Global Warming: A Scientific Overview

1. Global Warming:A Scientific Overview By James M. Taylor Senior Fellow, Environment Policy The Heartland Institute taylor@heartland.org

2. A Little Context Goes a Long Way

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4. Global Temperatures Since 1979

5. Carbon Dioxide and Temperature • Years CO2 Temperature • 1900-1945 Minimal Rising • 1945-1977 Rising Cooling • 1977-1998 Rising Rising • 1998-2009 Rising Cooling

6. Solar Output: A Better Fit

7. Earth’s Temperature History

8. U.S. Temperatures and Solar Changes

9. The Sun is more likely the dominant driver of the recorded Arctic temperature variations

10. Ocean Cycles and Global Temperature

11. What About the Computer Models?

12. How Have Computer Predictions Fared? • IPCC, 2001 – Computer models predicted temperatures will rise 0.4 degrees Celsius per decade. • Nearly a decade has passed. Let’s verify the predictions.

13. Computer Models vs. Reality

14. Why the Computer Models Fail • Scientists agree that, all other things being equal, doubling atmospheric CO2 will cause merely 1.1 degree Celsius of warming • Yet CO2 has risen only 40 percent since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution • Computer models assume “positive feedbacks” will cause much more warming than the CO2 itself • Relative humidity • Cirrus clouds

15. Let’s Check the Real-World Evidence • Hurricane expert Dr. William Gray has for decades been reporting declining atmospheric relative humidity. • In March 2001, MIT atmospheric physicist Dr. Richard Lindzen reported declining cirrus clouds, creating a negative feedback so strong that it canceled all positive global warming feedbacks.

16. Testing the Computer Model Assumptions

17. What Has Aqua Satellite Found? • 1) Relative humidity is DECLINING, not increasing • Gray right, Computer modelers wrong! • 2) Cirrus clouds are DECLINING, not increasing • Lindzen right, computer modelers wrong! • This eliminates the vast majority of projected warming in alarmist computer models. • This explains why temps rose only 0.6 C during the entire 20th century, in line with CO2 physics.

18. NOAA Humidity Measurements

19. Cloud Assumptions Defy Real-World Science Dr. Roy Spencer, co-director of NASA’s satellite temperature data program – “What is peculiar about all of the IPCC climate models now producing positive cloud feedbacks is that it is well known in the climate business that the average effect of clouds on the climate system is one of cooling…not warming.”

20. Longwave Radiation Evidence MIT Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen - “With the warming after 1989, the observations characteristically exceed 7 times the model values. … If the observations were only 2-3 times what the models produce, it would correspond to no feedback. What we see is much more than this – implying strong negative feedback.”

21. Why Computer Models Fail • In the real world higher CO2 concentrations are resulting in declining relative humidity and fewer cirrus clouds. • While computer models assume that positive feedbacks dominate the climate, negative feedbacks dominate in the real world. • This is why 20th and 21st century warming has been so gradual and benign.

22. Florida Temperature HistorySource: U.S. National Climatic Data Center

23. Florida Merely Average Solar Potential

24. Florida Poor Wind Potential

25. U.S. vs. Global CO2 EmissionsSource: U.S. EPA, EIA

26. Levelized Electricity CostsSource: Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics, Tufts University (2006) • Production costs per kWh in tax regime providing no investment preferences: • Coal: 3.79 • Clean coal: 4.37 (+ 15 %) • Natural gas: 5.61 (+48 %) • Nuclear: 5.94 (+57 %) • Wind: 6.64 (+75 %) • Solar thermal: 18.82 (+570 %) • Solar photovoltaic: 37.39 (+887 %)

27. U.S. Energy Information Administration The average retail price of electricity in states with renewable power mandates is 42% higher than the price of electricity in states without such mandates.

28. Obama’s Plan in His Own Words • Interview, San Francisco Chronicle, 2008 – “I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers under my plan of a cap-and-trade system. Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” • “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them”

29. Economics “The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent … the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year,” – CBSNews.com, Sep. 15, 2009.

30. Economics • Dept. of Treasury, Sep. 18, 2009 – Carbon offsets could cost consumers $300 billion per year [nearly $3,000 per household per year].

31. What Would a 70% Cut in CO2 Cost? • 2008 Lieberman-Warner would have cut emissions 70% by 2050, versus Waxman-Markey 83% cut • Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) ran the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling System on Lieberman-Warner • SAIC ran a low-cost and high-cost model

32. Millions of Jobs Lost, Lieberman-WarnerSource: SAIC, EIA Model

33. Percent Rise in Baseline Gasoline Prices Source: SAIC, EIA Model

34. Percent Rise in Baseline Electricity Prices

35. Lost Annual Household Income(in constant 2007 dollars)

36. Percent Loss in Annual GDP

37. Supporting Studies A number of other studies from leading economists and economic institutions largely agree with the SAIC-Energy Information Administration assessment.

38. Congressional Budget Office - 2007 According to a 2007 study conducted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 15 percent would cost the average household nearly 3 percent of its income. A family making $50,000 per year would be forced to pay an extra $1,400 every year for the same goods and services it purchases today.

39. Congressional Budget Office - 2007 "Most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline.”

40. Congressional Budget Office - 2007 "A CO2 cap would worsen the negative effects" of "existing taxes that dampen economic activity…. The higher prices caused by the cap would lower real (inflation-adjusted) wages and real returns on capital, indirectly raising marginal tax rates on those sources of income."

41. CRA International - 2007 By 2030, typical greenhouse gas legislation will cost: 4.9 million lost jobs $1,700 in lost household annual income 4.0 percent loss in annual GDP

42. Massachusetts Institute of Technology - 2007 A 2007 study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reached similar conclusions. According to the MIT study, mandatory greenhouse gas reduction schemes similar to those most popular in Congress and the state legislatures would cost typical families of four close to $5,000 each and every year.

43. Wake Forest University - 2007 In 2007, Wake Forest University Economics Chair Robert Whaples surveyed a random selection of American Economic Association Ph.D. economists. Fully 59 percent projected that even 100 years from now global warming will have a neutral or positive impact on the U.S. economy

44. Yale University - 2004 In 2004, Yale University economics professor Robert Mendelsohn concluded that the benefits of global warming will outweigh the harms until temperatures surpass 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today. At current warming rates, temperatures will not surpass 2.5 degrees Celsius until at least the 24th century.

45. Green Jobs at What Cost?

46. Spanish Study • King Juan Carlos University, April 2009 – Study of Spain’s “green” jobs program frequently cited by Barack Obama as a model for his priorities: For every 1 job created by renewable power subsidies and other “green” jobs programs, 2.2 other jobs are destroyed in the process.

47. Scare Scenarios Debunked • Antarctica – Cooling, ice pack growing • Arctic sea ice – Local wind patterns causing retreat • Mt. Kilimanjaro – Temps cooling, deforestation the culprit • Hurricanes – NHC, NOAA report no increase • Tornadoes - Declining • Drought – 20th century soil gaining moisture • Floods – More precipitation, but fewer floods • Greenland – Cooling for most of 20th century • Oceans – Higher CO2 benefits almost all species • Sea level – Very minor, gradual rise • Polar bears – Populations rising, not falling

48. Thank you! James M. Taylor Senior Fellow, Environment Policy The Heartland Institute taylor@heartland.org

50. Africa Drought National Geographic News, July 31, 2009 – “Desertification, drought, and despair—that's what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear.”“Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.“Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall. If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities.“This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.”