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.
Re #367
Several people including Steve Fish (#259) and Completely Fed Up (#189) have attacked my remark (# 52 and #171) about Phil Jones breaching the British law on Freedom of Information. They suggested that there has been no verdict from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Indeed there has not been, a search on the ICO website for a Decision Notice concerning the University of East Anglia reveals that there hasn’t been one, nor a press release. A full search of their website failed to produce any reference to UEA on this matter.
bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion
It’s my impression that those problems are not new. Al Gore’s talks, movie, and tv appearances (to take one famous case) have had all three and he received some prestigious awards. Some of my friends had acquired the belief that that the DC, Philadelphia and Baltimore area and England really would have snow-free winters, and have been surprised to learn that extra snowfalls have been predicted instead.
The only thing new is a run of stories that have these features on the anti-AGW side. It’s just the latest swing of the media pendulum. If the scientists focus on the science, rewrite and update the offending portions of the IPCC reports (complete with caveats about the sources of imprecision and incompleteness of knowledge) then the pendulum will swing back your way again.
Right now “cap and trade” is stalled in Congress, but the strongest promoter is Henry Waxman, and he is neither ignorant nor a fool. President Obama is a believer in AGW and so are the Democratic leaders in both Houses of Congress. They’ll ride out this storm as they have ridden out so many others in their careers, and they’ll pass something that mitigates CO2 accumulation and can be expanded in the future when the evidence is clearer.
Meanwhile, you have to remember to clarify all the exaggerations in the public discourse, such as the claim that the Maldive Islands will go under water imminently, or that Hurricane Katrina is the warning of worse to come imminently, or that a particularly well-documented snow anomaly in Vancouver is proof of AGW.
The best forecast of the science is that, even in the next 50 years, AGW is likely to cause much less damage and havoc that the routine fires, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes. Indonesians and Haitians, to pick just two examples, will never (at least not in the next three centuries) suffer as much from AGW as from the recent earthquake and the Boxing Day Tsunami.
It’s very interesting for the U.S. media, which have long taken the “silent treatment” tact — just ignore the GW topic and people won’t know it’s an issue. So they’re sort of caught between reporting it — even as a hoax — and maintaining their silence.
And now it’s increasingly presented in the blogophere (after the “cap & trade” bill was brought up in Congress) as GW = “increasing taxes and harming the economy.” It’s almost as if the science should be decided based on these taxes and how they will harm the economy — if taxes are perceived as too high, then GW isn’t happening. The snow storm only adds fuel to the hoaxers fuel.
It’s getting very very vicious out there, but I’d predict that this is nothing compared to our future of vicious, killer musical chairs as we fight over ever-diminishing life supporting resources being harmed by GW and other serious enviro problems.
Richard Steckis (350),
Why link to an op-ed piece that references another op-ed piece, rather than link to what the actual Polish Academy of Sciences says? If you read either their latest 2009 annual report or their 2007 position statement (released after IPCC), you’d see that they clearly are on-board with the other Academies in accepting that AGW is a significant concern.
Their annual report (English version) is here:
http://www.english.pan.pl/images/stories/pliki/publikacje/annual_report/annual2009-net.pdf
Their position statement (you’ll need to use a translator) is here:
http://www.aktualnosci.pan.pl/images/stories/pliki/stanowiska_opinie/2008/stanowisko_pan_131207.pdf
#362
People who have not been trained as scientists do not know what the word
“truth” means. They think that courts of law determine truth. They think that voting determines truth. Neither could be farther from the truth. Only experiments determine truth. Humans should never be trusted or believed because telling the truth is just impossible in ordinary language, and the human animal did not evolve to tell the truth. Most people can’t tell the truth even if they want to.
I only agree with a part of this. Yes courts and voting are inadequate. But the public do have a useful idea of ‘truthful’ as applied to an accurate report of what a person has done or said. They just don’t realise how little of it they are getting from the media on this topic. The next stage will be when they say “I don’t know who to believe” and some people are already saying that “they are all at it” (i.e lying). The final stage is when people stop caring. That is just what this campaign is all about.
[If you are interested in the morality involved see “Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life” by Sissela Bok. I wish BBC’s Radio 4 would discuss this issue on its Moral Maze programme but with Melanie Phillips, from the Daily Mail, on the team, no one else would get a look in. ]
Somebody said: “Global Ice coverage seems ok; Antarctica’s ice extent (more than 90% of world’s ice) is up decade after decade.””
