Five to watch in 2009
As the butterfly of 2009 emerges from the pupa of 2008, I thought it might be worth flagging up a few environmental themes and events to look out for during the year that lies ahead.
So here is my somewhat arbitrary and definitely non-exhaustive list of five to watch in 2009. I'd be glad of your input into what else is worth a look.
1. Apologies for being predictable; but politicking over climate change is going to figure high on the news agenda for much of the year.
By early June, negotiators will have compiled the first draft of a new UN agreement - a comprehensive global package including targets on greenhouse gas emissions, funding to help poor countries adapt to climate impacts, the transfer of "clean" technologies, money for forest protection, and much more.
The package is supposed to be finalised and signed off at the UN climate conference in December in Copenhagen.
Key things to look out for in the lead-in include what targets the US and Japan set themselves for reducing emissions by 2020, what kinds of targets developing nations indicate they'll be willing to adopt, the reaction of organisations lobbying for indigenous peoples and for wildlife to draft wording on reducing emissions by slowing deforestation, and whether the sums of money raised for adaptation look like getting anywhere near the $50bn per year ballpark that several reports have concluded is necessary.
The complexity is staggering. If it comes off, it will be by far the most complex environmental agreement ever concluded; if I were a negotiator, I would be getting all the sleep I could now.
2. While the UN process is firmly under the control of politicians, scientific bodies continue to look for new and better ways of gathering data about the important parameters of climate change; and 2009 will see the launch of satellites designed to answer some of the big outstanding questions.
The US Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) and Japan's Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) (see here) will both plot production and absorption of carbon dioxide across the Earth's surface in unprecedented detail.
The absorption side is particularly fascinating, as the information we have on the behaviour of carbon "sinks" - and how that behaviour may change in the future - is still annoyingly sketchy.
Comprehensive data on how forests take up carbon dioxide would also be politically important, enabling more accurate targeting of funds for the protection of trees.
Meanwhile the European Space Agency is planning to launch its ice-measuring satellite CryoSat-2 during 2009 - four years after the first Cryosat was destroyed by a fault during launch.
Among other things, this craft should provide better indications of whether warmer seas and air are accelerating the melting of ice from the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets - a factor that could generate significant changes in sea level over the coming century, but which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges is a major unknown.
3. Back on Earth, wildlife groups are denoting 2009 as Year of the Gorilla. The idea is to raise awareness about the factors causing most populations of this close human relative to decline - chief among them being the expansion of the human footprint.
Do these "years of the..." really work as awareness-raising tools? 2008 was variously declared as the year of the frog, year of the potato, and an extension to the year of the dolphin - there may have been a few others - but I'm not sure that the outlook for any of these really improved during the 12 months.
There are some hopeful signs for gorillas. The 10 range states recently concluded an agreement pledging, among other things, to prosecute poachers, establish reserves and minimise conflict between gorillas and humans.
Cameroon has just set up a new national park in a key area for the Cross River gorilla, one of the most threatened populations. But from Democratic Republic of Congo, we receive regular reminders of how fragile protection measures are rendered by the very human problem of civil conflict.
4. Early in the year, institutions connected to the life of Charles Darwin will be celebrating the bicentenary of the great man's birth, in a year that also marks 150 years since the publication of his seminal On the Origin of Species.
Parts of the book could have been subtitled On the Demise of Species; and I suspect Darwin would have understood the gorilla's problems rather well.
He certainly recognised that humans were taking species to and beyond the edge of extinction; but hinted that by concentrating on extinctions, we were missing the overall picture of natural decline:
"To admit that species generally become rare before they become extinct - to feel no surprise at the rarity of a species, and yet to marvel greatly when it ceases to exist, is much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the forerunner of death - to feel no surprise at sickness, but when the sick man dies, to wonder and to suspect that he died by some unknown deed of violence."
In other words, we should be noting the slide of common species into rarity as much as the final plunge into extinction; a thesis that the Year of the Gorilla patrons would no doubt heartily endorse.
5. The final of my five picks for 2009 takes us to the whaling grounds of the polar seas - and to the conference halls of Portugal, where this year's International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting takes place in June.
If this is a seminal year for climate change, it is no less important for whales and whalers.
For about a year and a half, various countries have been discussing whether a compromise package of reforms can be agreed between the various factions; and for a number of reasons, it appears that this initiative must reach a conclusion at this year's IWC meeting or be consigned to the graveyard where many previous attempts at reform lie interred.
The political obstacles are formidable and it is unclear whether all parties actually want an agreement.
If it does emerge, it will overturn in some way the moratorium on commercial whaling that has stood for more than two decades and which some cite as one of the biggest achievements of the conservation movement.
So that's five from me.
But what have I missed? What else do you think is shaping up as a key environmental issue for 2009?
I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~46~RS~)
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One of the key indicators will be attitude of the populace. While political leaders are still paying at least lip service, climate change is already showing signs of being old news. At a time that their involvement becomes critical, have people moved on to a new crisis of the moment.
There is a real danger that leaders will weigh this lack of political interest and commitment as they consider the expensive and fundamental changes that are necessary for any real change in global greenhouse gas emissions.
Signs abound of the start of this issue: signatories of the Kyoto Protocol not even coming close to their commitments; Universities that signed the AASHE commitment that haven't even made an honest start at the first step, their emission inventories; SUV sales are starting to rebound as gas prices drop and the US government pumps money into the finance wings of the automakers.
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You mentioned in a previous post, that the targets about curbing biodiversity loss are not going to be met by any world region: do you think that there will be anything new coming out of the Tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, in October?
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I think that 2009 will be the year that climate alarmists and environmental propagandists like Richard Black finally get their comeuppance by reality.
