A good unbiased read,...best go to the website below as graphs and pictures are integral to the story. It remains to be determined if there is any significant net negative effect to Canada. Warming temps are favorable for increasing arable land, and a shift in milder climate to the North. Imagine North Bay being like Windsor, and Toronto being like Atlanta on the Lake. The percentage of coastline that would be flooded more than a few hundred meters is minimal and would likely take place over centuries so Canadians could easily adapt.
He who adapts earliest and best will inherit the earth,...and it will probably help to have a big army :-[)
A further thought,...we're about -20 now,...where the hell is this global warming???? We're all waiting!!!!
caseyresearch.com
1/31/06
SPECIAL REPORT: CLIMATE CHANGE II
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Dear WWNK readers,
Our WWNK issue of 1/9/07 was dedicated to the topic “Climate Change Revisited,” researched and written by our longtime contributing editor Doug Hornig. The article generated a lot of reader interest and educated feedback. Thank you very much for that!
However, on topics as complex as climate, there is no one answer or scientific consensus. Since we don’t have any preconceived notions about climate change either way, we are not afraid to present information from both sides of the global warming front. In response to Doug Hornig’s article, longtime friend Brent Cook, a seasoned geologist, has prepared comprehensive and well-thought-out arguments. We’d like to share them with you here, in the interest of fostering information not based on pseudo-science or exaggerated threats, but scientific data of merit.
If you have problems viewing the charts and graphs included in the article, or to enlarge the two thumbnail images, you can read this issue online by clicking here.
Enjoy reading!
Shannara Johnson
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Comments and Observations on Global Warming, a Reply
By Brent Cook
In my extensive travels throughout the world, it has made empirical sense to me—based on the obvious and significant glacial retreats over the past few decades—that the earth is in a period of global warming. Doug Hornig’s (DH) essay on climate change published in your Jan. 9, 2007 issue of What We Now Know finally prompted me to look in detail at this issue (which I had been avoiding for some time) to try and put the debate into context. I am neutral on the issue and just wanted some semblance of the truth.
What I will attempt to do here is comment on some of DH’s conclusions as well as add some details of my research, supplying hyperlinks where possible to take you back to the source. But first a caveat; I am a geologist, not a climatologist or meteorologist; hence some of the finer details of the science will undoubtedly go over my head. Additionally, I do have a day job pillaging and plundering the earth, which limits the time I could spend on an issue that would literally take months to come to grips with. Likewise, although DH is an accomplished writer and researcher, he has, I presume, a limited scientific background and can likewise not be expected to completely follow the results of some of the scientific research, either. This global climate stuff is a very complicated and complex scientific field dealing with the interrelationships of oceans, air, land, time, the sun and who knows what else, all interacting in ways that we are just beginning to understand. Plus, this ongoing climate experiment has a new input, man’s anthropogenic contribution (pollution), for which there is no previous record.
There are three central questions we need to address; 1) are we in a period of global warming, 2) if so, is this an aberration and, 3) if it is in fact abnormal, what could be the cause? Please read on.
Are we in a period of global warming?
As DH points out, the Earth’s temperature has risen—according to my research, roughly 0.8°C (~1.5°F) over the past 120 years or so, based on thousands of land and sea observations compiled by the National Climate Data Center and illustrated in the chart below.
Looking at the last decade or so, DH says temperatures have been nearly flat since 1998. He quotes paleo-climatologist Bob Carter of Australia’s James Cook University, who says, “official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK [show that] the global average temperature did not increase between 1998-2005.”
This does not seem to be the case.
The University of East Anglia reports that “Preliminary temperature figures for 2006, released by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, show the mean surface air temperature has continued to demonstrate a warming climate, both around the globe and especially here in the UK.”
“Worldwide, the provisional figures for 2006, using data from January to November, place the year as the sixth warmest. This is on a record that stretches back to 1850—the top 10 warmest years have all occurred in the last 12 years—and it could have been warmer but for a cool start due to La Niña.”
