It won’t have escaped many of our readers’ notice that there has been what can only be described as a media frenzy (mostly in the UK) with regards to climate change in recent weeks. The coverage has contained more bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion on the subject than we have seen in such a short time anywhere. While the UK newspaper scene is uniquely competitive (especially compared to the US with over half a dozen national dailies selling in the same market), and historically there have been equally frenzied bouts of mis-reporting in the past on topics as diverse as pit bulls, vaccines and child abductions, there is something new in this mess that is worth discussing. And that has been a huge shift in the Overton window for climate change.
In any public discussion there are bounds which people who want to be thought of as having respectable ideas tend to stay between. This is most easily seen in health care debates. In the US, promotion of a National Health Service as in the UK or a single-payer system as in Canada is so far outside the bounds of normal health care politics, that these options are only ever brought up by ‘cranks’ (sigh). Meanwhile in the UK, discussions of health care delivery solutions outside of the NHS framework are never heard in the mainstream media. This limit on scope of the public debate has been called the Overton window.
The window does not have to remain static. Pressure groups and politicians can try and shift the bounds deliberately, or sometimes they are shifted by events. That seems to have been the case in the climate discussion. Prior to the email hack at CRU there had long been a pretty widespread avoidance of ‘global warming is a hoax’ proponents in serious discussions on the subject. The sceptics that were interviewed tended to be the slightly more sensible kind – people who did actually realise that CO2 was a greenhouse gas for instance. But the GW hoaxers were generally derided, or used as punchlines for jokes. This is not because they didn’t exist and weren’t continually making baseless accusations against scientists (they did and they were), but rather that their claims were self-evidently ridiculous and therefore not worth airing.
However, since the emails were released, and despite the fact that there is no evidence within them to support any of these claims of fraud and fabrication, the UK media has opened itself so wide to the spectrum of thought on climate that the GW hoaxers have now suddenly find themselves well within the mainstream. Nothing has changed the self-evidently ridiculousness of their arguments, but their presence at the media table has meant that the more reasonable critics seem far more centrist than they did a few months ago.
A few examples: Monckton being quoted as a ‘prominent climate sceptic’ on the front page of the New York Times this week (Wow!); The Guardian digging up baseless fraud accusations against a scientist at SUNY that had already been investigated and dismissed; The Sunday Times ignoring experts telling them the IPCC was right in favor of the anti-IPCC meme of the day; The Daily Mail making up quotes that fit their GW hoaxer narrative; The Daily Express breathlessly proclaiming the whole thing a ‘climate con’; The Sunday Times (again) dredging up unfounded accusations of corruption in the surface temperature data sets. All of these stories are based on the worst kind of oft-rebunked nonsense and they serve to make the more subtle kind of scepticism pushed by Lomborg et al seem almost erudite.
Perhaps this is driven by editors demanding that reporters come up with something new (to them) that fits into an anti-climate science theme that they are attempting to stoke. Or perhaps it is driven by the journalists desperate to maintain their scoop by pretending to their editors that this nonsense hasn’t been debunked a hundred times already? Who knows? All of these bad decisions are made easier when all of the actually sensible people, or people who know anything about the subject at all, are being assailed on all sides, and aren’t necessarily keen to find the time to explain, once again, that yes, the world is warming.
So far, so stupid. But even more concerning is the reaction from outside the UK media bubble. Two relatively prominent and respected US commentators – Curtis Brainard at CJR and Tom Yulsman in Colorado – have both bemoaned the fact that the US media (unusually perhaps) has not followed pell-mell into the fact-free abyss of their UK counterparts. Their point apparently seems to be that since much news print is being devoted to a story somewhere, then that story must be worth following. Indeed, since the substance to any particularly story is apparently proportional to the coverage, by not following the UK bandwagon, US journalists are missing a big story. Yulsman blames the lack of environmental beat reporters for lack of coverage in the US, but since most of the damage and bad reporting on this is from clueless and partisan news desk reporters in the UK, I actually expect that it is the environmental beat reporters’ prior experience with the forces of disinformation that prevents the contagion crossing the pond. To be sure, reporters should be able and willing (and encouraged) to write stories about anything to do with climate science and its institutions – but that kind of reporting is something very different from regurgitating disinformation, or repeating baseless accusations as fact.
So what is likely to happen now? As the various panels and reports on the CRU affair conclude, it is highly likely (almost certain in fact) that no-one will conclude that there has been any fraud, fabrication or scientific misconduct (since there hasn’t been). Eventually, people will realise (again) that the GW hoaxers are indeed cranks, and the mainstream window on their rants will close. In the meantime, huge amounts of misinformation, sprinkled liberally with plenty of disinformation, will be spread and public understanding on the issue will likely decline. As the history of the topic has shown, public attention to climate change comes and goes and this is likely to be seen as the latest bump on that ride.
