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.
The print media are in crisis with rising costs, decreasing revenues and diminishing subscriptions. I cannot help but think that at least part of this media frenzy is a desperate sensationalistic ploy a la National Enquirer in the hopes of increasing readership. If average reader intelligence is sufficiently high, then said ploy will inevitably backfire, hastening the demise of the irresponsible media outlets. If average reader intelligence is not sufficiently high, the ploy may work – for a while – as society goes into a black fantasy fugue of increasing ignorance. In a free society where schools have done their job of instilling the value of free nad independent thought, the latter is unlikely.
Canada’s media situation is particularly interesting. Canadian author and publisher Mel Hurtig in his 2008 book “The Truth about Canada: Some Important, Some Astonishing, And Some Truly Appalling Things All Canadians Should Know About”, based largely on analysis of Canadian statistical data, revealed that nearly 80% of all Canadian media sources are owned by wealthy right-wing conservative interests, who also happen to be deeply involved in the Alberta oil sands development and strong supporters the highly controversial conservative Stephen Harper government. It might also help explain the extent of the anti-AGW sentiment which is seemingly rampant in Canadian media posts.
Of course, there may also be the element that most of Canada will actually benefit during the first couple of centuries from global warming (albeit from a purely nationalistic and selfish point of view), at least until hundreds of millions of armed, starving climate refugees assail the borders.
wilt (648) — Forcing from CO2 proportional to the logarithm of the concentration, to good approximation.
Wilt, the thing you have to realize is that the increase in CO2 forcing is not linear in CO2 concentration but logarighmic. Thus if we look at the increase from 1910-1940, from roughly 295-395, that’s a factor of 1.03. Take the log, and we get 0.0333. Now look at the increase from 1974-1998 from roughly 330 to 360 ppmv, a factor of ~1.09, the log of which is .087. Thus the increase in forcing from 1910 to 1940 was less than a factor of 3 less than that from 1974 to 1998. Do the math.
The additional factors of increasing insolation (not present from 1974-1998) and low levels of volcanism (same) are probably sufficient to account for the difference.
search – site:realclimate.org “The Katrinas Are Coming!” – did not match any documents.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Arealclimate.org+Katrina+%2Bfurry
Dee, Wow, so you are just going to give up. I’m sorry that you think that preserving the advantages of civilization for your children is of so little value.
Look, Dee, the fact is that this matters. It matters because we are talking about coming up with a sustainable economy which will ensure that our progeny can continue to progress. It matters because the truth matters. It matters because science offers us the best hope of an institution that can force us to listen to the things we don’t want to hear.
My guess is that you are not an old woman. Your life will be awfully boring if you give up raising hell now. This is a cause that is worth raising some hell over. It would be a pity to have no good stories to tell your grandchildren.
Septic Matthew: “…I expect CO2 to start declining sometime between 2030 and 2060.”
I agree for petroleum, maybe even sooner. The question is whether we dig up much of China, India, the Appalachians and the US West to burn the coal. Coal is a much bigger problem than petroleum. Then there’s natural gas, tar sands, oil shale. My calculations show we have more than enough fossil fuels to reach over 1000 ppmv, and if the rest of the developing world reaches economic take-off (a prerequisite for population stabilization), we could reach that by 2100. If on the other hand, we go with renewables (probably supported by nukes), we could stabilize below 600 ppmv. Maybe we’ll have developed effective sequestration techniques by then–but remember, all that CO2 in the oceans will start going into the atmosphere as we start decreasing atmospheric concentrations. Recovery if it happens at all, will be long and slow.
RE- Comment by Jimbo — 20 February 2010 @ 6:01 AM:
There have only been opinions expressed about the Freedom of Information Act requests for data from the CRU. A judgment would be by a deliberation and finding expressed in a document. Please show evidence of this.
Further, if you would actually read the UK Freedom of Information Act you would immediately see why the refusal was legal. You are showing irrational bias.
Steve
Wilt, flattening does not mean flat. The trend is positive over the interval regardless of which temperature dataset you choose to use.
wilt (650) — Look with some care at the decadal averages from the GISTEMP global temperature anomaly product:
1960s -0.01
1970s +0.00
1980s +0.18
1990s +0.32
2000s +0.51
I, at least, wouldn’t call that “recent flattening”.
