The news that 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded in Australia comes at the end of a year in which, to the extent that facts can settle anything, the debate over human-caused global warming has been settled. Worldwide, 2005 was equal (to within the margin of error of the stats) with 1998 as the warmest year in at least the past millennium.
More significantly, perhaps, 2005 saw the final nail hammered into the arguments climate change contrarians have been pushing for years. The few remaining legitimate sceptics, along with some of the smarter ideological contrarians, have looked at the evidence and conceded the reality of human-caused global warming.
Ten years or so ago, the divergence between satellite and ground-based measurements of temperature was a big problem – the ground based measurements showed warming in line with climate models but the satellites showed a cooling trend. The combination of new data and improved calibration has gradually resolved the discrepancy, in favour of the ground-based measurements and the climate models.
Another set of arguments concerned short-term climate cycles like El Nino. The late John Daly attributed the high temperatures of the late 1990s to the combination of El Nino and solar cycles, and predicted a big drop, bottoming out in 2005 and 2006. Obviously the reverse has happened. Despite the absence of the El Nino or solar effects that contributed to the 1998 record, the long-term warming trend has dominated.
Finally, there’s water vapour. The most credible of the contrarians, Richard Lindzen, has relied primarily on arguments that the feedback from water vapour, which plays a central role in climate models, might actually be zero or even negative. Recent evidence has run strongly against this claim. Lindzen’s related idea of an adaptive iris has been similarly unsuccessful.
Finally, the evidence has mounted up that, with a handful of exceptions, “sceptics” are not, as they claim, fearless seekers after scientific truth, but ideological partisans and paid advocates, presenting dishonest arguments for a predetermined party-line conclusion. Even three years ago, sites like Tech Central Station, and writers like Ross McKitrick were taken seriously by many. Now, anyone with access to Google can discover that they have no credibility. Chris Mooney’s Republican War on Science which I plan to review soon, gives chapter and verse and the whole network of thinktanks, politicians and tame scientists who have popularised GW contrarianism, Intelligent Design and so on.
A couple of thoughts on all this.
First, in the course of the debate, a lot of nasty things were said about the IPCC, including some by people who should have known better. Now that it’s clear that the IPCC has been pretty much spot-on in its assessment (and conservative in terms of its caution about reaching definite conclusions), it would be nice to see some apologies.
Second, now that the scientific phase of the debate is over, attention will move to the question of the costs and benefits of mitigation options. There are legitimate issues to be debated here. But having seen the disregard for truth exhibited by anti-environmental think tanks in the first phase of the debate, we shouldn’t give them a free pass in the second. Any analysis on this issue coming out of a think tank that has engaged in global warming contrarianism must be regarded as valueless unless its results have been reproduced independently, after taking account of possible data mining and cherry picking. That disqualifies virtually all the major right-wing think tanks, both here and in the US. Their performance on this and other scientific issues has been a disgrace.
John Quiggin 
Hans, when have I ever written anything like “McKitrick makes errors, so McIntyre must be wrong”? Have you ever actually read my blog?
Chris, you say:
You say the problem with Hans’ model is that the earth is nothing like a freely radiating black body, which is true. However, the temperature of the earth is also not a linear function of the solar radiation as you seem to think.
In addition, you desperately need to study some math. A fourth-power relationship in Stefan Bolzmann does not mean a fourfold increase, as you so blithely assume. Any good high school algebra text will reveal the difference between “four-fold” and “to the fourth power”.
Finally, you confuse a change in incoming shortwave forcing (from the sun) with a change in longwave forcing (from the atmosphere). Any change in shortwave forcing is increased by the so-called “greenhouse effect”. The change in longwave forcing from a change in CO2, however, is defined as the net change in forcing, so it is not increased by anything.
Here is the IPCC definition:
Note that they are very clear that the definition precludes other feedbacks such as the one you are incorrectly postulating.
w.
Hans Erren number two eh well not so sure about Canada, maybe we should wait for the subsidence to finish in Russia from melting permafrost, factor in the increased freshwater runoff having a good chance to effect & help shut down the Atlantic conveyor and see what releasing all those billions of tonnes of frozen hydrates will do.
May lengthen the growing period for Russia and shorten it for Europe if the conveyor shuts down, already have a measurable slow down.
Could be good for Russia and maybe they will allow all the people from Bangladesh and other low lying places to move there when their corner of the world is effected badly by AGW. I’m sure you’ll share your home with Pacific island refugees, it’s the least people like you could do given your stance. Since it won’t happen you have nothing to lose.
I think I’ll go on accepting that the experts in climate science have a handle on the issues and I won’t bother trying to argue their case for them with people who aren’t prepared to accept the validity of their work. They work within a framework of institutions and systems that mean that the kind of fundamental errors and omissions the contrarians claim are extremely unlikely to go unchecked.
Meanwhile GHG production goes on increasing with and without Kyoto. But Kyoto has put people on notice, planners and engineers are incorporating the requirement for reduced emissions into their current thinking and their future designs, governments and corporations are aware that real reductions are going to be called for and implemented, but I suspect it will take some kind of defining consequence of Global warming like tens of millions of refugees who’ve had their lowlying farms inundated and made unusable by salt water, or a major shift in ocean currents and regional climate changes that cause crop failures and famines without respite before governments bite the bullet and climate security gets the kind of attention military security gets.
