History of Climate Change

Many of the Presidential candidates called Climate Change (formerly Global Warming and now being changed to Climate Emergency) an “existential problem” that demands immediate action to dramatically curtail the increase in global surface temperatures.  When non-scientists refer to climatic change today, they are referring to the Androgenic Global Warming (AGW) portion of Climate Change that tends to increase surface temperatures.  AGW is hypothesized to be the result of burning fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and thereby increase the greenhouse effect that warms the earth.  The particular problem of climatic change is really an old and familiar one.  Each generation seems to espouse some theory for the changing climate.  President Jefferson wrote about warming during his lifetime. Within my lifetime, climate change has been blamed on nuclear tests, atmospheric aerosol pollution, and now emission of carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels for energy.   

Actually, from the standpoint of meteorology, the weather is always changing, never static. The atmosphere is a restless medium undergoing all sorts of transitory variations-not only on an hourly or daily scale, but also on weekly, monthly, yearly, decadal, and greater scales up to the ice ages. Meteorologists are engaged in modestly detecting and predicting some of these variations over periods of a week or two. We would indeed be surprised if there were no major natural changes taking place even of the order of a year, two years, or even a century or longer.  

There are many theories about natural causes of geologic temperature changes that focus on changes in the solar output, or in changes to the earth’s solar orbit.  The last ice age peaked about 25,000 years ago and ice covered New England up to a mile thick with a significant lowering of the oceans.  Obviously, Man did not end the ice age because he had fires in the caves. 

Now, let’s concentrate on the past thousand years.  The early estimates of the global temperature indicated a Medieval Warm period starting about 1000 AD when the Viking farmers settled Greenland for more than 300 years and Vikings landed in Labrador and Newfoundland. This was followed by a cold period from 1450 to 1850 that is known as the Little Ice Age.  Certainly, there are historical accounts from the colonial period and the American Revolution on the extreme cold of this period.  For example, the Connecticut River often froze from October to May in the 17^th century and the bitter cold at Valley Forge. What caused these changes?  The first thermometers were developed in 1709 and widescale surface temperature readings started in the late 1800s.  Recent analyses showed the following features:

• Global temperatures rose about 0.9°F in two periods: 1910 to 1940 and 1970 to 2000.
• A period of cooling occurred from 1940 to 1970
• There was a pause with nearly constant temperature during the 15 years 2000-2015 
• Warmer years occurred from 2015 to 2018 with a strong El Nino.

Now, Man is trying to forecast the future climate based on the theory that emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels for energy will increase the warming to catastrophic levels by 2100.

Climate Models

The climate change theory that increased carbon dioxide results in a catastrophic increase in the earth’s temperature is modeled using climate models. Solar radiation from the Sun warms the Earth and infrared radiation emitted by the earth cools the planet. When long term incoming and outgoing radiative transfers are in balance, the global temperature will be unchanged.  The transfer computations are relatively well known and depend on the vertical concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other minor gases for both the incoming solar radiation and the emitted infrared radiation.  However, the computations are complex and time consuming and the cloud data are difficult to include. Extensive radiation computations were added to meteorological forecasting models to develop climate models.  Radiative effects on atmospheric temperature are only one of many factors in temperature changes.

Universities and government institutes in many countries developed over 30 climate models in the 1990s that made projections of the climate until 2100 and are updated about every five years.  Energy use based on fossil fuels increased after World War II due to increased industry and population.  Carbon dioxide increased from 280 ppm in 1945 to 415 ppm today.  Climate models initially estimated the global temperature increase of 6°F with plus or minus 50% error in 2100.  The model results differ by 3 to 1.

A comparison of the model temperature results with observations show three major points:

• Failure to match 20^th century changes. The models were simulated for 30 year periods 1910-1940 and 1970 to 2000. There are only small statistical differences between the rate of warming between the periods.  Climate models failed to simulate the natural warming duri g 1910-1940 when the carbon dioxide was constant.
• Divergence of model results in the early 21^st century.  Statistically significant global warming of the surface stopped for the first 15 years.  The models failed to predict any period of 10 years in which the temperature would not rise with increasing carbon dioxide. 
• Models are warmer than current observations. Overall, the climate models forecast temperatures that are higher than the observations for the last 20 years.  Currently all models predict more warming than observed. 

