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.
Wondering if Milos is seen on the AIRS CO2 images?
Just say “Dr. Pachauri, I find your work incredible…”
And of course the meaning of “incredible” is “not credible”.
Mike Bryant (08:15:44) :
Wondering if Milos is seen on the AIRS CO2 images?
would need much higher resolution than the one provided in the animations.
JamesG:
Whoa there, James. Your conclusion doesn’t exactly follow your premise.
I have nothing against [free market, non-gov’t] green technologies, but there is a much better, more efficient, and more direct answer: drill for the billions of barrels available under U.S. jurisdiction.
ANWR alone has, by conservative estimates, over 10 billion barrels of easily recoverable oil. Look at this map, and you’ll notice a couple of things:
ANWR is only about 3.13 square miles. It is also near other oil fields like Prudhoe Bay; why can we drill there and not in ANWR, which is a desolate wasteland?
And there are literally hundreds of billions of barrels of recoverable oil off the U.S. continental shelf. A huge reserve has been recently discovered in the Dakotas, equal to Saudi Arabian reserves. And most federal lands are off-limits. Why is that? Is it better to send $$$$$ to the Middle East and Venezuela?
@ur momisugly Smokey: At the current rate of consumption and growth, we’ll use more oil in the next ten years than has been used in the entire of recorded history before that. Hundreds of billions of barrels last the US about a week. Literally. Even if you don’t agree with the environmental arguments, if you think oil doesn’t have to be replaced you’re only fooling yourself.
custador:
No, hundreds of billions of barrels would last decades at a consumption of 20 MM BPD. And there is much more undiscovered oil.
We hear the same argument all the time: “Why drill for oil? We’ll only run out.”
Thomas Malthus said the same thing about the linear increase food supplies being inadequate to feed a geometrically increasing population. Malthus was wrong, just as the nay-sayers are wrong about oil running out.
It is only the “low hanging fruit,” the easy to extract oil that is running low. But there is enough oil in Canadian tar sands to last a century. Alaska has huge amounts of oil — ANWR has over 10 billion barrels, and it covers only a few thousand acres. Alaska is a really big place. Are you saying there is no oil outside of ANWR?
Within only the past year enough new oil was discovered in the Dakotas to equal or surpass Saudia Arabia’s huge reserves. It is more costly to extract, but it is there for the taking.
And now Cuba, with China’s help, is drilling in the outer continental shelf — the same continental shelf they share with us — for the bountiful oil supplies there.
The only thing that stops us from being so dependent on foreign oil, and which keeps the cost of gasoline so high, is the environmental lobby and its wholly-owned string puppet contingent in Congress.
Claiming that we shouldn’t use our own oil because it will run out some day is both wrong [it won’t run out, it will just be somewhat harder to extract] and short sighted: there is no reason to hobble our economy in this way, when there is plenty of oil available.
Hello
I’m new here, and must admit to being totally perplexed by the preponderance of data. Despite being able to accept that there are agendas on both sides of the debate I really don’t have a clue if the Earth is warming or cooling, and if I did I wouldn’t have a clue why.
But after reading most of the above comments I was surprised to find amongst the intelligent discussion some absurd claims considering something considerably more straightforward: war and its motivating forces. So I have a question for all of you apparently bright people…
Does anyone here believe that the Iraq war was started for any reason other than to redistribute several billion dollars from the US treasury into the hands of a few dozen US-based multinationals?
Cause if the answer is yes, maybe you all aren’t as bright as you seem.
No. But then I never claimed to be that bright.
And being bright about these things rarely equates to being right about these things.
I really don’t have a clue if the Earth is warming or cooling, and if I did I wouldn’t have a clue why.
All four major metrics (UAH, RSS, HadCRUT, and even GISS) seem to agree on the following:
-From 1979 – 1998 it warmed
-From 1998 – 2001 there was a big El Nino follwed by a shallower but longer La Nina
-From 2001 – 2007 it remained near-flat
-From 2007 – 2008 there was a rather sharp decline in global temperatures
At this moment we seem to be somewhere between 0.1°C and 0.2°C above the 1979-2008 average (GISS being the outlier). We had a whopping La Nina (now over), there was some “upward recovery”, but may be on the verge of another.
We seem to be entering a cooling phase initiated by a Pacific Decadal Oscillation flip or a “dead sun”, or both. We don’t truly know and we don’t know how long it will last, but a PDO cool phase usually continues for 30 years and a solar grand minimum (which may or may not be about to occur) typically runs from 40 to 70 years.
Underlying trends may or may not apply.
The Farmer’s Almanac says “cold”.
The 8-ball says “Answer uncertain. Try again later.”
The corner psychic tells me I will meet a tall, dark stranger.
I think that about sums it up.
Malthus was wrong, just as the nay-sayers are wrong about oil running out.