David Horton – Edison may have been a bit over the top, but he didn’t “convince” anyone to use AC for electrocution, rather he siezed on an offered opportunity for a marketing advantage – it’s a shame tho’ that DC lost it’s momentum, we might be much better off today if battery development and electric vehicles had “kept up” – I agree about Tesla, a real giant mind, but also a very odd person :)
One last attempt, then you can go back to losing the climate debate.
You must stop making specific predictions on what will happen.
First, the weather/climate is very complex. For every study that postulates that it will cause droughts and destroy agriculture, there will be another study that says it will be a warm, wet world ideal for plantlife. You will get nowhere with doomsday predictions.
Secondly, because of the complexities, there’s a significant probablity that any specific prediction will be proved demonstrably wrong. The Arctic will melt by 2008 – no, it didn’t. The Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035; no, impossible. Hurricanes will become stronger; no, they have become weaker. Snow in London/Washington will only exist in our memories; wrong again. The credibility of GW supporters is very low now because of this. So when UNPREDICTED consequences of GW happen, no one is going to believe you when claim it is the result GW.
Guys, you have got the science to back up the theory of global warming, but you are losing the fight. Use the argument that we are making the world warmer; there will be changes in climate; we don’t know exactly what or where the changes will be, but with almost 7 billion people in the world to feed and care for, any changes that could affect agriculture, living conditions, the spread of disease, extinctions, etc. could have catastrophic results. I can’t guarantee this will win the debate, but it can’t do worse than the losing position you’ve adopted.
We exist because of a strange combination of very specific conditions. There are several universal constants that, if changed just a minor amount, would have prevented the creation of the universe. Life on this planet is possible because of many seemingly trivial events. (Did you know that advanced life forms would likely not exist if ice did not float? And that water, bismuth, and gallium seem to be the only substances with the property of being less dense in solid form than liquid?). Point out how tenuous the parameters for supporting life are, and how we must do what we can to not change those parameters.
But I know this diatribe will fall on deaf ears (or blind eyes, as the case may be). Go ahead and make predictions of doom, doomed to fail, lose the debate, and watch as the end comes from a completely unexpected direction. Ah, well, Mankind had a good run.
Re: post on 470
[Response: Care to substantiate that? – gavin]
No problem…. but i won’t waste my time on a compendium – and yes it is all free speech to which you are entitled. As for whether politics diminishes science, I hope this is not a request to substantiate. From your post, I thought we were already in agreement. – stickery
http://www.dailykos.com/search?offset=0&old_count=30&string=RealClimate&type=comment_by&sortby=relevance&search=Search&count=30&wayback=3679200&wayfront=0
[Response: 16 collective comments over 4 years on a blog? We’ve given interviews to the Wall Street Journal and CNN too. This is too trivial to even think about. – gavin]
Steckis says, “Specifically they state that ignoring the influences of the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere as interacting forces along with human influences gives a biased and wrong interpretation of climate.”
My reading is that they call for more study of what they consider worth studying [eg: their specialties], not that there’s any thing wrong with the existing science.
“547
Septic Matthew says:
19 February 2010 at 11:50 AM
526, Andrew Adams: No, there is no need for there to be a “tipping point” in order for us to be seriously concerned about the AGW and its likely consequences.
The kind of temperature increases we could see even without a tipping point would be serious enough in themselves.
On that I think that you are wrong.”
This is your prerogative.
Do you have anything to back that thought up, or just thinking it is sufficient for you?
“Without tipping points, the changes will be slow in coming”
Please prove this assertion.
See, for example, the changes already seen and consider accelerated warming. Also consider that we’ve not really learned anything new in the past 20 years that we didn’t know (if to less certainty) then and we STILL have lots saying that there’s nothing to worry about.
“Only the threat of tipping points creates the urgency to act more intensely than we are acting now.”
The evidence seems against you: no tipping point has been used to argue the urgency. Except one brought up by those wanting to divert the discussion into the weeds.
“What if every dollar for prevention saves two cents of mitigation? ”
Well preventing CO2 production IS mitigation.
“let’s agree to disagree”.
No.
If someone is wrong, there’s no point letting them accept their wrong conclusion or supposition.
You don’t add 4 to 3 and get 9 and say “let’s agree to disagree” when your accountant tells you this is wrong.
“Or is money irrelevant because the people who benefit from AGW (through their increased prosperity from fuel use) ”
I think you have the wrong side. Oil industry benefits from increased prosperity from fuel use.
