Like all human endeavours, the IPCC is not perfect. Despite the enormous efforts devoted to producing its reports with the multiple levels of peer review, some errors will sneak through. Most of these will be minor and inconsequential, but sometimes they might be more substantive. As many people are aware (and as John Nieslen-Gammon outlined in a post last month and Rick Piltz goes over today), there is a statement in the second volume of the IPCC (WG2), concerning the rate at which Himalayan glaciers are receding that is not correct and not properly referenced.
The statement, in a chapter on climate impacts in Asia, was that the likelihood of the Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035” was “very high” if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate (WG 2, Ch. 10, p493), and was referenced to a World Wildlife Fund 2005 report. Examining the drafts and comments (available here), indicates that the statement was barely commented in the reviews, and that the WWF (2005) reference seems to have been a last minute addition (it does not appear in the First- or Second- Order Drafts). This claim did not make it into the summary for policy makers, nor the overall synthesis report, and so cannot be described as a ‘central claim’ of the IPCC. However, the statement has had some press attention since the report particularly in the Indian press, at least according to Google News, even though it was not familiar to us before last month.
It is therefore obvious that this error should be corrected (via some kind of corrigendum to the WG2 report perhaps), but it is important to realise that this doesn’t mean that Himalayan glaciers are doing just fine. They aren’t, and there may be serious consequences for water resources as the retreat continues. See also this review paper (Ren et al, 2006) on a subset of these glaciers.
East Rongbuk glacier just below Mt. Everest has lost 3-400 ft of ice in this area since 1921.
More generally, peer-review works to make the IPCC reports credible because many different eyes with different perspectives and knowledge look over the same text. This tends to make the resulting product reflect more than just the opinion of a single author. In this case, it appears that not enough people with relevant experience saw this text, or if they saw it, did not comment publicly. This might be related to the fact that this text was in the Working Group 2 report on impacts, which does not get the same amount of attention from the physical science community than does the higher profile WG 1 report (which is what people associated with RC generally look at). In WG1, the statements about continued glacier retreat are much more general and the rules on citation of non-peer reviewed literature was much more closely adhered to. However, in general, the science of climate impacts is less clear than the physical basis for climate change, and the literature is thinner, so there is necessarily more ambiguity in WG 2 statements.
In future reports (and the organisation for AR5 in 2013 is now underway), extra efforts will be needed to make sure that the links between WG1 and the other two reports are stronger, and that the physical science community should be encouraged to be more active in the other groups.
In summary, the measure of an organisation is not determined by the mere existence of errors, but in how it deals with them when they crop up. The current discussion about Himalayan glaciers is therefore a good opportunity for the IPCC to further improve their procedures and think more about what the IPCC should be doing in the times between the main reports.
Update: This backgrounder presented by Kargel et al AGU this December is the best summary of the current state of the Himalayas and the various sources of misinformation that are floating around. It covers this issue, the Raina report and the recent Lau et al paper.
Hello,
Could you please verify whether the comments from:
rosie hughes says:
19 January 2010 at 8:04 PM
ending with the rant about wishing she were not born are meant to be sarcasm?
Marcus, I’ll take that as a “yes” (to the first approximation.)
The context was, to what extent does Luna exemplify the temperature regime of a hypothetical greenhouse-effect-free Earth? I saw a denialist post use the word “conjectured” to describe the temperature differential resulting from the greenhouse effect.
Obviously, that’s already wrong as “calculated” is not the same as “conjectured,” but it’s pretty clear this guy has no number sense, so it probably seems so to him. But I thought, “Hmm, I think I know an empirical test–the Moon obviously has the same radiation input as Earth and we know Lunar temperature” and wanted to follow up on that thought.
But as your response confirms, apples-to-apples comparisons turn out not to be so easy to come by.
@Terry #944. The main articles tend to be about the known science – mostly published papers or comments re same. There have been articles on the recent Lindzen paper for example (which could be counted as ‘an opposing view’).
In regard to comments about the articles, as Ray Ladbury said, there does appear to be an inordinate number of comments from skeptics. Sometimes these lead the discussion a bit off the track of the main article.
There is also an open thread in which people are invited to comment on anything in the media (real and unreal), and a wiki which comments on slants in the press, which slants may or may not be based on science.
The site is very large and the menu at the top will lead you through it.
# 689
“…I guess you can’t find 100 papers by denialists, can you? In fact, you’d probably have trouble finding 10 that you’d actually want to cite, wouldn’t you?”
REPLY – You’re right, I can’t find 100 or even 10 – however, I’ll give you over 150 see link below
[edit – don’t use crap links in lieu of discussion]
___________
Moderator – I knew you would delete the link. Why did you not just leave it there and let other commenters attack it? So much for open discussion.
