Category Archives: Climate Change

The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.

Posted on by
Reply

Given our current delay in dealing with the climate change issue, I was reminded of this interesting article.  Should those who are obfuscating on climate change be made to pick up the tab?

(Reuters) – Tue Nov 10, 2009 6:18am EST

At United Nations climate talks in Barcelona last week negotiators from developed countries said the world would need an extra six to 12 months to agree a legally binding, global deal to cut carbon emissions beyond a planned December deadline.

The IEA, energy adviser to 28 industrialized countries, said the world must act urgently to put greenhouse gases on a track to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.

Every year’s delay beyond 2010 would add another $500 billion to the extra investment of $10,500 billion needed from 2010-2030 to curb carbon emissions, for example to improve energy efficiency and boost low-carbon renewable energy.

“Much more needs to be done to get anywhere near an emissions path consistent with … limiting the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees,” said the IEA’s 2009 World Energy Outlook. “Countries attending the U.N. climate conference must not lose sight of this.”

U.N. talks meant to agree a deal in Copenhagen in December to extend or replace the existing Kyoto Protocol have struggled to overcome a rich-poor rift on how to split the cost of curbing carbon emissions, for example from burning fossil fuels.

Developed countries accept that they have to take the burden of cutting carbon emissions, but want developing nations to accept binding actions too under a new treaty.

Poor countries want financial help to implement carbon emissions cuts and prepare for unavoidable global warming, including droughts, floods and rising seas.

The IEA report estimated that the world needed to invest an extra $197 billion annually by 2020 to make the necessary emissions cuts in developing countries, compared with a global total of $430 billion by then.

“The Copenhagen conference will provide important pointers to the kind of energy future that awaits us,” it said.

To continue present trends of energy demand and burning of fossil fuels “would lead almost certainly to massive climatic change and irreparable damage to the planet,” it said.

To implement swinging carbon cuts, on the other hand, would require a huge shift in the world’s energy system.

That would raise, for example, the share of non-fossil fuels to 32 percent of total primary energy in 2030, from 19 percent in 2007. The share of the internal combustion engine in new car sales would fall to 40 percent by 2030 from more than 90 percent under current trends.

Science and the fight against mainstream media bias

Posted on by
4

I came across this piece of journalism today by the now deceased journalist Warren T Brookes, describing the hysteria and hype behing ‘global warming’, directly attacking politician Al Gore and climate scientist James Hansen (click through for a higher resolution).

So what’s so surprising about this particular piece of journalism? Believe it or not, this was written and published back in 1989. For a little perspective, here’s a graph from Wood for Trees showing temperature anomaly data from 1850 – 2010…

… and the green line is the linear trend since the the newspaper piece was published (1989 – 2010). Vindication for Gore and Hansen? In retrospect yes,  but by which time, the damage is already done. In decades following 1989, the media have done a great job in slurring climate change science. The solution?  Andrew Weaver (from the University of Victoria in Canada) is suing the National Post newspaper for defamation following a series of accusatory articles:

University of Victoria Professor Andrew Weaver, the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis, launched a lawsuit today in BC Supreme Court against three writers at the National Post (and the newspaper as a whole), over a series of unjustified libels based on grossly irresponsible falsehoods that have gone viral on the Internet.

In a statement released at the same time the suit was filed, Dr. Weaver said, “I asked The National Post to do the right thing – to retract a number of recent articles that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held. To my absolute astonishment, the newspaper refused.”

Dr. Weaver’s statement of claim not only asks for a Court injunction requiring The National Post to remove all of the false allegations from its Internet websites, but also seeks an unprecedented Court order requiring the newspaper to assist Dr. Weaver in removing the defamatory National Post articles from the many other Internet sites where they have been re-posted.

“If I sit back and do nothing to clear my name, these libels will stay on the Internet forever. They’ll poison the factual record, misleading people who are looking for reliable scientific information about global warming,” said Weaver.

The suit names Financial Post Editor Terence Corcoran, columnist Peter Foster, reporter Kevin Libin and National Post publisher Gordon Fisher, as well as several still-unidentified editors and copy editors. It seeks general, aggravated damages, special and exemplary damages and legal costs in relation to articles by Foster on December 9, 2009 (“Weaver’s Web”), Corcoran on December 10, 2009 (“Weaver’s Web II”) and January 27, 2010 (“Climate Agency going up in flames”), and Libin on February 2, 2010 (“So much for pure science”).

