Misinformation and the global warming debate

Sam van Rood posted a critique of an article of mine on global warming. My article summarised some of the key issues in measurement of global warming, the trend shown by measurements, the flaws in some surface measurements, the disparities between surface measurements and atmospheric measurements, the consequent invalidation of predictions implicit in the protocols of the Kyoto Treaty, and the signing of a petition by more than 17,000 American scientists (now some 19,000, I believe) recommending against ratification of the Kyoto Treaty on scientific grounds.

There are two central issues in the debate. First, whether the scientific evidence justifies the conclusion that human hydrocarbon and other emissions are causing significant global warming with disastrous potential; and, second, the massive and economically very costly industrial restructuring implied by Kyoto for all Australians. This latter issue revolves, of course, around the answers to the first question. If there is no credible and conclusive evidence that human emissions are causing significant global warming, then there is no case whatever, on that ground, for incurring huge and futile costs in reducing them.

Using methods that, regrettably, do the Australian Conservation Foundation no credit, he associates my article with "interest group tactics" and claims my arguments are "flawed and outdated", even though I was summarising acknowledged experts writing this year and in the knowledge of the latest measurement results. I have no affiliations with any "interest group"; unless a part-time association with an independent, wholly non-profit research and education organisation, without any industrial, political, religious or other affiliations or obligations meets that definition.

He refers to a Wall Street Journal article that I have never seen and then attacks the scientists’ petition referred to above and claims, falsely, that "The petition is full of fake non-scientists" such as "Perry S. Mason (the fictitious lawyer)". Now either Mr van Rood has never bothered to visit the petition’s website or, if he has, is concealing the fact that the petition’s organisers have taken extensive precautions against fraudulent tricksters’ and activists’ attempts to sabotage it and that the Perry Mason concerned is indeed a real person, a PhD chemist who has signed the petition. Rather than take my word about the importance and genuineness of the Petition, readers can judge for themselves by going to www.oism.org/pproject/s where a full listing of signers (including some 2,660 physicists, geophysicists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists) is available along with other relevant information.

Now for the science. There are three questions and they need to be separated. The first is whether there is evidence of global warming over the last 100 years. The answer is ‘yes’. Measurements of global surface air temperatures since the 1880s reveal an increase of about 1.0 degree C.

The second question is whether there has been a significant increase in human-caused output of greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide and methane) in recent years. The answer is ‘yes’. About 80 per cent of the increase in carbon dioxide output has occurred since 1940.

The third question is whether it can be demonstrated that the temperature increase over the past century has been caused entirely or substantially by this increased output of greenhouse gases. The answer to this critical question is ‘no’, and the reasons follow. The objective reader must be constantly alert, in reading activist literature and statements, including those from the Australian Conservation Foundation, to the obfuscation caused when mention of ‘global warming’ is subtly implied to mean ‘human-caused global warming’.

It is worth noting that most of the increase over the past century in surface air measurements, referred to above, occurred before 1940; that is, before the large increase in output of greenhouse gases. There has been an upward trend in surface air temperature measurements, which began 120 years ago, and it cannot reasonably be explained as due to release of greenhouse gases by mankind and domesticated animals. In a moment, I will give some evidence that throws doubt upon the reliability of recent surface air measurements but, accepting their validity for the time being, what do they signify? The obvious answer is that they could signify a slight degree of global warming that has nothing to do with human action. Cores of polar ice, marine sediments, historical records, and other evidence, indicate large variations in temperature over the past tens of thousands of years. In his critique, Mr van Rood claims that the 1990s were the hottest decade in the last 1000 years. Yet it is likely that surface temperatures during the Middle Ages were at least as great then as now and possibly greater; to be followed by the ‘little ice age’ in the 17^th century from which we have since been emerging, to reach temperatures today that may be still, so far as we can tell from the sort of evidence mentioned above, well below those of 3000 years ago. I am happy to supply the references for these and later claims.

The reliability of temperature measurements

The models employed to justify the Kyoto protocols to drastically reduce energy use predicted that atmospheric temperatures would show a rise of between one and two degrees Fahrenheit, or approximately 0.5 to 1.0 degree C over the past twenty years.

