Timberati » anthropogenic global warming

Trees ain’t thermometers

Timberati — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 08:00:56 +0000

I used to work on Mountain Home State Forest in the southern Sierra. MHSF has about 3000 specimen-sized sequoia within its boundaries. Dendrochronolgists often visited to see the stumps from logging in the mid to late 1800s. These were often over 2000 years old when they had been cut.

The Dendrochronolgists were interested in the tree-ring patterns. Trees grow fast or slow in response to many factors and these seasonal factors (light, water, nutrients) created ring signatures or patterns. Certain years might have been favorable for growth with plentiful water, light and nutrients (each favorable year would be marked a large, wide ring) and certain years might have had poor conditions for growth–drought, late spring conditions, early winter–marked by thin (in some cases–microscopic) rings. In general, the wider the ring the more favorable the growing season, the narrower the ring the poor the growing conditions. These ring patterns can be distinctive and can be used to date archeological sites (where wood is present).

Oxford’s Tree-ring Laboratory put it this way:

The way dendrochronology works is relatively simple. As a tree grows, it puts on a new growth or tree-ring every year, just under the bark. Trees grow, and put on tree-rings, at different rates according to the weather in any given year: a wider ring in a favourable year and a narrower ring in an unfavourable year. Thus, over a long period of time (say 60 years or more) there will be a corresponding sequence of tree-rings giving a pattern of wider and narrower rings which reflect droughts, cold summers, etc. In effect, the span of years during which a tree has lived will be represented by a unique fingerprint, which can be detected in other geographically-similar tree-ring chronologies.

Using tree rings as a proxy for temperature however is fraught with caveats and pitfalls.

Mike D.‘s of the Western Institute for Study of the Environment comment (on William M. Briggs’ blog) about using tree ring data as proxies for temperature is an excellent explanation of the problems of using tree ring growth for temperature. He starts with how tree rings are laid down:

Diameter growth on any tree is theoretically a sigmoid growth function. No tree puts on constant radial growth year after year. Trees grow by adding a layer of new wood at the cambium, under the bark. Each year a larger surface area is added. If growth is constant, the rings get narrower. But growth is never constant. There is significant deviation from ideal (model) sigmoid diameter growth in individual trees regardless of the weather. Even when sigmoid growth models are used, the natural variation adds statistical error.

Two sigmoid curves. The taller is the period annual increment for cubic feet; the lower smoother S curve is for mean annual increment of cubic feet.

So as the diameter expands, the amount of material put on would need to be more if the ring’s width was to stay the same as the previous season. Think of a clay disk that you add the same amount of clay to in successive rings. The volume of clay would be the same but the thickness of each new ring would decrease. The ring growth is S-shaped (sigmoid) because initially the tree has little foliage for photosynthesis and often puts its initial years into root development for survival. Then once roots are deep enough the tree puts its growth into height and width.

He then points out that tree-to-tree competition for light, water, and nutrients also affects the ring growth:

Dense stands exhibit narrow rings on individual trees, sparser stands may have wider ring growth, yet both stands may have equivalent gross growth. That’s why only open-grown trees are supposed to be selected for ring studies. But nobody knows what the tree density surrounding an individual tree was 100, 200, 500 years ago. Competitors could have arisen and died without leaving evidence of their presence so long ago. More error.

Besides competition, disease and injury can affect growth.

Trees can sustain injuries that affect growth, such as top and branch damage, that are difficult to detect 200 years later, especially a few feet off the ground where the rings are sampled. There are very few pristine, undamaged trees. I know, having searched for such across broad acreages. Open grown trees at high elevations are always damaged. A heavy winter snow can snap off branches and the tree will exhibit reduced diameter growth for a few years, even if growing season conditions are ideal.

This makes using tree ring data as stand-ins for temperature problematic.

Ring width has all but been abandoned as a temperature proxy. Instead, the latest technique is sampling rings for O18 ratios, under the assumption that O18 varies with temperature. Regardless of the ring width, the O18 ratio is supposed to have recorded growing season temperature. But that theory is fuzzy and mushy, and O18 ratios in living trees correlate very poorly with known growing season temperatures. In other words, it calibrates with much error at best.

Trees are not thermometers, but even thermometers have some serious measurement error problems.

Tree ring studies are a fad akin to phrenology and other discredited pseudosciences that has not dissipated as it should have decades ago.

