Steve McIntyre writes: One reviewer of the IPCC 2007 Assessment Report specifically asked IPCC not to hide the decline. The reviewer stated very clearly:
Show the Briffa et al reconstruction through to its end; don’t stop in 1960. Then comment and deal with the “divergence problem” if you need to. Don’t cover up the divergence by truncating this graphic. This was done in IPCC TAR; this was misleading (comment ID #: 309-18)
The IPCC said that it would be “inappropriate to show recent section of Briffa et al. series“.
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This from an earlier link to the national post
‘At the upcoming Copenhagen conference, governments are expected to fail to agree to an ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s a more modest, if mundane goal for them: They should agree to share the data from their national meteorological services so that independent scientists can calculate global climatic temperature and identify the roles of carbon dioxide and the sun in changing it. ‘
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/11/26/skewed-science.aspx#ixzz0Y3HjMoU8
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I like that, I really like that I’m gonna send that to Brown et al.
@twits re peak oil
Prolly the next scare they’ll try to latch onto.
I believe it was back around 2004 that a national energy report was written for USA energy policy decisions. That high level document stated that we have enough oil just in oil shale alone to serve the entire oil needs of the USA for over 100 years.
Not to mention Canada’s oil sands, which is pretty large also.
We’re sitting with producing oil wells capped off California (and Florida??) because of drilling restrictions. Sitting on undrilled oil in Alaska. The Obama Admin is holding up licensing of others that could be drilled – a number of which were approved shortly before he took office, but they’re holding those up also.
Proven oil reserve figures, historically, wind up being significantly low relative to the oil that winds up being extracted.
Up until the recent oil price spike, there was little point in much searching for new supplies – since then, there’ve been something like 200 finds including the large offshore Brazil find.
Peak oil? Is the sky falling? Think I’ll camp out tonight.
twit (18:07:09) :
All the data and what models exist seem to indicate that we have reached a peak in oil production and a long steady decline is ahead of us.
This chronic oil depletion crisis happens to be occurring in parallel with climate change awareness, although peak oil has gotten much less publicity.
Now what a coincidence… but think about it… in this context AGW gets the sheeple wanting to reduce oil consumption because they are saving the planet… so energy costs will be increased and increased and increased until only the very rich can afford to run a car… it is like getting turkeys to vote for Thanksgiving and Christmas… but don’t worry they will make sure there is enough electricity to run your TV so you can shiver at home while you watch the latest global warming horror movie…
However, the window of opportunity is closing fast… the AGW “science is settled” propaganda is falling apart at the seams while people are beginning to notice that global temperatures are cycling downwards [probably until 2030] … nature has this habit of putting man in his place… so fingers crossed we avoid the double whammy of cooling plus massive new energy taxes.
The shame of it all is that the published numbers behind Peak Oil are as reliable [for all the same reasons] as the numbers behind AGW… and if you listen to some Russians there is not even “settled science” regarding the origins of oil deposits… but we don’t talk about that either in polite society.
Having Spent the last 28 years drilling for oil in nearly all the oil producing countries in the world, I would think that my great great grand children will not be feeling the decline of petroleum products, the USA has more oilfields designated as ‘ Strategic Military Reserves’ that could be used in the next 500 years, the world is a big place and if we have discovered more than 5% of the oilfields that exist under or feet I have wasted 28 years of my life.
twit (18:07:09)
Oil and climate have nothing to do with each other in the last analysis. However, I remeber the oil crises in the 70’s when OPEC tripled the price. Since then there’s been a plentiful supply. Mrs Thatcher was at war with oil barons and coal miners during the 80’s, and coincidentally the Hadley Centre was established in 1990, shortly after and Hansen gave his testimony to Congress in ’88.
It could be said that a relation between oil/fossil fuels and climate was created during the course of this period.
Climategate is a catchy one, Climaquidick less so. Some phrases seem to invent them selvs. What about “Mannmade global warming”? Changed meaning of “climatesmart”? =Clever at making hockeystix?
The refrain: “Hide the decline” is kind of sticky.
Still we await some more durable results. IPCC should be redesigned and a scientific board without “consensus”. The meaning of that word also has changed. It seems to be approaching “squelched” or something.
The person who rejected it was Briffa himself. Just check the AR4SOR_BatchAB_Ch06-KRB-1stAug.doc. Or is that some other Keith?
REPLY: It was coined here at WUWT on Nov 19th I believe. – Anthony
Good try, Andy, but you can’t claim coinage of “climategate.” I am sure it popped into the heads of people world-wide instantaneously.
Heidi Deklein (01:22:11) :
Love the handle, and the post was pretty fair too.:)
Sen. Jim Inhofe: ‘Cap and Trade Is Dead’
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574558070997168360.html
In German TV-media there’s nothing about climategate.
Everything is calm but the ZDF, one of the more or less official German TV-Stations, yesterday evening proudly announced the public that China will reduce CO2-emissions until 2020 in relation to 2005 for 45 %!
