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.
CC: “So, a member of the public hears that the glaciers aren’t melting out of control”
Uh, we’re not melting them and do you have a plan to stop them?
If not, then they are melting out of control.
In any case, this isn’t what the IPCC said.
” hurricanes are not increasing,”
Well the measurements haven’t been going on long enough to say. Unless you can reference a paper showing the statistically significant lack of increase below the IPCC projections.
“The Amazon Forest isn’t being lost to AGW,”
It isn’t? And when was this supposed to happen?
“Phil Jones is suspended from UEA”
No, he’s stepped aside. If he hadn’t you’d be complaining that he’s interfering with the investigation.
“and Michael Mann is under investigation at Penn.”
And what reason given? All I need to get YOU investigated is to find out your name and report you for having KP on your computer.
You’ll be under investigation.
“None of these issues change the science – only the public’s perception of the science – i.e their faith gets “undermined”.”
It isn’t necessary to have faith. The truth is what happens even when we don’t believe it.
This is why “AGW is a religion” is bollocks: it doesn’t require faith in the IPCC or P Jones or M Mann or anyone.
It just requires that you look for the truth.
HAVE YOU GOT IT YET?
Nothing to do with the present debate, but (the online version of) the French newspaper La Monde has just published a contrarian point of view of a rare bad faith and emptiness (even by contrarian standards):
“Le GIEC est mort, vive le débat”
http://www.lemonde.fr/opinions/article/2010/02/01/le-giec-est-mort-vive-le-debat-par-drieu-godefridi_1299689_3232.html#ens_id=1275244
A must-read for a good laugh.
What is RC’s strategy with respect to such an article? Ignore or debunk?
Gilles: “I wanted ?don’t be silly, why would I WANT such a thing ?”
Well you want to have your current lifestyle and if people starve, you’re fine with it.
So, that’s why you want such a thing.
“”Do you think that when we have enough food for 10 billion people and have 6 billion to feed that this will mean fewer people starving?”
I don’t think so.”
So why did you complain that showing that we have people starving though we have food enough for double our population was silly?
That we have enough for 12Bn but still have starving people shows that when we reduce our food production we will have even MORE starving people.
Which is what you wanted proof of.
“But IPCC does, because all its scenarios are based on unrealistic growth hypothesis.”
The IPCC doesn’t say that we’ll have less starvation.
“There is of course absolutely no mention of people starving in mass in these scenarios”
And no mention of people not starving.
And you wanted proof that we’ve had starving people from climate change. Well, a long term drought is climate change. Expanding deserts are a climate change. Ask Ethiopia how they felt about it.
“People who are now victims of it are exactly the same who are deprived of FF.”
Ah, running out the old concern troll. These people don’t eat fossil fuels.
And buying fossil fuels means they have to sell their produce to outside customers (with trade subsidies to first world farmers depressing world food trade prices, a fact you seem sanguine about) meaning less food in the country.
“Limiting – voluntarily or not – the amount of FF can only increase the number of such people.”
Really? How?
They don’t need mechanicals to do the work: labour is cheap and they don’t have massive farming combines run by only a few people. They don’t need refrigeration to export to distant lands, they need the food where they’re making it.
So what do they need fossil fuels for?
They don’t.
Limiting fossil fuels WILL NOT make a difference to the starvation levels. If the IMF stopped foisting expensive mechanicals that take money out of the country, that would INCREASE the amount of food they have available AND reduce their need for fossil fuels.
If farming subsidies were killed, that would do far, far FAR more for the wealth of the average third-world farmer.
But you don’t seem to be concerned about that. Your concern is only manufactured to stop having to change your selfish ways.
Hey guys, could I see an example of an IPCC mistake in which reality seems to be worse than the mistake published? These things don’t get printed in the papers and I just want to give my friend some additional evidence that this thing was not intentional.
1044 Ray: I do agree. People have something they label “quality of life”. But what is it?
I bought a Saab 9000 automobile in 1990. It delivered consistently better than 40 mpg. It was big, wider than a Cadillac. They said so in the ads. Six years later it was scrapped in a very serious accident and saved me from serious injury. Haven’t seen such a thing since the manufacturer was acquired by GM. Regrettably.
A lot can be done, although I suspect it is not nearly enough in our current predicament. “Quality of life ” is not available for sale at a petrol pump, despite the beliefs and pretence.
Ben@1053–melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, for one. It’s happening much more rapidly than previously.
“1054
Ben says:
1 February 2010 at 12:14 PM
Hey guys, could I see an example of an IPCC mistake in which reality seems to be worse than the mistake published?”
The rate of ice melting in most glaciers are worse.
Ray Ladbury in 1045 and 1042 says that the recent controversies highlighting sloppiness and dishonesty in the IPCC and linked organisations have not effected the evidence. But what evidence is there besides computer models with exaggerated positive feedbacks, temperature records corrupted by UHI and data manipulation, and suspect paleoclimatic curves relying heavily on bristlecone pines? The story was believed by the majority because of trust in climate scientists. That trust is now eroded and the emperors new clothes appear a tad transparent.
As a PhD chemical engineer I am shocked by the gullibility of many scientists and scientific organisations who did not apply the discipline they would in their own fields to climate sceince which is clearly an area populated with many charlatans and environmental activists with agendas.
I may have misunderstood but I think Curmudgeon Cynic is not arguing against the evidence for AGW. He’s making the point that the general public (at least here in the UK) are seeing a barrage of denialist stories coming from every media organisation to the right of the Guardian, which is one explanation for public “belief” in AGW trending downwards, despite the science becoming more and more solid. When Curmudgeon Cynic says “you’re bringing a whole new meaning to denialist” (paraphrasing) I think he’s suggesting that parts of the science community are in denial about the level of AGW-denial within the general population. Or something.
