Part III of this six part series, is below.  For the full series, click:

Part I – Palin’s Assertions
Part II – The Basic Science, in Stark Contrast
Part IV – “Political” is Whatever I Don’t Like, and Science is Whatever I Assert
Part V - Real Editorial Debate, and the  Costs/Benefits Myth
Part VI - The Hacked E-Mail “Scandal” Scandal, and the Real Issues:  Palin’s assertions, the Post’s Misleading Promotion, and the Ensuing Misinformation Driving Our National Debate

Part III – Climate Variability, Threshold Effects, and How to Subvert Informed Discussion

As noted in Part II, the long term temperature trend has been warming.   In fact, including 2009, the eleven warmest years on record will all have occurred in the last thirteen years.

But at the same time, the earth hasn’t gotten warmer “each” year,” leading some to question whether global warming has been exaggerated” — at least according to the prominent display box accompanying the Post’s December 5 article, noted above, that Palin linked to.

Perhaps the “some” that the article refers to is Sarah Palin — and of course Washington Post expert scientist and climatologist George Will.  It is difficult to say however, because an email to both of the article’s authors and the newspaper’s ombudsman, asking “which scientists” said certain things that the article attributes to “some scientists” (along with who these “some” in the display box refers to), was never substantively responded to.

The fact is that a few years are virtually meaningless in comparison to the longer term trend.  Climate is not monotonic, nor remotely so; that is, climate does not necessarily shift in the exact same direction in each successive year (or even years) no matter how powerful the underlying trend, although it can. And no competent scientist believes that it is.

More importantly, climate can also be wildly, unpredictably, erratic.  In fact, the higher the concentrations of heat trapping gases, and the more rapidly, from a geologic perspective, that they are increasing, the more likely it may be that it might become more erratic,  even with a clear underlying trend, as the climate shifts.  It is even conceivable that this would include extremes.

For example, consistent even with worse case scenarios, or “tipping points,” we might even see mild cooling for several years, and then, sudden, almost unimaginable, breakneck speed warming (or, perhaps more likely, just the latter, without the former.)

How? Shifting ocean patterns or other natural variability might temporarily mask anthropogenic effects, before reversing itself and only adding further to them.  Then, as ice caps and glaciers melt, warmer water rushes down cracks, bringing pressure and heat (ice also melts faster in water than air), increasingly speeding up the glacial melting process; the heat reflecting albedo of the white snow and ice is then lost, leading to more heat absorption and further warming; warmer water expands even further, raising water levels even higher; the cooling effects of icebergs in the ocean may initially be increased as more and more ice breaks off into the sea, and then reduced, and then eliminated as more and more ice disappears, leading to an increasingly rapid transition to warmer water; warming water also tends to retain less carbon dioxide, meaning even more stays in the atmosphere, thus trapping even more heat; the hoped for ‘cooling’ effect of increased cloud cover in some areas due to increased evaporation instead is offset or outweighed by the increased greenhouse effect of far more water vapor; melting permafrost (and perhaps even warmer ocean currents acting on ocean bottom methane clathrates), releases even more methane, particularly in the carbon riddled bogs of the Siberian Tundra, while heat and drought fires over the warmer Eurasian peat bogs release their stored carbon in the form of even more CO2, and so on and so forth…

As these things build, critical thresholds are met; what was once slow suddenly snowballs, and suddenly change runs rampant throughout the system.  And anti science skeptics (those not under water) throw up their hands and go “Dang, we didn’t know! We’re so surprised!!” Or perhaps the most extreme ones blame this, too, on “natural, cyclical, environmental trends.”

The possibility of tipping points, mocked in Palin’s piece by calling the irrelevant CRU hacked email “scandal” a “tipping point,” is very real.  The idea of radically fast changes in the earth’s temperature is also very real.

Also keep in mind that while climate change may seem abstract, a rise of just 6 to 9 degrees globally, depending on how much of it emanates from frozen areas (as so far seems to be the case) could see oceans rise around 80 feet. That would be bad.  The global economic costs of this alone would dwarf anything we have ever seen, or likely ever even contemplated.  And the earth has made these shifts before, without man’s input.

But how likely are such scenarios? We don’t know. But numerous leading scientists, including  NASA’s now ideologically bastardized but traditionally straight laced and super solid James Hansen, believe it is likely.  (Another compelling case for extreme change, among many, is made here.)

What we do know, as a matter of basic atmospheric chemistry and climate science, is that it is invariable that we will have some sort of effect, whether we can ever precisely measure that effect or not. We also know, as a matter of basic science, that this effect is likely to be increasingly large — and not on a linearly correlated scale (as almost nothing in nature is) – the more we add to these atmospheric levels.  This also directly conflicts with what ideologically driven groups have presented, and media institutions such as the Washington Post have posited, as if positing a falsity is “debate.”

