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.
SecularAnimist says: 4 February 2010 at 12:43 PM
“One university study found that by switching from the “standard American diet” to a vegan diet, one can reduce one’s carbon footprint as much as by switching from a gas guzzler to a Prius. And it doesn’t cost $25,000 like the Prius — on the contrary, for most people switching to a vegan diet saves money, and has health benefits as well.”
And let’s not forget, you don’t have to make this an all or nothing deal. Let’s say you want to make a significant impact through a dietary change– you don’t have to eschew all meat, just instead take a look at a month’s consumption and pare it back by a substantial amount. That’s what we’ve done in our household, for a variety of reasons including footprint.
Speaking strictly from a gastronomic standpoint I’ve never been a major meat hound so maybe cutting back is a bit easier, but all the same whether by atavistic impulse or plain inculcation meat is a treat for me. What meat I do now consume I enjoy all the more, just because I’m not gobbling in down so often as to dull its appeal.
Should be needless to say, but if you eat less meat you can afford better product on those occasions you do buy it. Free range grass fed beef is an entirely different and superior flavor experience over corn-stuffed sedentary beef, same level of difference as between industrialized tomatoes and those grown more scrupulously.
> Nope, I’m CERTAIN fossils aren’t used in … steel …
Iron ore (iron oxides) first must be turned into iron–how?
@1293, CTG suggests: “How about: the oil companies stop their PR campaign to discredit the science and the scientists?”
Or, perhaps they should stop their real funding and PR activities, rather than their imaginary ones? Not sure how widely this has been aired on RC, but reporting it as it’s published:
In order to improve scientific understanding of climate change, [ExxonMobil Vice Chairman Lou] Noto said ExxonMobil has funded studies at numerous major research centers, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford Energy Modeling Forum, the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, and …
Ooops! Is that the Hadley Centre taking money from Big Oil? Perhaps you might like to ask them where their allegiances lie?
[Response: Perhaps the distinction escapes you, but funding actual research is very different from funding astroturf ‘institutes’ that only produce noise. The former is fine, the latter, not so much. – gavin]
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. (1246) — I recall seeing a study using an ocean model devised by Canadians. Guess which country to authors were from?
Anyway, there seems to be a daily mixed layer, a seasonally (at least annually) mixed layer and maybe a deeper one down to a pycnocline. Whatever, a multi-decadal mixing time appears to be in vogue (if not actually correct). I’d like to know more about it, but am finding the terminology in physical oceangraphic papers to be a bit inpenitrable. Let me know if you find a decent primer, please.
What the IPCC and peer-reviewed science say about Amazonian forests
http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-the-IPCC-and-peer-reviewed-science-say-about-Amazonian-forests.html
Thursday, 4 February, 2010
The whole brouhaha reduces to:
“The error is that the WWF erroneously omitted the citations supporting the ‘up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive…’ statement. The lesson here is that the IPCC could have avoided this glitch if they’d quoted directly from the original peer-reviewed papers.”
All this over NOTHING!
One can go to jail for filing a false police report. The courts frown on frivolous lawsuits. But accusations of impropriety and fraud are being leveled at scientists through the media with impunity. What is the comeback on individuals pursuing a disinformation campaign, making false claims and deliberately wasting people’s time provoking university investigations, for instance?
Why isn’t the press stepping back to investigate disinformation campaigns and frivolous charges for which they’ve been used to rile up the populace and incite investigations of wrongdoing?
The public is being flimflammed by corporate interests and other interested parties gaming the system, especially the media. Without the press investigating the root of impropriety once the falseness of charges are found out, it is just as guilty of impropriety as the parties foisting false leads on them are.
AxelD, I assume you mean well. But there is much about this that you seem not to understand. The bending of the rules of peer review was not by the scientists supporting AGW, but by those of the denialist camp. A few papers were published that never should have passed initial peer review and their false conclusions were touted by the denial-sphere in an effort to undermine AGW. Those flawed papers failed in the next level of peer review and should not have been included in the IPCC report, but were as a result of political pressure.
1295
The IPCC has undertaken the gargantuan task of summarizing the work of thousands of individual scientists. Yes, a few mistakes have been made — primarily due to the fact that its members are HUMAN. So why should we expect a replacement organization (presumably also composed of humans) to be able to do any better (or even as well)?