That you get such a simple thing so extremely wrong shows a lot about the way you approach things.
> 550, S. Matthew
> monetary costs and benefits
Right sidebar, between Rabett and Grumbine:
RealClimateEconomics
Andrew Adams wrote: “The kind of temperature increases we could see even without a tipping point would be serious enough in themselves.”
Septic Matthew replied: “On that I think that you are wrong. Without tipping points, the changes will be slow in coming …”
Andrew Adams is right and Septic Matthew is wrong.
Why? Because the changes that are already occurring from the CO2 emissions that have already occurred and the temperature increases that have already occurred as a result of those emissions, are already “faster in coming” than was expected, and are already “serious enough in themselves”.
Denialists like to pretend that we have not yet experienced any “serious” changes as a result of AGW and that all the discussion is about what might or might not happen in the future. That is false.
533, 545, 546: Well, I’m glad that we agree that the army is smaller. Wealth concentration is a tricky subject not necessarily well treated by simple snapshot percentages. Inside those numbers a lot is going on. Two very important things about wealth creation in recent decades have been the number of newly wealthy individuals (top 5%) and the fact that so many individuals at the very top (top 1%) are newly wealthy. In other words, there has been more, not less, upward mobility. As for incarceration rates and percentage of the population classed as poor, we’d need to define terms at a level of detail inappropriate in this forum. I’ll simply close by saying that sentencing guidelines and generational demographics have more impact than trends in income equality/disparity.
There are still some credible journalists out there who get what is going on here– This by Jeffrey Sachs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/19/climate-change-sceptics-science#start-of-comments
After reading that I felt better about the world, then I made the mistake of reading some of the comments. OMG. He must have hit the nail on the head b/c those in denial are fuming.
Jeffrey needs our support.
Gavin,
If you haven’t yet heard, the esteemed Texas State Climatologist, Dr. John Nielson-Gammon, is making his case on the Texas Governor’s Perry’s lawsuit against the EPA over at The Wonk Room:
Texas State Climatologist Disputes State’s Denier Petition: Greenhouse Gases ‘Clearly Present A Danger To The Public Welfare’.
and at Joe Romm’s Climate Progress:
Texas state climatologist disputes state’s anti-science petition: Greenhouse gases “clearly present a danger to the public welfare.”
Now those are some headlines we can all live by.
All you science savvy, biodiversity loving, intelligent citizens of planet Earth, bring friends, lots of ’em.
–IANVS
BPL (506)
My face is red, I misremembered the numbers in my 531 post.
I have found Naomi Klein’s report here on the web. What she wrote was
“That means, according to the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, “an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger” and “water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts the stakes like this: “We are facing impending disaster on a monstrous scale…. A global goal of about 2 degrees C is to condemn Africa to incineration and no modern development.”
You can find Naomi’s report here:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100104/klein
Hank Roberts , I don’t understand: the link you provide with google scholar is a different paper (and quite interesting too) than the one I (poorly) summarized. I’m French.
Here’s the link to what I was referring to:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFM.C13A..04L
Regards
jtom wrote: “But I know this diatribe will fall on deaf ears …”
Likely it will, when you support your argument with blatant falsehoods like “Hurricanes will become stronger; no, they have become weaker” and ridicule “predictions” that no one ever made about “The Arctic will melt by 2008”. Nor did anyone ever predict that by the winter of 2009-2010 there would never again be snow in Washington, DC.
If you are here to argue that no one should make predictions that no one has ever made, fine, but I don’t know why you bother.
And if you want to argue that predictions (e.g. about increasing intensity of hurricanes) have been proved false when that is not in fact the case, then you are simply too ill-informed to have much credibility.
The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board has finally expressed what it is that has caused journalists to act so horribly. Journalists want to shout in the faces of scientists – We’re just as smart as you and until you admit it, we’re going to stick it to you. –
It’s all about ego. I’m trying hard not to vomit. When I think of all of the consequences of global warming, I can honestly say I’ve never seen such selfishness exposed.
This is disgusting.
The last sentence of this Chicago Tribune editorial says it all.
“One climate expert, John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, wrote in Nature: “The truth, and this is frustrating for policymakers, is that scientists’ ignorance of the climate system is enormous. There is still much messy, contentious, snail-paced and now, hopefully, transparent work to do.”
Hmm. Humility. How refreshing. And scientific.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-climate-20100216,0,2980279.story
David Horton — You can check the dating for the bottoms of the GISP2 and NGISP ice cores; better than relying on my memory. However, the melting is around the edges, not the tops. The evidence is there.
