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.
Gilles: Limiting – voluntarily or not – the amount of FF can only increase the number of [starving] people.
BPL: Merde. If we generate power from other sources, it doesn’t affect the small fraction of FF available for producing fertilizer, and it turns out you can be just as productive WITHOUT the fertilizer by using organic, biodynamic, and/or hydroponic farming methods.
G. Marinov: I can’t see us building one million square kilometers of solar panels, and then doing it again and again every 20-30 years as they age.
BPL: How many Liberty ships do you think people envisioned building in 1941? How many were actually built in 1943?
Alleged chemical engineer “votenoonkyoto:” what evidence is there besides computer models with exaggerated positive feedbacks,
BPL: Feedbacks come out of the models, they aren’t preset.
V: temperature records corrupted by UHI
BPL: Not an issue:
Hansen, J., Ruedy, R., Sato, M., Imhoff, M., Lawrence, W., Easterling, D., Peterson, T., and Karl, T. 2001. “A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change.” J. Geophys. Res. 106, 23947–23963.
Parker, DE. 2004. “Large-scale warming is not urban.” Nature 432, 290.
Parker, DE. 2006. “A Demonstration That Large-Scale Warming Is Not Urban.” Journal of Climate 19, 2882-2895.
Peterson, Thomas C. 2003. “Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous United States: No Difference Found.” J. Clim. 16(18), 2941-2959.
Peterson T., Gallo K., Lawrimore J., Owen T., Huang A., McKittrick D. 1999. “Global rural temperature trends.” Geophys. Res. Lett. 26(3), 329.
V: and data manipulation,
BPL: Fraud and hoax, you mean? Whom do you think is behind it? The Jews? The Vatican? Maybe the Trilateral Commission?
V: and suspect paleoclimatic curves relying heavily on bristlecone pines?
BPL: When they leave out ALL the tree ring data, they still get the hockey stick:
Crowley, T.J. 2000. “Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years.” Sci. 289, 270-277.
Mann, Michael E.; Zhihua Zhang, Malcolm K. Hughes, Raymond S. Bradley, Sonya K. Miller, Scott Rutherford, and Fenbiao Ni 2008. “Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia.” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 105, 13252-13257.
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309102251
National Research Council 2006. Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
V: 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.
BPL: Sure, because of a massive propaganda campaign by cynical SOBs trying to protect their profits. And you’ve bought it, hook, line and sinker.
V: 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
BPL: Who? Where? When? Care to cite a specific paper where this happened?
V: which is clearly an area populated with many charlatans and environmental activists with agendas.
BPL: Google “ad hominem argument.” Doesn’t matter if they torture puppies in their basement. If they draw a conclusion about nature, either they’re right or they’re wrong. Which is it?
Tim Jones: 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.
BPL:
1. America is part of the world.
2. In 1970, 12% of the world’s land surface was in drought. By 2002 that figure was 30%. Some UN bodies estimate 70% by 2025. That doesn’t leave much land aside from Antarctica, and it leaves practically no cropland at all.
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.
Do you understand? Unless you’re quite old, or as sick as I am, this is quite possibly going to happen in your lifetime–definitely in the lifetime of your children.
“. . .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 ?”
Gilles wasn’t asking me, but given the absence of a timeline or other constraints to his first question, I’d say:
1) Zero, and
2) See this post:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/04/hit-the-brakes-hard/
Curmudgeon Cynic,
Perhaps you would care to detail some of those “very shoddy procedures”?
I’ve seen evidence of:
1)a typo–the 2035 glacier story. Yeah, it’s stupid. It should have been caught, but this was in a working group document on consequences. That isn’t the main event.
2)Citations of non-peer-reviewed literature. First, there is nothing in the IPCC rules that prevents citing non-peer-reviewed sources. Second, when it comes to consequences, there is a dearth of publications that deal in this subject. It’s one of the subjects that falls in the “white spaces”. Third, the goal when discussing consequences at this point is to provide an upper bound so that we can start allocating resources toward efficient risk mitigation.
What I have seen zero evidence of:
1)Anything that invalidates the basic theory of climate of which anthropogenic causation is a direct and irrefutable consequence.
2)Any evidence for any real misconduct on the part of the IPCC, Hadley Center or UEA.
Now, I’m willing to be proved wrong, but you had better be willing to justify any accusations of scientific misconduct with more than a couple of sentences taken out of context from pilfered emails or a citation to WUWT.
OK, just for the sake of argument, let’s let you have your hypothetical way and you can fire Pachauri and Jones–hell, you fricking witchhunters can burn them at the stake for all I care. What has changed? A new guy comes in. Let’s make it…you. How long do you think it would take before they were mentioning you in the same sentence with Al Gore? How long do you think it would be before they found another fricking typo and we were barbecuing you?
