Category Archives: Climate Change

Running into ecological debt – Earth Overshoot Day 2010

Posted on by
1

Apart from playing host to one of the most unconventional election days in Australia’s history, August 21st also marked a rather unfortunate milestone – when humanity consumed all of the renewable resources that nature has been able to generate during this year.

Earth Overshoot Day is an initiative of the new economics foundation and the Global Footprint Network, and signifies the day in which human demand has outstripped the annual biocapacity of the Earth. Since the first Earth Overshoot Day in 1987, human consumption has been continuously growing beyond the sustainable limits of the planet –  it now takes one year and five months to generate the resources and the CO2  absorption capacity to meet that our annual requirements.

This year’s global overshoot milestone has come a full month earlier compared to last year – meaning the rate of resource depletion is becoming more rapid, and our ecological debt is worsening. It’s been known for some time that we are living beyond our means, but the growth in global consumption shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Indeed, continued economic growth (measured by the production and consumption of goods and services, or GDP) is necessary to keep our current global economy afloat. How can the maintenance of the economy be reconciled with the very obvious need to preserve our biosphere? This is clearly a dilemma, as the key issues facing humanity are really the symptoms of global overconsumption:

Climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water and food shortages — these are all clear signs that we can no longer finance our consumption on credit. Nature is foreclosing.

Technological advancement is often cited as a way to consume resources more efficiently, leading to a relative decoupling of economic growth from consumption. But even if growth occurred at a slower pace, is it possible for the economy to grow continuously on a finite planet?

The folks at the new economics foundation and a growing number of other organisations and  individuals think that an alternative is possible – an economy which grows in quality, rather than quantity. A steady state economy is defined as one which remains within the biophysical limits of the planet – and is measured by indicators other than GDP, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator.

Advocates of the model such as Herman Daly and Tim Jackson think that a steady state economy is not only possible, but necessary in order to transition to a more sustainable, equitable, and happier society. Such a grand transition seems unthinkable in a world which is hooked on growth, and would be vigorously opposed by those with vested interests – working towards action on climate change is difficult enough! But perhaps the prospect of questioning growth is not quite as crazy as initially thought:

It has often been said that the lack of immediacy is the climate movement’s major handicap. The economic crisis we just faced certainly didn’t lack immediacy. There’s nothing more immediate than losing your house, your job, your livelihood, as so many did when the housing bubble burst.

Moreover, people weren’t oblivious to the fact that the crisis was caused by a bubble – by unsustainable growth in a certain sector of the economy. Public confidence in our economic model has already been shaken. To help precipitate its collapse, we need to start connecting the dots between the housing bubble and the much larger bubble that’s bound to burst when it collides in the very near future with the very sharp reality of a devastated planet.

Whatever the case may be, there is a lot of work to be done if we ever plan on living sustainably on the one planet we have – that is, not unless we depart for space within the next century.

How health is a climate change issue

Posted on by
3

Climate change certainly appears to a topic that both leaders would prefer not to discuss in much detail during the current election campaign.  Ignoring for a moment that the policies put forth are expected to lead to an increase in Australia’s emissions (according to the Climate Institute’s Pollute O Meter), Tony Abbott has this week barely concealed his skepticism of human induced climate change, and Julia Gillard devoted just 0.2% of her campaign launch speech to the topic.

While climate change seems to be the elephant in the room being ignored (but who just won’t go away), health has been a major topic of discussion for our political leaders in the past few weeks. The state of public health is obviously an issue that touches everyone, and has far more tangiable and immediate impacts on the nation that outweigh thoughts on what may be occurring in the Pacific Islands, the Arctic or in Australia more than 3 years into the future.

What our leaders have so far failed to recognise is the ever greater prominance of climate change as  a significant human health issue.  Last month, the Australian Medical Association called on the federal government to set up a national climate change and health strategy, given the expected impacts of unabated climate change upon public health.

