Saturday, March 30, 2013

California's coming Green-Outs

March 29, 2013 6:46 PM

California's Coming Green-Outs
The wind and solar mandate means future power shortages.

WSJ.COM 3/30/13: Regulate first, think later. That seems to be the guiding principle of California policy makers. Take the state's renewable energy standard, which will soon cause a surge in electricity prices and could even lead to rolling blackouts when the weather heats up.
Californians can thank former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislators for the fun to come. In 2006, the state passed a law requiring utilities to derive 20% of their power from renewables by 2010. The mandate has since been increased to 33% by 2020, but the real kicker is that not all renewables are equal under the law.
About three-quarters must come from California even though other states can produce renewables at lower cost due to natural resource advantages (e.g., wind in Wyoming). Democrats say this is important to foster energy independence. You never know when Utah will bomb Wyoming. Large hydroelectric plants—which contribute about 13% of California's power—also don't count toward the target because the state wanted to boost its infant solar and wind industries.
California and its municipalities offer more than 60 incentives to stimulate solar and wind development. Although solar accounted for a mere 0.6% of the state's power supply and 3% of renewables in 2011, about two-thirds of the projects under review last October were for photovoltaic solar plants. By 2020, the state expects to generate 13,600 megawatts of solar and wind, up from 800 megawatts in 2011.
Utilities have been in such a rush to bring new wind and solar projects online that they've been locking in long-term rates with developers that are often two to four times higher than what they pay for nonrenewables. The Division of Ratepayer Advocates reported in 2011 that the California Public Utilities Commission has "approved nearly every renewable contract filed by the utilities, even when they rate poorly on least-cost, best-fit criteria."
Note: California residents and businesses already pay rates that are 25% to 60% higher than the national average. Excessive energy costs have helped to obliterate the state's manufacturing base. Hence, the obsession to chase green jobs.
Meanwhile, the state's cap-and-trade program, which took effect last year, will further jack up rates and is causing some plants to scale back operations. This is impeccable timing since state and federal water regulations also require 17 coastal generators that provide about 12,000 megawatts of electricity—enough to power nine million households—to shut down or be retrofitted over the next decade.
The upshot is that millions of Californians could soon experience power outages. As the state derives more of its electricity from renewables, it needs more "peak" gas-fired plants that can ramp up to meet demand when the sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing—namely during dawn and dusk. Otherwise, rolling blackouts could ensue.
Nobody knows exactly how much flexible power is needed to ensure a reliable electric supply. The California Independent System Operator's best guesstimate is about 3,100 megawatts by 2017—and more thereafter as more wind and solar come online.
However, energy companies don't want to build new generators or refurbish older ones unless they're guaranteed a return on their investments—especially since peak plants are about 25% more expensive to operate and build than conventional turbines. Utilities also don't want to pay for back-up power they don't know they'll need.
The Independent System Operator says that plant investment decisions need to be made soon to ensure a reliable electric supply, though a spokesman tells us that they don't anticipate rolling blackouts and that they've got everything under control. That's a huge relief since regulators did such a great job predicting the rolling blackouts a decade ago.
The Little Hoover Commission, the state's oversight agency, pointed out in December that an unexpected outage at the San Onofre nuclear plant, which almost left 1.4 million households without power last summer, illustrated how "supply risks can escalate quickly because of constraints imposed by a combination of uncertainty, aging infrastructure and regulations." And "should energy costs unexpectedly escalate or energy become unreliable," California could jeopardize support for renewables across the country. At least there's a bright side.
When these green-power outages occur, the politicians will blame the utilities. But this is an avoidable crisis caused entirely by politicians and green-energy lobbies who pretend they can defy the laws of energy supply and demand. Californians are going to pay for their wind and solar power indulgences.

Friday, March 29, 2013

New study finds increased CO2 ameliorates effect of drought on crops

Elevated Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Trims Wheat, Sorghum Moisture Needs

Mar. 25, 2013 — Plenty has been written about concerns over elevated levels of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, but a Kansas State University researcher has found an upside to the higher CO2 levels. And it's been particularly relevant in light of drought that overspread the area in recent months.

"Our experiments have shown that the elevated carbon dioxide that we now have is mitigating the effect that drought has on winter wheat and sorghum and allowing more efficient use of water," said K-State agronomy professor Mary Beth Kirkham.

Kirkham, who has written a book on the subject, "Elevated Carbon Dioxide: Impacts on Soil and Plant Water Relations," used data going back to 1958. That's when the first accurate measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide were made, she said.

"Between 1958 and 2011 (the last year for which scientists have complete data), the carbon dioxide concentration has increased from 316 parts per million to 390 ppm," she said. "Our experiments showed that higher carbon dioxide compensated for reductions in growth of winter wheat due to drought. Wheat that grew under elevated carbon dioxide (2.4 times ambient) and drought yielded as well as wheat that grew under the ambient level carbon dioxide and well-watered conditions."

