Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News

I was pleased to see an interview of Gavin Schmidt in Popular Mechanics on July 3 2009 with the headline “5 Climate Studies That Don’t Live Up to the Hype”[and thanks to Joe D'Aleo for alerting us to it!].

This news article is refreshing, after the Real Climate’s recent overstatement on climate (see and see), as it provides a balanced presentation of the subject by Dr. Schmidt.  Hopefully, this will translate to more balance, and less personal criticisms on Real Climate than we have seen repeatedly in the past and as recent as this week [e.g. More bubkes].

The article is introduced with the text

“A leading climate scientist argues that overbroad claims by some researchers—coupled with overblown reporting in the media—can undermine the public’s understanding of climate issues. Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate modeler, author and PM editorial advisor, concurs with the consensus view that the planet’s temperature is rising due largely to human activity. But, he says, many news stories prematurely attribute local or regional phenomena to climate change. This can lead to the dissemination of vague, out-of-context or flat-wrong information to the public.”

Real Climate has posted a response titled “More bubkes” to my weblog of July 30 2009 titled  Real Climate’s Misinformation. First, it is clear they are (deliberately?) misinterpreting what I wrote on the weblog. Embedded in the personal attack comments that Real Climate permits be posted, there are several that recognize that the error in the original Real Climate post was their statement

 ”Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago”.

As I documented in my weblog of June 30 2009, their statement is clearly and documentably false (and is not a “wild allegation”). 

They present a set of observational evidence regarding the longer term trends, and I have no disagreement with them on this. Indeed, in the past I posted a weblog that supported the retrospective skill of the GISS model in simulating upper ocean heat content increases at least until the last few years;

Comparison of Model and Observations Of Upper Ocean Heat Content.

I wrote in that weblog

“The conclusion that the GISS model is consistent with the observations for the time period in the second figure is clear from this comparison. The absence of a positive radiative imbalance in the last 4 years, however, that is anywhere neat the 0.85 Watts per meter squared value in Hansen et al. 2005, needs to be reconciled.”

More recently, I questioned further their skill for the last several years; see

Update On A Comparison Of Upper Ocean Heat Content Changes With The GISS Model Predictions.

Real Climate is correct that the time period to make conclusions on longer term trends is too short. However, they weaken the confidence in the scientific objectivity when they report that “Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago” . Why do they feel they need to do this when this is obviously not true?

By overstating what is actually occurring within the climate system (which they clearly did in their original weblog and perpetuated in their second weblog), they provide fodder for those who conclude that the human intervention in the climate system is minimal. To emphasize my view, it is summarized in my weblogs

Summary Of Roger A. Pielke Sr’s View Of Climate Science

Roger A. Pielke Sr.’s Perspective On The Role Of Humans In Climate Change

Roger A. Pielke Sr.’s Perspective On Adaptation and Mitigation

House Testimony of Roger A. Pielke Sr. “A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits Effective Climate Policy”

Real Climate could be an important venue to permit the presentation and debate on the diversity of peer reviewed perspectives on climate. However, they need to permit all such viewpoints to be presented, as well as not attack (or permit their commenters to) colleagues with whom they disagree.

Climate Progress has a weblog by Joesph Romm titled “Breaking: NOAA puts out “El Niño Watch,” so record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record“.

This is an interesting and very bold forecast of record temperatures by Joe Romm, and, if this does occurs, it would substantially support his claims on the dominance of human-caused global warming. Only time will tell, of course, if this warming will occur.

However, unfortunately, he still does not understand that i) the appropriate metric to monitor global warming involves heat in Joules, most which occurs in the oceans (e.g. see),  and ii) that the accumulation Joules in the upper ocean has not occurred since 2003 (e.g. see and see). Even Jim Hansen agrees that the ocean is the dominant reservoir for heat accumulation (e. g. see).

In Joe Romm’s weblog, there is the text

“As a side note:  Roger Pielke, Sr.’s “analysis” of how there supposedly hasn’t been measurable ocean warming from 2004 to 2008 is uber-lame.  In the middle of a strong 50-year warming trend, any clever (but cynical) analyst can connect an El Niño-driven warm year to a La Niña-driven cool year a few years later to make it look like warming has stopped.  In fact, the latest analysis shows “that ocean heat content has indeed been increasing in recent decades, just like the models said it should.”

This text shows a failure to understand the physics of global warming and cooling. There are peer reviewed analyses that document that upper ocean warming has halted since 2003 (e.g. see and see).  Even the last few years of the Levitus et al 2009 paper shows this lack of wamring (see).