It doesn’t matter who is head of the IPCC. It doesn’t matter who is on the IPCC (as long as they are competent scientists). What matters is the evidence. The science is going to keep telling us we’re in trouble, and people are going to keep trying to deny it.
The scientists cannot compromise with the anti-scientists, because we are playing a completely different game. All I know is to keep insisting people look at the evidence. If humans are too stupid to do that, then we’re too stupid to survive, too. That’s not denial, CC. That’s reality.
#1098 Georgi Marinov says:
I get what you mean and I absolutely agree that the societal-collapse scenarios are important to communicate to some folks. But most folks in the general public will just laugh in denial (bear with me here…). I think it’s essential that we examine the evidence regarding what works and what doesn’t work in terms of communicating the science to the wider population. It’s not an area I have a huge amount of knowledge but the little research I have read makes a compelling case *against* using any sort of scary predictions. People just switch right off. You’re asking people to let their intellect override their entire direct life experience: so far, for most people, the environment seems pretty damn stable. People just laugh when told stories of doom. (Again, I must emphasise that I’m not arguing against the models – I completely agree that the models project some utterly catastrophic scenarios.)
I suppose my main point is this:
I think it’s safe to assume that everyone reading RC puts a great deal of value on evidence. When confronted with a question we don’t know the answer to, our gut instinct is to look to the evidence, right? We need to use that exact same instinct when it comes to communicating with the public: what works, what doesn’t work, what turns people right off. Examine the evidence from previous attempts to communicate. I’m also entirely conscious that any sceptic reading this will think I’m advocating some sort of evil brain-washing campaign. I’m not. I’m simply saying: there’s historical data available on which types of “story” people reject instantly. We need to at least glance at the data regarding the success of previous communications before starting to communicate, otherwise we risk being dismissed before we even start to communicate. For starters: on blog comments, it’s absolutely vital that we restrain ourselves from snarky, pompous comments (I know it’s impossibly hard sometimes) – that just makes us look like twats and makes what we have to say easier to reject. We need to soften the polarisation between “believers” and “denialists”, not fuel it.
ref 107 Jack Kelly
Thank you Jack. A voice of reason.
Ref 106 Ray Ladbury
I give in Ray. You are right. Everything is fine. More and more people are trusting the IPCC now than did a year ago. These minor annoyances don’t affect anything. The newspapers are not full of stories about possibly incorrect, exagerated claims.
No one will take any notice of the press – they will ignore them and download the scientific papers themselves, understand them, and see everything is still as it was and Phil Jones will receive a Knighthood and all the governments represented at Copenhagen were climbing over themselves to agree tougher and tougher targets. Pachauri’s worlwide image as a serious leader of the IPCC is totally intact – if not enhanced.
That’s a relef. Sorry for being a bit “off message” for a while there.
BTW, this isn’t one of the longest threads on Realclimate at there isn’t anyone here agreeing with me.
“I think it’s essential that we examine the evidence regarding what works and what doesn’t work in terms of communicating the science to the wider population.”
That’s why the scientists wrote the IPCC reports and wrote them in a technical way THEN wrote the less science-heavy summary for policymakers.
Because the scientists aren’t supposed to be communicating to the wider population, that’s what the policymakers and politicians are supposed to do (see the word root of “politician”).
“2)Citations of non-peer-reviewed literature. First, there is nothing in the IPCC rules that prevents citing non-peer-reviewed sources. Second, when it comes to consequences, there is a dearth of publications that deal in this subject.”
Third McIntyre’s (I think, it could have been Jr/Sr Pielke’s) product got included in the IPCC report despite being non-peer-reviewed. Even though many considered it trash and said so (and then got vilified for trying to quash the views of others when saying so).
Illustrating yet another “heads I win, tails you lose” for the denialist screed: not including peer reviewed papers only gets them villified for only showing those “singing from the same hymn sheet” [yet again another religious metaphor from the denialist site, silently ignored by that moonbat on BBC R4], whist including it shows that they aren’t scientific.
Oh, and for Rob’s eternal edification in the vain hope he’ll give up the tired old canard about correlation is not causation, I present:
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/philosophy/courses/100/100determinism4.htm
cliff note version: you never see causations, only correlations. All causations must be induced from the correlations.
BPL :”Gilles: Limiting – voluntarily or not – the amount of FF can only increase the number of [starving] people.