Apparently you are gullible enough to fall for one of McIntyre’s fabrications.
Ahhh, I think that is the most succinct conclusion ever drawn by someone visiting C (‘smells like teen spirit’) A.
Best,
D
SimonjJm, you say:
Heck, if they’ll let me live for free on their tropical Pacific island until it sinks, I’ll let them live at my place after that … but then, since I already live on a tropical Pacific island, I may have a better grasp of the odds of sinkage than you.
In reality, the low lying island states in the Pacific (Tuvalu, Kiribati, etc) are coral atolls. As Charles Darwin first discovered, coral atolls increase in height to match the sea level as it rises, and have been doing so for thousands of years. (See Darwin, C., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, 1887)
Now, since:
a) modern rates of sea level rise are generally less than earlier in the Holocene (see Miller, “The Phanerozoic Record of Global Sea-Level Change”, Science, Nov 25, 2005, Fig. S1), and
b) the islands didn’t disappear earlier in the Holocene, when the sea level rise was much greater than today, and
c) coral growth rates are much greater than any conceivable modern rate of sea level rise (see Sewell, R.B.S. (1935) Studies on coral and coral-formations in Indian waters Geographic and Oceanographic Research in Indian Waters No. 8, Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 9:461-539., and Verstelle, J. Th. (1932) The growth rate at various depths of coral reefs in the Dutch East Indian Archipelago, Treubia, 14:117-126.)
we must conclude that the chances of them sinking now from sea level rise are extremely remote.
The most cited “problem” is Tuvalu, but the damages to the islands there have been shown by SOPAC to be a result of changes made to the coral reefs around the islands in WWII, when several harbours were built by dredging the reefs. This changed the currents around the islands, which of course eventually washed away parts of the islands. (See Xue, C. (1996) Coastal Erosion And Management Of Amatuku Island, Funafuti Atoll, Tuvalu, 1996, South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC), http://conf.sopac.org/virlib/TR/TR0234.pdf)
Sorry, bro’, but you’ve been duped by people wrongly claiming that erosion is sea level rise, people who never heard of Darwin’s work on coral atolls … but then Darwin’s work is only a century old, no reason they should have heard of it yet …
w.
Willis – was the Holocene rise accompanied by an increase in average or maximum sea temperature?
I ask because you do seem to have done your homework in this area and I’m sure you’re aware of the Indian Ocean coral bleaching event.
Relatively small variations in ocean temperature seem to produce major coral dieback. I’m sure that the reefs will recover eventually – and at the most extreme will eventually be reseeded by species from warmer water if they die off completely.
The key word though is “eventually” a 50-year period of greatly reduced biological activity on the reefs would have little long term significance to the reefs but would have considerable impact on fishing and tourism in the meantime.
Also, have you looked at the impact of rising sea levels on the fresh water aquifers under those coral islands? They might re-establish themselves once the corals grow higher but even a couple of years is a long time between drinks.
Willis as this points out
http://www.earthsky.com/shows/observingearth.php?date=20030331
yes corals and atolls grow but the process doesn’t seem to be one that you would like to rely on to keep your feet out of the water. Throw in time lag -as indicated- problems with fresh water and an increase in storm activity & the atolls may remain but whether they will be able to be habitable is the real point.
BTW do you have spare room for a few million Bangladeshis many are already losing land to sea rise?
Ian, thanks for your posting.
I don’t know of any sea temperature proxies for the Holocene, although there likely are some. However, the nature of coral bleaching events seems to be misunderstood.
Coral reefs are built by coral polyps, which build and inhabit a skeleton of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). These polyps are of a wide variety of species, each of which is adapted to a certain temperature range. This variety of polyps allows coral reefs to exist in a wide variety of temperatures. Typically, any given reef will have a number of different species of polyps.
When ocean temperatures get either higher or lower than a given reef of polyps can stand, they die, leaving the CaCO3 skeleton behind. This is not the end of the reef, however. The CaCO3 skeleton is re-colonized by some other species of polyps which can stand the new temperature.
This re-colonization is relatively rapid. Here in Fiji, for example, the reefs have mostly recovered from a bleaching event which occurred in 2000. So your “50 year period of greatly reduced biological activity” is too long by a factor of about 10.
Finally, the sub-surface fresh water on coral islets exists in the form of what is called a “lens” of fresh water. This lens of fresh water is floating on salt water below it, so as the salt water rises, the fresh water rises as well. While these fresh water lenses face a variety of environmental threats, chiefly overpumping and pollution, rising sea level is not one of the threats because the lens is floating, and thus it rises with the sea level.
All the best,
w.
Willis, that’s an interesting theory, but is there really evidence for it in the scientific literature? I did some basic searching of the recent literature and found a paper which states pretty much the opposite.
For example, the abstract of a article titled “Global warming and the future of Caribbean coral reefs” (RR Graus, IG Macintyre; Carbonates And Evaporites 13 (1): 43-47 1998) reads:
Computer simulations with the COREEF model … demonstrate that the growth of Caribbean coral reefs will be unable to match all but the most optimistic predicted rates of sea level rise that global warming is expected to cause over the next few centuries, and, therefore, these reefs will gradually become more submerged. As they deepen, higher waves will propagate into back-reef areas, altering the ecological and sedimentological zonation patterns and accelerating the erosion of leeward shelves and shores. Resuspended sediment will increase the turbidity, causing the demise of sediment-sensitive corals and possibly entire reef communities.
