By Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California September 11,
2011
Several of my friends have asked me lately how I can be so positive that CO2 is not the evil, planet-killing pollutant that the science community insists that it is. This missive is a partial response to those friends. I will have more to add, likely some figures, charts, graphs, links to other sites and such. But, here is the first effort. Fair warning: this is a long, long piece. It covers a lot of ground. It is as accurate as I can make it. I haven't delved into the "why", but concentrated on the "what" and some of the "how." There are a few "whos" in here, also. Most of this has been covered by me in one or several earlier posts on SLB.
Scientists said CO2 emissions are heating the Earth, with
dire, even catastrophic consequences about to happen: ice caps melt, sea level
rise, shores inundated, massive very strong hurricanes and more of them, heat
waves with deadly tropical diseases moving into temperate zones, crop failures
due to heat and desertification, human health pandemics from heat-aggravated
issues, snow disappearing from the California Sierra Nevada range, fresh water
shortages, the list went on and on.
The solution, the scientists said, was to stop using fossil
fuels, e.g. natural gas, coal, and oil.
Instead, we were to conserve and learn to use less electric power, drive
electric cars, make gasoline from corn-based ethanol, make diesel from recycled
animal fats and seed oils, recycle all our garbage into trash-burning power
plants, build wind-turbines and solar panel-farms to generate electricity,
collect methane from dairy farms’ manure pits and landfills, then burn the
methane for fuel in power plants. But,
until those technologies could carry the load, we had to capture CO2 from power
plants and big furnaces, and hide it away forever. This hiding was named “sequestration.”
My interest was piqued, to say the least. The Earth is becoming un-inhabitable? Millions of climate refugees would be on the
move, seeking places to live? Wars would
be fought over food, and fresh water?
Coastlines would flood and be gone forever? And this is all due to our fossil fuel
use? My industry? The oil and gas industry?
I knew that chemical engineers would be involved, and in the
thick of it, too. Chemical engineers are
the ones that know how to provide substitutes for oil, for diesel, make ethanol
from corn or cellulose. Chemical
engineers also are the ones that know how to design, build, and operate a
CO2-capture plant, and find ways to either chemically bond the dangerous CO2 or
find ways to permanently store it underground as part of that
sequestration.
So, I began to look into what chemical engineers could do to
solve the problem, and seek ways to benefit from my chemical engineering
background, and legal expertise as an attorney.
Surely, there would be some opportunities in all this for a guy with my
skills. I had to do my due diligence,
and verify the scientific claims.
First, just how does CO2 cause all this warming? I had worked with CO2 for decades, in many
forms and many places. CO2 is a
combustion product (along with water vapor) from burning natural gas, other
light hydrocarbons, gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, petroleum coke, wood, coal,
even peat and dried animal dung. I knew
more than most, I supposed. I had
designed and installed and operated liquid CO2 storage tanks, equipment to
gasify liquid CO2, to compress it, to re-liquefy the compressed gas. I had also designed and operated process
equipment to scrub CO2 out of a furnace’s flue gases, and designed and operated
other process equipment that made solid particles out of the CO2. I figured there would be lots of opportunities
for me.
Finding out how much CO2 needed to be removed seemed like a
good place to start. I began by reading
blog posts on a website called RealClimate.org, where they claimed “real
climate science written by real climate scientists.” That seemed like a good thing, to get the
information right from the experts. I
saw there some charts and graphs, and I
understand charts and graphs. Chemical
engineers know all about such things.
One of those graphs showed the earth’s global average temperature since
about 1880 up until 2005. There was a
dramatic and noticeable upward trend from around 1975 until the present. That trend, if it continued, would certainly
appear to make the world hotter, and indeed, perhaps the ice caps would all melt.
So, being a good engineer, and a lawyer trained to look at
all sides of the issue, I looked at the rest of the chart. It looked a bit odd, to me. You see, there was a rather flat area from
around 1940 to 1975, or perhaps even a slight downward trend in those 35
years. Hmmm…I wonder what caused
that? Perhaps CO2 was going
down in that period? Made a note to
check that out.
