UPDATE: 11/10 From the Sydney Morning Herald
Michael Duffy
November 8, 2008
Last month I witnessed something shocking. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was giving a talk at the University of NSW. The talk was accompanied by a slide presentation, and the most important graph showed average global temperatures. For the past decade it represented temperatures climbing sharply.
As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: “We’re at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before]”.
Now, this is completely wrong. For most of the past seven years, those temperatures have actually been on a plateau. For the past year, there’s been a sharp cooling. These are facts, not opinion: the major sources of these figures, such as the Hadley Centre in Britain, agree on what has happened, and you can check for yourself by going to their websites. Sure, interpretations of the significance of this halt in global warming vary greatly, but the facts are clear.
Satellite derived lower troposphere temperature since 1979 – Click for a larger image
Reference: UAH lower troposphere data
So it’s disturbing that Rajendra Pachauri’s presentation was so erroneous, and would have misled everyone in the audience unaware of the real situation. This was particularly so because he was giving the talk on the occasion of receiving an honorary science degree from the university.
Below: find out how you can tell Mr. Pachauri directly what you think – he has a blog!
Later that night, on ABC TV’s Lateline program, Pachauri claimed that those who disagree with his own views on global warming are “flat-earthers” who deny “the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence”. But what evidence could be more important than the temperature record, which Pachauri himself had fudged only a few hours earlier?
In his talk, Pachauri said the number of global warming sceptics is shrinking, a curious claim he was unable to substantiate when questioned about it on Lateline. Still, there’s no doubt a majority of climate scientists agree with the view of the IPCC.
Today I want to look at why this might be so: after all, such a state of affairs presents a challenge to sceptics such as me. If we’re right, then an awful lot of scientists are wrong. How could this be?
This question was addressed in September in a paper by Professor Richard Lindzen, of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen, probably the most qualified prominent global-warming sceptic, suggested that a number of changes in the way science is conducted have contributed to the rise of climate alarmism among American scientists.
Lindzen believes another problem with climate science is that in America and Europe it is heavily colonised by environmental activists.
Here are just two examples that indicate the scale of the problem: the spokesman for the American Meteorological Society is a former staffer for Al Gore, and realclimate.org, probably the world’s most authoritative alarmist web site, was started by a public relations firm serving environmental causes.
None of this is necessarily sinister, but the next time you hear a scientist or scientific organisation warning of climate doom, you might want to follow the money trail. Sceptics are not the only ones who have received funding from sources sympathetic to their viewpoint. (And yes, Lindzen did once receive some money from energy companies.)
Lindzen claims that scientific journals play an important role in promoting global warming alarmism, and gives a number of examples.
Someone else who’s looked closely at scientific journals (although not specifically those dealing with climate science) is epidemiologist John Ioannidis of the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. He reached the surprising conclusion that most published research findings are proved false within five years of their publication. (Lest he be dismissed as some eccentric, I note that the Economist recently said Ioannidis has made his case “quite convincingly”.)
Why might this be so? Later work by Ioannidis and colleagues suggests that these days journal editors are more likely to publish research that will make a splash than that which will not. They do this to sell more copies of their publications and of reprints of papers in it. Ioannidis believes these publication practices might be distorting science.
It’s possible the forces described by Lindzen and Ioannidis have imbued climate science with a preference for results that involve (or seem to involve) disastrous change rather than stability. Rajenda Pachauri’s recent Sydney lecture suggests that in this relatively new field, inconvenient truths to the contrary are not welcome.
Does the temperature data you use account for known forcing factors such as the El Ninho / El Ninha cycle and the axial inclination wobble of the Earth?
Sorry!
The climate change alarmists have their minds made up and facts won’t change them.
I completely agree. We should prepare ourselves for the inevitable ice age which generations to come will eventually have to deal with, and not concern ourselves with CO2 which has not been shown to be a detriment to the planet or anything living on it.
leebert (00:02:45) :
If you had looked at the data charts you would recognize I believe that CO2 causes warming.
