Climate science from climate scientists...
Last week, the European Geophysical Union held its annual general assembly, with thousands of geophysicists converging on the city of Vienna, Austria. It was time to take the pulse of the geophysical community.
[Read more…] about Impressions from the European Geophysical Union conference 2008
) Nature Geoscience has two commentaries this month on science blogging – one from me and another from Myles Allen (see also these blog posts on the subject). My piece tries to make the point that most of what scientists know is “tacit” (i.e. not explicitly or often written down in the technical literature) and it is that knowledge that allows them to quickly distinguish (with reasonable accuracy) what new papers are worth looking at in detail and which are not. This context is what provides RC (and other science sites) with the confidence to comment both on new scientific papers and on the media coverage they receive.
Myles’ piece stresses that criticism of papers in the peer-reviewed literature needs to be in the peer-reviewed literature and suggests that informal criticism (such as on a blog) might undermine that.
We actually agree that there is a real tension between a quick and dirty pointing out of obvious problems in a published paper (such as the Douglass et al paper last December) and doing the much more substantial work and extra analysis that would merit a peer-reviewed response. The approaches are not however necessarily opposed (for instance, our response to the Schwartz paper last year, which has also lead to a submitted comment). But given everyone’s limited time (and the journals’ limited space), there are fewer official rebuttals submitted and published than there are actual complaints. Furthermore, it is exceedingly rare to write a formal comment on an particularly exceptional paper, with the results that complaints are more common in the peer reviewed literature than applause. In fact, there is much to applaud in modern science, and we like to think that RC plays a positive role in highlighting some of the more important and exciting results that appear.
Myles’ piece, while ending up on a worthwhile point of discussion, illustrates it (in my opinion) with a rather misplaced example that involves RC – a post and follow-up on the Stainforth et al (2005) paper and the media coverage it got. The original post dealt in part with how the new climateprediction.net model runs affected our existing expectation for what climate sensitivity is and whether they justified a revision of any projections into the future. The second post came in the aftermath of a rather poor piece of journalism on BBC Radio 4 that implied (completely unjustifiably) that the CPDN team were deliberately misleading the public about the importance of their work. We discussed then (as we have in many other cases) whether some of the responsibility for overheated or inaccurate press actually belongs to the press release itself and whether we (as a community) could do better at providing more context in such cases. The reason why this isn’t really germane to Myles’ point is that we didn’t criticise the paper itself at all. We thought then (and think now) that the CPDN effort is extremely worthwhile and that lessons from it will be informing model simulations some time into the future. Our criticisms (such as they were) were mainly associated instead with the perception of the paper in parts of the media and wider community – something that is not at all appropriate for a peer-reviewed comment.
This isn’t the place to rehash the climate sensitivity issue (I promise a new post on that shortly), so that will be deemed off-topic. However, we’d be very interested in any comments on the fundamental issue raised – how do (or should) science blogs and traditional peer-review intersect and whether Myles’ perception that they are in conflict is widely shared.
Knud Jahnke and Rasmus Benestad
After having watched a new documentary called the ‘Cloud Mystery’ – and especially the bit about the galaxy (approximately 2 – 4 minutes into the linked video clip) – we realised that a very interesting point has been missed in earlier discussions about ‘climate, galactic cosmic rays and the evolution of the Milky Way galaxy.
It is claimed in ‘The Cloud Mystery’, the book ‘The Chilling Stars’, and related articles that our solar system takes about 250 million years to circle the Milky Way galaxy and that our solar system crosses one of the spiral arms about every ~150 million years (Shaviv 2003).
But is this true? Most likely not. As we will discuss below, this claim is seriously at odds with astrophysical data.
[Read more…] about A Galactic glitch
By John Fleck and William Connolley
To veterans of the Climate Wars, the old 1970s global cooling canard – “How can we believe climate scientists about global warming today when back in the 1970s they told us an ice age was imminent?” – must seem like a never-ending game of Whack-a-mole. One of us (WMC) has devoted years to whacking down the mole (see here, here and here, for example), while the other of us (JF) sees the mole pop up anew in his in box every time he quotes contemporary scientific views regarding climate change in his newspaper stories.
Una traducción está disponible aqui
Tłumaczenie na polski dostępne jest tutaj.
I was honoured to be invited to the annual regional conference for Norwegian journalists, taking place annually in a small town called ‘Hell’ (Try Earth Google ‘Hell, Norway’). During this conference, I was asked to participate in a panel debate about the theme: ‘Climate – how should we [the media] deal with world’s most pressing issue?’ (my translation from Norwegian; by the way ‘Gods expedition’ means ‘Cargo shipment’ in ‘old’ Norwegian dialect).
