SUPPORTING SCIENCE:

"http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ci/31/special/may01_viewpoint.html"

Does CO2 really drive global warming?
I don't believe that it does.

To the contrary, if you apply the IFF test-if-and-only-if or necessary-and-sufficient-the outcome would appear to be exactly the reverse. Rather than the rising levels of carbon dioxide driving up the temperature, the logical conclusion is that it is the rising temperature that is driving up the CO2 level. Of course, this raises a raft of questions, but they are all answerable. What is particularly critical is distinguishing between the observed phenomenon, or the "what", from the governing mechanism, or the "why". Confusion between these two would appear to be the source of much of the noise in the global warming debate.

In applying the IFF test, we can start with the clear correlation between the global CO2 profile and the corresponding temperature signature. There is now in the literature the report of a 400,000-year sequence clearly showing, as a phenomenon, that they go up-and down-together (1). The correlation is clear and accepted. But the causation, the mechanism, is something else: Which is driving which?

Logically, there are four possible explanations, but only two need serious consideration, unless they both fail.

Case 1: CO2 drives the temperature, as is currently most frequently asserted; and
Case 2: Temperature drives the level of CO2. Both appear at first to be possible, but both then generate crucial origin and supplementary questions. For Case 1, the origin question is: What is the independent source of CO2 that drives the CO2 level both up and down, and which in turn, somehow, is presumed to drive the temperature up and down? For Case 2, it is: What drives the temperature, and if this then drives the CO2, where does the CO2 come from? For Case 2, the questions are answerable; but for Case 1, they are not.

Consider Case 2. This directly introduces global warming behavior. Is global warming, as a separate and independent phenomenon, in progress? The answer, as I heard it in geology class 50 years ago, was "yes", and I have seen nothing since then to contradict that position. To the contrary, as further support, there is now documentation (that was only fragmentary 50 years ago) of an 850,000-year global-temperature sequence, showing that the temperature is oscillating with a period of 100,000 years, and with an amplitude that has risen, in that time, from about 5 °F at the start to about 10 °F "today" (meaning the latest 100,000-year period) (2). We are currently in a rise that started 25,000 years ago and, reasonably, can be expected to peak "very shortly".

On the shorter timescales of 1000 years and 100 years, further temperature oscillations can be seen, but of much smaller amplitude, down to 1 and 0.5 °F in those two cases. Nevertheless, the overall trend is clearly up, even through the Little Ice Age (~1350-1900) following the Medieval Warm Period. So the global warming phenomenon is here, with a very long history, and we are in it. But what is the driver?

Arctic Ocean model
The postulated driver, or mechanism, developed some 30 years ago to account for the "million-year" temperature oscillations, is best known as the "Arctic Ocean" model (2). According to this model, the temperature variations are driven by an oscillating ice cap in the northern polar regions. The crucial element in the conceptual formulation of this mechanism was the realization that such a massive ice cap could not have developed, and then continued to expand through that development, unless there was a major source of moisture close by to supply, maintain, and extend the cap. The only possible moisture source was then identified as the Arctic Ocean, which, therefore, had to be open-not frozen over-during the development of the ice ages. It then closed again, interrupting the moisture supply by freezing over.

So the model we now have is that if the Arctic Ocean is frozen over, as is the case today, the existing ice cap is not being replenished and must shrink, as it is doing today. As it does so, the Earth can absorb more of the Sun's radiation and therefore will heat up-global warming-as it is doing today, so long as the Arctic Ocean is closed. When it is warm enough for the ocean to open, which oceanographic (and media) reports say is evidently happening right now, then the ice cap can begin to re-form.

As it expands, the ice increasingly reflects the incoming (shorter-wave) radiation from the sun, so that the atmosphere cools at first. But then, the expanding ice cap reduces the radiative (longer-wave) loss from the Earth, acting as an insulator, so that the Earth below cools more slowly and can keep the ocean open as the ice cap expands. This generates "out-of-sync" oscillations between atmosphere and Earth. The Arctic Ocean "trip" behavior at the temperature extremes, allowing essentially discontinuous change in direction of the temperature, is identified as a bifurcation system with potential for analysis as such. The suggested trip times for the change are interesting: They were originally estimated at about 500 years, then reduced to 50 years and, most recently, down to 5 years (2). So, if the ocean is opening right now, we could possibly start to see the temperature reversal under way in about 10 years.

