By
E. Calvin Beisner
web posted May 7, 2018
On
November 10, 1942, after British and Commonwealth forces defeated the
Germans
and Italians at the Second Battle of El Alamein, Winston Churchill told
the
British Parliament, “Now this is not the end. It is not even
the beginning of
the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
In The
Hinge of Fate, volume 3 of his marvelous 6-volume history of
World War II,
he reflected, “It may almost be said, ‘Before
Alamein we never had a victory.
After Alamein we never had a defeat’.”
The
publication of Nicholas Lewis and Judith Curry’s newest paper
in The
Journal of Climate reminds me of that. The two
authors for years have
focused much of their work on figuring out how much warming should come
from
adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. In this paper they conclude
that it’s
at least 30% and probably 50% less than climate alarmists have claimed
for the
last forty years.
In
fact, there are reasons to think the alarmists’ error is even
greater than 50
percent. And if that is true, then all the reasons for drastic policies
to cut
carbon dioxide emissions – by replacing coal, oil and natural
gas with wind and
solar as dominant energy sources – simply disappear.
Here’s another important
point.
For
the last 15
would publish their article. That this staunch defender of climate
alarmist
“consensus science” does so now could mean the
alarmist dam has cracked, the
water’s pouring through, and the crack will spread until the
whole dam
collapses.
Is
this the beginning of the end of climate alarmists’ hold on
climate science and
policy, or the end of the beginning? Is it the Second Battle of El
Alamein, or
is it D-Day? I don’t know, but it is certainly significant.
It may well be that
henceforth the voices of reason and moderation will never suffer a
defeat.
Shattered Consensus: The True State
of Global Warming
was edited 13 years ago by climatologist Patrick J. Michaels,
then
Research Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of
Virginia and
the State Climatologist of Virginia; now Senior Fellow in Environmental
Studies
at the Cato Institute. Its title was at best premature.
The
greatly exaggerated “consensus” – that
unchecked human emissions of carbon
dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases would cause
potentially catastrophic
global warming – wasn’t shattered then, and it
hasn’t shattered since then. At
least, that’s the case if the word
“shattered” means what happens when you drop
a piece of fine crystal on a granite counter top: instantaneous
disintegration
into tiny shards.
However,
although premature and perhaps a bit hyperbolic, the title might have
been prophetic.
From
1979 (when the National Academy of Sciences published “Carbon
Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment”)
until 2013 (when the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its “5th
Assessment Report”
or AR5), “establishment” climate-change scientists
claimed that – if the
concentration of carbon dioxide (or its equivalent in other
“greenhouse” gases)
doubled – global average surface temperature would rise by
1.5–4.5 degrees C,
with a “best estimate” of about 3 degrees.
(That’s 2.7–8.1 degrees F, with a
“best” of 5.4 degrees F.)
But
late in the first decade of this century, spurred partly by the
atmosphere’s
failure to warm as rapidly as the “consensus”
predicted, various
studies began challenging that conclusion, saying
“equilibrium climate
sensitivity” (ECS) was lower than claimed. As the Cornwall Alliance reported four years ago:
“The
IPCC estimates climate sensitivity
at 1.5˚C to 4.5˚C, but that estimate is based on computer
climate models
that failed to predict the absence of warming
since 1995 and
predicted, on average, four times as much warming as actually
occurred
from 1979 to the present. It is therefore not credible. Newer,
observationally based estimates have ranges like 0.3˚C to
1.0˚C (NIPCC
2013a, p. 7) or 1.25˚C to 3.0˚C – with a best
estimate of 1.75˚C (Lewis
and Crok 2013, p. 9). Further, “No empirical evidence exists
to support
the assertion that a planetary warming of 2°C would be net
ecologically or
economically damaging” (NIPCC 2013a, p.
10).” [Abbreviated references are identified here.]
However,
most of the lower estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity were
published
in places that are not controlled by “consensus”
scientists and thus were
written off or ignored.
Now,
though, a journal dead center in the “consensus”
– the American Meteorological
Society’s Journal of Climate
– has accepted a new paper, “The impact of recent forcing and ocean heat
uptake data on
estimates of climate sensitivity,” by Nicholas
Lewis and Judith Curry. It
concludes that ECS is very likely just 50–70% as high as the
“consensus” range.
(Lewis is an independent climate science researcher in the UK. Curry
was
Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at
the
Georgia Institute of Technology and now is President of the Climate
Forecast
Applications Network.)
Here’s
how Lewis and Curry summarize their findings in their abstract, with
the
takeaways emphasized:
“Energy
budget estimates of equilibrium
climate sensitivity (ECS) and transient climate response (TCR)
[increase
in global average surface temperature at time of doubling of
atmospheric CO2
concentration, i.e., 70 years assuming 1% per annum increase in
concentration]
are derived based on the best estimates and uncertainty ranges
for forcing
provided in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Scientific Report (AR5).
“Recent
revisions to greenhouse gas
forcing and post-1990 ozone and aerosol forcing estimates are
incorporated and the forcing data extended from 2011 to 2016.
Reflecting
recent evidence against strong aerosol forcing, its AR5
uncertainty lower
bound is increased slightly. Using a
1869–1882 base period and a
2007−2016 final period, which are well-matched for
volcanic activity
and influence from internal variability, medians
are derived for
ECS of 1.50 K (5−95%: 1.05−2.45 K) and for
TCR of 1.20 K (5−95%: 0.9−1.7
K). These estimates both have much lower
upper bounds than
those from a predecessor study using AR5 data ending
in 2011.
“Using
infilled, globally-complete
temperature data gives slightly higher estimates; a median of 1.66 K
for ECS (5−95%: 1.15−2.7 K) and 1.33 K for
TCR (5−95%:1.0−1.90 K). These
ECS
estimates reflect climate feedbacks over the historical
period, assumed
time-invariant.
“Allowing
for possible time-varying
climate feedbacks increases the median ECS estimate to 1.76
K (5−95%:
1.2−3.1 K), using infilled temperature data. Possible
biases from non-unit
forcing efficacy, temperature estimation issues and
variability in
sea-surface temperature change patterns are examined and found
to be minor
when using globally-complete temperature data. These results
imply that high
ECS and TCR values derived from a majority of CMIP5
climate models are
inconsistent with observed warming during the historical period.
A press release from the
Global Warming Policy Forum
quoted Lewis as saying, “Our results imply that, for any
future emissions
scenario, future warming is likely to be substantially lower than the
central
computer model-simulated level projected by the IPCC, and highly
unlikely to
exceed that level.”
Veteran
environmental science writer Ronald Bailey commented on the new paper in Reason,
saying:
“How much lower? Their median ECS estimate of 1.66°C
(5–95% uncertainty range:
1.15–2.7°C) is derived using globally complete
temperature data. The comparable
estimate for 31 current generation computer climate simulation models
cited by
the IPCC is 3.1°C. In other words, the models are
running almost two times
hotter than the analysis of historical data suggests that
future
temperatures will be.
“In
addition, the high-end estimate of Lewis and Curry’s
uncertainty range is 1.8°C
below the IPCC’s high-end estimate.” [emphasis
added]
Cornwall
Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. Roy W. Spencer (Principal Research Scientist
in
Climatology at the University of Alabama-Huntsville and U.S. Science
Team
Leader for NASA’s satellite global temperature monitoring
program) commented
on the paper. Even Lewis and Curry’s figures make
several assumptions that
are at best unknown and quite likely false. He noted:
“I’d
like to additionally emphasize
overlooked (and possibly unquantifiable) uncertainties: (1) the
assumption in
studies like this that the climate system was in
energy balance in the
late 1800s in terms of deep ocean temperatures; and
(2) that we know
the change in radiative forcing
that has occurred since the
late 1800s, which would mean we would have to know the extent to which
the
system was in energy balance back then.
“We
have no good reason to assume the
climate system is ever in energy balance, although it is constantly
readjusting
to seek that balance. For example, the historical temperature (and
proxy)
record suggests the climate system was still emerging from the Little
Ice Age
in the late 1800s. The oceans are a nonlinear dynamical system, capable
of
their own unforced chaotic changes on century to millennial time
scales, that
can in turn alter atmospheric circulation patterns, thus clouds, thus
the
global energy balance. For some reason, modelers sweep this possibility
under
the rug (partly because they don’t know how to model
unknowns).
“But
just because we don’t know the extent
to which this has occurred in the past doesn’t mean we can go
ahead and assume
it never occurs.
“Or
at least if modelers assume it doesn’t
occur, they should state that up front.
“If
indeed some of the warming since the
late 1800s was natural, the ECS would be even lower.”
With
regard to that last sentence, Spencer’s University of Alabama
research
colleague Dr. John Christy and co-authors Dr. Joseph D’Aleo
and Dr. James
Wallace published a paper in the fall of
2016 (revised in the
spring of 2017). It argued that solar, volcanic and ocean
current variations
are sufficient to explain all the global warming over the period of
allegedly
anthropogenic warming, leaving no global warming to blame on
carbon
dioxide.
At
the very least, this suggests that indeed “some of the
warming since the late
1800s was natural” – which means the ECS would be
even lower than Lewis and
Curry’s estimate.
All
of this has important policy implications.
Wisely
or not, the global community agreed in the 2015 Paris climate accords
to try to
limit global warming to at most 2 C degrees – preferably 1.5
degrees – above
pre-Industrial (pre-1850) levels.
If
Lewis and Curry are right, and the warming effect of CO2 is only
50–70% of what
the “consensus” has said, cuts in CO2 emissions
need not be as drastic as
previously thought. That’s good news for the billions of
people living in
poverty and without affordable, reliable electricity. Their hope for
electricity is seriously compromised by efforts to impose a rapid
transition
from abundant, affordable, reliable fossil fuels to diffuse, expensive,
unreliable wind and solar (and other renewable) as chief electricity
sources.
Moreover,
if Spencer (like many others who agree with him) is right that the
assumptions
behind ECS calculations are themselves mistaken … and
Christy (like many others
who agree with him) is right that some or all of the modern warming has
been
naturally driven – then ECS is even lower than Lewis and
Curry thought. That
would mean there is even less justification for the punitive,
job-killing,
poverty-prolonging energy policies sought by the “climate
consensus” community.
Regardless,
we’re coming closer and closer to fulfilling the prophecy in
Michaels’ 2005
book. The alarmist “consensus” on anthropogenic
global warming is about to be
shattered – or at least eroded and driven into a clear
minority status. 
E.
Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is Founder and National Spokesman of The
Cornwall Alliance for the
Stewardship of Creation.