Then, the period before 1940 really caught my eye. From about 1900 to 1940, the graph showed a
remarkably similar upward trend, just like the one from 1975 to 2005. Hmmmm, again…how did that warming trend happen? Was CO2 rising in those days? And if it was, why did it stop around
1940? The world was in a global war in
the late 30s and first half of the 40s….did we not use any coal, or oil, or
natural gas in those days? Something
seemed not quite right about that, as I distinctly remember from my reading
about the oil industry that oil production rose dramatically during World War
II, due to all the military machines that needed gasoline and diesel fuel, and
the ships that needed fuel oil to run. I
knew that atomic power was not around until well after the war, so all those
ships were running on heavy fuel oil, what we referred to as Bunker C oil. Also, factories across the world were
humming at full capacity before and during World War II, turning out munitions,
steel, aluminum, war machines, tanks, jeeps, ships, and all the other trappings
of war. Not much conservation going on
there, I thought. Lots of CO2 being
emitted, too. Nobody cared about efficiencies
or conservation, or even pollution, the only thought was for more production as
fast as possible. There was a war on,
after all.
I then looked into the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere,
thinking it was some great percent, probably 3 or 4 or maybe 5 percent. The graphs I found looked wrong, at
first. The CO2 was nowhere near 5
percent. Not even 1 percent. It was so low it was measured in parts per
million! About 365 ppm (parts per
million), I found, and increasing by about 2 ppm per year. The measurements went back to 1959, and even
more amazing to me, this 365 ppm was on a bone-dry basis. That means, the air sample was desiccated, or
dried very thoroughly to remove any water vapor before quantifying the CO2
amount. That is actually a good
practice, because it eliminates any variations due to changes in air
humidity. But on a practical basis, if
the atmosphere contains very much water vapor, then the actual CO2
concentration will be somewhat less. I
worked it out, and for air in the tropics at 80 degrees F and 90 percent
humidity, air contains about 0.2 pounds of water per pound of dry air. Roughly, 17 percent of the air we breathe in
is water vapor. That, then, would reduce
the CO2 concentration also by 17 percent, so that 365 ppm was actually about
310 ppm. Wow. Could CO2 at 310 ppm be causing all that
trouble? I had to see how this
worked.
It didn’t take me long, looking around on the internet to
find that scientists were claiming that CO2 absorbs heat from the Earth’s
surface, and re-radiates about half of that heat back down to Earth. The effect was termed the “greenhouse”
effect, and CO2 was labeled a “greenhouse” gas.
Hmmm…that’s not how greenhouses work, I knew, because we had designed
and built greenhouses, too. Greenhouses
stay warm just like a car stays warm when the windows are rolled up. Heat from the sun passes through the glass,
is absorbed by the dark green plants, and heats up the air inside the
greenhouse. Winds cannot blow the warm
air away because the glass walls and roof are present. In engineering terms, there is no convection
heat transfer. Well, this “greenhouse”
gas may be a term of art, and I have certainly encountered many such terms of
art in engineering, and in the law. More
investigation was clearly needed.
So, I found the
Kyoto Protocol, which had a lot to say about
greenhouse gases. Turns out, there are six
of them, not just CO2. The Kyoto Six
included CO2 of course, plus methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride,
hydrofluorocarbons, and perfluorocarbons.
Then, how did the CO2 and others absorb heat and re-radiate it
back to Earth? And, how did that create
a warming? Some things already did not
add up, such as increasing CO2 since 1959 but the temperature cooling from 1940
to 1975. More on that, later.
More investigation led me to Anthony Watts’ blog,
Watts Up With That. It appeared to be a place
where articles were posted that questioned the orthodoxy of man-made,
CO2-caused global warming. So, I read
and read about Al Gore and his movie An Inconvenient Truth, Dr. James Hansen of
NASA who creates the world’s temperature chart, and several other figures. There was something called “The Team” and I
did not know who was on the team, and what game they played. From the context, though, being a member of
The Team seemed like not a good thing, as the term was used somewhat
disparagingly.