The results should give some indication to the lack of accuracy of the models on their 10 to 30 year forecasts and whether their forecasts for 100 years will be scientifically defensible.

What is causing the errors in the climate models that cause them to overestimate global warming?  Three major problems are well known:

• Problem 1.  Water Vapor Changes.  The models predict the atmosphere will contain additional atmosphere water vapor.  Water vapor is highly variable in the atmosphere in both horizontal and vertical dimensions and may differ from the model’s assumptions.
• Problem 2.  Cloud coverage changes.  The simulation of clouds in climate models remains challenging. There is very high confidence that uncertainties in cloud processes explain much of the spread in modelled climate sensitivity. Nevertheless, biases in cloud simulation lead to regional errors on cloud’s radiative effect of several tens of watts per square meter.  Climate scientists have downplayed these biases because they are mainly looking for carbon dioxide as the sole cause of the observed warming.
• Problem 3.   Omission of long-term oceanic cycles.  Scientists know various long-term cycles such as ENSO, North Atlantic Oscillation, (NAO), and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) influence the global average temperatures, but are not generally a predicted element in the global models.
• Problem 4.  Solar activity is assumed constant in the models.  Sunspots increased during the past century from the lows during the little ice age.  Since 2000, the number of sunspots declined to low levels.  If the low activity continues, will the global temperature be reduced during the coming decades? While the output is nearly constant, one theory is that the solar activity indicated by sunspots may alter cosmic rays which may affect the formation of clouds. 

While modelers always think their models are representative, the models need to be verified using independent data. 

Climate Observations

The most common indicator of climate change is the global temperature that is computed monthly by several agencies in different countries. The global temperature is a calculated number based on stations on land, with some observations over the oceans, where each station represents the temperature measurement over wide areas of earth.  Since the 1970s, satellites have been used to estimate the lower atmospheric temperature. There are many problems with the calculated global average temperature that need to be considered.  Sites with temperature readings are opened and closed, and sites may be moved.   Missing data is often a problem at the sites.  Over time, the surroundings of the site may change and the temperature will change, such as increased urbanization. Changes in instrumentation may result in changes in temperature when accuracy is increased.  Some of the remote sites have a large weight in assessing small changes and any inaccuracies at the sites would be magnified. The calculations since 1880 have moved less than the distance on a thermometer that represent 2°F. 

While the global temperature can be used as an indicator of climate change, the actual temperature within a region provides the actual influence on the environment.  The surface warming over northern continents is largest in the middle to high latitudes. It is more pronounced in winter–spring and notably smaller in summer–autumn. In much of the eastern US, the summertime maximum trends are zero or slightly cooler in the past 75 years. One expects fewer very cold days in the winter (less than 10°F in New England) with minimal changes in the summer. 

Alarmists indicate there will be more severe weather such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and wild fires.  Far ranging effects, such as reduction in polar ice and rising sea levels could make changes that affect plant and animal life around the planet. When severe weather occurs, it is often said “that you can see the climate changes occurring.”  However, if one looks at the meteorological data, it is difficult to discern any changes in severe or extreme weather in the last 75 years.  The evidence for any changes in severe weather is very difficult to detect due to its sporadic nature.  It is necessary to look at long term trends in the weather.

Prime examples include Hurricanes Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and Sandy in New York in 2012 because of their extreme damages.  Current examples include the midwestern floods and high number of tornadoes in May 2019.  Yet they were just ‘weather events’ that had occurred in the region previously.  Their high damages increased from a larger population living in these areas. Hurricanes are fairly common in Louisiana.  Major hurricanes in the northeast were reported as early as 1635 with the last major hurricane in 1938 that killed more than 600. 

In the case of hurricanes, a WMO Task Team report on human effects on tropical cyclones in 2019 stated “Human activities may have already caused changes in tropical cyclone activity that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of these changes compared to estimated natural variability, or due to observational limitations.”  So, should we worry about nondetectable changes yet?

NOAA examined the frequency of tornadoes and strong tornadoes since 1950 and found  a slight negative trend in the frequency of tornadoes. What weather events, if any, can be related to the emission of carbon dioxide or to the recent climate changes?  According the IPCC report in 2014 on extremes

• There is a lack of evidence on the sign of the trend in magnitude and frequency of floods.
• There is no evidence of trends in hail and thunderstorms.
• No evidence of trends for floods or droughts since the middle of the 20^th century on a global scale.

