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.
leebert,
What you did not mention also was the discovery of over a dozen labs secreted beneath police (torture) stations and some Presidential ‘palaces’, the intended purpose of which was to preserve Saddam’s chemical/bio production capabilities against the day the French and Russians managed to get the UN inspection regime lifted (which would have occurred, sans the US invasion, in 2004.
Saddam was a horribly inept General, but he was not stupid and realized he could not keep quantities of chemical/bio weaps hidden from the UN. What he could keep hidden (and was also required to surrender by the UN ceasefire agreement) was the capability to produce the weapons. I suspect, tho there is no proof that large quantities of nerve gas/mustard gas were dumped into the Tigris near Baghdad as US troops approached (the inability of the 4th ID to attack from the north allowed Saddam significantly more time than we had wanted – time he used to ‘clean up’) . I recall US troops getting highly positive readings from the waters of the Tigris for nerve agents in the first days of the approach to Baghdad. That and it does not take much to change Sarin to insecticide (since that is what led to the development of Sarin type agents – research into effective insecticides). It was always seemingly strange to me that we discovered caches of insecticide guarded by Republican Guards..
I just went on his blog and gave him a good verbal thrashing! Nothing better in the morning than clubbing a global warming idiot who is doing a great deal of damage the world over! :]
Thinking a large reduction of CO2 emissions will mean the end of civilization as we know it, is alarmism of the other kind.
Oh, I agree. The brunt will be borne by the poor in the third and fourth worlds. The cost in human life will be tremendous. Civilization as we pampered few know it will not be materially affected.
DDT provides the stereotypical analogy. Malaria was at the point of being wiped out worldwide. Cases in India and Ceylon were practically nil. Then came Silent Spring. The US was hardly affected by the ban. India banned DDT but quickly reverted to use (after millions of deaths). All in all 40 million of the world’s most vulnerable children needlessly died. And yes, the White Man’s World hardly even noticed. We just substituted far more toxic and environmentally destructive, far less effective insecticides and continued forward.
So, yes, nothing to be alarmed about.
From Jennifer’s blog:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,24608324-30538,00.html
Carbon crash hits Europe’s emission trading scheme
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Carl Mortished | November 06, 2008
“WHILE you were distracted by crashing banks and clashing US senators, you may have missed a small environmental earthquake.
The price of carbon has collapsed.
In only three months, life has become a lot cheaper for polluters. The financial cost of warming the planet has plummeted in Europe’s emissions trading system (ETS) and the effectiveness of such a volatile market mechanism in curbing carbon is being questioned. ”
……
“Carbon’s falling price spells companies going bust, the loss of jobs and the shredding of political reputations. Over the next year, no politician with re-election hopes will back a policy that would triple the price of carbon for industry and raise consumers’ energy costs. There is a wider question about the ETS that must be addressed, and that is whether it is a sensible mechanism to regulate carbon.”
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.
It will be interesting to see if his research holds up in five years… 🙂
Well played Leif, well played! 😉
Evan..by the way, those who are unaware of “German Songs” may have children and grandchildren who unwittingly, once again, sing them.
John D.
The warming period from 1895 to 1946 and the current one from 1957 to 2008 are virtually identical in lope and appearance as Anthony pointed out in his presentation.
The good doctor skipped over the cooling phase in the 70th to produce a steeper temperature trend.
Amazing what wisdom garners you a Nobel Price these days.
Anne (07:42:47) Proof that CO2=AGW is irrelevant? You marvelously illustrate that the Precautionary Principle is a paeon to ignorance. Would you pre-emptively remove your colon to make sure you don’t develop colon cancer?
How about trying to gain enough knowledge to make an informed decision. We really need an effective and honest accounting of the costs and benefits of carbon encumbrance. There is nowhere near enough proof that CO2 adversely effects the climate to justify the massive social costs of encumbering carbon, especially now that temperatures are falling and the purported connection between CO2 and climate regulation is unravelling. You fool yourself if you think otherwise.
