To me a tipping point in the climate system is like a sweet spot in the climate system, where a small perturbation can have a major, even qualitative effect.  It’s like a small change in temperature moving, for example, the Greenland Ice sheet beyond the point where eventually it will melt down all together…from about 2 degrees global warming there would be a risk of the complete meltdown of the Greenland Ice sheet…I think this two degree limit agreed in Cancun by the politicians may not be enough to prevent a dangerous interference in the climate system.

Now let’s be clear about this: a “complete meltdown” of the Greenland ice sheet would raise the planet’s sea level 7 meters (7000 mm).  The sea level rise rate today is about 3 mm per year and decreasing according to satellite data.  A rational reading the tide gauge data is even less.

I guess in Greenland ice must melt at -25°C.  Here is today’s temperature outlook…

Oh, I know, the scientifically sophomoric sophisticated will tell us all about the rapidly accelerating glaciers.  Well, their favorite journal, Science, throws a little icy cold water on their dreams of catastrophic nirvana.  In 21st-Century Evolution of Greenland Outlet Glacier Velocities ( T. Moon, et. al., Science, 4 May 2012, Vol. 336, pp. 576-578)  Moon et. al. produced “a decade-long (2000 to 2010) record documenting the ongoing velocity evolution of nearly all (200+) of Greenland’s major outlet glaciers.”  They found that in some regions there was a glacier acceleration (SEE! SEE!), but not very consistently over the last 10 years.  Here is their conclusion

Our observations have implications for recent work on sea level rise. Earlier research (33) used a kinematic approach to estimate upper bounds of 0.8 to 2.0 m for 21st-century sea level rise. In Greenland, this work assumed ice-sheet–wide doubling of glacier speeds (low-end scenario) or an order of magnitude increase in speeds (high-end scenario) from 2000 to 2010. Our wide sampling of actual 2000 to 2010 changes shows that glacier acceleration across the ice sheet remains far below these estimates, suggesting that sea level rise associated with Greenland glacier dynamics remains well below the low-end scenario (9.3 cm by 2100) at present. Continued acceleration, however,may cause sea level rise to approach the low-end limit by this century’s end. Our sampling of a large population of glaciers, many of which have sustained considerable thinning and retreat, suggests little potential for the type of widespread extreme (i.e., order of magnitude) acceleration represented in the high-end scenario (46.7 cm by 2100). Our result is consistent with findings from recent numerical flow models (34).

So, Rahmstorf is worried about a “complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet” which would lead to 7 meters (7000 mm) of sea level rise, but the data shows “sea level rise associated with Greenland glacier dynamics remains well below the low-end scenario (9.3 cm by 2100)” (93 mm by 2100).  Does being off by a factor of 75 (7000/93) qualify as ”alarmist?”

By the way, when Moon says “Earlier research (33) used a kinematic approach to estimate upper bounds of 0.8 to 2.0 m for 21st-century sea level rise” he is talking about Kinematic Constraints on Glacier Contributions to 21st Century Sea-Level Rise (Pfeffer, et. al., Science, 5 September 2008, Vol. 321. no. 5894, pp. 1340 – 1343).  I discussed this paper at length two years ago in my “Reply to John Mashey.” (Still feeling smug, John?) 

And finally,  Moon’s last sentence says “Our result is consistent with findings from recent numerical flow models (34).”  He is talking about Committed sea-level rise for the next century from Greenland ice sheet dynamics during the past decade (Price, et. al., PNAS, 31 May 2011, vol. 108 no. 22 pp. 8978-8983).    Price, et. al. say

The modeling conducted here and some reasonable assumptions can be used to make approximate upper-bound estimates for future SLR from GIS [Greenland Ice Sheet] dynamics, without accounting for future dynamical changes explicitly. As discussed above, numerous observations indicate that the trigger for the majority of dynamic thinning in Greenland during the last decade was episodic in nature, as the result of incursions of relatively warm ocean waters. By assuming that similar perturbations occur at regular intervals over the next century and that the ice sheet responds in a similar manner, we can repeatedly combine (sum) the cumulative SLR [sea level rise] curve from Fig. 4B to arrive at additional estimates for SLR by 2100. For example, if perturbations like those during the last decade recur every 50, 20, or 10 y during the next 100 y, we estimate a cumulative SLR from GIS dynamics by 2100 of approximately 10, 25, and 45 mm, respectively…Addition of the estimated 40 mm of SLR from changes in SMB [surface mass balance] by 2100 would result in a total SLR from Greenland of 85 mm by 2100.