Your citations to show that corel growth outpaces sealevel growth date back to the 1930s…
Also, as Ian Gould points out that higher temperatures can damage corel, so too can high CO2 levels. Loss of ozone can also hurt reefs.
I think that it’s entirely possible to fix the co2 problem with increased information processing (for example, if we did away with private cars in favour of a point-to-point pickup and putdown minibus system based on mobile phone calls we’d use much less petrol) but that we can’t fix the economic problems that fixing the co2 problems would bring (in that example, a collapse of the car companies) and so can’t fix the problem of how to get from here to there.
What is it about an energy and resource efficiency drive that keeps it being overlooked as the logical first step as a win/win for both sides. It saves resources, makes business more competitive, makes them money and cuts CO2 emissions.
Why iinstead is it that the right go straight to nuclear or carbon sequestration as their main techno fixes costly and for CS unproven.
Chris would our economy collapse without the private car industry? A transfer of subsidies and incentives for private to public wouldn’t create its own positive economic flow on?
SimonjJm, well said.
I have always been at a loss to understand why (genuine) conservatives aren’t pushing harder for energy efficiency. The technology to roughly double energy efficiency across the board is already extant and economic, with no significant sacrifice to lifestyle.
Go figure.
Willi wrote:
“In addition, you [Chris] desperately need to study some math. A fourth-power relationship in Stefan Bolzmann [sic] does not mean a fourfold increase, as you so blithely assume. Any good high school algebra text will reveal the difference between “four-foldâ€? and “to the fourth powerâ€?.”
Willi, a one percent increase in temperature would correspond to an increase in total radiated power (Stefan-Boltzmann law) by a factor of (1+0.01)^4. Power expressions of the type (1 + x)^a can be expanded as a series which, for x
“Willi”? I.e., Willis.
P.
Second try: the last part of my reply was itself truncated, apparently because of my use of symbols. Here it is again, with symbols replaced by words.
***************************
Willis, a one percent increase in temperature would correspond to an increase in total radiated power (Stefan-Boltzmann law) by a factor of (1+0.01)^4. Power expressions of the type (1 + x)^a can be expanded as a series which, for x much less than 1, can be truncated after the second member and approximated as (1 + x)^a approx. equals 1 + (a.x). So, a 1% increase in temperature would correspond, APPROXIMATELY, to a 4% increase in power. (Or, other way around, a 1% increase in power to a 0.25% increase in temp.) This is how I regularly do quick mental arithmetic on interest rates, etc. Since you’re arguing with Chris over factors of two, I assume a few % error in this kind of approximation is insignificant. I am not sure who needs the maths lesson, but I suspect it’s not Chris….
Cheers,
P.
I think that at least part of the Howard governments interest in carbon sequestration technology is that Coal is a major export. If a means can be made to make coal clean then we can continue to export it. If the future is one without coal then Australia looses a large comparitive advantage.
Willis Eschenbach says
In reality, the low lying island states in the Pacific (Tuvalu, Kiribati, etc) are coral atolls. As Charles Darwin first discovered, coral atolls increase in height to match the sea level as it rises, and have been doing so for thousands of years. (See Darwin, C., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, 1887)
Now, since:
a) modern rates of sea level rise are generally less than earlier in the Holocene (see Miller, “The Phanerozoic Record of Global Sea-Level Change�, Science, Nov 25, 2005, Fig. S1), and
b) the islands didn’t disappear earlier in the Holocene, when the sea level rise was much greater than today,
A number of people have pointed out problems with this, but there is another one. Some of the CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans. Water with CO2 disolved in it is more acidic than water without. Corals grow more slowly in acidic water. Consequently the idea that islands will grow faster than the oceans rise is highly unlikely to be true.
In regard to the people who suggest that warmer temperatures will be great for Canada and Siberia – I have read that most of the currently unfarmable areas of Canada also have quite acidic soils, and will be very difficult to make arable. I can’t vouch for the truth of this, but have never seen it refuted, and it certainly poses a challenge to the “warmer temperatures mean we will all just move towards the poles” arguement.
So Dave S – my answer would be 3) but with a whole lot more problems than you mention – its not just coasts and islands. Other issues are increased storm damage, changes in rainfall patterns (lots of areas will get dryer. Other areas will be wetter and may benefit in the long run, but if their infrastructure is not set up for flood conditions they will suffer for a long time). Add these problems together and you get litterally hundreds of millions of climate refugees. I doubt that Canada, Russia and Antarctica will be capable of taking them all.
Terje I had similar thoughts on that so I do see the justification, but I wonder though whether that money would be better spent creating a new renewable industry to have advantage in.
What about a natural comparative advantage in our open spaces and solar energy we could develop?
I’d be more than happy to have cost benefit analysis done on to see if such a subsidy for the coal industry, which is what CS is- is worthwhile. Oh well too bad that many of our renewable energy firms will go bust or move overseas but we’ll still have our coal $ to import the renewable technology others will develop.
Seeker I think we come up against two of the conservative idols: business and consumption. It’s taboo to mess with either of them and they can do nothing wrong. That and many wouldn’t be caught dead looking ‘green’ even if it made business sense.
