The American Geophysical Union has just published its new Statement on Climate Change, here is the press release. Here is how they describe it:
“AGU has a responsibility to help policy makers and the public understand the impacts our science can have on public health and safety, economic stability and growth, and national security,” said Gerald North, chair of AGU’s Climate Change Position Statement Review Panel. “Because our understanding of climate change and its impacts on the world around us has advanced so significantly in the last few years, it was vitally important that AGU update its position statement. The new statement is more reflective of the current state of scientific knowledge. It also calls greater attention to the specific societal impacts we face and actions that can diminish the threat.”
The AGU Statement: Here is the complete text of the statement as released, Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.’s Response follows.
Human-induced climate change requires urgent action.
Humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years. Rapid societal responses can significantly lessen negative outcomes.
“Human activities are changing Earth’s climate. At the global level, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases have increased sharply since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel burning dominates this increase. Human-caused increases in greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed global average surface warming of roughly 0.8°C (1.5°F) over the past 140 years. Because natural processes cannot quickly remove some of these gases (notably carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere, our past, present, and future emissions will influence the climate system for millennia.
Extensive, independent observations confirm the reality of global warming. These observations show large-scale increases in air and sea temperatures, sea level, and atmospheric water vapor; they document decreases in the extent of mountain glaciers, snow cover, permafrost, and Arctic sea ice. These changes are broadly consistent with long-understood physics and predictions of how the climate system is expected to respond to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. The changes are inconsistent with explanations of climate change that rely on known natural influences.
Climate models predict that global temperatures will continue to rise, with the amount of warming primarily determined by the level of emissions. Higher emissions of greenhouse gases will lead to larger warming, and greater risks to society and ecosystems. Some additional warming is unavoidable due to past emissions.
Climate change is not expected to be uniform over space or time. Deforestation, urbanization, and particulate pollution can have complex geographical, seasonal, and longer-term effects on temperature, precipitation, and cloud properties. In addition, human-induced climate change may alter atmospheric circulation, dislocating historical patterns of natural variability and storminess.
In the current climate, weather experienced at a given location or region varies from year to year; in a changing climate, both the nature of that variability and the basic patterns of weather experienced can change, sometimes in counterintuitive ways — some areas may experience cooling, for instance. This raises no challenge to the reality of human-induced climate change.
Impacts harmful to society, including increased extremes of heat, precipitation, and coastal high water are currently being experienced, and are projected to increase. Other projected outcomes involve threats to public health, water availability, agricultural productivity (particularly in low-latitude developing countries), and coastal infrastructure, though some benefits may be seen at some times and places. Biodiversity loss is expected to accelerate due to both climate change and acidification of the oceans, which is a direct result of increasing carbon dioxide levels.
While important scientific uncertainties remain as to which particular impacts will be experienced where, no uncertainties are known that could make the impacts of climate change inconsequential. Furthermore, surprise outcomes, such as the unexpectedly rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice, may entail even more dramatic changes than anticipated.
Actions that could diminish the threats posed by climate change to society and ecosystems include substantial emissions cuts to reduce the magnitude of climate change, as well as preparing for changes that are now unavoidable. The community of scientists has responsibilities to improve overall understanding of climate change and its impacts. Improvements will come from pursuing the research needed to understand climate change, working with stakeholders to identify relevant information, and conveying understanding clearly and accurately, both to decision makers and to the general public.”
Adopted by the American Geophysical Union December 2003; Revised and Reaffirmed December 2007, February 2012, August 2013.
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Roger Pielke Sr response:
Humanity Has A Significant Effect on Climate – The AGU Community Has The Responsibility To Accurately Communicate The Current Understanding Of What is Certain And What Remains Uncertain [May 10 2013]
By Roger A. Pielke Sr.
I served on the AGU Panel to draft the updated Position Statement on “Human Impacts on Climate”. We were charged by the AGU to provide
“…..an up-to-date statement [that] will assure that AGU members, the public, and policy makers have a more current point of reference for discussion of climate change science that is intrinsically relevant to national and international policy.”
In my view, this means we were tasked to report on the most important aspects of climate change. This was incompletely done in the Statement, where they inaccurately, in my view, discuss a view of climate change that is dominated by the emission of CO2 and a few other greenhouse gases. Indeed, the Committee, under the direction of Jerry North, with the report writing subgroup led by Susan Hassol, was clearly motivated to produce a Statement of this one particular view. Under his leadership, other views were never given an adequate opportunity to be discussed.
