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Writing about the climate crisis My slow awakening to climate change Climate sceptics answered: | Dear Mr Goossens Thanks for the opening compliment. It’s not the case that the IPCC assessments have been restricted to examining anthropogenic climate effects. When the first assessment was adopted here in Sweden in 1990, Working Group I reported already then on a variety of factors, including radiative forcing. You suggest that global warming can be attributed to solar activity. Actually, radiometers on a variety of space platforms since November 1978 have shown a decline in total irradiation (World Radiation Centre TSI, Davos). Conversely, in this same period there has been rapid and dramatic warming. Regarding the linear nature of temperature increases versus carbon dioxide concentrations, CO2 is not the only factor forcing change in surface temperature. For example, short-lived aeorosols can have an important impact. This is illustrated by the temperature record for the 1990s. There is a sharp drop in '92, '93 and '94 when massive amounts of SO2 were ejected into the stratosphere by Mount Pinatubo's eruption. Furthermore, Meehl et al (2004) used a DOE global climate model to show 20th century average surface temperature relative to solar irradiation, ozone, volcanic activity, sulphates and greenhouse gases. They concluded that between 1900 and 1994 global warming should be attributed to a 0.69C temperature forcing from greenhouse gases offset by a 0.27C cooling due to man-made sulphates. Regarding the hockey stick, numerous studies have shown this kind of anomolous warming, not just Mann et al in 1998 and 1999. The non-peer reviewed work by McIntyre and McKitrick in 2003 has been called into question by peer reviewed scientific literature, for example Rutherford and colleagues (2004) in the American Meteorological Society Journal, Journal of Climate. You complain about my reliance on “blind statistics”, but at least I’m drawing mine from the peer reviewed literature. We can agree that water vapour is the dominant greenhouse gas, but not that it causes global warming. We live in a water world where massive quantities of water are entering and leaving the atmosphere all the time. Residence time is estimated as a matter of days for water vapour. Converseley, 56% of the CO2 humans have ever liberated by burning fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere today (Kump, L.R., 2002). As this accumulating trace greenhouse gas reflects more heat back to Earth it raises surface temperatures slightly, thus, as you desribe, increasing moisture in the air and water in clouds, and amplifying the warming. This is a feedback effect, not a forcing, as you suggest. Finally, you say that the hydroprocessing industry is challenged to remedy misguided policy by producing better climate models. I beg to differ. Even if there were a hydroprocessing industry consensus of skepticism to climate change, which there is not, it would be unwise to attempt a modelling effort. Many responsible HPI leaders recognise that there is sufficient information to act. Their challenge now is to do the right thing, do it effectively and do it quickly. It may feel different where you are. Most of the skeptical correspondence I’ve had on this subject has come from the US and I can understand that from this perspective, outside of ROW so to speak, it may seem that the science of climate change is in general dispute. It’s not. ROW (rest of world) companies have moved on. So have many leading US corporations and states. This week Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer appealed, not for the first time, for legislative intervention to create “a climate for change” so that his company could more effectively “attack CO2”. Last week I spoke to two impassioned BP managers building Carson Hydrogen Power. Between times, Vattenfall, the Swedish power group and Europe’s second largest corporate emitter of CO2, has launched the Combat Climate Change. It makes “an urgent request to the global community and its representatives” to integrate climate issues into world markets by 2013. In other words, they want carbon priced. Policy makers are responding: Deftly in California, somewhat painstakingly here in the EU. The European Commission’s Strategic Energy Review calls for large cuts in EU CO2 emissions by 2020. It wants EU unilateral reductions of 20%, or 30% as part of a global framework. Much of the HPI is responding to the challenge. But not in the way you seem to hope. Society rewards companies that do the right thing. That’s why those joining the Vattenfall Combat Climate Change initiative include GE, ABB, PG&E, Siemens, Bayer, Alstom, E.ON and Enel. TLW | ||||
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Wingo is the project we started here on the archipelago outside Gothenburg to create a model of winning sustainable local development. You can visit wingo's website here. The website of our wind park has only just been registered. | |||||
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