“Lukewarmers are climate change experts [many Nobel Prize winners] who understand that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases exert a mild warming pressure on the lower atmosphere. This has been known for 150 years. But lukewarmers have been aware for some time that something is not right with the climate projections made by general circulation climate models. Nearly 30 years ago, it became obvious that the models were predicting far too much warming in response to CO2 changes. Lukewarmers believe the evidence of some human-caused climate change is compelling, but it is hardly the alarming amount predicted by the models.” Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. Knappenberger, Lukewarming: the New Climate Science that Changes Everything (published 2016).
The national and international discourse on global warming, now called climate change, is as political and polarized as any debates since Quebec agitated to separate from Canada and American brothers took up arms against each other in the Civil War. It has impacted a variety of issues – ranging from foreign policy, group rights, health care, the energy industry, defense, and education, etc.
The media has lumped people into two camps. You’re either an “alarmist” or a “denier.” What few understand is there’s a third group who are not as visible, not as extreme, who are globally recognized as giants in their various research fields and have a scientific understanding the public is only vaguely understands. They’re called “lukewarmers.”
The lukewarmers are concerned about the “unquestioning attitude of the many climate modelers who have testified to the U.S. Congress about their forecasts.” They know the models have been too hot, the modelers have applied some other factor, such as sulfate aerosol, that cools them down.
“This was an obvious band-aid because it allowed modelers to simulate the past as perfectly as they wanted,” write Michaels and Knappenberger. “The possible range of sulfate cooling effects is so large that any value that fits the past could (and would) be selected.”
Historians of science have extensively documented how difficult it is for scientists to abandon their paradigms, add Michaels and Knappenberger, “They just cannot forsake the notion of a disastrous warming. Sulfate aerosol has allowed climate modelers to hold onto their paradigm far longer than is warranted.”
The scientific community is well-aware that newer, more robust estimates of the sulfate cooling effect are disclosing what lukewarmers long suspected. “The sulfates are more of a cheap fix than an explanatory reality,” the authors say. “The truth is that the various families of climate models are just too darned hot or, to put it in the jargon of the day, their sensitivity to carbon dioxide is too high.”
Naturally, climate change policies based on those models similarly are too hot. It’s hard for anyone – especially a researcher who has devoted his or her life to modeling – to utter the three most important words. I was wrong.
“Consequently, those who study the effects of climate change continue to produce a florid literature of alarming climate change impacts,” report Michaels and Knappenberger. “When summarized in various government compendia – perhaps for the use by a regulatory agency like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – the picture therefore always alarming and is likely to be wrong.”
How Climate Data Came to Impact Government Policies
In the minds of two powerful former American senators – John Kerry (Massachusetts) and Tim Wirth (Colorado) – global warming became political theatre on Jun 23, 1998. Press reports note it was a very hot day, at the height of a large drought that had impacted most of the U.S. and the Midwest was experiencing a major heat wave. The high temperature the day before the hearing remains the hottest June 22nd on record (101 degrees F or 38.4 C) while the low temperature overnight was 76 F (24.5 C), is still a record low for June 23.
It was a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) researcher, James Hansen, “who lit the bonfire of the greenhouse vanities,” say Michaels and Knappenberger. He testified to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee there “is a strong cause and effect relationship … between the current climate and human alteration of the atmosphere.”
Hansen presented a global temperature history from weather stations around the world. It showed a 1.3 F (0.7 C) of warming in the previous 100 years, including warming in the decade prior to his testimony.
Senator Wirth presided over the hearing. “The room was very hot and Hansen repeatedly wiped his brow to absorb a sheen of perspiration along his receding hairline,” report the authors. Wirth was later interviewed by PBS (Frontline, April 24, 2007), and admitted to disabling the room’s air conditioning.
