Global luke-warming: Is the threat of climate change overstated?
In an interview with OilPrice.com, climate blogger and former TV meteorologist Anthony Watts says carbon dioxide will heat the Earth somewhat, but by the time we get to full saturation we’ll have likely have moved on to other energy sources anyway.
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We think we’ve come so far from the dark ages where people feared the weather as the work of demons and witches, yet here we are today with an nearly identical argument where demons and witches have been replaced with energy companies.
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Oilprice.com: You’ve spoken at length about urbanization and the “heat sink” effect. Can you explain how this does or does not tie in to the overall concept of global warming?
Anthony Watts: It is rather simple physics really. First, let’s draw on personal experience. Anyone who has ever stood near a brick wall that was exposed to sun during the day can feel the heat radiating off it at night. That’s the heat sink effect for the energy from sunlight, and it is re-emitted as Long Wave Infrared (LWIR) at night, which has the propensity of heating the air near the surface due to its interaction at the molecular level with water vapor, CO2, and other gases. That’s the basis of the greenhouse effect.
Our society has metamorphosed from mostly rural agrarian to one with a great amount of modern infrastructure in the last century. While cities certainly have more infrastructure, so do even our small towns. Readers that grew up in small towns 30-50 years ago can surely note the addition of infrastructure by their own personal experiences. This infrastructure is primarily asphalt, steel and concrete, all of which will absorb solar energy during the day and re-emit it at night as LWIR, warming the local environment near the heat sink.
The issue that I have documented--thanks to a new weather station siting rating system from Michel Leroy and endorsed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)--is that weather stations with a greater surface area of such heat sinks within their thermometer view shed (~10 meters radius) tend to have a warmer temperature trend for the past 30 years. The signal manifests itself primarily at night by elevating the minimum temperature, which in turn elevates the average temperature.
Oilprice.com: And is there any coherent data out there that would demonstrate how much of the rise in temperatures over the last 100 years is a result of carbon dioxide?
Anthony Watts: I think what is left of the signal--i.e. the trend from the compliant weather stations that don’t have heat sink effects--can be attributed to CO2. That value appears to be half of what NOAA claims. (Related article: Analysing the Link between Air Pollution and Heart Attacks)
Oilprice.com: Ultimately, then, do we have the ability to accurately determine how much of global warming is attributed to man-made causes and how much is evolutionary climate change, so to speak?
Anthony Watts: Again, as Dr. Judith Curry says, climate is a “wicked problem”. Separating the definitive signals from the noise is a real challenge, especially when the signals are so small. In my view, the uncertainty is larger than the signals being coaxed out of the noisy data.
Oilprice.com: With all of this in mind, what should we be doing to address global warming? What SHOULDN’T we be doing?
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