Scientist says IPCC claims about African rainfall reductions due to global warming have no supporting data.
A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.
Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.
The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.
This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.
The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.
This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself.
In it he wrote: “By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.” The same claims have since been cited in speeches to world leaders by Pachauri and Ban.
Speaking at the 2008 global climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Pachauri said: “In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020.” In a speech last July, Ban said: “Yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by half in some African countries over the next 10 years.”
Speaking this weekend, Field said: “I was not an author on the Synthesis Report but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines.”
Watson said such claims should be based on hard evidence. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change. I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report,” he said.
Read the entire article at The Times here
I’m sure Pachuri will respond to this by calling it voodoo science or something…
Good grief. Bob Watson uttering a sceptical word… things are getting worse and worse for the IPCC. Delighted to hear that all these Africans are not going to starve after all. Especially as the Sahara is greening over.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
Ah Bob Watson, I did enjoy watching him squirm on Channel 4 news up against Lord Lawson. You could see from his body language that he knew the game was up.
Now we see him throwing anything he can overboard to try and keep himself afloat and divert attention from the major part he has played.
Renault: I am shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on in here!
Croupier: Your winnings sir.
Renault: Oh. Thank you very much.
Renault: Everybody out at once!
Is someone collating these blunders for easy reference?
….Observing climate changes is a paranormal gift some people have. Some talk to the dead, some see ghosts , others watch gletschers melting and deserts growing.
When all is said and done, the only aspect of AGW that will remain credible is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
Not one prediction of impending doom, the only justification for AGW inspired radical policies, holds up under scrutiny.
Robert Watson was on Sky news this morning (approx 10:30 GMT) making the following claims:
1. The only mistake the IPCC made was about Himalayan glaciers.
2. There is nothing wrong with the peer review system.
3. The emails do not show any data manipulation.
4. The IPCC report is based on peer reviewed literature so is solid.
5. etc
So I wonder what has happened since 10:30am.
After all too many instances of the IPCC’s publishing alarmist theses in bad faith, under self-evidently false pretenses, we are entitled to ask: Has no-one inside or out the “climate science community” (sic) ever actually read any of these ludicrously contentious, high-strung prognostications?
When we find that, first, projecting Himalayan glaciers’ disappearance in thirty years (2035) was based on an uncorrected typo; second, that no evidence supports the original figure (2350); third, that this datum’s garbled source was a years-old off-the-cuff press interview broadcasting pure advocacy-group propaganda– objective, rational observers are entitled to ask, What IPCC statement is NOT false-and-misleading hyperbole designed to promote Warmists’ hyper-partisan, extreme-radical collectivist Statist “New World Order” with such as Seigneur Rajendra Pachauri, railroad engineer extraordinaire, presiding o’er benighted private-sector peasants at its head?
For the record, Edward Lorenz’s Chaos Theory (1964) plus Ludwig Boltzman’s fundamental Second Law of Thermodynamics (1880s) prove that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) in Earth’s complex dynamic atmospheric system is both mathematically and physically impossible. (See Gerlich and Tschneuschner’s 125-page paper published by Germany’s Institut fur Mathematische Physik in January 2010.) Not only are linear extrapolations from Lorenz’s non-random but indeterminate processes invalid due to “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” (the Butterfly Effect), but denying Boltzman’s Second Law of Entropy that governs heat-exchanges (“work”) amounts to endorsing Perpetual Motion.
When fundamental math and physics make nonsense of one’s aggravated hypothetical house-of-cards, who needs to waffle and fuss in detail over conclusions rendered prima facie ignorant, mistaken from first principles?
“A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.”
The headline seems to imply this is a possiblity – I thought it had already lost pretty much all its credibility anyway. With yet another “gate” today there’s not a lot of credibility left to lose. Even the MSM are starting to sound almost unbiased (some of the time).
