Editorial in Hydrocarbon Processing Journal, and the

Debate between The Editor and Jeff Temple

Below please find a series of exchanges which have been published in the pages of Hydrocarbon Processing Journal, and which have been reproduced with kind permission of the Hydrocarbon Processing Journal. They are as follows:

•  Editorial in the July 2008 edition, by Les Kane “Climate Change and Computer Models”

•  Response from Jeff Temple, published in the January 2009 edition “More from Kazakhstan”

•  Response from The Editor to the letter from Jeff Temple, “Editor's Reply”

•  Response from Jeff Temple to the Editors Reply, Jeff's Response

  Climate change and computer models

Apparently some of the climate scientists that are claiming the earth is going through a period of climate change/global warming caused primarily by human activity (mostly burning fossil fuels that put CO 2 into the atmosphere) overestimate the accuracy of climate computer model predictions. Chaotic systems are very difficult to model with reasonable accuracy.

Obviously models of complex systems with many interacting variables are less accurate than models of simpler systems. For example, multivariable predictive control applied to a single process unit provides much more accurate predictions of future process operation than an overall real-time plant optimization model because considerably fewer interacting variables are needed in the single-unit model. And even though most of the interacting variables are known, these models only approximate what happens in the actual plant (they are not models of chaotic systems).

Climate is a chaotic system. Chaotic systems are defined as those where a small change in an input variable can result in a major change in the system's behavior. The classic example for climate is the "butterfly effect." 1 It postulates that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could cause or prevent a tornado in Texas . The premise is that the small changes in air pressure, temperature, humidity, etc., around the flapping wings cause a chain of events that propagate and amplify throughout the atmosphere, resulting in large changes in weather in other parts of the world. An obvious exaggeration, but it illustrates the point that climate, and other chaotic systems, are very difficult to model with reasonable accuracy.

Many interacting variables would have to be included in climate models. Even if climate scientists knew all the predictable interacting variables that affect climate, and could include them in climate models, the most influential interacting variables (future natural occurrences and technological advancements) can't be predicted. Thus, many assumptions would have to be made that can't be assumed to have a reasonably accurate model. A recent study predicted climate to 2100 (92 years); many unpredictable assumptions had to be included in that prediction.

Sure, if you assume all the other variables will remain constant and increase CO 2 in the atmosphere, the climate models will predict global warming. But nothing stays constant. Perhaps due to unpredictable events, additional CO 2 in the atmosphere will be the blessing that averts another ice age.

Global warming due to human activity is a theory, not a proven fact. "Theories," by definition, are ideas that are not proven. Many prominent climate scientists believe human activity is an insignificant contributor to global warming, and new data are being discovered that support this questioning.

Debate not over. A classic example of an ongoing debate of a theory is Darwin 's theory of evolution. Even with all the overwhelming evidence supporting evolution, it is still debated and called the "theory" of evolution, not the "fact" of evolution—and this debate has been going on for nearly 150 years. Many are advocating that schools also teach the theory of creationism. So for politicians and some climate scientists to say "the debate is over" about the causes of global warming is done only to serve their political and economic interests.

Natural causes primarily responsible. Changes in the sun's heat output (solar flares, sunspots, etc.), geological and other natural occurrences (volcanic eruptions; forest fires; natural CO2, methane, water vapor, nitrous oxide and other natural greenhouse gas emissions; shifts in ocean currents, etc.), the periodic change in the earth's orbit around the sun and the tilt of its axis, have caused the many global warming and cooling events the planet has experienced throughout its history. I suspect they are still the main causes of the climate changes we are experiencing (climate is always changing).

IPCC predicting global cooling in the next decade. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the group of international climate-change "experts" that insisted that global warming is real and due to human activity, and prompted most of the legislation forcing CO2 reduction—now reports that the earth could go through a period of cooling in the next decade because of naturally occurring shifting ocean currents. IPCC reported that, after including actual sea-surface temperatures over the past 50 years in its climate computer model, natural climate variations could temporarily offset the projected human-caused warming. Using the word "temporarily" shows that they won't admit that they really don't know the impact of human activity on climate change—another example of where major decisions should not be made based on computer model predictions of chaotic systems.

What should we do? We shouldn't be passing legislation that is increasing the prices of energy and food, weakening the world's economy, and allowing many politicians and climate scientists to get rich promoting an unproven theory based on approximate computer models. The increasing price of oil and natural gas, and all its consequences (higher gasoline, food, hydrocarbon-based product, etc., prices) alone will increase development of alternate energy sources and prompt corporations and individuals to make changes that reduce their energy consumption and CO2 emissions without additional government regulations.

End of Editorial

  More from Kazakhstan...

The Editor

Dear Sir,

Words cannot describe my disappointment when I read your Viewpoint column in the July 2008 issue (p. 21). Climate change is a great opportunity for innovation and development in the energy sector. Fossil fuels and feedstocks will inevitably have a massive role to play, and we in the industry need to be at the core of change. Whether we like it or not, we cannot ignore the pressures, so it is a time to be thinking creatively, not for burying our heads in the sand.

I am a chemical engineer, working in an oil refinery, and, after study, I am convinced that the evidence for global warming has been proven beyond reasonable doubt. The United States National Academy of Sciences was commissioned by the Bush administration to assess the current understanding of global climate change. Its report, published in June 2001, stated: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue."

Where exactly do you disagree with the IPCC or NAS? Where are your facts?

A joint statement issued by the national science academies of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sweden, and UK says, "The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world's most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus." It goes on to note that "the balance of the scientific evidence demands effective steps now to avert damaging changes to the earth's climate." 1

Do you doubt the conclusions of all these learned bodies? If so, please share the exact scientific basis for us all to know and to be educated.

There is no doubt that climate is complex. The huge range of physical processes that are involved are encapsulated in what are called general circulation models (or GCMs), and unlike your unsubstantiated claim, are acknowledged to model with reasonable accuracy. 2 It is also bad logic to say that, because some weather phenomena are chaotic, they all are. This is the fundamental error with this editorial, which confuses weather with climate. Weather is chaotic, climate is not. Climate is determined by conservation of energy and the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law. Climate changes in the past, and in response to rising CO 2 concentrations so far, have been well predicted by the climate models. The forecast for the amount of warming from rising CO 2 levels has been stable for a hundred years from Arrhenius' predictions in 1896. Let us look at an analogy. We cannot predict the chaos of the flow of every atom in Brownian motion, but we can predict the overall averages, and airliners fly straight off the drawing board to prove the point! Climate can and is being modeled successfully!

I felt that the general "anti-computer-model" tone of the editorial was misplaced. In our industry, we are happy to rely on big finite element models for reservoir simulation, structural design, with thousands of components, or process simulators for front-end design, or turbulent flow models for gas turbine design. Yet here you ignore the predictions of other complex computer models, without scientific justification? Is that reasonable or professional? You blamed "natural causes" to be primarily responsible, again without reference, yet these natural causes are all included in the computer climate models, and it has been generally accepted that these are not to blame.

Where is the information from the IPCC that the world is cooling that you used as a core argument against taking action over global warming? You put your entire argument on an unreferenced source, ascribing it to the IPCC, and yet ignore the conclusions of the report itself. I think that you are referring to a paper by Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel , Germany , who said: "The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that." In the article referred to, Mr Keenlyside also stressed "that the results were just the initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades and it would be wholly misleading to infer that global warming, in the sense of the enhanced greenhouse effect from increased carbon emissions, had gone away." 3 His comments were not made (as claimed by you) representing the IPCC, and he was at pains to point out that his work did not contradict the IPCC results. Sir, you selectively extracted one piece (which you thought supported your claims), and you misquoted its source to give it credibility, whilst ignoring the whole mass of data and conclusions from the world's leading experts (and who you claimed your own quotation from). Is that professional?

You characterized the global warming as a "theory," drawing on debate over Darwin 's theory of evolution, as if all theories are suspect. The important thing with a scientific theory is that it should make predictions that can be tested against observation and experiment. The following are examples from empirical results, which were predicted by the models, and this is far from an exhaustive list:

• The rapid increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases should throw the Earth's radiation budget out of balance, because the ocean has not yet had time to warm up to restore balance. The expected imbalance has been observed. 4
• The planet's energy imbalance has implications for the pattern of subsurface ocean warming. The predicted pattern has been observed. 5
• Satellite observations indicate that mid-tropospheric water vapor is indeed increasing with temperature, as the theory requires and as models predict. 6
• Melt-back of Northern Hemisphere sea ice
• Nearly worldwide melting of mountain glaciers, many of which survived previous naturally occurring warm periods
• The theory predicts that the stratosphere should be cooling at the same time the surface is warming. This pattern is observed.

When all the empirical tests have borne out the predictions, it becomes foolish to withhold at least provisional assent. Look at the changes in the average over the long term, and the trend is undeniable: the planet is getting hotter.

We look to Hydrocarbon Processing to provide objective, evidence-based analysis, in an industry that above all respects the laws of nature, physics and chemistry. For this reason, we expect your editorials to be forthright, surely, but also objective and rational. Yours was neither of these last two. If you have scientific reason to doubt global warming, then please show this scientifically and professionally.

LITERATURE CITED

1 http://royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13619.
2 Rahmstorf, S., "Recent Climate Observations Compared to Projections," Science , May 2007, Vol. 316.
3 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/30/eaclimate130.xml .
4 Hansen, J., et al., "Earth's energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications," Science , Vol. 308, 2005, pp. 1431–1435, doi:10.1126/science.11102525.
5 Levitus, et al., "Warming of the world ocean, 1955–2003," Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 32, 2005, L02604, doi:10.1029/2004GL021592.
6 Philipona, et al., "Anthropogenic greenhouse forcing and strong water vapor feedback increase temperature in Europe ," Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 32, 2005, L19809, doi:10.1029/2005GL023624.  

  Response from Jeff Temple – Submitted for publication, 1st February 2009

Dear Sir,

Those of us who subscribe to the Hydrocarbon Processing Journal do it for a reason; that it is a Quality Professional Publication. The point I was making in my last letter (January 2009 on-line edition) was that your Editorial (July 2008) was deficient about the fundamental science of Global Warming, since your opinions contained scientific errors as well as false trails. It is fine to express opinions, but if the science behind them is wrong, then you should come clean. I notice you did not offer a correction in your own follow up letter (also January 2009 on-line edition). The most important confusion, one often made by climate sceptics, and the one on which the whole of your opinions were based, is that you called our climate a “chaotic system”, which is therefore impossible to model. Seasons are plainly distinctive from each other - compare winter with summer; we have warmer weather in tropical climates than in Polar Regions ; we have wetter weather in rain forests than in deserts. If a large volcanic eruption occurs, global temperature drops for a few years quite predictably. Does this sound chaotic? Weather is chaotic, climate is not. Climate models are indeed robust and stand up to validation. Clearly, if you we receive less energy from the sun, the temperature drops. Clearly, if we turn the surface completely white, the temperature drops. And clearly, if we double the amount of an important Greenhouse Gas in the atmosphere, the temperature rises. And all of these inputs (called forcings by climate scientists”) can be modelled. This is science, not an opinion.

In your Editorial you also turned quotations on their head, “ IPCC predicting global cooling in the next decade”, which was alas untrue, as well as your words round this, with resulting selective conclusions. You selectively used fictional information to support your cause, misquoted its source to give it credibility, whilst ignoring the whole mass of data and conclusions from the world's leading experts (and who you claimed your own quotation from). Was that professional? This is an important question. We look to the Hydrocarbon Processing Journal to be professional, including in their Editorial opinions.

Yes, we certainly need to look at the wider picture, which includes of course how to make the appropriate response, and which will necessarily include the costs. Your own journal covers many papers showing steps being taken. Opinions are of course valid and necessary. But please, base these on science. If the science of Global Warming is proven to be wrong, I would gladly change my mind, if the appropriate evidence were forthcoming. But I will not make that judgement based on “opinions”, and neither should your readers be expected to be able to separate truth from falsehood in Editorials.

I understand that you have a personal opinion that climate scientists and politicians are becoming fat as a result of milking the Global Warming story. Fine. If you had kept the Editorial to just that, then we could have lived with just your opinion . This is an important debate, and presenting errors as facts in Editorials to support your opinions reduces the high esteem we hold for your journal, and you may not realise it, also establishes a stereotype view of complacency, in the face of pretty conclusive scientific evidence.

However, I do commend your journal for encouraging and supporting this debate. For those who have difficulty to follow these exchanges, I have started a Web Site ccd4e.org (Climate Change Debate for Engineers) where the sequence of exchanges can be seen in full, and which includes a section describing some of the science, as well as covering some of the points raised in this message in more detail.

Yours sincerely, Jeff Temple

   Glosure of Debate from the Editor, 2nd February 2009

Hi Jeff:

The climate change debate has run its course, therefore we won't be publishing any more letters on the subject for the foreseeable future.  Thanks for reading and supporting the magazine. 

Billy Thinnes

News Editor

Hydrocarbon Processing

Note from Jeff Temple –In his Editorial, the Editor got the facts wrong on Global Warming. He misquoted a source which was not the IPCC, but he ascribed this to the IPCC, then made selective conclusions, whilst ignoring the whole mass of evidence which did not suit his opinions. I think he owes an apology to the readers of HP, or at a minimum a correction of the facts.