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Global Warming
Cut methane and soot to curb warming: scientists
South China Morning Post – 14 Jan 2011
Pollution reduction measures would lead to US$6.5tr in annual gains from fewer deaths, less global warming and increased crop yields
An international team of scientists says it has figured out how to slow global warming in the short run and prevent millions of deaths from dirty air: Stop focusing so much on carbon dioxide.
They say the key is to reduce emissions of two powerful and fast-acting causes of global warming – methane and soot.
Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and the one world leaders have spent the most time talking about controlling.
Scientists say carbon dioxide from fossil fuels like coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes.
Soot is also a big health problem, so dramatically cutting it with existing technology would save between 700,000 and 4.7 million lives each year, according to the team’s research published online on Thursday in the journal Science.
Since soot causes rainfall patterns to shift, reducing it would cut down on droughts in southern Europe and parts of Africa and ease monsoon problems in Asia, the study says.
Two dozen scientists from around the world ran computer models of 400 different existing pollution control measures and came up with 14 methods that attack methane and soot.
The idea has been around for more than a decade and the same authors worked on a United Nations report last year, but this new study is far more comprehensive.
All 14 methods – capturing methane from landfills and coal mines, cleaning up cook stoves and diesel engines, and changing agriculture techniques for rice paddies and manure collection – were being used efficiently in many places, but not universally adopted, said the study’s lead author, Drew Shindell of Nasa.
If adopted more widely, the scientists calculate that would reduce projected global warming by 0.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.
Without the measures, the global average temperature is projected to rise nearly 1.2 degrees in the next four decades. But by controlling methane and soot, the increase is projected to be only 0.7 degrees.
It also would increase the annual yield of key crops worldwide by almost 150 million tonnes.
Methane comes from landfills, farms, drilling for natural gas, and coal mining.
Soot, called black carbon by scientists, is a by-product of burning and is a big problem with cooking stoves using wood, dung and coal in developing countries and in some diesel fuels worldwide.
Reducing methane and black carbon is not the very best way to attack climate change, air pollution, or hunger, but reducing those chemicals are among the better ways and work simultaneously on all three problems, according to Shindell.
And shifting the pollution focus does not mean ignoring carbon dioxide. Shindell said: “The science says you really have to start on carbon dioxide even now to get the benefit in the distant future.”
The new research won wide praise from other scientists, including a conservative researcher who held a top post in the George W. Bush administration. “So rather than focusing only on carbon dioxide emissions, where we have to make a trade-off with energy prices, this strategy focuses on ‘win-win-win’ pathways that have benefits to human health, agriculture and stabilising the Earth’s climate,” said University of Minnesota ecology professor Jonathan Foley, who was not part of the study. “That’s brilliant.”
John Graham, who oversaw regulations at the Office of Management and Budget in the Bush administration and is now dean of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, said: “This is an important study that deserves serious consideration by policymakers as well as scientists.”
The study even does a cost-benefit analysis to see if these pollution control methods are too expensive to be anything but fantasy. They actually pay off with benefits that are as much as 10 times the value of the costs, according to Shindell. The paper calculates that as of 2030, the pollution reduction methods would bring about US$6.5 trillion in annual benefits from fewer people dying from air pollution, less global warming and increased crop production.
Molecule could help cut pollution
Molecule could help cut pollution
(UKPA)–19 hours ago
A little-understood molecule in the atmosphere could play an important role in reducing pollution and global warming, scientists believe.
Criegee biradicals were first hypothesised in the 1950s but have only now been isolated and measured. New research shows they act as powerful “clean up” agents, neutralising atmospheric pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide.
A by-product of the process is the creation of aerosol droplets that “seed” planet-cooling clouds.
The molecules, known as chemical “intermediates”, should in theory have a significant influence on climate. However, until now they have never been directly observed.
The new work involved watching simple Criegee intermediates react with various atmospheric molecules including nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide.
Scientists found the reaction rates were faster than expected, leading them to conclude that Criegee biradicals might have a bigger impact than previously thought.
