Deal with climate reality as it unfolds
Special to Financial Post May 23, 2012
By Dr. Bob Carter
Over the last 18 months, policymakers in Canada, the U.S. and Japan have quietly abandoned the illusory goal of preventing global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, an alternative view has emerged regarding the most cost-effective way in which to deal with the undoubted hazards of climate change.
This view points toward setting a policy of preparation for, and adaptation to, climatic events and change as they occur, which is distinctly different from the former emphasis given by most Western parliaments to the mitigation of global warming by curbing carbon dioxide emissions.
Ultimately, the rationale for choosing between policies of mitigation or adaptation must lie with an analysis of the underlying scientific evidence about climate change. Yet the vigorous public debate over possibly dangerous human-caused global warming is bedeviled by two things.
First, an inadequacy of the historical temperature measurements that are used to reconstruct the average global temperature statistic.
And, second, fueled by lobbyists and media interests, an unfortunate tribal emotionalism that has arisen between groups of persons who are depicted as either climate “alarmists” or climate “deniers.”
In reality, the great majority of working scientists fit into neither category. All competent scientists accept, first, that global climate has always changed, and always will; second, that human activities (not just carbon dioxide emissions) definitely affect local climate, and have the potential, summed, to measurably affect global climate; and, third, that carbon dioxide is a mild greenhouse gas.
The true scientific debate, then, is about none of these issues, but rather about the sign and magnitude of any global human effect and its likely significance when considered in the context of natural climate change.
For many different reasons, which include various types of bias, error and unaccounted-for artifacts, the thermometer record provides only an indicative history of average global temperature over the last 150 years.
The 1979-2011 satellite MSU (Microwave Sounding Units) record is our only acceptably accurate estimate of average global temperature, yet being but 32 years in length it represents just one climate data point. The second most reliable estimate of global temperature, collected by radiosondes on weather balloons, extends back to 1958, and the portion that overlaps with the MSU record matches it well.
Taken together, these two temperature records indicate that no significant warming trend has occurred since 1958, though both exhibit a 0.2C step increase in average global temperature across the strong 1998 El Niño.
In addition, the recently quiet Sun, and the lack of warming over at least the last 15 years — and that despite a 10% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide level, which represents 34% of all post-industrial emissions — indicates that the alarmist global warming hypothesis is wrong and that cooling may be the greatest climate hazard over coming decades.
Climate change takes place over geological time scales of thousands through millions of years, but unfortunately the relevant geological data sets do not provide direct measurements, least of all of average global temperature.
Instead, they comprise local or regional proxy records of climate change of varying quality. Nonetheless, numerous high-quality paleoclimate records, and especially those from ice cores and deep-sea mud cores, demonstrate that no unusual or untoward changes in climate occurred in the 20th and early 21st century.
Despite an estimated spend of well over $100-billion since 1990 looking for a human global temperature signal, assessed against geological reality no compelling empirical evidence yet exists for a measurable, let alone worrisome, human impact on global temperature.
Nonetheless, a key issue on which all scientists agree is that natural climate-related events and change are real, and exact very real human and environmental costs. These hazards include storms, floods, blizzards, droughts and bushfires, as well as both local and global temperature steps and longer term cooling or warming trends.
It is certain that these natural climate-related events and change will continue, and that from time to time human and environmental damage will be wrought.
Extreme weather events (and their consequences) are natural disasters of similar character to earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions, in that in our present state of knowledge they can neither be predicted far ahead nor prevented once underway. The matter of dealing with future climate change, therefore, is primarily one of risk appraisal and minimization, and that for natural risks that vary from place to place around the globe.
Dealing with climate reality as it unfolds clearly represents the most prudent, practical and cost-effective solution to the climate change issue. Importantly, a policy of adaptation is also strongly precautionary against any (possibly dangerous) human-caused climate trends that might emerge in the future.
From the Financial Post via Dr. Carter in email correspondence
Bob Carter, a paleoclimatologist at James Cook University, Australia, and a chief science advisor for the International Climate Science Coalition, is in Canada on a 10-day tour. He speaks at Carleton University in Ottawa on Friday.
The real change will be seen when those now in power and turfed out. Right now, they continue to push their policies regardless of facts or what the people want, it’s a carry on regardless approach in their rush to lock it all in place.
Meanwhile, reality keeps intruding. It’s refreshing to read that behind the scenes common sense is prevailing. When governments worldwide are replaced, we will see it come to the fore.
What I would like to see are a few in-depth court findings presented to the public so they learn the truth about CAGW and don’t panic when the new politicians turn to doing what’s right for civilization instead of following some Greenie wet-dream to “save” the planet.
Roll on, elections everywhere!