Making money out of thin air

Timberati — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:00:20 +0000

What do the South Sea Company and carbon exchanges have in common? Everything.

In 1711, Britain’s treasurer, Robert Harley, had an extraordinary idea. He could finance Britain’s war debt by selling shares in a non-existent trading company: the South Sea Company. South America was just opening up and was imagined to be a place where silver and gold flowed as easily as water. But for the scheme to be pulled off, according to a recent Economist article, investors needed to “be persuaded to drive the stock above its par value” in order “to create wealth out of thin air.” It worked for a while. Speculation drove up the price but when negotiations with Spain faltered, the South Sea Company needed government backing to keep the party going. They went old school and bribed people close to the king. Eventually, despite the royal imprimatur, the investors discovered that the scheme contained no substance and was just hot air, and their shares’ par value equaled pond scum.

Today, a number of scientists, companies, and policy-makers are concerned with anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. And, carbon dioxide (CO2), a by-product of burning, has been fingered as the prime suspect. CO2 also happens to be the gas that you and I exhale with each breath. Simply put, CO2 reflects infrared radiation back to earth that would otherwise be lost to the cold cold depths of space–the so-called greenhouse effect.

Climate scientists have built complex computer programs to model the earth’s future climate. Using sophisticated equations with feedback loops and forcings they have “proven” the warming, which vary from 1 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit change, of the worldwide average by the end of this century. For our purposes we can simply say that more CO2 equals a hotter earth. People living at the start of the 20th century who could remember the “little ice age” thought this greenhouse effect beneficial. Today, the warming involved with the higher levels of climate change stands accused of everything from colder winters to cancer, and even illegal immigration (I am not making this up).

Some have suggested that a cap-and-trade system could reduce CO2 emissions; this would be similar to how regulators curbed other smokestack pollutants (such as sulfur dioxide) in the late 20th century. Essentially, regulators “cap” the total output of a pollutant with a limited allowance of CO2, and then polluters can trade their credits. Those who produce less of the pollutant can sell their remaining allowance to those who produce more. The state of New York has collected $282 million under a regional agreement from the auctioning of carbon dioxide credits.

In addition to selling allowances in a cap-and-trade system, indulgences can also be sold in the form of “carbon offsets.” Offsets provide a counter-balance to the CO2-emissions’ damage (presumably) done by flying in an airplane, driving a car, having a child, or all three and more. The offsets vary: one might buy a bit of rainforest (to grow and soak up CO2 through photosynthesis) or fund family planning in Ethiopia (to prevent another carbon emitter from entering the world) as atonement. By buying such carbon-coated indulgences, one can expiate the sins of extravagant western living and transform oneself into a holy carbon-neutral being.

It’s not about saving the world (except for the true believers), it’s about money. Follow the incentives. Baptists and bootleggers, true believers and the buck-seekers, have banded together to make markets out of thin air with offsets or allowances. At the United Nations’ climate change delegate meeting in Cancun that just ended, investment funds, insurance companies and banks have lobbied for a treaty, and not because they are altruistic. Ronald Bailey at Reason writes that the delegates there have decided “to kick the Cancun down the road” because the “rich countries continued their vague promises to hand over $100 billion in climate aid annually to poor countries beginning in 2020.”

Cutting 100 percent of our CO2 emissions lowers CO2 emissions by a whopping 1.5 percent of the carbon cycle, because the rest (210 billion metric tons per year) comes from natural processes. But, “if you’re looking to make money from the trading of carbon allowances (carbon credits) than (sic) it makes a great deal of sense….If you are in the renewable energy business it makes perfect sense to support the reduction of carbon dioxide ‘pollution’,” writes one energy analyst.

I could be wrong, but I see no “there” there. The investment has no portfolio. I think, just as what happened to the British South Sea Company, investors will eventually learn that these hyperventilated bubbles are simply full of hot air. What do the South Sea Company and carbon exchanges have in common? Nothing.

Sources

Buttonwood. “An early attempt to buy government bonds by creating money.” The Economist, November 11, 2010.

Christy, John R. “The Global Warming Fiasco.” In Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths, by Competitive Enterprise Institute, edited by Ronald Bailey, 423. Forum, 2002.

Derbyshire, David. “‘Climate change could give you cancer’: UN report warns of deadly pollutants from glaciers .” Mail Online. December 9, 2010. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1336810/Climate-change-cancer-UN-report-warns-deadly-pollutants-glaciers.html#ixzz17qXOVfeT (accessed December 11, 2010).