Point taken, sorry.
The question is, how much? The extant trend lines of the past 125 years do not show a catastrophic increase in temperatures.
If my memory serves me well, it is a 0.7 C, with 0.5 C more ‘in the pipeline’ because the earth reacts with a delay. Indeed this 0.7C temperature increase was not catastrophic. But what about the next 0.7 C? Will the consequences of that be equally non-catastrophic? And the 0.7 C after that, and the 0.7C after that, etc? No one really knows, the only honest assessment is: we’re gambling on it.
The IPCC’s AR4 projected temperature forecasts have been falsified while Keenlyside has issued yet another forecast showing another decade of stable temperatures.
This makes my jaw drop. How can you falsify with forecasts? This is an entire new concept to me.
With regard to the last 10 years of data: the official position in the climate science community is that 10 years is too short a period to falsify the IPCC projections. So I do not exactly see what has been falsified by what.
I too am under the impression that the role of soot has been on the increase lately. However not to fundamentally change the picture, they remain a secondary factor to CO2 as knowledge currently stands.
Again, look at the graphs:
http://tinyurl.com/co2trend
This graph is simply wrong. The exponentially increasing line resembles the the IPCC A2 scenario, predicting a + 3.6 C rise by 2100. However, the A2 scenario predicts 1250 ppm for 2100, not 550 as the graph suggests. The A2 scenario is a pessimistic scenario, based on rapidly increasing CO2 emissions, therefore the exponential growth.
The graph appears to combine two different horizontal scales: time (for the IPCC projections) and CO2 level (the green line representing the opinion of the author of the graph). The green line could be correct, the IPCC line is definitely not representing the IPCC projections, as the horizontal timescale has been replace by CO2 levels. The graph is actually quite appalling and misleading.
…when it hasn’t happened yet?
+0.7C and it hasn’t ‘happend yet’? Climate change is slow from the human perspective. 0.7C seems a little from the human perspective: we’re used to a day-night difference of >15C.
Even Kevin Trenberth of NCAR famously commented that it appears the extra errant heat has succeeded in escaping back into space! Some greenhouse effect!?
Was that comment peer reviewed? 🙂
http://tinyurl.com/co2trend2
Likewise, if the trends of CO2 levels vs temperature continue to diverge, then it could well indicate that CO2’s warming effect is – as Arrhenius himself found – saturating; that CO2’s warming effect is logarithmic & decreases in effect for every new unit of concentration added.
Completely correct. The logarithmic response to increasing CO2 is well established in climate science. Your assumption that the IPCC projects an exponential response is based on a flawed graph, as I have tried to point out above.
The quandary isn’t whether CO2 causes warming, but whether the concern that increased humidity would inhere runaway heating – disproportionate to the baseline effect – has any basis in fact.
Where did you get the idea from that water vapor can cause runaway heating? Honestly, this is the first time I heard that. Forget runaway heating, no one is touting that possibility. It has indeed no basis in fact. Water vapor is a feedback, not capable of causing runaway heating.
…Thus far neither Argo nor Aqua data are showing dangerous warming in the seas or extra water vapor in the atmosphere…
…Meanwhile more data & climate models are revealing atmospheric soot to be a far larger culprit in ongoing temperature anomalies, possibly exculpating CO2 by some margin….
…The evidence for such water vapor feedback greenhouse effects is being confronted with counterveiling evidence that shows that the middle troposphere is both cooler and drier than expected, that the climate models have wrongly assumed constant relative humidity and hence warmer temperatures in altitude, that CO2 is evenly distributed throughout the atmosphere, that soot-ladened brown clouds cause more heating than cooling, that the ongoing glacial losses have been from droughts caused by brown clouds, soot and deforestation, not atmospheric warming and that atmospheric soot has been a far more pernicious heating agent than heretofore known.
That’s aside from the evidence that most of the ongoing boreal thaw of the past 150 years has been consistently attributed to snow-darkening sootfall, yielding easily 20% of all sesquicentennial global warming….