CC, please correct me if I’m wrong?
I’ve just started reading “Don’t Be Such A Scientist – talking substance in an age of style” by Randy Olson. It looks like it’ll provide some very interesting ideas with respect to discussing science with the wider public.
One vaguely related point: will the AR5 emissions scenarios (or whatever they’re being called in AR5) include a “denialist wet-dream” scenario? i.e. “burn it all as quickly as it’ll come out of the ground; go to hell with your wind turbines and other low-carbon technologies”? I’m starting to get the impression that humanity is (at least) as dumb as yeast.
I admire Curmudgeon Cynic’s efforts to make the head-in-the-sanders, like Ray Ladbury and CFU, see that the world has changed dramatically, but he’s obviously wasting his time. They think that the purity of their blinkered (US blindered?) view of the evidence is enough. “Look at the evidence!” they cry, as though that means anything when the whole AGW scene has undergone a sea-change.
The evidence, whatever it says, is meaningless, because what counts is the message communicated to the general public by the media. For more than a decade, that message has been uniformly apocalyptic. In what seems a very short time, the whole media scene has flipped through 180 degrees – now the message being conveyed is that there are suspicions about the evidence and, especially, the climate scientists and their science. Furthermore, evidence to the contrary is being produced. The message that AGW is probably now discredited is readily accepted by the public who have seen no absolutely sign of apocalypse in a decade, and have every reason to believe, using the evidence of their own senses, that the climate is cooling (at least, here in the UK.) I think that the situation is very simuilar in the US.
Frankly, you AGW proponents have had your chance, and you’ve blown it. All of the irresponsible claims with which you (not personally, I’m speaking generally here) have created a climate of fear are now rebounding on you. The exposures of malpractice, regardless of whether they constitute a major or minor element of the whole picture, merely confirm what many people suspected – that the whole AGW story is a house of cards. (Not necessarily my view, but a common perception.)
Please stop resorting to the “evidence”. It’s now completely irrelevant. That’s what the Curmudgeon means by “getting it”. The only way back is to to totally rebuild the story with a complete and fully open re-examination of the data (and that should be interesting, in the case of the temperature records!) by a scientific body that is openly transparent, and is seen by both sides to be completely impartial. The IPCC had its chance and threw it away – it’s completely discredited, and that’s apparent to anyone who’s opened a newspaper recently. Do you only read RealClimate?
You may not like this analysis, but I think it’s realistic. I’m probably what you’d call a sceptic, no, sorry, denialist, because I think that the probability of the IPCC forecasts being correct is at best 40% and probably much nearer to 20%. But I have as much interest as you do in seeing the evidence validated or reappraised. At present, science in general is in a deep hole because of one small but highly voluble section of the science community. That must change.
[Response: This might well be your opinion, but your are as mistaken as the people who thought the Day After Tomorrow was a public service announcement. Much less depends on media sensationalism (in either direction) than you think. IPCC will still exist in 5 years time, and the next report will be written and, as happened in each previous incarnation, it will be better done than the last time. Scientists are mostly carrying with their jobs and the conversations with journalists, staffers, policy-makers and the public are continuing as they did. I’m sure that it’s much more exciting to think about collapsing narratives and public relations disasters, but these things are not the substance of the issue and the vast majority of the people who are actually making decisions are well aware of that. Indeed, the evidence is the substance, not the media froth. – gavin]
Ben (#1054), see
http://climatesight.org/2010/01/24/mistakes/
AxelD wrote: “The evidence, whatever it says, is meaningless, because what counts is the message communicated to the general public by the media.”
Well said — for someone who only cares about “his team” winning the public relations contest, and doesn’t give a damn about reality: according to you, the actual evidence is “meaningless” and all that matters is whether ExxonMobil’s scripted propaganda is having the intended effect.
AxelD wrote: “For more than a decade, that message has been uniformly apocalyptic.”
That’s a blatant lie. For more than a generation, the media has given ExxonMobil’s dishonest, bought-and-paid-for shills, and a handful of ignorant, arrogant cranks, an appearance of credibility that their phony-baloney pseudoscience and outright lies don’t deserve, and has thereby perpetuated the false impression that there is legitimate scientific “controversy” over the reality of anthropogenic global warming.
You are celebrating the success of dishonesty, period. You really have nothing more to say than “hurray for the liars, they’re pulling ahead.”
AxelD wrote: “I think that the probability of the IPCC forecasts being correct is at best 40% and probably much nearer to 20%.”
So, you obediently have exactly the opinion that the so-called “right wing” media has told you to have, an opinion obviously not based on any actual evidence since you yourself have proclaimed that actual evidence is “meaningless”, and you imagine that this accomplishment is impressive because — why?
@1060, gavin says: … I’m sure that it’s much more exciting to think about collapsing narratives and public relations disasters, but these things are not the substance of the issue and the vast majority of the people who are actually making decisions are well aware of that. Indeed, the evidence is the substance, not the media froth.
The tragedy is that RC does actually seem to believe this. It probably has no option. But to underestimate the power of the media (“froth”) will be a grave mistake – in the UK, at least, where a single tabloid headline has been known to swing an election. Aside from the dramatic switch in the tabloids’ position, the (probably) foremost opinion-formers’ newspaper, the Times, has also changed its position and, in addition, reports the Government’s chief scientific adviser as warning of huge uncertainties in the models,
[Response: But he said absolutely nothing that I or hundreds of other scientists wouldn’t have said at any point in the last five years (for instance). This is exactly what I mean – you are confusing the spin put on an interview that is a product of the current froth with actual substance (which hasn’t changed). I fail to see why panic over tabloid nonsense is supposed to be something that is going to change the way science is done. It hasn’t and it won’t. – gavin]
as well as much else damaging to the AGW case. The politicians, who know nothing of the “evidence” and could care less, simply go on what their advisers tell them will play well with the public, especially with an upcoming general election in a time of grave economic uncertainty. My hunch is that climate concerns will drop down the political agenda to where the public concern is: about as low as it can get, relative to other concerns. Just as in the US.
