Error-Riddled Matt Ridley Piece Lowballs Climate Change, Discredits Wall Street Journal. World Faces 10°F.

Leading Scientists Debunk Ridley Piece, Even Climatologist Cited by WSJ Says Ridley "Is Just Plain Wrong About Future Warming"

Memo to media, deniers: "Climate sensitivity" is NOT the same as projected future warming!

Projected warming even with (an unlikely) low climate sensitivity of between 1.5°C and 2.0°C from Michael Ring et al 2012. A WSJ op-ed that cites this work absurdly concludes "Evidence points to a further rise of just 1°C by 2100." Not. Not even close.

Every major projection of future warming makes clear that if we keep listening to the falsehoods of the anti-science crowd and keep taking no serious action to reduce carbon pollution we face catastrophic 9°F to 11°F [5°C to 6°C] warming over most of the United States and World (see literature review here).

The Wall Street Journal, however, has published a piece, "Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change," that (falsely) asserts observations suggest global warming will be so low as to "be benificial." This risible piece by Matt Ridley is so riddled with basic math and science errors it raises the question of how the Journal can possibly maintain its reputation as a credible source of news and financial analysis.

Ridley and the Journal apparently don't know the difference between water vapor and clouds. They don't understand the basic concept of climate sensitivity. And they can't do simple math. Naturally, the climate deniers have embraced this nonsense and spread it across the internet.

I wasn't going to waste time with the umpteenth debunking of the Wall Street Journal's nonsense - especially one written by someone whose "family leases land for coal mining"! But one of Ridley many basic mistakes is one I have seen often in the media - the confusion of the "climate sensitivity" (to a doubling of CO2 levels to 560 parts per million) with projected warming (from actual greenhouse gas levels projected for this century). That confusion needs clearing up (again).

Fist, though, let me start by quoting some of the country's leading climate experts on an excellent debunking piece by Media Matters, "WSJ's Climate 'Dynamite' Is A Dud":

[A]s John Abraham, an IPCC reviewer and the director of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, put it to Media Matters: the column "has such elementary errors in it that [it] casts doubt on the author's understanding of any aspects of climate change."

... Boston University's Robert Kaufmann, lead author of a 2011 sulfur emissions study, agreed:

I know of no evidence that would suggest that the temperature effect of sulfur emissions are small. This conclusion is totally at odds with my peer reviewed publication in the area, which indicate that sulfur emissions have a significant effect on temperature.

With regard to the feedback effect of water vapor: Kevin Trenberth, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Media Matters in an email: "water vapor effects are well established as an amplifier (strong positive feedback)." Abraham further noted that Ridley has apparently confused water vapor with clouds, whose effects are not as well understood. He said, "it is very clear water vapor ... is an amplifying effect. It is a very strong warmer for the climate" and challenged Ridley to name the anonymous scientist who gave him his information.

With regard to the rate of ocean heat absorption: Trenberth wrote: "On the contrary there is now very good evidence that a LOT of heat is going into the deep ocean in unprecedented ways, which completely undermines this sort of argument. OHC [Ocean Heat Content] keeps increasing at a fairly steady rate, just as sea level keeps going up."

A good discussion of the latest science on ocean heat content can be found here.

To expand on what Abraham said, it is head-exploding and self-discrediting for Ridley and the Wall Street Journal to print this for millions to read:

And then, as one Nobel Prize-winning physicist with a senior role in combating climate change admitted to me the other day: "We don't even know the sign" of water vapor's effect-in other words, whether it speeds up or slows down a warming of the atmosphere.

Climate models are known to poorly simulate clouds, and given clouds' very strong effect on the climate system-some types cooling the Earth either by shading it or by transporting heat up and cold down in thunderstorms, and others warming the Earth by blocking outgoing radiation-it remains highly plausible that there is no net positive feedback from water vapor.

An unnamed physicist? Seriously, WSJ? What's next. "A guy I met in an underground parking lot"?

