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.
590, Ray Ladbury: Septic Matthew, Warming is likely to be 3 degrees per doubling or slightly more–the question is how rapidly it will occur.
I said that warming to date is 0.7 per century and the current trends in warming and CO2 forecast a 1C warming in the next century. And I said that was “slow” compared (in a later post of mine) to humans’ ability to adapt, as represented by, among other things, the growth of the air transportation industry and the growth of agricultural productivity (e.g. the Green Revolution.) I don’t think the quoted passage from you disputes that.
Later: 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.
CO2 levels are about 1.3 times what they were 150 years ago. How does that predict another 0.5C increase based on current levels alone? I did not write about equilibrium, but about speed of warming.
Second, it is likely that melting of Himmalayan glaciers will cause severe hardship–just not by 2035.
The water flow from the glaciers is a tiny fraction of the total.
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.
I agree with that, but AGW proponents mostly or entirely complain about the press only when it mangles the news in an anti-AGW direction, and “mangle” is the topic of the thread.
This reminds me: have AGW proponents been really clear and forceful in publicizing that Global Warming is predicted to occur mostly at the poles, mostly in winter, and mostly at night? This winter the Arctic has fluctuated up and down above the mean by 5C, after being really close to the mean all of last summer. Since it takes a lot more energy to melt the ice in summer than to warm it in winter, why do we care if winter ice is a few C warmer on the average in the winter and especially at night? Was the Arctic Ice Melt of summer 2007 actually caused by the 0.2C – 0.3C global average warming that occurred after 1979? You know that’s been mangled by the press into a harbinger of imminent doom.
OOPS, sorry, “mangle” was the theme of a parallel thread. This one was “bad reporting”, “misrepresentation” and “confusion”.
Most of which weren’t actually errors, in the view of science. The non-scientist judge tried his best, made some mistakes …
This is all a fascinating insight into human nature.
Those same “intelligent” people who were AGW believers some years ago believed it because they read it in the newspaper. Now they think it’s all a con – because they read it in a newspaper. And those exact same people, if they disagree with something in a newspaper will say “oh you can’t believe everything you read in the newspaper”.
I’m finding increasingly that there are degrees of intelligence, most of which do not extend to going to the source and researching the information for oneself, but rather getting it second or third-hand and being entirely uncritical of it as long as it “sounds OK”. Perhaps because it just takes too much time – I don’t know. But I’m amazed by the sheer number of otherwise intelligent friends and colleagues of mine who now have a contrary opinion on AGW, yet have no real idea why they hold that opinion. That is, when you ask them specific questions on where they got the information from, they don’t have a clue. When you ask them specific questions on the science, they don’t have a clue either.
It’s so bizarre. We might be able to build rocketships, bridges, and planes, but we are possibly also the most naive species on the planet.
[Response: In defense of the majority of the human race, I think the issue here is that most people have very busy lives and only have a certain amount of intellectual energy to devote to questions that come up. People can (correctly) realise that what they are seeing in newspapers is incomplete, biased and obviously oversimplified, but still not find the energy to look into the background or what the real story is (which is generally hard). Thus most knowledge that most people have about a whole range of issues is thus very shallow and not strongly grounded in anything factual – but this is not because people are dumb, just busy. While we can certainly make it easier to find the real background, I don’t see this general picture changing anytime soon. – gavin]
BPL Read my lips: In 40 years, you will no longer be able to waltz into a grocery store and buy food just because you have the money. You’ll be lucky to be shooting it out with your neighbors over who gets the scraggly, greenish tomatoes growing next to an outhouse. You’ll be luckier still if you can get rations from a food line once a week.
You know I didn’t know what to think of your posts (Richard Feynman was a womanizer being a typical example) till this one and then it struck me. You’re the climate equalivant of a Left Behind wacko. Just you wait non-believer till I’m proven right and the world goes to hell.
Winner of this thread’s Paul Ehrlich Apocalypse Award:
“Complete collapse of global agriculture in no more than 40 years”
Ray Ladbury,
Thanks for your reply. I’d like to answer your most important points in detail.
“Solomon et al.’s PNAS study showed that even without any sort of tipping point, we could wind up irreversibly altering the climate
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/irreversible-does-not-mean-unstoppable/
The climate achieves equilibrium again only very slowly, so every ton of CO2 we put into the atmosphere moves us further from a stable climate.”