What we have here is a sufficient mechanistic explanation for the dominant temperature fluctuations and, particularly, for the current global warming rise-without the need for CO2 as a driver. Given that pattern, the observed CO2 variations then follow, as a driven outcome, mainly as the result of change in the dynamic equilibrium between the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and its solution in the sea. The numbers are instructive. In 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) data on the carbon balance showed ~90 gigatons (Gt) of carbon in annual quasi-equilibrium exchange between sea and atmosphere, and an additional 60-Gt exchange between vegetation and atmosphere, giving a total of ~150 Gt (3). This interpretation of the sea as the major source is also in line with the famous Mauna Loa CO2 profile for the past 40 years, which shows the consistent season-dependent variation of 5-6 ppm, up and down, throughout the year-when the average global rise is only 1 ppm/year.

In the literature, this oscillation is attributed to seasonal growing behavior on the "mainland" (4), which is mostly China, >2000 mi away, but no such profile with that amplitude is known to have been reported at any mainland location. Also, the amplitude would have to fall because of turbulent diffusive exchange during transport over the 2000 mi from the mainland to Hawaii, but again there is lack of evidence for such behavior. The fluctuation can, however, be explained simply from study of solution equilibria of CO2 in water as due to emission of CO2 from and return to the sea around Hawaii governed by a ±10 °F seasonal variation in the sea temperature.

Impact of industrialization
The next matter is the impact of fossil fuel combustion. Returning to the IPCC data and putting a rational variation as noise of ~5 Gt on those numbers, this float is on the order of the additional-almost trivial (<5%)-annual contribution of 5-6 Gt from combustion of fossil fuels. This means that fossil fuel combustion cannot be expected to have any significant influence on the system unless, to introduce the next point of focus, the radiative balance is at some extreme or bifurcation point that can be tripped by "small" concentration changes in the radiation-absorbing-emitting gases in the atmosphere. Can that include CO2?

This now starts to address the necessity or "only-if" elements of the problem. The question focuses on whether CO2 in the atmosphere can be a dominant, or "only-if" radiative-balance gas, and the answer to that is rather clearly "no". The detailed support for that statement takes the argument into some largely esoteric areas of radiative behavior, including the analytical solution of the Schuster-Schwarzschild Integral Equation of Transfer that governs radiative exchange (5-7), but the outcome is clear.

The central point is that the major absorbing gas in the atmosphere is water, not CO2, and although CO2 is the only other significant atmospheric absorbing gas, it is still only a minor contributor because of its relatively low concentration. The radiative absorption "cross sections" for water and CO2 are so similar that their relative influence depends primarily on their relative concentrations. Indeed, although water actually absorbs more strongly, for many engineering calculations the concentrations of the two gases are added, and the mixture is treated as a single gas.

In the atmosphere, the molar concentration of CO2 is in the range of 350-400 ppm. Water, on the other hand, has a very large variation but, using the "60/60" (60% relative humidity [RH] at 60 °F) value as an average, then from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers standard psychrometric chart, the weight ratio of water to (dry) air is ~0.0065, or roughly 10,500 ppm. Compared with CO2, this puts water, on average, at 25-30 times the (molar) concentration of the CO2, but it can range from a 1:1 ratio to >100:1.

Even closer focus on water is given by solution of the Schuster-Schwarzschild equation applied to the U.S. Standard Atmosphere profiles for the variation of temperature, pressure, and air density with elevation (8). The results show that the average absorption coefficient obtained for the atmosphere closely corresponds to that for the 5.6-7.6-µm water radiation band, when water is in the concentration range 60-80% RH-on target for atmospheric conditions. The absorption coefficient is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than the coefficient values for the CO2 bands at a concentration of 400 ppm. This would seem to eliminate CO2 and thus provide closure to that argument.

