Tag Archives: IPCC

Who killed the Golden Toads? Not Global Warming, but…

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Posted by JJ on March 7, 2010 – 6:28 pm
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A new study shows that the extinction of Monteverde golden toads in the Andes in the 1980s was not caused by global warming.  Earlier widely publicised studies said global warming was the cause.  The authors of the new study, however, are careful to warn us that global warming may cause ecosystem stresses that may cause extinctions.  This is what happened, and why they give that warning in spite of their study’s conclusions.

The Monteverde golden toad disappeared from Costa Rica Pacific coastal forest in the late 1980s, killed by the chytrid fungus.   Many researchers have linked outbreaks of the deadly fungus to climate change.

In a 2006 paper in Nature, a team of U.S. and Latin American scientists linked rising tropical temperatures to the disappearance of 64 amphibian species in Central and South America.  “Disease is the bullet killing frogs, but climate change is pulling the trigger,” the lead author of the Nature study and a research scientist at the Monteverde reserve, J. Alan Pounds, said at the time.

A new study by Kevin J Anchukaitis of Columbia University and Michael N Evans of the University of Maryland, says it was El Nino, not climate change or global warming, that caused the fungus to thrive, killing the golden toad. “El Niño pulled the trigger,” said Anchukaitis.  El Nino always dries up the area in which the toads lived, which maked them congregate closely together in the few pools that remain.  So all were exposed to the fungus, which wiped them out completely.

This latest study shows that El Nino is the cause of the extinction of the golden toads.  It shows conclusively that there was no discernible long-term trend visible in the circumstances of that event.  At a time when the IPCC is making dire predictions of mass extinctions caused by global warming, and cites events like the extinction of the golden toad as evidence that it is already happening, that is refreshing.  And that should be that.  The earlier study was yet another of the many climate change studies that have blamed global warming for every possible disaster, and predicted more catastrophes to come if we don’t take firm action to stop it.

But wait.  Anchukaitis and Evans then talk about what their study definitely did not show.

In their Q&A section of the study, the authors say “Both the rate and magnitude of ongoing and future climate change are very likely to put additional stresses on ecosystems. In combination with land use change, introduced pathogens, pollution, and other related ecological changes, anthropogenic climate change will undoubtedly play a role in future extinctions.”  And Evans says “extinctions happen for reasons that are independent of human-caused climate change, but that does not mean human-caused climate change can’t cause extinctions”.

No part of their study supports those statements.  So why do they depart from the legitimate findings of their study when they are supposedly discussing the study?

Because their sources of present or future funding expect warnings about global warming to be communicated with the findings.  Even when the study conclusions in no way support those warnings.  Them’s the rules.  That’s the tune the men with the money expect the pipers to play.

By the way, their results in the new study are only the latest challenge to the theory that climate change is driving the deadly chytrid outbreaks in the Americas. In a 2008 paper in the journal PLoS Biology, University of Maryland biologist Karen Lips mapped the loss of harlequin frogs from Costa Rica to Panama.  She found that their decline followed the step-by-step pattern of an emerging infectious disease, affecting frogs in the mountains but not the lowlands.  Had the outbreak been climate-induced, she said, the decline should have moved up and down the mountains over time.

References:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/02/25/0908572107

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~kja/monteverde/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/06/global-warming-not-blamed-for-toad-extinction/

Are Humans the Climate Weapons of Mass Destruction?

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Posted by JJ on March 7, 2010 – 11:58 am
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The UK Met has led a new study into Global Warming, a review led by Peter Stott of the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter.  The review was conducted by six IPCC scientists.  Their arguments and conclusions remind me of a desperate-looking Colin Powell on TV, showing pictures of suspicious-looking Iraqi buildings and claiming that they were strong evidence that Saddam Hussein was concealing Weapons of Mass Destruction.  This is the NZ Herald report of the study’s conclusion:

“The researchers found that no other possible natural phenomenon, such as volcanic eruptions or variations in the activity of the sun, could explain the significant warming of the planet over the past half century as recorded on every continent including Antarctica.”  It goes on:  “It is only when the warming effect of emitting millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from human activity is considered that it is possible to explain why global average temperatures have risen so significantly since the middle of the 20th century.”

