The Wall Street Journal vs. Itself on Climate Change
In May 12th’s Wall Street Journal, the Science Journal feature considered how “Scientists Explain How They Attribute Climate-Change Data”. Subscribers can read the article online. It’s short, but fascinating for two reasons: it’s a succinct rebuttal to a few of the popular arguments used to try to convince people that the science of climate change is unsettled, and it’s directly in conflict with the WSJ’s editorials, which seek to dimiss the scientific consensus on global climate change.
Why the Science Journal is Cool
The piece explains the argument that the sun’s variability could be the cause of much of the rise in global temperatures, then offers the evidence for why this argument is flawed: if the sun were the cause of warming, the stratosphere should warm along with the troposphere, but instead, the stratosphere has cooled while the troposphere warmed– exactly what would happen if greenhouse gases trapped more heat in the troposphere. Additionally, the article notes that the change in heat energy in the oceans is far greater than what could be explained by the variability in the sun’s output.
It goes on to note the basic thermodynamic concept that many people seem to miss– in the absence of global warming, heating and cooling in one ocean basin would have to be matched by the opposite in other basins. Instead, a warming in all basins has been observed, a fact that can only be explained by global warming. It then notes that if the extra heat were the result of an increase in geothermal output on the ocean floor, as some have suggested, the warming would be greater near the floor– which it is not.
Why the WSJ’s Op-Ed Section is Not Cool
Meanwhile, the Opinion Journal publishes pieces like this, which are convenient for those who wish to ignore a problem, but offer nothing but misinformation to the reader. The author of the piece, Pete Du Pont, promotes his own think tank’s “study”, while ignoring the massive body of peer-reviewed scientific research on climate change.
The sophistry at the beginning of Mr. Du Pont’s piece is amusing. He talks about the dire warnings of environmentalists in the 1970s and how many measures of environmental quality have improved since then as the economy has expanded– as though these improvements aren’t the result of environmental legislation. In mentioning our economic growth, Mr. Du Pont actually almost manages to make a good case for environmental protections– after all the screaming about how much damage pollution controls, endangered species protections, and other measures would do to the domestic economy, the economy has grown nicely as environmental quality has improved. Does this say anything about claims that regulating CO2 emissions would destroy our economy? [The answer, I think, is that the reality of the economic impact of CO2 regulations is unknown and dependent on the nature of the regulations-- but certainly less than whatever industry groups claim.]
The meat of Mr. Du Pont’s editorial, however, is in what he claims to be “the reality about global warming and its impact on the world”. It’s an ideal opportunity to look at how misinformation about climate change and other issues is generated and propagated. What follows is fairly long; this is a reflection of why climate “skeptics” have so much staying power– a bogus claim can be made in a sentence, but takes time and effort to effectively rebut.
I’m feeling saucy today, though, so here we go with a rebuttal:
Misleading, Cherry-Picking, and Lying: From Whence the Claims in the WSJ Op-Ed Come
There are substantial differences in climate models–some 30 of them looked at by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–but the Climate Science study concludes that “computer models consistently project a rise in temperatures over the past century that is more than twice as high as the measured increase.” The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s prediction of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warming is more accurate. In short, the world is not warming as much as environmentalists think it is.
This is a confusing paragraph, given that the author speaks of a rise over the past century and then suggests that the National Center for Atmospheric Resarch (NCAR) predicts a warming of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. He can’t possibly be referring to the rise in average temperatures over the past century, as the observed rise during the 20th century was about 0.6 degrees Celsius, or about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit.
We can, at least, gather from it that he rejects the IPCC’s analysis in favor of NCAR’s. The author must, then, love this paper, which is featured on NCAR’s Climate and Global Dynamics Division web page on global warming. The paper, entitled “How Much More Global Warming and Sea Level Rise?” begins:
Two global coupled climate models show that even if the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had been stabilized in the year 2000, we are already committed to further global warming of about another half degree and an additional 320% sea level rise caused by thermal expansion by the end of the 21st century. Projected weakening of the meridional overturning circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean does not lead to a net cooling in Europe. At any given point in time, even if concentrations are stabilized, there is a commitment to future climate changes that will be greater than those we have already observed.
The authors were even nice enough to provide us with a figure illustrating their predictions:
If we throw out the high-end estimate (derived from extrapolating the rate of increase of greenhouse gas emissions) and the low-end estimate (derived by assuming that humans ceased all greenhouse gas emissions from industrial activity) and take the average of the other two models under both remaining scenarios, we arrive at approximately a 3.6 degree Celsius rise in temperature by the year 2100, and a 7-inch increase in sea levels by the same time. Dropping NCAR’s name to increase his credibility was a cute ploy, but if Mr. Du Pont were serious about debating climate change, he’d honestly represent their findings.