I’m familiar with the paper you’ve cited. Solomon et al.’s paper uses the Bern 2.5 model, a coupled carbon-cycle model. The paper bases its conclusions on this model. Is there any reason to suspect that this coupled carbon-cycle model and others like it are problematic? You claim:
“We also know that the ability of the oceans to absorb CO2 is not unlimited–at some point they become a source, rather than a sink of CO2. This would accelerate warming and slow down recovery…”
This is a striking claim. And, indeed, recent studies suggest the possibility that the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems have started losing some of their ability to sequester a large proportion of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. These studies, like Solomon et al., rely on coupled carbon-cycle models to make the claim that the oceanic and terrestrial ecosystems are likely to become a source, rather than a sink of CO2. What does the data actually say with regards to this absolutely crucial claim of the CC models?
Let’s consider Knorr’s recent paper in GRL:
http://radioviceonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/knorr2009_co2_sequestration.pdf
Knorr’s paper is based on measurements and statistical data, not coupled carbon-cycle models, and it shows that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. An extraordinarily interesting and important result. It is especially important to note that Knorr states unequivocally: “despite the predictions of coupled carbon-cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found.”
I know RC has glanced at this paper. But that post dealt mainly with the ridiculous way in which this paper was presented by the media, as if it suggested that *total emissions had not risen,* which is of course not the case. However, not enough has been made of the fact that the CC based literature predicts results which are not justified by the evidence.
Since you correctly claimed that the ocean becoming a “source” of CO2 would accelerate warming, it is crucial to see the hard evidence in Knorr’s paper that makes clear that this has not come to pass. It also requires that we carefully reconsider claims based on the current crop of coupled carbon-cycle models, since these models are clearly in error with respect to such an important matter as this.
Now, as far as paleo data is concerned. Paleoclimatic data as a source of TPT speculations largely derives from a single paper:
http://rivernet.ncsu.edu/courselocker/PaleoClimate/Kennet%20&%20Stott%201991.PDF
It is instructive to read the entire text. See esp. the paragraph beginning: “During the early Palaeogene…” which pointedly ends with the exemplary and modest statement: “The nature of the triggering remains unknown.” The scientific literature often shows us an entire field of conjecture derived from a decidedly modest initial source. Few people bother to locate and carefully read that first source. A great deal of the contemporary discourse regarding the “PETM” derives from the paper cited above. However, a close reading shows us that the authors’ conclusions were very modest indeed.
When you say:
“There is plenty of evidence that there are tipping points, and we have no idea how close they are. This is an area where uncertainty is definitely not your friend.”
I cannot agree. My reading in the primary literature leads me to conclude that the evidence for TPT is sparse and that the contemporary discourse regarding TPT is basically an enthusiastic speculation derived from interpretations of CC models which are clearly problematic.
[Response: You have it completely backwards. Most of the evidence for dramatic and rapid changes in the climate come from the paleo-climate record – the collapse of the Green Sahara, mega-droughts in the American Southwest, Heinrich events, D/O oscillations, the PETM, the 8.2 kyr event etc. None of these things arose from examinations of GCMs – and given that most GCMs don’t include dynamic ice sheets, or dynamic vegetation, they still don’t capture much of this behaviour. It is precisely *because* the GCMs are not complete that the paleo record is examined with such attention. Another example of a climate ‘surprise’ is the polar ozone hole which was not predicted by models (because of the lack of understanding of heterogeneous chemistry on PSCs at the time). The existence of future surprises will not be surprising. – gavin]
Ray (594)
You are correct, melting of Himalayan glaciers will cause severe hardship, and it has already started.