Wilt – you actually said “temperatures are flat” in #615, and claimed that he said “Yes, since 1995 to the present the temperatures are flat“. The question was “are they significant”, the response was “not quite, but the trend is positive” – that is NOT “flat”, nor is it even “flattening” which would be interpreted as “a lessening of the trend”. You’re right, precision in science isn’t childs play.
@654:
The name is “FurryCatHerder”. Not “furry”.
It’s winter, I’ve not shaved my legs in a few weeks, but my name is still “FurryCatHerder”.
If you’d like to see the “official” RealClimate stance on GHG, AGW and the (non-existent) increasing Northern Hemisphere ACE value, you may wish to review this posting —
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/tropical-ssts-natural-variations-or-global-warming/
>654, 661, still looking for whatever it was you said about Katrinas
Try this one: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Arealclimate.org+FCH
Wilt:
Others have pointed out why this is a “misrepresentation”.
No, you don’t have to accept the zero hypothesis.
You can’t *reject* it at that level of confidence. Not the same thing at all.
The fact that it can be rejected at, say, a 93% or 94% confidence level is … suggestive, to say the least. Suggestive enough to consider, oh, going back a few more years and re-running your test. Hint: it won’t come out “no trend”.
And, of course, there are other hypotheses you can’t reject as a result, such as the possibility that the trend is actually higher than the observed trend.
“reject” is too strong a word, anyway, we’re talking probabilities, not certainties.
653, 656, Ray Ladbury, Well said.
Hank @ 661:
Try using my screen name — not your idea of what my screen name might be. There’s also a distinct possibility that “Katrina” isn’t in the posting since “Katrina” would have been a past-tense storm, and the discussions would have been about future-tense storms.
Regardless, I did post a link from 2007 where the forecast was being made, and people “piled on”, about how we’re going to be having Katrinas on alternating Tuesdays from now until we’re back to living in mud huts and chewing on grass.
@604, thanks for your response Gavin. You are of course quite correct and perhaps I’m being a little harsh on the human race, though sometimes I wonder!
Part of the frustration in that post was due to my recent experience with a blogger who made wildly incorrect assertions about the conclusions of a reasonably easy-to-understand study which is freely available on the web, but who didn’t even bother to read it before he made them. Sound familiar? ;)
Naturally the situation will resolve itself eventually, but at what cost I’m not sure.
Hank @ 661:
Here’s one of my “experience not matching rhetoric” posts from 2007, along with a prediction (!) that what we’re seeing now with “The Ice Age Is Coming!” (or whatever was forecast and didn’t occur) would be a result —
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/friday-roundup-2/comment-page-3/#comment-51871
Remember — I’m one of the good gals. I’m completely down with the entire “Let’s cut CO2 emissions!” biz. I’m just an extra annoying cynic.
Speaking of bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion
Pres. Obama has said that the snowfall in Dallas is evidence of global warming. Wouldn’t it be fairer to say that this snowfall, and the snowfalls in Philadelphia, Baltimore and DC, “rare events” rather than “unprecedented events”? That they last happened 100+ years ago hardly makes them evidence of anything. Isn’t this meat for the anti-intellectual denialists like Rush Limbaugh (or so I have read, I never listen), and doesn’t it make Obama look foolish?
[Response: He didn’t quite say that. He said ” I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn’t mean that every place is getting warmer; it means the planet as a whole is getting warmer. But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees, and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow. The idea is, is that as the planet as a whole gets warmer, you start seeing changing weather patterns, and that creates more violent storm systems, more unpredictable weather. So any single place might end up being warmer; another place might end up being a little bit cooler; there might end up being more precipitation in the air, more monsoons, more hurricanes, more tornadoes, more drought in some places, floods in other places.” This isn’t what I would have written, but most of this is fine – more intense precipitation and more water vapour in the air are both already being seen and are forecast to continue. The variance over region of climate change impacts in general is a good point to make. I wouldn’t endorse “more unpredictable weather” – that is more of an urban myth than a scientific finding, and the “more hurricanes” and “more tornadoes” are conclusions too far. “More monsoons” doesn’t really make sense. Compared to other politicians pronouncements (i.e. Sarah Palin or John Boehner) it’s at least grounded in some reality. – gavin]
If we were to remove all human contributions to global warming, would the world still be warming?
I have asked this question on many forums and as yet never received an answer that was not just based on opinion.
