Memo 23/08
David v Goliath
Will Alexander [email protected]
Wednesday 16 July 2008
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I
would still plant my apple tree. Martin Luther
Fig. 1 David (Alexander June 2008)
Fig. 2 Goliath (NASA July 2008)
A footpath through the jungle
As described in my last memo, the whole climate change issue is
in tatters. But that does not solve the problem. We have to start
looking for a new route through the climate variability jungle.
The interested parties can be divided into three broad groups.
Group 1 is the very vociferous and influential environmentalist
lobby. They are mainly academics. The supporters are generally
wealthy.
Group 3 at the other end of the scale are the tens of millions
of poor and disadvantaged people in the world. About three quarters
of them have no access to electricity, and about half are
illiterate. I guess that about 90% of them have never heard the
word ‘environment'. Despite their majority, they have very little
say in the affairs of their region, let alone the world as a
whole.
Group 2 are those in the middle who attempt to achieve the
impossible. This is to reconcile poverty reduction with
environmental concerns. As any politician will tell you, following
the middle path is political suicide. Yet there are some of us
whose professional and moral responsibilities force us to follow
this dangerous path. I'm one of them.
What I propose doing is to take you by the hand (not by your
collar or pearl necklace), and try to explain the basics in simple,
logical terms, so that you have a greater understanding of the
issues and conflicting interests.
The basics
This whole climate change issue began when a group of
knowledgeable scientists raised concerns about the steadily
increasing discharge of undesirable greenhouse gases (mainly carbon
dioxide) into the atmosphere. These are principally from fossil
fuel burning power stations; heavy industries such as the
production of steel and cement; and by land, air and sea transport.
It was feared that these would result in a slow but steady increase
in global temperatures. The temperature increases would have a
whole series of undesirable consequences.
These concerns led to the establishment of two United Nations
bodies, the UNFCCC and the IPCC. The latter body was established in
1988 and issues five-yearly reports. Unfortunately, honest and
competent scientists gradually lost control of the situation as the
politicians and environmentalist pressure groups took over. A lot
of research money became available and many scientists succumbed to
the temptation to exaggerate some aspects and suppress others. When
they started losing ground they resorted to vilifying all those who
disagreed with them.
The physical evidence to support this theory began to
accumulate. Polar ice sheets and continental glaciers started
melting. Together with the threatened polar bears, this caught the
public's imagination. Al Gore exploited these fears in his very
popular video for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Support for
the theory grew and grew. In the EU and UK in particular,
legislation was introduced to control the undesirable greenhouse
gas emissions. National economies were healthy and the costs were
politically acceptable.
During the past 12 months, the international scene changed for
the worse. There were alarming increases in the costs of food and
fuel. National and international economic difficulties developed.
Then to the embarrassment of the climate change supporters, global
temperatures stopped rising in 1998. They remained sensibly
constant until last year when they started dropping. The polar ice
sheets have stopped melting and glaciers are advancing again. South
Africa's fauna and flora are in a healthy condition. We have even
started culling our elephant population. Our dams are in a healthy
state, and there are no major water shortages.
The sceptics are rejoicing, and the politicians are becoming
more cautious. For a few of us this has become worrying. We have
seen these climatic swings in the past. Experienced engineers know
that in times of plenty, you have to start planning for the
inevitable times of shortages that lie ahead.
The climate change advocates are in an even greater predicament.
Their alarmist theories have become unstuck. They have two choices.
Either they have to accept that they were wrong, or try to prove
that all is in order. Neither approach will be easy because the
sceptics are starting to rub salt in their wounds. Let me give you
two examples from events during the past week.
Critical questions
Last week a colleague sent me the press release distributed by
NASA on 11 July titled What’s Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing). NASA
requested that we “Send this story to a friend”.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/11jul_solarcycleupdate.htm?list31452
Figure 2 above is from the press release. I have no wish to join
the debate regarding NASA’s activities in this whole climate change
issue, but I have several questions. The most important is why is
it that the solar physicists of NASA, with all the funds and
technology at their disposal, failed to appreciate that it is the
double sunspot cycle that is of interest, not the single 11-year
cycles? The properties of the alternating cycles are fundamentally
different.
In our paper published in June last year, my co-authors and I
demonstrated that a synchronous linkage exists between the double
sunspot cycle and the multiyear hydrometeorological processes.