But, back to CO2 and heating the Earth. I read about CO2 absorbing heat. Some small bells went off way deep in my
memory. I had heard about this
somewhere, a long time ago. I pulled out
my ancient handbook of Chemical Engineering, known as
Perry’s Handbook. That book is full of rock-solid, never-wrong
science and engineering facts. If it was
in Perry’s, it was a fact. It could be
relied upon. Chemical engineers use the
principles and knowledge found in Perry’s every day, around the world. So, I looked in Perry’s. And I found it. Under Heat Transfer, sub-heading Radiative
Heat Transfer, furnace design. Furnaces
usually burn some form of fossil fuel, perhaps coal, or oil, or natural gas, or
a mixture of light hydrocarbons if the furnace is in an oil refinery. Home heating furnaces burn a medium oil
similar to diesel fuel, and there are millions of these around the world. There are a similar number of large,
industrial furnaces and boilers in power plants, factories, steel mills,
refineries, and chemical plants. Furnace
design is a very mature art, having been practiced and perfected over not just
decades, but centuries. Even railroad
locomotives burned wood or coal, and have done so for centuries. And, sure enough, one of the correction
factors that must be included in the furnace design is the effect of CO2 in the
combustion gases. Water vapor also must
be accounted for, and its effect is even greater than that of CO2.
A bit of an aside is in order, here. When a fossil fuel is burned, a chemical
reaction occurs that gives off a great quantity of heat. A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon, meaning most
of the molecules are either hydrogen, or carbon. Hence, Hydro-Carbon. Chemists are not very inventive when naming
things, sometimes. Air is added, and
heat, and the oxygen in the air reacts chemically with the carbon, and with the
hydrogen. One carbon atom combines with
two oxygen atoms in the air, to form CO2, Carbon Dioxide – meaning one Carbon,
and two Oxygens. Again, not very creative
naming. Similarly, two Hydrogen atoms
react with one oxygen atom to form H2O, Di-hydrogen Monoxide, more commonly
known as Water. The water is in the
gaseous state, so it is water vapor.
This is important in furnace design, because what flows out of a furnace’s
exhaust stack is mostly nitrogen from the air fed into the furnace, very little
oxygen because most of it is reacted, and the rest is water vapor and CO2. How much CO2, and how much water vapor? Is the CO2 a very low concentration, like
that in the atmosphere? Turns out the
answer is no, CO2 is on the order of 19 percent, and water vapor is also about 29
percent. This is
very, very different from the concentration in the atmosphere. Stated another way, 19 percent is the same
as 190,000 ppm. So, the concentration of
CO2 is much, much higher in a furnace.
What else is different? For one
thing, the temperatures are much different.
CO2 in a furnace is glowing, white-hot.
Its temperature is on the order of 1800 degrees F. Yet, in the atmosphere, CO2 is on the order
of 90 degrees F down to - 40 degrees F.
I wondered if that made a difference, and if it did, how much? The
basic answer was that yes, CO2 and water vapor each absorb radiant heat and
re-emit that radiant heat. So, there
appeared to be some valid basis for the scientists’ claims that CO2 absorbs
heat. But still, I wondered.
I then read some more in the scientific literature and found
that CO2 only absorbs a small fraction of the radiant heat leaving the Earth’s
surface. A very, very small portion. Not only a very small portion, but the effect
of adding more CO2 to the air has a diminishing effect on how much radiant
energy is absorbed. In effect, the atmosphere’s radiant
absorption is the same whether CO2 is present, or not. The effect is further diluted because water
vapor also absorbs radiant energy at the same wavelengths as does CO2. Water vapor also absorbs radiant energy at
other wavelengths, but there is an overlap with CO2.
So, I sat back and pondered over all this, gave it a good
thinking through. The Earth, as I knew,
cooled off rapidly and substantially in the clear desert nights, even in the
heat of summer. The cold desert nights
are attributed to the very dry air, that is, almost zero water vapor. This effect is pretty amazing, and one can
actually see ice form in a shallow pan at night in the desert when the
surrounding air is above freezing. This
is a favorite event for Scouts who go desert camping. One takes a shallow pan, such as a brownie
pan, puts about a quarter inch of fresh water in the pan, and sets the pan down
on some insulating material such as Styrofoam or cardboard. We wrapped a dry towel around the sides, too,
to keep the air from warming the pan.
Sure enough, just before sunrise, we checked and there was a layer of
ice on the water surface. Enough heat
had escaped from the water via radiation into the black sky above, unimpeded by
CO2 or water vapor, to allow the water to chill and create ice. The ice water was great for filling
canteens.
Yet, one cannot do this at night in a humid climate, such as
Houston, Texas where I grew up and also did some camping. The water vapor in the air, even on a clear
night, prevents this.