Wow, that is quite a grab-bag of talking points you’re throwing at me. I am not going to address them all, sorry if I disappoint you. I’ll say this
Reading around in the Ramanathan and Carmichael report, that to my knowledge was the first to address the underestimated importance of about black carbon and atmospheric brown clouds, I found this quote: “…that BC forcing is as important as GHGs in the observed retreat of over two thirds of the Himalayan glaciers. That conflicts with your statement: “…that the ongoing glacial losses have been from droughts caused by brown clouds, soot and deforestation, not atmospheric warming…”. You might want to check that (and perhaps your other points).
—————————————————————-
Well – that’s all folks, I will not be posting anymore on this thread. Thanks for all the responses, I have to attend my non-digital life now.
Meanwhile more data & climate models are revealing atmospheric soot to be a far larger culprit in ongoing temperature anomalies, possibly exculpating CO2 by some margin.
Particulates are a temporary phenomenon. Every country that is developing pours out soot like crazy. Every country that is developed cleans up its act.
The socioeconomic equation is that when poverty is reduced to the point where pollution is killing more than poverty, and the affluent begin to value less smelly air, in and of itself (an affectation of affluence), countries clean up all on their own, without any international regulation.
Affluence trumps effluence.
The basic premise of the models, that the tiny, (anthropogenic CO2 is a tiny fraction of the CO2 in the atmosphere:
http://www.co2web.info/Icecap_CarbonDioxide.pdf) anthropogenic CO2 is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and starts runaway greenhouse warming is absolutely NOT SUPPORTED BY THE DATA.
My only nitpick is:
–Yes, anthropogenic CO2 is only 3% of what is emitted.
BUT
–All natural CO2 is reabsorbed. Only half of anthropogenic is reabsorbed.
THEREFORE
–the 30% or so rise in CO2 is due to industry.
BUT, AGAIN
–Even such a large increase in CO2 has not had any significant effect on climate, and there have been no positive feedback loops whatsoever.
Why would burning fossil fuels (and/or conventional fuels) have to make for a warming climate? It could be doing the opposite, like with particulates, as in the 14th century overpopulation burning all the wood & coal they could get thier hands on, only to suffer a massive (not necessarily colder) climate change that brought calamity as the Medieval Maximum came to a close.
Insult upon injury, the fuels & fossil fuels just act like an accelerant and make whatever change is taking place worse. Simple pollution.
Scrub it and get over it, or figure out a way to use it as climate control.
Ah, but the ulterior motive gets in the way every time. The rich don’t want to pay to play, they just want to write the rules to make everyone else pay thier way for them. So on it goes, AGW is just another excuse to squeeze more profits, until the resources available fail to match the needs of supporting massive overpoputation, the base of which supports the massively wealthy, the base starves, depopulates, goes on freaking rampages massacring all the rich folks they can get thier hands on until equilbrium is once again reached.
Is this a repeat of the 14th century we are headed for, or will we figure a way out?
UN/IPCC AR-4 falsified.
Sorry, Anne. But there it is.
Anne (09:36:57) wrote:
Secondly you should not take my words out of context, they were a reply to the exaggeration by Katherine, suggesting we’ll have no money left to buy food if we want to mitigate climate change. You should perhaps challenge her instead where she got such wonderfully alarmist ideas.
An exaggeration? The country might have money left over, but individuals like myself who aren’t earning as much as you apparently do would face that dilemma. For example, higher electricity rates (due to unnecessary carbon-mitigating expenses) or enough food? You think power companies won’t pass the higher cost of doing business to their customers? You get real.
You seem to live in a world where everyone can afford a plasma TV. What about those of us who can’t afford that luxury? Don’t we count? Al Gore might not feel the pain of your few percent of GDP spent on carbon mitigation, but people making minimum wage likely would.
kim (15:11:14) wrote:
Anne (14:57:27) So, how many people have to die? Are you callous naturally, or as a sophistical point. We are talking about flesh and blood, helpless creatures, at the mercy of the elite. So what about it? Cake or bread?
