Physics & Climate

Climate Science

Introductory Remarks

General

Climate is the weather averaged over several decades. While it is relatively easy to observe daily variations of the temperature, humidity or wind speed, changes of the climate requires to measure smallest trends of these strongly varying quantities over many years and large areas. Even more difficult is to make reliable climate prognoses, when the origin and interaction of some climate drivers are not known or not fully understood. Over recent years climate science has rapidly developed to an interdisciplinary branch of sci- ence and nowadays covers many of the classical disciplines like meteorology, geology, earth- and atmospheric physics, chemistry and biology, paleontology or astrophysics. Meanwhile it even includes subjects like climate-ecology, -health, -psychology, -law and, of course, climate politics. And indeed for understanding such an extremely complex ‘phenomenon‘ like climate, interdisciplinarity is an absolute requirement. But up to now climate science suffers from some principal problems: 1. Despite considerably improved measuring techniques for temperature, humidity, clouds or sea-level heights - meanwhile covering the whole planet by means of satellite techniques - direct measurements are only available for relatively short observation periods. For longer trends researchers have to rely on proxy data like ice cores, marine sediments, stalactites, dendrology or stomata of leaves with much higher uncertainties. 2. Up to now the main processes and drivers for a changing climate are not really understood. There exist different hypotheses but because of the long time constants and a lot of compe- ting effects, it is extremely difficult to verify one of them. Only climate models based on many assumptions and endless parameters can be used to simulate the past and future climate. 3. The different research fields are not really integrated and do not form a common discipline. Often scientists proceed in their original research but under the label of climate science, which is known to be well funded. Meanwhile climate covers all fields of our society, and any inconvenient developments are traced back to climate. Already brief insinuations of danger or catastrophes assumed to result from climate changes give the highest guarantee for receiving attention from media, politics and finally for further funding. 4. As long as science cannot explain unambiguously the processes responsible for previous and future climate variations, speculation and ideology defeat serious science. It is easier and more spectacular to retrace all changes to human activities and to neglect any natural effects. 5. At present a lot of fundamental research of serious scientists is no longer recognized. Instead, ideologized environmental and political organizations, which don‘t care about real science, dictate our actual environmental and energy politics. Our society and particularly some of our politicians are manipulated and indoctrinated by these groups, which believe: “The only way to save our planet is to stop all anthropogenic CO 2 -emissions.“

Climate of the Past

Unfortunately, the actual climate discussion is strongly dominated by pseudo-science and speculations about domino effects or tipping points, which are initiating the doomsday, when the CO 2 -emissions are not strongly reduced. But in this overheated debate, even seasoned climate experts and realists often forget to remember that we are living in an Ice Age, currently the Quaternary. From paleoclimatic studies it is largely settled that for more than 4 billion years the Earth‘s climate was determined by Warm Ages, which were interrupted by Ice Age Periods of 18 to 300 million years. Over the last 2.4 billion years, the temperatures were only comparable to today's values for one fifth of the time, i.e., for 4/5th of the time higher, temporarily even significantly higher, up to 10°C more than our current temperatures. This also applies to the last 570 million years, i.e., reaching back to the Cambrian (Palaeozoic), as derived from proxy data. But it is not known that these Warm Ages caused tipping points like de- struction of fauna and flora. On the contrary, to- gether with a significant- ly higher CO 2 concentra- tion this gave the basis for new forms of life to develop in an unexpect- ed way. Warm Ages were also the basis for the emergence of the extensive resour- ces of fossil fuels, the use of which only made economic development and today's prosperity possible. The Warm Ages were interrupted by 4 Ice Ages, which are characterized by one or both polar caps being icy. We are therefore living in an Ice Age, the Quaternary, which began about 2.6 million years ago and is still going on. Within such ice ages we find periodically recurring distinctive ice periods, the Glacials, and warmer periods, the Interglacials. So, in the Eemian Interglacial more than 115,000 years ago it was at least 4 degrees warmer than today in the actual interglacial, the Holocene. At that time there were hippos on the Upper Rhine, as numerous bone and tooth findings show. Again, there are no signs of a climatic tipping point or domino effect, instead, higher temperatures have mostly led to more favorable living conditions for animals and plants. During the Holocene, i.e. over the last 11,000 years, there were various warmer periods that had higher or comparable temperatures than today. It is therefore a falsification of climatological history to claim that we have never had such high temperatures as today. After the Medieval Warm Period of a few hundred years and a subsequent much colder epoch, which lasted from around 1450 to around 1850 and is known as the Little Ice Age, we have since been in a climatic phase with slightly increasing temperatures. Fortunately, we live in a warmer period of the Ice Age Quaternary and should be happy that temperatures have risen by a few tenths of a degree since the Little Ice Age.