Joe Romm, since he disagrees with this, should present other observational analyses of the continued accumulation of heat content in Joules since 2003. He should also focus on this time period since the Argo network was established, as it is this data network which is providing us more accurate assessments of the heat content in the upper ocean than is found in the earlier data.

If he continues to use the global average surface temperature trends as the metric for global warming, he will convince us that he does not recognize i) that surface temperature, by itself, is not a meaasure of heat (e.g. see), and ii) that there are major remaining uncertainties and biases with the surface temperature data set (e.g. see, see and see).

He writes

“In the middle of a strong 50-year warming trend, any clever (but cynical) analyst can connect an El Niño-driven warm year to a La Niña-driven cool year a few years later to make it look like warming has stopped.”

He ignores that since 2003, global warming (the accumulation of Joules) has stopped. An objective scientist [as opposed to a "clever (but cynical) analyst"] would report this scientific observation.

He would find more appreciation and respect for his viewpoints if he properly presented the actual observational finding, and discussed its implications as to where we are with respect to the accumulation of Joules over time. I have proposed such an approach in my weblogs

A Litmus Test For Global Warming - A Much Overdue Requirement

http://climatesci.org/2009/02/09/update-on-a-comparison-of-upper-ocean-heat-content-changes-with-the-giss-model-predictions/.

There is part one of an interview with Professor Stephen Schneider regarding global warming and climate change issues published on Examiner.com on May 24 2009. It is titled “The global warming debates: Stephen Schneider” and is written by Thomas Fuller who is the San Francisco Policy Environmental Policy Examiner reporter. This interview is an excellent example of the failure to present a balanced presentation of the climate science issues.

The reporter asked the following question

“More specifically, the principal skeptic websites (Watt’s Up With That, Climate Skeptic, Climate Audit and Climate Science) that I look at regularly seem to think they are winning the day. They think data is coming in that questions the established paradigm.”

First, the reporter erroneously presented my perspective as a “skeptic” website. 

Steve Schneider, unfortunately, chose not only to fail to correct this error, but demeaned the scientific value of these websites.

His reply is

“They have been thinking that as long as I have observed them and they have very few mainstream climate scientists who publish original research in climate refereed journals with them–a petroleum geologist’s opinion on climate science is a as good as a climate scientists opinion on oil reserves. So petitions sent to hundreds of thousands of earth scientists are frauds. If these guys think they are “winning” why don’t they try to take on face to face real climatologists at real meetings–not fake ideology shows like Heartland Institute–but with those with real knowledge–because they’d be slaughtered in public debate by Trenberth, Santer, Hansen, Oppenheimer, Allen, Mitchell, even little ol’ me. It’s easy to blog, easy to write op-eds in the Wall Street Journal.”

On the first issue, the characterization of my website as a “skeptic website” is completely inaccurate. In 2006, Andy Revkin of the New York Times also erroneously described me as a “climate skeptic”, and after confronting him on this mistake (see), the New York Time published a correction (see). My views on climate science, hardly those of a climate skeptic (which I consider a perjorative characterization of my perspective), are summarized, for example, in my weblogs

Summary Of Roger A. Pielke Sr’s View Of Climate Science

Roger A. Pielke Sr.’s Perspective On The Role Of Humans In Climate Change

Roger A. Pielke Sr.’s Perspective On Adaptation and Mitigation

and in my House subcommittee testimony in 2008; see

Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2008: A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits of Effective Climate Policy. Written Testimony for the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce Hearing “Climate Change: Costs of Inaction” – Honorable Rick Boucher, Chairman. June 26, 2008, Washington, DC., 52 pp.

More importantly, I am disappointed that Steve Schneider personally attacked the websites that are listed. I have quite a bit of respect for Dr. Schneider’s past work [e.g. his book Genesis Strategy is an excellent example of why we need a resource-based, bottom-up assessment of vulnerability, as has been discussed in our peer reviewed papers (e.g. see) and books (e.g. see)]. 

However, his casual denigration of each of the websites, Watt’s Up With That, Climate Skeptic, Climate Audit and Climate Science  (each of whose contributions to the discussion of climate science are informative and very valuable) represents a failure to engage in constructive scientific debate.

This cavalier dismissal of these websites illustrates that instead of evaluating the soundness of their scientific evidence, the authors of these websites, who provide a much needed broader viewpoint on climate science, are insulted. This is not the proper way to discuss scientific issues. 