I see I’m not the only one who got a whiff of Marie Antoinette from Anne’s plasma TV rephrasing.
@Slamdunk,
Your breakfast eating friend would be just as “logical” if he believed that there was an invisible, space-faring elephant the size of Texas approaching Earth at half the speed of light and due to “catastrophically” imapct on April 1st 2009…
I don’t know what to do or say when faced by people who are unable to deal with evidence.
Is it a form of functional insanity?
@Anne,
For an account of the costs of AGW mitigation try the following link http://www.examiner.com/a-1529816~Saving_the_planet_while_letting_children_starve.html
Is Pachauri actually the head of the IPCC – by golly, maybe he is lying about that too…
I wonder if the Uni of NSW will take back the honourary degree if he is found to be a fraud…
Here is a report from the MET Office custom made for Mr. Pachauri. They conveniently left 2008 off the graph:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/news/warming_goes_on.pdf
Hnasen has a new revised CO2 theory:
http://www.physorg.com/news145286037.html
[…] thing for someone already so well known, well positioned, to do (hence the exclamation marks from Wattsupwiththat). It is also not that sophisticated as a portfolio […]
The threat of libel, slander, etc in the AGW context is a very low risk for bloggers.
There is surely no advantage for the AGW camp to have AGW tested in a court of law with rules of evidence, cross-examination, etc….
It could easily end up like the Scopes trial with AGW visibly, and publically shot to pieces.
evanjones (15:00:18) :
–Yes, anthropogenic CO2 is only 3% of what is emitted.
BUT
–All natural CO2 is reabsorbed. Only half of anthropogenic is reabsorbed.
THEREFORE
–the 30% or so rise in CO2 is due to industry.
How do we know that only half of anthropogenic is reabsorbed?( Let alone that CO2 does not come with labels, anthropogenic/natural.)
In quantity? How do we know if the variations in the naturally emitted volcanic CO2 are not on the upswing, and much more is emitted and reabsorbed than the speculations?
The whole budget of CO2 rests on: if we cannot account for it, it is human induced.
For example: the 40% increase in plant productivity due to the excess CO2, has it been used in the sinks of CO2, or are the sinks old calculations that do not include this?
I am talking of volcanic CO2 because very little attention has been payed to it, it is not in the budget, the volcanic community does not have relevant maps and easily found links to them, and I have been surprised by enormous numbers of CO2 emissions from volcanism that I cannot check.
Just from the island of Milos:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16321975.300-vents-de-milos.html
Look at this:
http://www.mineweb.co.za/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page68?oid=21959&sn=Detail
“Where does CO2 (carbon dioxide) come from?
Volcanoes (such as Milos, Greece), earthquakes, intrusions of plutonic rocks (such as Kamchatka, Russia), metamorphism (such as the Alps), oceans degassing (evident in the tropics), life-bacteria (humans are riddled with bacteria) and comets.
“The human contribution is miniscule,” Prof Plimer said.”
I have seen an estimate that Milos, where there was new activity in 1992, exudes about 2% of the world’s CO2, but cannot verify it.
All I am saying is, we are not talking of a bank budget ( even there you see what has happened).
continued:
highlight the potency of subterranean forces, he showed an image of a hot spring on the island of Milos, in the Aegean Sea, which he claims releases 2pc of the CO2 entering the atmosphere.
“That hot spring is emitting more CO2 than all of humanity together,” Prof Plimer said
http://sj.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/livestock/cattle/doubtful-nats-scrutinise-climate-science/1233087.aspx
@ur momisugly Robert Bateman (15:59:59) :
Completely right, look at the 14th century and what do we see here in Europe, in the great famine lasted for 5 years (1312-1317) killed millions in the whole of Europe, actually famines was pretty much what was happening on a regular basis during that century, and when some 30 years later the plague came it found a population that was already weak so it was able to wipe-out some 25-30% of the european population (globally the figures run into 20-25%).