This overall position can be summarized by saying that water accounts, on average, for >95% of the radiative absorption. And, because of the variation in the absorption due to water variation, anything future increases in CO2 might do, water will already have done. The common objection to this argument is that the wide fluctuations in water concentration make an averaging (for some reason) impermissible. Yet such averaging is applied without objection to global temperatures, when the actual temperature variation across the Earth from poles to equator is roughly -100 to +100 °F, and a change on the average of ±1 °F is considered major and significant. If this averaging procedure can be applied to the atmospheric temperature, it can be applied to the atmospheric water content; and if it is denied for water, it must, likewise, be denied for temperature-in that case we don't have an identified problem!

What the evidence shows
So what we have on the best current evidence is that global temperatures are currently rising; the rise is part of a nearly million-year oscillation with the current rise beginning some 25,000 years ago; the "trip" or bifurcation behavior at the temperature extremes is attributable to the "opening" and "closing" of the Arctic Ocean; there is no need to invoke CO2 as the source of the current temperature rise; the dominant source and sink for CO2 are the oceans, accounting for about two-thirds of the exchange, with vegetation as the major secondary source and sink; if CO2 were the temperature-oscillation source, no mechanism-other than the separately driven temperature (which would then be a circular argument)-has been proposed to account independently for the CO2 rise and fall over a 400,000-year period; the CO2 contribution to the atmosphere from combustion is within the statistical noise of the major sea and vegetation exchanges, so a priori, it cannot be expected to be statistically significant; water-as a gas, not a condensate or cloud-is the major radiative absorbing-emitting gas (averaging 95%) in the atmosphere, and not CO2; determination of the radiation absorption coefficients identifies water as the primary absorber in the 5.6-7.6-µm water band in the 60-80% RH range; and the absorption coefficients for the CO2 bands at a concentration of 400 ppm are 1 to 2 orders of magnitude too small to be significant even if the CO2 concentrations were doubled.

The outcome is that the conclusions of advocates of the CO2-driver theory are evidently back to front: It's the temperature that is driving the CO2. If there are flaws in these propositions, I'm listening; but if there are objections, let's have them with the numbers.

References
Sigman, M.; Boyle, E. A. Nature 2000, 407, 859-869.
Calder, N. The Weather Machine; Viking Press: New York, 1974.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change; Houghton, J. T., Meira Filho, L. G., Callender, B. A.,
Harris, N., Kattenberg, A., Maskell, K., Eds.; Cam bridge University Press: Cambridge, U.K., 1996.
Hileman, B. Chem. Eng. News 1992, 70 (17), 7-19.
Schuster, A. Astrophysics J. 1905, 21, 1-22.
Schwarzschild, K. Gesell. Wiss. Gottingen; Nachr. Math.-Phys. Klasse 1906, 41.
Schwarzschild, K. Berliner Ber. Math. Phys. Klasse 1914, 1183.
Essenhigh, R. H. On Radiative Transfer in Solids. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Thermophysics Specialist Conference, New Orleans, April 17-20, 1967; Paper 67-287; American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics: Reston, VA, 1967.

-----------------------------------

Robert H. Essenhigh is the E. G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conversion in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ohio State University, 206 W. 18th Ave., Columbus, OH 43210; 614-292-0403; essenhigh.1@osu.edu.

"http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article339596.ece"

Warmer Seas Will Wipe Out Plankton

By Steve Connor
Science Editor - The Independent
1-19-5

The microscopic plants that underpin all life in the oceans are likely to be destroyed by global warming, a study has found.

Scientists have discovered a way that the vital plankton of the oceans can be starved of nutrients as a result of the seas getting warmer. They believe the findings have catastrophic implications for the entire marine habitat, which ultimately relies on plankton at the base of the food chain.

The study is also potentially devastating because it has thrown up a new "positive feedback" mechanism that could result in more carbon dioxide ending up in the atmosphere to cause a runaway greenhouse effect.

Scientists led by Jef Huisman of the University of Amsterdam have calculated that global warming, which is causing the temperature of the sea surface to rise, will also interfere with the vital upward movement of nutrients from the deep sea.

These nutrients, containing nitrogen, phosphorus and iron, are vital food for phytoplankton. If the supply is interrupted the plants die off, which prevents them from absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

"Global warming of the surface layers of the oceans reduces the upward transport of nutrients into the surface layers. This generates chaos among the plankton," the professor said.

