I followed with great interest the launch of the sixth assessment report Working Group 1 (The Physical Science Basis) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on August 9th.
The main report is quite impressive (see earlier posts here, here, here, and here) but the press conference didn’t come across as being focused and well-prepared. In my opinion the press conference on 9 August 2021 didn’t do justice to the vast effort that went into it.
I was nevertheless pleased to see a great improvement from last time, which is that the full report (‘AR6’) was made available by the time of the launch of the summary for policy-makers (SPM), but I still have some issues with the way the SPM has been laid out.
The problems with the SPM are similar those from the previous fifth assessment report which prompted me to write a post in 2013. Neither the present nor the previous SPM have much resemblance to either being a summary or being written for policy-makers.
The new SPM covers 41 pages, and one could debate whether that can be called a ‘summary’. I think it would improve with cutting down on the amount of information, only keeping the most important points.
Also, the summaries of the IPCC reports can seem a bit confusing. In addition to SPM, there is also a Technical Summary (150 pages long). Why? And who is supposed to read it?
I think in hindsight that my concerns from 2013 to some extent were supported by the fact that the IPCC organised an Expert Meeting on Communication, Oslo, Norway, 9–10 February 2016. Some of recommendations from its Meeting Report were:
Author teams should include or be supported by science writers (scientists, or journalists with a science background, who write professionally about science for non-specialist audiences), at least in the SPM team.
Authors should be trained in writing and communicating, including the use of clear language, as budgetary resources allow. A guidance paper on writing (e.g. short sentences, no jargon) should be established with the help of professionals.
Avoid the temptation to squeeze too much information into graphics that are difficult to understand, in an effort to comply with page limits.
Another clue indicating a shortcoming is if you look at the atmospheric CO2-concentrations over time to see how much impact the IPCC reports have had on the real policy-makers in the world (Figure below). You should keep in mind that the CO2 concentrations increase because some of us have worked hard to extract fossil resources from the ground.
The data indicates that the emissions have kept increasing regardless of the scientific knowledge and our understanding. One question is whether that has been a result of a communication gap.
One argument that has been made on Twitter is that the SPM is meant for decision-makers within climate-related bureaucracy. But I suspect that there is not much new information in the SPM for this group of professionals. Most of those that I have met tend to read the full assessment report.
There is nevertheless a need to reach policy-makers who are unfamiliar with climate science. I wonder how many of this type of decision-makers actually read and understand the SPM. It’s a struggle to read, even for me.
There are some easy tricks to improve a text. You can change the order of the sentences and words to improve the flow and make less complicated sentences. Fewer numbers and ranges cited in the text also help, if some are not as important than others.
I have also learned from journalists that it’s a good idea to start with the most important information – that doesn’t change its contents.
There is no need to keep all the cryptic citations and elaboration of the uncertainties since this information is already in the main report. After all, it’s supposed to be a summary for policy-makers and the main report contains all the details.
One suggestion is to get policy-makers who are not so familiar with global warming and man-made climate change to read the SPM and then ask them if they understand its main messages. Maybe give them a quiz to see how much they remember.
Another question is how policy-makers should act on the information provided in the SPM.
Since the SPM isn’t a brief summary written in layman terms, I’ve taken the liberty to try to write one based on the SPM below. I hope it conveys the most important messages of the SPM.
A shorter summary for policy-makers in layman terms
There is no doubt that we have changed Earth’s climate through our activities on a broad range of aspects that includes consequences for the atmosphere, the oceans, snow, ice, Earth’s fauna and ecosystems.
The cause of our changing climate is the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations that we have released into the air. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important greenhouse gas that we have added to the atmosphere, however, some of it has been absorbed by land and oceans.
The CO2-concentrations have now reached an annual average of 410 ppm, but it used to be around 278 ppm in 1750. Our analysis indicates that the CO2-concentrations are now at their highest in at least 800,000 years. There is a similar story for methane (CH4), now measured to 1866 ppb and nitrous oxide (N2O) 332 ppb.
The changing climate means that you cannot base your decisions on what you have experienced in the past, but must take into account the scientific calculations for the future because these gases will stay in the atmosphere for a long time and their concentrations are quite likely to continue to increase.
The global mean surface temperature has increased in jumps and spurts since 1850, and is now somewhere between 0.8°C to 1.3°C higher than pre-industrial times. The observed global warming is to the best of our knowledge happening at the fastest rate than any time in the last 2000 years.
Our scientific calculations indicate that the greenhouse gases we have emitted so far are responsible for a global warming of somewhere between 1.0°C and 2.0°C since the industrial revolution, however, other types of pollution have had a moderating effect on that warming. In addition, ozone depletion higher up in the stratosphere has caused a cooling high up in the atmosphere.
More rain is falling on Earth than before with a faster increase in the amount since the 1980s. This is likely an effect of man-made climate change. Mid-latitude storms have moved nearer the poles, and our scientific analyses have exposed a connection between man-made greenhouse gases and a poleward shift in the southern hemisphere jetstream in austral summer time. This displacement of the jetstream has consequences for high and low-pressure systems and subsequently rain and drought. Such changes may also have consequences for both agriculture, water management and wildfires, and it is likely to continue into the future.
The world’s glaciers are melting because of man-made global warming, and the sea-ice area in the Arctic is shrinking fast: a 40% reduction during the September month since 1979 when the first satellite observations became available. Our scientific analysis also suggests that the annual average Arctic sea ice area has now reached its lowest level since at least 1850. Similarly, the snow cover is dwindling and our emissions of greenhouse gases can be linked to the melting of the surface of the Greenland ice sheet over the past two decades. Perhaps the Antarctic Ice Sheet also loses ice due to man-made global warming.
Climate scientists are convinced that the world oceans have warmed down to a depth of 700 m since the 1970s because of our past emissions of greenhouse gases. CO2 also has an additional effect: it makes the oceans more acidic when dissolved in seawater. Furthermore, the oceans are being depleted of oxygen (known as ‘hypoxia’), which also is thought to be related to man-made global warming. These changes in the oceans is bad news for marine ecosystems.
The global mean sea level has increased by 20 cm from 1901 to 2018, and the rate of increase has accelerated and is now about 3.7 mm increase every year. This increase can be explained by man-made global warming, where increased temperature makes seawater increase its volume and melting from land-based ice provides an additional contribution. A thermal expansion explained 50% of sea level rise during 1971–2018, while ice loss from glaciers contributed 22%, ice sheets 20% and changes in land water storage 8%. This means more coastal erosion, increases the risk of coastal inundation and makes storm surges a bigger threat for coastal settlements.
In addition to physical changes, scientists have also observed other changes in nature that provide further evidence of global warming. One example is a lengthening of the growing season by two days every decade in the northern hemisphere.
The changes in Earth’s climate have happened everywhere on the globe and are unprecedented in human history.
Man-made climate change disrupts our weather and changes the statistics of extreme weather events across the globe. This includes heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones. The sixth assessment report from the IPCC provides stronger evidence that changes in such extremes can be attributed to our activities. Heatwaves and extremely hot days have become more frequent and intense, whereas cold extremes have become more rare. There are also marine heatwaves, regions of hot sea temperatures, and they have become twice as frequent since the 1980s, thanks to human influence.
The monsoon rainfall amounts decreased between the 1950s and 1980s, partly due to aerosol pollution, but they increased after the 1980s because of the increased greenhouse effect. The monsoon rainfall amounts are affected by a tug of war between aerosols and greenhouse gases.
The number of the strongest tropical cyclones has increased and they have moved further away from the equator. Perhaps there are long-term trends in all-category tropical cyclones, however, we are more certain that the heavy rainfall brought by them has increased due to a stronger greenhouse effect for which we are responsible.
We have recorded more extreme events that consist of a more complicated nature. For instance, an increased frequency of concurrent heatwaves and droughts, fire weather, and flooding.
The sixth assessment report presents more accurate estimates than ever for the amount of global warming that we can expect if the concentrations of atmospheric CO2 were to double, the so-called climate sensitivity. The current estimate is 3°C, with a likely range of 2.5°C to 4°C. We have also managed to shift Earth’s energy balance with approximately 2.72 Wm2 over the period 1750-2019 because we have added extra greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere. This shift has resulted in excessive heat stored in the oceans (91%), ice melt (3%), atmospheric warming (1%), and Earth’s surface warming (5%).
Scientific calculations provide future outlooks indicating that the Earth’s global warming since pre-industrial times will exceed the thresholds of 1.5°C and 2°C unless we stop emitting more CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Similar calculations estimate global warming between the periods 1850-1900 and 2081–2100 in the range of 1.0°C to 5.7°C, depending on our future greenhouse gas emissions. More emissions result in more warming. The last time global surface temperature was sustained at or above 2.5°C higher than 1850–1900 was over 3 million years ago.
The Arctic will continue to warm faster than the rest of the globe, but the hottest days in mid-latitude and semi-arid regions are also likely to be subject to the highest increase. There will of course be a series of brief and random natural fluctuations on top of the predictable long-term trends that may result in even higher temperatures in some years. Our calculations also indicate more frequent and intense hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts if global warming proceeds.
We have to expect a wide range of consequences from global warming and our computations reveal an increased proportion of intense tropical cyclones as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost. In addition, our climate models simulate more intense heavy rainfall that comes at greater frequency with additional global warming.
Higher temperatures will amplify permafrost thawing, loss of seasonal snow cover, of land ice and of Arctic sea ice. The Arctic is likely to be practically sea ice free in the month of September at least once before 2050.
The sixth assessment report presents stronger evidence than ever that a continued global warming will intensify the global water cycle and the severity of the associated wet and dry conditions and more variable surface water flows.
The annual precipitation amount may increase from the 1995-2014 levels with up to 13% by 2081-2100 averaged over global land areas. The mathematics of climate change gives more precipitation at high latitudes, over the equatorial Pacific and parts of the monsoon regions, and less precipitation over parts of the subtropics. Very wet regions become wetter and very dry regions drier, implying more floods and droughts. Rainfall associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation will also become more intense by the latter part of the century.
The monsoon season is projected to have a delayed onset over North and South America and West Africa and likely a delayed retreat over West Africa.
The calculations presented in the assessment report indicate that mid-latitude storm tracks in the southern hemisphere will continue to shift southward, although the stratospheric ozone recovery counteracts may inhibit this shift for a while. The storm tracks over the North Pacific and associated precipitation may get displaced northward. Maybe this also will happen with the North Atlantic storm track.
The ability of the oceans and land to take up some of the carbon that we emit to the atmosphere is estimated to diminish with global warming, which means that the increasing atmospheric concentrations may accelerate. The atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are strongly influenced by how we deal with the emissions. The effect of changes to the ecosystems on the level of greenhouse gases is not fully accounted for.
Many changes in our climate are irreversible for centuries to millennia. Earth’s climate has not quite caught up with all our emissions yet, and even if we stop emitting today, we will see further global warming at rates depending on the future emissions. Other long-lasting consequences include melting of glaciers and ice sheets, continued rise in the global sea-level (0.28-1.01 m by 2100), deep ocean acidification and maybe deoxygenation.
It’s important to keep in mind that natural variations will continue in the future, and some locations may even experience a brief cooling period from time to time. These fluctuations can mask the long-term trends due to an increased greenhouse effect, especially on regional scales.
We should not be surprised if at least one large explosive volcanic eruption takes place during the 21st century, based on paleoclimate and historical evidence. If this happens, it will briefly (lasting one to three years) lower the global mean temperature and alter the wind patterns.
Really big and catastrophic consequences of global warming are unlikely but cannot be ruled out, such as ice sheet collapse, abrupt ocean circulation changes, some compound extreme events and a future warming substantially larger than the assessed very likely range of future warming. They should be part of risk assessment.
The sixth assessment report from the IPCC presents new and improved carbon budgets. We humans have emitted a total of about 2390 gigatons of CO2 over the period 1850-2019. The remaining amount that we can emit depends on our ambitions to keep the global mean temperature below 1.5°C or 2.0°C.
Perhaps we will manage to remove some of the atmospheric CO2 in the future, which would make it easier to limit climate change. We can get a stable climate if the greenhouse gas concentrations are no longer changing, for instance by removing an equal amount to what we add, i.e. net zero emissions.
Needless to say, our scientific understanding has been reinforced further on all aspects of the climate system since the fifth IPCC assessment report that was published in 2013. Our knowledge is based on new evidence found in paleoclimate archives, new climate model simulations, new analyses, and of course new observations. In other words, multiple lines of evidence. There is a more robust understanding that we humans are having an effect on a wider range of climate variables, including weather and climate extremes. All the evidence points in the same direction. Hence, these scientific conclusions are very credible.
More details about climate change are provided in the main report. So why is this relevant for you? It’s important for you to be prepared for what may come and investigate how different types of weather and climatic changes may affect your livelihood. Since you are making decisions, you can influence your own future. You may need to adapt to a new climate and to do so, you need relevant and robust climate information specific for your needs. You need to use this information in a knowledgeable way. It’s equally important to make sure that you reduce your greenhouse gas emissions and your demand for energy.
Separated by a common language and little spin on how to persuade.
Long does not sell. Monotony does not sell. Data with 3 or more axes does not sell. But, it is the current mother document on Changing Climate to which all thinkers will refer and ponder.. Yes, Elizabeth, the sky IS falling.
Nice comprehensive summary. The problem with the SPM, as I understand it, is that every word must be approved by consensus, there is nothing in it that anyone in the group finds wrong. It is hard to believe that such writing-by-committee could produce anything remotely readable, and everyone involved deserves prolonged applause for producing statements that are comprehensible and, where appropriate, strong and definite. None of the world’s governments, having signed off on these statements, can pretend they’re incorrect. That’s the purpose, and it has worked from the start.
If you want something policy-makers will actually read and understand, well, that’s a different purpose. For that, long experience shows that you need an “executive summary” of not more than two pages, with strong unqualified statements. Alas, such a thing could never get IPCC consensus endorsement. That purpose is fulfilled instead by journalists, mostly science writers. From what I’ve seen in the last few days, many of them have done a reasonably good job.