Holy cow! Rahmstorf is telling us to be worried about 7000 mm of sea level rise due to the “complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet,” but Price et. al. say maybe 85 mm due to Greenland by 2100.

Why do I say he is the “ostensible” author of the article at ClimateCentral?  Because the article is steeped with the “connect the dots” talking points. 

Lemonick tells us the public is “connecting the dots” about “extreme weather” and they finally “get it.”  He explicitly mentions that people are “connecting the dots” concerning tornadoes and hurricanes, with the majority believing they are getting worse due to “changing climate”.

Lest I be accused of violating ClimateCentral’s “comment guidelines”, here is a screenprint of my comment as it appeared when I submitted it.  I have blanked out my email address and location, and I have circled the URL of the ClimateCentral article where I submitted the comment.

Here is the text of my comment…

Perhaps the folks who “get it” might consider the following data…

From the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, number of strong to violent tornadoes as a function of time (1950 to present)

http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/image44.png

Or how about Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy…

http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_running_ace.jpg

If people are interested in “connecting the dots,” well here are a few more to connect…

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/21/mckibben-connects-the-weather-dots-on-sh-happens/

I guess I can understand ClimateCentral’s reticence about posting my comment: they wouldn’t want a few facts to foster any “doubt and confusion” about the end of the world.  Here is what the links in my comment showed…

Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s “Global sea level linked to global temperature” (PNAS, 2009) relied on Church’s and White’s “A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise” (GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33,) for their sea level data.  Church and White built their sea level time series from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) tide gauge data.

There is no attempt to analyse the data here, but I have started that process and will report on it later.  The first two minutes may be a little boring, but please read along.  It livens up later.   For now, sit back and enjoy.

ClimateSanity
with apologies to Sir Walter Scott

Intrepid mathematician Stefan Rahmstorf has calculated the global temperature increase rate for the last 31 years.  (Global temperature evolution 1979–2010, Foster and Rahmstorf, Environ. Res. Lett. 6, 2011) For the fun of it, lets take him at his word.  The problem is that when his temperatures from this new paper are inserted into his sea level rise rate formula from one of his earlier papers (Global sea level linked to global temperature, Vermeer and Rahmstorf, PNAS, 2009), the calculated sea level rise rate isn’t anywhere close to reality.

These papers can’t both be correct.  My guess is that neither of them are. 

In the 2011 paper he starts with five different global temperature records and adds his version of corrections for volcanoes, el Nino and solar variations.  He then calculates the temperature rate of change per decade for each of the five temperature records.  The five ranged between 0.141 °C/decade to 0.175 ° C/decade, but the average was 0.163 °C/decade as shown in figure 1,  below.

He also calculated the temperature rise rate acceleration, and found none.  In his own words

“To look for changes in the warming rates over time, we computed the rate in adjusted data sets for different time intervals, for all start years from 1979 to 2005 and ending with the present. The results show no sign of a change in the warming rate during the period of common coverage.”

Figure 1 Rahmstorf's version of global temperature for 1979 to 2010. This is figure 4 and table 1 from Foster and Rahmstorf. Trendline, based on the average of table 1, added by ClimateSanity

You know what higher temperatures mean: higher sea level rise rates.  Nobody knows this better than Herr Rahmstorf, who has spent the better part of his career making the point.  He has even provided a formula in his 2009 paper to translate the global temperature to the sea level rise rate.