The research showed that sorghum and winter wheat used water more efficiently as a result of the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Kirkham said. Because elevated carbon dioxide closes stomata (pores on the leaves through which water escapes), less water is used when carbon dioxide levels are elevated. Evapotranspiration is decreased.

Studies done subsequent to the early work confirmed the findings.

Over the past few months, the researcher said she's heard people comparing the dry summer of 2012 with the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s and the drought of the mid-1950s in Kansas.

The first accurate measurements of CO2 levels were made in 1958, so while scientists do not know what the concentration of CO2 was in the 1930s, Kirkham said, she used the data that she and her students collected to calculate how much the water use efficiency of sorghum has increased since 1958, which was about the time of the middle of 1950s drought.

"Due to the increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, it now takes 55 milliliters (mL) less water to produce a gram of sorghum grain than it did in 1958," she said. "Fifty-five mL is equal to about one-fourth of a cup of water. This may not seem like a lot of water savings, but spread over the large acreage of sorghum grown in Kansas, the more efficient use of water now compared to 1958 should have a large impact.

"The elevated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2012 ameliorated the drought compared to the drought that occurred in the mid-1950s."

At the basis of Kirkham's book are experiments that she and other researchers conducted in the Evapotranspiration Laboratory at K-State from 1984-1991.

"They were the first experiments done in the field in a semi-arid region with elevated carbon dioxide," Kirkham said. The lab no longer exists, but the work continues.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

US Senate votes down a carbon tax- twice


A Carbon Tax Loses—Twice

The Senate gives an energy levy a double thumbs down.

WSJ.COM 3/29/13: Proposals for that hardy Al Gore perennial, a carbon tax, are making a comeback. But if last weekend's votes in the Senate are any guide, the idea is going to require a lot more political persuasion.
The media ignored Harry Reid's budget vote-a-rama, but along the way Senators were allowed to declare on a pair of amendments related to energy taxes. First up was Rhode Island liberal Sheldon Whitehouse, who wanted to reserve any carbon-tax revenues to reduce the deficit or redistribute to certain voters. Apparently Mr. Whitehouse sees a carbon levy as inevitable and wants to make sure he's the middleman.
The Democrat waxed liturgical in support: "We have a new pope, Pope Francis, who said last week that our relation with God's creation is not very good right now. God's creation runs by laws—the laws of nature, the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry—and God gave us the power of reason to understand those laws. But they are not negotiable. They are not subject to amendment or repeal. And the arrogance of our thinking that they are is an offense to His creation."
We promise he gets to a carbon tax.
"We can ignore obvious facts, we can ignore the essentially unanimous science, we can ignore our generals and admirals, we can ignore the insurance industry's warnings, but we ignore carbon pollution at our peril," Mr. Whitehouse continued.
To which Missouri Republican Roy Blunt replied: "I know the pope also mentioned, more times than he mentioned carbon tax, helping the poor." And "I would just say, when the poor family cannot pay their utility bill . . . " The Whitehouse amendment lost 58-41, with 13 Democrats joining every Republican in opposition.
Mr. Blunt then rose to offer his own amendment—without a papal invocation—to require 60 Senate votes to impose an energy tax. His amendment passed 53-46, with eight Democrats joining a united GOP. Perhaps these heretical Democrats figured that a Senate budget outline that already raised taxes by $1 trillion was enough.
Some of our conservative friends want us to endorse a carbon tax, and it certainly beats taxing income. But until someone finds a way to stop the Whitehouse liberals from using the additional revenue simply to expand the government, we're with the poor and the Senate's anti-carbon tax majority.

Analysis finds warming leads to less extreme storms

Highlights of a new SPPI analysis, STORM TRENDS ACROSS THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN:

One of the projected consequences of CO2-induced global warming is an increase in all types of extreme weather, including storms. A good test of the validity of this hypothesis comes from evaluating trends in storminess over the period of time when the Earth was recovering from the global chill of the Little Ice Age and transiting into the Current Warm Period, when the world's climate alarmists contend the planet experienced a warming that was unprecedented over the prior one to two millennia. In the present section, these claims are evaluated as they pertain to storms over of the North Atlantic Ocean.

The global warming that occurred between 1951 and 2006 did not lead to an increasing trend in the extremeness of East Coast Winter Storms. There is little evidence that the mid- to late nineteenth century was less stormy than the present, and there is no sign of a sustained enhanced storminess signal associated with 'global warming'.


Such a finding, in the words of the researchers, "lends a cautionary note to those who suggest that anthropogenic greenhouse warming probably results in enhanced extratropical storminess, as this is indicated neither by our own nor existing published observational results for the northeast Atlantic for the last ~150 years."