Observed Temperature Changes

This temperature increase since 1850 is about 0.9°C, although there is still a hot debate, how far such an increase can really be confirmed and is not falsified by urban influences or changes in the recording of measured values over the years. For example, measurements from stations in rural areas that have not been relocated, show an increase of only about 0.5 °C. This increase is presented by some climate experts as unique with an unprecedented speed in climate history (see, e.g., Mojib Latif, GEOMAR Helmhotz Institute Kiel), although reconstructions from proxy data do not remotely allow a sufficient measurement sensitivity and temporal resolution to be able to make such a statement at all. At the same time, previous warmer periods in the Holocene, such as the climate optimum 4 – 8 thousand years ago, the Roman Warm Period or the Medieval Warm Period, are not acknow- ledged or are simply omitted (see 3rd and 4th IPCC Assessment Report, Hockey Stick Curve by Michael Mann). The increase in temperature, as found from large-scale satellite measurements since 1979, shows an average of 0.13°C/decade, i.e. about one hundredth of a degree per year. This increa- se was by no means continuous but appeared in oscillations and sometimes in individual steps that correlate strongly with El Niño events (warming in 1983, 1988, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2015), i.e. it was not rising monotonically or evenly to the atmospheric CO 2 increase. Between 2000 and 2015 there was no warming at all, although greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continued to increase steadily during this period. So, there is an average increase of 1/100th of a degree per year, this with temperature differen- ces on Earth sometimes of more than 100°C at one location (Verkhoyansk-Russia: 105.1°C) and even more than 180°C between different climate zones (Topan Basin China +82.3°C; Antarctica -98.6°C). That means, we are talking about changes that are not greater than one 10,000th of the observed temperature differences on Earth over the year. Also the global temperatures are scattering from one year to the next by about 2°C. Neverthe- less from this the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), many nongovernmental organizations, politicians and media derive an unprecedented increase and threaten with the end of the world, if all fossil emissions do not fall to zero by 2050. Different to the IPCC, which assumes almost exclusively anthropogenic warming and estimates a natural influence to be less than 10%, detailed own calculations show that only about 30% of the observed warming can be assigned to the GHG and 70% traced back to solar anomalies to- gether with cloud variations. In addition, further comprehensive studies of the carbon cycle indicate that humans should not have contributed more than 15% to the increasing atmospheric CO 2 concentration over the In- dustrial Era. Therefore, 30% x 15% = 4.5% from 0.9°C give a human fraction to global warming of not more than 0.04°C. The following section presents a survey of the own climatological studies and results together with some critical comments to the actual international energy and climate debate.

Outline of this Section

• The German Way or the CO 2 Delusion and its Consequences This article presents some consequences of the actual environmental and energy politics of many industrialized countries like Germany. • IPCC and UNFCCC This Subsection summarizes the main deficits of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its politics. It also lists some alternative organizations, which see no climate emergency and fight for serious climate research that is independent of politics and based on facts. Advocates of Climate Science Wrong Climate Forecasts • Own Climate Studies This Subsection gives an overview of own climate investigations. It shows the negligible influence of human emissions on our climate. a) Greenhouse Effect b) Climate Sensitivity c) Methane Sensitivity d) Carbon Cycle e) Solar Influence • Actual Reports & Publications Compilation of the own reports and publications and of some other authors with related topis.