The average age of Europeans went from 35 in 1275 to 29 in 1317 (when the great famine ended) and in 1351 when the plague had run its course the average age in Europe had dropped to just 17.
During that time we also see the Anasazi leave the stage in America and the Vikings deciding for themself that there is no place like home and left Greenland.
This is what happens when the world switched from a non-existant Medivial Warm Period into a non-existant Little Ice Age and that the ruling elite could not cope or couldn’t be bothered with it in the first place.
The AGW crowd is convinced that the temperatures goed one way, wich is up while the history books tells us another and that is that they can come down, and when that happens it happens to be the lesser periods in our history books, times of great suffering.
Re: Visits to the blog
There are comments for Dr. Pachauri’s earlier blog posts, but missives (and missiles) from the peanut gallery are being swept. Messages from the true (and starry-eyed) believers, however, are obviously quite welcome. My advice, if you want to have a comment accepted there: fawn.
Anne:
>> he question is, how much? The extant trend lines of the past
>> 125 years do not show a catastrophic increase in temperatures.
> If my memory serves me well, it is a 0.7 C, with 0.5 C more
> ‘in the pipeline’ because the earth reacts with a delay.
Right. The problem is this, there are still scientists claiming more than 0.5 C overall. The pipeline you cite is all in the oceans as the atmosphere doesn’t buffer, only the seas do. About 80% – 90% of AGW would be in the seas (Trenberth, Hansen, et. al.) in the notorious “heat bucket” temporal buffer. Bbut again, the warming of the seas has leveled off (ARGO data) and even cooled a bit (discontinuities in the data sets have been reviewed & the seas are still cooling a tad while sea levels have fluctuated).
> Indeed this 0.7C temperature increase was not catastrophic.
> But what about the next 0.7 C? Will the consequences of that
> be equally non-catastrophic? And the 0.7 C after that, and
> the 0.7C after that, etc?
We’d have to increase CO2 levels 8x from 280 ppm to 2200 ppm get your last + 0.7 degr C increase.
> No one really knows, the only
> honest assessment is: we’re gambling on it.
We’re gambling every day on many things. This is no basis for expensive & impractical energy overhauls.
> > The IPCC’s AR4 projected temperature forecasts have been
> > falsified while Keenlyside has issued yet another forecast
> > showing another decade of stable temperatures.
> This makes my jaw drop. How can you falsify with forecasts?
When they don’t come true?
> This is an entire new concept to me.
For starters see Lucia’s rankexploits.com blackboard. But even Gavin @ur momisugly RC has said that if temperatures don’t rise for 10 – 15 years they’ll have to seriously reconsider their forecasts.
>> Again, look at the graphs:
>> http://tinyurl.com/co2trend
>> This graph is simply wrong. The exponentially increasing
>> line resembles the the IPCC A2 scenario, predicting a + 3.6 C
>> rise by 2100. However, the A2 scenario predicts 1250 ppm for
>> 2100, not 550 as the graph suggests. The A2 scenario is a
>> pessimistic scenario, based on rapidly increasing CO2
>> emissions, therefore the exponential growth.
The graph, albeit quickly improvised, is not wrong. It is not time-based, it is concentration-based from NASA/GISS data. The graph represents the *historical* temperature response to changing CO2 levels starting circa 1880 & the last section, two lines (Arrhenius/logarithmic vs. IPCC) projected temperatures for a doubing of CO2.
I’ve seen the forecasts from AR4, they’ve been fastidiously analyzed at Lucia’s rankexploit’s site. AR4 gives projected scenarios with upper & lower bound of +5.6 degrC with a median 2.8 degr C response to doubling CO2 levels from 280 (circa 1880) to 560 (projected by 2100). That’s not what Arrhenius shows, what he shows is +1.2 degrC response to doubling (CO2 isn’t exculpated). The extra climate sensitivity beyond 1.2 degrC would be due to increased humidity holding yet more heat, with a runaway nightmare greenhouse loop due to gross environmental degradation (loss of Arctic albedo, tundral methane outgassing, etc.).
