Guest commentary from Ben Santer
Part 2 of a series discussing the recent Guardian articles
A recent story by Fred Pearce in the February 9th online edition of the Guardian (“Victory for openness as IPCC climate scientist opens up lab doors”) covers some of the more publicized aspects of the last 14 years of my scientific career. I am glad that Mr. Pearce’s account illuminates some of the non-scientific difficulties I have faced. However, his account also repeats unfounded allegations that I engaged in dubious professional conduct. In a number of instances, Mr Pearce provides links to these allegations, but does not provide a balanced account of the rebuttals to them. Nor does he give links to locations where these rebuttals can be found. I am taking this opportunity to correct Mr. Pearce’s omissions, to reply to the key allegations, and to supply links to more detailed responses.
Another concern relates to Mr. Pearce’s discussion of the “openness” issue mentioned in the title and sub-title of his story. A naïve reader of Mr. Pearce’s article might infer from the sub-title (“Ben Santer had a change of heart about data transparency…”) that my scientific research was not conducted in an open and transparent manner until I experienced “a change of heart”.
This inference would be completely incorrect. As I discuss below, my research into the nature and causes of climate change has always been performed in an open, transparent, and collegial manner. Virtually all of the scientific papers I have published over the course of my career involve multi-institutional teams of scientists with expertise in climate modeling, the development of observational datasets, and climate model evaluation. The model and observational data used in my research is not proprietary – it is freely available to researchers anywhere in the world.
The 1995 IPCC Report: The “scientific cleansing” allegation
Mr. Pearce begins by repeating some of the allegations of misconduct that arose after publication (in 1996) of the Second Assessment Report (SAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These allegations targeted Chapter 8 of the SAR, which dealt with the “Detection of Climate Change, and Attribution of Causes”. The IPCC SAR reached the historic finding that “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”. Information presented in Chapter 8 provided substantial support for this finding.
I served as the Convening Lead Author (CLA) of Chapter 8. There were three principal criticisms of my conduct as CLA. All three allegations are baseless. They have been refuted on many occasions, and in many different fora. All three allegations make an appearance in Mr. Pearce’s story, but there are no links to the detailed responses to these claims.
The first allegation was that I had engaged in “scientific cleansing”. This allegation originated with the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) – a group of businesses “opposing immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.
In May 1996, a document entitled “The IPCC: Institutionalized ‘Scientific Cleansing’?” was widely circulated to the press and politicians. In this document, the Global Climate Coalition claimed that after a key Plenary Meeting of the IPCC in Madrid in November 1995, all scientific uncertainties had been purged from Chapter 8. The GCC’s “scientific cleansing” allegation was soon repeated in an article in Energy Daily (May 22, 1996) and in an editorial in the Washington Times (May 24, 1996). It was also prominently featured in the World Climate Report, a publication edited by Professor Patrick J. Michaels (June 10, 1996).
This “scientific cleansing” claim is categorically untrue. There was no “scientific cleansing”. Roughly 20% of the published version of Chapter 8 specifically addressed uncertainties in scientific studies of the causes of climate change. In discussing the “scientific cleansing” issue, Mr. Pearce claims that many of the caveats in Chapter 8 “did not make it to the summary for policy-makers”. This is incorrect.
The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the IPCC SAR is four-and-a-half pages long. Roughly one page of the SPM discusses results from Chapter 8. The final paragraph of that page deals specifically with uncertainties, and notes that:
“Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because the expected signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there are uncertainties in key factors. These include the magnitude and patterns of long term natural variability and the time-evolving pattern of forcing by, and response to, changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and land surface changes”.
Contrary to Mr. Pearce’s assertion, important caveats did “make it to the summary for policy-makers”. And the “discernible human influence” conclusion of both Chapter 8 and the Summary for Policymakers has been substantiated by many subsequent national and international assessments of climate science.
There were several reasons why Chapter 8 was a target for unfounded “scientific cleansing” allegations. First, the Global Climate Coalitions’s “scientific cleansing” charges were released to the media in May 1996. At that time, Cambridge University Press had not yet published the IPCC Second Assessment Report in the United States. Because of this delay in the Report’s U.S. publication, many U.S. commentators on the “scientific cleansing” claims had not even read Chapter 8 – they only had access to the GCC’s skewed account of the changes made to Chapter 8. Had the Second Assessment Report been readily available in the U.S. in May 1996, it would have been easy for interested parties to verify that Chapter 8 incorporated a fair and balanced discussion of scientific uncertainties.
Second, the “pre-Madrid” version of Chapter 8 was the only chapter in the IPCC Working Group I Second Assessment Report to have both an “Executive Summary” and a “Concluding Summary”. As discussed in the next section, this anomaly was partly due to the fact that the Lead Author team for Chapter 8 was not finalized until April 1994 – months after all other chapters had started work. Because of this delay in getting out of the starting blocks, the Chapter 8 Lead Author team was more concerned with completing the initial drafts of our chapter than with the question of whether all chapters in the Working Group I Report had exactly the same structure.
The reply of the Chapter 8 Lead Authors to the Energy Daily story of May 22, 1996 pointed out this ‘two summary’ redundancy, and noted that:
“After receiving much criticism of this redundancy in October and November 1995, the Convening Lead Author of Chapter 8 decided to remove the concluding summary. About half of the information in the concluding summary was integrated with material in Section 8.6. It did not disappear completely, as the Global Climate Coalition has implied. The lengthy Executive Summary of Chapter 8 addresses the issue of uncertainties in great detail – as does the underlying Chapter itself.”
The removal of the concluding summary made it simple for the Global Climate Coalition to advance their unjustified “scientific cleansing” allegations. They could claim ‘This statement has been deleted’, without mentioning that the scientific issue addressed in the deleted statement was covered elsewhere in the chapter.
This was my first close encounter of the absurd kind.
The 1995 IPCC Report: The “political tampering/corruption of peer-review” allegation
The second allegation is that I was responsible for “political tampering”. I like to call this “the tail wags the dog” allegation. The “tail” here is the summary of the Chapter 8 results in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, and the “dog” is the detailed underlying text of Chapter 8.
In November 1995, 177 government delegates from 96 countries spent three days in Madrid. Their job was to “approve” each word of the four-and-a-half page Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC’s Working Group I Report. This was the report that dealt with the physical science of climate change. The delegates also had the task of “accepting” the 11 underlying science chapters on which the Summary for Policymakers was based. “Acceptance” of the 11 chapters did not require government approval of each word in each chapter.
This was not a meeting of politicians only. A number of the government delegates were climate scientists. Twenty-eight of the Lead Authors of the IPCC Working Group I Report – myself included – were also prominent participants in Madrid. We were there to ensure that the politics did not get ahead of the science, and that the tail did not wag the dog.
Non-governmental organizations – such as the Global Climate Coalition – were also active participants in the Madrid meeting. NGOs had no say in the formal process of approving the Summary for Policymakers. They were, however, allowed to make comments on the SPM and the underlying 11 science chapters during the first day of the Plenary Meeting (November 27, 1996). The Global Climate Coalition dominated the initial plenary discussions.
