Time To Put Talk Of The Global Warming "Pause" On Permanent Hiatus

No, global warming hasn’t “paused.” It hasn’t stopped. And it certainly hasn’t reversed. It would be wonderful if that were the case. But it’s not. Demonstrably, provably, it’s not. In fact, global warming has accelerated over the period of the alleged “pause” (http://bit.ly/1qW3B0P). When one understands the physics of the accumulating energy imbalance in the climate system on the whole, he shouldn’t expect global warming to stop (http://bit.ly/1uNO5Dj). Not with atmospheric CO2 concentration currently hovering at 400 parts per million, 43% higher than the pre-Industrial 280ppm (http://bit.ly/1qOKzJf). Not with atmospheric CO2 concentration rising 2-3ppm per year; the 2.9ppm increase in 2013 was the largest year-to-year change in three decades (http://bit.ly/YJ9inZ; http://bit.ly/1oLWnaM). Not with 2.3% of warming accumulating in the atmosphere and 93.4% of excess heat going into the oceans (http://bit.ly/1qB1CQm). (The excess heat accumulating in the system is equivalent to the energy of 4 Hiroshima bombs per second (http://bit.ly/1sSaGje). The increase in global ocean heat content is measured at around 20x10^22 joules (http://bit.ly/1ww41xO)). Not with the continued massive decline in Arctic sea ice area and volume, even with two years of uptick from the 2012 record low (http://1.usa.gov/1qUMQS9). Not with land ice sheets continuing to lose gigatons of mass annually (http://bit.ly/1qUMRp7; http://1.usa.gov/1qW49Un). Not with global sea level rising without surcease (http://1.usa.gov/1uxV3Om). Not with parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet already on an irreversible course to complete collapse (http://bit.ly/1uNOkOE; http://1.usa.gov/YJ9OCC). Not with multiple other lines of evidence all indicating the continued warming of the climate system due to the energy imbalance caused by the man-made buildup in the atmosphere of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Beyond understanding the basic physics of why we shouldn’t expect the energy imbalance in the global climate system to slow or stop, the so-called “pause” is susceptible to scientific scrutiny. It can be analyzed to determine whether it’s true, whether it’s a data artifact, what internal and external factors may be causing it, and whether climate models are skillful at simulating it. In a number of recent studies, scientists have done just that.

First, one should understand the “pause” derives from a “double cherry-pick.” It reflects the choice of a short-term trend beginning with 1998 and focuses only on the atmospheric component of the climate system where less than 3% of total warming accumulates. A short-term interval of 10 to 15 years is unreliable for making determinations about long-term climate patterns. Variations in internal and external forcings over short time scales can create noise that obscures the underlying signal. Multi-decadal observations are more reliable, as short-term noise tends to recede against the long-term signal. Further, focusing on the atmosphere where less than 3% of warming accumulates yields an incomplete, even misleading, picture. While some have pointed to the apparent pause in surface temperature warming to claim global warming has slowed or stopped, the evidence shows global warming continuing apace in the climate system on whole (http://bit.ly/1qW3B0P).

Apart from its cherry-picked derivation, what does science tell us about the apparent pause in surface temperature rise over the period since 1997?

Particularly strong El Niño conditions prevailed in the Pacific in 1997-98. It was, in fact, a record El Niño year, surpassed only by the 2010 El Niño. The warmer sea surface temperature (SST) associated with El Niño conditions contributes to the warming of atmospheric surface temperature. Consequently, 1998 is the hottest year on record outside the 21st century. Cherry-picking 1998 as the first year of the short-term trend stacks the deck with an anomalously high starting point. Further, between 1998 and 2012, La Niña conditions were more prevalent than El Niño. The cooler SST under La Niña conditions has a slight cooling effect on atmospheric surface temperature. In addition, the increased gradient between La Niña’s slightly cooler SST and the overlying air in contact with the ocean surface causes more atmospheric heat to be absorbed in the ocean. Recent research reveals unprecedented ocean warming since 1998, particularly in the deep ocean (http://bit.ly/1uxViJq). During much of the same period, the Sun was in a prolonged solar minimum, producing a slight cooling effect (http://bit.ly/1y6LpGx;http://1.usa.gov/1y341ao). With the unusually warm 1998 as the starting year, coupled with the solar minimum, accelerated uptake of heat in the ocean, and La Niña conditions predominating in the Pacific, global average atmospheric surface temperature appears to rise more slowly over the ensuing 15-year period relative to the long-term trend -- hence, the “pause.”

