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.
His photo looks like a police mug shot.
Old Coach (15:43:29) :
“There is a logical theory that postulates that baseline climate is dependent on the positions of continents around the globe. ….”
I would love to see ocean circulation modelers get to the point where they could simulate (with independent verfication) scenarios where the continents are in different positions in, say, 200,000-1,000,000 years. Alternatively, suppose we get to the point where we can confidently predict the next ice age starting in, say, 500 years and one of our kids comes along and proposes a geo-engineering project, that can be validated with the models, that proposes to increase equator to poleward ocean circulations to offset this real catastrophe.
I don’t know what would do it. Perhaps some strategically placed giant breakwaters or an expansion of the Bering straits to open up Pacific to Arctic circulation….
Anthony, the arctic ice is now within one standard deviation of the trend line for the last 100 years:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
You’ll be needing to go back further than that.
There is a logical theory that postulates that baseline climate is dependent on the positions of continents around the globe.
Surely. If Antarctica were not there, if the Southern extremes were ocean rather than land, we’d have a much warmer planet.
Smokey
Re: residence time of a CO2 molecule. Your Dyson quote is slightly misleading as he is talking about the residence time without replacement, that is, the scenario where emissions have ceased. In the debate assuming ongoing emissions the more appropriate figure is the residence time with replacement (the Bern cycle), which is nearer a century on average, with about 20% of a given pulse of CO2 remaining in the atmosphere 1,000 years after emission. This was pointed out in a reply to Dyson from Professor Lord May of Oxford here.
This leads Dyson to the conclusion that “the average lifetime of a molecule of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere…is about twelve years.” Dyson correctly emphasizes that such a timescale is fundamental to discussions of global warming. Unfortunately, however, estimates of the characteristic “residence time” of a molecule of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere involve a complicated mélange of factors, leading to the conclusion that although almost half of newly added carbon dioxide molecules remain for only a decade or two, roughly a third stay for a century or more, and fully one fifth for a millennium (see, e.g., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7 (2007), pp. 2287-2312). This is why the residence time of such molecules is generally characterized as a century.
Hope this is useful.
JP
PS We had fireworks last night. At one point I lit a roman candle. The fuse burned for about 45 seconds, there was a brief pause then the firework began to emit an increasing amount of light and then the local temperature rose considerably as the explosives combusted. Clearly, however, since the temperature rise from the explosives occurred after the burning of the fuse it is not possible that the black powder was responsible for the increasing temperatures.
Anne,
From your Stanford/Jasper Ridge link:
In other words, under normal growing conditions, increased CO2 stimulates plant growth. Only when radical changes were made to the water and soil did they get the results that they wanted.
And as explained here, their experiment has no real-world control; they rely on invented new conditions, which can only be found in their computer models.
Without a control group of plants subjected to the same inputs of heavier rainfall, increased fertilizer, and other additives, they will never know how plants react to these changes in the open air.
Furthermore, the authors admit that microscopic biomass has significantly increased due to increased CO2. That is certainly strong evidence that organic life thrives when CO2 increases. [This effect has been clearly explained by Prof. Freeman Dyson in this article.]
Finally, it is clear [IMHO] from reading the author’s commentary that this questionable experiment is just one more example of the quest for grant money to study global warming/AGW/CO2.
Had they wanted to do a proper experiment, there are numerous skeptical biologists who would have loved to be a part of an experiment with lots of grant money available.
But skeptics aren’t asked, are they? The grant money would then have to be shared.
Has anyone else tried to post on Dr. Pachauri’s blog?
Yes (but not me). It never occurred to me for one minute he’d allow a dissenting post.
JP: It is not implausible that there is a secondary CO2 effect. But if so, how much? The cooling does not wait for CO2 to decline. The cooling occurs first, then the CO2 declines, just as the warming precedes the CO2 bump.
Therefore it is unlikely that the CO2 is having that much of an impact. It may have some; it is a greenhouse gas. But how much? And at what saturation?
Given the chicken/egg situation, it needs to be shown that a secondary effect does exist, not the other way around.
OK, John Philip, explain why Lord May is credible. Note that May is selling a book. However, that doesn’t excuse his repeated ad hominem attacks against Prof. Freeman Dyson; the personal attacks only make May come across as desperate.
