The Science of CO2 and Temperature

Benefits of Carbon Dioxide

• Carbon Dioxide Fertilizes plants and increases plant growth Earths Biosphere is Booming. Source link.
• Doubling CO2 may increase crop yields by 33%. Kimball.
• Trees grow faster. Paper in Nature.
• Farmers use CO2 to increase crop growth here.
• Greening of Planet Earth Video.

Back to Top

Blogs -Most detailed

• The anti AGW side: Climate Audit
• The best for AGW: Real Climate

ClimateGate

• IPCC involvement with “hide the decline” [climateaudit]

Clouds

• Spencer and Christie’s research on tropical clouds, summary here, original paper here.
• Spencer’s feedback
• Spencer on the PDO
• High clouds decrease with rising temperature
• Josh Willis reassess Argo Data
• Peilke Sr critics Josh Willis

Back to Top

Correlation: CO2 & temperature

There are many different ways to measure the temperature. JunkScience.com publishes the most up to date graphs from the primary sources (and lists the link to the data at the top of each graph.)

1. RSS Globe: Remote Sensing Systems in California. Uses only satellite data.
2. UAH: University of Alabama in Huntsville. Uses only satellite data.
3. HadCrug: The Hadley Centre in the UK uses a mix of satellite data and land-based thermometers.
4. GissGlobal: The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) at NASA uses land-based thermometers (plus a few ocean thermometers), but no satellite data.
5. Graphs of Southern Hemisphere versus Northern Hemisphere warming, Climate Audit
6. CO2 levels at Mauna-Loa Hawaii. Data.
7. Central England Temperature Graph, 1650 -2000
8. Reconstruction of air temperatures in Eastern Europe based on Lambs Winter Severity Index.
9. Half a billion years of CO2 and temperatures. Scotese and Berner GRAPH & Here
10. Description of the Holocene Optimum (Uni of Arizona Lecture).
11. Graph of temperatures since the last ice age.
12. Western Australia temperature records
13. Plot your own graphs at WoodForTrees.org.
14. Carbon rose 3000 years after temperatures in the PETM 50 million years ago. Sluijs et al. 2007
15. Half life of CO2. Graph comparing studies.
16. Hubert Lambs‘ reconstruction of the last 1000 years.

Back to Top

Greenhouse Gas Theory

• Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics Link. It quotes the 1909 experiment with the two greenhouses, one normal the other with glass transparent to infra red.
• Hans Schreuder I love my Carbon dioxide the greenhouse gas effect is not just not significant, it is not possible
• Similarly Will Alexanders article takes a broader and more holistic view and seems to be stating similar conclusions about the greenhouse effect’s non-existence.
• Miskolczi’s 2007 paper, see here for commentary.
• Michael Hammers discussion of radiative energy budget on Jennifer Marohasy’s site is here. He suggests that the amount of feedback attributed to water vapor in the models is impossible and explains why using at least two different methods.
• The Log Graph of carbon dioxide absorption on p 8 of The Skeptics Handbook comes from David Archibald: The Past and Future of Climate (Pdf).

Back to Top

Missing hot spot (due to lack of feedback – see also feedback)

• My summary, and response to claims that ‘it’s been found”.
• Signatures of different causes of warming see page 25. CCSP report 2006.
  
• Radiosonde recorded temperatures in atmospheric temperatures for 1979 – 1999. US CSSP published the graphic summary in part E of Figure 5.7 on page 116 in 2006
• A variation of the signatures of different causes of warming are also graphed in IPCC Assessment Report 4, 2007, Chapter 9, Figure 9.1, page 675
• Dr David Evans has summarized the explanation and evidence here for the Missing Greenhouse Signature.
• SPPI reports on the missing signature Greenhouse Warming? What Greenhouse Warming? August 2007. Christopher Monckton. (16 page pdf file).
• Fallacies about Global warming John McLean SPPI (8 page pdf). This covers the historic methods of recording temperatures, the meaning of peer reviewed papers, measuring global temperatures, the ‘consensus’, whether trends in temperature means anything and the accuracy of climate models. Its especially strong discussing the nature of the IPCC and it’s ’scientific’ standing, or not.
• Statistics of radiosonde errors: Debate at climate audit and the opposite view at real climate.
• Santer’s new paper and some discussion.
• Sherwood’s paper, and some commentary.
• All of my posts on the topic.