Most of the plenary discussions at Madrid focused on the portrayal of Chapter 8’s findings in the Summary for Policymakers. Discussions were often difficult and contentious. We wrestled with the exact wording of the “balance of evidence” statement mentioned above. The delegations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait argued for a very weak statement, or for no statement at all. Delegates from many other countries countered that there was strong scientific evidence of pronounced a human effect on climate, and that the bottom-line statement from Chapter 8 should reflect this.
Given the intense interest in Chapter 8, Sir John Houghton (one of the two Co-Chairs of IPCC Working Group I) established an ad hoc group on November 27, 1996. I was a member of this group. Our charge was to review those parts of the draft Summary for Policymakers that dealt with climate change detection and attribution issues. The group was placed under the Chairmanship of Dr. Martin Manning of New Zealand, and included delegates from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Kenya, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Sir John Houghton also invited delegates from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to participate in this ad hoc group. Unfortunately, they did not accept this invitation.
The ad hoc group considered more than just the portions of the Summary for Policymakers that were relevant to Chapter 8. The Dutch delegation asked for a detailed discussion of Chapter 8 itself, and of the full scientific evidence contained in it. This discussion took place on November 28, 1996.
On November 29, 1996, I reported back to the Plenary on the deliberations of the ad hoc group. The Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti delegations – who had not attended any of the discussions of the ad hoc group, and had no first-hand knowledge of what had been discussed by the group – continued to express serious reservations about the scientific basis for the detection and attribution statements in the Summary for Policymakers.
On the final evening of the Madrid Plenary Meeting, debate focused on finding the right word to describe the human effect on global climate. There was broad agreement among the government delegates that – based on the scientific evidence presented in Chapter 8 – some form of qualifying word was necessary. Was the human influence “measurable”? Could it be best described as “appreciable”, “detectable”, or “substantial”? Each of these suggested words had proponents and opponents. How would each word translate into different languages? Would the meaning be the same as in English?
After hours of often rancorous debate, Bert Bolin (who was then the Chairman of the IPCC) finally found the elusive solution. Professor Bolin suggested that the human effect on climate should be described as “discernible”.
Mr. Pearce – who was not present at the Madrid Plenary Meeting – argues that the discussion of human effects on climate in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers “went beyond what was said in the chapter from which the summary was supposedly drawn”. In other words, he suggests that the tail wagged the dog. This is not true. The “pre-Madrid” bottom-line statement from Chapter 8 was “Taken together, these results point towards a human influence on climate”. As I’ve noted above, the final statement agreed upon in Madrid was “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”.
Is “suggests” stronger than “points towards”? I doubt it. Is “The balance of evidence” a more confident phrase than “Taken together”? I don’t think so.
The primary difference between the pre- and post-Madrid statements is that the latter includes the word “discernible”. In my American Heritage College Dictionary, “discernible” is defined as “perceptible, as by vision or the intellect”. In Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, one of the three meanings of the verb “discern” is “to recognize or identify as separate and distinct”. Was the use of “discernible” justified?
The answer is clearly “yes”. Chapter 8 of the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report relied heavily on the evidence from a number of different “fingerprint” studies. This type of research uses rigorous statistical methods to compare observed patterns of climate change with results from climate model simulations. The basic concept of fingerprinting is that each different influence on climate – such as purely natural changes in the Sun’s energy output, or human-caused changes in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases – has a unique signature in climate records. This uniqueness becomes more apparent if one looks beyond changes averaged over the entire globe, and instead exploits the much greater information content available in complex, time-varying patterns of climate change.
Fingerprinting has proved to be an invaluable tool for untangling the complex cause-and-effect relationships in the climate system. The IPCC’s Second Assessment Report in 1995 was able to draw on fingerprint studies from a half-dozen different research groups. Each of these groups had independently shown that they could indeed perceive a fingerprint of human influence in observed temperature records. The signal was beginning to rise out of the noise, and was (using Merriam-Webster’s definition of “discern”) “separate and distinct” from purely natural variations in climate.
Based on these fingerprint results, and based on the other scientific evidence available to us in November 1995, use of the word “discernible” was entirely justified. Its use is certainly justified based on the scientific information available to us in 2010. The “discernible human influence” phrase was approved by all of the 177 delegates from 96 countries present at the Plenary Meeting – even by the Saudi and Kuwaiti delegations. None of the 28 IPCC Lead Authors in attendance at Madrid balked at this phrase, or questioned our finding that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”. The latter statement was cautious and responsible, and entirely consistent with the state of the science. The much more difficult job of trying to quantify the size of human influences on climate would be left to subsequent IPCC assessments.
Mr. Pearce’s remarks suggest that there is some substance to the “political tampering” allegation – that I was somehow coerced to change Chapter 8 in order to “reflect the wording of the political summary”. This is untrue. There was no political distortion of the science. If Mr. Pearce had been present at the Madrid Plenary Meeting, he would have seen how vigorously (and successfully) scientists resisted efforts on the part of a small number of delegates to skew and spin some of the information in the Summary for Policymakers.
The key point here is that the SPM was not a “political summary” – it was an accurate reflection of the science. Had it been otherwise, I would not have agreed to put my name on the Report.
A reader of Mr. Pearce’s article might also gain the mistaken impression that the changes to Chapter 8 were only made in response to comments made by government delegates during the Madrid Plenary Meeting. That is not true. As I’ve mentioned above, changes were also made to address government comments made during the meeting of the ad hoc group formed to discuss Chapter 8.
Furthermore, when I first arrived in Madrid on November 26, 1995, I was handed a stack of government and NGO comments on Chapter 8 that I had not seen previously. I had the responsibility of responding to these comments.
One reason for the delay in receiving comments was that the IPCC had encountered difficulties in finding a Convening Lead Author (CLA) for Chapter 8. To my knowledge, the CLA job had been turned down by at least two other scientists before I received the job offer. The unfortunate consequence of this delay was that, at the time of the Madrid Plenary Meeting, Chapter 8 was less mature and polished than other chapters of the IPCC Working Group I Report. Hence the belated review comments.
The bottom line in this story is that the post-Madrid revisions to Chapter 8 were made for scientific, not political reasons. They were made by me, not by IPCC officials. The changes were in full accord with IPCC rules and procedures (pdf). Mr. Pearce repeats accusations by Fred Seitz that the changes to Chapter 8 were illegal and unauthorized, and that I was guilty of “corruption of the peer-review process”. These allegations are false, as the IPCC has clearly pointed out.
The 1995 IPCC Report: The “research irregularities” allegation
The third major front in the attack on Chapter 8 focused on my personal research. It was a two-pronged attack. First, Professor S. Fred Singer claimed that the IPCC’s “discernible human influence” conclusion was entirely based on two of my own (multi-authored) research papers. Next, Professor Patrick Michaels argued that one of these two papers was seriously flawed, and that irregularities had occurred in the paper’s publication process. Both charges were untrue.
