Audubon Goes over the Edge (Jan/Feb 2016 issue) promotes anti-science alarmism)

[This is a reprint of an article published by MasterResource.Org in 2016.  We have included it as an archive post by CASF member, Bob Endlich]

By Bob Endlich — February 4, 2016

“Audubon’s equivocal policy on wind power ostensibly calls on wind energy developers to consider planning, siting, and operating wind farms in a manner that avoids bird carnage and supports ‘strong enforcement’ of laws protecting birds and wildlife. On the other hand, the same Audubon policy speaks about ‘species extinctions and other catastrophic effects of climate change’ and ‘pollution from fossil fuels’.”

The cover of the January-February 2016 issue of Audubon Magazine  proclaims: Arctic on the Edge: As global warming opens our most critical bird habitat, the world is closing in. In reality, it is the magazine’s writers and editors who have gone over the edge with their misleading reports on the Arctic.

This magazine is so awash in misstatements of fact and plain ignorance of history, science, and culture, that Continue reading “Audubon Goes over the Edge (Jan/Feb 2016 issue) promotes anti-science alarmism)”

Climate Change: A Serious Threat to Science

by

Marita Noon

The current cold covering a large portion of the country has, once again, brought out the climate change alarmists with claims of “serious threat.”

[This article by Marita Noon was originally posted on the Townhall:Finance web site on January 27th, 2014.  It is being reproduced here under the Fair Use Doctrine.]

Marita Noon
Marita Noon

Due to his respected position, as climate scientist at the University of California, San Diego Institution of Oceanography, Richard C.J. Somerville’s recent “Cold comfort” column was published in newspapers throughout the country.

In it, he grouses that the public doesn’t take the “consequences” of climate Continue reading “Climate Change: A Serious Threat to Science”

Seasonal Radiative Response

 

[This was originally posted in 2013 on Judith Curry’s site and was authored by CASF member, Steve McGee.  We have included it here as part of the CASF Archive.  Posted on December 26, 2013 | 169 Comments]

by Steve McGee

In science, one likes to have more examples than theories. – Dusan Djuric

Those words, spoken whimsically about cosmology, apply to climate science as well. The theory of the sensitivity of climate to the radiative SFCTforcing imposed by a doubling of carbon dioxide suffers from a lack of observed, repeatable examples. Paleo-climate studies carry with them the uncertainty of the proxy data and unmeasured assumptions on which they are based. Studies regarding the forcing from volcanoes and other transient events may not be repeatable for some time. However, Lindzen et. al. 1995 (link ) and Ramanathan and Inamdar in Frontiers of Climate Modeling, 2006 (link ) each have pointed out that the seasonal variation of earth temperature is quite large and possibly a surrogate for climate change. With this in mind, I set out to determine how the seasonal variation Continue reading “Seasonal Radiative Response”

History falsifies climate alarmist sea level claims

Seas have been rising and falling for thousands of years – without help from the EPA or IPCC

[This is a reprint of an essay originally published by wattsupwiththat.com and authored by CASF member, Bob Endlich.  It is being reprinted here as part of the CASF Archive for 2013.]

Anthony Watts / December 2, 2013

Seas have been rising and falling for thousands of years – without help from the EPA or IPCC

Guest essay by Robert W. Endlich

Sea levels are rising rapidly! Coastal communities are becoming more vulnerable to storms and storm surges! Small island nations are going to disappear beneath the waves!

Climate alarmists have been making these claims for years, trying to tie them to events like “Superstorm” Sandy, which was below Category 1 hurricane strength when it struck New York City in October 2012, and Typhoon Haiyan, which plowed into the low-lying central Philippines in November 2013.

For alarmists, it does not seem to matter that the strength and frequency of tropical storms have been decreasing in recent years, while the rate of sea level rise has fallen to about seven inches per century. Nor does it seem to matter that the lost lives and property have little to do with the storms’ sheer power. Their destructive impact was caused by their hitting heavily populated areas, where governments had not adequately informed Continue reading “History falsifies climate alarmist sea level claims”

Is Earth in Energy Deficit?

