Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is convinced the science on man made global warming is settled. In fact he’s so convinced that the science of the IPCC and NASA’s James Hansen is correct that his number 1 political priority is the introduction of an Emissions Trading Scheme by mid 2010.
The latest science shows that the IPCC’s Climate Change Modelling is grossly overstated.
“Climate change may not be as severe as predicted, suggests an international study that shows current modelling of carbon dioxide emissions from soils are overestimated by as much as 20%.
The view, reported in the latest Nature Geoscience journal, is based on a study of Australian soils that finds the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released by Australian soils is much lower than previously believed.
The finding has major implications for climate change predictions as annual carbon emissions from soils are estimated to be more than all human-made CO2 emissions combined.”
The incredibly ironic thing is that one of the Co_Authors of the report Dr Evelyn Krull, is a scientist at the Australian government’s own CSIRO Land and Water. Dr Krull goes on to say:
Dr Evelyn Krull of CSIRO Land & Water
“For Australia, a proportion of 20% charcoal in soils would lead to a 135 teragram (135 billion kilograms) overestimation on a continental scale.
“On an annual basis, an inflated prediction from topsoils alone equates to … 84% of CO2 emissions associated with aviation for Australia using values obtained for 2006,” the paper says.
Surprise, Surprise the research has found that climate change modelling is grossly overstated.
…this means that current scenarios predicted by climate change modeling “are making it look worse than it actually would be”.
This highlights the need for a global initiative to analyse soils worldwide for charcoal content so that modeling can be more accurate, she says.”
Beautiful – the climate models are overstated. All the while Rajendra Pachauri, James Hansen, Al Gore, Tim Flannery, Don Henry , Barry Brook & Clive Hamilton all of the alarmist cause try to tell us Global Warming is actually happening faster than the models predict.
The science on man made global warming is settled. Yes right.
8 Comments
Overstated, yes. Just like the carbon offsets scam. Do not pay for carbon offsets when you can get them for free:
http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com
But aren’t the soil emissions of carbon dioxide part of the natural carbon cycles, as distinct from the unnatural liberation of excessive greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning?
This critical distinction has been deliberately overlooked in the populist debate, so in a sense ignorance is coming back to bite the serious aspects of anthropogenic global warming.
Nature is not coping with the excesses of fossil fuel burning. It is dealing with all of the other carbon cycles, but not the overburden that is inhibiting radiative cooling of the lower atmosphere, poisoning the oceans and breaking the marine food chain.
If the the scaremongering in which where every single carbon emission is lumped together into one massive set of figures had not been indulged in by scientists who should have known better, a far more rational but nevertheless urgent discussion would be underway into fixing the real problems with base power load generation, industrial processes and land, sea and air transport.
The actual paper Australian climate–carbon cycle feedback reduced by soil black carbon is here.
Nowhere does it suggest that “IPCC’s Climate Change Modelling is grossly overstated”. What the paper actually does state is that:
All they are stating is that one particular feedback (one of many) is 18.3 – 24.4% less than previously thought. Not all global climate change models even include this feedback. Surprise, surprise, the science is uncertain. There are a huge amount of feedbacks in the global climate and not all of them are well understood. Most of them are positive. Uncertainties on this issue are are reason why we should be more worried about climate change, not less. Uncertainties increase the expected cost of climate change dramatically.
Your claims about people trying to “tell us Global Warming is actually happening faster than the models predict” is also nonsense. The models give you probability distributions, and some of the recent science is suggesting is that we are at the bad end of these probability distributions.
G’day Peter,
What the report Co-Author Dr Evelyn Krull said is clear:
…this means that current scenarios predicted by climate change modeling “are making it look worse than it actually would be”.
As you well know there would be no Global Warming issue if it was not for the IPCC’s computer modelling. It is the only foundation for the whole man-made global warming alarm-ism. Nothing else – zip – just what the IPCC computer modelling is predicting.
So now we have new research coming out saying that the IPCC has it’s computer model setting wrong:
“Climate change may not be as severe as predicted, suggests an international study that shows current modelling of carbon dioxide emissions from soils are overestimated by as much as 20%.
As you’d well know if one foundation input in a computer model program is erroneous the whole outcome is seriously flawed. To overstate one of the major inputs by a factor of +20% distorts the outcome by a greater magnitude.
But wait soil carbon is not the input that has been found to be over or understated.
“computer models grossly under-specify the rate of increase of evaporation with temperature, the factor that constrains surface temperature increase.
In 2006, US researchers Isaac Held and Brian Soden reported that, on average, the rate of increase of evaporation with temperature in computer models used for the IPCC fourth assessment is only about one third of the expected value.
In 2007, Frank Wentz and his US colleagues repeated the earlier finding and, on the basis of satellite analysis of rainfall, confirmed the expected rate of increase of evaporation with temperature as the appropriate value.”
Evaporation causes clouds, which cause rain hence a cooling effect. If you understate the level of evaporation by a 66% of course the model puts out a expected temperature increase that not only defies nature, but is completely fictitious.
So the IPCC modelling now has two critical imput factors wrong, soil carbon emissions and evaporation rates. If you factor them both back in at the correct rates you get a vastly different (cooler) result.
I’d be interested to know what the “recent science” (which is not actually science is it – it is just computer modelling with a few variants or inputs tweaked) is that suggests that “we are at the bad end of these probability distributions.”
Cheers – Steve
G’day Ben,
Yes I agree with you. The issues that mention:
“the real problems with base power load generation, industrial processes and land, sea and air transport.”
Need to be and should be addressed urgently.
It won’t be. The Australian government is fixated on the projections of the IPCC modelling. Cut carbon emissions by taxing business and the population is a red herring that will only harm our economy and make the pleasures of life that we enjoy now, either much more expensive or totally out of reach.
For example why are we going to pay billions of dollars to prop up car manufacturing when we could be investing in this kind of technology that will completely replace fossil fuels in most land transport?
Like Peter, I’ve read the study and it absolutely does not say that IPCC modelling is “grossly overstated”. Your post is wrong. Please correct it.
Nor is it true that overstating one of the emission sources by 20% changes the result by a greater magnitude. If soil emissions are, say, 10% of total emissions, overstating them by 20% means that overall emissions are over by just 2%.
I’ve also read the Hold and Soden and Wentz et al papers you cite and they don’t say that their results imply that there is any significantly wrong with the climate models.
There was no definitive proof about the ill effects of smoking for most of the last century, and the same type of people who said that we cannot 1000% say that smoking is bad are now saying that the jury is still out on climate change.
At http://www.enoughco2.com we are starting a campaign to save 100 tonnes of CO2 in 100 days. Come join us.