This is a classic error. Sea ice (the wafer thin floaty stuff around the edge) makes a very small proportion of the world’s ice – and won’t contribute to sea level rise because it is floating. Arctic sea ice shows a strong downward trend. Antarctic sea ice shows a negligible long-term trend, which doesn’t surprise anyone (except deniers, for some reason).
Continental ice, the land based ice sheets, kilometers thick and accounting for a huge proportion of the world’s ice – that is definitely melting. Mass is added from snowfall, but the rate of melting is so high that overall Antarctica is losing mass. It is losing so much mass that it alters gravity in the region, and can be detected from space.
Because Antarctica is so big and inaccessible, we don’t have really exact figures for melting. But the rate is so significant (and is arguably accelerating) that we have to be very, very worried.
So, whoever originally made that quote above: wrong on all counts.
Re #333
Ackerman and his ilk still can’t resist the urge to ‘adjust’ quotations, in his justification for misrepresenting Houghton he still trims the quotation to suit his purposes, the full quotation is:
“If we want a good environmental policy in the future, we’ll have to have a disaster. It’s like safety on public transport. The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accident.”
Which is a succinct description of environmental laws, the UK Clean Air act arose from public outcry following the great London smog for example. The Titanic sinking had a profound effect of maritime safety regulation, seems like a perfectly reasonable statement to me (the Radio Act,1912, the International Ice Patrol, international legislation re lifeboat provision and ship construction)
wilt #394: no this does not clarify things sufficiently. What you do is ‘quote mining’, and is frowned upon. You missed:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/vcstatement
Sounds like somebody at ICO spoke before his turn, and went mouse quiet.
398 CFU
You say:
“But that’s nothing to do with climate change or the changes. Neither was the closure due to AGW or mitigation of it”.
How do you work that out? You don’t think a boss can see a way of making 100s of millions just by switching production to a different place i.e. make the same amount at a lesser cost (Indian wages) and, here’s the kicker, get a few 100 million in the process for reducing UK carbon production? You dont think that a company might do that? And the reason that they can do that is because of carbon trading – and the reason carbon trading exists is purely, entirely because of the AGW proposition – what part of this are you struggling to understand? Naive doesn’t even get close!
You say: “And you know that the same amount will be produced through WHAT means”?
Do you think Tata are not gonna bother fulfilling orders and contracts, or pitching for the new business to be fulfilled via India? You is greener than than the greenest green thing!
You say: “We’re in a recession if you didn’t notice. Companies close during recessions because demand isn’t there. When demand picks up, supply will too, but that isn’t proof of anything other than closing steelworks means they’re closed and unlikely to open again”
Nah, you still not getting it are you. I’ll try again. Its the same company making the same amount of steel, producing the same amount of C02 (whatever that is – or was going to be) – but in a different place – for which they get the 100s million carbon credit kicker.
Let me try an analogy on you. You work at say, a bakery where you grow the wheat out back for the bakers to use. The government says we want to reduce baking because growing wheat is a bad thing and the planet is burning up. So the government says it will give you a few million dollars to stop growing wheat. So you stop growing wheat, pocket the few million dollars and say thank you very much – and then import the wheat from Canada! Same amount of wheat used, same issues, USA and UK taxpayer has paid you for not growing the wheat that you now import. Have you spotted the problem yet?
You say “So you know the same amount of CO2 is being produced because you say the same amount is being produced”.
Unless the Indians have come up with a way of making steel without producing C02 – Yes, the same amount of CO2 will be produced!
Damn this is hard work. Have you considered that it is your incredulity at the ridiculousness of the situation that might be the problem here? You can’t believe that this is what is happening so you make ridiculous comments?
You say “This is not normally considered “evidence”.
Which part do you not believe to be true or lacking evidence? Is it that the people aren’t loosing their jobs? Is it that you don’t think Tata will pocket the cash from the sale fo the carbon credits? Is it that you think Tata are gonna tell the customers they are not going to fulfill orders and contracts. Is it that you don’t think anyone in the UK wants steel anymore.
What is it?
You say “It’s a recession”
Ok lets go with that then. So, in the recession, the requirement for wheat for the bakery has gone down say 30% The comapany closes its USA bakery and lays of all of the employees.