Rising sea level changes are possibly the biggest danger caused by the projected global warming.  Many millions of people live within a few meters of sea level around the world. Some entire nations, such as Maldives and Bangladesh are within a couple of meters from sea level.  Sea levels has been rising for more than 200 years at between 1 and 2 mm per year  (6-8 inches increase in the 20^th century). A recent paper predicted that the increase by 2100 would be up to 2 meters (80 inches or 2000 mm) with the water coming from the melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets.  In order to get a projected rise of 2 meters the rates will need to accelerate to record levels within the next few years by a factor of at least 10.  Are the climate scientists the Noah of our age or will it be just another spurious prediction?  So, when will the flood start? 

Proposed Solutions

The major assumption that the projections of the climate models are correct led the countries to sign the Paris Climate Agreement to limit the temperature to less than 2°C (preferably 1.5°C) above the 1800 temperature before the Industrial Revolution. (So was the warming in the 1800-1950 period due to CO2?).  ALL solutions to the problem are to drastically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by industrialized countries from oil, natural gas and coal for energy uses by 20% by 2020 and to nearly zero prior to 2050. There are fewer reductions for the developing countries including China and India. 

Climate change is a hot political issue in many parts of the world and the possible solutions are heavily political.  There is a continuing concerted effect by the governments to demonstrate to the world that global warming is due to emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and will cause a number of cataclysmic effects.  The Global Warming debate has entered the political arena and many politicians like the solutions in that the government may raise large sums of money implementing changes.  And in many respects, it has taken the form of a religion in which “This is the way to save the planet.”  

There are many problems in implementation for these goals and countries have been trying to solve the problem for the past 25 years, without much success.  Most solutions use wind and solar energy as replacement sources for fossil fuel for electrical generation with little mention of nuclear energy.  The major problems with wind and solar are the intermittent nature of these sources for most locations.  Only areas with high wind reliability, such as the southern Plains and off-shore provide sufficient steady winds to generate reliable electricity. The major problem with solar is the lack of sufficient storage facilities to provide energy when the sun is not available at night and during cloudy days and the lower availability in the northern latitudes.  In order to maintain electric grid reliability, many fossil fuel plants have to be ready to replace energy shortfalls. 

The reductions proposed for energy use are projected to cause massive disruptions to the global economies by the mid 21^st century if high reliability of electricity is not maintained. Most solutions do not discuss the drastic changes in the life styles that would be necessary.  Fossil fuels would be heavily restricted for transportation, heating and cooling and for industry.  House temperatures would be reduced in winter and increased in summer with higher costs. Some have proposed a massive insulation effort for residences in the nation.

Most proposals are general and fail to show the effects that will be imposed on the general population. An American Congressman proposed elimination of air travel.  A  British Labor leader proposal to reduce wages by 75% for a 10 hour work week.  The climate plans of Ireland and other European counties propose gasoline and diesel cars will not be sold after 2030.  Ireland’s plan is to pack the population into “higher density” cities which will ‘revolutionize’ people’s lifestyle and behavior.  Other proposals include zero or one child families and reduction of meat in the diet.  It is difficult to see where all the required money will be obtained or whether the current economic and social  systems can survive.

Yet, we now have 75 years of observations of weather and climate data and are half way to 2100 to draw conclusions on the possible climate from the observations. The most likely outcome appears to be a slight warming of the winter months.  The current question is whether we need to upend our economy to forestall catastrophic changes that are foretold in the models, but not apparent in the observations. 

The application of the theory needs to follows the rules of the scientific method.  In particular, the theory of AGW needs revision as the models used around the world are consistently showing overwarming.  The magnitude of the global warming is largely unknown after numerous ‘revisions’ of the global temperature data.  The increased presence of extreme weather is not supported by meteorological data.  Climate theory cannot be exempted from verification because most of the work is funded by governments.

Any major change in the global economies aimed at affecting climate will probably have little effect on the climate, but will impose an unneeded expense on the poor and in many parts of the world the poor will be denied electricity. There is certainly not enough evidence that would require the energy supply using carbon to be shut down with a resultant change in the way Man lives within the next 20 years.  When does someone say “The emperor hath no clothes!”