Yes these are worth considering. However on the face of it I would expect that if the world changed its energy source from fossil fuels to sunlight tomorrow then Australia would loose a considerable advantage in world energy markets.
Photovoltaics is made of silicon (ie sand) which as a raw material we hardly have a big advantage in. Most of the advantage in new renewable technologies will probably follow intellectual property rights, and manufacturing ability.
I am a fan of the solar tower concept being promoted by Enviromission. However I sence that commercilisation is not going well.
peterd, thanks for yr comments. You say:
While you are correct that it is a reasonable approximation, that’s not what Chris said. He said:
He says clearly that a fourth power relationship is four times the relative rate-of-increase in temperature, not that it approximates the answer.
If he was using it as an approximation, then he should say so, not you. Until then, I’ll continue with my previous statement.
w.
Ken (Miles), thanks for your comments. You say:
Let me take this one point at a time.
1. You say “that’s an interesting theory, but is there really evidence for it …?” Not sure which “theory” you’re talking about.
2. You say there is evidence on your side, but all that you have cited is a computer model. I have said this many times, but it obviously bears repeating. Computer models are not evidence. If you don’t understand why, I’ll be happy to explain.
Bear in mind that we have seen both rising temperatures since about the year 1700, and rising sea levels for the last 10,000 years (and at times rising much faster than today), and the coral reefs are still here, and Tuvalu is still floating. So whatever argument you make will have to explain that hard fact …
3. My citations on coral growth date to the 1930s. Are you saying that coral growth rates have changed radically since then? Because if you read the references, they report coral growth rates of 300 – 400 mm per year. This is in agreement with my experience living and diving in the tropics. Since sea level rise is a hundredth of that, your claim (and your computer model) seem very doubtful.
4. I have dealt with the “higher temperatures damage coral” question above. I would like a citation of some evidence for your claims that high CO2 levels damage coral, or that ozone damages coral. Remember that computer models are not evidence …
All the best,
w.
Looking at my most recent posting, I realize that I can likely save some time by explaining why the results of computer models are not evidence or data, and why they cannot prove anything.
The easiest way to show this is to consider another area of science, high energy physics.
We have a very good theoretical understanding of high energy physics, much better than our understanding of climate.
We also have very good computer models of what happens during high energy physics interactions, again much better than our models of climate.
And yet we still build multi-billion dollar linear accelerators to do experiments in high energy physics.
Why? Why do experiments, if we have such good models?
Because only experiments can give us data to prove or disprove the theories that are built into the models. The models cannot do this. High energy physicists would laugh if someone said “I have evidence that a new, undiscovered high energy particle exists,” and their “evidence” turned out to be their hot new whiz-bang computer model …
The scientists would reasonably say “No, you have a theory about a new particle, but that model is not evidence that it exists. It is merely a statement of your theory in model form. Go do an experiment that shows the particle exists …”
I have built a variety of computer models for various purposes. I once put together a STELLA model of a business I was involved in. It showed that the business would make a lot of money in the next few years.
Was this model result evidence that the company would make money? In the event, and sadly for my pocketbook, it was not evidence at all … just another flawed computer model.
Computer models are useful to help us understand reality. But they can never give us evidence about that reality. Only observation and experiment can do that.
Best to everyone,
w.
StevenL said:
Hundreds of millions of climate refugees? Folks, it has been warmer in the past. Ice core records from both Greenland and Antarctica show that we are currently near the coldest point of the last 10,000 years.
Since the recent warmer periods (Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period) produced no climate refugees, what makes you think they will suddenly appear?
All of the conditions you describe (storms, droughts, floods, etc.) are with us today. Never mind sea level rise, your average cyclone in Bangladesh kills thousands and thousands of people. But where are the refugees?
Predictions of disaster are a dime a dozen. The apocalyptic heat wave/cold wave/storm/flood/pick your poison is always just around the corner, with lots of people saying “it’s just about to happen” …
Well, we’ve been hearing the “just about to happen” mantra for some time now … still waiting …
w.
PS — I am mystified that anyone still believes that warming will lead to increased storms. The IPCC specifically disowns this specious claim, and good records over the past century (a time of warming) show no increase in storms despite the warming. Go find another claim, that one is dead and buried.
>I think that at least part of the Howard governments interest in carbon sequestration technology is that Coal is a major export. If a means can be made to make coal clean then we can continue to export it. If the future is one without coal then Australia looses a large comparitive advantage.
1. As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, we don’t need to reduce GHG emissions to zero – we need to reduce them by around 70%. Australian black coal is amongst the cheapest on the planet and is a lower carbon-intensity fuel than many other fossil fuels (such as brown coal). I’d expect that much of the residual demand for fossil fuel will be supplied by Australian coal (and natural gas, including from Australia) displacing relatively high-emitting fuels such as brown coal. Removing subsidies to inefficient coal industries around the world would enhance Australia’s competitive position and probably increase prices.
2. While everyoen focuses on the use of fossil material as a fuel we tend to overlook its use as the starting point for plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals and so on. Currently, natural gas and to a lesser extent oil are used as the basic feedstock for plastics etc. As supplies decline and prices for these feedstocks increase there are only two realsistic alternatives: coal and plant matter. In the long term, genetically engineered plants will probably be used but for the medium term future, coal is likely to be in demand as a feedstock for chemical products. Once again, as one of the largest and most efficient prodcuers of coal, Australia shoudl be one of the major beneficiaries of this trend. We might end up exporting less coal but synthesising ethylene and the like and exportign these value-added products instead.