“Hansen’s stirring testimony was the lead story on network news,” say Michaels and Knappenberger. “In a call-in poll two days later, CNN found that a clear majority of the respondents believed that the heat and drought were a result of carbon dioxide emissions. This was probably the first conflation of weather (a short-term phenomenon, like a heatwave)) and global warming, which operates on the scale of decades.”
The advanced microwave sounding unit (AMSU) is a multi-channel microwave radiometer installed on meteorological satellites. The instrument examines several bands of microwave radiation from the atmosphere to perform atmospheric sounding of temperature and moisture levels.
Critics argued that some of the warming was because cities have a way of growing up around their long-term weather stations. In March 1990, Science, the most prestigious academic science periodical in the Western Hemisphere, published a paper showing the first 11 years of temperature data derived from orbiting satellites. It showed no warming whatsoever. Its authors were NASA scientists Roy Spencer and John Christy.
“The satellites were sensing the vibration of atoms in the oxygen molecule,” the paper stated. “For a constellation of complicated reasons, the diatomic bond in this molecule vibrates in the microwave portion of the spectrum proportionate to its temperature. Just as the expansion of mercury in an evacuated column provides a proxy for heat (temperature), so does the vibration of oxygen.”
According to Michaels and Knappenberger, the first satellite with a microwave sound unit (MSU) became operational in 1978. “Its orbit was designed to pass over the same region of the Earth at the same time every day. The synchronicity is important, as temperatures in the layer that it senses (and hence the vibration of oxygen) are dependent upon the time of day. While that effect becomes attenuated a few thousand feet above Earth’s surface, it is enough to require a carefully calibrated and monitored orbit.”
Naturally Hansen’s critics had a field day with Spencer and Christy’s data showed no warming. “The MSU signal band they had chosen represents a vertical slide of the atmosphere roughly from 5,000 to 30,000 feet (1,524 — 9,144 metres), with the signal maximizing around 10,000 feet (3,048 m). There are no cities there and no warming to be found.”
Meanwhile, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s James Angel, began to compile data from twice-daily weather balloon launches.
“Instruments dangling from the balloon sense temperature using calibrated and standardized instrumentation,” states Michaels and Knappenberger. “The balloon data are totally independent of the surface temperature record and of the satellite data. When Angel looked at balloon data from the atmospheric layer that corresponds to NASA’s Spencer and Christy’s he couldn’t find a lick of warming there either.”
By the early 1990s, three temperature measurements were available: surface thermometers, satellite MSUs, and weather balloons. Michaels and Knappenberger wryly note, “The only one that could be biased by urban heating showed warming; the other two didn’t.”
What happened next? In succeeding years, the MSU satellite continued to show no warming.
Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), based in California, demonstrated that temperature-sensing satellites were experiencing a slight orbital decay that affected the data and effectively induced a slight cooling. When Wentz adjusted for this, the satellite data acquired a warming trend after all.
Wentz, Spencer, and Christy traveled around in an endless round of panel discussions debating the validity of each other’s approach. “Spencer and Christy acknowledged Wentz’s point and attempted their own adjustment,” say Michaels and Knappenberger. “It too, induced a warming trend – but one a wee bit less than that of Wentz. This time, global warming advocates were ecstatic. Finally, the satellite data have been taken down.”
Weather balloons use calibrated and standardized instrumentation to record Earth’s temperatures.
What the advocates failed to grasp was the warming was muted, running at about half of what computer models suggest.
And that’s how Lukewarming was born. “The lukewarm view of climate change arose from the refinement of climate records, all of which now are in agreement that while there has been a warming, it is far less than what was predicted to happen. Instead, temperature is Lukewarming,” the authors conclude.
(Editor’s note: Ironically, since January 1995, the RSS data show no statistically significant warming trends. Recently, Spencer and Christy issued the latest iteration of their record, adjusting for some drifting instruments. “As of April 2016, their record has fallen into line with that of the RSS. Both data sets for the lower atmosphere are in their 19th year[sic] with no significant warming,” report Michaels and Knappenberger.)
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