Above image: Gradual receding terminus of the Mer de Glace glacier after 1644. 1
I revisited the used bookstore where a couple weeks ago, while browsing for a book on wild edibles to supplement my diet, I had instead accidentally stumbled upon three books on climate change that stood out from the shelves and spurred intense, renewed study of the subject that inspired my last blog post, The 1500-year Cycle of Global Warming (and Cooling).
This time, Lawrence Solomon’s book, The Deniers, was again on my mind. I still had questions about the climate issue, such as “What about carbon dioxide? Is human activity contributing a significant amount? Enough to significantly affect the environment? In a negative way, in a positive way, or both?” I wanted to know what the experts in his book had to say about such things.
Lawrence Solomon is an environmentalist. His Canada organization, Energy Probe Research Foundation, has been a major player in keeping nuclear plants from proliferating and in holding nuclear and other energy industries accountable for environmental problems such as nuclear waste. Of the authors of the books on climate that had caught my attention at the bookstore that day, I felt the most willing to trust him—maybe he was of my kind.2 But to keep my load light, on my first visit I had only purchased the thinnest of the three books—simply skimming and taking notes from the other two. Now I had to go back to satisfy my curiosity. And after thumbing through The Deniers again briefly, I realized I wanted to read it cover to cover.
I wasn’t disappointed with my new purchase. I spent the next two days devouring its 200+ pages. The full name of the book with subtitle is, The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution and fraud (and those who are too fearful to do so) [Richard Vigilante Books, 2008]. To begin with, I’d like to reproduce here just one the stories of the many prominent scientists Solomon profiles, also an environmentalist:
“ Claude Alegre, one of France’s leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming. ‘By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century,’ Dr. Allegre, a geochemist, wrote 20 years ago [1987]. Fifteen years ago, Dr. Allegre was among the 1,500 prominent scientists who signed ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,’ [1992] a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming’s ‘potential risks are very great’ and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe’s fragility in order to stave off ‘spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic, and environmental collapse.’
That was back in the days before the world had spent billions studying the problem. Then the evidence began to come in, and Dr. Allegre... changed his mind. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a manmade cause of catastrophic global warming. On his reading, the evidence indicated most of the warming comes from natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as overhyped and an environmental concern of second rank.
His public break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September 2006 in an article entitled ‘The Snows on Mount Kilomanjaro’ in L’Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilomanjaro’s retreating snowcaps, among other global warming concerns, come from natural causes. ‘The cause of this climate change is unknown,’ he states matter-of-factly.
... Dr. Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFC’s and public health from lead pollution. He is, above all, a scientist of the first order, the architect of isotope geodynamics... Dr. Allegre is perhaps best known for his research on structural and geochemical evolution of the earth’s crust and the creation of mountains: ‘The Snows on Mount Kilomanjaro’ are a rather personal matter to him.
Allegre’s break with scientific dogma over global warming came at some personal cost: colleagues in both government and environmental spheres were aghast that he could publicly question the science behind climate change. But what does it say about the credibility of such doomsayer colleagues, that they can dismiss a man of such impeccable credentials, a man of their own political persuasion who has fought the great environmental battles of our time, merely for voicing doubt? ”
Allegre’s story was among many of the stories of scientists in Solomon’s book that impressed me. But nothing fascinated me more than the work of Syun-Ichi Akasofu—so much so that I searched the internet and discovered and read, in their entirety, four separate papers by him (written between 2007 to 2013) documenting his thesis that warming over the 20th century has been a continuation of a steady gradual warming since the Little Ice Age, with a super-imposed effect from multi-decadal fluctuation, a natural phenomena. I discuss the LIA in my previous blog. I also included a video interview with Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, retired head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics at Stockholm University, who predicts that we may be entering a new little ice age as early as 2030 to 2050. Akasofu’s take is a little different. He suggests the lull in warming since 2000 is part of the 60 year multi-decadal fluctuation’s temporarily overcoming of the general warming of the last two centuries or more, and believes this lull will last aproximately 30 years (or half of the sixty-year cycle, similar to the cooling between 1940 and 1970 discussed later), while he expects the overall warming trend of approximately 0.5ºC/century to continue during this century. As far as I could gather, he doesn’t say when he expects the overall warming trend to break off, though he does make it clear that the if the observed trend of ˜0.5ºC/century extends as expected until 2100, that gradual trend is far lower than the IPCC’s alarming and so far unfounded predictions of an increase of 2-4ºC during this century. (See Akasofu’s 2013 paper, “On the Present Halting of Global Warming.”)
Akasofu is the founding director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska. He received his Ph.D. in geophysics in 1961. According to Solomon, Akasofu “has been a giant in Arctic research since his discovery in 1964 of the origin of storms in the aurora borealis. He has published more than 550 professional journal articles, has been the invited author of many encyclopedia articles, and was twice named one of the ‘1,000 Most Cited Scientists.’” He was director of the UAF Geophysical Institute from 1986 to 1999 and “helped establish it as a key research center in the Arctic.” (Solomon devotes most of pages 64-79 of his book to Akasofu’s work).
To those with any interest in climate, I highly recommend taking a look at Akasofu’s papers on the subject, which I’ll outline, with links, at the end of this article. I’d suggest starting with either of the more recent papers (2011, 2013). Then, if you are interested in more details, evidence, and graphics, 2010 is my top pick.
The following images, and the one at the top of this article, appear in Akasofu’s 2008 and 2010 papers:
- Retreat of glaciers in Glacier Bay, Alaska; Molnia, B. (2008) Glaciers of North America and Alaska, USGS, professional paper 1386K, 525.
- Retreat of the Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand; Grove, J.M. (1988) The little ice age. Methuen, New York, 498.
Section 4 of Akasofu’s 2010 paper briefly discusses “Possible Solar Causes” for fluctuations in earth’s climate, though he begins by saying, “It is not the purpose of this section to discuss any major causes of climate change.”
The question of cause is dealt with more seriously by many other scientists and institutions (described in chapters 9 through 11 of The Deniers). Akasofu rules out CO2 as a major cause of warming since CO2 emissions did not begin to increase rapidly until 1946, and the record shows gradual warming since at least the early 1800s. Moreover, the earth cooled between 1940 and 1970; so notably so that climatologists of that period were concerned that human activities would lead to a new ice age. Akasofu attributes this cooling to multi-decadal fluctuation, an observed approximately 60 year cycle. As an Arctic scientist, he notes that Arctic temperatures act as a magnifying glass for global trends. These variations and cycles are much stronger in the arctic, as seen in the figure below from Akasofu’s 2008 paper.
“Arctic temperatures fell sharply for about 25 years just when CO2 emissions were accelerating. Moreover, the temperature rise from 1920 to 1940 was far more dramatic than the temperature rise from 1975 to 1998, at a time when hydrocarbon was relatively small.” (Solomon, p. 77) Note that the peak in temperature in the Arctic around 1940 is higher than that of 2000.
“The global temperature appeared to drop between the 1940s and 1970s, and some thought that anthropogenic aerosols could be the cause of observed global cooling, and that we may be triggering a new ice age,” says Nir Shaviv, associate professor, Racah Institute of Physics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Shaviv, “Carbon Dioxide or Solar Forcing?”).
Along with many others today, Shaviv believes that cosmic ray flux leading to cloud formation in the earth’s atmosphere is likely the biggest factor in climate change, and “may account for 80% of the global warming in the 20th century. Curiously, Shaviv attributes just about as much of the global warm to natural causes as Akasofu. Nevertheless, Dr. Shaviv maintains fossil fuels should be controlled not because of their adverse affects on climate but to curb pollution.” (Solomon, p. 91).
In my previous blog, I describe how the solar magnetic cycles of the sun have been found to deflect cosmic rays from the earth, in turn leading to variations in cloud seeding through ionization of the atmosphere. Shaviv goes further. His research of cosmic ray damage of ancient meteorites suggested large variations of cosmic ray flux over hundreds of millions of years, resulting in heavy damage of meteorites lasting for tens of millions of years, going through another period of tens of millions of years with mild damage, then back again. When he learned of the work of Danish scientists on cosmic ray influence on earth’s climate, he applied what he knew about cosmic ray flux and discovered a match of this fluctuation with the reconstructed temperature of the earth over the last 550 million years, “in sync with the occurrence of ice age epochs on Earth.” (Shaviv, “The Milky Way Galaxy’s Spiral Arms and Ice Age Epochs and the Cosmic-Ray Connection”.)
“[C]osmic rays undoubtedly affect climate, and on geological time scales are the most important climate driver.” (Shaviv, “Cosmic Rays and Climate.” See Solomon, p. 152-153)
Papers by Syun-Ichi Akasofu on the gradual recovery from the Little Ice Age continuing to the present:
The 2011 paper is the most succinct and the easiest read, while 2010 is the most complete and well ordered.
I found the 2007/2008 paper somewhat poorly organized and difficult to follow, though it covers much of the same information as 2010. 2013 is a slightly more thorough version of what’s covered in 2011.
2007/2008
“Is the Earth Still Recovering from the ‘Little Ice Age’?”
http://www.wright.edu/~guy.vandegrift/climateblog/s06/akasofu.LIAge.pdf
2010
“On the Recovery from the Little Ice Age”
https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=3217
2011
“Natural Components of Climate Change”
Notes:
1 Taken from Syun-Ichi Akasofu, On the Recovery from the Little Ice Age (2010), section 2.5 Glaciers. Attributed to von Michael Kuhn, H. (2007) Fluctuations of the ‘Mer de Glace’ AD 1500-2000; an interdisciplinary approach using new historical data and neural network simulations. Zeitschrift für Gletscherkunde und Glazialgeologie, 40, 183.
2 From the jacket cover of The Deniers: “Lawrence Solomon, a worldrenowned environmentalist, author, and activist has been at the forefront of movements to stop nuclear power expansion and to save the world’s rainforests. He is a columnist with National Post (Toronto) and author of half a dozen books including Energy Shock (Doubleday). Mr. Solomon’s Energy Probe Research Foundation works with citizen groups around the globe to stop environmentally destructive projects and promote sound development.”
Energy Probe was one of the first groups to warn about global warming and was represented among the dozens of environmental groups from around the world attending the Rio Summit on climate in 1992 that led to the 1995 Kyoto accords. The following is from Energy Probe’s website:
Current Priorities
Our 30 years of research have led us to conclude there is a great need to:
- Restore strong regulation in monopolized markets, such as those involving gas pipelines and electricity grids
- Promote competition in naturally competitive markets
- Promote a clean energy future
- Stop nuclear expansion
- Explain that global warming alarmism promotes an all-electric society of uneconomic and environmentally destructive dams, industrial wind farms and nuclear reactors
- Protect consumer interests when considering energy purchases and options
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