>Hundreds of millions of climate refugees? Folks, it has been warmer in the past.
And what was the human population at those times and how many of those peopel were dependant on irrigated agriculture and groundwater?
Hi Willis,
It will take me a while to answer all of your points, so I’ll just slowly dribble out a number of comments each addressing one issue.
On ozone depletion damaging reefs here a couple of citations and abstracts:
Ultraviolet radiation effects on the behavior and recruitment of larvae from the reef coral Porites astreoides by Gleason DF, Edmunds PJ, Gates RD (Marine Biology 148 (3): 503-512 JAN 2006)
We tested the rarely considered hypothesis that the ultraviolet portion (UVR, 280-400 nm) of the light spectrum affects patterns of recruitment in reef-building corals. The premise for this hypothesis rests in the fact that biologically relevant intensities of UVR penetrate to considerable depths (> 24 m) in the clear waters surrounding many coral reefs, and that reef organisms allocate substantial resources to prevent and repair UVR damage. The ability of larvae spawned by the brown morph of the Caribbean coral, Porites astreoides, to detect and avoid UVR was assessed in petri dishes where one-half of the dish was shielded from UVR and the other exposed. Observations made every 30 min between 10:30 and 13:30 h showed significantly higher densities of larvae swimming in regions shielded from UVR. To determine how this behavior affects settlement patterns, larvae collected from P. astreoides adults at 18 m depth were released into chambers deployed at 17 m depth where they were given a choice of three different light regions in which to settle: PAR (PAR=400-700 nm), PAR+UVAR (UVAR=320-400 nm), and PAR+UVAR+UVBR (UVBR=280-320 nm). At the end of the experiment, greater numbers of P. astreoides larvae had settled in the region of the tube where UVR was reduced than would be expected if dispersion were random. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration in any reef-building coral species that planula larvae can detect UVR and that it affects their choice of a settlement site. These results indicate that the capacity to detect and avoid habitats with biologically damaging levels of UVR may be one factor contributing to the successful recruitment of coral larvae.
Photoinhibition of photosynthesis is reduced by water flow in the reef-building coral Acropora digitifera by Nakamura T, van Woesik R, Yamasaki H (Marine Ecology-Progress Series 301: 109-118 2005)
While photosynthesis of symbiotic algae is essential for reef-building corals, excess irradiance inhibits photosynthesis through photoinhibition, which can lead to coral bleaching under elevated temperature conditions. Here we show that water flow reduces photoinhibition of in hospite endosymbionts in the coral Acropora digitifera. Diurnal monitoring of chlorophyll fluorescence, under 2 different flow regimes (
Willis writes “I would like a citation of some evidence for your claims that high CO2 levels damage coral”.
Do you really need a citation? It’s pretty elementry chemistry. Extra CO2 will reduce the carbonate ion concentration in the upper ocean layer. This in turn will reduce coral’s ability to produce CaCO3.
Ken, thanks for the theory. You write:
However, what I requested was evidence.
w.
Ken, thanks for the citation on UV and reefs. It is interesting but not particularly surprising, given that most living things adjust themselves to their own comfort level vis-a-vis the sun.
I was not at all clear about the connection between that citation and human-caused global warming. Are you saying that humans increasing CO2 will somehow decrease the ozone and thus change the reef growth pattern, or what?
Thanks,
w.
Willis,
since you asked, here is a paper on ocean chemistry and corel.
Effect of calcium carbonate saturation state on the calcification rate of an experimental coral reef by Langdon C, Takahashi T, Sweeney C, Chipman D, Goddard J, Marubini F, Aceves H, Barnett H, Atkinson MJ (Global Biogeochemical Cycles 14 (2): 639-654 JUN 2000).
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is projected to reach twice the preindustrial level by the middle of the 21st century. This increase will reduce the concentration of CO32- of the surface ocean by 30% relative to the preindustrial level and will reduce the calcium carbonate saturation state of the surface ocean by an equal percentage. Using the large 2650 m(3) coral reef mesocosm at the BIOSPHERE-2 facility near Tucson, Arizona, we investigated the effect of the projected changes in seawater carbonate chemistry on the calcification of coral reef organisms at the community scale. Our experimental design was to obtain a long (3.8 years) time series of the net calcification of the complete system and all relevant physical and chemical variables (temperature, salinity, light, nutrients, Ca2+, pCO(2), TCO2, and total alkalinity). Periodic additions of NaHCO3, Na2CO3, and/or CaCl2 were made to change the calcium carbonate saturation state of the water. We found that there were consistent and reproducible changes in the rate of calcification in response to our manipulations of the saturation state. We show that the net community calcification rate responds to manipulations in the concentrations of both Ca2+ and CO32- and that the rate is well described as a linear function of the ion concentration product, [Ca2+](0.69)[CO32-]. This suggests that saturation state or a closely related quantity is a primary environmental factor that influences calcification on coral reefs at the ecosystem level. We compare the sensitivity of calcification to short-term (days) and long-term (months to years) changes in saturation state and found that the response was not significantly different. This indicates that coral reef organisms do not seem to be able to acclimate to changing saturation state. The predicted decrease in coral reef calcification between the years 1880 and 2065 A.D. based on our long-term results is 40%. Previous small-scale, short-term organismal studies predicted a calcification reduction of 14-30%. This much longer, community-scale study suggests that the impact on coral reefs may be greater than previously suspected In the next century coral reefs will be less able to cope with rising sea level and other anthropogenic stresses.
