Peter - you were quite right to point out that many scientists seemed to have succumbed to peer pressure in these matters but I think you will find, if you read the public statements that many of these scientists are making the only reasonable to conclusion is that they have flipped. They have abandonded any objectivity and become simply activists.
As you noted water vapour is vastly more important as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Yet the models assume that a small amount of heating from CO2 will trigger a large amount of warming from water vapour. This is an assumption but both it and the output of the models has been presented as virtually proven facts. These results have been defended, often violently, in the face of some contrary evidence about cloud cover and the recent mild cooling trend. As I said, the scientists have flipped.
The stuff you present about pollution affecting rainfall is far more compelling than the climate forecasts..

I am sceptical of Brumby's capacity to do anything for the climate, water shortage!
Why not buy a cleaner coal? because it comes from some other state?
SA piped it's irrigation water years ago, the state of Victoria's channels is a disgrace. As is the condition under which power is produced, brown coal. While he lets water leak from the channels and pollutes the air the SA irrigators and the Coorong go without.
Time for change Victoria.
fluff
PS a very good appraisal of the state of the climate, even if he's not a Skeptic!

Peter,

Thank you for an interesting article. I am a anthropogenic (CO2)climate change skeptic, however I have been considering another human factor that could explain changes in precipitation in relation to mountains.

Where deforestation has been considerable, I would understand that changes to humidity (relative and absolute) have occurred. The loss of transpiration from forests must reduce the intensity of the water cycle between the earth and sky and the precipitation that occurs in mountainous regions.

A television presentation of some years ago pointed out the reduction in precipitation around Mt. Kilimanjaro and the retreat of a glacier. The lowering of regional humidity would assist in the sublimation of ice contained in the glacier ie ice does have a vapour pressure.

Note: East Africa has little industry to produce the pollutants that are found in S. E. Australia and China and cause the effects that Dr. Rosenfield has suggested.

Regards,

Mike Clarke (Dr.)
M.E.T.T.S. Pty Ltd.

Peter - good article, it's a sad reflection on the current state of science and Australian society that it even needed to be written.

You haven't yet suffered the usual storm of indignation and scorn seen on OLO, I'm surprised your reputation has not been sullied and your head not been called for, nor has anyone yet insisted you are in the pay of big oil or evil polluters.

'Scientists, like all other people, need to remain open to competing views and avoid the danger of being locked into tunnel vision through group obsession, which is what global warming seems to have become.'

You have as much chance of getting the Taliban to denounce the Koran as you have of the true believers admitting they swallowed pseudo science when it comes to gw. Their dogmas look sillier everyday as temperatures drop as carbon emissions increase.

So why was the last 10 years the hottest on record?
People keep on persisting on saying it is getting cooler but no facts are shown.
2008 was in the top 10 hottest years.

Are you telling me that NASA are wrong.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

Peter,

You are right - CO2 is not the only issue. However, be it CO2 or small particles we know that burning fossil fuels appears to be leading to undesirable outcomes.

A strategy is to stop burning fossil fuels and to move to other forms of energy generation that have a lower impact on the environment. Clearly if CO2 is not the whole problem then measures such as putting a price on CO2 will at best be a partial solution.

Another approach is to encourage investment in ways to generate energy that have a lower impact on the environment. We can do this by increasing the price of energy from burning fossil fuels through putting a price on carbon - but that only increases the price of all energy.

An alternative to price increases is to reduce the finance costs associated with energy production from other sources of energy. That will bring down the price of energy. That is we reduce the cost of investing in alternatives. From the point of view of wealth creation this will increase our overall output for lower costs - that is we will become richer not poorer from changing to lower impact alternatives.

One way this can be done is to change the way we increase our money supply which also has the positive effect of stimulating the economy in productive ways.

http://stableproductivemoney.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/amasset-an-economic-tool-for-managing-economies/

An interesting article, though strange in that the effects of particulates are presented as being much more significant than CO2, regardless of timeframe or context. Surely the author is aware of the enormous differences of longevity in the atmosphere involved: raised CO2 and some other greenhouse gases can stay in the atmosphere for 100 years or more, whereas particulates have a very short life in the atmosphere and are only sustained if particulate injections into the atmosphere are near-continuous. This is underlined by the short-term temperature effects of particulates after volcanic eruptions, and by the suppression of warming during the 1940-1970 period due to high levels of sulphate aerosol pollution.

Also, it would be useful to clarify that, while it may be true that "with complete abandon, a vociferous body of claimants is insisting that CO2 alone is the root of climatic evil", this body of claimants does not include climate scientists. Climate models take account of many greenhouse gases and a large number of other influences beyond CO2, of course.

An interesting article though the issue of particulate matter and the adverse impacts of this pollution on climate (and human health) is far from new. Particulate matter (PM) has not been ignored by climate scientists.

In fact Daniel Rosenfeld was a researcher in the INDOEX project in 2000 which involved more than 150 scientists across several disciplines from Austria, France, Germany, India, Maldives, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States.

The $25 million project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and funded in part by NASA, the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, focused on the Indian Ocean region in a "multiplatform" analysis approach of satellites, aircraft, ships, surface stations, and balloons.

The project was designed to assess the nature and magnitude of the chemical pollution over the tropical Indian Ocean and to assess the significance of the region’s aerosols.

A wide range of results from the project—from meteorology to chemistry—were presented in 25 papers published in a special issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research released in November 2001.

Early in the project, INDOEX researchers documented a human-produced brownish-gray haze layer of about 10 million square kilometres over the Indian-Asian region which scientists say is impacting on Northern Australia.

I take exception to the author’s view that scientists have tunnel vision. Industrial particulate matter is a regulated substance in developed countries (though regulations are continually violated) and the IPCC have advised on particulate matter. Major research is ongoing and improvements are constantly taking place in the modelling processes.

This month, researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California published a paper advising that “sulfate is commonly mixed with atmospheric soot in the same particles, which means in some regions sulfate could lead to more warming as opposed to more cooling as one would expect for a pure sulfate aerosol”:

http://www.physorg.com/news165517024.html

contd.....

In 2007, the American Chemical Society found that epidemiological studies consistently link ambient concentrations of particulate matter (PM) to negative health impacts, including asthma, heart attacks, hospital admissions, and premature mortality.

They estimated global and regional mortalities by applying ambient PM increases due to ships to cardiopulmonary and lung cancer concentration-risk functions and population models.

Their results indicate that shipping-related PM emissions are responsible for approximately 60,000 cardiopulmonary and lung cancer deaths annually, with most deaths occurring near coastlines in Europe, East Asia, and South Asia.

Under current regulation (and resistance from pseudo-sceptics) and the expected growth in shipping activity, they estimate that annual mortalities could increase by 40% by 2012.

The ongoing research on particulates in no way mitigates the destructive forces of carbon dioxide. Carbon based pollutant emissions and CO2 are bound together by an inextricable fate. They are inseparable. Therefore, carbon dioxide remains the “bête noire.”

I continue to ask why recalcitrant deniers and pseudo-sceptics persist in raising the issue of CO2 and global warming but refuse to acknowledge the issue of carbon pollution? The evasion is surely due to uncertainties which deniers desperately latch onto rather than act responsibly and address the whole picture.

CO2 is the progeny of pollution – ie. benzene (a category 1 carcinogen) burns to CO2 as does carbon monoxide after elevating tropospheric ozone and methane - etc etc. Unburnt hydrocarbons are contaminating and destroying the planet’s ecosystems. Unintended byproducts of industrial stack emissions include bio-accumulative dioxins and other chlorinated substances and toxic, ground-water plumes are contaminating Australia's rivers.

Corporate Australia is polluting with impunity.

Capping particulate matter and other fossil fuel pollutants will mitigate carbon dioxide emissions.

Capping carbon dioxide emissions will mitigate fossil fuel pollutants. The science is elementary.

All things are bound together. All things connect. That too is elementary.

Matt Andrews

I would have thought that the particulates that the auther is referring to are characterised by being peculiar to the Victorian power stations which operate 24/7/365,and there by effect the rain fall patterns in that region.

The evidence certainly seems to support that, more so than the supposed attribution studies done by CSIRO/CMAR et al whereby they blame Co2 and only co2.

Further the persistance of A/Co2 in the atmosphere of 100 years is an exagerration. There is no reliable evidence to support that.

“Further the persistance (sic) of A/Co2 in the atmosphere of 100 years is an exagerration (sic.) There is no reliable evidence to support that.”

Bigmal

Could we have a link to support your claim please?

In the meantime, do you realise that climate science is forever evolving? Perhaps it’s catch-up time for you.

“Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California and University of Chicago oceanographer David Archer, who led a study with Caldeira and others, is credited with doing more than anyone to show how long CO2 from fossil fuels will last in the atmosphere.”

As Archer puts it: "The lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is a few centuries, plus 25 percent that lasts essentially forever.”

"The climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge," Archer writes. "Longer than time capsules, longer than nuclear waste, far longer than the age of human civilization so far."

http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html

Just look at all the skeptics seizing on ANOTHER piece of bad information about coal, and twisting it to say "See, we told you global warming was wrong!?" If anything this article gives us ANOTHER reason to stop burning the stuff, and does nothing towards disproving Co2's role in raising global climate temperatures higher than ever! (The last decade was meant to be cooling because of La Nina and yet is STILL one of the hottest on record. You can only say it's cooling if you cherrypick data from 1998 and ignore that 98 was a super-El Nino event. Don't forget "phase changes" in global ice absorbing some that extra energy as well. When more of the ice is gone, temperatures will soar).

Anyway, talk about misinterpreting Peter's article! Peter specifically points out that he is not a climate sceptic.

Peter suggests a tunnel vision I find little evidence for in climate science? Perhaps the author could do with reading more broadly within the climate community? Everything from black carbon on ice, to solar forcings, to albedo changes due to land clearing are considered.

Also, does the author confuse "climate" and weather? A local rainfall trend in one region might be a different subject to global climate temperature averages.

I just don't buy the assumption that climatologists ARE ignoring this new alarming ADDITIONAL reason to BAN COAL and move into cleaner, renewable wind and solar energy. The assumption that particulate effects on rainfall is being actively supressed needs to be demonstrated, not just assumed. Does Peter have any evidence of the IPCC, James Hansen, or other big players rejecting this paper please? And if it did not get through the peer-review process, why not? Is there something use lay-people need to consider before we pounce on the climate community? Skeptics here seem ready to believe more conspiracy theories than Area 51 and the "Fake moon landing" put together. Why don't you guys get together and write a Dan Brown novel?