Excellent piece by Bob. I fear the alarmist are also Camelot-ists (?!) They seem to believe, as in Camelot, that “it only rains at night and sun shines all day, and snow falls evenly for three months in winter” – or some such ideas. Any deviation from this pattern is clear ‘evidence’ of man-made climate change/warming/abrupt climate tipping… we’re dooomed. – sorry just discovered http://www.ggweather.com/camelot.html is way ahead of me!
What is ‘local climate’?
I’d like to know which “policy makers” in these United States he refers to as “quietly abandoned…reducing carbon dioxide emissions”. He is either mistaken (a fool), or lying. I’m unable to affirm or deny with respect to Canada and Japan, except for Japan’s full nuclear shutdown which forces reductions or carbon replacements.
Let’s keep it simple. Would it have make sense to grow an olive tree in Paris fifty years ago? And get fruits from it? The urban island effect existed then too, or did it not?
[snip. Site Policy forbids comments about “denialists”. ~dbs, mod.]
“As always, Bob Carter is right.” Unfortunately he is not.
One only needs to look at the energy “policy” of the UK, USA and most of the EU to see that the policy aims of the watermelons – rent seeking; artificial “markets”; punitive “carbon” taxes applied to coal and/or petroleum products; unsustainable subsidies for renewable energy; unsolicited intrusion in private energy production and distribution companies and multi billion dollar greenmail of WWF,Greenpeace, FTE, solar and wind “energy” companies and academia etc to see that we are already in a fait accompli with respect to AGW, the damage has been done.
Despite and in spite of Dr Carters best efforts, some of the worst AGW excesses have been in Australia.
We will see if the electorate can roll back the countless laws, taxes, subsidies and good old fashioned bribes that have been introduced across “the West” . Australia will be a test in its upcoming federal elections.
Woah!!! Wait a minute there. Canada did not QUIETLY abandon the goal of preventing global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. I remember it being fairly loud. At least as far as Canadian standards go for being loud about something.
Apparently he will be speaking at the University of Calgary. Here’s a link: link
The problems remain in the background even if current officical views back off of CAGW. School and public indoctrination of CAGW is complete. Programs, especially regulatory, are in place. The bull is already moving around in the china shop.
It will take a “reform” minded leader to dismantle some of these things. It took the Canadian political scene more than 10 years and > 1 billion dollars to dismantle the forced registration of “long guns”, i.e. not handguns, even though no evidence that such legislation was effective in reducing crimminal access to crime existed. But various groups, especially law enforcement, like to have records of who has what. So, for them, it was a good idea if they could check the registry before they responded to a call – I get that. But for society, we didn’t need it. And most people knew that its stated purpose was not justifiable. We/they just went along with it on an emotional, support-for-gun victims way (it came after a massacre of women at a college by a crazy misoginist). Ten years for a small piece of legislation and “only” 1 billion dollars invested.
The global warming regulatory scam has a lot of life left, even if it stopped being fed today. It would take someone with no claim to the past and a claim to want less government for less money to kill what is already embedded.
Another 10 years? I’ll bet more.
Scarface says:
May 24, 2012 at 2:44 pm
The presentation is overall meaningless. He’s trying to create this strawman fictional movement that never existed to cover for his buddies and for “science” in general. By making this a battle of two “extremist” groups he can run cover and try to protect the doomsday cultists and many others from being put in jail and fired.
This is classic propaganda here to create this supposed “middle ground” to which the real extremists aka doomsday cultists can run and save they’re hides. The doomsday cultist let the no quarter given rules and made it a “doomsday cultist” vs everyone else argument. How many people have been fired because they didn’t “believe”, how many had careers ruined?
Global warming is a sinking ship filled with rats… who attacked and destroyed huge sums of wealth. Now this guy comes along and wants to invite the rats which are now fleeing the sinking ship into the life boats…
ITS INSANITY. Rats are RATS and they will do the same thing on the life boats that they did before. Sure they’re spread out more and thus has less effect and breed slow… BUT THEIRS STILL FRICKING RATS and they will do what science says they will do… Let the ship sink… let the rats drown. No one should be offering a life boat to them…
If the rats sneak on border fine **** happens but to willingly let them hop in the boat… out of your mind retarded.
Just to throw this out there…
In the physical sciences (anything having to do with global warming will fall into this category) empiricism trumps theory. Top down approach, to “let the facts speak for themselves.” This is the correct method.
However in the social sciences such as economics or psychology, the correct method ought be a bottom up approach. In other words, theory trumps empiricism. Theories are deduced a priori logically (even though unfortunately this is not the case in most universities yet). There are no experiments in human action, and empirical analysis of data is often useless due to so many variables, whereas in the physical sciences, things can be held constant.
Puckster says:
“They will be insisting on perceived changes around us as proof that we need to build higher dikes, inact laws removing people from shorelines, i.e., massive relocation of infrastructure due to imaginary effects they see happening right now.”
Maybe. Almost any policy can be abused if those in power choose to do so.
On the other hand, large scale development has taken place in locations that were, in hindsight, possibly unwise. We do know that sea levels are (very slowly) rising and they’ve been doing so for thousands of years. It is only prudent to consider these facts when reviewing the permits for proposed developments near sea level.
I think the author is suggesting that inconvenient facts like rising sea levels should be addressed in a calm, sensible, and economically sound manner. And not driven into hysterical alarmism. That’s a position I can support.
Killing the current culture of alarmism doesn’t mean discarding all caution to known risks.
GogogoStopSTOP:
re. your post at May 24, 2012 at 2:37 pm.
Yes, I agree, and for years I have been warning that we should be responding to
I again say how and why I think we need to respond in my above post at May 24, 2012 at 12:42 pm.
Richard
“The 1979-2011 satellite MSU (Microwave Sounding Units) record is our only acceptably accurate estimate of average global temperature, yet being but 32 years in length it represents just one climate data point. The second most reliable estimate of global temperature, collected by radiosondes on weather balloons, extends back to 1958, and the portion that overlaps with the MSU record matches it well.
Taken together, these two temperature records indicate that no significant warming trend has occurred since 1958, though both exhibit a 0.2C step increase in average global temperature across the strong 1998 El Niño.”
1. The MSU records are not observations. They are a data product. To create this data product from raw sensor outputs ( voltage) scientists apply a whole chain of physical models of the atmosphere. They apply the laws of radiative physics. The “temperature” ‘data’ is the product of
sensor outputs and physical models and various assumptions and adjustments and interpolations.
2. Note the argument here that radiosondes are claimed to be trustworthy because they overlap and agree with MSU. That approach, however, can also be extended directly to the surface measurements that carter tries to question. Simply, he argues that the agreement during overlap (1979-present) allows one to trust radiosondes back to 1958. By the same logic the agreement between the 1958-present record, can be used to trust surface measures even further back.
Basically, there was a LIA. the current temps are warmer than the LIA. Nothing in the record suggests that there was no LIA. Nothing suggests that it is cooler now than then. If one holds the MSU record as accurate ( its a model after all ) and one validates radiosondes because of agreement during overlap, then that same argument holds for the surface record.
Importantly, a policy of adaptation is also strongly precautionary against any (possibly dangerous) human-caused climate trends that might emerge in the future.
————
But there is a massive contradiction here. The whole climate skeptic thing is driven by the conservative fear of change.
So given a choice between a doing a little yourselves to avoid change, you are insisting do nothing and then have change rammed down your throats by mother nature. That might not be pleasant.
There is also avoidance of considering what adaption will mean and how effective it will be. Are you going to jack up Venice on stilts or are you going to say SUV yes, Venice too bad?
There is hope yet for the CO2 alarmists. The Law of the Sea Treaty is coming before the US Senate. It contains verbiage to regulate pollutants arriving at the sea through the atmosphere, pollution identified by competent international groups (IPCC?), groups with regulatory recommendations for member states. In the same document are provisions that hint at a promise of funds and resources from first-world seabed resource developers to be spread by a Seabed Authority among the multitudes of the less well-off of the body. So if the IPCC clings to its CO2 fetish, it can count on support from the many benefiting from the Seabed Authority’s beneficence. It’s a backdoor Kyoto.
Contact your Senators indicating their possible unexpected, early retirement if they affirm the treaty.
Lou
Doesn’t matter anyway. Global CO2 levels are overwhelminghly controlled by temperature and have nothing to do with humans.
You’ll note one major difference between this [flawed] opinion piece and actual scientific literature is that Carter fails to provide embedded links to his spurious assertions – such as:
LoL. Utter rubbish.
Steven Mosher says:
May 24, 2012 at 3:37 pm
<>
Not sure I follow your poiunt Steve, I think I see what you are saying, but it only makes partial sense, for two reasons:
1) that the models for the MSU data were presumably also ‘set’ to match the surface records at the time ? (with all the inherent errors, station siting, UHI etc, etc)
and
2) just because a limited temporal match over a period was ‘made’ certainly does not validate an earlier unmatched period of the second ‘correlated’ or any other temporarily ‘correlated’ dataset.
Better take a look at this presentation. It may change your mind about him.
In my opinion he’s a hardcore skeptic on AGW and a big supporter of the scientific method.