Such “tipping point” or threshold effect type suggestions are simply reasoned speculations.  But what are not speculations are the basic atmospheric gas and climate facts covered in part II, from which you can play armchair scientist, and draw your own conclusions regarding how likely things are, and/or what we should do about it. But you can’t do this if you don’t know the basic science. And we can’t make good decisions, as a society, as a country, as a world, with bad information.

Yet the Washington Post, a once flagship Fourth Estate institution, is now instead serving up more bad information under a mistaken notion of debate, and helping to further promulgate an already high level of bad information on the subject.  And it is doing so, all while further legitimizing and popularizing a leading conveyor of that bad information.

Go to Part IV

Part II of this six part series, is below.  For the full series:

Part I – Palin’s Assertions
Part III – Climate Variability, Threshold Effects, and How to Subvert Informed Discussion
Part IV – “Political” is Whatever I Don’t Like, and Science is Whatever I Assert
Part V - Real Editorial Debate, and the  Costs/Benefits Myth
Part VI- The Hacked E-Mail “Scandal” Scandal, and the Real Issues: Palin’s assertions, the Post’s Misleading Promotion, and the Ensuing Misinformation Driving Our National Debate

Part II – The Basic Science, in Stark Contrast

To get a sense of just how much this prominent op-ed misinforms readers, in this part we’ll take a look at Palin’s representations to American readers, in the context of the basic science which the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen was based upon.[i]

Palin’s central premise, along with the idea that Copenhagen is based upon “fraudulent science,” and that international efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions (as opposed to her own view of the matter) are therefore radical, is that there is a lot of real controversy over the fundamentals of climate change. She even writes (emphasis added):

What’s more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd.

In Parts III and VI of this series, we’ll look at the December 5 Washington Post article that Palin links to for this assertion.  But note here that in telling readers that there was “no real consensus even within the CRU crowd,” Palin is using disagreements on details to try and discredit the whole. This is a propaganda trick, not informed debate.

Palin is also essentially telling Americans here that the scientific consensus on climate change is not real. Either that, or she has written an otherwise meaningless, and extraordinarily misleading, sentence in reference to it– and done so with the design or effect of fooling readers into falsely believing that the actual, relevant, consensus is not real.

Since this is blatantly false, it is hard to see how this leads to rather than detracts from informed debate; let alone on a prominent subject matter where there is already a great deal of misunderstanding to begin with.

There is a widespread consensus on the issue. A strong one (see here,here,here,here,here,here,here,here,here,here,here,here,here,here, and here) for some examples, which essentially include every leading worldwide scientific association on the planet.)

That consensus — and the reason for the Copenhagen meeting that Palin nevertheless essentially suggests to readers is based upon “fraudulent science” — is that anthropomorphic activities are directly affecting the climate; and that if left unchecked, they will likely have an increasingly severe, and deleterious, effect.

Okay, so Palin misrepresented to the American public regarding the consensus on climate change.   But is this consensus at least based upon “fraudulent” science, as Palin essentially tells readers, or at least simply ill reasoned?

No. In remarkably stark contrast, the consensus is based upon very specific, incontrovertible, known facts; facts which a lot of Americans still don’t know, while instead they are being led by wildly misleading and poorly informed “leadership” such as exhibited by Palin here, further promoted by one of our nation’s most prominent, and important, newspapers.[ii]

The most important of these facts is that well known, easily identifiable, and widespread anthropomorphic behaviors are contributing enormous amounts of net greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.  These include the rapid release of carbon that took millions of years to build up and accumulate deep underground.

At the same time, atmospheric levels of these greenhouse gases – from a scientific standpoint – have rocketed skyward.  More problematically, they are still rising.

For example: levels of atmospheric CO₂, by far the most important greenhouse gas, have risen by about 38% since 1750. [iii] Based upon ice core sample drilling, these levels are also almost 30% higher than at any point in the past 650,000 – 800,000 years (key graph here).  Even more telling is that the rate of change we have observed is at least 100 times faster than at any point observed in those past 800,000 years.  (Less probative, but relevant, we also know that temperatures have tended to track atmospheric CO₂ levels over time (explanation here, charts here; for more detail, see 1,2,3)).

