CLIMATISM!

Reviewed 7/15/2012

Climatism!, by Steve Goreham

Access to this book courtesy of the
San Jose, CA Public Library
CLIMATISM!
Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century's Hottest Topic
Steve Goreham
John Coleman (Fwd.)
New Lenox, IL: New Lenox Books, April 2010

Rating:

2.0

Fair

ISBN-13 978-0-9824996-3-4
ISBN 0-9824996-3-9 466pp. HC/BWI $32.95

Chapters 2 & 3

[Rant Warning]

Chapter 2: The Thin Science for Man-Made Global Warming

Chapter 2 is devoted to describing the greenhouse effect and the history of its discovery, and it does a pretty good job of that. But then we arrive at the present, when Goreham claims that "Urban Heat Island Bias" has skewed the surface temperature data upward because "most of the U.S. temperature-measuring sites show a temperature error of over 2°C too hot." (p. 30, emphasis his) To support this he cites a study headed by Anthony Watts that photographically surveyed the 1,221 stations of the USHCN and ranked them into five categories. This study was discredited when a team at NOAA took data from just the stations Watts rated good and showed these gave almost identical results. In addition, satellite data show that the polar regions, nearly devoid of cities and town, are warming more than the rest of the planet.

(By way of illustration, Goreham shows two stations: one on an asphalt parking lot in Tucson, AZ and the other "located over a cinder ground cover and next to a car radiator." (Figure 8, p. 29) Here's an exercise for the reader: How much heat would that radiator have to put out to cause an 0.01°F rise in the monitor station reading? (That's Fahrenheit, not Celsius.) Assume it is five feet away and the car stays where it is, running constantly.

He describes climate models and points out how they depend on positive feedback: as more CO2 warms the air, the air absorbs more water vapor. This is also a greenhouse gas, which increases warming, evaporating still more water in a vicious cycle. He calls this feedback effect an assumption and asserts it is looking increasingly doubtful. He then turns to data from ice cores taken at the Vostok station in Antarctica. Noting that historical increases in CO2 lagged rising temperature by about 800 years, he repeats the assertion that temperature rise causes CO2 concentration to increase, not vice versa. Rising temperatures do free more CO2 from soils and ocean waters; but the extra CO2 has its own warming effect. So this is another case of positive feedback — another one he does not wish to acknowledge. He lists the seven steps in the case for AGW, which, he says, "is simple and straightforward, but increasingly disproven. He asserts that steps 4 through 7 are false.

Chapter 3: Carbon Dioxide: Not Guilty

Chapter 3 opens with the statement that "Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is an odorless, colorless, harmless gas that is naturally produced by nature. [...] Carbon dioxide is not poisonous to humans, plants, or animals." He's right that CO2 is not a traditional pollutant like smog, which has only harmful effects. But what makes anything a pollutant is how it affects us. As he points out, water is natural and vital; but too much water in your lungs is life-threatening. Scientists agree that too much warming caused by CO2 will also threaten human life; therefore, CO2 is a pollutant.

With regard to its alleged harmlessness, or otherwise, I'll simply note as I always do that this can be tested in a simple experiment, or Mr. Goreham could just watch Ron Howard's Apollo 13.

This chapter is the most nearly scientific so far. In it, he aims to show that CO2 from fossil fuels cannot be the cause of global warming. That, he says on page 40, is because CO2 is a trace gas. "The total man-made CO2 emissions in history would amount to only one of those 10,000 spectators." The math in his analogy is right: That amounts to 100ppm; if you subtract the pre-industrial value of 280 ppm from 385 ppm, you get 105 ppm for man's contribution. So man has raised the CO2 concentration by almost 38 percent. Now if, as he agrees, CO2 at 280ppm keeps the Earth about 15°C above freezing, what will 385 ppm do? Obviously it will raise the temperature somewhat, unless something else changes. Hypothetically, the Sun might get dimmer temporarily. But if it dims enough to offset current warming, solar physics will have to be rewritten. As long as we've been measuring its output, that output has varied less than 0.1 percent.

Henry's Law

"For a given temperature, the amount of gas dissolved in a solution is directly proportional to the pressure of the gas in the air above the solution."