[Response: How are we supposed to demonstrate this to you then given that we don’t get to run the 20th Century over again? The best estimates (second panel) that we have made indicate that, yes, the last half of the 20th Century would have cooled in the absence of human factors. – gavin]
dhogaza (663)
FWIW I agree, the 95% stuff seems to me to be splitting hairs. The data/graph seems to trend and I guess I’m not smart enough to choose between 90% and 95% when I don’t really know much about the “real” distribution anyway.
However, I have been curious for a long time about a similar situation in the MWP debate. As I understand it, there may have been a warming in the NH but there is no good data for the SH. In that case, why don’t we assume (with little certainty) that an MWP happened rather than not.
I am screwed up or missing something because many have looked at/debated MWP and I’m unaware of anyone bringing this up. Can you tell me an answer or point me to something to study?
TIA
[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]
Gavin,
I think you just made a very well reasoned argument. But the million dollar question is where do we go from here? The mistake in the IPCC report is so frustrating.
It’s not just the ‘GW Hoaxers’ who are talking about conspiracies, some of the respectable AGW types are coming up with similar crank views:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8418356.stm
Re #665, Coal is the most likely to go. As climateprogress keep on telling us over and over CSP, Nuclear Wind and new large scale pan continental grids (Desertec etc) can replace coal much easier than anyrthing else due to its base load nature.
Oil means everythng and represents 40% of global energy usage. Gas usage will increase to due to its liquified and gasfied ability and nature. Gas makes good power stations to with its instant on demand nature. All of the recent mayhem about the USA and shale gas that can be extracted with new techniques might just raise gas reserves to dangerous CO2 levels even though its a better fuel than coal for AGW.
Humankind has plenty of options, its all down to the political and economic will along with perhaps some serious cultural change. Its a 50/50 bet I reckon.
#499, John & “I fail to see why any of advantaged would deny AGW?” I’m sort of rethinking my ideas. It is “FrankenCorp” (that nonhuman entity that’s given all the rights and privileges of humans, more even) that denies AGW — or at least fund orgs & politicos to deny it. And the people that work for Frankencorp — the CEOs and PR people might actually KNOW AGW is real, but they also know who’s buttering their bread. (I’m reminded of THE INSIDER — the protag, who knew the harms, would never have outted them, except he was fired for some other reason.) And the poor (middle and working class) pretty much go along, bec they also hope to get their bread well buttered. When I did my thesis on ENVIRONMENTAL VICTIMOLOGY, I came across an article — “The Sweet Smell of Money” — about a small company town I think in Michigan where the industrial odor was so horrible no one could stand it, except the whole economy was tied into that company, so they didn’t complain.
RE #491 & “#450 Lynn Vincentnathan is wrong on history and wrong about the present. There were lots of conservatives in the late 60’s–that’s how Nixon became President.”
I was one of those conservatives back then (I think the only one in my age set, ostracized) — I was for Nixon in 1968. Then, esp after Watergate — THE original “gate” — I gradually became more “liberal.” However, it sort of seems to me I didn’t shift so much, as something else happened; the conservatives shifted more and more to the radical right (and have taken “conversative” right out of the word “conservative”), and the Republican party changed somewhat from including small business interests to basically stomping on them.
And come to find out Nixon was our best environmental president of all time (except perhaps for Teddy Roosevelt, another Republican) — that’s actually in the Environmental Crime & Justice textbook I use. Maybe his heart wasn’t really in it, but he did establish the EPA. And perhaps Carter would have been even better, bec I think his heart was in it, except for the economic downturn at the time.
So, let me rephrase my 450 statement: “I remember the late 60s when no one in their wildest sci fi imagination could have imagined how weird, anti-conservative, destructionist, and radical the Republicans would have become. And we had some very good sci fi writers back then.”
“643
J says:
20 February 2010 at 12:43 PM
“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…”
you don’t like the message.
However an Erlich Award Winning staple of delayers is that mitigation will cause massive collapse of the civilised world and its economies.
But you like that message.
So it doesn’t get a snark.
I notice that you haven’t actually addressed it either. It is a possible liable outcome of CO2 production under the currently desired increased rapine of natural resources.
When your mum tells you not to stand close to the edge, is she earning an Erlich award because the chance of you losing footing and falling to your death is small and the outcome scary and threatening and, when you walk away from the edge like your mum told you to, also impossible to prove would have happened.
Do you tell your mum she’s won an Erlich award?