If Ridley did in fact talk to a Nobel prize-winning physicist then that person almost certainly did not make the mistake Ridley did and confuse "water vapor's effect" - where we most certainly know the sign (it speeds up warming) with cloud's effect (where there is a tad more uncertainty). Yet even in that case, the new IPCC draft report, upon which Ridley makes all his claims finds:

Various feedbacks associated with water vapour can now be quantified, and together they are assessed to be very likely positive and therefore to amplify climate changes. The net radiative feedback due to all cloud types is likely positive.

Ridley and the WSJ cite on their behalf recent work by Ring and Schlesinger to help make the case that we face a warming of only another 1°C this century for a total cumulative warning of under 2°C:

An impressive study published this year by Magne Aldrin of the Norwegian Computing Center and colleagues gives a most-likely estimate of 1.6°C. Michael Ring and Michael Schlesinger of the University of Illinois, using the most trustworthy temperature record, also estimate 1.6°C.

The problem is that Ridley apparently doesn't have the first clue what the climate sensitivity means, which is a key reason why Dr. Schlesinger has written a letter to the WSJ (below) explaining

"In his article, Mr. Ridley is just plain wrong about future global warming."

It bears repeating that the amount of warming we are going to subject our children and countless future generations to depends primarily on three factors:

1. The so-called "equilibrium climate sensitivity" - the sensitivity of the climate to fast feedbacks like sea ice and water vapor - or how much warming you get if we only double CO2 emissions to 560 ppm and there are no major "slow" feedbacks. We know the fast feedbacks, like water vapor, are strong by themselves (see Study: Water-vapor feedback is "strong and positive," so we face "warming of several degrees Celsius" and Skeptical Science piece here).
2. The real-world slower (decade-scale) feedbacks, such as tundra melt (see "Carbon Feedback From Thawing Permafrost Will Likely Add 0.4°F - 1.5°F To Total Global Warming By 2100".
3. The actual CO2 concentration level we are likely to hit, which is far beyond 550 ppm (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: "Recent observations confirm ... the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories are being realised" - 1000 ppm).

Given that the anti-science, pro-pollution forces seem to be succeeding in their fight to keep us on our current emissions path, it's no surprise that multiple recent analyses conclude that we face a temperature rise that is far, far beyond dangerous (see links below).

Schlesinger's full letter to the WSJ is:

In "Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change" (WJS, 19 December 2012), Matt Ridley mentions the findings of my Climate Research Group's paper "Causes of the Warming Observed Since the 19th Century"

(http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=24283).
In his article, Mr. Ridley is just plain wrong about future global warming. In our paper "A Fair Plan to Safeguard Earth's Climate" (http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=20038), we show that by the middle of this century the warming will exceed the 2°C (3.6°F) maximum allowed by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to "prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".

In that paper and its sequel, "A Revised Fair Plan to Safeguard Earth's Climate" (http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=23864), we phase out the emission of greenhouse gases this century such that the cumulative greenhouse-gas emissions by the Developing and Developed Countries are equal. Both Plans keep global warming below the UNFCCC allowable maximum of 2°C.

Schlesinger sent an email around to some journalists and scientists that included a figure from his work, which I posted at the top.

It is worth noting that there is a healthy debate about Schlesinger's low estimate (see here). Kevin Trenberth, for one, says the analysis is not correct.

Indeed, Trenberth coauthored a major new study of actual observations of relative humidity finds "that warming is likely to be on the high side of current projections ... projecting a global temperature rise for doubled carbon dioxide of more than 7 degrees F" - see "Science Stunner: Observations Support Predictions Of Extreme Warming And Worse Droughts This Century."

And Schlesinger himself says it would be unwise to plan on a low sensitivity given the very real risks that it is not so low. I queried Schlesinger about whether his analysis included the feedback from the permafrost. He wrote me back:

What will most likely happen is ... permanent outgassing of carbon dioxide from permafrost and methane from clathrates/hydrates. As you know, methane is a greenhouse gas that is 23 times more potent, molecule for molecule, than carbon dioxide. If we hedge not against this outgassing, it's game over.

