This is rather stupid, in my opinion. Not one person I have ever professionally associated with in the cause of climate skepticism has ever said anything at all like what you are about to read below. For the record: Yes, both CO2 and CH4 are “greenhouse gases”, and yes they do have a warming effect by backscattered long wave infra red. The magnitude and risk from it is the central argument. Since it is a good time to review this, here is this graph of CO2 response, done by Willis Eschenbach in MODTRAN. Note it is logarithmic, not linear, as it is often portrayed in media. More here – Anthony
From Quadrant online: ABC fails listeners
by Tom Harris
ABC Radio fails listeners in climate change interview
What’s the worst radio interview ever conducted on climate change? Could it be Australian?
Maybe so. ABC radio’s Robyn Williams’ October 2, 2010 interview of UK-based public relations director Bob Ward is certainly a contender for the worldwide gold medal in the ‘worse ever’ category. The interview, broadcast on the nationally prestigious Science Show, is so bad that listeners don’t need to actually know anything about climate science to spot the most obvious flaws.
Ward says, “The uncertainties in the science are really about how much it will warm in the future and how it will affect the climate. We don’t know because this is a huge experiment that we’re running on our planet.”
Williams justifiably did not contest Ward on this point. The science of climate change is so immature that indeed we do not know “how much it will warm in the future and how it will affect the climate.” The warming could be large, medium (both unlikely based on recent trends), small, or even negative (known by climate campaigners as “interrupted warming” since “cooling” is not part of their lexicon). And, yes, it is effectively an experiment we are conducting. But then Ward’s UK government are already conducting another “experiment” to do with possible future hazard by not preparing for an invasion from Canada. You never know, Canadian forces with mass murder on their minds might hitch a ride on an American transport plane (we have few of our own) destined for Gatwick. Risk assessment also includes probability, Mr. Ward. Otherwise we would never fly in an airplane, drive a car or even cross a city street.
Despite his sensible initial caution, Ward also confidently asserts, “We know, despite the uncertainties, there is a significant probability that if we just carry on pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere we risk large changes in temperature with large impacts on the climate, impacts that will be very, very difficult for us to cope with and the kinda [sic] thing that I think most people would not want to risk if there’s a cost effective solution to reducing emissions.”
A good interviewer would have immediately cornered Ward since this comment contradicts Ward’s (correct) statement that we don’t know “how much it will warm in the future and how it will affect the climate”. Williams should also have asked, “What is “a significant probability” of large climatic changes due to human emissions?” 5%? 25%? 90%? This is important to approximate since we know with 100% certainty that if we spend trillions on Ward’s boss’ climate crusade (Ward works as Policy and Communications Director for Nicholas Stern, at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London), there will be far less money available to tackle truly desperate world problems that we know are real and immediate.
Take the 5 million people a year, mostly children, who die due to contaminated drinking water in Africa, for example. This is not some abstract possible threat postulated by theorists with vested interests in forecasting catastrophe to keep research dollars flowing. The drinking water crisis, and many other on-going world tragedies, are happening right now; there is no doubt. The UN has shown that the 1.5 billion people who lack clean water, sanitation and elementary health care and education could all be provided with it for about $70 billion/year. Contrast this with the one trillion dollar price tag estimated by George Taylor, former President of the American Association of State Climatologists, for one year’s compliance of OECD countries with the Kyoto Protocol. If Williams was on the ball, he would have asked Ward, “which is more important – the health and welfare of people suffering today, or those not yet born who might suffer someday due to climate change that even you admit is highly uncertain?”
Even if there is non-trivial warming over the coming decades, how does Ward, or anyone else, know that human activity is making a measurable contribution? We don’t of course. Even if Williams didn’t know this, he still should have asked, “who is to say warming “will be very, very difficult for us to cope with” or that the warming will even be detrimental overall?” In one of the many peer-reviewed scientific papers that Ward seems to have missed, former Environment Canada scientist Dr. Madhav Khandekar has shown that India has done very well in a warming climate and concludes that wealthier nations such as Canada have essentially nothing to fear should warming resume (the UK’s Hadley Center shows that temperatures have plateaued in the last decade despite an increase in carbon dioxide levels of more than 5% – see graph below).
