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Thursday, February 08, 2007
Is the IPCC Report All That It Seems?
I don't read Melanie Phillips blog that much, but can I point you to THIS post about the IPCC report on climate change? If what she and Christopher Monckton say is true, then some people have a lot of explaining to do.
72 comments:
Anonymous
said...
www.Realclimate.org the leading climate sciewntists' blog disagrees strongly, commenting on the WSJ editorial that mirrors MP's blog points: "While the rest of the world has basically accepted the conclusion of the latest IPCC report, one small village still holds out against the tide - the Wall Street Journal editorial board. This contrasts sharply with the news section of the paper which is actually pretty good. They had a front-page piece on business responses to global warming issues which not only pointed out that business was taking an interest in carbon reduction, but the article more or less took as a given that the problem was real. However, as we have pointed out before, the editorial pages operate in a universe all their own.
This would not be of much concern if the WSJ wasn't such an influential paper in the US. However, the extent of its isolation on this issue is evident from the amusing reliance on the error-prone Christopher Monckton. They quote him saying that the sea level rise predictions were much smaller than in IPCC TAR (no they weren't), that the human contribution to recent changes has been 'cut by a third' (no it hasn't), and that the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) was written by politicians (no it wasn't - the clue is in the name).
Even more wrong is the claim that "the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous 'hockey stick' ". Not only are the three original "hockey stick" reconstructions from the IPCC (2001) report shown in the (draft) paleoclimate chapter of the new report, but they are now joined by 9 others. Which is why the SPM comes to the even stronger conclusion that recent large-scale warmth is likely to be anomalous in the context of at least the past 1300 years, and not just the past 1000 years.
Thus on any index of wrongness, this WSJ editorial scores pretty high. What puzzles us is why their readership, who presumably want to know about issues that might affect their bottom line, tolerate this rather feeble denialism. While we enjoy pointing out their obvious absurdities, their readers would probably be better off if the WSJ accepted Jeffery Sachs' challenge. For if they can't be trusted to get even the basic checkable facts right on this issue, why should any of their opinions be taken seriously?
This doesn't come as any surprise. A couple of years ago I read the Michael Chrighton novel "State of Fear". This is one of those books that interspace a rather dumb fictional yarn with numerous factual reports and references which say much the same as Melanie Philips now reports. At the time I verified many of Chrighton's references and was shocked that we were being completely misled in all but the carbon emission values. Even in the case of carbon emissions however, the level of increase is nothing like as large as is published.
There are indeed some elements of doubt on the science and economics of climate change, but to suggest that the IPCC report is "exaggerated misleading and wrong" is the territory of the flat-earthers.
The actual science is extremely complex and you need some sort of summary for a non-specialist audience. The report represents the considered opinion of the worlds finest scientists and this summary has been endorsed by them as representing their views in a rapidly developing areas of research and science. Perhaps an analogy would be a weather forecast - you could spend hours presenting information about cloud formation, pressure and air temperature ect, when a quick summary can say that all the signs are that is going to snow.
Like weather, climate change science has some inherent degree of uncertainty in terms of modelling and long-term prediction. Arguing over the commas and wording of a policy statement when the general trend is clear is rather like rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic. What the this latest report has demonstrated is that the sceptics are becoming fewer as more people accept the need to at least apply the precautionary principle.
We know that it's probably going to snow this evening again, but cannot be absolutely certain. Do we put the gritters on standby and make plans, or just ignore the science as we can't be absolutely sure?
I can well believe this. If you want to get the truth (or at least, an accurate impression of the uncertainty) about climate change, it's worth subscribing to the Cambridge Conference network:
CCNet is a scholarly electronic network edited by Benny Peiser. To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserver@livjm.ac.uk ("subscribe cambridge-conference").
Oh Iain, gone are the heady days of free flowing discussion and postings on your blog, gone is the thrill and buzz of being published immediately. It's feels a bit like the House of Lords now, when you contribute to the debate and are not sure who is awake/alive to respond.
Why not give us all another chance, or at least turn moderation off when you are going to be unavailable for a few hours. You deleted 3 comments in 3 weeks - that's worth the risks. Your regulars know you are not a c***
As I understand it, the range of possible outcomes has narrowed, so the highest likely temperature rise has gone down, and the lowest likely has gone up.
This means that any doom merchants (not the scientists) who quoted the upper value will be subject to this kind of argument. But it is bogus.
As for Michael Crighton, here is realclimate's answer: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
There are a lot of scientific errors in State of Fear, I'm afraid. It would be a lot easier for everyone if it was true...
A writer called Michael Crowley wrote a piece about State of Fear and Crichton responded by creating a character with the same name in his next novel who rapes a two year old. Just so you know the level of his arguments.
Yes, there is a danger in focusing on the Summary for Policymakers. When IPCC produced its 1999 report Aviation and the Global Atmosphere, NGOs leapt upon the most extreme ranges of projected impacts in the SFP, ignoring the warnings in the main report about the scientific uncertainty surrounding those figures.
There are in fact three further parts to the IPCC report to be released over the next few months. Perhaps the most interesting will be the one on the prospects for mitigation.
An interesting "nu - science" approach by the IPCC. Release the summary first and then tailor any "incovenient truths" in the main report to suit - Oh & then release this months later
The site which revealed the somewhat post - modern approach to the scientific method was Climate Audit.
Oh dear. Having read Monckton's critique of IPCC IV and George Monbiot's critique of Monckton's critique in the Grauniad I'm actually no wiser than I was yesterday.
Canada's National Post printed 10 articles by leading climatologists on Feb 2nd, all of them disagreeing with some aspect of the IPCC report - either the 'political' conclusions or the quality of the science that it was based (or should that be 'biased'?) on.
One article (by the top expert on hurricanes in the Atlantic) had his contribution side-lined and instead the IPCC convened a panel with no hurricane experts on it which came to conclusions the expert definitely did not agree with but which the anthropogenic warming activists loved. Well worth reading and very worrying.
Many scientists agree that some degree of global warming is taking place, but they're uncertain as to the cause (note that anthropogenic warming is a lovely bandwaggon for control freaks - "We're doomed! But do what I say and you'll be saved!")
Others - notably Russian and Chinese - have some evidence that it's going to get much colder over the next 50 years.
Who's right? Nobody knows, and really that's why the argument should not be considered as closed.
What is encouraging is that more of the questioning of the so-called consensus is starting to percolate into the non-scientific domain despite concerted efforts from what appears to be an organised pressure group aided and abetted by the MSM - which loves doomsday scenarios - just think of the column inches.
Good. The more discussion, the more input from related disciplines - climatology, atmospheric fluidics, chaos theory, astronomy (Mars has been warming too), statistical analysis etc, the better.
Science should not be politicised, though this debate shows a disturbing inclination to do just that. Lysenko showed what a disaster it is when that happens.
Haven't scientists also been quietly rubbishing Stern?
Somewhere I read that the IPCC report predicts a much smaller rise in sea levels than it predicted in 1999. And presumably this 8 year intervening period has produced much more evidence than was available in 99!
The elite believe that the voters always need an enemy, and now the Russians are quiet and not many believe the al-Qaeda hype it's time for the environment to take centre stage.
Anonymous at 1.46am has it spot on. This blog is becoming a bit of a favourite for climate change deniers. It's odd that otherwise intelligent people would believe Melanie Phillips, Christopher Monckton and Michael 'Jurassic Park' Chrichton rather than thousands of climate scientists.
It is striking that most of the 'exposers of the truth' hailed by the deniers (and indeed the deniers themselves) have very little understanding of even the most basic scientific concepts, let alone the intricacies of climate science. I think the embrace of the 'climate change conspiracy' is partly due to this widespread scientific illiteracy. It is easier to believe in something supposedly simple (a left-wing conspiracy to raise taxes) than something extremely complicated that can only be fully understood by people who have spent years studying it. Experts in other fields are given the respect that their knowledge and learning deserves. I would not presume to criticize a brain surgeon as I know nothing about brains or surgery; reading a couple of articles in a newspaper or on a website would still not make me an expert. Yet it seems that climate science is a free-for-all and one opinion is as good as another. We should be honest about this: people who claim to speak the 'truth' and who know nothing about climate science are charlatans and should be treated as such.
There is also, of course, the small matter that lifestyles may have to change if we are to avert serious problems in the future. If climate change is just a lie propagated by communist luddites jealous of our material success then we don't have to do anything and any sense of responsiblity can be forgotten.
Oh here we go. Melanie Phillips and Christopher Monckton and the WSJ say that the IPCC is wrong so we must all bow down to their analysis. Yet climate scientists are on TV every day saying the report underestimates how bad things will get. I think I prefer to believe the latter. I have always found Phillips to be sound on Israel and other political issues but she has a tendancy to stray into areas she does not fully grasp yet discuss them as if she does, something she exhibits regularly on the Moral Maze!
Man in a Shed works on computer 'simulation' software in Engineering and is making a very small living by it ( so is rather worried by all these green taxes coming up - perhaps we should call them camouflage taxes rather than stealth taxes - we know about them but their true nature is disguised. But I digress ...)
Let me tell you there is no such thing as accurate simulation - only appropriate estimation and approximation. Get the assumptions wrong and the answer will be vastly wrong - they are never going to be 100% 'right'. Most computer models have large fudge factors for what people don't know or it would be too much trouble to find out. Hence you can get almost any answer you want with simulation....
In Engineering we are looking for an answer as close to reality as possible, as bad things happen quickly when we get it wrong.
The world should ask what the vested interests of the scientists who are beavering away at their simulations are ? ( Here's a clue - what will you get research grants approved for.) How well received would a paper which contradicts the 'consensus' be ?
Oddly enough science is very bad at receiving new ideas or challenges to orthodoxy. And unlike Engineering it can take a long time to find out who is wrong and who is right.
