heat up as a result of the existing CO2. It will continue to heat up for many years. It’s why we don’t need scare tactics by the left or skeptics from the right – we need actual change right now.

It may be that more global warming doubters are surfacing because there just isn't any global warming.

Lovely close – in 500 words the author is already patting himself on the back that he just toppled all of science as we know it. Nice work. Now go read some books on the topic, talk to real sources, and try to bring something to the table next time.