Bob Wats on: ” We’re in quicksand. We take one more step, and we’re still there, and there’s no way out. “
Okay so how does this not show bias in the IPCC report? The IPCC report is little more then conclusion with as much science as possible and then a healthy dose of speculation ( alarmism ) to spur people into action ( allowing the UN to tax them to ‘fix’ the problem )
Forget about that even if we were to go back to 1990 CO2 levels it would be meaningless if in fact Global Warming was occurring because of CO2 emissions.
Re: hunter (Feb 6 14:42),
Actually it may change to Celadonhouse Gas.
Celadon (pronounced /ˈsɛlədɒn/) is a color that is a pale tint of spring green.
And all paid for with our tax money. I wonder when the lawyers will get involved?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1DEG6BWgp0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
TerryS (14:45:37) :
Robert Watson was on Sky news this morning (approx 10:30 GMT) making the following claims:
…
3. The emails do not show any data manipulation.
…
_____________
Ans:
Well, mostly. The damning part regarding data manipulation was what came WITH the emails (the emails just fretted about such minor things as disobeying FOIA, beating people up you disagree with, subverting the peer review process, tax evasion, deleting emails to CYA, lamenting that the earth was cooling down, etc. etc). It was the REST of the material (condolences to Harry the progammer, et al) that point to data manipulation.
Of course, without a BEFORE set of data, determining what was manipulated and exactly how it was manipulated will be rather difficult to ascertain, but I have a sneaky feeling it’s all stored in somebody’s basement or garage just waiting to be discovered.
the flood gates have opened.
the suppression of science is ending.
it was “a damn close run thing”.
glad i could watch it happen here, anthony!
It’s one thing for Bob Watson to talk about the IPCC losing it’s credibility – not that it has any – but I notice he doesn’t say anything about the IPCC Working Groups losing any of the considerable funding DEFRA and other UK government sources throw its way…
The day of the Blogger:
A Fifth Estate Comes into it’s Own, WUWT!
http://web.me.com/sinfonia1/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Entries/2010/2/4_The_Day_of_the_Blogger%3A_the_Fifth_Estate_Comes_into_its_Own.html
John Blake,
People have been reading the IPCC reports from the beginning, finding the same flaws and trying to get the word out on what is actually going on. If they were in the ‘climate research science community’, they soon found themselves pariah. If they were in another branch of the atmospheric sciences, they were labeled ignorant or some other more demonstrable epitaph. The complaints and arguments against the AGW theory were never addressed directly. Instead, there would be some hand waving and then a pronouncement that the skeptical arguments were easily disposed of.
This has been going on for 20 years. It is good to see the house of cards falling down, but we will be paying for the consequences of this for a long time. A whole generation has been brainwashed.
I was in the Denver Airport yesterday and all the advertisements on the walls were for ‘green’ energy companies. These are companies trying to sell an inferior product at a higher price to the brainwashed masses, using the tax dollars of the masses just to stay in business. It is a lose/lose scenario at a time when the country needs some big wins.
We will be paying for the AGW falsehood for a long/long time.
It’s going to be along long winding crash landing.
How many IPCC lies does this make now? I call them lies because things like this don’t just happen with world quality peer reviewed science.
If that prediction was true then any steps that were taken by the west to cut CO2 emissions would have no affect, at least in the short term. The only solution would be massive transfers of wealth to Africa and other like affected locations.
Oh wait…
How ironic. The real reason the Africans might still starve to death is because of the AGW policy of denying them a cheap source of power generation – coal. Without that, they are possibly doomed but hope not. I won’t go as far as some who say this is a deliberate policy to cull the African population. I see no evidence of this. But the end result might still be the same thanks to the AGW extremists.
u.k.(us), don’t be so sure. They still have the vast majority of the media on the AGW side. I still fear they will win given all the lies still being reported. Sure many will be unconvinced thanks to the Internet but that doesn’t mean the western governments won’t rush in the appropriate legislations to tax us under the guise of saving the planet. It’s the early stage of the Orwellian society we may have to suffer, largely thanks to the large section of the public who are not interested and don’t want to use their brain matter to think things over before voting. That’s why the media are to blame in the end for not doing due diligence, and reporting both sides of the debate when in doubt rather than reporting almost all the time one side only.