Melanie Phillips is to be congratulated on bringing the problem with the science being made to fit the politics to wider attention. Just look at the near hate campaign waged against Bjorn Lomborg for his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist", which called into question some of the environmentalist hysteria.
Why doesn't the government send that round to school libraries along with the Al Gore political propaganda DVD ?
I can't help noticing that unlike Iain, who whatever people think of him has enough democratic fibre in his veins to allow comments, Melanie does not allow any comments on her "blog". Perhaps she fears being shot down in flames?
The spin she has copied from the Wall Street rag is a simple one - take the highest range estimate from before. Then claim that was the agreed figure. (It wasn't). Then say they got it all wrong last time so how can we trust them this time. Then say they are fixing the report. (They aren't, but there are some disagreements between that many scientists which always help).
Could the WSJ's line be anything to do with it seeking to represent the views of US mega-corporations anxious about not meeting carbon targets? A huge head of political steam is building up in America from ordinary people worried about this issue and the corporations are doing what they can to fight back.
For anyone interested in how a consensus document like the SPM is formulated, you can see here - a report from The Tenth Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group I (WGI) which took place at UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, from 29 January to 1 February 2007. The meeting was attended by 311 participants, including scientists and representatives from governments, UN agencies, and non-governmental organizations.
for example:
Participants expressed concern that the media may interpret the new temperature projections to be lower than those in the TAR (i.e. 1.4-5.8ºC), particularly if AR4 best estimates (i.e. 1.8-4.0ºC) are highlighted as opposed to the lower and upper AR4 likely range values (i.e. 1.1-6.4ºC). Italy stressed that the AR4 message to the general public will be whether the problem is deemed to be more or less serious than before. The Coordinating Lead Authors noted that the projections in the TAR primarily demonstrate the existence of climate change, while projections in the AR4 provide quantitative information of the climate change outcomes depending on the choices of policy makers. The final language reflected both the best estimates and the likely ranges, explicitly stating that the AR4 projections are broadly consistent with the TAR although the quantities are not directly comparable. The approved text also listed the advances of AR4 over TAR. The UK, supported by Germany and Belgium, called for a statement at the end of the section to indicate that there are other warming possibilities outside the SRES scenarios. New Zealand, seconded by Co-Chair Solomon, said the proposed inclusion is probably evident from other parts of the text, and the statement was not included.
Professor Naomi Oreskes of University of California San Diego did a study of 928 scientific papers, journal entries etc published between 1993 and 2003. The results showed 75% of these papers in agreement either explicitly or implicitly with the idea that human CO2 emmissions were causing climate change. The remaining 25% were neutral on the subject.
Her work was then criticised by Dr Benny Peiser of Liverpool's John Moores University, who criticised her sampling methods and her choice of criteria. Dr Peiser retracted some of his criticsms, leaving a consensus view that.
1) Climate change is happening (although may not be man made)
2) The majority of climateologists agree that human activity is the case
3) There are qualified climateologists who do disagree with the consensus position.
Of course, none of this makes making a decision on what science to believe based on what most conveniently suits your free market beliefs the wrong way to go.
I made an oblique reference to this matter in a comment on your item, 'Gordon Proves He's As Good At Cronyism As Tony', that appeared here a few days ago:
"It's worth noting that even in comparison with the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, issued on February 2, The Stern Report on Climate Change is now exposed as an extemist hysterical scaremonger's rant: in short, it is utter rubbish.
"The faults in this latest IPCC report are many and various, but modest compared with Stern, and for discuaaion another day."
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Anon 1:46 quotes approvingly from www.realclimate.org, which certainly does disagree strongly with Melanie Phillips and Viscount Monckton. It would be amazing if RealClimate failed to take this view, as it is the heavily-biased, heavily-censored site of those who depend upon public belief in anthropogenic global warming for their incomes and scientific reputations. The fact that Anon 1:46 insists that the infamous, utterly-discredited 'hockey stick' lives on in this new IPCC report (it does, but deeply buried, due to embarrassment) betrays his/her utter failure to actually understand the real issues at stake here.
The plain fact is that any climate report depending upon the 'hockey stick' as substantiation for its conclusions is no longer serious.
For a much more open, balanced and better-reasoned alternative to www.realclimate.org try www.climateaudit.org/ (Warning: both sites are heavily technical and demand as least undergraduate-level knowledge of mathematics (especially statistics) to properly understand what is going on.)
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Anon (MAC) 8:22 tells us that this IPCC report 'represents the considered opinion of the worlds finest scientists'. Really?
Firstly: the previous IPCC Summary & Report (that led to Kyoto) had over 1,000 'authors' of whom, at a stretch, perhaps 50 could be called 'scientists'. The rest were mostly politicians and civil servants. I don't have the breakdown for this new IPCC report, but what do you bet?
Secondly: I know a good few scientists, and I doubt if any one of 'the worlds finest scientists' would touch climate change with a barge-pole. For a start it is far, far too politicised, and then much, although not perhaps all, of the 'science' it is based on is not really science at all: for instance, the climate forecasts are all arrived at through computer models that are supposed to emulate the earth's climate behaviour over the next 100 years or so.
These computer models are of the same general variety as the ones used to predict the weather. Of course they are not identical, but they work on the same general principles. The difference is that while the weather forecast can be relied upon to give us a reasonable approximation of future weather ahead for maybe 3 or 4 days, these climate forecast models are supposed to predict climate some 10,000 times (yes, ten thousand times) farther into the future. The reason why accurate weather forecasts don't exceed 3 or 4 days is that there are literally trillions upon trillions of variables that would have to be measured and computed, including how these would interact with each other, to make any meaningful extension of accurate weather forecasting periods. This is utterly beyond the power of the most powerful computers yet built. It can't be done.
But compared with a climate forecast ahead 100 years, this would be a trivial task. The computation required for a 100 year climate forecast would amount to something like that weather forecast squared: that is, there would now be trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions of variables. The task is utterly hopeless; way beyond our capabilities. But this does not stop those brave boys and girls in the climate research industry.
Why?
Firstly, because they can get away with it. Not many people have cottoned on to the utter absurdity of the forecasts they keep churning out. Secondly, because of the nature of this so-called 'forecasting tool' they can in fact tweak the results to give the answers they want. Which is so terribly handy for what I suspect may well turn out to be perhaps the greatest scandal in the history of science when it becomes public, as it surely must, sooner of later.
A constant theme of True Believers in anthropgenic global warming is that industries, such as oil, with a supposed interest in quashing "The Truth" spend millions of dollars subsidising the deniers. (Would that that were so around here!)
However i would suggest that this very constant theme of the True Believers betrays their own thinking more clearly than anything else. The fact is that for every single dollar from ExxonMobil, etc., that goes to help fund the sceptics, there must be at least $100; perhaps several hundred, paid out by governments to help fund the so-called 'climate research' that is the stock-in-trade of the True Believers. And not only that: if (no, when: when the weather inconveniently stops warming up, for example, or even moves into a cooling phase... actually, come to think of it, every year since 1998 has been cooler than that year...) it all comes crashing about their ears, they will not just have lost their nice fat government cheques, but their scientific reputations too.
I'm sure you've noticed the frequent use of the description "climate change denier" to demonise sceptics and thereby attempt to short-circuit/close down any debate on the topic. The closeness of such an epithet to "holocaust denier" is no accident. The fact is that we so-called "climate change deniers" do not deny that climate changes - it changes all the time. We "deny" that the posited mainly anthropogenic cause of this change has been (or can be) "proved" by computer models analogous to those which find it impossible to produce accurate predictions of weather 100 days hence, let alone 100 years.
"Holocaust deniers" would deny the existence of the holocaust as an historical fact, not argue over the efficacy of the methods used to slaughter millions. Similar epithets are used (again no accident) to demonise those who are sceptical of the benefit to the UK of (continued) membership of the EU and, again, are a favoured method of closing down any debate.
2br02b just repeats many of the well-trodden smears against the concept of climate change caused by human activity. One of the favourites of the Wall Street / neocon attack dogs is that the scientists are not eminent enough or that many other leading scientists dispute it. Both are false. Just as a starter, the brief biogs of key scientists who theorised anthropomorphic climate change are available on Wikipedia - for example...
See also Attribution of recent climate change which explores in a good, readable format why climate change is a real phenomenon and why it is based on human activity.
The phrase "climate change denier" should not be used, but it is still a fact that there are many right-wing forces (primarily emerging from the oil industry) who resent the facts of climate change as they threaten their profits. Some more enlightened companies are taking a different view. Resenting the facts is ostrich behaviour, regardless of what we call it. Conservatives need to accept the facts and not allow themselves to get misdirected by neocon propaganda. The world economy does need to change and possibly the interests of some very rich industrialists are not the main thing we should be listening to.
So umbongo, what would you call these people then? Are we no longer allowed to use the word 'denier'? There is absolutely no reason to bring the Holocaust into this argument. This just seems to be another ploy by anthropogenic climate change deniers (for want of a better term) to muddy the waters and distract attention from the fact that they have no proper evidence to support their case.
The exact pattern of turbulence over a period of a few seconds (for instance, from wind flowing over a hill) is more or less impossible to predict, and yet the general weather forecast is accurate up to about 3 days, because the effects of the turbulence even out over time.
Nobody is trying to predict whether it will snow on February 8th 2095, they are predicting the average temperatures in February. This is completely and utterly different, because, again, the daily variations even out over time.
I used to write/run models of aircraft engine flow and the exact nature of the turbulence was very hard to get right, and is still poorly understood on some levels. Nevertheless, RR engines have improved thanks to computer modelling and work well enough to get you to New York cheaply.
PS 1998 was the warmest year because it was a very strong El Nino. A new El Nino is developing this year and it is expected to make 2007 warmer than 1998, although we'll only know whether this is true in a year's time...