So, I wondered and pondered the entire question of CO2
absorbing heat in the atmosphere. First,
the Perry’s handbook made mention of a most important parameter, the “mean beam
length,” or MBL. This refers to the
distance from the hot CO2 and water vapor gases to the furnace tubes where the
liquid is contained that must be heated.
The greater the distance, the less impact the radiant energy has. This is rather obvious from everyday
experience, also, if anyone has ever built a campfire or lit a candle. Closer to the flame is much hotter, and far
away from the flame is much cooler. This
is common knowledge, except among very young children. This is also well-known from the planets in
the solar system, with planets closest to the sun being very hot such as
Mercury, and those farther away growing colder and colder. Yet, the Sun’s surface is the same
temperature. Clearly, distance has
something to do with the amount of radiant energy absorbed. I wondered just how much energy CO2 could
absorb at altitudes of 10,000 feet, 20,000 feet, 30,000 feet, and higher. Also, as the atmosphere grows thinner and
thinner with altitude, I wondered how many CO2 molecules are present at each
altitude to absorb whatever heat energy happens to be passing through.
It was rather obvious that even ancient man knew some of
these basic facts, as references to “the cold stars” are common in
literature. Yet, we now know that stars
are in fact suns, and some of them are much bigger and far hotter than our
sun. We cannot feel the heat from them,
due to the very great distances measured in billions of miles, if not
trillions. Far away means very
cold. Up close means very hot.
I had not yet formed a conclusion, a firm opinion, on all
the scientific claims of CO2 causing the earth to warm, but it was looking
pretty shaky to me. Then I considered my
engineering background in process control, and kept thinking about
campfires. The Law of the Campfire is
simple, and was stated briefly above: if
you are too hot, move back. If you are
too cold, move closer. Closer is
hotter, every time, for a campfire that has constant heat output.
And yet, I had seen the chart that showed CO2 was slowly
rising, a nice smooth curve. At the same
time, the average temperature for the entire earth had peaked in about 1940 and
decreased for 35 years. Then, the trend
reversed, and the earth started warming again.
That is impossible, if CO2 is what is causing the warming. For CO2 to cause the earth to cool for 35
years, then warm again for the next 35 violates the fundamentals of process
control. A noted PhD chemical engineer,
Dr. Pierre Latour, wrote on this same subject in a familiar magazine,
Hydrocarbon Processing. I had my own blog by then,
and wrote an
article discussing Dr. Latour’s writings. For CO2 to allow cooling then warming, would
be like moving your chair closer to the campfire to cool down on some
occasions, but moving away to cool down on other occasions. I knew right then that CO2 could not do what
the scientists say it does. Not at those
low concentrations in the atmosphere, and not at those low temperatures. But, I wanted to look further, so I kept
reading and questioning.
About that time, November of 2009, the
Climategate scandal
broke when thousands of emails and computer files were released into the
internet. The files were incredibly
damning, and damaging to the climate warmists’ cause because they revealed
improper actions by some of the scientists at the heart of the climate
debate. In damage-control mode, the
scientists at the Hadley Center’s Climate Research Unit of the University of
East Anglia, UK, chose to release some of their files on temperature records
for about 1,000 locations around the world.
The intent was to show that there was nothing to hide, and in a good
faith effort, here was the raw data for all the world to see. I copied the files onto my computer and had
a look.
First, the so-called raw data was anything but raw. I know raw data, having acquired reams and
reams of raw data as a practicing chemical engineer, in refineries and chemical
plants all over the world over more than
20 years. What HadCRU (Hadley Climate
Research Unit) had released was processed data.
Their release showed the average monthly temperature over a period of
several decades for the chosen cities.
The monthly average was created from the daily average temperature. The daily average was created by averaging the
high and low temperature for the day.
The high and low temperature were each sometimes adjusted, or fudged, by
accounting for the time of day for that temperature reading. Also, there was no indication of how missing
data was replaced or created. Instruments
are not 100 percent reliable, and sometimes require attention. They may require cleaning, calibration, parts
replacement, or other servicing. They
may be out of service for a period while someone notices the data is missing
and fixes the instrument.