– Page 42

Relying on Henry's Law, Goreham says that the oceans will soak up all the extra CO2 from the atmosphere. He's right about the basic fact of Henry's Law, but he misses some details. First, the oceans can only absorb CO2 from a relatively thin layer of air just above the waves, where turbulence and wave action put air containing it in contact with the water. Likewise, the top layer of ocean gets saturated with CO2. Not until the slow currents have pulled that surface water into the depths does the ocean's ability to sink CO2 return. It takes on the order of a thousand years for complete mixing to occur. Third, the greenhouse effect happens in the whole depth of the troposphere, where CO2 is well mixed. That's why it takes so long for the atmosphere to lose CO2, and why Goreham is wrong on this point. (This is one area where an engineer, with his knowledge of calculus, should have an advantage in understanding what's going on.)

To support this, Goreham cites Dr. Tom Segalstad of the University of Oslo:

"Experimentally it has been found that CO2 and pure water at 25°C reaches 99%...equilibrium after 30 hours and 52 minutes; after shaking (like wave agitation) 99% equilibrium is reached after 4 hours and 37 minutes."

– Page 43

Reference 7: Tom Segalstad, "Carbon Cycle Modeling and the Residence Time of Natural and Anthropogenic Atmospheric CO2: On the Construction of the 'Greenhouse Effect' Global Warming Dogma," web site: http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm . Well, with a title like that it has to be totally objective, nicht wahr? But getting to the substance:

  1. The oceans are not pure water and there is no reason to think they would behave like pure water in absorbing gases.
  2. They are very seldom at 25°C, and temperature has an effect on solubility of gases.
  3. The oceans are big. As noted, they mix slowly. At least Dr. Segalstad should have applied some sort of scaling ratio to his results.

"As we have discussed, the IPCC and global warming alarmists claim the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last century is entirely due to man-made CO2 emissions." (page 44, emphasis his) This is incorrect. Everyone acknowledges that land use changes (esp. deforestation) and the manufacture of cement are contributors.

Isotope Ratios

"In addition, the actual measured atmospheric isotopic carbon ratio has increased only very slightly since 1980, while the IPCC predicted carbon ratio for an atmosphere filled with man-made CO2 increases much faster." An atmosphere filled with CO2? "Therefore, both the isotopic composition and rate of change are wrong for IPCC assumptions. This means that Henry's Law is working and emitted man-made CO2 is rapidly being absorbed by surface systems." (pages 44-45, emphasis his) It's hard to dispute these conclusions since he doesn't cite a source for the IPCC numbers and his statements are based on Figure 13, which "uses methodology of Segelstad" the source for which is a conversation with Segelstad. I do know that no one reputable would claim a C13:C12 ratio of 27%, because the natural ratio is less than 1%.

The test of whether CO2 in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuels or is part of the "natural" carbon cycle is the measurement of carbon-isotope ratios. Carbon occurs in 16 forms, most of which decay radioactively within minutes and are of no importance to the carbon cycle. That leaves carbon-14, produced continuously in the atmosphere by cosmic rays, and two stable forms: carbon-12 and carbon-13. These isotopes form a progression in weight, with one more neutron each from C-12 to C-14. Plants prefer C-12, and they contain more of it on a percentage basis than the atmosphere. Thus, burning large quantities of fossil fuel (long-buried plant matter) raises the atmosphere's percentage of lighter C-12. On the other hand, C-14 decays over time. Thus, the large emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels should be almost free of C-14, and our atmosphere today will be depleted of this radioactive carbon isotope, as compared to pre-industrial atmospheres.

Goreham's objection to the finding that this is actually happening is that he says the IPCC predicts 27% man-made CO2 in the atmosphere, whereas the measured value is 4% (Figure 13, page 45.) I'm not sure how he gets to these percentages from the published values for the ratios. Again, this is the unspecified "methodology of Segalstad." In any case, he agrees that the atmosphere holds 38 percent more CO2 than it did pre-industry. If the increase is not man-made, it has to come from some natural process that sped up around 1850. Volcanoes are a likely candidate.

"This further means that most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration on the Keeling curve is due to natural processes rather than man-made emissions. Ian Plimer, Australian geologist and author of Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science, argues that CO2 ejected from undersea volcanoes is a major source of emissions to the atmosphere, not considered by the IPCC." For this to be true, the rate of volcanism has to have sped up a hundredfold sometime during the past 150 years. Also, this increase has to have affected only the hidden undersea volcanoes, not the ones on land that are easy to observe. It's hard to see a mechanism that would account for this. That's a double burden, because it's hard to see a mechanism that would increase volcanism in general in geologically recent times. Also, if CO2 is reaching the atmosphere from these undersea volcanoes, why don't we see the other gases associated with volcanism: sulfur dioxide, for example?