Horn, Art. “The Utter Futility of Reducing Carbon Emissions.” Energy Tribune. December 1, 2010. http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/5961/The-Utter-Futility-of-Reducing-Carbon-Emissions (accessed December 1, 2010).

Lindzen, Richard S. “Global Warming: How to approach the science.” Testimony: House Subcommittee on Science and Technology hearing on A Rational Discussion of Climate Change: the Science, the Evidence, the Response. Richard S. Lindzen, 2010.

Lomborg, Bjorn. “Human Welfare: Food and Hunger.” In The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, by Bjorn Lomborg, 515. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

NAVARRO, MIREYA. “Carbon Auction Yields $16.9 Million for New York.” Dot Green. New York Times. December 3, 2010. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/carbon-auction-yields-16-9-million-for-new-york/ (accessed December 12, 2010).

Optimum Population Trust. “Your questions answered.” PopOffets. Optimum Population Trust 12 Meadowgate, Urmston Manchester M41 9LB. http://www.popoffsets.com/faq.php (accessed December 11, 2010).
Revkin, Andrew C. “Cold Weather in a Warming Climate.” Dot Earth – New York Times blog. March 1, 2008. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/reconciling-cold-weather-and-a-warming-climate/ (accessed December 11, 2010).

Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. New York, New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

Shuaizhang Feng, Alan B. Krueger, Michael Oppenheimer. “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” Linkages among climate change, crop yields and Mexico–US cross-border migration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.pnas.org/content/107/32/14257.long.

Vaughan, Adam. guardian.co.uk,. 10 31, 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/31/climate-change-computer-game (accessed 11 20, 2010).

10,000 attendees set an example at the Cancún shindig

Timberati — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:00:14 +0000

“Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions,” environment correspondent, Louise Gray wrote in Britain’s Telegraph under the headline, “Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world

Apparently a fair number of scientific papers have been published by Britain’s Royal Society saying that temperatures might rise as much as 4C (7.2F) by 2060. And to prevent that, at least one expert thinks World War II-style rationing would be a good idea.

Prof Anderson insisted that halting growth in the rich world does not necessarily mean a recession or a worse lifestyle, it just means making adjustments in everyday life such as using public transport and wearing a sweater rather than turning on the heating.

“I am not saying we have to go back to living in caves,” he said. “Our emissions were a lot less ten years ago and we got by okay then.”

So, the approximately 10,000 delegates to the Cancún shindig aka COP 16 [the 16th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change], while not meeting or staying in caves, have tightened their belts in solidarity:

The blind chasing after the blind in Cancún

Timberati — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:14:41 +0000

Image credit: Freefoto.com

Briggs over at William M. Briggs, “statistician to the stars,” has a delightfully damning post about Cornell’s delegation to the shindig aka COP 16 [the 16th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] in Cancún.

According to The Cornell Daily Sun, “A delegation of Cornell researchers will join the fight against climate change Monday in the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico.” Eighteen students, plus Three Cornell professors — Prof. Antonio Bento, applied economics and management, Prof. Johannes Lehmann, soil sciences, Prof. Sean Sweeney, director of Cornell’s Global Labor Institute will comprise the Cornell delegation. The faculty members “will give formal presentations to the COP 16 on issues ranging from cap-and-trade offsets, sustainable agriculture and organized labor.”

According to the Daily Sun,

“The third research group will offer information “on how to avoid carbon dioxide losses from soils that would contribute to global warming, and how to increase organic carbon in soils that will be a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide,” Lehmann said in an e-mail.

Lehmann, who will present in two “side events” meant to inform the delegates, expressed hope that his scientific research would affect the diplomatic bargaining.”

To which Briggs points out:

[I]f you begin to muse on soil physics, you’ll have missed the meat, which is that Lehmann, the only scientist in the group, is being shunted off onto a “side event”, which is “meant to inform the delegates.” Lehmann said, “The presentations by scientists are attended by negotiators that will hopefully be better informed through the material. Often, negotiators are directly interacting with presenters to deepen their knowledge.”

The Daily Sun’s article reports:

At the COP 16 , Bento will present a theoretical and computational model of a cap-and-trade model in the United States. In a cap-and-trade program, the government sets pollution caps and firms may purchase and trade carbon credits.