And when Ward asserts that dangerous global warming is “the kinda [sic] thing that I think most people would not want to risk if there is a cost effective solution to reducing emissions”, why didn’t Williams ask Ward what such “a cost effective solution” would be? Is it perhaps because no one can complete a meaningful cost/benefit analysis when future climate states are even less understood than the economic and social impacts of both climate change or energy rationing due to the sort of greenhouse gas controls Ward promotes? Ward’s statement is also self-evident – no one would oppose eliminating risk, no matter how small, in any field if a “cost effective solution” could be found. But then to formulate such a solution we first need to know accurately the balance of cost and benefit – which, for climate change, we do not.
Next, Ward attributes nonsense to climate skeptics:
Anybody who seriously argues that carbon dioxide and methane are not greenhouse gases; that increasing the concentrations in the atmosphere doesn’t warm the world; I mean they’re basically fighting against 200 years worth of science….
and …
Now, you’ve got to be very, very blinkered in your view if you are saying “I know for sure there will be no increase in temperature and there’s no risk.”
Why didn’t Williams ask Ward to tell the listening audience who has made these sorts of absolute statements? Is it because no one actually has? Certainly, Ward’s primary targets for vilification in the interview, Professors Carter, Lindzen and Plimer, never have. Even with his relatively weak science background, Ward must know that.
Ward’s conclusion is classic:
… what’s worrying about this is they [climate skeptics] are creating confusion at a time when we have to make very serious decisions because the climate responds slowly to changes in greenhouse gas emissions and actually the decisions we gonna [sic] make today about emissions are about what kind of climate we’ll see 20, 30 years from now and has very large implications if we make the wrong decisions.
Given Ward’s overconfidence about a science that he admits is grossly uncertain, Williams should have jumped at the chance to ask him an obvious question, which is:
Since the impacts of major greenhouse gas decisions are delayed for decades, shouldn’t we take the time to carefully consider what leading experts such as Carter, Plimer and Lindzen are saying? Why rush decisions when the consequences of being wrong are so high? Either we are headed towards climate catastrophe or we are on the verge of wasting trillions of dollars worldwide on a non-issue. Either way, we owe it to our children and grandchildren to perform due diligence on the issue before making any decisions at all.
Finally, Williams should have pointed out that Ward is not treating the public like adults. We may tell very young children that the world is predictable to help them sleep at night. But telling the public that ‘the science is clear’, as UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon and other alarmists do all the time, when reality is precisely the opposite, does us all a great disservice.
Rather than labeling well-qualified experts such as Carter, Lindzen and Plimer as merely confusion generators who should be silenced, and trying to suppress their views, Ward should be helping the public to hear more of what they have to say.
For only if all sides of the science are on the table for discussion do we have any chance of making rational decisions about what may very well be the most complex issue humanity has ever tackled.
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition
=====================================================
The audio and transcript of this entire interview is online at ABC here:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/3023812.htm
Email addresses contacting people at ABC to express your views on this incident:
Chairman of the Board (Maurice Newman -via his personal assistant who is Angela Peters: Peters.Angela (at) abc.net.au
Robyn Williams: Williams.Robyn (at) abc.net.au
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You want a critical, probing climate change interview from this Robin “100m sea-level rise” Williams?
Pascal’s Wager was mentioned.
The AGW movement makes a false appeal to Pascal. Pascal’s wager presumes the cost of the remedy is near-nil and the consequences of doing nothing is infinite. In this case, the cost of the remedy is hideous and will result in the inevitable early deaths of many, many millions. So until we take such measures, we had better make very damn sure the cost/benefit ratio makes even the vaguest sense. (Which, currently, at least, it does NOT.)
BTW, my carbon output is almost zip, a sad fact that I hope to be able to rectify in future! If i gave back 10%, I’d have to go back to living in the caves.
Williams journalistic integrity = log 1
The problem is that very few journalists have anywhere near the understanding of basic science to even know enough to ask the “tough questions”. In brief, they don’t know what they don’t know.