Eugenie Kayak from Doctors for the Environment Australia has said:

As a modern society we have often failed to recognise, or conveniently forgotten, the absolute dependence of human health on stable, productive, healthy, natural environments. Nearly all the adverse environmental effects of climate change threaten human health and humanity possibly to catastrophic levels and probably sooner than many realise.

These are not extreme views but rather follow what has been expressed by respected international health journals and organisations concerning the relationship between climate change and human health. For example, in 2009, leading international medical journal, the Lancet, published that, “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”.

World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan stated that, “The real bottom-line of climate change is its risk to human health and quality of life”.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has said, “Climate change threatens all our goals for development and social progress” and “it is a true existential threat to the planet”.

Make sure to the rest of the article on ABC News.

When ethics and resources combine …

Posted on by
Reply

Bill Gates

By Ian Wylie

Financial Times Published: August 9 2010 23:35 | Last updated: August 9 2010 23:35

The cold call asking you to pledge money to a charity is an uncomfortable conversation at the best of times. But what if the person on the other end of the line happens to be the third-richest man in the world?

It seems Warren Buffett, who has been calling up fellow American billionaires to ask them to donate at least half their wealth to charitable causes, also knows an evasive answer when he hears one. “Sometimes they’re just trying to get you off the phone,” he said last week. “A few people had dynastic ideas about wealth because they had inherited their wealth themselves. And then there were others who said they had a plane to catch.”

But, like the best charity street “chuggers”, Mr Buffett – who has already pledged to give away 99 per cent of his $47bn fortune – and his “Giving Pledge” partners Bill and Melinda Gates plan to keep asking, working their way through the Forbes 400 rich list.

Never has there been such an attempt by a group of the wealthiest people in the world to enrol their peers in such grand scale philanthropy. And in the process Buffett and the Gateses are trying to export their model of “philanthrocapitalism” or “venture capital” to the world.

Mr Gates has previously estimated that just 15 per cent of the super-wealthy give away large chunks of their fortunes, but he thinks this could rise to 70 per cent. After just two months of calls, some 40 billionaires have signed the pledge, including George Lucas, Barry Diller, Michael Bloomberg, Larry Ellison, Pierre Omidyar and Jeffrey Skoll. The pledge is not binding, but a moral commitment to donate more than 50 per cent of their wealth. It does not in volve pooling money or supporting one single cause or organisation. Charitable causes supported by these early signatories range from HIV programmes and the arts to brain research and Middle East peace.

Yet philanthrocapitalism has come under fire from critics who say billionaires are simply buying power and control. Financial Times columnist Christopher Caldwell has warned of their “disruptive effects on democracy”. An editorial in The Lancet in May 2009 expressed “serious anxiety about the transparency of the [Gates] Foundation’s operation” and questioned its “whimsical governance”.

Moreover, donating billions is not as straightforward as it might seem. Many charities are incapable of absorbing large sums of money, and some billionaires’ assets are illiquid.

However, for supporters of philanthrocapitalism, it is the influence and networks as well as the funds that billionaires have at their disposal that make their commitment so important. “What’s remarkable increasingly about billionaire families is that they have not only significant financial resources, but the access, opportunities, relationships and connections to have tremendous impact in very perplexing problems,” says Melissa Berman, chief executive of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Most of the 40 who have signed up to the pledge are already generous givers – yet the pledge is significant, says Michael Green, co-author of Philanthrocapitalism: How The Rich Can Save The World. “To have brought in people like Larry Ellison – who has blown hot and cold on philanthropy over the years – to make public his intention to give away 95 per cent of his wealth, is a big step change,” says Mr Green. “It raises the bar in that super-rich category where the question now is, are you going to sign the Gates/Buffett pledge?”

The timing is significant, as the worlds of business and finance struggle to redeem their reputations. According to one of the pledge signatories, investment banker Tom Steyer, the initiative is “changing the face of American business . . . to my mind it transforms the image of private enterprise from an old-fashioned extractive model where people are taking resources out of the system for their benefit and their families to a more regenerative model of capitalism where they are putting resources back into society.”