“641
Septic Matthew says:
20 February 2010 at 12:25 PM
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”
Really? So squirrels have a NYSE that collapses? That Spider Monkeys have banking systems that lend out toxic assets and then bet that they are toxic?
Really?
And natural doesn’t mean unavoidable. It’s natural for someone to fall down dead when shot in the head by several bullets.
This is still not considered unavoidable.
Furry: “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.”
Which is complete bollocks.
It’s the other way around.
And the denialist headpieces don’t counter alarmism about teh ebils of AGW science. They PRODUCE it.
But I suspect you’re not really here to be educated, just to get your voice out in anger against those “elite scientists”.
A realization came to me yesterday, along the lines as “there’s no such thing as an economically rational man.” For denialists AGW = taxes, or -taxes = -AGW. This is such a strong chemical bond (this tax/AGW thing), that there is absolutely no concern about rising prices — it’s perfectly all right to give $2 more on some product, than a 5 cent tax that would actually translate (somehow by mitigating AGW) into lowering (not raising) the product’s price. Because it’s just fine to give one’s extra money to frankencorps out rampaging the earth — in fact, it’s the moral thing to do, make the rich richer and destroy the environment — but heaven forbid giving a penny to help (or make) those corps become energy/resource efficient, and thereby lower prices of their products.
So that’s why there are all these “gates.” It the pathological fear and hatred of taxes. Skip taxes even for public roads, goes the hue and cry, and just put up a lot of “toll-gates” on private roads.
Pete Best @673,
I agree that petroleum is unlikely to suffer greatly as a result of efforts to mitigate climate change (which is one reason why Exx-Mob’s support of denialists is self-defeating). However, I would contend that petroleum is also to valuable a resource to burn! It’s irreplacable as a feed stock for organic chemicals, for fertilizer…
Our progeny will look back on us and simply shake their heads that we could have been so stupid to simply piss away such a valuable resource.
“631
Jiminmpls says:
20 February 2010 at 10:48 AM
#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 ”
I’m getting a feeling of Deja Vu all over again.
That precent thingy has turned up before and it led to an argument I’m going to have to have with you again.
Why is the land being (ab)used? Because it is the only land they have.
All the other bits are taken by someone else.
So since the only real change causing that destruction of verdanity is that heat stresses are causing the land to be unable to provide as they used to, the (ab)use of that land causing desertification IS from AGW results.
Manky Matthew: “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 what about that third source of warming?
The one which is the result of us not currently being in equilibrium?
“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?”
This may help:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/
“The water flow from the glaciers is a tiny fraction of the total.”
But there’s a reason why towns flood: pavements are impermiable.
There’s a reason why you get damaging flash floods: it takes so long for water to percolate through baked soil.
The rain falls on ice and slows down because instead of running freely it has to squoosh through cracks with many surfaces to slow travel.
Ice melts: Bare rock is impermiable to rainfall.
Rain or snowmelt now run freely.
So instead of taking a month to flow, it takes a day to flash flood.
Total water flow: same. Or near enough.
Peak water flow: MASSIVE.
Minimum water flow: longer lasting.
You really don’t understand much, do you?
“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.”
How many times has that been shown to be false?
It’s not like you’re even weaselly right. You said “only”.
Proven wrong several times on this thread alone. If you’d actually read rather than repeated what you’ve been told is true, you would have known this.
“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?”
Check for yourself:
http:/www.ipcc.ch
Not that this will change anything for you. You’re not here to learn, you’re hear to stop someone else learning.
One think I realised but didn’t connect until recently.
All the Anonymous posts on Denial Depot supporting AGW and calling Al Gore “The Goracle” and therefore lamely aping the comments of the posters there are done because if they used the same handle on that site as elsewhere their words could be sent back to haunt them.
George is genuine and he’s also the only supporter of science that’s given himself a handle.
> no one in their wildest sci fi imagination could have imagined
Er. no: Nehemiah Scudder, 2012
http://www.google.com/search?q=“Nehemiah+Scudder”
Here is the exact type of alarmist stuff the AGW movement needs to rid itself of, this recently in the NYT. There are numerous responses of a “scientist never actually said this” in some replies, but layman don’t read science, they read newspapers. This is the face of AGW, like it or not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21view.html?scp=1&sq=small%20price%20for%20large%20benfit&st=cse
A Small Price for a Large Benefit
By ROBERT H. FRANK
“…But even an increase that small (3.6F) would cause deadly harm”
“Scientists say that even the 3.6-degree increase would spell widespread loss of life,”
“The M.I.T. model estimates a zero probability of the temperature rising by less than 3.6 degrees by 2100”
“the cost of preventing catastrophic climate change is astonishingly small”
Here is one of the craziest statements on AGW EVER:
“If climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets.”
