NoaIzumiTainted Testimony
March 8th 2009 01:34
A lot has been made of Dr. William Happer’s recent testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. Capitalism Magazine, Investor’s Business Daily and the American Thinker website all ran pieces showing how this proves the alarmists wrong and the skeptics right.
Uh, not exactly.
Global Warming and Climate change in perspective, by William Happer
Really Long Link
Really Long Link (PDF file from the Senate website)
Several counter-arguments in this piece have been used before on this blog, so if some of them sound like the same ‘ole thing you’ve read before, please bear with me.
“However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player.
True, if you round up, and by “at least”, you mean, “at most”. Sorry for pointing this out for the umpteenth time, but experiments have shown that water vapor and clouds account for 85%, maximum. CO2 is responsible for between 12 and 26 percent of the greenhouse effect, depending on other factors.
Really Long Link
Really Long Link (PDF file)
“There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth's temperature -- on the order of one degree."
By my admittedly crude math, not even close. Say CO2 accounts for 10% of the greenhouse effect (the low estimate). The greenhouse effect warms the planet by about 33 degrees C (average temp is 18 degrees, without the greenhouse effect it would be minus 15). So if CO2 by itself is responsible for 3.3 degrees of warming, wouldn’t an equal amount of CO2 heat things up by an additional 3.3 degrees? The additional warming wouldn’t be as much, of course, because the impact of each increment goes down the more CO2 there is, but I find out hard to believe that the additional CO2 would have one-third the strength of the original, since we’re not anywhere near the maximum strength of the greenhouse effect.
“observations suggest that the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative. That is, water vapor and clouds may actually diminish the already small global warming expected from CO2, not amplify it."
Dr. Happer never named this phenomenon, but it sounds a lot like the iris effect, which noted skeptic Richard Lindzen hypothesized a few years ago. There’s been a fair amount of research on it since then, and it’s still an unproven, but not disproven, idea.
Really Long Link
So it could very well happen exactly as Dr. Happer said it will. But there’s a problem with the “negative feedback will stop global warming” argument. As many contrarians have delightedly pointed out to me on blogs and comment boards, the Earth was been warmer at many times in the past, sometimes by several degrees. Dr. Happer mentioned a couple of them in his testimony. So, where was this negative feedback mechanism then? Taking a nap? To argue this effectively, the skeptics have to explain not only how it’s going to happen this time, but why it didn’t happen, or at least wasn’t very strong, in past times.
“the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age"
Well, in a word, “So?” No one’s claiming that natural change never happened, and saying, “It happened naturally then, therefore it’s happening now,” is logic I’d expect from children, not a respected scientist.
“The current warming also seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide."
In his statement, the good doctor never says which natural causes those might be.
“Over the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a slight cooling."
Not according to NASA, whose readings say that 2005 was the warmest year since temperature readings began.
Really Long Link
And ten years ago was 1998, a year with a strong El Nino that caused a spike in temperature, and God’s gift to skeptics trying to claim that global warming has stopped.
“The existence of climate variability in the past has long been an embarrassment to those who claim that all climate change is due to man and that man can control it."
Except that no one claims that all climate change is due to man. All climatologists acknowledge natural climate change in the past, as does Al Gore in the movie An Inconvenient Truth.
“So I was very surprised when I first saw the celebrated "hockey stick curve," in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. I could hardly believe my eyes. Both the little ice age and the Medieval Warm Period were gone,"
Not exactly. The hockey stick curve isn’t really wrong, more just mis-interpreted.
Notice the grey area around the black line? Most times you see the hockey stick reproduced by a skeptic or skeptical site, that grey area is missing. But any scientist can tell you that the grey area is the most important part of the graph, because that shows the 95% confidence levels. So when researchers present the graph, they’re not saying, “The temperature was here.” (the black line); they’re saying, “We’re 95% certain that the temperature was between here and here.” (the upper and lower limits of the grey area). The point of the hockey stick is not that temperature never changed before, it’s that even if the temperature was in the high range of the estimate, it was still cooler (worldwide) then than it is now.
And other research backs this assertion up.
Really Long Link
Gristmill has more on the hockey stick here.
Really Long Link
“you find that first the temperature goes up, and then the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere goes up. There is a delay between a temperature increase and a CO2 increase of about 800 years. This casts serious doubt on CO2 as a climate driver because of the fundamental concept of causality"
Actually, it doesn’t cast much doubt at all. What happens is, the temperature rises due to some factor, CO2 is released (mainly by warming oceans), and the additional CO2 causes more warming; it’s a positive feedback effect. And according to the ice core records, the warming and rise in CO2 are 90% concurrent. Since CO2 is a proven greenhouse gas, it’s inconceivable that the additional CO2 would not be contributing to the warming, even if something else got the ball rolling initially.
(And it’s equally inconceivable that William Happer, a scientist who specializes in the greenhouse effect, would not have known this. I’m not normally this blunt, but the man stood up there and lied to the US Senate and, by extension, the American people.)