Also, in the current climate of budget cuts, indebted governments will be more likely to welcome wealthy philanthropists who share Mr Gates’ and Mr Buffett’s belief in co-funding and leverage – a conviction that, as Mr Buffett puts it, “private philanthropy can make the subsequent expenditure of public monies more effective”. The Gates Foundation, for example, has granted more than $650m in the past couple of years to schools, public agencies and other groups that align with its main education priorities.

Philanthropists using their money as risk capital to help governments spend money better is an emerging theme, says Mr Green: “The most striking thing Gates said when we interviewed him for the book was that the Gates Foundation is ‘just a tiny organisation’. He recognised that to tackle the problems he wants to tackle he can’t do it on his own. He wants to lever government money, and here in the UK there’s scope in this idea of ‘big society’ for that kind of partnership working.”

The pledge is a nudge too for donors to consider giving the money away during their lifetime – “spend down” their endowments within a specified timeframe to meet current needs, rather than have them dribble out grants from a foundation once they are dead. Unlike the philanthropists of former times, many new billionaires are young enough to take a more active role.

The initiative is also an attempt to apply a network effect to philanthropy. The more common it becomes, the more the wealthy will seek to do it, as they share experiences, plot strategies and exchange ideas.

“It’s not just about people pledging success – it is also about inspiring more families to talk about giving and philanthropy,” says Patty Stonesifer, former CEO of the Gates Foundation, who currently advises Bill and Melinda Gates and was present at the May 2009 dinner in New York where the idea of the pledge was hatched.

The agenda includes educating the super-rich on the Buffett/Gates model of “high-engagement philanthropy” and “results-oriented giving”, where the efficiency of the business world is injected into aid – where philanthropists “invest” their donations and use venture capital strategies and research tools and techniques to manage the performance of their “portfolios”.

According to Mr Buffett, pledge signatories will be invited to an annual summit to “spend a day talking about various problems of philanthropy and how better to do it”. And last month the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made a $3.7m grant to RPA to publish donor education resources on its website for would-be philanthropists in the US and beyond.

Mr Buffett and Mr Gates are taking their model of philanthropy on the road. The pair will travel to China at the end of next month to meet some of its wealthiest business people, followed by a similar trip next March to India, which Mr Gates has already predicted will become second only to the US in its high-end philanthropy.

“Bill, Melinda and Warren started this pledge effort here in the US, in part because they realise that to be successful in any other country the effort will need to be led by local leaders,” says Ms Stonesifer. “That said, the basic idea – that those with great wealth can and should devote that wealth to efforts to leave the world a better place – has resonance around the globe.”

It seems that as Mr Buffett and Mr Gates – the Rockefeller and Carnegie of their day – spin their Rolodexes for yet another cold call, their mood is one of unstoppable momentum

Climate change ignorance unacceptable.

Posted on by
Reply

  • Andrew Trounson, Higher Education Supplement,
  • The Australian,
  • August 11, 2010 12:00AM

    • LABOR’S Science and Research Minister Kim Carr has hit out at anti-scientific opinion on climate change. He has warned that the scientific method was coming under public attack, undermining science and replacing it with irrationality.

    “In all fields we want to encourage debate, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept the earth is flat,” Senator Carr told the HES yesterday after launching Labor’s science policy, which includes a $21 million science literacy project.

    “We don’t have to accept every lunatic proposition that comes along as the basis of a legitimate view, which now seems to be increasingly present.”

    He took aim at what he called the increasingly rampant irrationality of some Coalition senators. “There is a fundamental change in attitude, and people are now prepared to argue positions that they wouldn’t have been prepared to a few years ago,” he said.

    Senator Carr announced the $21m program to promote science awareness in the community, including ongoing support for science prizes and events, as well as media training for scientists and cadetships for science journalists.

    But the program will be paid for by cuts in three existing research programs: Enterprise Connect, the Co-operative Research Centres and Collaborative Research Networks scheme.

    Australian Nobel prize-winning scientist Peter Doherty backed Senator Carr’s comments.

    He said the attacks on climate science made it easier for people to dismiss the threatening implications of climate science, and distracted the debate from focusing on solutions.