Rod B says: 3 February 2010 at 9:51 PM
“Doug Bostrom (1145), I almost hate to say it, but this post is cogent and pretty good.”
I’m speechless, almost, a very rare thing indeed…
Netherlands really angry now: IPCC states 55% below sea level: http://bit.ly/NL55NRC. Well, not yet, but this error is probably self-repairing, at the expected sea level rise.
(They should have said: 26 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level and another 29 percent can suffer when rivers flood)
At cliamteaudit there is a new concern raised about an error elsewhere in the IPCC: Is mistates the percent of the Netherlands that is below sea level.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/03/latest-ipcc-exaggeration/
I responded with this:
I found this claim: “Half of the country [Netherlands] lies below 1 meter above sea level, with an eighth of the country lying below sea level.”. [http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/dutch-sea.htm]
It might account for the IPCC error. If the regions within 1 meter of sea level are considered vulnerable then the numbers used in the IPCC would report make sense and the error not so serious. It is still an error and should be corrected.
“But, in the parallel case, I’d call bending the rules of peer review (for just one instance) a pretty flagrant breaking of science’s moral code,”
Yes it is, but despite Soon’s paper being published over the scientific moral code’s obvious result being to deny its publication as fabrication or damaging to the progress of scientific understanding was done by a publisher who had a political aim to persue: denial of AGW and/or the delay of mitigation actions for same.
However, if you wish to denounce this paper for publishing this farce, feel free to do so.
E&E publishing the pre-shcool postings of G&T also follows the same process, adding into the mix the collusion to attain only friendly reviewers and to refusal to proceed with suggested amendments that were also part of the Soon papers failings.
If you wish to complain there too, feel free.
However, the IPCC is not the right place to put these complaints. Field them to the publishers and journals concerned.
BPL: “China sabotaged Copenhagen.”
Wrong here, B.
China agreed to REAL cuts. But put in a proviso so that the west cannot continue to push all their manufacturing (which is very energy intensive per dollar returned) to China whilst increasing or holding steady on their own economy even though their products are now almost entirely “intellectual” (as in “IP”, horrible though that umbrella term is) and therefore much more efficient in dollar-return-per-watt.
After all, if you want more people with the idea, just tell them.
If you want more people with a vacuum cleaner, you have to make more vacuum cleaners.
Secular Animist: “If it is objectionable to divert food crops to biofuels,”
But even farmstock is a good way of collecting poor land productivity into a handy little container (goat, for preference, they’re much more hardy, sheep for taste, though they’re dumber than a sack of socks).
Biofules also use the part of the foodstock even you vegans wouldn’t eat.
Well, SENSIBLE biofuel sources, US corn is driven by the corn lobby. NOTE: Cane sugar ethanol is dual use: internal combustion engine and internal whoopie-juice. Note also that the quality of cane used for biofuel is much lower, so it’s more the vegetable equivalent of “mechanically recoverable meat” when it’s used for biofuels.
This also ignores weeds like hemp which can actually improve productivity of land (which should be left fallow to recover) and have many uses besides diesel.
Not to mention algae.
Not even vegans eat hemp rope or algae. Smoke other parts, maybe (for medicinal purposes, for those in the US!).
“1288
AxelD says:
4 February 2010 at 1:08 PM
OK, so a foreigne mistook the Washington Post for the Times. Ho ho. And that’s the best you can do”
That was rather the question here of YOU, Axle.
If you can’t even get the Post and Times right, why are you so extremely certain of all the other things you’ve stated?
Why should anyone else believe you’re right when you get such simple things (the name is in the URL, FCS!!) wrong?
Is the best you can do is get things wrong when asked for facts and elsewhere resort to blank statement?
Is that the best you can do?
Septic: “What’s needed is diversity in energy R&D ”
Remember though that commercial entities are not thinking of R&D. That’s a cost overhead. Even G S K and other med ical companies refine or twiddle old pha rmaceu ticals because the R&D there is much lower than research on a new dr ug, and the patent lasts just as long.
This requires, just as nuclear power did for decades after WW2, huge inves tment by a body that MUST consider at least nearly a decade ahead.
Government.
Nuclear power got it to get it to the stage where it’s merely unwanted finan cially.
Proven ROI in renewa bles curr ently out there is much better than nuclear and R&D would make produc tion cheaper, simpler, cleaner, faster or a mix of these and others.