Hat tip to Deltoid. Will be watching this one closely…

Hottest March and hottest Jan-Feb-March on record: “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous”

Posted on by
4

Climate Progress calls it (thanks to Phil M):

It was the hottest March in both satellite records (UAH and RSS), and tied for the hottest March on record in the NASA dataset.  It was the hottest (or tied for hottest) January through March in all three records.

The record temperatures we’re seeing now are especially impressive because we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.” It now appears to be over. It’s just hard to stop the march of anthropogenic global warming, well, other than by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that is.

NASA’s prediction from last month is standing up:  “It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be set in 2010.″ Actually, NASA made that prediction back in January 2009:

Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.”

Of course, there never was any global cooling — see Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira — “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.” Indeed, the overwhelming  majority of the warming went right where scientists had predicted — into the oceans (see “How we know global warming is happening”):

“If Kevin Rudd is sincere about taking ‘any threat to the Great Barrier Reef fundamentally seriously’ he should perhaps be looking more closely at the cargo on the ship”

Posted on by
4

Here’s a great article by the ABC News quoting David Wachenfeld (the Chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority) that places the recent ship grounding on the Great Barrier Reef in perspective:

Oil not the main threat from the coal ship (ABC News, 6th April)

“From my point of view as Prime Minister of Australia, there is no greater natural asset for Australia than the Great Barrier Reef,” said Kevin Rudd today after he flew over the reef to survey the damage caused by a Chinese coal ship that ran aground.

“I take any threat to the Great Barrier Reef fundamentally seriously,” he said.

David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the Great Barrier Marine Park Authority says while he fears for the fate of the oil in the ships tanks, he is far more concerned about the impact of climate change on the reef than a lost Chinese coal ship.

“There is no doubt that climate change is the greatest long term threat to the reef.”

Oil spills are considered far less of a threat both because they are less likely, and their damage is localised if it does occur.

“Climate change is not a localised impact,” says Wachenfeld. “Unlike an oil spill, it doesn’t happen in one place; it happens everywhere. So the issue is scale. That’s what brings climate change to the top of the list. It’s simply the scale of the impact.”

There is an irony that the cargo the stranded ship is carrying is coal. Even if the ship lost its entire supply of oil, the environmental catastrophe would still be less than the impact of the world’s continued burning of fossil fuels.

So if Kevin Rudd is sincere about taking “any threat to the Great Barrier Reef fundamentally seriously” he should perhaps be looking more closely at the cargo on the ship, than its route or the hole in its fuel tank.

Valuable words. Hat tip to Chris McGrath for pointing out the article.

Climate change skeptics ‘lack scientific credibility’

Posted on by
11

The skeptics who frequently deny the reality of climate change in the world’s media lack all scientific credibility, charge three eminent Australian researchers who have just been listed among the world’s 20 most influential scientists in the field of climate change.

Marine researchers Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor Terry Hughes and Professor John Pandolfi were ranked in the world’s top 20 by the international science citation analysts Thomson Reuters and ScienceWatch, for the decade 1999-2009. All three are coral reef researchers, members of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS).

However, they warn, many self-proclaimed climate skeptics have never conducted any authentic climate research nor had it peer-reviewed by the world scientific community and published in respected journals.

The three researchers are urging the Australian and international media to be far more cautious in accepting views about climate change put by people whose work has not been subject to rigorous scientific scrutiny and peer-review – and to question the motives behind it.

Professors Hoegh-Guldberg, Hughes and Pandolfi (ranked 3, 7 and 17 in the world respectively) have published extensively in the world scientific literature, in particular on the impacts of climate change on the world’s coral reefs, fish and ocean ecosystems, and on the appropriate management responses to human-related climate change.

Collectively, their research papers on climate change have been cited by over 5000 other scientific publications, giving their work a powerful influence over the thinking of other researchers globally, who then cited it in their own peer-reviewed reports.

Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, Director of the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland, is a co-author of the world’s most cited paper on climate change, the 2002 Nature report, “Ecological responses to recent climate change” (G.R. Walther et al., Nature 416: 389-95, 2002), which has now been cited about 1,100 times.

The US National Center for Atmospheric Research is ranked as the world’s most cited institution. Its most cited paper – the 2003 Science report, “Climate change, human impacts and the resilience of coral reefs“ – was co-authored by an international team including Professors Hughes, Hoegh-Guldberg and Pandolfi (T.P. Hughes et al., Science 302: 1503-1504, 2003)

“There are no climate skeptics among the coral reef science and management community, because we have seen first-hand the damage caused to reefs in response to the global warming that has already occurred. The evidence for man-made climate change is unequivocal,” says CoECRS director, Professor Hughes

“Our focus now is to move beyond the gloom, doom and denial, and look for practical solutions that will limit the damage from climate change.”

Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said: “The evidence emerging from both ocean and atmospheric science makes it increasingly clear that humanity is going to have to get atmospheric CO2 levels back down to 350 parts per million or less, if we are to avoid major impacts on the planet and everything that lives on it.

“It is good that Australian science is playing a significant role in this global awakening – and Australians generally can support their science by demanding greater urgency and more action from their governments and political parties.”

CoECRS principal researcher Professor Pandolfi from The University of Queensland, said: “We are entering a new era in the history of environmental change on our planet: dramatic changes in climate coupled with massive degradation from overexploitation and pollution continue to threaten the foundations of many ecosystems.

“By showing that these linked threats are unprecedented in the Earth’s long history, we are drawing a line in the sand for immediate and substantial action to promote the rehabilitation and recovery of ecosystem goods and services.”

“Climategate: The lion that squeaked” – Clive Hamilton

Posted on by
29

Clive Hamilton

ABC News, April 1st: by Clive Hamilton

It was the “final nail in the coffin” of global warming science, declared James Delingpole of London’s Daily Telegraph, the moment you should start dumping shares in renewable energy companies.

Lord Monckton announced that it proved beyond doubt “the abject corruption of climate science”.

“The reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished”, thundered Lord Lawson and in the United States Senator James Inhofe went so far as to recommend that all those involved should be chased down for criminal prosecution.

Our own Lord of Blog Andrew Bolt declared it “a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science”, an outrage in which leading scientists were guilty of “conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more”.

Across the globe, denialists were cock-a-hoop. At last, the leaking of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia had vindicated everything they believed, even the conspiracy theories about which they were a little embarrassed.

Except that the leaked emails that sent the denial industry into a heart-stopping frenzy have turned out to be the mouse that squeaked. That roar we heard was generated in the denialist echo chamber.

Today the Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Commons brought down its report into “Climategate”. What did it find?

1. There was nothing untoward behind the “trick” used to “hide the decline” in the temperature record. The phrases were colloquial terms without any sinister implications. The Committee found that the “evidence patently fails to support” the claim that these words reveal a conspiracy to hide evidence that does not fit with global warming, and that CRU Director Professor Phil Jones has “no case to answer”.

2. The results and conclusions of CRU research have been independently verified by other methodologies and other sources of data. The Unit’s analyses “have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified”.

3. There is no evidence to suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process.

4. While 95 per cent of the CRU data have been publicly available for years and some of the remainder is subject to confidentiality agreements with overseas organisations, the report did find that CRU scientists had refused to hand over their data to climate “sceptics” and the University may have breached the Freedom of Information Act.

Despite this finding, the Committee wrote that it “can sympathise with Professor Jones, who must have found it frustrating to handle requests for data that he knew—or perceived—were motivated by a desire simply to undermine his work.”

The University of East Anglia had submitted that in “July 2009 UEA received an unprecedented, and frankly administratively overwhelming, deluge of FOIA requests related to CRU”, which helps to explain why the Committee noted a “culture at CRU of resisting disclosure of information to climate change sceptics”.

The Committee blamed the failure to release data on the relevant officers at the University who should have stepped in to over-rule the scientists. “We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced”, concluded the Committee, and recommended Jones be reinstated.

So, no conspiracy, no collusion, no manipulation of data, no corruption of the peer-review process, no scandal; just an understandable reluctance to hand over data to dishonest people with a history of misrepresenting it.

Squibs don’t get much damper than “Climategate”. The most worrying aspect of the drama was the way in which most of the media ditched any attempt at assessing the claims and became caught up in the frenzy, when a couple of hours spent reading the emails and talking to one of two of those involved would have made the conclusions of the House of Commons inquiry entirely predictable.

Clive Hamilton is an Australian author and public intellectual.

Tobacco and climate change: no difference.

