Clean up your act, professor tells the climate science community
Cracks have opened up in the credibility of a new US government report on climate change. The study has been criticized by a respected environmental scientist, who says that it 'repeatedly misrepresented the science of disasters and climate change' and twisted his research to back up tenuous claims.
Hailed as 'up-to-date, authoritative, and comprehensive' by the White House, the report claimed that droughts are increasing and heat waves are becoming more intense due to climate change. (Read the United States Global Change Research Program's report here.)
Oh no they aren't, retorts Dr Roger Pielke Jr, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado.
If the report's authors had bothered to look at more up-to-date research, Professor Pielke says in his blog, they would have seen that there's no long-term trend in the US towards worse droughts or more intense heat waves. (Take the US Climate Change Science Program's 2008 report, 'Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate', for example.)
How tempting it is to dismiss Professor Pielke's opinions as the foam-flecked ravings of a fringe sceptic? But it turns out that he's no sceptic of climate change ('anthropogenic climate change is real, and deserving of significant attention to both adaptation and mitigation', he says). Only of bad science and political agendas, it seems.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~43~RS~)
Comments
This Government has never got anything right , in regard to the new religion of climate change where any dissenters are heretics .I am
hanging on to my ice skates and hope to be ice skating on the Thames
by 2012. My test with ice in my Gin and Tonic shows no increase in
volume indeed it seems water expands when frozen and shrinks when
it unfreezes . I believe most of ice is below sea level. Global Warming
is a excuse to tax and control our leisure activities . That if Cows
and vehicles exhaust are the main culprits . Why was the explosives and
heat of World War One and Two innocent ? What action is being taken to quell the underground coal fires which produce more CO2 than all the cars
in the World. Suggest doubters read Don't hate on Science to save the
environment by Michael S Berliner Ayn Rand Institute . Quote " The Fundamental goal of environmentalism is not the advancement of human
health and happiness , rather it is a sub human world where nature
is worshipped like the totem of some primitive Religion. Where the rights of a tree is more important than human well being.
Complain about this comment
There is only one way to save our Parliament. Do away with political
parties and vote for Independents who have experienced what its like to have to earn your living in the real World , and have experience of
running a business.
Complain about this comment
Following Pielke's links to his earlier post and so to the earlier 'more rounded' CCSP report (June 2008) that he favours; I find a different picture to the one he summarises in the six points at the end of his post. As always the devil is in the detail. e.g.
Pielke's summary: "Nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought."
CCSP report: "Droughts are becoming more severe in some regions, though there are no clear trends for North America as a whole."
Both statements can be said to be 'true', but the CCSP sentence paints a fuller, more accurate picture. I wouldn't expect to see a coast-to-coast US drought; droughts tend to be regional (as the 9 yr 1930s Dust Bowl one was) and some areas would become wetter as air streams carrying moisture are diverted elsewhere.
It's worth quoting the 'more rounded' 2008 CCSP report more fully:
"Many extremes and their associated impacts are now changing. For example, in recent decades most of North America has been experiencing more unusually hot days and nights, fewer unusually cold days and nights, and fewer frost days. Heavy downpours have become more frequent and intense. Droughts are becoming more severe in some regions, though there are no clear trends for North America as a whole. The power and frequency of Atlantic hurricanes have increased substantially in recent decades, though North American mainland land-falling hurricanes do not appear to have increased over the past century. Outside the tropics, storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are becoming even stronger."
"Averaged over the continental U.S. and southern Canada the most severe droughts occurred in the 1930s and there is no indication of an overall trend in the observational record, which dates back to 1895. However, it is more meaningful to consider drought at a regional scale, because as one area of the continent is dry, often another is wet. In Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, the 1950s were the driest period, though droughts in the past 10 years now rival the 1950s drought."
Attributing 'extreme events' to climate change will always be difficult. Hurricane Katrina was only category 3 (cat' 5 is the strongest) when it struck New Orleans, the city was just unlucky to be struck-full on; some would say it was lucky to have avoided it for so long.
Pielke is also right to argue that flood/hurricane damage is now greater simply because more people are moving into vulnerable areas. (Something that applies to the UK too.)
Other factors also have to be considered; for example there is current debate about whether warming will increase tornado activity? I'm of a school of thought that believes La Nina's act to increase tornado activity and strength (and there has been a run of La Ninas in recent years) so it may be long term changes to the frequencies of El Nino/La Nina that need watching.