Some easy math

Assuming his calculated temperature increase rates for the last three decades are correct, what does his sea level rise rate formula tell us?  In Rahmstorf’s parlance H is the sea level and dH/dt is the sea level rise rate.  His formula, from which sprang the famous 1.8 meter sea level rise for the 21st century meme, looks like this…

From Rahmstorf’s graph of global temperature from 1979 to 2010 (figure 1, above), we see that his temperature and the rate of temperature change are given by …

Substituting equations II & III into equation I and gathering terms reveals

While equation IV won’t tell us the exact sea level rise rate for a particular year, it will tell use how much the sea level rise rate changes between two years.  That is

Let’s say that Rahmstorf’s temperature data from the his 2011 Environmental Research Letters paper is correct and his formula relating sea level rise rate from his 2009 PNAS paper is correct.  And let’s say that we wanted to know how  much the sea level rise rate had increased between (oh, I don’t know – how about) 1993 and 2010. Then equation V would tell us that the sea level rise rate should have increased by 1.55 mm/year (0.09128 mm/year X (2010-1993)). 

Comparing to reality

Lucky for us, we have measured sea level data to compare the calculated value to.  As figure 2, below makes abundantly clear, the sea leve rise rate has been about 3.1 mm/year over this time period.   The combination of Rahmstorf’s 2009 PNAS paper and 2011 Environmental Research Letters paper indicate that it should have increased by 1.55 mm/year (an additional 50%).
How can this discrepancy be explained?  Oh yeah, I almost forgot, we already know the Rahmstorf’s formula relating sea level rise rate to global temperature is totally bogus.

Hartmut Michel

Hartmut Michel won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on photosynthesis.  So, it is fair to say that he knows a thing or two about energy transport and storage in plants.  Today he is director of the Molecular Membrane Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics.

He recently penned an editorial in Angewandte Chemie International Edition in which he hammered the use of biofuels for alternative energy.  Note that Angewandte Chemie International Edition has the world’s highest impact factor of all chemistry journals.  His simple but pointed criticism condemns all varieties of biofuels and supports my previous posts on this subject.^{1, 2}

The problem is the inherent inefficiency of photosynthesis.  He points out…

“The photosynthetic pigments of plants can only absorb and use 47%(related to energy) of the light of the sun (“photosynthetic active radiation”). Green light, UV, and IR irradiation are not used…

Photosynthesis is most efficient at low light intensities. It is already saturated at 20% of full sunlight and 80% of the light is not used…In addition, high light intensities lead to photodamage of a central protein subunit of the photosynthetic apparatus…3.5 billion years of evolution have not been long enough to develop a mechanism for preventing the photodamage….

The dark reactions are limited by an insufficient discrimination between CO2 and O2 by the enzyme RuBisCO, which inserts CO2 into ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate. One third of the energy of the absorbed photons is believed to be required to remove the product of the O2 insertion…[and] photosynthesis depends on the availability of sufficient amounts of water, a condition that is not met during much of the day.”

Current biofuel technologies

Taken as a whole, conversion efficiency of sunlight to usable chemical energy in biofuels for commonly used technologies is extremely low.

“For German “biodiesel” which is based on rapeseed, it is less than 0.1%, for bioethanol less than 0.2%, and for biogas around 0.3%.”

But is it actually much worse than that when you consider

“… these values even do not take into account that more than 50% of the energy stored in the biofuel had to be invested in order to obtain the biomass (for producing fertilizers and pesticides, for ploughing the fields, for transport) and the chemical conversion into the respective biofuel.”

Michel confirms what I have pointed out before, biofuels of all stripes put a great burden on arable land.  He says…

“Taken together, the production of biofuels constitutes an extremely inefficient land use. This statement is true also for the production of bioethanol from sugar cane in Brazil.”

“Second Generation” biofuels

Some people hold out hope for “second generation” biofuels where the whole plant is utilized.  Michel explains that this is an illusion because the energy input for these types of processes in ever greater than for first generation processes.  For example…

“in the production of biodiesel by the Fischer–Tropsch process, hydrogen has to be added because syngas obtained from biomass contains insufficient amounts of hydrogen.”

