The Current Wisdom

TWO BOMBS SCRAMBLE CLIMATE EGGS

One of the little amusements about the current enrage over climate is that changes in the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect are somehow supposed to be the sole main driver of climate change. Changes in the earth's orbital parameters have a small effect, but no one can get them to make an ice age unless a concomitant change in the greenhouse effect is invoked. Then it was pointed out that the sun is an inconstant star, and that its fluctuations may have some influence on our climate. Most astute students of the earth's climate history might be a bit perplexed, because there are known changes that can be inferred from geological records, and no apparent matchup between the earth's orbit, greenhouse gases, and many of the changes.

This, unfortunately, is the way science works. Most do no ask impertinent questions, especially given the current reward structure. Several books have been written on this, although our $0.02 opinion is that the late Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions has been the best. He argues that few scientists choose to question existing "paradigms" (here, that greenhouse and orbital parameter changes explain geologic history), because it is just more secure to agree with your colleagues. (For a more brazen, in-depth look at this, be sure to read The Satanic Gases by yr. obt. svt., new in 2000). A reasonable estimate is that about 98% of all scientists spend their careers telling each other that their overall view of things is right.

So it is rather amusing to see two recent papers that call into serious question the prevailing paradigm. It is also rather amusing to read the papers, each of which choose to demur from what they do.

EGG ON CHICKEN LITTLE

For years now, several scientists and political figures (including one currently interviewing for the nations Top Job) have cited the correspondence between inferred temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations trapped in ice cores in Antarctica and Greenland as the strongest evidence that the computer forecasts of warming gloom-and-doom made by complicated computer models are correct. Carbon Dioxide = egg, global warming = chicken.

Critics argued that a close inspection of published ice core histories (see indicated that changes in temperature might slightly precede the carbon dioxide fluctuations. They used the sophisticated tools of eyeballs and straight-edge rulers applied to illustrations such as the one shown here.

The problem is the initial ice-core records didn't have enough precision to confirm either point of view. Now it does and it looks like the skeptics were guarding the henhouse after all.

Writing in a recent issue of Science, Hubertus Fisher and four colleagues from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography found, in ice core records from Antarctica that "Carbon Dioxide concentrations increased by about 80 to 100 parts per million volume 600±400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations." (emphasis added).

During the next-to-last glacial cycle, this happened:

"During the penultimate warm period, CO₂ concentrations reach their maximum 400±200 years later than Antarctic temperatures". Following that warmth, temperatures began their long descent into the current ice age, but CO₂ changes were nowhere to be found:

"In the following 15,000 years of the Eemian warm period, CO₂ concentrations do not show a substantial change despite distinct cooling over the Antarctic ice sheet. Not until 6000 years after [emphasis added] a major cooling....does the substantial decline in CO₂ occur."

It appears the chicken and the egg may have been switched at birth!

A close look at ice core records from Antarctica reveals that cooling trends tend to occur before drops in atmoshperic carbon dioxide levels.

Not to worry, though. Fisher et al. can't bring themselves to actually own up to the fact that they are confronting the climate change paradigm. "In the case of a recent anthropogenic warming, the external climate forcing by CO₂ emissions due to combustion of fossil fuels leads [precedes] climate variations". Too bad that roughly half of the 20th century warming occurred before the CO₂ had changed much...sounds like what happened in the ice cores!

Reference: Fisher, H., et al., 1999. Ice core records of atmospheric CO2 around the last three glacial terminations. Science 283, 1712-1714.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE MIOCENE...

...things are heating up! Hard after Fisher et al. demonstrated that glacial/interglacial climate changes can precede changes in carbon dioxide, M. Pagani and two coworkers demonstrate that the warmest period in the last 35,000,000 years was not accompanied by an enhanced carbon dioxide greenhouse effect.

This period, known as the "Miocene Climatic Optimum", had midlatitude annual temperatures averaging around 10°F higher than today. Given the expected winter/summer differential sensitivity to climate fluctuations, this might translate into winters averaging 15° above the current average here. No wonder it's called the the "Climatic Optimum"!

(For what it's worth, climate textbooks of the 1970s—before warming became politically incorrect—also referred to the period from 4,000 to 7,000 years ago, when the earth was 2-3ºF warmer than today, as the "Climatic Optimum", because the warming accompanied the rise of agriculture and civilization)

Describing this article in Nature, Benjamin Flower writes that "Many workers believe that high CO₂ levels, in combination with oceanographic changes, caused Miocene global warming by the greenhouse effect". Not so, according to this new paper. Fowler writes "[Pagani et al.] conclude that greenhouse warming by high CO₂ cannot explain miocene warmth, and that other mechanisms must have had a greater influence".

Relationship between Miocene temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

Gets worse after the Miocene optimum: "rising [emphasis ours] CO₂ levels accompany global cooling [emphasis ours] and expansion of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet about 12.5-14 million years ago."

It seems safe to say the chicken-egg relationship between carbon dioxide and climate seems a bit scrambled—like maybe an omelet with ground chicken filling.

Not to worry, though, Flower can keep a paradigm going with the best of the 98% of scientists who spend their lives doing it. Now it's even worse than we thought! "This research "raises the prospect that projected CO₂ levels in the next century...may be the highest of at least the past 25 million years". Perhaps the correct response is: "so what"?