No information from the ZDF what this relative reduction really means!
Calculation:
2005-2020 = 15 years
Average growth of Chinas GDP/year: 9 %
GDP 2020 in relation to 2005: 364 %!!!
CO2 reduction GDB-based 45 % means absolute CO2-emission in 2020 in relation to 2005: 200 % !!
Anthony, Steve, anybody….
I’d read much of the reviewer notes and requests a year or more ago and was appalled then by what was being rejected…noting that Fred Singer seemed a popular target.
I’ve lost the link to that whole part of the AR4 process, and would love to have it again, especially now.
What I think is critical now is to know who the specific individuals were that, on behalf of the IPCC, were those who made the decisions, that is, who were these guys? Was it the lead authors of the respective chapters??
You may be right; I puzzled for some time over Ripper’s post before making my response. If the interpretation of his post is as you say, my apologies.
Heidi Deklein (01:22:11) :
Good post. Your summary of the range of skeptical positions is clearer than mine.
The only hope, w/regards to both oil reserves AND C02, is that the personal consequences become so dire that individuals actually spend some time to educate themselves and look beyond the 60sec sound bite, and then find a way to take the appropriate action. Myths like Mt. Kilimanjaro and polar bears floating around on chunks of ice need to be dispatched effectively. There are still people that believe that Mr. Kilimanjaro is losing it’s snowcap because of warming, rather than deforestation at the base.
As Luis Black said in one of his performances: “Sooner or later, republicans and democrats have to be able to look at an event and agree on what happened.”
So the problem is two-fold:
Getting people to take the time to educate themselves, and then presenting them with a path to take action on the issue.
Btw, when that happens (I don’t think that’s an “if”), the U.S. Congress should beware, because they’ll be out of a job in a heartbeat, along with a lot of other pols.
JimB
I’m noting wryly that Steve failed to mention… that he was the reviewer who said “don’t cover up the divergence”.
Twit – I would like to see this issue opened up for debate beyond folk saying “this IS how it is” because I smell issues as well as questionable science, but am also fairly ignorant, and getting lots of perspectives helps me at any rate in digging deeper for key evidence.
But not right now. The frauds constituting ClimateGate are a threat to the foundations and fair practice of Science altogether, and that includes the sciences involved in oil issues. To say nothing of the threat to democracy, to ridiculous action for no result, etc. This spectre of GROUP_THINK needs to be exposed, so that people can see how widespread it is, how easy to fall into, and how dangerous. Jim Jones showed that; so did Hitler.
Anthony, I know we have not seen eye to eye but please let these posts run.
I have no selfish reasons for posting here, my only aim is to kill Copenhagen.
[snip]
REPLY: “Sophistry in politics” No and hell no. You proceeded to post bomb multiple threads here multiple times even after I told you the content you were pushing on your website was not welcome.
Hell you are doing it right now, multiple posts under difference names.
Coming back later and saying “we have not seen eye to eye” while at the same time engaging in post bombing at the same time insults my intelligence and the intelligence of readers here when what was called for was an apology. Bugger off! – Anthony
Mooloo (20:55:48) :
We’ve been listening to the “peak oil” scare now for thirty years. It’s lost its legs.
Of course one day it will come. So denying it utterly would be particularly stupid. And even if it isn’t soon, not wasting oil is a good idea in its own right.
We don’t need to research “peak oil” though. Watch the money guys, and follow their lead. They have the resources and skill to investigate the true situation in places like Iran and sub-Saharan Africa which we do not. When guys like Soros and Buffet start getting rid of all their oil-based investments, then I will suspect it is truly running out.
[REPLY – Thirty years, hell. We’ve been hearing it since before they stuck a straw in the ground in PA in 1959.]
First reference that I know of occurred in a 1934 U.S. Geological Survey study. They alluded to there being less than one generation’s supply of oil (15 years worth).
twit et al,
I think it’s unfair to associate global warming sceptics with peak oil deniers, we all know that oil is finite.
However, there is already a market system in place for energy. As oil gets more scarce, it’s price goes up, and we cut back .
In 1998, oil was $10 \ bbl, so nobody was exploring for it, hence no new discoveries. When it did go up, not only did we find more of it in the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil among others, we also found ways of extracting more from existing oil fields.
Most oil companies extract the easy 1/3rd from a well i.e. the stuff that pumps itself, and then move on. The North Sea fields were supposed to be depleted in 1998, latest estimate is now 2025, because of new extraction techniques.
Gas is currently so cheap, it’s not worth their while putting in the pipelines to distribute it. But as oil depletes, that will change.
There’s between 130 – 420 years of coal reserves (depending on where you look for your information). At worse, that can be converted into a form useful for transport.
Then there’s methane clathrates, of which there is something like 2trillion bbl equivalent. Extracting that now is prohibitively expensive at current prices. But at higher prices and with newer techniques, that can become viable.