================================
It seems to me the film implied that when we look at the past 400,000 years and see changes in atmospheric CO2 following rather than leading temperature changes, it means the oceans act as a sink for CO2, releasing more when it warms up, and absorbing CO2 when it cools down.
Yes, but that is a delta of a mere 10 ppm CO2 per Degree Celsius of increase or decrease. So the level varies by around 100 ppm CO2 over a Milankovitch-inspired ice age.
–Man adds @ur momisugly of c. 3% of total atmospheric carbon (or c. 7.5 BMTC/year).
–A little over half of that is absorbed by ocean and soil sinks.
–The remainder remains in the atmosphere and accumulates, increasing the amount in the Atmospheric sink (750 BMTC) by c. 0.4% per year.
So, yes, man has had a significant role in the increase in CO2.
HOWEVER, since it would appear that since CO2 does NOT drive climate at current levels (we’ve hit diminishing returns) and since IPCC CO2 positive feedback theory is woefully incorrect, the increase in CO2 is not significant to temperatures (but may well have contributed to the 6% increase in biomass–mostly in the rainforests–over the last decade and a half).
So, is man responsible for CO2 increase? Yes.
Is CO2 increase a Bad Thing? No.
The fact that the UN IPCC now has a loyal servant in the white House, the biggest economy of the world, clearly makes them over confident.
Especially because this economy is hit by one of the worst economic crises in history.
The Patriot Act and a new formed Civil Army (as introduced by Barack Obama on his speech of the 2nd of july 2008), provide a forward view on what COULD happen to climate deniers and protesters when the use of carbon fuels is regulated by law.
The president already has promised to bankrupt the coal industry, sky rocket the costs for electricity and tax the use of carbon fuels.
There is absolutely no life threatening reason why we should kill the coal industry and confront the US households and the industry with soaring energy prices.
It is my personal opinion that any doctrine based on lies and disinformation of the people should be rejected at any price.
The “agenda” of the UN IPCC, planned for decades, is not democratic and represents a great threat to our existence. (http://green-agenda.com)
The basic philosophy behind the agenda is the threat of over population and use of resources and destruction of habitats.
Their final objective is to create a sustainable society limited to about 500 million to 1 billion inhabitants…
The fastest and most efficient way to achieve this goal is to choke the western world by destroying the carbon energy infrastructure which is the life blood modern society.
Without carbon energy the modern world comes to a stand still.
The result will be human suffering, hunger and starvation on an unimaginable scale.
The UN push for the development of green fuels, a huge mistake which will be corrected by the current crises, is directly responsible for 1 billion people that currently depend on food aid which is NOT delivered.
This is because the world food stocks are at its lowest levels since a long time and the price of food was coupled to the price of carbon fuels.
I personally believe that we can solve our problems very well without a doctrine that intends to artificially take a way our liberties, messing with our way of life and a reduction of 5/6 of the world population.
It could very well be that I have made a completely wrong assessment about the forces that push for carbon taxation.
But one thing is clear to me.
When the the ruling elites in the world use lies to push policies we have to be extremely careful and be prepared for the worst.
Hi!
Please be very circumspect about referring to DDT. Granted alternatives are can be worse but DDT is an accumulative OP poison with a whole host of consequences.
Shouting about DDT leaves the door open to being deluged with evidence about bats, bird eggshell thickness etc.
It was the one part of Monktons letter that made me feel he was giving the “opposition” a target which which they could belittle and dismiss everything he says.
Excerpts from BJØRN LOMBORG article in today’s WSJ:
… And while warming will mean about 400,000 more heat-related deaths globally, it will also have positive effects, such as 1.8 million fewer cold-related deaths, according to the only peer-reviewed global estimate, published in Ecological Economics — something that is rarely reported. …
… Germany, the leading consumer of solar panels, will end up spending $156 billion by 2035, yet only delay global warming by one hour by the end of the century. …
anna v (08:06:24) :
If cooling/stasis continues for another ten years we will have one more datum on which side is right because the cooling oceans should be absorbing more CO2, and the CO2 curve should flatten.