“TerryS (14:45:37) :
Robert Watson was on Sky news this morning (approx 10:30 GMT) making the following claims:
1. The only mistake the IPCC made was about Himalayan glaciers.
2. There is nothing wrong with the peer review system.
3. The emails do not show any data manipulation.
4. The IPCC report is based on peer reviewed literature so is solid.
5. etc
So I wonder what has happened since 10:30am.”
Nothing. It’s still not true.
Has Global Warming increased the toll of disasters.
Debate, The Royal institution of Great Briton,
Panel: Prof Roger Pielke Jr, Bob Ward, Dr Robert Muir-Wood,
The audience came to the conclusion there is NO link.
I believe Dr Robert Muir-Wood ran his Ipcc cited study from 1970 and failed to allow for population growth in areas susceptible to hurricanes.
Roger Pielke jr ran his study from 1900 allowed for population growth and found NO link.
http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayEvent&id=1000
“The errors seem likely to bring about change at the IPCC. Field said: “The IPCC needs to investigate a more sophisticated approach for dealing with emerging errors.”
The above was the last paragraph in the article. If the IPCC reports continue to be a collection of misrepresentations and inventions, they will indeed need a better means of explaining themselves.
Is it official yet?
The IPCC report – the “gold standard” – has now been shown to be fool’s gold.
Sad Science (14:25:44) :
I’m sure Pachuri will respond to this by calling it voodoo science or something…
I believe he has already played that card, or something very close to it.
Neither Pachuri or the IPCC can hear anything at this point.
Bubble wrapped and isolated.
The IPCC report – the “gold standard” – has now been shown to be fool’s gold.
I’d say more like lead. They have been exposed as the alchemists they really are.
Field said: “The IPCC needs to investigate a more sophisticated approach for dealing with emerging errors.”
He’s still saying after the fact.
How about just don’t lie and fabricate in the first place.
But there’s no fun in that, because then all they could say is we really don’t know.
AR5
begin:
We really don’t have a clue.
end:
Printing the whole report on a index card would save a ton of money too.
JohnWho (16:45:11) :
Is it official yet?
The IPCC report – the “gold standard” – has now been shown to be fool’s gold.
When pressed it was found to be ironed pyrites. ;>)
I agree that all these blunders and inaccuracies are gradually chipping away at fortress IPCC. Unfortunately, the warmist propaganda movement is still able cite these inaccurate doom and gloom scenarios, since the MSM stays silent for the most part.
Remember the Hockey stick is still cited and used regularly despite it’s thorough de-bunking. Nevertheless, it is good to see the “settled science” being challenged, when a few short months ago, hardly anyone would dare (except here of course!).
Well, Climate Progress is still quoting the IPDD stuff. I am sure several blind writers have no where to go. They attached their identity to the IPCC and now it craters. Now the skeptics are being called condescending.
I started out on my “climate change” journey by reading Will Alexander at climaterealists.
He is elderly and retired now, but worked faithfully for the So. African government his whole career. He has a great deal to say about the droughts in So. Africa. And he writes simply, so that the commoner can understand.
His work is archived at climaterealists under his name in pdf files.
Comment from Will Alexander:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5051#post_comments
What I cannot understand is how no-one seems to have caught these lies and blunders before. I have only been reading this blog & related ones for the last 6 months, but it is several years since their original publication! I am not blaming anyone, but think we should prepare, collectively, to analyze the next major IPCC offering (AP5?) by scouring it’s contents and checking on it’s references; just let me know if this layman can help.
Dear Grumpy – I’ve had the same feeling. But there was massive cover-up.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/thisweek/5749853/part_5/the-global-warming-guerrillas.thtml
13 Trillion dollars here:
This might also help to explain the position of the BBC, the Environment Agency, other Government and some Universities.
http://www.iigcc.org/index.aspx
“The group currently has over 50 members, including some of the largest pension funds and asset managers in Europe, and represents assets of around €4trillion. A full list of members is available on the membership page”.
