Environment & Economics: Global Warming Apologetics

You may have heard some of the following claims by climate change skeptics recently:

-According to solar patterns (and such contributions to global temperatures) we should be beginning to cool, not warm.

-Satellite data since 1998 has indicated a halt or pause in global warming. Some data points out that since 2005 we might actually be observing some cooling… according to satellite data.

Since the beginning of satellite data collection in the late 1970's, temperature data has been revised several times. The revisions to the data were prompted by the lack of reliability in the data due to things like instrument degradation and orbital decay. It is possible to account for these losses within an acceptable margin of error.

Surface data taken by instruments such as oceanic thermometers that record and relay hourly temperature readings do show some slowing to the temperature increases, but not a total stall. Recently the satellite data was revised to account for some of the affects called out above the trends lines up with surface temperature readings (actually taken at the surface). These indicate an increase of 0.08C (0.144F).

This gives me the impression that the sun (solar activity) does have an impact, contributing to cooling. Humans also contribute, how much of an impact is hard to say. Proponents of anthropogenic global warming will assert that our contributions are significant (most of the warming) and perhaps catastrophic. The only consensus I've thus far been able to verify in the scientific community is that anthropogenic-sourced CO2 is likely responsible for some of the warming.

On their webpage, skepticalscience.com, they assert that this view is more common among scientists whose expertise is not in climate science (geologists, etc.) and that the closer the scientific discipline is to climate science (meteorology) the higher the consensus. John Cook's study on consensus and how he reached the 97% is quite controversial, however, other studies have been performed that indicate a 90% or higher consensus in the scientific community that human activity is a contributing factor to global warming.

Quick note on the terms "Global Warming" and "Climate Change", it was proposed by republicans to start using the Climate Change term as it sounded "less scary" than Global Warming, though they did not invent the term it has existed for some time. Climate Change encompasses other impacts of human or anthropogenic CO2, when I use the term "Global Warming" it's because I'm discussing the impacts to global temperatures that is being attributed to human activity.

The integrity of other studies becomes easy to question when one study has clearly displayed bias. It becomes easy to question or discredit the whole community when the forecast impacts of human-caused global warming are grossly over estimated or exaggerated. Not the mention the whole movement being used as a political tool. We often forget that George H. W. Bush called for protections against human-caused global warming, by the time his son was elected the issue had become politicized.

In the first decade of the 21st century I reviewed some of the data and became convinced that human activity was in fact the root cause behind global warming. It has been in the last few years that information has been published about a stall in the global temperature rise that has prompted me to take a second look. What I found was appalling. A lot of the data that I had been presented was cherry-picked or cooked (pardon the pun). Thanks Al Gore, an individual I might add, that flies his private jet all over the world to give talks on how bad it is… to fly all over the world. Then again there are politicians like Ted Cruz that point to the satellite data (that now appears to have been erroneous) which indicates no warming since 1998… so who is right? The right points to obsolete data and the left cherry-picks the data… what is the science? The actual science?!

Our confidence has been shaken by this debate, our confidence in the science. Any good scientist must consider new information as it becomes available, but we are not so certain that is what is going on with regard to this topic. There's too much politics involved (and funding). Scientific organizations are being funded to find the truth, well, so we think. More doubt comes into play when you consider certain programs would lose a significant amount of funding if the consensus is that anthropogenic climate change is not occurring. The concern is that scientists are being paid to find the "Right" answer and are thus corrupted. We might not be concerned about the authenticity of such claims if other climate scientists had not come out speaking against the assertion that humans are responsible for "most" of the observed warming. One such climate scientist asserted that the recent warming we've seen has coincided with oceanic warming and cooling cycles (~65yr), another scientist pointed out that the oceanic cycle and the solar cycle (~200year) have lined up since the middle of the 20th century creating an exaggerated effect on global temperatures. The cycles have existed for way longer than the discipline of science and the assertion is that they perfectly fit the observed global temperatures whereas the CO2-based models do not fit the past nor the present.

The solar impact claim is that we saw a low in the 200-year cycle around 1880 CE, so we should see another low in the year 2080 CE, which also means we should have peaked warm around 1980. Since then the solar impact should have contributed to cooling. But we didn't see cooling, we saw warming. There is still the oceanic cycle at play, which is important to note.

There is also an 11-year cycle of solar activity and this is the solar irradiation, different from the 200 year cycle is based on spectrum analysis (208 years, solar wind Defrese Cycle). So proponents of man-caused climate change look at the 11 year solar cycle and the skeptics look at a 200 (~208) year cycle.