The climate will continue to cool, and with it will come the desperate rearguard action by the BBC Environmental Propaganda Unit to remove all reference to "global warming" in favour of "climate change". The Green Room will get the same blatent favouritism in giving a bully pulpit to scientifically and economically illiterate eco-alarmists calling in ever more shrill terms for scary reductions in population (without, of course, ever specifying exactly how this would be achieved - mass sterilizations anyone?), with more ridiculous linking of every trouble under the Sun to climate change from bird migrations to spurious losses in biodiversity. During 2009 the Sun itself will never vary at all, at least not according to the BBC.
Of course the hurricane seasons for the past two years have failed to provide the desperately needed superstorms that were supposed to be receiving in increasing numbers in our AGW-controlled world. And the BBC will continue to focus on the warming Arctic and fail to mention the increase in sea and land ice cover in Antarctica or the increasing size of glaciers in the Himalayas. The journos will ignore the increasing number of extremely well credentialled scientists who dispute the AGW story who if they are mentioned at all, will be put in the standard sandwich of climate alarmist-climate alarmist-sceptical scientist-climate alarmist-withering patronizing statement about sceptical scientist.
The results of climate models (but never the climate models themselves) will be reported as if they produced scientific data.
Stories generated from environmentalist corporations will be cut/pasted and quoted as indisputable fact in no need of analysis, criticism or any reasoned response and the proposed remedies (mainly involving crashing the Western economies under a new blizzard of eco-taxes and heavyhanded bureaucracy) treated as if they were carved into stone on Mount Sinai.
Every news story mentioning weather will continue to get the shrill undertone of alarm over climate, until one day the BBC Trust finds its testicular fortitude and having had enough of the flouting of its clear guidance on impartiality, starts sacking the journalists responsible.
And oh! What a happy day that will be.
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No need to apologize about being predictable Richard. I'm about to do the same.
I'll add Global Cooling as one to watch for 2009. The increasing spin to keep this myth alive will derail it.
We are ignoring it at our peril. With the ocean currents having turned to a negative phase, extended La Nina, lower sun output/activity (effects not well known but likely cooling) and all observations indicate cooling over the past few years and into the foreseeable future.
Crops will fail and growing seasons will reduce. More power will be required to keep us warm. Couple this with the economic problems and we could be in for a very grim future. I'm stocking up now while I have the chance.
I noticed you list Darwin in your list and wondered what he brings to the environment. Then I realize that after catastrophic Global Cooling it will be us Humans who will be endangered and see our natural demise through not being equipped to survive with the fittest.
Very best wishes for 2009.
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Having just added my comments I picked up a link on this page which took me to:
"Coral reef growth is slowest ever
Growth of corals in the Great Barrier Reef has slowed to the most sluggish rate in 400 years, researchers say" This is put down to Global Warming.
Then I noticed on that page a link to:
"Scientists have reported a rapid recovery in some of the coral reefs that were damaged by the Indian Ocean tsunami four years ago"
I guess Global warming must have beenresponsible for that.
Looks like the wheels are already spinning close to falling off.
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"Stories generated from environmentalist corporations will be cut/pasted and quoted as indisputable fact in no need of analysis, criticism or any reasoned response and the proposed remedies (mainly involving crashing the Western economies under a new blizzard of eco-taxes and heavyhanded bureaucracy) treated as if they were carved into stone on Mount Sinai."
The first line of the paragraph means anyone can ignore the rest of what BritinAussie says. What the heck is an 'environmentalist corporation'?
And then predictably, 'oh no' taxes and regulation. God forbid.
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Mr Black, I also have some predictions to look out for in 2008:
1, Global Warming doubters will increase in numbers.
2, Someone from the WWF will get around to including the recently discovered 100,000+ gorillas in the African highlands onto their current total of gorilla populations. It might also be beneficial to mention that gorillas are currently being devastated by the Ebola virus.
3, IPCC will be disbanded after a proper 'peer- review' analysis shows that the IPCC figures are nonsensical.
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If nothing else a little impartiality in the way the BBC presents information about Global Warming/Climate Change would be a bonus. When was the last time someone who valued accurate scientific data and not GI-GO Greenie hyped guesses allowed to speak on ANY BBC Production/Website?
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I expect the science of climate change will continue to frustrate the sceptics and that their reliance on outlying and/or short term data, rather than basic physics, will look even more flimsy at the end of 2009 than it does now.
The key warming trends in the climate will keep on going, regardless of all of the huffing and puffing that those in denial might manage or wish to be the case.
Increases in insurance premiums will offer a cold eyed guide to the seriousness of the problems faced by millions of households and farmers.
The scientific community is not in the least bit frightened of the BBC re-examining it's coverage of climate change, if anything all of the scientists I know would love the BBC to catch up with the science and to report the seriousness and urgency of the problem, without editors worrying what the public might think or want to hear.
In my opinion rapidly securing access to low carbon, affordable and reliable energy supplies - then using them efficiently - will become major pre-occupations for all politicians, businesses, journalists and voters this year, regardless of their views on climate change.
In reality, the state of the global economy will determine how fast action is really managed, but the need for a serious rethink of business as usual will become overwhelming and widely, if not universally, accepted.
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Where is the real science in the likes of Al Gore, Mann, Hansen, Holdren and so many biased followers.
There is nothing wrong with coal, nuclear, oil, gas power generation. CO2 is not a poison. What is bad is wind power which is a total con and should be banned IMHO. What does it supply? Little if anything beneficial. At a huge cost.
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The science of climate change is not a secret.
Please read the UN IPCC's 4th Assessment Report.
http://www.ipcc.ch/
This report has not only been produced by a very large number of credible, senior scientists but it was conservatively editted, before publication, by all of it's member governments, including the United States.