Gavin’s response shows that RC still thinks that the substance of the issue is the “evidence”. Wrong! The substance of the issue is the media message, because that’s what 95% of the population responds to, not the “evidence”, which anyhow is now regarded with deep suspicion. And the media message is extremely unlikely to change for another decade, unless there are dramatic changes in the climate. Always possible, but unlikely maybe, based on the historical record.
AxelD says, “Please stop resorting to the “evidence”. It’s now completely irrelevant.”
Wow, simply wow! Did you even think about this before you wrote it–’cause it says volumes about how you look at the world.
Axel, I’d like you to meet physical reality. Physical reality, this is Axel. I’ll leave you two alone. You have a lot of getting acquainted to do.
Whilst I wish the picture painted by AxeID was false, it appears to be an accurate portrayal of the media “climate” here in the UK, from what I can tell. Large chunks of the UK media have turned from agnostic to outright denialist in the past few months (as many have already noticed). It’s frankly extremely disturbing.
My feeling is that one of the largest challenges facing those of us who agree with the IPCC’s assessment is to communicate the science to the wider population (in a non-patronising and non-alarmist fashion). Many people are being exposed to denialist story after denialist story. It’s like a jury only being exposed to one side of the argument.
re#1060. If only the climate scientists would learn the lessons,of how to manage interactions with the media, the message would get across to the lay public. They are great at convincing other such scientists ( mostly), but to the rest of the population, its woeful !
Anyway, even if AcxelD were right, even at 20% likely, given that the outcome is eventual collapse of civilisation (and given that we’re teaching eskimos cost accounting but we’re not teaching anyone how to live off the land, probably humanity in any recognisable form), then spending a trillion or two (less than the US spent in Iraq!) seems to be chicken-feed.
Heck, how much was given to banks worldwide ***in case*** the failing banks caused a run and a deepening recession (predicted by economic models and we know how accurate they are!)?
More than a trillion.
Re: 1029 Septic Matthew says:
31 January 2010 at 8:26 PM
“With all of the information available on new energy development (the oildrum is a good place to start, as well as the web page of the National Renewable Energy Lab), there is really no reason to claim that the developed world will run out of fertilizer. There is at least a credible claim that we might run out of fresh water, but we don’t need fresh water to make fertilizer.”
Nope. Not any more reason than to claim the world is going to run out of straw people.
Jack Kelley, so what?
That people are listening to cranks and idiots has no bearing on the truth of what’s going on any more than the bible belt has many idiots who believe that putting their hand on the Telly when a faith healer is on will cure them.
AxelD wrote: “Gavin’s response shows that RC still thinks that the substance of the issue is the “evidence”. Wrong! The substance of the issue is the media message …”
What a load of rubbish. You are actually saying that scientific facts are unimportant — that physical reality is unimportant — and that only the dishonest, corporate-sponsored propaganda of the phony “right wing” media is important.
When the continent-wide, permanent mega-drought settles in across North America, and the crops fail year after year, and food riots consume the cities, I guess you plan to eat “media messages”.
Good luck with that.
votenotokyoto (1058) — It is disturbing that you posted without even beginning to attempt to understand a little climatology. I recommend “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart, first link in the science section of the sidebar.
@1058 saynototokyo – “As a PhD chemical engineer I am shocked by the gullibility of many scientists and scientific organisations……”
A PhD materials physicist recently told me, a layperson, that it’s a well known fact that radiocarbon dating can be in error by millions of years, then informed me that if you aren’t actually present to measure a parameter, you can never determine what that parameter ever was with reasonable accuracy – strong and convincing evidence that he got his material physics PhD from a packet of Rice Crispies (and horrible news to forensic investigators). So you’ll excuse me if I ignore your argument from authority.
You might want to rethink your allegation that temperature measurements have been corrupted by data manipulation. That was, is, and will forever remain an unsubstantiated allegation. Temperature measurements have been verified by numerous independent sources so much that not even the prominent scientifically qualified sceptics like Linzden, Spencer, and so on doubt that the temperature record is really what it says it is. Repeating the falsehood that has been corrupted will not magically make it corrupted. I wait with baited breath for the day that a pseudosceptic shows that the temperature anomaly charts produced by NASA, CRU etc, are actually upside down.
As for “adjusting” data (as distinctly opposed to “manipulating” it), even I as a layperson can fully understand the multitude of reasons which have already been explained, as to why raw data from weather stations must be adjusted, so that apples are compared with apples – and not pears.
It was with increasing feelings of incredulous disbelief that I read some of the comments above. SecularAnimist still believes in “right-wing” plots, and Ray Ladbury invites me to “meet physical reality.”
To quote Ray, Wow. Simply wow! Have you any idea what reality is, when you write from the fastness of the RC ivory tower? I meet reality every day – I see it in the press, I hear it in conversations, I experience it through my senses and memory. The reality is, whether you like it or not, that the real world – not the RealClimate world – has changed. At least two comments above, from Jack and Bill, implicitly support my original proposal, though they’d probably be horrified that I suggest that.
What it seems extremely difficult for some RC adherents to understand is that what works in the real world is not fundamental scientific evidence, nice though that would be, no matter how firmly you believe it to be be real and truthful. But what works in the real world is crucial, because that’s the only way that real world things will change. Currently, what is working in the real world is a very different story than that which RC has been telling – and the real world is in consequence changing, and not in a way that suits you.
