Answers are the easy part;
Questions raise the doubt.
— Jimmy Buffet
Pummeled nearly senseless by the popular refrain that manmade carbon dioxide emissions cause catastrophic global warming, I optimistically opened climate researcher Roy W. Spencer’s latest book, The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists and commenced a learning experience that transcends modern climate science mediocrity.
Groupthink breeds mediocrity and mediocrity breeds contempt – verifiable truisms woven into the climate science fabric of the western world. Spencer elucidates those truisms using nature’s own calling card – surface temperatures inferred from measurements made by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) aboard a NASA satellite.
Spencer, lead scientist for the AMSR, dices the climate change question into its two primary components: forcing and feedback. Spencer generally agrees with the IPCC on the relatively small amount of warming that carbon dioxide, acting alone, forces through its greenhouse attributes. The major area of disagreement between him and the IPCC – whether the feedback generated by these forcings is positive or negative – forms the basis of this well-written, insightful and at times humorous work.
According to the IPCC and the mainstream climate science establishment (MCSE), increased atmospheric carbon dioxide from human’s domestic, commercial and industrial burning of fossil fuels causes significant positive feedback, resulting in warming above that attributable to carbon dioxide alone. Factoring this baseless belief into all complex climate models yields predictions of increased global temperatures which are then proclaimed spectacularly detrimental to worldwide health and wealth.
For example, the IPCC decrees that doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide, currently forecasted to occur by the end of this century, generates feedback causing an average global temperature increase ranging from one to several degrees C. Therefore, according to the IPCC, doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels causes about 1 degree C and feedback, in the form of water vapor and clouds, yield a few more degrees C to the average global temperature. Finally, according to the IPCC, this increased temperature leads to a wide variety of gradually occurring but extremely untenable outcomes for mankind and nature throughout this century and well into the next.
Following an overview of historical climate patterns and a brief critique of the IPCC’s singular and incredulous charge of reviewing only human’s impact on world climate, Spencer examines the feedback question using the tools of a genuine scientist: an open and inquiring mind. What he finds may astound you.
Without divulging the crux of the book regarding his feedback experiments, Spencer uses simple analogies to explain his theory and tests his hypothesis with satellite measurements. Feedback, according to Spencer, is analogous to the windows of a car sitting in the sun on a hot day. With the windows closed simulating positive feedback (endorsed by the IPCC) the interior of the car heats up until reaching equilibrium with the outside air. Open the windows, analogous to negative feedback induced by high clouds (endorsed by Spencer), and the temperature inside the car drops.
Spencer asserts that his US Government-funded research, now shunned by the MCSE, clearly shows that feedback in the form of high clouds acts as a cooling mechanism shielding the earth from the sun’s warming rays. In contrast to the complex climate models the IPCC relies on which run on high speed computers, Spencer’s simple model is available for free at his website.
Using natural warming phenomenon that, according to Spencer, account for 75% of the 0.6 C warming that occurred during the last century, he emphasizes the earth’s natural climate variability. In contrast, the IPCC assumes that all of the warming that occurred in the last century was caused by manmade carbon dioxide emissions and models complex interactions of aerosols and pollutants to accurately simulate past temperatures. Spencer bristles at such an overly simplistic assumption and compellingly argues that natural climate variability, such as the cyclic Pacific Decadal Oscillation, primarily drives global temperatures, not carbon dioxide.
Interestingly, Spencer’s feedback research featured prominently in an online quasi-debate between UK’s Climate Czar David MacKay, author of Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air, and Matt Ridley of The Rational Optimist fame (reviewed here). Incidentally, at the time of this writing, the ball was clearly in MacKay’s court; but, it doesn’t seem likely that he will respond – akin to a boxer refusing to leave his corner after the bell rings.
In addition to trumpeting his theory and findings about feedback, Spencer’s tome provides an excellent overview of what is known and unknown about earth’s climate and asks the questions all sentient beings should be asking. Spencer takes a good stab at answering them and not a moment too soon. In time, the question of who’s right — the blinding pessimism of the IPCC or Spencer’s illuminating optimism — will become known. Until then, the world’s most adaptable creature will continue doing what it does best.