SciBlogs

Posts Tagged IPCC

Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going Gareth Renowden Jan 05

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

Here’s the podcast you’ve all been waiting for — The Climate Show New Year special. Glenn and Gareth review the big climate stories of 2012, discuss at the big picture post Doha, and peek into their transcontinental Skype-powered crystal ball to prognosticate on the next 12 months. The three sections were recorded shortly before Christmas for Glenn’s New Year Things You Need To Know for 2013 summer series on Radio Live. The first two aired last week – the final section will be broadcast on Wednesday, so consider this an exclusive preview.

Climate Show Podcast special

PS: My reference to CO2 at 400 ppm in 2013 should have been qualified with where it will happen — which is northern hemisphere, high (Arctic) latitudes.

The Doha Gateway: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair cindy Dec 11

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

Where we are, where we should be and the consequences. Climate Action Tracker’s graphic on our future choices.

And so. Another set of climate talks done, this year dusted with Doha sand and labeled the “Doha Gateway”.  I’m not sure what they’re a gateway to,  certainly no immediate improvement to the climate. The final hours were bizarre, to say the least.  We began the day on Saturday with a text much improved from the day before, but with some major issues outstanding.  Ministers wrangled behind closed doors for most of the day, changing bits of text here and there.

We were preparing for Russia who, with Kazakhstan, Belarus and the Ukraine, were set to continue the talks way into Saturday night.   They were holding out in the informals, furious about the discussions on hot air.

Hot air

The “Russian factor” is one those of us who’ve been involved for a few years are all too familiar with. Just when you think there’s general agreement, in come the Russians who manage to drag the talks on for hours.

“Hot air” has been major problem with the Kyoto Protocol for years.  Somehow, the Russians managed to get the Kyoto negotiators to agree to a baseline of 1990, before the collapse of the former Soviet Union, which meant millions of tonnes of carbon credits ended up in the hands of Eastern European countries, bringing them a handy income, and other countries an easy and cheap option to do nothing at home and buy cheap hot air.  Russia has 6Gt of hot air – that’s how much it’s been cheating the atmosphere.

In Durban and Doha, New Zealand has sided with this team against the wish of the rest of the world to make sure that this “hot air” didn’t get carried over into Kyoto’s second commitment period (CP2).

A report released last week by Climate Analytics showed that if this hot air was allowed, governments could meet their pledges, buy hot air and continue emitting on a business as usual pathway to 2026.  The Ukraine argued that they needed their hot air credits as their economy was growing, but the report showed that they would have to have an amazing 11.6% annual growth in GDP to do so. I don’t think anyone expects Ukraine to have such a boom economy.

In practice there are few who can benefit from their hot air surplus carried over from CP1 to CP2 are not many: Australia, Norway and the Ukraine.  New Zealand would have had some too, from our Kyoto forests, but we’re not in CP2 so we can’t use them anyway. At the end of the day, while the carry-over from CP1 to CP2 was allowed, many governments signed a political declaration as part of the agreement that they wouldn’t buy this hot air anyway. Even Japan signed it – but of course NZ didn’t.

The killer for Russia and New Zealand were the “elegibility” rules, where it was decided that governments outside Kyoto would not be allowed access to the carbon markets it set up. The New Zealand delegation was at the heart of the earlier draft of the text seen on Friday morning that had every government and its dog allowed access to Kyoto’s Flexible Mechanisms.

But overnight on Friday night that the Ministers put a stop to that, so NZ was left out in the cold.  While we could, on the face of it, continue to trade hot air to meet our “target”, we run the risk that the credits may well not be eligible for emissions under the post 2020 global agreement as the rules for that haven’t yet been settled.

When the final plenary began, to everyone’s surprise, the somewhat flambouyant Qatari Minister Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah gaveled it all through.  Watch the beginning of the webcast – it was quite something.  He ignored the Russian flag being pounded on their table and simply declared the Doha Gateway agreed.  It was the first bold move this former OPEC president had made throughout the entire talks – if he’d bashed heads together a bit earlier we could have achieved a lot more.

Russia was furious, and the US made reservations, but they were simply told that all of it would be noted in the report.  There are precedents for such action, such as with Bolivia in Cancun. In 1992 the chair ignored the Saudis and gaveled the UNFCCC itself through when the Saudi flag was still clearly up.

Ratching up emissions cuts

Another vaguely positive outcome for the Kyoto Protocol CP2 agreement was the review by April next year of the adequacy of commitments under the IPCC’s 25-40% recommendation.  This leaves open the option of Europe finally agreeing to go to 30%, something it can easily do.

Of course Kyoto, as Tim Groser argues, doesn’t cover many countries at all, and certainly a small chunk of global emissions.   The global deal is on track to be agreed by 2015, but won’t come into effect until 2020. All the hot air from Groser about working on a global deal essentially means we’re off the hook until 2020, apart from our meagre pledge that remains “conditional” on a global deal.  As I’ve said before, the best thing Groser could have done to help that global deal get through was to sign up to Kyoto’s CP2 to show good faith.