And as a result of closing the bakery, in the middle of a recession, for reasons no one can fathom, the government then gives the bakery a few 100 million dollars for not producing wheat in the USA.
Have you spotted the problem yet?
You say: “AGW didn’t do it. Bankers and rich people who risked other people’s money (skimming off a little slice on the up and the down)”
Carbon trading exists only because of the AGW proposition – or can you give me another reason?
.
You say “Neither do you show one jot of sympathy. In fact you rub their noses in it because the only value you see in their plight is one to make up a stick to beat AGW science with”
Its all about you isn’t it! This situation is indefensibly outrageous and all you can do is revert to type.
Let me ask you a simple question.
Do you think that Tata should get a few 100 million dollars from the western taxpayers for closing their Corus Plant and not producing steel at Corus (whilst producing the steel that Corus would have produced, elsewhere).
Give me a Yes or No because them’s the only options. Forget the arguments and forget the science, just answer the question – cause carbon trading, as I have demonstrated, aint got nothing to do with either.
Come on, Yes or NO?
Comment by Completely Fed Up — 18 February 2010 @ 11:54 AM
Re #306. Stu says:
Jonesy says,
Why should humans necessarily need to adopt any belief about the future? The long history of predictions, especially of the apocalyptic type, has not generated a good track record.
You can’t be talking about well established, widely supported scientific predictions.
Stu says: Imagine yourself in the year 1900. Now imagine yourself making a complex prediction about what would be going on in the year 2000. Would you honestly feel confident that you’d be right? Be honest.
At increasing levels of complexity, of course there is more uncertainty, but that’s a strawman of the issue here. It is not reasonably uncertain that CO2 is rising nor that this rise is causing and will cause future increased temps. It may be uncertain what the exact climate sensitivity is beyond a certain range, but not that there is any sensitivity. What would have much more uncertainty would be a prediction that said the increasing CO2 won’t lead to rising temps because of some other potential but unstated and undescribed forcing or dynamic.
Stu says: Not believing is simply being reasonable and realistic. We can plan, and we should plan! But nowhere is it guaranteed that we’re going to get things right. This is applicable even to the short term. 100 years from now, who’s to say?
Appreciation of uncertainty should be a critical first step in dealing with any future risks. Many people sympathetic to AGW understand this. Many seem to forget.
The point is whether they are disbelieving for good reasons. The people not believing most commonly disbelieve that AGW is scientifically valid for such reasons as: that it snowed a lot yesterday in their hometown or that an email had the word “trick” in it or because “climate has always changed” or because “it’s ridiculous that humans can have any affect on the climate” or that “the temperature record uses adjusted data and obviously unadjusted raw data is best” or because “Al Gore is not a scientist and he’s making money off of it” or because “in the 70s they said we’re headed for another ice age” or because “CO2 is insignificant compared to water vapor” or because “there is no consensus for it since there is a list of 650 scientists who refute it” or because someone on Fox News or from their political party told them to.
How many are well informed on the issue and are disbelieving for good reasons?
#345, “Perhaps a guest post by a psychologist about group wishfull thinking is called for”. Sounds to me like a case of the “sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander”. It applies to both sides of the divide.
@382 I love this bit: “so riddled with errors it could have been researched on Wikipedia.”
Now this is as opposed to Conservipedia, which for the first 6 months of its existence actually had an article that complained that reality had a “liberal bias”. They are now rewriting the Bible to purge that book of it’s liberal bias. Comedy Gold, I tell you!!!
It’s certainly true the MSM have swung with a vengeance. But the whinging about it I find extraordinary. The same MSM you quote – New York Times; The Guardian; The Sunday Times; – and over here all UK TV channels – have all uncritically for ten or twenty years parroted the consensus, and publicised every exaggeration from polar bears to malaria to Bangladesh under water. I bet you didn’t point out their exaggerations quite so incredulously then. Why expect them to be more accurate now?
Climategate is a big deal. Of course it doesn’t change the science, any more than Einstein being a paedo would cause an issue with e = mc2. That’s not the point. Nor does a NYT story.
I applaud posts 17 and 19 – sensible.
I think the public backlash, as in lower poll figures, is more due to the policies we are being asked to adopt in mitigation than any hard views on the science, and that any questioning of facts, theories, policies, precautionary principle had become unthinkable, anti-social.