On July 25, 1996, I addressed the first of these allegations in an email to the Lead Authors of the 1995 IPCC Report:
“Chapter 8 references more than 130 scientific papers – not just two. Its bottom-line conclusion that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate” is not solely based on the two Santer et al. papers that Singer alludes to. This conclusion derives from many other published studies on the comparison of modelled and observed patterns of temperature change – for example, papers by Karoly et al. (1994), Mitchell et al. (1995), Hegerl et al. (1995), Karl et al. (1995), Hasselmann et al. (1995), Hansen et al. (1995) and Ramaswamy et al. (1996). It is supported by many studies of global-mean temperature changes, by our physical understanding of the climate system, by our knowledge of human-induced changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere, by information from paleoclimatic studies, and by a wide range of supporting information (sea-level rise, retreat of glaciers, etc.). To allege, as Singer does, that “Chapter 8 is mainly based on two research papers” is just plain wrong”.
In the second prong of the attack, Professor Michaels claimed that a paper my colleagues and I had published in Nature in 1996 had been selective in its use of observational data, and that our finding of a human fingerprint in atmospheric temperature data was not valid if a longer observational record was used. Further, he argued that Nature had been “toyed with” (presumably by me), and coerced into publishing the 1996 Santer et al. Nature paper one week prior to a key United Nations meeting in Geneva.
My colleagues and I immediately addressed the scientific criticism of our Nature paper by Michaels and his colleague Chip Knappenberger. We demonstrated that this criticism was simply wrong. Use of a longer record of atmospheric temperature change strengthened rather than weakened the evidence for a human fingerprint. We published this work in Nature in December 1996. Unfortunately, Mr. Pearce does not provide a link to this publication.
Since 1996, studies by a number of scientists around the world have substantiated the findings of our 1996 Nature paper. Such work has consistently shown clear evidence of a human fingerprint in atmospheric temperature records.
Disappointingly, Professor Michaels persists in repeating his criticism of our paper, without mentioning our published rebuttal or the large body of subsequently published evidence refuting his claims. Michaels’ charge that Nature had been “toyed with” was complete nonsense. As described below, however, this was not the last time I would be falsely accused of having the extraordinary power to force scientific journals to do my bidding.
A Climatology Conspiracy? More “peer-review abuse” accusations
Mr. Pearce also investigates a more recent issue. He implies that I abused the normal peer-review system, and exerted pressure on the editor of the International Journal of Climatology to delay publication of the print version of a paper by Professor David Douglass and colleagues. This is not true.
The Douglass et al. paper was published in December 2007 in the online edition of the International Journal of Climatology. The “et al.” included the same Professor S. Fred Singer who had previously accused me of “scientific cleansing”. It also included Professor John Christy, the primary developer of a satellite-based temperature record which suggests that there has been minimal warming of Earth’s lower atmosphere since 1979. Three alternate versions of the satellite temperature record, produced by different teams of researchers using the same raw satellite measurements, all indicate substantially more warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.
The focus of the Douglass et al. paper was on post-1979 temperature changes in the tropics. The authors devised what they called a “robust statistical test” to compare computer model results with observations. The test was seriously flawed (see Appendix A in Open Letter to the Climate Science Community: Response to A “Climatology Conspiracy?”). When it was applied to the model and observational temperature datasets, the test showed (quite incorrectly) that the model results were significantly different from observations.
As I have noted elsewhere, the Douglass et al. paper immediately attracted considerable media and political attention. One of the paper’s authors claimed that it represented an “inconvenient truth”, and proved that “Nature, not humans, rules the climate”. These statements were absurd. No single study can overturn the very large body of scientific evidence supporting “discernible human influence” findings. Nor does any individual study provide the sole underpinning for the conclusion that human activities are influencing global climate.
Given the extraordinary claims that were being made on the basis of this incorrect paper, my colleagues and I decided that a response was necessary. Although the errors in Douglass et al. were easy to identify, it required a substantial amount of new and original work to repeat the statistical analysis properly.
Our work went far beyond what Douglass et al. had done. We looked at the sensitivity of model-versus-data comparisons to the choice of statistical test, to the test assumptions, to the number of years of record used in the tests, and to errors in the computer model estimates of year-to-year temperature variability. We also examined how the statistical test devised by Douglass et al. performed under controlled conditions, using random data with known statistical properties. From their paper, there is no evidence that Douglass et al. considered any of these important issues before making their highly-publicized claims.
Our analysis clearly showed that tropical temperature changes in observations and climate model simulations were not fundamentally inconsistent – contrary to the claim of Douglass and colleagues. Our research was published on October 10, 2008, in the online edition of the International Journal of Climatology. On November 15, 2008, the Douglass et al. and Santer et al. papers appeared in the same print version of the International Journal of Climatology.
In December 2009, shortly after the public release of the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Professors David Douglass and John Christy accused me of leading a conspiracy to delay publication of the print version of the Douglass et al. paper. This accusation was based on a selective analysis of the stolen emails. It is false.
In Mr. Pearce’s account of this issue, he states that “There is no doubt the (sic) Santer and his colleagues sought to use the power they held to the utmost…” So what are the facts of this matter? What is the “power” Fred Pearce is referring to?
- Fact 1: The only “power” that I had was the power to choose which scientific journal to submit our paper to. I chose the International Journal of Climatology. I did this because the International Journal of Climatology had published (in their online edition) the seriously flawed Douglass et al. paper. I wanted to give the journal the opportunity to set the scientific record straight.
- Fact 2: I had never previously submitted a paper to the International Journal of Climatology. I had never met the editor of the journal (Professor Glenn McGregor). I did not have any correspondence or professional interaction with the editor prior to 2008.
- Fact 3: Prior to submitting our paper, I wrote an email to Dr. Tim Osborn on January 10, 2008. Tim Osborn was on the editorial board of the International Journal of Climatology. I told Dr. Osborn that, before deciding whether we would submit our paper to the International Journal of Climatology, I wanted to have some assurance that our paper would “be regarded as an independent contribution, not as a comment on Douglass et al.” This request was entirely reasonable in view of the substantial amount of new work that we had done. I have described this new work above.
- Fact 4: I did not want to submit our paper to the International Journal of Climatology if there was a possibility that our submission would be regarded as a mere “comment” on Douglass et al. Under this scenario, Douglass et al. would have received the last word. Given the extraordinary claims they had made, I thought it unlikely that their “last word” would have acknowledged the serious statistical error in their original paper. As subsequent events showed, I was right to be concerned – they have not admitted any error in their work.
- Fact 5: As I clearly stated in my email of January 10 to Dr. Tim Osborn, if the International Journal of Climatology agreed to classify our paper as an independent contribution, “Douglass et al. should have the opportunity to respond to our contribution, and we should be given the chance to reply. Any response and reply should be published side-by-side…”
- Fact 6: The decision to hold back the print version of the Douglass et al. paper was not mine. It was the editor’s decision. I had no “power” over the publishing decisions of the International Journal of Climatology.
This whole episode should be filed under the category “No good deed goes unpunished”. My colleagues and I were simply trying to set the scientific record straight. There was no conspiracy to subvert the peer-review process. Unfortunately, conspiracy theories are easy to disseminate. Many are willing to accept these theories at face value. The distribution of facts on complex scientific issues is a slower, more difficult process.
Climate Auditing – Close Encounters with Mr. Steven McIntyre
Ten days after the online publication of our International Journal of Climatology paper, Mr. Steven McIntyre, who runs the “ClimateAudit” blog, requested all of the climate model data we had used in our research. I replied that Mr. McIntyre was welcome to “audit” our calculations, and that all of the primary model data we had employed were archived at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and freely available to any researcher. Over 3,400 scientists around the world currently analyze climate model output from this open database.