I would be glad to debate Dr. Schneider (or any of the other individuals who are listed). 

I also challenge them to refute in the professional literature (and in a debate) the numerous peer reviewed articles and national (e.g. see) and international climate assessments (e.g. see) that present scientific evidence that conflicts with the narrow perspective on climate science that Steve Schneider is representing.  

For those interested in my scientific credentials in climate science, please see

Pielke Research Group

and my vita

Roger A. Pielke Sr.

I am alerting Dr. Schneider and Mr. Fuller to the appearance of my weblog on this subject, and will publish their replies with their permission, if they provide them.  

I have generally supported most EPA actions which have been designed to support environmental improvement. These regulations have resulted in much cleaner water and air quality over the past several decades; e.g. see

National Research Council, 2003: Managing carbon monoxide pollution in meteorological and topographical problem areas. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 196 pp.

However, the EPA Endangerment Findings for CO2 as a climate forcing falls far outside of the boundary of the type of regulations that this agency should be seeking.

The EPA on April 17, 2009 released this finding in “Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act”.  

This report is a clearly biased presentation of the science which continues to use the same reports (IPCC and CCSP) to promote a particular political viewpoint on climate (and energy) policy).

The text includes the statements

“The Administrator signed a proposal with two distinct findings regarding greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act:

Action

“The Administrator is proposing to find that the current and projected concentrations of the mix of six key greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. This is referred to as the endangerment finding.

The Administrator is further proposing to find that the combined emissions of CO2, CH4, N2O, and HFCs from new motor vehicles and motor vehicle engines contribute to the atmospheric concentrations of these key greenhouse gases and hence to the threat of climate change. This is referred to as the cause or contribute finding.”

As Climate Science has shown in the past; e.g. see

New Plans To Regulate CO2 As A Pollutant

Comments On The Plan To Declare Carbon Dioxide as a Dangerous Pollutant

A Carbon Tax For Animal Emissions - More Unintended Consequences Of Carbon Policy In The Guise Of Climate Policy

Will Climate Effects Trump Health Effects In Air Quality Regulations?

Supreme Court Rules That The EPA Can Regulate CO2 Emissions

Science Issues Related To The Lawsuit To The Supreme Court As To Whether CO2 is a Pollutant

the “cause” for their endangerment finding can cover any human caused climate forcing. For just one example, the paragraph above could be rewritten as

The Administrator is further proposing to find that the combined emissions of CO2 and CH4 from agriculture contribute to the atmospheric concentrations of these key greenhouse gases and hence to the threat of climate change. This is referred to as the cause or contribute finding.”

The EPA, by expanding its authority to be able to regulate for climate, will have enormous power to regulate all aspects of society. The seriousness of this grasp for power, using “science” as the tool, needs to be widely communicated and debated.

Further information is given at “Overview of EPA’s Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act”, where it includes the information

 ”After a thorough examination of the scientific evidence on the causes and impacts of current and future climate change, as well as other effects of greenhouse gases, the Administrator concludes that the science compellingly supports a positive endangerment finding for both public health and welfare. In her decision, the Administrator relied heavily upon the major findings and conclusions from recent assessments of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

“The Administrator is proposing this endangerment finding after considering both observed and projected future effects of climate change, key uncertainties, and the full range of risks and impacts to public health and welfare occurring within the United States. The scientific evidence concerning risks and impacts occurring outside the United States, including risks and impacts that can affect people in the United States, provides further support for this proposed endangerment finding.”

What these statements tell us is that their finding includes results from multi-decadal climate predictions, which have never shown regional predictive skill, including any ability to predict past major weather events such as droughts!

Nevertheless, they make claims with respect to the climate risks as if these are certain, despite the absence of skill in predicting them for the 20th century. They claim that

 ”The effects of climate change observed to date and projected to occur in the future include, but are not limited to, more frequent and intense heat waves, more severe wildfires, degraded air quality, more heavy downpours and flooding, increased drought, greater sea level rise, more intense storms, harm to water resources, harm to agriculture, and harm to wildlife and ecosystems. The Administrator considers these impacts to be effects on public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act.”

In the document “Frequently Asked Questions on the Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases”, they have the Q&A

 ”On what science was the proposed Endangerment Finding based?

“The Administrator relied heavily on existing, peer-reviewed scientific literature. In particular, she relied on reports and conclusions from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, the National Research Council, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change because they represent the current state of knowledge on climate change science, vulnerabilities, and impacts. These studies are authored by leading scientific experts and underwent multiple layers of peer review, including, in many cases, review and acceptance by government agencies.”