Lest anyone think that the current crop of journalists is any worse (or better) than a generation ago, I still recall the first time I ran into this remarkable lack of knowledge on the part of “science reporters”.
I was still in high school, so it was… a couple or three decades ago. NASA had run an experiment with 5 atomic clocks launched into orbit compared to 5 atomic clocks kept on earth. The experiment showed that the clocks in orbit travelled in time just a few fractions of a second less than the clocks on earth, and roughly correlated to Einstein’s equations on relativity. Then the shocker. The article went on to say that had the clocks been in orbit in the opposite direction, they would have gone ahead in time instead of lagging behind.
Just based on high school physics I knew that wasn’t right. My letter to the paper was soundly rejected on the basis that their science journalist had years of experience and they trusted that he had done his due diligence on the matter.
I have distrusted reporting of science in the media ever since, and have done my own research on contentious issues. I see no difference in the level of competant between then and now.
intrepid_wanders says:
October 5, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Oddly, enough, ALOT of the skeptics or denier/realist types (Mods — Lindzen type, like myself) seem to have a lower carbon footprint than any of these “activists” could hope to imagine (Bicycle, bus, one car per family, $100-200 electricity/gas/water per month), I am sure Bob could not come close. I have no 10% to give back, and I need no further taxes to things that go nowhere (e.g. CRV tax moneies… should the government be COLLECTING my cans at the door?).
Conservatives are typically, a little thick, but I welcome the “reset button” to general craziness.
=======================================================
See, just goes to show, it takes all types. In spite of your insensitive use of the pejorative word, “denier”(and the Holocaust diminishing connotations that goes with it), and your ludicrous insinuation that conservatives don’t conserve, I, too, welcome the reset button. Typically, I find people with the delusion that they are, themselves, moderate to be a bit given to the “craziness” and more apt to the knee jerk reactions without proper deliberation. Which, I consider quite dense.
You compare yourself to Lindzen? I’ve never once heard or read anything like your drivel coming from a person such as he.
This is the propaganda they want out there. This way they can label skeptics as those who do not accept basic science. While there are scientific arguments against the greenhouse effect these are not made by the most prominent skeptics,
Prominent Climatologists Skeptical of AGW Alarm
What they fail to mention is the common debate is not that CO2 causes some warming but exactly how much and the likely hood of a catastrophe.
Newly arrived in Australia from the UK, I naturally gravitated towards the ABC believing that a ‘state sponsored’ media organization would be neutral and unbiased on a range of subjects. It didn’t take long to discern a pattern though, namely frequent and widespread references to ‘Climate Change’ and always from an alarmist point of view.
That was two years ago and the country was experiencing drought conditions. There were daily stories of dying ecosystems, failing agriculture, cities running out of water, and of course to cap it all the horrendous bushfires in which 170 people lost their lives. It wasn’t hard for me to see why Australians genuinely believed that they were at the cutting edge of climate catastrophe, despite the fact that none of the above events were without precedent.
As a student of climate and history and the media I felt it necessary to ‘gently’ point out a few things to the ABC through comments pages and suchlike.
On one occasion I contacted Philip Adams who presents a generally interesting ‘intellectual’ chat show called Late Night Live. He had just had James Hansen on the programme and had basically provided him with a propaganda platform. I wondered if he might give some skeptical scientists a similar amount of airtime. To his credit he replied quite directly that he had been a ‘climate campaigner’ for thirty years, that I, as a skeptic was quite simply wrong.
It was then I realized that I’d walked into one of those scenarios you often find in old sci-fi movies…where the hapless hero or heroine runs up to someone in authority expecting help only to discover that ‘they’re in on it too.’
The ABC is openly, unashamedly and systematically pro AGW alarmism. They were given a pre-election handout by the Labour Government which holds a similar position.
Given the extreme conditions which prevail in this vast, beautiful continent it’s hardly surprising that people are spooked by global warming. But doesn’t a public broadcaster have some obligation to be balanced and informative? Apparently not.