 Finance, loss and damage

The most disappointing part of the Doha was the decision to simply keep talking on the major issue of Finance.  Governments agreed in 2009 to, by 2020, contribute a total of $100bn a year to help the developing world develop clean energy and adapt to climate change, but the money is still not forthcoming.  Indeed at the beginning of Doha there wasn’t enough money to pay the secretariat for another year.

The trade-off here was the inclusion of the “loss and damage” terminology in the final text, where the US had been fighting to keep it off the table.  While again, like the finance section, the agreement is to simply keep talking about what to do on Loss and Damage, this was a blow to the US.

To sum up, nothing was done in Doha that will immediately stop the relentless rise of global emissions.  There were some agreements to agree sometime in the future.   The meeting was never going to achieve much, but to get Kyoto’s CP2 done, and blocking the “cheaters” like NZ and Russia out of carbon trading without an emissions target was the biggest win.

For us, no doubt John Key and his pals will be happy with the fact that there’s little to change our somewhat dubious status of having the sixth fastest growing emissions in the OECD.

Our government’s “drill it mine it frack it” policy can continue unabated, our foresters can continue to replace plantations with dairy and we don’t really face any pesky global rules that will make us increase our targets before 2020.  How our ETS will look after 2015 remains to be seen, as we won’t be able to trade our way through it.

As I left Doha, contemplating the 3-4degC world the next generations will face unless more action is taken, I was reminded of Percy Bysse Shelley’s famous “Ozymandius” which somehow seems apt:

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

A change is gonna come: no Arctic sea ice and our planet with a different climate Gareth Renowden Aug 24

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

The crunch is coming. Before the end of this month, or very soon after, the Arctic sea ice will set a new record summer minimum for area and extent, by any measure. The only question remaining is by how much 2007′s record will be beaten. For the rest of the world, those of us who aren’t habitually glued to the Arctic Sea Ice Blog (where Neven’s counting the dominoes as they fall — one, two, three, four, five, six so far), or who aren’t checking the wonderful images from space that NASA assembles into an Arctic mosaic, or in the Greenpeace team hanging on to a Russian oil drilling rig, we have a simple lesson to learn. The climate of the northern hemisphere has changed, and with it the climate of the planet. And we have precious little idea of how that change is going to affect all of our futures.

Here’s the University of Bremen’s map of the Arctic sea ice today. You might want to commit it to memory, because in years to come this will look like a bumper year…

Bremen20120823

I’ve discussed what this means for the climate of the northern hemisphere before — in fact, I’ve been banging on about it more or less since 2007′s record loss of ice — but Joe Romm at Climate Progress provides a handy summary of why the weather patterns of the northern hemisphere are going to feel the impact of less ice.

Let’s put it simply. When all that blue ocean in the picture above starts to freeze, it is going to give up heat to the atmosphere. A lot of heat. An enormous amount of heat. A decade ago, that didn’t happen to anything like the same extent. That heat has to go somewhere, and it goes into changing the way the atmosphere moves around the northern hemisphere. Look out for interesting winters in Russia, Europe and north America this year and in years to come.

So where do we go from here? I’m on record as projecting that within a decade — perhaps only five years — we will have an Arctic Ocean effectively ice-free in late summer. A few decades later we may see the Arctic ice free in winter. That’s bad news, but the big changes are already with us, and already locked in. They fall within the “climate commitment” — the thirty years or so it takes the atmosphere and oceans to “catch up” with the heat being trapped by any given level of greenhouse gases. Even if we could wave Harry Potter’s wand and magically hold atmospheric CO2 to today’s levels, the warming will continue and the ice will disappear. There is no way back from where we’re going. It’s inevitable, and it’s scary.

To make matters worse, we have next to no idea what this means for the climate of the northern hemisphere, and therefore for the planet as a whole. Take a look at this graph, from the NSIDC’s August 6th sea ice report. It’s a comparison of what climate models project might happen to the Arctic sea ice, and what has actually happened. I’ve been surprised that very few people seem to have picked up on the real import of this graph.

NSIDCmodelobs

The blue line and shading is what the ensemble of models used in the last IPCC report were suggesting might happen. The red line is the multi-model mean for the projections in the next IPCC report, and the pink shading covers the full range of individual model runs. The black line is what’s actually happened so far — not including this year. It’s one run on the real thing. Reality biting. You may safely assume that this years minimum is going to keep that black line bumping along at or below the lowest individual model runs compiled for the next IPCC assessment, which will therefore be out of date before it’s published.

We’ve known since 2007 that the AR4 modelling wasn’t capturing what was happening in the Arctic. It’s now obvious that the latest modelling isn’t capturing it either. A quick eyeball estimate suggests that this year’s minimum shouldn’t be happening for another 10 or 20 years. Some individual model runs might be capturing some of the dynamics of the ice loss, but on average, they’re underestimating it badly. And if they can’t get the sea ice right, then they can’t — because of all that heat being released to the atmosphere every autumn and winter — get the climate of the northern hemisphere right.