And for much the same reasons.
(The difference being that Malthus recanted in his old age.)
How do we know that only half of anthropogenic is reabsorbed?( Let alone that CO2 does not come with labels, anthropogenic/natural.)
It’s what the IPCC and the DoE say. Not that we necessarily trust them. They do claim it comes with labels, however (isotope ratios and such, well beyond my field of expertise).
And it does make intuitive sense that adding input to a balanced cycle will tend to increase the trend. Not that intuitive sense is proof of anything.
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?
That’s estimated to be around 1% of input, right? If that figure is correct, there would have to be around a tripling of output to account for it. That seems a little much.
And we can measure things like increases in oil and coal consumption as the UDCs do the D thing, and figure it out from there.
That hot spring is emitting more CO2 than all of humanity together,” Prof Plimer said
Very interesting, if true. I take it this will be investigated and we will find out?
@ur momisugly JamesG: So much to agree with. So much to disagree with!
why can we drill there and not in ANWR, which is a desolate wasteland?
Flat, too.
Jacob (16:04:37) WalMart’s gonna gitcha, gitcha, gitcha.
===================================
If some folks have a phobia about drilling for oil, maybe they’d be agreeable to producing energy this way.
evanjones (16:44:21) :
That hot spring is emitting more CO2 than all of humanity together,” Prof Plimer said
Very interesting, if true. I take it this will be investigated and we will find out?
I have tried to find relevant information on the net, but the volcanism community is not on the same wavelength about CO2 : they do not give numbers nor maps, just vague words.
I notice continuous discoveries of new vents in underwater volcanoes, and ditto, no estimates of CO2 or anything.
If you look for Milos, you get interesting biological studies of strange sulfur loving lifeforms.
this has links on volcanic activity:
http://iceagenow.com/Ocean_Warming.htm
otherwise it is somebody who writes books that we are entering an ice age.
I am just not trusting any CO2 sources sum up because they are much less transparent than temperatures, and look at the mess of temperatures.
Possibly AIRS has the data, if one could lay hands on them, focusing on volcanic arcs over the globe. Looking for day to day changes and identifying hot spots would be a good student thesis. After that one could do a world sum.
Certainly a hot spot over the antarctic must be of volcanic origin, though I cannot find the maps easily.
http://iceagenow.com/Ocean_Warming.htm
You have a point. And I certainly must view any measurement–in this case, a proxy measurement–of CO2 emissions being flat (or even dropping) during WWII with a jaundiced eye. They were frantically digging all the coal they could and extracting all possible oil and burning it (along with a few dozen cities) as fast as they could get it. If domestic use was down, that was only because it was being consumed by “die rustung”. I must agree that CO2 estimates are at least somewhat suspect.
If their modern model is right, though, they are right. I think I need to look into this more.
“Smokey (15:35:32) :
It is only the “low hanging fruit,” the easy to extract oil that is running low. But there is enough oil in Canadian tar sands to last a century. ”
A) No there isn’t. I suggest you go forth and learn how exponentials work. I happen to know what I’m talking about on this one.
B) So what if there is? There is no point trying to prospect for oil if, in order to extract that oil, you have to expend twice as much energy as the barrel of oil produces! In other words, if it costs you two barrels of oil to extract one barrel of oil – what’s the point? You’ve just wasted a barrel of oil on nothing.
C) From what I hear, the Canadian people and government are none too thrilled at the idea of giving the US access to their oil, and there’s a pretty big lobby to make sure it never happens.
D) Genuinly, how can you be so blind? There is only so much oil. Eventually, it will run out. This is unarguable. It is going to happen. Your attitude seems to be that you don’t care provided that it doesn’t happen in your lifetime. Selfish, much?!
I’m going to continue that last post, actually. According to the last source I read, the US currently uses 20,730,000 barels of oil PER DAY. And it’s growing. If it wasn’t growing, a billion barrels of oil would last the US 48 days. If you were somehow magically able to find a new source which contained one hundred billion barrels of accesible crude oil, it would last the US (never mind the rest of the planet) approximately 13 years. The problem is, consumption is growing. Go and do the math for yourself, but if growth continues as forecast (by OPEC, among others), one hundred billion barrels of crude oil would last the US about 5 years. Oil is going to run out. This is not an arguable statement! It is going to happen!
[snip] sorry but I’m not going to allow that, here is the reason.
Gavin would not let me and many others post a similar rebuttal on Real Climate, so he doesn’t get space here. If Gavin wants to publish here himself, he is more than welcome, but with the caveat that I (or a colleague) get “equal space” on RC in the same type of venue.
Gavin seldom plays fair in matters of published commentary, so I doubt he’ll even consider it. My only tool to help him see the error of his ways is what you see above. -Anthony
From what I hear, the Canadian people and government are none too thrilled at the idea of giving the US access to their oil, and there’s a pretty big lobby to make sure it never happens.