BPL: Merde. If we generate power from other sources, it doesn’t affect the small fraction of FF available for producing fertilizer, and it turns out you can be just as productive WITHOUT the fertilizer by using organic, biodynamic, and/or hydroponic farming methods.”
again, you miss the point, BPL. You reason with a fixed wealth, or GDP. You forget the essential point , linked to Jevons paradox : increasing efficiency has always been used to increase the wealth with the same amount of energy. Because if you reduce the use of fossils, again, you have to prevent EVERYBODY to use them instead of you. Which means that you basically think that nobody needs to be richer and that all basic needs are fulfilled. Do you REALLY think that all basic needs are fulfilled in the world?
BTW, if you think that FF is only unavoidable for fertilizers, you probably don’t know much about chemistry : because they are not. What is useful is hydrogen, and hydrogen can be produced by other means that natural gas (including solar panels). It just damn’d more expensive. Metallurgy is another business. Try to produce steel without coke. You can- with charcoal- but it is pretty much more difficult or expensive too. Same for all metals. Same for cement, and thus concrete. Same also for glass. Now consider alternatives to FF. I imagine what you would propose : windmills, solar panel, geothermy – maybe not nuclear but some will. Can you imagine to build them without steel, concrete, and glass? and without some extra materials like plastic, insulators, glues, paintings, solvents. You know, all these cheap things you can buy so easily anywhere. Must be easy to produce, it sooooo cheap. Yes, it is cheap. Now.
All the alternatives are just a little bit more expensive than fossil fuels, but their cost is determined by the abundance of cheap materials made with cheap fossil fuels. Without fossil fuels, everything becomes more expensive. Incredibly more expensive.
Fed-up :
To those commenting on EROEI as a limit to fossil fuel production of CO2:
It’s worse than you’ve presented here. Way worse.
Once oil gets expensive enough there will be in-situ efforts to extract tar sands and gasify coal in place. If you don’t have to pull the coal out of the ground to extract *some* energy from it, the energy invested is what it takes to drill a couple of holes and pump oxygen down. No matter that 3/4 of the energy is lost: if the 1/4 of the energy that’s recovered is profitable it will be pursued. “No matter” that it’s 4x more carbon intensive than Saudi light crude.
”
Uh, so we here who aren’t starving DO eat fossil fuels???
News to me. What is the metabolising route we take here?
”
Industrial agriculture uses around 10 % of fossil fuels, and mankind biological power is a few percent of the total amount of energy we use (or in other terms, the fossil we use produce several dozens times the biological power of our body – around 100 W). So what you eat has been produced with more fossil energy than its caloric content. The metabolism route take the plants and the animals as intermediate paths, but modern agriculture basically converts fossil energy to edible carbohydrates.
”
Same with you: your meme doesn’t allow corporations to be interfered with or fossil fuels to be left in the ground.
”
sorry. I have no preferred “meme”. I don’t tell people how they should live, which car they should buy, and how large their house must be. I’m not mother Theresa – and nobody is less religious than me. Again, I’m looking at plain facts, numbers, and these numbers simply show what I said : The modern history will be a transient period of a few centuries, heated and powered by the massive combustion of a tremendous reserve of energy , accumulated for hundred of millions of years, that will be burnt at an exponential rate until they will be exhausted. That’s it. There is no moral there. Just thermodynamics.
And I’m just saying that the facts I know tend to show that the amount of carbon we are able to burn – approximately between 1000 and 1500 GtC – won’t probably change a lot the climate where everybody lives – or better than it won’t change the usual problems that mankind has faced since it arrived on the Earth. But the ending of fossil fuels will mark the ending of this extraordinary period, that will probably never come again in the history. I think you’re totally wrong if you think that fossil fuels have nothing to do with our current standard of living – and we will be much more sensitive to their disappearing than to the side-effect they can produce.
BTW would you like to bet with me than the average fossil- and energy – consumption per capita will never exceed that of the 2000-2010 decade – something unpredicted by every scenario of IPCC ? that’s a simple, quantitative, easy to test- in the near future at least – prediction isn’t it ?
”
“”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???
”
Sorry : I meant that what I suspected is that you think that. I don’t agree, but I understand why our basic premisses are so different. You think fossil fuels are not necessary to our lifestyle, just easier to use because they are cheaper. I think they are the basic ingredient – more exactly, the abundance of cheap and easy-to-use energy is the key ingredient, and only fossil fuels provide it.
CC@1108
Well, you’re great with the vitriol, but I notice a profound lack of any sort of constructive comment. What is it you are proposing? Take our ball and go home and let humanity die off? Fire Pachauri? Fire Jones? Fire the entire IPCC? What precisely would that accomplish?
I’m all ears waiting for constructive suggestions…but I’ll probably have to turn elsewhere for those. Your are too caught up in your own righteous and impotent anger.
Ray : “I’ve seen evidence of:
1)a typo–the 2035 glacier story. Yeah, it’s stupid. It should have been caught, but this was in a working group document on consequences. That isn’t the main event.”