We are, not to put too fine a point on it, up shit creek without a paddle, with mud spattered spectacles and no map. This is not good news. It’s all over bar the shouting, of which you may expect plenty. But nothing’s going to change the direction we’re heading. From here on in, it’s damage control only.

[Otis Redding]

Prat watch #5: Ignorance is bliss Gareth Renowden Mar 29

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

What happens when you deny things? Well, if you deny the reality of global warming, and if you are to be in any way self-consistent, then you have to deny every bit of evidence that it might be happening. Here’s a classic example, drawn from New Zealand’s very own little corner of the climate crank echo chamber, Richard Treadgold’s “Climate Conversation Group” blog. Treadgold concludes a recent post thus:

Once more: let’s stop accepting this palpable nonsense that climate change is responsible for anything.

Climate change means global warming. Global warming has not happened for about 15 years, unless you take a micrometer to the thermometer. And if you have to do that just to detect warming, then it’s hardly dangerous, is it?

Oh — if it didn’t happen, then it didn’t cause anything! No droughts, no wildfires, no floods, no storms. No ice melt.

Look at the bit I’ve emphasised. No warming for 15 years? Tell that to the planet, Richard. Here’s what the World Meteorological Organisation says about the first decade of the 21st century:

…climate change accelerated in 2001-2010, which was the warmest decade ever recorded in all continents of the globe.

No warming for 15 years? After we’ve had the warmest decade ever recorded in all continents of the globe?

The decade 2001-2010 was the warmest since records began in 1850, with global land and sea surface temperatures estimated at 0.46°C above the long-term average (1961-1990) of 14.0°C. Nine of these years were among the ten warmest on record. The warmest year on record was 2010, closely followed by 2005, with a mean temperature estimated at 0.53°C above the long-term average. It was the warmest decade ever recorded for global land surface, sea surface and for every continent.

No warming for 15 years? Not to put too fine a point on it: balderdash, piffle, stuff and nonsense.

And because there has been warming, it can be linked to extreme events1. The IPCC has just released its full SREX report, full title Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (PDF – 44MB), which finds, amongst other things, that not only is there a clear signal of warming’s effect on extremes such as heatwaves, but that large parts of the world — especially coastal megacities such as Mumbai or countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam — are vulnerable to increasing extremes and sea level rise over the course of the coming century. [AP/NZ Herald, AFP.]

The certainty of Treadgold’s denial is only possible because he creates a carefully cultivated cocoon of ignorance around himself and around the true believers who worship at his blog. The world where the rest of us live is a much more uncomfortable place. We have to work with whatever reality throws at us. Retreating into a fantasy world where warming hasn’t happened for 15 years is a luxury only the deluded can afford.

[Jellyfish]

  1. I’ll have post examining recent work on the attribution of extreme weather events soon.

Climate ethics and the reckless endangerment of denial Bryan Walker Jan 18

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

An interesting-looking series of posts has begun on the climate ethics blog of Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute. The series plans to put the the climate change disinformation campaign under the ethical spotlight. The introductory post written by Associate Professor Donald Brown examines some of the broad issues before planned subsequent posts look at the detailed tactics employed to discredit the science. As I read the first post I was struck by how relevant its argument is across a much wider sector of society than that occupied by the ethically reprehensible disinformation campaign: it challenges the moral lethargy which seems to afflict many of the world’s governments and business communities when it comes to climate change. They may not be part of the organised denial of climate change, but their response as yet hardly reflects the gravity of the issue or faces up honestly to the ethical challenge it presents.  I’ll extract or paraphrase some of Brown’s points which seemed to me to have relevance to our common need to face the moral imperative climate change brings with it.

He refers to the writing of philosopher of Hans Jonas in his 1979 book Imperative of Responsibility, In Search for Ethics In A Technological Age. Jonas argued that scientific uncertainty about the consequences of technologies that have great potential for good and harm create new, profound ethical challenges for the human race.

[He] argued that ethics requires that humans must apply a “heuristics of fear” to their deliberations about whether they should deploy new potentially harmful technologies about which there is reasonable scientific basis for concern. That is, decision-makers should assume the harms will occur if there is a scientific basis for concern that significant harms could occur. Jonas claimed that in such situations, precaution is both ethically mandated and may be necessary for human survival. Furthermore, precaution in these situations requires that those who propose dangerous activities assume the burden of proof to show that the activities are safe. This is especially true for human behaviours that could create catastrophic harms.

Brown sees close parallels with climate change. It is a problem which will always carry some uncertainty about the precise impacts of human-induced warming, yet these impacts are potentially catastrophic for tens of millions of current people and innumerable members of coming generations. Some facts may be uncertain, but the stakes are extraordinarily high. Careful ethical consideration is therefore necessary.

Brown elaborates on behalf of those already affected. Climate change is a problem caused by people in one part of the world who are threatening poor people often far away. The harms the victims suffer are potentially catastrophic. They cannot enlist the aid of their governments who have no jurisdiction over those causing the problem.  They can only hope that those causing the problem will see an ethical duty to the vulnerable to lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

Ethics involves responsibilities, obligations and duties to others; self-interest alone cannot justify policy responses. If our actions are putting others at risk through no fault of their own we have a special duty to be precautious about scientific uncertainty.