It is clear that relative coolness, as opposed to relative warmth, typically leads to more extreme storms, which is just the opposite of what the world's climate alarmists continue to contend. Given the findings noted by Trouet et al., as well as those reported by other researchers that are described in this summary and for this particular portion of the planet, it is clear that relative coolness, as opposed to relative warmth, typically leads to more extreme storms, which is just the opposite of what the world's climate alarmists continue to contend.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Hansen's mea culpa? Says global warming has slowed due to surge in coal use

Hansen becoming a skeptic of IPCC?

A paper published today by James Hansen has some startling admissions, including 


  • the effect [forcing] of man-made greenhouse gas emissions has fallen below IPCC projections, despite an increase in man-made CO2 emissions exceeding IPCC projections
  • the growth rate of the greenhouse gas forcing has "remained below the peak values reached in the 1970s and early 1980s, has been relatively stable for about 20 years, and is falling below IPCC (2001) scenarios (figure 5)."
  • the airborne fraction of CO2 [the ratio of observed atmospheric CO2 increase to fossil fuel CO2 emissions] has decreased over the past 50 years [figure 3], especially after the year 2000
  • Hansen believes the explanation for this conundrum is CO2 fertilization of the biosphere from "the surge of fossil fuel use, mainly coal."
  • "the surge of fossil fuel emissions, especially from coal burning, along with the increasing atmospheric CO2 level is 'fertilizing' the biosphere, and thus limiting the growth of atmospheric CO2."
  • "the rate of global warming seems to be less this decade than it has been during the prior quarter century"


According to "coal death train" Hansen,
"However, it is the dependence of the airborne fraction on fossil fuel emission rate that makes the post-2000 downturn of the airborne fraction particularly striking. The change of emission rate in 2000 from 1.5% yr-1 to 3.1% yr-1 (figure 1), other things being equal, would have caused a sharp increase of the airborne fraction (the simple reason being that a rapid source increase provides less time for carbon to be moved downward out of the ocean's upper layers). 
We suggest that the huge post-2000 increase of uptake by the carbon sinks implied by figure 3 is related to the simultaneous sharp increase in coal use (figure 1).
We suggest that the surge of fossil fuel use, mainly coal, since 2000 is a basic cause of the large increase of carbon uptake by the combined terrestrial and ocean carbon sinks. One mechanism by which fossil fuel emissions increase carbon uptake is by fertilizing the biosphere via provision of nutrients essential for tissue building, especially nitrogen, which plays a critical role in controlling net primary productivity and is limited in many ecosystems."
So is the new data we present here good news or bad news, and how does it alter the 'Faustian bargain'? At first glance there seems to be some good news. First, if our interpretation of the data is correct, the surge of fossil fuel emissions, especially from coal burning, along with the increasing atmospheric CO2 level is 'fertilizing' the biosphere, and thus limiting the growth of atmospheric CO2Also, despite the absence of accurate global aerosol measurements, it seems that the aerosol cooling effect is probably increasing based on evidence of aerosol increases in the Far East and increasing 'background' stratospheric aerosols.
Both effects work to limit global warming and thus help explain why the rate of global warming seems to be less this decade than it has been during the prior quarter century."


Climate forcing growth rates: doubling down on our Faustian bargain


OPEN ACCESS
James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha and Makiko Sato
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Perspective