Well I will give you just 1 in this case:
“Amplification of Global Warming by Carbon-Cycle Feedback Significantly Less Than Thought, Study Suggests”
From “Nature” magazine:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134721.htm
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html
[Response: Why do you think this is ‘denialist’? The potential range of the carbon cycle feedback was 20-200 ppmv by 2100 – or 5 to 50 ppmv/degC. That was pretty uncertain, and this paper comes in at the lower end around 8 ppmv/degC. That’s probably good news, but it’s still positive and so implies a greater warming than the standard models that didn’t have interactive carbon. – gavin]
“Yes there is a Malaria vaccine – it is in clinical trials in Africa, right now, as I write this. Now, one could say there is not an APPROVED malaria vaccine – but that is like defining what the definition of “is” is.”
If you don’t think clinical trials are necessary before approving widespread adoption of a drug or vaccine …
We’ll just label you as the guy who insists that thalidomide should’ve been widely introduced in the USA, rather than just the UK.
Comment 8
“I await the explanation of why the other glaciers of the world, unaware that they don’t need to melt because glacier retreat in the Himalayas is due to local factors, nevertheless also melt.”
Not all glaciers around the world are retreating.
” Although most of the Earth’s small glaciers have been retreating, many glaciers are advancing. Some are advancing due to local climatic conditions and others are advancing due to factors not directly tied to climate such as the tidewater glacier cycle.”
http://glacier-bay.gsfc.nasa.gov/hall.science.txt.html
[edit]
@941: “The Club of Rome was saying similar things 35 years ago. However, I think that both they and NEF are not taking into account that increases in technology equate to growth while sometimes even decreasing resource consumption.”
False. There is something called the Jevons paradox, which has been confirmed time and time again in history – increases in efficiency do not lead to decreased use of resources, they actually increase it. Google it for more info.
And when we are talking about growth from an ecological perspective, there are two things that are growing – the population and the per capita resource consumption; we should be talking about decreasing both, not about economic growth and money.
Terry wrote: “I’ve read some skeptics saying that you do not post opposing stands. Is this true?”
Terry…That is dead wrong and everyone knows it who is honest. If you notice from the links below, not only does RealClimate present opposing (scientific evidence that holds up over time) but also regularily discusses opposing contrarian views which sometimes do not even obey the laws of physics (which unfortunately is done all too often).
RealClimate publicly shows how the saussage of science is made- (“if you like saussage or living with science’s discoveries, you are not going to like seeing how it is made.”
The making of science is ugly and brutal, but is the reason you are not stepping in your or your neighbors’ poop when you leave your house or the reason your mother probably did not die in childbirth, or you of diseases by now…if you had even managed to live to the age of 40.
RealClimate even posts embarrassing scientific evidence which opposes what RealClimate writers have written in the past and others which point out the weaknesses in the particulars of science itself.
See how many examples like this you see from the contrarians.
It takes a special dedication to the truth, and to science, for RealClimate to serially risk publicly embarrassing itself over many years and point out weaknesses in the details of science itself.
These posts here are done by real publishing scientists whose work holds up over time, unlike that of the contrarians and bloggers…big difference.
Some examples (and links)follow from the main posts, not comments sections, that speak for themselves from only the last two months:
Post: Plass and the Surface Budget Fallacy
“I noticed something about the way Plass estimated surface temperature increase, that Gavin and all previous commentators on Plass — including Kaplan himself — seem to have overlooked.”
This is a threat to anyone’s ego…but Gavin prints it as a major topic anyway. That is science, not pseudo-science where people run away from opposing points of view.
I don’t know if you see it, but that is bravery and moral courage far beyond what most human beings possess.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/plass-and-the-surface-budget-fallacy/
“In my opinion, there is a case to be made on the peer-review process being flawed, at least for certain papers.”
“but LC09 is a clear example that it (peer review) doesn’t work all of the time.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/lc-grl-comments-on-peer-review-and-peer-reviewed-comments/
“First published response to Lindzen and Choi”- (uhhhh, this is a blatent post all by itself giving time to the opposing point of view-RO)
“The first published response to Lindzen and Choi (2009) (LC09) has just appeared “in press” (subscription) at GRL. LC09 purported to determine climate sensitivity by examining the response of radiative fluxes at the Top-of-the-Atmosphere (TOA) to ocean temperature changes in the tropics. Their conclusion was that sensitivity was very small, in obvious contradiction to the models.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/page/2/
Here is the second independent RealClimate post devoted to the very same contrarian paper! (Uhhhh, this is definitely giving voice to the contrarian point of view, No?)
“A recent paper by Lindzen and Choi in GRL (2009) (LC09) purported to demonstrate that climate had a strong negative feedback and that climate models are quite wrong in their relationships between changes in surface temperature and corresponding changes in outgoing radiation escaping to space.”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/lindzen-and-choi-unraveled/
“So Plass was correct about all of the big issues, but lucky that, in his quantitative estimates, the errors went both ways and end up pretty much canceling out.”