Gilles: “Sorry , fossil fuels ARE kind of fossils, ”
No, they’re a form of hydrocarbon.
Not a fossil.
Of any kind.
A fossil is the replacement of an organic entity by silicate replacements over time.
Sillicates are not a fuel.
And if you make a PV panel out of fossils you won’t get any V out of your P.
“But CHEAP concrete, steel, and transportation are possible – to my knowledge – only with fossil fuels. ”
And your knowledge in this engineering fact is what?
Cheap transportation is possible to my knowledge with non-fossil fuels.
The invention of the Diesel engine predates that of the petrol engine and the original design was created to burn waste vegetable oils.
Petrol was a poisonous contaminant and meant that a land affected by surface seepage was wasted land and avoided, literally, like the plague.
You’re sitting there with your ears plugged and your eyes closed and saying “I can’t see anything other than fossil fuels, so they’re the only answer”.
“I see no ships” for the denialist age.
“PS the FIRST step to produce silicon is SiO2 +C -> Si +CO2. Guess what is “C”. ”
Funnily enough, humans are made up of a lot of C.
Yet we are not fossil fuels.
And a huge lump of C is not a fossil fuel. If you’re fairly lucky, it’s diamond. If even luckier, it’s graphite.
AxelD, David Wright, Gilles: A band, Deadly Ennui. What is it about ’em that keeps their songs on the top of the charts?
@1282 Kevin McKinney.
Yes, the Mann report is very encouraging and concludes there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest Mike Mann conspired or covered up or deleted or fudged or manipulated anything whatsoever. Just as most vaguely sane people would have expected. I hope it gets published far and wide. The denyosphere have attempted to hang, draw and quarter him for finding results in climate science they didn’t like. It’s a disgrace.
Just bracing myself for the cries of “coverup!” though. You know they’re coming….
Pachauri should not resign. All it would do is empower the denialist crusade to attack everyone and everything standing in their way of raping the planet.
UN climate scientist defends record
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9f86ef0-10cb-11df-975e-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
By Amy Kazmin in New Delhi
Published: February 3 2010 15:15 | Last updated: February 4 2010 00:11
Rajendra Pachauri, the embattled chairman of the UN’s Nobel Prize-winning climate change panel, lashed out on Thursday at the flurry of attacks on the panel’s credibility, calling climate change sceptics’ criticism “skulduggery of the worst kind”
Last month, Mr Pachauri was forced to acknowledge his panel’s prediction that the Himalayan glaciers could completely disappear by 2035 if global warming went unchecked was unsubstantiated and an error, a painful admission from a scientist long treated in his native India as the last word on environmental issues.
The pressure on Mr Pachauri has been so great because the damaging revelation came amid a scandal engulfing scientists at the UK’s University of East Anglia. Climate sceptics allege hacked e-mails between scientists that were posted on the internet show some researchers tried to hide data that did not fit with their theories.
Mr Pachauri told the Financial Times that recent assaults on the reputation of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and on his personal probity – were “carefully orchestrated”, with the aim of stalling international action on global warming.
Although he declined to name names, he said he believed the attacks were probably backed by certain companies that feared that tough action to battle global warming would threaten their profitability.
[…]
“There is absolutely nothing but, I would say, nefarious designs behind people trying to attack me with lies, falsehoods, that I have business interests,” Mr Pachauri says. “Teri started raising concerns about climate change before the IPCC came into existence.” With several European heads of state and climate change activists heading to Delhi for a sustainable development summit – organised by Teri – which starts on Friday, Mr Pachauri ruled out any resignation.
“I’m not a quitter,” he said. “Some people would want me to be; some people would probably say that I should go, but I am not going to oblige them.”
#1318
Some possible relevance to the Mann inquiry – McIntyre and McKitrick, part 1: In the Beginning
http://deepclimate.org/2010/02/04/steve-mcintyre-and-ross-mckitrick-part-1-in-the-beginning/
But McIntyre’s thin publication record suggests that his prominence has less to do with any compelling scientific analysis, and much more to do with astute promotion. And, indeed, the McIntyre-McKitrick saga turns out to have the usual supporting cast of anti-science propaganda: two notorious right-wing think tanks (the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the George Marshall Institute) and a deft fossil-fuel company funded PR veteran operating behind the scenes (none other than Tom Harris of APCO Worldwide).
re axelID 1303
The petrosaurs have always funded research on how to increase their profit margin, no suprise.