How did they arrive at this conclusion?  Well, they matched computer models of possible causes of climate change, both human-led and otherwise, to measured changes in factors such as air and sea temperature, Arctic sea ice cover and global rainfall patterns.  They call the technique “optimal detection”, and claim that it showed clear fingerprints of human-induced global warming.  Richard Lindzen has this to say about their application of “optimal detection”:

“they take models that can not reasonably simulate known patterns (such as ENSO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation), claim that such models accurately depict natural internal climate variability, and use the fact that the models could not replicate the warming episodes… to argue that forcing was necessary and that the forcing must have been due to man”.

Well put.  As Lindzen also points out, their argument constitutes a rejection of scientific logic that makes arguments for Intelligent Design seem rigorous by comparison.  It boils down to argument from ignorance.  They have created models that include only the possible causes they know about and are capable of modelling, with all of their weightings tuned to enable reasonable hind-casting, applied it to a warming world, and shouted “Eureka!” when it sort-of matched expectations (nothing is said about the fifteen-year hiatus in warming from 1995).

To return to Dr Peter Stott, in his review: “”What we see here are observations consistent with a warming world. This wealth of evidence we have now shows there is an increasingly remote possibility of climate change being dominated by natural factors rather than human factors.”

Bunkum.  Stott’s “wealth of evidence” has no more significance than the Iraqi buildings.  There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.  And the endless list of the consequences of Global Warming does not show that we humans are causing it, or that it is catastrophic.  There is no need to go to war.

References:

NZ Herald Article on the Review:  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10630087

Aust Age Article on Guardian report:  http://www.theage.com.au/world/climate-change-review-stresses-human-factor-20100305-pouc.html

Richard Lindzen on AGW  http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/02/dr-richard-lindzens-talk-at-fermilab.html

Methane Alarm (Please fund my Research)

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Posted by JJ on March 6, 2010 – 11:15 pm
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Scientific American reports a study of Methane bubbling up from the sea floor off the coast of Siberia.  The study was conducted by a team of scientists from the United States, Russia and Sweden, who published their findings in the Science journal on March 4 2010.  The study is titled Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf

This is the very first sentence of the abstract of the paper in Science:  “Remobilization to the atmosphere of only a small fraction of the methane held in East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) sediments could trigger abrupt climate warming.”

Not bad as an attention-getter.  They go on to say that the methane leaking into the atmosphere from the East Siberian Arctic shelf is on par with previous estimates of methane venting from the entire world ocean.  They estimate that the region is producing 8 to ten million tons of methane into the atmosphere every year, because warming ocean water is thawing permafrost, allowing methane trapped underneath to escape.

The Scientific American article notes that “Methane is regarded as 20 to 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.”  It also points out that it’s “a relatively small slice of the 440 million metric tons of methane emitted worldwide each year from a combination of human activities and natural sources like rotting plants in wetlands, termites and wildfires.”

The lead author of the study, Natalia Shakhova of the University of Alaska, says that scientists had not thought subsea permafrost would begin to thaw and release the gas. She said more research is needed to figure out whether the methane leaking from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is an ongoing, steady phenomenon, or whether it suggests a new source of the gas is emerging as seafloor permafrost thaws.  It seems that every piece of climate related research carries a recommendation for more research.

Here’s what neither the article nor the study tell us about the atmospheric content of greenhouse gases:

  • Water Vapour, 40,000 parts per million.  Water vapour is the most powerful greenhouse gas.
  • CO2,  360 parts per million
  • Methane, 1.7 parts per million.

Yes, that’s right.  1.7 parts per million!

But then, why would they point that out?  They want to do more research, and for that they need funding.  The billions available from the IPCC and its affiliates can best be assured by showing that your work supports Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.

References:

Scientific American Article:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=methane-siberia-climate-change

Science Publication: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/327/5970/1246

Table of Atmospheric Gases:  http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7a.html