This is what a great many climate moderates are arguing against: These dire scenarios.
As for Ramanathan’s research into soot, his efforts have been excellent but also reveal a rift in climatology. The problem is that *easily* 40% of ongoing heating anomalies are from brown clouds, but this same proportion of heating anomalies had been heretofore ascribed to GHG, not aerosol heating. Zender’s & Ramanathan’s work indicate a 20-year window of opportunity in soot mitigation.
IOW the temperature graphs have been used as a cudgel to exaggerate CO2’s contemporary effect (Mann’s infamous hockey stick graph).
FWIW Ramanathan & Charlie Zender both steer clear of making CO2-based forecasts and yet both cautiously claim – in the case of ice fields – that soot is as bad as CO2, but the reality is that CO2 has yet to cause as much damage to the Arctic, the Himalayas, the Rockies or Kilimanjaro as soot has. They are saying that at the moment the ongoing decimation effects are about even, but ice field recovery could be possible w/out so much sootfall.
As for the Antarctic a recent study found that the Antarctic is far drier than previously modeled, and as such will be far less prone to GHG effects.
FatBigot (19:40:11) :
“…might like to bear in mind a fine old saying: “never argue with an idiot, he will reduce you to his level then beat you with experience.”
That’s what the Royal Society eventually learned from the Flat Earth Society with their experiment to prove it one way or another in Victorian Britain and losing! Better to get on with your research.
I find it all quite ironic as I’m often accused of being a flat earther in discussions on glabal warming. And, I’m the one with no belief in god!!
I quite like
“Believe nothing, trust no one.”
Mark N
Leebert
My original point was to expose the hypocrisy of criticizing supposed untruths from people who just want to save the planet (however misguided) while ignoring more blatant untruths from people who just want their hands on the oil. And we know that’s what they wanted because they still boast about it in the publications on their website. No conspiracy – it’s all in the open. When they got in they did exactly what they said they wanted to do, looked for the excuse they said they were looking for and faked the “evidence” for an illegal war. Regardless of any tinpot inquiry those are the facts and you know it.
I agree with much that you say regarding the rise of extremism and the need to stop it. However, it’s not a black and white issue with easy solutions as you might like to believe. Just how do you battle people who’ll happily blow themselves up in public places? Just massacre the innocent along with the guilty? I hope not!
It’s not nonsense that the sanctions directly killed innocent Iraqis. It’s just another gray blowback issue that you don’t like to consider. But at the end of the day the majority of the Iraqi people, while still suffering, still mostly want to be friends of the west. We all saw the Iraqi people welcome the invasion force as liberators. Is it too late to rekindle that by spreading more honey and less acid? Most Iranians feel the same way. They are simply caught up in stupid patriotism that better diplomacy would have avoided. On the wider issue remember that the US-backed Wahhabi Saudis are funding much of the Sunni extremism. That has to be stopped too.
On your point about alternative fuels, which i also agree with, there are two further things to consider. The first is that more nuclear power plants in 3rd world countries are guaranteed to increase the threat of nuclear terrorism. Perhaps you noticed the polonium poisoning of a prominent Russian dissident. Now imagine such things in a dirty bomb in a suicide bombers jacket at the Rockefeller centre at Xmas. Yet this climate campaign is bouncing us directly into nuclear proliferation. So if oil money is funding them and nuclear proliferation would arm them then don’t we need to consider green technologies much more than we do? Does the cost even matter? How much did those oil wars cost anyway? – just for comparison. Happily the second point I’d make is that clean, green energies are actually viable now and they also save money for not much real outlay. If you have heard the opposite, then consider who might have been telling you that – and what their motivations were.
By the way – about that 200mpg car. Will 150mpg do?
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/02/27/loremo-debuts-150-mpg-concept-car-in-geneva/