Hansen, for example, is best-known for adjusting the facts to fit his own far-out version of CO2 AGW theory: he is hardly a serious scientist, but maybe a serious danger to science. For instance, The new IPCC numbers for sea level rise are actually quite reasonable. Now we see with some amusement that the IPCC is under attack by extremist scientists like him who think the numbers should be more catastrophic. Hansen's values are about 20 times higher than the IPCC 'consensus'. I suppose that makes him (and that other well-known scientist Al Gore) climate 'contrarians'.
And I though Lovelock was in disgrace with the Greenies because he remains a sufficiently honest scientist to point out that if CO2 AGW is real, the sole and single way to solve the energy problem is with nuclear reactors. (I have long pointed out that those who say CO2 AGW is real but refuse to accept the unavoidability of expanded nuclear power if that's so, are not serious people.)
As for attribution of climate change: the reason why CO2 was 'chosen' as the 'guilty party' are well-known: We humans make some of the stuff, and there was a (very approximate) fit between anthropogenic CO2 output and world temperature changes.
However, it is actually a VERY approximate fit, and no direct causal connection has ever been established. But it's done by man, so we can be made to feel guilty: that's what the Greenies want.
The fact that the fit between sun-spots and global temperatures is very much closer is ignored, because we can't be blamed for sun-spots. The same is true about cosmic radiation flux.
The fact that CO2 is only responsible for about 2% of the greenhouse effect, and only 2% of atmospheric CO2 is man-made, making anthropogenic CO2 responsible for a microscopic 0.004% of the greenhouse effect, is also ignored as inconvenient....
But if you still believe such nonsense, along no doubt with the Tooth Fairy and ghosts and goolies and things that go 'bump' in the night... well, that's your problem.
Darcy Dancer,
It is not those who say anthropogenic global warming is not true who brought comparison with Holocaust deniers into this; that was the True Believers.
Dr Random:
I did not say climate forecasting is weather forecasting. I said it uses similar modelling techniques, which is undoubtedly true. In comparison with turbulent modelling in gas turbines (which I know is a difficult task) the variables involved in weather forecasting as vastly greater--hence the 4/5 day maximum for a reliable forecast, even with the most powerful computers we have: and then when it comes to climate forecasting the variables problem is many orders of magnitude worse: in other words, we can't actually do it in a way that's worth a light.
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As HL Mencken put it, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."
I am not a denier, in fact I imagine that putting the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere that was taken out eons ago is probably a bad idea. But that doesn't mean that I am happy for people to spin the data to turn it into a catastrophe in order to bring in draconian measures.
Jsut as Reid has been waiting for a terror alert to re-visit the 90 day rule, evironmentalists have been wishing for bad data to prove that we should go back to subsistence farming days.
Climate Scientist is another of those glorified job titles like information technichians (librarians) and refuse scientists (bin men). They're weather men (or women).
When we can't rely on what they say will happen this afternoon, how can we have any confidence in what they forecast for 2100?
Yes Dan, and local councillors are just incompetent bureaucrats. There's a big difference between weather and climate. If it snows this afternoon down in Folkestone it doesn't mean you're living in an Arctic climate.
Dan, a weather man, aka meteorologist, usually has a degree in mathematical physics and a PhD, and is eminently qualified to investigate climate change. Although admittedly they might need to speak to experts in geophysics, geochemistry and geology too.
What qualifications do you have to be a councillor? Less than a bin man these days, it would seem.
2br02b - if the sun is responsible, why are the polar caps on Mars not diminishing? In fact, they have expanded slightly over the last 20 years.
Nuclear power - I agree that this may be needed, but you are merely respecting Loverock's opinions there and he claims that on current trends humanity will be reduced to a hunter-gatherer level within the next 200 years.
Melanie Phillips analysis would be fine, but she has a serious axe to grind in this area. She has previously gone on record stating that climate change is a creation of the self-hating western intellectual elite. Somebody with such a clearly ideological response to what is a scientific and environmental issue can hardly be trusted not to seriously and malignantly manipulate the information.
There is a strong strand of flat-earth right-wingery that measures its manhood by the vehemence of its climate-change denial. (Another clear parallel is with anti-evolutionists.) Utterly impervious to the scientific method, one of the most precious flowers of humanity. Best ignored by rational, educated people.
We can only thanks our lucky stars that the Inquisition isn't still weighing in on their side.
But citing Monckton! Please. This man has a record of crack-pottery second to none. By their friends shall ye know them.
James Lovelock is going just a little bit overboard if he thinks we will return to emulating Ray Mears, unless there is a major global war over resources, but he's absolutely right about Nuclear Power.
Clearly solar forcing is the dominant cause of pre-20th century short term weather cycles (short term in the geological sense!), either through the sun being a variable star or through the Milankovitch cycles (Earth's orbital wobble).
There has, however, been no large increase in solar output over the past 50 years, certainly not enough to account for the current warming trend. The solar cycles suggest there should be some cooling over the next 20 years or so, but if AGW is real then this will be over-ridden. Solar output correlates well with sunspot count:
The science on the thermodynamic behaviour of mixed gases in a closed system in equilibrium is well-understood. But I cannot, on the evidence I've seen, accept that this basic science has any practical application to global climate - which is not a closed system, and shows no evidence whatsoever of ever having been in a state of equilibrium.
Global temperatures have varied enormously over the millennia in apparently random ways that nobody has been convincingly able to relate to changes in any relevant underlying variables. My default assumption is that this is a system showing chaotic behaviour, and that attempts to control global climate by targeting just one variable of the hundreds that may be relevant - i.e. carbon dioxide levels - are therefore doomed to failure.
I've been following this debate closely for years and have never seen anyone deal with this argument except by simply asserting that it is obviously wrong. That isn't good enough for me. Are any of the experts who read this blog able to help me find a better response?
I'd be delighted to find a good explanation. My career to some extent depends on accepting the consensus (hence my anonymity, which I apologise for) and I really need to believe in what I'm doing. Many of my colleagues can live with suppressing their doubts. But I flatter myself I have too much integrity.
I really do try to keep an open mind on this subject but there is clearly an intolerance of dissent that makes me deeply suspicious of accepting the arguments of mainstream science at face value. Anybody who's studied the behaviour of scientists, when their work gets entangled with a political agenda, should be very alarmed by current events. There are clearly too many closed minds on both sides.
Anon 4.04 - I'm no expert on thermodynamics but I believe the Earth as a whole is regarded by scientists as "almost closed" since there is relatively little dissapation of gases from the earth out into space - therefore the issue is what happens to gases like CO2 inside the earths systems, eg, do they end up in the soil, the oceans, etc.
2br02b - if the sun is responsible, why are the polar caps on Mars not diminishing? In fact, they have expanded slightly over the last 20 years.
Two points here.
One: I did NOT say the sun is responsible. I said that sun-spots and cosmic radiation flux changes match global temperature changes very much closer that atmospheric CO2 does.
Two: According to NASA, you are exactly 180 degrees pointing the wrong way on Mars, where the Polar CO2 ice caps have in fact been shrinking for a number of years.
I draw no final conclusion about global warming, for two very good reasons:
One: We do not in fact know enough yet to draw any definite conclusion on causes--except to say that on the growing objective evidence, anthropogenic CO2 seems an increasingly unlikely culprit.
Two: The way science works there can never be any final conclusions. All science is provisional, and what's more it is not a democracy. As Einstein said when told a book had been published called '100 Scientists against Einstein', "Why 100? If just one had a better argument, that is all that is needed."
Anon 3: 41
That is why statements by the doom-mongers that, "the debate is over," and that "there is consensus on anthropogenic CO2" are the actual voices of the flat-earther, if that's what you want to call it, that "measures its manhood by the vehemence of its anthropogenic climate-change" insistence, never mind the evidence. Yes, there is indeed a clear parallel with anti-evolutionists here: like the anti-evolutionists, this so-called 'consensus' are the true deniers of science. They are "utterly impervious to the scientific method, one of the most precious flowers of humanity. Best ignored by rational, educated people."ad hominem attack on Viscount Mockton. You are not worthy of serious consideration on this topic, which you clearly know nothing about.
You finally diplay your utter ignorace with your ad hominem attack on Viscount Mockton. You are not worthy of serious consideration on this topic, which you clearly know nothing about.
Anonymous said... bt, do you have a weblink for your assertion that Nasa say the Mars ice caps are diminishing? I think you are telling porkies.
4:19 PM
No porkies. Below are extracts from one of the articles in the series I mentioned in an earlier post. If you want to read them all, which I recommend, go to The National Post site:
It'll give you links to the other 9 articles, too.
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post Published: Friday, February 02, 2007 January 26, 2007 Climate change is a much, much bigger issue than the public, politicians, and even the most alarmed environmentalists realize. Global warming extends to Mars, where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries. "One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," NASA scientist William Feldman speculated after the agency's Mars Odyssey completed its first Martian year of data collection. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated." With each passing year more and more evidence arises of the dramatic changes occurring on the only planet on the solar system, apart from Earth, to give up its climate secrets.
NASA's findings in space come as no surprise to Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. Pulkovo -- at the pinnacle of Russia's space-oriented scientific establishment -- is one of the world's best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839. Heading Pulkovo's space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world's chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming. "Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians," he told me. "These parallel global warmings -- observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth -- can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance."
The climate has indeed changed constantly for millennia. It no doubt does depend on many factors, including the make up of the atmosphere, the sun, the positions of the continents, the reflectivity of the surface, the amount of volcanic dust, the vegetation, and so on.
But that doesn't make it a chaotic system, which is something completely different. A chaotic system is one that responds in _mathematically_ unpredictable ways, not one that is just complex. A chaotic system could just have a couple of variables.
However the climate has been driven in the past, the amount of CO2 we are putting in the atmosphere now is unprecedented in recent geological history.
The mechanism for warming of the earth through the reflectivity of CO2 in the infra-red is understood well enough, and it is reasonable to expect that it will warm the earth. How much is the real argument - will the oceans be able to absorb it all (probably not), will increased evaporation add more water vapour into the atmosphere causing more heating (probably) etc.