Posted on by
Reply

Many scientists are perplexed why we have lost the so-called ‘media war on science’ given that the evidence of climate change and its human origin is so extensive and considered unambiguous within the best scientific circles. Have a listen to this fascinating session at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the peak US scientific association which also produces science magazine):

[audio:https://climateshifts.org/media/scienceshow.mp3]

The four speakers recorded by Robyn Williams at the ABC Science Show give fascinating perspective on why this has happened despite the fact that the science behind climate change is so solid.  Four major points emerge from their analysis:

1. Climate change is diffusing away from the scientific community and into general society.

“Conservative think-tanks, obviously with corporate support that we’ll hear about, have greatly amplified the work of contrarian scientists. They’ve recently been joined by conservative media, Limbaugh, Fox, conservative politicians, Inhofe, most Republicans these days with the exception of Lindsey Graham, and especially the blogosphere in waging an all-out war in climate change science. We can add undermining climate change policy to the policy impacts that we started out with of conservative think-tanks” (Riley Dunlap).

2. Scientists need to be more sceptical about those new studies coming out saying ‘well, it’s not so bad’.

“For the mass media we’re in time for a new era of coverage. If you decide to cover the ideological think-tanks at all after the American Enterprise Institute has already announced publicly that they’ll pay $10,000 for any scientist who will write something that says ‘hey, it isn’t so bad, this is why I’m sceptical’, if you want to cover them at all, what is worth covering is the tactics that these right-wing think-tanks are using. If you really want to report the conflict like a good journalist: ‘On the one hand this, on the other hand that’, the true other side, the scientifically credible other side on global warming issues is not that it’s not happening but that either it’s as bad as the IPCC says or else it’s worse.” (William Freudenburg)

3. There is a considerable gap between scientific knowledge and public perception.

I think we know that one reason for sure is that the balanced framework that so many journalists rely on unduly weighs outlier views. So we’ve talked about that a lot already, but it seems to me there is an important point for this audience which is how scientists think about the problem. Actually most scientists, it seems to me, don’t spend most of their time really worrying about the balance framework in the media, what they worry about more, or what they invoke if you ask them why the public are confused, is what we historians and sociologists would call the deficit model. That is to say, we tend to assume that the public are confused because they have a deficit of scientific knowledge, education and cognitive skills. That is to say that they’re scientifically illiterate.

So if the problem is a deficit, then the remedy for it is a surfeit. (Naomi Oreskes)

4. There’s no such thing as a good scientist who isn’t a sceptic.

I changed my opinion in 1970 from cooling to warming, published it first, it’s one of my proudest moments in science because we found, as the evidence accumulated, that there were a number of reasons, it’s all explained in chapter one of “Science as a Contact Sport”, and I still have to hear things from those famous climate professors, the ones that publish all the papers in the referee journals, professors Limbaugh and Will, you know, about how… ‘Oh Schneider, he’s just an environmentalist for all temperatures’, it’s a great line! (Stephen Schneider)

Koch Industries: Secretly funding the climate denial machine

Posted on by
Reply

This recent report by Greenpeace on Koch Industries makes for damning reading:

Most Americans have never heard of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the country, because it has no Koch-branded consumer products, sells no shares on the stock market and has few of the disclosure requirements of a public company. Although Koch intentionally stays out of the public eye, it is now playing a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming. Koch Industries has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition.

This private, out-of-sight corporation is now a partner to ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and other donors that support organiza- tions and front-groups opposing progressive clean energy and climate policy. In fact, Koch has out-spent ExxonMobil in funding these groups in recent years. From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries- controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of the ‘climate denial machine’.

The company’s tight knit network of lobbyists, former executives and organizations has created a forceful stream of misinformation that Koch-funded entities produce and disseminate. This campaign propaganda is then replicated, repackaged and echoed many times throughout the Koch-funded web of political front groups and think tanks. On repeated occasions documented below, organizations funded by Koch foundations have led the assault on climate science and scientists, “green jobs,” renewable energy and climate policy progress (click here to see more of Koch’s web of dirty money and influence).

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change

Posted on by
1

According to James Lovelock, anyhow:

“I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change,” said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. “The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is “modern democracy”, he added. “Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”

Fighting words from a cranky 90 year old man, but is he really that out of line? Read the rest of the article over at The Guardian before passing judgement..