The sea is one of nature's "carbon sinks", which removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and deposits the carbon in a long-term store - dissolved in the ocean or deposited as organic waste on the seabed. The vast quantities of phytoplankton in the oceans absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide. When the organisms die they fall to the seabed, carrying their store of carbon with them, where it stays for many thousands of years - thereby helping to counter global warming.

"Plankton... forms the basis of the marine food web. Moreover, phytoplankton consumes the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide during photosynthesis," Professor Huisman said. "Uptake of carbon dioxide by phytoplankton across the vast expanses of the oceans reduces the rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere."

Warmer surface water caused by global warming causes greater temperature stratification, with warm surface layers sitting on deeper, colder layers, to prevent mixing of nutrients.

Professor Huisman shows in a study published in Nature that warmer sea surfaces will deliver a potentially devastating blow to the supply of deep-sea nutrients for phytoplankton.

His computer model of the impact was tested on real measurements made in the Pacific Ocean, where sea surface temperatures tend to be higher than in other parts of the world. He found that his computer predictions of how nutrient movement would be interrupted were accurate.

"A larger temperature difference between two water layers implies less mixing of chemicals between these water layers," he said. "Global warming of the surface layers of the oceans, owing to climate change, strengthens the stratification and thereby reduces the upward mixing of nutrients."

Scientists had believed phytoplankton, which survives best at depths of about 100 metres, is largely stable and immune from the impact of global warming. "This model prediction was rather unexpected," Professor Huisman said.

"Reduced stability of the plankton, caused by global warming of the oceans, may result in a decline of oceanic production and reduced sequestration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the oceans."

Vital link in the food chain

Microscopic plankton comes in animal and plant forms. The plants are known as phytoplankton. They lie at the base of the marine food chain because they convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into organic carbon - food for everything else.

Smaller animals such as shrimp-like krill feed on plankton and are themselves eaten by larger organisms, from small fish to the biggest whales. Without phytoplankton, the oceans would soon because marine deserts. Phytoplankton are also important because of the role they play in the carbon cycle, which determines how much carbon dioxide - the most important greenhouse gas - ends up in the atmosphere to cause global warming. Huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which dissolves in the oceans, are absorbed by phytoplankton and converted to organic carbon. When the phytoplankton die, their shells and bodies sink to the seabed, carrying this carbon with them.

Phytoplankton therefore acts as a carbon "sink" which takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and deposits the carbon in long-term stores that can remain undisturbed for thousands of years. If the growth of phytoplankton is interrupted by global warming, this ability to act as a buffer against global warming is also affected - leading to a much-feared positive feedback.

"http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?6713dc5a-c3c6-4075-9b68-98c7036fbc08"

The Un-Ending Global Warming 'Crisis'

The First Obligation of a Scientist is to Prove Himself Wrong - Anon
By Michael R. Fox, 7/25/2006

Global warming is the latest of dozens of environmental issues, with doom and gloom always part of the process.

It is a shame that this must be the case. The study of the global climate is relatively new and has been aided by large fast computers and the internet technology to transmit massive amounts of data globally as never before. The forces driving our climate are very complex, some of them not even known.

The study of the Earth's climate deserves to have all of the latest analytic tools brought to bear on increasing the understanding. Regrettably, very strong political forces are now involved with the scientific issues, which have made such debates quite poisonous and unscientific.

As in past years scientific/environmental issues can be driven by political agendas and a veneer of science jargon. The debate is characterized by alarmist and confusing rhetoric, a patina of plausibility, impending doom, statistical legerdemain, as well as personal attacks, disrespect, and dismissiveness.

Regrettably, this has happened many times in the past such as the government sanctions of Galileo and the torture and execution of his colleague Giordano Bruno. Heresy is not welcome, even if the heresy is true. Contrary to the edicts of today's elitists, the science has not spoken with regard to global warming as claimed, and the scientific debate is not over. We simply know too little about how the climate works to make such arrogant claims.

Global Warming

Yes there is global warming. And there is cooling too, even today. The Earth has been in repeating cycles of warming and cooling over millions of years. History shows that the time between ice ages is measured in thousands of years. Global warming takes place in between the ice periods.

During the 13th to the 18th century the earth went through a cooling period now called the Little Ice Age. During this time snow fell in Paris in July and Ice Carnivals were held on 4 feet of ice on the River Thames in London.