It looks like the 11-year cycle does not have an impact, but it could be that the 200-year cycle does, but has not since 1980, skeptics point to a 65-year oceanic cycle for this. They assert that both the 200 year and 65 year oscillations contribute to the last 20th century rise in global temperatures and that is why we haven't observed any warming since 1998, maybe actually cooling.

But have we seen cooling? Have we really seen no increase? The satellite data indicates no increase but that data source is less reliable over the long term and was recently revised to indicate a little warming. What does the surface data (ocean temps) tell us?

Found some data and made my own table

(source: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-sea-surface-temperature)

If we look at the data, from 2000-2015 the change in global oceanic temperatures was about 0.7F considerably higher than the 0.14F the satellite data gives us. Take into account that 2000 was a valley and 2015 a peak, we should fairly compare valley to valley and peak to peak.

Compare peaks 2015 to 1998 (magic date) = 0.403F increase, these were extreme years

Compare Valleys 2011 to 2000 = 0.196 F these were moderate years

Compare 2012 to 2001 =  0.124 F years on a slope (neither peak or valley)

We start to see numbers closer to the Satellite average of 0.141 but that is picking out dates to compare. Since 1998 the average year to year global sea temperature increase has been 0.05F (accounting for the peaks and valleys in the chart above. We don't really need the metrics to see the increase, the chart does the job far better. I am in the habit of wrapping my head around the numbers, quantifying relevance and being as skeptical as possible.

Antarctica recently saw an increase in sea ice, more than has been observed in quite a few years. Global Warming skeptics will point to this as evidence of cooling, or now warming. While proponents will point to the land ice that continued to melt that is the most imprtant. They are two different things. Sea ice grows and contracts every year. Glacial Ice continues to melt. It is not sea ice that causes the sea to rise (by definition the water is already in the sea), whereas glacial ice is not in the sea. The whole idea of the ice cube in the glass, when the ice melts there is no real difference in the water level of the glass… but if you add another cube (i.e. land ice -melted or not) the glass may overflow, the level does increase.

So are the glaciers still melting? Maybe. In 2015 NASA release a study that indicated that the land ice of Antarctica has been increasing for some time. From 1992 to 2001 this increase has been at a rate of 112billion tons, and from 2003 to 2008 the accumulation has slowed to 82 billion tons per year.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/11/04/nasa-scientist-warned-deniers-would-distort-his/206612

The author of the study was concerned that climate change skeptics, called "deniers" would tout the study as proof that we do not need to worry about climate change. Well duh, if one does not believe that there is a problem and they are presented evidence that supports this belief then they will point to it. Just as climate change proponents would have pointed to a decrease in total ice as proof of global warming. It is important to  understand what is going on with the ice and why it is increasing to make such a determination as to what we should expect. The issue I see is that the cry from climate change proponents (called "alarmists") has been asserting that the land ice in Antarctica has been decreasing and the sea levels rising. So when the evidence supports the exact opposite the skeptics will naturally doubt everything else that the proponents have claimed. This is not the first instance of counter-confirming data or evidence. As scientist, and taxpayers, we should be skeptical. Especially when there is such a political and monetary impact at stake, and we should remain skeptical and refrain from jumping onto the skeptic's bandwagon (yes, I guess I am saying be skeptical of the skeptics, which sounds a lot like paranoia), as well as the proponents bandwagon. It was noted that the ice accumulation is slowing, so why is that? What does that mean?

The current view is that the loss of land ice in west Antarctica will pass the accumulation of snow in east Antarctica  in the next couple decades. But this has yet to happen. So if the sea levels are and have been rising, where is this coming from? Sea level rise can be attributed to two major factors, land ice melt, and thermal expansion. Thermal expansion is when the volume of water increases due to the overall warming of that body, warmer is bigger(atoms/molecules become more excited with increased temp and thus expand). So if the melt in Antarctica is slower than the overall accumulation the rise previously attributed to it must be coming from somewhere else, supposedly other glacial melt and/or thermal expansion. If this is so then those two factors are happening quicker than previously estimated… and that might be something to be alarmed about.

Other studies contest this study. Measuring gravity and elevation, NASA's grace satellites point to net loss still. This study considered data that did not go beyond 2008, which was eight years ago so what has happened since? Some assert that the ice loss in Antarctica has greatly accelerated since, and frankly has been accelerating historically. The Grace Satellites put recent Antarctic Ice loss at 130 billion tons per year a number that goes up by about 6 billion tons per year. This is confusing. Basically, scientists thought that a certain amount of yearly rising sea levels from 1992 to 2008 were due to Antarctic melt, but they were wrong because that land ice was actually increasing over that period, though slowing. This is alarming because it means they underestimated other contributing factors to sea level rise. Since 2008, according to the most recent data the annual melt has exceeded annual accumulation… so now it(Antarctic land ice melt) is contributing to global sea level rise.