More distant possibilities

“Hydrogen production by photosystem II would reduce the number of photons required by more than 50%.  However, this protein engineering task appears to be insurmountable at present.”

and

“Microalgae have been advertised as the ideal candidates for biofuel production. There are many unsupported claims about their efficiency, some even exceeding the theoretical limits of photosynthetic efficiency…the existence of photoinhibition and a poor RuBisCO will limit the advantages of microalgae together with the demands for growing and harvesting them.”

But biofuels will save us from CO2

Sorry, no.

“The production and use of biofuels therefore is not CO2-neutral. In particular, the energy input is very large for the production of bioethanol from wheat or maize, and some scientists doubt that there is a net gain of energy. Certainly the reduction of CO2 release is marginal.”

And

“Clearing rainforests in the tropics and converting them into oil palm plantations is highly dangerous because the underlying layers of peat are oxidized and much more CO2 is released by the oxidation of organic soil material than can be fixed by the oil palms…it would be even much better to reforest the land used to grow energy plants, because at a 1% photosynthetic efficiency, growing trees would fix around 2.7 kg of CO2 per square meter, whereas biofuels produced with a net efficiency of 0.1% would only replace fossil fuels which would release about 0.31 kg CO2 per m2 upon combustion!”

His conclusion

“Because of the low photosynthetic efficiency and the competition of energy plants with food plants for agricultural land, we should not grow plants for biofuel production. The growth of such energy plants will undoubtedly lead to an increase in food prices, which will predominantly hit poorer people.”

Read the entire editorial in context here (The Nonsense of Biofuels, Hartmut Michel, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 2–4)

Here is a video of Michel making the same point.

His Noble Prize was for the determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre, as seen here

If you are worried about anthropogenic CO2 induced global warming (a.k.a. climate change, a.k.a. climate disruption), he points out

The following video shows all the PSMSL tide gauge data so you can search for a sea level rise acceleration.  Or you can dance or sing along!

There is no attempt to analyse the data here, but I have started that process and will report on it later.  The first two minutes may be a little boring, but please read along.  It livens up later.   For now, sit back and enjoy.

Update, 3/11/12: My original videos have been banned by Youtube for violating music licenses.  They contained music by REM (The End of the World As We Know It), Johnny Cash (How High’s the Water, Mama) and James Taylor (the traditional “The Water is Wide”). 

I have replaced the music with Creative Commons licensed music.

Daniel Kahneman

Theory-induced blindness and Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s “Global sea level linked to global temperature.”

In one of the many interesting chapters of  Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University Emeritus Professor of Psychology and winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics discussed Daniel Bernoulli’s 250-year-old mathematical theory of risk aversion. 

Kahneman points out that “Bernoulli’s essay is a marvel of concise brilliance…

Most impressive, his analysis… has stood the test of time: it is still current in economic analysis almost 300 years later.  The longevity of the theory is all the more remarkable because it is seriously flawed.  The errors of a theory are rarely found in what it asserts explicitly; they hide in what it ignores or tacitly assumes”

Kahneman then goes on to demolish of Bernoulli’s theory.  This demolition is simple and incontrovertible, takes about one page, and is easily understood by anybody of average intelligence. Kahneman says this about the demolition…

“All this is rather obvious, isn’t it?  One could easily imagine Bernoulli himself constructing similar examples and developing a more complex theory to accommodate them; for some reason, he did not.  One could imagine colleagues of his time disagreeing with him, or later scholars objecting as they read his essay; for some reason, they did not either.