A new wave of Ponzi Schemes has begun – the Shell Quest CCS proposal
got 850 million from the taxpayer [for a start] …. of course it won’t have any effect until 2050, but it makes for good adverts now on the telly about how ‘green’ they’ve become. It appears the petro industry is satisfied the denial campaign is now self-sustaining and is putting it’s eggs in another basket, the see how much we care approach.
1319 Tim Jones: Here’s part of what you left out of the Pachauri interview in your […] snip:
“They are the same people who deny the link between smoking and cancer,” he said. “They are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder – and I hope they put it on their faces every day.”
Dr. Pachauri should resign, and the sooner the better.
UNREQUESTED AND UNWANTED ADVICE FROM A SKEPTIC:
Trust in climate science is going south and it wasn’t good two months ago before all the recent events.
The science may be correct, but the issue is the public will never take the time and energy to understand it. They cannot intuitively sense it or see it happening, it is an invisible problem. Do not underestimate this. They must be able to trust the science and scientists. Trust must be re-gained.
Here is what I would do if I was on your side:
1. The hardest one. Detach yourselves from the environmental movement. Although they are great cheerleaders and get the message out, they are a liability for trust. Most of the over the top alarmism comes from over eager environmentalists.
2. Speak for yourselves. Make a crystal clear delineation of what the science says, and more important, what is does not say.
3. The IPCC either must be significantly restructured or dropped. They are tainted and are seen as an advocacy organization, and the clown Pachuri at the top is a skeptic’s best friend (please keep him!). Doing nothing is not an option.
4. Do not let over-statements and alarmism go unchallenged. Smack these things down, or volunteer to screen advocacy groups literature. Maybe create a science logo that indicates a brochure has been approved by the official climate group.
5. Give the skeptics all the rope they want, and let them hang themselves. Give them a whole chapter in AR5 and watch them in-fight. You will wonder why you didn’t do this to begin with.
6. Deal with the uncertainty. Tell the public what you don’t know in understandable language and let the chips fall where they may.
7. Stop the scare tactics. They aren’t working. Weekly reports of it’s now much worse than last week are getting repetitive and people just stop listening.
8. Stop the whole denialist and deniers thing. It reeks of elitism and polarizes people. You have to get all these stupid people on your side to get what you want.
9. Make it a 5 or 10 year plan. Public opinion will not move quickly. The 11 year running average of the current temperature will likely flatten out for the next 5 years and you can expect to hear about it.
10. When someone finds a flaw in your data, say “Thank you, we just want to get the answer right”.
11. Publish all the code and data, every time, on the web. This is a very sensitive area of public trust right now.
There you go. I’m quite certain there will be significant disagreement on a lot of this. This is just one person’s opinion and I don’t represent anyone but myself.
> flxible says: 4 February 2010 at 2:26 PM
> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,639224,00.html
> http://globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/world-hunger/land-ownership-and-hunger.html
Thank you. Those are good, important references on what’s being done wrong now, for anyone looking at soil conservation and restoration.
The same business model that stripped the topsoil off of Europe and the Americas is now starting to do the same kind of extractive agriculture in Africa.
Remember this about freshwater economics — it’s strip-mining nature.
Tom S (1323) — Eleven years won’t cut it; thirty or more years is necessary.
#1323
I actually agree with a few (by no means all) of your points.
But I would add this:
#12. Insist that responsible journalists expose the distortions and falsehoods, and their provenance, that constantly emanate from the right-wing press (National Post, WSJ, Fox News etc).
Re:1322 Don Shor says:
4 February 2010 at 6:32 PM
1319 Tim Jones: Here’s part of what you left out of the Pachauri interview in your […] snip:
“They are the same people who deny the link between smoking and cancer,” he said. “They are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder – and I hope they put it on their faces every day.”
Dr. Pachauri should resign, and the sooner the better.
I left 9 of 16 paragraphs out of what I quoted. I should have left that one in what I quoted.
People saying asbestos and smoking are safe are responsible for many millions of horrible deaths. What do you think he should have said about people saying asbestos is safe as talcum powder? What was he trying to convey?
But that’s not the point is it? You want an effective communicator more than an irascible representative of one of the Third World’s most populous and faster industrializing nations maliciously accused of all sorts of wrongdoing leading the way. Who would you suggest?