Glacier man is adapting by moving some of the critical glaciers as Thomas Schelling describes (in a peer reviewed journal, Science!):
“The News Focus story “Glacier man” (G. Vince, 30 October 2009, p. 659) is an extraordinary example of innovative adaptation to climate change and should be an inspiration to all concerned about such adaptation. What happens above 3000 meters in snowfall, rain, early melt, and the possibility of water capture and release is crucial to irrigation in Chile, Peru, Argentina, China, India, Pakistan, Burma, and California and Colorado in the United States. That a low-tech, inexpensive adaptation could be conceived and implemented so successfully by a local person with meager financial resources, even if only on a small scale—but large in relation to the resources available—is nothing less than fantastic. Let’s have more examples, if there are any! “The News Focus story “Glacier man” (G. Vince, 30 October 2009, p. 659) is an extraordinary example of innovative adaptation to climate change and should be an inspiration to all concerned about such adaptation. What happens above 3000 meters in snowfall, rain, early melt, and the possibility of water capture and release is crucial to irrigation in Chile, Peru, Argentina, China, India, Pakistan, Burma, and California and Colorado in the United States. That a low-tech, inexpensive adaptation could be conceived and implemented so successfully by a local person with meager financial resources, even if only on a small scale—but large in relation to the resources available—is nothing less than fantastic. Let’s have more examples, if there are any! “
How should we score this, MSM-wise?
597
Didactylos says:
19 February 2010 at 9:30 PM
“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.”
You must be a trainee spin doctor. That was not the conclusion that came out of the High Court decision. The stated that there was at least nine major errors in the film and that the film could NOT be shown as an educational video as part of a school curriculum unless a guidance pack also accompanied the movie to outline those nine scientific errors.
Completely Fed Up — 19 February 2010
“Jimbo, it is illegal to speed past a schoolyard in 1989 except that the statute of limitations for such a crime has now passed and we don’t have any cam footage.”
———
OK fine Paul Jones is legally NOT GUILTY, but he was found to have breached the Freedom of Information Act by his non-compliance in a timely manner. Does that make is actions OK with you? Please stop trying to excuse the inexcusable.
“596
two moon says:
19 February 2010 at 9:23 PM
585 Completely Fed Up: You are confusing simple with simplistic.”
You’re confusing me with someone who is simple.
No, that is simple and accurate.
Rank people by income and then either add from the bottom up or from the top down.
You then calculate the %money in the top %earners and the %money in the bottom %earners.
This gives you the wealth disparity.
Now, are you going to try that jedi trick again and just say “it can’t be done like that” and hope nobody notices?
“587
Septic Matthew says:
19 February 2010 at 7:23 PM
CFU: Please also show that that 1C you propose is not a problem, anyway.
What I said was that it was slow.”
So what?
Just because it’s slow means it’s not a problem now?
I can see where you get it from: the CEOs and killer investors think that if it is fine this quater, it’s fine full stop. Someone else can pick up the pieces after they’ve cashed in.
In fact, that’s the same attitude that caused the recent recession.
And guess what? The rich cashed in (3% unemployment) while the poor picked up the pieces (30% unemployment) (for the US).
Jim Galasyn, that was great. Live version here.
From the Crock of the Week comment section, we have this gem
“bfpccbm
Al gore scaring and brainwashing our children with his doom and gloom……he ranks right in there with the pedophiles ……”
I don’t see this making denial of AGW false.
The privilege of being nasty and making shit up is reserved for the denial crowd. And they like it that way.
Theo Hopkins (530): I am afraid I can not directly answer your question. But isn’t it more important what Phil Jones answered to the questions, no matter whether they were inspired by sceptics or not? I suppose you will agree that the questions asked were relevant (otherwise mr. Jones would have said so, or the journalist would not even have asked them). For me, the answers to question A and B were very revealing (Yes, there have been two recent episodes with similar warming as 1975-1998 and Yes, since 1995 to the present the temperatures are flat, no significant temperature increase). For a scientist that is so closely linked to the IPCC panel those are remarkable statements and actually I do not understand why the US newspapers have more or less ignored this.
Jimbo “OK fine Paul Jones is legally NOT GUILTY, ”
That’s the only form of Guilty there is.
Unless you’re on a witch hunt.
“but he was found to have breached the Freedom of Information Act by his non-compliance”
No, he hasn’t.
How can this be found before the investigation ends? Do you always jump to the conclusion before the evidence?
And there’s nothing wrong in not complying with FOI requests if they are under the aegis of several clauses where the act doesn’t cover.
There’s also nothing wrong in not replying quickly. How long would it take to answer? How much free time is there for doing this work?
It will take AT LEAST that long to answer.
If that’s wrong, then you’ll have to invent a time machine or change to 100-minute hours, 25-hour days and 10 day weeks.