Reference: Flower, B. R., 1999. Warming without high CO2? Nature 399, 313-314.

LEGAL BEAGLES: KYOTO and KYOTO LITE

A little note on the legislative process with respect to global warming may be in order.

Most everyone who reads this has heard of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is an unratified modification to the treaty that says we will reduce our net emissions of carbon dioxide (and a few very minor other gases) to seven percent below 1990 levels by the averaging period 2008-2012.

The problem is that our emissions have been rising rapidly since 1990, owing in no small part to the articulated engines of low energy prices and economic growth. by the end of last year we were around 14% above where we were in 1990. If we merely continued to emit at the same rate until 2010, we would be 35% ahead of 1990 by then. But the Kyoto Protocol requires us to reduce emissions seven percent below 1990 values, or somewhere around 42% beneath where we would have normally trajected by 2010.

The fact that a number of our economic competitors don't have to do a thing was not lost in the public discussion of Kyoto; nor were estimates of substantial costs from all but one econometric model. After our "negotiators" at Kyoto (perhaps they should have been "facilitators") agreed to this mess, pundits calculated a total of—maybe—12 votes for the Protocol in the Senate, which requires a two-thirds majority for ratification. Congressman John Dingell (R-MI) , regarded by friend and foe alike as one of the most perceptive and savvy politicians of the 20th century has said that the Protocol is "so flawed, in fact, that it cannot be salvaged".

Well, Kyoto is hardly dead; its like one of those little Pokemon that just disappears only to emerge as a slightly different beast. In its place we now have S.547, the "Credit for Voluntary Reductions Act"

The concept is pretty simple, seems fair, and the real objective is hidden. Sounds like good legislation! S. 547 allows a company to be "credited" for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are made prior to approval of the Kyoto Protocol. This credit can be in the form of a "tradeable permit", which can be sold to another industry that cannot reduce its emissions enough to comply with the treaty.

The argument is quite simple: Company E, while striving for efficiency discovers, how to emit less greenhouse gas, even though Kyoto hasn't passed the Senate. Once Kyoto has passed, S 547 gives company E credit for its activities prior to passage.

"Tradeable permits" and "credits" work like this. A national inventory of greenhouse gases is required under the treaty. Each industry or corporation contributed some to that inventory. A goal is then established, say, a reduction in emissions to 7% below 1990 levels (just as Kyoto says). Each increment that an industry reduces emissions below a certain amount creates a "credit" that can be sold, at market prices, to another industry that can't or does not want to meet that target.

It has other subtle benefits for some. Suppose company E has recently acquired large amounts of natural gas, which it intended to substitute for coal in power generation. They get an emissions credit for the roughly 30% (depending upon assumptions and technology) of CO₂ saving that results from this fuel substitution. Upon passage of Kyoto, a coal fired utility, which cannot reduce emissions further, has to buy the gas company's credit in order to stay in business. The market, recognizing the desperation of all of the coal fired utilities, bids up the price of the credits to the point that the gas company's competition in power production is severely, if not fatally damaged.

Further, whatever industries stand to gain in this exercise now deploy their PACs in support of Kyoto; otherwise they do not gain this advantage.

In other words, S. 547 is not an alternative to Kyoto at all; instead it is a vehicle to ensure that the Kyoto Protocol is eventually ratified by two-thirds of the United States Senate.

VOODOO ENVIRONOMICS

More than a year ago, Janet Yellin, the head of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, told Congress that it would cost only $7 to $12 billion dollars annually to meet our commitments under the Kyoto Protocol (see above). She did this again last month, although the top was around $14 billion. That's still chicken feed—about $100 per family per year. Almost all the other estimates are real turkey: computer models with more realistic assumptions than the White House version put the cost around $350 billion per year, or about 25 times the amount touted , or $2500 per family.

As noted above, somehow, we are going to reduce our total net emissions of carbon dioxide etc...by over 40% from where they would get in 2010 if we just keep on with our pernicious economic growth. No one knows how to foster such reductions without making energy more expensive to use. Thanks to the U.S. Constitution, the feds just can't command everybody to use their air conditioners less or to forgo that shiny Ford Valdez.

So, does anyone believe this proposition: One way or another, we make the net energy cost to your household $100 more per year, and that discourages your use enough to effect, nationally, an aggregate 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2010. Remember that about 1/3 of our national emissions come from transportation (your new Ford Valdez is built to last, too), 1/3 from the production of electrical power (don't forget, every new baby and every immigrant is a consumer), and 1/3 is from manufacturing (the fine folks who built the Valdez). Is Janet Yellen kidding?

And don't forget how much global warming this will prevent by 2050, according to Federal Climatologist Tom M.L. Wigley at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). It's shown on our graph, but you can barely see it, because it is 0.07ºC.  So, do you think all the thermometers on the planet can be accurately read (or give readings sufficiently accurate) to detect 0.07º?

According to NCAR, the amount of projected warming that will be "saved" if everyone does what they said they would do under the Kyoto Protocol is 0.07°C by the year 2010.  Our chart assumes a growth rate in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide that is more consistent with the behavior of the last ten years than it is in other models.