My response was insufficient for Mr. McIntyre. He submitted two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for climate model data – not for the freely available raw data, but for the results from intermediate calculations I had performed with the raw data. One FOIA request also asked for two years of my email correspondence related to these climate model data sets.
I had performed these intermediate calculations in order derive weighted-average temperature changes for different layers of the atmosphere. This is standard practice. It is necessary since model temperature data are available at specific heights in the atmosphere, whereas satellite temperature measurements represent an average over a deep layer of the atmosphere. The weighted averages calculated from the climate model data can be directly compared with actual satellite data. The method used for making such intermediate calculations is not a secret. It is published in several different scientific journals.
Unlike Mr. McIntyre, David Douglass and his colleagues (in their International Journal of Climatology paper) had used the freely available raw model data. With these raw datasets, Douglass et al. made intermediate calculations similar to the calculations we had performed. The results of their intermediate calculations were similar to our own intermediate results. The differences between what Douglass and colleagues had done and what my colleagues and I had done was not in the intermediate calculations – it was in the statistical tests each group had used to compare climate models with observations.
The punch-line of this story is that Mr. McIntyre’s Freedom of Information Act requests were completely unnecessary. In my opinion, they were frivolous. Mr. McIntyre already had access to all of the information necessary to check our calculations and our findings.
When I invited Mr. McIntyre to “audit” our entire study, including the intermediate calculations, and told him that all the data necessary to perform such an “audit” were freely available, he expressed moral outrage on his blog. I began to receive threatening emails. Complaints about my “stonewalling” behavior were sent to my superiors at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at the U.S. Department of Energy.
A little over a month after receiving Mr. McIntyre’s Freedom of Information Act requests, I decided to release all of the intermediate calculations I had performed for our International Journal of Climatology paper. I made these datasets available to the entire scientific community. I did this because I wanted to continue with my scientific research. I did not want to spend all of my available time and energy responding to harassment incited by Mr. McIntyre’s blog.
Mr. Pearce does not mention that Mr. McIntyre had no need to file Freedom of Information Act requests, since Mr. McIntyre already had access to all of the raw climate model data we had used in our study (and to the methods we had used for performing intermediate calculations). Nor does Mr. Pearce mention the curious asymmetry in Mr. McIntyre’s “auditing”. To my knowledge, Mr. McIntyre – who purports to have considerable statistical expertise – has failed to “audit” the Douglass et al. paper, which contained serious statistical errors.
As the “Climategate” emails clearly show, there is a pattern of behavior here. My encounter with Mr. McIntyre’s use of FOIA requests for “audit” purposes is not an isolated event. In my opinion, Mr. McIntyre’s FOIA requests serve the purpose of initiating fishing expeditions, and are not being used for true scientific discovery.
Mr. McIntyre’s own words do not present a picture of a man engaged in purely dispassionate and objective scientific inquiry:
“But if Santer wants to try this kind of stunt, as I’ve said above, I’ve submitted FOI requests and we’ll see what they turn up. We’ll see what the journal policies require. I’ll also see what DOE and PCDMI administrators have to say. We’ll see if any of Santer’s buddies are obligated to produce the data. We’ll see if Santer ever sent any of the data to his buddies”
(Steven McIntyre; posting on his ClimateAudit blog; Nov. 21, 2008).
My research is subject to rigorous scrutiny. Mr. McIntyre’s blogging is not. He can issue FOIA requests at will. He is the master of his domain – the supreme, unchallenged ruler of the “ClimateAudit” universe. He is not a climate scientist, but he has the power to single-handedly destroy the reputations of exceptional men and women who have devoted their entire careers to the pursuit of climate science. Mr. McIntyre’s unchecked, extraordinary power is the real story of “Climategate”. I hope that someone has the courage to tell this story.
Benjamin D. Santer
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow
San Ramon, California
February 22, 2010*
*These remarks reflect the personal opinions of Benjamin D. Santer. They do not reflect the official views of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the U.S. Department of Energy. In preparing this document, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Tom Wigley, Myles Allen, Kristin Aydt, Graham Cogley, Peter Gleckler, Leo Haimberger, Gabi Hegerl, John Lanzante, Mike MacCracken, Gavin Schmidt, Steve Sherwood, Susan Solomon, Karl Taylor, Simon Tett, and Peter Thorne.
“696
doubting Thomas says:
2 March 2010 at 10:06 AM
Energy is indeed energy, but the problem is economy of cost. ”
Then why, when wind power is cheaper than almost all other energy sources more widely used, is it a problem for renewables?
“695
Paul Levy says:
2 March 2010 at 9:43 AM
#692 BPL. There are huge concerns about getting fuels from crops.”
How about fuel from waste biomass?
No, the issue is not HOW the Emails were obtained, which is unproven, but what they reveal.
which is also unproven.
doubting Thomas asks: “What am I missing here?”
Well, actually rather a lot. First, I have no problem releasing data. Great! Knock yourselve’s out. Code is entirely another question. Science progresses by replication of results, not by simple repetition. Scientific programming is entirely unlike commercial software. Much of the code is intended for a single use and then shelved. You don’t devote a lot of effort to commenting, readability or even elegance for such a purpose. The code could contain bugs that are unimportant for the analysis done with the code, but which are important when applied outside previous use. In my opinion, it much better to develop the analysis oneself. Not only will it not contain legacy errors, the new analysis may even be an improvement on the old. I see nothing to gain from making scientific code widely available unless it is part of a well verified library (e.g. GEANT 4). There is a reason why science has always stressed INDEPENDENT verification.
Even wrt data, using someone else’s data is risky. A dataset not compiled from original sources may have errors that were introduced in compilation. The Himmalayan glacier error in the WG2 summary is an example.
WRT fusion, one thing you are missing is the 14 MeV neutrons, but then everybody misses those! These require very heavy shielding and over time, that shielding is going to become VERY radioactive. Moreover, that 14 MeV is lost–and that is a lot of the energy released in a deuterium-tritium fusion. There is also the difficulty of “cracking the fusion nut”. It is not a trivial technical problem, and may not even be soluble in a practical way. It is what caused one wag to quip, “Fusion is the energy source of the future…and it always will be.” So while I agree that it is worth pursuing, it would be a mistake to count on it.
Fortunately, the fusion nut has been cracked, and the generator is ~150 million km away. That energy is available for the taking and is sustainable.
A bit OT I know, but as the subject of stratospheric cooling has come up I’m reminded of another topic which puzzles me slightly – the lifetime in the atmosphere of CO2. I believe the IPCC has this as 100 years, which the “skeptics” say is a vast exaggeration. I think they may be talking about two slightly different things. Can anyone point me to a good link or provide a very basic explanation?
@699 JBowers, those comments were interesting but I wonder how many were from publicly employed scientists. The proposal re making data and workings freely, publicly and immediately available has implications way beyond climate science. At the UK HoC committee hearings yesterday, the Chief Scientist indicated he’d be looking into the situation (from what I recall). If all publicly funded scientists in the UK are required to post on the internet all their data, codes, modelling algorithms etc, they’ll most probably have to tidy up their act quick smart.