Tim Jones: “People saying asbestos and smoking are safe are responsible for many millions of horrible deaths. What do you think he should have said about people saying asbestos is safe as talcum powder? What was he trying to convey?”
I don’t think he should have said anything at all about asbestos, cancer, or smoking, or other irrelevancies. He is glib, abrasive, and confrontational, and he has become counterproductive to the purposes of the IPCC. This is not the first time he has publicly mocked those who have called attention to IPCC report errors.
Dr. Pachauri’s implication is that all criticism of the IPCC and of him is coming from profit-motivated corporations. Clearly that is not true. It won’t take you long to find criticism of the IPCC and of Dr. Pachauri from within the climate science community.
“Who would you suggest?”
Somebody who is more diplomatic.
Re:1316
Completely Fed Up says:
4 February 2010 at 4:31 PM
Gilles: “Sorry , fossil fuels ARE kind of fossils, ”
No, they’re a form of hydrocarbon.
Not a fossil.
Of any kind.
A fossil is the replacement of an organic entity by silicate replacements over time.
And then there’s fossil water. Fossils can be composed of carbonates, sulfides and all sorts of other minerals. Limestone is almost entirely composed of fossils.
Some fossils are made out of marble. Some are aragonite. Some fossils are made out of coal. Some are composed of shale. I have a fossil scallop made out of pyrite.
http://www.teriin.org/index.php?option=com_pressrelease
including among much else
“False allegations against Dr R K Pachauri by the Telegraph, UK: A TERI Statement
22 December 2009
The UK-based Sunday Telegraph of December 20, 2009 has made serious, unfounded and false allegations against Dr R K Pachauri about business interests that he has “with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organizations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations”. Just for the record, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes no policy recommendations, and all its reports are in the public domain, widely distributed and disseminated across the world. There is nothing in these reports that could have any proprietary benefit.
The Center for Public Integrity in the US recently brought out a report that more than 770 companies and interest groups hired an estimated 2340 lobbyists to influence federal policies on climate change in the past year, registering an increase of more than 300 % in the number of lobbyists on climate change in just 5 years. Lobbyists in the UK led by long term climate skeptics like Lord Monckton have mounted similar efforts. Dr Pachauri gave a talk at the University of Copenhagen during COP15 at which Lord Monckton who was in the audience, raised some questions, which Dr Pachauri was able to deal with effectively. Lord Monckton also handed over some papers which were neither addressed to Dr Pachauri nor signed by Lord Monckton, but contained many untruths and false allegations, all of which strangely also appeared in the article published by the Sunday Telegraph. ….”
Here’s what deniers are pushing lately on newspaper articles.
“John Christy: Readings taken at the surface show 0.16 or 0.17 degrees of warming per decade—a bit more than the microwave readings. That may not seem such a great difference, but climate models indicate that if greenhouse gases are causing this warming, the upper atmosphere ought to be warming by about 1.2 times that of the surface, not less.”
The upper atmosphere? Stratospheric cooling and tropospheric warming, right?
More, relevant to the links posted above:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/02/04/boverty-blues-p2/#comments
“… African reforestation
As outlined in the Part I, many grasslands on the planet are not the product of natural forces, but were cleared by people and kept as grasslands for livestock grazing by annual or occasional conflagrations. This is global burning on a massive scale as shown in the NASA firemaps presented in Part I. The continent with the most deliberate human burning is Africa. Over 200 million hectares and 2 billion tonnes of dry matter are burned annually in deliberately lit fires. Almost all of these fires are set by livestock herders to stop grasslands becoming forests. By comparison, burning by shifting cultivators for crops covered an area about 10 percent of this size. A recent study in Nature gives an idea of what could happen if the burning stopped. The reforestation potential is massive….”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7069/abs/nature04070.html
A bit more worth quoting from the Barry Brooks site:
“This plot of per capita cattle ratios and undernourishment proportions shows pretty clearly that livestock are not effective in protecting people from hunger. … Niger, Chad, Sudan and such have more cattle than the famously obese hamburger munching US. But still they starve. Does it look like more cattle will fix anything?”
What’s your point, Don? (#1322.)
It’s factually true that some of the climate denialists began their careers as smoking denialists. (Cf. Fred Singer.) Ditto asbestos:
“Alcalde & Fay’s two lead climate lobbyists, Kevin Fay and David Stirpe, worked on regulatory controversies before — they both were previously counsel to the Safe Buildings Alliance, the asbestos lobby.”