And Briggs notes:

Bento and team “will present a theoretical and computational model of a cap-and-trade model”, which—do I need to say this?—is based on output from climate models. A model of a model of a model. Put another way: an approximation of a surmise of a guess. What could go wrong?

Read the whole post here: Cornell’s Cancun Climate Conference Crew. It’s worth it to marvel at the UNFCC process.

Background:
The United Nations Climate Change Conference is to be held in Cancún,
Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010. What is it supposed to do?

According to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCC) website, the conference ” encompasses the sixteenth Conference
of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as
the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), as well as the
thirty-third sessions of both the Subsidiary Body for Implementation
(SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice
(SBSTA), and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session
of the AWG-LCA. To discuss future commitments for industrialized
countries under the Kyoto Protocol, the Conference of the Parties
serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP)
established a working group in December 2005 called the Ad Hoc Working
Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto
Protocol (AWG-KP). In Copenhagen, at its fifth session, the CMP
requested the AWG-KP to deliver the results of its work for adoption by
CMP 6 in Cancun.”

Got that? Well according to the UNFCC’s fact sheet, “Over a decade ago, most countries joined an international treaty — the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — to begin to consider what can be done to reduce global
warming and to cope with whatever temperature increases are inevitable.
More recently, a number of nations approved an addition to the treaty:
the Kyoto Protocol [the US congress did not ratify it] , which has more powerful (and legally binding) measures. The UNFCCC secretariat supports all institutions involved in the climate change process, particularly the COP, the subsidiary bodies and their Bureau.”

“The negotiating process on climate change revolves around the sessions of
the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP), which meets every
year to review the implementation of the Convention. The COP adopts
decisions and resolutions, published in reports of the COP. Successive
decisions taken by the COP make up a detailed set of rules for practical
and effective implementation of the Convention.”

“Thousands of participants including government representatives and observer organizations have attended previous climate change conferences. The sessions in Bali attracted over 10,000 participants, including some 3,500 government officials, over 5,800 representatives of UN bodies and agencies, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, and nearly 1,500 accredited members of the media.”

Leaving on a jet plane

Timberati — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 08:00:18 +0000

Image credit: freefoto.com

According to PR Newswire there is an “initiative to promote aviation biofuel development in the Pacific Northwest” that “will include an analysis of potential biomass sources that are indigenous to the Pacific Northwest, including algae, agriculturally based oilseeds such as camelina [wildflax], wood byproducts and others.”

Because biomass sources absorb carbon dioxide while growing and can have higher energy content than fossil-based fuel, their increased efficiency and use as aviation biofuel could potentially save millions of tons of aviation greenhouse gas emissions.
Air travel currently generates approximately 2 percent of man-made carbon emissions, and the industry has set aggressive goals to lower its carbon footprint, including the use of aviation biofuel when it becomes available.

According to a recent post on Scientific American, the airline industry conducted a number of test flights in 2008 and 2009:

“[C]ommercial airlines have flown four successful test flights using a variety of biofuel-jet fuel blends. Boeing was involved in all four flights, including a Virgin Atlantic flight using a coconut- and babassu-derived biofuel blend; an Air New Zealand flight using a jatropha-derived biofuel blend; a Continental Airlines flight using a blend of algae- and jatropha-derived biofuel; and a Japan Airlines flight using an algae-, jatropha- and camelina-derived biofuel blend…[And, Air New Zealand reported] that using a 50 percent blend of biofuel with traditional jet A-1 fuel can improve fuel efficiency by more than 1 percent.”

Now using fuel efficiently should be sufficient reason to consider a change. Yet, everything now gets pushed through the funnel of one’s carbon footprint and climate change.

So, natural sources put 210 billion metric tons (98.5 per cent) of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere comes from natural sources in the world’s carbon cycle, and people add 3.2 billion metric tons (1.5 per cent) to the total (source: John Christy at University of Alabama, Huntsville). And, air travel accounts for 2 percent of human-caused carbon emissions. So, if we grounded all air travel, instead of 213.2 billion metric tons of CO2 going into the atmosphere (natural + man-made), the atmosphere would receive only 213.136 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, the difference is .064 billion metric tons. A 1 percent improvement in fuel efficiency for the total air industry would then mean (if my math is correct) instead of 213.2 billion metric tons of CO2, the total would be 213.19936.

Again, if the fuel is more efficient and less expensive, do it. Otherwise, it appears at first (and second and third) blush to make more sense for us to grow food or fiber, rather than fuel, in the ground.