And the IIGCC are not alone. On 14th January 2010 an association of similar groups published at statement calling for more action, quicker, ‘cos they’ve got investments to protect… I mean, to save the planet. And UNEP have their fingers in that as well. http://www.Unepfi.org
The world’s largest investors released a statement calling on the U.S. and other governments to quickly adopt strong national climate policies………
The Investor Statement on Catalyzing Investment in a Low-Carbon Economy calls for rapid action on carbon emission limits, energy efficiency, renewable energy, financing mechanisms and other policies. The statement was endorsed by four groups representing more than 190 investors with more than US$ 13 trillion of assets – Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC) and the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI).
Fact:
The ancient Egyptians lived during a warmer period than today. They experienced longer rain seasons and the Sahara desert was smaller at the time. The famous Sphinx still bears grooves along its body formed by ancient rainfall.
Apart from the annual flooding of their lands, which they saw as a good thing and no longer happens because of the Aswan Dam, the Egyptians called their land k’mt, which means black fertile land. They called the dry red land far from the Nile ‘dsrt’, which is where we get the world desert from. In those days the Egyptians had to travel to out to the desert to see the parched landscape. Today, in a cooler world and because of the damming of the Nile, the desert has grown to swallow Egypt’s cities and meets the Nile.
TIMES ONLINE headline:
I thought of killing myself, says climate scandal professor Phil Jones
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece
Quote: “Jones believes that the unit was maliciously targeted with multiple FoI requests by climate change sceptics determined to disrupt its work.”
Sigh. The toll of paranoia.
REPLY: There is a second story by the same author, which gives a bit different picture;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017905.ece
– Anthony
There is a second story by the same author, which gives a bit different picture
Quote: “Since November last year he has been a prisoner of public opprobrium and a target of such vilification that was he was almost persuaded to comply with the wishes of those who wanted him dead.”
I am reminded of what Tim Ball, Patrick Michaels, Sallie Baliunas, and Willie Soon, etc. have had to put up with for years — thankfully with much greater resiliency.
It must be disheartening for Dr Tom Wigley, formerly of East Anglia University who went on to preside over the UCAR in the US, to witness the edifice of his vision crumble around him.
Has anyone been keeping track of how much this report is shrinking as each false claim is revealed? Pretty soon, all that will be left will be the covers.
Pachauri’s response will be…..
” She came to him. Her breath hot against his cheek. Outside a blizzard raged, but inside passion burned hot and unchecked….. ”
I kid you not! :-0
All that is left to support the IPCC hypothesis, is the model projections for the future.
The first and second of the Assessment Reports revealed the (impenetrable?) barriers to modeling the climate with fidelity over anything more than a decade, such issues were not revealed in the Fourth of the Assessment Reports, by design, because it was desired to make the Reports coherent with the Summaries (for Policymakers).
#Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (20:14:46)
Also
During the Holocene Optimum 6000-8000 years BP when the world was ≈ 2°C warmer than today, the Sahara had some of the largest freshwater lakes in the world and the biggest, Lake Megachad (of which the present Lake Chad is a miserable relic) was bigger than the Caspian Sea
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndLandscapes.htm#Lake%20Chad
“….Observing climate changes is a paranormal gift some people have. Some talk to the dead, some see ghosts , others watch gletschers melting and deserts growing.”
And some see the global socialist party blowin’. Just wait till the Americans get wiff of this.
John Blake,
please teach us American squishy-faced people how to speak.
Still into distortion and self justification. If Phil J had been above board and freed CRU’s public date to Steve Mc when it wasinitially requested, he wouldn’t have been hit with an avalanche of requests. Just doesn’t get it does he?
Rereading a Related Post by Bob Carter cited by Anthony, (25?10/09.) Nothing like a bit of hindsight to add dramatic irony. Comment by Anna V, responding to David Corcoran comment, ‘A long way to go until AGW is completely discredited.’ Her reply, ‘Well maybe the hubris is so large that the ice gods will take over.’