RS: “You must be a trainee spin doctor. That was not the conclusion that came out of the High Court decision”
Yes it was.
Didn’t you read the court decision or did you just read what Hannity said it said?
This is why the film IS part of the education curricula in the UK.
The points that the judge wanted added were PURELY as clarifications to simplifications of the science to make it easier to understand (a central tenet of EDUCATION) that could, possibly, be overstating the certainties.
POSSIBLY.
The judge was fine with it and as a factual documentary, NOT ONE THING had to change (compare with TGGWS). As primary material for education, it warranted some modifications to the certainties expressed in the simplified language.
“606
J says:
20 February 2010 at 3:13 AM
Winner of this thread’s Paul Ehrlich Apocalypse Award:
“Complete collapse of global agriculture in no more than 40 years””
Are you saying that is IMPOSSIBLE?
If so, please prove it.
Sere, I think that the appropriate way to look at tipping points is from a risk management perspective. The paleoclimate certainly establishes their existence, and also demonstrates that their consequences in terms of mass extinction, environmental degradation, etc. qualify as catastrophic. Indeed, in conjunction with the strains already put on the environment by trying to support 9-10 billion people, they could result in the end of human civilization (though likely not extinction.
The dynamical models demonstrate that the probability of such events being realized is not negligible. There is good reason to trust these dynamical models more than statistical models, the conclusions of which can only be considered reasonable if the data used to calibrate them are representative of the conditions we are extrapolating to. Since we are talking about conditions that have not been extant in hundreds of thousands of years, such extrapolation is problematic.
You criticize the CC models. OK, since these are based on the best physics we know, and since we are extrapolating beyond the likely range of validity for statistical models, on what would you have us base our extrapolations? Clearly, given the potential consequences of such events, we cannot simply ignore them.
Also, note that the paper by Solomon et al. assumes no tipping points–merely extrapolates to higher CO2 concentrations using known physics. There is absolutely no reason to distrust the conclusions, as they are merely based on the known very long lifetime of CO2. Permanently altering the climate of the only habitable planet we know of–anywhere–is not something we should take lightly.
And even if the oceans had unlimited ability to absorb CO2, increased acidity is already causing severe stress in many marine habitats.
I find it odd that you see the peer-reviewed literature to support your sanguinity regarding the current health of the planet’s ecology and even odder that you find nothing in it to cause you concern as we elevate CO2 to levels not seen in at least tens of millions of years. As Gavin’s brief list of paleo-events indicates, it would seem that your reading has been selective.
Mind you, it’s not all doom and gloom.
Captcha’s will always give us the giggles (from the Denial Depot):
“Gail said…
I for one welcome our obsolete aristocratic overlord!
Why is my captcha dykfib? I resent that!”
Still giggling like a little girl at a E17 reunion band…
(PS I feel really sorry for George there. He’s trying so hard.)
Septic Matthew,
A doubling of CO2 is 3 degrees, right? ln(2)=.693, right? ln(1.3)=.26, so a 30% increase in CO2 represents .26/.693 x 3=1.15 degrees of warming. So there’s still likely about half a degree in the pipeline.
Regarding glacial melt in the Himmalayas
Septic: “The water flow from the glaciers is a tiny fraction of the total.”
It is water that comes at a critical time though and makes irrigated agriculture possible in a very heavily populated area. After all, there is a reason why the Indus civilizations sprung up where they did.
WRT what environmental partisans say: How am I responsible for what other people say. On this blog, I and others with any scientific training have been fairly scrupulous to emphasize the distinction between weather and climate regardless of whether that distinction worked in our favor. It is perfectly valid to point out that some research suggests an increase in Hurricane strength on the heels of Katrina. It is not reasonable to attribute Katrina to climate change. It would be meaningful to point to a trend of 30 years of no warming. It is not meaningful to point to trends of 15 years, 10 years, 5 years of one day.
Also, I think it is clearly a qualitatively different situation when the press making errors of fact (e.g. confusing weather with climate) and when the press is making baseless allegations against the integrity of scientists and indeed the scientific process.
Re: 190. Sorry, too late.
jtom (552): 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.
BPL: Then cite them.
kai: som na naa (which mean “well deserved”)!
BPL: As they say in Haiti, “Mo manze!”
Don Shor (571): 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.