Obviously you earnestly believe that your IPCC version of the truth is the only true one. If you want to get it accepted, it is absolutely vital that you (that is, the whole climate science community) change direction and adopt a completely different way of showing the public the evidence and what it means. Because the current methods have patently failed. I made a proposal above that I know will be difficult to accept, as shown by the anguished responses, but it’s worth giving it some thought, rather than dismissing it immediately, as your more precipitate contributors are prone to do.
I know it’s trite, but perception is reality. And the perception in the real world has swung strongly away from the AGW line. I can’t put it more simply than that, and I shall now promise myself to stop beating my head against a brick wall here!
Gilles: “I wanted ?don’t be silly, why would I WANT such a thing ?”
Well you want to have your current lifestyle and if people starve, you’re fine with it.
??? why do you put the burden only on me? I’m just saying an obvious thing – that the large majority of people live as they can with their income, and do not reduce it significantly just because there are poorer people elsewhere. Because of course if it were not the case, we would have all shared our income with poor people , whatever the climate sensitivity is and even if CO2 has no absorption line in the infrared !!
How much do YOU reduce your own purchasing power to avoid people starving for death ?
So why did you complain that showing that we have people starving though we have food enough for double our population was silly?
I don’t say it was silly. I said it has nothing to do with climate.
But IPCC does, because all its scenarios are based on unrealistic growth hypothesis.”
The IPCC doesn’t say that we’ll have less starvation.
“There is of course absolutely no mention of people starving in mass in these scenarios”
And no mention of people not starving.
Be careful. You begin giving up rational arguments and saying anything to save your position in a desperate move. Of course it does. With an average income multiplied by 10 , it is obvious that much less people will be starving. And you can check that the use of wood for heating is also planned to vanish in all scenarios at the end of XXIth century, because there will be so much FF flowing everywhere. Just think of a simple question : do you think people will be able to buy expensive fuels if they can’t afford food ? what do you think starving people heat with ?
And you wanted proof that we’ve had starving people from climate change. Well, a long term drought is climate change. Expanding deserts are a climate change. Ask Ethiopia how they felt about it.
“People who are now victims of it are exactly the same who are deprived of FF.”
Ah, running out the old concern troll. These people don’t eat fossil fuels.
of course, that’s why they’re starving : actually rich people like us DO eat fossil fuels – under the form of fertilizers and engine fuels. They’re just transformed in edible material.
“Limiting – voluntarily or not – the amount of FF can only increase the number of such people.”
Really? How?
They don’t need mechanicals to do the work: labour is cheap and they don’t have massive farming combines run by only a few people. They don’t need refrigeration to export to distant lands, they need the food where they’re making it.
So what do they need fossil fuels for?
They don’t.
May be you should go for a trip to Haiti, Madagascar, Chad, to understand what a society without FF looks like. Supposing you know where these countries are.
Limiting fossil fuels WILL NOT make a difference to the starvation levels. If the IMF stopped foisting expensive mechanicals that take money out of the country, that would INCREASE the amount of food they have available AND reduce their need for fossil fuels.
That’s what I suspected. You probably live in some Simcity world, and you think that fighting fossils is a noble cause, consisting essentially in demonstrating against coal power plants , buying a hybrid Toyota, and setting solar panels on your roof. Again, go to countries with the lowest fossil fuel consumption and look at them.
If farming subsidies were killed, that would do far, far FAR more for the wealth of the average third-world farmer.
If farming subsidies were killed,no farmer could live in western countries. Do you think it is a good plan for the future to forget all about farming ? I don’t
But you don’t seem to be concerned about that. Your concern is only manufactured to stop having to change your selfish ways.
I don’t know your ways. As I said, I live in France, with a electric (mainly nuclear) heat pump + wood heating. I have a small car running 40 MPG (6 l /100 km). My favorite leisure are singing in a choir and playing bridge – rather low fuel intensity, you will admit. So I don’t think I’m the worst CO2 producer in the world – I would bet I produce much less than Al Gore and Pachauri, and maybe M. Mann , P. Jones and G. Schmidt. This has absolutely nothing to do with the way I’m living and nothing to do with politics – I belong to the left wing and I think of course that we should share more with poor people. All what I’m saying is just the most realistic , objective, and scientific assertions I can make. I can mistake, but don’t accuse me being selfish.
Completely Fed Up says: 1 February 2010 at 4:28 AM
Re Pratchett, please don’t get me wrong, not only is he brilliant but he’s also not radioactive. I just thought it funny that he came up in conversation about fission power.
Back more or less on topic, I see there’s a lot of heat here today regarding PR versus science. I think it was here on RC recently that I pointed out, facts did not help John Kerry in the ’04 election, efficient use of a megaphone by his opposition essentially ended his chances for success in a situation where margins were important. An entirely counterfactual and synthetic narrative was created and employed against him with complete success. Kerry responded by calmly and truthfully telling his real story and was knocked off. History abounds with similar sad narratives.
Regardless of whether we hear of morbidly effective PR from pragmatic friends with their feet planted in the material world or from strangely detached folks dancing in the end zone over some effective intellectual poison, it is a very foolish mistake to dismiss those signals and assume that patiently reciting facts will win this affair.
Astronomical sums of money are at stake here for entrenched interests, more wealth than the combined GDP of many countries, countries that would wage war and shed blood over lesser matters. The harder these interests are pushed, the uglier they’re going to become; so far we have seen the lesser part of what fossil fuel concerns and dependent industries will be prepared to do in performing what they see as their fiduciary duty.
I really do feel sorry for the scientists who have inadvertently wandered onto a stage with such powerful forces at play. Does anybody think Dr. James Hansen picture himself in the position he’s in today, the nexus of a raging storm of controversy? Hardly, but let him stand as one little inkling of what has been unleashed by simple curiosity colliding with mindless avarice. It’ll get much worse.