As documented in

Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2008: A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits of Effective Climate Policy.Written Testimony for the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce Hearing “Climate Change: Costs of Inaction” – Honorable Rick Boucher, Chairman. June 26, 2008, Washington, DC., 52 pp.

Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences“. 88 pp including appendices.

Protecting The IPCC Turf - There Are No Independent Climate Assessments Of The IPCC WG1 Report Funded And Sanctioned By The NSF, NASA Or The NRC.

the conflict of interest (with most of the same individuals leading the reports) is easy to see; i.e. the Federal (non-EPA) expert reviewers for the EPA Endangerment findings (see “Technical Support Document for the Proposed Findings”) are

Virginia Burkett, USGS; Phil DeCola; NASA (on detail to OSTP); William Emanuel, NASA; Anne Grambsch, EPA; Jerry Hatfield, USDA; Anthony Janetos; DOE Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Linda Joyce, USDA Forest Service; Thomas Karl, NOAA; Michael McGeehin, CDC; Gavin Schmidt, NASA; Susan Solomon, NOAA; Thomas Wilbanks, DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

In conclusion, the EPA Endangerment findings is the culmination of a several year effort for a small group of climate scientists and others to use their positions as lead authors on the IPCC, CCSP and NRC reports to promote a political agenda.

Now that their efforts have reached the federal policy decision level, Climate Science urges that there be an independent commission of climate scientists who can evaluate the assement process that led to the EPA findings as well as the climate science upon which it is constructed.

I have always enjoyed and learned from the magazine “The Economist”. However, I have been critical of its biased reporting on the climate science subject (e.g. see).

In the April 25th 2009 issue there is an article titled “A green figleaf” (subscription required).  The article includes the text

“The EPA has been mulling the harmfulness of greenhouse gases since 2007, when, in a case brought by a coalition of states, cities and NGOs, the Supreme Court ruled that it should regulate greenhouse gases if they were found to be toxic. As expected, the EPA, now run by Lisa Jackson, who brings to the job 20 years of experience as a regulator who’s tough on business, gave a provisional ruling that they were; a final decision will come after a 60-day period of public consultation.”

Climate Science agrees that CO2 is a climate forcing, and has discussed the EPA approach in the weblogs

 New Plans To Regulate CO2 As A Pollutant

Comments On The Plan To Declare Carbon Dioxide as a Dangerous Pollutant

A Carbon Tax For Animal Emissions - More Unintended Consequences Of Carbon Policy In The Guise Of Climate Policy

Will Climate Effects Trump Health Effects In Air Quality Regulations?

Supreme Court Rules That The EPA Can Regulate CO2 Emissions

Science Issues Related To The Lawsuit To The Supreme Court As To Whether CO2 is a Pollutant

However, the term “toxic”, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, has three uses

1. containing or being poisonous material especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation with the examples “toxic waste”; “toxic radioactive gas”; “an insecticide highly toxic to birds”.

2.  exhibiting symptoms of infection or toxicosis with the example “the patient became toxic two days later”.

3. extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful with the example “toxic sarcasm”
 
At the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, CO2 does not fit any of these definitions.  The Economist (and if they accurately reported) the EPA postion misrepresent the actual effect of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is a climate forcing NOT a toxic air pollutant.

Ed Ring of Ecoworld has posted today (April 30, 2009) an excellent weblog titled “Antarctic Ice Increasing”, which provides some much needed balance in the discussion of climate science. I am correctly quoted in the article;

“Just like last year, to assist in the research for this post I contacted Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., a climatologist at the University of Colorado whose blog www.climatesci.org is one of the most balanced forums and respected sources of technical information on global climate anywhere. In response to my inquiry, he wrote the following: ‘The sea ice around the continent is far above average (ref. UIUC). Also, note the colder than average sea surface temperatures around Antarctic (ref. NOAA). If the media is going to discuss the Wilkens Ice Shelf, they should also discuss this other data. The expansion of the sea ice coverage implies a cooling.’”

There is an informative powerpoint presentation by Jim Hansen and colleagues at the March 11 2009 Copenhagen meeting. Thanks to Doug Gleason for alerting us to the pdf of this talk!

The powerpoint talk is

Hansen, J., M. Sato, T. Conway, E. Dlugokencky, G. Dutton, J. Elkins, B. Hall, S. Montzka, and P. Tans, 2009: Air Pollutant Climate Forcings within the Big Climate Picture, Talk given by J. Hansen at the Climate Change Congress, “Global Risks, Challenges &Decisions”, Copenhagen, Denmark, March 11, 2009.