BPL: Well, let’s extrapolate. In 1970, 12% of Earth’s land surface was “severely dry” by the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI < 3.0). In 2002, that figure was 30%. That's an increase of a factor of 2.5 in 32 years. If it keeps up (a big if, I admit, with huge error bars, I'm sure), the next figure would be 75% by 2034. That leaves… Antarctica, mostly.
How do we grow crops without agricultural land?
HotRod (586): I enjoy RC EXCEPT for the bizarre Completely Fed Up comments – do they add anything at all to the thread? Relentless attack dog?
BPL: CFU can be abrasive, but he has a big advantage over a lot of the people who post here–he actually knows what he’s talking about.
Wilt says: ” For a scientist that is so closely linked to the IPCC panel those are remarkable statements and actually I do not understand why the US newspapers have more or less ignored this.”
No, Jones statements are not at all remarkable. It is only your straw-man misinterpretation of climate science that makes them appear so! Since you have ignored repeated corrections in the past, allow me to repeat:
NO RESPONSIBLE CLIMATE SCIENTIST CLAIMS THAT CO2 IS THE ONLY DRIVER OF CLIMATE.
Both previous periods 1860-1880 and 1910 to 1940 had other drivers that were important, namely increasing insolation and low levels of volcanism. In addition, you need to remember that forcing to CO2 increases logarithmically rather than linearly with CO2 concentration. Thus the increased warming due to increased CO2 in the 1910-1940 period was about half that for the period 1975-1998.
Likewise, Jones statements on the MWP. The data available do not support a global MWP. The studies that have claimed a positive signal show warm periods that were not contemporaneous with the North Atlantic MWP. The only reason that the idea of a global MWP is not dead and in its coffin is because of the lack of good proxy data with sufficient resolution in the Southern Hemisphere.
None of this is at all controversial. Nor is it particularly relevant. The existence of a global MWP would not invalidate the known physics of greenhouse gasses. Nor would it negate the very rapid warming we have experienced since mid 20th century. If you want to discuss the validity of the evidence, that is great, but at least learn what the scientists are saying about the evidence rather than constructing straw men based on what you read in the blogosphere or the nontechnical media.
Dear Gavin,
Thank you for all the time you devote to this site. I have never posted before, since I am not a scientist, but a mere mother and housewife. I also am an observer of nature. We are watching nature change around us every day, but few are paying attention. I feel we are living in a Twilight Zone episode, where the scientists are trying to alert the world about an impending disaster, but everyone is out partying and too busy to listen.
I have children and would love to have grandchildren one day to spoil, but I pray that my kids do not have their own kids. Why bring a child into this world?
The deniers are winning in the public debate. I talk to people in my daily life about climate change, but the responses are almost always filled with doubt and dismissal. I can’t get my friends or neighbors interested in talking about climate change. As I learn more about the melting Arctic and Antarctic, I feel there is nothing that can be done to stop it. I truly feel we have gone beyond the tipping point and are headed into unknown territory. Will it just be rising seas and heavier precipitation to worry about, or will mankind be wiped off the earth?
Nobody has a crystal ball, but with the efforts of the denialist camp spreading like wildfire and the lack of political will in the US and around the globe, I don’t have much hope for our children’s futures.
Keep up your good work, Gavin. It is needed.
John Peter@608 – maybe we score the “headline” as “garbling”? [“moving some of the critical glaciers”]
Aside from Science not really being MSM, your quote was actually of a letter comment, the article [abstract] was about “artificial glaciers” created by impoundment of rain/snow/ice melt water
Seems to me it points up that glacier loss will indeed get to be more of a problem as time continues to get wasted – good to see some “grass roots” action.
BlogReader (605): You know I didn’t know what to think of your posts (Richard Feynman was a womanizer being a typical example)
BPL: Well, that’s what the man wrote in his book. Was he lying? Have you actually read him?
BR: till this one and then it struck me. You’re the climate equalivant of a Left Behind wacko. Just you wait non-believer till I’m proven right and the world goes to hell.
BPL: “Equivalent.” Except that I’m a wacko with a physics degrees who has been writing atmosphere models for twelve years. What are your qualifications?
#507 BPL UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025
Wrong! The UN warned of 70% of desertification OF DRYLANDS by 2025. About 40% of global land area are drylands, so this would be about 25% of global land area.