“However, Kaplan was wrong about everything that has ended up mattering – CO2 does play a big role in ice age cycles (with a magnitude of change close to what Plass anticipated) and its growth today is climatically significant.”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/the-carbon-dioxide-theory-of-gilbert-plass/#more-2590
“Some comments on the John Coleman/KUSI/Joe D’Aleo/E. M. Smith accusations about the temperature records. Their claim is apparently that coastal station absolute temperatures are being used to estimate the current absolute temperatures in mountain regions and that the anomalies there are warm because the coast is warmer than the mountain.” Another contrarian argument being given space.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/page/2/
“One of the more unnerving impressions from the behind-the-scenes glance at climate research may be that subjectivity exists in climate science My response is “Well, duh.” (Admitting weakness)
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/kim-cobbs-view/
“Flaws in temperature analysis. Figure 2 illustrates an error that developed in the GISS analysis when we introduced, in our 2001 paper, an improvement in the United States temperature record. The change consisted of using the newest USHCN (United States Historical Climatology Network) analysis for those U.S. stations that are part of the USHCN network. This
improvement, developed by NOAA researchers, adjusted station records that included station moves or other discontinuities. Unfortunately, I made an error by failing to recognize that the station records we obtained electronically from NOAA each month, for these same stations, did
not contain the adjustments. Thus there was a discontinuity in 2000 in the records of those stations, as the prior years contained the adjustment while later years did not.” Stating errors when he did not have to (it did not have to be part of the subject of which he raised the error voluntarily).
“Jim Hansen’s opinion” https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/jim-hansens-opinion/
“The 1991 Science paper by Friis-Christensen & Lassen, work by Henrik Svensmark (Physical Review Letters), and calculations done by Scafetta & West (in the journals Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Geophysical Research, and Physics Today) have inspired the idea that the recent warming is due to changes in the sun, rather than greenhouse gases.” Another paper by the contrarians is made into an independent post.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/please-show-us-your-code/
“A case in point is Andrew Revkin’s recent query to political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. Revkin asked, “If the shape of the 20th-century temperature curve were to shift much,” would that “erode confidence that most warming since 1950 is driven by human activities”? Pielke replied that “the surface temps matter because they are a key basis for estimates of climate sensitivity,” and that there will ultimately be a “larger error bars around observed temperature trends which will carry through into the projections.” Yet, another contrarian argument given in a major post.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/who-you-gonna-call/#more-2193
“Unusually, I’m in complete agreement with a recent headline on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page:
“The Climate Science Isn’t Settled”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/
“Peer Review: A Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition
by Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt
On this site we emphasize conclusions that are supported by “peer-reviewed” climate research. That is, research that has been published by one or more scientists in a scholarly scientific journal after review by one or more experts in the scientists’ same field (‘peers’) for accuracy and validity. What is so important about “Peer Review”? As Chris Mooney has lucidly put it:
[Peer Review] is an undisputed cornerstone of modern science. Central to the competitive clash of ideas that moves knowledge forward, peer review enjoys so much renown in the scientific community that studies lacking its imprimatur meet with automatic skepticism. Academic reputations hinge on an ability to get work through peer review and into leading journals; university presses employ peer review to decide which books they’re willing to publish; and federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health use peer review to weigh the merits of applications for federal research grants.
Put simply, peer review is supposed to weed out poor science. However, it is not foolproof — a deeply flawed paper can end up being published under a number of different potential circumstances:” December 2009 link to an older RealClimate post.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/peer-review-a-necessary-but-not-sufficient-condition/
Terry, All these posts are only from December 2009 until today (Jan 29, 2010) (about two months and I simply went down the posts in line order). Literally, every month or so at least, RealClimate openly posts contrarian studies and openly admits problems in science details which could hurt their public perception of the science.
This is real science- raw, painful and ego crushing…and the way science has been done since the 1600s. Please check to see if the contrarians do this.
I will leave it to you to figure out what kind of people could write the blatantly false information you’ve been told about RealClimate and what they could be afraid of.
Joel Black says: 29 January 2010 at 11:01 PM
“Could you please verify whether the comments from rosie hughes [at] 19 January 2010 at 8:04 PM ending with the rant about wishing she were not born are meant to be sarcasm?”
You’d need to ask Rosie Hughes to get a definitive read but as I read her words, she’s been “flooded” with information about what happens when lemmings become numerous and was in a state of despair.
Her central point about education is by design or accident reliable; empirical data suggests that improved education leads to sustainable behavior on the part of humanity.
#954 – Response from Gavin
“Why do you think this is ‘denialist'”
I apologize; indeed they are not ‘denialists’ but they show contrary information so you had better get back to your ‘super’ computer models and do some more tweeking instead of being out in the atmosphere doing some hard observations.
I note you use the words “potential,” “uncertain,” and “probably;” and you wonder why sceptics exist. :o)
[edit]
[Response: Why do you think this is an interesting statement? Does not the contradiction with all your previous comments accusing scientists of not acknowledging uncertainties not bother you? Do you really think ‘sceptics’ exist because scientists couch their statements with caveats? I mean, really? – gavin]
“denialist” is not a scientific theory. It is just a attitude covering different positions but having in common the general impression that things are much less settled that what the media claim ad nauseam. As soon as you point out that some claims made in IPCC or in the media are not really founded or not strongly proved, you’re classified as “denialist” – even if this proves to be true like for himalayan glaciers : then you become a “denialist obsessed by some minors errors that can happen in any human endeavour” . Basically it’s not science, it’s religion.