Yet, here was a data set of monthly averages for about a thousand cities. I decided to look at what was there, for the USA. There were 87 records, all in the lower 48
states. The data were for cities all
across the USA, not in every state, but in most states, and were fairly evenly
distributed. Some were in great cities
like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, some in mid-sized cities like
St. Louis, Spokane, and Fresno. Others
were in small cities or large towns, like Abilene, Texas, and Meridian,
Mississippi. I loaded the data for each city into a
popular spreadsheet and made graphs of the monthly temperature versus
time. I included a moving average to see
what trends were apparent, if any, then added a linear best-fit trend
line. The results were so fascinating
that I uploaded
all the graphs onto my blog, with some commentary. What I found confirmed what I had suspected
all along. CO2 cannot do what the scientists claim it does.
What the graphs showed was a terrible inconsistency in the
warming of cities in the USA. Some
cities did, indeed, show a pronounced warming trend over a roughly 100 year
period from 1900 to 2009. Not all
cities had data that extended that far back, though, as only 62 had long-term
records. Yet, other cities among those
62 had cooling trends, or neutral trends.
That seemed odd, because if CO2 was truly warming the earth, then it
must be warming every part and not being selective about what to warm and what
to ignore. This is especially true for
adjacent cities, or those not separated by great distances north to south. There would be some difference, supposedly,
for cities in the far north compared to those near the equator. But, the USA is only about 1500 miles from
north to south in the lower 48 states. For the earth’s total distance from pole to
pole of approximately 12,000 miles, that is barely more than 10 percent. For cities that are only one or two hundred
miles apart, it seemed very odd to me that CO2 would ignore one and focus its
heating rays on the other. Physics does
not work that way. If a phenomenon is
truly a physical effect, it works consistently and equally at all times and
places. Gravity, for instance, has the
same downward force in Houston, Texas as it does in Mumbai, India, or Bora
Bora. One
can imagine the confusion if travelers had to adjust to different gravity
effects depending on what city their plane had landed in. No, physics does not play whimsical games
like that.
Or, one could imagine how chaos would reign if the
properties of steel were capricious, like CO2.
Engineers might be building a bridge in Cairo, Egypt, and require hefty
steel beams 12 inches wide and 24 inches deep.
But, an identical bridge across the Mediterranean in Rome would require
lighter beams of only 4 inches width and 12 inches deep. Engineers will laugh at this, because that
simply does not happen. A given grade
and quality of steel will hold up the identical weight, no matter where in the world
it is used. Purists will note that this
is not strictly true, as steel is somewhat affected by temperature. But, for most purposes, bridges do not get
hot enough to weaken the steel noticeably.
At this point, I looked at adjacent cities and noted that
some cities, as I wrote above, showed a cooling or neutral trend. Abilene, Texas, and Shreveport, Louisiana are
two of those. Abilene shows a slight cooling of 0.19 degrees
C per century, while Shreveport shows a very slight cooling of 0.01degrees C
per century; essentially no change at all. These cities are only approximately 250
miles apart, east to west. They are at
essentially the same latitude. At the
same time, St. Louis, Missouri, shows a warming of 1 degree C per century. St. Louis is only approximately 300 miles
north and a bit east of Shreveport, and approximately 400 miles from
Abilene. Clearly, something is amiss
in the CO2-causes-global-warming science.
How could CO2 know to ignore Shreveport, but focus its beams on St.
Louis?
Another example came to my attention: San Francisco,
California, and its neighboring city, Sacramento. These cities are separated by only about 50
miles, and nearly at the same latitude.
Yet, San Francisco had a warming of 1.5 degrees C per century, while
Sacramento cooled by 0.3 degrees C per century.
One possibility that explains the heating versus cooling or
no trend is what I learned was called the Urban Heat Island effect, or
UHI. At first I thought this referred
to the University of Hawaii until I finally found what the acronym spelled out. UHI is a phenomenon that causes cities, or
large urban areas, to be hotter during the day, and warmer during the night,
compared to more rural areas nearby. The
UHI effect is small for small cities, but grows larger for large cities. The UHI is due to several factors, including
expanses of asphalt and concrete paving, stone or brick or glass-and-steel
buildings, great consumption of electricity to heat or cool the buildings,
industrial heat from factories and other heavy industries, and large numbers of
cars, trucks, buses, and airplanes that consume great quantities of fossil
fuel.
But, even UHI has problems.
For example, Meridian, Mississippi is a small town and it is warming at
the identical rate as the large city in Texas, San Antonio. Both show a modest warming of 0.26 degrees C
per century. How can that be, if UHI is
important?