Catastrophic is a term which is frequently dismissed as overstatement.  It is not, says Brown.

…the [scientific] consensus view does assume that human-induced climate change could be very catastrophic for some people and places if not most of the world. This is not hyperbole, it is where the mainstream science points as potential consequences of business-as-usual.

The consequences may not be absolutely certain. All reasonable climate scientists will admit that there may be negative feedbacks in the climate system that we don’t understand, though mainstream science sees them as increasingly unlikely. But the lack of certainty doesn’t mean remove the responsibility for ethical response:

…ethics actually requires people to act responsibly once it becomes evident that their actions could cause great harm. As a matter of ethics, responsibility does not start only when it is proven that behaviour will cause great harm. For instance, laws of reckless endangerment that have been enacted around the world make dangerous behaviour criminal. Defendants in reckless endangerment cases may not defend themselves on the grounds that the prosecution did not prove that their behaviour would cause harm, the prosecution need only prove that the behaviour could cause serious harm.

Brown goes on to establish at some length how solid the scientific consensus view on human-caused climate change is. The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represent that consensus and the summary for policy makers requires the unanimous consent of all 194 member countries; it is not credible to conclude that IPCC’s conclusions are biased to overstating the risks of climate change.  He adds a long list of the scientific organizations with expertise relevant to climate change which have endorsed the consensus position, and refers to surveys which show the very high level of climate researchers actively publishing in the field who support the IPCC’s position. All of which means that the IPCC consensus position is entitled to strong respect.

In summary:

This consensus is not a consensus on all scientific issues in climate science; it is a consensus about the fact that the planet is warming, that this warming is largely human caused, and that under business-as-usual we are headed to potentially catastrophic impacts for humans and the natural resources on which life depends. Furthermore, these harms are likely to be most harshly experienced by many of the Earth’s poorest people.

Brown’s material is not new, but it’s a cogent reminder that declining to grapple seriously with climate change is a massive failure in the ethical behaviour we know to be necessary for civilised human existence. We shield ourselves from the full reality of this failure almost by tacit agreement as we carry on with the business of government and commerce in the familiar ways to which we have been accustomed. But if the science is correct this is simple evasion of moral obligation, and it ought to trouble us deeply. Business as usual takes on the character of reckless endangerment.

Science sidelined at Durban Bryan Walker Dec 14

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

An image that has lingered with me from all the reports of the Durban conference was the Democracy Now interview with a somewhat disconsolate Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chair. He was at Durban to represent the science, a rather thankless task since he detected very little interest in what the science has to say.

’I’d like to see the science driving some of the discussions and the decisions that are taken. I’m sorry I don’t see much evidence of that right now.’

He pictured the delegations being confronted with the scientific reality every day and how that might affect the progress of their negotiations.

’[There’s a] complete absence of discussion on the scientific evidence that we have available   I would like to see each day of the discussions starting with a very clear presentation on where we are going, what it’s going to mean to different parts of the world and what are the options available to us by which at very little cost and in some cases negative cost we can bring about a reduction in emissions   I would like to see an hour, hour and a half, every day being devoted to this particular subject   I think then the movement towards a decision would be far more vigorous, it would be based on reality and not focusing on narrow and short-term political issues.’

Nothing remotely like that happened of course, and Pachauri vented his exasperation:

’Actually, to be honest, nobody over here is listening to the science.’

One can understand his verdict. It won’t have been true of everyone present, but the negotiations hardly displayed a widespread awareness of the scientific reality.

Pachauri was robust in his defence of the trustworthiness of the IPCC reports and asserted the need for emissions to peak no later than 2015 if we hope to limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees or thereabouts. Delaying that peak to 2020 means a much larger cost to the reduction process.

This is certainly no time to be soft-pedalling the scientific message, or allowing the policy makers and negotiators to escape exposure to its full force. In which context I thought I’d draw attention to a recent release by NASA’s earth science news team on James Hansen’s new research into Earth’s paleoclimate history. He warned at a press briefing at the American Geophysical Union last week that a warming of 2 degrees would be sufficient to lead to drastic changes, such as significant ice sheet loss in Greenland and Antarctica.

Hot Topic readers will be familiar with Hansen’s concerns, but the new NASA statement is a particularly good summary for the lay person of the paleoclimate evidence underlying what he has to say about sea level rise. It’s well worth reading in full, but I’ll pull out a few of its major points here.

In studying cores drilled from both ice sheets and deep ocean sediments, Hansen found that global mean temperatures during the Eemian period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today. If temperatures were to rise 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, global mean temperature would far exceed that of the Eemian, when sea level was four to six metres higher than today.

“The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to 2 degrees is not sufficient,” Hansen said. “It would be a prescription for disaster.”

Two degrees Celsius of warming would make Earth much warmer than during the Eemian, and would move Earth closer to Pliocene-like conditions, when sea level was in the range of 25 meters higher than today, Hansen said. In using Earth’s climate history to learn more about the level of sensitivity that governs our planet’s response to warming today, Hansen said the paleoclimate record suggests that every degree Celsius of global temperature rise will ultimately equate to 20 meters of sea level rise. However, that sea level increase due to ice sheet loss would be expected to occur over centuries, and large uncertainties remain in predicting how that ice loss would unfold.