SecularAnimist — Yes indeed. This would, I opine, finding knowledgable people to do guest posts; I would dearly like to see one on the Eemian, for which there is now a fair amount of evidence.
jtom:
Your list of predictions are notable only in that scientists never made them.
For example, there was a prediction that there was a 50% chance that the north pole (but not the entire Arctic) would be briefly ice free in 2008. That is completely different to what you seem to think was forecast.
Your other “predictions” are equally flawed, but I think you will learn more by looking them up yourself. Or, just blame the media. You evidently got these mistaken ideas from somewhere – and unfortunately so did many other people. The sad reality is that some media outlets are quite happy to simply lie.
@5, Elliot,
I could not agree more. Let me add this, to paraphrase a famous saying: living by the media, dying by the media. Climate science has thrived under uncanny (for a science) media attention, has gained importance in awareness (and funding) compared to other scientific area, and, i feel, has chosen to turn a blind eye (or even a benevolent eye) to some alarmist making claims in the same cranky ballpark as the most extreme deniers (the conspiracy theory type, or god will not let the CO2 warm us variant). Earth will become a second Venus if you do not act NOW! Your children will never see snow again!! 60 m sea rise, half the world is going to drown!!! Serious scientist never made such predictions,
[Response: They never did. Please take the strawman arguments somewhere else. – gavin]
at least not for short term, but many considered that as a valid vulgarisation in that it helped the public to support CO2 control schemes (Al Gore even won a nobel price for this)…Sorry, but this is not an acceptable behavior for a scientist, when speaking as a scientist (activism is ok, but then let your labcoat in the drawer).
So, as a moderate denier or skeptic, I have a lot of trouble finding sympathy for the AGW-crowd now that the media wind is starting to turn. Sorry for those that had tried to correct those errors, but for all that said nothing, som na naa (which mean “well deserved”)!
I have a question relating to the D’Aleo charges. I’ve been trying to understand the GISS “bias method” from Hansen 87 and how this handles the gaps in station records as to producing their temperature anomaly plots. I don’t understand the formulas exactly, but is it correct to say for the recent years when they have less station data available, that those discontinuous stations are still taken into account for those recent year anomaly numbers because the bias method ‘extrapolates’ more or less their prior data into the calculation for their subbox or grid anomaly value (the T1,N(t) number?) for those recent years as well? Am I close or way off? If close, does that also mean stations are similarly extrapolated back to 1880 too?
Also in relation, I have a basic question on what an anomaly calculation means relative to an average temperature calculation. I understand that the GISS/HADCRU/NCDC plots are showing anomalies relative to some baseline. What is the usefulness to understanding a temperature trend using an anomaly plot compared to a plot that was produced by giving the average of the stations temperature readings instead and showing that value for each year. Isn’t the yearly anomaly number an kind of average of all the anomalies for that year? I can see an average temperature trend wouldn’t mean much if the station representation changed over the years, but what if you controlled for the changes the way they do in calculating the anomalies?
[Response: See this explanation from John Nielsen-Gammon. – gavin]
507 Barton Paul Levenson
1. UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025 Published by Jim on Monday, October 5, 2009 at 4:15 PM
BUENOS AIRES (AFP) — Drought could parch close to 70 percent of the planet’s soil by 2025 unless countries implement policies to slow desertification, a senior United Nations official has warned.
You keep posting this. It is a statement by a UN official, with no scientific basis.
2 Battisti, D. S., and R. L. Naylor. 2009. “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat.” Science 323: 240-244.
This article doesn’t even remotely support your exaggerated, repeated statement about the “complete collapse of global agriculture in no more than 40 years.”
Nothing you have ever posted even comes close to supporting that statement.
kai:
The media weren’t interested in moderating their scare stories then any more than they are interested in applying a sense of proportion to their whatevergates now.
Thanks to Murdoch, most of the media is only interested in shouting loudly enough to make money. We should treasure those rare exceptions, and not waste time blaming scientists for whatever things you mistakenly think they did or didn’t do.
The North Pole will be ice free in 2008:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080620-north-pole.html
“North Pole May Be Ice-Free for First Time This Summer”
And this is how the’gray’ literature presented it:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/arctic-ice-cap-gone.php
“Arctic Ice Cap Could be Gone by the Summer”
Hurricane Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE, the measurement of the amount of energy in hurricanes)
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_running_ace.jpg
That was easy. If you have charts indicating an increasing trend, check the end-date of the data. For personal reasons, I know EXACTLY what the hurricane seasons have been like for the last several years.
No more snow in D.C.: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/RFK-79834057.html
RFK, Jr.