This post is a list of books since 2005 (in reverse chronological order) that we have been involved in, accompanied by the publisher’s official description, and some comments of independent reviewers of the work. We will try and keep this list up to date as and when new books appear. We have also added links to the sidebar with the latest offerings.
Available now:
Happy Reading!
The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, Michael E. Mann (Columbia University Press).
Publisher’s description:
In its 2001 report on global climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations prominently featured the “Hockey Stick,” a chart showing global temperature data over the past one thousand years. The Hockey Stick demonstrated that temperature had risen with the increase in industrialization and use of fossil fuels. The inescapable conclusion was that worldwide human activity since the industrial age had raised CO2 levels, trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and warming the planet.
The Hockey Stick became a central icon in the “climate wars,” and well-funded science deniers immediately attacked the chart and the scientists responsible for it. Yet the controversy has had little to do with the depicted temperature rise and much more with the perceived threat the graph posed to those who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to protect our environment and planet. Michael E. Mann, lead author of the original paper in which the Hockey Stick first appeared, shares the real story of the science and politics behind this controversy. He introduces key figures in the oil and energy industries, and the media front groups who do their bidding in sometimes slick, bare-knuckled ways to cast doubt on the science. Mann concludes with an account of the “Climategate” scandal, the 2009 hacking of climate scientists’ emails. Throughout, Mann reveals the role of science deniers, abetted by an uninformed media, in once again diverting attention away from one of the central scientific and policy issues of our time.
The Climate Crisis: An Introductory Guide to Climate Change. David Archer and Stefan Rahmstorf, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Publisher’s description:
This book provides a concise and accessible overview of what we know about ongoing climate change and its impacts, and what we can do to confront the climate crisis. Highly illustrated in full colour, it lucidly presents information contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, making essential scientific information on this critical topic available to a broad audience.
David Archer and Stefan Rahmstorf – two outstanding scientists – bring us up-to-date on climate science in this remarkable and very readable book. This book deserves to be read by anyone interested in climate change.
–Paul Crutzen, Max Plank Institute for Chemistry, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for explaining the ozone hole
The key findings of the IPCC, written in plain and simple terms. Great value in informing the public at large about the science underlying the growing challenge of climate change.
-Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC and Director-General of The Energy Resources Institute
They are excellent communicators of the science to the general reader… One hopes for a wide readership for this measured book which clearly and thoughtfully sets out the results of the work of a great many scientists.
– Bryan Walker, Hot Topic, 19 January 2010
Climate Change: Picturing the science. Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe, W. W. Norton, April 2009
“Climate Change: Picturing the Science is a tour de force of public education. It is simply the best available collection of essays by climate scientists on the nature of human-induced climate change, the ways scientists have come to understand and measure the risks that it poses, and the options that we face….The editors, climatologist Gavin Schmidt and photographer Joshua Wolfe, have produced a collection of essays of uniformly outstanding quality, supported by photographs of beauty and insight.”
-Jeffrey D. Sachs
Director, Earth Institute at
Columbia University
Publisher’s description:
An unprecedented union of scientific analysis and stunning photography illustrating the effects of climate change on the global ecosystem.
In this groundbreaking book, published by W.W. Norton & Company in April 2009 NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt and photographer Joshua Wolfe illustrate as never before the ramifications of shifting weather patterns for human society. Photographic spreads show us retreating glaciers, sinking villages in Alaska’s tundra, drying lakes. The text follows adventurous scientists through the ice caps at the poles to the coral reefs of the tropical seas. Marshalling data spanning centuries and continents, the book affirms the headlines with cutting-edge research and visual records, including contributions from experts on atmospheric science, oceanography, paleoclimatology, technology, politics, and the polar regions.
The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate, David Archer (Princeton University Press, 2009).
Publisher’s description:
Global warming is usually represented as a hundred-year problem, say to the year 2100. In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world’s leading climatologists, shows how a few centuries of fossil-fuel use will change the climate of the Earth dramatically for hundreds of thousands of years into the future. The great ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland will take more than a century to melt, we think, but the climate impact from fossil fuel CO2 will last long enough for the ice sheets to respond fully to the warmer climate, changing sea level one hundred times more than the forecast for the year 2100. A planet-wide thaw driven by humans has already begun, but Archer argues that it is still not too late to avert dangerous climate change—if humans can find a way to cooperate as never before.
