Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Huffington Post's Terkel denies climate science on decade of Alaska cooling, -2.4 degrees F, 'large value for a decade' say scientists. Terkel says AGW in Alaska 'won't go away' when science says it already has

.
2/6/13, "Sarah Palin's Climate Change Sub-Cabinet Goes Dormant Under Alaska Governor Sean Parnell," Huffington Post, Amanda Terkel

"At least 12 small, indigenous communities on Alaska's coast need to relocate completely because of global warming....
 
One effort formed in 2008 that does provide assistance -- the Alaska Climate Change Impact Mitigation Program -- gives funding to villages affected by climate change....

Alaska is the state most vulnerable to climate change, and its disastrous effects are here now, and growing worse every year,” said Rick Steiner, a retired University of Alaska professor and PEER board member who pursued the issue.... Ironically, Alaska's present oil and gas production contributes to the global warming that threatens Alaska's future. 

We can't simply ignore this threat, hoping it will go away -- 

it won't."

===========================================

Following citation disputes Terkel's above claim about Alaska warming. Decade of Alaska cooling reported by Alaska Climate Research Ctr., Geophysical Institute. Alaska Dispatch article follows expanding on the findings:

6/17/2012, The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska,benthamscience.com, G. Wendler, L. Chen and B. Moore, Alaska Climate Research Center, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA

"Abstract: During the first decade of the 21st century most of Alaska experienced a cooling shift,
modifying the long-term warming trend, which has been about twice the global change up to this time. All of Alaska cooled with the exception of Northern Regions. This trend was caused by a change in sign of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which became dominantly negative, weakening the Aleutian Low. This weakening results in less relatively warm air being advected from the Northern Pacific. This transport is especially important in winter when the solar radiation is weak. It is during this period that the strongest cooling was observed. In addition, the cooling was especially pronounced in Western Alaska, closest to the area of the center of the Aleutian Low. The changes seen in the reanalyzed data were confirmed from surface observations, both in the decrease of the North-South atmospheric pressure gradient, as well as the decrease in the mean wind speeds for stations located in the Bering Sea area."


==========================================

Alaska Dispatch article expands on findings of Alaska Climate Research Center, Geophysical Institute:

12/23/12, “Forget global warming, Alaska is headed for an ice age,” Alaska Dispatch, Alex DeMarban

"The nation's icebox is getting even icier. That may not be news to Alaskans coping with another round of 50-below during the coldest winter in two decades, or to the mariners locked out of the Bering Sea this spring by record ice growth.

Then again, it might. The 49th state has long been labeled one of the fastest-warming spots on the planet. But that's so 20th Century.
In the first decade since 2000, the 49th state cooled 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

That’s a “large value for a decade,” the Alaska Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks said in The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska.

The cooling is widespread holding true for 19 of the 20 National Weather Service stations sprinkled from one corner of Alaska to the other, the paper notes. It's most significant in Western Alaska, where King Salmon on the Alaska Peninsula saw temperatures drop most sharply, a significant 4.5 degrees for the decade, the report says....

Most noticeable was that for the first time last year, the Bering Sea ice shelf extended south nearly to the edge of the Alaska Peninsula, he said....

Will Alaska’s frigid spell last long? The researchers don't know. The report notes, however, that Alaska endured three decades of relative cold starting in the mid-1940s. Many Alaskans pray the current cold stretch abates sooner....

Alaska’s cold trend may even be strengthening this winter. National Weather Service meteorologist Shaun Baines reported Saturday that as of Dec. 21, Anchorage had already spent 10 days below zero this month. The city's average temperature this December is just 5.3 degrees, nearly 8 degrees shy of the December average of 13.2 degrees.  Even though warmer air is due by Christmas Day, Anchorage was already enroute to the coldest winter since 1982....

The National Weather Service in Anchorage recently completed its 90-day forecast and calls for colder-than-normal temperatures at least through the end of March (2013), said meteorologist Dave Stricklan."  
 
 ========================== 

Alaska was specifically excluded from the2012 hottest year” report issued in Jan. 2013:

1/8/13, “2012 hottest year on record in contiguous U.S., NOAA says,” Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin

Alaska and the Pacific Northwest did not have record-setting heat last year.”…
 
===========================

Following are 4 articles citing how western US atmosphere is influenced by aerosols and other matter flowing from Communist China:

6/7/12, “Potential impacts of Asian carbon aerosols on future US warming,“Geophysical Research Letters, AGU

“Key Points: Asian black carbon aerosol can enhance US warming by changing the circulation

---------------------------------- 

7/20/2007, "Huge Dust Plumes From China Cause Changes in Climate," NY Times, Robert Lee Hotz

"On some days, almost a third of the air over Los Angeles and San Francisco can be traced directly to Asia. With it comes up to three-quarters of the black carbon particulate pollution that reaches the West Coast, Dr. Ramanathan and his colleagues recently reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research. This transcontinental pollution is part of a growing global traffic in dust and aerosol particles."...