For Gary Thompson (your question back at 307)
GISS doesn’t operate the weather stations. Start at this link and poke around and you’ll be in the right ballpark, I’m sure you’ll find documentation about them:
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/stationlocator.html
406, Didctylos:
Interesting reading on the subject of Antarctic ice loss, courtesy of NASA, which gives some figures for the rate of mass loss (more than 100 km^3/year):
Is Antarctica Melting?
> 390, Bob
> Question: Is anyone aware of a site or database which cross references various
> scientific papers, in particular citations and more importantly refutations (or
> supporting follow ups) of those original papers?
Sure. Take the information you have, whatever it is, and start here:
http://scholar.google.com/
Look through the results or refine your search until you find the actual paper you’re interested in.
Look right below that for colored text “Cited by” and a number. Click that link to see the citing papers as indexed by Google Scholar.
And, follow the original hit to the page at the publisher. Usually you’ll find one.
Then look on that page for a link called “citations” or “cited by” — there are several other services besides Scholar that also list citing papers; their updates and criteria differ a bit (for example Scholar considers ‘Energy and Environment’ and some of the PR anti-science blogs to be citations).
Lynn Vincentnathan says:
18 February 2010 at 12:46 PM
It’s very interesting for the U.S. media, which have long taken the “silent treatment” tact — just ignore the GW topic and people won’t know it’s an issue
I guess that depends on your media market. Our local metropolitan newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, has run dozens if not hundreds of articles about climate change, including an award-winning series on the impact of global warming on the Sierra mountain range: http://www.sacbee.com/sierrawarming/index.html
My impression is that most print media coverage is “favorable” to the concept of AGW. What you see on cable news is a different matter, of course. Any science topic is likely to be covered in a very facile way on television, due to the constraints of time and the fact that news editors are not generally very science literate. That is why it is important for them to have articulate scientists in their rolodexes.
Septic Matthew – If your “particularly well-documented snow anomaly in Vancouver” refers to the Olympic situation, I can assure you it is NOT an anomoly and here it hasn’t been reported as such, the Vancouver area regularly has totally snow free winters, and the actual main venue area [Whistler, further north] has had rather average snow this year. OTOH, the Olympic comittee apparently failed to take the possibility of an El Nino event into consideration 7 years ago, which is what may actually be proof of the results of ignoring climate science in terms of effects on “the bottom line”.
I got to hand it to the skeptics who never (try to) publish any valid arguments against AGW but post on blogs, www sites etc and continually harass the media to allow them to put their ill informed and mostly incorrect ideas into print.
I mean the chances of AGW being incorrect as about as likely as someone finding out that the copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is. Its not going to happen. Skeptics being angry at peer review calling it elitist I suppose! Well of course it is, we only want our best scientists reading other best scientists work dont we ?
Two comments.
1.Here in the southwest of the UK, the Great British Public – by reference to letters to the local newspaper – has learned that weather is not climate. Despite the seriously cold and disrupting weather we have been having, there were _no_ letters to the paper saying the cold “disproved global warming”.
2. But there is a steady flow of letters saying that warming has stopped. Now,please don’t talk about “trends” – the reality is ordinary people(like me) don’t see the trend – they see a flatish line.
So happens that the region that the regional newspaper (Western Morning News)covers includes Exeter – and Exeter is where the Met Office has its HQ. Prior to Copenhagen the newspaper ran for and against op-eds on climate change. And one of the two on the warming side was right from the Met office. :-)
To #381. Ray Ladbury. No, I discussed the accuracy of temperature measurements, random and systematic errors and I have suggested that the analysis that was provided in the refs given by Gavin is based on assumptions that can be challenged. These are the technical issues. Regarding my non-technical statements, I said that your research (meteor impact, Universe birth) are of the History Channel kind.
RL:
I am not an ignorant troll and I hope you know it. Since you are uncivilized, please do not communicate to my posts. I would appreciate if you just ignore me.
RL:
I like his modeling very much. Impressive and accurate; however, to certain extent. To what extent is the topic of discussion.
RL: I don’t like this one: folks befor me Used Maxwell distribution ,but I will use Fermi Dirac! Uh, such a step for IEEE Life Fellow!
RL:
You don’t know what people do in private companies.
“Unless the Indians have come up with a way of making steel without producing C02 – Yes, the same amount of CO2 will be produced! ”
Since this is in the future, how do you know that have done this?