Back to Top

Ice cores

• Ice Core CO2 data: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, CDIAC
• Callion’s 2003 paper detailing the 800 year lag for the first time.
• Lorius on Climate Sensitivity in ice cores in 1990 Review.
• See Palisad for the most informative detailed graphics on what the Vostok and Dome Ice cores mean and why they strongly mathematically suggest CO2 follows temperatures and has little effect on them.This is what you need to see to understand “feedback” or the postulated “amplification”.
• A colorful but informative and link-filled presentation is here.
• See the lag for yourself. My large graphs of the full 420,000 years of Vostok data is here.
• Sea Ice current extent data here.
• Discussion of ice cores,  questioning reliability of CO2 estimates here. 1997

Back to Top

Feedback Loops

• Richard Lindzen calculates the feedback from data (ppt).
• Richard Lindzen shows how outgoing radiation demonstrated negative feedback and a climate sensitivity of about 0.5 C with ERBE data. (Lindzen and Choi 2009).
• Positive Feedback: Have We Been Fooling Ourselves?
• “Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered”: APS newsletter
• Hansen 1984, original paper.
• Paltridge 2009, Humidity levels are falling in the upper troposphere… (Summary)

Back to Top

Hockey Stick Graph

• Good summary from the Ross McKitrick who uncovered Mann’s fraud 2005 overview and a 2008 speech with up to date extras.
• The Australian Department of Climate Change still sports the hockey stick on its website in 2008. ( Ahhh. Maybe they got the message. It’s gone now in 2009. I’ll try to find an archive version.)
• The Medieval Warming Period: What the combined mass of independent researchers say about the historical past in 2007 is in Figure 3 (the last blue downtick seems to be due to using 30 year averages with the last period ending in about 1975, the end of the last cooling).
• Hockey Stick? What Hockey Stick? This long pdf goes right through the Mann-McIntyre saga, then lists graph after graph of observations around the world over the last millenia that supports the idea that the Medieval Warming Period was real.
• Briffas Hockey Stick. My summary; Climate Audit;  Watts Up; Real Climate; A Reply to Real Climate; Briffas’ reply; (CA reply to Briffa); Yamal06 - the most influential tree.
• Andrew Bostom‘ summary: “Horse Hockey Climate Scientology” Dec 2008.
• Wegman Report 2006. ( Back up)
• McIntyre and McKitrick: Corrections to Mann 2003; Hockey Sticks, Principal Componants, & Spurious Significance 2005; M&M Critic and update 2005.
• David Deming on that email “get rid of the MWP”".

Back to Top

Medieval Warming Period (MWP) & Little Ice Age (LIA)

The best collection of information is the Medieval Warming Period Data base and Map at CO2science.org. (Look at that map, it’s animated.)

• Temperature reconstructions -
  • Tree rings, South America, last 3620 years,  Lara 1993.
  • Gunten 2009, Sediments in Chile, AD 850- present. MWP 0.3 degrees and LIA from 1350-1750.
  • Discussion of tree ring proxies and their limits.
  • References to studies and information.
  • Boreholes

Back to Top

Oceans (see also Water)

• Ocean temperatures: The New Bluff in Climate Temperatures, David Evans, Science and Public Policy Institute.
• The Role of the Oceans in Climate, Summary:  NOAA.
• Argo Buoy Data
• William Di Puccio discusses the ocean data and whether it falsifies the AGW theory
• Wiki on Argo Buoys
• Watts Up on cooling oceans and falling CO2 . 21-3-09
• John Willis reassess’s the ARGO data
• Pielke Snr reassess’s Josh Willis’s reassessment.

Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

• PDO Summary here

Back to Top

Sea Ice

• Current global sea ice graph. Arctic Climate Research, Uni of Illinois.
  
• National Snow and Ice Data Centre NSIDC
• Basics of Sea Ice annual flux.

Back to Top

Solar-Magnetic Theory

• Solar cycles 24 and 25 and predicted climate response, David Archibald. Energy & Environment, Volume 17, Number 1, January 2006 , pp. 29-35(7). See also The Past and Future of Climate (Pdf).
• “Solar Cycle 24 Why the world will continue cooling and why carbon dioxide won’t make a detectable difference”. David Archibald, (2008, 70 page book)
• The Chilling Stars: The New Theory of Climate Change by Henrik Svensmark, Totem Books 2007.
• Reply to Lockwood and Frohlich by Svensmark 2007
• Falls in cosmic rays affect low clouds Svensmark 2009
  
• Alexander: Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development

Summary Documents

• Overall 2008 summary (50 page pdf) by the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change.
• 2009 NIPCC (Non Governmental International Panel of Climate Change). Check here for the latest detailed comprehensive report. 8Mb!
• Monthly reports by SPPI. See the latest graphs on CO2, Temp, Oceans and Ice.
• An excellent summary and collection of relevant graphs by Friends of Science
• see also Greenhouse Gas Theory (below).
• Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric CO2, Robinson, Robinson, & Soon. Excellent 12 page summary.
• There is No Evidence, David Evans summary pdf.
• There is no evidence (that answers the question) in the IPCC Assessment Report 4 Chapter Nine. AR4, Ch 9.