The correlation between CO2 and Temperature is shown here:
Now correlation doesn't imply causation, but we have a perfectly good physical mechanism too, so it is a perfectly reasonable assumption to make.
Whatever the outcome, we are going to run out of cheap oil in the medium term, so it would be a very good idea to come up with alternative technologies before the US has to invade 15 other countries just to maintain its supply. And relying on the Russian gas supply is bonkers.
PS The Martian ice cap (actually, its CO2 in the southern hemisphere) is indeed shrinking slightly. Maybe there is some CO2 feedback mechanism in operation? There could be any number of reasons for it. Solar output has not increased over the last 50 years or so, although there was a maximum around 1950. See my previous post for the reference.
2br02b: I remember when Monckton solemnly informed the world that the introduction of turnstiles at stations was dangerous to life and limb, & guaranteed to be unworkable at rush-hour - and he could prove it!
I remember when Monckton staked his house on the 'insolubility' of a puzzle he'd invented - he could prove it!
In both cases, all one had to do was sit back and watch. Remarkably, in both cases these 'proofs' evaporated in a matter of days, in the face of Hard Facts. The scientific method in action.
As for the schemes that emanated from Downing Street during his policy regime...
'Ad hominem'? Well, yes, but hey, induction is all part of the process. And you know what? All we'll have to do is wait & watch.
I've just learned of this, but am little surprised. Enron and James Hanson would have made a perfect match for each other, don't you think?
(From Luboš Motl's wonderful blog http://motls.blogspot.com/ )
Enron has been the strongest corporate proponent of the flawed Kyoto protocol in the US and it was trying to bribe politicians into accepting this mad treaty:
http://www.cei.org/gencon/019,02898.cfm One of Enron's major consultants of its own internal global warming study was James Hansen of NASA, the US father of global warming. Although Enron wanted the study to end up with catastrophic predictions, the study concluded that the climate alarm could very well be a false alarm. Enron censored its own study and never published it.
The company thus became a prototype of a company, a country, or a society that starts to build on hot air and non-existent effects. When you start to invent non-existent events such as global warming catastrophes, you're just one step from inventing $11 billion of non-existent profits...
It didn't come as any surprise to me that there was going to be a delay of some three months before the "science" of the latest IPCC report got published... Why? Simple, a friend, who is one of the climate scientists who worked on one section of the report, told me that it was being delayed so that "the science can be rewritten to match the political summary". It stinks.
Also, as a Popperian, I'm of the belief that no *proper* science can ever be "closed", unfortunately AGW has achieved the status more of a religion than a science - as demonstrated by much of the intemperate language used to describe sceptics.
Iain: Had you followed this Junk Science tip from contributor, yours truly, on 2 Feb, the story re-told by Christopher Monckton and Melanie Phillips would not have taken you by surprise. The story now has a new dateline and the new Junk Science link that is given in Melanie Phillips's post. "Anyone who thinks the debate is over should read: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,249598,00.html."
Oh - he made a profit out of his spurious claim ... so that's all right, then
That's pathetic. A little while ago you were laughing at him for loosing money on that venture; now you do the same becasue he made a profit.
If it's making money from spurious claims that offends you, surely few can be said to have done this more than Hanson, Mann, Jones, etc--the 'high priests' of your quaint, proof-free CO2 'religion'.
Are we talking about the James Hansen who recently complained about NASA trying to stop him talking? He seems to be fairly convinced of AGW...
Yup, the very same. Is he fairly convinced? You bet. He almost invented the whole daft idea, and has never let awkward facts get in the way of his wonderful 'theory.'
So how come Enron didn't get what they wanted then, if he (Hansen) is totally biased...?
Hansen didn't invent the idea of AGW, it was first proposed by a Swede called Arrhenius in about 1898, although admittedly it took about 100 years for most people to take any notice.
Interestingly Arrhenius thought it might be needed to prevent another ice age and to improve crop yields, although I don't think the impact of sea level change or habitat loss occurred to him.
According to the latest from IPCC (once their arithmetical error has been corrected) there is no sea level change due to AGW.
Yes, they forecast a sea level rise, but it's just at the same rate we've been living with without difficulty for 18,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age.
Like the Shed Resident I too work with computer models in the engineering world. And like him some I am uneasy about some of the predictions of doom being bandied about. In my case the models with which I deal are of ore bodies my employers are mining or wish to mine.
These are created from a mass of point data which is then extrapolated to fill the gaps between those points.
Even when dealing with a fixed case (geology doesn't usually change much over any recognisable timeframe) a bloody good model (one that makes the shareholders happy to lend us their cash) will have a variance of +/- 10% from reality. And that's between the points of data. Once you start predicting outside the area ofd known data, this degree of error rises rapidly.
Looking at climate models I can see three major problem areas:
1) Not nearly enough accurate data points both geographically or over time.
2) Trying to predict the relationships between these points in a dynamic rather than static system (weather moves, rocks generally don't).
3) Attempting to predict future events from past data - going outside the area of known data.
In my experience each of these areas of concern alone would render a model unsuitable for investment decisions. If I were to suggest that our shareholders should commit themselves to an large, unspecified and endless commitment of expenditure based on a model containing all three I would be out on my arse and looking for a job at MacDonalds faster than you could say "incompetent mining engineer".
Add to this the rather strange processes that seem to be accompanying the publication of the IPCC report (issuing the Executive Summary before the full report is finalised; quietly dropping that, inconveniently, debunked "Hockey Stick Graph" without explaination; and so on) and you can see why this reasonably competent mining engineer has some doubts.
I spent more than a few years as an egineer in a large oil company where I was part of the team assessing what new proposals were worthy of development.
All you say is true, but I would add that anyone who came along with any proposal that claimed to have found or predicted results--be they in crude or momey--that looked like the 'hockey stick' would immediately be thrown out: it was the classic sign of a false prospectus, or of proposers who were not living in the real world, where you just don't find 'hockey sticks'!
Incidentally, and unfortunately, the new IPCC report does NOT do away with the 'hockey stick'. It's still there, as basic an element of their projections as ever, and it's still true that if you repaced the input data with random noise, you still get a 'hockey stick'-shaped answer. They are just keeping quiet about it this time.
But the fundamental reason why climate forecasts are basically useless is that they are attempts to solve equations of chaotic systems that have effectively infinite variables. No computer, even a theoretically perfect one, could come close to a solution to this that was worth a moment's consideration.
I can only suppose that the whole AGW faraggo of nonsense had become as widely accepted as it has is due to the dire state of scientific and mathematical education in this country.
A quote for non-believers:"Last year, there was an extraordinary exchange on the BBC's Newsnight between the environmentalist George Monbiot and the global warming denier Melanie Phillips. Monbiot pointed out that virtually all the "evidence" Phillips cites stems from people funded by Exxon-Mobil, a Big Oil corporation that has dedicated tens of millions of dollars to promoting denialist myths so they can carry on pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. "Could it be," Monbiot asked, "that you are an unwitting dupe of Exxon-Mobil?" Phillips replied, "It could be, it could be. I have no idea who funds the people I read and listen to."" =Johann Hari writes for The Independent in Britain.
Anyone who can't link and accept 2 billion Chinese emitting more carbon dioxide, global warming due to humans, melting polar ice, sea level rises and consequences; Is a Knob!
I think a common sense approach would be to disbelieve the sudden enviromental religion on instinct but accept that given the events of the last century it would be suprising if there was no effect.
The problem is this "emergency", this global Krystallnacht is used to justify 1 Higher taxes 2 Supernational Governement 3 Domestic bullying 4 the EU ( by Millipede notably)
Ken Clarke was right the other night when he said that the solutions cannot be the ones proposed even if one ,cautiously , accepts there may be something to concern oursleves with.
Why not give tax breaks to green production or knock VAT off green products ? David Cameron has rightly , in my view, identified the danger of associating concern with big governement and coercion.One tends to wantto get the retalliation in first.
PS Was a post of mine deleted ;I didn`t mean to be controversial especially?
To quote Bjorn Lomborg in the Guardian of all places (though only the online version):
"By the 1990s, the IPCC was expecting a 67-centimetre rise. Six years ago, it anticipated ocean levels would be 48.5 centimeters higher than they are currently. In this year's report, the estimated rise is 38.5 centimeters on average." He then goes on to point out that this 15 inches is only twice what we got last century (& in preceding centuries back to the last ice age).
By comparison the Gore film which the government are paying to show Britian's childrren (despite a legal bar on political propaganda) promises a 20 foot rise.
Whatever Realclimate & Gore may be saying the truth is much more prosaic. I don't personally deny the possibility of some warming - I do deny that we have any reason to expect the soert of catastrophic warming that alone could justify all these proposed new regulations 7tax rises.
72 comments:
www.Realclimate.org the leading climate sciewntists' blog disagrees strongly, commenting on the WSJ editorial that mirrors MP's blog points:
"While the rest of the world has basically accepted the conclusion of the latest IPCC report, one small village still holds out against the tide - the Wall Street Journal editorial board. This contrasts sharply with the news section of the paper which is actually pretty good. They had a front-page piece on business responses to global warming issues which not only pointed out that business was taking an interest in carbon reduction, but the article more or less took as a given that the problem was real. However, as we have pointed out before, the editorial pages operate in a universe all their own.
This would not be of much concern if the WSJ wasn't such an influential paper in the US. However, the extent of its isolation on this issue is evident from the amusing reliance on the error-prone Christopher Monckton. They quote him saying that the sea level rise predictions were much smaller than in IPCC TAR (no they weren't), that the human contribution to recent changes has been 'cut by a third' (no it hasn't), and that the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) was written by politicians (no it wasn't - the clue is in the name).