You don’t.
It also has eff all to do with AGW or mitigation or climate or anything.
Thanks, Hank. Your response is useful, but problematic when I don’t have access to the citing papers, which have to be completely read to determine if they are supporting, refuting, building on or simply referencing the original paper (the latter seems to make up the bulk of citations, things like “as discussed by Havlchuk, 2002, Bias, 2001, and Nevermind, 1983”).
I would still gladly do the work, and actually enjoy it… but reading fifteen papers to determine the validity of one to determine its correct application in a silly skeptic argument… that’s past the point of diminishing returns for me. For some reason I haven’t gotten my share of the gobs of Grant money that our whole climate hoax is supposedly making.
It’s actually a little strange to me that we’ve created and continue to create a wealth of lies on the Internet, with no good mechanism for retracting or updating or identifying them. This works within a narrow field, I think, because competent scientists stay up to date, know what’s real, what’s not, what’s been refuted, etc. The lies can stand, because people in the field know them for what they are. The lies are part of the permanent record, and are useful in themselves in science, even if they’ve been refuted.
But now we have blogs and articles that get put out there with lies and misunderstandings and distortions and misquotes, and people outside of science are reading abstracts for journal articles and saying “wow, that’s impressive, hey, look at this! This guy proved…” . . . even if it’s a paper that was laughed out of the room. And these things are all just left there, floating in cyberspace, as if carved in cyberstone, for anyone to wander across and read and believe (look at how long it takes hoax e-mails to finally fade away).
Ten years from now we’ll still have people telling us that Lindzen proved in 2009 that global climate models foolishly have their feedbacks reversed, or that in 2007 Miskolczi proved that the greenhouse effect is basically irrelevant in climate.
“402
Septic Matthew says:
18 February 2010 at 12:18 PM
bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion
It’s my impression that those problems are not new. Al Gore’s talks, movie, and tv appearances”
Have nothing to do with bad reporting, misrepresentation or confusion.
Except it pisses denialist dittos right off. Because it’s easy to understand.
See, they want confusion.
And they sow confusion.
And if they can’t make it stick, they complain about confusion that doesn’t exist.
With regard to the “Overton Window” —
I would very much like the scientists who run RealClimate to write an article about the scientifically plausible worst-case scenario for unmitigated anthropogenic global warming, which would describe what that worst case scenario would look like, and would also summarize the empirical observations that support the view that the worst case scenario is already under way.
I don’t think RealClimate will write such an article — because of the “Overton Window”.
While lunatic fringe conspiracy theories about a supposed global climate science hoax are permitted — including on the comments pages of this blog — science-based discussions of possible worst-case outcomes are outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.
Am I wrong?
1) I’m very supportive of a scientist proposing a hypothesis – then seeking to prove or disprove that hypothesis. After all that is what moves knowledge forward, even for “settled science” (e.g., what causes stomach ulcers).
2) For me the key questions of AGW supporters are not: Why do you believe that mankind is warming the planet? or What evidence do you have?. The key questions are: How is it now possible for mankind to understand with certainty how this planet’s global climate works? What scientific breakthroughs occurred – and when did they occur?.
I would really like to see a reporter/ author publish the story of how it became possible for mankind to understand with certainty how this planet’s climate works. After all, that would have to rank as one of mankind’s greatest scientific achievements and the story should be told – if there is a story to tell.
3) There are objectives that both those who support the AGW theory and those who do not can agree on, so let’s start with those first. And let’s also continue to support the effort to understand how our planet’s global climate works.
At least Steven Chu, the US Energy Secretary and a Nobel Prize winner is pushing back against the way journalists are selling science short. His claims of a double standard (“Its very asymmetric. Denialists can say anything they want”).
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/18/scienceenergy-secretary-steven-chu-interview-financial-times-ipcc-climategate/
406, 415 Didactylos:
Increasing Rate of Ice Mass Loss from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets Revealed by GRACE (Velicogna, 2009)
Climate Change:
The problem with elevated CO2 levels is its effect on Ocean Chemistry. Put aside the cause of Global Warming and focus on CO2 emissions. The Oceans are in dire straights more dead zones pop up every year. The Oceans are becoming oxygen depleted, phytoplankton is disappearing as the Ocean becomes more acidic. The acidity is directing correlated to dissolved CO2 entering solution as carbonic acid.