Next, he (quoting his own think tank’s “study”) comes into direct conflict with the Science Journal piece:
What warming there is turns out to be caused by solar radiation rather than human pollution. The Climate Change study concluded “half the observed 20th century warming occurred before 1940 and cannot be attributed to human causes,” and changes in solar radiation can “account for 71 percent of the variation in global surface air temperature from 1880 to 1993.”
The National Center for Policy Analysis study derives this conclusion from a single paper that has been shown to rely on an incomplete, flawed data set. That paper, incorrectly cited as “Inference of Solar Radiance Variability from Terrestrial Temperature Changes, 1880-1993: An Astrophysical Application of the Sun-Climate Connection” (the correct title uses the word “irradiance”, not “radiance”) has been surpassed by advances in data collection and analysis during the past ten years, and the author’s choice to rely on this paper alone is telling. With respect to the correlation between solar irradiance and warming trends, if one considers the satellite data (versions combining the different observations, with discussion, are available here) on solar irradiance, then compares this to the trend in global average temperature, the claim that 71% of the temperature variation can be explained by solar irradiance becomes obviously false.
He continues:
As for hurricanes, 2005 saw several severe ones–Katrina and Rita both had winds of 150 knots–hitting New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and Florida. But there is little evidence linking them to global warming. A team of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists concluded that the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995 “is not related to greenhouse warming” but instead to natural tropical climate cycles.
Of course, it’s impossible to conclusively link the small sample representing hurricane activity during the past ten years to the larger phenomenon of global warming. However, it’s not even hurricane activity that is the relevant question– it’s hurricane strength:
Although we cannot say at present whether more or fewer hurricane will occur in the future with global warming, the hurricanes that do occur near the end of the 21st century are expected to be stronger and have significantly more intense rainfall than under present day climate conditions.
This is from– who else?– NOAA scientists. The name-dropping-for-credibility game really is a dangerous one, isn’t it?
After the aforementioned misdirection play, he tries another:
Regarding Arctic temperature changes, the Study found the coastal stations in Greenland had actually experienced a cooling trend: The “average summer air temperatures at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet, have decreased at the rate of 4 degrees F per decade since measurements began in 1987.” Add in Russian and Alaskan temperature data and “Arctic air temperatures were warmest in the 1930s and near the coolest for the period of recorded observations (since at least 1920) in the late 1980s.”
So, there’s a cooling trend in the arctic, right? Well… no. The “Study” got this information from a paper that tracked data from 1951-1990 (where the 1930s came from, I cannot say, as I do not have a copy of the paper). What happens when we look at the picture out to the year 2005? Again, NASA provides truth, this time in the form of an animation (quicktime, MP4) . It’s worth watching once or twice, then scrolling through– you’ll see the anomalies, get a feel for the long-term warming trend, and have the opportunity to decide for yourself whether you think, based on the evidence at hand, that the arctic is warming.
Mr. Du Pont then misrepresents the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and demonstrates a willful ignorance of the dynamics of sea level rise:
As for sea ice, it is not melting excessively. Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans concluded that “global warming appears to play a minor role in changes to Arctic sea ice.” The U.N.’s IPCC Third Assessment Report concluded that the rate of sea level rise has not accelerated during the last century, which is supported by U.S. coastal sea level experience. In California sea levels have risen between zero and seven millimeters a year and between 2.1 and 2.8 millimeters a year in North and South Carolina.
First, note that sea level rise and sea ice are related, but that sea level rise is not the product of melting sea ice. To prove this, try an experiment– fill a glass with water, float a few ice cubes in it, and see if, when the ice melts, the level of water in the glass rises. It won’t. Melting ice only affects sea level if the melting ice is on land. The two major components of sea level rise are melting ice on land and thermal expansion; the latter being simply the slight expansion of the water in the seas as it warms– which is subtle, difficult to observe with the small volumes of water we use at home, but a relevant factor when dealing with approximately 361.2 quintillion (3.612 x 10^20) gallons of water.
Second, Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans did not “[conclude] that ‘global warming appears to play a minor role in changes to Arctic sea ice.’” This claim is derived from a study by Greg Holloway and Tessa Sou that was funded in part by Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, but does not represent the official position of the department. It’s also worth nothing that, in addition to misrepresenting the role that Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans played in the study, the quoted text stating that “global warming appears to play a minor role in changes to Arctic sea ice” does not exist in the paper (a note: the link in the footnote included in the “Climate Change Study” cited by Mr. Du Pont does not even lead to the paper, so it is possible that this text does exist in a different version of Holloway’s paper than the one available online).