It won’t be a linear process. GRACE satellite data relating to Greenland and West Antarctica has not been accumulating long enough to confirm the rate of acceleration of ice loss possibly occurring, but it is not inconsistent with multiple metres of sea level rise by 2100.

“We don’t have a substantial cushion between today’s climate and dangerous warming,” Hansen said. “Earth is poised to experience strong amplifying feedbacks in response to moderate additional global warming.”

Hansen acknowledges that using paleoclimate evidence to predict precisely how climate might change over much shorter periods than natural timescales is difficult, but he notes that the Earth system is already showing signs of responding, even in the case of slow feedbacks such as ice sheet changes.

Also, the vastly more rapid rate at which carbon dioxide is being released today by comparison with the slow increases from natural causes in the past adds to the difficulty of predicting how quickly the Earth will respond.

“Humans have overwhelmed the natural, slow changes that occur on geologic timescales,” Hansen said.

These warnings from Hansen relate to sea level rise, one of the most ominous prospects. There is equal reason to be concerned over a range of likely impacts which the science has detected, some of which are kicking in already. But it’s not apparent that the world’s political leadership is jointly capable of taking on board the enormity of what climate change means for humanity. The determination to press on with the continued exploration and exploitation of fossil fuels seems virtually unquestioned in the corridors of power of most countries.

While some governments are pushing the development of renewable energy it is not at a pitch to be compared with a wartime mobilisation. To suggest that coal, oil and gas should be left where they are just as soon as we can urgently organise to do without them is to appear foolish in New Zealand and presumably in most other countries endowed with the resources. Canada’s commitment to the tar sands development, to the extent of leaving the Kyoto agreement, is a case in point.

Pachauri’s concern that the politics is not being measured against the science is fully justified. The hopes for realism may prove incapable of fulfilment. But we must continue to demand unwaveringly that politicians look up and take notice of the desperate seriousness of the scientific warnings, and condemn them when they don’t.

The Climate Show #22: Durban doubts & Renwick on extremes Gareth Renowden Nov 25

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

A crisp and crunchy show this week, as Gareth and Glenn interview Dr James Renwick about the IPCC’s cautious new report on extreme weather and the riskier future we all face. With added ruminations on the potential slowdown in international action at the Durban conference, record greenhouse gas levels reached in 2010, the prospect of “hyper warming” and the release of some lightly warmed over stolen emails. No debunking a la Cook this week, but he’ll be back soon, and we have news of the world’s first hybrid jet aircraft.

Watch The Climate Show on our Youtube channel, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, listen to us via Stitcher on your smartphone or listen direct/download from the link below the fold…

Follow The Climate Show at The Climate Show web site, and on Facebook and Twitter.

The Climate Show

News & commentary: [0:04:30]

Rich nations ‘give up’ on new climate treaty until 2020 — Ahead of critical talks and despite pledge for new treaty by 2012, biggest economies privately admit likelihood of long delay: Fiona Harvey in the Guardian

But Chris Huhne disagrees.

And Gummer, Prescott and Jay are more upbeat, as is Mark Lynas, adviser to the Maldives.

And just to underline how stupid that all is, the WMO reports record GHG levels in 2010
Reuters, WMO Bulletin.

Which might mean we’re on the way to ’hyperwarming’.

Fresh round of hacked climate science emails leaked online: A file containing 5,000 emails has been made available in an apparent attempt to repeat the impact of 2009′s similar release.

Two year old turkey for Thanksgiving: CRU emails part deux, and Stephan Lewandowsky at The Conversation.

Interview [0:27:00]

Dr James Renwick, principal scientist, climate, at NIWA talks to us about the IPCC’s latest report – the SREX, or Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.

See also: http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2011/11/21/nz-faces-moral-obligations-as-climate-changes-hit-scientist/, and all links to report here: Stormy weather: we’re making it worse, and there’s more on the way.

Solutions [0:54:00]

California hits 1GW of rooftop solar.

Turning Commercial Jets into Hybrids.

Google drops some projects… A “Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal” initiative launched to drive down the cost of generating solar power was listed among the Google undertakings being nixed. “At this point, other institutions are better positioned than Google to take this research to the next level,” he added.

Thanks to our media partners: Idealog Sustain, Sciblogs, Scoop and KiwiFM.

Theme music: A Drop In The Ocean by The Bads.

Stormy weather: we’re making it worse, and there’s more on the way Gareth Renowden Nov 20

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

The IPCC released the summary for policymakers of its Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) in Kampala, Uganda, on Friday (SPM, SREX site, launch presentation slides). The report concludes that globally there has been a significant decrease in cold days and nights and an overall increase in warm days and nights, that it’s likely that “anthropogenic influences” have led to warming of extreme daily minimum and maximum temperatures, and that heavy rainfall events are increasing in many areas. There has also been an increase in extreme coastal high water events.