I would like to share our interest as one of the principals of Royal Wind we have designed an Ocean Temperature Regulatory System using our revolutionary turbines to power cold water pumps. Our system is designed to pump large amounts of cold water to the surface of the ocean to create cold water thermoclines. We believe that widespread use of our system worldwide would result in a much desired global temperature regulation and reduction. The health of our oceans and the increased carbon sequestration are linked to global sustainability. We feel that without intervention the oceans are in danger of collapse. The health of our oceans is crucial to the maintenance of oxygen levels in the atmosphere. If the oceans die, we will struggle to survive. It?s all connected: ocean health, carbon sequestration, and global temperatures. Here’s the plan: To install our ocean-current powered cold water pumps in strategic locations worldwide, creating cold water thermoclines, increasing the sequestration of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Our system will also be used to build the polar icecap back to a more acceptable year-round base level which will also ensure the continued function of the thermohaline and of the North Atlantic drift. Our system will also be used to create cold water barriers to hurricanes. We can solve the Earth’s problems with the right effort. We must if we plan to continue living on this Earth.
Is the United States already carbon-negative? Some reports in the journal Science answered “Yes”, but here is a site that reports “No”:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/
According to that site, the US forests absorb about 30% of US CO2 emissions. According to a post by Gavin a few days ago, the target for CO2 reductions is 65%, so the US could become carbon-negative by a reduction of 40% of current CO2 emissions, assuming that the US is not already carbon-negative. The 40% reduction could be achieved in about 20 years if the current rate of CO2 reduction is maintained or slightly accelerated (figures differ about what the actual decline of fossil fuel has been lately.) The ongoing development of non-hydro renewable energy supplies, accelerated under Bush and accelerated again under Obama, will probably achieve this goal if maintained.
There is no real need to complain about the recent media coverage. Continue to hammer home the points that fossil fuels have large external costs (mining deaths, mercury, and radioactivity for coal, military expenditures for oil), and that American industrial and military power need plentiful fuel supplies, preferably domestic, in the future.
CFU (326)
Care to prove that melting ice caps is both impossible if we discontinue BAU and that it won’t be a catastrophe?
cheerio
john peter
Phil. Felton says: 18 February 2010 at 1:02 PM
“…the UK Clean Air act arose from public outcry following the great London smog for example.”
Here where I live local governments finally became serious about dealing with under-managed sewage when our enormous lake became unsuitable for swimming as it was too saturated with fecal coliform bacteria. Photos of kids standing next to a “no swimming” sign on the shore of this huge body of water catalyzed public outrage, public policy was changed.
Our C02 pollution problem is nicely analogous. Sewage does not actually vanish when it is dumped into a river, nor does C02 when it is dumped into the air. We can ignore either up to a certain point, then we have to manage the problem instead of pretending it does not exist.
arthur — I doubt very much that Greenland had less ice around 1000 CE than now. Provide a reliable reference, please.
Curmudgeon Cynic: the UK steel industry has been in decline for many years. Decades, even. This is all very sad for people working in the steel industry, but doesn’t necessarily damage the UK economy as a whole. It most certainly has nothing in any way to do with climate change.
The recession has merely been the last straw for an industry that was almost gone anyway.
See? It doesn’t take dozens of paragraphs. Simple.
“2. But there is a steady flow of letters saying that warming has stopped. Now,please don’t talk about “trends” – the reality is ordinary people(like me) don’t see the trend – they see a flatish line.”
No they don’t.
They ONLY see a flattish line if you select
a) one of three datasets
b) only from 1998 to 2008.
Show them a line from 1999 to 2009 and there ain’t no more flattish line.
But what they get TOLD is that they should see a flattish line. And what they get shown is the cherry.
They don’t get shown the line, they get a cherry.
Matt had it right:
Meanwhile, you have to remember to clarify all the exaggerations in the public discourse, such as the claim that the Maldive Islands will go under water imminently, or that Hurricane Katrina is the warning of worse to come imminently, or that a particularly well-documented snow anomaly in Vancouver is proof of AGW.
Bear in mind that I’m one of the alledged “skeptics” who is less than thrilled at the political mechanisms being forwarded to reduce emissions. I came to the site by recommendation of a very pro-AGW fellow who had the good sense not to call me vicious names; rather he invited me to look at the science and not summaries (or summaries of summaries).