Continuing, the U of EA states that “in the UK, the year has been remarkable, with the Central England Temperature (CET) series setting a succession of records including, the warmest month on record set this July (19.7°C), the warmest ever September (16.8 °C), the warmest ever April to October having a mean temperature of 14.6 °C, and the warmest ever autumn with a mean temperature of 12.6 °C. 2006 is very likely to be the warmest year in terms of CET. The joint warmest years are currently 1990 and 1999, which recorded a mean temperature of 10.63 °C.”
Professor Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit said: "This year sees the highest average temperature recorded since the Central England Temperature series began in 1659, and the rise above the average is significantly higher than that for the two hottest years we have experienced."
The World Meteorological Org. points out that 2006 is likely to be the fourth-warmest year in the Northern Hemisphere, and the seventh in the Southern Hemisphere since their records going back to 1861. 2004 was the fourth-warmest on record and, excluding 1996, the past 10 years are amongst the warmest on record. Since the start of the 20th century, the global average surface temperature has risen approximately 0.7°C. But this rise has not been continuous. Since 1976, the global average temperature has risen sharply, at 0.18°C per decade. In the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the period 1997-2006 averaged 0.53°C and 0.27°C above the 1961-1990 mean, respectively.
Clearly, the record shows the past decade or so is abnormally warm compared to the previous 140 years. Even considering natural climate variations, DH’s assertions regarding recent temperatures don’t fit the published research I was able to find.
So what about the glaciers?
DH’s article suggests that the striking image from An Inconvenient Truth of huge chunks of glacial ice breaking off from Antarctica and floating away is a normal process to be expected as parts of the Antarctic warm while others cool. Not true—ice shelves are not like glaciers, which advance and calve off as they are pushed out over water. Ice shelves tend to be long-lived features formed on water at the continent’s edge. The Larsen Ice Sheet featured in the film is actually three sheets (A, B, C), which have seen a total of around 5,700 km2 of ice break free of the Antarctic at the end of one of the warmest summers on record, 2002. The Larsen A ice sheet has been around for approximately 2,000 years and has survived multiple periods of global warming and cooling. According to studies by Eugene Domack, geosciences professor at Hamilton College, the Larsen B shelf is estimated to have been around since the last glacial period, about 12,000 years. It would appear the massive Larsen ice shelf breakup is a rather unique event in the context of thousands of years.
Similarly, research by A.J. Cook in Science of April 2005 presents trends in 244 marine glacial fronts from the Antarctic Peninsula and associated islands over the past 63 years. The results show that 87% of the glaciers have retreated southward. Cook goes on to suggest that “the pattern is broadly compatible with atmospheric warming but that the rapidity suggests this may not be the sole driver.”
Although there are portions of the Antarctic that are experiencing cooling and increased snow pack, these changes could very well be the result of local climatic changes not unlike what is being documented in Greenland, where glacial thickness is increasing at higher elevations due to increased snowfall, yet the glaciers are receding along the coasts, presumably due to warming. In a Journal of Glaciology study by Zwalley et al, they point out that the Greenland ice sheets growing at higher elevations and thinning at the margins is an expected response to increasing temperatures and precipitation in a warming climate.
The Jakobshavns Isbrae glacier in west Greenland, a major outlet glacier of the Greenland Ice Sheet, is the fastest-moving glacier in the world. It had been moving continuously at speeds of over 20 m/day with a stable terminus since at least 1950. In 2002, the 12 km long floating terminus entered a phase of rapid retreat. The ice front started to break up and the floating terminus disintegrated. The rapid thinning and retreat of the Helheim, Jakobshavns and Kangerdlugssuaq Glaciers, which jointly drain more than 16% of the Greenland Ice Sheet in close association with one another, suggests a common triggering mechanism, such as enhanced surface melting due to regional climate warming. [Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 13, Issue 1, pp. 46-48]
Although DH’s statement that “in plain terms, the Greenland ice is expanding, not contracting” may be technically correct, it ignores the real possibility that both the receding glacial toes and increasing upland precipitation appear to reflect climate change and not a steady state.