The report also projects that it is “virtually certain” that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes will continue through this century, and that there will be corresponding decreases in cold extremes. It’s also very likely that heat waves and warm spells will become more frequent and warmer. Heavy rainfall events are also expected to increase, and the proportion of rain falling in those events is likely to increase. There are also likely to be more problems from storm surges and sea level rises, an increase in droughts, and landslides in mountainous regions.

Much of the report’s content will come as little surprise to those who have been following the subject — in common with previous IPCC reports the conclusions are conservative, couched in laboriously exact language, and exclude the most recent work1 — and for me the most interesting parts are the discussions of how extreme weather events interact with human populations to create disasters. In this respect, arguing about whether an event was “caused by” or “made worse by” warming is largely irrelevant to trying to find ways to reduce the impact of current and future extremes.

See also: Jeff Masters has an interesting post going into more detail about the report’s findings, RealClimate considers the report’s discussion of tropical cyclones, plus news reporting from the BBC, Guardian, and Reuters.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects are scrabbling around looking for ways to misrepresent the report’s findings. The most egregious to date comes from Nigel Lawson’s secretly-funded “Global Warming Policy Foundation”, who pick a paragraph out of context and pretend that it shows that…

According to a preliminary report released by the IPCC, there will be no detectable influence of mankind’s influence on the Earth’s weather systems for at least thirty years, and possibly not until the end of this century.

… which is not what the report says at all!

Finally, Green.TV and WeatherUnderground have launched a new twice monthly video on current global extreme weather events. Here’s the first episode:

Definitely one to follow with interest…

  1. Unavoidable, given the way these things are put together.

Hard Talk on the wrong track Bryan Walker Jul 27

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

I wondered what Stephen Sackur might want to put to Rajendra Pachauri when he interviewed the IPCC chair on BBC’s Hardtalk this week. His agenda turned out to be depressingly predictable for the most part. The opening was not encouraging. Sackur referred to other options than a global climate deal in view of the stalled international negotiations, mentioning the abandonment of the Kyoto approach  proposed by David King recently. ’Has Pachauri got the energy and the ideas to reframe the climate change debate?’ he asked.

Well of course it’s not within Pachauri’s brief to try to frame the debate, as he pointed out when declining Sackur’s urging to express his opinion on the matter. His job is to bring the science to the attention of the negotiating governments, not to advance his opinions on how they might formulate their response. He leaves no doubt as to the necessity driving a response, and is clear that emissions reduction needs to be under way within the near future, but he can hardly go beyond that into the details of negotiation.

Sackur adopted an incredulous tone in relation to the recent weighty IPCC report on renewable energy sources to the effect that renewables could supply nearly 80 percent of the world’s energy by mid-century. The lack of realism, he claimed, was compounded by the report’s positing that world energy consumption would go down. Pachauri could do little more than refer to the surprising speed with which energy transformations can take place and to stress the remarkable gains available in energy efficiency. To Sackur’s reiterated incredulity he replied mildly that no one says the task will be easy, but pointed out that if it is not undertaken the impacts of climate change will create enormous problems for a large part of the world’s population.

Sackur was hot on the credibility trail, and moved immediately to the accusation that the inclusion of a Greenpeace advisor among the writers of the renewable energy report was a serious mistake.  Pachauri came back strongly.

’Not at all. Not a bit. We have had authors from Exxon Mobil…We take in individuals on the strength of their qualifications…It would be totally wrong and unfair to dismiss a good individual just because he’s working for Greenpeace.’

Next on the credibility list was the hoary old chestnut of the mistaken statement about the melting of Himalayan glaciers in the fourth assessment report. A regrettable mistake, said Pachauri immediately, adding that it was one error in 2000 pages of valuable material and pointing out that there was now a protocol in place by which correction of errors can be better achieved.  Sackur at this point even tossed in the climategate emails as somehow contributing to the credibility issue.

He then raised the issue of claims of a link between extreme weather events and global warming, suggesting with considerable vigour that it was stretching the science to make the connection. He quoted a recent statement from Pauchari, ’We know (Sackur’s emphasis) there will be more floods, more droughts, more heatwaves and extreme precipitation events’, and claimed this meant that people would assume that specific events could be assigned to global warming. Pachauri had already made clear that it was events in the aggregate, the trend, that he speaks of, and could only repeat that he was not talking about a single event, a fact that he said he clarified and always does.

Then came the accusation in which Sackur wondered whether there had been a decision to become more vocal about the link to extreme weather events because the long-term message is not producing the action wanted from politicians, as if the IPCC is involved in manoeuvring its science to achieve a desired objective. To which Pachauri replied that the forthcoming report on the subject later in the year was being carried out at the behest of the governments of the world.

Geoengineering was introduced, with the suggestion that the IPCC was close to despair in pursuing the subject. It didn’t seem to matter how often Pachauri explained that the geoengineering survey was being undertaken because the governments have asked for it and that the IPCC was taking no position on the subject.

The interview finally moved to the question of Pachauri stepping down as chair. He said he had been appointed to see the 5th assessment through and would do that.