The Committee, instead of presenting the actual state of scientific understanding on the issue of climate change, used the following approach, as summarized in my son’s book “The Honest Broker”
Scientific activity is diverse enough to provide information that can be used to support different perspectives on any topic … [to] decide the course of action and then find information to back it up is a common practice across the political spectrum. “
The Committee leadership already had a course of action in mind even when we were appointed.
I presented to the Committee what I have concluded is a more scientifically robust Statement. I started from their Statement, and accepted what I could, as well as sought to remain close to their length.
I sought to answer the following questions, which the Statement accepted by the Committee incompletely does and/or does not address at all.
- What is the definition of climate and climate change?
- What are the societally and environmentally important climate metrics (e.g. a global average surface temperature trend; changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns over multi-year time periods; sea level rise, trends in extreme weather etc)?
- What are the main human and natural climate forcings?
- What is the observational evidence for climate change?
- What is the skill of the global and regional climate model projections
(predictions) of changes in these metrics on multi-decadal time scales?
- What are recommended pathways forward to reduce the risk from climate,
including changes in climate over time?
My proposed text of a more balanced Statement on “Human Impacts on Climate” is
Humanity Has A Significant Effect on Climate – The Scientific Community Has The Responsibility To Communicate The Current Understanding Of What is Certain And What Remains Uncertain
Climate is defined here as the statistical description of all the elements in the climate system (including the atmosphere, ocean, land surface and cryosphere), including both the mean state and any variations over time. Climate change is defined as a shift in the statistical description of climate. Climate change includes radiative, biophysical, biogeochemical and biogeographic effects. “Human-caused climate change” is a change resulting from one or more of the human climate forcings.
The natural Earth’s climate system, even in the absence of humans, is nonlinear in which forcings and response are not necessarily proportional; thus change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual. Climate has always changed over time. As Earth’s population has grown, however, human climate forcings have become significant on the local, regional and global scales. These human forcings include greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. CO2, methane, CFCs), aerosol emissions and deposition [e.g., black carbon (soot), sulfates, and reactive nitrogen], and changes in land use and land cover. A number of these forcings are spatially heterogeneous and include the effect of aerosols on clouds and associated precipitation. Most, if not all, of these human radiative, biophysical, biogeochemical and biogeographic influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades. Natural climate forcings and feedbacks will also continue to be major effects on this time period.
With respect to human climate forcings, among their effects is their role in altering atmospheric and ocean circulation features away from what they would be in the natural climate system. While the greenhouse and aerosol emissions, in particular, have resulted in changes to the global average radiative forcings, the use of a global averaged radiative forcing or a global average surface temperature are grossly inadequate metrics to diagnose such effects as circulation changes on multi-decadal time scales. It is these regional scale atmospheric and ocean circulations that have the dominant effect on societally and environmentally important weather events such as droughts, floods, tropical cyclones, etc and any possible alteration by human climate forcings is a major concern.
It is also important to recognize that changes in the global radiative forcings (global warming or cooling) represent only a subset of climate change. The ocean is the component of the climate system that is best suited for quantifying climate system heat change. There are major unresolved issues concerning the ability of a global average surface temperature trend to accurately measure climate system heat changes. “Global Warming” can be much more accurately monitored in terms of an increase in the global annual average heat content measured in Joules.
Scientific confidence of the occurrence of climate change include, for example, that over at least the last 50 years there have been increases in the atmospheric concentration of CO2; increased nitrogen and soot (black carbon) deposition; changes in the surface heat and moisture fluxes over land; increases in lower tropospheric and upper ocean temperatures and ocean heat content; the elevation of sea level; and a large decrease in summer Arctic sea ice coverage and a modest increase in Antarctic sea ice coverage. Over the last ten years, lower tropospheric and upper ocean temperatures increases, however, have been less than in the preceding years, for reasons that are actively being debated.
These climate changes are a result of human and natural climate forcings and feedbacks – the relative role of each in altering atmospheric and ocean circulation features, and even the global annual average radiative forcing, however, is still uncertain. We do know that added carbon dioxide is the largest human-caused, and black carbon the second largest positive annual, global-averaged radiative forcing, while sulfates are among the largest human-caused negative annual, global-averaged radiative forcing. The importance of decadal and longer variations in natural annual, global-averaged radiative forcing (e.g. due to solar, and from internal natural climate feedbacks, such as from cloudiness), however, remains uncertain.