    “People are just rejecting the scientific conclusions and they are being helped in that by people who should know better,” Professor Doherty said.

    The Australian Academy of Science yesterday called for scientific advisers to be appointed to every government department.

    “Despite the emphasis given in recent years to the value of evidence-based policy by major political parties, new policy announcements and spending initiatives are rarely referenced with peer-reviewed research to substantiate the arguments,” the academy said.

    No quick fix for climate with geoengineering

    Posted on by
    1

    It sounds like something from a sci-fi movie, but the artificial manipulation of the Earth’s climate has been touted as a possible strategy to reduce the effects of unmitigated climate change. Thanks to the painfully slow progress that has been made towards reducing our carbon emissions, there has been some surprisingly serious discussion about the prospect of geoengineering the climate in order to suit the needs of humans.

    Of the various forms that have been suggested (large machines to suck CO2 from the air, space-borne mirrors to reflect sunlight, iron filings in the ocean), the mostly widely discussed option is the injection of vast quantities of sulphur into the stratosphere. In theory, the airborne particles would have the effect of reflecting solar radiation, and thereby the reducing warming effects of climate change.

    Of course, this would do nothing to actually reduce carbon pollution (which would continue to increase with human development), not least anything to reduce the effects of ocean acidification and a myriad of other impacts upon biodiversity, ecosystems and human health. Geoengineering is certainly a drastic option fraught with uncertainty, but advocates of the approach have been considering back-up plans for the worst possible case scenario, while others have been looking into what effects may come if geoengineering became a reality.

    A new study published in Nature Geoscience[1] last week has examined the possible consequences of large scale geoengineering on the planet from the baseline year of 2005. The authors simulated a range of geoengineering scenarios by making use of thousands of home computers that were volunteered as part of a large scale climate forecasting experiment.

    They found that although the injection of trogospheric sulphur aerosols did in fact reduce global average temperatures compared to the unmitigated climate change scenario, global net precipitation would decrease as a result. The disparity between temperature and precipitation anomalies became increasingly apparent the longer that geoengineering activities were maintained in the modelled scenarios – meaning that over time it would become more and more difficult to regulate temperature and precipitation within “20th century climate conditions” simultaneously.

    On top of these effects, the results also indicate that the degree of climate engineering undertaken (i.e the amount of aerosols pumped into the air) would impact upon different parts of the world in different ways. This regional variation in the effects of geo-engineering would make it even more difficult to choose an “optimum” level of climate manipulation – for example, keeping China close to its baseline climate meant undesirable conditions for India, and vice versa.

    Although some of these results may be model-specific (such as the specific regional effects), this new study gives a frightening glimpse into the risks and uncertainties of climate geoengineering. The fact that we’re even considering the idea of large scale climate manipulation seems to be  indicative of society’s desire to seek technological fixes to treat the symptoms of a problem, instead of addressing the root cause. Clive Hamilton[2] describes the penchant of wealthy Texans to enjoy a log fire despite living in a hot climate, and so likens geoengineering to “responding to overheating by turning up the air-conditioning while continuing to pile more logs onto the file”.

    But with the stifling of action on climate change both at home and abroad, is geoengineering a reality we are rapidly moving towards?

    [1] Ricke, K. L., Morgan, M. G. & Allen, M. R. Nature Geosci. Advance online publication doi:10.1038/ngeo915

    [2] Clive Hamilton. 2010. Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change

    Page photograph from Nature News article “Geoengineering can’t please everyone”  doi:10.1038/news.2010.357

    Our Future World: CSIRO research of megatrends, megashocks & future scenarios

    Posted on by
    3

    Dr Stefan Hajkowicz gave an interesting presentation on 12 July 2010 in Brisbane, Australia, on recent CSIRO research of megatrends, megashocks and future scenarios.

    Stefan is the co-author of Our Future World: an analysis of global trends, shocks and scenarios, released by CSIRO in April 2010. The report is being used to guide CSIRO’s research investment strategy.