What could be done better for the next report? Guidance for the science writers who will deliver the messages to people. Perhaps it would be possible to get some kind of IPCC approval for an official “press release.” I’m thinking of two pages of bullet points for “what’s new since the last report,” which journalists need, and “things that haven’t changed but are super important so we’re repeating them.” With references to the relevant statements in the SPM.
Also, yes, the Technical Summary is a waste of time, for those who wrote it and those who try to read it.
Many moons ago, our particular community was trying to come to a consensus for a test method. The debate had raged for years, and the meeting lasted hours until there was a single holdout refusing to join the consensus. He wasn’t wrong. There were exceptions where the test method would not yield bounding results, but the differences were unlikely to be catastrophic.
As it turns out, the holdout was the chair for the conference at which the meeting was taking place. The finance chair came in with a critical issue, and while the conference chair was outside the room the committee took a vote and passed the method unanimously. The test method has stood the test of time for nearly two decades.
The race in the end goes not to the greatest mind, but to the largest bladder.
Thanks for keeping to the point. Just so!
How about a one-sentence summary: “We are SOOOOO fucked!”
As always, a typing error will be picked up by contrarians to “proof” that …..(whatever they want to proof)
I’m afraid you made a typo too in your summary.
“The observed global warming is to the best of our knowledge happening at the fastest rate than any time in the last 200 years. “
I think this texts referring to ‘the hockey stick graph’ but here the text states 2000 years.
Also 2.72 Wm2 should be 2.72 Wm-2 or 2.72 W/m2 .
2,000 years is correct.
“a Technical Summary (150 pages long). Why? And who is supposed to read it?”
I read it. I always do. Why? Because it is the best part of every IPCC report. I have already quoted from it onto one of these IPCC related articles. It offers the best info, and the best explanations of what all the different things mean. And how they are calculated analysed etc.
The TS is what every policy maker aka Politician and related Govt public servant should be forced to read and understand.
The IPCC should provide all Politicians, national, state and local, a professionally manned Telephone Help line 24/7 365 days per year to answer their questions – especially the matters which arise as new recommended Laws and Regulations, Building and Environmental Approval applications, and Financial Budgets come across their desks.
Sorry, but I think the Technical Summary is brilliant. The most useful resource of all.
PS Rasmus that was fair effort rewriting the SPM but it is far from being clear and effective enough. My humble suggestion is to skip the SPM altogether and go to the TS instead – then try doing an Executive Summary of that material. Focusing on the headings and stripping out the jargon, numbers etc while speaking in common english instead would be a good approach.
I’m not really saying do it, simply go have a look and think about what you might use and say.
Less CO² emissions, urgently less CO² emissions, less CO² emissions – or you will die ……
Is this the last word of wisdom to get a grip on the root causes of global warming? – I hope not.
After decades of research and analysis, it is high time to define new approaches to solving increasing global warming.
Anyone who has even the slightest idea of weather, climate and radiation balances must at some point ask themselves the question:
What is the best, strongest, most reliable and possibly even the most natural climate protection against excessively absorbed radiation energy from the sun ??? I hope not to be the only one who says:
— It’s the CLOUDS
with a net CRE = -19W / m² the difference of ALL_SKY to CLEAR_SKY in a mean energy balance.
– far more than snow, glaciers & polar ice caps and 5 times as much as the radiative forcing of ~ 3.7 W / m² that has been around 1750-2050 has accumulated.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-018-4413-y
Sea level rise, drought, flooding, heat records, and even biodiversity are all issues that are clearly related to the presence or absence of water.
Could humanity and IPCC please be so clever to add this to the SPM and put an end to the rapidly advancing desertification, the draining of the continents and the wrong water management?
Everyone understands the idea of artificial irrigation – but cooling with artificial clouds seem to be an alien concept and idea.
!!! Artificial irrigation = artificial clouds !!!
@rasmus – Everyone of the authors and readers present here knows that water vapor is the strongest climate gas, with the all-important difference that, thanks to the cloud albedo, it has a cooling, negative radiative forcing. I do not doubt the need to reduce CO² emissions as quickly as possible, but rather its implementation, which is largely not only carried out by politics, but above all by the population at large. In contrast, water management is mostly the responsibility of the state and can be implemented into legislation much more easily by responsible politicians with an overview. — let me know if I have missed anything in the IPCC report.
Dissemination of scientific evidences is an important duty for all scientists. Maybe the most important “decision makers” are not the politicians, but the general public they depend on, and who elect them. For this kind of dissemination Rasmus’ summary or similar essays would be important.
Rasmus wrote: “Earth’s climate has not quite caught up with all our emissions yet, and even if we stop emitting today, we will see further global warming at rates depending on the future emissions.”
Is there a mix-up here? If we stop emitting today, future emissions will be zero and no further warming will occur because there is no committed warming in the climate system. The temperature will actually soon start fall because CO2 will start to decline due to natural sinks and methane and N2O will decompose. Did you mean: “…if we do not increase climate gas concentration further, we will see…”?
The discussion about how fast warming might stop if we stopped emitting today is like a parlor game. Some folks playing this parlor are convinced warming would stop almost immediately. Almost immediately is usually defined as within a decade.
Other folks playing this parlor game argue that warming would continue for much longer because the global climate system is very large and has momentum that might produce new warming for a much longer period of time. I think if you consider changes in albedo from loss of ice cover and increased changes in albedo from ice cover loss that could continue for decades because glacial change and ice cover change happens primarily on a time frame that is “glacially” slow.
The main reason that I think this is a game is that it assumes an event that is impossible: we cannot stop emitting today. We cannot stop emitting tomorrow… or next year… We know we should stop emitting. We have known that for a long time and yet, we continue to emit greenhouse gases into the biosphere at a rate that is driving the sixth great extinction event.
It would make sense to me to suspend these kind of arguments and simply focus on reducing and stopping emissions as fast as we can. We should probably stop the emissions faster than that. I think it makes sense to talk about how we stop emissions and put off the questions about what happens once we stop.
Some folks firmly believe that a supernatural being, a father-like figure, our creator, watches over us and will intervene as needed. That’s slightly different from the thought/supposition “what if emissions stopped today?” Both of those implausible scenarios offer space for conjecture about how things would play out afterward.
I am stuck on the question about how and how fast we might reduce emissions. Everything else seems a little silly to me. But silly can be fun.
Cheers
Mike
Mike,
I share your emphasis on the question “about how and how fast we might reduce emissions.” We presently have only one way to reduce emissions substantially- by substituting nuclear for fossil fuels to generate electricity and also using that dispatchable electricity for the transportation sector to the extent possible. With electrical generation and transportation responsible for some 50% of emissions, nuclear is the only way to substantially reduce emissions. I share the common belief that nuclear and nuclear waste present dangerous problems. That surely means that we must do a cost benefit analysis of two scenarios. as best we can, to determine if the unknown costs of the dangerous from adopting nuclear energy are greater or less compared to the unknown costs of the dangers from climate change. Obviously such cost analyses are very, very difficult which means, I think, we should start talking about them, studying them, and evaluating them right now so that our governmental leaders and citizens are aware of these difficult choices and we can make the best informed decisions possible.
If it’s decided that nuclear energy is too dangerous, then we have a fallback option to reduce carbon emissions much less, but substantially, compared to the present, by substituting natural gas for coal and biofuels everywhere globally. Natural gas can be paired with the amount of solar and wind generation that is deemed affordable and allows 24-7 dispatchable energy. That mix of natural gas, wind, and solar will vary by location. and also requires several cost benefit analyses. One is an estimate of climate dangers of continued carbon emissions from natural gas (only about a 50% decrease from using coal and oil) compared to the economic dangers of the greater cost of the energy redundant wind, solar, and natural gas mix required for 24-7 dispatchable energy.
It’s about time everyone gets real and starts doing the hard analysis and making the hard decisions, and not just arm waving about how we must reduce emissions. If it’s determined we have time, then, instead of talking about 2030, let’s create a Manhattan-like project to develop better and cheaper sources of energy and storage for later this century.
DA: “nuclear is the only way to substantially reduce emissions. ”
BPL: No, it is not. Renewables are better. Nuclear costs more than any other method of power generation and takes the longest to deploy. It is a technological dead end.
Doug, this topic belongs on Forced Responses, where it has been discussed ad nauseam.
If you would like to respond to my question, please do it there.
My question is: What’s your plan?
All the discussions never address the implementation of whatever conclusion we might arrive at, here in the USA.
1. The only successful conversion from fossil fuels to nuclear involved dictionary-definition Socialism. The government of France nationalized the electricity sector, so it owned the means of production and decided what would be built, and where.
If that’s your plan for the USA, then you should run for President, promising that the Federal Government would be able to dictate this to the States. I wish you luck.
2. If that isn’t your plan, then you have to explain why any rational private investor would choose to put money into a nuclear plant, with their history of cost overruns, construction delays, and bankruptcies, when the option exists to invest in a natural gas plant with virtually guaranteed rapid return on investment.
The point is, we already know that nuclear can’t compete economically with natural gas, so we don’t need any further analysis. Time to move on from this stale and boring phony “debate”.
@zebra @doug replied to on Forced Responses https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/07/forced-responses-july-2021/comment-page-11/#comment-794988
It’s either nuclear or more FFs. Hmmm… Now just which industries might be pushing that sort of conclusion…? As BPL pointed out, these are false dichotomies. But, then, so is his in that simplification is faster, cheaper and we already have enough renewables in inudstrialized nations to support a degrowth future.
How quickly do you want to? That’s how fast. First, let me say there is a usefulness in this seemingly silly game: It allows hope. IF we can reduce emissions to zero and IF we do return to pre-industrial levels of CO2, THEN we have a shot at stabilizing the planet and limiting the damage done before then. Except SLR. We are stuck with meters of that, imo, unless we are back to pre-industrial very rapidly.
How long? It takes @ five years to build up good soils where they are depleted or damaged. Once you have good soils so people can grow much of or all they need in their own communities, all you need is shelter/clothing (stable body temp) and water for survival. There are exceptions, of course, but this is true for the vast majority of humanity. We can choose to allocate those unsustainable resources we will to limiting the disruptions for particularly dependent people.
If we choose to, we can be going backwards with atmospheric CO2 within those five years if we:
* had a global jubilee
* established everything as nested Commonses
* localized food production
* localized most other production within a need-based economy
* established localized micro-grids for power in the vast majority of places so energy can be scaled to need and communities design the scale to need and alter behavior to minimize energy consumption
* use the internet to train people everywhere in TEK and regenerative practices, mostly peer-to-peer, i.e. bottom-up
* establish egalitarian “people’s assemblies” (as they seem to be called in England/UK) at needed scales ranging from neighborhood/small town to bio-region.
There is nothing spectacularly difficult in any of this except getting people to understand it is necessary. But people are stuck on beliefs, morality, religious doctrine, personal values, etc., and cannot allow themselves to just. see. the. problems. But this is also part of why gov’ts can’t do this You can’t impose it on people because they think it’s an ideological attack on their ways of thinking rather than a rationalist response to a nearly intractable problem. It must be bottom-up. The best gov’ts can do is facilitate and get out of the way.
“Really big and catastrophic consequences of global warming are unlikely but cannot be ruled out, such as ice sheet collapse, abrupt ocean circulation changes, some compound extreme events and a future warming substantially larger than the assessed very likely range of future warming.”
At the first clause I got a tad optimistic–at least we may be spared the big “pulses” as Kim Stanley Robinson calls them of sea level rise–but then I read the rest of the sentence.
Thank you for this summary. It’s excellent to be able to share something like this with less scientifically inclined colleagues, etc.
I’m glad to see this written in just this particular way, because I also don’t expect the concentrations to decline over the period of time, that which remains to my life on this planet anyway.
More than this, I’m uncertain and ignorant enough that I’m neither hopeful nor yet despairing either, that the acceleration will reach zero and move into negative territory. I could just as easily convince myself that (A) we simply will continue to maintain a positive or zero acceleration into the foreseeable future and/or until natural disasters and other human behaviors precipitate a rapid and global change of state of affairs as I could convince myself of (B) we may transition into a consistently negative acceleration.
But what I do not yet see in the σCO2 data is any firm indication that other than BAU is taking place and will likely continue. But, of course, I’m merely looking at the curves by eye. Nothing more.
Is there some analysis of globally renormalized σCO2 where I may find some hope that recent changes provide strong evidence of a meaningful, global shift away from BAU?
I mean, something one can sincerely hang their hat on?
Is there some analysis of globally renormalized σCO2 where I may find some hope that recent changes provide strong evidence of a meaningful, global shift away from BAU?
No. None. Not that I have seen.
For example: 15 July 2021
New IEA report sees 5% rise in electricity demand in 2021 with almost half the increase met by fossil fuels, notably coal, threatening to push CO2 emissions from the power sector to record levels in 2022
https://www.iea.org/news/global-electricity-demand-is-growing-faster-than-renewables-driving-strong-increase-in-generation-from-fossil-fuels
Maybe dream of the IPCC having a Financial Budget as big as Coca Cola’s marketing budget.
Then again, the IEA’s projections have historically been, as people say, “crap.”. They are very good at telling us what just happened, but when it comes to what is about to happen, not so much.
True enough. Could you recommend anyone with a better track record than “crap”? You know, prediction is difficult- particularly when it involves the future. :)
More importantly regarding Jon’s query, is there someone somewhere saying recent changes provide strong evidence of a meaningful, global shift away from BAU?
Let’s ignore the IEA then. We can ignore everyone else as well.
Though some may be desperate enough to believe in the prophesies being made at COP26.
It’s been a few years, but last I heard the projection that had then held up best came from Greenpeace.
IRENA has some thoughts, both prescriptive & descriptive:
https://www.irena.org/publications/2020/Apr/Global-Renewables-Outlook-2020
@Kevin thanks for the reply.
Those Irena proposals are ‘ambitious’. But like the IPCC scenarios out to 2100 they are theoretical and imagined possible, and not realistic or proven.
In particular the short term to 2030 and 2050 don’t reflect what’s in train in the real world at present.