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-05-20-climate-change-lobbying/
Dr. Pachauri seems to have a better grasp of the reality facing us than you do.
I see that Dr. Roy Spencer has the January UAH anomaly up on his website. No comment from him; it’s a sizzling .72 C, the highest such since the last El Nino in ’98. (To a quick eyeballing, anyway.)
Of course, it’s still just weather, and of course it’s been expected here at RC for some time now. But there it is.
Just goes to show that cold in Horsham, Moose Jaw, or Xingcheng City–or, indeed, all three at the same time–does not necessarily a cold globe make.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
1304 David B. Benson,
Thanks for noticing my question of 1246. I can not get much response on questions about what actually is in the climate model code. That is discouraging.
All those XBTs thrown in the water over the last 50 years (X standing for expendable) have generally shown seasonal but changes, but somewhat variable year to year. That is why they do it. It tells US ships whether they have a chance against submarines. If the cycle was 20 to 30 years we should have saved a few hundred million over the years and just sampled every ten years or so. This does not prove anything, but it raises the question.
And by the way, we have maybe taken the XBT data too seriously. The point of these was never to get absolute data but the gradient was the issue. Hence when they tried to get the cost of these down I suspect that quality control regarding absolute temperature calibration was a bit loose. And one low bidder to the next could have handled things differently.
Tim Jones says: 4 February 2010 at 8:00 PM
I believe Don was pointing out that even when directed at disingeuous, dogged enemies, essentially saying “f__k off and die” is not reflective of good people skills of the sort possibly needed by the point man for IPCC. The true answer depends on the exact job description. If Pachauri’s only supposed to herd a bunch of researchers, bellicosity might be just the ticket at times while if the description focuses more on facing the general public, not so much.
Dealing with the public in a situation of controversy requires the patience of a saint.
Deep Climate says: 4 February 2010 at 6:02 PM
Very interesting.
Isn’t it astonishing how CA and the like can select what business they conduct openly and what is conducted in private, all the while demanding complete transparency from their victims. Of course, there’s nothing wrong and a whole lot right with transparency in government, transparency in science. Just so, when private enterprise steps into the realm of public policy the same standards should apply.
Incorporation is a deal with the public. For a corporation, personal responsibility on the part of owners is evaded. In exchange, the government gets more or less insight into the interior of the corporation, more than what the public is entitled to in the case of a true private enterprise. The basic terms of this deal should be revisited in light of political activities by corporations unanticipated when the notion of incorporation was created.
Sorry, I have to many contradictors to answer all, but I try to do a synthesis.
I perfectly know that IN PRINCIPLE, you can use carbon from the biomass instead of fossil fuels , electricity to power engine, make silicon, and so on. In a laboratory, everything works. What the reality shows is that it is not possible to do it CHEAPLY AT A VERY LARGE SCALE. The wealth of nations is just that : the amount of people having a lot of energy to do many things , travel far away, have a big house, a car, working in air-conditionned offices instead of growing by hand their food. Ask Mr Gore and Mr Pachauri. All this falls not from the sky.
And you say ; “I don’t see the problem doing all that with zero fossil”. Children don’t see also why they should go to school and not stay in vacation. The problem is just that this life without fossil fuels doesn’t exist anywhere and has never existed. That the facts, look at the curves. The fact that we can gain 10 % here or even 20 % does not change this basic facts, and actually these 10 % or 20 % gains have always been used to INCREASE the amount of wealth produced by fossil fuels, not decreasing their use globally. Again that’s facts, you can choose to see them or to ignore them, but as Huxley said :”Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored”. My vision explains why no policy of carbon reduction has been effective on the global scale. Yours doesn’t. My vision explains why nobody forbids developing countries increasing their fossil fuel use. Yours doesn’t. My vision explains why Mr Gore and Pachauri chose to “offset” their carbon emissions instead of suppressing them (because they couldn’t live without them). Yours doesn’t. My vision explains why the world has entered the worst crisis since 50 years just after the oil production has plateaued. Yours doesn’t. My vision predicts that the global carbon production is about to peak and will never produce more than around 1000 GtC more, and that won’t probably cause more than 2°C in the century, which is most probably easy to cope with. But that the fossil fuel depletion will be the most difficult thing to cope with , and it will be much more rapid (within next years) , strong (impacting the whole global economy) and spectacular than a few degrees more in temperature (that actually nobody would have probably remarked if it weren’t so much mediatized).