“we face “only” a 10 percent chance of a catastrophic 12-degree climb”
“…certainly, than the modest cost of a carbon tax — to avoid having someone pull the trigger on a gun pointed at their head with one bullet and nine empty chambers…”
The reasonable reader would come to the conclusion that the article states a certain catastrophe will occur unless a carbon tax is implemented. This is alarmism, and it does AGW a disservice.
CFU – I think you meant verdancy, but there’s a lot more than AGW that has been driving it’s loss via desertification or depletion, particularly chemically based industrial monoculture aimed at the export market. It’s as much or more a lack of good stewardship on the part of economic powrhouses than on the part of the poor subsistance goat herders.
On desertification and climate change:
Desertification driving mass migrations – up to 700,000 migrate from Mexico drylands every year
Ray Ladbury (#653) has challenged me to do the proper math with respect to the relative contribution of CO2 during 1910-1940 compared to the warming in recent years. Initially (#627) he claimed that the contribution of CO2 to warming during 1910-1940 was about half that for the period 1975-1998, later (#653) he wrote that the log values for those periods would be 0.033 and 0.087 respectively. In that case CO2 contribution in 1910-1940 would be 38% when compared to 1975-1998. (There was by the way an obvious typing error with respect to the CO2 value that Ray Ladbury mentioned for 1940).
Well, here is my calculation. For a fair comparison the length of the periods should of course be the same, so I compare the most recent years 1980-2009 with a similar 29-year period 1910-1939.
For 1910-1939 I use the ice core data (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/lawdome.combined.dat) and for recent years the Mauna Loa data.
1910-1939 CO2: 300-310 ratio 1.03 and the log value is 0.033
1980-2009 CO2: 339-387 ratio 1.14 and the log value is 0.132
Therefore the contribution of CO2 to warming during the period 1910-1939 is less than 25% compared to the period 1980-2009. When one chooses the period 1970-1999 instead of 1980-2009, the outcome is about the same (CO2 326-368, ratio 1.13, log value is 0.121 therefore CO2 contribution about 27% during 1910-1939 compared to 1970-1999).
Two conclusions:
– relative contribution of CO2 during the 1910-1939 warming compared to warming in recent years is about 25%, and therefore much lower than “about half” or 38% as Ray Ladbury suggested
– the problem of course is not so much that there was a typing error, or a miscalculation, but that even in every little detail presented by the AGW proponents there seems so often to be an exaggeration in the direction of more support for the CO2 hypothesis.
And don’t misunderstand me: I realize that increasing CO2 probably will have a contribution, but I am trying to find the truth or at least the best approximation of the truth: how much will CO2 affect temperature and climate, and when, and how.
John Peter:
I don’t believe that the statement that “there is no good data for the SH” is correct. What’s correct is that there’s a relative lack of good data. The data that does exist doesn’t support the notion that there was a global, synchronous MWP.
I highly recommend the skeptical science piece on the MWP, which examines Mann’s 2009 paper on the subject.
668, Gavin I like your comments.
However, consider the following: But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees, and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow.
They have “suddenly” experienced events like those that they have experienced in the past. That’s not evidence for anything. As described, it isn’t even a problem. Somebody else, in a previous post, established that the weather in Vancouver isn’t even unusual.
However, I take your point that I had misquoted Obama.
I hope that you noted the exchange between Ray Ladbury and me. He corrected my misperception of the projected effects of the CO2 accumulation to date. What is your estimate of the time that will be taken for the earth system to respond to the CO2 accumulation to date?
676, Completely Fed Up: So squirrels have a NYSE that collapses? That Spider Monkeys have banking systems that lend out toxic assets and then bet that they are toxic?
Like every other species, they suffer dramatic population swings; they overproduce every year, and nearly all of the offspring die before attaining reproductive age. Now and again in favorable conditions an unusual number grow and reproduce, but then they suffer massive population declines. The first serious attempt to model this natural population fluctuation was the Lottka-Volterra equations.