’I really cannot walk away. I’m in the middle of something that’s an ongoing activity.’

Pachauri handled the interview with dignity, making it quite clear that the function of the IPCC was to report on the published science and that it had a duty to inform the public of what the impacts of climate change are likely to be. But the aggressive attacking nature of the questioning made it difficult for him to do much more than defend IPCC procedures.

I know Hardtalk is meant to be hard hitting, but as I watched this interview I thought of Steve Jones’ remarks in his recent report on the impartiality and accuracy of BBC science reporting.

’…again and again news and current affairs return to the sub‐text that the correct way to treat a scientist on air is as if he or she were a politician: someone whose devotion to the truth is determined by a pre‐existing agenda.’

Pachauri is not a climate scientist, but as IPCC chair he represents their work, and the assessment reports are put together by scientists. The line of questioning Sackur adopted was suggestive that something less than scientific openness is at work in the IPCC, that manipulations are going on to fit an agenda. It didn’t correspond with the way the IPCC actually works, preparing reports as directed by UN bodies, following transparent procedures in doing so.

It’s a little dispiriting to see the IPCC treated by a BBC programme as if it is engaged in dodgy political tactics

I often appreciate Hardtalk interviews, including many conducted by Sackur. Maybe he was just playing devil’s advocate in this interview, but even if that were the case it’s a little dispiriting to see the IPCC treated by a BBC programme as if it is engaged in dodgy political tactics (’a shady pastime awaiting exposure by the bright beam of reportorial truth’, in Jones’ words), especially in view of the utter seriousness of the message its reports convey. Politics will no doubt play a part in the formulations of our response to climate change, but the IPCC reports themselves are hardly the product of political contriving. One hopes that the ’new training programme for journalists on impartiality as it applies to science’ promised by the BBC in response to Jones’ report might produce interviews aimed at eliciting scientific information before confidently challenging it.

Note: A short clip from the Hardtalk interview is available on the BBC website.

Climate: The Counter Consensus Gareth Renowden Apr 29

Join the conversation at Hot Topic

ClimateThis review of Bob Carter’s latest book, by Dr James Renwick, Principal Scientist at NIWA’s Climate Variability & Change group, was first published in the March newsletter of the Geoscience Society of New Zealand. My thanks to Jim for permission to republish it here.

This book is a curious read, full of misinformation, straw-man arguments, and poorly-documented assertions. To become immersed in it, we must enter the through-the-looking-glass world of the ’independent’ scientist, where those such as myself are the ones ’…who have dissembled, told half-truths, cherry-picked their data, fantastically exaggerated, and suppressed the circulation of better science’ (Prefatory Essay, p. 19). Meanwhile, the ideas put forward by Prof. Carter are portrayed as representing a balanced appraisal of the issues. From where I sit, that’s the opposite of reality.

The basic premise of the book is that observed climate changes are a result of natural variability, with at most a very gentle nudge from human activity. Carter asserts that future global cooling is at least as likely as warming. And those whose work suggests that human-induced climate change is real and is a significant threat have either become politicised (p. 231), or have been pressured into submission (p. 181). To support his case, Carter lists many references, relying heavily on his own publications plus those of Soon, Loehle, McLean, McKitrick et al., and with extensive reference to the blogosphere — wattsupwiththat.com, co2science.org, climateaudit.org, etc.

Much of the criticism is directed at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body that every few years provides a synthesis of what’s published in the scientific literature on climate change. The IPCC report writing is done by volunteer teams of scientists, and every effort is made to be inclusive, broad-ranging, and authoritative. But in Carter’s book, the IPCC is portrayed as a slick PR machine designed to push a political line, resistance to which is professional suicide. Carter claims that major news organisations, science academies, the Archbishop of Canterbury and even Prince Charles (!) are involved in the relentless drive to squash opposition (p 162). Many authors are quoted out of context, in part to portray the idea that there’s a growing number of brave souls who are starting to see the light 1.

Climate science is seen as ’consensus science’ and so by definition is not science at all. The IPCC is again painted as the major villain. Actually, there’s an overwhelming weight of evidence in the literature that supports the reality of human-induced climate change. This could be described as a consensus, which could then be criticised for being a consensus, if scientific agreement is seen as a bad thing. Galileo is held up as proof that consensus is meaningless — one man turned the consensus of his time on its head. Since Galileo’s time, a general consensus has developed that he was right, because a mountain of observational evidence and theory has built up to back his findings. That adds weight to Galileo’s ideas, rather than detracting from them. There are the occasional Galileos (e.g. Milankovitch, Arrhenius), but most scientific advance is incremental, carried out by large teams who communicate widely, guided by the observational evidence to hand.

The book begins with an overview of the geological context, covering orbital forcing, Milankovitch cycles, abrupt events, and the Holocene. The existence of large natural variations in the past is used to argue that present-day variability is nothing unusual, and that there’s no evidence that human activity is having a significant effect today. The crucial point left out is that the major influence changing the climate today is the increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, a result of human activity. That is true regardless of climate history and the existence of other natural forcings. The tight coupling between carbon dioxide and global temperature is undisputed and is documented through the ice ages and beyond. The basic radiation physics has not changed.