Try asking in Alberta. #B^1
Genuinly, how can you be so blind? There is only so much oil. Eventually, it will run out. This is unarguable. It is going to happen. Your attitude seems to be that you don’t care provided that it doesn’t happen in your lifetime. Selfish, much?!
That’s what the Club of Rome said. And Malthus.
To make a long argument short, we will in all probability run away from oil long before we run out of it. (Or even short of it.)
When you were calculating your exponentials you forgot to include exponential technology. (So did Malthus, come to think of it.)
We had 3.4 trillion bls potential (sic) reserve in 1974 (from all sources). I added up those same numbers for today from wiki and I got 6.5 tril. And they’re pessimistic. Exponents cut both ways.
If you were somehow magically able to find a new source which contained one hundred billion barrels of accesible crude oil, it would last the US (never mind the rest of the planet) approximately 13 years.
Hocus-pocus, Bakkenocus!
Alberta is open for business. Unless you are from Quebec or Ontario. But they have zero say in the matter.
We have about 2.7 trillion (yes, trillion) bbls of oil in place. So far, about 270 billion is recoverable.
Alberta won’t run out in my great-grand children’s time. Or even THEIR grand children’s time.
One other thing that most people don’t know, is that the industry knows where about 3 trillion MORE oil is located at. Right NOW.
Most oil reservoirs only give up about 25% of the oil in place, before it costs too much to get the remaining oil. If we have used 1 trillion bbls so far, that means we know where 3 trillion more is at.
It just takes a little more money to get it out. 50 dollar oil won’t get it. 100 dollar might. 150 dollar oil will.
I haven’t even counted the shale plays in the US west (several trillion bbls), or the shale play in ND and Sask (several billion bbls), or the arctic, etc.
evanjones and Les covered most of what I was going to post.
Alberta? Not wanting to sell to the US? Try again… and check out which direction our pipelines go.
As yet another who is surrounded by and grew up with the oil industry, I laugh at all of the “peak oil” fretters with their ridiculous assumptions… and apparent inability to perform simple mathematics.
There are enough KNOWN reserves to satisfy global demand for over a century. There are enough reserves to go for centuries more that are not on the “KNOWN” list, but we “know” they are there. There are more than enough reserves currently in less accessible form (tarsands, shales) that represent more than we could use in centuries, even at increasing consumption rates.
If the US was doing what virtually every other responsible country is, ie. developing their own reserves, drilling where needed, the insane dependence on foreign oil would never have gotten this bad. Remembering, of course, that canadian oil is still classified as “foreign”, still it is ridiculous that the US has to finance rogue regimes, chavez, the middle east, etc.
It’s not oil that ran out in the continental US, it was the will to drill. That MUST be changed.
Oh yeah… there is convincing evidence that oil is NOT a one-use resource, that it is renewable and renewing. I used to count this as a whacko theory, but have since seen some evidence that looks probable.
@ur momisugly Les Johnson:
We have about 2.7 trillion (yes, trillion) bbls of oil in place…. Most oil reservoirs only give up about 25% of the oil in place, before it costs too much to get the remaining oil.
Actually, a typical figure of extractable oil from a given field is 5%, not 25%, as you assert. Also, I think you need to expand upon “before it costs too much to get the remaining oli“.
In terms of oil exploration, that means the point at which you’ll get less oil out than you’ll have to burn to get it. That oil is utterly, utterly pointless to the argument, and talking about it at all is highly misleading, because nobody will ever extract it.
So, extractable from your 2.7 trillion bbl of know oilfields? About 135 billion bbl. Currently used by the US? About 20,730,000 bbl per day.
So, even if that useage doesn’t grow, that reserve will last less than eighteen years. And it will grow! That reserve probably won’t last the next ten years once you factor that in!
@ur momisugly Codetech:
Oh yeah… there is convincing evidence that oil is NOT a one-use resource, that it is renewable and renewing. I used to count this as a whacko theory, but have since seen some evidence that looks probable.
I’m sorry, WHAT? DO you even know what oil is? Oil is a FOSSIL. It is NOT renewable, the Earth does NOT magically produce more, and your “convincing evidence” is very likely a hoax.
Also @ur momisugly CodeTech:
You laugh at my maths, hey? Well, let’s see yours and remember to show your workings so that I can pull them apart at my leisure later. I assure you, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with my maths.
I’d say “unwillingness” as opposed to “inability”.
2.7 trillion time 5 percent = 135 billion barrels extractable.
135 billion over 20 million, 730 thousand = those barrels lasting 6,512 days.
6512 over 365.25 = 17.83 years.
That’s at ZERO growth.
Willing and able, thanks.