Continuing in the Northern Hemisphere, DH references a 2003 paper by Igor Polyakov of the University of Alaska, claiming that Polyakov found no overall Arctic temperature rise since 1940, and in fact in several published records, there is a decrease for the last 50 years. This is a complete misreading of what Polyakov’s paper was about or concluded. The paper did not argue the existence of an upward trend in the Arctic temperature record, and was in fact “motivated by reports of extraordinary change in the Arctic Ocean in recent decades.”
The paper points out that “shifts in atmospheric circulation patterns have resulted in increased transport and temperature of Atlantic waters entering the Atlantic via Fram Strait.” Further, “According to these observations, the Atlantic water was nearly 1°C warmer compared with climatological data.” What Polyakov actually investigated dealt with polar amplification of warming, and he concluded that strong variability makes it difficult to define the exact magnitude of warming. Interestingly, the chart below of surface air temperature anomalies from the study does show the general increasing temperature trend in the Arctic over the time studied and calls into question the selection by DH of 1940 for his reference point to claim there was no change.
Surface Air Temperature Anomalies, Polyakov
The graph below compiled by the National Snow and Ice Data Center depicts the decline in sea ice extent from 1978-2005, 8% on average per year. 2006 (not shown) continues the pattern of sharply decreasing Arctic sea ice marking the second lowest on record, missing the 2005 record by 340,000 km².
Arctic sea ice extent, 1978 to 2005
The sea temperatures and salinity, ice thickness, precipitation etc. are all interrelated and as Polyakov pointed out, interdecadal cycles will need to be better understood to come to strong conclusions. There is some evidence that high-salinity water masses circulating around the Arctic play a role in the changes. A study on Arctic climate change by the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Norway, investigated observed and modeled temperature and sea ice variability. The data led them to theorize that the Arctic warming in the 1920s–1930s and the subsequent cooling until about 1970 are due to natural fluctuations internal to the climate system. Secondly, there were strong indications that neither the warming trend nor the decrease of ice extent and volume over the last two decades can be explained by natural processes alone. Thirdly, their climate models both predict a dramatic decrease of the ice cover, which could result in a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean during summer at the end of this century.
Need more Northern Hemisphere examples? Let’s see what is happening to mountain glaciers. DH starts off with the quote by Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at MIT, “Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century [i.e. before the Industrial Revolution], and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don’t know why.”
I am unable to locate the source of Lindzen’s comments quoted by DH, but do note that Lindzen is a vocal critic of the “alarmist global warming” factions and is skeptical of consensus science. His issue is with ambiguous scientific statements that are hyped and politicized, particularly in the climate debate. Most of his work involves topics like “Non-linear saturation of topographically forced Rossby waves in a barotropic model” (I have no idea what that is about). There is nothing on his website that would indicate he has studied and published on mountain glaciers.
A quick search and review of the information on glaciers reveals the following:
In the Himalayas, a glacier inventory based on the comparison of remote-sensing images and the digital elevation show that over the past 30 years the area loss is about 9%, and the shrinkage trend continues according to the meteorological data. In a summary report referencing 200 papers and commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (yeah I know, about as suspect as the Association of Petroleum Engineers covering the same topic, so check the extensive referenced papers yourself), they concluded that 67% of the Himalayan glaciers are retreating.
Research by Ohio State University and published in Science magazine looks at core holes they have drilled into Himalayan glaciers over a 25-year period. Based on an analysis of the ice, “both the last decade and the last 50 years were the warmest in 1,000 years” explained Lonnie Thompson, professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University. They also noted that core samples covering the last century reveal a four-fold increase in dust trapped in the ice and a doubling of chloride concentrations, suggesting an increase in both drying and desertification in the region.