Even more wrong is the claim that "the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous 'hockey stick' ". Not only are the three original "hockey stick" reconstructions from the IPCC (2001) report shown in the (draft) paleoclimate chapter of the new report, but they are now joined by 9 others. Which is why the SPM comes to the even stronger conclusion that recent large-scale warmth is likely to be anomalous in the context of at least the past 1300 years, and not just the past 1000 years.
Thus on any index of wrongness, this WSJ editorial scores pretty high. What puzzles us is why their readership, who presumably want to know about issues that might affect their bottom line, tolerate this rather feeble denialism. While we enjoy pointing out their obvious absurdities, their readers would probably be better off if the WSJ accepted Jeffery Sachs' challenge. For if they can't be trusted to get even the basic checkable facts right on this issue, why should any of their opinions be taken seriously?
This doesn't come as any surprise. A couple of years ago I read the Michael Chrighton novel "State of Fear". This is one of those books that interspace a rather dumb fictional yarn with numerous factual reports and references which say much the same as Melanie Philips now reports. At the time I verified many of Chrighton's references and was shocked that we were being completely misled in all but the carbon emission values. Even in the case of carbon emissions however, the level of increase is nothing like as large as is published.
There are indeed some elements of doubt on the science and economics of climate change, but to suggest that the IPCC report is "exaggerated misleading and wrong" is the territory of the flat-earthers.
The actual science is extremely complex and you need some sort of summary for a non-specialist audience. The report represents the considered opinion of the worlds finest scientists and this summary has been endorsed by them as representing their views in a rapidly developing areas of research and science. Perhaps an analogy would be a weather forecast - you could spend hours presenting information about cloud formation, pressure and air temperature ect, when a quick summary can say that all the signs are that is going to snow.
Like weather, climate change science has some inherent degree of uncertainty in terms of modelling and long-term prediction. Arguing over the commas and wording of a policy statement when the general trend is clear is rather like rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic. What the this latest report has demonstrated is that the sceptics are becoming fewer as more people accept the need to at least apply the precautionary principle.
We know that it's probably going to snow this evening again, but cannot be absolutely certain. Do we put the gritters on standby and make plans, or just ignore the science as we can't be absolutely sure?
MAC
I can well believe this. If you want to get the truth (or at least, an accurate impression of the uncertainty) about climate change, it's worth subscribing to the Cambridge Conference network:
CCNet is a scholarly electronic network edited by Benny Peiser. To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserver@livjm.ac.uk ("subscribe cambridge-conference").
But please note the copyright statement!
All hale Nigel Lawson.
So its all a plot to warm us up for painfull but necessary green taxes.
Oh Iain, gone are the heady days of free flowing discussion and postings on your blog, gone is the thrill and buzz of being published immediately. It's feels a bit like the House of Lords now, when you contribute to the debate and are not sure who is awake/alive to respond.
Why not give us all another chance, or at least turn moderation off when you are going to be unavailable for a few hours. You deleted 3 comments in 3 weeks - that's worth the risks. Your regulars know you are not a c***
As I understand it, the range of possible outcomes has narrowed, so the highest likely temperature rise has gone down, and the lowest likely has gone up.
This means that any doom merchants (not the scientists) who quoted the upper value will be subject to this kind of argument. But it is bogus.
As for Michael Crighton, here is realclimate's answer:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
There are a lot of scientific errors in State of Fear, I'm afraid. It would be a lot easier for everyone if it was true...
A writer called Michael Crowley wrote a piece about State of Fear and Crichton responded by creating a character with the same name in his next novel who rapes a two year old. Just so you know the level of his arguments.
Anonymous 1:46
You would do better to give us links to the correct figures. Otherwise it's just your word against somebody elses.
Yes, there is a danger in focusing on the Summary for Policymakers. When IPCC produced its 1999 report Aviation and the Global Atmosphere, NGOs leapt upon the most extreme ranges of projected impacts in the SFP, ignoring the warnings in the main report about the scientific uncertainty surrounding those figures.
There are in fact three further parts to the IPCC report to be released over the next few months. Perhaps the most interesting will be the one on the prospects for mitigation.
An interesting "nu - science" approach by the IPCC. Release the summary first and then tailor any "incovenient truths" in the main report to suit - Oh & then release this months later
The site which revealed the somewhat post - modern approach to the scientific method was Climate Audit.
Oh dear. Having read Monckton's critique of IPCC IV and George Monbiot's critique of Monckton's critique in the Grauniad I'm actually no wiser than I was yesterday.
Death and taxes remain the only certainties.
Canada's National Post printed 10 articles by leading climatologists on Feb 2nd, all of them disagreeing with some aspect of the IPCC report - either the 'political' conclusions or the quality of the science that it was based (or should that be 'biased'?) on.
One article (by the top expert on hurricanes in the Atlantic) had his contribution side-lined and instead the IPCC convened a panel with no hurricane experts on it which came to conclusions the expert definitely did not agree with but which the anthropogenic warming activists loved.
Well worth reading and very worrying.
Many scientists agree that some degree of global warming is taking place, but they're uncertain as to the cause (note that anthropogenic warming is a lovely bandwaggon for control freaks - "We're doomed! But do what I say and you'll be saved!")
Others - notably Russian and Chinese - have some evidence that it's going to get much colder over the next 50 years.
Who's right?
Nobody knows, and really that's why the argument should not be considered as closed.
What is encouraging is that more of the questioning of the so-called consensus is starting to percolate into the non-scientific domain despite concerted efforts from what appears to be an organised pressure group aided and abetted by the MSM - which loves doomsday scenarios - just think of the column inches.
Good.
The more discussion, the more input from related disciplines - climatology, atmospheric fluidics, chaos theory, astronomy (Mars has been warming too), statistical analysis etc, the better.
Science should not be politicised, though this debate shows a disturbing inclination to do just that. Lysenko showed what a disaster it is when that happens.
Another nu-lab tax con!
So it is down to which set of scientists you believe or taxman !
Haven't scientists also been quietly rubbishing Stern?
Somewhere I read that the IPCC report predicts a much smaller rise in sea levels than it predicted in 1999. And presumably this 8 year intervening period has produced much more evidence than was available in 99!
The elite believe that the voters always need an enemy, and now the Russians are quiet and not many believe the al-Qaeda hype it's time for the environment to take centre stage.
Anonymous at 1.46am has it spot on. This blog is becoming a bit of a favourite for climate change deniers. It's odd that otherwise intelligent people would believe Melanie Phillips, Christopher Monckton and Michael 'Jurassic Park' Chrichton rather than thousands of climate scientists.
It is striking that most of the 'exposers of the truth' hailed by the deniers (and indeed the deniers themselves) have very little understanding of even the most basic scientific concepts, let alone the intricacies of climate science. I think the embrace of the 'climate change conspiracy' is partly due to this widespread scientific illiteracy. It is easier to believe in something supposedly simple (a left-wing conspiracy to raise taxes) than something extremely complicated that can only be fully understood by people who have spent years studying it. Experts in other fields are given the respect that their knowledge and learning deserves. I would not presume to criticize a brain surgeon as I know nothing about brains or surgery; reading a couple of articles in a newspaper or on a website would still not make me an expert. Yet it seems that climate science is a free-for-all and one opinion is as good as another. We should be honest about this: people who claim to speak the 'truth' and who know nothing about climate science are charlatans and should be treated as such.
There is also, of course, the small matter that lifestyles may have to change if we are to avert serious problems in the future. If climate change is just a lie propagated by communist luddites jealous of our material success then we don't have to do anything and any sense of responsiblity can be forgotten.
Oh here we go. Melanie Phillips and Christopher Monckton and the WSJ say that the IPCC is wrong so we must all bow down to their analysis. Yet climate scientists are on TV every day saying the report underestimates how bad things will get. I think I prefer to believe the latter. I have always found Phillips to be sound on Israel and other political issues but she has a tendancy to stray into areas she does not fully grasp yet discuss them as if she does, something she exhibits regularly on the Moral Maze!
Man in a Shed works on computer 'simulation' software in Engineering and is making a very small living by it ( so is rather worried by all these green taxes coming up - perhaps we should call them camouflage taxes rather than stealth taxes - we know about them but their true nature is disguised. But I digress ...)
Let me tell you there is no such thing as accurate simulation - only appropriate estimation and approximation. Get the assumptions wrong and the answer will be vastly wrong - they are never going to be 100% 'right'. Most computer models have large fudge factors for what people don't know or it would be too much trouble to find out. Hence you can get almost any answer you want with simulation....
In Engineering we are looking for an answer as close to reality as possible, as bad things happen quickly when we get it wrong.
The world should ask what the vested interests of the scientists who are beavering away at their simulations are ? ( Here's a clue - what will you get research grants approved for.) How well received would a paper which contradicts the 'consensus' be ?
Oddly enough science is very bad at receiving new ideas or challenges to orthodoxy. And unlike Engineering it can take a long time to find out who is wrong and who is right.
Melanie Phillips is to be congratulated on bringing the problem with the science being made to fit the politics to wider attention. Just look at the near hate campaign waged against Bjorn Lomborg for his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist", which called into question some of the environmentalist hysteria.
Why doesn't the government send that round to school libraries along with the Al Gore political propaganda DVD ?
I can't help noticing that unlike Iain, who whatever people think of him has enough democratic fibre in his veins to allow comments, Melanie does not allow any comments on her "blog". Perhaps she fears being shot down in flames?
The spin she has copied from the Wall Street rag is a simple one - take the highest range estimate from before. Then claim that was the agreed figure. (It wasn't). Then say they got it all wrong last time so how can we trust them this time. Then say they are fixing the report. (They aren't, but there are some disagreements between that many scientists which always help).
Could the WSJ's line be anything to do with it seeking to represent the views of US mega-corporations anxious about not meeting carbon targets? A huge head of political steam is building up in America from ordinary people worried about this issue and the corporations are doing what they can to fight back.
