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.
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…meanwhile, look at that ice go!
Katherine (09:41:09) :
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?
Is that the choice we’re facing? Come on, get real. Even the most agressive mitigation proposals cost less than a few percent of GDP. To parafrase your example: If paying for that health insurance means I won’t have enough money for a new plasma tv, yes, I’d demand proof first. After all, what good is that insurance if I miss out on the latest and greatest tv shows in HD?
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.
Since historical records have shown that CO2 and climate change are deeply linked, it’s up to the skeptics to first prove that this time the change of CO2 levels will not cause climate change.
Roy Spencer said;
While a politician might be faulted for pushing a particular agenda that serves his own purposes, who can fault the impartial scientist who warns us of an imminent global-warming Armageddon? After all, the practice of science is an unbiased search for the truth, right? The scientists have spoken on global warming. There is no more debate. But let me play devil’s advocate. Just how good is the science underpinning the theory of manmade global warming? My answer might surprise you: it is 10 miles wide, but only 2 inches deep.
Contrary to what you have been led to believe, there is no solid published evidence that has ruled out a natural cause for most of our recent warmth – not one peer-reviewed paper. The reason: our measurements of global weather on decadal time scales are insufficient to reject such a possibility. For instance, the last 30 years of the strongest warming could have been caused by a very slight change in cloudiness. What might have caused such a change? Well, one possibility is the sudden shift to more frequent El Niño events (and fewer La Niña events) since the 1970s. That shift also coincided with a change in another climate index, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
evanjones (22:53:48) said:
But the reason I like the break points I mentioned is that from 1976 or so to 2001, the “Big Six” cycles (PDO, AMO, NAO, IPO, AO, AAO) went from cold to warm phase one by one. The climate warmed.
Joe D’Aleo said:
La Nina is gradually returning. The Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) has dropped to -0.74 in October, well into weak La Nina territory. The tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures all the way from South America to beyond the dateline are back below normal. The North Pacific as a whole remains strongly in the cold mode (negative PDO). The Atlantic is weakly in its warm mode (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is positive).
Dr Leif said:
There is good evidence that solar activity has not increased steadily over the past 300 years.
Anthony Watts said:
As many readers know, the predictions for record low sea ice minimums in 2008…
Sorry: the repetition
FM
Anne, thanks for the reply. I have learnt from being married that the last way to solve a problem with my partner is to try to apportion blame. It doesn’t matter who screwed up, we have to try to work out a way that benefits both of us.
Apportioning blame leads to more conflict, and on the world stage that means all sorts of trouble. You may want to clean up your house, but how are you going to convince another country like the UK or Italy to clean up? Every nation is essentially selfish, including the poor ones. The governments of the poor countries can be some of the worst and most draconian. It is the rich countries that are more open to ethical behavior. But don’t imagine that countries won’t just exploit our self sacrifice for their own ends. This is the problem. There is this idea that a global problem requires a global solution, but the countries of the world will attack this problem using competition, not co-operation.
There is a big difference between a marriage where both people are genuinely helping each other, and a marriage where neither one wants to be in the relationship but they are tied together financially. The world is like the latter.
JamesG (09:56:27) : “M. Jeff, I respect your views on DDT… ”
I did not mention DDT.
The precautionary principle
Some say there will be a drought
Some say there will be a flood
Do you dig a well or build an arc??
G Alston
If you’re trying to pigeonhole me you’ll fail. I’m a skeptic’s skeptic and apolitical. But if I’m wrong just tell me so. Actually if Anne is the same Anne from “Economists view” then we do pretty much agree on most things, except climate change of course. We were both very adamant there that there was a massive financial collapse coming due to the unsustainable nature of the debt-based economy. Bingo. My own credo is the search for truth and you often have to wade through piles of ideological manure from both sides in order to get to it. I see the way ahead is on clean, green energy solutions based on cost-benefit and I’m sure we can all agree on that at least. There’s nothing wrong with being anti-tax though, so don’t be ashamed of it 🙂
And on a completely different note, the RSS anomaly numbers are out for October.