The research is reported in the journal Science. Study leader Dr Carl Percival, from the University of Manchester, said: “We have been able to quantify how fast Criegee radicals react for the first time.
“Our results will have a significant impact on our understanding of the oxidising capacity of the atmosphere and have wide ranging implications for pollution and climate change.”
Co-author Professor Dudley Shallcross, from the University of Bristol, pointed out that chemicals released naturally by plants aided the production of Criegee biradicals.
“Natural ecosystems could be playing a significant role in off-setting global warming,” he said.
Copyright © 2012 The Press Association. All rights reserved
CO2 climate sensitivity ‘overestimated’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15858603
25 November 2011 Last updated at 15:48 GMT
By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News
The last glaciation saw ice sheets extend to almost 40 degrees north
Continue reading the main story
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Global temperatures could be less sensitive to changing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels than previously thought, a study suggests.
The researchers said people should still expect to see “drastic changes” in climate worldwide, but that the risk was a little less imminent.
The results are published in Science.
Previous climate models have tended to used meteorological measurements from the past 150 years to estimate the climate’s sensitivity to rising CO2.
From these models, scientists find it difficult to narrow their projections down to a single figure with any certainty, and instead project a range of temperatures that they expect, given a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial levels.
The new analysis, which incorporates palaeoclimate data into existing models, attempts to project future temperatures with a little more certainty.
Lead author Andreas Schmittner from Oregon State University, US, explained that by looking at surface temperatures during the most recent ice age – 21,000 years ago – when humans were having no impact on global temperatures, he, and his colleagues show that this period was not as cold as previous estimates suggest.
“This implies that the effect of CO2 on climate is less than previously thought,” he explained.
By incorporating this newly discovered “climate insensitivity” into their models, the international team was able to reduce uncertainty in its future climate projections.
The new models predict that given a doubling in CO2 levels from pre-industrial levels, the Earth’s surface temperatures will rise by 1.7C to 2.6C (3.1F to 4.7F).
That is a much tighter range than the one produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 report, which suggested a rise of between 2.0C to 4.5C.
The new analysis also reduces the expected rise in average surface temperatures to just over 2C, from 3C.
The authors stress the results do not mean threat from human-induced climate change should be treated any less seriously, explained palaeoclimatologist Antoni Rosell-Mele from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, who is a member of the team that came up with the new estimates.
But it does mean that to induce large-scale warming of the planet, leading to widespread catastrophic consequences, we would have to increase CO2 more than we are going to do in the near future, he said.
“But we don’t want that to happen at any time, right?”
“At least, given that no one is doing very much around the planet [about] mitigating CO2 emissions, we have a bit more time,” he remarked.
Whether these results mean that the global temperatures will be less responsive to falling CO2 is unclear. “I don’t think we know that, to be honest,” remarked Dr Rosell-Mele.
Gabriele Hegerl, from the University of Edinburgh, is cautious about the result in her perspective piece published in the same issue of Science.
She says that this is just one particular climate model, and “future work with a range of models would serve to strengthen the result”.
Climatologist Andrey Ganopolski, from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, went further and said that he would not make such a strong conclusion based on this data.
“The results of this paper are the result of the analysis of [a] cold climate during the glacial maximum (the most recent ice age),” he told BBC News.
“There is evidence the relationship between CO2 and surface temperatures is likely to be different [during] very cold periods than warmer.”
Scientists, he said, would therefore prefer to analyse periods of the Earth’s history that are much warmer than now when making their projections about future temperatures.
However, although good data exists for the last million years, temperatures during this time have been either similar to present, or colder.
“One should be very careful about using cold climates to [construct] the future,” he added.
Whether It Is Warming or Climate Change, It Cannot Be the CO2
http://lewrockwell.com/orig11/ball-t8.1.1.html
Recently a Japanese Research Institute published a satellite map of sources of CO2 emissions. It was virtually ignored by the mainstream media, but that has become an inverse measure of its significance to the climate debate. It showed a pattern that most would not expect because of the misleading information presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) amplified by most media. Producers of the research illustrate the problem.
