A fresh look at climate change.

• Author: Ballonoff, Paul
• Position: Report

Recently The Economist (2013a), a prominent journalistic advocate of strong policies to control C[O.sub.2] emissions, expressed their puzzlement on the absence of warming over the last 15 years. They observed that this flat period of global average temperature occurred despite that C[O.sub.2] emissions from human sources continued at an increased rate. The total human-produced C[O.sub.2] emissions in that period of flat temperatures represent a quarter of all such emissions ever produced. The standard climate models, such as those used by the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC), anticipated that such massive C[O.sub.2] increases should have caused continuing increases in average global temperatures. The Economist noted that observed global average temperature is now at the lowest end of the predicted range, and that if the present trend continues, the actual temperatures will soon be below even the lowest forecasts. Most recently, Fyfe, Gillett, and Zwiers (2013) demonstrated that the current climate models have experienced a systematic failure--a finding very similar to Knappenberger and Michaels (2013).

Given the large difference of observed data from the forecasts that underlie much current policy, it is timely to ask if the climate debates are addressing the right questions. Comparison of forecasts to observations is the right way to start asking. If the forecasts used to set policy are not accurate, then policies based on those forecasts warrant review. This is important for all of the purposes for which climate policies may be set, but this article concentrates on country development policies related to energy, especially electricity. Those policies are critical, because it is widely accepted that more than one billion people have no access to reliable electric grid power and therefore must turn to other sources for heat and light (Ballonoff 2013). The cost to provide that electricity, and also meet the continued and expanding needs of developed and developing countries, is estimated in the trillions of dollars. Our understanding of climate change and how it interacts with continued expansion of use of energy resources thus has a profound effect on assuring such huge capital cost is invested in the most effective way.

The Status of Climate Science

The foundation of the modern climate change discussion is the accurate observation that human activity has significantly increased the atmospheric concentration of C[O.sub.2], and that such activity is continuing (Tans 2009). Increased C[O.sub.2] concentration, especially when amplified by predicted feedback effects thus also is assumed to predict increasing global average atmospheric temperature. Depending on the degree of warming expected, other serious and mainly undesired effects are predicted. As The Economist (2013a) observed, the average global temperature did rise on average over the previous century. Following a 25-year cooling trend post-World War II, temperatures increased at an especially strong rate in the quarter century ending in 1997. The trend of that warming period, the correlation with increased C[O.sub.2], and the fact of human activity causing that C[O.sub.2] increase apparently supported use of projection models extending that trend to future years. Such projections were the basis for the UN's 1997 IPCC analysis on which much current policy is based. It is thus at least ironic that 1997 was also the last year in which such measured global average temperature increase took place.

One of the key features of the IPCC forecast, and greenhouse effect forecasts generally, is the expected feedback loops. One of those is that the presumed drier and hotter conditions on the ground would cause expanded desertification and deforestation. A distinct kind of greenhouse effect is also predicted from increased C[O.sub.2] concentration--namely, the aerial fertilization effect, which is that plants grow better in an atmosphere of higher C[O.sub.2]. Many analysts, such as the IPCC, clearly thought the greater effect would be from heating, not plant growth. One must assume this was an intentional judgment, as the IPCC was aware of the C[O.sub.2] aerial fertilization effect from its 1995 Second Assessment Report, which contained empirical evidence of increased greening in enhanced C[O.sub.2] environments (Reilly 2002: 19). In contrast, climate analysts such as those with the Cato Center for the Study of Science have argued since 1999 that atmospheric temperature is much less sensitive to increased concentration of C[O.sub.2] (Michaels 1999b).

While in fact heating has not occurred as the IPCC forecasted, greatly increased global biomass is indeed demonstrated. Well documented evidence shows that concurrently with the increased C[O.sub.2] levels, extensive, large, and continuing increase in biomass is taking place globally--reducing deserts, turning grasslands to savannas, savannas to forests, and expanding existing forests (Idso 2012). That survey covered 400 peer-reviewed empirical studies, many of which included surveys of dozens to hundreds of sources. Comprehensive study of global and regional relative greening and browning using NOAA data showed that shorter-term trends in specific locations may reflect either greening or browning, and also noted that the rapid pace of greening of the Sahel is due in part to the end of the drought in that region. Nevertheless, in nearly all regions and globally, the overall effect in recent decades is decidedly toward greening (de Jong et al. 2012). This result is also the opposite of what the IPCC expected.

Global greening in response to increased C[O.sub.2] concentrations was clearly predicted by a controlled experiment of the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory conducted from 1987 through 2005 (Idso 1991). (1) In that study, half of a group of genetically identical trees were grown in natural conditions and the other half in the same conditions but in an atmosphere of enhanced C[O.sub.2] concentration. By 1991 the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) reported that the trees in the enhanced C[O.sub.2] environment contained more than 2.8 times more sequestered carbon than the natural environment trees (i.e., were 2.8 times larger). By 2005, when the experiment was ended, the total additional growth of the enhanced C[O.sub.2] trees was 85 percent more than that of the natural-condition trees, both in woody mass and in fruit.

One reason for expanded growth even into dry environments is a seldom remarked propensity that C[O.sub.2] induced growth due to aerial fertilization also greatly increases a plant's efficiency of use of water. The AIRS further documented this effect in a 2011 study, citing the extensive literature demonstrating that enhanced C[O.sub.2] environments "impact growth through improved plant water relations" (Prior et al. 2011). Similar results, both as to aerial fertilization effect and increased efficiency of water use, were found by the joint study of the USDA and the U.S. Department of Energy on the effects of C[O.sub.2] on agricultural production in the United States (Reilly 2002). In that study, the effect of forecasted increased C[O.sub.2] concentration, together with the increased warming forecasted, was shown to cause up to 80 percent increases in agricultural productivity, and decreased use of water since the growth would occur faster and with more efficient water use by plants. While different crops were forecasted to respond differently, most crops were positively affected, with a range from 10 percent reduction in yield up to 80 percent increase. Even considering the complex interactions with market conditions, the overall effect was certainly found to be favorable.

Using demonstrated experimental data, the 1991 ARS study also predicted effects of further or even greatly enhanced atmospheric C[O.sub.2] concentrations, such as from the expected large increase that might come (and subsequently did come and is continuing) especially from developing and newly industrializing countries. Comparing demonstrated warming to that date to the evidence, the ARS study concluded:

If past is prologue to the future...