For anyone interested in how a consensus document like the SPM is formulated, you can see here - a report from The Tenth Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group I (WGI) which took place at UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, from 29 January to 1 February 2007. The meeting was attended by 311 participants, including scientists and representatives from governments, UN agencies, and non-governmental organizations.
for example:
Participants expressed concern that the media may interpret the new temperature projections to be lower than those in the TAR (i.e. 1.4-5.8ºC), particularly if AR4 best estimates (i.e. 1.8-4.0ºC) are highlighted as opposed to the lower and upper AR4 likely range values (i.e. 1.1-6.4ºC). Italy stressed that the AR4 message to the general public will be whether the problem is deemed to be more or less serious than before. The Coordinating Lead Authors noted that the projections in the TAR primarily demonstrate the existence of climate change, while projections in the AR4 provide quantitative information of the climate change outcomes depending on the choices of policy makers. The final language reflected both the best estimates and the likely ranges, explicitly stating that the AR4 projections are broadly consistent with the TAR although the quantities are not directly comparable. The approved text also listed the advances of AR4 over TAR. The UK, supported by Germany and Belgium, called for a statement at the end of the section to indicate that there are other warming possibilities outside the SRES scenarios. New Zealand, seconded by Co-Chair Solomon, said the proposed inclusion is probably evident from other parts of the text, and the statement was not included.
Professor Naomi Oreskes of University of California San Diego did a study of 928 scientific papers, journal entries etc published between 1993 and 2003. The results showed 75% of these papers in agreement either explicitly or implicitly with the idea that human CO2 emmissions were causing climate change. The remaining 25% were neutral on the subject.
Her work was then criticised by Dr Benny Peiser of Liverpool's John Moores University, who criticised her sampling methods and her choice of criteria. Dr Peiser retracted some of his criticsms, leaving a consensus view that.
1) Climate change is happening (although may not be man made)
2) The majority of climateologists agree that human activity is the case
3) There are qualified climateologists who do disagree with the consensus position.
Of course, none of this makes making a decision on what science to believe based on what most conveniently suits your free market beliefs the wrong way to go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at0T7Fi5l_I
in the pay of............
(Another long one.)
I made an oblique reference to this matter in a comment on your item, 'Gordon Proves He's As Good At Cronyism As Tony', that appeared here a few days ago:
"It's worth noting that even in comparison with the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, issued on February 2, The Stern Report on Climate Change is now exposed as an extemist hysterical scaremonger's rant: in short, it is utter rubbish.
"The faults in this latest IPCC report are many and various, but modest compared with Stern, and for discuaaion another day."
---
Anon 1:46 quotes approvingly from www.realclimate.org, which certainly does disagree strongly with Melanie Phillips and Viscount Monckton. It would be amazing if RealClimate failed to take this view, as it is the heavily-biased, heavily-censored site of those who depend upon public belief in anthropogenic global warming for their incomes and scientific reputations. The fact that Anon 1:46 insists that the infamous, utterly-discredited 'hockey stick' lives on in this new IPCC report (it does, but deeply buried, due to embarrassment) betrays his/her utter failure to actually understand the real issues at stake here.
The plain fact is that any climate report depending upon the 'hockey stick' as substantiation for its conclusions is no longer serious.
For a much more open, balanced and better-reasoned alternative to www.realclimate.org try www.climateaudit.org/ (Warning: both sites are heavily technical and demand as least undergraduate-level knowledge of mathematics (especially statistics) to properly understand what is going on.)
---
Anon (MAC) 8:22 tells us that this IPCC report 'represents the considered opinion of the worlds finest scientists'. Really?
Firstly: the previous IPCC Summary & Report (that led to Kyoto) had over 1,000 'authors' of whom, at a stretch, perhaps 50 could be called 'scientists'. The rest were mostly politicians and civil servants. I don't have the breakdown for this new IPCC report, but what do you bet?
Secondly: I know a good few scientists, and I doubt if any one of 'the worlds finest scientists' would touch climate change with a barge-pole. For a start it is far, far too politicised, and then much, although not perhaps all, of the 'science' it is based on is not really science at all: for instance, the climate forecasts are all arrived at through computer models that are supposed to emulate the earth's climate behaviour over the next 100 years or so.
These computer models are of the same general variety as the ones used to predict the weather. Of course they are not identical, but they work on the same general principles. The difference is that while the weather forecast can be relied upon to give us a reasonable approximation of future weather ahead for maybe 3 or 4 days, these climate forecast models are supposed to predict climate some 10,000 times (yes, ten thousand times) farther into the future. The reason why accurate weather forecasts don't exceed 3 or 4 days is that there are literally trillions upon trillions of variables that would have to be measured and computed, including how these would interact with each other, to make any meaningful extension of accurate weather forecasting periods. This is utterly beyond the power of the most powerful computers yet built. It can't be done.
But compared with a climate forecast ahead 100 years, this would be a trivial task. The computation required for a 100 year climate forecast would amount to something like that weather forecast squared: that is, there would now be trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions of variables. The task is utterly hopeless; way beyond our capabilities. But this does not stop those brave boys and girls in the climate research industry.
Why?
Firstly, because they can get away with it. Not many people have cottoned on to the utter absurdity of the forecasts they keep churning out. Secondly, because of the nature of this so-called 'forecasting tool' they can in fact tweak the results to give the answers they want. Which is so terribly handy for what I suspect may well turn out to be perhaps the greatest scandal in the history of science when it becomes public, as it surely must, sooner of later.
A constant theme of True Believers in anthropgenic global warming is that industries, such as oil, with a supposed interest in quashing "The Truth" spend millions of dollars subsidising the deniers. (Would that that were so around here!)
However i would suggest that this very constant theme of the True Believers betrays their own thinking more clearly than anything else. The fact is that for every single dollar from ExxonMobil, etc., that goes to help fund the sceptics, there must be at least $100; perhaps several hundred, paid out by governments to help fund the so-called 'climate research' that is the stock-in-trade of the True Believers. And not only that: if (no, when: when the weather inconveniently stops warming up, for example, or even moves into a cooling phase... actually, come to think of it, every year since 1998 has been cooler than that year...) it all comes crashing about their ears, they will not just have lost their nice fat government cheques, but their scientific reputations too.
Iain
I'm sure you've noticed the frequent use of the description "climate change denier" to demonise sceptics and thereby attempt to short-circuit/close down any debate on the topic. The closeness of such an epithet to "holocaust denier" is no accident. The fact is that we so-called "climate change deniers" do not deny that climate changes - it changes all the time. We "deny" that the posited mainly anthropogenic cause of this change has been (or can be) "proved" by computer models analogous to those which find it impossible to produce accurate predictions of weather 100 days hence, let alone 100 years.
"Holocaust deniers" would deny the existence of the holocaust as an historical fact, not argue over the efficacy of the methods used to slaughter millions. Similar epithets are used (again no accident) to demonise those who are sceptical of the benefit to the UK of (continued) membership of the EU and, again, are a favoured method of closing down any debate.
2br02b just repeats many of the well-trodden smears against the concept of climate change caused by human activity. One of the favourites of the Wall Street / neocon attack dogs is that the scientists are not eminent enough or that many other leading scientists dispute it. Both are false. Just as a starter, the brief biogs of key scientists who theorised anthropomorphic climate change are available on Wikipedia - for example...
James Hansen from NASA
Syukuro Manabe from Princeton
James Lovelock, who worked with NASA and is one of the leading British scientific theorists
See also Attribution of recent climate change which explores in a good, readable format why climate change is a real phenomenon and why it is based on human activity.
The phrase "climate change denier" should not be used, but it is still a fact that there are many right-wing forces (primarily emerging from the oil industry) who resent the facts of climate change as they threaten their profits. Some more enlightened companies are taking a different view. Resenting the facts is ostrich behaviour, regardless of what we call it. Conservatives need to accept the facts and not allow themselves to get misdirected by neocon propaganda. The world economy does need to change and possibly the interests of some very rich industrialists are not the main thing we should be listening to.
So umbongo, what would you call these people then? Are we no longer allowed to use the word 'denier'? There is absolutely no reason to bring the Holocaust into this argument. This just seems to be another ploy by anthropogenic climate change deniers (for want of a better term) to muddy the waters and distract attention from the fact that they have no proper evidence to support their case.
2b0r02b:
Climate forecasting is NOT weather forecasting.
The exact pattern of turbulence over a period of a few seconds (for instance, from wind flowing over a hill) is more or less impossible to predict, and yet the general weather forecast is accurate up to about 3 days, because the effects of the turbulence even out over time.
Nobody is trying to predict whether it will snow on February 8th 2095, they are predicting the average temperatures in February. This is completely and utterly different, because, again, the daily variations even out over time.
I used to write/run models of aircraft engine flow and the exact nature of the turbulence was very hard to get right, and is still poorly understood on some levels. Nevertheless, RR engines have improved thanks to computer modelling and work well enough to get you to New York cheaply.
PS 1998 was the warmest year because it was a very strong El Nino. A new El Nino is developing this year and it is expected to make 2007 warmer than 1998, although we'll only know whether this is true in a year's time...
I've got news for Anon 11:46
Hansen, for example, is best-known for adjusting the facts to fit his own far-out version of CO2 AGW theory: he is hardly a serious scientist, but maybe a serious danger to science. For instance, The new IPCC numbers for sea level rise are actually quite reasonable. Now we see with some amusement that the IPCC is under attack by extremist scientists like him who think the numbers should be more catastrophic. Hansen's values are about 20 times higher than the IPCC 'consensus'. I suppose that makes him (and that other well-known scientist Al Gore) climate 'contrarians'.
And I though Lovelock was in disgrace with the Greenies because he remains a sufficiently honest scientist to point out that if CO2 AGW is real, the sole and single way to solve the energy problem is with nuclear reactors. (I have long pointed out that those who say CO2 AGW is real but refuse to accept the unavoidability of expanded nuclear power if that's so, are not serious people.)