“The head of the research institute, Yasuhiro Sasano, says he hopes the map will help display how much each region needs to reduce its CO2 emissions in the future.”
This is only a politically correct comment because the map illustrates the exact opposite, CO2 emission reduction is not required where the IPCC recommend. John O’Sullivan correctly drew attention to this dilemma, however, the results are logical if known science is applied.
Figure 1: Red is for high CO2 emission: Green (absorbers) no emissions: White is low or neutral emissions.
The information in the article is not surprising if you know anything about CO2 and don’t buy the ‘official’ nonsense. The oceans are the main control of atmospheric CO2 as one of the atmospheric gases in constant flux between the water and the atmosphere. The ocean’s ability to absorb CO2 is a function of its temperature – cold water absorbs more CO2 than warm water. The boundary between the warm polar water and warm tropical water is very clearly defined in most parts of the world and the map generally reflects this pattern. The map is only surprising if you believe that humans are the primary source of CO2.
I was criticized for participating in the book Slaying the Sky Dragon but did so because they were tackling a question that few, including most of the skeptics, ignore; the actual role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. As a climatologist I know all the variables must fit together and interact with each other. The evidence for CO2 as a greenhouse gas simply doesn’t fit. The Slayers had serious problems with the physics and it was essential to put that information into the debate. The map makes it time to revisit why, besides the physics, CO2 doesn’t fit.
There are several misconceptions about CO2, most created because proponents tried to prove the hypothesis rather than the normal scientific practice of disproof. It helped them if the misinformation created unfounded fears. An early IPCC claim said atmospheric residency time of CO2 was at least 100 years. Done, ostensibly, for the political point that even if we stopped production immediately the damage was done. We now know the actual time is at most 5 to 6 years.
The major assumption of the hypothesis says a CO2 increase causes a temperature increase. After publication in 1999 of Petit et al., Antarctic ice core records were presented as evidence. Just four years later proof that the major assumption of the hypothesis was wrong appeared. Somehow it was shuffled aside, probably because of the diversionary claim that the lag was between 80 and 800 years. It doesn’t matter, it still contradicts the basic assumption. Temperature change before CO2 change is the case in every record for any period or duration is studiously ignored by proponent and skeptic. A shorter record showing the relationship is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Lag Time for Short Record 1958 to 2009
It is logical to assume that if CO2 change follows temperature change in every record then CO2 cannot be a greenhouse gas.
Another misrepresentation is the claim that CO2 is evenly distributed throughout the atmosphere and levels don’t vary much over time. The measuring techniques developed by Keeling for the Mauna Loa site were patented and is the standard measuring technique for the world. It is a questionable technique including the ‘adjustments’ made to the readings. Ernst Georg Beck demonstrated the problems (Figure 3) and the lengths taken to blend the ice core record to the 19th. Century data to the Mauna Loa record. He also shows a lag of five years eliminated by the 70 year smoothing applied to the ice core data that eliminates or masks most diagnostic information.
Figure 3 Diagram and Caption by Ernst Beck
Beck’s work confirms the findings that compares ice core CO2 levels with stomata measures. Figure 4 shows 2000 years of record from 6500 to 8500 years BP. Similarities of stomata readings with Beck’s record include higher atmospheric levels and much greater variability.
The map and the accompanying article create a distortion in its speculation about the amount of human produced CO2 as a fraction of natural production. According to the IPCC, who produce the original numbers, humans produce approximately 9 gigatons of CO2 per year. This is within the error factor for the amount of CO2 from at least two natural sources. Estimates of CO2 from natural sources are very crude as evidenced by the large error factors. Reports with headlines like, “Forests soak up more CO2 than thought” and “Old-growth forests absorb CO2 too: study” keep appearing. In 2010 humans produced 9 gigatons, but ocean output was between 90 and 100 gigatons and ground bacteria and rotting vegetation was between 50 and 60 gigatons according to Dr Dietrich Koelle. Spread the human annual production across the planet and it doesn’t even show on the world map. The pattern confirms this because it reflects natural sources.