The ABC’s morally bankrupt position has been highlighted in recent months… the drought has broken, the rivers are full and we’ve just had our coolest winter for sixteen years guess what the cause of all this cool wet weather is? You got it…Greenhouse Gases!
In response to Phil’s Dad’ October 5, 2010 at 5:50 pm:
By definition, the precautionary principle only demands that a society look at risks and considers any ‘benefits’ as virtually irrelevant. When people wish to make good judgments, they call for a study that includes both risks and rewards. When they want to enforce an agenda, the invoke the precautionary principle. There is no proper way to use the precautionary principle to make a sound decision, for all sound decisions are based on a firm knowledge of both the risks and rewards.
Use of the precautionary principle in decision making almost always causes more harm than good. Therefore, it is not precautionary. It is also not a principle because it is self contradicting. The precautionary principle is nothing more than Orwellian Double-Speak!
Maybe it time for a poll of WUWT readers.
True or false.
1. C02 is a greenhouse gas and is responsible for some of the warming we have
seen in the post industrial era.
No arguments about how much. no arguments about if its dangerous or what to do.
so frame the question this way
C02:
A. is responsible for some of the post industrial warming
B. None of the warming
C. more than half of the warming.
D. we don’t know.
E. cools the planet
Anyone that reads Dr Spencers blog knows that their are extreme examples of skeptics that got very upset in the comments when he attempted to explain that a greenhouse effect does exist.
If I had interviewed him, my first question to Mr Ward would be: how does the 0.7°C (not 0.8 of a degree “we’ve already had”) rise since c. 1950 objectively differ from the 0.6°C rise c. 1910 – c. 1945, when human CO2 emissions could not have been a major factor?
Since 1950 (when the IPCC says human emissions became the major driving force) there has been only one sustained period of net warming, c. 1975 – 2001.
How is that consistent with the hypothesis that the monotonic rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration (which is assumed to be 100% human caused), is now the climate driving force which overwhelms all other factors which previously affected climate (e.g. 1910-1945) and that accordingly would have to have ceased to operate?
If peer-reviewed papers are the only source of valid discourse on IPCC science, how is it that the thousands of PRPs published on the subject have not increased the certainty of projections of future temperature rises since the First Assessment Report (1990) i.e. that global mean temperature will increase by ~ 0.3°C per decade during the 21st century?
‘….In the present age — which has been described as “destitute of faith, but terrified at scepticism,”— in which people feel sure, not so much that their opinions are true, as that they should not know what to do without them — the claims of an opinion to be protected from public attack are rested not so much on its truth, as on its importance to society….’.
Mr Ward, have you ever bothered to read John Stuart Mill ‘On Liberty’?
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645o/
Reading the transcript, it seems Ward spends much of the interview trying to discredit a few realists. He also talks about the improbability of 300,000 scientists participating in a global conspiracy. But the data key to this issue (That of Global Mean Temp Records which precede the satellite record) are managed by a handful of people. The entire justification of CAGW relies on CO2’s CORRELATION to a highly questionable and wholly inadequate proprietary construct. All those scientists who find further correlation of say, Seal migration, to this construct add nothing to the certainty of the hypothesis. Fail.
A hundred years ago in some states in this country racism was uniform and readily applied. Conspirators did not need to collude before acting. They shared a belief system which dictated their actions. CAGW belief is much the same. And Lo and Behold, the SOLUTIONS for CAGW are ready for application! …. Having been written more than a hundred years prior to discovery of the problem ………. by Malthus and Marx. What luck! Wow! What are the chances?
CAGW proponents will (rightfully) never be credible until/unless they embrace solutions to the “problem” not steeped in these philosophies.
Steven Mosher et al
D.
Oh, come on mods…… I only gave as good as was given. Fair play and all of that.
Steve, it can’t be true/false and then a multiple choice. Further, it isn’t that black and white. CO2 has potential to warm. And, once we know all of the interactions and forcings(paradoxes and all) we’ll have a more informed answer. The atmosphere isn’t a vacuum. Let’s frame the question better.
We know all the properties of CO2 in the atmosphere and all of the interactions with light, heat and all other substances in the atmosphere and the climatic effect all the interactions have. So, we can assert absolute statements regarding CO2 and all of its effects in its entirety.