I’m referring to https://www.irena.org/publications/2021/Jun/World-Energy-Transitions-Outlook
and https://www.irena.org/energytransition
and https://www.irena.org/remap
Which are primarily ambitions, plus what needs to be happen to get to net zero, remain under 1.5C .
Irena’s Future assumes major CCS, CCU, BECCS, other sequestration options, energy conservation and efficiency, and hydrogen,
Bioenergy will represent 18% of total final energy consumption in 205 (which sounds extremely ambitious)
Hydrogen and derivatives will account for 12% of final energy use by 2050 – Some 5 000 GW of electrolyser capacity will be needed by 2050, up from 0.3 GW today
Electricity will (theoretically) be the main energy carrier, increasing from a 21% share of total final energy consumption in 2018 to over 50% in 2050 and Fossil fuels still underpin energy supply in their best case scenario in 2050.
These are not the kinds of reports the IEA did in their “outlook projections” of the expected short and longer term energy use in the real world. Until now — Net Zero by 2050 – A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector
https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050
afaik neither of these reports will make it into the IPCC reports. And no one on RC is qualified or should be expected to compare the two and determine which is right.
But at least the IEA info is grounded in actual NDCs and Net Zero pledges made by government to date for the COP26 cycle.
Only then does the IEA present it’s potential scenario to achieve Net Zero – pg 47 A global pathway to net-zero CO₂ emissions in 2050 – very different and far more ambitious than Irena’s.
examples:
In the NZE, global energy‐related and industrial process CO2 emissions fall by nearly 40% between 2020 and 2030 and to net zero in 2050. Universal access to sustainable energy is achieved by 2030. There is a 75% reduction in methane emissions from fossil fuel use by 2030. These changes take place while the global economy more than doubles through to 2050 and the global population increases by 2 billion.
Total energy supply falls by 7% between 2020 and 2030 in the NZE and remains at around this level to 2050. [ like wow! that is one big assumption right there. ]
Solar PV and wind become the leading sources of electricity globally before 2030 and together they provide nearly 70% of global generation in 2050. The traditional use of bioenergy is phased out by 2030 [..]
OK then, Open Questions:
I wonder what the IPCC is doing with this kind of info? Is the UNFCCC system or COP26 analyzing who is more right here: Irena or the IEA or the IPCC scientists?
Who decides what information is the right info to trust? Who then decides what is needed to be done, and how to do it, what’s best practice, and what is actually possible?
Who decides what’s true and false? What is realistic and what is unfounded fantasy?
I know you and I don’t know or decide. The IEA doesn’t. Irena don’t. The IPCC process and scientists certainly do not.
I think the (IPCC) scientists should responsible for deciding such things. Because that is exactly what they were established to do – to properly advise Governments what the facts are, what to do, and what not to do to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Now, this is essentially No Different to Governments taking the advice of their highly trained qualified Medical Experts (Chief Health Officers, FDA, TGA, Immunologists etc.) about what to do about the Covid Pandemic and how to maintain their national Medical systems.
What is there other than Science to determine what is the ‘best-practice’ Objective evidence based Truth? There is nothing.
That science advice must be made public for all to see, and be the formal Expert Advice given to all Governments and essentially followed.
That is not the situation today and has not been so for over 3 decades. The litany of multiple failures from this BAU are clear as day.
It’s past time for major reform creating a totally new System to replace the failed UNFCCC, COP and IPCC processes in my opinion. Naturally others will disagree and see things entirely differently. Knowing nothing I say can change a thing.
Kevin, I am of the opinion that nobody really understands global energy consumption–there are simply too many moving parts. If we did understand it, might we be able to capitalize on the exponential trend seen in Rosenfeld’ s law (that GDP per unit of energy consumption increases at a rate of about 1% per annum)? If we could increase that rate of growth even slightly, it could significantly offset the costs of climate adaptation.
Rasmus ideas, and those recommendations quoted from the Meeting Report are very good. They should have been adopted long ago. Many academics in the comms psych marketing fields have been reaching out to the climate field for a very long time suggesting such approaches. and offering support and assistance to no effect.
On the flip side, it is worth remembering the IPCC org is poorly funded. The secretariat have 13 members on staff. It relies on hundreds of scientist volunteers to produce it’s most critical reports of all.
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. The whole system has been short changed. I’d suggest that is no accident.
The IPCC reports and summary for policy makers do seem impressively well written to me overall. Although not a scientist, I used to write technical reports. I would suggest that 20 pages is the magic number for the summary for policy makers, based on what we did. Its a very digestable length both to write, and to read for non experts.
The first page of the summary for policy makers might include a series of bullet points of the main climate issues, particularly the key future projections of warming and sea level rise, including the extreme scenario of 2 metres approx. this century. These projections should be in bold text so it stands out. This all gets the key issues grabbing peoples attention, and in a way that cannot be missed.
The 150 page technical summary is possibly useful for policy makers wanting more detail, without having to wade through thousands of pages.
Excuse re-post, but I posted my previous comment before I’d finished editing it… Could you ignore that one? Better version below.
I think that Rasmus’s summary is pretty clear but, as a long term denialist debunker, I think it leaves itself open to those who would choose to misinterpret it politically. Specifically, it’s the references to ‘extreme weather’ events and the intensity and frequency thereof that rang my bells. Anyone who engages with denialists will soon be reminded that floods, heat waves, hurricanes, monsoons, ice melt etc have happened before naturally. I think it fair to say that most attribution studies, establishing that such and such an event is increasing in frequency or intensity or both, need quite powerful statistical analyses to come up with their conclusions. As a way of motivating the public, however, this doesn’t seem to work very well, if at all. People are often resistant to statistics derived arguments unless they are very obvious – if crime in an area had been statistically worked out to have increased by 5%, I don’t think most would vote for draconian, probably expensive, action. If crime had increased by 300% the public would be beating down the doors of the forces of law and order demanding draconian action at any cost. Even non-denialist members of the public are not going to be that impressed by media scare stories, or IPCC reports, which say that such and such an event is a record, if the amount they exceed the previously (naturally set) records by are, in reality, actually quite small percentage-wise.
Many stories in the media these days, which can be aided and abetted by some climate science communicators, look quite like they are spinning a narrative that every current wildfire or heat wave or storm caused flood is entirely down to global warning and the (usually unspoken) underlying insinuation is that none of these events would have happened if it wasn’t for our emissions.
Much as I despise what denialists such as Tony Heller (aka Steve Goddard) do, his modus operandi of showing the general public with short memories, or who are ignorant of the past, that severe events have always been happening, is very effective. He does this mainly by searching out newspaper clips of the time reporting these things and showing people that there is ‘nothing new under the Sun’ and that similar language in the media has been used before.
Whether we approve of it or not, Heller’s (and his imitators) techniques are highly effective at defusing public concerns about modern ‘shock horror’ stories from climate communicators who, to be frank, do a rather poor job at communicating how and why climate change influenced extreme events are going to be a quantum jump to a new level of ‘worse’ than things which humanity has got through OK long before we became as good at dealing with and mitigating the effects of disasters that modern civilisation has enabled us to be.
Nick, I feel like I’ve answered this before…not sure if it was to you.
First, it is absolutely true that none of these specific events would have happened absent the anthropogenic increase in energy of the climate system.
We know that weather is sensitive to small differences in initial conditions, and we have created a system state which is very different from what it would have been without our inputs. Much more than the breeze from the butterfly’s wings. Can we agree on that?
Now, I am somewhat unpopular here because I agree with you about the hopelessness of communicating to the public about even the simplest statistical reasoning. That’s why the trolls set up their strawmen; they know they will trigger responses that create the illusion that there is a real “debate”, and their nonsense is equivalent in stature to the ‘splanation from the expert. (Which experts are not necessarily adept at explanation, however well they can perform the work.)
But I hesitate to answer the question you pose in the last paragraph, because you are not clear whether you agree that these events are going to be that much worse. If you can clarify that, I could offer some suggestions.
That’s a big leap to say “it is absolutely true that none of these specific events would have happened absent the anthropogenic increase in energy of the climate system.” Statements like that make Tony Heller seem reasonable.
It’s a simple thought experiment:
Say there is a parallel Earth, A, and we are Earth B. Earth A has not experienced the substantial increase in climate system energy that we have.
What we experience as weather is the complex, non-linear movement and transformation of energy, which is not uniformly distributed. For such a system, an exactly identical phenomenon in space and time with exactly identical characteristics on both A and B has essentially zero probability.
That’s not what “attribution” in the sense climate scientists use it applies to, but I think it is important to clarify the terminology. If someone says “it could have happened without anthropogenic energy increase”, that is flat out wrong. That particular event did happen, and so it must have been influenced by initial conditions/inputs.
Without commenting on your concerns about whether climate events are growing worse, I cannot help but wonder how you concluded humanity has become so adept “…at dealing with and mitigating the effects of disasters…”. Perhaps you live outside the US? After the major hurricanes of the last several years, the fires in the West, and utility failure in Houston in response to a freeze, I am reluctant to agree with that opinion.
Jeremy: I think what I mean is that if you transported, say, Victorian era civilisation to the current time, then their ability to cope with the same natural or ‘enhanced’ disasters we suffer would be greatly inferior to what we can do
Hmmmm… I am not sure that is true. Certainly, we have greater warning they are coming, but life was more resilient, less fragile then. It would be interesting to study the differences.
“Neither the present nor the previous SPM have much resemblance to either being a summary or being written for policy-makers.”
I strongly agree with that assessment of the SPM, although I am not sure what climate policy-makers there are nor their qualities. The managers I worked under — different business — would read at most a short, extremely clearly written paragraph, and generally ignore and quickly forget it. I am cynical about the supposed climate policy-makers. I suspect they might skim the SPM and note time frames of decades and millennia longer than their expected tenure and learn all they need to know about climate change — it is not their problem. They might hand the SPM off to their public relations flacks to mine it for soundbites and phrases useful for some ‘green’ project they hope to profit from.
I am a member of the lay public who might be considered a secondary target for the SPM and whatever else I might struggle through in the rest of the doorstop AR6 report. I found the SPM confusing and both sleep and trance inducing, especially as I experience the hot, humid, nasty weather in my locale matching that predicted in the report.
One area of confusion for me has to do with CO2 emissions. The report talks about GtCO2 which I find difficult to relate conceptually to ppm CO2 [yes I looked up conversion factors]. I have trouble figuring out how the SPM could be related to some form of policy. Policy commitments in reducing GtCO2 or ppm or some other abstract global measure never seem to result in reducing the burning of fossil fuels or the GtCO2 or ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. The EPA conversion factors for calculating CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels or generating electricity appear to be gross CO2 additions uncorrected for the long term ‘equilibrium’ that the SPM appears to assume for calculations of global CO2 in the atmosphere related to predicted global temperatures.
Another issue I have with the SPM is how it makes much of CO2 budgets.
“The term carbon budget … the maximum amount of cumulative net global anthropogenic CO2 emissions that would result in limiting global warming to a given level with a given probability, taking into account the effect of other anthropogenic climate forcers…. The remaining carbon budget indicates how much CO2 could still be emitted while keeping warming below a specific temperature level.” SPM-36
The way this is stated makes dealing with climate policy sound almost like kitchen table budgeting for a small household. I think the carbon ‘budget’ numbers might more aptly be termed constraints.
I guess I will try reading the Technical Summary next, but I do not look forward to the task after attempting a grind through the SPM. I very much appreciate the summary provided in this post.
Zebra: “Nick, I feel like I’ve answered this before…not sure if it was to you.
First, it is absolutely true that none of these specific events would have happened absent the anthropogenic increase in energy of the climate system.
We know that weather is sensitive to small differences in initial conditions, and we have created a system state which is very different from what it would have been without our inputs. Much more than the breeze from the butterfly’s wings. Can we agree on that?”
It wasn’t me. I am not disputing that ‘these specific events’ would not have happened. Clearly, the physics of climate mean that any relevant factors that are altered will change the outcome. I am suggesting that, without the kick from global heating, that DIFFERENT extreme events would have happened naturally anyway.
What I am suggesting is that, assuming we had never raised greenhouse gas levels at all, that ‘extreme events’ would still be happening – probably somewhat less often and, for some events such as floods and droughts, probably less intense and less long lived. I further went on to suggest that pointing to an old record being broken by a certain percentage does not justify ‘fear porn’ articles or commentaries by climate pundits headlined with hellscapes of wall to wall fires which insinuate that the Earth is burning up uncontrollably and that current wildfires are a quantum leap far beyond what a ‘natural fire’ would be.
Unfortunately, to establish the truth empirically would require a time machine with multiple trips to the past to alter the initial conditions. Or several identical Planet Bs. Even more unfortunately, we’re actually stuck in the test tube (© Greg ‘What’s the Worst That Could Happen’ Craven).
@Nick, I understand what you are getting at. However I see it slightly differently.
When you speak of this:
I further went on to suggest that pointing to an old record being broken by a certain percentage does not justify ‘fear porn’ articles or commentaries by climate pundits headlined with hellscapes of wall to wall fires which insinuate that the Earth is burning up uncontrollably and that current wildfires are a quantum leap far beyond what a ‘natural fire’ would be.
Two things come to mind. First, ‘fear porn’ is something that is in the eye of the beholder. It is not an objective universal. So it’s hardly a valid yardstick, anymore than “hey that guy is ugly” could be. I still get your point though.
Secondly what you are speaking to is unrelated to climate science per se. Since the news media began (1500s? and before that in the church pulpits) ‘fear porn’ is a staple reality. If it bleeds, it leads.
It’s really that simple. Using what the news media, or mass media do with climate science and weather events is besides the point of science and findings. Whether the media oversells (which they do) or undersell it (which they also do) the media will keep doing what they do. It’s their nature to be like that. They are no less biased and no more objective as we can be despite the higher expectations.
Leadership, typically hoped for in our national leaders elected into office, is supposed to cut through all that media crap and guide the public discourses. But they have weaknesses and biases as well.