Surface measurements of temperatures reflect the averages of thousands of thermometers in every country. Most of them are located in cities and towns. Ocean surface temperatures are taken by ships using the same ‘Stevenson Screens’ (or boxes) that are used on land. It is these overall measurements that have shown the slight increase in surface temperature over the past century or more.

The surface measurements showed a global warming of 0.4 C between 1979 and the present.

Beginning in January, 1979, satellites began measuring the atmosphere between 1000 and 8000m altitude. Measurements by weather balloons have also been taken over this period. The satellites make many thousands of measurements each day and the orbit is constantly shifted so that the whole Earth is covered over a three-day period. The measurements are accurate and comprehensive.

The satellite measurements showed a trend quite different to the surface measurements purporting to show a warming of 0.4 C since 1979. The satellites were showing a warming of less than 0.1 C which was not evenly spread across the 21 years, nor was it global. This restricted warming apparently resulted from the El Nino of 1997-98. Before that, the satellites were showing a slight global cooling, which is still persisting in the southern hemisphere (see Daly at www.vision.net.au/~daly). There is thus a major and vital discrepancy between the surface measurements and the satellite measurements. The weather balloon measurements are highly consistent with the satellite measurements.

The United States National Research Council Panel of eleven, in its January, 2000 report, reached the extraordinary conclusion that both surface and atmospheric records are right, conjecturing that the discrepancy may be due to some unknown process, perhaps volcanoes or ozone depletion, which no models can detect. Readers are urged to inspect the Panel’s highly qualified conclusions which acknowledge, but do not explain, the crucial disparity between the suspect surface measures (see below) and the more reliable satellite and balloon measurements.

Satellites can now measure surface temperatures and this, hopefully, will overcome the problems of surface measurements, to which we now turn. A full description of these problems is to be found in the Daly net reference above. Briefly, however, the main ones are ‘heat island’ effects for measuring instruments located in or near towns, cities, industrial complexes, airports, etc., and variations across the world in the care with which the measuring instruments are maintained and the measurements accurately made.

It is puzzling and highly significant, for example, that the surface and atmospheric measurements are not diverging everywhere. In North America, Australia, and Western Europe, where the records have been properly collected and the instruments well maintained, the surface records are in close agreement with the satellite measurements. Elsewhere, including countries subjected to warfare, political and economic upheaval, and civil turmoil, the surface measurements show the degree of surface warming referred to earlier.

The most reasonable conclusion from all this is that human-caused greenhouse emissions, especially carbon dioxide emissions over the last 60 years, have made no noticeable contribution to global warming. Whatever recent global warming might have taken place (a highly debatable claim as we have seen) is almost certainly due to natural forces, such as variations in solar activity and radiation, which have characterised the whole of the Earth’s history, as have the advance and retreat of glaciers and much else.

A subsidiary question is whether more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (on a world scale, only a little more) is a bad thing anyway. In terms of increases in human and animal food production, agricultural output generally and the flourishing of forests, carbon dioxide fertilisation is showing measurable benefits. The United States Forestry Service, for example, says that large standing timber in the USA has increased by 30 per cent since 1950 and, because of the increase in plant food, animal numbers are increasing as well. There is other good news from this story than space allows for the telling. One would have expected that an organisation supposedly dedicated to conservation would inform us of such welcome developments.

On the contrary, after belatedly acknowledging that "there is some uncertainty in the global warming debate", but either concealing or ignorant of the crucial and sobering measurement data I have summarised, Mr van Rood nevertheless goes on to repeat the extravagant scare scenarios (described by him as "predictions") about catastrophic floods, droughts, cyclones, dead coral reefs and so on, which have no sound scientific basis but which serve to worry the trusting and the uninformed. He follows with snake-oil economics about alternative energy sources being cheaper whilst keeping silent about the huge costs of the changes he would have us unnecessarily make. One cannot help wondering what the Conservation Foundation’s true objectives are.

There is no real evidence that human beings and their industrial, agricultural and pastoral activities are causing global warming. To act as Kyoto would have us do under the false premise that we are causing global warming, would inflict on the world, including the most desperate, more hunger, more poverty, more disease, and more death. For Australians, it will make us poorer and more vulnerable for no good reason whatsoever.