You can also read a grim assessment of the available science, and the threats to US national security posed by plausible climate change, that has ben produced by 11 retired generals and admirals in the US for the Military Advisory Board
http://securityandclimate.cna.org/
The scenarios covered by Andrew Marshall's Abrupt Climate Change report for the Pentagon also painted a consistly dreadful picture of the threats posed by climate change and I look forward to its republication when the new President takes over.
http://www.jyi.org/features/ft.php?id=446
It's key finding, that a precautionary "no regrets" strategy should be adopted, remains extremely sensible.
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As temperatures have been falling ( see all the main temperature recorders - Hadley centre, Giss, UAH ) since 2003 and there has been no net warming for ten years, the present theory of man made global warming is in effect dead.
None of the computer predictions saw the present cooling coming, in fact they predicted ever higher temperatures and a "tipping point".
Any scientific theory has to be proven true by measurements in the real world.
For the present cooling to occur must mean there is another driver of climate, other than CO2 because CO2 levels have continued to rise while temperatures have dropped.
Investing billions of dollars in researching a failed theory is obscene as is the reporting of it to get cheap headlines when that money could be invested in research into disease control, better sanitation and clean drinking water for millions of people.
How many people have to die before this madness is stopped
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Another interesting trend to watch is sunspot numbers - very low at the moment, as the Sun's magnetic activity has fallen dramatically and the next cycle - 24 - has got off to an extremely slow start.
Should the current short-term cooling trend begin to look like a longer-term trend over the next decade or so, I think this is a connection that should be investigated more seriously than it is at present.
Dr Prescott said: "In my opinion rapidly securing access to low carbon, affordable and reliable energy supplies - then using them efficiently - will become major pre-occupations for all politicians, businesses, journalists and voters this year, regardless of their views on climate change."
Low carbon, affordable and reliable - now this reminded me somehow of an old saying relating to software projects: "Good, fast and cheap - pick any two."
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Thanks for all your comments, and a Happy New Year to all.
Quite a few points that I'd like to pick up. Asterionella, I suspect the CBD meeting will see plenty of discussion on the biodiversity target and the reasons why it hasn't been met. As Sebastian Winkler points out here, governments are likely instead to highlight the actions they have put in place with the aim of curbing biodiversity loss. But, in the jargon, that's an output, not an outcome... and it will be interesting to see how keen governments are to adopt another set of targets.
Many of you, from different points of view, point up public attitudes to climate change as being something worth watching - and I suspect you are right, although of course in which direction opinions will move is an open question. The global snapshot published in December by the HSBC Climate Partnership suggests that public support for political action is strong but possibly declining. If that's true - and you always have to be wary of taking conclusions from a single poll, of course - is it because people have moved on to a new "crisis", perhaps economic, as Washburns suggest, or for other reasons? We can only guess, I think.
I wanted to pick up timjenvey's point on coral reefs. There's no contradiction, I think Tim, between the short-term recovery of reefs damaged by the Asian tsunami and what appears to be a longer-term decline in growth of Australian corals due to warming waters. One is a sudden, brutal event causing sudden, brutal damage to reefs; the other is a gradual change in conditions which would be expected to bring a gradual response from the organisms. And I don't think anyone in the field would ever hold up climate change as the only source of damage to reefs - overfishing and pollution, for example, are widely cited as key factors in their decline.
charmingSailor, I must disinter a comment I posted a few weeks back (in response to timjenvey):
"there is a bit of confusion in some circles about temperature trends which I think stems from an oversimplistic reading of data. You can take a graph for the last decade, see that 2008 was colder than 1998, draw a straight line between them and deduce that the world is cooling. This is misleading for two reasons. Firstly, inter-annual variations are greatly influenced by the El Nino Southern Oscillation. 1998 saw strong El Nino conditions, making it warmer than it would otherwise have been; 2008 saw the opposite, strong La Nina conditions, which have lowered temperatures. If you're looking for a long-tern underlying trend - natural or man-made - you must subtract these short-term cycles. A second, but related, reason is that because other short-term factors can also affect temperatures, discerning a trend means using a smoothed graph. These graphs from the Hadley Centre plot annual data with red bars, and the trend with a smoothed blue line."
Finally,
BritinAussie, if things go according to plan The Green Room will continue to reflect a range of thinking on all environmental issues, with an emphasis on new ideas and new angles. And if I am guilty of alarmism and sacked by the end of the year, as you request, I'll know whose door to come knocking on for alms.
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Interesting article for anybody that is interested:
http://bit.ly/JeRS
It describes climate change over millenia and has some graphs on temperature change / CO2 variances measured from Vostock, Epica and Gisp 2, plus tables comparing the various geological era / temperature / CO2. It also has a commentary on temperatures / climate change.
I haven't read it all yet but will do this evening
Happy New Year everybody!
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Thank you Richard you have reinforced my point perfectly, if you look at the trend on the Hadley center graphs that you have linked to, you will see that the trend from 1850 is rising steadily. That was the end of the little ice age and well before man was producing much in the way of extra CO2, so if you deduct that trend from the recent warming it does not look much does it?
By starting in 1850 ( a very short term cycle in relation the the age of the earth) it also misses out the medieval warm period which over 650 scientist from 380 different scientific organizations in 40 different countries say was warmer than the present warming. So is well within the range of normal variation.
Even if it is warmer now than in the recent past I have yet to see a scientific paper that will say that it is definitely caused by higher CO2. Even the IPCC reports admits there are many things we do not understand about the climate, so perhaps you could answer my main point.
How many millions of people are we going to allow to die because billions of Pounds (Dollars) are being spent on a theory that is not proved and may not be the cause anyway?
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Low carbon energy is already affordable and reliable.
In particular, it is worth noting that you don't have to pay for a very large army, navy and airforce or to be at the economic mercy of any number of dictators / unstable regions in order to tap the wind or the sun.
We know exactly when the sun rises and fairly accurately where the wind will blow, thanks to modern weather forecasting.
Granted both the electricity system and the existing energy market are heavily geared towards taking electricity from large fossil fueled power stations, but the present arrangements are far from perfect and in many cases extremely inefficient and outdated.
