Ben Bova: Again, science proves global warming real

Dr. Ben Bova is well known to readers of both science and science fiction. -Roger =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ben Bova: Again, science proves global warming real

By BEN BOVA, Special to the Naples Daily News June 13, 2004

As we head into the summer's heat and hurricanes, the last crutch propping up those who refuse to believe in global warming has been knocked out from under them.

As the headline in a recent issue of Science magazine put it, 'Getting warmer, however you measure it.' Pardon the pun, but global warming is a hot issue not only among politicians but among scientists, as well. Many have steadfastly refused to believe that the Earth's climate is heating up, even though measurements from around the globe show that the planet's temperature is steadily rising, so much so that changes in the arrival of spring in high northern latitudes are already noticeable.

If temperatures keep rising, coastal areas (such as most of Florida) could be flooded, tropical disease-carrying insects could invade northward, disastrous hurricanes could become more frequent and more intense, and all the ingredients of a global catastrophe are in the making.

Hogwash, say many who think this entire scenario is some sort of international conspiracy by Third World nations to force the industrialized nations (especially the United States) to cut back on their industrial activities while the poorer nations push as hard as they can to industrialize and overtake them economically. The Kyoto Treaty calls for industrialized nations to severely reduce their outputs of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, while allowing the poorer nations to continue or even increase their greenhouse emissions.

The Bush Administration has been roundly condemned for refusing to agree to the provisions of the Kyoto Treaty. But there is no doubt that cutting down greenhouse emissions means cutting down on industry and transportation, including personal automobile use. It would gravely handicap our economy, perhaps cripple it.

On the other hand, a relatively small but influential nucleus of scientists argue that global warming is an illusion. The disagreement involves temperature measurements of the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere that starts at the Earth's surface and goes up to roughly six miles' height, where the stratosphere begins.

They insist that satellite measurements of temperatures of the upper troposphere show little or no warming trend at all. How, they ask, can the lower troposphere be warming up so rapidly while the upper atmosphere doesn't seem to be affected? After all, in the troposphere the air is constantly mixing, rising and falling. Not like the stratosphere, where very little vertical mixing takes place.

How can you have warming in the lower troposphere without having warming in the upper troposphere? A conundrum, as Winston Churchill might have said, wrapped in a contradiction inside a paradox.

The difference between science and politics is that when politicians have a difference of opinion they continue to argue over it until one side gives up. Sometimes they even resort to war before one side or the other surrenders. Scientists have a different way of settling their differences. They look for more evidence.

Like detectives who have insufficient clues to figure out whodunit, scientists go searching for more and better information to solve their conundrums, contradictions and paradoxes.

For example, for thousands of years most people firmly believed that a heavy object falls faster than a lighter one. A few thought otherwise, among them Galileo Galilei, the first true scientist.

Instead of arguing the point, Galileo toted two objects of different weights to the top of tower. It wasn't the Leaning Tower of Pisa, as legend has it, because although Galileo was born in Pisa, at this time (around 1600) he was living in Venice.

He dropped his two different weights at the same time and had assistants at the bottom of the tower report on which one hit the ground first. They both hit the ground at the same time, and did every time Galileo (or anybody else) repeated the experiment. An argument of some thousands of years' standing was resolved in a few seconds by a simple experiment.

Incidentally, in 1971 Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott repeated Galileo's experiment on the airless surface of the Moon. He dropped a hammer and a feather. With no air to impede their fall, both hit the ground at the same instant, while a global television audience watched.

As for global warming, it turns out that the satellite measurements weren't getting the whole story.

Reporting in the British journal Nature, a team of atmospheric scientists from the University of Washington, Seattle, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have shown why the satellite temperature measurements were misleading.

The satellite's measuring instrument was a radiometer that actually measured microwave emissions from the stratosphere, not the upper troposphere. The greenhouse gases from the well-mixed troposphere don't get into the stratosphere very easily. In fact, they act as a sort of lid, so that while the troposphere warms up, the higher levels of the stratosphere can remain cool.

Paradox resolved. The upper troposphere is indeed heating up, just as the lower troposphere — the region we live in — is showing higher temperature readings every decade.

Global greenhouse warming is real.

So what can we do? Cut down on greenhouse emissions, obviously. . . .

The rest of this important article is at:

Maybe he should stay with science fiction. I've read a couple of his books and not been impressed by the science in them.

Ouch! This is *not* a good description, maybe Mr Bova ought to reread that article in Nature. The greenhouse gasses have little trouble getting into the stratosphere, in fact, the stratosphere is cooling *because* they get

'...both science and science fiction....'

And do you even recognize the difference?

WDA

end

If they are so damned convinced already, why do they need scads more money for more evidence? Sounds like a lot of assistant professor wannabes need to avoid driving those cabs.

This is apples and oranges and AGW enthusiasts always equate global warming with anthropogenic global warming as if natural change doesn't exist. It has become a standard misleading statement of the unethical environmentalists. Even the news media reports it as such too.

The wild guesses that how much is natural and how much is man induced will get answers in a wide range but is always presented as no doubt the man induced warming is guilty. Not suspect mind you but an absolute certainty. At the same time no one can say with any certainty all the variables that nature plays in such warming and how much for each.

They will tell you how someone who studies the sun is not qualified to comment on it's part in the scheme of climate but count themselves as qualified to say what it's part is not. This arrogance and double standards are proof of the environmentalist acting as priests in their eco-religion. Any Galileo not on board in this flock is soundly tarred and feathered.

