Appendix 1. Climatic change, Kyoto and the future

 

Introduction

 

No sensible person denies the fact of climate change or indeed the fact that climate is warming at this time. It would indeed be rather odd if it were not. We are in the midst of an interglacial warm period, one of many which are embedded in a cyclic succession of cold periods, some of them ice-ages, which have repeated inexorably many tens of times during the past 1.5 to 2 million years.

 

The fact of man-made global warming is more controversial, but as noted in Section 5 (Calculating CO₂ emissions and saving), whether or not one accepts the tenets of a simple, one-factor CO₂ -driven model of climatic warming it can be shown that wind power in particular cannot provide a significant or cost effective means of displacing CO₂ emission, or limiting fossil fuel consumption sufficiently to alter climate.

 

However the assumption that man-made CO₂ will cause the world to become a warmer place is advanced as a prime reason for limiting the burning of fossil fuel. One approach has been the introduction of several sources of renewably generated electricity. At the moment wind power is the fastest growing of these.

 

What ‘they’ say

 

“Harnessing the natural power of the wind is essential to tackle global warming.” Yes2wind Home-page http://www.yes2wind.com/

 

The above claim is untrue, but it is advanced so often that a brief discussion of the nature of global warming is presented in this Appendix for interested readers.

 

The Kyoto Protocol

 

In response to fears of man-made global warming many governments have adopted the terms of the Kyoto Protocol which is an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Countries that ratify the protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases (see notes), or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases.

 

The targeted reduction of collective emissions of greenhouse gases will be 5.2% compared to the year 1990 (compared with the emissions levels that would be expected by 2010 without the Protocol, this target represents a 29% cut).

 

In 2002, all fifteen then-members of the European Union ratified the Protocol at the UN. The EU produces around 22% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and has agreed to a cut, on average, by 8% from 1990 emission levels.

 

The UK chose to adopt a more stringent target of a 12.5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (from 1990 baseline) by 2008 to 2012. However, the government subsequently affirmed a domestic goal of 20% by 2010. The contribution from the British power generating industry is set to be 10% of total electricity generation from renewables by 2010.

 

The major global emitter, the USA, has however failed to ratify the Protocol, as has Australia, whilst the two developing countries, China and India have ratified the protocol but are not required to reduce carbon emissions under the present agreement though their fossil-fuelled emissions are rising at a formidable rate which will make them second only to the US by mid-century (the US currently contributes about a quarter of global CO2 emission).

 

Emission trading.  

 

The UK Emissions Trading Scheme is a voluntary scheme covering emissions of greenhouse gases... The idea is that businesses reduce their emissions and receive tradable 'allowances' in return. One Allowance Unit equals one tonne of CO₂. These allowances can be traded in a 'virtual' open market hosted on a website overseen by Defra. The revenue from selling allowances is an incentive to businesses to reduce their emissions. http://www.netregs.gov.uk/netregs/275207/1018642/?version=1&lang=_e

 

The Netregs website says the process “… is complex, and a full explanation of its working is beyond the scope of this website.”! It is. More detail can be found at http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/trading/uk/index.htm?lang=_e .

 

The mechanism ‘works’ as a money generator. The UK recently announced their option to sell an 8% 'over-achievement' against the UK's emissions reductions commitment to the US for around £100 million! Rather like the RO arrangement it seems that money may be as important as emission control in this matter.

 

As I finally proof-read this document (May 2006) there are rumblings that  many power companies have benefited from increases in electricity prices brought about by the EU carbon credit scheme, without needing to make any extra investment in return with the possibility that the unwarranted profit could reach around £1bn (BBC News, May 1). Despite this, carbon prices continue a collapse that has wiped up to 50 percent off the value of carbon during late April. Watch this space!

 

 

What is 'global warming'?

 

A simplistic answer to this requires a little bit of physics. Energy from the sun reaches us as short-wave radiation (a mixture of visible light, ultraviolet and infra red). The atmosphere and earth's surface absorb some of this radiation, the balance being reflected back to the cosmos.

 

This absorption of radiant energy warms earth's surface and atmosphere, and without a balancing process earth would rapidly heat up to a lethal temperature. The balance is provided by loss of long wave infra-red radiation (radiant heat).

 

It is a matter of geological history that these two processes have maintained an equilibrium temperature in the very narrow 'window' for the molecular structure of life for over 3.5 billion years. Living processes cannot continue much below 0^o Celsius and above about 60^o to 70^o C almost all organisms die.