The same applies to hurricanes, and droughts in the American west; hurricane seasons are influenced by several factors (African dust and El Ninos both dampen hurricane formation in the tropical Atlantic) whilst there is an established link between ENSO/PDO activity and changes to drought/precipitation patterns over the USA. Detecting unequivocal trends requires decades, so we'll have to see what picture emerges as time goes by, we're still in early days.
Finally, just to remind the more 'sceptical' readers of Pielke's position (from his blog) on the anthropogenic climate change issue:
"Finally, let me emphasize that anthropogenic climate change is real, and deserving of significant attention to both adaptation and mitigation." Roger Pielke, Jr.
Complain about this comment
"...foam-flecked ravings of a fringe skeptic"
In about 15 years time this "mending the world's climate" movement will be studied by psychology students.
I'm going to use it as a case study for my Group-think 101 class.
Let's look at some of the Symptoms of Group-think
Mindguards self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information. [check - Guardian, BBC, Miliband, ...]
Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus. [check]
Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, disfigured, impotent, or stupid. [I'm looking at you, Shanta]
Rationalising warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions. [this means finding excuses to ignore or rubbish any conflicting information]
All this would be just a minor tragedy if it was Jonestown in Guyana. But its bigger than that - we are talking about the ruling elite in most modern countries.
The wikipedia article also covers off how Group-think can lead to poor decision-making:
1. Incomplete survey of alternatives [we've got that in spades]
2. Incomplete survey of objectives
3. Failure to examine risks of preferred choice
4. Failure to reevaluate previously rejected alternatives
5. Poor information search
6. Selection bias in collecting information
7. Failure to work out contingency plans.
Complain about this comment
"the foam-flecked ravings of a fringe skeptic"
That's a nice neutral phrase for a supposedly objective BBC journalist. We Brits spell it "sceptic", and it's a wise thing to be. Talking of which - where's Richard Cable? Has he be sent for re-education?
Complain about this comment
Richard has been called in to see the headmaster.
Complain about this comment
Alas, more cracks appear in the shiny armor (rhetoric) of the "climate change gang". The writing is on the wall. People just don't believe the hoax anymore. Fact is, we don't know what the effects of increased CO2 concentrations are, nor what really drives climate change. All of the models which predict armaggedon assume a positive feedback in warming from water vapor (clouds) associated with an increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Fact is, we really don't understand the atmospheric water cycle well enough to accurately model it.
This is clearly evidenced by the fact that the "doomsday" models cannot be reconciled with the physical observations (i.e. satellite observations of temps in both the lower and upper troposphere). But lets not worry about the facts...
Dr. Roy Spenser has taken a novel approach - rather than creating a model and then trying to make it fit the real world observations, he started with the observations and created a more simplistic model. The model he has come up with fits the data very nicely and implies a strongly negative feedback (i.e. low sensitivity), rather then the base assumption in all the "doomsday" models - that feedback is positive and highly sensitive. Hmmm...something to ponder there.
I will admit my ignorance. The older I get and the more I learn, the more I realize that I don't know. Its quite arrogant to believe we are so smart we can predict the climate - or that we really understand the primary drivers behind climate change. Much less have the ability to "control climate change".
In reality, a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere could cause a dramatic rise in temperatures or conversly, due to the complexity, interrelations, feedbacks and mechnisisms we don't really understand or even currently know about, it (CO2 doubling) could usher in the next ice age. The Vostok Ice Cores show clearly that CO2 concentrations reached their peak just before the onset of the last several ice ages. We may also find that a doubling of Atmospheric CO2 would have a negligable effect on temperatures. We simply don't know.
Just because Prince Charles says its so, doesn't make it so. In fact, the fact that he says it makes me want to question it further. Same with Al Gore. Contrary to "consensus opinion" presented by the liberal media, the science is far from "settled".
The recent predictions (actually projections, far different from predictions), by both the Obama administration and the Met Office, underscore the politicization of the issue and the science. How we spend trillions of dollars is on the line. Clearly, there are many poised to make a lot of money from AGW and Climate Change - provided they can foster the hysteria to bring about emissions caps, subsidies and green hysteria.
Who can we trust? The alamists,lobbies and those others who are poised to "cash in" - or the skeptics, presumably funded by the oil companies. I don't have the answer to that, all I suggest is that eventually the truth will come out, it always does. Read both points of view and make up your own mind - and act accordingly. But lets not be too hasty in making long term and far reaching decisions based upon computer models of a very poorly understood chaotic system.
Complain about this comment
Isn't it wonderful to find any article on the BBC that is not by Nick Griffin and has something sensible to say on Climate change.