The concept of ‘missing heat’ implies that a surplus of energy exists to be missed. And the NASA GISS Model E projects a trend of increasing energy surplus.

 

[This post on earth's energy budget analysis origninally appeared on Judith Curry's web site and was authored by CASF member, Steve McGee,in 2013.  We have added it to this site as part of our archive.  Posted on November 28, 2013 | 673 Comment]

by Steve McGee

Unlike many fiscal budgets, earth’s energy budget is widely believed to be in surplus.

With each year of increasing amounts of greenhouse gasses, earth is modeled to send less energy outward than it receives from the sun. This energy surplus, as understood, continues until the global average temperature rises sufficiently to restore balance by emitting more energy in accordance with the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. Indeed, the concept of ‘missing heat’ implies that a surplus of energy exists to be missed. And the NASA GISS Model E projects a trend of increasing energy surplus. The runs of Model E for “Dangerous Human-Made Interference” (from 2007) A1B scenario ( available at  link) yield this projection for net radiance at the top of the atmosphere:

GISS_Dangerous_LatTime

attachment-01

Notice the increasing trend of anomalous net radiance.

With this in mind, but on another matter I recently examined the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis. The CFSR is a newer reanalysis described by Saha, Suranjana, and Coauthors, in 2010: The NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 91, 1015.1057. doi: 10.1175/2010BAMS3001.1

The CFSR monthly data sets are available at [link].

The CFSR is the first reanalysis from NCEP to use radiance observations from the menagerie of past satellites. The CFSR also uses the AER RRTM radiative model to fill in the gaps of satellite data. The RRTM is the same radiative code used by many climate models. By subtracting the top of the atmosphere outgoing infrared from the net shortwave radiative flux, one arrives at the net radiative flux. And by dividing the outgoing shortwave radiative flux by the incoming shortwave radiative flux, one arrives at albedo. Examples for March of 1979 appear as:

bud

 

Due to missing values, all data for the year 1994 are excluded. By calculating the spatially weighted global annual averages, the time series of various fields yield interesting results. The data for the top of the atmosphere net radiance appear as:

AnnualCFS_NRAD

The CFSR Net Radiance data indicate radiative deficit following the El Chichon volcanic eruption in 1982, and again following the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in 1991. Also, the peak net radiative surplus appears during 1997 which coincides with the anomalously warm El Nino event. I was quite surprised, however, to note that the years 2001 through 2008 indicate net radiative deficit and that the overall trend was toward decreasing net radiance.

Should I have been surprised? Perhaps not. Net radiation, particularly the shortwave component, is known to be quite difficult to measure because shortwave reflection varies greatly with respect to the angle of observation  depending upon the composition, size, shape, and orientation of clouds and earth’s surface. Further, the very process of reanalysis can add spurious errors. That is why NCAR ( the National Center for Atmospheric Research ) warns that reanalysis should not be equated with “observations” or “reality.”

Still, while not “observation” nor “reality”, the CFSR does represent a best assessment of  the recent climate based on observations and the same radiative codes that lie within the prognostic climate mod

So what does this imply?

To the extent that the CFSR radiance is accurate, it implies that earth was in radiative deficit, not surplus, for the decade of the 2000s and that for this decade, there is no ‘missing heat’ to be found.

The negative trend in CFSR net radiation implies a divergence from the NASA GISS model projections cited above.

The CFSR net radiative deficit also implies that energy loss to space, rather than shifting of energy within the climate system may be responsible for the negative trend since 2001 in many of the global temperature data sets.

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Biosketch:  Steve McGee has a bachelor of science degree in meteorology. His long career of software engineering includes the development of numerous defense related systems providing analysis and display weather and atmospheric effects.