 

That I am here to write this, and you are reading it at this moment in geological time is of great significance to the controversy about 'global warming' and the future!

 

The 'normal' state for the earth is that balance between incoming and outgoing radiation maintains a life-supporting temperature within these extremes. The balance is governed by the composition of earth's atmosphere. Without atmospheric gases the surface of a planet shows dramatic temperature swings well down toward absolute zero (minus 273^o C at night and up to several hundred ^oC during the day.

 

The presence of an atmosphere both ‘shades’ and 'blankets' this effect. Incoming short wave radiation is attenuated by the gases of earth's atmosphere and a substantial proportion is reflected back to space from cloud tops (cloud being a mist of very fine water droplets). The net income of solar radiation warms the earth and its atmosphere.

 

This warming is balanced by the long-wave energy loss from surface and atmosphere to space. Water vapour and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are particularly effective at 'blanketing' long wave loss. Water vapour is the major greenhouse gas accounting for some 95% of the infra-red blanketing and its concentration is barely affected in the short term by human activities because the greatest sources are evaporation from ocean surfaces and from vegetation (though the atmosphere can hold more water vapour if it is warmer).

 

Carbon dioxide CO₂ is a minor constituent of the atmosphere despite its overwhelming importance to life as the source of carbon for photosynthesis. Its concentration was less then 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), or 0.028% v/v, prior to the Industrial Revolution. The burning of fossil fuels has increased this by about a third, to 373 ppmv in 2002, thus it is still a very minor component by volume or mass.

 

However CO₂ is a very active 'greenhouse gas' being transparent to the short wave income but strongly absorbing the upward flux of long-wave thermal infra-red. As a result it has been assumed from the early 19th century that increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentration would cause temperature increase - often known as 'global warming'. Fourier (1807) first advanced the 'greenhouse' analogy and Arrhenius in 1896 attempted to calculate temperature changes related to different CO₂ concentrations.

 

Has global temperature been constant in the past?

 

Most certainly not. Through deep geological time, the earth's mean temperature has fluctuated widely but always within the 'window' for life to persist. The latest geological Period, the Quaternary, covering the past 2 million or so years has seen a cyclic repetition of many warm and cold periods - the coldest becoming full glaciations ("Ice Ages"). We know from ice-core records that CO₂ and another greenhouse gas, methane (CH₄) rose and fell in concentration synchronously with warming and cooling - possible even slightly preceding  the temperature changes. There could of course have been no ‘anthropogenic’ effect on CO₂ concentration during any of these oscillations.

 

The present time is a mid- to late-interglacial, of which there have been many cyclic recurrences. The peak temperatures at our latitude became sub-tropical last time (fossil evidence) and almost certainly this will happen again. ‘Chemical fossil’ evidence from  ice-cores in the Antarctic and Greenland tells us that atmospheric CO₂ and CH₄  increased in concentration during these interglacial warming periods and then declined again as the following glacial periods ensued. There were no industrialised humans burning coal at these times!

 

During our current interglacial, the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere has been rising in sporadic fashion since the glacial maximum (c.18, 000 years ago). Warming was faster during the final de-glaciation (ended c.10,000 years ago) but has continued sporadically ever since - much more slowly in the past 2,000-3,000 years.

 

By the middle of last interglacial period the sea level had risen several metres above present OD, as a result of thermal expansion and partial melting of landlocked "ice-caps". Wales has some spectacular remains of "raised-beaches" which record the last such event which, it is certain, will recur. As part of this natural geological process, the sea will reach a similar level within possibly hundreds, and certainly thousands, of years. We can do nothing to prevent this and need to plan for it.

 

It is indeed possible that the human contribution to CO₂ enrichment may speed the warming process but before embarking on policy decisions, the proponents of warming must explain how CO₂ and CH₄ increased previously without human intervention. More crucially, how did the concentration decline again as the climate cooled into the succeeding glaciation? What physical process flip-flops warming and cooling in the absence of human interference. We do not know.