My Climate Research Group is now writing a paper about sea-level rise throughout this century.

You and the world want not to know about this.

In the scheme of things, we human beings are not a very intelligent species.

All species have a finite lifetime.

Most species do not self exterminate.

While this is a bit hyperbolic, it may not be far from the truth.

So I think it is quite safe to say that it is irresponsible and indefensible to quote Schlesinger's work in an article that concludes the "net effect [of global warming] on the planet may actually be beneficial."

Related Posts:

• Hadley Center: "Catastrophic" 5-7¬∞C warming by 2100 on current emissions path
• M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10¬∞F "" with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20¬∞F
• Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11¬∞F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90¬∞F some 120 days a year - and that isn't the worst case, it's business as usual!"
• "The Copenhagen Diagnosis" warns "Without significant mitigation, the report says global mean warming could reach as high as 7 degrees Celsius by 2100."

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/20/1365671/error-riddled-matt

DOE Approves Field Test for Promising Carbon Capture Technology

A promising post combustion membrane technology that can separate and capture 90 percent of the CO2 from a pulverized coal plant has been successfully demonstrated.

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/news/techlines/2012/12057-DOE_Approves_Ca

Deep-Sea Mining Is Closer Than You Think

Deep-sea mining is poised to become a major growth industry over the next decade -- though the full range of undersea diversity has yet to be discovered. Until the legal framework of mining in international waters catches up to the ready-to-dig reality, cooperative participation from scientists may be the best way to preserve the most fragile, irreplaceable aspects of deep-sea ecosystems.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/deep-sea-mining-is-closer-th

Changing the IPCC to Better Meet The Needs Of International Climate Policy

One seemingly minor and unreported component of the recent UN climate talks in Doha highlights the drawbacks of old-school scientific assessments and the need to modernize the IPCC process.

http://theenergycollective.com/simondonner/160221/changing-ipcc-better

Dithering In Doha: We Need To Re-Frame The Politics Of Climate

by Steve Herz

Last week, a full day after it was scheduled to end, this year's United Nations climate negotiations finally ground to an anticlimactic and dispiriting conclusion.

Despite the near round-the-clock endgame and down-to-the-wire drama, negotiators from more than 194 member countries ultimately had precious little to show for their efforts. Yes, they managed to ensure that the Kyoto Protocol would continue for another term. And they tied up some loose ends from previous meetings and made some incremental progress on emerging issues. But on the core issue affecting the fate of the planet - the need to rapidly reduce emissions to have any hope of keeping climate change to manageable levels - progress was nowhere to be found. They moved the process forward, but the problem rages on.

In one sense, this exceedingly modest outcome was no surprise. From the outset, we were warned that this was just an "implementation" or "transitional" meeting; the big issues were not to be discussed. This is because at last year's meeting in Durban, the Parties decided on a three year schedule to negotiate an overarching agreement, and nothing in the climate negotiations happens until the last possible moment. The Durban timetable all but assured that incrementalism and procrastination would rule the day in Doha.

But in another sense, this summer vacation approach to the negotiations was utterly incomprehensible. The urgent need for action was there for all to see. Many delegates came with vivid, heart-rendering accounts of how climate change was already impacting their countries in ways their governments could not address. Not least, President Obama's negotiating team could point to this summer's searing, unprecedented drought in the Midwest, forest infernos in the Rockies, and of course, the over $70 billion worth of devastation inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

If these calamities weren't a clear enough call to action, informed delegates arrived in Doha with three new hair-on-fire reports in their briefcases that put these impacts in larger context. In November, the global consultancy PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the International Energy Agency both issued papers showing that nothing short of heroic efforts will be necessary to reduce emissions enough to keep global temperature rise below the 3.6°F that most climate scientists believe is the outer bound of "safe" warming. Without such efforts, we'll likely see 7.2°F - 10.8°F of warming by the end of this century. The World Bank followed these assessments with its blockbuster Turn Down the Heat report, which described in appalling detail what a 7.2°F warmer world would actually be like. It's truly scary stuff.