Methane (CH₄) is likely the next most important greenhouse gas.  Far less prevalent than CO₂, its heat trapping potential is nevertheless about 21-23 times greater per molecule. Atmospheric methane increases (see page ES-5 for a quick summary) mainly come from ruminant livestock (predominantly cattle, sheep, goats, and, worldwide, yes camels); landfills; natural gas systems (which are around 87% methane), and coal mining – which of course packs the double whammy of also being a CO₂ emitting fossil fuel.  (Note that coal, in addition, is also extremely polluting, is a predominant cause of the bio accumulated neurological toxin mercury that we consume in our larger game fish, and its mining is often highly destructive to the land and surrounding ecosystems.)

Atmospheric methane levels have gone up even more than CO₂, and are now 157% higher than in 1750.  They are also in the range of 125-130 percent higher, again based upon ice core sampling, than at any time in the past 800,000 years.  The next two greenhouses gases, rounding out the four we are concerned with, are nitrous oxides, which are emitted through both natural and anthropomorphic activities (including vehicle exhaust), and, to some extent, fluorocarbons, which do not otherwise exist naturally.  (For global emissions of non CO₂ greenhouses gases, see here; a comprehensive report from the “radical environmentalist” Bush Administration EPA in 2006.)

These gases all trap heat. Heat, ultimately, drives climate.

All of these things are incontrovertible.

What conclusions from them can be drawn? Here’s what the IPCC draws (see p. 665):

It is extremely unlikely (<5%) that the global pattern of warming during the past half century can be explained without external forcing, and very unlikely that it is due to known natural external causes alone. The warming occurred in both the ocean and the atmosphere and took place at a time when natural external forcing factors would likely have produced cooling.

The IPCC also concludes that it is “exceptionally unlikely“(emphasis in the original), for natural radiative forcing such to have had even as large an effect as anthropogenic sources. (See page 131.) [iv]

Let’s say that Sarah Palin, with little grounding in basic science, had simply drawn her own conclusions – that this is all an absolutely freakily bizarre coincidence.  In such a case, her piece would not have been a lie.  Just extremely bad:

For example:  over three quarters of a million years go by, we don’t have the heat trapping greenhouse gas levels we do today; at the same time – today — there are known specific human activities adding enormous nets amounts of those very same persistent gases to the atmosphere; at the same time causing measurable changes to those concentrations at a speed which over those same three quarters of a million years is not only unprecedented, but likely on the order of two magnitudes more rapid; these gases trap heat; and we have indisputably observed a rather stark, and increasing, warming trend – and this is all, according to Palin, just a bizarre coincidence.

But Palin is also essentially asserting that the scientific consensus that this a bizarre coincidence, is not real. This is not just abysmal, unsupported, editorializing. This is a lie. The consensus among scientists (whether that consensus is correct or not) is that it is real; in other words, that this is not some bizarre coincidence.

This does not mean that only man now affects the climate – a fact that Palin further used, intentionally or otherwise lacking basic knowledge, to mislead readers.  Virtually no scientist believes that anything that we observe, climate wise, can ever be fully removed from natural variability. The real concern is that whatever results we are likely to see from all of these increases won’t be known until after the fact; and that, given the rate, and degree, of atmospheric gaseous change, this is very likely to completely dwarf natural variability.

Again, the basic reasons for this – which polls show a significant number of Americans (including Sarah Palin, apparently) still don’t know — are that greenhouse gases trap heat, heat ultimately drives climate, long lived greenhouse gas concentrations have and are rising dramatically, and at geologic breakneck speed, due to specific, identifiable, known anthropomorphic activities.

Go to Part III

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Notes:
[i] In so doing, we’ll also briefly cover some key points that will probably come as a bit of a surprise to a great majority of Americans. Also, for those wishing to even further understand our role in the emissions of heat trapping gases into the atmosphere – which is the driving force behind concern that climate will inevitably be drastically altered — EPA’s Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Emissions and Sinks, 1990-2007, April, ‘09, provides an informative, authoritative source. (The Executive Summary also summarizes key facts and points.) The relevant IPCC reports (see 1,2,3,4,5), also help illustrate the enormous gap between ideologically motivated claims (see pp. 92-93 for a potential basis for these), and the basic, physical science of climate change. Some common climate change myths versus fact on climate change are also presented here.
[ii] Note, it’s not that Palin appears to be deftly trying to avoid taking steps to curtail emissions that matters. It is that Palin wildly misleads Americans – again, and again, and again — to try and lead them to this same conclusion.
[iii] Note that water vapor is the most prominent greenhouse gas, but harder for us to directly effect. More importantly, it also does not persist in the atmosphere as do the more relevant greenhouse gases.
[iv] “Forcing” refers to events outside of normal ongoing climate fluctuation, such as solar irradiance, volcanic aerosols, or net anthropogenic emissions, for example.