Re #679 Its valuable in making plastics, pesticides and fertilisers but motion is everything to humans and hence not only do we need to replace coal but we also are reqired to electrify our transport except aircraft which will require some sustainable biofuel instead. That doubles the problem as oil is let us suggest peaking around 2010 to 2020 or maybe it already has as that is possible to!
RE 679 Pt 2# Its all down to growth (log 2) which is the number 70 which you divide by your annual growth rate to get a doubling of something. So lets try out CO2 in terms of global economic growth year on year. Its between 2-3% (2.5% mean). Divide 2,3 in to 70 and you get the doubling time. 3%=23 years and 2%=35 years. Total Co2 output in doubling time is doubled to 60 billion tonnes per annum. Add it all up accumulative from 2010 through to doubling time and beyond to 2050 with differing percentage rises and you get between 1.8 to 2.3 trillion tonnes of additional Co2 into the atmosphere!
In terms of ppmv it goes to around 480 – 530. 2050 through 2100 adds an additional 5 through 11 trillion tonnes. I doubt we have the ability to go beyond 2050 with BAU fossil fuel usage but a doubling in around 23-35 years is potentially plausable.
gavin wrote in regard to Obama’s comments: “I wouldn’t endorse ‘more unpredictable weather’ – that is more of an urban myth than a scientific finding”
It does seem intuitive to me that during the current period of (1) rapidly increasing GHG levels, driving (2) rapid warming, driving (3) rapid climate change, that weather would indeed become “more unpredictable” — for the simple reason that the whole Earth system, including weather patterns, is rapidly changing, in ways that we know are not (entirely) predictable even with our best scientific understanding.
How could the question of the “predictability” of weather be examined scientifically? Has it been? If not, why not?
The GISS web site used to have a graph comparing land and ocean temperatures. It seems to no longer be there. Is this feature expected back soon or has it just moved to a new location?
I wrote to Septic Matthew in #559:
Septic Matthew replied: “As for costly changes that have already occurred (Secular Animist), they are barely perceptible among the natural variability.”
Thanks for giving a perfect example of what I was talking about.
Did I write anything about “costly changes that have already occurred”?
No, I did not. You made that up. You then proceeded to argue about what you pretended I wrote.
Regardless of whether they have yet impacted your pocketbook or anybody else’s, there are in fact plenty of very serious AGW-driven changes that are already occurring, that are occurring faster than was anticipated, and that are very clearly “perceptible among the natural variability.”
Gavin’s response (#668), quoting Pres. Obama: ‘But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees’
I suppose it’s not the president’s fault but rather of his scientific advisors, but in view of the fact that for Vancouver the average low for February is 34 degrees Fahrenheit (plus 1 degree Celsius) and the average high 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) I do not think one should expect to have snow during the Olympics when it’s in February. One can hope for it, of course but that’s something else. So there is not much remarkable about the present weather in Vancouver.
And yes, we all know that weather is not climate so I think no one not even the president should try to link them directly, no matter of the direction (pro or con AGW).
CFU @ 667 —
The other way around?
I don’t have time to point to instances where doom-and-gloom predictions that haven’t come true — regardless of the scientists, politicians or media spokepeople making them — have been used against the =legitimate= issues, but they are out there. And the current “No warming in 5 / 10 / 12 years!” crowd is a fine instance of that — because someone drew a line and called it a “projection”. Likewise, I did provide an instance from 3 or so years ago where people were talking about “more intense hurricanes!” without observing first that we were on the down-leg of whatever Atlantic cycle we were on.
Am I upset at “elite scientists”? No. Most of them are no better (or worse) than other scientists and engineers at Public Relations. And as someone who’s worked in four different engineering fields, that includes me — though I’m keenly aware that I need to “language” my message more carefully for audiences outside of whatever field I’m working in at the moment.
Are there things where I =am= angry? Yes. But I also know that venting my personal paranoid feelings is a bad idea and would tend to make me look like a crackpot.
But thanks for a perfect example of “If you aren’t toeing the party line, you’re a denialist!” I’m heading out to the Texas Hill Country to go preach Renewable Energy to the Masses. Something I’m sure that all climate denialists engage in on a regular basis. And twice on Sunday!
681, Completely Fed Up: Check for yourself:
During my walk today I determined to download the 4 reports of the IPCC (AR4), so your prompt was most timely.
Ray Ladbury, it might have already been caught, but you slipped a decimal in #653.
Septic Matthew, “well said” indeed, other than Ray’s #653 being wrong.