Desertification is a serious problem, but global warming is not the sole or even primary cause of desertification. The primary cause is land (ab)use – overgrazing, unsustainable irrigation and agriculture practices, slash and burn, deforestation, etc. Even if there were no global warming, desertification of dryland areas would still be a threat. Your misrepresenation serves to trivialize the real problems and challenges related to desertfication.
Jimbo (610): OK fine Paul Jones is legally NOT GUILTY,
BPL: What’s more, he captured HMS Serapis!
J: but he was found to have breached the Freedom of Information Act by his non-compliance in a timely manner.
BPL: How does one respond “in a timely manner” to 40 FOI requests, each requiring 18 hours of paperwork, delivered over the course of a weekend?
Kate7, Can you post a peer-reviewed journal article covering your modeling efforts? The website is interesting, but light on details. Based on what I’ve read from the website to date, I would give the following critique. I cannot comment on the viability of the mechansim being proposed as there is insufficient detail on the webpage.
My main critique based on what I see on the webpage is that what you are really doing fits more into the realm of weather and short-term variability than it does climate. Moreover, to call Global Climat Models “AGW models” suggests that you are not that familiar with them. There is a lot more to them than the anthropogenic component. And to say that they have failed dismally is an interpretation that is “creative” to be charitable. It is certainly unclear how you would produce a 30-year warming trend with your model unless you took into account anthropogenic ghg. And what is more, your model has no bearing on the fact that CO2 sensitivity is one of the better constrained properties in climate models.
If you have a valid mechanism and your model is as good as you claim, it would seem to have more promise in explaining short-term variability rather than long-term climate trends.
jtom,
I think that you are misunderstanding the purposes of the various working groups. I’ve posted this before, so I’ll apologize to others in advance for the repetition.
First, WG1 is charged with elucidating the actual science of Earth’s climate and what that implies given large-scale anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses. They do that exceptionally well. Over 90% of scientists were satisfied to very satisfied with the summary–quite an achievement. This tells us that we are likely to get 3 degrees warming per doubling and that this will affect ice caps, sea level, precipitation, seasonal and temperature conditions. There are even some projections for regional effects. That is as far as it goes.
WGs 2 and 3 have a much more difficult task. WG2 is looking at the effects of warming. There is much less peer-reviewed research here, and no real journal of record for the subject. Their role is two-fold: First they have to decide whether a threat is significant–in terms of either its probability, its consequences or both. Then they have to bound the risk (probability times loss) conservatively. The bound need not be accurate as long as 1)it is finite and 2)it doesn’t drive the entire risk budget. The grey literature is just fine for this. If we find it violates condition 2, we can refine the bound. The problem we have here is that there are many threats that arise from climate change that cannot at present be bounded. Thus, even if a threat has significant consequences, it may not be refined adequately just because there are so many risks in need of attention. The Himmalayan glacier error falls into this category. It should have been caught because it posed unreasonable risk. The problem was that it did not stand out significantly from other unbounded risks except in terms of the date by which it would occur. Since there are many risks that cannot be bounded at present, risk management would dictate that risk avoidance is the only viable strategy at this point until we can get a better handle on the risk calculus.
WG3 is even more at sea. There are no viable, validated mitigation schemes at present except risk avoidance, and there is even less peer-reviewed literature.
In no way does this invalidate the process. It is about where you would expect it to be.
gavin in response to 569:
No, but that’s not how I read his comment. I read his comment to say that if someone publishes something far =worse= than what’s supported by the science, they are given a free pass. But if someone publishes something far =better= than what’s supported by the science, they are immediately branded a “denialist”, attacked, discredited, and so forth.
The way I read that comment, it’s that climate scientists are =complicit= in the negative media attention that’s now being focused because they allow “alarmism” to hang out in the blogosphere and beyond, while smacking down anyone who disagrees with them on the other side. That, to me, is the real story.
Sure, reducing CO2 emissions =benefits= from everyone who buys the alarmist nonsense. I think anyone would be hard pressed to disagree with that statement. Statistics such as this — http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/maue_2009.php — are hard to reconcile with the claims being made ON THIS BLOG in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane season. By fuzzy memory, I offered real folding money wagers that “The Katrinas Are Coming!” was alarmist nonsense and that was one of the instances in which I was branded a “denialist”.