Carbon dioxide as plant food

"It's ironic that environmentalists, sometimes called 'tree-huggers,' have now become Climatists with a mission to eliminate carbon dioxide, a gas beneficial to trees! (Pages 46-47, emphasis his) Another straw man. No one wants to "eliminate" carbon dioxide, only to hold its ultimate concentration at a safe level.

"Trees and food crops grow faster with more CO2 in the air. They lose less water vapor from their leaves and are better able to grow and survive in drier conditions. This makes plants more drought resistant and able to prosper in more varied climatic conditions." (Page 47) And again, the true picture is not so simple. Skeptical Science2 provides the "executive summary:"

"A specific plant's response to excess CO2 is sensitive to a variety of factors, including but not limited to: age, genetic variations, functional types, time of year, atmospheric composition, competing plants, disease and pest opportunities, moisture content, nutrient availability, temperature, and sunlight availability. The continued increase of CO2 will represent a powerful forcing agent for a wide variety of changes critical to the success of many plants, affecting natural ecosystems and with large implications for global food production. The global increase of CO2 is thus a grand biological experiment, with countless complications that make the net effect of this increase very difficult to predict with any appreciable level of detail."

Research to untangle the complexities of this topic is just getting under way. But we do know that there are two types of photosynthesis: C3 and C4. Plants with C4 do not make use of extra CO2; they already use it efficiently. Many crops are C3 types, and yields increase with more CO2 — but only if other nutrients are increased in proportion. Also, plants raised out of doors are subject to insects, and it seems the bugs find crops grown under extra CO2 much tastier. So the expected yields are not as great.

Other complicating factors include the fact that weeds too grow faster with more CO2. Global warming will shift rainfall patterns, perhaps turning present "breadbaskets" into dust bowls. Insect pests do better in a warmer world, as shown by the pine bark beetle now devastating western forests. And higher temperatures themselves can impair growth; rice will not germinate above 35°C.

So it is far from clear that more CO2 is a net win for agriculture.

"Should atmospheric CO2 increase to over 600 ppm, it's estimated that the rate of tree growth will increase over 100% from the IPCC's 'natural' level of 280ppm.14" (Page 47) 13 and 14 cite the Robinson et al. paper.

Water vapor feedback is disproven

"The Keeling data shows (sic) that CO2 concentration is growing in the atmosphere since 1957, so earth's temperature rises by a small amount to maintain the energy balance. (Claim #1). The models of the climatists then assume the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere rises as a positive feedback, further increasing the greenhouse effect (Claim #2). There are two major problems with the water-vapor positive-feedback assumption. First, this assumption was made without any supporting experimental data. [...] Second and equally important, the assumption ignores other larger processes of our weather systems. [...] A small increase in cloud cover, resulting in a 1% increase in Earth's reflectivity, would more than compensate for any CO2 greenhouse warming. A 1% increase in rainfall efficiency would also compensate for CO2 warming. A small decrease in low-level cloudiness or an increase in high-level cloudiness could increase warming. Climate scientists continue to learn more about these processes, but they are still poorly understood." (pages 50-51, emphasis his)

In fact, recent measurements find the atmosphere holds 4 percent more water vapor than it did in 1970 — just as the models predict.

Greenhouse effect is nonlinear

GCMs1 are just curve-fitting

He devotes pages 52-58 to an attack on GCMs, claiming that they are based on false assumptions (namely that CO2 forces temperature and that higher temperature means more water vapor.) He further asserts that the way the models track actual temperature trends only with natural and man-made forcings included merely means they are tuned to match those trends with both included; of course they fail when man-made forcings are removed. If this were true, it would amount to fraud by climate scientists — and a golden opportunity for contrarians to show them as fraudsters by constructing their own model. Some skeptics have built their own climate models, but so far no consensus-shaking results have come forth.

He says that aerosols have a greater than expected effect, may be enough to offset CO2 forcing. "Studies show [30] — Idso & Singer, Climate Change Reconsidered: the 2009 report of the NIPCC.

Work in progress
1 General Circulation Models
2 See CO2 is plant food? If only it were so simple (Posted on 27 April 2011 by Dawei)
Valid CSS! Valid HTML 4.01 Strict To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.
Copyright © 2012-2016 Christopher P. Winter. All rights reserved.
Contents of this page were last modified on 1 May 2016.