We all have evidence that it is NOT a typo, but that it has been deliberately used as an argument to get fundings, and that opponents have been publicly insulted and discredited by the highest authority of IPCC.
“What I have seen zero evidence of:
1)Anything that invalidates the basic theory of climate of which anthropogenic causation is a direct and irrefutable consequence.
2)Any evidence for any real misconduct on the part of the IPCC, Hadley Center or UEA.”
We all have evidence that CRU and Hadley center have behaved as if they were not confident neither in their data, nor in their conclusions. If they were, they just wouldn’t have written such things.
[Response: 2035 was not a typo, but it should have been caught by peer review. The rest of your statement is equivalent to guilt by suspicion. There is no evidence of scientific misconduct by the Hadley Centre or CRU. – gavin]
Me:
CFU:
Sure, I understand that the research scientists shouldn’t be tasked with making popularist documentaries about Climate Change.
But we can’t rely on the politicians to communicate the science either. Folks don’t trust politicians. That rules them out. (when the history of the public’s response to AGW is written, I think we’ll come to see Al Gore’s involvement in Climate Change as more of a hindrance than a help. By first being a high-profile Democrat and then becomming the “figurehead” for AGW; he instantly polarised the issue down partisan lines.)
I should put all my cards on the table and mention that I left a Cognitive Neuroscience PhD to pursue a career in filmmaking a few years ago. Hence, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking that we need a prime-time documentary about the science of AGW. I’m probably not the guy to make that film (not enough filmmaking experience yet); but I hope someone makes it (yeah, I know the BBC made an excellent series of films a little while back about AGW but we need a new series which speaks more directly to the “sceptics”). Peter Sinclair’s “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” YouTube videos do a great job but we need millions of people to view those videos.
1106, Ray Ladbury, First, there is nothing in the IPCC rules that prevents citing non-peer-reviewed sources.
In their self-promotional speeches and writings IPCC claim that their reliance on only peer-reviewed literature is one of their strengths; this claim was repeated by global warming advocates in testimony to the EPA and Congress.
“Question : if what you said is true, why does everybody agree that we should not forbid developing countries to increase their fossil use”
I don’t know. Ask them.
But one reason is that we’ve managed to build an ***economy*** with cheap (as long as you offload the externalities off on someone else) power, so banning them from doing the same is a bit off.
Note, however, an economy will produce iPods but you can’t *eat* iPods.
So is irrelevant to the position of starvation.
“Proposal : go in poor countries in Africa or Asia, and explain them how to develop without fossil fuel.”
It’s easy. Don’t burn fossil fuel.
Please tell me what development demands only fossil fuels, as opposed to, for example, electrical power?
Here in the first world, it would be unthinkable to not have a landline 10 years ago even though we had decent coverage of mobile phones.
Because we had, at that time, landlines all over the place. An investment that was now almost pure profit because the investment was long past. Meanwhile phone masts required investment NOW. So mobiles were slow to take off.
In Africa they don’t have any expensive infrastructure for landline phones so investment was needed and it is cheaper to supply a town with mobile phone access to the telephone network than to run copper wires out to each building.
So they leapfrogged many first world countries in mobile phone use.
Mobile phones are a development over the landline.
A development that didn’t require burning more fossil fuels than the first world to make happen.
“I think you will be eligible for the Nobel peace prize, as a “bienfaiteur de l’humanité”. ”
Not really, non-fossil fuel methods have been promoted recently to great effect. I don’t see any Nobel prizes running around for them.
“Anyway, I have the explanation why we can’t agree.”
Is that because you’ve realised that you’ve taken as self-evident truth that development DEMANDS fossil fuel use and only fossil fuel use can supply that development?
Gilles: “You forget the essential point , linked to Jevons paradox : increasing efficiency has always been used to increase the wealth with the same amount of energy”
Again you miss the point: extreme wealth goes to fewer and fewer people. Google on the wealth gap or poverty gap.
Note also that the biggest CO2 footprint occurs in countries that also seem to have the biggest dimorphism between rich and poor.
1104 BPL: 2….Some UN bodies estimate 70% by 2025. …
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,” ,/I.
You’ve cited this statistic a couple of times. All I can find online is the press statement you quote. Do you have a link to the actual report the UN official is using? For whatever reason, I can’t find it.
Re – Gilles #1113:
The answer is simple, utterly so:
Because fossil fuels are finite.
Any society that gets beyond that particular addiction is a future winner: any that stays behind is a loser.
It’s as easy as that.
Cheers – John
Jack: “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:”
And my point is: So What?
Reality will bite if “the people” refuse to realise the wall they are running up against.