As for attribution of climate change: the reason why CO2 was 'chosen' as the 'guilty party' are well-known: We humans make some of the stuff, and there was a (very approximate) fit between anthropogenic CO2 output and world temperature changes.
However, it is actually a VERY approximate fit, and no direct causal connection has ever been established. But it's done by man, so we can be made to feel guilty: that's what the Greenies want.
The fact that the fit between sun-spots and global temperatures is very much closer is ignored, because we can't be blamed for sun-spots. The same is true about cosmic radiation flux.
The fact that CO2 is only responsible for about 2% of the greenhouse effect, and only 2% of atmospheric CO2 is man-made, making anthropogenic CO2 responsible for a microscopic 0.004% of the greenhouse effect, is also ignored as inconvenient....
But if you still believe such nonsense, along no doubt with the Tooth Fairy and ghosts and goolies and things that go 'bump' in the night... well, that's your problem.
Darcy Dancer,
It is not those who say anthropogenic global warming is not true who brought comparison with Holocaust deniers into this; that was the True Believers.
Dr Random:
I did not say climate forecasting is weather forecasting. I said it uses similar modelling techniques, which is undoubtedly true. In comparison with turbulent modelling in gas turbines (which I know is a difficult task) the variables involved in weather forecasting as vastly greater--hence the 4/5 day maximum for a reliable forecast, even with the most powerful computers we have: and then when it comes to climate forecasting the variables problem is many orders of magnitude worse: in other words, we can't actually do it in a way that's worth a light.
---
As HL Mencken put it, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."
I am not a denier, in fact I imagine that putting the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere that was taken out eons ago is probably a bad idea. But that doesn't mean that I am happy for people to spin the data to turn it into a catastrophe in order to bring in draconian measures.
Jsut as Reid has been waiting for a terror alert to re-visit the 90 day rule, evironmentalists have been wishing for bad data to prove that we should go back to subsistence farming days.
Climate Scientist is another of those glorified job titles like information technichians (librarians) and refuse scientists (bin men). They're weather men (or women).
When we can't rely on what they say will happen this afternoon, how can we have any confidence in what they forecast for 2100?
Yes Dan, and local councillors are just incompetent bureaucrats. There's a big difference between weather and climate. If it snows this afternoon down in Folkestone it doesn't mean you're living in an Arctic climate.
Dan, a weather man, aka meteorologist, usually has a degree in mathematical physics and a PhD, and is eminently qualified to investigate climate change. Although admittedly they might need to speak to experts in geophysics, geochemistry and geology too.
What qualifications do you have to be a councillor? Less than a bin man these days, it would seem.
2br02b - if the sun is responsible, why are the polar caps on Mars not diminishing? In fact, they have expanded slightly over the last 20 years.
Nuclear power - I agree that this may be needed, but you are merely respecting Loverock's opinions there and he claims that on current trends humanity will be reduced to a hunter-gatherer level within the next 200 years.
Melanie Phillips analysis would be fine, but she has a serious axe to grind in this area. She has previously gone on record stating that climate change is a creation of the self-hating western intellectual elite. Somebody with such a clearly ideological response to what is a scientific and environmental issue can hardly be trusted not to seriously and malignantly manipulate the information.
There is a strong strand of flat-earth right-wingery that measures its manhood by the vehemence of its climate-change denial. (Another clear parallel is with anti-evolutionists.) Utterly impervious to the scientific method, one of the most precious flowers of humanity. Best ignored by rational, educated people.
We can only thanks our lucky stars that the Inquisition isn't still weighing in on their side.
But citing Monckton! Please. This man has a record of crack-pottery second to none. By their friends shall ye know them.
anon 3:18
Mars does appear to be warming according to both NASA and the St Petersburg Astonomical Observatory.
Mars' ice caps have shrunk, not grown, over the past few decades.
James Lovelock is going just a little bit overboard if he thinks we will return to emulating Ray Mears, unless there is a major global war over resources, but he's absolutely right about Nuclear Power.
Clearly solar forcing is the dominant cause of pre-20th century short term weather cycles (short term in the geological sense!), either through the sun being a variable star or through the Milankovitch cycles (Earth's orbital wobble).
There has, however, been no large increase in solar output over the past 50 years, certainly not enough to account for the current warming trend. The solar cycles suggest there should be some cooling over the next 20 years or so, but if AGW is real then this will be over-ridden. Solar output correlates well with sunspot count:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png
There has been a recent maximum but very little change (or a slight decrease) since 1950.
I have a problem - perhaps your readers can help.
The science on the thermodynamic behaviour of mixed gases in a closed system in equilibrium is well-understood. But I cannot, on the evidence I've seen, accept that this basic science has any practical application to global climate - which is not a closed system, and shows no evidence whatsoever of ever having been in a state of equilibrium.
Global temperatures have varied enormously over the millennia in apparently random ways that nobody has been convincingly able to relate to changes in any relevant underlying variables. My default assumption is that this is a system showing chaotic behaviour, and that attempts to control global climate by targeting just one variable of the hundreds that may be relevant - i.e. carbon dioxide levels - are therefore doomed to failure.
I've been following this debate closely for years and have never seen anyone deal with this argument except by simply asserting that it is obviously wrong. That isn't good enough for me. Are any of the experts who read this blog able to help me find a better response?
I'd be delighted to find a good explanation. My career to some extent depends on accepting the consensus (hence my anonymity, which I apologise for) and I really need to believe in what I'm doing. Many of my colleagues can live with suppressing their doubts. But I flatter myself I have too much integrity.
I really do try to keep an open mind on this subject but there is clearly an intolerance of dissent that makes me deeply suspicious of accepting the arguments of mainstream science at face value. Anybody who's studied the behaviour of scientists, when their work gets entangled with a political agenda, should be very alarmed by current events. There are clearly too many closed minds on both sides.
Alex, It's no good attacking Melanie Phillips when her doubts rest on the words of Phillip Stott.
Or is the eminent professor another 'right wing flat earther'?
bt, do you have a weblink for your assertion that Nasa say the Mars ice caps are diminishing? I think you are telling porkies.
Anon 4.04 - I'm no expert on thermodynamics but I believe the Earth as a whole is regarded by scientists as "almost closed" since there is relatively little dissapation of gases from the earth out into space - therefore the issue is what happens to gases like CO2 inside the earths systems, eg, do they end up in the soil, the oceans, etc.
Anon 3:18
2br02b - if the sun is responsible, why are the polar caps on Mars not diminishing? In fact, they have expanded slightly over the last 20 years.
Two points here.
One: I did NOT say the sun is responsible. I said that sun-spots and cosmic radiation flux changes match global temperature changes very much closer that atmospheric CO2 does.
Two: According to NASA, you are exactly 180 degrees pointing the wrong way on Mars, where the Polar CO2 ice caps have in fact been shrinking for a number of years.
I draw no final conclusion about global warming, for two very good reasons:
One: We do not in fact know enough yet to draw any definite conclusion on causes--except to say that on the growing objective evidence, anthropogenic CO2 seems an increasingly unlikely culprit.
Two: The way science works there can never be any final conclusions. All science is provisional, and what's more it is not a democracy. As Einstein said when told a book had been published called '100 Scientists against Einstein', "Why 100? If just one had a better argument, that is all that is needed."
Anon 3: 41
That is why statements by the doom-mongers that, "the debate is over," and that "there is consensus on anthropogenic CO2" are the actual voices of the flat-earther, if that's what you want to call it, that "measures its manhood by the vehemence of its anthropogenic climate-change" insistence, never mind the evidence. Yes, there is indeed a clear parallel with anti-evolutionists here: like the anti-evolutionists, this so-called 'consensus' are the true deniers of science. They are "utterly impervious to the scientific method, one of the most precious flowers of humanity. Best ignored by rational, educated people."ad hominem attack on Viscount Mockton. You are not worthy of serious consideration on this topic, which you clearly know nothing about.
[Corrction: a line got "chopped out".}
Best ignored by rational, educated people.
You finally diplay your utter ignorace with your ad hominem attack on Viscount Mockton. You are not worthy of serious consideration on this topic, which you clearly know nothing about.
Anonymous said...
bt, do you have a weblink for your assertion that Nasa say the Mars ice caps are diminishing? I think you are telling porkies.
4:19 PM
No porkies.
Below are extracts from one of the articles in the series I mentioned in an earlier post.
If you want to read them all, which I recommend, go to The National Post site:
http://canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=edae9952-3c3e-47ba-913f-7359a5c7f723&k=0
It'll give you links to the other 9 articles, too.
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
Published: Friday, February 02, 2007
January 26, 2007
Climate change is a much, much bigger issue than the public, politicians, and even the most alarmed environmentalists realize. Global warming extends to Mars, where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries.
"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," NASA scientist William Feldman speculated after the agency's Mars Odyssey completed its first Martian year of data collection. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated." With each passing year more and more evidence arises of the dramatic changes occurring on the only planet on the solar system, apart from Earth, to give up its climate secrets.
NASA's findings in space come as no surprise to Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. Pulkovo -- at the pinnacle of Russia's space-oriented scientific establishment -- is one of the world's best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839. Heading Pulkovo's space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world's chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming.
"Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians," he told me. "These parallel global warmings -- observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth -- can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance."
Anonymous 4.04:
The climate has indeed changed constantly for millennia. It no doubt does depend on many factors, including the make up of the atmosphere, the sun, the positions of the continents, the reflectivity of the surface, the amount of volcanic dust, the vegetation, and so on.
But that doesn't make it a chaotic system, which is something completely different. A chaotic system is one that responds in _mathematically_ unpredictable ways, not one that is just complex. A chaotic system could just have a couple of variables.
However the climate has been driven in the past, the amount of CO2 we are putting in the atmosphere now is unprecedented in recent geological history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png
The mechanism for warming of the earth through the reflectivity of CO2 in the infra-red is understood well enough, and it is reasonable to expect that it will warm the earth. How much is the real argument - will the oceans be able to absorb it all (probably not), will increased evaporation add more water vapour into the atmosphere causing more heating (probably) etc.