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Richard, and anyone else interested , here is a link to the science behind the poorly reported story aboutthe Great Barrier Reef.
http://bit.ly/2hMQ
To go back to earlier correspondence Richard, could you please explain where HadCrut get the data to input in to their models for the data concerning the continental US ?
With regard to the so called "concensus" offered by the IPCC , what is "peer review" worth , when it is conducted by co authors of the original paper ?
That is how the IPCC perform , and it does not stand up to scientific scrutiny or independence which is why the IPCC fidings are so discredited.
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How many scientists work on the IPCC ?
Take a look here :
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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The IPCC produces summaries of the science which have achieved a level of scientific concensus, but their published reports are openly political documents which have had to be approved by all of the endorsing governments, including the sceptical US government.
In this sense the IPCC does not produce documents that would be considered peer reviewed in the traditional sense, as the peer reviewed content, produced by the working groups and editors, has had to pass through a political filter before it can be published.
This process generally results in conclusions that are conservative, when placed in the context of the published science, but accurate enough to provide a minimum concensus baseline.
If you look at the scenarios for carbon emissions the peak emissions scenario in the IPCC's 3rd Assessment Report only reflected variations on business as usual, rather than emissions increasing significantly through the use of coal, etc. A non-political emissions scenario would have acknowledged the possibility that emissions would increase fairly significantly, as they have done in many countries, since 1990.
In a similar vein the estimated timescales proposed for increases in the extent of summer ice melt in the Arctic, mentioned in the recently published 4th Assessment Report, have already proven to be very optimistic.
This is not because the science or peer review process are failing, but because politicians do not like the social and economic implications of the full range of available science and have the final say on what gets published via the IPCC.
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Regarding climate, we musn't overlook the possibility of change that has nothing to do with human activity.To what extent will the 2008 "wobble" (if that's what it is) away from the warming trend - eg with an increase over 2007 levels in polar ice during the 2008 summer - turn into something more substantial? And linked to that, when will sunspots resume, to take us up from the minimum point of the 11 year cycle - is that not already overdue? A prolonged period of sunspot absence could eventually take us back into the mini ice age of the 17th century - the well-documented "Maunder minimum" when sunspots all but ceased for decades....
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Climate trends are based on 30 year averages. Individual years prove nothing in either direction.
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Richard. I could not agree more with your reply on coral reefs when you say "And I don't think anyone in the field would ever hold up climate change as the only source of damage to reefs". It’s good to see some balance from your perspective. (Just a little aside; the article specifies global warming and not climate change).
However, the BBC article only blamed global warming (and acidification as a result) and is a blatant attempt to create headline grabbing alarmism. I think this is the sort of reporting that some folks on this blog refer to as bias.
It would be a great service to everybody if you could inject some of your balance into these stories before they go to print.
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It would be good if the BBC stopped being biased, responded adequately to being accused of biased reporting and gave up repeating all the non-scientific propaganda on global warming (now called climate change).
I could provide countless examples of this bias, but time is short and some others have already given examples.
I know weather is not climate, but the examples of global cooling are becoming irresistible (PDO, AMO, La Nina, sunspots). CO2 has done all the warming it can do and natural forces changing the climate are becoming more and more evident. A cooling climate will be disasterous for civilisation, whereas history has shown how beneficial warming is.
I must go now and put more logs on the fire and get the oil tank topped up.
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Harveyalan #22- Firstly, perusal of the historical temperature record will show several previous occaisions of wobbles away from warming trends. Hence your comment shouldn't start that way.
Secondly, record ice formation is due to record ice melt, ie more melts, there is more space to be made up once it gets cold. Moreover, there is less and less multi-year ice on the sea, meaning the ups and downs of ice coverage will increase.
Thirdly, there isn't any evidence for a long term decrease in solar output, nor for such a thing happening with the loss of sunspots. Many people like to claim there is, but at the moment have no evidence to support it.
Toughneilhyde- I would appreciate it if you stopped lying. Claiming that the IPCC doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny or independence is completely false.
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drmattprescott says that "increases in the extent of summer ice melt in the Arctic, mentioned in the recently published 4th Assessment Report, have already proven to be very optimistic" and then says that "Climate trends are based on 30 year averages. Individual years prove nothing in either direction." This sounds like having your cake and eating it (it's only just over a year since the IPCC report, so how do we know the IPCC report is very optimistic, don't we have to wait 30 years?). The Arctic ice is doing very well at the moment (less melt last summer and increasing as expected this winter) and the Antarctic ice extent is greater than it has ever been (since satellites enabled it to be measured).
Time will show what an enormous and dangerous hoax (fraud) the IPCC and its supporters (and that includes the BBC) have perpetrated on the rest of us with the mantra of man-made global warming (climate change).
It needs a truly impartial examination of the evidence, not reliance on worthless computer models.
And whilst I'm at it, it would be good if Richard Black could explain to us all how the Hadley Centre manages to produce those temperature graphs that he likes. Nobody is allowed to see the adjustments to the raw temperature data that is used by P Jones at Hadley to manipulate the temperatures to give the warming. Perhaps Richard, you have access to the workings of Hadley that no-one else has. Government (taxpayer) funded work of the Hadley should be freely available to us taxpayers. Why is it kept secret?
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Dr Prescott: "Climate trends are based on 30 year averages. Individual years prove nothing in either direction."
Yes, I'd generally agree that the longer the trend, the more significant it is. Right now, we've had less than a decade of "not-much-warming" and a couple of relatively cool years, so it really is early days. Maybe there will be significant warming again after 2009, as the Hadley Centre et al are saying, or we may be in for a longer spell of cooling; to be honest, I don't think anyone really knows. But I get the impression that the current "blip" or "wobble", or whatever the most appropriate term is, was not generally foreseen by the climate modellers; it has been after the fact, that we've started to hear a lot more about ocean cycles masking the long-term warming signal, etc.