This field is very developed and there are lots of papers on it.
I was not at all clear about the connection between that citation and human-caused global warming. Are you saying that humans increasing CO2 will somehow decrease the ozone and thus change the reef growth pattern, or what?
Before I start, I should stress that the effect of ozone deplection on coral will be very minor compared with other factors. However, global warming will cool the stratosphere which will lead to an increased hole in the ozone layer, which will lead to lower ozone concentrations over the areas where coral lives. This effect could be (and will probably be) reversed by reductions in stratospheric CFC levels.
So it’s a very minor effect, but an interesting one.
Since the recent warmer periods (Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period) produced no climate refugees, what makes you think they will suddenly appear?
Were the Roman Warm Period and MWP warmer than today? I haven’t seen any credible evidence to suggest that (globally) they were. Do you have any citations?
I am mystified that anyone still believes that warming will lead to increased storms. The IPCC specifically disowns this specious claim, and good records over the past century (a time of warming) show no increase in storms despite the warming. Go find another claim, that one is dead and buried.
Actually, your wrong here.
The IPCC notes (pg 575 in The Scientific Basis) that while no increases in cyclone wind speed and precipitation have been oberved, the data is limited. Modelling suggest that it is likely to occur in the 21st century.
Since then, there has been some published studies which suggest that some extreme weather events are increasing in power.
>All of the conditions you describe (storms, droughts, floods, etc.) are with us today. Never mind sea level rise, your average cyclone in Bangladesh kills thousands and thousands of people. But where are the refugees?
Well , according to this private charity, at least 285,000 of them are in Africa and at least 1.7 million of them are in South Asia. That’s simply the numbers for peopel they’re supporting so it’s obviously an underestimate of the real situation.
http://www.weekofcompassion.org/pages/reports/response2005.html
Or maybe you mean that as long as they starve quietly out of your line of vision you don’t really care.
Ken – there was a Roman Warm period now???????
Ender – As far as I’m aware, there isn’t much evidence for or against it. There may have be some evidence for localised European warmth, but I can’t see how this would effect coral reefs.
For those interested in a good overview of the likely fate of coral reefs in the 21st century, I would suggest reading Coral Reefs In A High-CO2 World by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (Journal Of Geophysical Research, vol. 110, C09S06, 2005). This passage from it puts the discussion between myself, Ian and Willis into context:
Globally, sea level is projected to increase by between 0.2 and 0.8 cm yr[per year]…. Sea level rise has been seen as rather benign relative to the effects of temperature rise and the changes in aragonite saturation… Palaeological studies show that coral reefs have kept pace with past changes in sea level… Corals are also highly mobile larvae and hence settlement of coral recruits into new flooded habitats would be expected to occur rapidly as sea levels rise. The critical element here, however, is the physiological condition of corals in these scenarios. Coral reefs could be left behind by rising sea levels if corals are not growing or reproducing at healthy rates. The latter is more than likely given the large and demonstrated impacts of both elevated temperature and reduced aragonite saturation state on coral growth and reproduction (discussed
above).
Willis,
As long as you’re splitting hairs and scoring points over whether or not Chris explicitly claimed a fourth-power relationship to be equivalent to multiplication by four, let me split one or two of my own.
In your response to Chris, you quoted Chris and added words of your own: “…the problem with Hans’ model is that the earth is nothing like a freely radiating black body, which is true.�
This is not really a very precise summary of the situation. In the book “Radiation in the Atmosphere�, by the celebrated Soviet atmospheric physicist K. Ya. Kondrat’ev, one can find the following statement, at the start of Chapter 3: “…the emission and absorption properties of the earth’s surface are very close to those of a perfect black body. Considerably more complex laws apply to the atmosphere. The infrared absorption spectrum of the atmosphere is very complicated, and for this reason the emissivity of the atmosphere is greatly dependent on the wavelength and on the composition and structure of the atmosphere.� So let’s be clear that we’re talking about one component of the earth: its atmosphere. The atmosphere is not even a grey body in the regions of interest.
It is strange to me that in response to Chris, you also neglect to mention that a fundamental reason for the non-linear response to added CO2 is that the CO2 absorption is approaching saturation- that is, the concentration of CO2 is already so high that the absorption bands (e.g., the 14.6-micron band) are no longer optically thin; in this case the incremental fractional absorption is not proportional to incremental CO2 concentration, but is much less. Doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere will not produce a temperature change equivalent to taking that amount away, as was made clear in an exchange of letters in ‘Physics Today’ some years ago (unfortunately, I don’t have the volume & page numbers at hand) involving, among others, Richard Lindzen, Keith Shine and Robert Kandel.
Cheers,
P.
Now, if you all scroll down to the bottom of the url,
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/howmuch.htm
you’ll see that in time more stuff was added. A clear sky modtran co2 doubling indicates a sensitivity of 1K/2xCO2, agreeing with Douglass and Clader, and also agreeing with transient climate sensitiviy of the dutch CKO climate model run.
