Climate Change :

Be Not Afraid!

Presentation to CEI Interns

November 6, 2013

Marlo Lewis

“By far the most terrifying movie you will ever see.”

“The whole aim of

practical politics is to

keep the populace

alarmed, and hence

clamorous to be led to

safety, by menacing it

with an endless series

of hobgoblins, all of

them imaginary.” –

H.L. Mencken

Big Picture Points • The scariest parts of the “planetary emergency” narrative on climate change

– ocean circulation shutdown triggering a new ice age, ice sheet

disintegration raising sea levels 20 feet, malaria epidemics in industrialized

countries, runaway warming from melting frozen methane deposits and

CO2 from decomposing peat bogs – are not supported by scientific

research.

• The only card left in the alarmist deck is extreme weather.

• However, there has been no long term trend in the strength or frequency of

hurricanes, tornadoes, U.S. floods or drought.

• The one exception is heat waves, but, paradoxically, the more common hot

weather becomes, the more heat-related mortality declines: People adapt!

• There is no long-term trend in “normalized” extreme weather damages

(losses adjusted for increases in wealth, population, and consumer price

index).

• Globally, mortality rates and aggregate mortality related to extreme weather

have declined by 98% and 93%, respectively, since the 1920s.

• The climate alarm crowd predictably predict that climate

change is worse than they predicted.

• In fact, the state of the climate is better than they told

us.

• The unanticipated 17-year warming pause, the growing

divergence between models and reality, and a pile of

recent papers on climate sensitivity indicate 21st century

warming will be at the low end of the IPCC forecast

range.

“Worse than we thought” is a political mantra

pretending to be a scientific finding

Remote Sensing Systems: Tropical

Troposphere Dec. 96 – Oct. 2013 (Brozek)

Warmest trend (UAH) over past 17 years is

0.009C/decade – less than 1C/century

Models vs. Observations.

(John Christy June 2013)

Models vs. Observations, Linear Trends.

(Roy Spencer June 2013)

Canadian Climate Model, global troposphere: overshoots

warming since 1979 by 650% (Gregory)

The more poorly IPCC models perform, the more

confident the IPCC becomes! (Laframboise)

Average sensitivity

of IPCC AR5

models (3.4ºC) is

70% higher than

the average of

recent research

(2ºC).

Lower sensitivity

means less

warming, hence

lower climate

impacts.

Source: Michaels &

Knappenberger,

April 25, 2013

Warming→Arctic Ice Melt→Sea Water Freshening→Ocean

Circulation Shut Down→European Ice Age

• Mini-ice age of 8,200 years ago possibly due

to the rupture of a giant ice dam allowing

more than 100,000 cubic kilometers of fresh

water to pour into the North Atlantic. Source:

Barber et al. 1999

• The rate of fresh water infusion from

Greenland today is a comparative trickle—

an estimated 222 cubic kilometers per year.

Science News 2008.

• Today, there is no bigger-than-all-the-Great-

Lakes-combined glacial meltwater lake in

central Canada held back by an ice dam on

the verge of collapse.

• “Very unlikely that the AMOC will undergo a

rapid transition [in the 21st century] (high

confidence)” – IPCC AR5 Table 12.4

“When the [melt-]water reaches the bottom of the ice, it lubricates the

surface of the bedrock and destabilizes the ice mass, raising fears that

the ice mass will slide more quickly toward the ocean.” (AIT, p. 192)

• Gore warned sea levels could rise 20 feet.

• He misrepresented as a gigantic fissure or crack the Greenland ice sheet E.Q. line (the line above which snow accumulation exceeds ice melt)!

• In the study he cited (Zwally et al. 2002), basal lubrication from “moulins” increased the 1998 flow rate of an outlet glacier from 31.3 cm/day in winter to 40.1cm/day in July. This added meters to annual glacier flow. Apocalypse not!

“Our results show that several fast-flowing outlet glaciers,

including [the biggest,] Jakobshavn Isbrae, are relatively

insensitive to this process.” Joughin et al. 2008

Richard Kerr, Science 2008. An entire 4 km-long, 8 m-deep melt-

water lake disappeared down a moulin in about 1.4 hours–at an

average rate of 8,700 cubic meters per second, “exceeding the

average flow rate of Niagara Falls.” Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it?

Yet, despite all the water dumped under the ice that day and all

the water drained into new moulins in the following weeks, the

ice sheet moved only “an extra half meter near the drained lake.”

An extra half meter! In perspective: The Greenland Ice Sheet

extends 2,530 kilometers (1,570 miles) North-South and has a

maximum width of 1094 kilometers (680 miles) near its northern

margin.

More on basal lubrication via moulins

Faezeh et al. (2013): Greenland’s four main outlet glaciers are

projected to contribute 0.7 to 1.1 inches to sea-level rise by 2200

under a mid-range warming scenario (2.8°C by 2100) and 1.1 to 1.9

inches under a high-end warming scenario (4.5°C by 2100).

King et al. (2012): The rate of Antarctic ice loss is not accelerating

and translates to less than one inch of sea-level rise per century.

The contribution of the great ice sheets to 21st century sea level

rise is more likely to be measured in inches, not feet or meters.

Latest estimates of sea-level rise from

Greenland and Antarctica

20th century sea level rise: 1.74mm/yr. Significant decadal

fluctuation, no long-term acceleration. (Holgate 2007)

Post-1990 rate: 3.2mm/yr. Faster than 20th century rate. Not known

how much due to greenhouse forcing vs. decadal variability.