======================

April 2011, "Air Pollution in China, Facts and Details," Jeffrey Hays

"Soot, dust and chemical pollutants from China have been captured in a weather observation stations on the summit of Mount Bachelor in Cascade Range in Oregon. Soot, dust, ozone and nitrous oxides can be detected by satellites moving across the Pacific." (see sub-head, 'Chinese air pollution reaches the United States')

"Even if China increased the efficiency of its coal burning power plants, it wouldn't make much of difference because so many small industries and households burn coal for heating, cooking and power."...(sub-head, 'Success and limitations in cleaning up air pollution in China').

"Washington Post writer John Pomfret was based in Beijing for many years. When his family moved to Los Angeles afterwards his son’s asthma attacks and chronic chest infections stopped. When asked why he moved to Los Angeles he jokingly said “for the air.”"...(sub-head, "Health problems and air pollution in China')

==================

8/26/2007, "As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes," NY Times, J. Kahn, J. Yardley

"(Chinese) Provincial officials, who enjoy substantial autonomy, often ignore environmental edicts, helping to reopen mines or factories closed by central authorities. Over all, enforcement is often tinged with corruption. This spring, officials in Yunnan Province in southern China beautified Laoshou Mountain, which had been used as a quarry, by spraying green paint over acres of rock. (p. 2 of 6) ...

"Beijing also insists that it will accept no mandatory limits on its carbon dioxide emissions, which would almost certainly reduce its industrial growth. It argues that rich countries caused global warming and should find a way to solve it without impinging on China’s development....(p. 2 of 6)

"The toll this pollution has taken on human health remains a delicate topic in China. The leadership has banned publication of data on the subject for fear of inciting social unrest, said scholars involved in the research."... (p. 3 of 6, bottom)

(p. 5 of 6): "In 1996, China and the United States each accounted for 13 percent of global steel production. By 2005, the United States share had dropped to 8 percent, while China’s share had risen to 35 percent."...

"Today, a culture of collusion between government and business has made all but the most pro-growth government policies hard to enforce."...(p. 6 of 6. 2nd para.)

"The state still controls the price of fuel oil, including gasoline, subsidizing the cost of driving. (p. 6)

"Energy and environmental officials have little influence in the bureaucracy. The environmental agency still has only about 200 full-time employees, compared with 18,000 at the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States. "...

=========================

Ms. Terkel, following are 6 citations about "stunning" US CO2 plunge. US weather can no longer be blamed on US humans:

6/26/12, “The Incredible Shrinking Carbon Pollution Forecast – Part 2,” switchboard.nrdc.org, Dan Lashof
 “While there has been some press coverage of these facts (see here and here) I continue to find that most people are surprised to learn about this progress….

 chart from NRDC article

---------------------------------------------------------

6/4/12, “Climate change stunner: USA leads world in CO2 cuts since 2006,” Vancouver Observer, Saxifrage




“Not only that, but as my top chart shows, US CO2 emissions are falling even faster than what President Obama pledged in the global Copenhagen Accord.
Here is the biggest shocker of all: the average American’s CO2 emissions are down to levels not seen since 1964 --
over half a century ago. …Coal is the number two source of CO2 for Americans. Today the average American burns an amount similar to what they did in 1955, and even less than they did in the 1940s. …It is exactly America’s historical role of biggest and dirtiest that makes their sharp decline in CO2 pollution so noteworthy and potentially game changing at the global level.”...

--------------------------------

12/7/12, “Surprise Side Effect Of Shale Gas Boom: A Plunge In U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions,Forbes, guest article by Julie M. Carey, an energy economist with Navigant Economics
 

In order to determine where [catastrophic man-caused] climate change fits into the priority ranking of our nation’s most important agenda items, it seems worthwhile to step back and take stock of the quiet but tremendous progress that the U.S. has already made in reducing carbon [dioxide] emissions.”…


==================================
.
 6/22/12, U.S. cuts greenhouse gases despite do-nothing Congress,” CNN, Steve Hargreaves
.
Even factoring in a stronger economy, forecasters see greenhouse gas emissions continuing to fall….Others take the U.S. success in reducing its energy sector emissions as a sign that its fragmented, state-based, regulatory approach has worked better than Europe’s market-based cap-and-trade approach.”