Climate models, unfortunately, are still unable to provide skillful predictions of changes in regional climate statistics on multi-decadal time scales at the detail desired by the impacts communities. Even on the global scale, the annual, global-averaged radiative forcing predicted by the models is significantly greater than has been observed based on the accumulation of Joules in the climate system. The summer arctic sea ice extent, in contrast, has been significantly under predicted by the models, while the summer Antarctic sea ice extent increase has been missed by the models. Also attribution of specific extreme weather events to multi-decadal changes in climate has not yet been shown, and is likely not even possible.
We recommend a way forward that promotes effective policy decisions even with these uncertainties. The Statement on Climate Change that was adopted by the majority on the Committee, unfortunately, does not provide an accurate summary of our understanding of climate change issues, and, thus, is not an effective policy framework to reduce risks from the climate system.
The effective use of mitigation and adaption to reduce the risk to water resources, food, energy, human health and well-being, and ecosystem function from climate (including changes in the climate system) requires a multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted approach. Attempts to significantly influence climate impacts based on just controlling CO2 and a few other greenhouse gases emissions is an inadequate and incomplete policy for this purpose.The goal should be to seek politically and technologically practical ways (with minimal cost and maximum benefit) to reduce the vulnerability of the environment and society to the entire spectrum of human-caused and natural risks including those from climate, but also from all other environmental and social threats.
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So, Roger Sr., just like Roger Jr. is a covert issue advocate. Who knew?
“”Because our understanding of climate change and its impacts on the world around us has advanced so significantly in the last few years….”
Right, because it’s been proven, at least according to “mainstream” Climate Science’s hypotheses, that CO2 has hardly anything to do with the “climate”, apart from its beneficial effects on living things and what that might in turn do to affect the climate in terms of land use, carbon soot, and aerosol effects, for example.
juan slayton says:
August 5, 2013 at 5:40 pm
“From an outsider, just wondering: Is this statement the product of a committee purporting to speak for the AGU, or has it actually been approved by the membership?”
No, it was not approved by the membership, according to what Dr. Pielke says above. It was supposed to inform the AGU members as well as everyone else:
Unbelievable – what chutzpah. How can they say these things in the face of so much evidence proving they are dead wrong?
Richard Branson’s response to CAGW policy!
5 Aug: Age, Australia: Matt O’Sullivan: Virgin singles out carbon tax in profit warning
Carbon tax hit
Virgin estimates the carbon tax will cost it between $45 million and $50 million for the year – a cost Virgin said it could not recover due to the weak economy and tough competition.
Virgin chief executive John Borghetti singled out the carbon tax as a major reason for the slump in earnings, and he said he wanted to see it abolished.
‘‘If it continues, it will obviously impact our results if the market remains soft,’’ he said. ‘‘We have said all along, right from the beginning, that this carbon tax is not recoverable in a weak economic environment. It is purely a cost on the business.’’…
http://www.theage.com.au/business/aviation/virgin-singles-out-carbon-tax-in-profit-warning-20130805-2r8id.html
What I find particularly curious is the timing of this travesty from the AGU. Isn’t the usual process for the IPCC to issue one of its perennial “gold standard” OMG, its-worse-than-we-thought escalations – followed by a resounding chorus from eminent institutions echoing the IPCC cliams (if not relying entirely on its “authority”)?
Knowing that we are less than two months away from the public release of the next edition of the climate bible (or at least the short version thereof), why wouldn’t the AGU have waited for the new, improved sermons from the mount?!
Some possibilities occur to me:
a) The powers that be at AGU have an “inside track” on the “findings” of the IPCC, and (like former UNFCCC head honcho Yvo de Boer) is paving the way for mindless acceptance by the masses – aided and abetted by the dutiful churnings of the honourable members of the Society for Environmental Journalists.
b) Although they would never admit it publicly, the AGU is somewhat embarrassed by the recent spate of 97% nonsense – which has done absolutely nothing to restore the downward spiralling credibility of the IPCC, its Chair and/or its “in-crowd” (cf. the recent silly paper co-authored by AR5 WG2 Co-Chair, Chris Field).
So this may be a last gasp effort to shore up and restore the primacy of evil place once accorded to the dreaded CO2 emissions, before this distinct “footprint” is subsumed under one that is, ironically, even less “sustainable” in the real world: Our “ecological footprint” whose army of advocates require that we put “nature on the balance sheet” and “radically transform our economies” and patterns of consumption etc. etc.