Most of my skepticism came from outrageous claims by pro-AGW activists and politicians that were relayed in the press without any balance from scientists.
RealClimate is outside of the debate, really, since it is real scientists talking science….which means caveats and corrections.
There is some “pendulum” effect going on. I think we underestimate the ego of newsmen, though. For quite awhile there has been plenty of nonsensical alarmism they swollowed due to poor vetting on their part, and they feel wronged by it. So now they switch sides and make the same mistake in reverse.
Much of the skepticism is far shallower than many here think it is. Ask most people and they’ll admit that the climate is changing, and in principle emissions should be curbed whenever possible. Ask them if the answer is sending money by the truckload to the Third World (particularly Africa) and raising the price of gasoline artificially, and you’ll get a different answer.
Tobacco is an interesting parallel, one often brought up. We learn a lot about how solutions to a problem can play out. Huge sums of money were paid to the states here in the USA by the tobacco industry on the grounds that it burdened them with medical costs. The states then took the money and rather than addressing the effect of tobacco (on which the legal case was based) plowed it into the General Fund, where it literally disappeared. Today we see states decrying a lack of money for medical care.
That’s the “rest of the story” in the tobacco history, and one that people know very well. When a politician or activist starts talking about dangers to the general public and the need to drain huge sums of money from the economy in order to protect it, senseable people protectively put their hands on their wallets and question motives.
Climate change isn’t going to be some “And then one day…” affair, if I read things right. It is far more sinister than that. Planting season moving a few days one way or another over the course of several years, and harvesting doing the same. Yields becoming static instead of improving despite improvements in the crops or processes.
Is it “sexy?” Nope. Farmers understand it, and city folks do too, once it is explained why it’s important.
So long as the extremists on both sides have megaphones, however, we’re going to be stuck with the swinging press.
One other note:
Science doesn’t discover “truth.” It finds facts. Truths are self evident as they are based on beliefs, facts aren’t. This might seem like semantics, but it is really important semantics.
If one is searching for truth in religion, consult a clergyman. If one is looking for facts in religion, consult an archeologist. Any correlation between the two can be considered coincidental.
> 423, Bob
> I don’t have access to the citing papers, which have to be completely read
Sure you do. Make up the list of material you want to read.
Ask your librarian to get them for you.
If you can’t get to your local library, most areas have a disablity access program in which they’ll come to you or send you material.
Interlibrary l-o-a-n makes almost everything available to anyone who asks.
(hyphenation to defeat the suspicious s-p-a-m checker)
Aside — for those whose handicaps prevent them from going to the library, the Library of Congress used to have a wonderful program providing scanned images electronically. That has been terminated. One wonders why.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/l-o-a-n/illscanhome.html (remove the hyphens)
What self-frottaging tripe
“I would really like to see a reporter/ author publish the story of how it became possible for mankind to understand with certainty how this planet’s climate works”
Certainty that CO2 is a greenhouse gas? That happened in 1894.
Certainty that the saturated gassy argument was false? Variable 1934 to 1956.
Certainty that There are climate zones on the earth? About 400BC.
What you would REALLY like to see is that science is abandoned because it never says it is CERTAINLY right, unlike The Good Book, which says it is the inerrant word.
Lucky Dog, if you want certainty (as opposed to reliable knowledge), then perhaps the Church is more your style. If you want to understand the progress of climate change:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
I think you will actually enjoy it. It is a good read.
Frank Giger:
Acid rain.
Ozone hole.
Proof that despite the screams from lobbyists, humanity as a whole is quite capable of acting on planet-sized problem (and incidentally proof that cap and trade schemes work perfectly well, if not quite as well as direct regulation).
We haven’t solved either problem completely, but we have turned potential disaster into something that we have time to address.
lucky dog says: 18 February 2010 at 2:41 PM
“I would really like to see a reporter/ author publish the story of how it became possible for mankind to understand with certainty how this planet’s climate works. After all, that would have to rank as one of mankind’s greatest scientific achievements and the story should be told – if there is a story to tell.”
Voila:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
Written by an honest-to-goodness historian of science, a fellow well equipped to tell the story. “Certainty” you won’t find, but probability is there for your reading pleasure.
“I applaud posts 17 and 19 – sensible.”