Re energy, I'd agree whole-heartedly that the promise of alternatives to oil and gas is that they offer energy security. It's just that in the short term, will they be adequate to fill the gap left by our ageing power stations when they go offline? I'm no expert, but haven't heard much to give me confidence yet that they will. Long-term, I think the future is bright (!) for solar in particular. The Sun throws vast amounts of energy our way every second - our much-vaunted human ingenuity must surely be up to the task of tapping into this bonanza to fill our future energy needs.
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@PAWB46:
I think you a flogging a dead horse with this one. The Met Office in the form of John Mitchell has constantly refused to hand over correspondence with the IPCC, requested under the Freedom of Information Act by David Holland, claiming he was acting in a personal capacity, despite the Met Office trumpeting their involvement with the IPCC. Kind of makes you wonder what Mitchell is hiding (my turn with the tinfoil hoodie!) The IPCC require that all correspondence is kept for a minimum of 5 years.
For further details refer to Climate Audit : http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3208
But you are right - the Met Office works for us
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Dr Prescott: "Climate trends are based on 30 year averages. Individual years prove nothing in either direction."
The modern temperature products from the Ministry of Defence(HadleyMet/CRU) and the Pentagon(NASA/GISS) are suspect.
The satellites tell a different story "but, but, but we need 30 years of data to detect a trend" (even though James Hansen went to Congress with his sky is falling rubbish based on only 8 years of "data")
OK then. Here is a 45 year temperature trend taken over an era (1935 to 1979) when CO2 levels were rising just as steeply as today:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1935/to:1979/trend
The NASA/GISS product from the same era yields the same result.
CO2 is not causing our current (tiny, tiny) warming. It would be nice if a few bob were spent on some definitive science that could produce some empirical evidence that CO2 does *anything* to the "global temperature". Anything at all. No computer game guesses either thanks - we are already attempting economic suicide based on the results of those fantasies.
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Of course we need "alternative" energy, for more than a few reasons, but....
Not 30 years to early. Not to the detriment of the development cycle just because companies can cash in on their, currently inefficient, product via subsidies and political adventuring. Not by ignoring innovation and pushing mediocrity.
To have coal/oil/nuclear power stations constantly "turning", so as to kick in when the wind turbines don't, makes a mockery of current "thinking" on generation.
If you want to lower the amount of plant food that humanity emits....
A massive solar array - on any desert with a coast - whose output is used to crack seawater into hydrogen which can then utilize our existing infrastructure to get the product to market via existing channels - supertanker - port - tankers - petrol station - without upsetting the precious status quo and those profiting from it.
This is what humanity has always done. We always move on from the fuels of the past. We progress, it is what sets us apart from the lentils. We learn and, when we have escaped drudgery, we clean up after ourselves. The only credit missing right now is the one we should give ourselves and our ability to adapt, mutate and survive.
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Post 26 calcination:
I will not go down to your true believer response of an adhominem.
Answer this :
Chapter 9 of AR4 is the key scientific aspect of the IPCC theory, how many scientists make up that chapter ?
Of the total number of those scientists involved in Chapter9, which of them were co authors of the papers which are claimed to be peer reviewed ?
Not a lie , just an analysis of the facts.
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CuckooToo:
My last comment must have got moderated out of existence. Thanks for your support regarding the Met Office and Hadley not releasing the data.
I request Richard Black, with the weight of the BBC behind him, to investigate why these publicly funded organisations operate in secret and won't tell us how they manipulate their data to get the temperature graphs.
In all other areas of science (except the military and areas of national security), openness of data and methods is vital to ensure good scientific practice and to avoid fraud.
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In my opinion, those who dispute that climate change is real and man-made tend to use the same tactic to try and shoot holes in the other sides claims.
When someone says that climate change is real and man-made, and provides evidence, the skeptics dismiss it as an alarmist hoax, a conspiracy theory, or just plain mistaken. They dismiss any evidence as being exaggerated, misinterpretated, or incorrect.
However, they seem to expect everyone else to believe their own alarmist conspiracy theories, often involving shady government masterplans to tax us more or even sterilise the population (!), or some sort of carve-up by sham scientists. They also expect people to believe in their evidence - that their evidence is somehow immune from being accused of the same exaggeration, misinterpretation or mistakes.
There is echos of the Creationism vs. Science "debate". Creationists will attack any perceived flaws in scientific theories or evidence, whilst simply rebuffing any suggestion that their theories or evidence that prove we were created by a supreme being is mistaken.
Anyway, on the subject of climate change, the climate is far too complicated for us to be able to fully understand it. As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, scientists are still collecting new data about the climate that may reinforce or dispute current theories. For the meantime, I'll believe the likes of the IPCC. At least they seem a bit more believeable and less paranoid than the climate change deniers, for the reasons I touched upon above.
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Post 35 Caleylujah:
I think you perhaps misunderstand the view of the majority of so called climate sceptics.
I and most of the people I know of a similar opinion believe that the climate is changing, it always has and always will .
What most sceptics dispute is the role man has played in that climate change.
So far there is no definitive observed signal of CO2 induced climate change , only models.
It is a bandwagon which has been jumped on , but when the data is analysed , such as the dreaded Hockey Stick , it has been proved that it riddled with faults in the code.
Heard of GIGO ?
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Caleylujah:
I don't think you'll find any person who doesn't believe in climate change. After all, in a chaotic system like the earth's climate, it would be amazing if it were stable and never changed. However, the current reasonably warm climate is not unusual compared with the climate of the last 10,000years. Somertimes it has been warmer, sometimes it has been colder. Fortunately for us, the climate has warmed since the Little Ice Age, without any intervention of humans. There is ample historical evidence for natural climate change, but none for man-made climate change. All the supposed "evidence" for man-made climate change comes from computer models, and computer models are not evidence.