These in turn are synchronous with the acceleration and
deceleration of the sun as it moves along its trajectory through
galactic space. Were the NASA solar physicists not aware of this,
or did they deliberately suppress it, as it conflicted with their
theory of exclusive human causality of global warming?
On Monday 7 July my article Likelihood of a global drought in
2009-2016 was published in the South African monthly magazine Civil
Engineering, which has more than 8,000 readers. [Not 3,000 as
stated in a previous memo.] On Wednesday 9 July I distributed one
of my memos in which I described the conclusions reached in the
article.
Please refer to Figures 1 and 2 above. The first is my
illustration of the properties of the double sunspot cycle. The
second figure is that in NASA's recent press release.
Coincidentally, the vertical scales are the same. Add 1995 to the
numbers on the horizontal scale in my figure. We are now in year
13.
I agree that the current solar activity is not unusual, but I
disagree with the other statements. NASA’s projections for the
forthcoming cycle 24 are wrong. The magnitude of sunspot activity
in cycle 24 will be LESS than that of cycle 23, based purely on an
analysis of the historical data.
I agree that the peak of cycle 24 should occur in 2012 but I
disagree altogether with the exaggerated estimates of the range
within which the numbers of sunspots are likely to occur. My
estimates are as follows: average (89), maximum (146) and minimum
(42). The corresponding numbers derived from NASA’s illustration
are: average (130), maximum (155) and minimum (105). How could NASA
have made this fundamental error that a high school child could
have checked?
Reference. World Data Centre for the Sunspot Index
http://sidc.oma.be
Also, NASA failed to carry out simple, multi-decadal, concurrent
trend analysis between sunspot numbers and global air temperatures.
This would have shown synchronous multi-decadal trends of
increasing and decreasing global temperatures with the increasing
and decreasing sunspot numbers. These are shown in Figures 3 and 4
below. They were included in my course notes distributed earlier
this year. Note that while sunspot numbers and global temperatures
increased from 1913 to 2006, they decreased in unison for 1850 to
1913.
Why did NASA not carry out this simple exercise that would have
shown that a linkage exists between sunspot activity and global
temperatures? This relationship is not fortuitous. Why is it that
NASA, like the British Royal Society, is misusing its status to
confuse the public on this vitally important climate change
issue?
Figures 3 & 4. Surface temperature v sunspot data 1850-1913
above and 1913-2006 below.
Knockout blows
The observation that global temperatures have been more or less
static since the 1998 peak while carbon dioxide emissions continue
to rise, has not escaped the attention of the critics. This has
been the subject of intense Internet exchanges. Figure 5 by Joe
D’Aleo is doing the rounds and is now on its way up the ladder.
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Letter_UN_Sec_Gen_Ban_Kimoon.pdf
Figure 5. Global air temperatures v atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations by Joe D’Aleo.
References:
1. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/msu.html
2. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature
3. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
4. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/experts Joseph D’Aleo,
Certified Consultant Meteorologist, Fellow of the American
Meteorological Society (AMS), Executive Director Icecap.us
It is very clear that there is no connection between global
carbon dioxide concentrations and global air temperatures. This
goes to the very heart of climate change theory.
Consequently, climate alarmism has received three mortal blows
during the past week. The first is political. The attitudes of the
developing nations are hardening. There is no way that they will be
willing to adopt measures that will have an adverse effect on their
poverty alleviation measures. In Japan, our Department of
Environment Affairs and Tourism Minister, called the G8 nations’
bluff. This worsened the already strained relations between the
African and the Western nations.
The combination of the other two events delivered the knockout
blow. The rise in global temperatures relied on as proof of
anthropogenic global warming, was due to changes in solar activity
and NOT rising carbon dioxide emissions. This will undoubtedly be
denied, but the evidence is solid.
The road ahead
There is tremendous inertia in this whole climate change issue.
Earlier, the UK appointed the Stern Review, and more recently, the
Australians appointed the Garnaut Commission. The terms of
reference in both cases were to advance climate alarmism. It is
difficult to see a face-saving exit for these two governments. My
prediction is that they will react to public pressures and slowly
de-emphasise climate change as a national priority. The UK
authorities in particular are going to have a hard time.
Returning to South Africa, climate change has never been a
political issue, so it will be a lot easier for the authorities to
move on to the much more important problems facing our country.
Regards
Memo 2308 David v Goliath.doc
16 July 2008