Just as disappointing as the outcome in Doha was the role of the United States in bringing it about. When President Obama first took office, there were great expectations that he would bring about a new era American climate leadership. Instead, the US negotiating posture too often has been characterized by a reluctance to expend real political capital, a hypersensitivity to Congressional extremism, and an unwillingness to lead by example.

Still, there were good reasons to hope that Doha might be the place where the President would begin to fashion a more creative and ambitious negotiating strategy. After all, hadn't President Obama just handily won reelection over an (opportunistically) denialist opponent, and in the flush of victory, affirmed his intent to address the climate crisis in his Second Administration? Didn't superstorm Sandy just drive home the intolerable human costs of a significantly warmer planet in the starkest terms possible? With the election safely behind him and the devastation of Sandy laid out before him, was there ever a fiercer urgency than now?

It was not to be. On every critical issue, the Obama team did just enough to avoid being called out for blocking progress, far less than what was needed, and nowhere near what real leadership required. For example, the US negotiators refused to discuss how the US could ramp up its actions at home, despite the fact that the actions countries have agreed to take before 2020 are not nearly enough to limit warming to 3.6°F, and the US has committed to do much less than other developed countries. The US also made sure that developed countries would not provide any clarity on how they would ramp up climate assistance to developing countries to meet their collective pledge to provide $100 billion a year by 2020.

It has become fashionable to blame the UN process itself for the collective failure to craft an adequate international response to climate change. But the US performance in Doha cannot be attributed to a failure of international politics; it was plainly a failure of politics right here at home. Most of the blame, of course, lies with a Republican opposition that is contemptuous of science, heedless of risk, and beholden to the most regressive fossil fuel interests. But President bears much responsibility as well. Rather than using the power of the Presidency, his high public approval ratings and his peerless rhetorical gifts to change the political dynamics around climate change, he has simply taken the political space as he has found it.

President Obama has two critical opportunities to re-frame America's climate diplomacy in the coming months.

First, he must select a new Secretary of State with a clear sense of the overriding strategic importance of climate change to America's core interests, and the creativity and vision to lead the world towards more ambitious collective action.

Second and more importantly, he must use his State of the Union Address to discuss the stakes and impacts, and explain why an appropriate response is essential for our long-term prosperity and security. He should commit in no uncertain terms that climate change will be a signature priority in his Second Administration. And he should propose a suite of policy initiatives that can swiftly reduce our emissions, and give other nations confidence that we will not shirk our responsibilities.

Together, these actions would go a long way towards ensuring that our climate diplomacy is much more successful in the second Obama Administration than it was in the first.

Steve Herz is a Senior International Climate Attorney with the Sierra Club.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/17/1343391/dithering-in-doha-

Leaked IPCC Draft Report: Recent Warming Is Manmade, Cloud Feedback Is Positive, Inaction Is Suicidal

Ultra-conservative report still concludes sea level rise could reach 6 inches a decade by century's end! Deniers duped by leaker's blunder.

Figure SPM.6.a. Warming in two IPCC scenarios reveals humanity's choice. With aggressive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (RCP 2.6 with 443 ppm of CO2 in 2100), warming is modest and adaptation is plausible. With continued inaction (RCP 8.5 with 936 ppm in 2100), warming is a catastrophic and unmanageable 10°F over much of Earth's habited and arable land - and more than 15°F over the Arctic. This projection ignores many key amplifying feedbacks, such as the release of permafrost carbon, which would likely lead to far greater warming.

The draft 2013 Fifth Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change leaked this week makes clear inaction on climate change would be devastating to modern civilization. The report finds that the human fingerprint on climate has grown more obvious, concluding "it is virtually certain" the energy imbalance that causes global warming "is caused by human activities, primarily by the increase in CO2 concentrations. There is very high confidence that natural forcing contributes only a small fraction to this imbalance."