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Thanks for all your comments, as always. Three of you asked me about specific things:
charmingSailor, I can't really answer your main point because I'm not sure what it is. Your initial comment dealt with decadal variability which is clearly linked to ENSO. But your second comment refers to much longer timescales when different natural cycles such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation are at play, as well as the rise in greenhouse gas concentrations that we have witnessed.
One clarification I could make when you write "I have yet to see a scientific paper that will say that it is definitely caused by higher CO2" is that last year's IPCC report concluded: "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th Century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." And "very likely" in IPCC-speak means "more than 90% probability".
toughNeilHyde and PAWB46, you both ask about how the Hadley Centre compiles its long-term datasets and analyses. I think that if you begin on the part of their website relating to the datasets and follow the appropriate links you will find all the answers you need either on the site or linked from it. Corrections, it seems to me, are documented in quite some detail.
I'm intending to post more on the "sceptical" side of climate science in the next couple of weeks, by the way. But let me throw in a general observation here. You can comment on what you like on this blog, and so long as it doesn't break the house rules it'll be posted. But the blog is supposed to be about all environmental issues rather than about climate science, and aimed at the general reader rather than the specialist. There are plenty of other blogs out there that deal exclusively with climate science, and it might make more sense to do detailed postings on those sites. There's no way for example that I could or would get engaged, CuckooToo, in issues such as how the Hadley Centre responds to FoI requests - too detailed for this blog, and frankly, I suspect, rather tedious for the person who comes here rather than, say, climateaudit. I'm not saying these issues aren't important, by the way, just that this is probably not the best place for that detailed coverage. There are lots of other environmental things that merit discussion - as many self-styled "climate sceptics" have reminded me down the years - and so I would urge broadening the scope of comments as much as possible.
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Richard Black at 4.33:
On the point of the secrecy surrounding the Hadley Centre methods, only someone like you and the BBC can generate the publicity to get them to reveal their methods so that they can be replicated (in the true way of science).
On the point of evidence, the IPCC "very likely", meaning 90% probability, is just their opinion. The 90% is not a probability in the statistical sense. It is an opinion based on the results of their computer models, which, because the models do not adequately represent the natural phenomena of clouds, ocean currents, solar wind etc, can only come up with CO2 as the climate driver. And even then, the models have to use an arbitrary positive feedback to get the warming due to CO2. There is no scientific evidence behind the IPCC claims.
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Richard,
I think that’s a reasonable comment, but it is very difficult to get the BBC to report on issues that are not pro-AGW. The fact that the Met Office refuses to answer FOI questions relating to correspondence between the Met Office and the IPCC should be investigated and reported, but the BBC ignores the story, whilst still claiming they are unbiased. The BBC too often prints press releases and calls it reporting (present company accepted). For example, the report of Manns latest Hockey Stick was almost word for word what Mann himself had provided as a press release (but again, no follow up story telling the public that Mann had got it wrong again).
You are quite correct of course when you say this is an environmental blog not a climate change blog, but currently the 2 are almost inseparable, especially when the media continues to link almost all stories to climate change.
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toughneilhyde- not an ad-hom at all. Merely a statement of fact. Your post merely claimed that the science was wrong, but you didn't add any evidence about the science.
Oddly enough, you also suggest that there is corruption in the world of climate change researchers, which certainly counts as an ad-hom, but its ok when you use them?
Furthermore, people moaning about Manns latest hockey stick being wrong have no evidence for their case either.
Making claims on the internet is easy, but backing them up is a lot harder.
I commend Richard for his measured replies. I note he has pointed you towards the Hadley centre website which I was about to do anyway.
As for the post topic, I suspect that global fisheries will be rather important, given that we seem to be over fishing, with over two thirds of fish stocks either collapsed or overexploited, i.e. will collapse if nothing is done.
http://simondonner.blogspot.com/2008/11/farming-oceans.html
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Calcination,
There is plenty of evidence to show Mann and others got their Hockey Sticks wrong. The NAS, Wegman and others including Climate Audit have all produced evidence to show the Hockey Stick is at most a double blade and not the shape acting as poster boy for the climate alarmists.
With regards to the rest of your comment, I wholeheartedly agree that we need to curb our overexploitation of the seas and lack of respect for the earth is a very bad thing (that was not meant to sound patronising btw), but blaming the rise in recorded temperatures towards the end of the last century on man is simply ridiculous
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Signs of the Times for 2009:
The climate change skeptics will iterate and trumpet their old adage louder that ever before without any further argument.
1. Laboratory experiments showing clear heat capture capacity of Greenhouse Gases is not applicable outside laboratory, the heat caption vanishes outside test tubes.
2. Lage holes on the ground of fossil fuel extracted materials become transparent and vanish from the system forever, there is no more carbon effect once it is burned.
3. Forests need to be cut down to last tree and blue fin tuna will be hunted 50% above reproduction rates as God or evolution creates more fish for us as much as we can kill with no need to worry about extinction.
4. The climate change skeptics argue that there is no long term trend in coral growth, the decrease of coral growth since 1990 is insignificant aberration and nothing to worry. The acidification does not exist in any effective way to disturb aquatic life.
5. Sea ice keeps melting as there are more sunspots in the sky. When spot numbers go down, we can forget about their worrying effect and concentrate on claiming that climate is cooling and pollution does nothing.
The climate skeptics, where are your vocal chords you need to win the argument iterating more and screeming louder your old adage and misrepresentations.
Regards,
Veli Albert Kallio
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Post 41:
Sorry , I only base my opinion on what I have read myself. Suggest that you begin yours in the following locations:
http://www.climateaudit.org/ will show where the GISS temperature plots had to be corrected.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/ will show where the temp measuring instruments in the US are not up to standard...which is fed in to HadCrut models.