Debunking the climate change myths of Dr Andrew Burns

Posted on by
7

So quite often we get a torrent of completely pointless comments on Climate Shifts (e.g. “Don’t bother with the next scare of “Oceans going acidic, shock – horror” that one is dead in the water…. Get real, the AGW scare is gone forever. Climategate, glaciergate, amazongate, yawn, it goes it just goes on and on……” and “The public will determine policy based on preception so kiss AGW good bye baby! The skeptics have won. It’s over, go home.”). Other times, we get the usual “THE EARTH IS COOLING SO CLIMATE CHANGE IS ALL A LIE” approach. Here’s a comment we got this morning from Andrew Burns (unsurprisingly from this story) which seems to fit the usual template:

There’s thousands more scientists who have woken up to the global warming scam … and even more who look at the facts:

1. Warming since the Little Ice Age
2. A DECREASE in the rate of warming after 1945, when man’s CO2 output increased 1200%.
3. No warming in the past 15 years
4. No evidence that man’s CO2 has contributed to warming
5. Lots of faked temperature data (eg Darwin)
6. Oceans cooling for the past 5 years.
7. Sea levels rising for the past 6000 years with less increase in recent years.

Should we post comments like these? It’s pretty clear from above that it’s a deliberate campaign of disinformation. Instead, let’s dismantle this meme piece by piece (thanks in large part to Skeptical Science):

There’s thousands more scientists who have woken up to the global warming scam … and even more who look at the facts:

More often than not, these comments always appeal to the “facts” with zero evidence. So exactly who are these scientists? What is the scam they’ve woken up to? See these links for discussion on “Is there a scientific consensus on global warming?” and “Do 500 scientists refute the consensus?“. Here’s a challenge for you Dr Burns: name some of these thousands of scientists?

1. Warming since the Little Ice Age

Here’s one I never understood. Why do skeptics assume that all warming is anthropogenic? Anyhow, here’s what the science says:

“The main driver of the warming from the Little Ice Age to 1940 was the warming sun with a small contribution from volcanic activity. However, solar activity leveled off after 1940 and the net influence from sun and volcano since 1940 has been slight cooling. Greenhouse gases have been the main contributor of warming since 1970.” (Read more)

2. A DECREASE in the rate of warming after 1945, when man’s CO2 output increased 1200%.

Where does this figure of 1200% come from? Why is 1945 significant? Who knows? Either way, this seems to be a new spin on the same recycled argument. Here’s what the science says:

Early 20th century warming was in large part due to rising solar activity and relatively quiet volcanic activity. However, both factors have played little to no part in the warming since 1975. Solar activity has been steady since the 50’s. Volcanoes have been relatively frequent and if anything, have exerted a cooling effect. (Read more)

3. No warming in the past 15 years

The ‘it hasn’t warmed since 1998’ meme has been recycled and debunked more times than I can count:

The planet has continued to accumulate heat since 1998 – global warming is still happening. Nevertheless, surface temperatures show much internal variability due to heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. 1998 was an unusually hot year due to a strong El Nino. (Read more)

Empirical measurements of the Earth’s heat content show the planet is still accumulating heat and global warming is still happening. Surface temperatures can show short term cooling when heat is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean, which has a much greater heat capacity than the air.
(Read more)

Globally-averaged annual mean temperature anomalies in degrees Celsius, together with 11-year unweighted moving averages (solid lines). Blue circles from the Hadley Centre (British). Red diamonds from NASA GISS. Green squares from NOAA NCDC. NASA GISS and NOAA NCDC are offset in vertical direction by increments of 0.5°C for visual clarity.

4. No evidence that man’s CO2 has contributed to warming

On the contrary, there’s plenty of evidence that CO2 is contributing to warming:

Direct observations find that CO2 is rising sharply due to human activity. Satellite and surface measurements find less energy is escaping to space at CO2 absorption wavelengths. Ocean and surface temperature measurements find the planet continues to accumulate heat. This gives a line of empirical evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming. (Read more)

5. Lots of faked temperature data (eg Darwin)

I don’t know where to start here. Darwin ‘faked’ temperature data?

6. Oceans cooling for the past 5 years.

Another debunked meme:

Early estimates of ocean heat from the Argo showed a cooling bias due to pressure sensor issues. Recent estimates of ocean heat that take this bias into account show continued warming of the upper ocean. This is confirmed by independent estimates of ocean heat as well as more comprehensive measurements of ocean heat down to 2000 metres deep. (Read more)

7. Sea levels rising for the past 6000 years with less increase in recent years

What was the rate of sea level rise for the past 6000 years? Without this we can only guess what was meant, but either way, the science is clear:

Sea levels are measured by a variety of methods that show close agreement – sediment cores, tidal gauges, satellite measurements. What they find is sea level rise has been steadily accelerating over the past century.(Read more).

Global mean sea level from 1870 to 2006 with one standard deviation error estimates

Thanks to Dr Andrew Burns for allowing us to correct his misunderstandings! Thanks too for Skeptical Science, check out their new iPhone app: