Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: J.S. Sawyer in 1972

[GliderGuider]

Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: J.S. Sawyer in 1972

In the Lessons from Past Predictions series, we've examined some impressively accurate global warming projections made over 30 years ago, for example by James Hansen in 1981 and Wallace Broecker in 1975. We recently learned of an even earlier successful prediction, made by John Stanley (J.S.) Sawyer in a paper published in Nature in 1972.

Sawyer referenced work by Guy Callendar in the late 1930s and early 1940s, in which Callendar estimated that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had increased by about 10 percent over the prior 100 years (a remarkably accurate measurement, as current estimates put the increase during that time at about 9 percent). Sawyer also referenced the Keeling Curve, which included continuous reliable measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere beginning in 1958. Compared to measurements of human carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, Sawyer noted that only about half of those human emissions were remaining in the atmosphere. The other half, climate scientists had concluded, was being absorbed by the oceans and the biosphere.

Sawyer referenced a 1967 paper by Manabe and Wetherald, who had calculated that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would by itself cause approximately 1.3°C global surface warming, but that warming would be amplified by a further 1.1°C due to rising water vapor concentrations if the relative humidity were to remain constant. Observations have indeed unequivocally shown that water vapor strongly amplifies human caused global warming, for example as found by Dessler & Wong (2009).

Sawyer put all this information together to predict how much average global surface temperatures would warm between 1972 and 2000.

"The increase of 25% CO2 expected by the end of the century therefore corresponds to an increase of 0.6°C in the world temperature – an amount somewhat greater than the climatic variation of recent centuries."

Remarkably, between the years 1850 and 2000, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels did increase by very close to 25 percent, and global average surface temperatures also increased by just about 0.6°C during that time.

Have you noticed how politics trumps science every time, especially when the scientific conclusions are politically unpalatable? That's our evolved great ape nature at work.

There's more in the article.

[daleanime]

1. kick, kick, kick.....

[cprise]

2. Worth a rec, despite the misanthropy thrown in

The overall mechanics of AGW were not hard to scope out. I think the search for "missing" pieces that often weren't there (i.e. negative feedbacks) were played up by the political right and the corporate media. Perhaps if the timescales of cause and effect weren't so large, that "controversy" and doubt dynamic wouldn't have set it.

I think we have a chance to emerge with a decent civilization in a hundred years, but this crisis might define some limits to human attention and caring.

[GliderGuider]

3. Not misanthropy. Realism, founded on evolutionary psychology.

Your interpretation of my comment as misanthropic may be just another example of what I described: emotional politics trumping rational science.

[cprise]

4. You're no scientist

Don't get pretentious, now.

Its easy for pessimists to take a narrow view of evolution and create something like Social Darwinism, i.e. genetic predetermination. An astute evolutionary psychologist would, for instance, note the genetic basis of culture and how it can extend our abilities for knowing and coping.

Some people think its heinous (even traitorous) enough that I think we need a new culture. You, OTOH, think we need a whole new evolutionary tree, so there's no hope.

[GliderGuider]

5. I wasn't talking about me being a scientist.

Evolutionary psychology was the science I was referring to.

I know you're a culturalist. My investigation has convinced me that our collective behavior (but not individual behavior) is shaped by evolutionary imperatives, that are themselves the result of natural selection that operates according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

That is why, when people ask me what to do in the face of the looming catastrophe, I always advise them to discard any notion of collective action saving the day. Instead, I suggest they turn their attention to individual and small-group activities, that have some hope of running counter to the collective herd behavior.

There will be no new evolutionary tree. We have to play the hand we're dealt, so it's best to know what cards we are actually holding.

I know this not a welcome perspective on a political board, but ten years of multi-disciplinary investigation have convinced me of its truth.

YMMV. Obviously.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

7. I hope that any valid perspective is welcome on a political board.

Especially when dealing with something as vital as climate science.

[GliderGuider]

8. I would hope so too.

It's not, though. Political boards, by their very nature, cater to and reinforce culturalist groupthink. As a result they tend to be hostile to viewpoints outside the mainstream. Not always, or in every case, but in general.

C'est la vie!

[cprise]

9. Creating a direct link between culture and thermodynamics...not scientific

At least not the way you conceive it. The terminology is taken from science, but the content is pseudo-science that would be better suited to a sci-fi novel (maybe even a sequel to Asimov's Foundation series).

Someday there may be a proper theory strongly linking social sciences with thermodynamics and other laws of physics, however.

[GliderGuider]

11. I'm not actually alone in this view.

Here are some of the scientists whose work I've based my hypothesis on:

Timothy Garrett, Associate Professor in Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah
Stanley N. Salthe, Professor Emeritus, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
Arto Annilla, Professor, Department of Physics, University of Helsinki
James J. Kay, Associate Professor in Environment and Resource Studies, University of Waterloo, deceased.
Eric D. Schneider, co-author with Dorion Sagan of "Into the Cool"
Howard T. Odum the noted American ecologist.
Eric Chaisson, Astrophysics researcher and Professor at Harvard

All of those scientists have done research explicitly linking various social sciences with the Second Law. This didn't just spring out of my own febrile imagination.

You can see the reading list I've used in my investigation on my web site: A Thermodynamics Reading List

[CRH]

6. Good find GG, book marked. ...

The history in the article fills in some of the blank time between the first TV coverage of the atmospheric CO2 pollution and global heating, in the mid 1950's, to the sponsorship through the Club of Rome for the original Limits to Growth research done at MIT.

Other agendas obviously controlled the suppression of the information from most all of the public, and much of the science curriculum in high schools and universities. Except for the very few scientists involved in specific areas of science, the information was largely ignored until the 1980's.

Certainly John Stanley Sawyer, Guy Callendar, Manabe and Wetherald were never covered in any course I had in the 60's and 70's. I'll have to google them to find out more.

Thanks