Reviews:
In this short book, David Archer gives us the latest on climate change research, and skillfully tells the climate story that he helped to discover: generations beyond our grandchildren’s grandchildren will inherit atmospheric changes and an altered climate as a result of our current decisions about fossil-fuel burning. Not only are massive climate changes coming if we humans continue on our current path, but many of these changes will last for millennia. To make predictions about the future, we rely on research into the deep past, and Archer is at the forefront of this field: paleoclimatology. This is the book for anyone who wishes to really understand what cutting-edge science tells us about the effects we are having, and will have, on our future climate.
Richard B. Alley, Penn State University
This is the best book about carbon dioxide and climate change that I have read. David Archer knows what he is talking about
James Hansen, NASA
Books on climate change tend to focus on what is expected to happen this century, which will certainly be large, but they often neglect the even larger changes expected to take place over many centuries. The Long Thaw looks at climate effects beyond the twenty-first century, and its focus on the long-term carbon cycle, rather than just climate change, is unique.
Jeffrey T. Kiehl, NCAR
A great book. What sets it apart is that it expands the discussion of the impacts of global warming beyond the next century and convincingly describes the effects that are projected for the next few thousand years. What also sets it apart is how deeply it takes general readers into the scientific issues of global warming by using straightforward explanations of often complex ideas.
Peter J. Fawcett, University of New MexicoArcher has perfectly pitched answers to the most basic questions about global warming while providing a sound basis for understanding the complex issues frequently misrepresented by global warming skeptics. With a breezy, conversational style, he . . . provides a complete picture of climate change.
—Publishers Weekly[An] enjoyable and fast-paced treatise. . . . Archer leads the reader to a simple yet accurate picture of climate changes, ranging from geological time scales to current warming, ice ages and prospects for the future.
—Susan Solomon, Nature
Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming Michael Mann and Lee Kump, (2008).
Publisher’s description:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been issuing the essential facts and figures on climate change for nearly two decades. But the hundreds of pages of scientific evidence quoted for accuracy by the media and scientists alike, remain inscrutable to the general public who may still question the validity of climate change.
Esteemed climate scientists Michael E. Mann and Lee R. Kump, have partnered with DK Publishing to present Dire Predictions–an important book in this time of global need. Dire Predictions presents the information documented by the IPCC in an illustrated, visually-stunning, and undeniably powerful way to the lay reader. The scientific findings that provide validity to the implications of climate change are presented in clear-cut graphic elements, striking images, and understandable analogies.
Readers will be able to understand the IPCC reports’ key concepts such as scientific uncertainty. They will also learn how to build a climate model and use it to predict future climates. Geoforensics is presented as a way to learn from the past by piecing together clues from prior climates.
Independent reviews:
Here’s a powerful, straight-forward guide to how scientists, economists, and engineers really understand the problem of global warming. It makes 20 years of research and consensus-building completely accessible to anyone who cares to know the truth–and to do something about it.
Bill McKibben, author of “The End of Nature”
With its eye-grabbing graphics and reader-friendly prose, “Dire Predictions” walks us through the findings of the world’s leading climate scientists – and places the ultimately responsibility for the human future directly at our feet.
Ross Gelbspan, author of “The Heat Is On” and “Boiling Point”
Dire Predictions is a must read for anyone who wants the straight facts on global warming. It cuts to the heart of the massive 2007 IPCC report, presenting major scientific findings in easy to understand language and graphics. Written by two of the scientific community’s most thoughtful researchers, Dire Predictions’ unbiased message about global warming arrives at a time when people need it most!
Dr. Heidi Cullen, Climate Expert at “The Weather Channel”
Wie bedroht sind die Ozeane?, Stefan Rahmstorf and K. Richardson, (Fischer 2007, in German, English version published 2008)
Publisher’s description:
Die Meere sind eine Grundlage unseres Lebens — sie regulieren unser Klima und sind ein wichtiger Nahrungslieferant. Doch wir zerstören sie durch globale Erwärmung, Überfischung und Verschmutzung. Das wird verheerende Folgen haben, wenn wir nicht rasch umdenken und handeln. Dieser Band zeigt Ansätze auf, wie wir unsere ozeanischen Ökosysteme wirkungsvoll schützen können.
Global warming: Understanding the Forecast, David Archer (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).
Publisher’s description:
Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast is a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of global warming. Written in an accessible way, this important book examines the processes of climate change and climate stability, from the distant past to the distant future. Examining the greenhouse effect, the carbon cycle, and what the future may hold for global climate, this text draws from a wide range of disciplines, and not only summarizes scientific evidence, but also economic and policy issues, related to global warming. A companion website provides access to interactive computer models of the physics and chemistry behind the global warming forecast, which can be used to support suggested student projects included at the end of each chapter. Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast provides an essential introduction to this vital issue for both students and general readers, with or without a science background.