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=25003&start=1
If you want a true Stefan Boltzmann applet it is here:
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/sb.htm
Input solar constant, emissivity and albedo, output average surface temperature, try it with the CO2 doubling emisivity value (from modtran) of 62.23 %
Ian, in response to my question asking where are the refugees from global warming, you say:
First, my question was clearly about refugees from global warming. Either you deliberately misunderstood that, or you are ignoring that. Yes, there are refugees, and always have been … but that was not my point, and you know it.
Second, to say that I don’t care about refugees unless they are within my sight is:
a) Nasty
b) Uncalled for
c) 100% Wrong, and
d) Altogether, sadly typical of the ad hominem attack style of global warming believers.
I have done more work with refugees, and work with third world development in general, than most people on this planet, perhaps including yourself.
A simple apology for your unwarranted insult will suffice. A deeper examination of your biases, beliefs, and willingness to be nasty to total strangers is also recommended …
w.
Ken, thanks for your (several) responses. I’ll answer them as you’ve given them, one at a time. You say:
As you point out, the IPCC itself says that no increases in storm strength has been observed. This, of course, was my original claim.
This is actually one of the few climate claims that we have reasonable data on. Long term climate series, particularly for northern Europe, show several things very clearly:
1. There has been no change in the strength of the storms, despite three centuries of documented warming.
2. There has been no change in the total amount of precipitation, despite three centuries of documented warming.
3. There has been no change in the peak precipitation, despite three centuries of documented warming.
Once again, you are confusing models and possibilities with evidence. I will say it again — MODELS CAN SHOW ANYTHING!!! They are not proof or data or evidence of anything. Climate models (GCMs) routinely forecast weather changes which have never occurred on earth.
Finally, while we’re on the subject … what do you think caused the three centuries of documented warming in Northern Europe? (Hint – it can’t have been CO2, because for most of that time CO2 wasn’t rising.)
w.
“only observation and experiment can .. give us evidence about that reality.”
I’m glad the word “observation” was included included in this statement. One common mistake in my view is that science must include an experiment to test a hypothesis when actually the essential thing is observation. Experiments are handy for setting up the observation you want efficiently but sometimes it’s too expensive e.g. the only observation that a lot of people will accept for proof of damage caused by CO2 is that from an experiment involving enough CO2 to cause damage. That would be an expensive experiment. Some people give the impression that just because there is no experiment that tests the global warming hypothesis that there is no real test of the hypothesis. In my understanding science allow us to test the hypothesis using observation. Given that that’s the only choice of test, it would be good if people got used to the idea of test by observation.
Ken, thanks for the postings on coral growth. One is of coral growing in an aquarium … don’t think that applies here, we’re talking about the real world.
The other is an altogether too typical quote that says things like:
As they say, it sure could get worse, and it could be likely, but will it? My advice is to be very cautious when a “scientist” starts saying things “could” and “might” happen. Sure, they could, so he’ll never be proven wrong … but that’s not science.
It’s particularly not science because as with most plants and animals, elevated temperatures generally increase rather than decrease coral growth rates … but I digress.
Me, I focus on real world evidence, not what’s happening in somebody’s aquarium. Here’s some evidence:
Bessat, F. and Buigues, D. 2001. Two centuries of variation in coral growth in a massive Porites colony from Moorea (French Polynesia): a response of ocean-atmosphere variability from south central Pacific. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 175: 381-392
So did the “could” and “might” happen in the real world? Well … um … er … no, not at all. Bessat and Buigues found that in the real world, “instead of a 6-14% decline in calcification over the past 100 years [as] computed by the Kleypas group, the calcification has increased, in accordance with [what] Australian scientists Lough and Barnes [found].”
Like many parts of the debate over global warming, there is no definitive answer. However, there is much evidence (the study cited above is one of several showing the same result) that we will not see the “could, might, likely” declines in coral growth rates.
Part of the misunderstanding is that people keep talking about reef formation as though it were a matter of simple chemistry. It is not a simple chemical reaction whose response to changing conditions can be simply predicted. A coral reef is a biologically created structure, which may or may not be responsive to any given change in the environment.
w.
PS — I lived for a while on a remote tropical Pacific island, with access through a coral reef. Periodically, we had to go out and clear out the passage, as the reef kept growing and closing it off. I can guarantee you that, even if reef growth speed were cut in half, it would have no problem keeping up with any proposed sea level rise.
PPS — Tuvalu has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. During the change from the ice age to the Holocene, sea levels rose at rates much, much higher than current rates, and guess what?
Tuvalu didn’t get washed away.
“This is because of the fourth-power relationship in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, i.e. the relative rate-of-increase in radiation is four times the relative rate-of-increase in temperature.”
For those with a very limited understanding of mathematics, this comes about from the Stefan-Boltzmann equation which can be written:
R = sigma T^4
Taking differentials:
dR = 4 sigma T^3 dT
Divide both sides by R (which equals sigma T^4):
dR/R = 4 dT/T
dR/R can be called the relative rate-of-increase in radiation, dT/T similarly for temperature. This equation means that in the limit as the changes approach zero, the ratio of a change in radiation to the total radiation equals four times the ratio of a change in temperature to the total temperature. This is useful in practice for giving a first order approximation for small changes, such as when a black body is already receiving, say, 237W/m2, and then an additional 3.7W/m2 is added. In this case the temperature increases from 254.268K to 255.254K, an increase of 0.986K. Using the approxomation from the differential formula above, the increase would be 0.25*254.268*3.7/237 = 0.992K, an error less than that of the 2 digits of accuracy I was using.