It’s one thing for a scientific body to call for climate scientists to do this, but in the UK at least, it looks as if this will set a precedent for all publicly funded scientists – and I’m not sure if every other field of science would be ready, willing and able to be quite so accommodating.
Interesting article on the question of why people do or do not agree with consesus on science
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/23/everyone-who-knows-what-they-a
actual Yale Law school article
http://www.culturalcognition.net/browse-papers/cultural-cognition-of-scientific-consensus.html
The Climate Summit http://www.theclimatesummit.org/
needs photographic images of various examples of the
impact of global warming and/or climate change
as well as images of places which will be impacted.
We need leads for:
Madagascar has been recommended by one of us here as
instructional regarding the loss of elevation due to
deforestation I believe.
The destruction of rain forests and boreal forests world
wide impact climate change in a big way. Pictures of the
Amazon and palm tree plantations in Indonesia would
be good…
Glaciers in South America are receding rapidly and pictures
before and after will have impact. As will pictures of those
in Alaska, Greenland, Europe, the Himalayas, and Antarctica…
Pictures of coal fired power plants and traffic jams interspersed
with these pictures could have dramatic effect. Clear cut forests
and desertification due to agriculture …
Alberta tar sands mining pictures would depict how we just
won’t stop. Pictures of drilling rigs in the far north would
indicate how Exxon and others want to drill in the Arctic
as sea ice recedes…
Melting tundra and permafrost, buildings tumbling into
sinkholes, methane bubbling out of thaw lakes in Siberia,
drunken trees, pine bark beetle infestations, eroding coastal
Eskimo and other endemic native village lands all are
phenomena we need pictures of.
Pictures of the aftermath of violent weather would be
instructive. Floods and snowfall potentially derived by way of
evaporation of warming seas.
Anyone having ideas or examples of other effects of current
warming are welcome to submit suggestions. Links and photos
as well as permission to use photos would be helpful.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
If you would like to submit material or leads, or have positive
suggestions, please contact me here or via my websites or
The Climate Summit website, re: Michael Bailey.
The idea is to build galleries and a slideshow of compelling
and beautiful photography to illustrate the site with.
Adelie Penguin
http://earthlightimagery.com/datalinks/_ANT1918_W3n.jpg
Sea Ice in the Weddell Sea Near Paulet Island, Antarctica
01-20-09
(please respect the copyright)
Tom (696),
Breakeven fusion power is only five to ten years away.
And it has been for the past sixty years.
Ron (698),
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.
See also:
Battisti, D.S., and R.L. Naylor 2009. “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat.” Science 323, 240-244.
> IOP
> “Membership is for everyone interested in physics and its future”
membership rates page:
http://www.iop.org/Membership/Membership%20Rates/page_31407.html
Free for ‘youth’ and ‘over 70’ and many other variations
@706 Sou
Well, I dug around on the internet looking at both private and public scientific organisations, trying to find out what their policies are on data archiving for data, etc, used for published articles and other work. I couldn’t find any who require data to be kept for longer than ten years.
AFAIK (and I’m no scientist) if a paper is going to be challenged or debunked, it usually happens well within ten years. The only way I can imagine permanent archiving working would be for the data to be copied to a central government archive funded by the taxpayer. Retrieval would then come under the remit of the IOC or Ministry of Justice to distribute to those making FoIA requests.
It’s too much for small and tightly funded individuals to take on, especially if the scientific subject becomes a political hot potato. In other words, the politicians need to put the taxpayer’s money where their mouths are.
@711 Hank Roberts
I’m neither a sprouter-of-bum-fluff nor a silver surfer. I’d rather put the cash towards a subscription to Nature or beer ;)
On a different note…I am slightly bewildered why Fred Pearce has turned so fervently to the dark side.
So on a whim I just searched in the hacked UEA emails for his name.
He appears 3 times in other people’s emails. None of the three are particularly aggresive, but they are not flattering either. They are all taking in mild mannered terms about errors in pieces he wrote in the New Scientist.
Maybe he is personally offended? Would seem daft, but it is a small possibility.
Tim Jones @ 708, I have a number of photos that might fit your bill; many are public domain (though not all.)
They illustrate the following web reviews:
http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Long-Thaw-A-Review
http://hubpages.com/hub/Climate-Cover-Up-A-Review
http://hubpages.com/hub/Climate-change-resources–Fixing-Climate–A-review
You can use the slideshow view feature to quickly view all images, then zero in on any of interest in the regular page view, which contains credits (in most cases.) Contact me for information on specific photos, if you need to.
#705 Andrew Adams: it’s actually a very large difference. It’s the difference between what happens to an individual CO2 molecule, and the time scale on which a disturbance in the CO2 atmospheric concentration is restored.
You see, there is a very large natural circulation of carbon in and out of the atmosphere, through the ocean and biosphere. This cycle used to be in equilibrium, i.e., the amount of carbon stored in these various reservoirs was constant.
The emission of CO2 by burning fossil fuels disturbs this. The amount of carbon involved is much, much smaller, but it disturbs the equilibrium. That’s how CO2 in the atmosphere — and in reservoirs communicating with the atmosphere — starts building up.
The time scale of restoration of this equilibrium is much larger than the residence time of individual molecules.
A metaphor: it’s the difference between the time scale on which to restore a loss-making company to profitability, and the time it takes for a received banknote to get spent again. The former is the interesting time scale.
> Andrew Adams
> atmospheric lifetime of CO2?
Pasting your question into Google Schlar search (since 2008):
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=lifetime+in+the+atmosphere+of+CO2%3F&as_sdt=2001&as_ylo=2008&as_vis=1
Take a look and pick some to read yourself.
I’d go with this from the first page of results, to start, but that’s because I recognize several of the authors’ names, YMMV:
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Vol. 37: 117-134 (Volume publication date May 2009)
(doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100206)
First published online as a Review in Advance on January 26, 2009
Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100206
Andrew, Martin, re: atmospheric residence time of CO2,
I’ve suggested a juggling analogy to show why denier arguments about the atmospheric residence time of CO2 are misleading. Briefly, just like the individual CO2 molecule will get taken up by ocean or vegetation in just a few years, a juggler will toss a ball and catch it again in a second. But that doesn’t change the fact that the more balls you juggle – or the more carbon you put into the carbon cycle – the more you’ll have in the air at any time.
Gavin apparently has the perfect skill set for communicating this…
Andrew adams @ 705: “the lifetime in the atmosphere of CO2”?
The rule-of-thumb that I use after reading the references below is that about a third remains at 100 years, 25% at 1000 years and 10% at 100,000 years. (Bear in mind that what “remains” is not the actual molecules released, but their influence on atmospheric concentration.)
Archer, D., Fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time. Journal of Geophysical Research, 2005. 110.
Archer, D. and V. Brovkin, The millennial atmospheric lifetime of anthropogenic CO2. Climatic Change, 2008. 90(3): p. 283-297.
Archer, D., The Long Thaw. 2009, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Montenegro, A., et al., Long term fate of anthropogenic carbon. Geophysical Research Letters, 2007. 34.
Paul Levy wrote: “Setting aside large areas of arable land to produce crops for fuel and not food will inevitably put upwards pressure on food prices. Obviously, the people who will suffer first in that are the world’s poor … Then there’s also the problem of strain on water resources.”
The overwhelming majority of the vast quantities of industrial factory-farmed corn and soybeans grown in the USA is fed to industrial factory-farmed animals, to produce cheap meat, with a resulting reduction in the protein content for human consumption of up to 90 percent.
A United Nations study estimated that livestock production is responsible for nearly 20 percent of global GHG emissions, comparable to the transport sector. A more recent study published by WorldWatch Institute found that livestock production is responsible for more than half of global GHG emissions.
Either way, animal agriculture is a major contributor to AGW, and yet it is rarely discussed compared to the electricity generation or transport sectors.
A large scale switch to vegetarian diets would not only help to reduce GHG emissions but would also free up a huge amount of crops for fuel … or to feed hungry humans … or both.
Unfortunately, meat production worldwide — typically based on the energy and pollution intensive, US-style industrial factory-farming model — is growing, and with it increased GHG emissions and increased levels of the degenerative diseases associated with diets high in animal products.
1) Apologies for not including in my submission the need for “cleaning the dataset” via thowing out outiers based on statistical analysis, smoothing, and all the other sound reasons for data “preparation” prior to input to the algorithms containing current theory and analysis of results, but I assumed the audience here (indeed, any scientist) knew that. My bad. Also, I know algorithms can also contain inconsequential and/or non-leveraging errors (IMHO due to poor formulation). Still, the code(s) should be also “clean and groomed”, if one expects to convince others to agree with you and not have them wasting their time pursuing “blind alleys” in the code (if and where they exist). Seems like entirely re-typing the paper before turning it into the prof, I know, but it must be done.
2) Similarly, I already knew that a Fusion reactor itself becomes radioactive over the 30 years time it is in service, but I deemed it not worth mentioning, because a) it is relatively inconsequential vis-a-vis the current volume of production of very highly radio-active spent fuels (indeed, we could throw the reactors into the same pit as the current waste, should we eventually come to concensus on where that “pit” should be…I would argue lauching the entire “nuclear pile” (pun intended) into the Sun), and b) again, I assumed this audience already knew that as well. My bad again.
Fusion is NOT all that far away, as we can see by the sequence of experiments over the last 30 years rapidly approaching the all-sought “self sustaining ignition” temperatures and time. Please take the time to see these plots of the accumulated experimental results thus far, available from multiple sources. Granted, that point may be a “black hole of half-steps”, but it doesn’t appear to be yet (despite the log scales on both axes). We should pursue it until we really see such diminishing returns before we throw in the towel. Fusion, like solar and other alternative energies, has been clearly underfunded versus its potential benefit – even versus the alternative energies we promote that in some cases are near commercial viability (i.e. Wind+Batteries). Finally, the Sun is not what I mean by “cracking the fusion nut.” This should be self-evident, but to clarify, the sun is not controlled by man, whereas Fusion can be.
PS – I am not a fusion scientist/engineer, just a scientist/engineer who has followed fusion and climate science for years. (Please, no ad-hominems (and jokes too!) about being an engineer)
Kindest Regards,
@Ray (704)
I forgot to mention that I also know hand-calulations should be performed (usually this is a requirement to write the code in the first place) and that the computed results should be confirmed against the hand calculations, preferably multiple iterations using different inputs to at least attempt to identify any errors in the code forumlation.
Finally, is climate science any more a trivial problem than cracking the Fusion nut? Not sure which is tougher, but that certainly doesn’t stop a scientist!
Thanks for your thoughtful feedback!
> 705, 716
Andrew, that’s the right answer, from a real scientist (Martin Vermeer)
He’s pointing out how the way the question is phrased can illuminate — or obscure — what’s really happening.
To try an analogy
Normal rainfall will soak in to the ground about as fast as it happens.
Before we started burning fossil fuel, CO2 cycled steadily.
Double the rainfall and cause a flood, and it may take days to go down.
When we started burning fossil fuel, cycling sped up, and about half the _extra_ CO2 we’ve been adding has been taken back out of the atmosphere; the rest accumulates.
This is why the question should refer to CO2 from fossil fuel — not that the molecule is handled differently but because that’s the _excess_ CO2.
There are hundred of scientific fields and thousands of journals. And yet I’ve never heard of scientists in general facing a limitless gauntlet of self-appointed auditors. Do endocrinologists, for example, deal with barrages of FOI requests?
Since science is a social construction and consensus reality is negotiable, I presume “real climate” is just an in house joke, the current orbit of Venus was caused by increasing CO2 levels, and rising CO2 levels will move the earth’s orbit closer to the sun too, thereby warming the globe?
Josie says: 2 March 2010 at 1:44 PM
“Maybe he is personally offended? Would seem daft, but it is a small possibility.”
Sort of like when it turns out one’s new lover is overall an excellent driver but is nonetheless given to occasionally shouting at other motorists? Or, despite all their excellent qualities, is still flatulent from time to time?
A let down, but most folks presumably would not end the relationship over such things unless they consigned themselves to permanent loneliness.
A bit OT, but some are fighting back.
The ONLY reason CRU received FOI requests was because they refused to release their data, or at least confirm which stations they used. The ONLY reason they became what could be called a barage is because all earlier requests were ignored. No hiding the data = no FOIs. Simple.
Thanks to everyone for your answers. The basic explanations are quite clear but I will do some of the reading as well.
I will then be able to clearly and concisely explain it to someone who will completely ignore me and carry on spouting the same nonsense anyway. Just like I have been doing today re the difference between no warming and warming which is not statistically significant.
I was a student member of the IOP when I lived in the UK and am now a member of the Australian IOP. I wrote to the (UK) IOP to complain about their intemperate statement. the basis of my complaint was:
1) It [the statement] seemed to be assuming guilt
2) It was put together up by the energy group who have no particular expertise in the climate area and despite this seem somewhat sympathetic to the skeptic viewpoint.
3) Within the membership of IOP there must surely be a few climate scientists/atmospheric physicists who could have given a more balanced perspective and why didn’t they ask them to contribute to a statement?
The statement seems to be written as if the UEA were denying access to info to genuine ‘good faith’ scientists who would be engaging with them and with the data through the scientific literature, whereas the reality was (to put it mildly) rather different!
doubting Thomas opines:
If we cracked the Fission nut for ~US$40B (Y2K$) in 1936-45, put a man on the Moon for ~$141B in 1960-69, and spend ~$17B/yr now on the shuttle/ISS programs, we can surely solve the Fusion problem in 10 years with dedicated government funding.
and then asks for logical arguments.
The problem with this is that you haven’t presented any logic to argue with.
What you have here is opinion – you feel strongly that with sufficient funding we could harness fusion in 10 years.
Perhaps it’s true. Perhaps electrostatic containment would work. I’m not opposed to research funds for it, but to bet our future on it seems silly.
Fusion is not the only nuclear option – various fission reactor designs have been available for years and could conceivably solve all the problems you expect fusion could solve. The fourth generation designs have much higher inherent safety and a fuel cycle that burns fuel left over from current light water reactors. And there’s a much greater likelihood of fission reactors being viable than fusion, based on decades of experience with fission.
The problem with both of these is build out time. In order to bring either online it’s going to take 10 years of research (best case) followed by some years (10 ?) of product design to come up with something that can be replicated out everywhere, followed by 10 years of deployment. In the 30 years that takes we’ll build a whole pile of new coal plants that the owners will want an ROI on, and we’ll be replacing virtually all of the current light-water nukes in service today. And we’ll have business-as-usual emissions for 30 years.
30 years out is way too late. As an alternative we could build windmills and solar thermal plants and research electrical storage and have a large part of the buildout done before the research on new nukes (fusion or fission) is done.
You’re also taking a huge gamble that new nukes will be economically attractive. While they seem to feel that way over at bravenewclimate, the actual nukes being constructed today seem to be way late and way over budget. Are the current contractors just dumb? Can’t settle on a standard design? Don’t remember how to build a nuclear reactor? Whatever the cause it’s clear that it’s a high-risk solution to solving the climate problem.
Re: 715 Kevin McKinney says: 2 March 2010 at 1:47 PM
“Tim Jones @ 708, I have a number of photos that might fit your bill; many are public domain (though not all.)”
Thank you! This is excellent stuff and will be useful indeed.
Any climate scientist, or anyone else who has a favorite photo or two, or a collection of published or unpublished images relating to what I suggested in # 708, who might like to further contribute to the effort, your time would be appreciated – most likely as a credit on the website. You can send a jpg, a tiff whatever electronically. If you send an old photo I’ll scan it and get it back to you. (You can just take a high res picture of the picture if you hold the camera perpendicular and keep the original.)
You can go to the website The Climate Summit and see how else you can contribute ideas and suggestions.
I got into this by way of solid friends who introduced me as a photo contributor. I’ve taken on to help Michael collect what his people need to get the site up with the good stuff. What I get is a credit on my pix. Many of us are volunteers.
If you are thinking of copyright protection for images and how to do this, for those wishing to do so, we have a handle on this. If you’re concerned about it, as I am, we’ll work out copyright protection for your images without expense on your part.
These are the positive steps in addition to the outright science that keep the effort alive and well. Authentic is a key word here. Sites like these with a positive message to get this going while attenuating any suffering associated with culture change are what all of us need to support.
This is the PR you were talking about.
It’s happening.
We need your help.
The Institute of Physics backs off.
The Institute of Physics recently submitted a response to a House of Commons Science and Technology Committee call for evidence in relation to its inquiry into the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
The Institute’s statement, which has been published both on the Institute’s website and the Committee’s, has been interpreted by some individuals to imply that it does not support the scientific evidence that the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is contributing to global warming.
That is not the case. The Institute’s position on climate change is clear: the basic science is well enough understood to be sure that our climate is changing – and that we need to take action now to mitigate that change.
More information about IOP’s views
The Institute’s response to the Committee inquiry was approved by its Science Board, a formal committee of the Institute with delegated authority from its trustees to oversee its policy work.
It reflected our belief that the open exchange of data, procedures and materials is fundamental to the scientific process. From the information already in the public domain it appears that these principles have been put at risk in the present case, and that this has undermined the trust that is placed in the scientific process.
These comments, focused on the scientific process, should not be interpreted to mean that the Institute believes that the science itself is flawed.
Jeffrey @ 722: Right. And after The Lancet famously retracted (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/02/lancet_wakefield_autism_mmr_au.html) the paper it published erroneously linking vaccines and the onset of autism, we didn’t see headlines shouting “Medical Research Disproven, Once and For All!”
BPL “I don’t think you’ve ever seriously researched any of this. I have. You’re wrong. We depend on fossil fuels now, but there is no reason at all why we have to. There is no natural law that says wealthy civilizations can only run on fossil fuel. Energy is energy.”
I did. And I saw that all what you mentioned has only been developed on a very small, experimental scale, sometimes in very specific locations (for instance, thermal solar power requires hot sunny countries close to large cities. Works in California, Spain, or Australia, but not much elsewhere), and that no country has ever based its industrial development on them, and is any close to use them on a large scale. Furthermore, you persistently forget that they all require cheap steel,glass, transportation, electric wires – but they are unable to produce them.
You are simply wrong in saying “energy is energy”. Agricultural civilizations had plenty of solar energy and biomass, much more than we use now. But they couldn’t use it on the scale we use fossil fuels.
So basically you claim that the mankind’s prosperity is very dependent on the average temperature of the globe, and quite insensitive to the availability of the fossil fuels, whereas I think just the opposite. In principle it should be a very simple matter to decide which one of these two assertion is right or wrong. I can find a number of justifications of mine. For instance
* GDP is obviously much more correlated with fossil fuel consumption , for a given average temperature of the country, than with (minus) temperature, for a give fossil fuel consumption.
* If you were true, it shouldn’t be a problem to forbid quickly the use of fossil fuels, replacing them with all the clean and convenient energies you’re advocating. It’s obviously not the case, and nobody really asks that.
*predicability : I’m ready to bet with you than within 20 years, the average temperature won’t have increased by more than 0.2 °C, but that oil production will have fallen by more than 20 %. Obviously if you were right, this shouldn’t be a big deal for the mankind, but I predict also that the world will have experienced the worst economic crisis in its history (worse than the current one, I mean).
Conversely, if you think that I’m saying “n’importe quoi”, it should be easy for you to find a bet that you’re sure I will loose ! I’m waiting for your proposals ;).
Tim, my wife has some nice photos of some badass erosion in Madagascar. Email me.
Oakwood@728, Simple, indeed. The goal was to stop research, pure and simple–not the actions of someone who wants to know the truth.
And, funny thing, said individual has done bupkes with any of the gigabytes of data already available. He has only a single peer-reviewed publication to his name.
Sounds to me like the only “fraud” that occurred was in his attestation in the FOI that he would use the data for purposes of “academic research”. Riiiiight!
Tim Jones, you might find my collection of stories and images useful. Click in the Label Cloud to filter by specific keywords, such as “coastal erosion”.
doubting Thomas,
I to have long followed the progress of fusion. And I would say that the current efforts to “break even” are a whole helluva long way from a viable energy system–let alone, one that could be deployed globally on a short timescale. By all means we should pursue it, but it would be a big mistake to depend on it. There is no silver bullet to mitigating climate change and achieving sustainable energy economy. This will be the work of the next generation…or that generation will be the last to enjoy the benefits of civilization.
BTW, I made a pilgrimage to the tomb of your namesake in Chennai (then Mysore) India. The lore says that Thomas as a penance for his doubt resolved to go to the furthest ends of the civilized world to proclaim the gospel. I’ve always loved the fact that when the Portuguese arrived to bring Xtianity to India, they found churches that had been practicing it about 500 years longer than the Portuguese! If you find yourself in Chennai, the Cathedral is along the beach. Nothing special. You’d never know Thomas was buried there if you didn’t know it already. I thought it was a very appropriate pilgrimage for an agnostic physicist.