Learning how to do public relations is key to optimizing the outcome of the mess we’re in. Shouting at people who point out the efficacy of cynical manipulation of public understanding is pointless and even worse is basically hiding from a real and potentially lethal threat.
Re:1071 SecularAnimist says:
1 February 2010 at 4:22 PM
“AxelD wrote: “Gavin’s response shows that RC still thinks that the substance of the issue is the “evidence”. Wrong! The substance of the issue is the media message …”
What a load of rubbish. You are actually saying that scientific facts are unimportant — that physical reality is unimportant — and that only the dishonest, corporate-sponsored propaganda of the phony “right wing” media is important.”
Couldn’t agree more with the intent of this. But watch out for the cat claws on your example:
“When the continent-wide, permanent mega-drought settles in across North America, and the crops fail year after year, and food riots consume the cities, I guess you plan to eat “media messages”.”
In trying to nail down GW and drought a few minutes ago I ran into the second paragraph below:
Abrupt Climate Change Summary and Findings
http://downloads.climatescience.gov/sap/sap3-4/sap3-4-brochure.pdf
(excerpts)
“Climate model studies over North America and the global subtropics indicate that subtropical drying will likely intensify
and persist in the future due to greenhouse warming. This drying is predicted to move northward into the southwestern
United States. If the model results are correct, then the southwestern United States may be beginning an abrupt period of increased drought.”
However…
“Historic droughts over North America have been severe, but not nearly as prolonged as a series of “megadroughts” reconstructed from tree rings from about A.D. 900 up to about A.D. 1600. Because these megadroughts occurred under
conditions not too unlike today’s, the United States still has the capacity to enter into a prolonged state of dryness even in the absence of increased greenhouse-gas forcing.”
Notice the graphics… http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol306/issue5698/images/medium/306_1015_F2.gif
from
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5698/1015/FIG2
see also;
Long-Term Aridity Changes in the Western United States
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5698/1015
(excerpt)
“Using gridded drought reconstructions that cover most of the western United States over the past 1200 years, we show that this drought pales in comparison to an earlier period of elevated aridity and epic drought in AD 900 to 1300, an interval broadly consistent with the Medieval Warm Period.”
If you’ve got the chops to prove imminent AGW forcing for drought in America I’d love to see how to tease the coming megadrought out of natural variability.
1069, Tim Jones: Nope. Not any more reason than to claim the world is going to run out of straw people.
Doug Bostrom says: 1 February 2010 at 6:26 PM
Let me add Dr. Jones to the ugly drama I mentioned earlier, latest to be fed into the buzzsaw of public opinion manufacture:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
Very nice. Toss a treat to journos every few days, keep the story alive. Woof. The Guardian implies they’ve done a deep dive on their own; I seriously doubt it, they’re being led.
I seem to remember using the word “fizzle” for this story, I was wrong, it’s being handled better than that.
Tim Jones (1077) — Presumably as the world warms the Hadley cells expand. Can you take it from there?
AxelD and votenotokyoto (golly, what a clever name) both seem to think that the truth doesn’t matter. Well, I’m sorry, gentlemen, but the truth is all science has to offer you. It will keep looking for the truth and keep telling you and the rest of us the truth until we finally listen. And listen we will. Maybe not ’til our progeny are neck deep in water or we really know what hunger is, but eventually, the climate will speak loudly enough that even folks like AxelD and voteno won’t be able to drown it out by sticking their fingers in their years and saying “La-la-la-la.”
It is not a matter of whether we must learn to conserve, but rather how much will be left to get us through when we do. It is not a matter of whether our lifestyles will change, but of how drastically and how permanently.
Now if we hurry, we might just emerge from the other end of this crisis with something resembling a sustainable, free economy, a democratic government and a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. Unfortunately we have wasted 20 years already, and I suspect mother nature’s tolerance for stupidity is wearing thin. The longer we wait, the more draconian the action that will be needed, and the less probability we will have of coming out well on the other side.
See, this thing is not going away. There is simply too much evidence, and nothing any of the denialists have done has weakened one iota of it. Hey, prove me wrong. Cite one aspect central to the current consensus theory of climate that has been weakened in the slightest. You can’t. So go ahead and rant and rail all you want. Your quarrel is not with me, but with the evidence–and it doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about you.
A worthwhile musing here
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/opinion/01greensboro.html
on how the media 50 years ago handled the US civil right story, with some thoughts about how the same story might have been spun today to those watching and listening from a distance:
“… Now at the remove of 50 years, we can ask how it happened so fast — but not only that. We can also usefully ask how such an idealistic and altruistic movement might fare in today’s media environment. … it was a time when everybody watched the three network news programs. It was also a time when hysterical jeremiads about the perils of change were not part of the mainstream news flow….”
AxelD says: 1 February 2010 at 1:17 PM
“At present, science in general is in a deep hole because of one small but highly voluble section of the science community.”
I’d be the first to concede that the public is susceptible to artful misdirection of the kind you mention and for that matter seem to be practicing here.
However, the responsibility for collateral damage inflicted as part of a scorched earth campaign conducted purely in defense of continued commercial stability necessarily lies at the feat of the people handling the torches and igniting the academy.
Here’s another lesson of history: you can create a monster that will seemingly do your bidding, then as often as not you find it turns back on you, or veers off into destruction willy-nilly. We like to flatter ourselves that chemical and biological weapons were so horrible that mankind eschewed them in moral outrage, but the truth is they were ditched because military minds recognized them dangerous to both sides of a conflict, impossible to precisely target.