And then there’s renewables, which are already viable here in Europe, with energy taxes so high ($8 for a gallon of petrol). Eventually we will reach a crossover point where renewables become viable everywhere, particularly if we can crack the storage problem.
So it’s not so much that we’re denying the problem exists, it’s that we know if the market is allowed to work efficiently, it will sort it out for us.
twit: The oil depletion problem has been predicted over and over again, so this has become a clear example of the “Boy who cried Wolf”.
Unfortunately, oil will come to an end at some point, and other nations like France are now 80% nuclear (a great hedge even if AGW was true). Unfortunately, in this country the party in power sees lots of money and power betting on renewable fuels that still produce GHGs (the glaring disconnect with their own AGW beliefs doesn’t seem to bother them). This strategy will waste the means of production that could go to feeding the world’s hungry on making fuel, not to mention that it can’t possibly replace oil fast enough, which cuts back to the laughable complaint that nuclear plants take too long to come on line.
Even if oil is at its peak production, don’t forget gas and liquid diesel type fuel can be made from coal. Not a new technology, Germans ran their tanks and jet aircraft with in during WWII.
Lots more expensive than oil though.
Found it!! Chapter 3 of AR4, Expert Review Comments on First-Order Draft (16 November 2005)
***Note 3-55 on page 11, where the response to commentor Menglin Jin is ….”Rejected.; we need to include all relevant papers; not max 3 per author”
http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/7795947?n=11&imagesize=1200&jp2Res=.25
….so we need to include all relevant papers that agree with our predetermined view. ?? Do I seem to recall someone saying that they were going to keep something out???
Alright…will someone tell me if I’m correct that the reviewers accepting or rejecting comments in the AR4 Chapter 3 were:
Tom Karl of NOAA’s NCDC
Bubu Jallow of the UN
Sir Dr. (or is is Dr. Sir?) Brian Hoskins of Reading
…..or have I made a bubu??
Sorry for violating the 3-in-a-row posts rule…but Dr. Sir Brian would seem to demonstrate a preconceived conclusion to the outcome of Chap 3, IMHO….which would make me suspicious of the motivation for his acceptance or rejection of anything, since he should be scientifically neutral and clearly isn’t…and wasn’t.
http://www.cert.bham.ac.uk/docs/AnnualLecture08.pdf
The IPCC has a built in bias.
The problem with peak oil is not reserves – it is production.
In the classic (M. King Hubbert) study at the instant production peaks, there is approx 50% of the oil left (as a rule of thumb). However production declines year on year from there on. It should decline roughly symmetrically.
However, with modern innovations such a horizontal drilling etc, the production peak is delayed. This leads to asymmetry and a much more precipitous decline in production.
If yesterday you were producing (and consuming) 1billion barrels of oil, and today you are producting (and consuming) 999 milion barrels, then someone will have to do without. They are encouraged to do this by rising prices.
There are a lot a beneficial effects to raising prices – just the consumer never sees any of them.
Peak oil is not the end of oil – it is the end of cheap oil. On the bright side, the coming depression will make oil very cheap by killing demand – a final hurrah if you like. But it will never be as cheap again after that – in inflation corrected terms.
The problem of every 10 years, there being only 10 years of reserves is kind of obvious – they stop looking. Exploration is expensive, and if you know what you’re going to be doing for the next decade, then why bother looking? Scientists doing studies on how we’re all going to die, didn’t really understand this alas.
Oil is not the only mineral that seems to be heading towards a peak at the moment – there a quite a few. From the not-so-vital like gold, to the very vital like phosphorous.
OK, I see the “Running Out Oh Noooo!” topic is afoot again.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
We can make a few hundred years worth of “oil” from various materials (coal, tar sands, natural gas) at prices roughly the same as today in the USA (that is about $2-$3 / gallon of gasoline equivalent) when that runs out we can make an effectively unlimited quantity from any of: trash, algae, tree farms….
No, it is not hypothetical. Yes companies are doing it today (I own stock in several from time to time, one RTK Rentech is turning LA trash into fuel for the ground equipment at LAX airport ). No it dose not require 20 years more R&D (and no it does not require a new fuel infrastructure like Hydrogen).
And per “peak oil” meaning an “oil crash”. Not going to happen. The curve is roughly a bell curve. We took 150 years to enter and it will take 150 years to exit, more or less. Even now the worlds “depleted” oil fields have about 1/2 their oil still in place. APA Apache regularly takes over “empty” fields and “finds more oil” via advanced recovery techniques.
There is no energy shortage and there never will be. Get over it. There is, however, a shortage of common sense and a willingness to act responsibly and build energy production facilities. That may lead to a product shortage, but we are still up to our eyeballs in energy sources all at reasonable costs. And we always will be. (If you dispute that, see the links, and don’t clutter up this thread with OT energy junk).