Yeah,some of these predictions were not made by scientists. THAT’S THE PROBLEM. Just like the other examples (Hamalayan glaciers gone by 2035, etc.) but you keep repeating speculative gray literature predictions that prove to be absurdly wrong. KNOCK IT OFF UNLESS IT IS YOUR INTENT TO DEFEAT THIS ISSUE.
[Response: First off, you have backed down from your first assertions, second, you demonstrate exactly that scientists are not saying things that are exaggerated, third you miss the context that scientists (here and elsewhere) have tried to give some of the soundbites that get out there, and fourth, you still blame scientists for this state of affairs? Give me a break. Your beef is with the media and with advocates, and instead of blaming scientists for doing their job, you should be encouraging us to speak out and continue to add the context that is so often missing in media coverage….. (now where have I heard that before?). – gavin]
555, Completely Fed Up: “Without tipping points, the changes will be slow in coming”
&&&
Please prove this assertion.
Are you denying that: (a) climate change has entailed a 0.75C mean rise over the last century, or that (b) the forecast for the next century, absent tipping points, is another 1C or(c) that the sea level rose 20cm over the last century or that (d) the forecast for the next century is about 30cm, or that (e) the effect of doubling the CO2 concentration is 2C-4C rise (and the increase since about 1850 is from about 280ppm to 380ppm, so doubling from pre-industrial revolution times won’t have occurred for a few more decades)? Are you asking me to prove that 1C/century is “slow”? That temp increase is a logarithmic function of CO2 increase?
To reuse some examples, these are slower changes than the changes in 20th century agricultural productivity, nuclear power growth, current non-hydro renewable energy growth, 20th century growth in hydropower and aluminum production, or the growth of commercial and military aviation.
As for costly changes that have already occurred (Secular Animist), they are barely perceptible among the natural variability. Nothing in the periphery of the Bay of Bengal has changed to match the disaster of the 2004 Tsunami; polar bear and seal populations fluctuate; Japan and the west coast of America have suffered more from earthquakes than from the 20cm sea surface rise, and agricultural productivity almost everywhere increased over the last 100 years, and the last 30 years. Today, Northern Hemisphere snow cover is nearly equal to what it was 100 years ago. Winter cold continues year-in-and-year-out to kill more people than summer heat.
Ray Ladbury says, “Distribution of wealth in the US is roughly equivalent to that in third world economies like Guatemala or Malaysia.”
Down, boy! Down!
jtom, I see two problems with your strategy recommendation #552.
First, scientists are not losing the fight. There is temporary public confusion created by a systematic campaign of disinformation. But the national science academies and the professional scientific societies are not confused, and the scientific evidence for AGW continues to pile up by the day.
Second, you are asking scientists to abandon what they do know. They don’t know everything, but they do know quite a lot. They can predict what is going to happen within error bars that provide useful information. What you are suggesting is to abandon science in favor of mushy, intuition-based commentary. Not gonna happen.
As long as the topic is bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion …
here is an item in the popular press that you’ll want to debunk:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7263568/Penguins-in-Antarctica-to-be-replaced-by-jellyfish-due-to-global-warming.html
jtom:
You fail to distinguish between “may” and “will”. These two words are not alike.
If you want to take on the fringe alarmists who keep trying to push doom and gloom apocalyptic scenarios without putting them in the proper time context, then you will have to go elsewhere. Yes, there are a couple of commenters here who stoop to those tricks – but if you read carefully, you will see that errors by “warmists” and “deniers” are squashed with equal rigour. If you see a bias, it is because deniers make so very many errors.
Scientists and informed individuals are perfectly well aware that overstating the case can be as damaging to our future as underplaying the risk, since public trust depends on honesty, and action is linked to public feeling.
Septic Matthew said: “(b) the forecast for the next century, absent tipping points, is another 1C”
This is just wrong. Possibly you are trying to quote the figure for temperature rise without feedbacks, but that’s not the same as the rise without “tipping points” such as the clathrate gun, sudden changes in ocean circulation, or a precipitous ice collapse.
Most of these events could lead to sea level rise or temperature rise much more than forecast, but they have nothing to do with the normal climate feedbacks that we understand and have allowed for. Note also that we generally have a low expectation that these “tipping points” will occur (although this may change as we understand them better).
This is great, Septic Matthew …
The headline and the subhead contradict each other. That’s cool.
What does the scientist actually say?
Nothing wrong here. Nor in the summary given in the article, actually. Reading the article, I’d say the reporter did a decent job.
However whoever wrote the headline was far off the mark. The subhead was better, but still sensationalist.
dhogaza says: 19 February 2010 at 5:39 PM
“However whoever wrote the headline was far off the mark.”