The transference of these known shortcomings of political leadership and what the media (plus activists and special interests) do with climate science issues is chasing shadows. They cannot determine the objective validity, the truth of, or the relative importance of that science,
Gosh, even science has difficulty doing that 24/7/365. :)
Having said that, you are still raising relevant issues and make a lot of sense. It does cause real problems. You are correct when you say “DIFFERENT extreme events would have happened naturally anyway.” At some point or other, yes. It’s normal and natural. Yes.
While “pointing to an old record being broken by a certain percentage does not justify ‘fear porn’ articles or commentaries by climate pundits headlined with hellscapes of wall to wall fires” Yes, correct. But the news media will still say what they will anyway.
Whereas “that the Earth is burning up uncontrollably and that current wildfires are a quantum leap far beyond what a ‘natural fire’ would be.” is another question entirely.
They either are, or they are not. It is the opinions which vary. This is where good science comes into it’s own. Science has already answered those kinds of questions in the affirmative much better than opinions and beliefs or the news reports ever could.
I wish much higher standards were being met in our media and political circles too. It is still better to separate their issues from climate science efficacy; it would help maintain a healthier perspective of what’s going on. Keeping in mind the processes within each of the three domains is different, even if the “topic” being discussed is the same one.
That’s how I see it at least. It is OK if others see it differently.
I suppose my point depends on my disappointment that significant climate science communicators do not do a better job at countering the wild over-exaggerations and mis-representaions of the situation we are in by activists and organisations who one would hope are nominally ‘on our side’.
Despite what some say, many denialists are actually pretty smart as anyone will find out if they try to argue, say, the simplified Greenpeace version of the science, whereupon they will tear you to shreds. Allowing ‘fear porn’ activists and climate communicators free rein to continue spreading their pseudo-scientific version of the actual science without conspicuous correction in the media will risk, nay guarantee, that denialist lobbyists will gleefully use such over the top predictions and pronouncements to successfully smear the genuine science and scientists in the minds of the public.
I’ve been countering denialists online and in the media for a very long time now but, unlike most, I will also counter any alarmism and doomism too. Mostly the exaggerators seem quite shocked that someone nominally ‘on their side’ will try to show them where their views and misleading rhetoric diverge from the scientific reality. They really don’t like it. I hate to admit but many doomists are far more irrational and are far harder to convince than denialists… It almost seems as if they actually want to portray the situation as far worse, even apocalyptic, because such would justify whatever their favoured policies and ‘answers’ are.
Nick, there’s rub. Yes, many alarmists and many denialists are actually pretty smart and well informed and well intentioned. The belittling remarks and attitude by individuals on both sides about the other has devolved into childishness and culture war narratives. Kudos to you for saying with the science.
I agree, but is understanding enough? Many have observed that politicians are more motivated by votes than by understanding, and that power corrupts. If that’s true, then it’s the voters who need to understand the science. Is that even possible with such complexities being absorbed into conflicting political narratives about climate change? If only we could have a complete RESET and start climate change understanding and communication about it without the political narratives, but that is impossible, and we would probably end up in the same culture war mentality we have now unless……………. I wish I knew.
@doug answered here https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/08/deciphering-the-spm-ar6-wg1-code/#comment-794997
OK, I still have trouble reconciling this with what you say in your subsequent comment re the SPM. You reference page 23, which I agree has improved graphics (not a high bar).
What it shows are increases in frequency and intensity of extreme events. Are you saying that those numbers are correct, but the effect of those increases would not cause serious disruption and dislocation for large numbers of people, with consequent political, and probably geopolitical, destabilization?
I think you need to do a better job of quantification and definition to explain your concern. When you say that “extreme events” would still occur on Planet B, (where we did not substantially increase the energy of the climate system,) you have to make clear what the metric is. As I understand it, this latest effort by the specialists involved an effort to choose more useful metrics. “Floods” and “droughts” is just too vague.
“Are you saying that those numbers are correct, but the effect of those increases would not cause serious disruption and dislocation for large numbers of people”
Not really. I pointed out that the page 23 graphic actually partially quantified the ‘how much and how often’ aspects and how this was sorely needed to convince the public of the future situation enough that they will demand action now to avoid the probabilities, rather than the nebulous rhetoric we currently see in the media about increased ‘extreme events’ which insinuates ‘Apocalypse soon’ without any figures!
I was pointing out that most ‘extreme events are going to increase’ type statements don’t actually quantify by how much and how often. I gave the example of a 5% statistical rise in crime rate being insufficient to make the public call for draconian action to reverse it, whereas a 300% increase would have the public out on the streets demanding action.
Where I used to live, the island very rarely had snow and, if it did, it rarely settled but in, I think, 1963 we had several feet and the sea froze which paralysed everything as we had no equipment to deal with it. Later on they did eventually get ploughs etc to deal with such events but those never again had the same negative effects as the first one because we were more ready for them.
Although that all sounds a bit like the denialist/Lomborg argument that it will be cheaper and easier to adapt to the changes rather than transition our civilisation away from fossil fuels, that argument does not actually sound that crazy to the public, who probably wouldn’t mind more and greater extreme events if they had flood protection methods, air conditioning and drought irrigation sorted out. If it was an extreme event every weekend they would complain. Quantified proportions, magnitudes and frequencies are important to convince the public that the pain will be worth the gain.
@Nick
I totally agree with what you say (above) about the communications are terrible. That “fear porn”can go way too far and become irrational.
re “that argument does not actually sound that crazy to the public”
I agree.
” Quantified proportions, magnitudes and frequencies are important to convince the public that the pain will be worth the gain.”
again I agree. I think you are pointing to the fact that what the Risks entail are not clearly communicated to the public, or the politicians.
They are never quantified in terms people can comprehend or clearly understand how things could impact their own lives significantly forever, and the region in which they live.
Instead “risks” are being incorrectly framed into things like breaking +1.5C will destabilize the climate further and cause greater extreme weather events. These things are too esoteric, visuals on a TV screen and so the impacts are not real to people.
That’s not defining what the Risks really are. It ignores the ongoing “Pain” which will be visited upon people in their real lives. Such as hitting +1.5C might mean your food costs can triple for months on end as the weather destroys your local agricultural output for a season or more.
Or your home and car insurance increases by 1000% over time, and so your home and car become uninsurable at any price, while the risk of flooding and fire increases 100 fold until all the natural vegetation around where you live is totally and permanently destroyed, never to regrow, as you “suddenly”find yourself living in a dry sandy desert and your home valuation plummets to 10% of what it cost you to buy.
Throw away lines like climate change might only cost the global economy 0.5% over the next 50-100 years is myth making spin. That missing 0.5% cost might well be the Job you currently have, that will no longer exist where you live. To that 0.5% will be taken from schools, childcare, aged care or medical services where YOU live and where you need them to be.
Therefore, when people or orgs or govts do proffer up mitigation strategies that will cost money, and or change the current system it’s very easy for people to balk at those because the potential Risk and the Costs of not doing that are unknown because no one has ever properly spelled them out.
There’s this inbuilt unspoken assumption all the time that sauing the arctic will lose all it;s sea ice, and temperatures increasing to 2C or bigger floods and crazy wild fires will be understood as a Risk not worth taking.
That’s just a really dumb assumption to make – but everyone has been doing it for like 30 plus years. They are still doing it now.
Michael Mann is really active now in the media pushing the alrm that urgent actin is needed, but he still fails to communicate the actual Risks involved and what they can Cost people and how they will affect people, and how easily they might end up even killing the people reading his articles.
He is still not explaining what the actual risks are of a warming world that doesn’t radically cut GHG emissions by half in the next 10 years — and that no matter what that might cost us now, the cost of not doing it far outweighs that.
A large majority of people do not comprehend the massively more powerful and destructive wild fires all over the world. They might see more reports of fires but they do not get the intensity and power of them relative to the past.
They do not comprehend what it means – that sooner than later there will be no more forests and wilderness and suburban vegetation left to burn like that. It will be gone. Never to return.
Most do not understand that even if they live in a NYC Condo far away from fires these things will still affect their lives going forward. There will be direct impacts and costs to them eventually.
Why do people and politicians not understand these Risks and looming events? Because the scientists involved in the IPCC etc fail to explain it to them in ways they can understand it and comprehend what the impacts and costs will be to them perosnally, and their community where they live.
I do not believe I have just engaged in fear porn, but have pointed to the reality based on the scientific evidence. There are writers and communicators far better than I who could possibly express it better.
Problem is they don’t get hired or paid to communicate the facts and the risks and costs surrounding climate issues.
For 30 years climate science communication has been predominantly left to the amateurs and volunteers and far too often incompetents.
I’ve now trawled through the summary for policy makers. I found quite a few paragraphs (taken from pages 10-23) which back up my contention that Apocalypse Now ‘quantum leaps’ in intensity, duration and frequency (as portrayed in the media and by activists) are not happening, but rather that there has most probably been incremental percentage changes. I’ll put those first with my comments and then show a page which does support that future changes will be objectively measurable on a scale that the public will take a lot of notice of, which would be a far more valuable, and less ‘deniable’ piece of public relations to front things with than all the Armageddon type ‘Earth is burning up’ rhetoric…
1) “It is virtually certain that hot extremes (including heatwaves) have become more frequent and more intense across most land regions since the 1950s, while cold extremes (including cold waves) have become less frequent and less severe, with high confidence that human-induced climate change is the main driver of these changes. Some recent hot extremes observed over the past decade would have been extremely unlikely to occur without human influence on the climate system. Marine heatwaves have approximately doubled in frequency since the 1980s (high confidence), and human influence has very likely contributed to most of them since at least 2006”
This does not quantify how much, how often etc. It’s vague. To influence policymakers and the public, these things must be quantified in ways that the lay public can understand.
2) “The frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events have increased since the 1950s over most land area for which observational data are sufficient for trend analysis (high confidence), and human-induced climate change is likely the main driver. Human-induced climate change has contributed to increases in agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions due to increased land evapotranspiration (medium confidence).”
This leaves out that zooming out using longer time scales to periods when we were not substantially increasing greenhouse gases may (I’m not saying that it does, as I don’t know what records going back to before the industrial age might show) alter the picture. ‘Likely’ and ‘medium confidence’ won’t cut the mustard. We need the ‘unequivocals’ and ‘virtually certains’ that we see elsewhere in the document.
3) “It is likely that the global proportion of major (Category 3–5) tropical cyclone occurrence has
increased over the last four decades, and the latitude where tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific reach their peak intensity has shifted northward; these changes cannot be explained by internal variability alone (medium confidence). There is low confidence in long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trends in the frequency of all-category tropical cyclones. Event attribution studies and physical understanding indicate that human-induced climate change increases heavy precipitation associated with tropical cyclones (high confidence) but data limitations inhibit clear detection of past trends on the global scale.”
Again, ‘likely’, ‘medium confidence’ even ‘low confidence’ and ‘inhibit clear detection’ are not sufficient justification for pundits and communicators to assert that particular events and trends at any particular time and over particular periods are unprecedented whilst insinuating that nothing like that would have happened at all were we not warming the planet
4) “It is very likely that heavy precipitation events will intensify and become more frequent in most
regions with additional global warming. At the global scale, extreme daily precipitation events are projected to intensify by about 7% for each 1°C of global warming (high confidence). The proportion of intense tropical cyclones (categories 4-5) and peak wind speeds of the most intense tropical cyclones are projected to increase at the global scale with increasing global warming (high confidence).”
This is better, as it partially quantifies things although, assuming we’re stupid and let the world increase the average planetary temperature by 3°C, that equates to 21% globally which doesn’t actually qualify as a quantum leap to me and those reasonably well educated members of the public I’ve just tried this out on – an increased nuisance, not a disaster’ sums up their responses…
5) “Human influence has likely increased the chance of compound extreme events since the 1950s.
This includes increases in the frequency of concurrent heatwaves and droughts on the global scale (high confidence); fire weather in some regions of all inhabited continents (medium confidence); and compound flooding in some locations (medium confidence).”
This looks new to me and should be more prominent in any public facing pronouncements. The ‘chances’ could do with quantification though
6) Finally, in the graphics on SPM page 23, I saw some useful quantification which should have ‘legs’ at changing minds. You’ll have to look for yourself or see part of them here in this Youtube video analysing the SPM – https://youtu.be/1J0lCBjMgvg?t=311
The graphics are headed
“Projected changes in extremes are larger in frequency and intensity with
every additional increment of global warming”
This is the sort of quantification that could change minds and policies and it needs shouting out.
I think Stephen Schneider’s famous quote, often misused by denialists, applies to my main theme to illustrate how careful climate communicators and scientists have to be not to ‘over-egg the pudding’ in public statements even if the caveats, error bars and uncertainties are set out in the literature. Excessive statements are instantly seized on and filed for current or future use by the denialists and political lobbyists as powerful public-relations ammunition to sway the minds of the undecided public.
Dr Schneider was explaining how the media does not give climatologists a lot of time to explain anything thoroughly. As a scientist, he has an obligation to include all error and uncertainty measurements in statements, like any legitimate scientific report would. But as a human being, he needs to convey his message to the public in the couple of sentences journalists allow him.
This was the original quote:
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
I think my main theme – that the degree of oversimplifying and maximisation of the extreme event situation by climate journalists, science communicators and, hugely, by the environmental organisations is getting perilously close to being deceptive in terms of the impressions that the public take from it. I think there is an awful lot of Schneider’s:
“So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
and an insufficient amount of “the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Agreeing with Schneider, I hope to see major figures making public facing prounouncements and interviews adopting the “I hope that means being both” approach.
Hi @Richard, one thing you said stands out, I’m curious what you mean by “qualify as a quantum leap” and why that’s the yardstick you (appear to be using) to conclude that something dangerous / or at a disaster level has been met?
I don’t get the connection. How do you even define what a “quantum leap” is, for one climate parameter to another. I don’t understand why looking at it this way, using such a terminology idea could matter.
I am thinking of the typical “Quantum leap” definition as – an abrupt change, sudden increase, or dramatic advance.
Anyway, you are not the first person to find the language used, and the way the IPCC reports are framed, are not very clear or useful. Even hard to understand what their point might be having said xyz, and what it is supposed to mean overall. When even climate scientists struggle, as Rasmus pointed out above.
It’s a challenge for sure. I think overall the examples you’ve given above are good ones. It would great if someone like Rasmus could explain them / word them better to you. I’m sure many would benefit.
Politicians are all in the same boat. It’s word salad to them too, pro or con climate action afaik. Few ever bother to read SPMs or anything from the IPCC. I can’t blame them. Unfortunately some then go elsewhere and get fed a load of rubbish instead.
But that’s not news, it has been known for a very long time. The problem has always been there and it has never been solved. The IPCC is seriously underfunded. High quality info summaries costs money and time to produce. Volunteer scientists have limited time and no funding to do this work. Which is possibly part of the cause but it is still not everything.
Maybe best summed as : It is what it is. So make the most of it. Because that’s all there is! :)
I read through the ‘summary for policy makers’ and your comment. I am puzzled what purpose and intent motivates your lengthy comment — even your description of your main theme. My impression is that you believe scary scenarios are presented for making ” simplified, dramatic statements”.
In general, I believe scary scenarios are scenarios that lead to abrupt changes. I did not notice very many scary scenarios, scary compared to scenarios I have read about as recorded in the Earth’s Paleoclimate record.
I do not know if there is an update or a more recent post, video, or mp3 to update Jim White’s Nye lecture to the American Geophysical Union, from 2014. Jim White thoroughly describes abrupt changes. I believe the IPCC is allergic to even contemplating abrupt changes in their reports to policy makers. The reliance on models, at least what I perceive as the IPCC reliance on models, nicely circumvents discussions of abrupt change. Models can only model what is known. Much about climate is not known. The IPCC does reference paleoclimate — but as far as I could tell — from reading the summary for policy makers — it takes few lessons from the past.
@Jeremy
The White lecture is very good. It sounds familiar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZdhPnsp4Is
I think he touches on the Risks issue I mention above, when speaking about the abrupt impacts arising from slow steady climate changes etc. As well as the more obvious abrupt changes in the climate system which can arise, and what impacts they can create.
imo down to earth explanations like this need to be in every IPCC report. Repeated endlessly. Here he is in front of an audience of scientists and yet he is speaking to them in a down to earth manner, as if they are only normal people in the public using regular english language and analogies that are understandable.
This is the kind of language and commentary that should be in the SPMs – Not the science/maths jargon.
Why aren’t more people like this (scientists or not) being setup in front of Politicians teaching them what all this science actually means and how to use it better — long before they get anywhere near negotiating issues at COP meetings?
(another rhetorical question, with no answer)
I agree, but is understanding enough? Many have observed that politicians are more motivated by votes than by understanding, and that power corrupts. If that’s true, then it’s the voters who need to understand the science. Is that even possible with such complexities being absorbed into conflicting political narratives about climate change? If only we could have a complete RESET and start climate change understanding and communication about it without the political narratives, but that is impossible, and we would probably end up in the same culture war mentality we have now unless……………. I wish I knew.
And I agree with you Doug. Understanding is not enough. What matters is what the predominant power decides to do.
Yet ideas have their place too. Martin Luther nailed a few ideas on a door, and those ideas caught on, They created a new power of their own. That’s how it usually happens. 1776 was successful but new ideas don’t always win. Nor are they automatically better than what they replaced.
I see that there are many ideas out there competing now, but the power base hasn’t changed and is still in control, in charge. So we are, imo, as close to BAU as we could possibly be. Marginal add-ons like 7% wind/solar energy supply are just that, marginal ideas. Keeps the natives calm.
The AR6 WG1 offers up a re-presentation of some old ideas. It is firing some up while most of the world is not even listening. The ones fired up now certainly are not yet in the driver’s seat of power.
However it is still a good thing the voices keep presenting their new good ideas for a better world. They will not catch on if they are silent. (think the 100th monkey effect)
I conclude until then, a reality check is telling me it’s definitely BAU all the way down the road, except a few adjustments at the margins going forward.
And that is why I think the current BAU SSP/RCP (with only marginal improvements) is the only scenario / projection the IPCC should be detailing and warning about. The rest is fluff.
When the topic is made unnecessarily complex (says Occam), incomprehensible and written in gobbledygook for the average citizen and very below average politician, then naturally not enough of the right kind of people are going to understand it.
Or do anything substantive about it. How could they? It cannot be anything other than dead in the water.
FAR, SAR, TAR, AR4, AR5 and now AR6. There is a pattern there? Some new ‘ideas’ are desperately needed if anything will change regarding “understanding” and rational action in response.
That some math science nerd on real climate groks it easily – and can with total confidence label Victor an idiot – is not only besides the point, it actually proves the point!
But this is exactly where we are today. Some will assume, some will hope, and some are already praying that the WG2 and the WG3 will by some miracle make a massive difference.
Which makes me laugh, and cry, at the same time. I don’t think they will make an ounce of difference.
If anyone has any better Ideas then let’s hear them. Time has run out. :)
They don’t need to understand the science, they need to understand the solutions. And. the solutions are ultimately local.
Michael Mann is really active now in the media https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann pushing the alarm that urgent action is needed, but he still fails to communicate the actual Risks involved and what they can Cost people and how they will affect people, and how easily they might end up even killing the people reading his articles.
He is wasting too many column inches and personal energy blaming it all on fossil fuel companies instead. That’s not the critical issue at all, and it is not their fault anyway it is everyones – for 200 plus years the whole world has been quite happy to pay the fossil fuel companies to extract and burn coal, oil and gas as the cheapest easiest energy we have ever known.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/16/opinion/you-should-be-concerned-about-climate-change-big-oil-should-be-terrified/
Mann has personal issues with the fossil fuel industry in the USA because of how they attacked him personally. I get that but it is a distraction stopping him more clearly explaining what the actual risks of a warming world really are — if and when we don’t radically cut GHG emissions by half in the next 10 years — no matter what that might cost us now, the cost of not doing it will be much higher and more dangerous for everyone. Including fossil company executives and their families.
RC: He is wasting too many column inches and personal energy blaming it all on fossil fuel companies instead. That’s not the critical issue at all, and it is not their fault anyway it is everyones
BPL: Nonsense. It wasn’t “everyone” who spent a billion dollars lying about the issue and preventing legislation to address it.
True, but everyone is complicit. Most people have no idea the extent to which FFs fill their lives. They are consuming huge amounts of stuff, most now fully aware we are in overshoot, and like most on this board, intend to continue to because… magic (tech) will save us all in the end no matter how many resources we use up.
Worse, by blaming the FF companies and saying individuals can do very little – and that IS the message – it tells people all we need are windmills and solar panels and all will be well. I guarantee you, if we do not drop consumption of almost all manufactured goods from non-renewable resources to anywhere from zero to no more than 20% of present, there will not be a society to speak of in 100 years – and that’s being optimistic. Bauxite goes bye-bye @ 2070, e.g.
The bugpocalypse will see to it, and that’s just one avenue for collapse. There are multiple interacting disasters occurring, and all can be traced back to consumption. “The problem is the solution.” Doc, it hurts when I do this. Doc” Then don’t do that.
Earth: It hurts when they do that.
God: Knock if the anti-heaven off!
It’s you that is speaking Nonsense here. Illogical nonsense. Irrelevant nonsense. Emotional nonsense, and more.
Mann is wasting too many column inches and personal energy blaming it all on fossil fuel companies instead. Because that is not the critical issue, period!
You want to take them to court and prove that? Go for it. Be my guest, fund it as well. You think we have time to wait for an outcome? You imagine Trump and the rest of the goon show are going to change their minds because a court found Exxon guilty? You’re dreaming if that is what you think is realistic and not nonsense.
It’s not the critical issue at all. Far from it. What’s needed is people capable of thinking through complex systemic issues and not getting lost in the maze and the haze of disinformation and emotional triggers.
The critical issue is global warming – period.
The key component of that is the Forcing from the Cumulative GHGs now in the atmosphere (plus ocean acidification a side effect) and how they got there, and how to mitigate that and/or adapt to that.
That cumulative forcing goes all the way back to 1750 and before – but science uses 1750 as a yardstick.
1750 predates the establishment of the United States and almost every other nation on earth. Long before Standard Oil and long before Exxon-Mobil and Aramco.
The cumulative forcing includes:
Fossil fuel use begins with Coal, but even before that burning wood and charcoal added to GHGs now in the atmosphere today.
Plus
Vegetation and forest destruction aka land clearing
The establishment of cities
Building wooden ships and building steel ships
Agriculture of all kinds
Animal Pastoral farms of all kinds
Fertilizer use
Soil Erosion
Building roads and bridges
Mining activities of all kinds
Higher current temperatures
Methane from land use disruption, permafrost melt from higher temperatures
Cement production
Aviation impacts
Rapid uncontrolled expansion of the Internet and computerized digital networks
Wild fires, bushfires.
Record breaking floods
Land use including freeway and highway networks
Land glaciers and Sea Ice melt
Maintaining nuclear weapons systems
Maintaining massive defense forces
Building Nuclear powered electricity power plants
Building skyscrapers incl the Burj Khalifa in Dubai
Western and modern civilization since 1750 has been built upon the essential use of all Fossil Fuels plus the application of all the above.
Exxon did not kill all the buffalo and turn the great plains into a corn farm. Fossil fuel companies gave the people and the governments exactly what they wanted. Energy, plastics, fertilizers, billions of tons of steel and firearms, hundreds of millions of cars and air-conditioning.
To target Fossil Fuels companies and foolishly believe 1) it’s important, or 2) it can make any difference to solving climate change, or 3) they can be separated out from the actions and desires of humanity the last 270 years is pure Nonsense.
It’s Bunkum. Not thoughtful and not intelligent. It’s an utter waste of everyone’s time and energy – it’s a worthless distraction. It’s a waste of energy and effort by Mann to be blaming it on fossil fuel companies too.
That’s what I think. And some of the reasons why I think that.
Of course, there will be people who will disagree.
“The world is divided into those who think they are right.”
A quibble, but it’s important: Climate Change is a SYMPTOM, not a cause. The cause is consumption. Until that is understood, the solution sets will not solve the problem.
Yes, definitely. A symptom a side-effect of the cause.
who spent a billion dollars lying about the issue
Prove it. $1,000 million? I think you cannot. Even if true, can you prove it makes any difference to where we are today otherwise? No.
Bush-Cheney set into Law the EPA Cut-out for oil and gas fracking in the USA.
The American people put them into power and kept them their.
Obama-Biden then expanded the operations and facilitated the fossil fuel industry at every step.
Obama takes credit for U.S. oil-and-gas boom: ‘That was me, people’
“You wouldn’t always know it ,but it went up every year I was president,” he said to applause. “That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas that was me, people.”
https://apnews.com/article/business-5dfbc1aa17701ae219239caad0bfefb2
The American people put them into power, and kept them there.
Then they elected a Republican Congress and a Donald Trump.
How about you and Michael Mann sue them, and we all sue the American people for being self-centered greedy gullible fools? :)
I mean, if the point really is lying about issues, the cap surely fits them all.
I think there might even be a case for suing Americans for all the MAGA hats. I can’t imagine how much CO2 went up the flue making them, and shipping them all the way from China.
July was a Frankenstein month created by the fossil fuel industry
Op-Ed By Michael E. Mann
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/568462-july-was-a-frankenstein-month-created-by-the-fossil-fuel-industry
The old ‘give a dog a bad name and it sticks’ tends to work forever – check out some of the 800+ comments responding to this article by Mike Mann. It’s possibly an excellent insight into the present reality and where things are still heading?
quote: “A half-century ago, fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil’s own scientists predicted, in an internal report that was kept secret from the public, “catastrophic” climate change consequences if we remained addicted to fossil fuels. The industry then seemingly did everything they could to ensure that was the case.”
And ‘we’ remain very addicted.
“Hey look over there, they made me do it.”
For the last 40 years tens of thousands of scientists all over the world have been publishing research papers. That accumulated knowledge has been presented in six IPCC UN Assessment Reports warning of the dangers of global warming and climate change, and the urgent and sustained requirement to reduce GHG emissions.
Those emissions have not been reduced – they are higher than they have ever been in history.
‘We’ remain very addicted.
“Hey look over there, the fossil fuel industry made me do it.”
BPL: who spent a billion dollars lying about the issue
RC: Prove it. $1,000 million? I think you cannot. Even if true, can you prove it makes any difference to where we are today otherwise? No.
BPL: So RC defends the fossil fuel industry. Go out, knight in shining armor! The fossil fuel industry is your damsel in distress! You must defend its honor from all cruel calumnies!
Yeah, RC, blame anybody but the innocent fossil fuel industry. The cruelty! Those poor Koch Brothers! Alas, the innocent board of directors of Shell and Exxon-Mobil! How could anybody blame those poor souls when the true perpetrators are the evil consumers?
Elsewhere, BPL claims he does not attack without cause, yet here we see him employ Straw Man arguments, aka dishonesty, to belittle RC’s point that the issue is not *just* the FF companies. Nowhere above does RC say the FF Inc’s have no responsibility, He makes two essential points, and does so because Michael Mann has been making the extremely dangerous and misleading claim that individual actions don’t matter and that individuals are not responsible for Climate Change:
RC did say, “Prove it. $1,000 million? I think you cannot. Even if true, can you prove it makes any difference to where we are today otherwise? No. ”
I, too, find this statement a bit absurd. Of course, the denial industry set in motion, with massively ill intent, had a huge effect on the response to climate. The money they have spent is well-documented. However, the point RC is making is that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. That is, whatever the FF Inc’s have done, the people still chose their actions. Yes, he is wrong to pose this issue in this manner as it puts *all* of the responsibility on the public. HOWEVER, it is a valid argument to make that in a market economy, the power of the purse is king. At the end of the day, what consumers choose to consume matters greatly, and, had they chosen to, they could have forced change decades ago.
But this ignores the power of $ in the political system and the well-documented power of advertising and propaganda. But nowhere does RC actually say the FF inc’s have no culpability as BPL implies with his sarcasm.
It is a Straw Man to claim something unstated by RC and caustic sarcasm is not prudent discourse and is not intended to foster discourse. It is belittling, attacking, without merit and without provocation. Humorous sarcasm we can all live with, but the caustic stuff just makes things worse.