In the U.S., the Cascades Colombia glacier has retreated 134 m and thinned 14 m since 1986. Data available at the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project goes on to document and reference the retreat of a number of glaciers, including Glacier National Park, which has seen a 73% decrease in the area covered by glaciers and lost an estimated 113 of its original 150 glaciers since 1850, according to the National Park Service. In Alaska, the Icefield Research Program in Juneau documents significant retreats of up to 1,740 feet since 1946 in the glaciers they study including the Valdez glacier, which has thinned by 300 feet. Only the Taku glacier has advanced, they report.
South Cascade Glacier in 1928 [above]
South Cascade Glacier 2000 [source USGS]
In the Alps, Reinhard Boehm of Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics Alpine said “the region is going through its warmest period in 1,300 years, noting that a similar period occurred in the 10th and 12th centuries. But temperatures during those phases were ‘slightly below’ those of the past 20 years.”
The World Glacier Monitoring Service, which reports on changes in the terminus position of glaciers from around the world every five years notes that 103 of 110 glaciers examined are retreating. This service documents that 95% of those in Austria, nearly all the 69 Italian glaciers and all of the six French glaciers monitored are in retreat.
Since 1912, the glacier cover on the summit of Kilimanjaro has apparently retreated 75%, and just from the period of 1984 to 1998, one section of glacier receded 300 meters vertically. A report from March 2005 indicated that there is almost no remaining glacial ice on the mountain.
From the large island of New Guinea, the USGS has published photographic evidence of massive glacier recession since the region was first extensively photographed in the early 1930s. The ice extent on the Puncak Jaya massif is small, but the area is one of only a few present-day, ice-covered equatorial regions. The rapid and continuing retreat of the glaciers during this century indicates that the mass balance has been consistently negative. This suggests an equatorial climatic change, of which the glaciers are a sensitive indicator. They showed that a steady rise of the equilibrium-line elevation at a rate of 80 m per century allowed the model to match the observed retreat, and that the most likely explanation for the mass-balance change was a warming of the regional air temperature by 0.6°C per year.
DH also accurately points out that satellite temperature data collected by NASA since 1979 for the lower troposphere (lowest five miles) shows the Southern Hemisphere hasn’t heated up at all. According to NASA, “during this period temperatures in the lower troposphere have shown a series of ups and downs since 1979, mostly in a ±0.4°C band, with negligible trends over that period.”
This contrasts with surface thermometers that show warming during the same period of time. For the period since 1979, NASA points out that although surface temperature measurements indicate the Earth is warming at an average rate of 0.20°C per decade, their satellite data show a warming trend of about half that. These differences probably reflect unknown atmospheric processes and point to the complexity of the air-land-sea system.
One example is the 1997-98 El Niño which caused strong lower tropospheric warming in late 1997, and record warmth in February 1998. Satellite measurements of the lower stratosphere (9 to 12 miles) reveal two marked warm periods (as much as 1.5°C warmer), caused by sulfuric acid aerosols deposited in this layer by the eruptions of two large volcanoes. These two warm periods are superimposed upon a strong cooling trend over the 19-year period that has been attributed to ozone depletion in the lower stratosphere.
In summary, DH’s assertion that glaciers are not in retreat on a global scale is not backed up by legitimate research of the Arctic, Antarctic or mountain glaciers, nor by anyone else who visits these places. As graphically and pictorially illustrated in one of my favorite publications, the always entertaining Glacial Mass Balance Bulletin, virtually all the earth’s glaciers seem to be in retreat except in certain areas where local climate changes may be responsible for increased precipitation.
Temperature data and an extensive scientific report by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment by and large show an overall temperature increase over the past hundred or so years, although normal atmospheric patterns and interactions make it difficult to gauge the absolute changes. Additionally, the available glacial ice core that goes back centuries seems to suggest this warming may be a more unusual global warming event, which brings us to:
The Hockey Stick Controversy, is today an aberration?
