The insanity of denialists at WUWT: On the impact of natural gas on global warming

I couldn't pass up some gems of denialist thinking I came across today. It was in response to a new WUWT article, about a paper in Nature. The paranoia runs deep at WUWT.

The paper itself is the result of a study looking to see if abundant natural gas substituting for coal would help mitigate CO2 emissions. The answer was "probably not". Another article in Nature News and Views, which was describing the research, gave three main reasons. From ScienceDaily.com:

• Replacing low-carbon sources: Natural gas replacing coal would reduce carbon emissions. But due to its lower cost, natural gas would also replace some low-carbon energy, such as renewable or nuclear energy. Overall changes result in a smaller reduction than expected due to natural gas replacing these other, low-carbon sources. In a sense, natural gas would become a larger slice of the energy pie.
• More total energy used: Abundant, less expensive natural gas would lower energy prices across the board, leading people to use more energy overall. In addition, inexpensive energy stimulates the economy, which also increases overall energy use. Consequently, the entire energy pie gets bigger.
• Methane escape from production and distribution: The main component of natural gas, methane, is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. During production and distribution, some methane inevitably escapes into the atmosphere. The researchers considered both high and low estimates for this so-called fugitive methane. Even at the lower end, fugitive methane adds to climate change.

Speaking of "natural", naturally, the WUWT article only provided one of the three reasons - that of the lower energy prices leading to more energy being used overall (archived here). Once again, the article was by Eric Worrall - about the only person left (I mean, remaining) who is providing denialist fodder for Anthony Watts' blog these days.

Bits and pieces from the IPCC WG1 - methane, AMO and anthropogenic forcing

While I'm working my way through the IPCC reports, here are some more snippets of interest from the AR5 Technical Summary.

On methane emissions (page TS-23)

Models and ecosystem warming experiments show high agreement that wetland CH4 emissions will increase per unit area in a warmer climate, but wetland areal extent may increase or decrease depending on regional changes in temperature and precipitation affecting wetland hydrology, so that there is low confidence in quantitative projections of wetland CH4 emissions. Reservoirs of carbon in hydrates and permafrost are very large, and thus could potentially act as very powerful feedbacks. Although poorly constrained, the 21st century global release of CH4 from hydrates to the atmosphere is likely to be low due to the under-saturated state of the ocean, long-ventilation time of the ocean, and slow propagation of warming through the seafloor. Release of carbon from thawing permafrost is very likely to provide a positive feedback, but there is limited confidence in quantitative projections of its strength. {6.4}

Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation made little contribution to GMST* (page TS-25)

A number of studies have investigated the effects of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) on global mean surface temperature. While some studies find a significant role for the AMO in driving multi-decadal variability in GMST, the AMO exhibited little trend over the period 1951-2010 on which these assessments are based, and the AMO is assessed with high confidence to have made little contribution to the GMST trend between 1951 and 2010 (considerably less than 0.1°C). {2.4, 9.8.1, 10.3; FAQ 9.1}.

*GMST = global mean surface temperature.

Human activities had by far the greatest impact on global surface temperature (page TS-26)

Greenhouse gases contributed a global mean surface warming likely to be between 0.5°C and 1.3°C over the period between 1951 and 2010, with the contributions from other anthropogenic forcings likely to be between –0.6°C and 0.1°C and from natural forcings likely to be between –0.1°C and 0.1°C. Together these assessed contributions are consistent with the observed warming of approximately 0.6°C over this period (Figure TS.10). {10.3}...

...Observed warming over the past sixty years is far outside the range of internal climate variability estimated from pre-instrumental data, and it is also far outside the range of internal variability simulated in climate models. Model-based simulations of internal variability are assessed to be adequate to make this assessment. Further, the spatial pattern of observed warming differs from those associated with internal variability. Based on this evidence, the contribution of internal variability to the 1951–2010 global mean surface temperature trend was assessed to be likely between –0.1°C and 0.1°C, and it is virtually certain that warming since 1951 cannot be explained by internal variability alone. {9.5, 10.3, 10.7}

The instrumental record shows a pronounced warming during the first half of the 20th century. Consistent with AR4, it is assessed that the early 20th century warming is very unlikely to be due to internal variability alone. It remains difficult to quantify the contributions to this early century warming from internal variability, natural forcing and anthropogenic forcing, due to forcing and response uncertainties and incomplete observational coverage. {10.3}

Black carbon in the Arctic as viewed by WUWT - plus more about soot and methane

Anthony Watts posted an article about a new paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmosphere.

Anthony had a headline: In the Arctic, nearby soot may be a larger forcing than CO2. However there was nothing in his article to support his headline so one can only conclude that he made it up out of thin air in keeping with his latest disinformation push.

Sand, M., T. K. Berntsen, Ø. Seland, and J. E. Kristjánsson (2013), Arctic surface temperature change to emissions of black carbon within Arctic or midlatitudes, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 118, doi:10.1002/jgrd.50613.

It depends on from where the black carbon comes

The researchers set out to quantify the impact of black carbon emissions from different sources - comparing that emanating from within the Arctic with that coming from the midlatitudes. They found that if the black carbon was emitted from within the Arctic, it had "an almost five times larger Arctic surface temperature response (per unit of emitted mass) compared to emissions at midlatitudes".  The AGU report states (my bold italics):

Black carbon emitted within the Arctic is more likely to stay at low altitudes and thus to be deposited on the snow and ice there, whereas black carbon transported into the Arctic from mid-latitudes is more likely to remain at higher altitudes. Because of this, the Arctic surface temperature is almost 5 times more sensitive to black carbon emitted from within the Arctic than to emissions from mid-latitudes, the authors find.

How many WUWT readers understood what was written?

The first thing that struck me in the comments was that I don't think either Anthony or his readers understood the study or what it found.  Going by the headline, Anthony was just aiming for more disinformation and didn't bother to read what he copied and pasted.  His readers were no better. So far, I only counted three responses (out of 26) that demonstrates that any reader has understood the research or the findings.

The second thing that struck me in the comments, was the inability of some people to hold two complementary ideas in their brain at the same time.  It is as if there is only room for one.  This disability is interesting in the context of Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians.  (See here for a summary in the context of climate science denial).  Altemayer talks of the RWA's as being recognised for their ability to hold two conflicting ideas in their brain at the same time.  For example, they can swear black and blue that earth is warming because of the sun and in the next breath they'll swear black and blue that the earth isn't warming and then say that it's cooling and then say it's warming but it's caused by ENSO or the PDO.

Maybe the head of the RWA is so full of conflicting notions that it has no room for complementary notions.

Here is an example from Bob who says (extract):

August 13, 2013 at 6:37 pm CO2 doesn’t seem to be working all that well as the cause, so we need to switch to carbon, I suppose....

Here are more comments from the WUWT crowd, but this time to demonstrate how WUWT readers don't bother to read or understand before jumping in feet first:

Owen in GA hasn't bothered to read the WUWT article and hasn't understood what the research was about.  He seems to think it was just to see if black carbon caused melting:

August 13, 2013 at 6:21 pm  I don’t see why they didn’t expect to see this. Ice has an almost perfect reflection surface, put something that is almost a perfect black body on top of it and absorbed energy changes as far as is possible. I would have to run a series of experiments to put actual numbers on it, but the common sense factor of this seems evident. Occasionally the universe throws a curve ball at ya, but usually only on really large or really small scales.

For starters - Owen in GA hasn't bothered to read what the researchers were studying.  Next he's incorrect saying "ice having an almost perfect reflective surface".  Ice does have high albedo compared to, say, the open ocean.  But it's not perfect and is less than snow.  Owen in GA immediately doubles up on his lack of understanding by telling the researchers how they should have done their research.  It would help a bit if he learnt that "alot" is two words not one (yeah, I'm being petty now):

August 13, 2013 at 6:29 pm  The problem here though is they do all their “experiments” in a computer rather than in the universe. Would have to see the methodology to see if they used any actual observations such as solar intensity, shine angle, carbon absorption rate/conversion of effective solar to temperature and length of day. Such a simple model could tell you alot about what effect black carbon “might” have, but until you instrument the heck out of a patch with alot of black carbon and a control patch with little to no black carbon and measure the actual on the ground effect you have not done a real experiment.

Owen in GA throws in the towel and says:

August 13, 2013 at 6:48 pm  I don’t know why this article bugs me so much. I read them all, but only comment occasionally when something either grabs my funny bone or sticks in the craw.

Maybe it's because Owen in GA didn't bother to digest the article and the research findings.

Wyguy declares himself as one of the 8% Dismissives and says:

August 13, 2013 at 7:02 pm “Black carbon ….. is one of the major causes of global warming, after carbon dioxide emissions.” When I read that, I quit reading. The author(s) lost all credibility in my eyes.

Impact of cutting soot and methane - not as much benefit as previously thought

There are a couple of more interesting comments, though.  This time about a PNNL study on the impact of cutting soot and methane emissions, which has recently been published in PNAS and is discussed here in Scientific American.  You can read the press release from PNLL here.  An excerpt:

Cutting the amount of short-lived, climate-warming emissions such as soot and methane in our skies won't limit global warming as much as previous studies have suggested, a new analysis shows. The study also found a comprehensive climate policy (including methane) would produce more climate benefits by 2050 than if soot and methane were reduced alone.

Steven J. Smith1 and Andrew Mizrahi (2013) Near-term climate mitigation by short-lived forcers, PNAS,  doi: 10.1073/pnas.1308470110