Yes, I know, the easily-duped deniers and their media stooges have reported the opposite is true, that solar forcing has been a significant driver of recent warming, but the deniers are as likely to be right as the flat earthers. The only question is why anyone still listens to them. I'll repost a debunking of their nonsense below.

The draft Summary for Policymakers (the only thing 99% of people will ever read) finds:

It is extremely likely [">95% probability"] that human activities have caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature since the 1950s. There is high confidence ["About 8 out of 10 chance"] that this has caused large-scale changes in the ocean, in the cryosphere, and in sea level in the second half of the 20th century. Some extreme events have changed as a result of anthropogenic influence.

That multiply-hedged morass is pretty much the mildest statement that could possibly be made. A December 2011 study found it's "Extremely Likely That at Least 74% of Observed Warming Since 1950″ was manmade; it's highly likely all of it was (see Figure 1 below).

For me, the leaked draft, which has not yet been peer reviewed - and thus still has time to be watered down yet more - underscores how pointless the IPCC has become. Like the 4th assessment before it, this ultra-conservative and instantly obsolete report ignores the latest science - see "Fifth Assessment Report Will Ignore Crucial Permafrost Carbon Feedback!" Note that including the permafrost feedback would probably make the RCP8.5 scenario in the top figure as much as 1.5°F warmer!

And like the AR4, the AR5 scenarios low-ball future impacts - "Arctic sea ice area is projected to decrease by 28% for September" for the 2016-2035 period vs. 1986-2005. Seriously IPCC, a 28% drop is the scenario your touting? In fact, as we have reported, many experts warn of "Near Ice-Free Arctic In Summer" in a decade if recent ice volume trends continue.

Even so, the uber-conservative AR5 draft makes clear to anyone who reads between the lines that inaction would be suicidal for humanity, with devastating warming and sea level rise that could hit a half a foot a decade by 2100. How precisely does one adapt to that?

Indeed, the report guts the one remaining myth of those who downplay future impacts, that clouds would act as a negative (or weakening) feedback. It finds:

The net radiative feedback due to all cloud types is likely positive.

But the report fails to clearly spell out what the recent science says about inaction - for that you might try "An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts" or the recentWorld Bank report, which warned "A 4°C [7°F] World Can, And Must, Be Avoided" To Avert "Devastating" Impacts.

So I can't see why AR5 would motivate anyone to act more than AR4 and thus I see little real-world value in the entire effort - see my November 2007 post, "Absolute MUST Read IPCC Report: Debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly"! Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Once again, the authors twist themselves in pretzels to over-hedge every statement with their precise (but inaccurate!) terminology. And so we learn in the draft Summary for Policymakers (SPM):

It is very likely that the Arctic sea ice cover will continue to shrink and thin in the course of the 21st century as global temperature rises.

No, really, it is "very likely" - "> 90% probability" - which I guess means, what, that the IPCC seriously thinks there is an up to 10% chance Arctic sea ice cover will stop shrinking and thinning???

Observations and analysis of drought make clear it is already intensifying in many key regions thanks to global warming - see "NOAA Bombshell: Human-Caused Climate Change Already a Major Factor in More Frequent Mediterranean Droughts" and "Study: Global warming is driving increased frequency of extreme wet or dry summer weather in southeast, so droughts and deluges are likely to get worse." But all AR5 can muster up for the probability of future "increases in frequency and/or intensity of drought" is "Likely [> 66% probability] in some regions" - which I guess means the IPCC thinks there is 1 in 3 chance it won't happen anywhere! How could that be with the kind of warming we will see in the RCP8.5 scenario, which, it must be added is really just business as usual emissions and far from the worst-case?

This failure to warn the public and policymakers echoes the great failing of their 2011 extreme weather report (see "Blockbuster IPCC Chart Hints at Dust-Bowlification, But Report Is Mostly Silent on Warming's Gravest Threat to Humanity").