Taking centuries to recover, the earth at this time is still slowly warming from the Little Ice Age. Since 1675 the surface temperature has increased about 0.6 deg C. Other temperature data bases from both balloons and satellites, while covering shorter periods of time, agree with each other and do not show much warming.

Greenhouse Effect

For millions of years there always has been a greenhouse effect as well, since the presence of water vapor and lesser amounts of other gases in our atmosphere have helped in the warming by retaining heat from the sun. Were it not for the warming (retention of solar energy) by these gases our planet would be extremely cold (about -109 deg. F).

By far water vapor is the most prevalent greenhouse gas, accounting for more than 95 percent of the warming. The CO2 contributes much less while CH4 (methane) and N20 (nitrous oxide) contribute lesser still. Of the total inventory of such gases, 99.72 percent are estimated to be from natural sources, man-made sources of these gases are about 0.28 percent, and water vapor the vast majority of that.

This does not imply that the natural sources of greenhouse gases are completely known. In this context the curiously singular focus on man-made CO2 emissions, suggests that politics and not science is driving the debate.

Among the lesser gases CO2 is the most controversial which is often portrayed as a pollutant as well as being the sole source of warming. It is not. CO2 is a crucial reactant in the process of photosynthesis, the source of nearly all plant and animal life on our planet.

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)

An estimated 186 billion tons of CO2 are put into the atmosphere annually, about 6 billion tons of which are man-made. The majority comes from biological activity in the oceans, and the remainder comes from decaying plant life, volcanoes, etc.

Natural Sources of Warming

Natural sources of greenhouse gases such as those mentioned above account for more than 99 percent of the total. New sources of gases continue to be found. The warming from such gases is completely dominated by water vapor, not CO2.

As climate expert Walter Broecker has said: "I can only see one element of the climate system capable of generating these fast, global changes, that is, changes in the tropical atmosphere leading to changes in the inventory of the earth's most powerful greenhouse gas -- water vapor".

Dr. Wallace Broecker, a leading world authority on climate Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, lecture presented at R. A. Daly Lecture at the American Geophysical Union's spring meeting in Baltimore, Md., May 1996.

Other Natural Sources of Warming

(1) Astronomical Causes
11 year and 206 year cycles: Cycles of solar variability ( sunspot activity )
21,000 year cycle: Earth's combined tilt and elliptical orbit around the Sun (precession of the equinoxes ) and here.
41,000 year cycle: Cycle of the small wobble in Earth's orbit (tilt) 100,000 year cycle: Variations in the shape of Earth's elliptical orbit ( cycle of eccentricity )

(2) Atmospheric Causes
Heat retention: Due to atmospheric gases, mostly gaseous water vapor (not droplets), also carbon dioxide, methane, and a few other miscellaneous gases -- the "greenhouse effect".
Solar reflectivity: Due to white clouds, volcanic dust, polar ice caps

(3) Tectonic Causes
Landmass distribution: Shifting continents (continental drift) causing changes in circulatory patterns of ocean currents. It seems that whenever there is a large land mass at one of the Earth's poles, either the north pole or south pole, there are ice ages.
Undersea ridge activity: "Sea floor spreading" (associated with continental drift) causing variations in ocean displacement.

(4) Other sources of warming may also be at work of which we know little or nothing, such as recently discovered volcanism under the Arctic Ocean. 12 new volcanoes have been found there, in addition to large amounts of hydrothermal activity.

(5) In the April 2006 issue of Astronomy Magazine (p. 14) are 2 photos taken of the South Pole region of Mars. There are huge mesas of dry ice (solid CO2, m.p. of -78 deg C (minus 109 F)). The photos taken 6 years apart clearly indicate a warming process taking place. The mesas are retreating, according to the authors, at about 10 feet per Martian year (687 earth days). While it is no proof of the warming, one must suspect the involvement of increased energy from the Sun, the same Sun we have. Movie Makers

It seems like everyone is an expert in climatology, an expert in computer modeling, an expert in scientific discussion, and cause and effect. Having scientific credentials let alone interests in science is not apparently required to influence science policy. Fear is. Neither lawyers, movie stars, politicians, nor anchor men inspire confidence in their scientific pronouncements. They do not consider the long list of natural warming and cooling processes involved, nor appreciate the huge uncertainties which must be considered.