Independent reviews:
Rigorous but rewarding, David Archer’s book takes us through the science of global warming so that we can more effectively assess where the world may be heading.
Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford
David Archer’s book is an accessible, entertaining, but detailed account of how scientists are trying to predict future climate change. It is an excellent book and should be the first port of call for anyone wanting to delve deeper into exactly what goes into those global warming forecasts.
Mark Maslin, University College London, author of Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction
This is a wonderful book. Between the covers of a surprisingly slim paperback, David Archer has distilled nearly everything a concerned undergraduate student could wish to know about the workings of the climate system…overall, this book perfectly hits its target audience.
Keith Alverson, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, Environmental Conservation
Solar Activity and Earth’s Climate, Rasmus Benestad, (Praxis-Springer, 2006, 2nd Edition, originally published 2002)
Publisher’s description:
The main purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to the subject of solar activity and the connection with Earth’s climate. It commences with a brief review of the historical progress on the understanding of the solar-terrestrial connection and moves on to an objective scrutiny of the various hypothesis. The text focuses on how knowledge about the solar cycle and Earth’s climate is obtained. It includes discussion of observations, methods and the physics involved, with the necessary statistics and analysis also provided, including an examination of empirical relations between sunspots and the Earth’s climate. The author reviews plausible physical mechanisms involved in any links between the solar cycle and the Earth’s climate, emphasizing the use of established scientific methods for testing hypothesized relationships.
Der Klimawandel Diagnose, Prognose, Therapie, S. Rahmstorf and H. J. Schellnhuber (2006) (in German, Korean, Vietnamese; Arabic version forthcoming)
Independent reviews:
“In dem Buch “Klimawandel” in der Reihe “Wissen” des C.H. Beck Verlages melden sich zwei ausgewiesene Fachleute zu Wort: Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber ist Gründer und Direktor des Potsdam-Instituts für Klimafolgenforschung und Professor für Theoretische Physik an der Universität Potsdam. Stefan Rahmstorf forscht am Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung und ist Professor für Physik der Ozeane an der Universität Potsdam. Auf 144 Seiten geht es einmal quer durch das Fachgebiet, das die Autoren in fünf Abschnitte aufgeteilt haben: Die Klimageschichte der Erde; die derzeitige globale Erwärmung und ihre Ursachen, die Folgen des Klimawandels; die öffentliche Diskussion um den Klimawandel und schließlich die möglichen Lösungswege. Viele ihrer Aussagen und Analysen zum Klimawandel sind bekannt – doch man hat sie selten so kompakt, übersichtlich und kompetent auf so wenig Raum zusammengefasst gefunden.”
Susanne Billig, Deutschlandradio Kultur, 23. März 2006“Stefan Rahmstorf und Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber haben ein Buch geschrieben, das einen hervorragenden Überblick über Erforschung, Folgen und Lösungsmöglichkeiten des Klimaproblems gibt.”
RBB-Inforadio, 8. April 2006
Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary, Ray Bradley, (Academic Press, 2nd edition, 2005, originally published in 1999).
Publisher’s description:
Raymond S. Bradley provides his readers with a comprehensive and up-to-date review of all of the important methods used in paleoclimatic reconstruction, dating and paleoclimate modeling. Two comprehensive chapters on dating methods provide the foundation for all paleoclimatic studies and are followed by up-to-date coverage of ice core research, continental geological and biological records, pollen analysis, radiocarbon dating, tree rings and historical records. New methods using alkenones in marine sediments and coral studies are also described. Paleoclimatology, Second Edition, is an essential textbook for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying climatology, paleoclimatology and paleoceanography worldwide, as well as a valuable reference for lecturers and researchers, appealing to archaeologists and scientists interested in environmental change.
Independent Reviews:
Paleoclimatology is a definite “must-have” for anyone working in climate studies and highly recommended for anyone seriously interested in our climate.
William R. Green, The Leading Edge
This thorough, well referenced text will prove to be indispensable to anyone involved in the study of past and current climate change and modeling.
Southeastern Naturalist
We have a minor tradition of doing a climate-related book review in the lead up to the holidays and this year shouldn’t be an exception. So here is a round-up of a number of new books that have crossed our desks, some of which might be interesting to readers here.
