This hypothesis attributes all or most of the observed global warming at the Earth’s surface over the 140 years of the instrumented record to human-caused changes in the composition of the atmosphere.

By implication, if the world community ‘does the right thing’ regarding greenhouse gas emissions in the future, we can stabilise global climate and keep the seas to their current station.  But there is a probability much in excess of 50% that IPCC is wrong on both counts - even for the time-span relevant to humans - because natural influences remain the main driver of changes in both climate and sea-level.

Greenhouse is a phenomenon of the atmosphere.  Theory has it that human-caused GHG emissions cause warming of the lower atmosphere, and this extra warmth is redistributed, in its turn, upward to Space or back to the Earth’s surface.  It is this resultant surface warming which we call the ‘greenhouse effect’.  GHGs can’t warm the surface directly; the atmosphere must warm first.

Thus if there is no prior warming of the lower atmosphere, there can be no consequent ‘greenhouse effect’ attributable to it.

We now have 22 years global coverage for temperatures in the atmosphere, derived from satellite-borne microwave sounding units.  The satellite record for the lower atmosphere reveals a modest warming in the Northern Hemisphere and a slight cooling in the Southern.  On neither a hemispheric nor a globally-averaged basis, does the warming in the atmosphere approach the strength of that observed at the surface.

The conclusion is inescapable.  IPCC’s ‘greenhouse effect’ hypothesis is wrong.  The larger part of observed surface warming in the 20th century has some other cause.

9.2  Lifting the IPCC yoke from Australian policy-making
If we can break the spurious nexus between climate change and greenhouse gases in the eyes of government and public - even if we don’t yet convert IPCC - the environment will be the winner.  The Kyoto Protocol need not be ratified, and the money and zeal thus saved can go toward whichever real-life environmental causes pose the most-pressing need.  (Reducing the rate of clearing Queensland bushland might be one such cause.)

Australia is a First World country with Third World characteristics.  In particular, one of our main competitive advantages is our abundant high-quality low-extraction-cost coal.  IPCC, if it should succeed, will set it at naught; and the export of jobs from Australia to countries not bound by the Protocol will be one result.

In all its manifestations - the need to obtain greenhouse gas emission permits, national and international greenhouse emissions trading arrangements, decarbonisation of our now largely coal-fired (and hence low-cost) electricity generating capacity, monocultural plantings to serve as carbon sinks, imposition of higher petrol prices, and the consequent reduction of net community well-being - greenhouse is by far the most intrusive science/technology issue facing Australians today.

And yet, the Australian community has never heard the contending views on greenhouse science debated at length, in public, in an even-handed equal-time manner.  Even the informed public could be forgiven for believing greenhouse to be a coin with only one side.

Indeed Government is spending some hundreds of millions of dollars per year in single-minded support of the message being promulgated by IPCC and its ‘consensus of 2500 of the world’s top climate scientists’.  Government funding is sustaining Australia’s universities, and national icons such as CSIRO and Met Bureau, in the role of advocates for IPCC in Australia.

Yet, little or no government funding is going into provision of a contra view on the science.  On greenhouse, show me a dissenting scientist; and I will show you an unfunded scientist.

Government needs to find and fund a source of contrarian advice.  Most relevant agencies of Government, such as CSIRO, BRS, Met Bureau and - best funded of all, in this context - AGO, are compromised by their vigorous, and quite uncritical, promotion of the IPCC line.  An exception is AGSO (Australian Geological Survey Organisation), which appears to have not yet entered the greenhouse debate in overt fashion.

 9.3  A more-plausible alternative: the ‘Oceanic Impedance’ hypothesis
There is much that we already know about climate change:

* There is a cyclicity to our Ice Age climate (and to sea level), with a ca 100,000-year period comprising long Glacials and short Interglacials.  Although various feedbacks are also implicated, this global cycle appears to be orbitally-driven.  Figuratively speaking (don’t take me literally), we are poised in the last days of our ‘normal allowance of 10,000 years benign climate.  Thus, when it comes, Armageddon will be cold not hot.

* Overprinted on the longer cycle is a ca 1500-year warm/cold/warm cyclicity which is largely limited to the Northern Hemisphere, and is particularly prominent in the North Atlantic Basin mega-region for reasons of basinal geometry.  Its latest manifestations are the Roman Empire warm period, Dark Ages, Mediaeval Warm Period and Little Ice Age; and we are warming again as we rebound from that last cold interval.  This cycle is almost certainly inertia-related, and is probably driven by the surging of continental ice from Greenland (and/or Antarctica) into the sea.
 
* Overprinted on the shorter cycle is a still-shorter (60/70-year) cycle which is prominent in the equatorial Pacific and discernible elsewhere including the NE Pacific and North Atlantic.  This cycle may also be tied in some way to inertial influences.

The instrumented record of surface temperatures begins in about 1860, and displays two (roughly equal) tranches of global warming, although both were more pronounced in the Northern Hemisphere.  The first tranche at 1909-44 was followed by a period of slight cooling at 1945-76, and a second more clearly-defined tranche at 1977-2000.

The first tranche of warming largely predates the build-up of anthropogenic GHGs in the atmosphere.  Therefore, natural variability - particularly rebound from the inertially-related Little Ice Age (in the form of a reinstated stronger northerly flow of warm water in the North Atlantic) and increasing solar magnetic activity (in the form of a positive feedback from reduced cloudiness) - provides a much more-plausible explanation of observed warming in the first half of the 20th century than does human-caused changes to the composition of the atmosphere.

Much more information is available in regard to the time of the second tranche of warming (1977-2000), and it is therefore possible to be more confident in attributing to it a cause.  Here, the atmosphere is key to the debate.