In it most extreme scenario, RCP8.5 - about 936 ppm of CO2 in 2100 (not a worst-case in the real world because of permafrost and other feedbacks) - sea level rise in 2100 is only about 2 feet. That assumes you can figure out what this means: "The contributions from ice sheet dynamical change and anthropogenic land water storage are treated as independent of scenario, since scenario dependence cannot be evaluated on the basis of existing literature, and as having uniform probability distributions, uncorrelated with the magnitude of global climate change." Clarity ain't the IPCC's strong suit.

In any case, most climate scientists expect considerably higher sea level rise, especially if we don't act. That's what the recent literature says - see "Sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated, could hit 6 feet by 2100" and "JPL bombshell: Polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up, on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050."

Finally, if you read the denier blogs or columnists - and if so, you have no one to blame but yourself - you've probably heard something about how the IPCC finds cosmic rays are a major climate driver. In fact, the SPM finds:

Cosmic rays enhance aerosol nucleation and cloud condensation nuclei production in the free troposphere, but there is high confidence that the effect is too weak to have any significant climatic influence during a solar cycle or over the last century.

For debunkings of the latest denier spin, see here and here and especially here, which has an interview with the lead author of the key draft chapter.

Below I'm reposting a Skeptical Science piece on the subject.

IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun

Posted on 14 December 2012 by dana1981

Alec Rawls, an occasional guest poster on the climate contrarian blog WattsUpWithThat who signed up to review the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (as anyone can), has "leaked" a draft version of the report and declared that it "contains game-changing admission of enhanced solar forcing." This assertion was then repeated by James Delingpole at The Telegraph (with some added colorful language), and probably on many other climate contrarian blogs.

If the IPCC was to report that the sun is a significant player in the current rapid global warming, that would indeed be major news, because the body of peer-reviewed scientific literature and data clearly show that the sun has made little if any contribution to the observed global warming over the past 50+ years (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Percent contributions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), sulfur dioxide (SO2), the sun, volcanoes, and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) to the observed global surface warming over the past 50-65 years according to Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange), and Wigley and Santer 2012 (WS12, dark green).

So why would the latest IPCC report contradict these studies when its purpose is to summarize the latest and greatest scientific research? The answer is simple - it doesn't. Rawls has completely misrepresented the IPCC report.

Cosmic Source of Confusion

The supposedly "game-changing admission" from the IPCC report is this:

"Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR [galactic cosmic rays] or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system...The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link."

This statement refers to a hypothesis of Henrik Svensmark from the Danish National Space Institute, who has proposed that galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) could exert significant influence over global temperatures. The GCR hypothesis suggests that when they reach Earth, GCRs (high-energy charged particles originating from somewhere in our galaxy) are capable of "seeding" clouds; thus at times when a lot of GCRs are reaching the Earth's surface, more clouds will form. Clouds generally have a cooling effect on the Earth's temperature, because they reflect sunlight.

So the hypothesis goes like this: high solar activity means a strong solar magnetic field, which deflects more GCRs away from Earth, which means less cloud formation, which means less sunlight is reflected away from Earth, which means more warming. This GCR-caused warming would amplify the warming already being caused by increased solar activity. Conversely, cooling from decreased solar activity would hypothetically be amplified by more GCRs on Earth, more clouds, more reflected sunlight, and thus more cooling.

It's important to note that so far virtually all scientific research on GCRs has shown that they are not effective at seeding clouds and thus have very little influence over the Earth's temperature. In fact, as Zeke Hausfather has noted, the leaked IPCC report specifically states this:

"...there is medium evidence and high agreement that the cosmic ray-ionization mechanism is too weak to influence global concentrations of [cloud condensation nuclei] or their change over the last century or during a solar cycle in any climatically significant way."

But more importantly in this context, even if GCRs did influence global temperature, they would currently be having a cooling effect.