[Read more…] about Books ’07
) France has a per capita carbon emission of 1.64 tonnes, compared to 2.67 tonnes for the U.K and 5.61 tonnes for the US. So, if anybody has earned the right to rest on their laurels and pontificate to the rest of the developed world about what they should be doing, you’d think it would be France. Far from it, under the leadership of Nicolas Sarkozy, France has embarked on an ambitious program of deeper carbon reductions. In introducing the measures, Sarkozy said "The guiding principle is that the cost to the climate — the carbon cost — will be integrated into planning of all major public projects, and into all deliberations affecting the public." These measures include: a commitment that all new buildings would be net energy producers by 2020, incandescent lighting would be banned by 2010, buyers of efficient vehicles would be subsidized, drivers of inefficient vehicles would be penalized, and road construction would be severely curtailed in favor of expanded rail travel using state-of-the-art French TGV technology. A carbon tax is also being seriously contemplated. These proposals are the result of an intensive months-long series of discussions with scientists and stakeholders such as environmental nongovernmental organizations, industry representatives, and labor union representatives. The process, known as Le Grenelle de l’Environnement, was described here by Nature (subscription required) and a summary of some of Sarkozy’s proposed actions was reported in the press here.
All the same, there has been some pushback from a vocal pair of highly decorated French academicians, Claude Allègre being the most prominent and noisiest of the two. In recent years, Vincent Courtillot has emerged as a reliable sidekick to Allègre — a Dupont to his Dupond — helping to propagate Allègre’s claims and adding a few of his own. Both are members of the Académie des Sciences, and Allègre has been awarded both the Crafoord Prize and Bowie Medal. Allègre has an impressive list of publications relating to the Earth’s interior, and besides that was Minister for Education, Research and Technology in the Jospin government. Courtillot — currently director of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) — has had a distinguished record of research on fundamental aspects of geomagnetism and is currently President of the Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism Section of the American Geophysical Union. Their views were amply (some would say more than amply) represented at a symposium on the IPCC report, held last Spring at the Academie (See the issue "Evolution des Climats" of La Lettre de l’Académie des sciences, and press reports in Le Figaro, Le Monde, and Liberation). What does all this mean? Are the opinions of Allègre and Courtillot founded on some special profound insight that has escaped the notice of the community of scientists who have devoted entire careers to studying climate? Let’s take a look.
[Read more…] about Les Chevaliers de l’Ordre de la Terre Plate, Part I: Allègre and Courtillot
There is an interesting, if predictable, piece up on the BBC website devoted to investigating whether there is any ‘consensus’ among the various contrarians on why climate change isn’t happening (or if it is, it isn’t caused by human activity or if it is why it won’t be important, or if it is important, why nothing can be done etc.). Bottom line? The only thing they appear to agree about is that nothing should be done, but they have a multitude of conflicting reasons why. Hmm…
The journalist, Richard Black, put together a top 10 list of sceptic arguments he gathered from emailing the 61 signers of a Canadian letter. While these aren’t any different in substance to the ones routinely debunked here (and here and here), this list comes with the imprimatur of Fred Singer – the godfather to the sceptic movement, and recent convert from the view that it’s been cooling since 1940 to the idea that global warming is now unstoppable. Thus these are the arguments (supposedly) that are the best that the contrarians have to put forward.
Alongside each of these talking points, is a counter-point from the mainstream (full disclosure, I helped Richard edit some of those). In truth though, I was a little disappointed at how lame their ‘top 10’ arguments were. In order, they are: false, a cherry pick, a red herring, false, false, false, a red herring, a red herring, false and a strawman. They even used the ‘grapes grew in medieval England’ meme that you’d think they’d have abandoned already given that more grapes are grown in England now than ever before (see here). Another commonplace untruth is the claim that water vapour is ‘98% of the greenhouse effect’ – it’s just not.
So why do the contrarians still use arguments that are blatantly false? I think the most obvious reason is that they are simply not interested (as a whole) in providing a coherent counter story. If science has one overriding principle, it is that you should adjust your thinking in the light of new information and discoveries – the contrarians continued use of old, tired and discredited arguments demonstrates their divorce from the scientific process more clearly than any densely argued rebuttal.
Alexander Cockburn (writing in the Nation) has become the latest contrarian-de-jour, sallying forth with some rather novel arithmetic to show that human-caused global warming is nothing to be concerned about. This would be unworthy of comment in most cases, but Cockburn stands out as one of only a few left-wing contrarians, as opposed to the more usual right-wing variety. Casual readers may have thought this is a relatively recent obsession of his (3 articles and responses over the last month), however, Cockburn has significant form* and has a fairly long history of ill-informed commentary on the subject of global warming.
[Read more…] about Cockburn’s form