Dr. James Hansen, chief global warming alarmist and head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has a new paper in Environmental Research Letters wherein he says that burning coal has caused the hiatus in global temperature rise for the past 15 to 20 years (see here also).

Hansen attributes this to the fact that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stimulates plant growth, which, in turn, takes more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. “We suggest that the surge of fossil fuel use, mainly coal, since 2000 is a basic cause of the large increase of carbon uptake by the combined terrestrial and ocean carbon sinks. One mechanism by which fossil fuel emissions increase carbon uptake is by fertilizing the biosphere via provision of nutrients essential for tissue building, especially nitrogen, which plays a critical role in controlling net primary productivity and is limited in many ecosystems.” In Hansen’s figure 3, he notes that even though carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing, the airborne fraction of CO₂ [the ratio of observed atmospheric CO₂ increase to fossil fuel CO₂ emissions] has decreased over the past 50 years, especially after the year 2000.

That means that natural processes are compensating for increased emissions. This mechanism is noted in a report by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in which they state: “The productivity of the planet’s terrestrial biosphere, on the whole, has been increasing with time, revealing a great greening of the Earth that extends throughout the entire globe. Satellite-based analyses of net terrestrial primary productivity reveal an increase of around 6-13% since the 1980s.”

Some scientists claim that part of the lack of temperature rise is due to the cooling aerosol effect of sulfur dioxide, also a byproduct of burning coal. Hansen rejects this and is supported by an earlier NASA paper which says that sulfur dioxide (SO₂) aerosols in the atmosphere are due mainly to increasing volcanic activity, not from burning coal.

Hansen also notes that the effect [forcing] of man-made greenhouse gas emissions has fallen below IPCC projections, despite an increase in man-made CO₂ emissions exceeding IPCC projections.

This paper is quite an admission from someone who once said, “The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.”

Hansen’s reasoning seems somewhat circular to me. He’s saying that more carbon dioxide is creating less carbon dioxide. He is also ignoring the fact that as the globe warms (such as warming from the Little Ice Age of the 1850s), the oceans exsolve more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He is assuming that carbon dioxide is the major driver of global temperature, a contention for which there is no physical evidence. More likely, the “hiatus in global temperature rise for the past 15 to 20 years” has been caused by something other than carbon dioxide, such as solar cycles which overwhelm the weak warming force of carbon dioxide acting as a greenhouse gas. It is true, however, that as atmospheric carbon dioxide increased, there has been a great greening of the earth as plants respond to the aerial fertilization.

In spite of all the scary scenarios put forth by IPCC climate models, we see that modeling results are an artifact of modeling inputs; that’s a polite way of saying “garbage in – garbage out.” And perhaps Hansen is now realizing the implications of something he wrote back in 1998: “”The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change.”

UPDATE: The New York Times reports that James Hansen will quit his NASA  job this week to become a full-time climate activist.

See also:

Failure of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Hypothesis

Global warming theory fails again

A previous post: EPA war on coal threatens Tucson water supply, examined the consequences of EPA regional haze regulations at the Navajo Generating Station, near Page, Arizona, on our water supply. That station supplies all the electricity needed to pump water from the Colorado River to Tucson via the Central Arizona Project (CAP). It now seems that the EPA is after other coal-fired plants in Arizona.

As a result of the previous post, I received an email from William Yeatman, Assistant Director, Center for Energy and Environment, at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Mr. Yeatman is an expert on the issue of haze and power plant emissions. (See two of his publications on the matter here and here.)

Mr. Yeatman wrote me:

“Regional Haze is an aesthetic regulation pursuant to the Clean Air Act. Its purpose is to improve visibility at federal National Parks and Wilderness Areas. It is the only aesthetic regulation in the Clean Air Act. This point bears repeating: Unlike every other regulation established by the Clean Air Act, Regional Haze has nothing to do with public health.

Another hallmark of the Regional Haze regulation is State primacy. Whereas EPA is the lead decision-maker when it comes to setting public health standards pursuant to the Clean Air Act, the Congress intended for the States to render determinations on Regional Haze.