It’s clear that the high priests and mullahs of climate change science dogma are not going to budge any more than necessary. Therefore they will remain silent on key questions and definitions of the issue and focus more on consistency over all else. See the Iranian and Saudi leadership for modern equivalents and the dark ages of Europe for glacial-paced statement change. It will take 10 to 20 years of cyclical cooling to get any movement on their statement and only then will they even acknowledge cycles themselves. Upon acknowledgement of cycles they can then grant themselves another 30 to 50 years of grace time to say it is still humanity caused change but with cycles. Add in epoch change and they can keep humanity caused climate change in the presence of a new ice age. Parasites do not fall off their host based on time limits or good will. Enjoy.
Only when “scientists” are rewarded for doing real science will the professional bodies start changing their tune. Now tens of billions per year are riding on perpetuating the scam.
Eli Rabett says:
August 5, 2013 at 6:36 pm
So, Roger Sr., just like Roger Jr. is a covert issue advocate. Who knew?
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Tripe is allowed.
Now you have to defend it.
X Anomaly says:
August 5, 2013 at 3:31 pm
Best post so far. Most important point. The persons who wrote this document are blind to empiricism, blind to experimental research, and are working on the outrageous assumption that all causes of climate change are known.
Oh, really? Every falsification attempt of the Null (natural variation) has failed. It remains the default.
Make sure we archive (multiple times) these statements, just in case someone tries to pull an Orwellian, “… no, that’s not correct! What we REALLY said is … “
That, and the continued use of “global average temperature” as if it has any meaning beyond a statistical construct. It has no physical usefulness.
What has changed since since the previous AGU statement?
On the science side, every measurment of the climate system did not change as much as our science and models lead us to believe they would. We over predicted the changes to be expected. We thought we knew more than we did. Today what has increased the most is the recognition of our ignorance.
On the political side, the policy makers want to act and act now before the “jig is up”.
James Tolbert says:
August 5, 2013 at 4:52 pm
“As I read Pielke’s response, I interpret that he says he has no better way of quantitatively predicting the impact of increased CO2, soot or land changes on surface or ocean heat balance, and he proposes actions to mitigate our impacts.”
Pielke writes:
“With respect to human climate forcings, among their effects is their role in altering atmospheric and ocean circulation features away from what they would be in the natural climate system. While the greenhouse and aerosol emissions, in particular, have resulted in changes to the global average radiative forcings, the use of a global averaged radiative forcing or a global average surface temperature are grossly inadequate metrics to diagnose such effects as circulation changes on multi-decadal time scales. It is these regional scale atmospheric and ocean circulations that have the dominant effect on societally and environmentally important weather events such as droughts, floods, tropical cyclones, etc and any possible alteration by human climate forcings is a major concern.”
It seems to me that Pielke’s second sentence says says that climate science has no metric to diagnose the effects that interest you. Saying that someone has no science capable of diagnosing a particular condition is a far cry from saying that one has no better way of quantitatively predicting the condition..
Dr. Pielke, how do you reconcile AGU’s nearly repugnant agenda-based direction…i.e. the “foregone conclusion” that they so clearly present? You are a brave soul to go against the grain, I wish you the best of luck trying to honestly present the State of the Science Address to a room full of deaf people (which does not include your audience here).
Thanks for your efforts nonetheless.
The extreme warming hypothesis has been disproved by observations. Rallying the troops with speeches, proclamations, and name calling of others does not and cannot change reality.
P.S.
Hollywood could not write a more interesting script for the climate wars. Nir Shaviv’s analysis estimated (based on an analysis of the paleo record) that 0.47C +/-0.17C of the warming in the last 70 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes (Range: Low 0.3/0.8C=38% , Medium 0.47/0.8 = 59%, High 0.64/0.8 = 80%). It appears the sun is moving towards a deep solar magnetic minimum and we are at the peak of the climate wars. The warmists have spent the last 20 years saying 100% of the warming was due to CO2 and anyone who presents observations and logic to challenge that assertion is a denier. Almost 2 trillion dollars (US) has been spent on green scams and there has been no change in the increase in CO2 and there has been no warming for the last 16 years. Commercial greenhouses inject carbon dioxide into their greenhouses to increase yield and reduce growing times.
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/uploads/media/Shaviv.pdf
IPCC lead author Hans Van Storch:
“That’s what my instinct tells me, since I don’t know exactly how emission levels will develop. Other climate researchers might have a different instinct. Our models certainly include a great number of highly subjective assumptions. Natural science is also a social process, and one far more influenced by the spirit of the times than non-scientists can imagine. You can expect many more surprises.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/20/if-things-continue-as-they-have-been-in-five-years-at-the-latest-we-will-need-to-acknowledge-that-something-is-fundamentally-wrong-with-our-climate-models/
In reply to comments by IPCC lead author Hans Van Storch
Comment 1: “At my institute, we analyzed how often such a 15-year stagnation in global warming occurred in the simulations. The answer was: … in under 2 percent of all the times we ran the simulation. In other words, over 98 percent of forecasts show CO2 emissions as high as we have had in recent years leading to more of a temperature increase.”