For those who posted #17 and #19, I hope you feel this way:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame
Can I be picky and point out that Galileo said “Eppur si muove” (and yet it moves, with the “si” being the reflexive meaning that it itself moves rather than it is moving something else). Your “Eppur riscalda” needs a little “si” to avoid the suggestion that, no doubt your friend Monckton will soon suggest, that it is warming something else……
Eppur si riscalda (and yet it is getting warmer) rumorosamente (noisily).
Some (ivory tower folk?) seem to believe that emails are private communications like, e.g. letters. Forget it.
“ Privacy, Are You Kidding?
Stop right where you are and set aside a couple of brain cells for the following statement: there is no such thing as a private e-mail. I don’t care what anybody says, states, swears or whatever, there is just no such thing as private e-mail. The reason? Keep reading.” http://iwillfollow.com/email.htm
Who “owns” a particular email is unclear and,if in dispute, is determined by a court. A safe rule is to assume that it is owned not by the person who wrote it, but by whoever funded that person or provided the email server. A safer rule is to address the topic specifically in the contract – with the funding agency – or employee instructions, communicated in writing.
Disclaimers are sometimes provided to avoid these ownership/use details and will help your case in court, should the need arise.
For instance, the administrator of the East Hadley servers – or other servers along the way – had the right to access the content of any email that server handled.
If Phil was not being very careful with the cataloging of some of the climate data in the computers, it is very likely that he was paying even less attention to the privacy of his emails handled by those same computers.
john peter
Ray’s point about not overselling satellite measures in a Nino/Nina period is well-taken, as Hank said. But then again, the NCDC January anomaly is pretty warm, too, at .60 C.
Theo “And one of the two on the warming side was right from the Met office. :-)”
Ok, help me through the conspiracy theory trail here.
UK.
Met Office UK
It is in Exeter.
They are one of only two WMO centres.
And the paper is in Exeter.
UK.
And the Met Office have a climate group.
In the UK.
And the UK paper in Exeter, where the Met Office of UK, a WMO centre and major climate research centre have their basis, have asked the Met Office of the UK who are in the same town who study climate to talk about one climate report the paper runs.
And this is a conspiracy because they should have asked the Latvian Met Office comissioned cleaners to pop over on an expenses paid trip to Exeter to talk about climate instead.
That they didn’t shows that there is a conspiracy.
Yes?
This is moronic ;-)
David B. Benson : Vikings were living there with crops and animals seems sufficent proof to me that there was less ice then than today-I agree apon doubting (skepticism is essential in science) , do YOU have any reliable proof that Greenland had MORE ice in AD 1000 than today?
Short perl program for you on how you can see a flattish line.
perl
for ($i=0; $i<10;$i++) {
print int(rand()*20+$i),"\n";
}
The output I got:
4
8
14
20
12
23
20
16
22
20
Plot it.
It is a flattish line, isn't it?
This is a plot where the variation is 20x the positive trend increment.
In the climate, 0.5C variation up or down. The trend is 0.017C.
That's a 1-in-30 trend.
It's a 10 value spread. Just like the "flattish line" of annual temperature anomalies.
Just did that trend, for S&Gs:
for ($i=0; $i<10;$i++) {
print int(rand()*30+$i),"\n";
}
18
1
25
20
25
29
19
19
22
20
Except for the 1 there, you'd call that a cooling trend, really.
Wouldn't you?
But we KNOW there's a positive trend of +1.
#20 James Allison said “Two years ago most of my intelligent independent thinking friends and associates were convinced AGW exists. Today all of them bar none say either that GW has existed since the LIA but it isn’t largely due to humans or they say the climate scientists have manipulated the data to show dramatic warming when common sense says there hasn’t been any significant warming. What do you think has gone wrong for the advocates of AGW?”
I would have thought a better question would have been “What do you think has gone wrong for humanity?”
The elephant in the room is DENIALGATE!
I remember the late 60s when one wouldn’t be caught dead being a conservative.
That’s also the time in U.S. history when the difference between the rich and poor as the least. Since then the gap has increased exponentially — and pretty much all you have left is rich people with vested interests, and poor, not-well educated people who would believe anything the rich people say in the off chance they too might strike it rich (when actually for the vast majority of the poor (read “middle class”) the train left the station 40 years ago). And for both sections….anthropogenic global warming does not exist…