One could draw a troubling conclusion out of this. If a portion of sea level rise prior to 2008 was incorrectly attributed to Antarctic ice melt, meaning other factors were underestimated, and now melt is in fact outpaced by accumulation are previous sea level rise models grossly underestimating potential sea level rise? The next few years will tell…

Another point to be made about sea ice. When the sea ice expands somewhere the climate change proponents disregard it (even though no one predicted it) by asserting that it is the land ice we need to be worried about. This is true when talking about sea level. However, if we talk about Arctic sea ice, we are constantly seeing images of the northern sea ice shrinking every year as evidence of global warming. So which is it? Does sea ice matter or does it not?

What we can say for certain, if the overall trend of land ice and sea ice is that we are seeing less and less of it then the Earth is obviously warming. There will always be years where there is more or less than an historic average, it is the overall trend that we must consider. Let's then conclude that the Earth is warming, then the question becomes what is causing it? It is easy to blame humanity, it is in our nature. But is the blame fair? We cannot answer that until we look at all the contributing factors to a warming Earth. There is evidence, other than human activity, that can attribute for some of the warming of the late 20th century. However, from what I have found thus far such factors should have peaked at or before the turn of the century and now be contributing towards cooling. We thought we saw a stall or perhaps some cooling after 1998… if our only data points were from 1998 to  2008 we might be able to conclude a stall, but if we consider say 1990 to 2015 we see a warming trend that does not stall, 1998 was a hot year, a spike, if you factor in the years before it and after it you can easily see that, see the two figures below:

We will likely see that 2015 was similar to 1998 in the fact that it was a spike, but based on the trend in the second chart above I think you'd have to be crazy to suspect that 2016 will look like either 1996 or 2000, in fact since the low in 2008, with the exception of 2011 we have been at or above the 1998 level (a spike).

I have my own chart, based on the historical data I want to make a prediction, based on the assumption that 2015 was similar in nature to 1998.

All I did above was superimpose the trend following 1998 to following 2015 with using an offset of the data equivalent to the delta observed from 1998 to 1999. Not the most scientific but not a poor assumption either. This would be a continued trend of post-1998 global oceanic temperature averages, where there was supposed to be a stall. These charts are in degrees F as the one further above.

Another argument I have been shown is that the CO2 lags the temperature as shown in ice core samples from Antarctica's eastern shelf. The charts they present certainly seems to be showing that. When scientists tackled this phenomenon what they found was that something (like orbital shift) triggered an initial warming, which released CO2. The extra CO2 began driving global temperatures, which resulted in more CO2 being released, but this shows up in the record as a lag due to the offset of the original change. The Antarctic temperatures reacted quicker due to the impact on ocean currents which trapped most of the heat in the southern hemisphere. So the initial event gave the Antarctic temperatures a head start in relative trend, or so the assertion goes. The science seems pretty solid, hard for someone like me to refute.

The world use to be warmer and colder and the CO2 was higher than it is now. True. We are talking millions upon millions of years ago and a lot has changed since then. Dinosaurs lived 300million to 65 million years ago. During that period the world was quite warm and the CO2 content averaged over 1000ppm (we are currently around 400ppm). What killed the dinos? The most commonly accepted theory was an asteroid impact, other theories are some other climate event. Based on the way in which fossils have been preserved I suspect an asteroid impact more likely (as do paleontologist). This event forever changed our climate, since this event our atmospheric CO2 has dropped. It could be due to some impact on our tilt, rotation, orbit, other factor, or all of the above. It could be that a lot of carbon was taken out of the regular carbon cycle and buried (flora and fauna of the Cretaceous). Well guess where oil and coal comes from?

Other planets are warming, right? Pluto is warming, true, several degrees actually. So we've been observing Pluto for about 130 years, and only recently (historically speaking) have we been able to get any good temperature data on it. Pluto's orbit takes 248 earth-years. We don't even have 1 Pluto-year of Pluto data. Pluto was recently closest to the Sun in its elliptical orbit… it will probably continue to warm for another 13  years before it begins cooling again. Mars is warming. Is it? Albedo deltas from 1977 to 1999 show Mars got a little darker. This can easily be explained by the dust storms that are often planet-wide. A darker surface will warm, it's true. Mar's orbit is far more erratic than ours and its atmosphere far thinner. That and the lack of surface water present mean there is not much on Mars to sink temperature… which means it can change much more rapidly (like a desert).