William: There is a 98% chance that general circulation models are incorrect based on average global temperature Vs GCM model prediction and there is a 100% chance that that the GCM are incorrect based on the fact that there is no observed tropical tropospheric warming. The gig is up.
Comment 2: “There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.”
William:
Less warming CO2 warming does not explain no warming for 15 years. As atmospheric CO2 continues to rise planetary temperature must increase in a wiggly manner as the CO2 forcing does not go away. It appears at least 0.45C of the 0.7C warming in the last 70 years was caused by solar modulation of planetary clouds. The latitudes where the warming has occurred are the latitudes that are most strongly affected by solar modulation of planetary cloud cover. There is a plateau when there is no warming to explain and the latitudinal pattern of observed warming does not match the AGW forcing pattern.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-hans-von-storch-on-problems-with-climate-change-models-a-906721.html
“What fools we mortals be.”-Shakespeare. And I don’t mean Roger Pielke, Sr.
When I see the AGU Panel sell their property, don sackcloth, and retreat into the woods to take up a hunter-gatherer existence, I’ll join them in frolicking in the forest in a “sustainable” mode of life. Until then, I am mad as hell, and I want to see them arrested and jailed for fraud and other crimes that amount to yelling “fire” in a crowded, dark theater mostly filled with poorly educated but emotional human beings.
I preferred Willis Eschenbach’s letter to Marcia McNutt (new ed-in-chief of Science mag, short-time past director of USGS). A shortened version would also benefit Carol Finn, AGU’s current President, and current USGS employee.
Willis pointed to the fact that dear old Mamma Earth has been running an experiment in front of our eyes since about 1810. Global temps have risen over 2C, and nothing calamitous or unprecedented has happened. No major drowned cities, no detectable extinctions, no declines in ocean productivity, no trends in droughts/floods/heat waves/cold spells, etc have yet been documented due to this rate/amount of warming.
In addition, Earth has also run a shorter-span experiment since the Super Nino of 1998. Mankind has added 10% more CO2 to the atmosphere, and the amount of “global warming” has been … … … statistically bupkiss, nada, niente, nichts.
In a contest between Earth history and computer models, Earth wins every time.
Both of these ladies are trained Earth scientists, yet seem willing to toss off the evidence in the geological record for political celebrity. John Wesley Powell is not resting well in his grave.
That’s it, no more AGU here. They are now nothing more than a group of mindless environmentalist activists who have been able to hijack and takeover a once great organization. Sad, and on the eve of when real scientists are finally turning to the Venus atmosphere that in the proper science proves the Earth has no immediate worry, we are not going to meaningfully alter the mass of our atmosphere and by that, co2 will in the end show it too has no real influence on the flux of energy through our atmosphere to space. At 5 ppm this would not be true but at the current 400 a doubling is not even going to be measurable and will increase the plant life here able to support our growing population. And they destroyed a great union all for nothing.
In a nutshell : A statement from a fanatical warmist organisation and a “rebuttal” from a luke warmist. What a bunch waffling rubbish.
“So, Roger Sr., just like Roger Jr. is a covert issue advocate. Who knew?”
Another uncalled for and pointless remark. What a hobby!
Pamela Gray says:
August 5, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Good call Pamela, but perhaps you missed it because he’s so cagey about it. Try this bit from paragraph 3.
“… circulation changes on multi-decadal time scales. It is these regional scale atmospheric and ocean circulations that have the dominant effect on societally and environmentally important weather events …”
But even that is wrapped in a cloak of anthropogenic twaddle.
The AGU (like the IPCC) is nothing but a loaded committee that brings in science experts,flatters them, accepts a few of their words to gain credibility and then proceeds in its predetermined direction. This social methodology of nobbling scientists was used on a grand scale in Stalinist Russia and adopted in China to perform a “science” led agricultural revolution that resulted in millions starving to death and being displaced. The “AGW revolution” is already heading in the same direction – displacing indigenous farmers, creating price rises for staple grains (used for biofuels), destroying the most efficient available means of generating power to support manufacturing and industry and preventing tried and true methods of hydroelectricity and nuclear being established etc. Millions may freeze or starve in this grand experiment by the IPCC.