True or false?
Steven A should be,
A. Maybe responsible for some of the post industrial warming.
ABC/BBC/CBC/CNN/MSNBC.
Who really listens and believes what they are told on these networks? When was the last time anyone heard an impartial balanced product from them?
They have lied too much for too long and deceived and exaggerated and manipulated without compunction or hesitation, happily for us these networks have gained a reputation for manipulative propaganda. The fewer people who listen the louder they shout, the louder they shout the fewer people who are prepared to listen. The alarmist side has never understood that shouting louder will not make people understand or believe and censoring out dissent or insulting ordinary people for asking awkward questions will not bring people round to their way of thinking.
People are trusting but when they realise that trust has been abused they become deaf to further pleas/threats/promises/predictions, the CAGW lobby/establishment has managed to break the automatic bond of trust that has been in humanity for thousands of years.
The CAGW establishment has yet to realise that you cannot bully and batter people into trusting you, you cannot insult and deride your way into a persons affections and you cannot lie and cheat your way into peoples hearts. As the wicked 10.10 snuff murder video shows all too clearly, all the CAGW cult has left in its bag of tricks is the threat of casual murder if you do not obey the orthodoxy.
I know the folks here are skeptical of models. Thankfully you don’t need to merely rely on the MODTRAN model graph above. There are a few studies from the past decade that use experimental evidence to demonstrate the enhanced greenhouse effect.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
From the abstract: “Here we analyse the difference between the spectra of the outgoing longwave radiation of the Earth as measured by orbiting spacecraft in 1970 and 1997. We find differences in the spectra that point to long-term changes in atmospheric CH4, CO2 and O3 as well as CFC-11 and CFC-12. Our results provide direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate.”
http://rose.bris.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/1983/999/1/paper.pdf
Abstract: “Measurements of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave radiation allows signatures of many aspects of greenhouse warming to be distinguished without the need to amalgamate information from multiple measurements, allowing direct interpretation of the error characteristics. Here, data from three instruments measuring the spectrally resolved outgoing longwave radiation from satellites orbiting in 1970, 1997 and 2003 are compared. The data are calibrated to remove the effects of differing resolutions and fields of view so that a direct comparison can be made. Comparisons are made of the average spectrum of clear sky outgoing longwave radiation over the oceans in the months of April, May and June. Difference spectra are compared to simulations created using the known changes in greenhouse gases such as CH4, CO2 and O3 over the time period. This provides direct evidence for
significant changes in the greenhouse gases over the last 34 years, consistent with concerns over the changes in radiative forcing of the climate.
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2004/2003GL018765.shtml
From the abstract: “Here we show that atmospheric longwave downward radiation significantly increased (+5.2(2.2) Wm−2) partly due to increased cloud amount (+1.0(2.8) Wm−2) over eight years of measurements at eight radiation stations distributed over the central Alps. Model calculations show the cloud-free longwave flux increase (+4.2(1.9) Wm−2) to be in due proportion with temperature (+0.82(0.41) °C) and absolute humidity (+0.21(0.10) g m−3) increases, but three times larger than expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gases. However, after subtracting for two thirds of temperature and humidity rises, the increase of cloud-free longwave downward radiation (+1.8(0.8) Wm−2) remains statistically significant and demonstrates radiative forcing due to an enhanced greenhouse effect. ”
http://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm
From the abstract: “A comparison between our measurements of surface forcing emission and measurements of radiative trapping absorption from the IMG satellite instrument shows reasonable agreement. The experimental fluxes are simulated well by the FASCOD3 radiation code. This code has been used to calculate the model predicted increase in surface radiative forcing since 1850 to be 2.55 W/m2. In comparison, an ensemble summary of our measurements indicates that an energy flux imbalance of 3.5 W/m2 has been created by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases since 1850. This experimental data should effectively end the argument by skeptics that no experimental evidence exists for the connection between greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere and global warming.”
Just trying to help out.