The crowd of flacks pushing anti-science propaganda about AGW can also take a little credit for refusals to immunize against measles, for difficulties with managing fisheries, for imagining that teenagers will not experiment with sex, for a plethora of intellectual pollution that generally degrades the human condition. Every single place where scientific research could and should make a positive contribution to public policy and behavior Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre and others will have visited earlier, putting the public at unnecessary risk as a knock-on effect of their messy and thoughtless shotgunning of the process of scientific inquiry.
As to whether the world will make policy based on science — remember, this is brand new in history. There was no science until a few centuries ago. Most of the people and most of the political institutions haven’t gotten used to having science around, let alone understood what it is or what use it can be.
David Brin is consistently good on this point. http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/
where you’ll find the essay the below excerpt is from, among much else:
=== Defending the Enlightenment = a mini-essay ===
See a fascinating review of The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition
http://www.tnr.com/book/review/black-and-white
by Zeev Sternhell…. about how the progressive Enlightenment is under frenetic attack, by those scheming to restore older, oppressive ways…
… only with an important difference that prompts me to offer up an observation and a cavil. For, when I speak of the “Enlightenment” …. To me, it stands for the great experiment of Western Civilization, the sole time that any post-agricultural society discovered a viable alternative to the age-old human attractor state, the standard pattern that dominated perhaps 99% of cultures since history began — rule by inherited oligarchy.
…. It is the Anglo-Scot-American offshoot, with its emphasis on pragmatism, reductionist science, “otherness” inclusionism and material progress in the physical world, that truly changed the world….
… the pragmatic-scientific wing said: “Everybody will be deluded, as a matter of basic human nature, and we are terrible at spotting our own errors. Rationality can be just another method for incantatory justification and rationalization. But there is another answer. If we cannot spot our own mistakes, we can often notice each others! ….”
…. it is hard to arrange circumstance under which competition delivers all its benfits… without soon drawing in its own worst enemy, cheaters….(e.g. our present “culture war.”) ….
—- end excerpt —-
1060
AxelD says:
1 February 2010
“The IPCC had its chance and threw it away – it’s completely discredited, and that’s apparent to anyone who’s opened a newspaper recently.”
“The only way back is to to totally rebuild the story with a complete and fully open re-examination of the data (and that should be interesting, in the case of the temperature records!) by a scientific body that is openly transparent, and is seen by both sides to be completely impartial.”
You mean a do-over like in “What Not to Wear?”
I’m surprised you would so readily admit it’s so easy to pull the wool over your eyes. Would you have us believe that media pundits have finally awakened to a gaggle of hoaxers and are now showering us with revelations?
Are you aware of how oil and coal corporations and virtually every fossil fuel related industry on Earth will be impacted by legislation cutting back on greenhouse gas pollution? Are you aware of how fossil fuel dependent utilities and manufacturers and farmers and chambers of commerce are being manipulated to pull all the stops
to maintain the status quo?
Fortunes are at risk! Livelihoods will be lost! Future shock is descending on an unsustainable way of life.
Think about it. Do you think there isn’t HUGE money devoted toward maintaining a carbon intensive way of life? Can you imagine that every leaf isn’t being turned over to find the fatal flaw in the science? That every climate scientist isn’t being brutalized with an intent to discredit his or her work?
It’s all about the money, son. And know it or not, you’re part of their game.
C’mon, AxelD, look into this stuff for yourself.
It’s in all the newspapers. Who benefits? Check your local news for stuff like this story, it’s the way business does business:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-junket24-2010jan24,0,7805604.story
—excerpt follows—-
“… Altria has for years fought proposals to raise the state’s tobacco tax. …. Chevron and other oil companies have long battled a proposed oil-extraction tax. One such proposal was vetoed last year by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
[Can you say ‘wellhead tax’? Looks like a simple carbon tax, eh?]
Asked why Chevron donated the money for the retreat, Comey said, “We wanted to attend the event and we made the contribution.” …
Plains Exploration would have been the major benefactor of a bill last year to open the door to more oil drilling… the proposal is back in Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year.”
Septic Matthew — 31 January 2010 @ 8:26 PM
Septic, saying “I disagree!” does not win you an argument. If you want to claim doublings, you’re going to have to offer a link. You are also going to have to deal with receding horizons, the implied assumption we can afford such a build-out, the Chinese near-monopoly on rare earths, the speed of oil production decline vs. the build-out, NIMBY, areas that lack good wind and solar (Detroit, both), upgrading the grid, dealing with feed-in tariffs…
There are many things we can build quickly if we WANT to. What are the opportunity costs? What about the @ 50% of Americans who still don’t get that a problem exists?
Can is not will and is not is.
Oh, and invoking Lomborg wins you no points. There’s nothing worse than a denialist dressed as a skeptic (the real kind.)
Cheers
Ray : “Now if we hurry, we might just emerge from the other end of this crisis with something resembling a sustainable, free economy, a democratic government and a reasonably comfortable lifestyle.”
could you please tell me the minimum amount of fossil we have to burn per capita to insure what you call a “reasonably comfortable” lifestyle, and the total amount of fossil we are allowed to burn ?
AxelD:
You’re wrong on so many levels, its hard to know where to begin. First off, what makes you think that the new, squeaky-clean IPCC lookalike will fare any better than the old one? Contrary to you, and like Ray L., I have actually studied the science and the evidence, and I promise you that the old results will be re-obtained to close to 100% — you just have no idea about the redundancies. Your 20-40% is drawn out of you-know-where.
And then, when that happens, the same, massive vested interests will still be there, and playing just as dirty. And they will find dirt, as the new IPCC, just like the old one, is based on the work of human beings with all their imperfections.
And then we’re back to square one. With one important, intentional difference: several more years of inaction will have elapsed.