Solar Activity is Down, Greenhouse Gases are Up

Rawls also provides the following quote from the IPCC report (emphasis added):

"There is very high confidence that natural forcing is a small fraction of the anthropogenic forcing. In particular, over the past three decades (since 1980), robust evidence from satellite observations of the TSI [total solar irradiance] and volcanic aerosols demonstrate a near-zero (-0.04 W m^-2) change in the natural forcing compared to the anthropogenic AF increase of ~1.0 ± 0.3 W m^-2."

The term "radiative forcing" refers to a global energy imbalance on Earth, which may be caused by various effects like changes in the greenhouse effect or solar activity. A positive forcing will result in warming temperatures, while a negative forcing will result in cooling.

Here the IPCC is saying that since 1980, the sun and volcanoes have combined to cause a slightly negative global energy imbalance, which means they have had a slight cooling influence on global temperatures over the past three decades. Indeed, solar activity has decreased a bit over that timeframe (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Global temperature (red, NASA GISS) and Total solar irradiance (blue, 1880 to 1978 from Solanki, 1979 to 2009 from PMOD), with 11-year running averages.

As we would expect, lower solar activity including a weaker solar magnetic field has translated into a slight increase in GCR flux on Earth (Figure 3). Note that on the left-hand axis of Figure 3, GCR counts decrease going up the axis in order to show the relationship with temperature, since fewer GCRs hypothetically means fewer clouds, less reflected sunlight, and higher temperatures.

Figure 3: Global average surface temperature (red, NASA GISS) vs. GCR flux on Earth (blue, Krivova & Solanki 2003), with 11-year running averages.

So, if GCRs really do amplify the solar influence on global temperatures, since 1980 they are amplifying a cooling effect. In fact, GCRs reaching Earth recently hit record high levels (Figure 4), yet temperatures are still way up.

Figure 4: Record cosmic ray flux observed in 2009 by the Advanced Composition Explorer (NASA)

Physical Reality Intrudes on Rawls

Rawls has argued to the contrary by claiming that the climate is still responding to the increase in solar activity from the early 20th century, and that GCRs are amplifying that solar warming from over 60 years ago. This argument is simply physically wrong. As Figure 2 illustrates, when solar activity rises, temperatures follow suit very soon thereafter. In fact, during the mid-20th century, solar activity and global surface temperatures both flattened out. Are we to believe that the planet suddenly began responding to the pre-1950 solar activity increase in 1975-2012, after not warming 1940-1975? The argument makes no physical sense.

On top of that, the hypothetical GCR process is a relatively rapid one. Cloud formation from GCR seeding should occur within days, and clouds have very short lifetimes. For GCRs to have a warming effect, solar activity must be increasing right now. It is not, in fact solar activity has been essentially flat and slightly declining in recent decades. Changes in solar activity from 60+ years ago have no bearing whatsoever on GCRs today.

IPCC Shows Global Warming is NOT Solar

To sum up,

• The leaked IPCC report states that there may be some connection between GCRs and some aspects of the climate system.

• However, the report is also consistent with the body of scientific literature in stating that research indicates GCRs are not effective at seeding clouds and have very little influence on global temperatures.

• Solar activity has been nearly flat and slightly decreasing in recent decades, meaning that if GCRs do amplify solar influences on climate, they are amplifying a cooling effect.

The body of peer-reviewed scientific literature is very clear: human greenhouse gas emissions, not solar activity or galactic cosmic rays, are causing global warming. The leaked IPCC report is entirely consistent with this conclusion. In fact, in attempting to argue to the contrary, Rawls has scored an own goal by showing that if anything, GCRs are currently amplifying a solar cooling effect.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/16/1334921/leaked-ipcc-draft-

Obama To Name Climate Hawk John Kerry Secretary Of State

In the first serious indication Obama will focus on climate change in his second term, media outlets report the President will nominate Senator John Kerry (D-MA) to be Secretary of State.

http://theenergycollective.com/josephromm/158956/obama-name-climate-ha