This is a Perspective for the article 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 044035
Rahmstorf et al 's (2012) conclusion that observed climate change is comparable to projections, and in some cases exceeds projections, allows further inferences if we can quantify changing climate forcings and compare those with projections. The largest climate forcing is caused by well-mixed long-lived greenhouse gases. Here we illustrate trends of these gases and their climate forcings, and we discuss implications. We focus on quantities that are accurately measured, and we include comparison with fixed scenarios, which helps reduce common misimpressions about how climate forcings are changing.
Annual fossil fuel CO2 emissions have shot up in the past decade at about 3% yr-1, double the rate of the prior three decades (figure 1). The growth rate falls above the range of the IPCC (2001) 'Marker' scenarios, although emissions are still within the entire range considered by the IPCC SRES (2000). The surge in emissions is due to increased coal use (blue curve in figure 1), which now accounts for more than 40% of fossil fuel CO2 emissions.
Figure 1.
Figure 1. CO2 annual emissions from fossil fuel use and cement manufacture, an update of figure 16 of Hansen (2003) using data of British Petroleum (BP 2012) concatenated with data of Boden et al (2012).
The resulting annual increase of atmospheric CO2 (12-month running mean) has grown from less than 1 ppm yr-1 in the early 1960s to an average ~2 ppm yr-1 in the past decade (figure 2). Although CO2 measurements were not made at sufficient locations prior to the early 1980s to calculate the global mean change, the close match of global and Mauna Loa data for later years suggests that Mauna Loa data provide a good approximation of global change (figure 2), thus allowing a useful estimate of annual global change beginning with the initiation of Mauna Loa measurements in 1958 by Keeling et al(1973).
Figure 2.
Figure 2. Annual increase of CO2 based on data from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL 2012). CO2change and global temperature change are 12-month running means of differences for the same month of consecutive years. Nino index (Nino3.4 area) is 12-month running mean. Both temperature indices use data from Hansen et al (2010). Annual mean CO2 amount in 1958 was 315 ppm (Mauna Loa) and in 2012 was 394 ppm (Mauna Loa) and 393 ppm (Global).
Interannual variability of CO2 growth is correlated with ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) variations of tropical temperatures (figure 2). Ocean–atmosphere CO2 exchange is affected by ENSO (Chavez et al 1999), but ENSO seems to have a greater impact on atmospheric CO2 via the terrestrial carbon cycle through effects on the water cycle, temperature, and fire, as discussed in a large body of literature (referenced, e.g., by Schwalm et al 2011). In addition, volcanoes, such as the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption, slow the increase of atmospheric CO2 (Rothenberg et al 2012), at least in part because photosynthesis is enhanced by the increased proportion of diffuse sunlight (Gu et al 2003, Mercado et al 2009). Watson (1997) suggests that volcanic dust deposited on the ocean surface may also contribute to CO2 uptake by increasing ocean productivity.
An important question is whether ocean and terrestrial carbon sinks will tend to saturate as human-made CO2 emissions continue. Piao et al (2008) and Zhao and Running (2010) suggest that there already may be a reduction of terrestrial carbon uptake, while Le Quéréet al (2007) and Schuster and Watson (2007) find evidence of decreased carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic Ocean, respectively. However, others (Knorr 2009, Sarmiento et al 2010, Ballantyneet al 2012) either cast doubt on the reality of a reduced uptake strength or find evidence for increased uptake.
An informative presentation of CO2 observations is the ratio of annual CO2 increase in the air divided by annual fossil fuel CO2 emissions (Keeling et al 1973), the 'airborne fraction' (figure 3, right scale). An alternative definition of airborne fraction includes in the denominator of this ratio an estimated net anthropogenic CO2 source from changes in land use, but this latter term is much more uncertain than the two terms involved in the Keeling et al (1973) definition. For example, analysis by Harris et al (2012) reveals a range as high as a factor of 2–4 in estimates of recent land use emissions; see also the discussion by Sarmiento et al (2010). However, note that the airborne fraction becomes smaller when estimated land use emissions are included, with the uptake fraction (one minus airborne fraction) typically greater than 0.5.
Figure 3.
Figure 3. Fossil fuel CO2 emissions (left scale) and airborne fraction, i.e., the ratio of observed atmospheric CO2 increase to fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Final three points are 5-, 3- and 1-year means.
The simple Keeling airborne fraction, clearly, is not increasing (figure 3). Thus the net ocean plus terrestrial sink for carbon emissions has increased by a factor of 3–4 since 1958, accommodating the emissions increase by that factor.
Remarkably, and we will argue importantly, the airborne fraction has declined since 2000 (figure 3) during a period without any large volcanic eruptions. The 7-year running mean of the airborne fraction had remained close to 60% up to 2000, except for the period affected by Pinatubo. The airborne fraction is affected by factors other than the efficiency of carbon sinks, most notably by changes in the rate of fossil fuel emissions (Gloor et al 2010). However, it is the dependence of the airborne fraction on fossil fuel emission rate that makes the post-2000 downturn of the airborne fraction particularly striking. The change of emission rate in 2000 from 1.5% yr-1 to 3.1% yr-1 (figure 1), other things being equal, would have caused a sharp increase of the airborne fraction (the simple reason being that a rapid source increase provides less time for carbon to be moved downward out of the ocean's upper layers).
A decrease in land use emissions during the past decade (Harris et al 2012) could contribute to the decreasing airborne fraction in figure 3, although Malhi (2010) presents evidence that tropical forest deforestation and regrowth are approximately in balance, within uncertainties. Land use change can be only a partial explanation for the decrease of the airborne fraction; something more than land use change seems to be occurring.