In 1998, climatologist Dr. Michael Mann et al published a paper on global temperature patterns in which they produced Northern Hemisphere temperature patterns for the past 2,000 years or so. The resulting graph, which looks like a hockey stick to some, has been a lightning rod to extremists on both sides of the climate debate. The proxy data included tree rings, ice core, coral, sediments and historical documentation, which were calibrated against recent instrumental records to yield quantitative reconstructions that served as a best temperature estimate within a range of uncertainty. Mann has subsequently elaborated and expanded on the work and specifically goes into detail in a 2006 article in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science (recommended read), in which he pulls nine separate proxy and pseudo-proxy model studies together, in the graphs below, within a range of uncertainty (shaded).
Northern hemisphere proxy temperature data, Mann
The crux of the scientific debate (not the political debate) lies in the means by which the primary data is statistically normalized and over which time period. In 2005, McIntyre and McKitrick claimed Mann erroneously biased the results by overemphasizing the bristlecone pine tree rings in the normalization process, which then enhanced the last century’s variability. They run different algorithms in the data normalization process and show the variation is statistically insignificant. Professor P. Huybers of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute goes over the Mann and McIntyre statistical assumptions, pointing out that in the tree ring subset used by McIntyre, they use a questionable normalization procedure, which biased the results in the opposite direction of Mann’s work.
In another study of the Mann data by von Stork, he runs the data using a different statistical normalization process and comes up with a graph half way between the previous two. A Dummies Guide to the Hockey Stick Controversy is a good place to start if you wish to delve into this further. The conclusion here is that from the available data, you get the same increasing temperature answer, so long as you don’t remove significant data.
The debate also saw its way to a congressional hearing in which, at the request of congress, a committee assembled by the National Research Council was assigned to assess the state of scientific efforts to reconstruct the global temperature over the past 2,000 years. The conclusion of the Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate specifically addressed DH’s reference to Dr. Deming’s issues with the little ice age, stating that “after considering all the available evidence,” the study identified the little ice ages and medieval warm periods and points out that there is a general consensus between the different measurement methods (tree rings, ice bore holes, historical documents etc.).
Furthermore, the report states that with a high level of confidence, the global mean temperature over the past few decades was higher than any comparable period over the previous four centuries. From about 900 AD to 1600 AD, less confidence can be placed in the results due to a lack of data—however, using the presently available data, the past 25 years’ mean temperature is higher than any comparable period since 900 AD. Prior to 900 AD, they assign “very little confidence to statements concerning global temperatures due to the sparse data coverage and uncertainties associated with the methods used to analyze and combine them are larger than during more recent time periods.”
Amongst the skeptics, DH references a 2006 letter to the Canadian Prime Minister signed by 61 prominent scientists, which he claims is a “consensus buster” on global warming. The letter in question notes the “observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models and there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future.” It goes on to recommend an independent Canadian climate-science review with regards to Kyoto, and points out that there is “insufficient evidence” and “the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural noise.” In the contest of who can get the most scientists to sign up on their side of the debate, the list is long and overwhelming. On the global warming side, the Union of Concerned Scientists counts 110 Nobel laureates, including 104 of the 178 living Nobel Prize winners in the sciences, along with 60 U.S. National Medal of Science winners as signatories to their petition, and the National Science Academies of eight countries also joined the debate.
One recent, and I would guess reluctant, “convert” to the global warming side of the debate appears to be the Bush administration. Bush said, “the policy challenge is to act in a serious and sensible way, given the limits of our knowledge. While scientific uncertainties remain, we can begin now to address the factors that contribute to climate change.” This new policy is based on the findings of the US Climate Change Report whose chief editor, Dr. Thomas Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center concluded that, “discrepancies between the data sets and the models have been reduced and our understanding of observed climate changes and their causes have increased. The evidence continues to support a substantial human impact on global temperature increases. This should constitute a valuable source of information to policymakers.”