    The report defined a “megatrend” as “a collection of trends, patterns of economic, social or environmental activity that will change the way people live and the science and technology products they demand.”

    The five interrelated megatrends identified in the report are:

    1. More from less. This relates to the world’s depleting natural resources and increasing demand for those resources through economic and population growth. Coming decades will see a focus on resource use efficiency.
    2. A personal touch. Growth of the services sector of western economies is being followed by a second wave of innovation aimed at tailoring and targeting services.
    3. Divergent demographics. The populations of OECD countries are ageing and experiencing lifestyle and diet related health problems. At the same time there are high fertility rates and problems of not enough food for millions in poor countries.
    4. On the move. People are changing jobs and careers more often, moving house more often, commuting further to work and travelling around the world more often.
    5. i World. Everything in the natural world will have a digital counterpart. Computing power and memory storage are improving rapidly. Many more devices are getting connected to the internet.

    I attended the presentation interested to think outside my normal (environmental law) box and to hear how future scenarios could incorporate climate change impacts. Ove was also there to listen in.

    While the Stefan’s presentation did include a significant component on “TRIAGE” for the Murray-Darling and coral reefs due to over-allocation of water and climate change respectively, I came away fairly disappointed with the scientific validity of the analysis that was presented.

    The major failing of the analysis is that it treats climate change as only as seemingly minor component within megatrend 1 and there was no reference at all to ocean acidification.

    In fact, climate change is only mentioned in megatrend 1 tangentially through reference to “growth in the global carbon market”.

    The only direct reference to climate change in the report is in the megashock section of the report through identification of “extreme climate change related weather.”

    Incidentally, the full list of environment-related global risks identified in the report are:

    • Extreme climate change related weather
    • Droughts and desertification
    • Loss of freshwater
    • Cyclone
    • Earthquake
    • Inland flooding
    • Coastal flooding
    • Air pollution
    • Biodiversity loss

    Ocean acidification, the “evil twin” of climate change, is not mentioned anywhere in the report.

    It is hard to reconcile the failure in the report to recognise climate change and ocean acidification as a megatrend in their own right with the peer-reviewed literature or numerous synthesis reports of leading scientific bodies, including but far from limited to IPCC 2007.

    Just read the abstract of one of the many recent review articles on climate change and ocean acidification to understand the dystopia that current science foresees in the near-term future for the world’s oceans based on current and likely future trends in carbon dioxide emissions (Hoegh-Guldberg et al 2007):

    “Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is expected to exceed 500 parts per million and global temperatures to rise by at least 2°C by 2050 to 2100, values that significantly exceed those of at least the past 420,000 years during which most extant marine organisms evolved. Under conditions expected in the 21st century, global warming and ocean acidification will compromise carbonate accretion, with corals becoming increasingly rare on reef systems. The result will be less diverse reef communities and carbonate reef structures that fail to be maintained. Climate change also exacerbates local stresses from declining water quality and overexploitation of key species, driving reefs increasingly toward the tipping point for functional collapse. This review presents future scenarios for coral reefs that predict increasingly serious consequences for reef-associated fisheries, tourism, coastal protection, and people. As the International Year of the Reef 2008 begins, scaled-up management intervention and decisive action on global emissions are required if the loss of coral-dominated ecosystems is to be avoided.”

    Stefan wondered during his presentation into the climate change thicket when discussing the rapidly rising middle-class in India and said “we must fix poverty before we fix climate change.”

    To me that sounded a lot like Bjørn Lomborg’s misguided argument that climate change should be given a low priority because increasing the world’s riches will solve climate change in the future without costly interventions or unpopular behavioural change now. Understandably Lomborg is thin on the details of how this magic transition will occur.

    Like Lomborg’s work, the analysis reflects an economist’s rosy confidence in market forces and humanity’s technological capacity to solve all problems. Also like Lomborg’s work, more attention to the physics and chemistry of the world’s atmosphere and oceans would improve its usefulness as a guide to the future.

