Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
VOL 1 NO 1 of a new journal, Nature Climate Change, arrived in my mailbox today. While clearly in the Warmist camp, it was refreshing to read the first paper Overstretching attribution. It starts off by giving Richard Lindzen credit for being “a bona fide climate scientist who rejects the scientific consensus that current climate warming is largely caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases”. With seeming approval, they quote Lindzen’s pithy comment:
Climate change is the norm. If you want something to worry about, it would be if the climate were static. It would be like a person being dead.
Not only that, they have the audacity to tweak the IPCC a bit:
Is it fruitful … to continue to pursue deconstruction of biological responses into those due to natural or anthropogenic climate change?
The IPCC believes that it is, and advocates an ever-more-detailed approach to attribution. We disagree. We argue that ‘chained-attribution’ assessments from greenhouse gases to climate change to biological change, as called for by the IPCC are largely inappropriate, principally because our understanding of the biological impacts of climate change cannot aspire to the level achieved in physical climate science. This is not simply a matter of further research, for there is no common biological response to a single climate driver, and no simple biological metric analogous to global temperature rise. Each ecosystem, species, or even population can respond differently to climate change, and there are an estimated 30–100 million species. Thus, we are far from being able to achieve realistic coupled climate–biological models, and in an attempt to reach this goal, we risk taking research effort away from the critical issue of adaptation.[My emphasis]
They report the news that the past century or so has seen a modest increase in mean temperatures. They correctly note that many species have adapted by relocating the extreme edges of their habitats polewards by a handful of kilometers per decade. They identify the real issue as “assessing the extent to which observed biological changes are being driven by greenhouse-gas-induced climate change versus natural climate variability.” As for other human effects, such as land use, they even report the good news that the map butterfly (Araschnia levana) has also stretched its habitat equatorwards “contrary to expectations”, apparently due to mowing along roads.
All-in-all, a welcome change in tone by at least one influential part of the Warmist camp.
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Maybe this is a bit of honey to make the medicine more palatable. Nature says “xyz” but hey, they gave us the overstretching attribution article so they must be a reasonably balanced mag. That or they are using this Nature “light” as a pilot tug to steer the big ship away from climate-fantasy polluted waters.
And there could be two publications, one for pro global warming subscribers and one for those who don’t buy it. Maybe not but it would be good business.
TV producers start a series often with conservative scenes to get the interest of the public then after a few shows revert to the liberal crap trap.
How long will it take for the editors to buckle under pressure from warmists to print only the warmist agenda? Time will tell. However, it is very refreshing to see anything in print, on line, or on the tube that is even-handed. It seems everyone (except those who read this blog) has an agenda that does not include balanced reporting and analysis.
Maybe they are getting a little alarmed about the recent spate of climate predictions that didn’t work out and are actually thinking about how their papers will be viewed 20 years from now.
The next debate will then be related to “adaptation”. Instead of passive adaptation, you will see evidence of aggressive adaptation. And by that I mean there will be the usual attempt to control individuals and corporations by imposing adaptations rules, regulations, and edicts. Under our current politically correct regimes, adaptation will be the next level of taxation. Same tune, different title.
Keep it cautiously ! It will become soon a collector’s item.
Is AGW responsible for Muslims moving polewards as well?
“Kelvin Vaughan says:
April 23, 2011 at 11:30 am
Is AGW responsible for Muslims moving polewards as well?”
Of course. They didn’t bother us much during the LIA did they? At that time the Christians were moving equatorward and displacing the Moors who had moved up from Africa to Europe during the MWP.
Note too that the Vikings moved down from Scandinavia to the British Isles during the cooler Dark Ages and the Roman northward expansion was during the Roman Warm Period.
So that wasn’t a daft question after all.
Pamela Gray says:
April 23, 2011 at 9:53 am
“The next debate will then be related to “adaptation”. Instead of passive adaptation, you will see evidence of aggressive adaptation. And by that I mean there will be the usual attempt to control individuals and corporations by imposing adaptations rules, regulations, and edicts. Under our current politically correct regimes, adaptation will be the next level of taxation. Same tune, different title.”
Pamela,
Dr. Tenberth noted in a recent speech- “Instead , we must recognize that while there is considerable merit in slowing the pace of climate change, and we should work to reduce emissions, it is also essential that much stronger steps be taken to plan for and adapt to the change that is surely coming. How we cope with the challenges ahead and build more resiliency in our system, are major questions that should be higher on the agenda.”
So, yes it looks like we get some focus on adaption rules in the future. What we should prepare for- I guess that depends on what EXACTLY we expect to happen in a distinct location…………
Exactly. It’s a fallback position for the enviro-statists. If they can’t frighten enough legislators and governments into draconian measures to prevent the imaginary ‘climate change’ catastrophe by regulating and taxing everything ‘carbon’, then they’ll wail that we need just as many rules and regulations in order to ‘adapt’ to the oncoming disaster.
Either way, they have to keep insisting that the sky really will fall. It’s up to the rest of us to tell Chicken Little to go home and forget about it.
/Mr Lynn
There is a profound political point worth considering in all the hoohah about climate change and adaptation.
The issue is not that we are contributing to the speed or scale of climate change.
The real issue is that the exponentional growth of human populations, life expectancies and general prosperity since the industrial revolution have also exponentially increased the sensitivity of human societies to climate changes (whether natural or not) to a degree that adaptation is no longer a realistic proposition.
Climate changes on the scale of those seen from MWP to LIA to date will cause worldwide devastation whatever we now try to do.
As the global population increases towards the anticipated mid 21st century peak of 9 billion and our societies become increasingly sophisticated and energy dependent then the risks can only increase.
Thus there is heavy pressure to try to mitigate even natural climate changes and in support of that proposal it must initially to be asserted that we are capable of affecting climate in the first place.
That is why the mere idea of AGW has acquired such a hold. The actual evidence is not a significant factor.
Accepting that we can have a significant effect on climate changes allows the power hungry elites to entertain the illusion that when the next sizeable natural climate shift occurs then there is something we can do, or should have done, about it.
Of course it helps that when the natural shifts inevitably occur and the unavoidable consequences unfold then the power hungry elites will then have someone to blame so that they can maintain control.
That someone will naturally be the masses whose only ‘crime’ was to try to improve their lives by hard work and enterprise.
The logic is not recognised at a conscious level but it lies there in the background motivating and feeding the emotional content of AGW alarmism.
At the end of the day, as any good geologist will tell you, there is not a shred of evidence in the geological record to support the cornerstone of AGW dogma that a slight rise in global temperature – for whatever reason – will trigger major temperature rises due to the feedback effect from increased amounts of clouds – if temperatures rise this obviously means more evaporation, so logic suggests that should mean more clouds.
The geological record is barren of such instances, so why should it happen now?
Recognition of this inconvenient fact is the grand heresy of the alarmist AGW cult, which refuses to believe that the modest rise in global temperatures over the past century is almost all down to natural climate cycles.
The Idsos have shown that only the Northern (poleward) boundary shifts with climate change. The equatorial boundary remains about the same. This is from their video Carbon Dioxide and the “Climate Crisis” Avoiding Plant and Aminal Extinctions.”
You vcan buy your own copy from them at CO2Science.org.
To those who care about the well-being of plants and animals, I recommend all their videos.
P Gosselin says:
“Wow! Almost fell off my chair. Maybe this is a watershed shift by Nature.”
No such luck, my friend. I just got my copy of Vol. 1, No. 1 of Nature
Runaway Global WarmingClimate Change. They’ve toned down the red faced, spittle flecked arm-waving – leaving that job to the True Believers who post at RealClimate, Climate Progress, Skeptical Pseudo-Science, etc., while NCC pretends to be practically scientific skeptics. But of course they’re not, they’re the same bunch of gravy train alarmists that run Nature.What gives them away are their actual articles, with titles such as: “Climate Change Hits Home,” “Time To Try Carbon Labeling,” “It Isn’t Easy Being Green,” “The Case For Adaptation Funding,” “Sourcing The Sceptic,” “Climate Health, Agricultural and Economic Impacts of Tighter Vehicle Emission Standards,” and of course the book review: “HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years.”
When the Berlin Wall came down, lots of Pravda editors and writers were out of a job. Looks like they finally found a new home.
Thanks for the comments!
I remain optimistic that the mainstream science journals will eventially slide from their current Warmist orientation to something closer to a LukeWarmer stance.
PREDICTION: Within five years, Nature Climate Change will be renamed Natural Climate Change :^)