From: tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment
Subject: Re: global warming/global cooling/global climate change
Keywords: global warming cooling climate change
Date: 15 Oct 92 03:21:12 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Meteorology and Space Science

Wow! What a delight! The greenhouse effect attacked on grounds of
political incorrectness! Finally a case where I don't have to put
any caveats in. This is wrong, grossly irresponsible, and a lovely piece
of politician's science. (It's worse than lawyer's science since some
of the facts are wrong.)

In article <1992Oct14.184703.19662@colorado.edu> gordon@tramp.Colorado.EDU (GORDON ALLEN R) writes:
>I'm confused.  I've heard a lot about global warming as a result of CO2 and 
>other greenhouse gases.  I've also been hearing about this CO2 triggering an
>ice age and global cooling.

Once we get far from the known regime, nonlinear effects COULD happen, and
all bets are off. In particular, a mechanism whereby theGulf Stream could
be diverted southward, causing cooling of the North Atlantic and Europe, 
is known from the paleoclimate record of the last period of rapid warming.
It is interesting that most warming has occurred near the Pacific hemisphere,
and indeed Europe seems to show a weak cooling trend.

>A very persuasive paper by Ken Watt of UC Davis was written in '86 for the 
>earth regeration society (Watt also has other papers in refereed journals, but
>this one is very disturbing).  I'll excerpt it here and if I can get it scanned,
>I'll post it here. 

I look forward to it. Any clue what his other work was about? Any
sole authorships?

>Basically he's saying that "...there isn't a shred of evidence that the world
>is warming...all available evidence suggests that every part of the greenhouse
>warming theory is incorrect or incomplete and that the world is cooling 
>rapidly."  

Ridiculous. Even Lindzen, Jastrow, Singer, et al only argue that the
warming trend is small. There is no evidence for global cooling on the time 
scale of major human impacts.

>He also states that the evidence for cooling comes from "esoteric
>highly technical data such as computer tapes of weather records stored in 
>government bureaus and statistical analyses of climate trends locked up in 
>scientists` file cabinets" but also from newpapers and television.  He states 
>that the media are full of news stories about phenomena caused by cooling.  For
>example, headlines have been: "Record lows hit 46 communities (11/14/86), and 
>in many cities low temperature records or 130 years had been broken.

Record lows generally refer to record lows for a particular date. The record
referred to is usually about 100 or 150 years long. There are 365 days in a
year. Thus, 2 to 3 record lows can be expected per site per year. Postulating
that a single cold outbreak in a single country is evidence of a global
cooling trend is ridiculous.

>  He claims
>that such stories have been occuring more and more in the last 5 years.  He 
>goes on to cite more examples and also include stories of travellers.

Sounds pretty anecdotal to me. Anecdotal evidence is notoriously weak
in climate: consider that this was, as predicted, a weak Atlantic hurricane
season, and yet people were wondering why the sudden increase in hurricanes.
(Because the one big one happened to hit a city.)

>He also cites data collected from 7 rural US climate stations (away from the 
>warmer cities) that show a consistant 2.1 - 4.2 degress F fall in the avg 
>annual temperature over the last 43 years.  

How were these sites selected? Were they selected on some independent criterion,
or just to support the theory?

>Watt states that only 270 of the
>11,600 thermometers feeding climate data of the National weather service are 
>free of urban heat island effects due to waste heat from air conditioning, 
>vehicles, manufacturing plants, space heating etc.

The US is not the globe, and heat island effects have been corrected from
the large scale temperature trend lines.

>Watt argues against the evidence that tree mortality thought to be due to acid
>rain in favor of evidence showing that the mortality is due to cooling effects.

Not my area, but I'd think the biologists could tell the difference.

>One of the most astounding (to me) arguments  concerned the sources of CO2:

>"...was that combustion of fossil fuels was the principal source of increased
>concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.  This idea also proved false:  CO2 
>kept increasing after '79 when release of carbon from combustion of fossil 
>fuels was declining.