Two or three years from now there will be a wave of demands for scientists to explain why penguins have not yet vanished from the face of the Earth. Intricate parsing of expired press coverage will ensue, thousands of posts on dozens of websites will be generated, after which it will be concluded that scientists did a poor job of communicating their research findings.
I feel a little like Alice in Wonderland. The science was – and is – clear. We’re way above the CO2 ppm that we should be, and to bring it down to a safe level will require a colossal collective endeavour on the part of mankind. The big chance to do this has come and gone in Copenhagen. But rather than increase the sense of urgency, the opposite appears to have happened.
This was a good RC article in terms of content, but something about its tone greatly disturbs me. The notion that this relentlessly stupid media coverage is a blip is optimistic – I have zero faith in the media to spot a fact if it hits them right in the presses. All the press does is sell itself – to prey on people’s fears and prejudices, and feed them relentlessly. Science has no grounds to influence their agenda. The attitude of The Guardian in the UK is the most depressing of all – by all means call for openness and criticise where appropriate, but the misleading headlines could be taken straight from The Daily Mail.
Meanwhile the consensus among the vast majority of politicians seems to be fragmenting, faced with electorates who can’t see future climate beyond a local snowstorm. And climate politics on the world stage appears to have almost collapsed. All under the relentless and highly successful campaigning by the fossil fuel industry. Science simply can’t compete.
I have to admit I’ve given up believing that mankind can respond to this. No-one has managed to come up with a workable way forward – given this current mudslide of opinion backwards and the mountain yet to climb, those who DO listen to science and care about what it says need to hear something credible in terms of a workable response to the challenge. There appears to be none. It’s not the job of scientists to do this, I appreciate – and calling attention to the absurdities that are printed is no bad thing. But how many times can climate scientists answer the same old questions, that seem to be merely growing in volume? There’s a lot of petulance on display from scientists (often perceived as arrogance) that’s more than understandable. But RC and scientists who care about the real-world consequences of their research do need to look long and hard about engagement with the public. I feel we need a reason to believe again.
Didactylos,
fine that you also wish for rectification of errors in both way, and for the scientist to speak up when gross simplification and errors are made by the media, leading to either “nothing happen, it’s a conspiracy by communist scientists” or “poor baby bear will drown if you drive your SUV”.
My complaints was that I did not hear much scientists from mainstream climate science speeking up for debunking the scare stories till the mediatic wind change.
I am willing to consider that the media simply did not let them speak out (the record of the media for full and honest coverage is poor, as is it foe getting their fact right, i have verified it almost everytime a news for which i was direct witness was related).
However, AFAIK the iconic vulgarisation of climate warming is still “an inconvenient truth”. And this was not really devoid of scare mongering and innacuracies, if not plain wrongness. So why a Nobel, why a seemingly unanimous endorsement of this by mainstream climate science? One-sided coverage by the media? or looking the other way for the “good cause”?
“Are you denying that:… or that (b) the forecast for the next century, absent tipping points, is another 1C ”
Yes.
The forecast is for significantly over 1.7C for the next century.
Please also show that that 1C you propose is not a problem, anyway.
I won’t hold my breath
“560
two moon says:
19 February 2010 at 1:16 PM
Wealth concentration is a tricky subject not necessarily well treated by simple snapshot percentages.”
Yes it is.
Quite easy.
%money held by %of people.
Simples.
I appear to have been ‘moderated’ for some previous post that I, natch, thought v intelligent. Oh well. In which case I might as well say that I enjoy RC EXCEPT for the bizarre Completely Fed Up comments – do they add anything at all to the thread? Relentless attack dog?
CFU: Please also show that that 1C you propose is not a problem, anyway.
What I said was that it was slow.
If the last century’s rise was 0.7C (from Gavin’s American Scientist commentary on Gilbert Plass), and if the CO2 rise was about 100 ppm from abouty 280 ppm (same source), and if human CO2 output is growing exponentially (I believe that Gavin wrote us a figure of 2% or 3%), then the forecast temp rise is about 1C, absent tipping points, and less than that if EU, US, China, Japan, and India renewable energy industries grow at current rates.
580, dhogaza: The headline and the subhead contradict each other. That’s cool.
Hence, “confusion”. Scientists are always misquoted. In the last few months AGW scientists have suffered an unusual run of bad luck, but I am sure that by summer time (another stranded polar bear or an unusually early spring somewhere) we’ll be back to our regular climate alarmism.