Regarding Gavin’s response to #107
[Response: Again, a complete strawman. Perhaps you’d care to point to anything any of us have ever published where we said this was true and above criticism? Just one. And if you want to come back and say ‘well I didn’t really mean it’, don’t bother. – gavin]
This is a direct quote from “The IPCC Fourth Assessment SPM”, dated 2 February 2007
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/02/the-ipcc-fourth-assessment-summary-for-policy-makers/
Key results [of AR4] include the simulations for the 20th Century by the latest state-of-the-art climate models which demonstrate that recent trends cannot be explained without including human-related increases in greenhouse gases, and consistent evidence for ocean heating, sea ice melting, glacier melting and ecosystem shifts. This makes the projections of larger continued changes ‘in the pipeline’ (particularly under “business as usual” scenarios) essentially indisputable.
“demonstrate” and “indisputable” sound to me words of the kind referred to by Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
the RealClimate group and their allies in quite a few other countries deserve criticim less for their science than for how they have ‘marketed’ and ‘branded’ their research outputs as true and above criticism
Re: #705 .
the reason for your puzzle is that you are using a model for decay which involves a single lifetime, in mathematical terms this involves an exponential function which is written as e raised to a power or (easier to type) as :
n = N exp (t/T)
(Hold on if you don’t follow) where T is often just called ‘the lifetime’. N is just the value of n at the ‘beginning’ i.e. when the clock records a time t =0.
But this model for decay is often not good enough.,
It might work for the decay of radioactivity after a nuclear explosion , provided you consider one element (strictly radio-isotope) like radioactive iodine. . But what if the explosion has also liberated radioactive caesium and strontium? Your mental model is no longer good enough. You would need three different life-times.
The same is true for CO2 which is removed by several distinct processes. As someone has written above a decent model will involve the sum of say four exponential functions, with four different starting values (like N ) and four different lifetimes (like T). (Hansen in one of his papers in 2007 gave a reference).
Sorry if this is too elementary or the opposite but I don’t know you.
Re: #699 and #730
Good work. Most important comments in this thread after the lead article.
CM
I like your juggling analogy.
It made me wonder backwards about atmospheric dynamics. Probably for most jugglers, pushing more and more balls into the system would eventually require going from a cascade to a shower to more easily manage the balls and longer times spent aloft.
Not trying to break the analogy, just wondering if putting more carbon and/or energy into the atmosphere necessitates a change in functions at some point to capture the effects.
And are bad shoulder joints like environmental breakdown…
739 comments and mostly smart people defending good science against random nonsense.
Science never really had a chance. Human limitation is too dense a form of matter to easily manage.
In 100 years those limitations might be the norm just as they were in the Middle Ages. I’m glad I won’t be around to lament the loss of all that was learned before limitation won. Though on the bright side, the universe will be a mystery again and ready for a new round of explorers. I wish them luck, and hope they have better humans to work with than we did. Perhaps the third time really will be the charm.
cougar
David Miller (731) waxes:
“Fusion is not the only nuclear option”
Nowhere in my comments above have I suggested we pursue this as an only option, nor that we “hang our hat” on it. Also, I would assume most on this thread and in this community would cringe at the idea of new fission units creating yet more volumes of nuclear waste – which has remained accumulating for the last 50 years in neutron absorbing “swimming pools”, awaiting (in vain so far) disposal options that have not been blocked on scientific or political grounds, or both. While I’ve alway been a supporter of the third/fourth generation reactors (“breeders”, as I recall – actually a very old technology), this was all nixed under the Carter Administration and no US monies have been invested since, TMK. Meanwhile, both the Japanese and French developed it, and now enjoy Bullet & TGV trains due to the cheap electricity, generated by the waste of prior generations of fission technologies, and enjoy an order of magnitude (if not more) greater energy yield per unit of spent fuel radioactive input than the original generations!
Mr Miller further poses:
“The problem with both of these is build out time.”…and money. Your point is well taken that we must invest in currently available alternative energy technologies (worts and all) at a brisk pace. Last I looked, this is being done through massive government subsidies, tax-breaks, rebates, grants, quotas, mandates, etc. Still, sustaining even this effort will be very difficult to do in a recessional economy, wherein government income may be expected to decline as well, even if tax rates are raised on whatever industries remain economically viable in the US.
But what other “economy of scale” technologies (which wind and solar are currently not) do you suggest that do not face exactly the same development/rollout problem as Fusion/Superconductivity? It will take well over 30 years to replace the current US 30+ Quadrillion BTU of power generation from non-renewable coal, natural gas & hydro, even with current technologies and excluding growth (hopefully) in GDP demand for power over the same period. Are we to cover the planet with wind turbines (which look vaguely like the early 1900s fields of oil rigs to me, but the latter disappear in a year and yield far more energy per unit…and energy is energy, as someone above said) and/or still mightily expensive solar panels (which continue to suffer a 30-50% derate in initial quoted capacity at the bus-bar after the first year)? An even larger chunk of time will also be required for the massive investment in battery technologies necessary to balance both wind and solar generation with demand, and which, along with solar panels, consume vast quantities of rare precious metals, the mining of which will further scar the planet?
My point, er opinion, is, we should perhaps consider diverting some of the $17B per year of shuttle/ISS monies to Fusion research, and elevate it a Manhattan or Mercury/Gemini/Apollo technical policy goal, which so far it has not even approached. (Hate hurting the space program, but like you said, time is of the essence).
Don’t forget too, that ~50 Quads are consumed in/as transportation fuels in the US. How do wind/solar address that, other than sailboats? Given the inherent thermodynamic inefficiencies in coverting electric power into whatever type of battery/fuel cell/ICE transportation device you chose, that option seems “silly” with current technologies as well.
Thanks for responding to my (I now stand corrected) opinion, which lacks logic for the purpose of argument. Apologies to all for the run-on sentences, too!
David Miller (731)
Sorry, I forgot to mention it takes 8-12 years to get the permits for an already designed standard nuke, IF you had a firm Federal go-ahead. So no, dumb contractors and forgotten designs are not the stumbling block on fission power generation, it’s the permitting process.
682 Completely Fed Up: See http://clearnuclear.blogspot.com if you want to discuss that. It is forbidden here.
691 Barton Paul Levenson: Hot dry rock geothermal: If you are talking about heating homes, yes. If you are talking about making electricity , NO. You can’t drill that deep. Pressure inevitably squeezes your bore casing to zero size before you get deep enough. It only works where there are hot plutons near the surface.
Tim Jones, don’t miss the paleo record, the extreme increase in erosion around the PETM is increasingly well documented and cautionary. You’d have to contact the authors for any unpublished pictures they may have (or the journals for published ones, likely harder to obtain).
I remember the illos for this article being rather stunning, of one of those outcrops on which you can see dramatic change in layers, some aerial views.
Abrupt increase in seasonal extreme precipitation at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary Geology March, 2007, v. 35, p. 215-218
increase in seasonal extreme precipitation at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary
Schmitz, Birger | Pujalte, Victoriano
Geology. Vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 215-218. Mar. 2007
“… Here we show from continental records across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary in the Spanish Pyrenees, a subtropical paleosetting, that during the early, most intense phase of CO2 rise, normal, semiarid coastal plains with few river channels of 10-200 m width were abruptly replaced by a vast conglomeratic braid plain, covering at least 500 km2 and most likely more than 2000 km2….”
696 doubting Thomas “no radioactive waste with 50,000 year+ half-lives to contain, no proliferation issues, virtually free fuel sources with no environmental extraction impact”
See: http://clearnuclear.blogspot.com