* A global coverage of satellite-derived atmospheric temperatures is now available for 22 years.  It shows a warming trend of under 0.05 degrees C/decade in the lower atmosphere, compared to some 0.13 - 0.19 degrees C/decade - ie three times as much - at the surface over a similar period.

* A less-complete coverage of atmospheric temperatures is available back to 1958, a period of 43 years, from radiosondes - balloon-mounted thermometers.  Although this coverage is largely over land and excludes the high latitudes, it agrees well with satellite data for the period of overlap.  Except for a single warming step at 1976/77, which appears to be unrelated to greenhouse, this longer record shows no significant warming-trend in the atmosphere.

* IPCC has much over-estimated the impact of human-caused increases in the GHG content of the atmosphere on its temperature, and hence, indirectly, on temperature at the Earth’s surface.  GHGs are not the primary, no even a major, cause of the observed surface warming in the 1977-2000 period.

A new hypothesis is needed which better matches the facts as we know them today.

I here propose the “Oceanic Impedance hypothesis of global climate change”.  This hypothesis attributes the prominent surface warming in the latter part of the 20th century to the oceans - not the atmosphere.

The warming in the period 1977-2000 appears to stem from but a single nonlinear transition between climate regimes at 1976/77.  This sudden change marks the most significant climate-related event in the 20th century; and it is not human-caused.

There is circumstantial evidence to support my alternative hypothesis.  At this time:
 * Globally-averaged temperatures in the lower atmosphere took an upward step of  some 0.3 degrees C.
 * Sea-surface temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific made an upward step  of some 0.6 degrees C.
 * The PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) index, an indicator of variation in the  upwelling of cold, deep water in the NE Pacific, made a step-change in the  direction of reduced upwelling.  Concurrently, the average sea-surface  temperature in the southern California Current during upwelling season increased  by 1.5 -3 degrees C.
 * An index of wave climate in the NE Atlantic took a step in the direction of  more-pronounced wave activity.
 * The heat-content of the top 300 metres of the world’s oceans increased quite  sharply at about that time, and has remained generally higher since.  This change  was particularly clear-cut in the Atlantic.
 * The ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation) index, relating to the eastern  equatorial Pacific, made a pronounced step in the direction of its warmer (more- frequent El Niño) phase, which has since persisted.
 * Upwelling-season sea-surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific  made a step-like warming which has persisted, and remains unmatched during the  rest of the year.
 * Sea-surface temperatures in the subtropical South Pacific (at Raratonga) peaked  in 1976, and cooled about 2 degrees C in the following decade, before a partial recovery.

This remarkable event is undoubtedly related to a major re-ordering of oceanic heat transportation.  Furthermore, it coincides with a change in the rate-of-change of the length of day.  LOD variations imply the involvement of inertial factors, and inertial changes impede the continuity of oceanic circulation - particularly in the geometrically-complex North Atlantic Basin.

The coupled ocean-atmosphere numerical models on which IPCC relies for its projections of future climate have failed their reconciliation with climate over the past century.  Furthermore, the clear evidence that the 1997-2000 global surface warming is the result of a sudden nonlinear transition in climatic regime, challenges the veracity of model-based projections of future climate.  The models don’t and can’t cope with discontinuities such as that witnessed in 1976/77.

IPCC’s models cannot predict climate-change in a nonlinear world - such as the real world..

9.4  The West Antarctic ice-sheet: surging or collapsing?
Some 90% of the worlds ice is preserved in Antarctica, and most of the balance in Greenland.  Surging of continental ice into the sea from either location could cause the inertial changes triggering an ocean-related climate event such as that in 1976/77.

About 10% of today’s Antarctic ice is stored in the West Antarctic ice-sheet.  Unlike the ice-sheets on East Antarctica and Greenland, the WAIS is founded on a deeply-submerged continental shelf; and it has been destabilised by the 120 to 135 metres of sea-level rise since the Last Glacial Maximum some 20,000 years ago.  About 2/3 of the WAIS has collapsed into the sea over the past 8,000 years.  If this collapse continues, the balance of the WAIS will contribute another 5 or 6 metres to global sea-level.

Present-day surging speeds in ice-streams on the WAIS are of the order of 1 to 2 km/yr.  Irrespective of whether the ice lost through such surges is ultimately replaced by new snow-fall, surges of this magnitude could have an inertial impact, because ice entering the sea at high latitudes becomes sea-level rise at the equator.

9.5  A much bigger question
There is another issue not often articulated, nor often taken seriously when the question is asked.  Are the human-caused emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere good or bad for the future of humanity, and for the biodiversity of which we are the custodians?  It is an intensely multi-disciplinary question, and I would like to see IPCC tackle it.

9.6  A task for Government
They used to say that it is a long job to turn-about the Queen Mary when at Full Steam Ahead.  Given how deeply-entrenched in the scientific psyche is the Greenhouse Effect hypothesis - and in that of governments, media and environmentalists - reversal of the growth in wealth-destroying greenhouse-related policies will be the same kind of task.

Nevertheless, the Greenhouse Effect hypothesis is wrong - as clearly demonstrated when it is subjected to Popper’s Law of Empirical Disproof.  Observed global surface warming during the 20th century is largely the result of natural influences.  Reversal of the greenhouse mind-set will be a long job; but in Australia, the stakes are high in terms of protecting the welfare of our citizens and preserving our (largely endemic) biodiversity.

A start needs to be made now on curbing the pervasive growth - in the name of the environment, remember - of anti-environmental policies.  The initiative can only come from Government.  Specific funding, necessarily modest compared to that it now lavishes on promoting greenhouse, must be allocated to development of the countervailing scientific view.

I here propose that AGSO be funded specifically to provide policy-makers with the contra view of climate-change science - and keep it updated as more information becomes available.

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      60.    BOB FOSTER
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© 2001  Bob Foster  Posted   9, April, 2001
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