==================================
.
8/16/12, “AP IMPACT: CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low,” AP, Kevin Begos
.
In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful  natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.
Many of the world’s leading climate scientists didn’t see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.
 
Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center  at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for “cautious optimism” about potential ways to deal with climate change….

In a little-noticed technical report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said this month that energy related U.S. CO2 emissions for the first four months of this year fell to about 1992 levels. Energy emissions make up about 98 percent of the total.

virtually everyone believes the shift could have major long-term implications for U.S. energy policy.”…

==========================

4/21/12, “Why [CO2] Emissions Are Declining in the U.S. But Not in Europe,” by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, newgeography.com

As we note below in a new article for Yale360, a funny thing happened: U.S. emissions started going down in 2005 and are expected to decline further over the next decade.”...

———————————————————-
.

Ms. Terkel, Global Warming ‘action’ was institutionalized in US government in 1990 by George Bush the 1st in the “U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990.CO2 reduction is mentioned near the end in Section 204, #4. Devoting 13 federal agencies to ‘climate’ matters is hardly lagging in “action.” 

Trillions have been taken from US taxpayers for climate endeavors via agency budget allocations, tax subsidies, diversion of US military to climate or green projects, countless federal regulations, vast sums shipped out in no strings foreign aid for ‘climate’ capacity building, etc.

Other countries’ CO2 hasn’t dropped despite hundreds of billions spent on cap and trade and extra taxes. This isn’t to say the US government hasn’t become business partners with the ‘climate’ industry.

----------------------------------------------------

Ms. Terkel, Pres. Obama believes the Sultan of Brunei deserves "climate" aid more than Alaskans and other Americans. Climate action’ in November 2012 included giving $6 billion US taxpayer dollars for ‘clean energy’ to the Sultan of Brunei who owns 5000+ cars and to the Pres. of Indonesia, a country so corrupt even the World Bank says crime adds 20% to costs. Below, one of the Sultan of Brunei’s cars:


 --------------------------------------------------

Obama sends billions overseas for "climate" aid:

3/26/12, “Obama Requests $770 Million to Fight Global Warming Overseas,” CNS News, Matt Cover

“According to CRS, the government has spent a total of $2.5 billion on GCCI since 2010 on overseas anti-global warming efforts in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.”…

-----------------------------------------------------

1/11/11, Big Money in Climate Change: Who Gives, Who Gets, Al Fin


===============================

For those who care about the planet, UK Met Office says global warming is not happening:

1/12/13, Global warming stopped 16 years ago, Met Office report reveals: MoS got it right about warming… so who are the ‘deniers’ now?UK Daily Mail, David Rose

=============================

In Jan. 2013, NASA climate scientist Hansen said ’5 yr. mean temp. flat for past decade,’ climate predictions hampered by lack of scientific data, notes 2011 NASA satellite intended to measure aerosols crashed on take-off: 
---------------- 
Page 1 notes lack of scientific data on aerosols makes it impossible to accurately interpret global climate.
------------------- 
.
Jan. 15, 2013, “Global Temperature Update Through 2012, 15 January 2013,” Columbia University, J. Hansen, M. Sato, R. Rudy

(page 1): “Summary. …”The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing….

(page 1, parag. 3): “The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with little control on particulate air pollution, but satisfactory quantitative interpretation has been impossible because of the absence of adequate aerosol measurements 3,4.”…
Page 6 details problem predicting future “climate change” referenced on p. 1 above, ie lack of data on aerosols, and that the one US satellite designed to measure them crashed on takeoff and  no plans exist to restart the mission:

page 6, last parag. of report under sub-head, “Climate Change Expectations”

The one major wild card in projections of future climate change is the unmeasured climate forcing due to aerosol changes and their effects on clouds. Anecdotal information indicates that particulate air pollution has increased in regions with increasing coal burning, but assessment of the climate forcing requires global measurement of detailed physical properties of the aerosols. The one satellite mission that was capable of making measurements with the required detail and accuracy was lost via a launch failure, and as yet there are no plans for a replacement mission with the needed capabilities.4″
.
===================================
.
Links for NASA climate satellite crashes in 2009 and 2011. 2011 satellite (referenced by Hansen) was to study aerosols:

“Perhaps that’s why the loss hurts most, because Glory “was directed very specifically at the place where our knowledge was weakest, he said.”…”A tragedy for climate science.”…”an area that desperately needs more study.”…

3/4/11, “Raze of Glory: NASA Earth-Observing Climate Satellite Fails to Reach Orbit,” Scientific American, John Matson

“A launch malfunction sent the Glory satellite crashing into the ocean, almost exactly mimicking the 2009 loss of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory.“…
-------------------------------------------
.
3/6/11, “Nasa crashes hit geoscience efforts,” AFP, News24, Washington
.
A pair of costly satellite crashes have dealt a major blow to Nasa’s earth science efforts just as the US space agency faces scrutiny from Congress over whether climate science should be part of its focus at all.
The $424m Glory satellite to monitor aerosols and the sun’s power plunged into the Pacific on Friday shortly after launch, just two years after a similar satellite to study carbon dioxide in the atmosphere met the same fate.

“The loss of the Glory satellite is a tragedy for climate science,” said Bruce Wielicki, senior scientist for earth science at Nasa’s Langley Research Centre.”…

 

—————————————————–

Continuing on Hansen report, p. 4, “Global Warming Standstill:
.
(page 4): “Global Warming Standstill. The 5-year running mean of global temperature has been flat for the past decade.

It should be noted that the “standstill” temperature is at a much higher level than existed at any year in the prior decade except for the single year 1998, which had the strongest El Nino of the century. However, the standstill has led to a widespread assertion that “global warming has stopped”. Examination of this matter requires consideration of the principal climate forcing mechanisms that can drive climate change and the effects of stochastic (unforced) climate variability."...
=========================
.
(page 5): (Continuing in sub-head “Global Warming Standstill”):

The largest climate forcing is caused by increasing greenhouse gases, principally CO2 (Fig. 5).  

The annual increment in the greenhouse gas forcing (Fig. 5) has declined from about 0.05 W/m2 in the 1980s to about 0.035 W/m2 in recent years8. The decline is primarily a consequence of successful phase-out of ozone-depleting gases and reduction of the growth rate of methane. Also, the airborne fraction of fossil fuel CO2 emissions has declined and the forcing per CO2 increment declines slowly as CO2 increases due to partial saturation of absorption bands, so the CO2 forcing growth rate has been steady despite the rapid growth of fossil fuel emissions.

The second largest human-made forcing is probably atmospheric aerosols,

although the aerosol forcing is extremely uncertain3,4.”…

.
--------------------------------------------

Repeating page 6, where Hansen says entire climate change theory difficult to predict due to lack of data on aerosols, cites crash of NASA satellite (as noted above).

page 6, sub-head, “Climate Change Expectations:

(3rd parag.): “The one major wild card in projections of future climate change is the unmeasured climate forcing due to aerosol changes and their effects on clouds. Anecdotal information indicates that particulate air pollution has increased in regions with increasing coal burning, but assessment of the climate forcing requires global measurement of detailed physical properties of the aerosols. The one satellite mission that was capable of making measurements with the required detail and accuracy was lost via a launch failure, and as yet there are no plans for a replacement mission with the needed capabilities.4″ (end of report)

--------------------------------------------

page 7, “References”

.
1 Hansen, J., Ruedy, R., Sato, M., Lo, K., Global surface temperature change, Rev. Geophys. 48, RG4004, 2010.
2 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, eds. S. Solomon, et al., Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 2007.
3 Hansen, J., Storms of My Grandchildren, Bloomsbury, New York, 304 pp., 2009.
4 Mishchenko, M.I., et al., Accurate monitoring of terrestrial aerosols and total solar irradiance, Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., May, 677-691, 2007
5 Philander, S.G., Our Affair with El Nino: How We Transformed an Enchanting Peruvian Current into a Global Climate Hazard, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 288 pp., 2006.
6 http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/article/2012/summer-2012-recap & http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/
7 Hansen, J. Sato, M., Greenhouse gas growth rates, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 101, 16109-16114, 2004.
8 Hansen, J., Sato, M., Ruedy, R., Lacis, A., Oinas, V., Global warming in the twenty-first century:an alternative scenario, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 97, 9875-9880. 2000.
9 Hansen, J.,Sato, M., Ruedy, R., Kharecha, P., Lacis, A., Miller, R., Nazarenko, L., Lo, K., Schmidt, G.A., Russell, G., et al., Dangerous human-made interference with climate: a GISS modelE study, Atmos. Chem. Phys. 7, 2287-2312, 2007.
10 Hansen, J., Sato, M., Kharecha, P., von Schuckmann, K., Earth’s energy imbalance and implications, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 13421-13449, 2011.” via Climate Depot 

===========================
.
  .
.

No comments: