Why do we fund the drivel that passes as climate science?

Advanced nations now spend billions upon billions of dollars undertaking research into the supposed bogey called climate change.

New research conducted by Australia's CSIRO claims that CO2 emissions were 35% higher in 2006 than the Kyoto base year of 1990.

When will the Climate Faithful get it into their thick heads that if CO2 is increasing rapidly but temperatures have stabilised over the last nearly 10 years then the causative effect of CO2 on climate has to be called into question - at the very least.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just days after the Nobel prize was awarded for global warming work, an alarming new study finds that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected.

Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 percent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers led by Josep G. Canadell, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the gas absorbed by the oceans and land were listed as causes of the increase.

"In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slowdown" of nature's ability to take the chemical out of the air, said Canadell, director of the Global Carbon Project at the research organization.

The changes "characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing," the researchers report.

Kevin Trenberth of the climate analysis section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. said the "paper raises some very important issues that the public should be aware of: Namely that concentrations of CO2 are increasing at much higher rates than previously expected and this is in spite of the Kyoto Protocol that is designed to hold them down in western countries,"

The Kyoto Protocol isn't working? Could that be because Europe (which has ratified Kyoto and implemented carbon trading) is increasing CO2 faster than it is meant to and, amusingly, faster than the US (which hasn't ratified Kyoto), as well as the fact that the world's largest emitter, China, is pumping huge quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere? But people still want Australia and the US to ratify the thing.

Alan Robock, associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, added: "What is really shocking is the reduction of the oceanic CO2 sink," meaning the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere.

The researchers blamed that reduction on changes in wind circulation, but Robock said he also thinks rising ocean temperatures reduce the ability to take in the gas.

"...he also thinks..."? These guys are meant to know. The functioning of the earth's carbon sink needs to be fully understood in order for climate models to be accurate.

"Think that a warm Coke has less fizz than a cold Coke," he said.

As distinct from the global warming argument, which has no fizz at all.

Neither Robock nor Trenberth was part of Canadell's research team.

Carbon dioxide is the leading "greenhouse gas," so named because their accumulation in the atmosphere can help trap heat from the sun, causing potentially dangerous warming of the planet.

While most atmospheric scientists accept the idea, finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been a political problem because of potential effects on the economy. Earlier this month, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former Vice President Al Gore for their work in calling attention to global warming.

"It turns out that global warming critics were right when they said that global climate models did not do a good job at predicting climate change," Robock commented.

Whoa! Did I just read that correctly? I'm right? That's gotta hurt the unscientific, realclimate.org influenced AGW proponents that leave contrarian comments on my blog at regular intervals.

"But what has been wrong recently is that the climate is changing even faster than the models said. In fact, Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than any models predicted, and sea level is rising much faster than IPCC previously predicted."

I've been saying that the models have been a crock for umpteen years. Does the fact that the models have under-predicted the supposed effects of global warming mean that their forecasts are even more reliable because they're lower than reality?

According to the new study, carbon released from burning fossil fuel and making cement rose from 7.0 billion metric tons per year in 2000 to 8.4 billion metric tons in 2006. A metric tons is 2,205 pounds.

The growth rate increased from 1.3 percent per year in 1990-1999 to 3.3 percent per year in 2000-2006, the researchers added.

Trenberth noted that carbon dioxide is not the whole story — methane emissions have declined, so total greenhouse gases are not increasing as much as carbon dioxide alone. Also, he added, other pollution plays a role by cooling.

If CO2 is not the whole story then why is Kyoto the whole answer? The dishonesty of the Climate Faithful is astonishing. He then chucks in the old pollution chestnut, which is how modellers dealt with the cooling from 1940-75, a time at which CO2 rose consistently meaning the planet should have warmed. No doubt, modellers will now go and stick in some more fudged pollution to account for the current difference.

There are changes from year to year in the fraction of the atmosphere made up of carbon dioxide and the question is whether this increase is transient or will be sustained, he said.

Models work on the basis that CO2 sustains itself in the atmosphere for about 100 years. If the science is settled then how can this be a question?

"The theory suggests increases in (the atmospheric fraction), as is claimed here, but the evidence is not strong," Trenberth said.

The paper looks at a rather short time to measure a trend, Robock added, "but the results they get certainly look reasonable, and much of the paper is looking at much longer trends."

The research was supported by Australian, European and other international agencies.

As I said, why do we fund so lavishly such drivel?