 

Not only have we the geochemical and physical record of very large, cyclic temperature oscillations causing the glacial-interglacial periods, we also know in some detail that our present interglacial has repeatedly warmed and cooled to a lesser extent. The Bronze Age temperature optimum in N Europe began with warming in c. 2700 BC, lasting until c. 650 BC when a deterioriating, wetter and colder climate introduced the Iron Age. The Medieval Warm Period (750-1300 AD) marked the next temperature increase allowing  Norse settlers to colonise Greenland where there are the archaeological proofs of burials amongst tree roots on surfaces which are now tundra-covered permafrost and could not, today, support trees. According to pioneering climatologist, Hubert Lamb, sea ice was unknown south of 70^o north between 1026 and 1194.

 

The MWP was followed by the plummeting temperatures of the Little Ice Age (LIA) spanning the mid-1500s to the early 1800s.  The settlements in Greenland died, and by the late 1800s, montane snow lines were 100 m lower than in the 1970s. One remarkable historical and artistic record was provided by the frost fairs which were held on the Thames in London from about 1500 to the last, in 1813-14. The middle of the LIA coincided with the Maunder Minimum of low sunspot activity (some years having no sunspots at all).

 

Beginning around 1850, the world's climate began warming again and the Little Ice Age may be said to have come to an end at that time. It is possible that the Earth's climate is still recovering from the Little Ice Age accounting for the sporadic rise of temperature throughout the 20^th century. It has indeed been suggested that the LIA was the beginning of a Rapid Climate Change Event (RCCE) which the ice core record suggests should last 1000 years or more: this is discussed below.

 

Despite the remarkable body of evidence for considerable historical and earlier climatic change, with CO₂ and CH₄ fluctuation unrelated to human activity, we now assume there is a CO₂-mediated warming problem which should be 'stopped' even though we do not understand how the mechanism works. We cannot even suggest causes for its functioning in the geological past when CO₂ and CH₄ increased and decreased without human intervention. Removing gear wheels in a clock, to make it keep time, comes to mind!

 

Is there a true consensus on 'global warming'?

 

What 'they' say.

 

"To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest."

(Dr Stephen Schneider, leading US proponent of ‘global warming’ in an interview for "Discover" magazine, Oct 1989)

 

“Scientists don't have a Hippocratic oath, but we have to tell the truth. Everybody's truth is relative.”  (Dr Stephen Schneider in an interview for PBS (Public Broadcasting Service website 2006)

 

"On one hand we have the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the rest of the world’s major scientific organisations as well as the Government’s major scientific organisations all pointing to the need to cut emissions. And on the other, we have sceptics... who deny that the scientists are right." (President of the Royal Society, Sir Robert May 2005)

 

And the 'other side'?

 

"We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations." (HoL Select Committee on Economic Affairs 2005)

 

“Much of the billions of dollars earmarked for implementation of the protocol in Canada will be squandered without a proper assessment of recent developments in climate science… If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.” (Open letter to Canadian Prime Minister, signed by 60 senior scientists – April 2006 – see note on Canada - Kyoto) 

The doubt about human induced global warming is not a matter of denying climate change but of questioning the mathematical modelling process which relies largely on a single factor: CO₂ concentration. The IPCC presents 19 sophisticated models of the climate system that give 19 different answers as to what would happen if the CO₂ concentration were to double. This does not inspire confidence in the IPCC's conclusion. Many analyses neglect, or are unable to allow for, the potential negative feedbacks (see notes) caused by several other factors such as cloud (i); some ignore the non-linearity of rate controlling relationships with e.g. CO₂ concentration (ii); many neglect the known variations of solar income related to orbital and other astronomical and atmospheric processes (iii) and no attention is paid to the likely course of natural change (iv).

 

i. Cloud

 

Cloud is made up of water droplets which reflect a large amount of incoming sunlight back to space. It may also absorb some of it and become warmer. It may also serve as a ‘blanket’, preventing the escape of long wave infra red radiation.

 

Rising temperature causes more evaporation of water and increases the water holding capacity of air so inducing cloud formation which might cause warming - or it might cause cooling. Meteorologists don’t know which and, in 2000, the IPCC wrote: -

 

 "The sign of the net cloud feedback is still a matter of uncertainty."

 

This is still true and without knowing whether cloud causes a net positive or net negative feedback no climate-predictive model can give a valid output.

 

ii. Saturation of the long wave infra-red absorption curve of CO₂

 

Surface heating by the ‘blanketing’ of long wave infra red loss is not linearly related to CO₂ concentration

 

Imagine coating a greenhouse with shading-paint: it absorbs and reflects sunlight, reducing the intensity in the ‘greenhouse below. Paint another layer and less light enters the greenhouse. Repeat several more times and the greenhouse becomes ‘dark’. Addition of more shading has no further significant affect. CO₂ has exactly this effect on the outward transmission of long wave infra red from earth’s surface and is already in near the 'last coat’ concentration.