Did anybody in the AGW camp complain when the press first reported that the melting of Himalayan glaciers would cause agricultural disasters downstream? If they did, I missed it — only global warming deniers alerted the press and the rest of us to the fact that glaciers contribute little to the flows of the rivers.
Re global agriculture:
A child’s treasury of grim agriculture news
Rod B., Don’t believe me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.png
Russia, where we hear of oligarchs owning the entire country has a more equitable distribution of wealth. We are about equal with Mexico or the Peoples Republic of China.
Septic Matthew, Warming is likely to be 3 degrees per doubling or slightly more–the question is how rapidly it will occur. We could perhaps triple the atmosphere’s CO2 content, leading to up to 4.8 degrees warming on top of what we are already likely committed to, which is likely another half degree even if we stopped emitting CO2 right now.
CO2 sensitivity is probably of the numbers over which we have the least uncertainty.
Andy says, “The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board has finally expressed what it is that has caused journalists to act so horribly. Journalists want to shout in the faces of scientists – We’re just as smart as you and until you admit it, we’re going to stick it to you. -”
I believe that this is what Roy Schwitters used to refer to as “the revenge of the C students,” though in some cases that might be called grade inflation.
HotRod (586) — The internet is but best effort and sometimes comments just go into the great bit bucket in the sky.
Septic Matthew says: 19 February 2010 at 7:23 PM
Just to clarify, glaciers and ice sheets connected to drainage systems do actually contribute to stream flow to the extent they cover ground that otherwise would be occupied by snow, particularly those areas of a glacier or ice sheet in positive mass balance, and while so doing they regulate the delivery rate of water to a considerable extent. So while a particular glacier or ice sheet’s proportional contribution to stream flow may or may not be large depending on context, they all play a noticeable role in the function of drainage systems to which they are connected. Those glaciers and ice sheets which may vanish will be noticed in their absence.
Septic Matthew,
First, your estimate of climate sensitivity presumes we have already reached equilibrium. We haven’t. (This is the same mistake Steve Schwarz keeps making.) We are likely due another half degree or so of warming just based on current CO2 levels.
Second, it is likely that melting of Himmalayan glaciers will cause severe hardship–just not by 2035. I do not think most climate scientists were aware of this typo until the whole typogate debacle. Those who were aware of it likely didn’t have much experience of the Himmalayas. If I had been aware of it, I would probably have raised an eyebrow, as I’ve treked in the Himmalayas before and know the demise of the glaciers is unlikely to be imminent. Would I have said anything? Probably not, as I am not a climate scientist and it was not a central claim of the field. I do not think it is fair to hold climate scientists accountable for exaggeration when most of them did not even know about this error.
“Response: First off, you have backed down from your first assertions, second, you demonstrate exactly that scientists are not saying things that are exaggerated, third you miss the context that scientists (here and elsewhere) have tried to give some of the soundbites that get out there, and fourth, you still blame scientists for this state of affairs? Give me a break. Your beef is with the media and with advocates, and instead of blaming scientists for doing their job, you should be encouraging us to speak out and continue to add the context that is so often missing in media coverage….. (now where have I heard that before?). – gavin]”
Ok, Gavin, here’s the pertinent statements I have made in my posts. I’ll assume you missed one and didn’t understand the context:
Post 310: It matters not one whit if “not a single error has been found in the ~1000 pages of the WG1 AR4 report,” to the public if global warming / climate change has no disastrous impact. Those sections on the impact of global warming in the IPCC have been trashed because they were exaggerated, came from biased sources, and had material misstatements.
Post 501: Face it. The chances of getting public support has been lost by not refuting the ignorant statements of people
[edit]
Confounding science with ‘gray literature’ from biased sources such as Greenpeace and WFF speculating on the consequences of GW has destroyed the credibility of the IPCC.
Post 512: You must stop making specific predictions on what will happen. First, the weather/climate is very complex. For every study that postulates that it will cause droughts and destroy agriculture, there will be another study that says it will be a warm, wet world ideal for plant life. You will get nowhere with doomsday predictions. Secondly, because of the complexities, there’s a significant probability that any specific prediction will be proved demonstrably wrong. The Arctic will melt by 2008 – no, it didn’t. The Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035; no, impossible. Hurricanes will become stronger; no, they have become weaker. Snow in London/Washington will only exist in our memories; wrong again. The credibility of GW supporters is very low now because of this. So when UNPREDICTED consequences of GW happen, no one is going to believe you when claim it is the result GW.