But the only way to counter the PR spin machine is to forget about the science completely and merely do as the denialists are doing and brainwash people. Forget about truth because it’s too complicated. Forget about consistency because it limits your rhetoric. Forget about reasoning because you’re not working with reason but with brainwashing.
That’s what the denialist machine does and the only way to counter is to do the same thing.
For my part, this is not an option for the scientists who work on this stuff.
Therefore we can’t combat the PR brainwashing the denialists are doing.
So what?
So forget about them and forget about your “problem” in “losing” to them in PR land. the cost of winning there is the scientific endeavour itself. So continue to work as you are and let the truth speak.
If it’s not listened to, then we’re doomed by the idiots.
But if the cost of avoiding this is become an idiot too, let us be doomed.
Because, as an atheist, I only have this life and the only meaning I have is how well I live it, how well I act while able to move in this world. And my selfishness extends to not making worthless my entire existence on the possibility that someone else will do bad things successfully if I don’t join in.
Read O-Chu’s words here in panel 6.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0547.html
“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.”
So?
1) presupposes this happens
2) presupposes that nothing will reverse that by continuing to be proper in repose
3) presupposes that this would change under a new regime
4) presupposes that policy will be driven by the noisiest group of people who don’t know
lot of pre supposing going on there.
“Try to produce steel without coke. You can- with charcoal- but it is pretty much more difficult or expensive too. ”
Aluminium.
Uses electricity.
Re:1080
David B. Benson says:
1 February 2010 at 7:24 PM
“Tim Jones (1077) — Presumably as the world warms the Hadley cells expand. Can you take it from there?”
I’ll give it my best shot, but I’m not a climate scientist. If we aren’t seeing the precursors for the WMP today then we may be on to something.
Re:1104 Barton Paul Levenson says:
2 February 2010 at 8:30 AM
“BPL:
1. America is part of the world.”
Hey Barton, I’m a friendly, remember?
But your response illuminates a potential problem here at RC. How do we have a frank discussion on the pros and cons of an idea without assuming the person questioning the idea isn’t out to attack us?
When I wrote: “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” I was looking for the good stuff (the chops) to help me make a case I’ve been looking into for years and never got past some papers talking about the subtropics moving northwards as the tropics warm.
What I have found to counterpoint global warming aggravating droughts are the Science papers pointing out how megadroughts in the Southwest have been part of natural variability.
This is important to me. I live in Austin, Texas where we’ve been having “exceptional droughts” and summer heat waves killing the woodlands and wildlife for the last 3 years. With this being an example of how global warming could be influencing the local weather it’s critical that I be able to show that more than natural variability is the cause for what’s happening.
If I’m on about the drought and doing something about climate change, and someone brings up the Science articles, I’m screwed with the uncertainty. When I ask for chops I do mean I need chops, and I’d love to see something substantial.
2. That said, I appreciate the references. The more we can prove extreme weather is resulting from AGW the stronger our case for action will be. This is what people see. These events can carry a strong message if we can tie cause and effect together.
The public needs to see how current conditions keep aspects of natural variability from adding up to what we have today.
Curmudgeon Cynic, you and I (and others too) have tried to show the regulars here how the world has changed, and they’ve been left behind. But it seems plain to me that they’re in an unreachable state of denial, and any further efforts are pointless. You beat me to the draw on the Guardian’s story (the Guardian!) but when the Guardian starts to publish stories about problems with the AGW story, then you know the game really is up. For the benefit of the conspiracy theorists here, the Guardian is about the least likely organ that it’s possible to imagine being influenced by Big Oil and right-wing zealots. (Hank, Ray, SecularAnimist, are you listening?)
The sad thing is that there is still a possibility that you RC regulars are all correct, and when those large areas of ill-understood (or not even yet recognized) science are finally resolved in favour of an anthropogenic CO2 cause, you’ll be able to say that you were right all along. I think it’s less than likely, but still possible. But what’s the point of saying “we were right all along” when you’ve alienated the rest of the population that might actually have been able to do something about it? For when the Guardian prints knocking stories, be very sure indeed that you’ve alienated a large proportion of the population.
But I’ve said this before, and been shouted down. It’s your choice. Do you want to make a difference? Or do you want to cling to your “adjusted” data sets, your carefully selected papers and your strictly constrained view of “the science” and be totally ignored? It’s up to you, guys.
Gilles, off-grid solar is used the most in remote areas, for obvious reasons. Fossil-free, in principle. Cell phones are ubiquitous in many areas of the Third World, eliminating the need for land lines.
The same path need not always be followed, and there is nothing sacrosanct about fossil-fueled energy.