We suggest that the huge post-2000 increase of uptake by the carbon sinks implied by figure 3 is related to the simultaneous sharp increase in coal use (figure 1). Increased coal use occurred primarily in China and India (Boden et al2012; BP 2012; see graphs at www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Emissions/Emis_moreFigs/). Satellite radiance measurements for July–December, months when desert dust does not dominate aerosol amount, yield an increase of aerosol optical depth in East Asia of about 4% yr-1 during 2000–2006 (van Donkelaar et al 2008). Associated gaseous and particulate emissions increased rapidly after 2000 in China and India (Lu et al 2011, Tian et al 2010). Some decrease of the sulfur component of emissions occurred in China after 2006 as wide application of flue-gas desulfurization began to be initiated (Lu et al 2010), but this was largely offset by continuing emission increases from India (Lu et al 2011).
We suggest that the surge of fossil fuel use, mainly coal, since 2000 is a basic cause of the large increase of carbon uptake by the combined terrestrial and ocean carbon sinks. One mechanism by which fossil fuel emissions increase carbon uptake is by fertilizing the biosphere via provision of nutrients essential for tissue building, especially nitrogen, which plays a critical role in controlling net primary productivity and is limited in many ecosystems (Gruber and Galloway 2008). Modeling (e.g., Thornton et al 2009) and field studies (Magnani et al 2007) confirm a major role of nitrogen deposition, working in concert with CO2 fertilization, in causing a large increase in net primary productivity of temperate and boreal forests. Sulfate aerosols from coal burning also might increase carbon uptake by increasing the proportion of diffuse insolation, as noted above for Pinatubo aerosols, even though the total solar radiation reaching the surface is reduced.
Thus we see the decreased CO2 airborne fraction since 2000 as sharing some of the same causes as the decreased airborne fraction after the Pinatubo eruption (figure 3). CO2 fertilization is likely the major effect, as a plausible addition of 5 TgN yr-1 from fossil fuels and net ecosystem productivity of 200 kgC kgN-1 (Magnani et al 2007, 2008) yields an annual carbon drawdown of 1 GtC yr-1, which is of the order of what is needed to explain the post-2000 anomaly in airborne CO2. However, an aerosol-induced increase of diffuse radiation might also contribute. Although tropospheric aerosol properties are not accurately monitored, there are suggestions of an upward trend of stratospheric background aerosols since 2000 (Hofmann et al 2009, Solomon et al 2011), which could be a consequence of more tropospheric aerosols at low latitudes where injection of tropospheric air into the stratosphere occurs (Holton et al 1995). We discuss climate implications of the reduced CO2 airborne fraction after presenting data for other greenhouse gases.
Atmospheric CH4 is increasing more slowly than in IPCC scenarios (figure 4), which were defined more than a decade ago (IPCC 2001). However, after remaining nearly constant for several years, CH4 has increased during the past five years, pushing slightly above the level that was envisaged in the Alternative Scenario of Hansen et al (2000). Reduction of CH4, besides slowdown in CO2 growth in the twenty first century and a decline of CO2 in the twenty second century, is a principal requirement to achieve a low climate forcing that stabilizes climate, in part because CH4 also affects tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapor. The Alternative Scenario, defined in detail by Hansen and Sato (2004), keeps maximum global warming at ~1.5 °C relative to 1880–1920, under the assumption that fast-feedback climate sensitivity is ~3 °C for doubled CO2 (Hansen et al 2007). The Alternative Scenario allows CO2 to reach 475 ppm in 2100 before declining slowly; this scenario assumes that reductions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases and black carbon aerosols can be achieved sufficient to balance the warming effect of likely future decreases of reflective aerosols.
Figure 4.
Figure 4. Observed atmospheric CH4 amount and scenarios for twenty first century. Alternative scenario (Hansen et al2000, Hansen and Sato 2004) yields maximum global warming ~1.5 °C above 1880–1920. Other scenarios are from IPCC (2001). Forcing on right hand scale is adjusted forcing, Fa, relative to values in 2000 (Hansen et al 2007).
There are anthropogenic sources of CH4 that potentially could be reduced, indeed, the leveling off of CH4 amount during the past 20 years seems to have been caused by decreased venting in oil fields (Simpson et al 2012), but the feasibility of overall CH4 reduction also depends on limiting global warming itself, because of the potential for amplifying climate-CH4feedbacks (Archer et al 2009, Koven et al 2011). Furthermore, reduction of atmospheric CH4 might become problematic if unconventional mining of gas, such as 'hydro-fracking', expands widely (Cipolla 2009), as discussed further below.
The growth rate for the total climate forcing by well-mixed greenhouse gases has remained below the peak values reached in the 1970s and early 1980s, has been relatively stable for about 20 years, and is falling below IPCC (2001) scenarios (figure 5). However, the greenhouse gas forcing is growing faster than in the Alternative Scenario. MPTGs and OTGs in figure 5 are Montreal Protocol Trace Gases and Other Trace Gases (Hansen and Sato 2004).
Figure 5.
Figure 5. Five-year mean of the growth rate of climate forcing by well-mixed greenhouse gases, an update of figure 4 of Hansen and Sato (2004). Forcing calculations use equations of Hansen et al (2000). The moderate uncertainties in radiative calculations affect the scenarios and actual greenhouse gas results equally and thus do not alter the conclusion that the actual forcing falls below that of the IPCC scenarios.
If greenhouse gases were the only climate forcing, we would be tempted to infer from Rahmstorf's conclusion (that actual climate change has exceeded IPCC projections) and our conclusion (that actual greenhouse gas forcings are slightly smaller than IPCC scenarios) that actual climate sensitivity is on the high side of what has generally been assumed. Although that may be a valid inference, the evidence is weakened by the fact that other climate forcings are not negligible in comparison to the greenhouse gases and must be accounted for.