Climate Science will only comment here on one conclusion in the presentation. It is the statement on slide 3 that

“The two dominant human-made climate forcings are greenhouse gases and aerosols.”

This conclusion is incorrect, as documented in the 2005 NRC Report

National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp

where human land management has been shown to be a first order climate forcing.

Other papers and books which support this viewpoint include, for example,

Kabat, P., Claussen, M., Dirmeyer, P.A., J.H.C. Gash, L. Bravo de Guenni, M. Meybeck, R.A. Pielke Sr., C.J. Vorosmarty, R.W.A. Hutjes, and S. Lutkemeier, Editors, 2004: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system. Springer, Berlin, Global Change - The IGBP Series, 566 pp.

Cotton, W.R. and R.A. Pielke, 2007: Human impacts on weather and climate, Cambridge University Press, 330 pp.

Marland, G., R.A. Pielke, Sr., M. Apps, R. Avissar, R.A. Betts, K.J. Davis, P.C. Frumhoff, S.T. Jackson, L. Joyce, P. Kauppi, J. Katzenberger, K.G. MacDicken, R. Neilson, J.O. Niles, D. dutta S. Niyogi, R.J. Norby, N. Pena, N. Sampson, and Y. Xue, 2003: The climatic impacts of land surface change and carbon management, and the implications for climate-change mitigation policy. Climate Policy, 3, 149-157.

Climate Science invites Jim Hansen to present his perspective as to why land use change is not one of the dominant human-made climate forcings

There is a news report on April 5 2009 in the Orange County Register by Dennis Avery titled

“Greenhouse gas levels, like temperatures, are falling”

that, while it correctly quotes from our research findings that “[I]t is the change in ocean heat content that provides the most effective diagnostic of global warming and cooling”, the article has a significant error with respect to greenhouse gas levels.

The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide continues to rise in the annual average and this increase is almost all due to the human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This increase can be clearly seen, for example, in the data from the Earth System Research Laboratory.

There is a new paper that illustrates (as just one example) the recent approach of publishing papers in the peer reviewed literature in which the results cannot be verified. This is not science, but is presented to policymakers as if it is. The paper is

 H. J. Fowler, M. Ekström (2009). Multi-model ensemble estimates of climate change impacts on UK seasonal precipitation extremes. International Journal of Climatology DOI: 10.1002/joc.1827

The abstract reads

“Thirteen regional climate model (RCM) integrations from the Prediction of Regional Scenarios and Uncertainties for Defining European Climate change risks and Effects (PRUDENCE) ensemble are used together with extreme value analysis to assess changes to seasonal precipitation extremes in nine UK rainfall regions by 2070-2100 under the SRES A2 emissions scenario. Model weights are based on similarities between observed and modelled UK extreme precipitation calculated for a combination of (1) spatial characteristics: the semi-variogram parameters sill and range, and (2) the discrepancy in the regional median seasonal maxima. These weights are used to combine individual RCM bootstrap samples to provide multi-model ensemble estimates of percent change in the return value magnitudes of regional extremes. The contribution of global climate model (GCM) and RCM combinations to model structural uncertainty is also investigated. The multi-model ensembles project increases across the UK in winter, spring and autumn extreme precipitation; although there is uncertainty in the absolute magnitude of increases, these range from 5 to 30% depending upon region and season. In summer, model predictions span the zero change line, although there is low confidence due to poor model performance. RCM performance is shown to be highly variable; extremes are well simulated in winter and very poorly simulated in summer. The ensemble distributions are wider (projections are more uncertain) for shorter duration extremes (e.g. 1 day) and higher return periods (e.g. 25 year). There are rather limited differences in the weighted and unweighted multi-model ensembles, perhaps a consequence of the lack of model independence between ensemble members. The largest contribution to uncertainty in the multi-model ensembles comes from the lateral boundary conditions used by RCMs included in the ensemble. Therefore, the uncertainty bounds shown here are conservative despite the relatively large number of RCMs contributing to the multi-model ensemble distribution.”

Since there is no way to validate their model results for the time period 2070-2100 and the IPCC models have not even demonstrated skill in predicting regional climate extremes for the current climate, the results in the Fowler and Ekström are just hypotheses. It is a disppointing statement of climate science that hypotheses, which have not been tested, are presented as papers in the literature.