You can get the data here
Looks like it cooled a bit in October globally, warmed a little in the NH and cooled a little in the SH.
Follow the money trail…if they’re getting funding for ‘Climate Change’..they have to lie to continue to receive the money…shameful..very shameful….
http://www.cookevilleweatherguy.com
Leif Svalgaard (20:13:20) :
“Michael Duffy:
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… :-)”
This may be true of some research areas but in the AGW area false findings seem to be the rule when published.
Wow Evan,
That was a nice clear explanation, with plenty of data to support it.
Mitigation is supposed to be a low cost way to prevent large losses. If a hurricane is coming, you board up the windows. If the gate is open and the cows might get into the highway, you close the gate.
Somehow, mitigation has been turned upside down. It’s as if we must burn down the house to prevent hurricane damage, or kill/cripple the cows to prevent accidents.
We are being asked (ordered?) to pour the wealth of our nation down a black hole to delay warming for a few months a hundred years from now.
In the new logic, mitigation is an extremely high cost action designed to prevent very manageable outcomes.
Adaptation is the correct response to global warming. Mitigation? Sure, if the price is right.
Since historical records have shown that CO2 and climate change are deeply linked, it’s up to the skeptics to first prove that this time the change of CO2 levels will not cause climate change.
[Amused reaction sternly repressed.] Linked, yes. But it is the CO2 that follows the climate change, not the other way around.
The climate warms, and, centuries after, the CO2 increases. The temperatures drop and, centuries after, the CO2 decreases.
It is not logically impossible, I suppose, that there is some small interim feedback effect at work. But it is THAT theory which bears the primary burden of proof!
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.
You recall correctly.
That was a nice clear explanation, with plenty of data to support it.
Thanks. But it seems I am too late. the case appears to have been rested. Debate over. Case closed. (Move along.)
Lifted from the register.co.uk – because I like it:
By Charles Manning Posted Thursday 6th November 2008 00:36 GMT
” The aim of all scientists is to secure funding and the easiest way to do it these days is to somehow tie your research area to Global Warming. Sure many scientists think Global Warming is a crock (or at least is not “proven” — whatever that means), but you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
If you were in the CIA then you’d know that your funding and power depends on the commie/Islamic threat. Therefore you fan the commie/Islamic flame. The last thing anyone in the CIA wants is peace because that would do them out of jobs.
If you’re an IPCC scientist then you know that your funding & conferences etc depend on keeping the threat alive. Same deal.
The unwashed masses seem to love drama and the scientific community are always keen to play along. Just look at the list we’ve had over the last few years:
* AIDS: We were supposed to all be dead by now weren’t we. Sure, some people die, but for the most part so long as you don’t play silly buggers with needles or todgers you’re OK.
* SARS: 774 deaths in a few years. It was supposed to go around the wold in a killing spree.
* Bird Flu: 243 deaths. Mostly in Indonesia where people live with poultry walking around in their houses.
* Mad Cow Disease: About 150 deaths
Yet boring and less newsworthy stuff kills far more of us:
* Cars: Hundreds of thousands per year.
* Tuberculosis: 1.5 million per year”
All so true!
Anne,
I’ve always disliked the insurance analogy. You buy insurance to spread the risk and to protect you when bad things happen. While there may be a tiny preventative benefit from health insurance, its main benefit is to pay out when you get sick, otherwise there’d be demand for “service contracts” (x visits to the doc per year, no more). Generally, insurance doesn’t prevent bad things from happening.
AGW policy makers aren’t just trying to force us to buy insurance, they’re trying to change the way we live because THEY think it’s a good idea.
Of course, no analogy is perfect. What it comes down to is a political debate about who gives up what for who’s benefit. The “collective good” generally means “what’s good for me and what I think”.
By the way, our current and deepening recession is because of a drop of “a few percent of GDP.” Tell the 200,000 people that just lost their jobs and the people staring at their retirement statements that it’s just “a few percent of GDP”.
OT?…. New Zealand just elected a conservative government… I think it means the end of the crazy green idea of cap and trade scheme.