In recent months we've had the Al Gore movie "An Inconvenient Truth." The movie is a high quality photo essay, featuring many assertions and very little science, and no consideration of the weaknesses of his assertions. Many people have been critical of the movie for its lack of scientific rigor. John Stossel is among many who have panned the movie as "A Convenient Lie." Also see Natural Sources of Warming above.

For example, Gore's movie features the calving of icebergs from the faces of glaciers, with the voiceover implying that such activity (which has gone for hundreds of thousands of years), is caused by mankind's activities. Left out of Gore's discussion of disappearing glaciers, are other glaciers in New Zealand, Norway, and even the US where glaciers are growing.

The Hubbard glacier is Alaska is growing to such an extent that it threatens to block a nearby fjord. What this suggests is that whatever is happening with the climate is not global, but at best, regional. This does not suggest much of anything other than the obvious that climate varies from time to time and place to place.

Most certainly this is no basis for implementing trillion dollar cures for what is a largely natural phenomenon.

There is the perennial argument that the ice cap of Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing because of global warming. Left out of this discussion are the facts that the disappearance of this ice cap has been going on for a hundred years.

Nearby temperature stations suggest that little or no warming has taken place in the Kilimanjaro region in decades. It makes for high drama if you have axes to grind and people to scare, but it appears to be a natural phenomenon such as a change in precipitation patterns, well underway before the advent of coal plants and SUVs.

Then we get Tom Brokaw's version of global warming which he claims to be irrefutable. If one examines the actual temperature data, sea level data, rainfall data, many of the global warming arguments are most certainly refutable. For example, the actual temperature data show stations that are warming a little, cooling a little, and many staying about the same temperature over the past 100 years or so.

Likewise the sea level data show that sea levels are going up a little, some are going down a little, and some remaining unchanged over the past 100 years or more. Even the sea level at the famous Tuvalu Island in the South Pacific seems to be declining. None of this is mentioned by Gore or Brokaw.

The global warming debate has been taken over and contaminated by political zealots. In too many cases the spending of billions of research dollars has transformed scientists into money/agenda-driven zealots, too.

For example, consider the National Center for Atmospheric Research's climate expert, Stephen Schneider, who in 1989 in Discover Magazine said: "...on the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well...to (reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change) ... we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have ... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Call it what you will but that isn't science. The exaggerations don't get much clearer than that.

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., is the energy and science writer for Hawaii Reporter. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. He can be reached via email at mailto: foxm011@hawaii.rr.com

HawaiiReporter.com reports the real news, and prints all editorials submitted, even if they do not represent the viewpoint of the editors, as long as they are written clearly. Send editorials to mailto: Malia@HawaiiReporter.com

"http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/296/5568/727"

Science 26 April 2002:
Vol. 296. no. 5568, pp. 727 - 730
DOI: 10.1126/science.296.5568.727

Reports

Global Cooling After the Eruption of Mount Pinatubo: A Test of Climate Feedback by Water Vapor
Brian J. Soden,1* Richard T. Wetherald,1 Georgiy L. Stenchikov,2 Alan Robock2

The sensitivity of Earth's climate to an external radiative forcing depends critically on the response of water vapor. We use the global cooling and drying of the atmosphere that was observed after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo to test model predictions of the climate feedback from water vapor. Here, we first highlight the success of the model in reproducing the observed drying after the volcanic eruption. Then, by comparing model simulations with and without water vapor feedback, we demonstrate the importance of the atmospheric drying in amplifying the temperature change and show that, without the strong positive feedback from water vapor, the model is unable to reproduce the observed cooling. These results provide quantitative evidence of the reliability of water vapor feedback in current climate models, which is crucial to their use for global warming projections.

1 Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA.

2 Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: bjs@gfdl.gov

Nuke Winter, soot and Ozone Depletion

"http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/88spp.html"

===

Radiation and water vapor

"http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/"

"http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=11848"

Caruba: A Cloudy Mystery
By Alan Caruba

There's a reason why one should be extremely wary of the computer models that are cited by the endless doomsday predictions of Al Gore, the UN's International Panel on Climate Change, and all the other advocates of "global warming."