Now, we have a different situation. CO2 is being released independently of temperature, by the burning of fossil fuels. But no matter how it’s released, the additional CO2 goes up into the atmosphere and does what CO2 does, capture infrared radiation.
“We are all aware that "the green revolution" has increased crop yields around the world. Part of this wonderful development is due to improved crop varieties, better use of mineral fertilizers, herbicides, etc. But no small part of the yield improvement has come from increased atmospheric levels of CO2."
I can’t help wondering how much this “no small part” could be. Dr. Happer never specifies, and while increased CO2 has a beneficial effect to plants, it’s almost impossible to know whether it made a significant contribution to the green revolution, or how important that effect might have been.
“If we really were to decrease our current level of CO2 of around 400 ppm to the 270 ppm that prevailed a few hundred years ago"
No problem, we aren’t going to, because we can’t, not at our current level of technology. And wasn’t pre-industrial CO2 more like 280 ppm?
“economic studies like those of Dr. Robert Mendelsohn at Yale University project that moderate warming is an overall benefit to mankind"
Actually Dr. Mendelson was speaking about benefits for Canada (and northern Europe and the northern United States) only. As far as all mankind is concerned, he has said, “…it's bad for the world. It's important that we start trying to control greenhouse gases ... Eventually it's going to get too warm. Damages will far exceed the benefits."
Really Long Link
(Seems like Happer lied again)
“Controlling tropical diseases and many other diseases has little to do with temperature, and everything to do with curtailing the factors that cause the spread - notably mosquitoes in the case of malaria and yellow fever.”
To say that global warming isn’t the main factor is fair enough. To say it’s not a factor at all is something else again.
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
“It is true that climate models use increasingly capable and increasingly expensive computers. But their predictions have not been very good.”
Climate modeling isn’t perfect, nor does anyone claim it is. But there are several that do, and have done, a pretty fair job.
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
Besides, even if there were no such things as computer models, we’d still know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, how strong of a greenhouse gas it is, how much of it has been pumped into the atmosphere, and what positive or negative feedbacks we’d be likely to see. The core of the AGW argument comes from basic physics. Climate models simply refine the predictions. I don’t have a perfect (or even very good) understanding of how my circulatory system works, but I still know that eating fatty foods and not exercising aren’t good for it.
“Or they can act on unreasonable fears and suppress energy use, economic growth and the benefits that come from the creation of national wealth."
Except that cutting greenhouse gases and economic growth can go hand in hand. Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have all cut their CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels since agreeing to the Kyoto Protocol, and in the same period, the GDPs of every one of them grew faster than the GDP of the United States.
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
Uh, not exactly.
Global Warming and Climate change in perspective, by William Happer
Really Long Link
Really Long Link (PDF file from the Senate website)
Several counter-arguments in this piece have been used before on this blog, so if some of them sound like the same ‘ole thing you’ve read before, please bear with me.
“However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player.
True, if you round up, and by “at least”, you mean, “at most”. Sorry for pointing this out for the umpteenth time, but experiments have shown that water vapor and clouds account for 85%, maximum. CO2 is responsible for between 12 and 26 percent of the greenhouse effect, depending on other factors.
Really Long Link
Really Long Link (PDF file)
“There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth's temperature -- on the order of one degree."
By my admittedly crude math, not even close. Say CO2 accounts for 10% of the greenhouse effect (the low estimate). The greenhouse effect warms the planet by about 33 degrees C (average temp is 18 degrees, without the greenhouse effect it would be minus 15). So if CO2 by itself is responsible for 3.3 degrees of warming, wouldn’t an equal amount of CO2 heat things up by an additional 3.3 degrees? The additional warming wouldn’t be as much, of course, because the impact of each increment goes down the more CO2 there is, but I find out hard to believe that the additional CO2 would have one-third the strength of the original, since we’re not anywhere near the maximum strength of the greenhouse effect.
“observations suggest that the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative. That is, water vapor and clouds may actually diminish the already small global warming expected from CO2, not amplify it."
Dr. Happer never named this phenomenon, but it sounds a lot like the iris effect, which noted skeptic Richard Lindzen hypothesized a few years ago. There’s been a fair amount of research on it since then, and it’s still an unproven, but not disproven, idea.
Really Long Link
So it could very well happen exactly as Dr. Happer said it will. But there’s a problem with the “negative feedback will stop global warming” argument. As many contrarians have delightedly pointed out to me on blogs and comment boards, the Earth was been warmer at many times in the past, sometimes by several degrees. Dr. Happer mentioned a couple of them in his testimony. So, where was this negative feedback mechanism then? Taking a nap? To argue this effectively, the skeptics have to explain not only how it’s going to happen this time, but why it didn’t happen, or at least wasn’t very strong, in past times.
“the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age"
Well, in a word, “So?” No one’s claiming that natural change never happened, and saying, “It happened naturally then, therefore it’s happening now,” is logic I’d expect from children, not a respected scientist.
“The current warming also seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide."
In his statement, the good doctor never says which natural causes those might be.
“Over the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a slight cooling."
Not according to NASA, whose readings say that 2005 was the warmest year since temperature readings began.
Really Long Link
And ten years ago was 1998, a year with a strong El Nino that caused a spike in temperature, and God’s gift to skeptics trying to claim that global warming has stopped.
“The existence of climate variability in the past has long been an embarrassment to those who claim that all climate change is due to man and that man can control it."
Except that no one claims that all climate change is due to man. All climatologists acknowledge natural climate change in the past, as does Al Gore in the movie An Inconvenient Truth.
“So I was very surprised when I first saw the celebrated "hockey stick curve," in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. I could hardly believe my eyes. Both the little ice age and the Medieval Warm Period were gone,"
Not exactly. The hockey stick curve isn’t really wrong, more just mis-interpreted.
Notice the grey area around the black line? Most times you see the hockey stick reproduced by a skeptic or skeptical site, that grey area is missing. But any scientist can tell you that the grey area is the most important part of the graph, because that shows the 95% confidence levels. So when researchers present the graph, they’re not saying, “The temperature was here.” (the black line); they’re saying, “We’re 95% certain that the temperature was between here and here.” (the upper and lower limits of the grey area). The point of the hockey stick is not that temperature never changed before, it’s that even if the temperature was in the high range of the estimate, it was still cooler (worldwide) then than it is now.
And other research backs this assertion up.
Really Long Link
Gristmill has more on the hockey stick here.
Really Long Link
“you find that first the temperature goes up, and then the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere goes up. There is a delay between a temperature increase and a CO2 increase of about 800 years. This casts serious doubt on CO2 as a climate driver because of the fundamental concept of causality"
Actually, it doesn’t cast much doubt at all. What happens is, the temperature rises due to some factor, CO2 is released (mainly by warming oceans), and the additional CO2 causes more warming; it’s a positive feedback effect. And according to the ice core records, the warming and rise in CO2 are 90% concurrent. Since CO2 is a proven greenhouse gas, it’s inconceivable that the additional CO2 would not be contributing to the warming, even if something else got the ball rolling initially.
(And it’s equally inconceivable that William Happer, a scientist who specializes in the greenhouse effect, would not have known this. I’m not normally this blunt, but the man stood up there and lied to the US Senate and, by extension, the American people.)
Now, we have a different situation. CO2 is being released independently of temperature, by the burning of fossil fuels. But no matter how it’s released, the additional CO2 goes up into the atmosphere and does what CO2 does, capture infrared radiation.
“We are all aware that "the green revolution" has increased crop yields around the world. Part of this wonderful development is due to improved crop varieties, better use of mineral fertilizers, herbicides, etc. But no small part of the yield improvement has come from increased atmospheric levels of CO2."
I can’t help wondering how much this “no small part” could be. Dr. Happer never specifies, and while increased CO2 has a beneficial effect to plants, it’s almost impossible to know whether it made a significant contribution to the green revolution, or how important that effect might have been.
“If we really were to decrease our current level of CO2 of around 400 ppm to the 270 ppm that prevailed a few hundred years ago"
No problem, we aren’t going to, because we can’t, not at our current level of technology. And wasn’t pre-industrial CO2 more like 280 ppm?
“economic studies like those of Dr. Robert Mendelsohn at Yale University project that moderate warming is an overall benefit to mankind"
Actually Dr. Mendelson was speaking about benefits for Canada (and northern Europe and the northern United States) only. As far as all mankind is concerned, he has said, “…it's bad for the world. It's important that we start trying to control greenhouse gases ... Eventually it's going to get too warm. Damages will far exceed the benefits."
Really Long Link
(Seems like Happer lied again)
“Controlling tropical diseases and many other diseases has little to do with temperature, and everything to do with curtailing the factors that cause the spread - notably mosquitoes in the case of malaria and yellow fever.”
To say that global warming isn’t the main factor is fair enough. To say it’s not a factor at all is something else again.
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
“It is true that climate models use increasingly capable and increasingly expensive computers. But their predictions have not been very good.”
Climate modeling isn’t perfect, nor does anyone claim it is. But there are several that do, and have done, a pretty fair job.
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
Besides, even if there were no such things as computer models, we’d still know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, how strong of a greenhouse gas it is, how much of it has been pumped into the atmosphere, and what positive or negative feedbacks we’d be likely to see. The core of the AGW argument comes from basic physics. Climate models simply refine the predictions. I don’t have a perfect (or even very good) understanding of how my circulatory system works, but I still know that eating fatty foods and not exercising aren’t good for it.
“Or they can act on unreasonable fears and suppress energy use, economic growth and the benefits that come from the creation of national wealth."
Except that cutting greenhouse gases and economic growth can go hand in hand. Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have all cut their CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels since agreeing to the Kyoto Protocol, and in the same period, the GDPs of every one of them grew faster than the GDP of the United States.
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
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