Yet despite the predominance of La Niña conditions, the prolonged solar minimum, and increased ocean heat uptake, 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record (http://bit.ly/1wtBx82); it likely was the warmest in thousands of years (http://bit.ly/1qB2Jzj). Each of the 12 years from 2001-2012 features one of the 14 warmest years on record. Interestingly, if one looks at the 15-year period 1996-2010 instead of the period 1998-2012, not only is there no apparent pause, but the trend is slightly greater than the long-term trend (http://bit.ly/1msUbql). Moreover, the apparent slowing in the rate of surface temperature rise between 1998-2012 does not break the long-term trend, which is unambiguously upward.

In The Guardian a couple weeks ago Dana Nuccitelli summarized several recent studies that looked at the apparent slowdown in atmospheric surface temperature (http://bit.ly/Xma0X1). As noted already, the science shows some of the apparent slowdown is attributable to the slight decrease in solar irradiance during the solar minimum, to the predominance of La Niña conditions (otherwise known as the negative phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)), and to increased deep ocean heating. Volcanic activity since 1998 also was elevated. The sulfurous aerosols volcanoes spew into the atmosphere reflect incoming solar radiation back to space, producing a cooling effect. Changes in solar output, volcanic activity, and ocean cycles can’t be predicted accurately over short periods. One should not expect climate models that are designed to simulate climate patterns over long timescales to provide precise short-term forecasts given the unpredictability over short timespans of variations in certain internal (ocean cycles) and external (volcanism, solar radiation) forcings. Over the long term, however, these factors tend to be stable and make little difference on the climate change human activities are causing. When scientists include the observed short-term changes in ENSO, solar output, and volcanic activity, the climate models accurately simulate about half the observed surface temperature change over the period of the “pause.”

Another contributor to the apparent “pause” is a data artifact. Gaps in the weather station network used to collect temperature data exist in the polar regions and parts of Africa. We know surface temperature in the Arctic is rising faster than the rest of the world (http://bit.ly/YJa8kO). The under-representation of polar data produces a cooling bias in the calculation of global average surface temperature. Gavin Schmidt explains how a team of scientists filled in the gaps using statistical techniques and satellite data (http://bit.ly/1lAHwjX). The scientists found filling in the data gaps accounted for nearly half the difference between the observed temperature and modeled simulations.

When the data gaps and solar, volcanic, and ocean data are all accounted for, the models accurately simulate the observed global average surface temperature rise over the period since 1997.

In sum, science reveals there has been no pause in the energy imbalance accumulating in the climate system on whole since 1997. Short-term, unpredictable variations in internal and external forcings account for a portion of the apparent slowdown in surface temperature rise. Gaps in weather station data, particularly from the rapidly warming Arctic, account for the remainder. The majority of excess heat has been taken up by the oceans. When the models are updated with the gap data and short-term forcing variations, they accurately simulate the observed surface temperature change since 1997. Borrowing Gavin Schmidt’s terminology, the models are in fact skillful (http://bit.ly/1wlnyy4; see also “Well-estimated global warming by climate models” by Stephen Lewandowsky: http://bit.ly/1uD6ljx).

This exercise in examining the “pause” is emblematic of how science works. We started with the curious observation of an apparent slowing in global surface temperature rise. Scientists undertook to discover an explanation for it, and they succeeded. Now, we have a fuller understanding of the climate picture over the past decade and a half. We know that global warming has not slowed or stopped. Understanding the physics of the global energy imbalance, we can reasonably expect it not only to continue, but when the Pacific ENSO switches from negative to positive phase and the current Atlantic heat uptake cycle switches (http://bit.ly/1sUG2FP), as they invariably will at some point, we can expect surface temperature rise to accelerate.

A key aspect of the enterprise of science is that we remain open-minded to revise our thinking based on new information. The recent research on the “pause” allows us to discard as myth the idea of a global warming hiatus. Richard Feynman famously said, “Science is what we do to keep from lying to ourselves.” With the emergent scientific evidence showing no pause in global warming, we ought to expect reputable media outlets to stop treating those who stubbornly refuse to revise their thinking in the face of the evidence and continue to assert claims that have been debunked as legitimate, earnest participants in the climate conversation. For decades “merchants of doubt” have succeeded in preventing or delaying actions to address climate change by spreading misinformation and promulgating false claims. We cannot afford another decade of dithering (http://bit.ly/1wuQUNq;http://bit.ly/1oLWnaM). So let's put the talk of a global warming "pause" on permanent hiatus and move on to discussing solutions.

Further reading:

“Is Global Warming Really Slowing Down?”by Chris Mooney: http://bit.ly/1qB1MHd

“Who Created the Global Warming Pause?” by Chris Mooney: http://bit.ly/1msUbql

“Yeah, About That Global Warming ‘Pause’…” by Phil Plait:http://slate.me/1wmsoLN

“Still No Support for Global Warming ‘Slowdown’” by Kieran Mulvaney:http://bit.ly/YLClav

In Defense of Science - Jonathan Bines' superb piece and my comment

In light of the gallingly awful Ebola media coverage and condemnably irresponsible, opportunistic fear-mongering emanating from many in (and aspiring to be in) the elected class that at times borders on seditious, this piece deserves to be shared … and widely http://huff.to/1vnWaRq. Scientists expert in virology, epidemiology, and infectious disease are now experiencing what climate scientists, evolutionary biologists, and vaccination experts have endured for years: disingenuous skepticism and ideologically motivated distrust from manifestly ignorant and unlearned, epistemically closed ignoramuses who shun learned expertise, rationality, and informed advice in favor of factually unsupported and unsupportable feel-good fictions. The “I’m not a scientist” response some have resorted to uttering of late is a facile, intellectually lazy cop-out tantamount to dereliction by those entrusted with the solemn responsibility of governance, and it is detrimental to public welfare. You’re not a scientist? Fine, no problem. You resolutely refuse to learn or in good faith to acknowledge and consider carefully the information proffered by those who through diligent, focused study possess superior knowledge and expertise which you do not?—then go away so serious people can communicate and address the issue with the lucidity and seriousness it warrants. Your unlettered public utterances serve only to sow confusion and unnecessary worry. And what a pathetic low we have sunk to that late night comedy writers—here, Kimmel’s Jonathan Bines—and satirists—John Oliver, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert—have come frequently to perform better than much “serious” media the public service of articulating the merits of science and spotlighting public figures’ nonsense.

A Blueprint to End Paralysis Over Global Action on Climate by Timothy E. Wirth and Thomas A. Daschle

Former U.S. Senators Tim Wirth and Tom Daschle have written a thoughtful, valuable piece for YaleE360 titled A Blueprint to End Paralysis Over Global Action on Climate. It ought to be read by heads of state ahead of the Climate Summit in New York City slated for September 2014, and by delegates to the upcoming international climate talks in Lima, Peru in December 2014 and Paris in December 2015. The authors make a compelling argument that a change in focus from burden sharing to incentivizing a "race to the top" in low-carbon energy solutions and eco-efficiencies might well produce a change in psychology conducive to achieving an agreement.

Notably absent from the article, however, is any mention of nuclear energy as one of those low-carbon energy solutions. Given the magnitude and duration of the projected impacts of climate change, ought we not weigh the benefits and risks of nuclear energy in the calculus of determining which decarbonisation pathways we might pursue? Would not a risk-risk analysis of nuclear energy versus global warming be warranted? As a graduate student I learned from then-Director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, Professor John D. Graham, a thorough consideration of risk management policy options entails analyzing risk versus risk.

I also would note, the "pledge and review" approach the authors describe should be guided by the global carbon budget--how much oil, coal and gas could still "safely" be burned. Scientists calculate no more than about 565 gigatons of CO2 can be emitted if we have any reasonable hope of not exceeding 2 degrees C of warming.

I look forward to seeing whether and to what extent the authors' blueprint shapes the upcoming climate discussions in New York City, Lima, and Paris.

A Few Resources on the True Costs of Fossil Fuel-Based Energy

The following is my contribution to a comment thread on LinkedIn in which someone was attempting to argue that alternative energies, such as wind and solar, were not competitive with fossil fuels. It appeared he had not studied economics, as he did not understand the long-recognized externalities associated with fossil fuel-based energy.

---my comment below---

To analyze the net cost of renewable energies like wind and solar versus the net costs of fossil hydrocarbon-based energy, one must account for the negative externalities of carbon-based energy that are not reflected in the market price, as well as the billions of dollars of direct subsidies the fossil energy sector receives that both artificially depress the market price and cause alternatives to appear high by comparison. When those factors are accounted for in economic analyses, renewables achieve parity with or even become more attractive than fossil fuels. Following are a number of elucidating resources:

• Resources for the Future, "The True Cost of ElectricPower"
• International Monetary Fund, "Energy SubsidyReform"
• Skeptical Science on subsidies 
• Skeptical Science, "The True Cost of Coal Power" 
• What's the Real Cost of Fossil Fuels

A number of recent analyses demonstrate that decarbonising the economy will be less costly than continuing to rely on fossil fuels, and that the longer we delay the transition, the costlier it will become:

• Energy Technology Perspectives 2014 
• The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook; also discussed by Joe Romm here. A key conclusion of the IEA is that “Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”
• IPCC's 2014 Mitigation Report described here by Joe Romm 
• A Climate Risk Assessment for the United States, the Risky Business project chaired by Henry Paulson, Michael Bloomberg and Thomas Steyer mentioned by Andrew Winston in his piece.

One may think of the transition from a fossil energy economy to a decarbonised energy economy as an example of Schumpeterian "creative destruction." No doubt, such transitions are not painless, especially in this case of more than a century's worth of legacy fossil fuel infrastructure and fossil carbon-based economic development. And there will be losers and winners. But the growing body of scientific evidence of global warming and the many economic/risk analyses have informed our understanding to the point where we know with high certainty that embracing that transition now, while not entirely painless, will be far less costly and painful than waiting to embrace it later. We also know that the market's failure to reflect the externalities of fossil fuels in the market price of fossil energy, together with price- and behavior-distorting subsidies, are contributing to that delay. As Andrew points out above and at greater length in his book The Big Pivot, companies such as Wal-Mart, IKEA, Nestle, Ford, Unilever, Rio Tinto, HP and many others, are not waiting. They are already strategically implementing alternative energy, eco-efficiency and sustainability plans. And they are finding it profitable and competitively advantageous to do so.

My comment on a bad climate piece

A friend shared a climate piece on my facebook and asked for my take. The piece is titled "Why Climate Change Doesn't Scare Me". My comment follows:

There is so much the author gets wrong in that piece that if I were to correct every falsity, every incorrect assertion of science, every flawed premise, every ideologically motivated conclusion, every instance of a myth, misconstruction, or misunderstanding that has been debunked, and every example of motivated reasoning, and if I included references to support each rebuttal point—unlike this author who provides not one citation—the result likely would be a paper at least twice as long as this person’s original piece. It would require hours of my time. He gets almost nothing correct. And that’s not an exaggeration; literally, every paragraph is riddled with errors. Am I surprised? No. I’ve seen this kind of piffle time and again. Authors like this use sciencey words and sciencey-sounding reasoning to portray themselves as scientifically literate at some level. But by the number of things they get wrong they reveal not just how basic that level truly is, but how large the disparity is between their zones of competence: think of 2 concentric circles, a small inner circle representing what one knows surrounded by a larger outer circle representing what one thinks he knows. What frustrates me is that the amount of actual science freely available to anyone with a browser and internet connection is immense. For free one could educate himself, thus expanding his circle of competence and (hopefully) contracting the circle of what he thinks he knows. Great places to start are skepticalscience.com, Gavin Schmidt’s realclimate.org, climate.nasa.gov, the IPCC Assessment Reports (even the relatively short Summaries for Policymakers), and the National Climate Assessment. And I must suppress my urge to fact-check every instance of error, lest I spend an entire day drafting a rebuttal the educational value of which would be nil because authors of pieces like this tend to be rigidly ideological and epistemically closed.

A couple other points. Regardless of one’s political identification as libertarian, conservative or liberal, no one is “forced” to declare anything. The science says what the science says; one can learn it, evaluate it, question it, and propose and test alternative theories and submit his findings for scrutiny by the scientific community. That’s how science works. Unfortunately, one’s a priori heuristics, biases, and political disposition do affect how he or she views the science. A fair amount of scholarly research has been done on that front, including Yale’s Dan Kahan if I'm not mistaken. Our scientific understanding of the climate--past, present and future--has been building since the early 1800s beginning with the Frenchman Fourrier and continuing through the 19th century with the Englishman Tyndall and the Swede Arrhenius. One can read about them here. The climate-related changes to the physical and biological systems described in the IPCC reports are based on more than 29,000 data series, selected from a larger universe of almost 80,000, 90% of which point in the direction of anthropogenically-caused warming. Taking a skeptical stance when viewing anything, including the climate issue, is healthy. But when someone like the author of the piece above is so dismissive in the face of 200 years of science and such a mountain of evidence, it probably would be prudent to be at least as skeptical of him.