Thermometers, Surface recording (problems) (UHI)

• Urban Heat Island Effect: UHI
• See Anthony Watts collection of photos of Weather Stations that record car-park warming, and air conditioner output. (Like these ones in Detroit Lakes, or Tucson, Wickenberg.)
• GISS temperatures are ‘adjusted’ making the past cooler.
• Jones et al 2008 admit that urban warming accounts for 0.1 degree per decade in China!
• University of Melbourne work showing 1.8 C rise in Melbourne CBD
• Why ground measured data is suspect. Alan Carlin

Back to Top

Water (Evaporation, cooling, latent heat)

• Evaporation from the oceans cools the planet by 50 degrees: NASA.

The Politics of Science

Sacked!

Pat Michaels. Will Happer. Wall Street Journal writes about Al Gores’ purge in 1993.

The dog ate my evidence, Pat Michaels, National Review.

Back to Top

EPA regulations

• Alan Carlin writes on the EPA Proposals

History

• A history of the Global Warming theory by Spencer Weart.
• James Hansens speech in 1988.
• National Academy of Science “Global Environmental Change” 1999.

Politics of peer review

• Roger Pielke Jnr interview with Tom Fuller on the misrepresentation of his research by government bureaucracies.

Back to Top

The ‘consensus’

• 650 scientists dispute the AGW theory. Marc Morano’s list on the US Senate site. Over 200 pages of names, credentials, and statements.
• 30,000 scientists don’t agree that global warming is caused by man-made carbon dioxide.
  

  There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earths atmosphere…”

  The Petition Project

• A Canadian survey of more than 51,000 specialists in the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta showed 68 per cent disagree with the popular statement that “the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.”
• The Consensus. What consensus? John McLean. (See also IPCC)
  

Back to Top

The IPCC

• Prejudiced Authors, Prejudiced Findings. John McLean
• 50 articles that question the IPCC’s credibility.
• The IPCC Can’t Count. John McLean

Back to Top

Energy

• Key world energy statistics 2008 IEAE
• History of energy use since 10,000 B.C. book review
• US Dept of Energy (DOE).  Energy Sources fossil fuels = 85%.
• Energy Information Administration (EIA). Energy consumption by fuel type Highlights
• Total Fuel consumption 1971 – 2005 Mtoe.
• Energy Consumption from 1860 -2000 graph, from page.

The Money

Economic Impact

• Costing climate change and its avoidance The Garnaut Climate Change Review.
• The impact of a carbon tax on international tourism. Richard S Tol.
• Carbon Tax a blow for developing countries. Samoa.
• British Airways chief says consumers should pay carbon tax on flights.
• Cost to offset flights. JP Morgan “Climate Care”.
• Why the free market will choose better energy sources. Alan Carlin

Funding the climate industry

• The US budget totals $30 billion on climate research between 1989 – 2008 through USGCRP + CSSP. Details here of annual expenditure.
• Activists get funding too. There’s a collection of examples here.
• Forbes Magazine interviews Rex Tillerson from Exxon.

Research Programs

• Climate Science Technology Program CSTP
• Climate Change Science Program CSSP. 2009 report “Our changing planet”

Trading carbon

• State and Trends of the Carbon Market, 2009. World Bank Report.

Back to Top

Spin doctored

• A list of all the things global warming has been blamed for.
• Al’s snow job on ice cores in An Inconvenient Truth.
• Al Gores cartoon video of carbon molecules fighting sunbeams
• The Royal Society writes to Exxon to ask them not to exercise free speech. see also The Guardian .

———————————

Good luck, it’s a deep pool.

I’m happy to consider suggestions, and will update this list page regularly. But I’m only looking for The Best, The Original, or very notable contributions. I’m not trying to emulate the 4,000-climate-links-pages. Apologies to all the good contributions out there which are not listed here. Email me joanne ‘AT’ joannenova.com.au Nov 2, 2009

Skeptics Handbook artwork and downloadable files Here