There are way too many “alarmists, industry hacks, politicians, tree huggers and fundamentalists” with vested interested on both sides of the debate that make the sensational headlines but add nothing to the scientific debate. I’ll ignore them altogether. One scientist on the skeptical side of the debate is Dr. S. Fred Singer, who holds degrees in physics and electrical engineering and runs the Science & Environmental Policy Project, which is a good place to start looking into skeptics’ side of the argument.
A recent look at media coverage found that: 53% of the articles gave roughly equal attention to the views that humans contribute to global warming and that climate change is exclusively the result of natural fluctuations; 35% emphasized the role of humans while presenting both sides of the debate; 6% percent emphasized doubts about the claim that human-caused global warming exists; while another 6% percent only included the predominant scientific view that humans are contributing to Earth's temperature increase.
Going further back in time
If we consider a longer time from back to the end of the last glacial ice age about 12,000 years ago, the temperature data becomes less and less accurate in terms of absolute temperatures and time precision. For instance, temperature recordings since the late 1880s come from multiple global instrument readings from which the yearly averages are obtained. Going back 2,000 years, the charts presented previously rely on proxy data standardized to current data and are therefore less accurate but can be reasonably calibrated against recent data. If we now consider the past 12,000 years, presented in the graph below, the limitations of the database and the smoothing required to balance the sample sites allows us a rough accuracy only down to about 300-year periods. The net result to our investigation is that the Holocene data does not provide the resolution needed to judge whether the recent 10-year, or even 100-year, apparent temperature increases are unusual or not.
The five-million-year record (before present) derived from benthic sediment analysis presented below seems to show a general global cooling trend. However, once again, this apparent trend tells us nothing of today’s or even this century’s global temperature.
The causes of climate change
The geologic record documents numerous periods of global warming and cooling on the scale of tens of thousands of years to millions of years. Although the exact causes of individual climatic shifts are difficult to discern, decades of research point to a number of causative factors, including 1) tectonic activity such as the closing of the Panama Isthmus, 2) orbital variations over periods of 25,000, 40,000 and 100,000 years, 3) solar variations, 4) extensive volcanic activity and, 5) internal variability such as El Niño. An interesting and probably important facet of the first four postulated causes is that these are measurable and observable features, and none of them seem to be signaling red right now.
What many scientists believe, according to Andrew Dessler in The Science and Politics of Climate Change, is that orbital changes cause a small initial warming. This small initial warming leads to CO2 release, which leads to more warming. Some studies indicate the CO2 release is a feedback mechanism that lags the initial warming but plays a crucial “forcing” role in the warming.
In a study by Bains et al, investigating an abrupt episode of global warming in the Paleocene epoch (~55 million years ago), they showed that carbon and oxygen isotopes from two widely separated sites indicate that a massive input of biogenetic methane (a greenhouse gas) occurred. They point out that volcanic gasses are an unlikely source of the methane and believe it came from the dissociation of a large volume of methane from hydrates buried on continental shelves. They claim “the coherence of the data sets from the two sites suggests that even the small-scale carbon and oxygen isotope fluctuations we have identified are of global significance.” Interestingly, thawing Siberian bogs are now releasing methane into the atmosphere.
The science and theory behind greenhouse warming, in which the absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere warms the planet, is widely accepted. Without these greenhouse gases, the Earth's surface would be up to 30°C cooler. The global warming debate centers around: does anthropogenic greenhouse gas matter, and will the earth sufficiently buffer the system? This minor question I leave to you, for it is far too complex and time consuming to go into here. I do, however, feel it is worthwhile looking at some hard data on atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Ice core measurements of CO2 from the Vostok glacier, Antarctica, show a close correlation between temperature and CO2 concentrations and that the trends are similar for each glacial cycle. The study concludes that “during glacial transitions, the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rises from 180 to 280-300 ppm (Petit et al, 1999). The extension of the Vostok CO2 record shows the present-day levels of CO2 are unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.” The Vostok CO2 data and several other ice core studies are combined in the graph below, which includes data from a Nature magazine article, plus data from other referenced studies.