After countless hours of deliberation by State officials and significant public participation, Arizona submitted a Regional Haze implementation plan to the EPA in February 2011. Despite the Congress’s intention that States take the lead on Regional Haze decision-making, EPA Region 9 in mid-July disapproved Arizona’s submission, and proposed a federal implementation plan in its stead.”

Specifically, in addition to harassing the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona, the EPA found fault with Arizona’s proposed regulations for control of nitrogen oxides (NOx) for the Apache Generating Station near Cochise, Arizona; for Cholla Power Plant near Joseph City, Arizona, and for the Coronado Generating Station near St. Johns, Arizona.

Yeatman writes:

“For all three power plants, Arizona chose NOx controls known as ‘Low Nitrogen Burners.’ EPA, however, wants to impose NOx controls known as ‘Selective Catalytic Reduction.’ The difference in price is significant—EPA’s plan is almost $48 million per year more expensive than the State’s plan [emphasis added]. Of course, these costs would be passed along to Arizona ratepayers in the form of higher utility bills.”

Yeatman modeled the expected results comparing the Arizona proposal versus the EPA proposal. The effect on regional haze is shown in the graphic below. Can you see any difference?

The extra $48 million per year that the EPA requirements would impose does not seem to provide any additional benefit, only addition pain to Arizona ratepayers.

Mr. Yeatman concludes: “Despite the Congress’s intent that the State’s have primacy on Regional Haze, the EPA already has imposed four Regional Haze federal implementation plans on New Mexico, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Nebraska. EPA’s preferred plans cost almost $400 million more than the States’ plans. Not one of EPA’s imposed Regional Haze plans resulted in a perceptible improvement in visibility.”

It seems that the EPA is a rogue agency that imposes regulations just because they can. Few of their regulations in this matter have any scientific basis and the EPA seems to ignore economics.

See also:

EPA war on coal threatens Tucson water supply

EPA fuel standards costly and ineffective

EPA, ethanol, and catch 22

EPA may change Dioxane standards in Tucson water

EPA Admits CO2 Regulation Ineffective

Electricity supply endangered by EPA regulations

Clean Coal: Boon or Boondoggle?

Climate modelers are having a problem. The global temperature is not cooperating with the way the modelers say it should if their theories are correct. We learned of their consternation from the “Climategate” emails: Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

Now the modelers claim that China has saved the day by burning coal. A paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (written, by the way, by two geographers and two economists) claim that increased coal burning in China has put enough sulfur dioxide (SO₂) in the air to block the alleged warming effect of carbon dioxide.

The logical, but perhaps absurd, conclusion of this claim is that we should abandon wind turbines and solar arrays, to burn much more coal.

If we stipulate that air quality near Chinese coal-burning power plants is foul, the question remains: is this a local effect or is it world-wide, enough to affect global temperature? Well, apparently the effect is not world-wide. The EPA measures air quality and the graph below shows that in the U.S., sulfur dioxide content of the air has been steadily decreasing. (Source )

This “China syndrome” seems to be another attempt to explain away the failings of climate modeling and the divergence between model predictions and real-world observations. Perhaps the IPCC had it right when they said in their Third Assessment Report: “In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the prediction of a specific future climate state is not possible.”

UPDATE: New NASA paper says volcanoes primarily responsible for increased SO2:

Recently, the trend, based on ground-based lidar measurements, has been tentatively attributed to an increase of SO(2) entering the stratosphere associated with coal burning in Southeast Asia. However, we demonstrate with these satellite measurements that the observed trend is mainly driven by a series of moderate but increasingly intense volcanic eruptions primarily at tropical latitudes.

See also:

A Basic Error in Climate Models

Climate Model Projections vs Real World Observations

How Mother Nature Fools Climate Scientists

Your Carbon Footprint doesn’t Matter

A Modest Proposal: Triple Your Carbon Footprint