    Overall, it was a thought-provoking presentation and a report that is well worth a look at but there is a serious discrepancy between the analysis and the world that climate science suggests is our most likely future.

    Unlike their treatment in this analysis, climate change and ocean acidification should be regarded as a megatrend in their own right as they are fundamentally altering the world we live in on a massive scale and they will continue to impact on all aspects of life in the future.

    Page photo: “Dystopia” by Moebius (Hat-tip to Climate Progress)

    Monckton responds to Abraham in the predictable way

    Posted on by
    2

    Update 19/7/10: The Support John Abraham page now has over 900 signatories, and a Facebook group has also been set up.  John Abraham has the full support of his university – contrast with the tone of response that Christopher Monckton appears to favour and it is becomes very hard to see how someone could take Monckton’s arguments seriously.

    …..

    John Abraham from St Thomas University recently presented an extraordinarily detailed rebuttal of a sample of Christopher Monckton’s arguments.  After his initial response a few weeks ago, Monckton has not only asked Prof. Abraham to answer 446 questions about his presentation, but has now appealed to readers of Watts Up With That to pressure his university for the removal of the presentation, and to “instigate a disciplinary inquiry into the Professor’s unprofessional conduct”.

    A page has been created where you can show your support for John Abraham by commenting in the thread. More details over at Skeptical Science and Deltoid.

    Reply to Ridd et al.’s Technical Comment to Science: “Have coral calcification rates slowed in the last twenty years?”

    Posted on by
    7

    Several denialists have sort to deliberately confuse the readership over the important evidence gathered by De’ath et al. (2009) on slowing coral calcification on the Great Barrier Reef.  Given the recent resurgence in this misinformation, I thought it would be a good idea to post Dr Glenn De’ath, Dr Janice M. Lough and Dr Katharina E. Fabricius’s recent reply  to Dr Peter Ridd’s confused and misleading claims.

    The maintenance of coral calcification rates is critical for the future of coral reefs and it is, therefore, important to identify spatial patterns and temporal trends in the rates of coral calcification. Our recent report showed that substantial declines in coral calcification have occurred on the Great Barrier Reef in the last 20 years (De’ath et al., 2009), and similar reports are now emerging from other parts of the world (Tanzil et al., 2009). Ridd et al. here suggest that (1) ontogenetic effects, and (2) the last data points at the end of the recent cores, largely explain the ~14% decline in coral calcification we have shown across the Great Barrier Reef. We believe the assertions of Ridd et al. are erroneous due to: (1) their invalid assumptions about the data, and (2) their inappropriate statistical analyses.

    Ontogenetic effects

    Ridd et al. argue that we ignored the possibility that ontogentic effects contributed to the reported decline, namely that corals in their youngest years calcify at a faster rate than later in life. However, their main underlying assumption, that age of each short core is given by its number of growth records is wrong. Thus their Fig 2b derived from this assumption, is also wrong. Short cores are ~50 cm long (the length of the coring barrel), whereas the median height of the corals from which the short cores were taken was 1.5 m. The innermost year bands in short cores do not thus reflect early years of the corals’ life in the colonies sampled. Rather, corals were on average ~50 years old (rather than 1 year old, as Ridd et al assume) when the innermost year ring of the short cores was deposited.

    In contrast, ontogenetic effects can be accurately assessed in whole colonies where the first years of the corals are preserved. However, Ridd et al. do not include year as a covariate factor, so their analysis is unable to disentangle the two potentially confounded effects of age and temporal trends in environmental conditions.

    In the Report, we also investigated ontogenetic effects by comparing calcification in the last 15 years in the life of a coral (the outermost bands) in the 189 colonies collected from 1990 to 2005, and the 139 colonies sampled prior to 1990. We showed that for the cohort prior to 1990, the number of colonies and the number of reefs with increasing and declining rates were approximately equal in number, with 29 of the 56 reefs (51.7%) declining at an average rate of 0.11% yr-1 (SE=0.18%). However, in the 1990–2005 period, 12 of the 13 reefs (92.3%) declined at an average rate of 1.44% yr-1 (SE=0.31%), indicating a strong decline specific to that period, rather than reflecting ontogenetic properties of the outermost annual growth bands in coral skeletons.