Because we need that geological ’long view’, the instrumental record is seen as woefully inadequate (Chapter 2). Moreover, because it is standard meteorological practice to define climate ’normals’ as 30-year averages, we are told there is only one new climate observation every 30 years, hence the complete instrumental record is only 5 points long!

Chapter 3 covers climate sensitivity and greenhouse gases. Here, CO2 is portrayed as a benign gas with a limited role in the radiation balance. The bulk of the literature on this subject is ignored, in favour of work by Ernst Beck2 and Chris deFreitas. Climate sensitivity is portrayed as low, and uncertainty very high. I wish this were so, but the vast majority of research over recent decades (ignored here) says the opposite. Chapter 4 discusses the oceans. Again we are told that there’s no cause for concern, that sea level rise is all natural (and certainly not accelerating), and anyway, according to Carter the oceans are now cooling (p. 121). Ocean acidification (described as a deliberately ’emotional’ expression) is portrayed as a non-issue. Again, the reality of the situation, and the vast majority of the literature on this topic, is not discussed.

Climate models are roundly rubbished in Chapter 5, being described later as ’playstation games.’ Supporting evidence comes from Soon, McKitrick, Essex et al., again ignoring 99.9% of the scientific literature, and the long list of climate modelling achievements. There are many inconsistencies throughout this book, such as the statement on page 121 that models incorrectly project increasing ocean heat content, while observations show no warming for the last five years. After dismissing 150 years of instrumental observations in Chapter 2, we are given one sixth of one data point to imply (erroneously) that models are wrong.

Chapter 6 claims to show that evidence of (human-induced) climate change is either fraudulent, or exaggerated, or actually the result of natural variability. Amongst many other things, Carter claims that the Great Barrier Reef and its waters are in the same state they were in the 1700s — supported by reference to one of his own papers. That claim ignores well-documented declining water quality from runoff, loss of coastal wetlands, overfishing, invasive species, acidification…

If the author had a genuine case to make [...] he would be the toast of the science community everywhere [...] a modern-day Galileo.

Chapter 7 suggests that most of the climate science community has been corrupted by the vast sums of money on offer (certainly not my experience), or intimidated by science academies and others. We’re told that even the US National Academy of Sciences has been ’infiltrated by environmental activist scientists’ (p 167). Chapter 8 implies that ’independent scientists’ such as the author are deliberately shut out of public meetings on climate change. If the author had a genuine case to make, and could demonstrate that the threat of human-induced climate change is not real, he would certainly get entry to public forums. In fact, he would be the toast of the science community everywhere, having overturned thousands of person-years of research effort —- a modern-day Galileo.

Chapter 9 discusses the IPCC at some length. The strength of the IPCC reports is the breadth of research that is surveyed, literally tens of thousands of papers are referenced and woven into the biggest of big pictures on climate change. Carter’s contention that a small politically-motivated clique runs things is just not the case. As Carter notes, peer-review is not perfect, but I, and most in the science community, recognise that it’s a very good start. Yes, mistakes are made, but no document is error-free, and the number of identified errors is remarkably small for the 3000 pages of text and figures in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report. Similarly, a small number of scientists have expressed dissatisfaction with the IPCC process. Yet, the more notable thing to my mind is the huge number who have not expressed any disquiet and who are genuinely keen to contribute.

Chapters 10 and 11 discuss two things: that we should prepare for global cooling; and that adapting to regional natural variability and extremes (what Carter calls ’Plan B’) makes more sense than worrying about climate change (Carter’s ’Plan A’). The first point is risible, given that the globe continues to warm3, glaciers continue to melt4 and sea levels continue to rise5. The second point fits closely with strategies already adopted by many central and local government agencies in New Zealand and around the world: Plan B is already under way. At the same time, we need more emphasis on Plan A (climate change mitigation), if we are to avoid really major changes in climate.

The final chapter covers ’Climategate’. The book makes the illegal release of e-mails and other material from the University of East Anglia sound like the death knell for climate science. Again, that is just not so. All the official inquiries into the matter have since vindicated Phil Jones and the Climatic Research Unit, find no tampering with data, and no conspiracy to suppress anything or trick anyone. A huge amount of time and public money has been wasted looking in to crimes that were never committed.

In summary, I cannot recommend this book. Carter’s criticisms of the IPCC and the climate science community are just not true. The book’s scientific arguments are based upon a very selective reading of the literature and do not stand up to scrutiny.

  1. For example the Introduction (p 30) cites Perlwitz et al. (2009), noting that they say ’Doubts on the science of human-induced climate change have been cast by recent cooling.’ We are not told that the Perlwitz paper also states ’The implication is that the pace of North American warming is likely to resume in coming years, and that climate is unlikely embarking upon a prolonged cooling.’ ↩
  2. Check http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/beck-to-the-future/ for a summary of the dubious nature of Beck’s ’research’. ↩
  3. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20110112/ ↩
  4. http://www.wgms.ch/mbb/sum09.html ↩
  5. http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/ ↩

« Older Entries