These are serious times. We need serious people, not ti-for-tat bullcrap.
“RC defends the fossil fuel industry. “
It’s only false allegations from levenson. Not worth wasting time over.
It doesn’t matter killian. the strawman is effective when it distracts from what the original commentary was all about. Which had nothing to do with the degree of culpability of fossil fuel companies.
The comment was all about effective communication that can actually change minds, and adopting a winning strategy. The simple point I emphasized was Framing.
What you see bouncing around here every day by the outspoken few is own version of hypocrisy and irrationality. In not being able to grasp systemic issues.
If fossil fuel companies are the big baddies then so is George Stephenson for inventing the coal burning stream locomotive. So is Henry Ford for inventing the oil guzzling Model T.
The following remains true and is the correct perspective: “To target Fossil Fuels companies and foolishly believe 1) it’s important, or 2) it can make any difference to solving climate change, or 3) they can be separated out from the actions and desires of humanity the last 270 years is pure Nonsense. The critical issue is global warming. “
M Mann “still fails to communicate the actual Risks involved and what they can Cost people and how they will affect people…”
Instead he is building a Strawman over the recent actions of some fossil fuel execs and think tanks. While he keeps doubles down in his communications of promoting Biden and the Democrats – as if they are any better at resisting the BS and the funding of FF interests.
So the not that clever here attack me for pointing out the obvious truth, what highly skilled academics and scientists already know and have been saying for decades. The Framing matters.
As I suggested above “..check out some of the 800+ comments responding to this article by Mike Mann. It’s possibly an excellent insight into the present reality …”
Mann has every right to say whatever he wishes. He’s earned it. And he can choose to build bridges to effect widespread positive change or he can choose to burn down all the bridges between the polity.
He can act like Trump or he can act like FDR or Ghandi and at least try to bring people together. The same goes for this website and it’s most outspoken participants too. It’s a choice.
As Ray Ladbury says we can discuss ideas, events or people, and here unintentionally makes one of my points for me:
“We have suffered attacks and flame wars going back decades. There is a lot of pent up frustration (aka pent up Anger) among those of us who have been advocating for people to listen to the science for decades. There was a point in the bad old days of the “climategate” nontroversy when if you weren’t getting death threats, you weren’t doing your job. That history leaves a mark.”https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/08/we-are-not-reaching-1-5oc-earlier-than-previously-thought/#comment-794972
The choices are to heal and get over it or to continue living in the past remaining angry about it. To remain stuck blaming others for every little hurt, and solving nothing…. or maturing, moving forward with greater wisdom, and a range of winning strategies instead.
I think I already know where it’s heading. But in the slim hope someone with a voice is listening and might still get it…..
Reality check has posted things that make him come across as an apologist for the fossil fuels industry. Reality Check also posts huge volumes of material on the difficulties of scaling up climate solutions such as renewables and other solutions. This is what climate denialists do. Reality Check doesn’t allay that suspicion by saying something like “I support solutions xyz but here are some of the challenges faced.” He makes himself look like a concern troll and solutions denialist.
Reality Check says:
“If fossil fuel companies are the big baddies then so is George Stephenson for inventing the coal burning stream locomotive. So is Henry Ford for inventing the oil guzzling Model T.”
This is a very foolish statement that compares apples and oranges. Henry Ford did not know that his cars could lead to climate change. There was no definitive knowledge back then that burning fossil fuels could cause climate change. Modern fossil fuels companies certainly know that burning fossil fuels can cause climate change. Henry Ford did not engage in a decades long campaign to spread climate denial like the fossil fuel companies have.
Henry Ford did not act like the fossil fuel companies who told the public climate change was harmless and not caused by burning fossil fuels when internal communications leaked to the media showed they thought the opposite. Refer:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
While there may not be much point in trying to sue fossil fuel companies, or scapegoat them, do not believe for an instant they are innocents in all this. They are huge contributors to the climate problem on multiple levels, from the products they produce to their denial of the problem and lobbying against solutions and token efforts at mitigating the problem, and as in the Exon Mobil example have acted badly. Of course other people have also contributed but this does not reduce the part the fossil fuel companies play. Reality Check is clearly an apologist for the fossil fuels industry or alternatively he is very confused.
RE these descriptions:
” . . . warming that we can expect if the concentrations of atmospheric CO2 were to double, the so-called climate sensitivity. The current estimate is 3°C, with a likely range of 2.5°C to 4°C. We have also managed to shift Earth’s energy balance with approximately 2.72 Wm2 . . . ”
No and no, a partial truth and an inaccuracy. The planet is not only responding to CO2. It is responding to all climate forcing gases. So the “if the concentration” statement is inaccurate unless stating the context that the equivalent forcing at present is already passing 500 ppm. (This is not to deny different atmospheric timelines purported for each individual gas)
As far as an inaccuracy, the Earth’s energy imbalance derives over time from radiative forcing. Although both are given in the same unit of Watt per square meter, that 2.72 W/m2 figure is forcing while current heat flow into the Earth System is currently measured as approx. 1 W/m2. This figure alone may seem trivial to many readers. However, since it is functioning over the entire surface of the planet, it is actually gargantuan, and rising.
SJ: The planet is not only responding to CO2.
BPL: Yes, but the climate sensitivity is only expressed with regard to one forcing at a time. The 2.5-4.0 K per doubling figure applies to CO2 specifically, not to all forcings.
Well then, angels do dance on the head of a pin. To borrow a book title, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Levenson. What real climate do you live in? Although I have no reason to doubt that you are technocratically correct.
Thanks for an implication of the partial irrelevancy concerning a summary for POLITICIANS.
Sorry, Jim, you got it wrong, and I pointed out your mistake. Deal with it. Your petulance is neither here nor there.
I’m even going to go way, way out on a limb here and say, without (yet) examining the actual report, that the 2.72 W/m2 Radiative Forcing figure implied as the total historical forcing is incorrect. One reason to assert this is the AR6 SPM states in paragraph A.4.1 that RF has risen 0.43 W/m2 since the last report, yet AR5 (2013) data is 2.83 W/m2 and even AR4 was 2.63. This seems to indicate that current forcing is above 3.0 W/m2 and not below.
Perhaps I’ve missed some technical detail, such as “in reference to 1950” as opposed to the year 1750. Of course, this is a critical physical condition to consider when, shall we say, “estimating future levels of annihilation.”
@Jim fyi 1750 it is.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_TS.pdf
Pg 44 – (TS-35) TS.2.2 Changes in the Drivers of the Climate System
The total anthropogenic effective radiative forcing (ERF) in 2019, relative to 10 1750, was 2.72 [1.96 to 3.48] W m−2 (medium confidence) and has likely been growing at an increasing rate 11 since the 1970s. {2.2, 6.4, 7.2, 7.3}
Pg 45 (TS-36)
The total anthropogenic ERF (Figure TS.9) in 2019 relative to 1750 was 2.72 [1.96 to 3.48] W m−2 (Figure 50 TS.9), dominated by GHGs (positive ERF) and partially offset by aerosols (negative ERF). The rate of 51 change of ERF likely has increased since the 1970s, mainly due to growing CO2 concentrations and less 52 negative aerosol ERF. {2.2.8, 7.3}
Pg 64 (TS-55) TS.3.1 Radiative Forcing and Energy Budget
The best estimate ERF of 2.72 W m−2 has increased by 0.43 Wm-2 relative to that given in 24
AR5 (for 1750–2014) due to an increase in the greenhouse gas ERF that is partly compensated by a more 25 negative aerosol ERF compared to AR5.
Good luck with cross checking AR5
The SPM – A comment about ‘climatic impact-drivers’?
Who are the strange beings that invent these disconcerting meaning-challenged, anti-sense-making Jargon Word salads, and Gobbledygook to be used in a SPM where clarity and understanding are so critical for the future of this world?
Seriously should not summaries be readable and easily understood, there meaning grasped at first glance or not?
Random suggestion goes: What is the purpose of a summary? A summary is meant to inform your reader—who has not read the text or seen the presentation—of what the text is about.
Or-An academic summary provides an objective, condensed (shortened) description of the content of a piece of writing or presentation.
Or-A Plain Language Summary is an incredibly effective science communication tool that allows researchers to reach a wider audience by summarizing their work in terms that are accessible to people outside of a specific scientific circle.
Nice theory I suppose, but it is not possible for the IPCC authors.
Their explanation?
For this reason, Working Group I has developed the more general concept of ‘climatic
impact driver’ (CIDs) to provide information about “natural or human-induced climate events or
trends that may have an impact (detrimental or beneficial) on an element of society or
ecosystems”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2021/01/The-concept-of-risk-in-the-IPCC-Sixth-Assessment-Report.pdf
Do these people not have access to Linguists, Grammarians, and Philologists in their institutions?
How about Writing, Media, Marketing and Communications Professors even?
What about Poets? :)
Committees made up of Volunteers sequestered into back rooms where no one goes where no one knows where they are or what they are doing until it is too late.
What is clear and present danger?
PS Try this one out:
“In addition to internal variability influence, near-term projected changes in precipitation at global and regional scales are uncertain because of model uncertainty and uncertainty in forcings from natural and anthropogenic aerosols (medium confidence).”
Are they sure about that? :)
This is a Summary for Governments? For Politicians, advisors, and staffers, right? The people who decide what to do about the scientific advice – being the urgency of action to address the real risks of climate changes – provided in the SPMs and other reports by the IPCC, yes?
In my view the last thing the AR6 WG1 SPM is is compelling. The other thing it is not is a Call to Action.
I got a little excited about SLR for a moment but then was quickly put back to sleep.
Oh dear. Can we not do better than this?
Apparently no, we cannot.
(yes I did see the page notes explanation before tracking down where when why and how the term arose. )
36 Climatic impact-drivers (CIDs) are physical climate system conditions (e.g., means, events, extremes) that affect an element of society or ecosystems. Depending on system tolerance, CIDs and their changes can be detrimental, beneficial, neutral, or a mixture of each across interacting system elements and regions. CID types include heat and cold, wet and dry, wind, snow and ice, coastal and open ocean.–
It must surely be an incredibly short list of beneficial or neutral changes. In fact I suspect none actually exist in reality, but will need to wait and see the WGII. Though more rain in the Sahara might be nice for some.
ADDENDUM ….
Climatic impact-drivers (CIDs) are the strong effect or influence that components of the climate system (the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere, and the biosphere, and the interactions among them) have relating to or causing weather conditions and/or natural or human-induced climate events or trends that may affect an element of society or ecosystems.
Climatic impact-drivers are basically the current weather of a region and the changing climate conditions over time at that place. Including extreme weather events, any severe impacts, and the prevailing climate trends in a region and/or an influential global climate system component.
Including prevailing trends and severe impacts such as: mean temperatures, mean precipitation, mean wind speeds, relative sea level rise, floods, landslides, storm surges, drought, aridity, wild fires, dust storms, melting permafrost, avalanches, melting sea ice glaciers and ice sheets, snow levels, rivers and lake ice, atmospheric CO2/GHG concentrations, erosion, marine heatwaves, coral bleaching, ocean acidity, ocean salinity and dissolved oxygen.
Refs
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-AnnexII_FINAL.pdf
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2021/01/The-concept-of-risk-in-the-IPCC-Sixth-Assessment-Report.pdf
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/AR5_SYR_FINAL_Annexes.pdf
The new term ‘Climatic impact-drivers’ is so easy to understand any politician, staffer or head of Government reading the SPM might have worked out what it meant within a moment or two. Then again maybe not.
SPM observations con’t
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf
B.2 Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global
warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine
heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some
regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea
ice, snow cover and permafrost.
The explanations which followed are better than some, though again get bogged down in confidences and likelihoods which are not at all clear nor quantified. e.g. medium confidence means 50/50, maybe yes, and maybe no, or we actually do not know in other words. It’s six to one, half a dozen to the other. That’s what people “hear”. Changes of frequency, intensity and increases, or how large is large, are never quantified in a meaningful way the reader can easily comprehend why they matter.
(at least that’s how I see it happening – and having seen the responses and commentary about the IPCC reports by thousands of politicians, journos, think tanks, economists, bloggers, political parties, and the media over the last few decades, this seems precisely the case – they do not get it or understand what is being said and what it really means.
More concerning is that there is no easily understood qualification regarding Risk and Impacts for Government officials and Politicians. Even if readers understand what the implications are for increases and intensities of measurable weather/climate events, there is no clarity on why these things are dangerous in the real world in which they live.
Such as how dangerous and critical to human systems, food and water supply, economics and governance they can be. What the long term costs could be, and why they should be avoided if at all. The likely Risk to society human life the economic and ecological damages and costs involved are not defined or mentioned throughout the SPM. This is a critically important shortcoming, in my view, because Unstated Assumptions will not be considered or front of mind.
This is where the SPM has always fallen down. The inbuilt assumption that the reader is equipped to comprehend the fullest meaning of simple statements like this one: “With every additional increment of global warming, changes in extremes continue to become larger.”
How much ‘larger’ and why does it matter? Far too many do not comprehend it and cannot translate that statement into meaningful implications in which they live and for the generations following us. Those that do not understand are not going to telephone the IPCC and ask them what something means. Therefore, it must be made clear as day on the first reading.
Because it is not clear the commentary in the SPM becomes increasingly meaningless the more such statements are made because the language itself switches off the readers attention. Their mental ability to remain focused and obtain the intended meaning from what’s being said atrophies. Even trained academics, scientists and climate scientists in the know struggle.
Despite knowing the SPM is not written for the scientific literate the IPCC Authors continue to keep writing it as if they are literate. In my view it’s a key reason why communication of the critical import and extremely dangerous nature of global warming and climate change to politicians, businesses, journalists and writers, the news media and the general public has failed to convince an overwhelming majority of the urgency of actions required.
Blaming disinformation by others (including fossil fuel interests) for these failures is most likely a form of unjustifiable denial, default excuse making or a lack of accountability and responsibility. Or simply a natural ignorance of what makes public information and communication strategies work the best.