Figure 4 With Original Caption and Source
Few, including skeptics, want to confront the problem that temperature increase precedes CO2 increase in absolute contradiction to the major assumption of the AGW hypothesis. It is increasingly obvious that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas and the only group challenging that scientifically are the Slayers, which is why I joined them. Science must be about skepticism, otherwise the science is settled, but then it isn’t science.
November 19, 2011
Dr. Tim Ball [send him mail] is a renowned environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Ball employs his extensive background in climatology and other fields as an advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition, Friends of Science, and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Copyright © 2011 Tim Ball
Asia pollution blamed for halt in warming: study
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/04/us-climate-sulphur-idUSTRE7634IQ20110704
LONDON (Reuters) – Smoke belching from Asia’s rapidly growing economies is largely responsible for a halt in global warming in the decade after 1998 because of sulphur’s cooling effect, even though greenhouse gas emissions soared, a U.S. study said on Monday.
The paper raised the prospect of more rapid, pent-up climate change when emerging economies eventually crack down on pollution.
World temperatures did not rise from 1998 to 2008, while manmade emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel grew by nearly a third, various data show.
The researchers from Boston and Harvard Universities and Finland’s University of Turku said pollution, and specifically sulphur emissions, from coal-fueled growth in Asia was responsible for the cooling effect.
Sulphur allows water drops or aerosols to form, creating hazy clouds which reflect sunlight back into space.
“Anthropogenic activities that warm and cool the planet largely cancel after 1998, which allows natural variables to play a more significant role,” the paper said.
Natural cooling effects included a declining solar cycle after 2002, meaning the sun’s output fell.
The study said that the halt in warming had fueled doubts about anthropogenic climate change, where scientists say manmade greenhouse gas emissions are heating the Earth.
“It has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008,” said the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
A peak in temperatures in 1998 coincided with a strong El Nino weather event, a natural shift which brings warm waters to the surface of the Pacific Ocean every few years.
Subsequent years have still included nine of the top 10 hottest years on record, while the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said 2010 was tied for the record.
A U.N. panel of climate scientists said in 2007 that it was 90 percent certain that humankind was causing global warming.
COAL
Sulphur aerosols may remain in the atmosphere for several years, meaning their cooling effect will gradually abate once smokestack industries clean up.
The study echoed a similar explanation for reduced warming between the 1940s and 1970s, blamed on sulphur emissions before Western economies cleaned up largely to combat acid rain.
“The post 1970 period of warming, which constitutes a significant portion of the increase in global surface temperature since the mid 20th century, is driven by efforts to reduce air pollution,” it said.
Sulphur emissions are linked to coal consumption which in China grew more than 100 percent in the decade to 2008, or nearly three times the rate of the previous 10 years, according to data from the energy firm BP.
Other climate scientists broadly supported Monday’s study, stressing that over longer time periods rising greenhouse gas emissions would over-ride cooling factors.
“Long term warming will continue unless emissions are reduced,” said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at Britain’s Met Office.
Hot air
Last updated: September 17, 2010
Source: South China Morning Post
Is carbon dioxide really the monster driving climate change? If not, maybe we should prepare for a colder world
In my 20-plus years of studying carbon dioxide and global warming, I have found that hypothetical scares often come before any realities or factual presentations. Horror stories about rising seas inundating land, cities and wildlife, super typhoons and hurricanes, and epic “mega droughts” lasting a decade or longer are all promoted as devastating results of global warming caused by the rising levels of carbon dioxide, according to reports and scientists associated with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But will any of these scary scenarios about the carbon dioxide monster prove true for Hong Kong?
My recent seminar at the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Earth Sciences offered this simple answer: No. Objective science informs us that the so-called “consensus viewpoints” offered by the IPCC – about man-made carbon dioxide being the dominant factor in climate change – is primarily a political conclusion, and not likely a scientifically accurate one.
The natural and human history of Hong Kong was captured by former British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston around 1841. He described the area as “a barren island with hardly a house upon it!” That was of course explainable by the massive tree-cutting that began during the Song dynasty a millennium ago. It explains why the history of land use changes must surely be a decisive factor in determining the recorded evolution of meteorological and climatic conditions in Hong Kong, before urban greenhouse effects could have played any role.