Global temperatures declined slightly from ca. 1940-1970. At least from 1959 (start of Mauna Loa monitoring) until now it increased steadily. The temperature trend over the last decade was pretty flat too, but the CO2 level kept increasing. My bet is that the next ten years will not show any change in the rise of CO2 levels. Either the period is too short to prove your hypothesis or your hypothesis is false.
Anne: Excluding information will almost certainly decrease the quality of a decision.
Correct. In addition to lying, excluding information is precisely what AGWers habitually do.
I have complete faith in humen ingenuity So do we. It will prevail, despite the incredibly wasteful stupidity of believing the AGW lie.
You should learn to spell, BTW.
[REPLY – We can’t edit our posts. Typos are to be expected. ~ Evan]
evanjones — “There is only one way that speech would have been (mis)taken.”
He was warning about technological stasis, and he was mostly wrong. I said his quote was misapplied, not mistaken; the reason being that the result wasn’t technological stasis. Pournelle/Possony’s late 60’s book “strategy of technology” spells this out, if you’re interested. Reagan used this to great advantage.
Anne — “Whether it is ‘proven’ or not is irrelevant. Do you need proof that you will develop serious health problems next year before taking a health insurance? ”
You’re basicially positing a neutered version of Pascal’s Wager. It doesn’t apply to the climate debate, although attempts to invoke this are an everyday occurence. You’re the #87 this week alone. You can look up the discussion of the fallacy of this yourself; I lack the requisite interest to help you with your homework. (Will one of you GW people *please* come up with an original argument? And for once, can it also be logical? Is that too much to ask for?)
JamesG — “I’m pretty sure that most of you guys only looked closer at the data for one reason – you don’t like taxes under any circumstances. ”
So, all skepticism is informed by Rush Limbaugh? Hmmm. I didn’t know this. Brilliant observation. Just brilliant. You must hang with Anne there.
Anne: “Whether it is ‘proven’ or not is irrelevant. Do you need proof that you will develop serious health problems next year before taking a health insurance? All decisions suffer uncertainties. Excluding information will almost certainly decrease the quality of a decision.”
To provide a more correct analogy, I would require substantial proof that one of my legs is suffering from an incurable and spreading infection before I submitted to having the leg amputated.
evanjones (08:59:01) :
The brunt will be borne by the poor in the third and fourth worlds. The cost in human life will be tremendous.
And all that without any data to support it. I rest my case.
Less money in the pockets of the western consumer is already having an effect on China. This is without US cap and trade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7713594.stm
Cap and trade will just make life more expensive. In Europe there seems to be a bottomless pit of carbon credits.
http://newsbusters.org/node/12378
If you need some there’ll aways be some to buy.
Just how will the Chinese government manage an unemployment problem
Bruce Cobb
Re. aversion to taxes.
It’s also a pretty neat trick to convert “most of you” into “everyone” like you did. And far from being a bizarre claim, most people here, honest souls that they are, would likely admit that tax limitation is their main credo. Not that i was being nasty – obviously more folk should be skeptical regardless of motivation.
Leebert
You give a very good example of the typical human behavior I was talking about. Clearly you put most of the information you receive through your political affiliation filter – or perhaps you just don’t like to look at both sides to an argument. The decision to invade Iraq was made very early on by a prominent conservative think tank called “Project for a new American century” of which Cheney and Rumsfeld were members and signatories. The report is even online to read. All they needed was a good excuse. This was confirmed in a leaked memo by the UK MI5 where they complained that “the facts are being fit around the policy”. I’m sorry if those little facts escaped you. Why don’t you check it out via non-conservative channels. All your arguments are frantic revisionism obtained from your extreme right-wing support group. Again, I don’t mean to insult anyone here. I think most conservatives are decent people and that the neo-con movement has been a nasty succubus to real Republicanism just like the Militant Tendency was to the UK Labour party. They need to be expelled. The truth is you were lied to plain and simple and you wanted to believe it. It might not be nice to admit but you’ll be a better person when you do. Having said all that I’ll admit myself that I was in favor of the war too – because those evil UN sanctions had already killed millions of Iraqi children: Something everyone seems to forget about now.