Other small cities show substantial warming, such as Helena,
Montana and Duluth, Minnesota, at 2 degrees C per century. Duluth’s population hasn’t changed much
from around 80,000 people since 1930. It
reached 107,000 in 1960 but has been decreasing since then. Helena has grown from about 12,000 in 1910 to
28,000 in 2010.
I want to turn briefly to the amazing small town of Eureka,
California. I have never been there, but
it is on the coast in northern California between San Francisco and the Oregon
border. When the winter Olympics are
held near 2075, Eureka should put in a bid as the host city. It will soon be covered in snow year-round,
and may have a localized ice age if the present cooling trend does not
reverse. Eureka has, starting in about
1990, had a cooling trend of approximately 15 degrees C per century. Its average temperature currently is about
10 degrees C, so in 65 years the average temperature will be zero C. One
can only wonder why CO2 has ignored the small town of Eureka. If any town needed some global warming, it
would be Eureka.
Finally, my attention was turned to a published study by Dr.
James Goodridge, the former state climatologist for California, now
retired. His work showed that California’s
counties could be grouped in three groups according to population, and the average
temperature trend for each group computed.
He found that counties with large populations showed a distinct increasing
temperature over 80 years, while those with small populations showed
essentially no warming at all. The
mid-sized counties showed an intermediate amount of warming. One must seriously question how CO2 did
that, in a state as geographically large and diverse as California. The large population counties are typically
on the coast, with the cities of San Diego, Los Angeles, and San
Francisco. Small population counties are
all across the state, including on the remaining coastal areas. It is
highly unlikely that CO2 is smart enough to pick and choose which counties in
California will receive its warming beams, and which counties will be ignored
by CO2.
To summarize the journey to this point, then, I found that
scientists claim the earth is warming at an alarming rate, but there was a
previous warming of equal magnitude and duration (1910-1940) during a period
when atmospheric CO2 was at low concentration.
Also, the earth stopped warming and cooled a bit from 1940 to 1975, then
started the warming again. For CO2 to
cause a warming, then a cooling, then a warming again is impossible and
violates the fundamentals not only of physics but of process control. Finally, CO2 ignores completely some cities
in the USA, indeed entire counties in California, while warming adjacent cities
and counties with large populations at an alarming rate. CO2 is
a simple molecule with one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms, and cannot
possibly be that smart.
All the above was more than enough to convince me that the
threat man-made global warming is false, it is a hollow threat, and has zero
substance. Yet, if one reads the policy
summaries and scientific studies, the premise is that CO2 causes warming and
more CO2 causes more and faster warming.
All else follows from that failed premise.
Still, there is more to the story. I want to describe what I found when I looked
at the temperature record itself, the one that shows a warming from 1910 to
1940, a cooling from then until 1975, then a warming again until about
2000. To preface this, it is important to know that
in engineering data collection and analysis, indeed in any scientific data
collection and analysis, it is only rarely appropriate to go back and change
one’s data. It is extremely
inappropriate to change one’s data over and over again. That requires some explanation.
The question is, how accurate is any data? The data here, for climate purposes, and
whether the Earth is warming or cooling, is temperature data. Temperature data can be obtained very
accurately and very precisely with modern technology. Not to get too technical with this, but
accuracy and precision are not the same thing.
Accuracy can be considered as how close to the truth is the measurement,
while precision is the measure of how many decimal places are believable in the
measurement. In the early days of
thermometers, it was difficult to calibrate them and also difficult to obtain a
reading within half a degree. Thus, the
thermometer may have read 80 degrees on a fine sunny day but due to
mis-calibration, the actual temperature was only 78 degrees. What is not known in many cases is when a
thermometer broke and was replaced. It
is also not known if the replacement thermometer was calibrated to read the
same as the earlier one. Finally, if different observers read the
thermometer, one may have judged the reading to be 70.5 degrees, while another
would read it to be 70 degrees. These
seem like small differences, and they are.
However, the entire warming over the past century was said to be only
0.7 degrees C, or roughly 1.2 degrees F.
My attention was called to some amazing work by E. M.
(Michael) Smith, who runs a blog titled
chiefio.wordpress.com. The pertinent portions of his blog entries
are known as
The March of the Thermometers.