The mystery is how a conception … that is vulnerable to such obvious counterexamples survived for so long.  I can explain it only by a weakness of the scholarly mind that I have often observed in myself.  I call it theory-induced blindness: once you have accepted a theory and used it as a tool in your thinking, it is extraordinarily difficult to notice its flaws.  If you come upon an observation that does not seem to fit the model, you assume that there must be a perfectly good explanation that you are somehow missing.  You give the theory the benefit of the doubt, trusting the community of experts who have accepted it.  Many scholars have surely thought at one time or another of stories such as [the examples that Kahneman gives] and casually noted that these stories did not jibe…But they did not pursue the idea to the point of saying ‘this theory is seriously wrong because it ignores the fact[s]‘…As the psychologist Daniel Gilbert observed, disbelieving is hard work…”

What does all this have to do with ClimateSanity?  Simple – it sounds like Vermeer’s and Rahmstorf’s model linking global sea level to global temperature (“Global sea level linked to global temperature,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, December 22, 2009 vol. 106 no. 51 21527-21532 ).  It has been incontrovertibly demolished, but the believer’s just can’t let it go.  They must suffer theory-induced blindness.  They seem to have endless capacity to simply overlook the plethora of bizarre, improbable or impossible consequences of the Vermeer and Rahmstorf  model.

Suppose a friend of yours believes that the world is facing a dire future because of too much CO2 in the atmosphere.  The problem seems clear to him, he says, and so does the best course of action.  The fossil fuel powering of the world must come to an end.

He knows that bringing that end about is very difficult, but he perseveres.  It will be very expensive.   Many of the worlds assets will be consumed replacing a thriving fossil fuel based economy with a new “cleaner” economy.

The entire world must be convinced to cooperate, so he cajoles and he scolds.  The standard of living of the wealthy nations must be reduced.  The rest who are embracing the benefits of an energy rich society for the first time will have to wait.

Huge administrative changes will be needed, so he manuevers for control.  Great swathes of the planets landscape will have to be altered to accommodate some combination of wind power, solar power and biofuel production.

But he also has faith that the hardships of his solution will be offset by other (perhaps vague) benefits beyond the reduction of CO2.

A new idea

Now suppose along comes somebody who has another idea to solve the problem: an idea that might not result in a huge disruption of the economy. It’s an idea that might not result in all the hardships.  It is only an idea, in its infancy.  He would like your friend to take a look at it.

What does your friend say?  Does he say “Let’s see this new idea, look at the pros and cons.  Let’s run some simple tests.”  Or does he say “Go away!” and stick his fingers in his ears and say “NANANANANA - I can’t hear you – NANANANANA.”

Would you doubt your friends sincerity, or even his sanity, if he chose the latter response?

Suppose the idea was this…

The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) study, which considers the possibility spraying sulphur particles into the stratosphere, like a volcano, to force global cooling.  This is a big idea and it would be no simple feat to accomplish. What are the advantages and disadvantages?  Who knows?

The stratosphere is 20 km above the surface of the Earth.  The amount of material that would be required is enormous.  The idea is that huge balloons would pull hoses up into the stratosphere and particulate material would be pumped up from the ground.   

It is worth at least thinking about.  A small-scale project to test of the concept was planned in the UK for this fall.  A balloon would hoist a hose only one kilometer and water would be pumped into the atmosphere. 

Image is from "Good governance for geoengineering," Nature, 479, November 2011

Modern Luddites

Alas, this experiment may never take place because a lot of people like your friend may have killed it.  In effect, they said “Go away!” and stuck their fingers in their ears and chanted “NANANANANA - I can’t hear you – NANANANANA.”

According to Nature  (the journal where every environmentalist is a saint),

“the EPSRC [UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council], one of the study’s main funders… received a letter and open petition, also sent to UK energy and climate-change secretary Chris Huhne and signed by more than 50 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil-society organizations, demanding that the project be cancelled.”

The source of the letter and petition?  An organization called “Hands Off Mother Earth.”  The 75 or so signatory organizations to the petition include the following organizations: Amigos da Terra Brasil, Earthpeoples, Gaia Foundation, and my favorite, the Gender Climate Caucus.

Their letter states…

We believe the experiment planned to test equipment for injecting particles into the stratosphere with the aim of counteracting global warming through solar radiation management (SRM) should be cancelled…We believe that such research is a dangerous distraction from the real need: immediate and deep emissions cuts.

In other words, they do not want a simple test of an alternative idea.  I believe that makes them anti-science and anti-reason, modern luddites.