1102, Barton Paul Levenson says:
2 February 2010 at 7:33 AM
G. Marinov: I can’t see us building one million square kilometers of solar panels, and then doing it again and again every 20-30 years as they age.
BPL: How many Liberty ships do you think people envisioned building in 1941? How many were actually built in 1943?
We are talking about an enterprise of a much bigger scale here; the comparison doesn’t work
Jack Kelly @ 1107:
I am aware of everything you mentioned; however, if we try to “frame” things in a more easily digestible way, we will never be able to say things clearly. We are “framing” things now and it doesn’t work
The reason people laugh at doom prophecies is that they usually come from very unreliable sources. What I suggest is clear statements from the major scientific organizations, which are as reputable as sources get, about what will happen IF we continue BAU. It may turn people off, but the current mode of communication isn’t working anyway, so we need to change the approach
>> solar panels
>>> Liberty ships
>>the comparison doesn’t work
When my dad crossed the Atlantic on the way to Belgium, the ships ahead and behind his in convoy were torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. Solar panels are expected to have a service life rather longer than the Liberty Ships. That changes the equation.
>stories
Axel, did you read the David Brin link? Yes, there’s a need to tell people the stories in words that can be understood. People are trying. But there’s also a need to get the science right — and have the citations as footnotes for the stories. RC is among the few sources working on that.
Jack, an example of how your “concern” is irrelevant, take a look at this about a leaked memo from a Republican (Frank Luntz who wanted Global Warming changed to “climate change” to be less scary and now that hasn’t worked, they’re complaining that the IPCC have renamed to hide the flaws in AGW):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJMrlD_s93A
So where’s the “BankreformGate” cries? Where are the calls for investigation into falsification in “Luntzgate”?
Because the PR spin isn’t about truth, it’s about brainwashing.
“We are talking about an enterprise of a much bigger scale here; the comparison doesn’t work”
Proof please.
Or is this a Jedi Mind Trick you’re trying. It only works on the weak of will…
Try to produce steel without coke. You can- with charcoal- but it is pretty much more difficult or expensive too. ”
Fed up : “Aluminium.
Uses electricity.”
and carbon anodes. And Perfluorocarbon. I guess pretty much the same amount of GHG per unit volume than steel.
Kevin : “Gilles, off-grid solar is used the most in remote areas, for obvious reasons. Fossil-free, in principle. Cell phones are ubiquitous in many areas of the Third World, eliminating the need for land lines.
The same path need not always be followed, and there is nothing sacrosanct about fossil-fueled energy.”
Thanks, I’m not so ignorant. So you think all the problems of the world can be solved by solar panels and cell phones ? Again why don’t you convince these stupid chinese and indian people not to use fossil fuels to develop ?
just for kidding : try to build solar panels without anything made with fossils. I think wooden windmills is a better choice, don’t you? (and the same for all devices that are supposed to need electricity from solar panels, of course).
Septic: “In their self-promotional speeches and writings IPCC claim that their reliance on only peer-reviewed literature ”
Since they are so common, you’ll be able to show this is the case by multitudinous examples.
I don’t see it in
http://www.ipcc.ch
“Please tell me what development demands only fossil fuels, as opposed to, for example, electrical power?”
apart from hydroelectricity, that can be fully developed only at some very special places, can you indicate me where you have stable electrical power without fossil fuels? even France with its 80 % nuclear electricity cannot avoid them. And nuclear is the most efficient way to reduce carbon intensity. Unfortunately too limited to be a universal solution (have you checked the carbon intensity of countries having most developed wind power?). And all techniques require steel for alternators and copper or aluminum for wires – all requiring fossils.
And then electrical power can at best only represent 30 to 40 % of the total energy consumption, and especially in rich countries.
Guys, the fact that developement requires fossil fuels is bases only on FACTS. You can imagine all fairy worlds you want. Look at reality – and again if you were true, there would be no reason to accept that developing countries are not submitted to carbon restrictions; they aren’t because everybody knows they need it. That’s simple truth.
Here in the first world, it would be unthinkable to not have a landline 10 years ago even though we had decent coverage of mobile phones.
Because we had, at that time, landlines all over the place. An investment that was now almost pure profit because the investment was long past. Meanwhile phone masts required investment NOW. So mobiles were slow to take off.
In Africa they don’t have any expensive infrastructure for landline phones so investment was needed and it is cheaper to supply a town with mobile phone access to the telephone network than to run copper wires out to each building.
So they leapfrogged many first world countries in mobile phone use.
Mobile phones are a development over the landline.
A development that didn’t require burning more fossil fuels than the first world to make happen.
“I think you will be eligible for the Nobel peace prize, as a “bienfaiteur de l’humanité”. ”
Not really, non-fossil fuel methods have been promoted recently to great effect. I don’t see any Nobel prizes running around for them.
“Anyway, I have the explanation why we can’t agree.”
Is that because you’ve realised that you’ve taken as self-evident truth that development DEMANDS fossil fuel use and only fossil fuel use can supply that development?
AxelD @ 1128
And
Mixing two different issues this way may be the cause of some of the heat in the responces you’re getting.
The evidence for AGW is strong.
That there’s noise in media may indeed affect policy decisions, but it’s really hard to estimate the magnitude of the effect. As others have pointed out, so much yellow ragging may provoke a backlash. At any rate, there is quiet movement and policy making toward investing in sustainability, and issues of energy and Carbon are a part of that. Whether this is the beginning of a groundswell is hard to say, but if it takes root, it will be more substantive than the shallow blather of self-important barflies with access to the press.
Here’s some reality for you: The actual perceptions of movers and shakers behind the scenes matter more than the posturing in The Grand Guignol and diversionary circuses.
AxelD wrote: “SecularAnimist, are you listening?”
I’m still listening. And I’m still not hearing anything but rote regurgitation of tired old ExxonMobil-scripted bogus talking points, an absolute lack of any facts whatsoever, and a deranged insistence that right wing propaganda trumps physical reality. Topped off with a frosting of the willful ignorance and smug arrogance that so often go hand in hand in your brand of denialism.
You seem to be a run-of-the-mill pseudo-ideological anti-science denier. Why you think that anyone would be impressed by your vapid nonsense is a mystery.
“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.
”
I like the “offsetting” . How does the CO2 knows it has been “offset” when it absorbs infrared ?
and can you give me the price he pays for “offsetting” its carbon? it would indicate the cost he estimates for the damage produced by CO2. Interesting parameter.
AxelD wrote: “Or do you want to cling to your ‘adjusted’ data sets, your carefully selected papers and your strictly constrained view of ‘the science’ and be totally ignored? It’s up to you, guys.”
Your ignorance of science in general, and of climate science specifically, is profound — as I suppose should be expected from someone who has proclaimed that “evidence doesn’t matter” and that only deliberately dishonest, pseudo-ideological propaganda matters. If you want to live in a delusional world, it’s up to you.
Tim Jones (1127) — WMP? Chops? Anyway, here are some links which may help.
Ag in 2030 (FAO)
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y4252E/y4252e00.HTM
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/series/the_food_chain/index.html
Farming in a Warmer World, to the left. Click on it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/business/worldbusiness/17warm.html?pagewanted=1
The media is fickle. Today their story may be “ohhh, cold winter, IPCC uncertainty, questionable science!!!” – but after the next record maximum, they will change their position with absolutely no sense of irony.
The new story will be “global disaster, hottest year EVAR!!! Plot to discredit IPCC uncovered!”
Media-smart people know better than to pay too much attention. And trying to manipulate the media is not only incredibly unethical, it also rarely works (unless your goal is simply to distract).
Georgi Marinov:
The problem with you producing huge numbers and pretending they mean something is that they have no context. You say “one million square kilometers of solar panels every 20 years”, and I raise you “8 gigatonnes of coal mined every year“.
Big numbers, no context. If you want to talk meaningfully, provide numbers in per capita terms.
It’s funny how few people are prepared to discuss provision of clean energy through a mix of sources. We don’t need that impossibly large amount of solar power. We have wind, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wave…..
And we need them all.
Don Shor says: 2 February 2010 at 12:49 PM
Hey, Don, I see the -newspaper- said that, but do you have the quote where an actual UN person said the same thing?
Completely Fed Up says: 2 February 2010 at 12:53 PM
“But the only way to counter the PR spin machine is to forget about the science completely and merely do as the denialists are doing and brainwash people…”
No, no, no. There is research– real scientific findings not some kind of marketing rubbish– showing how to better reach people with facts, without deceiving them, lots of findings, with plenty of replication. That research output is not being utilized. For instance, in the middle of the incoherent mess being projected as the C02 threat/mitigation message one occasionally hears about C02 being like a “blanket” added to the Earth. This like all analogies is not perfect but it’s not misleading and it has been proven effective by actual research.
Same deal with the ill-conceived– or that is to say not even planned in any way– notion of constantly harping about surface temperatures when the problem here is total caloric content of the ocean-atmosphere system. Emphasis of surface temperature is why Dr. Hansen recently had to produce a necessarily overlong and ultimately narcotic explanation of why the wholly elliptical method we use of conveying global warming is full of confusing excursions. Surface temperature leads automatically to cognitive dissonance. It’s a fundamentally wrong approach to communicating this problem. W
Example: Why do we have to show pictures of glaciers and argue endlessly about the state of particular glaciers? It’s because we brought them up and foolishly use them as a proxy climate measure, yet they’re a tiny part of the total caloric picture and are terribly noisy compared to the bulk energy we’re talking about. Talking about glaciers to the general public is suboptimal, it’s crappy communications, overly complicated and too full of detail.
There are far fewer ways to misconstrue or mislead when talking about total system energy, and that approach is rich with possible useful and reasonably robust analogies.
Research also has shown– over and over again– that apocalyptic messages do indeed “flood” message recipients, our little brains put messages like those in a dungeon and throw away the key, and we then refuse to think about the cause of the projected apocalypse. We move on to something we think we can manage and the cause of the apocalypse being described will not be dealt with.
It’s all very scientific. We can deal with science and use it, we know that.
Re: 1122 AxelD says:
2 February 2010 at 1:36 PM
“…I have tried to show the regulars here how the world has changed, and they’ve been left behind.”
Not quite rapture ready, eh?
“But I’ve said this before, and been shouted down. It’s your choice. Do you want to make a difference? Or do you want to cling to your “adjusted” data sets, your carefully selected papers and your strictly constrained view of “the science” and be totally ignored? It’s up to you, guys.”
Jeeze, where do we sign up? Do we get to camp out?
AxelD, like it or not, there is such a thing as physical reality. You know, reality, that thing that doesn’t stop affecting you when you stop believing in it.
You claim that evidence is irrelevant. I claim that public opinion is irrelevant when it is contradicted by the evidence. In fact, unless humanity starts paying a whole lot more attention to reality, we ourselves will become an irrelevant evolutionary experiment.
None of the leaked emails or nontroversies over citations has weakened the evidence one iota. It will still be there when climate change starts to bite us. I do not expect you will believe it even then. After all, what is the point of arguing with someone to whom evidence is irrelevant?
AxeID – all I see you is posted claims from the media that are incorrect and thinking they are true. Nothing has changed in the science, but some people are making a very good job of changing peoples perception of it. If you think something has been published that changes the nature of the science then lets discuss it but what some ill-informed columnist thinks is irrelevant. You could also use this site to actually study the science and then decide on the theory. Your comment on “adjusted data sets” simply says you are prepared to believe easily refuted stuff published by either liars or the easily led, and not prepared to check whether the claims are true or not.
#1118 Jack Kelly:
Quite to the contrary, I think. He will be seen as an outreach visionary, with perhaps politics mentioned in a footnote. For an aspiring cinematographer (good luck BTW!), I’m surprised that you missed this.
My “proof”: hardly any denialist screed anywhere on a blog fails to mention him, — in spite of him being totally irrelevant to the science. He got under their skins, and it’s his outreach success that did it.
BTW I see the same in the current denialist anti-science shitstorm: motivated by, for the first time in a long time, a real ‘threat’ — remote, granted — of greenhouse legislation being considered in the U.S. It may feel depressing now, but it’s actually a measure of the scientists’ success — finally big-time recognition! ;-)
CFU 1024 wrote:
You might be right. But I hope not. I’m certainly not suggesting that we leave our ethics at the door and argue with “spin”. That’s not going to end well. I’m absolutely saying that we need to present the data and arguments as clearly and as honestly as possible, including the uncertainties. People probably have a greater appetite for complex science than you give them credit for, especially if it’s framed correctly.
I would hazzard a wild guess that perhaps 30% of the population are what might be called “religiously denialist” – i.e. they’ll never budge from their position. They’ll rip out their own eyes before they conceed that the evidence before them demonstrates that AGW is real.
But then there’s a wide chunk of the population who aren’t “religious” about the issue. Take my mother-in-law as an example. She’s not scientifically trained; she’s very intelligent and she’s certainly not ideologically opposed to “green” thinking. But she reads The Times and occasionally her friends leave copies of the Daily Mail kicking around. Hence she’s been exposed to denialist story after denialist story recently. She’s not particularly hot-under-the-colar about these issues. She’s never heard of WUWT, CA, Delingpole etc etc. She’s never written a rabid comment on a blog post. But neither has she ever been presented with a full description of AGW. I firmly believe that she’d be entirely open to listening to an accurate, logically argued hour of TV which built the AGW “story” up in stages and then she’d be able to make her own mind up based on both sides of the argument.
(I do totally accept your point about the truth being highly complex though. I’m not trained in any area relevant to climate science but it’s something I’ve been increasingly interested in. Mostly reading blogs for the past few years and then I finally bit the bullet and started reading an undergraduate text book. And yes – Climate Science feels pretty fractal at the moment – the more I try to zoom in on any topic, the more complexity is revealed (although it doesn’t look identical to the whole so “factal” isn’t a good description, but you get what I mean))