The reason is clouds. Computer models simply cannot provide for the constant variability of clouds, so they ignore them.

In a July issue of The Economist there was an article, "Grey-Sky thinking" subtitled, "Without understanding clouds, understanding the climate is hard. And clouds are the least understood part of the atmosphere." Since the increasingly rabid claims of Earth's destruction from rising temperatures depend on computer modeling, how can they be regarded as accurate if they must largely exempt or deliberately manipulate the impact of clouds?

How can you make predictions, whether it's a week or a decade from now, if you haven't a clue why clouds do what they do?

Tim Garrett, a research meteorologist at the University of Utah, with refreshing candor has said, "We really do not know what's going on. There are so many basic unanswered questions on how they (clouds) work." And that is never mentioned in the great "global warming" debate, one we are continuously told is "decided" and upon which there is a vast scientific "consensus."

This is particularly significant because clouds act to both cool and warm the Earth. It is widely believed that high clouds can reflect solar radiation away from the planet, but they can also serve to trap heat in the atmosphere. New studies, however, have given some cause to reconsider this. Moreover, cloud droplets can last for less than a second while whole clouds can live out their lives in minutes or days. There is no way to integrate such massive, constant change into a computer model that divides the world into boxes up to sixty miles on a side, so they mostly do not.

This is why there are two new missions by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration involving highly sophisticated devices to measure and study the actions of clouds. This is also why, up to now, the computer models on which "global warming" claims have been made have actually been tweaked, adjusted, manipulated-take your choice of terms-to factor in the mystery of clouds.

How wide is the computer modeling gap when it comes to predicting the weather? The Economist reported that, "In a recent paper in Climate Dynamics, Mark Webb of Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Change and his colleagues reported that clouds account for 66% of the differences between members of one important group of models and for 85% of them in another group." Clouds simply defy the logarithms of computer modelers.

In short, "Too much still remains unknown about the physical mechanisms that determine cloud behavior," said The Economist.

Here's a useful scientific definition of the weather: "atmospheric conditions at a given time and a particular location." Drive a few miles in any direction and the weather is likely to be different. Stay put and it will change soon enough. My other favorite definition is "chaos."

In an August 2002 article, The Trouble with the Weather, the European Space Agency noted that, "Forecasting the weather remains notoriously difficult because the atmosphere is not easy to predict, being affected by such factors as air pressure and temperature, air movements, the distribution of water in its various states (clouds) in the atmosphere, and static electricity stored in the air."

"Clouds are that 800-pound gorilla," says research meteorologist, Gerald Mace, also of the University of Utah, referring to the critical role they play in the weather on any portion of planet Earth.

That gorilla, however, is never mentioned by the "global warming" propagandists. Neither clouds, nor volcanoes, nor the most important factor, the Sun, is credited as responsible for either the climate or the weather. Instead, we are constantly told that "human activity" is the single cause.

Unmentioned, too, is the fact that water vapor constitutes 95% of all greenhouse gases. Environmentalists insist that carbon dioxide plays a major role. It is well to keep in mind, however, that CO2 is the gas that is vital to the growth of all vegetation on Earth. Nor do global warming advocates remind people that the Earth is at the end of the interglacial period between Ice Ages which suggests another one is due any day now.

Indeed, the only global warming that is occurring has been happening since the end of the last mini-Ice Age in the 1800s. It is a natural response and is not a dramatic rise of four to ten degrees. It doesn't even represent one-half a degree increase.

Following the publication of the results of new study in the journal of the American Geophysical Union revealing that the absence of clouds actually had a cooling affect-the opposite of widely held opinion on the role of clouds-Dr. Roy Spencer of the Earth System Science Center noted that, "To give an idea of how strong this enhanced cooling mechanism is, if it was operating on global warming, it would reduce estimates of future warming by over 75 percent. The big question that no one can answer right now is whether this enhanced cooling mechanism applies to global warming."

If leading meteorologists remain largely ignorant of why clouds do what they do, why would we pay any attention to those with a financial or ideological incentive to propagate "global warming" claims? There is, however, a difference between being ignorant and being stupid. Believing the "global warming" lies is stupid.

August 16, 2007

About the Author
Federal Observer contributor Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, "Warning Signs", that is posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about scare campaigns designed to influence public policy and opinion.