And ‘both sides’ gives you away. Yours is not a side, it’s a lie.
Gilles asks “could you please tell me the minimum amount of fossil we have to burn per capita to insure what you call a “reasonably comfortable” lifestyle, and the total amount of fossil we are allowed to burn ?”
Under what scenario? Are there alternative energy sources readily available in your purely hypothetical world? What is the price of fossil fuel energy vs. renewables? Do we have CCS?
Given your (as usual) vague and poorly posed question, there are only two possible responses:
1)a helluva lot less than we burn now
2)the minimum had damn well better be zero, since we are running our of fossil fuels on a timescale that will affect our great grandchildren.
[edit – please stay polite]
gilles: “could you please tell me the minimum amount of fossil we have to burn per capita to insure what you call a “reasonably comfortable” lifestyle”
Zero.
We don’t HAVE to burn fossil fuels to have our reasonable comfortable lifestyle.
If we did, then when we’ve removed our known reserves we are going to collapse. Without the benefit of a transition phase powered by fossil fuels, I note.
Please tell us what is it about our lifestyle that requires the CO2 combustion of stored fossil hydrocarbons?
“I would bet I produce much less than Al Gore”
You’d be wrong.
Al Gore is carbon neutral. He offsets his carbon and uses renewables wherever possible.
Just because you’re wealthy doesn’t mean you’re only using fossil fuels.
Thank you for some of the comments above where you tried to help me get Ray Ladbury to “see” that the public’s faith in the IPCC is being/has been undermined.
Ray’s “denialism” of the issue was the point that I was trying to make. If the IPCC carry on with their current chief and continue with their current processes they will become completely discredited insofar as the public is concerned.
In the UK, The Guardian is one 3 or 4 serious national newspapers. Politically it is perceived to be well left of centre (and in fact the term “Guardian reader” is often used to infer a picture of a lentil eating, hippy, tree huggers).
Today, the front page lead story, the headline story of the printed version of The Guardian, is about Phil Jones, emails and weather station data in China. This is the Guardian for heaven’s sake! This is the link to the online site story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
Maybe where Ray lives/works none of this is being discussed in the press and on the news – but here in the UK (the home of the CRU & UEA) there is a daily diet of stories where the IPCC/Pachauri are mentioned in less than flattering terms.
Evidence is all well and good and compelling – and so is flawed evidence. The evidence the public is presented with is that the Himalayan Glacier story was incorrect, same with Amazon Forest, Hurricanes, etc.
What was deemed to be the “truth” is now tainted by sensationalism and very shoddy procedures. 2500 scientists all agreed and peer reviewed the Himalayam Glacier story did they – I think not! Some idiot found a juicy headline and published it in AR4 – and now we reap what we sow.
gilles:
“of course, that’s why they’re starving”
Uh, so we here who aren’t starving DO eat fossil fuels???
News to me. What is the metabolising route we take here?
And you’re pretty pathetic: “oh, if only you’d seen the places I have, you’d know the plight of the poor people!!!”. Yeah, real mother Theresa. But one thing mother Theresa could have done that would have done more good than the total things she DID do would be to promote contraception.
But that was against here meme: Christianity only allows abstinence.
Same with you: your meme doesn’t allow corporations to be interfered with or fossil fuels to be left in the ground.
“”Limiting fossil fuels WILL NOT make a difference to the starvation levels…”
That’s what I suspected. ”
Then why did you say that reducing the use of fossil fuels would cause more starvation there???
This is why you’re a troll. You change your story sentence by sentence, rewriting the past to continue “winning”, hoping like hell nobody will read the words, just see the length and number of arguments and assum that means you’re saying something important. This is EXACTLY what the denialists do: they don’t care if they’re talking crap and making s*t up all they know their devotees and acolytes look for is lots of words and arguments with “factoids” thrown in that sound like they’ve been researched.
And, in a couple of places, like the G&T paper or Monkton’s 2008 response to the IPCC, some complex mathematics that are wrong, but look impressive.
Appearance over substance.
Just like your posts.
AxelD. – what Martin said. But in addition “seen by both sides to be completely impartial” is a red herring and you know it. There is no body that would be seen by the denialists and the energy industry and the neoconservatives as being “impartial” that didn’t totally deny any role of CO2 in global warming.
Re: #1060 Axel:
“Please stop resorting to the “evidence”. It’s now completely irrelevant.”
At last, the true stance of the opposition is revealed!
This reminds me of a popular one-liner about the media over here in the UK: “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story!”
Personally I quite like “evidence”, as it tends to help when getting papers published, whereas its absence rather terminally hinders the process!
cheers – John
#1070 Completely Fed Up wrote:
Sure, I completely and utterly agree that the current media narrative doesn’t in any way change the *science*. My point is something like this:
In order to avert serious disruption to the climate, we need the majority of the world’s population to act to reduce GHG emissions. At the very least, individuals need to support action by their democratically elected governments. At the moment, it looks like less than 50% of individuals support the statement “man-made emissions of GHGs are changing our climate and we must act now” (at least in the US and UK). In a democracy, the leaders generally have to follow what the population want in order to get elected. So it is absolutely *vital* that the climate change science finds its way to the public at large.
I get the impression that most peoples’ attitude to AGW is naturally weighted to denialism. In other words: it’s much easier to persuade an individual that AGW is a hoax than it is to persuade them that it’s a real problem. Add in the fact that newspapers are in serious financial trouble and are scrabbling to sell as many papers as possible and are now willing to put any old crap on the cover if it’s popularist enough. Add in the rising distrust of politicians. Etc etc. I gotta tell you; I’m very pessimistic that the public are going to “get it” any time soon. And I don’t think we can entirely blame WUWT, CA, Delingpole etc etc. Those of us who agree with the science are failing to communicate it to the outside world. The only voices speaking up in support of AGW science on the radio and TV tend to be folks like Ed Milliband – but he’s a politician and so his message is easy to dismiss. Sure, groups like Climate Camp are busy organising direct action campaigns but that will further convince the wider population that climate change is just a nutty left-wing conspiracy driven by hippies (not my view, I hasten to point out!)