Regards,
Interesting to note that the study of carbon, yes, that black thing with dirty footsteps, has got this year’s Nobel prize
Steve,
I need further clarification on the definition of warming. Are we taking about the warming observed by the raw data or the warming observed by the filtered, homogenised, pasteurised, secret modelling, non-UHI factored, bristlecone data?
Steven Mosher says:
October 5, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Answer: D. We don’t know.
Steven Mosher says at 8:57 pm:
“True or false.
1. C02 is a greenhouse gas and is responsible for some of the warming we have
seen in the post industrial era.
No arguments about how much. no arguments about if its dangerous or what to do.”
I constantly argue that issue, and my argument has not varied:
If the effect of CO2 is insignificant, then there is no rationale for spending another dime on “mitigation.” But if the effect of CO2 is significant… well, it can’t be significant, can it? Just look at the chart in the article. It can not be shown that CO2 has any measurable effect on temperature, which goes up and down as CO2 steadily rises. Thus, any effect from CO2 must be minor. QED.
Assuming that the observed temperature fluctuations are due to a minor trace gas is simply a belief. It is not a conclusion based on the scientific method, which requires full cooperation regarding requests for all [raw] data, methodologies and metadata – requests that are routinely stonewalled and ignored by the same clique that is peddling the same CO2=CAGW hypothesis, which has enormously enriched them and their organizations at taxpayer expense.
The experimental standard for hypothesis testing is comparing the null hypothesis to the alternative hypothesis [CO2=CAGW], where there should be a quantifiable difference between the two. But there is no measurable difference; the CO2=CAGW hypothesis fails to show any difference from past natural temperature variability.
Therefore, it cannot be concluded that CO2 is responsible for any significant effect on temperature. There may well be a minor effect. But as stated above, if it is demonstrably insignificant, then spending more public money to “study global warming” is a misappropriation of public funds.
If testable, empirical evidence should suddenly appear showing that the rise in CO2 has a major effect on temperature [rather than being the result of the temperature rise], then climate alarmists would have an argument. But so far, no such evidence exists.
These guys who represent the global climate disruption front are all air and blowhards. They never show any doubt in their position, and when encountered by someone knowledgeable they simply dry up and blow away.
Ian Dunlop is promoting more alarmism in Australia on the ABC blog site (Unleashed):
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/39714.html
What is funny is that this chap has a fine alarmist pedigree. Not only was he in the Club of Rome, he is also a Peak Oilist and now climate alarmist. Does that make it three strikes?
bgood2creation;
This experimental data should effectively end the argument by skeptics that no experimental evidence exists for the connection between greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere and global warming.”>>
Well sir, take a look at the chart by Willis Eschenback as the begining of this post. And there you shall find a chart that shows approximately the same thing as you just said. It also shows that an additional amount of CO2 equal to the increase since pre-industrial times would have about half as much effect as the pre-industrial increase. In fact, at 1180 ppm, an increase in CO2 10 times the increase from pre-industrial to now, the additional forcing is very little more than about what the we’ve seen so far. In other words, we would have to expand fossil fuel production by orders of magnitude for decades in order to achieve as much additional forcing in the future as you claim to have measured so far. And that is without considering increased uptake from the biosphere or negative feedbacks.
Almost everything that CO2 can possibly due to the climate it is already doing, and any additional contributions are subject to the law of diminishing returns. Pray the world doesn’t enter another ice age cycle because all the fossil fuel production we could through at if all we did was just burn everything we have would’t be more than p**sing into the wind to stop it.
It is ludicrous to keep pointing out that there are measurements that show the changes in outbound LW from CO2 and other GHG’s, while completeley skipping over the fact that any additional increases will have much, much, much smaller effects.
So without even going into a discussion of negative feedbacks, we’re already at reason for doubt.
Good old Robyn Williams!
Not so long ago the chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC)castigated the assembled journalistic staff on their biased pro-AGW reporting thus provoking an enraged outcry basically along the lines of “How dare he!”.
Robyn Williams sent a letter to “The Australian” stating that there was ABC balance on this issue because he had once interviewd a climate sceptic. Mate: your blood’s worth bottling isn’t it?