Natural forcings, by changing solar irradiance and volcanic aerosols, are well-measured since the late 1970s and included in most IPCC (2007) climate simulations. The difficulty is human-made aerosols. Aerosols are readily detected in satellite observations, but determination of their climate forcing requires accurate knowledge of changes in aerosol amount, size distribution, absorption and vertical distribution on a global basis—as well as simultaneous data on changes in cloud properties to allow inference of the indirect aerosol forcing via induced cloud changes. Unfortunately, the first satellite mission capable of measuring the needed aerosol characteristics (Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor on the Glory satellite, (Mishchenko et al 2007)) suffered a launch failure and as yet there are no concrete plans for a replacement mission.
The human-made aerosol climate forcing thus remains uncertain. IPCC (2007) concludes that aerosols are a negative (cooling) forcing, probably between -0.5 and -2.5 W m-2. Hansen et al (2011), based mainly on analysis of Earth's energy imbalance, derive an aerosol forcing -1.6 ± 0.3 W m-2, consistent with an analysis of Murphy et al (2009) that suggests an aerosol forcing about -1.5 W m-2 (see discussion in Hansen et al (2011)). This large negative aerosol forcing reduces the net climate forcing of the past century by about half (IPCC 2007; figure 1 of Hansen et al 2011). Coincidentally, this leaves net climate forcing comparable to the CO2 forcing alone.
Reduction of the net human-made climate forcing by aerosols has been described as a 'Faustian bargain' (Hansen and Lacis 1990, Hansen 2009), because the aerosols constitute deleterious particulate air pollution. Reduction of the net climate forcing by half will continue only if we allow air pollution to build up to greater and greater amounts. More likely, humanity will demand and achieve a reduction of particulate air pollution, whereupon, because the CO2 from fossil fuel burning remains in the surface climate system for millennia, the 'devil's payment' will be extracted from humanity via increased global warming.
So is the new data we present here good news or bad news, and how does it alter the 'Faustian bargain'? At first glance there seems to be some good news. First, if our interpretation of the data is correct, the surge of fossil fuel emissions, especially from coal burning, along with the increasing atmospheric CO2 level is 'fertilizing' the biosphere, and thus limiting the growth of atmospheric CO2. Also, despite the absence of accurate global aerosol measurements, it seems that the aerosol cooling effect is probably increasing based on evidence of aerosol increases in the Far East and increasing 'background' stratospheric aerosols.
Both effects work to limit global warming and thus help explain why the rate of global warming seems to be less this decade than it has been during the prior quarter century. This data interpretation also helps explain why multiple warnings that some carbon sinks are 'drying up' and could even become carbon sources, e.g., boreal forests infested by pine bark beetles (Kurz et al 2008) and the Amazon rain forest suffering from drought (Lewis et al 2011), have not produced an obvious impact on atmospheric CO2.
However, increased CO2 uptake does not necessarily mean that the biosphere is healthier or that the increased carbon uptake will continue indefinitely (Matson et al 2002, Galloway et al 2002, Heimann and Reichstein 2008, Gruber and Galloway 2008). Nor does it change the basic facts about the potential magnitude of the fossil fuel carbon source (figure 6) and the long lifetime of the CO2 in the surface carbon reservoirs (atmosphere, ocean, soil, biosphere) once the fossil fuels are burned (Archer 2005). Fertilization of the biosphere affects the distribution of the fossil fuel carbon among these reservoirs, at least on the short run, but it does not alter the fact that the fossil carbon will remain in these reservoirs for millennia.
Figure 6.
Figure 6. Fossil fuel CO2 emissions and carbon content (1 ppm atmospheric CO2~2.12 GtC). Historical emissions are from Boden et al (2012). Estimated reserves and potentially recoverable resources are based on energy content values of Energy Information Administration (EIA 2011), German Advisory Council (GAC 2011), and Global Energy Assessment (GEA 2012). We convert energy content to carbon content using emission factors of Table 4.2 of IPCC (2007) for coal, gas, and conventional oil, and, following IPCC, we use an emission factor of unconventional oil the same as that for coal.
Humanity, so far, has burned only a small portion (purple area in figure 6) of total fossil fuel reserves and resources. Yet deleterious effects of warming are apparent (IPCC 2007), even though only about half of the warming due to gases now in the air has appeared, the remainder still 'in the pipeline' due to the inertia of the climate system (Hansen et al 2011). Already it seems difficult to avoid passing the 'guardrail' of no more than 2 °C global warming that was agreed in the Copenhagen Accord of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 2010). And Hansen et al (2008), based primarily on paleoclimate data and evidence of deleterious climate impacts already at 385 ppm CO2, concluded that an appropriate initial target for CO2 was 350 ppm, which implied a global temperature limit, relative to 1880–1920 of about 1 °C. What is clear is that most of the remaining fossil fuels must be left in the ground if we are to avoid dangerous human-made interference with climate.
The principal implication of our present analysis probably relates to the Faustian bargain. Increased short-term masking of greenhouse gas warming by fossil fuel particulate and nitrogen pollution represents a 'doubling down' of the Faustian bargain, an increase in the stakes. The more we allow the Faustian debt to build, the more unmanageable the eventual consequences will be. Yet globally there are plans to build more than 1000 coal-fired power plants (Yang and Cui 2012) and plans to develop some of the dirtiest oil sources on the planet (EIA 2011). These plans should be vigorously resisted. We are already in a deep hole—it is time to stop digging.
Acknowledgments
We thank ClimateWorks, Energy Foundation, Gerry Lenfest (Lenfest Foundation), Lee Wasserman (Rockefeller Family Foundation), and Stephen Toben (Flora Family Foundation) for research and communications support.

Monday, March 25, 2013

New paper finds the Sun controlled climate change of Asian continent over past 12,000 years

A paper published today in Global and Planetary Change reconstructs climate change during the past 12,000 years and finds the Sun has governed climate change of the Asian continent during the Holocene. According to the authors, "Spectral analysis of our results demonstrates periodic changes of 1500, 1000 and 500 years of relatively warm and cold intervals during the Holocene of Siberia. We presume that the 1000 and 500 year climatic cycles are driven by increased solar insolation reaching the Earth surface and amplified by other still controversial mechanisms." Solar amplification mechanisms include via ozone, clouds, and ocean oscillations

Related: The Physical Evidence of Earth's Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle

Discovery of Holocene millennial climate cycles in the Asian continental interior: Has the sun been governing the continental climate?


  • a Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2G7
  • b Department of Earth Sciences, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 17, 3584 CD Utrecht, the Netherlands
  • c Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H4
  • d Now at Solstice Canada Corp., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5M 0H1
  • e Now at Archaeology, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK

Highlights

A complete Holocene sequence of loess and buried soils has been studied in Siberia
Climatic cycles of 1000 and 500 years are revealed using petromagnetic parameters
Such periods correspond to variations in solar insolation and sun spot activity
Climatic cyclicity in the continental interior contains also oceanic cycle of 1500 years

Abstract

We conducted a high-resolution study of a unique Holocene sequence of wind-blown sediments and buried soils in Southern Siberia, far from marine environment influences. This was accomplished in order to assess the difference between North Atlantic marine and in-land climate variations. Relative wind strength was determined by grain size analyses of different stratigraphic units. Petromagnetic measurements were performed to provide a proxy for the relative extent of pedogenesis. An age model for the sections was built using the radiocarbon dating method. The windy periods are associated with the absence of soil formation and relatively low values of frequency dependence of magnetic susceptibility (FD), which appeared to be a valuable quantitative marker of pedogenic activity. These events correspond to colder intervals which registered reduced solar modulation and sun spot number. Events, where wind strength was lower, are characterized by soil formation with high FD values. Spectral analysis of our results demonstrates periodic changes of 1500, 1000 and 500 years of relatively warm and cold intervals during the Holocene of Siberia. We presume that the 1000 and 500 year climatic cycles are driven by increased solar insolation reaching the Earth surface and amplified by other still controversial mechanisms. The 1500 year cycle associated with the North Atlantic circulation appears only in the Late Holocene. Three time periods — 8400–9300 years BP, 3600–5100 years BP, and the last ~ 250 years BP — correspond to both the highest sun spot number and the most developed soil horizons in the studied sections.

Friday, March 22, 2013

New analysis finds no increase in storms in N. America over past 150 years

A new SPPI paper entitled Storm Trends Across North America concludes, "as the Earth has warmed over the past hundred and fifty years, during its recovery from the global chill of the Little Ice Age, there has been little to no significant increase in either the frequency or intensity of stormy weather in North America. In fact, most studies suggest just the opposite has likely occurred. This observation -- coupled with the fact that storminess in many other parts of the planet has also decreased or held steady as the world has warmed -- thus suggests there is no data-based reason to believe that storms anywhere will become either more frequent or more intense if the world warms a bit more in the future."


[Illustrations, footnotes and references available in PDF version]
Among the highly publicized doom-and-gloom scenarios that climate alarmists allege to attend the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content are predicted increases in the frequency and severity of storms. As a result, and in an effort to determine if these predictions have any validity, many scientists are examining historical and proxy storm records in an attempt to determine how temperature changes of the past millennium have impacted this aspect of Earth's climate. This summary reviews what some of them have learned about various storm trends across North America.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

New paper finds models don't reproduce climate changes of the Holocene Climatic Optimum

A paper published today in Climate of the Past finds climate models are unable to reproduce known climate change during the mid-Holocene Climatic Optimum, a warmer period than the present. According to the authors, "our results for the mid-Holocene are substantially negative, with the models failing to reproduce the observed changes with any degree of skill," and "climate science is now facing the challenge of predicting future changes on regional scales, which includes the requirement to correctly model vegetation and many other feedbacks. Our results provide some sobering evidence of the limits to the ability of current models to accurately reproduce the local patterns of change that are seen in paleoclimate data."

Prior posts on the abject failure of climate models

Clim. Past, 9, 811-823, 2013
www.clim-past.net/9/811/2013/
doi:10.5194/cp-9-811-2013


Skill and reliability of climate model ensembles at the Last Glacial Maximum and mid-Holocene

J. C. Hargreaves1, J. D. Annan1, R. Ohgaito1, A. Paul2, and A. Abe-Ouchi1,3
1RIGC/JAMSTEC, Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences, Yokohama, Japan
2University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
3AORI, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan


Abstract. Paleoclimate simulations provide us with an opportunity to critically confront and evaluate the performance of climate models in simulating the response of the climate system to changes in radiative forcing and other boundary conditions. Hargreaves et al. (2011) analysed the reliability of the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project, PMIP2 model ensemble with respect to the MARGO sea surface temperature data synthesis (MARGO Project Members, 2009) for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 21 ka BP). Here we extend that work to include a new comprehensive collection of land surface data (Bartlein et al., 2011), and introduce a novel analysis of the predictive skill of the models. We include output from the PMIP3 experiments, from the two models for which suitable data are currently available. We also perform the same analyses for the PMIP2 mid-Holocene (6 ka BP) ensembles and available proxy data sets.

Our results are predominantly positive for the LGM, suggesting that as well as the global mean change, the models can reproduce the observed pattern of change on the broadest scales, such as the overall land–sea contrast and polar amplification, although the more detailed sub-continental scale patterns of change remains elusive. In contrast, our results for the mid-Holocene are substantially negative, with the models failing to reproduce the observed changes with any degree of skill. One cause of this problem could be that the globally- and annually-averaged forcing anomaly is very weak at the mid-Holocene, and so the results are dominated by the more localised regional patterns in the parts of globe for which data are available. The root cause of the model-data mismatch at these scales is unclear. If the proxy calibration is itself reliable, then representativity error in the data-model comparison, and missing climate feedbacks in the models are other possible sources of error.


 Final Revised Paper (PDF, 2495 KB)   Supplement (131 KB)   Discussion Paper (CPD)   Special Issue

New paper corroborates Svensmark's theory of cosmoclimatology

A paper published today in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics finds "strong evidence" of a link between thunderstorm and solar activity in Brazil from 1951-2009. According to the authors, thunderstorm "behavior with respect to the 11-year solar cycle suggest a global mechanism probably related to a solar magnetic shielding effect acting on galactic cosmic rays as an explanation for the relationship of thunderstorm and solar activity," which would corroborate Svensmark's theory of cosmoclimatology

The relationship between thunderstorm and solar activity for Brazil from 1951 to 2009


  • a Camilo Castelo Branco University (Unicastelo), São Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo, 12247-004, Brazil
  • b ELAT/CCST, National Institute of Space Research (INPE), São Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo, 12227-010, Brazil

Highlights

First results on the relationship between solar and thunderstorm activity in Brazil.
Strong evidence of anti-phase correlation between solar and thunderstorm activity in Brazil.
New statistical method for evaluating correlation between solar and thunderstorm activity.

Abstract

The goal of this article is to investigate the influence of solar activity on thunderstorm activity in Brazil. For this purpose, thunder day data from seven cities in Brazil from 1951 to 2009 are analyzed with the wavelet method for the first time. To identify the 11-year solar cycle in thunder day data, a new quantity is defined. It is named TD1 and represents the power in 1-year in a wavelet spectrum of monthly thunder day data. The wavelet analysis of TD1 values shows more clear the 11-year periodicity than when it is applied directly to annual thunder day data, as it has been normally investigated in the literature. The use of this new quantity is shown to enhance the capability to identify the 11-year periodicity in thunderstorm data. Wavelet analysis of TD1 indicates that six out seven cities investigated exhibit periodicities near 11 years, three of them significant at a 1% significance level (p < 0.01). Furthermore, wavelet coherence analysis demonstrated that the 11-year periodicity of TD1 and solar activity are correlated with an anti-phase behavior, three of them (the same cities with periodicities with 1% significance level) significant at a 5% significance level (p < 0.05). The results are compared with those obtained from the same data set but using annual thunder day data. Finally, the results are compared with previous results obtained for other regions and a discussion about possible mechanisms to explain them is done.   The existence of periodicities around 11 years in six out of seven cities and their anti-phase behavior with respect to 11-year solar cycle suggest a global mechanism probably related to a solar magnetic shielding effect acting on galactic cosmic rays as an explanation for the relationship of thunderstorm and solar activity, although more studies are necessary to clarify its physical origin.