There is another reason to support a minimal climatic role from atmospheric carbon dioxide. If carbon dioxide is the dominant driver of temperature, why has warming ceased over at least the past decade? Carbon dioxide levels have risen steadily, and yet average planetary temperatures have been stable or even declining since 1995.
Extremist views serve only to increase public panic about climate change – and the media’s, IPCC’s and political establishment’s unwillingness to address the real science only leads to spurious claims that “the science is settled”.
If global temperatures cease to rise, when they are supposedly affected by rapidly rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, then something more important than carbon dioxide must be driving climate change.
This is also why many peer-reviewed papers on past climatic records (as exemplified by the work of professors Zhonghui Liu and Jason Ali at HKU’s Department of Earth Sciences) tell us convincingly that weather and climate varied naturally in the past and will probably do so in the future, without any ties to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
In recent years, the world’s attention has indeed been drawn to the reality and danger of changing climate. Scientists well understand that climatic records comprise alternating periods of warming and cooling all over our earth. Yet, we have rarely considered how modern civilisation would best deal with the challenges of an emerging cooling trend.
There is no excuse for this neglect. Our knowledge about centuries of climate changes clearly indicates that significant cooling can happen on a time frame of a few decades. Several natural drivers of climate have been enumerated that could drive cooling on these time frames and, today, global climate observations seem to be on a razor’s edge between indications of warming and harbingers of cooling.
Thomas Jefferson once remarked: “I have no doubt but that cold is the source of more sufferance to all animal nature than hunger, thirst, sickness and all the other pains of life and death itself put together.” Closer to home, the transition from the Ming to Qing dynasty, a chaotic time owing to crop failures and periods of civil unrest, was likely to be related to a cooling climate. As geographer and historian David Zhang and his HKU colleagues recently noted, “during cold phases, China suffered more often from frequent wars, population decline and dynastic change”.
Another study of the 1,000-year history of typhoon landfalls in Guangdong, by climate scientists from Chinese University of Hong Kong and Louisiana State University, tells us that the two periods of 1660-1680 and 1850-1880 saw the most devastating typhoons.
It is not surprising to find that these two most active typhoon periods also correspond to the coldest and driest periods in northern and central China, as it is often the relatively colder, dryer times that cause the strongest contrasting meteorological conditions in the land, ocean and atmosphere, leading to frequent and damaging typhoons. Therefore, hypothetical scares proposed by global warming scenarios caused by carbon dioxide must raise more serious questions.
What if Hong Kong’s climate turns cold within the next 100 years?
How would the proposed 33 per cent carbon dioxide emissions reduction by 2020 benefit Hong Kong citizens, if it results in soaring energy costs but has no effect on climate?
Why should anyone continue to blindly demonise a life-supporting molecule: carbon dioxide?
Willie Soon is an astrophysicist and geoscientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. All views are strictly based on his own scientific research and conclusions
U.N. to examine panel’s global-warming report
First published: March 15, 2010
Source: One News Now
The United Nations says it will initiate an investigation into the practices of its climate change panel.
The secretary general of the United Nations says the InterAcademy, a multinational organization of the world’s science academies, will pick a panel of experts to take a thorough look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Several mistakes were found in the IPCC’s 2007 report, including an exaggerated account of how quickly the Himalayan glaciers are melting.
(more…)
IPCC likely to backtrack on claim that global warming will destroy rainforests
First published: March 15, 2010
Source: The Times of India
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the world’s leading climate change group, is expected to backtrack over its claims about how rainforests would be devastated by rising temperatures, as one of its own scientists has said that the claim is “totally wrong”.
According to a report in the Express, the latest embarrassment for the IPCC relates to a claim in a 2007 report that estimates up to 40 per cent of the Amazonian rainforest could be lost by even a “slight reduction” in rainfall.
But, a study of the region in 2005 when rainfall was at its lowest in living memory has contradicted the figures.
(more…)