Several lively comments also by the soon to be famous/ infamous Bulldust!
The count down to Climategate was about to begin. :-]
I agree that a comprehensive list of the errors with the IPCC 4 report should be written up and released as a systematic critique. I’m not qualified to do it except as a proof editor, which I am willing to do. We need to get a complete rebuttal out there. Rather than saying “somebody should”… perhaps WE should.
I’ve asked IPCC for a list of the “participating organisations” who are entitled to nominate experts and working group members for the fifth report. So far no reply, I will let you know if I hear anything.
Dear IPCC-
Don’t worry about the greening of the sahara- and the crops growing just fine.
It’s only “rotten” rain.
DR asked:
Is someone collating these blunders for easy reference?
Here’s a start:
“Lawrence Solomon: IPCC: Beyond the Himalayas – Climategate is one of many known IPCC failings”:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/02/06/lawrence-solomon-ipcc-beyond-the-himalayas.aspx
So where have all these “leading” scientists been during the past and why are they just noticing these egregious errors now, after they were pointed out by others. Did no one think to check the legitimacy of the sources?
Articles on Phil Jones
It’s hard not to feel compassionate for other humans when they are under stress and that goes for Jones too. But, how are your feelings for the other people who may have lost their jobs and earnings due to bad science or carbon baloney and treachery and conspiracy ? If all this about the IPCC and the other groups are true, I will have a hard time feeling anything for them except disgust.
I thought of killing myself, says climate scandal professor Phil Jones.
Read the comments, all of them.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece
John Blake (14:59:31) :
(…)
When we find that, first, projecting Himalayan glaciers’ disappearance in thirty years (2035) was based on an uncorrected typo; second, that no evidence supports the original figure (2350); third, that this datum’s garbled source was a years-old off-the-cuff press interview broadcasting pure advocacy-group propaganda– …
It’s worse than we thought.
Activism was behind the glacier info. Putting it down as bad sourcing is actually letting them off easy.
Major IPCC participants work/consult more or less interchangeably it seems between their official jobs, the IPCC, and advocacy groups like the WWF and Pew as examples (see link below)
However there has been a great sensitivity to maintain an illusion that IPCC is other than an advocacy group itself, as seen in email thread below. Wigley explains to Hulme some (of Watson’s) political sensitivities about this
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=152&filename=941483736.txt
However Wigley, Hulme and Watson’s position misses the larger point , that it is inherently a conflict of interest IMO to triangulate so many positions at once, whether or not it is based on IPCC’s offical rubber stamped spin, or preliminary IPCC spin.
Let’s give Pauchari some credits. He was just doing his job, a job he was trained to do. When the politicians wanted the issue railroaded, they have to get a railroad engineer.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was specifically designed by Maurice Strong as a political vehicle to further his objective of crippling the industrial nations
IPCC Science Designed For Propaganda
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/19702
here’s the end result of the IPCC ponzi scheme scam
“A distinguished professor from the local university (specialty semi conductor materials), asks question of German dude who just presented some info on his solar panel company. ‘My calculations have always shown that the energy to manufacture a solar panel is greater than the expected total output from the finished panel up to their predicted mean time to fail. Has new technology changed this fact?’ Answer from German dude. ‘The Ontario government pays between 70 – 80 cents per KWhr for power from solar installations supplying the grid. The current rate for all power is 12 cents. This is what matters.'”
’nuff said. That kind of tax payer ripoff to give out subsidies will attract every eco-grifter rent seeking con artist this side of Pluto.
Phil Jones interview:
‘Then, he believes, at the age of 57 he will be ready to resume his career and get on quietly and invisibly with what he does best. His hope for the future? “I wish people would read my scientific papers rather than my emails.”’
from:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017905.ece
If anyone does remember Jones in 50 years’ time, it will be *precisely because of the emails and the route they provided into the flawed and subverted science of those papers.
Would the UK and other European pension funds that are heavily loaded with green technology investments have anything to do with private companies being encouraged to build solar panels, regardless of whether or not this makes fiscal sense? Set up what kind of money you want to make, then get companies to follow suit, then buy investment stock. The last time I checked, this kind of insider trading information got a very famous TV personality in trouble here in the U.S. of A.. Apparently the folks involved in this under the table sleazy relationship from across the Northern border and those across the pond consider this kinky kind of being in bed together good enough fair for the family hour.
For me, this makes me want to avoid public government bonds of any kind, including those used to build schools and infrastructure. While the idea of building schools and bridges is a good one, the bonds may end up in the junk pile. Know from whence the bond gets its investment income from folks.
“EuroFooFighter (06:49:35) :
[…]
’nuff said. That kind of tax payer ripoff to give out subsidies will attract every eco-grifter rent seeking con artist this side of Pluto.”
While you are right that at present solar and wind power are de facto subsidy-pumping machines, here’s a number from makers of thin-film solar cells. They have an efficiency of 11% -that gives you about 100 Watt/m^2 on a sunny day- and a cost of 1.50 EUR – 2 USD – per watt. The price is not subsidized, the use is. So this kind of cell would need to run for about 30,000 hours at peak performance to get the money back if we assume a price of 5 eurocent per kWh. Multiply that by four to average out cloudy and wintry days, makes 120,000 hours of day time. We end up at 10,000 days or about 30 years.
While they are specified to withstand 20 years of operation, they actually can do 30 years in practice.
I would say not quite competitive but getting there slowly – of course we should be fair and add cost for inverter and battery storage (without battery storage it’s all pretty pointless).
“DirkH (08:30:46) :
[…]
30,000 hours at peak performance to get the money back if we assume a price of 5 eurocent per kWh.”
I should add that we pay 20cent per kWh as end consumers here but the bulk price of energy is about 5 cent.
Just read this description by the BBC about a radio programme ‘File on Four’ (investigative journalism, so called):
“Ayisha Yahya explores warnings from some scientists and meteorologists that some deserts, including the Sahara, could turn greener and experience more rainfall.”
OK so now we must preserve deserts from rain and vegetation???
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0015j3s
“Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change.”
I’m really starting to think that these people just don’t get science and the need for emperical content of hypotheses.
Yesterday I made a post to the BBC website on the comments section following Robert Black’s piece on Phil Jones,w hcih together with most of the comments is like entering a parallel universe).
The post was redacted for ‘defamation’.
I presume that’s because I referred to Jones as ‘dishonest’.
They should read the now 244+ comments following the The Sunday Times interview with Jones. 220+ of the comments call him or at least imply him to be dishonest, and several call him a murderer. Many suggest they would shed no tears for his suicide (I don’t condone the more bloodthirsty comments btw).
I also suggested that to compare himself to Dr David Kelly was contemptible.
The BBC is in deep denial, still
Well if the IPCC thinks that it is possible to control, just where on earth, rainfall decides to happen; as if certain places have some absolute right to have rainfall, while others don’t, they are surely barking up the wrong tree.
The sort of climate shifts that seem most unpredictable, and uncontrollable, are where rain will happen; well precipitation in general. yes I am sure there are some patterns, and you Meteorologists are well up on that subject (I’m not) but the precip will happen somewhere if it warms up.
According to Frank Wentz (et al) at RSS in Santa Rosa Ca., in his “How Much More Rain Will Global Warming Bring ?” see, SCIENCE for July-7 2007, a one deg C rise in mean global surface temperature will result in a 7% increase, in evaporation, precip[itation, and total atmospheric water content. The GCMs on the other hand agree with the 7% increase in total atmospheric water content; but cvlaim that evap/precip is only 1-3% per deg C.
That is a factor of as much as 7 different from what Wentz et al actually observed with satellite data.
Now they did NOT see anything like a whole 1 deg C temperature rise during their experiment; just a fraction of a degree; but that was the rate.
So this is another one of those climate observations that waves that “Ohms Law” caution flag.