The graph illustrates the dramatic vertical CO2 concentration rise at year 0, which actually represents the last 150 years (the modern industrial age). They also draw attention to the observation that there hasn't been a corresponding increase in temperature during this time period. This is probably due to the ability of the oceans to function as a heat sink, and thereby delay the increase in atmospheric temperatures. However, there are recent indications that the oceans are now warming, which will reduce their ability to act as a heat sink.
(Antarctic Ice Core CO2 and Temperature graph. The heavier temperature lines—160,000 BP to present—reflect more data points for this time period, not necessarily greater temperature variability.)
Since the industrial revolution, CO2 levels have increased to the current 380ppm level. This is the highest recorded and presumably reflects anthropogenic inputs, specifically the burning of fossil fuels, as shown in the following graph compiled by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. Recordings at Mauna Loa show an increase in CO2 from 320 to 380 since 1958.
Global fossil carbon emissions from CDIAC)
In summary, it appears that over the geologic record, CO2 is intimately associated with global warming and has acted as a feedback mechanism, accelerating the warming process once initiated. Now, however, the real possibility exists that the rapid anthropogenic input of greenhouse gasses could become a forcing mechanism to the atmospheric system. The earth’s ability to buffer the system is being tested and the next 100 years should show how this experiment turns out.
Truth?
After way too many late nights and boring pages on this subject, my search for some semblance of the truth leaves me with the following observations.
Although none of the evidence presented, by itself, proves global warming or links it to anthropogenic causes, the bulk of the evidence I found is heavily weighted that way. There is no doubt that man is pumping large volumes of pollutants into the air—the measurements substantiate the obvious. There is little doubt in my mind that the past 100 years have been warm, and probably abnormally warm, based on the vast majority of the research.
I find it a compelling corollary that research connecting ozone depletion to CFC’s and stratospheric cooling demonstrates man is capable of changing the climate. There is, however, insufficient information available to say for certain that we are headed for a climatic catastrophe or that the Earth cannot take care of itself.
There are literally thousands of scientists studying such disparate subjects as arctic moss, native hunting habits, 500,000-year-old ice or atmospheric chemical reactions, all unrelated to the global warming debate. They have published their results after peer review and come to the conclusion that there is something happening with a common thread and the likely culprit is anthropogenic atmospheric input. I do not believe they hate our way of life and seek to destroy it.
The 1,200-page Arctic Impact Assessment Report is comprised of peer-reviewed studies by over 300 scientists from 15 countries and is the most comprehensive report I could find on the subject; spend some time on it. However, the idea of a “scientific consensus” is inappropriate because it can never happen at the forefront of research into natural systems. The possibility that we are pushing ourselves into some fundamental and irrevocable climate change that could have serious economic and environmental consequences cannot be discounted. We are only 100 years into this global warming experiment, an experiment for which the consensus opinion will only be written in another 100 years or so.
In closing, I present a series of graphs that I find very interesting. Do take a look and consider your own bias on what they may show.
Global primary energy use, measured and numerous modeled projections
The above graph presented in a study by Morita and Lee and published in an extensive report on global emission scenarios shows historical primary energy use to 1998 and a multitude of modeled projections going out to 2100. On average, the global primary energy consumption has increased at more than 2% per year (fossil energy alone has risen at almost 3% per year) since 1900.
The graph below shows global CO2 emissions from 1900 and modeled projections based on intervention and non-intervention scenarios.
CO2 emissions and modeled projections
Concentration of Carbon Dioxide from trapped air measurements for the Law Dome, Antarctica. Source: CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research
Measured and modeled sea level rise
[Brent Cook is an independent Minerals Exploration Analyst and Advisor to funds, high-net worth individuals and a select group of junior exploration companies. He has over twenty-five years of experience focused on the economic evaluation of minerals exploration, development and mining properties in over 50 countries and encompassing virtually all geological environments. Brent has worked with Casey Research on numerous projects and currently also works with Paul van Eeden and writes a column for his investment letter.]
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