And he should be desperate, because in Dyson’s reply, May is demolished.
G Alston (01:20:34) :
I do not like to politicize this web site; occasionally I employ sarcasm or derision. But I must be political here.
“Mis-application” is just another way for the left to force their world-view down the throats of non-believers in their world-view. Remember, the left insists it understands history and that human behaviour is malable; the employment of any technique available to drive this world-view home, from “green” ads to re-education camps and gulags, is justifiable in their world-view, as they know the truth.
End of rant. I hope I have enlightened rather than wasted bandwidth.
dear bloggers: dr pachauri knows that there is a fenomenal recession world wide. and so, to implement “green” solutions will be very very difficult (i ask you perdom for my english).
Rick Sharp (20:32:02) “pray for snow”???
Are you crazy? This is Ottawa, Canada!!! For crying out loud, we understand cold and snow. Being the coldest & snowiest capital in the world.
Yes, Yes, I know, Ulan Bator is colder, but it has less snow.
…….There is a logical theory that postulates that baseline climate is dependent on the positions of continents around the globe.
Entropy:
We can have different solutions to the climate of the Earth, simply by altering the probabilities of spatial arrangements on the planet. Without the need external changes.
Unfortunately: the concern. is a Enthalpy.
FM
Leif,
I understand you objections to the Sun’s small variations producing large climatic changes on the Earth. I do not agree with them; I think there is more impact upon the Earth by the Sun than we understand.
However, there have been extremely large, even over a relatively short time scale, changes in Earth’s climate. This is a matter of fact. So, you must posit an external agent responsible for these changes; as, after all, you deny the Sun is responsible.
Come on, Leif, you know I am a smart guy and a man of his word. Please address this issue. BTW You are not allowed the “well, we don’t know” get-out-of-jail-free clause. if you don’t know, you cannot deny my arguments, or anyone elses.
Matt
I too have been censored on Dr. Pachauri’s blog. However, I expected the restriction of contrary opinion on the blog. You probably received the note that your comment would be published soon. Unfortunately, probably not in our life-time. My response to his blog of 5 November 2008 is as follows:
Dr. Pachauri, the government of the United States of America is not a democracy, it is a republic: “,,,and to the Republic for which it stands…”
What measures have you recommended to the Nation of India in eliminating the CH4 GHG emitted by the 400,000,000 bovines in India?
I would like you to provide me with the scientific data, not computer model data, that shows that there is an anthropogenic CO2 cause for climate change.
The specious and spurious claim of anthropogenic CO2 climate is without merit. A claim is not scientific fact and a computer model is not reality. Nature is reality.
The AGW assault has been an assault launched by the UN on capitalism, especially the dynamic economy of the United States.
The recent election, to which you refer, is a momentary detour into socialism from which We the People shall recover.
You mention the Lincoln Quote: Government of the people, by the people and for the people. Here is another Lincoln quote: You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
Keep warm,
Ed Scott
Interesting times ahead for our Brit friends: click
You deniers had better watch out!
Katherine (05:17:14) you said:
You’re taking it as given that CO2 is responsible for “global warming,” and that “global warming” is a problem. Until it’s proven that the human-produced additions of CO2 to the atmosphere is responsible for “global warming,” western countries cannot be held responsible. Plus studies have shown that warmer temperatures result in climate conditions that benefit agricultural production
You are also assuming that a warmer plane is bad. Now, hear this, dear world:
A warm planet is a happy planet.
CO2 makes for a green planet.
Smokey
You mean vicious personal attacks such as I greatly admire Freeman Dyson, one of the most notable physicists of his generation. I guess?
It is not a question of right or wrong, just context. The 12 year figure was in a hypothetical context, the 100 year average is the real world figure, as Dyson makes clear…
This discrepancy is easy to resolve. We are talking about different meanings of residence time. I am talking about residence without replacement. My residence time is the time that an average carbon dioxide molecule stays in the atmosphere before being absorbed by a plant. He is talking about residence with replacement. His residence time is the average time that a carbon dioxide molecule and its replacements stay in the atmosphere when, as usually happens , a molecule that is absorbed is replaced by another molecule emitted from another plant.