“With every increment of global warming, changes get larger in regional mean temperature, precipitation and soil moisture Figure SPM.5 ”
It is the extremes the tails the worst exceptions to climate norms and means as they change that are most dangerous and deadly. Those extremes need to be avoided at all cost, not the means. Talking about the means to non-science literate readers presents the wrong kind of Framing of the issues.
The large implications of small changes in means is not readily understood by the body politic and is therefore easily dismissed as of no importance. And they have been dismissed for decades due to the way information has been presented to people by the Authors of these IPCC SPM Reports.
“A projected reduction in mean soil moisture by one standard deviation corresponds to soil moisture conditions typical of droughts that occurred about once every six years during 1850–1900.”
I wonder what the chances are of one standard deviation occurring where I live and where my food comes from the next decade or two? Tell me again what one standard deviation means and how big that needs to be to cause an atypical climate change driven drought in my County. And again, what is the risk of that happening and what would it cost f I do nothing?
Because now there are four kinds of Drought I need to aware of and observations (data) I need to monitor:
meteorological droughts
hydrological droughts,
ecological droughts
agricultural droughts
By all means people can draw their own conclusions about the efficacy of the Wg1 SPM. Feel free. I see no problems with the science itself but I do not believe the purpose of the SPM is back slap scientists for producing high quality findings over time and for their detailed confirmations compared to the last report. That’s terrific in and of itself, so well done everyone, but is not the purpose of the SPM nor my comments above.
I do not need to show how it could be done better either. That is not my role nor my responsibility. No one needs to be a President or a politician to point out their failings and express your concerns about their behaviour. You do not need to be a fully trained taxi driver to know they are are not driving the fastest route home, or be a commercial cleaner to know their taxi is unsanitary.
So disagree for sure, but please try avoiding logical fallacies and strawmen to misrepresent (or attack) me or what I am saying above and the specific subject (aspect) I am focusing upon. Why I think it’s so important and why I think again the SPM has failed to deliver what is desperately needed from the IPCC – Conveying clarity and understanding. (Not that asking is going to stop it.)
RC. I agree to the extent that the IPCC reports are less than ideal in terms of content and style. Yet I find them easy enough to understand as a lay person (I do have some background in earth sciences, but just the basics), and they cover the main issues quite well. Everyone in the world must know the basic climate projections by now, unless they have been living under a rock. Likewise anyone except an idiot must have some grasp of the fact the situation is serious.
On specifics. The IPCC reports state they have low, medium confidence or high confidence in various findings on weather trends. It reflects the state of knowledge at this time. They are simply stating the truth. I’m completely puzzled what alternative you would have? Should they lie and say they have high confidence in all things? Im sure neither of us would want that. If they say nothing about what confidence they have, it would be misleading and they will certainly be asked by the media and so will have to be specific. They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
Regarding quantification of existing and projected climate trends. I agree this isn’t ideal. But warming and sea level rise is certainly well quantified. I seem to recall in the last IPCC report that at least some some weather trend projections. Its a shame not more are. For example we need to know how much worse hurricanes will get this century, in intensity and with numbers. I’ve heard scientists give estimates but I don’t recall it being in the IPCC reports as such.
One problem I do have with the IPCC reports is some of the serious climate possibilities seem somewhat buried away in the fine detail of the body of the report and don’t get adequate mention in the summary for policy makers. This has been partly rectified by mentioning extreme sea level rise possibility in the summary for policy makers, but more could be done I think.
For me I think the main problem is a lot of people till just don’t want to hear the climate message, and having more specifics and packaging the message differently will only shift that a little bit. But as they say, “every little bit helps”.
A fair and reasonable, nice respectful comment. Only speaks for himself not others, and does not ridicule what I was saying. Thank you for that.
“They are simply stating the truth.
Yes. I did not think they were doing otherwise.
“I’m completely puzzled what alternative you would have?”
I gave a few examples and pointed to a few other aspects I thought were deficiencies.
e.g. Far too many do not (would not) comprehend it and cannot translate that statement into meaningful implications in which they live and for the generations following us. (politicians included)
” Should they lie and say they have high confidence in all things?”
No. They should not do that.
“If they say nothing about what confidence they have, it would be misleading …”
And if what they write is not easily understood by all, by average people, then what the report says remains ‘misleading’ – in that it does not convey what was intended.
and they will certainly be asked by the media and so will have to be specific.”
In general, in a perfect world maybe. But not necessarily in the real world. I have not seen any questions or reporting by the media about the issues I mentioned.
” They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. “
That is only a common saying that does not necessarily apply in this case. The issues raised were not about damning anyone and did not curse anyone. It was only ideas about and questioning how effective and understandable the content and wording language of the SPM actually is for the average person and politician, voter or activist, to comprehend it’s intended meaning, and most important take away messages. That’s all.
As @nigel said: ” I agree to the extent that the IPCC reports are less than ideal in terms of content and style. “
So there is a degree of agreement a language/wording communication issue exists.
and “Yet I find them easy enough to understand as a lay person”
But you are exceptional, above average, therefore being an exception to the rule these problems do not affect you as they would others in the targeted audience. I would expect almost all RC visitors to grasps the main points due to their prior exposure, above average knowledge, and experience with the technical terminology and jargon.
RC residents comprehension were not the concerns I was raising above. I hope that is cleared up.
again thank you for your kind response. Again it is ok you and others might see things differently and not be at all concerned. I do. So I mentioned it.
Yes. In fact, the optimal ‘target audience’ excludes everyone who is part of the choir, so to speak. The reports should be written while visualizing fence sitters and militant GOPpers.
Convincing the fence sitters while shaking the GOPpers’ convictions takes mad skill.
Climate scientists aren’t up to the task (that is wayyyy out of their wheelhouse). Some are trying (Hansen, Mann, and others have had some success (big kudos to them).
“Regular” folks are trying too. My attempt is puttering along, but geez, it is such a stretch to reach from reality to the GOPpers’ bizarro world.
But what did the wealthy expect? Lie constantly and fleece everyone while teaching about how greed is good (Capitalism is ever so efficient, but at what? shoveling money from your pocket into the wealthy’s pockets without regard to anything else).
Prosperity doesn’t trickle down, but assholery does. Want to get ahead? Emulate the wealthy while thinking, “Nothing personal. It’s just business”.
Climate scientist discussing the content of the latest IPCC report.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-IPsCWVIRA&t=517s
He also discusses the tone of language used, and how its much more unequivocal , risk based and urgent than previously, partly as a result of research on attribution of extreme weather events over the last 8 years.
Yes, he does emphasize things like this:
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased (see Figures SPM.1, SPM.2, SPM.3 and SPM.4)
Which made no difference when they said it in 2013.
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf
Little to nothing has changed in fact or tone from the AR5 to the AR6.
Adam’s ref video says: “Not because it contains anything we didn’t know already…”
My point, and the point of videos like Adams is people still need a climate scientist like Rasmus above to explain it (who says: Neither the present nor the previous SPM have much resemblance to either being a summary or being written for policy-makers. ) Or Adam in the video above trying to explain it to them, by reading sections, and still not really cutting it.
Of those that do read the SPM most won’t make much sense of it. People who most need to understand it’s implications still won’t be reading it. Because it is not user friendly, nor fit for purpose.
Having to explain a joke means the joke failed.
One video comment went: “We really need to get cracking on with cleaning up all sectors of forestry, food, transportation, manufacturing and building stuff.
Yes, we must get cracking on. Which sector will I cleanup today? :)
My hypothesis is: the AR6 will make no difference in urgently driving down GHG emissions from now to 2030. The AR6 will have little to zero measurable impact upon Governments, Climate Action Policy, the level of Media Disinformation, or Policymakers in general between now and the AR7.
RC. I notice a difference in tone and content in the latest IPCC SPM, but I guess its a personal perception thing. And I suppose even a slightly heightened sense of urgency stands out quite a lot from previous reports, ,with their incredibly restrained and measured tone.
I think they could do better still communicating risk and urgency etcetera. I’m not saying you are wrong, but any lack of accuracy, hype or excessively colourful language could end up badly discrediting the IPCC and the credibility of the reports. I can see the whole issue both ways. Its a rather difficult thing to get just right.
Perhaps you should write your own version of the summary for policy makers, or parts of it, and email it to the IPCC. Assuming you have the time. This is a serious suggestion and is not being sarcastic. Just copy it to several people, because this makes it harder to ignore. This is what I do when I write suggestions or letters of complaint.
Yes it is difficult, challenging and so on.
I and many many others we will never know about are pointing to the symptoms. Offering an alternative such as Rasmus has above is addressing a symptom. When what is required is systemic change at a revolutionary scale (not a violent upheaval but in degrees of change vs the historical norm). The world is not ready yet. We’re still stuck in misunderstandings, inaction, difference and fears.
No, the Middle Way does not apply to Existential Threats. This is not hard to understand, so I don’t understand why you have been repeating this mantra since 2016. Truth does not damage credibility. Stupidity and/or ideology (greed) allow(s) some to think a risk warning that is avoided equals a mistake, but do we want the stupid/ideologically bankrupt running policy? No.
We are past the time when the denialists and their minions were the prime movers of policy. Now, the best they can do is create delay – which they are doing – but the days of fake email scandals among climate scientists are over.
It is time for the adults in the room to act like they are the adults in the room and stop running from petulant children, regardless how loudly they are screaming and fake crying.
K. This is what I ACTUALLY said: “but any lack of accuracy, hype or excessively colourful language could end up badly discrediting the IPCC and the credibility of the reports. I can see the whole issue both ways. Its a rather difficult thing to get just right.” This is nothing to do with some sort of middle way. Its about good writing. Its about making sure reports are accurate, objective, honest and non emotive and worded so they can’t be easily discredited. All reports should be like this. To claim thats a “middle way” is ridiculous.
If you think what I said and what you said are the same, you need to enhance your comprehension. You have looked at your error, said it was the same as what I said, repeated your error. Either you don’t understand the significant difference between the two or are communicating your view very poorly.
Whatever.
Prof. Philip Mirowski from 2007
“The Global Restructuring of Science as a Marketplace of Ideas”
Neoliberals are active interventionists.
Neoliberals do not believe in Laissez Faire Capitalism
Neoliberals are not Libertarians. They believe in organization.
They believe in taking over. They are kind of Leninist actually.
The participation of lay people in science means anyone can buy the
science they think they need and reject the science they don’t like.
That’s how the world works for these people – and then you begin to
understand why this is a Principled position on their part. They
aren’t just wackos!
There are five historical trends that I want to call your attention to since 1980.
1) The wide scale De-Industrialization of West
2) The great transformation of the regime of Intellectual Property
3) The outsourcing of Corporate R&D since the 1990s
4) The withdrawal of the State as Science manager
5) The retreat of the State as the primary provider of Education
These all go together. They aren’t individually unrelated phenomena.
The reason they are not individually unrelated phenomena is because
each are informed by Neoliberal Doctrines brought to fruition today.
https://youtu.be/2J13SDqmaNw?t=1341
The Neoliberals won the first Climate War using Denialism.
They are winning Mann’s New Climate War as well.
While the scientific world looks on dumbfounded wondering why.
We need a simpler way to talk about climate change
There’s too much jargon and people are getting confused.
There’s a gap between what scientists are saying on climate change and what the public is actually understanding,
https://www.zmescience.com/science/we-need-a-simpler-way-to-talk-about-climate-change/
2021 – Participants tended to draw on their mental models of non-climate contexts where terms had different meanings.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-021-03183-0
2020 – We offer empirical evidence that the presence of jargon disrupts people’s ability to fluently process scientific information, even when definitions for the jargon terms are provided.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0261927X20902177
October 2011 Physics Today – It is urgent that climate scientists improve the ways they convey their findings to a poorly informed and often indifferent public
https://climatecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Somerville-Hassol-Physics-Today-2011.pdf
On the other hand, everyday deniers on blogs, aggressive socioeconomic neoliberals, the right wing media, and fossil fuel funded think-tanks pushing the disinformation are expert at public and political communications.
The public and politicians usually know exactly what they mean by what they say – be it true or false.
These facts are not new. They are unequivocal. The IPCC and climate scientists in general, have been advised of these studies, these findings, these facts, countless times for decades in many scientific studies. To little effect. (aka little Change)
Some examples:
People generally care less about basic science than
about how climate change will affect them and what can be
done about it. Furthermore, climate change is often framed
as an environmental issue, when it should more appropriately
be framed as an issue threatening the economy and
affecting humanity’s most basic needs: food, water, safety, and
security.
Scientists typically fail to craft simple, clear messages and repeat them often.
They commonly overdo the level of detail
Scientists tend to speak in code.
Rather than “anthropogenic,” scientists can say “human-caused.”
Instead of “spatial” and “temporal,” they could say “space” and “time.”
They could use familiar units; for the American public, that means using
feet rather than meters, and Fahrenheit rather than Celsius.
Scientists shouldn’t expect a lay audience to do mental arithmetic.
Figure 3. Scientists can communicate more effectively
with the public about climate change by inverting the
pyramid of their usual presentations to colleagues. That is, start
with the “bottom line” and tell people why they should care.
Failing to use metaphors, analogies, and points of reference to make mathematical
concepts or numerical results more meaningful is another common mistake.
Scientists should avoid talking about aerosols and climate in a way that
reinforces this confusion. For most people, an aerosol is a spray can…
The term “consensus” makes some in the public conclude that global warming is just a matter of opinion.
When scientists say human activity “contributes” to global warming, that sounds like it could be a small contribution
When they say that climate change is due, “at least in part,” to humans, they reinforce the misconception that humans are perhaps a small part of the problem.
When climate scientists say that warming is “inevitable,” it can give the impression that nothing can be done.
Terms that have different meanings for scientists and the public
Scientific term – Public meaning – Better choice
positive feedback – good response, praise – vicious cycle, self-reinforcing cycle
uncertainty – ignorance – range
anomaly – abnormal occurrence – change from long-term average
https://climatecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Somerville-Hassol-Physics-Today-2011.pdf
Some of our local climate scientists do a great job of keeping it simple and unambiguous, but some don’t. One fellow was being interviewed, and he got so lost in the fine details he never got to the main point, before the interview was ended. He was also using a lot of jargon the average person wouldn’t understand. It all made me want to scream.