Michael is rather a whizz at computer programming and data analysis. He accessed the publicly-available massive
data and computer code used at NASA by Dr. James Hansen, known as the GISS
code. I believe GISS stands for Goddard
Institute for Space Studies. Michael unraveled the code, and wrote of his
findings in several postings. The key
findings were that the code re-writes the past data each time it is run. Also, the code makes questionable choices in
how missing data is treated, and how discontinuous data is spliced
together. Another and, to me, most
important finding was that Hansen deleted major portions of the temperature
measurement stations in recent years.
That does not appear to be random but perhaps (likely?) was chosen in a
way to show much more warming in recent years.
In effect, the temperature trend that results from NASA GISS is
false. I highly recommend that anyone
who is curious about the temperature history of the last 120 years or so read
what E.M. Smith wrote about it. The
past data is not only changed, it is changed frequently. If missing data is discovered, the computer
code simply reaches out to an adjacent station that can be 1200 kilometers
distant (about 700 miles!!!) and uses that data.
Then, the entire system spits out a global average
temperature based on anomalies from thousands of measuring stations around the
world. Anomalies are another area for
creating great mischief. The problem
lies in having some cities in cold locations, and others in warmer locations. What climate scientists do is assign each
month an average temperature, based on some pre-determined period of about 30
years. Some use 50 years, though, for
reasons not clear to me. Further, the
base period is not the same but is updated every ten years or so. Again, moving targets with
constantly-adjusted data. It reminds me
of the ancient three-shell game with the pea, where the mark tries to keep his
eye on the shell that has the pea under it while the con-man shuffles them all
around.
The use of anomalies supposedly allows one to merge or blend
temperature trends together without concern over where the average temperature was
5 degrees (Alaska) or 25 degrees (Bora Bora).
Still, it is quite disconcerting to see yet another opportunity for data
manipulation. A better method, in my
view, is to obtain the data trend for each decade, for each station. If the station showed a warming trend of 0.1
degree per decade, then that 0.1 goes into the averaging pot. There would be no anomalies, no base periods,
no changing base periods every 10 years, just a simple, one-time calculation of
the decadal trend. That decadal trend
would then be golden and not subject to change.
Another very disconcerting revelation was the excellent work
by Anthony Watts, who was mentioned earlier in connection with his blog, Watts
Up With That. Anthony also performed a
heroic task in assessing
the vast majority of the USA’s climate measuring stations. His assessment focused on how well or how
poorly each station was situated, or sited, according to the existing
guidelines. For example, a well-sited
station must be a certain distance from trees, from buildings or other
structures, must be placed at the correct height over a grass area, and not be
subjected to artificial heating or cooling measures such as an air conditioning
exhaust.
What Anthony found was appalling. He wrote up his findings along with several
co-authors and had a paper published in 2011 (
summary here). Many
stations ranked as the poorest rating, and only a few had the best rating. Some were indeed mounted next to brick walls,
on asphalt parking lots, next to air conditioner condensers, next to barbecue
pits, on asphalt rooftops, at airports where they are heated by massive runways
and jet exhaust, and other unacceptable locations. These are the sources of the temperature records
for the USA, which is supposed to be the best and most accurate of any country
in the world. Where the siting
conditions become important is how the temperatures are affected over time,
over a period of years. A rural setting would likely show lower
readings in the early years, but warmer and warmer readings as buildings are
built, roads are installed, parking lots are installed, and other such
things. Thus, part of what Anthony did
was determine how much of any demonstrated warming trend was due to siting
changes.
There are a few more points, and I will finish.
First, sea levels are not rising and oceans are not getting
hotter. This alone disproves the entire
CO2-induced global warming nonsense. By
the warmists’ belief, the oceans must grow warmer, and the sea levels must
increase as CO2 increases. Neither is
happening. In fact, the opposite is happening.
NASA and NOAA’s own data show this quite clearly. The chart below is from U. Colorado, and is based on NASA's satellites that measure sea level. Note on the chart the dramatic decrease in trend starting in about 2005, and the sudden decrease in sea level in early 2010.
First-part B, Sierra Nevada snowpack and snow-water-equivalent (SWE) have not changed significantly in almost 100 years. Dr. John Christy of University of Alabama, Huntsville, published a paper on this in 2010. His data ended in 2009. Since then, there have been near-record snowfalls in the Sierras. His key graph is shown below, normalized to show deviation from the average. From his paper, HL refers to a key snow measuring station, Huntington Lake. The paper is at
this link.