AxelD, but that argument is at the core of Gavin’s objection. You should get into it, because that is the problem with your point. Actually, there were attempts to subvert peer review — serious, multiple attempts. Reading the stolen emails would show you that the folks whose emails were stolen were the good guys in this — they were taking their professional duty as members of a community of peers seriously, to try to preserve peer review as a meaningful quality standard.
Perhaps clumsily, perhaps their honest exasperation at the dishonesty they were fighting in what were supposed to be respected colleagues got in the way of their diplomacy; but then, I would call that a feature, not a bug. They don’t teach this kind of warfare in grad school.
I can’t wait to see the Sir Muir Russell inquiry, and the second phase of the Penn State inquiry, rub this in. Yesterday was a good day for science.
Don, how better to get those who *publicly* *state* that asbestos is safe than to have them rub it in their faces in public?
Just like the health minister eating a beefburger and giving one to his daughter when the BSE scare came on, or as DIDN’T happen with the MMR triple vaccine and Tony Blair, such actions show how much you *really* believe it’s fine.
After all, asking that we get them to live and breathe in an asbestos-rich environment is not asking for anything terrible to happen to them according to the person who we’re asking to do this, is it: THEY believe that such an action is completely safe.
So why ask for a sacking of someone who says “you should do something completely safe”?
Tom S: If I were on your side, I would
1. The hardest one. Detach yourselves from the Fossil Fuel industry
2. Speak for yourselves. Make a crystal clear delineation of what the science says, and more important, what is does not say.
3. The NIPCC either must be significantly restructured or dropped. They are tainted and are seen as an advocacy organization, and the clown Plimer at the top is a skeptic’s best friend (please keep him!). Doing nothing is not an option.
4. Do not let over-statements and alarmism go unchallenged. Smack these things down, or volunteer to screen advocacy groups literature.
E.g. stop with the “we’ll cause massive starvation in the third world if we stop fossil fuels” or “this would mean the collapse of the economy and we’d live in the stone ages”
5. Give the skeptics all the rope they want, and let them hang themselves. Sadly, you don’t fight FOR anything, but AGAINST AGW, so therefore they won’t infight despite having multitudinous causations for what’s going on that are often antithetical with each other
6. Deal with the uncertainty. Tell the public what you don’t know in understandable language and let the chips fall where they may.
7. This, of course is a repeat of an earlier one. Were we aiming for a number, or a list of different things?
8. Stop the whole warmist and scam thing. It reeks of elitism and polarizes people. You have to get all these stupid people on your side to get what you want.
9. Make a plan.
10. When someone finds a flaw in your data, say “Thank you, we just want to get the answer right”.
11. Publish all the code and data, every time, on the web. This is a very sensitive area of public trust right now.
That I didn’t have to change anything, yet the list is NEVER aimed at the denialosphere shows your partisanship.
The howls that global warming has stopped happen every winter. It’s predicable.
But climate change isn’t taking a break no matter what pundits in the op-ed pages are fuming about. As the evidence accumulates the picture gets clearer and clearer.
It’s interesting to argue with the seasonal and political push back as if to be horribly worried that science is off message. But the following article demonstrates that this winter will yield an Arctic sea ice surprise come this summer.
Scant Arctic Ice Could Mean Summer “Double Whammy
http://planetark.org/wen/56617
Date: 05-Feb-10
Country: US
Author: Deborah Zabarenko,
Evidence is where we have our finger on the pulse of reality, not on
opinions as to whether Dr. Pachuari looks like a clown or not.
Mike: “If the regions within 1 meter of sea level are considered vulnerable then the numbers used in the IPCC would report make sense and the error not so serious. It is still an error and should be corrected.”
Mike, the word is “vulnerable”.
1m waves in a storm are a practical certainty in a storm level that is common.
How viable is a plot of land that gets unundated by saltwater twice a week? Such land is vulnerable to sea level rise of cms because if you already have a seawall, it was built to cover 50-year events, but that thin long tail of the power law distribution means that a cm change is a large change in the expected re-occurrence time of such an event.
And, just as the levees in NO, when they fail the government get dinged and the price of cleanup huge.
But if they overbuild, the politicians are thrown out for wasting taxpayer money. Or the money becomes available for other projects that are more politically healthy (as happened with Shrub in NO).