I don’t think there are many scientific peer-reviewed papers published on the following subjects : we don’t know how solar corona is heated – we don’t know why the sun cycle is 22 years long – we don’t know what dark matter is made from. But all these statements are true. Conversely there are many peer-reviewed papers that are simply BS. Don’t confuse truth and peer-reviewed litterature.
My own position is that CO2 and other GHG are indeed produced by anthropic activity, and that they do absorb infrared radiation , so much likely contributing to the warming BUT that the hysteria about the real dangers of GW is the result of a series of exaggerations at each stage :
* it overestimates the reliability of surface temperature measurements and especially past reconstructions
* it assumes a maximum sensitivity of climate to this forcing, deliberately minimizing any possible unforced variability that could contribute to the observed variations
* it assumes that fossil fuels reserves will exceed by large the proved ones
* it deliberately exaggerates the influence of climate on the whole society , cherry picking all (real but not determining) possible drawbacks associated with any climatic variation, but without any proof that this could really impact the bulk of civilization – which is obviously NOT the case currently considering the current diversity of climates of developed countries.
So independently of whether I’m right or wrong, an interesting question is : am I a denialist, or not ? (reading again the first sentences of my position).
BPL: BPL: SL-1. Enrico Fermi. Brown’s Ferry. Three-Mile Island. Chernobyl. Places like that.
EG: Three Mile Island resulted in ZERO injuries.
BPL: That we know of. Put that aside. It resulted in a billion-dollar loss for the utility which owned it.
EG: Chernobyl killed 52, mostly fire fighters.
BPL: Directly. The WHO estimates thousands will die from additional cancers, including a lot of kids who got thyroid cancer from the I-131.
EG: That is NOT where people got their irrational ideas. What are SL-1 and Brown’s Ferry? Oh, right: Other non-events. Nothing happened there, but great propaganda was generated. Enrico Fermi was a scientist who was involved in the Manhattan that’s project. Bombs are NOT reactors. Reactors are NOT bombs. What does Enrico Fermi have to do with it? Did he say something irrational once?
EG: In the SL-1 accident, in 1961, a military reactor was sabotaged by one of the workers, apparently over a love triangle involving two other workers. All three were killed, and their bodies had to be subdivided and the parts buried in individual lead coffins. There was little reporting of the story at the time, but the news got out later.
Enrico Fermi was an experimental breeder reactor in Detroit, Michigan. In 1966 it underwent a partial meltdown and had to be abandoned. A plant worker famously commented, “We almost lost Detroit,” which later became the title of an anti-nuke book.
EG: There has NEVER been a death or any injury attributable to American nuclear power.
BPL: No matter how many times you repeat this, it still won’t be true. I’ve pointed this out before, but in one ear…
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/NukeAccidents.html
BPL: Not yet, but it should cause about eight billion sometime around 2040-2060.
Gilles: any scientific, peer-reviewed reference for that, BPL ?
BPL: If we don’t eat, we die.
Battisti, D. S., and R. L. Naylor. 2009. “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat.” Science 323: 240-244.
Dai, A., K.E. Trenberth, and T. Qian 2004. “A Global Dataset of Palmer Drought Severity Index for 1870–2002: Relationship with Soil Moisture and Effects of Surface Warming.” J. Hydrometeorol. 1, 1117-1130.
12% of Earth land surface “severely dry” by Palmer Drought Severity Index 1970. 2002 figure 30%.
UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025
Published by Jim on Monday, October 5, 2009 at 4:15 PM
BUENOS AIRES (AFP) — Drought could parch close to 70 percent of the planet’s soil by 2025 unless countries implement policies to slow desertification, a senior United Nations official has warned.
“If we cannot find a solution to this problem… in 2025, close to 70 percent could be affected,” Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, said Friday.
Drought currently affects at least 41 percent of the planet and environmental degradation has caused it to spike by 15 to 25 percent since 1990, according to a global climate report.
“There will not be global security without food security” in dry regions, Gnacadja said at the start of the ninth UN conference on the convention in the Argentine capital.
Gilles: I think mankind has always coped with climate , hasn’t it ?
BPL: If by “coped” you mean “experienced the complete collapse of several civilizations,” then you’re right. Look up what happened to the Mesopotamian irrigation empires, the Mayans, and Easter Island.
Jorge #883,
Go through either or both of the following books and work all the problems:
Houghton, John T. 2002 (3rd ed.). The Physics of Atmospheres. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press.
Petty, Grant W. 2006 (2nd ed.). A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation. Madison, WI: Sundog Publishing.
Kevin #890,
The flux density absorbed by a climate system is
F = (S / 4) (1 – A)
and the radiative equilibrium temperature is
Te = (F / sigma) ^ 0.25
where S is the solar constant, A the bolometric Russell-Bond spherical albedo, and sigma the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (5.6704 x 10^-8 W/m^2/K^4 in the SI).
For a planet without an atmosphere, F and Te is the whole story. For the Moon, we have S = 1366.1 W/m^2 and A = 0.11. This gives F = 304 W/m^2 and Te = 271 K, not 220 K. I sometimes see 220 K cited as the mean global annual surface temperature of Mars, though a better figure would be 214 K. But the moon is, on average, very close to the temperature of the Earth, though of course very hot on the day side and very cold on the night side due to its slow rotation.
Tom at 931
I’m going by Dai et al. (2004) on the PDSI and the extrapolations made by the UN. In 1970 the fraction of world land in severe drought was 12%. In 2002 it was 30%. By 2020-2040 it will be 70%. That leaves Antarctica, steppes, and rather diminished forests. There will be no good cropland to speak of. Agricultural production will be negligible. People will starve en masse, and those weakened by mere malnutrition will be susceptible to plagues. The system will collapse. We will enter a new dark ages.
Count on it.
Jimbo@954: Do you even read the links you post–’cause they don’t exactly support the point you are trying to make, do they? But then, if you could (and would) read the science, you probably wouldn’t be a denialist, would you?
Karl Quick: I believe it is clear that we can, with the technology available, easily adapt to the current projected climate change over the course of the next 3-4 decades.
BPL: If we can learn to do without food.
dhogaza – I simply stated a fact, a Malaria vaccine is in clinical trials in Africa. Are you really suggesting the clinical trials are an immoral gamble with human life? To do so would disparage the scientists that do important research. It would also question their motivation.
Many
Georgi Marinov, I am familiar with Jevon’s paradox–which is not a paradox, but rather exactly what would be expected from an efficient market. After all, if demand from one sector decreases while supply remains the same, then price will decrease (discouraging production) and/or the resource will be used in another application. This is precisely what you expect in an environment with cheap energy.
What if actually more remarkable–and what we need to understand much better is Rosenfeld’s law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld's_Law
which shows that energy needed to generate $1 of GDP growth decreases by 1% per year. The track record here is even more impressive than for Moore’s law. I think what we need is an analog of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors directed at energy efficiency–but that won’t happen as long as energy is cheap (and heavily subsidized).
RE #900, here’s what I wrote re the Obama address & that he knows there are those in the congress who disagree with the overwhelming evidence on CC (on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q20cnn8vOfg ):
Ray Ladbury (972), are you suggesting that decreasing energy use will cause an increase in GDP? Would you also suggest that the non-increasing per capita use of electricity in California caused their economy to be in shambles? It would seem the increase in GDP came about in large part from the transition to services which by happenstance use less energy and that such decrease in relative energy is a result, not a cause. Or am I misreading your point?
Gilles asks if he is a denier:
“My own position is that CO2 and other GHG are indeed produced by anthropic activity, and that they do absorb infrared radiation , so much likely contributing to the warming BUT that the hysteria about the real dangers of GW is the result of a series of exaggerations at each stage :
* it overestimates the reliability of surface temperature measurements”
the temperature reconstructions are of temperature anomaly, and you have shown no statistical analysis of the error. The measurement error in monthly data is 0.03 degrees C. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT3_accepted.pdf. Is this small error really what you have a problem with, or do you mean something else?
” and especially past reconstructions”
irrelevant to global warming, except to test certain aspects of models and to constrain sensitivity
“* it assumes a maximum sensitivity of climate to this forcing, deliberately minimizing any possible unforced variability that could contribute to the observed variations”
There are a range of climate sensitivities. The most likely is 3 degrees C for doubling CO2, not the maximum (do you know what that number is?)
“* it assumes that fossil fuels reserves will exceed by large the proved ones”
Any support for this statement that you know better than the experts?
“* it deliberately exaggerates the influence of climate on the whole society , cherry picking all (real but not determining) possible drawbacks associated with any climatic variation, but without any proof that this could really impact the bulk of civilization – which is obviously NOT the case currently considering the current diversity of climates of developed countries.”
Do you think food comes from the store by magic? That sea level rise of a meter is nothing for coastal cities to worry about?
So independently of whether I’m right or wrong, an interesting question is : am I a denialist, or not ? (reading again the first sentences of my position).”
Yes, you are. You need to learn some more about the science involved before you can meaningfully decide that a field of science is substantially in error. Many people kid themselves about their level of understanding, and ignorantly assume that others have that deficit. Look up the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Any of the realclimate authors are superb examples of scientists who demonstrate that they actually know the scientific literature. You can tell by their reference to it when they post and reply. Try to read those papers – do you understand them? Is there one you think in error, and why? What would be the correct procedure?
By the way, I have no delusions about being able to go to a field (closely related enough to mine that I understand a fair amount) and tell them that they have overlooked things that would be obvious to novices.