Yes. I can't recall another person without a science degree who has been honored as a fellow of AAAS in recent years, as he was. His article here, alas, includes enough errors and slant about climate science to qualify it as an analysis piece in that weekly AAAS journal called Science.

As compared to the true believers, 'No doubt.'

1998 was peak.

In all fairness, Dr. Bova is confusing the science with the politics. This appears to be common amongst some of the alarmists.

Very reasonably put. Thanks for posting this, Roger.

Dr. Bova's emphasis on lower vs upper troposphere is an odd one. I've seen many scientists note the discrepancy between surface and troposphere trends, including surface and lower troposphere, but I don't recall any such lower vs upper troposphere conundrums.

Uh, both, actually, and the mid-troposphere, and the lower troposphere, and even from the surface.

Well, the new study actually uses an approach tried and, in the opinion of the pioneering researchers, bettered, a long time ago. The pioneers, you see, recognized early on that it would be a good thing to minimize the stratospheric influence. Which approach is better? Dr. Bova appears to think the matter is settled.

But there's more to the paradox than which analysis approach is better. For example, there's also the matter of the relatively independent balloon-borne data which correllates better with the pioneers' lower troposphere data than with any of the other satellite-based datasets.

A bit overstated, compared to, say Vaughan et al. [Climatic Change 60:243]: 'The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that mean global warming was 0.6 ± 0.2 °C during the 20th century and cited anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases as the likely cause of temperature rise in the last 50 years. But this mean value conceals the substantial complexity of observed climate change, which is seasonally- and diurnally-biased, decadally-variable and geographically patchy. In particular, over the last 50 years three high-latitude areas have undergone recent rapid regional (RRR) warming, which was substantially more rapid than the global mean. However, each RRR warming occupies a different climatic regime and may have an entirely different underlying cause. We discuss the significance of RRR warming in one area, the Antarctic Peninsula. Here warming was much more rapid than in the rest of Antarctica where it was not significantly different to the global mean. We highlight climate proxies that appear to show that RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula is unprecedented over the last two millennia, and so unlikely to be a natural mode of variability. So while the station records do not indicate a ubiquitous polar amplification of global warming, the RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula might be a regional amplification of such warming. This, however, remains unproven since we cannot yet be sure what mechanism leads to such an amplification. We discuss several possible candidate mechanisms: changing oceanographic or changing atmospheric circulation, or a regional air-sea-ice feedback amplifying greenhouse warming. We can show that atmospheric warming and reduction in sea-ice duration coincide in a small area on the west of the Antarctic Peninsula, but here we cannot yet distinguish cause and effect. Thus for the present we cannot determine which process is the probable cause of RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula and until the mechanism initiating and sustaining the RRR warming is understood, and is convincingly reproduced in climate models, we lack a sound basis for predicting climate change in this region over the coming century.'

Very truly,

Steve Schulin

LOL. You're like a man who announces that he knows people have accidents in their cars, but the auto companies don't have to spend any money on safety features in his car because he's never going to have an accident.

A bold-faced lie.

More stupidity.

They will tell you that someone who studies the sun should probably stick to commenting on the sun. Of course, in your world, James, you'd let your auto-mechanic do open heart surgery on you. After all, he is an auto mechanic.

Your analogies are awful David. The public didn't want them in the first place when it was offerred. It took a movement toward safety by government, companies and others to convince everyone it was important. If it wasn't important, you'd still be riding on 4 ply tires from the 50s.

A great explanation David but you are one who is lying. And you can use the term 'climate change' to indicate the evils of AGW as well.

Boy you're hot today. Would you like to list all the variables of natural climate change and the amount of contribution of each? Keep it simple but do give us some of those wonderful arcane numbers of yours.

Another great analogy. How do you do it.

Someone who studies the sun should include the impact and ramifications on it's surroundings. Uhh, that would be us. Meteorologists should stick to the 6 o'clock weather and refrain from telling everyone any impact and ramifications the sun might have on climate.

Steve,

I'll only respond to one thing.

Did you read the comment(s) by Scott Church here?
http://davidappell.com/archives/00000054.htm#comments

In essence (if Church's comments are correct) the approach that Fu used recently was NOT the one tried by Spencer and Christy years ago. I wouldn't say that the matter is settled, but it appears distinctly possible that Spencer and Christy did not fully understand what Fu actually did at the time that they wrote the response op-eds. (Same goes for Pat Michaels over on WCA, but he was borrowing from Spencer.)

Jim Acker

I recall reading that Quark Soup group of comments at the time. I never really understood the basis for Church's claims that S/C 'misunderstand' the Fu et al methodology and 'completely misunderstand' the Fu et al. math.

Spencer and Christy have an extensive track record showing how they respond to scientific criticism. They modified their method to take into account findings by Hurrell and Trenberth, and findings by Wentz and Schabel too. They've worked pretty closely with Wentz, Schabel and Mears at RSS to understand the differences in analysis techniques and results. With that kind of track record, I tend to believe them when they say that Fu et al used an approach they had discarded for cause.

You can't say that. The public didn't want to pay extra for them. But now things like the results of the IIHS crash tests are trumpeted in ads.

It took gov't regulations. Car companies didn't offer dual braking systems, side guard beams, air bags, padded dash, collapsible steering columns, etc., until the gov't required them (except for small pilot programs that were quickly dropped).

Based on what? More intense hurricanes require a higher rate of energy expenditure. Higher temperatures are not equivalent to a higher rate of energy expenditure. The energy balance of the earth will be the same in a warmer world - this energy balance will just happen at a higher temperature than it does now.