So why is this an error?
Land less than 1m below sea level is already underwater unless protected by an expensive seawall. Vulnerable is no longer a problem if you’re looking at it already being underwater, such places called “shoreline” or “beach” or, even, “sea”.
The sea is not vulnerable to flooding.
Fixable: “Or because the [wolves in Africa]landlord insists on his ROI [and your children starve anyway]:”
Indeed.
The people at risk of starvation in Africa aren’t wolves nor are they deer. They have a much bigger brain and can predict consequences.
That other big-brained non-wolf-non-deer humans can come along with a big stick and say “thou SHALL produce 100 head of cattle a year!” is another reason for overproducing. And, unless you can work without legbones, a requirement.
The one with the stick doesn’t live there and doesn’t care if the farmer doesn’t survive the next generation because the land goes south.
Just as the first world doesn’t (as a gestalt entity) if Africas’ resources are abused and run out as long as they get the ROI investors (who also don’t care, or, for most rank-and-file, don’t KNOW and cannot change the process) demand for the next quarter.
They have the money to inure themselves from the consequences of bad decisions today hitting reality tomorrow. As far as they’re concerned, bad decisions today mean not getting as much as possible today, tomorrow can go hang.
“Which, of course, is something that never happened. But that won’t stop AxelD from repeating it, I bet.”
It did happen, the Soon and Ballunias paper and the G&T one for two examples.
However, being papers that “disproved” AGW, they will not be mentioned by Axle, who spins everything else around him.
Complete Fed Up #1278 wrote:
Point taken! I’ve been thinking the same over the past few days. I’m now seriously thinking of making a (low budget) documentary video about the science of AGW, time permitting.
(but if there are any other filmmakers reading this, please don’t feel that my efforts let you off the hook! – the more films we make about the science, the better)
Whilst I do my best to understand the science, I know that my understanding of climate science is patchy (to say the least!). It’d be fantastic if anyone fancied reading through draft scripts and checking the science is solid. If you fancy getting involved in any capacity, please contact me at http://jack-kelly.com/contact
No guarantees this is going to happen, I’ve got a bunch of other commitments I need to finish first. But I seriously hope I’ll be able to make the time to do it.
Thanks,
Jack
“Aren’t you overlooking the official finding, now, that Dr. Jones engaged in unlawful conduct”
Except that isn’t the finding.
The finding is that EVEN IF conduct was broken (where, by the way, is the evidence, all I’ve ever seen from the dittos is the claim), it’s too late to prosecute.
Murder laws have the same problem. Statute of limitations, so it’s considered OK even when something FAR more serious than saying “I wish they’d just STFU. Honestly, I’d prefer deleting all the information I have than to waste my time doing the dirt digging for these panhandlers”. In private. To a friend.
‘course the denialosphere is against Big Government when it comes to interfering with THEIR rights and how they live their lives, or the actions and information in a business, but completely on the side of Big Government and spying on private individuals if they don’t like the person or group.
Leighton, my question is: Have McIntyre been far too concerned with killing the reputation of Mann and not enough with finding the scientific truths?
Feel free to ask them.
My question to you is: why didn’t you ask that to McIntyre?
BPL: Fossil fuels are not needed to generate electricity. They are not needed to fuel transportation. They are not even needed for fertilizer. They ARE needed for plastics and some medications, but that’s orders of magnitude less use than the energy-related ones.”
Gilles: They are needed for cheap steel and concrete,
BPL: Nope. There are electric steel-making plants. I ought to know, having worked at the USX Edgar Thomson 44″ slab mill in Braddock, PA for four years (1988-1992).
Gilles: which are needed for all other forms of electricity generation. They are needed for most long range transportation – you don’t transport goods with small electric cars.
BPL: You’ve never heard of electric locomotives, have you?
Gilles: They are needed for plenty of carbochemistry – not only plastics. They are needed almost everywhere for a stable grid, except some very peculiar places.
BPL: No, they are not. You can do it with renewables and a wide-area smart grid.
Gilles: And even if they can be replaced for some uses, this would mainly increase the price of everything – so make people poorer.
BPL: Wind now costs LESS than either coal or nuclear. Solar is on its way down. Biodiesel is competetive with gasoline.
Gilles: Your arguing without facts. I just consider plain facts.
BPL: The problem is, your “facts” are ones you made up.