Let me try to illustrate by foolhardily predicting a pessimistic version of the future:
2010 – The denialist message has probably already ensured that Obama will fail to get anything meaningful past the Senate. Hence the Mexico City meeting at the end of 2010 will fail to achieve any legally binding targets. Kyoto will time-out and there wont be anything to replace it. Here in the UK, the Conservatives will be elected and the backbench deniers will get stronger and stronger and the government will overturn the Climate Change Act (which currently states that the UK must reduce emissions by 80% by 2050). 2010 turns out to be the hottest year on record but this only gets reported in The Guardian and Al Jazeera English because the summer in major western population centres isn’t anything particularly out of the ordinary. The majority of the press don’t report serious draughts in Africa and the Mediterranean because it doesn’t fit in with their “AGW is a hoax” narrative plus they’re far more interested in the latest pop-star scandal. Any mention of climate disruption is qualified by “this year’s warm spell is just caused by a strong El Nino; it has nothing to do with AGW”.
2012 – Sarah Palin & Glenn Beck elected as President and VP in the US. One of their campaign messages is “drill drill drill”.
2015 – Oil prices go way above $100 a barrel due to geological supply constraints. Now the denialists have got a material reason for campaigning against AGW: they want their coal-to-liquids and they want it NOW!
2016 – Here in the UK, demand for electrical power outstrips the grid’s ability to supply. Gas from the North Sea is in decline and gas from Euroasia / shipped LNG isn’t reliable and we don’t have the time nor the cash to accelerate construction of nuclear plants. The solution? Coal (without CCS). Once the coal plants are built, we’re locked into burning coal for the lifetime of the plants (~50 years).
And so begins the nightmare “burn it all; burn it quick” emissions scenario. Largely as a result of the majority of the population not “believing in” AGW. The scientific evidence is one thing but the population’s enthusiasm for acting on that evidence is a completely separate thing.
A crap, slightly David Brent metaphor: think of the science/society link like a car: the science is the engine driving change, the science gets transmitted through the media (transmission) to the population at large (wheels). Except, in the case of AGW, vaccines, HIV etc, someone has spilt a large amount of oil into the clutch and the handbrake of denialism is firmly stuck. The engine is happily chugging away but the wheels don’t move. (I did mention it was a crap analogy, didn’t I?)
So- what are we gonna do about it?
1066: “My feeling is that one of the largest challenges facing those of us who agree with the IPCC’s assessment is to communicate the science to the wider population (in a non-patronising and non-alarmist fashion). Many people are being exposed to denialist story after denialist story. It’s like a jury only being exposed to one side of the argument.”
I actually disagree with that. The reality is that what is at stake is indeed civilization and humanity as we know it, and with that, the chance this planet has to produce an advanced civilization. If we collapse, there will be nothing after that, because we will have used up all the oil and high grade ores so whatever survivors are find it very difficult to build a technologically advanced civilization with the little resources left, while it will take a few hundred million years for the planet to reconcentrate them at which time the sun will have made the whole planet a lifeless desert (OK, we may be about to see another major oil formation event due to AGW, but this will do us no good of course).
So given what is at stake, I am actually very annoyed that the spin tends to be about the economic effects and not about the much more serious societal collapse issues. I happen to think that because as scientists we are obliged to say the truth (and not stretch it either, of course, but these things are pretty certain anyway), a strong Lovelock-like message should be given much more publicity. Instead there is a lot of between-the-lines-message talk where the consequences are quickly becoming apparent to anyone who can read between the lines, but most people aren’t going to do that, so they are left with the impression that the issue isn’t really that serious.
For example, this just came out in Science on the perspectives for food in the future:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.1185383
it’s 14 pages of hopeful talk and then here is the conclusion:
“There is no simple solution to feeding sustainably nine billion
people, especially as many become increasingly better off and
converge on rich-country consumption patterns. A broad
range of options, including those we discuss here, needs to be
pursued simultaneously. We are hopeful about scientific and
technological innovation in the food system, but not as an
excuse to delay difficult decisions today.
Any optimism must be tempered by the enormous
challenges of making food production sustainable while
controlling greenhouse gas emission and conserving
dwindling water supplies, as well as meeting the Millennium
Development Goal of ending hunger. And we must avoid the
temptation to sacrifice further the earth’s already hugely
depleted biodiversity for easy gains in food production, not
only because biodiversity provides many of the public goods
upon which mankind relies, but also because we do not have
the right to deprive future generations of its economic and
cultural benefits. Together these challenges amount to a
perfect storm.
Navigating the storm will require a revolution in the social
and natural sciences concerned with food production as well
as a breaking down of barriers between fields. The goal is no
longer just to maximise productivity, but to optimise across a
far more complex landscape of production, environmental
and social justice outcomes.”
Basically, they are telling you that we can’t possibly feed 9 billion people the way the world works right now, but this is never directly stated, and the consequences (i.e. that a few of those 9 billions will have to die of hunger) are not mentioned at all. I absolutely hate that kind of coward behavior and there is a lot of it.
A quick post-script to my comment above: I certainly don’t mean to be critical of Real Climate & climate scientists. RC does an excellent job of communicating the science to science-minded people. It’s the subsequent stages in the chain of communication to the wider public which are failing (or being actively attacked).
How is IPCC values for futhure CO2 emmission done. A new article have studied this.
Abstract: