This is my response to the posting on the lead-free mailing list about 2001 being
the "second warmest year on record".
Me thinks this is an exercise for a statistician. Certainly there must be one (or
at least a math type person) out there. This article by Brown raises many
questions: first of all is "why do it in the first place?" Here it is, past the
second week in December and they are saying "Global temperature data for the first
10 months of 2001 indicate that it LIKELY [emphasis added] will be the second
warmest year since recordkeeping began in 1867" Why the first 10 months? Why
exclude two months that will be among the coldest? What temperatures are they
estimating for November and December? They don't say. Or maybe they just took
the 10 months of data, divided by 10 to get a monthly average and then multiplied
by 12. That would skew the data by assuming that Nov. and Dec. will be the
average of the first ten months, which is highly unlikely. Couldn't they wait
until January 2, 2002 (I'll let them celebrate New Year's Day) when all data would
be in? Wouldn't that make for a more accurate statement? This article reeks of
manipulation of data.
Also, note the way this article tries to gain credibility by associating itself
with NASA. "Monthly global temperature data compiled by NASA's Goddard Institute
for Space Studies in a series based on meteorological station estimates going back
to 1867 show that September 2001 was the warmest September on record." NASA does
not say that 2001 was the hottest, they merely compiled the data. Earth-Policy
took that data to make their "analysis". Also suspect is the statement "...in a
series based on meteorological station estimates going back to 1867..." So the
data is from meteorological stations (i.e. ground based stations - which, unless
adjusted for the urban heat island effect, are highly suspect) and they are
"...ESTIMATES [emphasis added] going back to 1867..." So what is so magical about
1867? As long as they are estimating why not go back to 1866 or 1766 or 1066
during the Medieval Optimum when temperatures were much higher than they are
today?
As for the science: Two recent news items that you all might have seen. One was
about a "cold snap" in Europe, with a photo showing a van near Barcelona, Spain
buried under snow. Certainly there are members of this mailing list who live in
Southern Europe, perhaps they can confirm - or refute - that this is an unusually
cold winter for them. For the story see:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/20011215/wl/1008434528spain_snow_mad110.html
The other story was "Study Suggests Mars Ice Caps Eroding" about global warming on
Mars. See
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011206/sc/snows_of_mars_1.html
"By PAUL RECER,
AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Vast fields of carbon dioxide ice are eroding
from the poles of Mars, suggesting that the climate of the Red Planet is warming
and the atmosphere is becoming slightly more dense.
Experts say that over time such changes could allow water to return to
the Martian surface and turn the frigid planet into a 'shirt-sleeve environment.'"
"How could that be?" you may ask. Who's driving big American cars on the red
planet, where are the electricity plants? Is NASA withholding something from us?
What is happening of course is that the Sun is warming the planet and the carbon
dioxide sinks, in Mars' case - the ice caps - are giving up their CO2 to the
atmosphere. In other words, global warming causes increases in CO2 in the
atmosphere - on Mars. But why not on the earth, too? Are the rules of physics
different on Mars than on Earth?
As an aside, I was amused by this statement in the AP article: "Some experts
suggested that any speculation about a Martian climate change is premature. 'This
is a really neat observation,' said Allan H. Treiman of the Lunar and Planetary
Institute in Houston. But he said the pictures span a time too short to make
predictions about permanent changes in the Mars climate. 'We don't have enough
data on Mars to draw any clear conclusions about climate change'' he said."
No kidding!!
Maybe it is happening on Earth too. See the study done by Dr Jarl Ahlbeck of the
Abo Akademi University, Finland entitled "Increase of the Atmospheric Carbon
Dioxide Concentration due to Ocean Warming" at
http://www.vision.net.au/~daly/oceanco2/oceanco2.htm .
Also there was an article which appeared in the March 15, 1999 Washington Post
"Studies May Alter Insights Into Warming"
By Curt Suplee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Page A7
.... studies of the Earth's ancient atmosphere may alter the way scientists
understand the relationship between airborne carbon dioxide and climate
change--and hence the dynamics of future "greenhouse" global warming.
In [a] study, reported in the March 12 issue of the journal Science, Scripps
[Institution of Oceanography] investigators addressed one of the most vexing
"chicken-and-egg" questions in climate research. Namely, when the Earth shifts
from glacial to warm periods (as it does every 100,000 years or so), which comes
first: an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, or an increase in global
temperature? Contrary to what many believe, the team concluded that the
temperature rise comes first, followed by a carbon dioxide boost 400 to 1,000
years later.
That's what the researchers found at glacial-interglacial transitions from
240,000, 140,000 and 13,000 years ago. That sequence of events appears to
contradict the fundamental logic of simple greenhouse warming theories, which
argue that increases in heat-trapping gases will be followed by higher surface
temperatures. **** The Scripps-Bern authors writing in Nature found that at the
beginning of the Holocene, the atmosphere contained about 268 parts per million by
volume of carbon dioxide, up from 180 to 200 ppmv in the depths of the last ice
age about 18,000 years ago. By the late 1700s, it had risen to 285 ppmv. (Since
then, the concentration has climbed to 364 ppmv and is still growing. That is, it
rose by the same amount--80 ppmv--in the past 200 years that it had from the
coldest part of the previous ice age to the late 1700s.)
In accordance with orthodox notions, 'one commonly referred to the 'preindustrial
CO2 concentration of 280 ppmv,' ' as if it were constant, Stocker said. But now
"this has to be revised," he noted.
As the world warmed its way out of the last ice age, carbon dioxide levels first
dipped to 260 ppmv about 8,200 years ago, probably because receding glaciers made
way for the increasing vegetation that took up a lot of gas. But then the carbon
dioxide content began to creep back up as ocean temperatures rose (decreasing the
amount of dissolved gas oceans could hold) and land masses cooled and dried out
(decreasing the carbon-trapping activity of photosynthesis).
'The direct relevance of this finding,' said Jean Lynch-Stieglitz of
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, 'is that we can expect
that as climate warms, the terrestrial biosphere will probably be capable of
holding more carbon than it can today.' "
One last comment. A laboratory study undertaken by Dr. Heinz Hug, Wiesbaden,
Germany (see The Climate Catastrophe - A Spectroscopic Artifact? -
http://www.vision.net.au/~daly/artifact.htm - states "Laboratory measurements of
the infrared absorption of carbon dioxide using an FT-IR spectrometre suggest that
the radiative forcing for CO2 doubling must be much less than assumed by climate
scientists until now. A reduction factor of 80 is likely." In other words, CO2
is a lousy greenhouse gas if warming is what you are looking for.
Chuck Dolci
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