Gilles asks : “So independently of whether I’m right or wrong, an interesting question is : am I a denialist, or not ? ”
Given you’re saying this:
“so much likely contributing to the warming BUT that the hysteria about the real dangers of GW is the result of a series of exaggerations at each stage :”
Merely because you’re not going to suffer the downsides in your lifetime, you’re not a denialist. You’re a misanthrope.
Also, given your definition of denialist:
““denialist” is not a scientific theory.”
and given that you disparage any science that shows consequences, you are persuing a non-scientific theory based on personal hope and predilections.
This is a denialist stance.
PS your use of that definition to proclaim that denialists have “the general impression that things are much less settled that what the media claim ad nauseam.” is incorrect: they have that impression for non-scientific reasons and proclaim without proof or reason that the science is less settled merely because they want to deny the problem.
Still denial.
“956
Jimbo says:
29 January 2010 at 11:55 PM
Comment 8
Not all glaciers around the world are retreating.”
And not all men are bigger and stronger than women.
But when talking about “men” and “women”, we reasonably use “men are bigger and stronger than women”.
“927
Ken says:
29 January 2010 at 12:35 PM
For all those who are criticizing me on intricacies of my posts, I think you should take a step back, just as I will admit, I should.
I will use the “up to 40%” from now on as a few of you have mentioned. Regardless, the number “up to 40%” is not based on anything scientific”
1) it’s a whole lot more based on something scientific than your version of the statement
2) YES IT IS based on something scientific. It is measured that it is over 8% and the processes that amplify the effect (a SCIENTIFIC assessment) has a greater effect over most of the places not so far directly measured.
BPL: If we don’t eat, we die.
Hard to disagree. But is there any peer-reviewed paper showing that the food could lack that much before 2050 ? which amount of carbon do you need to burn to reach this point ?
BPL: If by “coped” you mean “experienced the complete collapse of several civilizations,” then you’re right. Look up what happened to the Mesopotamian irrigation empires, the Mayans, and Easter Island.
If any, it proves that natural variations can happen all the time, with or without fossils. And I just remind you that all these people were totally depending of nature because they were deprived of any external source of energy – fossils. So the real weakness of our civilization is the (unavoidable) disappearance of fossils. With fossils, saudians,israelis, americans, all live and grow vegetables in the desert.
So I agree with you on the long term : mankind will probably reduce to 1 billion people or so, but much probably after the disappearance of fossils, in two or three centuries.
Ray : What if actually more remarkable–and what we need to understand much better is Rosenfeld’s law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld’s_Law
which shows that energy needed to generate $1 of GDP growth decreases by 1% per year.
First I suspect that a fair part of this growth is due to virtual financial economy that has strongly deflated and will further deflate when it will become obvious that the tremendous debt of states can not be paid back. Second you miss the essential point : it is obvious that with cheap energy, the energy intensity can only improve because there is no reason to worsen the use of energy. But it doesn’t mean that total energy consumption decreases – or it could do it only if all the main basic needs are fulfilled, which is far from being the case around the world. So it would be silly – and criminal – to deprive poor people of the fossils spared by the rich ones. That is a simple explanation why CO2 has never decreased – except during recessions.
Gilles and Rod, you are misreading what Rosenfeld has found–the mechanism that drives the law is that over time, we develop more efficient technologies, and the energy saved goes into other productive sectors.
What would be silly and criminal would be to force the developing world to have a 20th century energy economy when better, cleaner and more sustainable energy alternatives are available. In fact, since it is easier to deploy a new technology than to replace an existing infrastructure, it makes sense for the new energy economy to grow most aggressively in developing economies.
Gilles yours is a false choice between fossil fuel energy and no energy. The real choice is between sustainable energy and a diminishing fossil fuel resource–as you yourself have acknowledged. Funny how you make different arguments when it suits you. You sure you’re just one person?
Maybe Realclimate readers would be entertained by comments at:
http://www.economist.com/node/15434416/comments#comment-464708
981 Ray Ladbury,
Your premise that fossil fuel is diminishing is incorrect. The only thing that makes coal look like it is diminishing is that it might become uneconomical to mine it after 35 years if the price remains at $11 per ton (referring only to the Gillette coal field of the Powder River Basin (PRB)). Otherwise, the supply goes up to something like 1000 years worth. All it really takes is scraping of a little more dirt. ( I actually read the USGS study that is misunderstood in many discussions. It is completely available in a 70MB pdf online.)
At $11 per ton, PRB coal is dirt cheap compared to natural gas. If it were at price parity with natural gas, the supply would easily be good for 1000 years. Any discussion needs to be based on this important fact. (I think it dropped to $9 this last year.) For many destinations PRB coal costs more to haul than to buy.
Jim,
My comment is based on total reserves (about a teratonne), not recoverable reserves. Keep in mind that demand for energy grows exponentially, and with less petroleum available, coal will be the carbon source of choice.