Wow, butt-kicking good presentation. And still only 2007! Five more years of basically no warming since then, an ever widening gap between the straight-up alarmist predictions and observed temperatures, at least two or three more “torpedos” added to the impressive collection he already provides in the talk. And if anything, he spent far too little time on the cost issue. The numbers being discussed for abatement are truly insane — tens of trillions of dollars try to save worst-case scenario damage that is actually less expensive than trying even if you succeed. And the trying would almost certainly be fruitless, as none of the abatement scenarios have any real plausible chance of reducing or even levelling CO_2 until it happens naturally (in an economically unforced way) because we find cheaper better ways of producing energy than burning a limited natural resource (as we will, over the next 20-30 years).
But yes, Carter was rigorously scientific in his presentation (when he wasn’t using his gift for sarcasm in the commentary asides:-). No real surprises — I imagine most people here are already well aware of at least most of the curves he presented (I hadn’t seen Roy Spencer’s tropical rainfall variable heat window paper, although I’ve read his book and know what he was shooting at). But his conclusions were (almost) devoid of theory — really, only the CO_2 gain curve is theoretical and it is pretty straight up physics and I think everybody sane believes that it is probably baseline correct (and predicts a whole degree of warming for a doubling of CO_2 — if you can detect it mixed in with natural variability). The rest of it was sheer common sense.
But that’s what real science, good science is, isn’t it? Sheer common sense. Use theory by all means — our goal is understanding — but at the end of each and every day data talks, bullshit walks.
rgb
temp says:
May 24, 2012 at 1:21 pm
“I can’t say I’ve ever heard of someone say “c02 has zero effect on warming/climate” and mean exactly as stated.”
Not anyone in the slightly oxymoronic skeptic mainstream. All other conditions being equal, added CO2 should have a warming effect. But, other conditions are most decidedly not equal. There are a plethora of reactions, generally of the negative feedback variety, which oppose any significant warming from CO2. Indeed, it is now apparent that the regulatory systems of the Earth act rapidly to sequester our addition to CO2, so that the major driver of CO2 level in the atmosphere is temperature itself.
This plot shows unequivocally that temperature drives the rate of change of CO2 to very high significance. The human input to CO2, the rate of which is an upward trend, simply cannot fit in anywhere to any significant level once you remove a linear regression against temperature anomaly from the rate of change of CO2.
I’ve been skeptical of the human attribution for years, because it is simply not plausible that CO2 can remain within a tight neighborhood of an equilibrium point without strong negative feedback holding it there. I found my proof in this plot about a month ago.
The debate is over. Not only does CO2 not significantly drive temperature (because of cloud and other negative feedbacks), but we are not even driving the level of CO2. All that remains now is to wait for the entire sorry edifice to come crumbling down.
Bart says:
May 24, 2012 at 4:03 pm
I completely agree with your arguments but in the end run everyone agrees that changes in CO2 will have an effect… no sane person can say exactly what that effect will be. Many insane ppl have been proven wrong in that small increases in CO2 will produce massive warming.
temp says (May 24, 2012 at 1:21 pm): ‘Chute_me says:
May 24, 2012 at 1:10 pm
“There are without doubt a number of folks in the so-dubbed “denier” camp who reject even the most basic premises of co2-enhanced warming.”
Really got any names? I know of none.’
Dr. Carter may be thinking of the so-called “slayers”, who “deny” basic radiative physics as seen here:
http://www.amazon.com/Slaying-Sky-Dragon-Greenhouse-Theory/dp/0982773404/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337901368&sr=1-1
Their arguments are on display in the comment thread to Dr. Roy Spencer’s “Yes Virginia” article here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/07/yes-virginia-cooler-objects-can-make-warmer-objects-even-warmer-still/
and in a rebuttal to Dr. Spencer’s article here:
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/9549-no-virginia-cooler-objects-cannot-make-warmer-objects-even-warmer-still
or at WUWT for example in the comment thread here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/monckton-responds-to-skeptical-science/
Their numbers are small, but they’re something of an embarrassment to “real” CAGW skeptics whose doubts are based on science, not fantasy.
Nevertheless I agree with temp that Dr. Carter has been too even-handed in his criticism. One side of the debate has been “fueled by lobbyists and media interests” far more than the other, and most of the “unfortunate tribal emotionalism” is to be found in one camp, not the other.
I also think he’s far too optimistic. Perhaps some policymakers “have quietly given up,” but alarmists and CAGW profiteers haven’t, and won’t.
As long ago as LAST year, even James Lovelock said in The Guardian that mitigation was being overly considered as a strategy, and that adaptation was not being given enough attention. To get an idea that he is in NO way ideologically conservative, he said that to fight global warming would require a “temporary” suspension of democracy, which he was okay with.