 

For this reason, doubling present CO₂ concentration would not of necessity double the equilibrium temperature change. Global warming protagonist Stephen Schneider, cited above, was thinking differently in 1971 when he wrote that: - “although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.” (Schneider & Rasool, 1971). However our knowledge of atmospheric physics has not changed since then and yet Schneider told a BBC Channel 4 audience in 1990 that: -

 

"The rate of change [of temperature] is so fast that I don't hesitate to call it potentially catastrophic for ecosystems".

 

iii. The equilibration-time of CO₂ mediated ‘warming’ processes

 

Sir John Houghton, IPCC, recently told the Welsh Assembly Government that even if we totally stopped all world emissions (no industry, no transport, no fossil fuel and no electricity), it would take between 50 and 100 years before temperature increase and sea level rise stopped (Houghton 2002).

 

The raison d’étre of Houghton’s statement is that ocean water contains both dissolved CO₂ and also chemically combined CO₂ in the form of the bicarbonate anion, both in contact with geologically large amounts of calcium carbonate. The equilibration time of atmospheric CO₂ with ocean water is long but the ‘buffer’ action of the CO₂ – carbonate – bicarbonate is much longer – many tens of years so any reduction of CO₂ input to the system will be balanced by CO₂ release from the ocean buffer.

 

vi. Astronomic and other external controls

 

Solar irradiance has more impact on climate than small changes in atmospheric chemistry. Doubling the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere would have the same effect as increasing input of solar radiation by 0.1% more or less... This is about what ACRIM has measured for the solar fluctuations. http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/varsun.html .

 

Solar irradiance of the upper atmosphere varies naturally with both solar activity and earth's orbital changes whilst the heating effect on atmosphere and surface is also influenced by natural variations in cloud cover, volcanic dust and atmospheric chemistry, some of them cyclic. Further periodic and random changes of surface climate may be controlled by alteration in the circulation patterns of ocean and atmosphere.

 

In the very short term the 11-year sunspot cycle has relatively little effect on global weather but longer cyclic minima in solar activity can been seen around 1300 (Wolf Minimum), 1500 (Spörer Minimum), 1700 (Maunder Minimum), with a smaller excursion around 1800. A solar variation thus coincided with the close of the Medieval Warm Period and the onset of the Little Ice Age (see: Has global temperature been constant in the past?)

 

On a longer time scale, according to the founder of the Climatic Research Unit, UEA, the cyclic variation in earth's orbit "seems to put the thesis that these orbital variations control the timing of ice ages and interglacial periods beyond reasonable doubt" (Lamb 1995).

 

More recently evidence has accumulated from other parts of the solar system - for example, in 2005 NASA reported for, the third year running, a shrinkage of the frozen carbon dioxide 'ice-cap' near the south pole of Mars, which suggests that climatic warming is in progress ( http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20050920a.html ). This is most likely to be a function of changing solar irradiance (unless we assume emissions from Martian canal-barges!).

 

Until much more information is available it is a dubious interpretation to suggest that the current warming trend on earth is controlled entirely by CO2 as a single driver.

 

v. What might be happening naturally?

 

A serious flaw in the application of temperature trend models to current events is that the starting point has been assumed to be an average temperature climate approximating that of the past century.

 

However Paul Mayewski gives another slant to this.  Mayewski was the leader of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) and his work has highlighted the common occurrence of Rapid Climate Change Events (RCCEs) during the recent warm period (Mayewski & White 2002).

 

Mayewski suggests that the Little Ice Age (see above) was a typical RCCE, in which case it should have lasted over 1000 years starting from the 1500s, as did the Younger Dryas period, and the many other RCCEs in the core and sediment records.

 

However, this did not happen and by the early 1800s the LIA cold had started to recede, which Mayewski interprets as the beginning of anthropogenic CO₂ warming.

 

 In the event of Mayewski being right, then our industrial tampering has actually kicked the Northern Hemisphere into a climatic condition which is far more favourable for humanity than it would be if the 1000 year LIA were still running its course. Again, suggestions for interference with climatic processes seem akin to tampering with the gear wheels in a clock! Good thing perhaps that “windmills cannot change the weather”!