This is perfectly possible. If the combustion decreased, that does not mean it
stopped. Since the system is far out of equilibrium with 1979 emissions levels,
concentration would continue to increase, even if at a slightly slower pace.
Anyone who thinks this is evidence that the CO2 isn't mostly from fossil
fuels is either completely uninformed or deliberately misinterpreting the
facts. 

Consider that I put two lumps of sugar into my coffee every hour. It gets
sweeter and sweeter. Then, in the fourth hour, I only put one lump in, and
yet THE COFFEE IS STILL EVEN SWEETER! Does this mean that the cause of the
sweetness is something other than all that sugar?

>  Further, some scientists are now beginning to point out
>that the increase in CO2 concentration of the global atmosphere began too early
>in the 19th century, if combustion of fossil fuel was the source.  Rather, the
>buildup of atmospheric carbon coincided with the massive destruction of the
>north temperate forests in Europe and North America in the 19th century..."

This is true. The increase started with deforestation, but the much more rapid
modern increases can, by simple  mass arguments, be shown to be mostly due
to fossil fuel consumption.

>Finally, the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere would warm the planet is a correct
>idea, however, it, Watt claims is incomplete.

Well, then what mechanism is proposed for this secret cooling?

>    The surface warming causes 
>increased evaporation of water from the ocean surfaces which forms clouds that
>the prevailing westerly winds move to high latitudes, increasing polar snow 
>fall.  

I thought he did not believe the surface was warming.

Anyway, warming may increase polar ice volume, but not its extent, which
will retreat if there is warming. Obviously, since the 32F line will
retreat poleward.

>He states that October snow cover in the Canadian arctic is now 
>spreading.  

I don't know why he picks October and Canada. Geophysical signals are
unfortunately quite noisy. Global snow area has been decreasing for
the past 20 years, according to publicly available satellite images.

>He also indicates that the models for global warming left out the
>effects of clouds.

Clouds are not correctly represented, admittedly, and the question of how to
do that represents one of the most controversial
areas in climate modelling. But leaving them out entirely leads to ridiclous
results, and no such model would ever be considered to have predictive value.

>He points out that the major source of funds for scientists supporting the 
>warming theory has been the US Dept of energy, who represents the nuclear 
>power and nuclear weapons industry.  

More connections between the meteorological community and the Worldwide
Evil Conspiracy (tm) to add to the Kuwaiti evidence. sigh.... :>}

Actually, most of our money comes from NOAA, a separate agency, but even
if this weren't true, the implication that scientists are on the take from
some evil conspiracy is pretty unlikely to come from any serious scientist.

Is this because they are themselves on the take or because they understand
that most scientists have some integrity and dedication to truth? You decide.

>These industries have a vested interest in
>promoting nuclear power and so would support the notion that fossil fuels 
>cause increased atmospheric CO2 and lead to gobal warming.

Aha!

>Finally, the way out, Watt claims, is to cease the destruction of forests, and 
>to revitalize existing ones in order to stem the rise in atmospheric CO2.

Well, that would be more intuitively in tune with what many people would
like to believe, but the numbers show that forest effects are swamped by
fuel effects in this problem. We must stop the loss of forest lands, of
course (ah, he did manage to get a caveat out of me, sigh) but not for
this reason alone. And an increase in forest lands without controls of 
fossil fuels will be hard pressed to make a detectable impact, and will
certainly not be able to stop the increase of CO2.

Anyway, to sum up the opinions presented here:

1) carbon dioxide is increasing
2) increasing carbon dioxide causes warming
3) warming causes cooling
4) the scientific community wants everyone to panic about CO2 warming
so they won't worry about CO2 cooling and do something about CO2
5) a single data point is a trend if it supports my position
6) despite simple calculations about biomass and fuel carbon content,
we should keep burning fossil fuels because loss of trees is really the problem
7) nuclear energy. radiation. eek! they must be lying because it is all bad
because it has atoms.

I like point 4 best. Sheesh. Btw what's the earth regeneration society and what
does this character do at Davis?

mt
Newsgroups: sci.environment