The correlation between CO2 and Temperature is shown here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Co2-temperature-plot.svg
Now correlation doesn't imply causation, but we have a perfectly good physical mechanism too, so it is a perfectly reasonable assumption to make.
Whatever the outcome, we are going to run out of cheap oil in the medium term, so it would be a very good idea to come up with alternative technologies before the US has to invade 15 other countries just to maintain its supply. And relying on the Russian gas supply is bonkers.
PS The Martian ice cap (actually, its CO2 in the southern hemisphere) is indeed shrinking slightly. Maybe there is some CO2 feedback mechanism in operation? There could be any number of reasons for it. Solar output has not increased over the last 50 years or so, although there was a maximum around 1950. See my previous post for the reference.
2br02b: I remember when Monckton solemnly informed the world that the introduction of turnstiles at stations was dangerous to life and limb, & guaranteed to be unworkable at rush-hour - and he could prove it!
I remember when Monckton staked his house on the 'insolubility' of a puzzle he'd invented - he could prove it!
In both cases, all one had to do was sit back and watch. Remarkably, in both cases these 'proofs' evaporated in a matter of days, in the face of Hard Facts. The scientific method in action.
As for the schemes that emanated from Downing Street during his policy regime...
'Ad hominem'? Well, yes, but hey, induction is all part of the process. And you know what? All we'll have to do is wait & watch.
I've just learned of this, but am little surprised. Enron and James Hanson would have made a perfect match for each other, don't you think?
(From Luboš Motl's wonderful blog http://motls.blogspot.com/ )
Enron has been the strongest corporate proponent of the flawed Kyoto protocol in the US and it was trying to bribe politicians into accepting this mad treaty:
http://www.cei.org/gencon/019,02898.cfm
One of Enron's major consultants of its own internal global warming study was James Hansen of NASA, the US father of global warming. Although Enron wanted the study to end up with catastrophic predictions, the study concluded that the climate alarm could very well be a false alarm. Enron censored its own study and never published it.
The company thus became a prototype of a company, a country, or a society that starts to build on hot air and non-existent effects. When you start to invent non-existent events such as global warming catastrophes, you're just one step from inventing $11 billion of non-existent profits...
Anon 5:36
On Christopher Monckton:
Turnstiles at stations? That was his father.
His game: he sold half a million over 18 months and made a profit before the prize was won.
... and you are exhibiting your ignorance for all to see.
It didn't come as any surprise to me that there was going to be a delay of some three months before the "science" of the latest IPCC report got published... Why? Simple, a friend, who is one of the climate scientists who worked on one section of the report, told me that it was being delayed so that "the science can be rewritten to match the political summary". It stinks.
Also, as a Popperian, I'm of the belief that no *proper* science can ever be "closed", unfortunately AGW has achieved the status more of a religion than a science - as demonstrated by much of the intemperate language used to describe sceptics.
Iain: Had you followed this Junk Science tip from contributor, yours truly, on 2 Feb, the story re-told by Christopher Monckton and Melanie Phillips would not have taken you by surprise. The story now has a new dateline and the new Junk Science link that is given in Melanie Phillips's post.
"Anyone who thinks the debate is over should read: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,249598,00.html."
"If what she and Christopher Monckton say is true"
Indeed, and even more so if the little green men in the centre of the earth who create all the electricity in the world by cycling hard go on strike!
2br02b @ 6.26:
Oh - he made a profit out of his spurious claim ... so that's all right, then
We are all certainly going to believe him now we know this
2b0r02b:
Are we talking about the James Hansen who recently complained about NASA trying to stop him talking?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?ex=1296190800&en=28e236da0977ee7f&ei=5088
He seems to be fairly convinced of AGW...
pogo:
What does your climate scientist friend think of the scientific question, rather than the politics?
Anon 8:24
Oh - he made a profit out of his spurious claim ... so that's all right, then
That's pathetic. A little while ago you were laughing at him for loosing money on that venture; now you do the same becasue he made a profit.
If it's making money from spurious claims that offends you, surely few can be said to have done this more than Hanson, Mann, Jones, etc--the 'high priests' of your quaint, proof-free CO2 'religion'.
Dr Random
Are we talking about the James Hansen who recently complained about NASA trying to stop him talking? He seems to be fairly convinced of AGW...
Yup, the very same. Is he fairly convinced? You bet. He almost invented the whole daft idea, and has never let awkward facts get in the way of his wonderful 'theory.'
2b0r02b:
So how come Enron didn't get what they wanted then, if he (Hansen) is totally biased...?
Hansen didn't invent the idea of AGW, it was first proposed by a Swede called Arrhenius in about 1898, although admittedly it took about 100 years for most people to take any notice.
Interestingly Arrhenius thought it might be needed to prevent another ice age and to improve crop yields, although I don't think the impact of sea level change or habitat loss occurred to him.
Dr Random:
... the impact of sea level change ...
What impact of sea level change?
According to the latest from IPCC (once their arithmetical error has been corrected) there is no sea level change due to AGW.
Yes, they forecast a sea level rise, but it's just at the same rate we've been living with without difficulty for 18,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age.
You really should try to keep up...
Like the Shed Resident I too work with computer models in the engineering world. And like him some I am uneasy about some of the predictions of doom being bandied about. In my case the models with which I deal are of ore bodies my employers are mining or wish to mine.
These are created from a mass of point data which is then extrapolated to fill the gaps between those points.
Even when dealing with a fixed case (geology doesn't usually change much over any recognisable timeframe) a bloody good model (one that makes the shareholders happy to lend us their cash) will have a variance of +/- 10% from reality. And that's between the points of data. Once you start predicting outside the area ofd known data, this degree of error rises rapidly.
Looking at climate models I can see three major problem areas:
1) Not nearly enough accurate data points both geographically or over time.
2) Trying to predict the relationships between these points in a dynamic rather than static system (weather moves, rocks generally don't).
3) Attempting to predict future events from past data - going outside the area of known data.
In my experience each of these areas of concern alone would render a model unsuitable for investment decisions. If I were to suggest that our shareholders should commit themselves to an large, unspecified and endless commitment of expenditure based on a model containing all three I would be out on my arse and looking for a job at MacDonalds faster than you could say "incompetent mining engineer".
Add to this the rather strange processes that seem to be accompanying the publication of the IPCC report (issuing the Executive Summary before the full report is finalised; quietly dropping that, inconveniently, debunked "Hockey Stick Graph" without explaination; and so on) and you can see why this reasonably competent mining engineer has some doubts.
Remittance Man:
Well said!
I spent more than a few years as an egineer in a large oil company where I was part of the team assessing what new proposals were worthy of development.
All you say is true, but I would add that anyone who came along with any proposal that claimed to have found or predicted results--be they in crude or momey--that looked like the 'hockey stick' would immediately be thrown out: it was the classic sign of a false prospectus, or of proposers who were not living in the real world, where you just don't find 'hockey sticks'!
Incidentally, and unfortunately, the new IPCC report does NOT do away with the 'hockey stick'. It's still there, as basic an element of their projections as ever, and it's still true that if you repaced the input data with random noise, you still get a 'hockey stick'-shaped answer. They are just keeping quiet about it this time.
But the fundamental reason why climate forecasts are basically useless is that they are attempts to solve equations of chaotic systems that have effectively infinite variables. No computer, even a theoretically perfect one, could come close to a solution to this that was worth a moment's consideration.
I can only suppose that the whole AGW faraggo of nonsense had become as widely accepted as it has is due to the dire state of scientific and mathematical education in this country.
A quote for non-believers:"Last year, there was an extraordinary exchange on the BBC's Newsnight between the environmentalist George Monbiot and the global warming denier Melanie Phillips. Monbiot pointed out that virtually all the "evidence" Phillips cites stems from people funded by Exxon-Mobil, a Big Oil corporation that has dedicated tens of millions of dollars to promoting denialist myths so they can carry on pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. "Could it be," Monbiot asked, "that you are an unwitting dupe of Exxon-Mobil?" Phillips replied, "It could be, it could be. I have no idea who funds the people I read and listen to.""
=Johann Hari writes for The Independent in Britain.
2b0r02b:
So, you do/did work for an oil company.
Interesting.
Anyone who can't link and accept 2 billion Chinese emitting more carbon dioxide, global warming due to humans, melting polar ice, sea level rises and consequences; Is a Knob!
I think a common sense approach would be to disbelieve the sudden enviromental religion on instinct but accept that given the events of the last century it would be suprising if there was no effect.
The problem is this "emergency", this global Krystallnacht is used to justify
1 Higher taxes
2 Supernational Governement
3 Domestic bullying
4 the EU ( by Millipede notably)
Ken Clarke was right the other night when he said that the solutions cannot be the ones proposed even if one ,cautiously , accepts there may be something to concern oursleves with.
Why not give tax breaks to green production or knock VAT off green products ? David Cameron has rightly , in my view, identified the danger of associating concern with big governement and coercion.One tends to wantto get the retalliation in first.
PS Was a post of mine deleted ;I didn`t mean to be controversial especially?
To quote Bjorn Lomborg in the Guardian of all places (though only the online version):
"By the 1990s, the IPCC was expecting a 67-centimetre rise. Six years ago, it anticipated ocean levels would be 48.5 centimeters higher than they are currently. In this year's report, the estimated rise is 38.5 centimeters on average." He then goes on to point out that this 15 inches is only twice what we got last century (& in preceding centuries back to the last ice age).
By comparison the Gore film which the government are paying to show Britian's childrren (despite a legal bar on political propaganda) promises a 20 foot rise.
Whatever Realclimate & Gore may be saying the truth is much more prosaic. I don't personally deny the possibility of some warming - I do deny that we have any reason to expect the soert of catastrophic warming that alone could justify all these proposed new regulations 7tax rises.
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