As anyone who follows e.g. "Watts Up with that", "Climate Audit" or even "Icecap" knows the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming has been pretty much blown apart. But still like the Monty Python's crazed knight it carries on however many arms or legs its loses with its relentless control of the media and the politicians pretty much intact.
Before we are all bankrupted wouldn't it be nice if we could persuade our rulers at least to set up some kind of balanced, independent overview that could ignore the hype and look at the facts.
Complain about this comment
The CCSP is junk science of the first order. Its exaggerated claims bear no resemblance to observations.
For an example of the the demolition of one aspect, characteristic of the rest see http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6327#comments
By the way, Dr Pielke is not a political scientist he is an environmental scientist. His 2008 paper with Chris Landsea and others, Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1900-2005, demonstrated that there is no trend in landfalling US hurricanes in any way attributable to climate change.
Regards
Paul
Complain about this comment
Well, we have a real world, real time experiment running, let's see where we are in a few decades time.
Complain about this comment
The sceptics obviously want the global-warming hypothesis to be false.
But one odd aspect of this debate is that the alarmists want the hypothesis to be true.
As in: "I'm pleased to tell you that your child is dead"
or: "I'm pleased to tell you that your cancer is worse than we thought"
They really seem to get off on all this bad news or even worse news. It's turned into an apocalyptic cult.
Complain about this comment
Richard's ill - but he should be back at some point in the next week or two. Thanks for asking after him, I'll let him know he's missed!
Complain about this comment
#11. "But one odd aspect of this debate is that the alarmists want the hypothesis to be true."
No, Id be more than happy for it to turn out to be a false alarm. I look at trends over decades, so I'm interested in what the next few decades tells us.
The physics (greenhouse effect) of the GHGs can be demonstrated in any school lab. Putting large amounts of additional GHGs into the atmosphere will, I think, will do something; the argument seems to be over what and how much.
But as Pielke Jr also makes a point of stressing, large scale changes to land use can also produce changes to climates. That also is anthropogenic climate change.
My position - as you know - is that what really matters is how any climate changes affect atmospheric precipitation patterns. Thinking that any changes are simply about it being x or y degrees warmer is simplistic.
Complain about this comment
"If the report's authors had bothered to look at more up-to-date research, Professor Pielke says in his blog,"
Odd that he says that when the NAS report didn't bother to look up more up-to-date research showing no significant difference if the analysis was done as they suggested.
He didn't say it then.
And he can always write a peer reviewed paper showing his stuff rather than post on a blog where he doesn't have to show any changes.
And why does the bloke turn comments off on his blog?
Complain about this comment
"But one odd aspect of this debate is that the alarmists want the hypothesis to be true."
Uh, nope.
"Your child doesn't have cancer! Be happy!"
Child later dies of cancer.
"Well, I don't like to give people bad news".
Yeah, that'll go.
Maybe it isn't that the climate scientists don't *want* AGW to be true, but that the universe is built so it IS true. And "want" has nothing to do with reality. After all, what is, is. And wishes and faith doesn't change this reality. We are free to ignore what our reason tells us but we are not free to ignore the abyss that stands before us and the consequences of ignoring it.
Complain about this comment
" 1. At 4:19pm on 19 Jun 2009, oldsepticsam wrote:
This Government has never got anything right , in regard to the new religion of climate change where any dissenters are heretics .I am
hanging on to my ice skates and hope to be ice skating on the Thames
by 2012. "
And in 2012, when the thames remains unfrozen, you will come here and say "I was wrong"?
Or will you have hidden away, never to be heard from again?
Complain about this comment
Complain about this comment
@yeah_whatever #16
Or will you have hidden away, never to be heard from again?
where are you, mate?
lmao
Complain about this comment
Global Temperature & CO2
------------------------
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/detrend:0.707/normalise/plot/esrl-co2/normalise
As shown in the above chart, it is true that both CO2 and global temperature increased from 1976 to 1998. However, if you look closer, there is no permanent relationship between global temperature and CO2.
CO2 has been monotonically increasing. However, mean global temperature is cyclic. At a time when the global temperature was at its warming phase, a relationship between CO2 and global temperature appeared to exist.
Fortunately, since 1998, the mean global temperature has started its cooling phase, and based on historical patterns it may continue for about 22 more years until about 2031. This prediction will be proved to be true in the next five years, when we face the effect of global cooling.
In the above chart, you see a perfect match between CO2 and global temperature. However, since 1998, they have started to move in opposite direction.
As a result, the world does not need to do anything with the CO2 in the air. Let plants use it to make food for animals and us!
Complain about this comment
View these comments in RSS