(University of Colorado Sea Level Research Group)

No acceleration in recent years. Source:

(Michaels, May 28, 2013)

Methane Bomb Fizzles

Frozen subsea methane Methane-eating bacteria

• Schultz (2011): Even under the most extreme climate scenario tested, permafrost

thaw in the Siberian shelf will not exceed 10 meters in depth by 2100 or 50 meters by

the turn of the next millennium, whereas the bulk of methane stores lie roughly 200

meters below the sea floor.

• Very unlikely that methane from clathrates will undergo catastrophic release (high

confidence)” – IPCC AR5 Table 12.4

• Kessler et al (2011): Microbes consumed the methane released during the BP

Deepwater Horizone oil spill, indicating that any warming-induced “large scale

releases of methane from hydrate deep in the ocean are likely to be met by a

similarly rapid methanotropic [digestive] response.”

Will the peat bogs get us?

• Charman et al. (2012) examined “carbon accumulation” in Northern latitude peat

lands over the past millennium. “Opposite to expectations,” they found that in warm

periods, peat lands become more bio-productive, leading to net increases in “long-

term carbon accumulation.” Thus, “the carbon sequestration rate could increase over

many areas of northern peat lands” as the world warms.

• Loisel and Yu (2013) examined 15 peat cores collected from south-central Alaska.

They found that “the observed apparent carbon accumulate rates over the past 100

years were almost ten times greater than those over the past 4000 years.” They

conclude: “these results are contrary to the widespread notion that higher

temperature will increase peat decay and associated carbon dioxide release from

peat lands to the atmosphere, contributing to the positive carbon cycle-climate

feedback to global warming.”

Malaria risk: chiefly a function of poverty, not climate

(Centers for Disease Control, Reiter 2000)

Wealth and

technology trump

climate in

determining malaria

risk.

Malaria endemicity

in 1900 (a, top) and

2007 (b, middle),

and the difference

(c, bottom). Source:

Gething et al. 2010

CO2Science.Org

Studies that allow

one to identify

the degree by

which peak

Medieval Warm

Period

temperatures

either exceeded

(positive values,

red) or fell short

of (negative

values, blue)

peak Current

Warm Period

temperatures.

Is current warming unprecedented?

CO2Science.org

Studies that allow

one to determine

whether peak

MWP

temperatures

were warmer

than (red),

equivalent to

(green), or cooler

than (blue), peak

CWP

temperatures.

Unprecedented?

Unprecedented? Figure source: IPCC 2007. Note: Arctic was actually

2.5ºC-7ºC above pre-industrial per McDonald et al. (2000)

Source:

CAPE Project

Members

(2006)

Map shows

Arctic warmth

(degrees

Celsius) in last

Interglacial

compared to

present

temperatures

Will polar bear survive?

No long term change in frequency of U.S.

hurricane landfalls

No long term global trend either

No long term trend in U.S. hurricane power

No long term trend in global hurricane power

No long term trend in tornado frequency

No long term trend in strong tornado frequency

No trend in U.S. flood frequency/strength

since 1950

No long-term trend in U.S. soil moisture

James Hansen, WaPost op-ed: Global warming caused European heat

wave of 2003, Russian heat wave of 2010, Texas drought of 2011, &

Midwest drought of 2012.

In 2003, global summer temperature was cooler than the 24-year average.

The European hot spell was a local anomaly. Source: Chase et al. 2006

Russian Heat Wave of 2010: “mainly due to natural internal atmospheric

variability.” – NOAA (Dole et al. 2011)

Texas drought of 2011: “This drought was an outlier. Even without global

warming, to the best of my knowledge, it would have been an outlier and a record-

setter.” – John Nielson-Gammon, Texas State Climatologist

Central Great Plains drought of May-August of 2012: “resulted mostly from

natural variations in weather.” – NOAA Drought Narrative Team 2013. NOAA

explains:

• Moist Gulf of Mexico air failed to stream northward in late spring as cyclone

and frontal activity were shunted unusually northward.

• Summertime thunderstorms were infrequent and when they did occur produced

little rainfall.

• Neither ocean states nor human-induced climate change, factors that can

provide long-lead predictability, appeared to play significant roles in causing

severe rainfall deficits over the major corn producing regions of central Great

Plains.

Natural variability chief factor in the three

other big heat events, too

Extreme weather losses adjusted for changes in wealth,

population, and CPI (gray bar is hurricane Sandy)

No trend either in normalized global weather loss data

As percentage of GDP, global disaster

losses are declining

As U.S. urban temperatures increased, heat-related

mortality declined. Source: Davis et al. 2003

Global deaths and death rates from extreme weather declined 93% and

98%, respectively, since the1920s. (Goklany 2008)

Updated from Goklany 2008

Global warming will not halt or reverse the long-term trend towards

cleaner air. Figure source: EPA

Global CO2 emissions, per capita GDP, life

expectancy at birth, 1760-2009 (Goklany 2013)

U.S. CO2 emissions, per capita GDP, life

expectancy at birth. (Goklany 2013)

Be Not Afraid!

References

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References

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• John Christy graphs are from: Roy Spencer, “EPIC FAIL: 73 Climate Models vs.

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4, 2013, http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-

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References

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to-slow/

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hearing on “Climate Change: It’s Happening Now,” 18 July 2013,

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df9665-e8c8-4b0f-a550-07669df48b15 (slides 27-33, 37-40)

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