621, Ray Ladbury: WRT what environmental partisans say: How am I responsible for what other people say.
You personally, probably not, but “bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion” is the topic of this thread. I expect that by summertime the “bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion” will again be predominantly on the pro-AGW side (so to speak: scientists try to deny that they have “sides”, but they are as fallible in this way as the rest of mankind.)
It is water that comes at a critical time though and makes irrigated agriculture possible in a very heavily populated area.
Glacier melt is even a small fraction of water flow in the dry season. Agriculture is made possible by the monsoon rains of summer, and by regular snow melt.
A doubling of CO2 is 3 degrees, right? ln(2)=.693, right? ln(1.3)=.26, so a 30% increase in CO2 represents .26/.693 x 3=1.15 degrees of warming. So there’s still likely about half a degree in the pipeline.
Oh, you are correct. I worked it in my head with too much rounding off (0.7 approximately 1, …), a lifelong habit that gets me into trouble sometimes. It could be worse than you wrote: according to Latif (in the 2008 Nature article that someone linked), it is possible that only half (about 0.4C)of the observed rise to date is caused by CO2, which would imply that a 2.6C future increase is already built in to the system. That would also imply that the system impulse response to CO2 forcing is really slow, which would give humans more time to respond, but more pressure to respond quickly and largely when we do respond.
Occasionally my optimism is near Panglossian, except that it is based on reports of work. With continuation and expansion of projects underway now, at a steady rate motivated mostly by the desire to reduce dependence on declining oil supplies, I expect CO2 to start declining sometime between 2030 and 2060. Add to the the reforestation efforts (the UN program plants millions of trees per year, and the US and EU finance millions more to offset CO2 [I contribute to one of the US-financed reforestations]), and the continuing developments and reductions in prices of all of the “stabilization wedges”, I expect to see great changes in this whole debate over the next 10 years.
Twilight Zone: Nobody ever said this would be easy. Fossil fuel interests have trillions of dollars at stake in this. Libertarians evidently feel that their ideology is too feeble to cope with a global threat. They will fight tooth and nail even if it means divorcing themselves from physical reality to do so.
Nature, though, has a way of answering questions consistently and turning up the volume if we ignore the answers. Unless anti-scientists succeed in outlawing science, they will keep getting answers they don’t like until at last even they will have to pay attention. The question is whether we will act in time to preserve 1)civilization, 2) a healthy environment, 3)a reasonable standard of living, and 4)something resembling democratic governance. If you consider these worth fighting for, then it does not pay to get discouraged. If you succeed, you can regale your grandchildren with the tales; if we do not, you can console them with the fact that your fought for them to the end. That is what it is to be human.
FCH, since Gavin and many others on here have been quite vocal in emphasizing that extreme weather events (e.g. Katrina) are weather and have hardly been alarmist in their pronouncements, I am wondering how you justify their facing criticism.
I’m also wondering whether you equate the seriousness of errors of fact or interpretation with erroneous and baseless accusations fraud. I would contend that there is a significant difference.
Jiminmpls says: Wrong! The UN warned of 70% of desertification OF DRYLANDS by 2025. About 40% of global land area are drylands, so this would be about 25% of global land area.
Distinction without a difference — those drylands are where we grow crops.
For more on desertification and climate change, check out the UNCCD site.
WIlt:
No, Jones said that the HadCRUT temperature data showed a +0.12C/decade rise. That is not “flat”.
The time period’s too short for that to establish a statistically significant trend at the conventional 95% confidence level. That is not the same as saying “temperatures are flat”. The actual trend is as likely to higher than lower than the observed rise of +0.12C/decade.
The lies about Jones Q&A session are getting tiresome.
612, Completely Fed Up: In fact, that’s the same attitude that caused the recent recession.
Recessions happen all the time, and they are as natural as tides, seasons, climate cycles, species extinctions, algal blooms, EEG rhythms, hearbeats, and circadian rhythms. Economies provide strong rewards to people who act quickly to take advantage of new opportunities, but economies also contain some very slow negative feedbacks so that people can be trapped into a huge delayed loss after a huge quick gain. And that’s just the beginning of a response to your comment.