Second, a recent peer-reviewed paper from CERN shows that
clouds and sunspots are related, with the 20th century having great
sunspot activity, but the little ice age had few to zero sunspots. Recently, in the last 4 years or so, our sun has
again gone suddenly very, very quiet and it is getting cooler. The lack of sunspots came as a complete surprise
to scientists all around the globe. The
relationship is that more sunspots equals hotter climate. The mechanism is that the sun’s magnetic
field is immense, and grows larger and more intense as sunspot activity
increases. The magnetic field shields
the Earth from Galactic Cosmic Rays, GCRs.
However, when GCRs hit the atmosphere, they create cloud nucleation
particles and more clouds form. More
clouds reflect more sunlight away from the Earth, and cooling occurs. Once again, more evidence that the science is
not settled. Heck, they cannot even
predict how many sunspots, nor when they will occur. The CERN experiment and published paper was
only a few weeks ago.
Third, climate models cannot agree, and their projections do
not match the satellite measurements. This shows that the science is far from
settled, and when a model fails to match the measured data, the models are
wrong and must be scrapped or improved if possible. A very recent
paper by Spencer and Braswell
has caused an uproar in the climate community because it shows very clearly
that the climate models are far off in their predictions. The satellite data doesn’t match the models.
Fourth, hurricanes are not growing more intense and in
greater numbers. In fact, hurricane
energy is at a historic low for the entire period of satellites. Meanwhile, CO2 continues to increase. Another busted prediction, proving their
ideas are totally nonsense. The chart below, from Dr. Ryan Maue of Florida State University, shows the current status of the world's tropical cyclones measured as Accumulated Cyclone Energy from 1972 until today. The top line is the total for the world, the bottom line is for the Northern Hemisphere. The total cyclone energy is back to what it was in the middle 1970s, and meanwhile CO2 continues to rise.
Fifth, and finally, the only prediction the warmists have
correctly made is the continual reduction in the Arctic ice cap. However, they have the cause and effect
completely wrong, for the following reasons.
First, the warmists maintain that a shrinking ice cap is strong evidence
that the Arctic area is warming, and that warming is due to the heat rays
beamed down by CO2 in the atmosphere.
In reality, ice acts as an insulator and prevents heat from being
released from the ocean into the night sky via radiation. Ice acts in a similar way on lakes, it keeps
the lake from freezing solid unless the lake is very shallow. The growing and retreating Arctic ice acts as
a negative feedback on the ocean’s heat content. When the oceans are warm, the ice begins to
melt at the edges. There is thus more open
water that loses heat due to radiation.
The ice extent is at a minimum usually around mid-September, which allows
great amounts of heat loss in the long polar nights. The oceans then cool, which eventually cools
the air, and allows more ice to form in future years. The system oscillates then between more ice
and less ice, with the ocean temperature and heat content also oscillating but
slightly out of phase.
In conclusion, if anyone still believes that CO2 does what scientists claim it does, I suggest you think about that the next time you are at a campfire, or near a candle, or any other fairly stable heat source. Move toward it, then move back. Also, find a nice masonry wall that has ample sunshine on it. Just after dusk, when the sun is no longer shining on the wall, place your hand on the wall and feel its warmth. Then, move slowly away from the wall and see how long you can continue to feel the warmth. Think about that little CO2 molecule, having to also feel that warmth, get all excited, absorb the heat, and then re-radiate the heat back out again. Remember that scientists insist that the Earth warmed from 1910 to 1940 - yet CO2 was very, very low.
Also, have a look at Anthony's blog and E.M. Smith's blog. Think about this: if the science is settled and we must act now or lose the Earth's future to a hell of warming, rising oceans, monster hurricanes and all the rest, why did the CERN experiment show that clouds are far more important than CO2? Why do the satellite temperature measurements show the models' predictions are all wrong? Why has nothing ever panned out for the climate warmists? The only thing they can point to is the declining ice in the Arctic, but as I discussed above, they have that completely wrong.
Finally, have a look at the temperature graphs of the USA's cities on SLB. See for yourself how many, many cities have zero warming or a slight cooling. Then, ask yourself how can that be? How did CO2 get so smart that it can selectively ignore some cities?
CO2 is innocent. It always has been, and always will be.
Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