I interject this thought into my climate discussions with scientists and activists all the time with the observation we need all humans pulling in the same direction but about 99.99% of humanity does not talk this way. KISS it. Six-year-old it.
The response is virtually always pretty much, “Screw that. I’m talking to the important people. Those others are not my audience.” And then they wonder why change is glacial. (Old-style glacial, that is.)
Genosse R.Check
I Quote:
1, Scienhtists typicaqlly fail to cratt simple, clear messages and repeat them often.
2,….
3….
4,….
5….
6, They could use familiar units for thew American public.that means using
feet rather than meters, an Fahreneit rather than Celsius.
7, Scientists schould not expect a lay auience to do mental aritmetic.
This alltogether from 1 to 7 is known style and methods by which educated and enlighted, trained people are keeping Trolls at a distance.
Adolf Hitler, also by a certain Style, did the quite opposite.
He ordered his “Plain English”” accordinjhg to the Will of the People, and strictly forbade any “alian” litterature or speaking. He even forbade French Latin types. It was to be stated in solid German Gothic for The People.!
“Still Foreighn litterature will not be lacking. Our very skilled journalists and translators will give you translations and rewiews of edifying litterature from abroad!”
(According to the NSDAP Cultural program from 1928.)
That typical strict ban of foreighn litterature and foreighn languages, i. e the listening to foreighn radio stations and reading of their newspapers in original, is one of the most typical and clear symptoms of tyranny, and that the Iron Curtain has been put up overnight, or accute plans for the same is going on.
It begins allready by the systematic rinsing of language from all, borrowed and foreighn words that “people” will not understand., It is founded as national linguistic purism and on that characteristic level of industrialized dilettantism, and carried out as systematic class warfare and civil war aqgainst any sort of facultary anchored highschool and higher education.
All possibly borrowed and even old traditional French, Latin Greek, Danish Dutch Old norse words are being systematically rinsed out and translated by your quite primitive mother into her silly talking.
Evreka, Pnevma, Tangens to alpha, pi, theta-epsilon, Jakta est alia, Champagne, Verdammtnochmal, … all of it. is suddenly declared for Enemy of The People, and rinsed out by the zealous Red Guardists.,
All who carry embossings and signs of having been abroad or having been to school and highschool in pre- revolutionary time must strictly adapt to the nationally correct and flat sociolect called “plain English”
(that means Englischer Platt. Did n`t you know that?)
And you sit back with the vulgar and very pure sociolect of the pioneers 0f that Grand Old Party.
Else they will disappear from the streets and from your neighbourhoods.
Even your children in school will be expected to report on suspicious enemies of The People.
But, remember that the climate situation and the IPCC with its Paris convention is an international and inter- diciplinary situation, for which you are due to have som education and training The IPCC is quite obviously adressing to that, enlighted and educated, international level. We cannot have it in London Cocney or your remaining Kauderwelsh where everything is made quite Platt and pure for you..
It is a quite important control of origin and of validity that you can also have it in original. and I personally allways check up in different and related languages in litterature and on the internet when it really matters.
Also in order to see whether there are discrepances of content and meaning or even sheere bluff and cheating. That possibility is quite eswpecially what the trolls, the populists, and that ugly KADRE – moovement is dependent of getting rid of first.
Reality Check says:
Start with “Is an El Nino considered climate change?”
Discuss
Hi there,
Steve McIntyre shows the
Cape Ghir series andwrites the following to it:
https://climateaudit.org/2021/08/11/the-ipcc-ar6-hockeystick/
“Precisely why local Cape Ghir (offshore Morocco) temperatures were going down is somewhat of a quandary. Rather than figuring out this quandary, Neukom and the woke just turn the series upside down, following the example of Upside Down Mann by orienting the series according to its correlation with target instrumental temperature, even in their “CPS” reconstruction – a technique that is normally resistant to opportunistic flipping of proxies to enhance HS-ness of a final reconstruction.”
Is that really true? (for a layman a data series with a negative temperature trend has NO WAY to reinforce a global warming trend )
And why was that not reported here so far?
The core is from an upwelling site, whose temperature apparently is out of phase with NH temperatures. This is plausible since upwelling is driven by the winds and as the NH warms you and expect to see poleward shifts in the winds. The original paper is here And that’s what the authors say even in the abstract, so I’m not sure that Neukon really has much to say about it.
– Gavin
SM is doing what he always does: Throw an out-of-context factoid out there, make some “obvious” inference from it, and then say scientists are all liars and cheats in their published writings.
Many examples. One only need to glance at his blog at any time. My “favorite” is his classic and oft-cited “proof” that sea ice loss has nothing to do with global warming because there was little or no ice near Svaalbard Harbor one year in the 1920s which “proved” the Arctic (as a whole) had little ice then. Sadly, whalers/sealers/etc. in other areas around the Arctic noted plenty of ice around the entire Arctic.
Propagandists use this technique all the time and have since time immemorial. Truth-seekers do not. SM is anything but a truth-seeker, and his propaganda techniques are now quite old and indeed rather stale from being too-often repeated.
I can give morf a hint: When you see someone throw down a cherrypicked factoid (i.e.,observations from only a single time/place while completely IGNORING all other times and places) then saying “AHA, GOTCHA!!!!” you can be pretty sure there’s something other than truth-seeking going on. For example I can “prove” to you a trout stream near me flows upstream towards its source if I am careful only to measure the correct side of a couple of permanent whirlpools I know about and ignore flow everywhere else.
But you know what? I really haven’t proven any such thing to you unless you are truly an idiot because you at least OUGHT to know I’m grossly cherrypicking observations and so my “proof” is so “Riddikulus” as to drive a boggart back into it’s box. Nor has SM proven anything general whatsoever. He’s merely propagandizing.
Our resident propagandists like Vic do this same propagandistic messaging all the time as well.
>> Upwelling-driven SSTs also vary out of phase with millennial-scale changes
At least for this series that does not seem to be the case!
Looking at the data (and at least for the layman, climate audit is an easy location to do so) , assuming that Morocco and Cape Ghir is the same series, you can see that the temperature stays around 19.6°C for more than 2000 years before recently dropping by about 2°C which represents a change about 10x stronger than any previous oscillation:
https://climateaudit.org/2014/11/25/new-data-and-upside-down-moberg/
Jgnfld says “..throw down a cherrypicked factoid”
Well, at least to me it seems McIntyre might have a valid point with his critique of this series.
And that knife cuts both ways, as I think he does a good job showing that this series is used as a crucial element in the reconstruction for this SPM figure 1a, there seems to be no other series of that lengths with such a drop in temperature. I think we can agree that you should not use data as proxies unless they only have the desired correlation with temperature and no other time-dependence. I am not in the slightest convinced that this is the case here!
>> I’m not sure that Neukon really has much to say about it.
Well, then he probably should not use this series in his reconstruction! As McShane and Wyner pointed out more then 10years ago, this kind of selections produces unforeseeable errors for the whole reconstruction. As far as I know their critique on such reconstructions stands undisputed?
And I really think that climate science does owe a huge debt to S. McIntyre for his exposure of Mann´s use of the bristlecone pines in 1998, I think by now it is undisputed that these trees were statistically overweighted in that Hockeystick-Paper and are poor temperature proxies to begin with (just look at a few pictures of them and ask yourself if there is no other dominating growth factor that temperature for these poor plants).
I keep wondering, when Mann might find time to either withdraw or correct this flawed science.
Labeling a pioneering study whose findings have stood up to the test of time and been corroborated by a quarter century of follow-on research as “flawed science” is a little over the top, don’t you think? Newton (and every other pioneering scientist who ever lived) gave us many such “flaws” as well in a number of areas in their first published research.
Good Lord.
>> Labeling [..] research as “flawed science”
It seems telling that instead of trying to defend that indefensible work, you distract.
That publication used dubious proxies and is statistically unsound, so it needs correction or be withdrawn. These are well known 20 year old facts. What does take him so long?
Would you say bristlecone pines are particularly good temperature proxies?
In your opinion, is there anything wrong with the method as used in Mann´s 1998 paper?
P.S.: In the discussion around the various issues scientists had with that article, Mann cited I.Jolliffe as an expert on decentered PCAs to defend his method, but Jollife commented “it seems unwise to use uncentered analyses unless the origin is meaningful. Even then, it will be uninformative if all measurements are far from the origin. [..] it’s less clear what we are optimizing and how to interpret the results”
As I stated before I strongly doubt bristlecone pines are a good temperature proxies and together with an statistical method, which is “uninformative” at best, you just end up with a result, which cannot be trusted. I also said that McShane and Wyner pointed out more then 10years ago that an invalid proxy selections produces unforeseeable uncertainties for the whole reconstruction, which spans the bridge back to the case we are discussing now, again there was a proxy selected by Neukon, not for the science, but the result: The Cape Ghir stays around 19.6°C for more than 2000 years before recently dropping by about 2°C which represents a change about 10x stronger than any previous oscillation in stark contrast to the data described in the abstract cited by Gavin.
Can we agree that again we seem to have a result which seems heavily impacted by a single proxy?
The stats Mann used _could_ have led to unclear results, possibly. That is true of all stats, btw as NO dataset EVER meets all of the assumptions. That they did not has been rather completely corroborated over a quarter century of additional work using multiple and independent-of-Mann methods. The North Report–commissioned you may remember by so-called “conswervative” congresscritters–clearly laid this out now nearly 2 decades ago now stating: “while the [stats] issues are real, they had a very minimal effect, not a material effect on the final reconstruction.”
I guess you missed it.
Same with your proxy problem.
That procedures get refined over time is a good thing, not a bad thing. That, BTW, is the problem with most denial, it never changes and grows more accurate. Mostly it just gets shriller and shriller as the evidence mounts.
1) Jollife’s criticism is hardly a severe condemnation. He is merely questioning whether the analysis is making best use of the data and techniques.
2) As jgnfld states, countless subsequent studies have produced results virtually indistinguishable from Mann et al.(1998).
3) Another way to look at the situation where a result stands the test of time despite less than optimized analysis is to conclude that the result is quite robust–and that seem to be the proper conclusion here.
Don’t know the present status of the scholarship on this question, but many decades ago I remember reading some statistical evidence that Mendel may have, uh, “hoaxed” the world–accidentally or otherwise–with his counts as at least one paper found his counts overly precise suggesting some sort of possible introduced bias.
Turns out even so assortive mating really does occur nonetheless. Some results really are robust.
Good afternoon dear RealClimate authors. I am.a regular reader and shy commenter. Quick question: i’ve seen here several times estimates indocating Humanity must reduce CO2 emissions by at least 80% in order to stabilize atmospheric levels.
What are the estimated minimum reductions necessary of methane and nitrous oxide to achieve aforementioned stabilization or steady reduction of atmospheric levels ( admitedly more plausible with methane than nitrous oxide).
Yes. To stabilize CO2 concentrations (not temperatures), you need ~80% reductions. But to stabilize methane or N2O concentrations you simply have to stabilize emissions (since they don’t really have the long time scales associated with the carbon cycle). Any reductions in emissions of CH4 though will lead to decreases in concentrations. – gavin
Aww I seem to be the newest critic on here.. doesnt everybody just love a critic?
(To be honest, so far I am not too impressed with the answers, there was basically no answer to my questions why that questionable proxy from Neukon was not further justified as it seems to impact the result significantly. And I am not sure at all what to make about a defense that Mendel´s wrong paper led to good science or Mann´s 1998 math might not be as bad as shown by McIntyre adn various people, which should not be a matter of opinion given the limited temperature proxies, the questionable method and a low verification statistic, (Mann didnt disclose at that time, which is a problem in itself).
>> To stabilize CO2 concentrations (not temperatures), you need ~80% reductions.
Seems an odd/simplified statement, as higher CO2 levels should lead to increased absorption in plants and oceans, which should always lead to an (almost) equilibrium.
In that regards, the IPCC reports seem to use the Bern model the residence times for CO2 in the atmosphere. Am I correct, that there are huge differences between these reports in regards to these numbers and even the amount of time constants used, this field elementary to long term predictions seems to fluctuate wildly!?
(However, it seems to me that these numbers will only result in small differences in the near future, but it shows that the knowledge about the carbon cycle still seems limited)
morfuo3, Mel Brooks understood critics quite well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H7IUbwFG40
You are the very latest in a long line of critics–a long, long fucking line–who are just sure the science is wrong, don’t understand the science well enough to see why it is not wrong, and are incapable of producing anything creative themselves.
Science is not about “auditing”. It’s about creating something better. ‘Til you do that, you’re just doing mathturbation.
Here’s a question to ponder: If Mann ’98 and other such efforts are so wrong, why does every new effort produce similar results?
My point, which morf seems to have missed, is that pioneering studies rarely if ever nail down everything perfectly. That doesn’t mean they are “wrong”. It doesn’t mean they are bad science. It doesn’t mean they are hoaxes. Same with stats. McIntryre (actually more McKitrick, IMO) didn’t even show that Mann et. al. used “questionable” techniques there either–they were rather standard at the time even if better techniques were available if known mostly to stats experts (hell–I used a closely related PCA technique in my own dissertation lo these many years ago though there was no issue with centering in my own context!). Nor did M&M honestly report the percentages of “fake” hockey sticks that could be generated as tamino, among others including the NRC North report noted. They only noted it was possible and “accidentally” forgot to report how often. This is not good Monte Carlo procedure you ought to know if you are any sort of stats expert. There is a reason the North
Report stated the stats issues though real were not important in the context of the MBH1998 study.
Your “concern” with quarter century old research that has been replicated and extended repeatedly using multiple independent proxies and multiple independent methods is therefore unwarranted and presents no scientific basis whatever for changing any conclusion. Ignore the MBH 1998 study if you want. It was an early shot. No problem. It changes precisely nothing about the reality of the hockey stick which really does seem to be there in the data regardless of your “concerns”. And that’s even if you ignore bristlecone pines from one site. The finding is simply robust.
Get over it.