It’s worth understanding what Holloway’s paper states, because doing so provides some insight into how those with agendas attempt to twist scientific evidence. Holloway’s paper does not conclude that arctic sea ice is not thinning, nor does it conclude that global warming is not one of the primary causes of this thinning. It concludes that the extent of thinning between 1970 could be overstated due to the role that certain conditions (changes in arctic wind patterns) could potentially play in biasing measurements. He arrives at this conclusion by running what amounts to a monte carlo simulation (the irony of climate change skeptics who reject computer simulation as valid relying on papers that employ computer simulations to support their claims is rich indeed) that produced sea ice thickness results for randomly generated virtual survey tours through a reconstructed arctic environment (the reconstruction being based on a series of assumptions that we can simply accept for the time being). It’s a valid scientific method for determining potential bias, if interpreted properly. The result of this, assuming that the underlying assumptions are accurate, shows that the observations made in the real world (showing a 45% reduction in ice volume) could be seen when ice volume actually fell by only 12 to 34 percent. That’s right– even when cherry-picking their data, Mr. Du Pont’s staff at NCPA choose papers that show that arctic sea ice may have fallen by “only” 12 to 34 percent over three decades. All of this, of course, is ignoring the impact of the anomalous cool arctic temperatures during the late 80s that we already discussed, and the significant warming that has occurred since the sample period– the loss of arctic sea ice volume has accelerated since the publication of this paper.
For an interesting simulation of where the situation with arctic sea ice may be headed, check out the results from a series of simulations at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
Third, the UN IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (TAR) did not “[conclude] that the rate of sea level rise has not accelerated during the last century”, and this isn’t entirely relevant anyway, given that the observed rate of sea level rise during the past century is consistent with models and that the IPCC report also notes that:
The large heat capacity of the ocean means that there will be considerable delay before the full effects of surface warming are felt throughout the depth of the ocean. As a result, the ocean will not be in equilibrium and global average sea level will continue to rise for centuries after atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have stabilised.
Yes, Virginia, there’s a delay before the effects are seen. Further, the TAR’s conclusion was that
Comparison of the rate of sea level rise over the last 100 years (1.0 to 2.0 mm/yr) with the geological rate over the last two millennia (0.1 to 0.2 mm/yr; Section 11.3.1) implies a comparatively recent acceleration in the rate of sea level rise.
So, given that sea level has been rising during the past century at an order of magnitude faster than it has in the past, why is Mr. Du Pont unsatisfied? Because, of course, he’s set the bar at a level where statistical significance is particularly difficult to establish:
There is no evidence for any acceleration of sea level rise in data from the 20th century data alone… Models of ocean thermal expansion indicate an acceleration through the 20th century but when the model is subsampled at the locations of the tide gauges no significant acceleration can be detected because of the greater level of variability (Gregory et al., 2001). Thus the absence of an acceleration in the observations is not necessarily inconsistent with the model results. [Emphasis mine]
The final claim made in Mr. Du Pont’s op-ed is perhaps the most ridiculous:
Finally come the polar bears–a species thought by global warming proponents to be seriously at risk from the increasing temperature. According to the World Wildlife Fund, among the distinct polar bear populations, two are growing–and in areas where temperatures have risen; ten are stable; and two are decreasing. But those two are in areas such as Baffin Bay where air temperatures have actually fallen.
We’re supposed to believe that the crazy environmentalists think that polar bears are threatened because they’re going to get too warm and die of heat stroke or something? The threat to polar bears is a product of the amount of their lives that Ursus martimus spends out on sea ice, fishing and mating. Their range is determined by the extent of sea ice– which, as we already discussed, is receding.
A Conclusion, of Sorts
It’s easy to see how intelligent people, especially those of a contrarian nature, could be taken in by the arguments that climate change “skeptics” present. Without a good background understanding of the dynamics of climate change, combined with some basic research into the sourcing of the claims, they seem to be valid arguments. Unfortunately, most people don’t have the time or inclination to read skeptically into the skeptics’ claims, or the background understanding necessary to evaluate claims on either side. As a result, groups like the NCPA can pollute the flow of information to the extent that the public at large believes that there is honest disagreement about climate change, and some are even willing to sign on to the belief that it doesn’t exist.
This takes us back to where we were before– Individuals who don’t want to believe that climate change is occurring will seize on the claims made by groups who have a vested interest in perpetuating the belief that it’s not happening. They won’t seek to challenge their beliefs, and even if they do encounter information that challenges their beliefs, they will set a different standard for the rebuttals than for the initial claims. Thus, studies like the NCPA’s “Climate Change Study” and op-eds written about them like Mr. Du Pont’s can create enough fodder to feed individuals’ desire to ignore objective reality.
To conclude, a question: Let us suppose for a moment that the effects of climate change will in fact be devastating for some significant fraction of the world’s population. If this were the case, and action that could have mitigated some of these effects were prevented by a campaign of disinformation, how morally culpable would be the agents of this campaign?