Lastly, whether by a carbon tax or by a cap-and-trade mechanism, pricing fossil hydrocarbons is warranted. Fossil hydrocarbon emissions are attended by well-known negative externalities that are not accurately reflected in the price we pay for them, from human health morbidity/mortality and environmental/ecological degradation to global warming/climate change. In the market, things that are underpriced get overused, as we’re doing with fossil hydrocarbons. Why are they underpriced and overused? Without writing a separate lengthy economic discourse, which I could, in short it’s because the atmosphere is a “commons”, and the classic commons problems occur. Putting a price on carbon, either by a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade mechanism, both of which have their advantages and disadvantages, is a means to overcome the market failure produced by the commons problem.

As for the terms “climate change” and “global warming”, one can use them interchangeably. The globe is in fact warming—lower troposphere, upper ocean (0-700m), deep ocean (below 700m), cyrosphere. We can measure and observe that. We have and we continue to. We can evaluate the factors that produce it: Milankovich cycles; internal variability (e.g., La Niña and El Niño); total solar irradiance; volcanoes; land use, forestry/deforestation and agriculture; and human emissions of GHGs. Climate is in fact changing. Even this past winter’s snowfall and cold temps in the mid-latitudes of North America (while the rest of the world was warmer on average, by the way, and Australia’s summer was a record-breaker) are being attributed to increased temps over the Arctic that caused big, prolonged dips in the jet stream’s Rossby waves and allowed the Polar vortex to dip into those latitudes (an area of research somewhat new, but on the forefront of which is Jennifer Francis at Rutgers). Notably, the “climate change” versus “global warming” terminology choice can be traced to Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s 2002 memo.

We’ve just passed 400ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, the first time it has been that high in millions of years. It was 280ppm before the Industrial Revolution, a 43% increase. It’s been stable within about 240-300ppm over the pre-industrial eons in which human civilization developed. We’re on a path toward 500ppm and higher. The Relative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) depicted in the 2013 IPCC Working Group I Assessment Report show the projections of CO2 concentrations and temperature changes under various emissions scenarios. Looking at the RCPs, there is legitimate cause to be concerned, indeed alarmed, about where we’re heading. The Defense Department is taking the science of climate change seriously; the insurance industry is taking it seriously; the International Energy Agency is taking it seriously; companies are taking it seriously (see, e.g, The Big Pivot by Andrew Winston); and countries around the world are taking it seriously. About the only group in the world which, as a bloc, is not taking it seriously are Republicans in the United States who have chosen to embrace ignorance, unlearnedness, and anti-intellectualism as values over learnedness, enlightenment, and reason.

From August 2013 - Educating a climate denialist

Cold snaps during recent winters may be due in part to global warming causing what is known as negative phase Arctic Oscillation (AO). See http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=48882; see also http://www.celsias.com/article/arctic-oscillation-fails-chilling-europe-florida/; and http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2011/2011-03-02-02.html

I recommend one study data from scientifically reliable and reputable sources, such as NOAA/NCDC, rather than known unreliable, ideologically motivated, discredited sources such as Heartland Institute, Daily Mail, and the WSJ editorial page. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html; http://berkeleyearth.org/results-summary/ (this is former skeptic Richard Muller's recent study out of Berkeley.) See also, e.g., http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/20/global-warming-study-climate-sceptics.

If one doesn't believe the data, then impeach that data by highlighting their insufficiency, inadequacy or gaps, or rebut them with other data and submit your work to a scientific journal for peer review. That is how science works. While climate science is a system science, the various components and empirical data inputs that go into that system science are amenable to the scientific method. Human belief is not one of those components. Natural laws (of physics, chemistry, quantum mechanics, cosmology, evolution, etc.) and emergent scientific truths, of which anthropogenic global climate disruption is one, do not depend on human belief for their existence and veracity.

Cooling? No demonstrable warming trend? False. Unless one does not know how to read a graph.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-land-ocean-mntp-anom/201001-201012.gif

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-january-2007-to-january-2008.htm; http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-intermediate.htm

The marked divergence between expected and observed beginning around 1970 corresponds to anthropogenic forcings, not natural variability (which is accounted for in models). http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/milankovitch-cycles (see graph, "Natural vs. Modern Climate Path").

How do we know it's anthropogenic? Science: http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm

For a risk management approach to confronting the policy challenges of global warming, see, e.g., Wesleyan U. economist Gary Yohe, here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5695/416.full; and here http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2101