Gilles – I don’t much like emotionally charged words like “denier” or “warmist”. However, your stated position seems to place you as a delayer.
Delayers can do just as much damage as those with more irrational ideas and motivations. If we haven’t successfully made the case for acting on climate now, then what evidence actually would suffice to change your mind?
Please bear in mind that the evidence you request must be obtainable. Waiting 30 years isn’t an option we have.
Ray Ladbury: “What if actually more remarkable–and what we need to understand much better is Rosenfeld’s law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld’s_Law
which shows that energy needed to generate $1 of GDP growth decreases by 1% per year”
Dollars are absolutely meaningless from physical point of view, what matters is the total energy consumption, and it has been growing exponentially with no tendencies to stop, Rosenfeld’s Laws or not. If you continue growing exponentially, at some point you hit the limits of what is available, especially if it’s non-renewable, and you crash.
As bad as AGW is, even it wasn’t happening we would still have to do exactly the same things (i.e. cut down energy use and downsize the economy and decrease the population), but because of Peak Oil. And Peak Oil is such an axiomatic thing that it is hard to argue with it, unless you’re absolutely insane. It would be helpful if the connection between the two was emphasized more often because they are really different aspects of the same crisis (and not even the only ones) and to solve the crisis it has to looked at in its entirety, not piece by piece
BPL – I am disappointed to note that you still haven’t corrected your list of nuclear accidents.
You have failed spectacularly in differentiating between civilian nuclear power, military uses, and experimental reactors. All the data should be there, so why do you bundle them all together when it suits you?
I think you have spent too long around deniers – you are learning their strategies all too well.
For others reading this thread: BPL thinks that a steam explosion is a “nuclear accident”. But then, BPL thinks anything with the word “nuclear” in or near it is EEEEEVIL!!!!!! If someone fell down a flight of stairs in a nuclear power station, is that a “nuclear accident” too?
It’s amusing, though. You really have the gall to compare the number of fatalities (less than 100 in 60 years, even when you pad it out with weapons research and military accidents!) with deaths from other sources of power?
Get a sense of proportion. Or draw a graph.
“The only thing that makes coal look like it is diminishing is that it might become uneconomical to mine it after 35 years if the price remains at $11 per ton”
Why is that?
Because Peak Oil is where supply cannot rise to meet increasing demand.
(Note to Tim et al: THIS guy’s argument is why you can’t use the engineering “Peak Oil” argument: as long as there’s SOME left then it’s always possible to extract even more quickly if the price is high enough).
“In fact, since it is easier to deploy a new technology than to replace an existing infrastructure, it makes sense for the new energy economy to grow most aggressively in developing economies.”
Just like the absolute fact that because they didn’t have the old wired infrastructure hanging around, Africa have a first-world level of Mobile phone coverage.
They had no sunk cost to eke out a little more profit from, and the placement of cell towers means that there’s a good deal better and easier coverage with less infrastructure cost than trailing copper wire all around the place on big sticks.
Gilles: “But is there any peer-reviewed paper showing that the food could lack that much before 2050 ?”
Have a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation
Plenty of people starving today.
Rod B “It would seem the increase in GDP came about in large part from the transition to services which by happenstance use less energy and that such decrease in relative energy is a result, not a cause.”
So you would agree that increasing quality-of-life as measured by GDP (as many who want BAU seem to do) can occur when you’re reducing your energy use, yes?
It does seem that you do.
Jim 983, can you give your workings on the 1000 years thingy.
I don’t believe it, to be frank.
Re 983
According to Theoildrum coal will peak by 2025. Remember it is not just a question of price. It gets to a stage where it will take more energy to produce it than it provides. Also in the US the energy density of coal mined has been declining. As anthracite declined they moved on to Bituminous. Now sub_Bituminous is being mined. Next Lignite? Also most of the World’s coal resources are too deep to be mined with current technology.
@983: “Your premise that fossil fuel is diminishing is incorrect. The only thing that makes coal look like it is diminishing is that it might become uneconomical to mine it after 35 years if the price remains at $11 per ton (referring only to the Gillette coal field of the Powder River Basin (PRB)). Otherwise, the supply goes up to something like 1000 years worth. All it really takes is scraping of a little more dirt. ”
Scraping off a “little more dirt” also means using up a lot more energy to get the coal. Which means that you net energy return (EROEI) diminishes, as it has been doing since we began using fossil fuels and started with the bets stuff. At some point it doesn’t make sense to continue mining because you’re actually losing energy in the process, but long before that point is reached society would have fallen apart because there is a minimum EROEI value below which it can’t be supported (although we have little idea what that value exactly is)
Re: 915 Septic Matthew says:
29 January 2010 at 10:17 AM
896, Tim Jones: Considering the interactions of peak oil, climate change and agriculture you might find it interesting to see numbers regarding how dependent the food supply is on nitrogen fertilizer derived from fossil fuels.
SM writes: “CO2 might not stop increasing before 2050, but current development makes it unlikely that the world will lose production of fertilizer due to a lack of energy supplies.”
Fertilizers are made out of fossil fuels. We’re not liable to lose production of them because of a lack of energy. The question has to do more with a lack of raw materials. Production may be stressed due to both a lack of feed stock as well as the energy to process and transport it.
Re: 983
Jim Bullis, says:
30 January 2010
“At $11 per ton, PRB coal is dirt cheap compared to natural gas.”
Coal is dirt cheap because the cost of protecting the environment and human health associated with it is externalized instead of internalized.
I suspect that if what it takes to clean up the pollution from coal becomes part of the cost no one will use it.
Jim Bullis, you are utterly wrong and completely unsupported. Coal, gas and oil are all depleting as they are all finite resources. Any amount we use means there is that much less to be used later. This is not debatable. You *may* debate how long they will last, but that too is incorrectly stated by you.
Implied in what you say is *at current rates of consumption*, which would simply not happen if we continued on in BAU style because of population growth if nothing else. Add Jevon’s Paradox and it gets worse.
Further, Ray didn’t say coal, he said FF energy. Oil, in particular, is depleting 3 or 4 times faster than we find new plays.
But even that isn’t the key issue with FF’s, that is rate if extraction. With oil, we are already there or very close to it. A declining net energy = less work. Where efficiency rises, population overwhelms. The US is the perfect example. We were consuming closer to 15 mbd at one point after the two energy crises of the 70’s/80’s. Efficiency since then is UP over 30%. Yet, until the recession hit, were had increased consumption to over 20 million barrels a day.
Natural decline rates of existing fields according to the IEA? Over 9%. With investment? Over 6%. Do the math. We are talking a new Saudi Arabia every two years. We haven’t been finding that much oil yearly since the 60’s. And won’t.
The key question is this: can we increase renewables as fast as we decline in oil? Answer: We aren’t so far. Not even close.
Also impacting this is EROEI, or energy returned on energy invested. Call it net energy. Your example of coal is shockingly dishonest in hinting we can carry on with the grades of coal that remain when the energy content of those ores are far lower than anthracite AND withdrawing them takes more energy and effort as time goes on. A bucket of coal mined today and one mined even 100 years from now will be radically different in energy content.
Cheers
Somebody sane: I await the explanation of why the other glaciers of the world, unaware that they don’t need to melt because glacier retreat in the Himalayas is due to local factors, nevertheless also melt.
Jimbo: Not all glaciers around the world are retreating.
Translation by BPL:
Doctor: There’s a terrible plague here! People are dying left and right!
Jimbo: Not everybody is dying.
Response to Jimbo@954:
“Do you even read the links you post–’cause they don’t exactly support the point you are trying to make, do they? But then, if you could (and would) read the science, you probably wouldn’t be a denialist, would you?”
RESPONSE – Indeed, I do read the links and do sometimes see points made that do not support my arguments as well as those that do. Do you want me to start cherry picking only those articles that support my argument 100%? The fact is articles are often filled with caveats (on both sides of the ‘debate’) and you can take from it what you will. Read all of the IPCC reports (particularly the ones not intended for policy makers) and they are filled with caveats.
Only time will tell who is right my friend so don’t be in such an alarmist rush, the world has survived much, much worse that the warming over the past 35 years.
_______________
Reply to Jimbo #977
“Jimbo says:
29 January 2010 at 11:55 PM
Comment 8
Not all glaciers around the world are retreating.”
And not all men are bigger and stronger than women.”
RESPONSE
If CO2 warming was causing glacier retreat, then ALL glaciers would be similarly retreating which is not the case.
After all the IPCC assumed that CO2 is a well mixed gas which has recently been contradicted by NASA which says CO2 is lumpy. If NASA simply assumed that CO2 is a well mixed gas and didn’t bother to check, observe, question then science on this particular point would not have advanced. Science is an adversarial system and without sceptics it would flounder.
Don’t get FedUp – keep contradicting me – this is how we make progress my friend.
[Response: You are floundering just fine on your own. Just in one paragraph you manage to fit a number of logical fallacies (assuming for instance that because factor A causes X, then X is not affected by factors B, C or D) and strawman arguments (do you even know what well-mixed is in reference to?). If you think this is how science progresses, you are very confused. – gavin]
“I simply stated a fact, a Malaria vaccine is in clinical trials in Africa.” – john
There have been clinical trials of AIDS vaccines, so according to john, there’s an AIDS vaccine. Great! A vaccine in clinical trials may well turn out to be ineffective, so it is simply misleading to say there is a malaria vaccine.
The context of my statement that “there is no malaria vaccine” was an ignorant comment that malarial deaths could be prevented by “a simple vaccine”, made in the service of a claim that we had to choose between malaria prevention and measures to mitigate climate change. I also identified the most effective measures currently available against malaria, and noted that claiming malaria could not be combated while acting to mitigate anthropogenic climate change is garbage. Any problem with that, john?