Anne (07:42:47) wrote:
Whether it is ‘proven’ or not is irrelevant. Do you need proof that you will develop serious health problems next year before taking a health insurance? All decisions suffer uncertainties. Excluding information will almost certainly decrease the quality of a decision.
If paying for that health insurance means I won’t have enough money for food, yes, I’d demand proof first. After all, what good is that insurance if I’m so weak from hunger I pass out on the street and get run over by a truck?
The consequences of climate change are not all negative. Nobody in the AGW camp disputes that. But the question is: do the postives outweigh the negatives? Do you have proof of that?
Since historical records have shown that climate change is natural and cyclical, it’s up to the warmists to first prove that this time the cause of the change is unnatural. Until they have proven that, no problem exists. That would be like advocating a glass of clean water be used to wash your hands when a person beside you is keeling over from dehydration.
clique: I hear you. But DDT (and all insecticides) were used very irresponsibly. Using it in the modern way poses no threat whatever to the birds and the bats.
The history is that since DDT was so safe to humans it was dumped wholesale over all creation and some residual effects over gross overuse DID show up. We are quite lucky, actually. If DDT were not so benign, we would have been up a very deep creek.
The point is that the alternatives are worse and more dangerous. But with modern use, their ill effects are limited. The WHO has finally got it through their thick heads that DDT–via modern use–is by far the best course. The kindertotenlieder is over.
And of course, DDT is persistent. That’s why it works! Plus, it not only wipes out the buggers but it repels them as well.
He was warning about technological stasis, and he was mostly wrong. I said his quote was misapplied, not mistaken; the reason being that the result wasn’t technological stasis. Pournelle/Possony’s late 60’s book “strategy of technology” spells this out, if you’re interested. Reagan used this to great advantage.
All very well. But he should never have said it in the first place. It just plain old hurt America and hurt the world.
“Without knowing exactly how he contributed to the plan, you can not make this type of judgements.”
I do know that he was the one presenting the plan to the Indian government and that he was responsible for it and that he offered no caveats. To attempt to find some weasel language to allow him to escape responsibility for his own report seems a but of a reach and more likely an improper judgment.
And this isn’t the only example of which I have heard where he has spoken domestically that AGW isn’t really a problem but could be used to the benefit of India to obtain a better global competitive position. It was simply the first example that came up on a not very exhaustive web search.
M. Jeff
I respect your views on DDT but I’ll leave these quotes from Robert Gwadz of the national institute of Health in Zambia in the National Geographic of July 2007 who said “the ban on DDT may have killed 20 million children” and “it’s possible that due to malaria every child in Africa is neurologically scarred”. He treats malaria victims every day so I think he deserves the last word. I truly respect most environmentalists, some of whom do huge amounts of good in the world, but when they get it wrong they can really get it wrong.
And all that without any data to support it. I rest my case.
And here is my case (esp. the last two pages). Enjoy.
(And thank me for my support!) #B^1
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/22/global_warming_mitigation_vs_adaptation/
A definite prediction (subject to change?)
The forecast from researchers at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in Exeter reveals that natural shifts in climate will cancel out warming produced by greenhouse gas emissions and other human activity until 2009, but from then on, temperatures will rise steadily. Temperatures are set to rise over the 10-year period by 0.3C
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/10/weather.uknews
Hadley temperature graphs from 1850
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/