    End of core data

    Ridd et al. argue that the last annual growth layer for each coral of the 2004 and 2005 series are negatively biased estimates of growth due to unspecified problems of measurement and should, therefore, be discarded. Such specific measurement problems are only likely if those corals were measured separately from the remainder. This was not the case as the data are based on the re-measuring and re-dating of all the material using the same methods and the same instrument, and conducted by one person (JML) within the past 5 years.

    Ridd et al also argue that the series ending in 2005 (21 corals) did not show a significant decline in 2004, when the series ending in 2004 (containing 77 corals) showed a decline. It is perhaps also worth noting that Ridd et al use the term “significant” on six occasions without any statistical reference or justification. This statement was neither supported by their Fig 1D, nor by any form of statistical analysis or significance tests.

    However, we also re-ran the temporal change model excluding the records of corals in 2004-5 (Fig. 1). The decline in calcification from 1990 – 2005 reduces to ~77% of that predicted when all data were included; still a decline of ~11.0%.

    Figure 1. Decline in calcification based on all data and with the final years records for 2004-5 removed. The predicted reduction in the current decline for 1990-2005 is reduced from ~14.2% to ~11.0%.

    Statistical analyses

    Ridd et al. standardise the measurements of individual calcification records, average them for each year, and then analyse the temporal trends using an antiquated smoothing technique (Savitzky-Golay, 1964). There are three major problems with their approach:

    (1)   It fails to account for the sampling structure whereby coral colonies are sampled from different reefs in highly variable numbers. There are between 1 and 46 colonies per reef, and the analyses in De’ath et al (2009) accounts for this structure by including random effects of reef and colony nested in reef in their generalized additive models (GAMs). The latter approach also takes into account the correlation across time due to repeated measures on colonies.

    (2)   The fitted curves of Ridd et al. have no basis for the selection of smoothness (such procedures did not exist in 1964) and are mostly over-fitted (i.e. they are too wriggly), in particular in the last few years at which time Ridd et al. claim the anomalies exist. For example, the rapid increase in the last year or so of the truncated series is extreme. This contrasts with the failure of their fit to capture a rapid rise in the period 1940-45. All efforts to recapture their fits (no details were provided in Ridd et al.) failed despite using the Savitzky-Golay procedure with a wide range of smoothing.

    The analyses of De’ath et al (2009) [SOM] used widely accepted model selection procedures for both random and fixed effect components of the GAMs, within which the smoothness of the temporal profiles was based on cross-validation.

    (3)   None of Ridd et al.’s analyses use an inferential statistical model other than linear regression in their Fig. 2., and in that instance no confidence intervals or significance of the regressions are provided. It is also clear from inspection of those plots that strong serial correlation is present, which is not catered for in their analyses.

    Conclusion

    For the above reasons, we disagree with Ridd et al that the observed declines in coral calcification on the Great Barrier Reef are due to ontogenetic effects in corals, and that the last two years of record should be omitted from the data set. The predicted decline in calcification would drop from ~14.2% to ~11.0% were the last two records omitted; still a major decline. We maintain that this decline in calcification, probably due to synergistic effects of prolonged and repeated temperature stress and ocean acidification in tropical waters, is a real and serious issue for massive Porites on the Great Barrier Reef, and indeed for coral reefs around the world (Tanzil et al., 2009).

    Dr Glenn De’ath, Dr Janice M. Lough and Dr Katharina E. Fabricius

    Australian Institute of Marine Science, PMB 3, Townsville Qld 4810, Australia.

    Expert credibility in climate change: not all climate research and expertise are equal.