I guess even in my day not many people had much use for this sort of understanding of differential calculus and these days people’s mathematical knowledge comes in the form of spreadsheets or some other software.
Ken and Ender, thanks for the posts. You say:
In fact, there’s dozens of studies supporting the existence of both the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, and only shonky studies like Mann and his mates against them.
Here’s a very partial list:
Evidence from Asia
Yu, K.-F., Zhao, J.-X, Wei, G.-J., Cheng, X.-R., Chen, T.-G., Felis, T., Wang, P.-X. and Liu, T-.S. 2005. δ18O, Sr/Ca and Mg/Ca records of Porites lutea corals from Leizhou Peninsula, northern South China Sea, and their applicability as paleoclimatic indicators. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 218: 57-73
Ji, J., Shen, J., Balsam, W., Chen, J., Liu, L. and Liu, X. 2005. Asian monsoon oscillations in the northeastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau since the late glacial as interpreted from visible reflectance of Qinghai Lake sediments. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 233: 61-70
Evidence from the North America
Carbotte, S.M., Bell, R.E., Ryan, W.B.F., McHugh, C., Slagle, A., Nitsche, F. and Rubenstone, J. 2004. Environmental change and oyster colonization within the Hudson River estuary linked to Holocene climate. Geo-Marine Letters 24: 212-224
Hu, F.S., Ito, E., Brown, T.A., Curry, B.B. and Engstrom, D.R. 2001. Pronounced climatic variations in Alaska during the last two millennia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 98: 10,552-10,556.
Evidence from South America
Bond, G., Showers, W., Chezebiet, M., Lotti, R., Almasi, P., deMenocal, P., Priore, P., Cullen, H., Hajdas, I. and Bonani, G. 1997. A pervasive millennial scale cycle in North-Atlantic Holocene and glacial climates. Science 278: 1257-1266.
Chepstow-Lusty, A.J., Bennett, K.D., Fjeldsa, J., Kendall, A., Galiano, W. and Herrera, A.T. 1998. Tracing 4,000 years of environmental history in the Cuzco Area, Peru, from the pollen record. Mountain Research and Development 18: 159-172.
Chepstow-Lusty, A., Frogley, M.R., Bauer, B.S., Bush, M.B. and Herrera, A.T. 2003. A late Holocene record of arid events from the Cuzco region, Peru. Journal of Quaternary Science 18: 491-502
Evidence from Africa
Holmgren, K., Lee-Thorp, J.A., Cooper, G.R.J., Lundblad, K., Partridge, T.C., Scott, L., Sithaldeen, R., Talma, A.S. and Tyson, P.D. 2003. Persistent millennial-scale climatic variability over the past 25,000 years in Southern Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 2311-2326
Evidence from Europe
Martinez-Cortizas, A., Pontevedra-Pombal, X., Garcia-Rodeja, E., Novoa-Muñoz, J.C. and Shotyk, W. 1999. Mercury in a Spanish peat bog: Archive of climate change and atmospheric metal deposition. Science 284: 939-942.
Kvavadze, E.V. and Connor, S.E. 2005. Zelkova carpinifolia (Pallas) K. Koch in Holocene sediments of Georgia – an indicator of climatic optima. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 133: 69-89.
Evidence from Antarctica
Roberts, D., McMinn, A., Cremer, H., Gore, D.B. and Melles, M. 2004. The Holocene evolution and palaeosalinity history of Beall Lake, Windmill Islands (East Antarctica) using an expanded diatom-based weighted averaging model. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 208: 121-140.
Noon, P.E., Leng, M.J. and Jones, V.J. 2003. Oxygen-isotope (ð18O) evidence of Holocene hydrological changes at Signy Island, maritime Antarctica. The Holocene 13: 251-263
I have many more references, these are just a sample.
This chronic denial by AGW supporters of the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods is actually quite humourous to me. The reality is that climate is variable, and has been both warmer and colder in the recent past. Why do you guys have such a problem with that simple fact?
w.
Hey Chris,
Looks we have an agreement here.
Chris (O’Neil), thanks for your explanation of the mathematical approximation you were using above. Had you indicated that it was an approximation, I wouldn’t have insulted your obvious mathematical ability by assuming you had made a mistake.
My bad …
w.
>First, my question was clearly about refugees from global warming. Either you deliberately misunderstood that, or you are ignoring that. Yes, there are refugees, and always have been … but that was not my point, and you know it.
So when you wrote “All of the conditions you describe (storms, droughts, floods, etc.) are with us today…. your average cyclone in Bangladesh kills thousands and thousands of people. But where are the refugees?”
You weren’t in fact asking “where are the refugees?” from the events which you state are “with us today”?
An examination of your tendency to make extremely poorly worded statements then take umbrage when they are interpreted at face value might be in order…
Willis, an assorted collection of regional studies doesn’t show anything if you want to demonstrate global warming. All what you’ve demonstrated is that small areas show larger climate variability than larger areas. This isn’t a surprise.
Also, it would be useful, if you read the Mann paper before stating that it removes the MWP. Far from, it suggests that it may have found evidence for its existence in the Northern Hemisphere.