This is something that puzzles me. World energy use is something like 60% oil and coal. How do you stop this?
evanjones (10:43:44) :
You touched a fundamental problem, which usually results in an endless discussion because it is a matter of opinion, simplified to its essence:
1. If you want to change human behaviour then you have the burden of proof.
2. If you want to change the composition of the atmosphere then you have the burden of proof.
Anne (10:12:28) wrote:
Is that the choice we’re facing? Come on, get real. Even the most agressive mitigation proposals cost less than a few percent of GDP. To parafrase your example: If paying for that health insurance means I won’t have enough money for a new plasma tv, yes, I’d demand proof first. After all, what good is that insurance if I miss out on the latest and greatest tv shows in HD?
You can afford a plasma TV? Lucky you! But you’re overlooking the millions who can’t, those who would be immediately affected by hikes in electricity cost if coal-fired power plants are forced out of service. I’m one of them. On hot summer days/nights, I turn on a fan; no air-conditioning in my home. Get real? That is real. My example stands.
Since historical records have shown that CO2 and climate change are deeply linked, it’s up to the skeptics to first prove that this time the change of CO2 levels will not cause climate change.
evanjones’s rebuttal said it all. “Deeply linked” is not causation, especially when CO2 change trails temperature change. The skeptics don’t have to prove nature. Nature will change as it will. Warmists claimed the change is unnatural? Prove it.
Stefan (10:19:17) :
I very well understand and appreciate your point of view.
Blaming people is definitely counterproductive. As is blaming yourself. But there is this a third option: feeling responsible for your own actions, which has nothing to do with guilt.
Since the western countries are the ones taking the initiative in both climate change awareness and mitigation efforts, I do not feel they are blaming themselves, they are taking responsibility for their actions.
Ann, some food for thought on your comments:
“The western countries are for more than 90% responsible for combined CO2 emissions done over the past centuries. It would be morally untenable to not hold those same western countries repsonsible for the problem.”
How many “centuries” are you referring to? Do you also include the periods that were extemely cold like in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s? Did CO2 emissions prevent any of this extreme cooling? In my opinion it is morally untenable to destroy our economy based on a politically driven agenda based on a weak theory, especially when the AGW advocates refuse to allow a scientific discussion of the facts and name call those who disagree.
You state that CO2 emissions are a problem caused by Western Nations. You assume the Science is settled, many do not agree with you and recent global and sea temperature data does not match that theory although CO2 emissions have increased.
“Just shut down the country till you’re left with change…in your pocket.
This is not true. Nobody apart from some extreme environmentalists suggest to shutdown the economy. Wait, you make it even worse, by claiming they suggest we have to shutdown the country.”
Barak Obama has called CO2 a pollutant and the Democratic leaders in Congress have called coal and oil dirty. Obama has said he want’s to bankrup the coal companies. Congress is restricting use of oil from Canada tar sands and refuses to drill offshore and in ANWR for oil and natural gas. Nuclear has been taken off the table by Harry Reid and Obama only says he will look at Nuclear. Al Gore runs around the world ranting and raving saying that the end is near and the MSM never questions his claims. This is not just a few extreme environmentalists. For many of us the above actions are extreme and based on our experience believe such a stance will negatively affect our economy in a significant way.
“I have complete faith in humen ingenuity to develop the technology needed to reduce CO2 emissions without sinking our economies or even noticeably affecting our way of life.”
Energy Companies have spent billions over 50 years looking for alternative sources of energy, and progress has been slow except for Nuclear that was killed in the USA by our government listening to the environmentalists. Do you think that the Countries like Japan, China, and India with all their talent have not tried to get off expensive oil? They have thousands of engineers and scientists looking for alternatives. What progress has been made in the last 10 years that have been devoted to alternative fuels? NADA. I spent a lot of time in the 80’s working on major, expensive projects to rid our dependence on foreign oil, so this has been going on for a long time. If it is as easy as you and Barak claim someone would have found the silver bullet a long time ago. Someday , a breakthrough will occur but not with the way we are approaching the energy need. In the meantime I’m not prepared to risk the lifestyle of my children and grandchildren based on your “faith”. One of the problems we experience is that the politicians have got involved and we have subsidized a lot of useless programs like subsidies for Corn farmers (Ethanol) and other marginal programs like cutting down trees to produce fuels and proposals for carbon tax. Of course this is a form of income distribution to congressional campaign contributors and those who have got into carbon trading business. What do you expect from a Congress with a 9% approval rating.