    Posted on by
    8

    A fairly convoluted (but interesting none the less) paper just got published in PNAS by Anderegg et al (2010) looking at climate change and scientific credibility (more coverage by the Guardian here). Why don’t we trust climate scientists? To answer this question, the authors conducted a literature search of 1,372 climate researchers whose work “constitutes expertise or credibility in technical and policy-relevant scientific research”, and conclude what we’ve been blogging here for some time: “Despite media tendencies to present both sides in debates, which can contribute to continued public misunderstanding,not all climate researchers are equal in scientific credibility and expertise in the climate system”

    Although preliminary estimates from published literature and expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC. A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

    Here’s the nuts and bolts of the paper (CE = convinced by the evidence, UE = unconvinced by the evidence):

    So: not only is there a pretty considerable difference between the number of expert researchers between CE and UE groups, the mean expertise of the UE group was around half (60 publications) that of the CE group (119 publications). Here’s the real interesting statistic: researchers with fewer than 20 climate publications comprise ≈80% the UE group, as opposed to less than 10% of the CE group. To quote the authors: “This indicates that the bulk of UE researchers on the most prominent multisignatory statements about climate change have not published extensively in the peer-reviewed climate literature.”

    From a subsample of the 50 most-published researchers from each group, there was a considerable difference in relative expertise between the CE and UE groups:

    Of these top 50 researchers, the CE group have an average of 408 climate publications, whilst the UE researchers averaged only 89 publications. Again, to quote the authors. “this suggests that not all experts are equal, and top CE researchers have much stronger expertise in climate science than those in the top UE group“.

    So who’s citing who? Anderegg et al use citation metrics to determine “…the quality and impact of a researcher’s contribution—a critical component to overall scientific credibility—as opposed to measuring a researcher’s involvement in a field, or expertise“. In examining the top four most-cited papers for each CE and UE researcher with 20 or more climate publications, the disparity in citation metrics between the CE and UE groups is astonishing:


    Conclusions?

    (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

    (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

    As Phil M commented on a post the other day, the UE group:

    1) Also happen to have close ties to fossil fuel & mining industries.
    2) Have ties to right wing lobby groups.
    3) Have only a handful of scientists who back the denier side, of whom few have published or conducted research in any relevant climate science field, much less publish any papers in reputable journals debunking AGW.
    4) Have not a single scientific instituion backing them.

    Anderegg W.R.L., Prall J.W., Harold J. & Schneider S.H. (2010 Online Early) Expert credibility in climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 21 June 2010, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107

    And while Watts tours, global warming continues.

    Posted on by
    2

    Professor Neville Nicholls, Monash University

    Contrary to the impression you might have gained from the media, the global climate is NOT cooling. In fact, the last twelve months, June 2009 – May 2010, has been the hottest June-May period on record, in both the 31-year satellite record of lower atmosphere global temperature and the 131-year surface global temperature record. In both data series the last 12 months have been more than 0.4C hotter than the average temperature of the last two decades of the 20th century.

    The figure below plots the time series of twelve-month (June-May) global mean temperature anomalies. The data in the figure are the Spencer-Christy lower atmospheric temperatures from satellites (labelled “UAH” in the figure) and the surface temperatures from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (labelled “GISS”). Both datasets are freely available (UAH from http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt; GISS from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt). Both datasets have been plotted as anomalies relative to 1979/80-1998/99, ie the first twenty years of the satellite observations.

    Simply eyeballing the graphs of the surface and satellite temperature record should convince anyone that global warming never “stopped”. Fitting linear trends to the data since the start of the satellite observations produces virtually identical trends in the two data sets. Even the variations from year-to-year in the two temperature series are close matches.

    The close match between the surface and satellite variations and trends confirms that the warming trend at the surface is NOT due to the urban heat island effect. Nor is it due to changes in the numbers of stations used in the surface analysis, or any problems with the locations of the surface instruments. None of these potential problems affects the satellite data, and the satellite data are completely independent of the surface data.

    Nor is the warming due to the Sun getting stronger. Satellite measurements show that total solar irradiance has decreased since the start of the 21st century, and this would probably have caused some weak cooling rather than any warming (http://acrim.com/TSI%20Monitoring.htm).

    Neville Nicholls is an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University, President of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (www.amos.org.au), and an Executive Editor of Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change (wires.wiley.com).