BPL (626)
Not abrasive, more a generalist knowing less and less about more and more, e.g. legally innocent until proven guilty.
“Complete collapse of global agriculture in no more than 40 years””
>>>>”Are you saying that is IMPOSSIBLE? If so, please prove it.”
Au contraire, I’m giving it the Ehrlich Award it because it is, like the apocalypse, possible, wondrously ominous and, like Ehrlich’s worldwide famines of the 70s, impossible to disprove while believable enough to be hoisted aloft by apocalyptic types which are always in abundance.
Heck, put enough of these together and you could write a best seller. Forty years is a long time. When it doesn’t happen, write another one.
fixible (629)
Agree emphatically (or at least twice)
this is not about stupidity and if you keep having to insult people to make them believe in what you believe than you don’t have much of a case. for me it has nothing do do with the science. I will give you that the scientist are correct in their findings; I just don’t believe that any of this matters. I have tried to believe that it does but the actions of the people from very ordinary to the famous show me that it’s just a cause for now to jump on the bandwagon and yes get all the money you can out of taxpayers.
for me there are too many outs, everyone has a reason for doing what they say we should not be doing. nearly everyone I spoke to who were trying to get people to join the Denmark summit, were flying or driving. they had to be there it was important they were there but they had to get back to work soon after. all the news stations keep doing reports on how are carbon footprint is changing the world icecaps melting, the rain forest being cut back and trees down, but they keep going sending people flying up there, the same with the reports by the experts, the people who really believe the earths in trouble. I met someone recently who as apart of his job is on and off planes 2-3 times a week setting up medical clinics around the world checking on things he needs to do this, he works for WHO. so the world will heat-up and than it will cool down; it has done it before. I do believe that things will work out.will I KEEP DOING MY SMALL BIT, YES and I think that the world over that people have changed the way the do things from the way the eat to the way they take a holiday.now you will say that we cannot afford not to believe and change,but most of us cannot afford to keep paying out of pocket for something that will come to nothing in the long run. the gas company,electric and phone will not pay itself and just because you believe doesn’t mean they will let you off, ask any nurse. life is to live and enjoy and for me life is now. you do not know what is going to happen in 100 years nor do all the scientists in the world. is man the cause more than likely. man destroys what God creates,man destroys what man creates.
Wilt in 615 says (allegedly speaking for Jones),
“Yes, since 1995 to the present the temperatures are flat, no significant temperature increase”
That’s not at all what Jones said. He said that from 1995 to 2009 the ten year trend was an increase of .12 degrees C, but that the time frame is too small to claim statistical significance at the 95% level. It was very close to rising to that level, and will undoubtedly do so with more years of data. That’s very different from saying that temps were flat. He said no such thing.
Here is the actual interview with Jones so you can read it and not make any more errors misquoting him:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
CFU (616)
Agree, Paul Jones was pretty rough on his workers, but he was never found guilty AFAIK.
Ray Ladbury (#627), are you seriously suggesting that during 1910-1940 increasing CO2 was an important contributor to warming? You must be kidding. Yearly increase of CO2 in that period was about 0.2 ppmv, so for instance from 1910 to 1911 it may have changed from 293.1 to 293.3 ppmv.
Now we are only human, so everyone can make a mistake and if you admit that you did, I will not hold it against you.
I think it’s time we address It’sgate, the shameless promulgation of an apostrophe in the possessive form of “its”. Gavin has been proselytizing on behalf of this superfluous apostrophe for years now (even in Climate Change, Picturing the Science, which turns out to be a much more thorough and engrossing book than I had anticipated, suffering only from its lack of an English-speaking editor). Now we have Jim propagating the error (without proper attribution) in, for example, his reply at comment 156 of the iPhone thread. What more proof do we need of the in-cestuous relationships among the AGW crowd?
RobM (#646) you are right that my words were not an exact citation (otherwise I would have used citation marks), so here is the question directed at Phil Jones’ and the exact words of his answer:
“Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.”
I really don’t see how the short description I used previously (#615) is ‘not at all what Jones said’. When there is no statistical significance you have to accept the zero hypothesis, that is temperatures were flat during that period. The term ‘flattening’, by the way, is also the word used by S. Solomon in her recent Science article.
And can we please focus on the issues themselves, rather than playing these childish games?