Hope that’s clear,
JP.
Source: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21882
Steve Berry said (06:09:55) :
Look, let’s not beat about the bush, Rajendra Pachauri is a liar – it’s as simple as that. I’m all for being courteous, but when someone is not telling the truth (and they know it) then they are lying – there’s no better word for it in the English language. If he wasn’t being strictly true then one might say he was being disingenuous, but he isn’t. He’s a liar.
Steve, I am with you here. You have opened yourself to a libel suite from the head wanker. You have called him a liar. I support you and repeat the accusation that Rajendra Pachauri is a liar; he is such to continue his very luxuious life as a UN king-pin. He is a liar. The planet is not warming’; and certainly not due to human activity.
I am willing to assist in legal costs; I cannot carry them all alone, we need other non-believers to pony-up.
Pachuri is a liar and fraud
I repeat it. I will spread this accusation throughout the planet. He is obliged to rsepond. Otherwise, he agrees.
Yes, John Philip, it’s clear that your boy May was misrepresenting the situation, as we see from Dyson’s no-nonsense response.
As Dyson unequivocally states, “Since we are discussing the effect of carbon-eating plants, my use of the short residence time without replacement is correct, and [May’s] use of the long residence time with replacement in that situation is wrong.”
May is writing a globaloney book. Of course he’s going to dispute Prof. Dyson. But he does so by spinning the facts.
Anyone wishing to decide for themselves is encouraged to read May’s position, and Dyson’s response immediately below it.
“Climate Change is the greatest threat that
human civilization has ever faced.”
– Angela Merkel,
German Chancellor
Actually Evan, if you look at her statement in the right way Merkel has a point; if you make a big fuss about supposed anthropogenic influence as climate forcings, and then use this argument as a prime driver for economic policy, then Earth’s ever changing climate really does become an economic threat to civilization.
Evan’s reply (15:01:28) Good answer. I like you, too, and will accept your editing. I used to brag that Steve McIntyre was the only editor I’d accept, but I’ve found a few others, since. But you are right, I really don’t know her well enough to judge in the way I did, besides, the attack was intemperate.
People with no conception or admission of the evil that they may be bringing just bug the shit out of me. And then they want to invoke the Precautionary Principle. Dramatic cooling will be a lot more devastating than any warming CO2 can bring, and it is a lot more likely.
==========================================
John Philip:
Please.
When the water solidified (ICE) in the Arctic. where is the heat released ? (79.7 cal / g).
FM
Hilarious!
Robert Wood (17:48:03) :
However, there have been extremely large, even over a relatively short time scale, changes in Earth’s climate. This is a matter of fact. So, you must posit an external agent responsible for these changes.
The way I see it is this:
(0) I’ll discount orbital changes as being too slow and catastrophic changes [impacts, Deccan Traps-style events, Yellowstone blowing its top, …] as being too infrequent and in a sense too large, so,
(1) Either the Earth’s climate system is hypersensitive to even the smallest solar changes, so that these extremely large effects can arise from nearly infinitesimal solar changes, or
(2) The Sun undergoes very significant changes on a short time scale which then has an obvious direct influence on the climate, or
(3) The Climate system has so many interlocking feedback mechanism that it is conditionally unstable and ‘blows up’ now and then all by itself [or by the batting of a butterfly wing] after which it can return to its metastable state, or
(4) Some combination of the above.
I’ll lean towards (3), for the following reasons:
(1) Being hypersensitive over billions of years without ‘going over the top’ is too fine a balancing act for my taste.
(2) The Sun is very large. Some stars are inherently very variable [some by orders of magnitude]. This variability happens in certain phases of stellar evolution. In between such phases, a star is very stable. It is also very hot, and hot things are much simpler than cold things. Heat up a snowman [or an elaborately carved ice swan] and watch him simplify to a puddle of water and then to unstructured steam. I hold it to be more likely that the vastly more complex climate system can vary and fluctuate randomly than the much simpler Sun. These fluctuations having no external sources. If you insist on large excursions to necessarily have external sources one might ask what those would be for the Sun.
(4) Leaves us with no explanation at all, and scientists tend to avoid being dogmatic about intractable problems.