[Response: Again, this is a strawman. I can find any number of people making stupid statements about anything. You are equating the most stupid statements (for which I still don’t see any evidence that anyone made) with what the ‘leading’ spokespeople have said. This is a complete distortion and in fact is a non-argument. Whenever the IPCC says something very conservative, you find someone who says something dumb, and thus the IPCC is tainted regardless of their actions or statements. Thus your argument simply designed to delegitimise the scientists regardless of their actual actions or how often they condemn exaggerations and distortions. – gavin]
Post 573: Yeah,some of these predictions were not made by scientists. THAT’S THE PROBLEM. Just like the other examples (Hamalayan glaciers gone by 2035, etc.) but you keep repeating speculative gray literature predictions that prove to be absurdly wrong. KNOCK IT OFF UNLESS IT IS YOUR INTENT TO DEFEAT THIS ISSUE
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Given that all my posts have specifically referred to the statements of NON-SCIENTISTS, and I have not addressed the scientific community whatsoever, your response is nothing short of bizarre. And I never backed down on my first assertions: “Those sections on the impact of global warming in the IPCC have been trashed because they were exaggerated, came from biased sources, and had material misstatements.” Which they were.
Any chance of remediation of global warming has been lost because of the gross mismanagement of those leading effort. The refusal of those leading the scientific community to disassociate from the gloryhounds and advocacy groups has played no small role in the failure.
United States of Whatever
585 Completely Fed Up: You are confusing simple with simplistic.
kai:
I imagine (although you don’t say so) that you are targeting Al Gore when you speak of Nobels and “iconic vulgarisation”.
However, Gore makes remarkably few factual errors for a non-scientist (you can find a discussion of the few errors he has really made [distinguished from those that people mistakenly think he has made] on this very site, and other places where “An Inconvenient Truth” has been reviewed by actual scientists). I believe this is because Gore goes to the trouble of getting his information largely directly from scientists, rather than grabbing it third or fourth hand from some source that agrees with him.
The conclusions of Gore’s movie were upheld by a UK court when the deniers tried to block it from being shown in UK schools. Needless to say, the denier spin focussed only on the minor errors that the judge confirmed, and not the overall conclusion, which was that it was appropriate that the film be shown in schools.
Does he overstate the case? Is it “vulgarisation”? Given the incredibly anti-science attitudes during the Bush years, and the unending campaign to deny that global warming even exists, then I think our response should be to speak out as loudly as we can. Gore had a megaphone, and he used it.
He was successful, too. Now it’s up to all of us to act, and to continue speaking out.
Richard Holle (15:57:22) : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/19/lindzen-on-climate-science-advocacy-and-modeling-at-this-point-the-models-seem-to-be-failing/#more-16551
Close to 18 years ago I had the chance to visit M.I.T. and got to talk to Dr. Lindzen, for a few minutes, and Peter Stone for about an hour about the Lunar declinational tidal studies I was working on. After looking through the satellite photo archives there in Building 54, and was able to further define the global circulation, into four repeating patterns of the 27.32 day lunar declinational tidal cycle.
Peter Stone encouraged me to go ahead and work on my project, as see if it ever produced any thing worthwhile, well here its.
With the dismal failure of the AGW climate models due to their concentration on the wrong driving forces of the weather and climate, I thought you might like to look at what a model derived from the “Natural Variability Patterns” could do at predicting the next 4 years of daily weather for the continental USA.
It has several differences from the “Business as usual” NOAA NWS forecast models, in that it uses all raw data from any stations found, considers the periodic influences from the Moon, and is based on past patterns of global circulation, to produce a “Natural Analog Weather Forecast” that works better than “their models.”
I put this forecast together back in 2007, posted it to web site in December of 2007, has remained there unchanged since, still has maps posted until beginning of January of 2014.
http://www.aerology.com/national.aspx
I post it here again to expose an idea to those who say models don’t work, they do if they consider all of the important influences driving the weather and hence the long term patterns, the climate.
The patterns it produces do not have a solar activity level component figured into the method, so the decrease in solar activity from the reference periods, shows the decrease in temperatures, that could then be insinuated as due to the solar changes, notable as the more southern movement of the Jet streams, although the daily timing of the arrival of the fronts stays sound, and the precipitation patterns stay about the same as forecast, there is a shift to more snow than rain, as noted in the Southeast USA.
Feel free to look at the daily maps from the past two years, or for the next 4 years. I am currently getting a lot of hits from the AGW team servers in England, it seems they are learning something.
I thought you might like to keep up with the current forward edge of research in this area.
> 587, S.Matthew
This?
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Melting_glaciers_threaten_Nepal_tsunami_999.html
If this isn’t what your’e talking about, please cite your source.
If it is, what’s your objection to the story? Headline writers, well, they’re a whole order of magnitude further removed from reality, we all know that.
The water is there; the results are predictable from past similar situation.