“Thinking a large reduction of CO2 emissions will mean the end of civilization as we know it, is alarmism of the other kind.”
Rapidly pushing for the CO2 reduction before there are commercially demonstrated, economic alternatives to replace fossil fuels is suicidal for our economy. And it is especially troublesome since it is all based on the theory that manmade CO2 is causing a “problem” which many do not agree with. Not to mention that because we refuse to develop our own fossil resources we are currently sending a lot of $$$ overseas, burdening our economy, and artifically creating a shortage of cheap, affordable energy. The carbon tax is already being questioned in Europe and yet we have a bunch of politicians eager to increase the cost for carbon based fuels. How will this help our economy?
I have one question, do Pachauri, Gore and Hansen
(a) really believe everything they say is true?
or
(b)believe some things they say are untrue but justify it in their minds?
Anne:
You can discard #1 and #2 above, and replace them with:
If you propose a hypothesis, then you have the burden of proof.
AGW/CO2/runaway global warming is the proposed hypothesis. It has not withstood falsification. Therefore, it has not replaced conventional climate science, which posits that the climate is currently well within normal historical parameters. Nothing out of the ordinary is occurring.
Remember that the only support for climate catastrophe comes from always-inaccurate computer models, while the empirical evidence supports conventional climate science.
The burden of proof is on the alarmists, who have completely failed to prove their hypothesis.
Anne: The fundamental point is which comes first, the chicken or the egg.
Even the most agressive mitigation proposals cost less than a few percent of GDP.
GOOD Lord! A few percent? A FEW PERCENT? World growth is around two to three percent. And the “most aggressive mitigation proposals” tag directly those very industries which create the growth. Cut my heart out, please! It’s only a few percent.
I think I’ll do the King Lear dodge: “I can be patient, I can stay with Re[a]gan, I and my hundred knights.”
The western countries are for more than 90% responsible for combined CO2 emissions done over the past centuries. It would be morally untenable to not hold those same western countries repsonsible for the problem.
I quite agree. But there are two problems. A.)The evidence is (esp. from the Aqua Satellite) that CO2 emissions are not harmful. And B.) When the developed countries lose productivity, the undeveloped countries take it in the teeth and suffer far more man-for-man.
It is clear that real scientists do no have a clear understanding of the specious science of AGW – BGW in Dr. Pachauri’s case.
When Dr. Pachauri stated “We’re at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before],“ he was speaking of the heat from the lighting above the stage on which he was standing in contrast with the heat from the lighting on previous stages.
Pachauri said the number of global warming skeptics is shrinking. Dr. Pachauri was having a Kinsley Moment in admitting that his audience was shrinking in that fewer and fewer skeptics were attending his lectures.
The concept in specious AGW and/or, BGW science is that factual data is irrelevant, it is the specious claim that prevails.
Remember, eat more vegetables and eat less meat to off-set the BGW (CH4) of 400,000,000 sacred bovines in Dr. Pachauri’s India.
To Dr. RK Pachauri
I was surprised to hear of your talk at the University of NSW. In it you are quoted as saying “We’re at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate” than before, and presenting a graph that shows global temperatures continuously rising since the beginning of the 21st century.
Is this true? If not, could you please correct the record?
If so, could you provide me with a reference to your source of temperature data?
All of the sources of global temperature data that I have used (hadcrut, giss, the various satellites) show little or no change in global temperatures since the dawn of century.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that global warming has stopped. There are a variety of possibly explanations that are completely consistent with the hypothesis of AGW driven by greenhouse gas emissions.
But if the allegation that you are misrepresenting global temperature trends is true, it could have a material impact on your credibility and that of the IPCC.