If your claim is that we don't know enough about our own climate to predict or understand warming trends then you cannot claim similar knowledge of other planet's climates. This is a distraction, one that tries to point to the Sun once again as the source of our warming. Well yes, without the Sun the Earth would be an icy rock drifting through space (or more likely a group of asteroids and dust). However, if we look at the Sun and it's recent activity (and predicable future activity) it's only impact should be a fraction of a degree of cooling. If there was a 200-year solar cycle that started the clime to warm in 1878 it should have peaked in 1978, 39 years ago, and we will hit bottom again in 2078 (61years from now (2017). I am not arguing that this cycle doesn't have an impact on global temperatures, but if it does then it should be contributing to cooling. We thought we were cooling or stalling but more recent data basically shatters this notion.

Medieval warming period.

Yes, there was a Medieval warming period… in Northern Europe that was followed by a mini ice age… in Europe. This was not observed globally.

Volcanoes. Volcanic activity spews forth mass amounts of CO2 and sulfur into the atmosphere, 200 million tons of it a year. Whereas human emissions exceed 38 billion tons, so volcanoes emit less than 1% of human activity every year. Of course there are years that are more volcanic, but don't forget the effect of the smoke, ash and dust that the volcanoes also emit, blocking sunlight adding a cooling effect -although temporary.

Action. 

Some argue that taking action to stop it is more difficult and expensive than adapting. Maybe that is true. But if we can learn anything from our exit from each ice age (every 40k years) we learn that a change in tilt drives us into an ice age and also bumps us out of one. After the bump it is the release of CO2 that amplifies the warming and therefore releases more CO2. Temperature does cause more CO2 to be released. Likewise, more CO2 drives up temperature. But CO2 is not the only warming gas, methane is also released in this manner. Water vapor makes up 95% of green-house gases, the assertion is that a rise in CO2 directly impacts the amount of water vapor. This is what they call a positive feedback mechanism. The thought is that this feedback mechanism is 3x (for 'x' CO2 released more CO2, methane, and water vapor is also released =3x). The point is, we are artificially recreating an event similar to what occurs when the climate gets 'bumped' out of an ice age by blasting CO2 into the atmosphere. We don't have an event such as this to point at in the historical record. We are heading into uncharted seas in this respect.

So what should we do? Before we panic realize that the current estimate is that in 53 years the last barrel of oil will be extracted from the Earth if we continue pumping at the current rate. 1.688 trillion barrels of crude still remain in the Earth. This does not mean that we will burn it all up in that time, but you can bet governments will reserve vast amounts for themselves to fuel their military if needed. It is reasonable to assume that the consumption or burning of oil by regular consumers will end in the foreseeable future. Coal? 892 billion tons of it remain to be mined or around a 100-year supply. The fossil fuel problem is finite folks. If we kept consuming for the next 100 years what would the impact be to climate change? It is hard to say but I'm willing to bet that in the 100 to 200 years that follow the last barrel of oil being refined and burnt the Earth would bounce back, it would normalize. How much damage would be done in the ~400 year era in which humans added a bunch of extra CO2 to the atmosphere and the earth bounces back? Will coral become extinct? How many human lives get impacted? That is really the bottom line. Most agree the Earth will survive us, the question becomes what does Climate Change cost in human lives? If we slow consumption we will also prolong it, which will be worse I wonder?

There are a lot of questions and a lot of doubt surrounding this issue. People tend to be dismissive of inconveniences that may require change on their part if given the opportunity to do so. People also assume the worst and have often been programmed to think that humans are bad and so the idea that we are doing something bad to the Earth is an easy pill for some to swallow. These two things I think contrite to rhetoric on both sides of the debate, sorting through it all is a daunting task. The fact remains that there is a cost to being wrong on either side of the argument. If Climate Change proponents are wrong then a lot of cost will be associated with economic policies that have been implemented. If the skeptics are wrong then the cost could be loss of crop yield, water sheds, and possibly human lives… not to mention the potential impact to flora and fauna. Skeptics will claim it is cheaper to adapt to the changing climate, proponents will claim that it is cheaper (and more ethical) to curb our carbon emissions.

The debate continues…

..and so does the investigation.

More Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWcPG9S9SUY

2017.8.2

Update: There is still a lot of debate regarding satellite data among skeptics. The claim is that the IPCC (and the climate science community at large) has revised the satellite temperature data, most significantly after 1998. The revision is attributed to things like orbital decay and other minor instrumentation drift factors. The skeptics cannot dispute the provided explanation for the revisions, doubtful anyone can, but skeptics do point to how the data revision seems quite convenient. The adjustments indicate small, even minute increases to the recorded temperatures by these satellites, impacting the flat trend originally observed to show a minuscule warming trend from 1998 to 2015.
Skeptics, however do not contest the ocean sea temperatures over the same time period which do indicate marginal warming. Climate scientists for the most part rely more heavily on ocean temperatures for more reliable and verifiable trend data. Why even use the satellite data then? The satellite data measures the temperatures at different elevations in our atmosphere and helps us better understand the physics of our climate. The ocean temperature readings are results metrics, or a result of what happens in our atmosphere. With ocean temperatures we can only see backwards and update the trends using basic algebra. In other words it does little to help us predict what will happen in the years to come with regard to atmosphere and CO2's impact on global temps.
Ice ages have happened over the past 800k years at intervals of 100k years. Before this period the ice ages happened in shorter intervals (~41k). During this period the inter-glacial periods have lasted for 10-15k years, since we are past the 10k mark my assumption has been that we are due for some cooling and an ice age should be expected in the next millennia or two. When we take a look at what sends us into an ice age and where we are astronomically this estimate is way off. We do not expect another ice age for 30 or 40 thousand years. (PBS Video) This begs the question of what the impact of CO2 is on these cycles. My previous thoughts were along the line of CO2 delaying an ice age or shifting the temperature cycles to lessen the ice ages. I also used to operate on the understanding that we will have extracted all the known oil buried in the earth by 2055, but with fracking and new oil fields discovered this "end of extraction" has been pushed out well past 2100. Which means that if we reduce our carbon footprints and burn less fossil fuels we may still go on burning them for hundreds of years still (or more). Anthropogenic climate change may very well push Earth out of an ice age that has been going on for millions of years. (We have been in an ice age and are currently experiencing an interglacial period or a temporary period of warming)
We fear what all this extra CO2 might do to our climate. Earth has seen CO2 like this before, and during such periods the Earth was much warmer than it is now. This was tens of millions of years before the age of ice though and life has evolved to adapt to a colder Earth, it was able to do this rather slowly. If we heat up to a world where the global temperatures are closer to that of the age of the dinosaurs to quickly mass extinctions will occur. While the Earth will eventually rebound this is likely to take tens or hundreds of thousands of years or more. Will humanity survive such events? I think so, but the truth of this survival is that with the increase in the scarcity of our natural resources pressed against an ever-exploding population war is inevitable. Famine will flood the poor nations. Nations will build walls to keep the flood of refugees out merely because it will not be capable of supporting all of them. This will all bring about social change and unrest in the developed nations. It is not hard to imagine a state of martial law, amendments to constitutions, suspension of liberties, etc.

The question is, how much CO2 will it take for such changes to come to pass? Have we already crossed that threshold? Has this already started? We have seen what happens in a place like Syria when 200k farmers are not getting enough water to farm due to extended drought. We will soon see what happens in a place like Sri Lanka when millions are displace due to rising seas.
Whether you believe we (humans) are contributing to these changes or not they are going to happen and we need to get used to that idea. The US government has been making such preparations for several years now.
I can say a few things will definitely have to change in order for the U.S. to survive the next couple centuries. First, open boarders must be closed. North and south, and our coasts will need more patrolling by coast guard and border agents as our own agriculture will likely diminish and our ability to produce food may reduce to a level of self-sustaining only. Second, we must proactively help other nations develop means to sustain themselves. This means that war-torn, underdeveloped nations will need help establishing a solid democratic system of government to bring political stabilization so that an agricultural industry can be allowed to flourish... this is simply being hopeful. We need to become energy independent. Yes this means stockpiling the cheapest energy source on earth, fossil fuels, but this also means expanding solar and hydro-electric, and perhaps even wind. We need innovations in this area, there are some very clever ideas out there, like using tidal currents to produce hydro-electric power sources. There is the potential for all of this to not be enough. Not enough at least to supply Americans with the vast amounts of energy we now consume. We need to modify our behavior with regard to energy consumption. Yes we will demand that companies producing products design more energy-efficient products (this is my industry/vocation), but I believe that we Americans need to reflect on what we truly need versus what we want. I cannot tell you how many "Hillary" and "Bernie" stickers I've seen on over-grown SUV's. Yeah even the liberals that are vocal about CO2 frequently fail to practice what they preach... we can always find excuses for such luxuries but we need to start being honest with ourselves.