Wentz may have observed a rate of 7% per deg C for some small temperature change, about the current supposed mean global surface temp of about 15 deg C (288 K); but how well does that rate hold up over a wider temperature range ?
It is interesting to consider a simpler case, of a cylindrical tank into which water flows at some rate that is dependent on temperature, and to imagine an outflow from the tank, that is proportional to the total amount of water in the tank. Since it is a cylindrical tank, the total water content is simply proportional to the water depth in the tank (the head) and it is not difficult to imagine an output flow pipe that has a constant “resistance”, whereby the output flow rate is directly proportional to the head, and hence to the total water content. Such a model agrees with Wentz’s observations that the precipitation rate, and the total water content are the same; and evidently over a range from zero water content up to the maximum.
If the water input rate, which we have also presumed to be proportional to temperature, is constant slope also, then one has a solution that would be linear all the way down to zero temperature, and total water content.
Well of course that can’t be true if the temp scale is Kelvins; because the physical properties of water preclude any water flow at zero K. It might work quite well down to say zero C where the saturated vapor pressure is quite small (but not zero) so maybe zero F would work, but you aren’t likely to get much evaporation there.
So it is not clear that Wentz’s observation really applies over wide temperature range.
Here proxies may come to the rescue, since they suggest, that the mean global surface temperature on earth is constrained between the limits of +12 deg C, and +22 deg C. based of course on only the last 600 million years of proxy data.
But now how does that sit, with the GCM predictions (excuse me; projections) that even though the total atmospheric water content increases 7% per deg C, the evaporation/precipitation (which must match) is only 1% to 3% per deg C.
Clearly you cannot have a constant rate of evap increase of 1% per deg C, yet have the atmospheric total increase at 7% per deg C; and have that rate remain constant over the whole temperature range; how do explain getting all that water up there at such a slow rate.
In any case; I don’t see any way, in any of the proposed climate or global temperature control prcedures being proposed; that would in any way lead to assurance of water supply at any particular place on the planet.
And what if people wnat to move to a different place, and have their water follow them there.
Not too likel;y to happen in my book.
Peter of Sydney (16:05:53) :
“How ironic. The real reason the Africans might still starve to death is because of the AGW policy of denying them a cheap source of power generation – coal. Without that, they are possibly doomed but hope not. I won’t go as far as some who say this is a deliberate policy to cull the African population….”
ERRrr, let me put my tin foil hat on for a minute.
This site has a lot of information on covert sterilization of third world populations. http://www.whale.to/m/sterile.html
Here is separate collaboration of the decline in birth rate from the book Demographic Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (1993)
“….Barney Cohen reviews levels, differentials, and trends in fertility for more than 30 countries from 1960 to 1992. He finds evidence of fertility decline in Botswana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, confirming the basic results of the DHS. What is new here though is his finding that the fertility decline appears to have occurred across cohorts of women at all parities, rather than just among women at middle and higher parities, as might have been expected on the basis of experience in other parts of the world. He also presents evidence that fertility may have begun to fall in parts of Nigeria and possibly in Senegal…. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=2207&page=4
Remember the “population explosion” is another scare story and Obama’s Science Czar
Holdren wrote in his 1977 book ECOSCIENCE
“… Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock….”
Well the USDA decided to actively pursue the issue with a spermicidal corn
http://noblelie.com/2009/03/10/gmo-population-control-spermicidal-corn/
There are some very scary people out there and unfortunately some have the wealth to implement their crazier ideas.
Peter of Sydney (16:16:01) :
“… That’s why the media are to blame in the end for not doing due diligence, and reporting both sides of the debate when in doubt rather than reporting almost all the time one side only.”
Peter, the Media is bought and paid for by the special interest groups and has been for a long time. Unbiased reporting is a complete illusion. Our “western” media is just as much a propaganda machine as Pravda was.
This is based on my real life experience. My father-in-law owns a newspaper. He stated very bluntly years ago that the Wall Street Journal here in the USA is the only reasonably unbiased paper.