Then try Lord Monkton, then the Oregon petition and a paper used by HM Treasury [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
If you need any more , just let me know.
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agwbsdotcom wrote: "A massive solar array - on any desert with a coast - whose output is used to crack seawater into hydrogen which can then utilize our existing infrastructure to get the product to market via existing channels - supertanker - port - tankers - petrol station - without upsetting the precious status quo and those profiting from it."
Now that's the sort of bold idea I like. As always, though, the challenge will be how to get "there" from "here".
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Alex-
Diverting some of the billions spent on the "research" (the hidden, spurious or repeated) that has so far presented.... ZERO empirical evidence that CO2 does/did/can do anything to "global temperatures" should be sufficient. The subsidies given out to the energy company buddies of MPs for windmills and the other inefficiencies passed off as "progressive, green, alternative, etc," re-channelled would help.
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@VeliAlbertKallio wrote:
As a sceptic on AGW who believes we must conserve energy and protect our environment, I feel I must respond to your points.
1. As far as I am aware the Earth is not a test tube. The atmosphere is far to complex to model in a laboratory or a computer. Therefore, laboratory experiments cannot duplicate the real world. The CLOUD experiment will show something of what is actually happening with clouds and point the way towards a better understanding of how clouds and water vapour affect the climate, but even this positive step towards a better understanding won't tell us everything.
2. We do need to find an alternative to fossil fuels, but I sincerly believe wind and solar is not the answer, because they are too unreliable. I was recently in the Canaries and saw wind turbines never turning for a week. What provides the energy when the turbines don't turn? The answer is probably nuclear, but the constant call by the greens for "renewables" is deflecting funding away from the only reliable source of energy we may have in the future. I had hoped that Steorn would be the answer, but I guess that has not lived up to it's initial promise.
3. I sincerely hope that man does come to it's senses and realise that we can't continue to cut down trees and eat the last piece of tuna, because if we don't we will all perish anyway. The green movements lust for agro-everything has shown us that trying to turn plants into fuel is most definitely not the way to go, but then any idiot could have seen that one coming.
4. Coral growth and health is affected by pollution and rising temperature, but the rise is temperature is a natural occurance affecting the coral. Pollution is a completely different matter.
5. The melting of sea ice does not affect seal level as it floats. The balance of ice over the world has remained unchanged since records began. Check this for yourself and don't rely on RealClimate and the like
All the best
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CuckooToo, BritinAussie, charmingSailor, timjenvey, globalclaptrap, toughNeilHyde and agwbsdotcom (love the name): We must get together! Have I missed anyone?
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Forces of Evil Joining Hands!
Well, if the climate change skeptics above are joining their forces to make an alliance of foolishness to produce a stronger elixair of their concentrated brain juices to attack idea of warming climate from emissions...
1. The immense holes dug on the ground by coal and oil extraction operations, it is a bit like holocaust deniers, to claim the black stuff disappears in the air and is infitely diluted, no longer part of the earth system. How many deniers have seen a coal pit?
2. The dogma of infinite pollution dilution for our insatiable consumption and growth is the doctrine of climate change deniers. 100 billion people with 100 billion cars is just OK. How many deniers have seent growth of car numbers in Brazil, China and India?
3. Even climate change deniers say there are clear signs of global warming. So there are reason why the Arctic Ocean sea ice melted in 2007 far beyond any in recorded history. I have never heard clear causative for a reason from climate change deniers why then the Arctic keeps losing its glaciers, sea ice and permafrost. Has any denier ever visited Greenland and met its people?
4. Nowadays the climate change deniers have started agree that we need to find alternatives to fossil fuels, but no wind, no solar as these are too bad. What then? If the Western Europe extracts uranium ore to run power stations , so then should Iran too. Why they are advised by Europe to use solar cells if nuclear energy is bad for them? If so, it is only because skeptics advocate that Iran, Pakistan and India can develop using coal to fuel the grow their economies.
5. European Commission has manifestly proven itself of not being eco-alarmist as the climate change deniers say, but given in to peoples' greed to stuff their mouths with blue fin tuna at over 50% their natural reproduction rate. Fried chicken seem to be falling from the sky to the plates as we wish, or more accurately, fish jumping from the sea to our dinner plate. As sonar technology has been perfected to detect the last individual fish catches are stable. How many have visited the African fishermen deprived of their food by empty sea?
The empire strikes back with these thoughts and ask others join under flag of VeliAlbertKallio to defeat force of darkeness.
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@ VeliAlbertKallio
1. Nobody, AFAIK, is claiming that coal doesn’t pollute, but big steps are being made to reduce the pollution, but the longer the Environmentalists divert funds into “renewables” the longer this will take. Many countries such as Poland rely on coal and do not have the infrastructure to use alternative fuels. Should Poland abandon coal and let it’s citizens freeze on the promise of unreliable renewable energy? Where would Poland find the money to build new power stations?
2. 100 billion people? Not sure where that figure comes from, but haven’t you hit the nail on the head with this claim? Is the real problem with pollution simply that there are too many people for this world? But where to start reducing population? The Chinese tried to ban couples having more than one child, but were attacked by other countries for human rights infringements.
3. I have never denied that recorded temperatures have increased towards the end of the last century, but there are many natural reasons why this should be so. Despite Manns best efforts to show otherwise, the MWP did exist, we know that the Vikings farmed in Greenland and we know that a place called Doggerland existed around 20,000 years ago. The world has been warmer – not even the global warm-mongers can deny this. The melt at the Arctic has been recorded since 1979 by NSIDC, so hardly a long time. There are records of ships navigating the Arctic stretching back hundreds of years, so again evidence that the Arctic has been warmer in the past.
4. I think you will find most sceptics say wind and solar are too unreliable, not bad. They require 100% back up. I have personally seen wind turbines not turn for a week because the wind isn’t strong enough (in the canaries, at the coast). Wind turbines also have to be shut down if the wind is too strong. Exactly how do we provide energy if the wind turbines don’t turn? I don’t think anybody is advocating more coal fired stations, but we have to do something to provide energy. Nuclear is the obvious answer but greens don’t like that either. I just wish Greens would make a realistic proposal that they do like.
5. Again the problem here seems to be overpopulation and greed rather than global warming.
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Cuckootoo# 42- Unfortunately, the WEgman report didn't actually say the hockey stick was wrong, merely that there were some statistical errors, which when corrected, produced, you guessed it, a hockey stick!
I am glad we agree about over-exploitation of the planet. There are a number of measures such as recycling and efficiency increases, (house insulation comes to mind) as well as solar power farms of the sort pushed by everyone from large corporations to greenies like Monbiot, that can be implemented in the next few years that would help with global warming and people pockets. If we could persuade the government and/ or companies to take more interest, I can live with your lack of acceptance of the science behind global warming.
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@calcination
Wegmans reported
"In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and
the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling. We also comment that they
were attempting to draw attention to the discrepancies in MBH98 and MBH99, and not to do paleoclimatic temperature reconstruction. "
"In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature
reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface. This committee does not believe
that web logs are an appropriate forum for the scientific debate on this issue."
"It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent. Moreover, the work has
been sufficiently politicized that this community can hardly reassess their public
positions without losing credibility. Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis."
Seems pretty clear to me and given that North (NAS) stated on record that he agreed with Wegman seems to indicate that the HS was completely wrong, unless it is possible to have a MWP that is warmer than present still producing a single blade.
Read it for yourself:
http://bit.ly/wJ9t
I absolutely agree that over-exploitation of the planet is a bad thing and I think you will find that most sceptics think the same. Good to find some common ground :)
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To watch for 2009:
It will be a warmer year than last despite a short-lived la nina in the early part of the year, much to the dismay of the sceptics whose entire position is now banked on global cooling.
I also think arctic sea ice will reach a lower winter maximum than it did last year, but I predict the sceptic blogs will be glaringly silent on this.
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I'm not banking on warming or cooling, weather happens, climate changes, ice melts, water freezes
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@l4dbill
According to Arctic Research Center, University of Illinois, 30 years of satellite data global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.
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CuckooToo
I do agree that renewables have their limits and therefore I have campaigned 50% nuclear 50% renewables as replacement. Besides, philosophical views there is the issue of capacity constraint. If all replacement energy were to be done by windmills, queues to get them would grow very long. But same applies for nuclear too. There is a lack of people and manufacturing capacity that only would be worse if all new power would be switches off. Fortunately, many new technologies have been developed to increase number of suppliers. I would never suggest turning lights off, unless there were some clear catastrophic change underway, such as the Amazon dessiccation or ice sheet destabilisation, permafrost seeping out lots of CH4 or CO2.
It is also important that Iran gets the energy it needs and produces its own fuels knowing its frequent skirmishes with USA and UK wheter it is Iraq or Afghanistan border demarkation which make European supplies of nuclear fuels unreliable. After all, what do the English military boats have to do in Iran's waters near Basra, did Iran bring its boats to sail in Thames estuary? Fortunately, Iran is going to get unbiased support from Russia and China to sort its nuclear power generation out and provide some oversee to its actions that is less politically tainted than ours that keeps the lights on Teheran without any reference to elections taking place in the UK or USA.
If Europe and USA want to help Iran to develop without nuclear power and without extending coal power, let them pay all the wind and solar energy power required by Iran if both nuclear and coal are perceived unpalatable to the West.
I think China has sorted out its population growth and keeps its people fed in comparison to India which very soon does not have enough free soil left to feed its ever growing number of people. Much of them already being fed by fossil water from the Himalayas or ground aquifers that may run out. What's the point of rights in producing people if you can't later feed them? You need to be some sort of nihilistic admirer of the Third Reich if you think it is OK to produce people just later to let them die due to lack of any ability care and feed them. Population control is important issue in conservation of biodiversity through land management and urbanisation which both deprive non-homo sapiens quota of land.
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Re 55:
That's more like according to that abysmal dailytech article.
Every year in the last 30 years has seen global sea ice reach 1979 levels at some point. But the long term trend is down.
In particular the long term summer arctic sea ice trend shows significant decline and at the rate it's going it will be gone within our liftimes, let alone if it accelerates.
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@VeliAlbertKallio
You see, I don'y think you can have 50% renewables and 50% nuclear, because renewables require 100% back up
Your comments on population and other countries having nuclear power are relevant and I really don't have a problem with much of the comment.
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@l4dbill
No, it's according to the Arctic Research Center, University of Illinois. Not sure if you are denying this fact out of misunderstanding or you have proof to show the Arctic Research Center, University of Illinois is incorrect.
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59:
The Arctic Research Center have announced nothing of the sort because it isn't "news". Like I said - global sea ice reaches 1979 levels at some point every year. The long term trend is down.
The source of this "news" you are talking about is a dailytech article and this claim about 1979 spread like wildfire through certain sites.
I suppose if you got this "news" from a site such as icecap.us which had just lifted text from the dailytech article verbatim you could very well have got the wrong impression that something newsworthy had been made by the Arctic Research Center.
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@l4dbill
My understanding is the chart shown is taken from data provided by the Arctic Research Center, University of Illinois.
The data is either right or wrong, it can't be both.
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It's the argument that is wrong. The data is correct.
When every year has seen a a period where global sea ice level has reached 1979 levels, there's nothing of note in it also happening in 2008.
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@l4dbill
OK, the data is correct, so this must mean you agree with the results.
The overall effect of rising temperature in the Arctic has had no discernable effect on globel sea ice level
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I've posted a response from the Illinois University team on the sea ice data at the top of a new thread.
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