Climate Change: Wealth redistribution or making the poor even poorer?

August 17, 2011 by

In a previous thread, Andrew Adams made an insightful comment about how climate change impacts and mitigation mix in with economic development in poor countries:

Energy poverty in the developing world is a problem, along with food shortages and loss of arable land due to soil erosion and other factors, lack of clean water supplies, the prevalance of diseases such as malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS, the debt burden etc. And, of course, climate change, which both raises entirely new threats and exacerbates some of the problems mentioned above.

(…)

It is naïve to suggest that they can just go full steam ahead now and worry about the problem later once they have better developed economies. It always bears repeating that humanity doesn’t get to dictate the timescales for taking action to avert dangerous climate change – the planet does.

But of course, what they are going to do is only part of the problem; if we really care about the fate of people in developing countries we also have to ask what we are going to do about it. Unless we take action to reduce our own emissions we can hardly expect them to follow suit and in any case any action they do take will be futile, and if they are going to develop along low emission lines they are going to need our assistance in both practical and material terms. And of course it is our past (and present) actions which have brought humanity to the position it is now in so even if not everyone accepts the moral/ethical responsibility of those who are well off to assist those who are less fortunate, there is still the responsibility to deal with the consequences of our own actions. I see a lot of skeptics expressing concern for the effects that climate mitigation policies will have on developing countries but they reject the notion that the developed world should do anything to help bear the costs itself.

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Posted in English, musing | 135 Comments »

Woody Guthrie award for a thinking blogger

August 16, 2011 by

It’s been a while since I received the Woody Guthrie award from the hands of Nick Stokes. Time to pass it on…

 

The ‘Woody Guthrie award for a thinking blogger’ goes to John Nielsen-Gammon. A professional climatologist, he also writes a very readable and insightful blog entitled Climate Abyss.

He writes about different topics, often on scientific issues (e.g. extreme weather) and occasionally also on the science-policy interface or science as a process. He is scrupulous about distinguishing these different aspects though: The physics is what it is, irrespective of his or other people’s political viewpoints (about which he hardly ever writes, if at all). 

I admire his writing for its scientific honesty, the clarity of expositions and the insights that they provide. From his forays over to CE and CA he has also shown himself to be a skilled e-debater: He understands climate change and knows how to discuss both the big picture and quite a string of detailed issues. One other thing I’d like to mention is that he seems to be a good bridge builder: Probably because he studiously refrains from appearing political, doesn’t eschew working together with contrarians (e.g. he co-authored a paper withWatts), and is respectful in his communications, he seems to be respected by (at least the less fanatical of the) contrarians. He does so without giving up on his scientific integrity however (he will still call a spade a spade), so it doesn’t (afaik) go at the cost of being respected by fellow scientists and mainstream science-minded bloggers. Kudos to John!

Read this interview to get a feel for his scientific persona. He also has a wikipedia page. See Willard for a collection of memorable ‘John N-G’ quotes.

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Posted in English, musing | 3 Comments »

Scott Denning’s smashing presentation at Heartland climate conference ICCC6

August 13, 2011 by

Listen to Scott Denning’s sharp and to-the-point presentation, which he gave at Heartland’s climate conference, here. It’s worth the full 16 minutes of it. He rocks. Alternatively, read this little recap:

Denning attended the Heartland conference for the second year in a row and it seems like he’s outdone himself by giving an even better and sharper presentation than last years (which was excellent as well).

He emphasized some very important things:

– The big picture is what matters; details do not (at least in terms of policy relevance; for science nerds of course it’s different)

– Part of that big picture is that, whatever the sensitivity, a 400% increase in CO2 is going to make a big difference to the climate, because of the simple fact that adding heat warms things up.

– He offered a big challenge to the (strongly contrarian and libertarian) audience: Propose and advocate for effective solutions, otherwise others will. Policy will be enacted anyway. His challenge got particularly strong when he said “do you want Greenpeace to dictate the policy? (…) Are you cowards?”

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Posted in Climate science, Communication, Consensus, English, Skeptics | 74 Comments »

How science does and does not work (and how skeptics mostly fall in the latter category)

June 22, 2011 by

Another kick-ass article on The Conversation, providing some insights into the scientific process and the place that pseudo-skepticism takes in (or rather outside of) that process.

In science, to actually contribute at the forefront of a field one has to earn credibility, not demand it. Being taken seriously is a privilege, not a right.

In science, this privilege is earned by not only following conventional norms of honesty and transparency but by supporting one’s opinions with evidence and reasoned argument in the peer-reviewed literature.

This is what makes science self-correcting. If arguments turn out to be wrong, in time they are caught and corrected by other scientists. It is virtually impossible to publish long-refuted nonsense in good peer-reviewed journals.

(…)

an overwhelming scientific consensus does not imply the absence of contrarian voices even within the scientific community.

Over time, those contrarian voices simply fade away because no one takes them seriously, despite their shouts of “censorship” and accusations of bias.

This is not to say that a scientific consensus is never overturned.

There are well-known examples such as the Helicobacter pylori discovery in medicine, and continental drift in geology. But in both cases the arguments were won and lost in the peer-reviewed literature, not by contrarians sitting on the side-lines writing opinion pieces about how they were being oppressed.

A ‘change in paradigm’ occurs when the evidence for the prevailing theory is shown to be weak, and the evidence for a competing theory is getting stronger. That is the opposite of what has been happening in climate science over the past 150 years: The evidence of human influence on climate has been steadily accumulating from the time that it was first postulated as a prediction. Arguments against it have been shown to be either wrong or irrelevant for the big picture.

Even more so, the prevailing paradigm (that us tiny humans can’t possibly compete with the great forces of nature in affecting the earth’ climate) has been gradually overturned by the evidence which pointed out that yes, we can.

Oreskes gives a good overview of how climate science stacks up against the scientific methods (Highly recommended: “How do we know we’re not wrong?” slides and book chapter).

Back to The Conversation. Read and shudder:

One self-proclaimed “rocket scientist” who has published junk science in the opinion pages of The Australian has been quoted on aNew Zealandwebsite as saying:

“To win the political aspect of the climate debate, we have to lower the western climate establishment’s credibility with the lay person. And this paper [an accompanying picture book of thermometers] shows how you do it. It simply assembles the most easily understood points that show they are not to be entirely trusted, with lots of pictures and a minimum of text and details. It omits lots of relevant facts and is excruciatingly economical with words simply because the lay person has a very short attention span for climate arguments. The strategy of the paper is to undermine the credibility of the establishment climate scientists. That’s all. There is nothing special science-wise.”

Undermine credibility.

That’s all.

Nothing science-wise.

Are these the people one should entrust with the welfare of future generations?

The tried and tested strategy of sowing doubt in the minds of the public seems to be supplemented by a strategy of lowering the scientists’ credibility. The latter strategy seems to be at least as successful as the former, if recent events are any guide.

PS: I’m well aware that the bulk of public skepticism is not based on a well orchestrated campaign, but stems more from individual reasons (which I’ve discussed in a previous post). That does however not negate the fact that certain lines of reasoning are repeatedly used in the public debate.

Another necessary element of denial is conspiratorial thinking. Any denier sooner or later, whether an academic or not, must resort to a global conspiracy theory to negate the overwhelming evidence arrayed against them.

(…)

Just imagine the devastating rebuttal of climate change that Bob Carter could submit for peer-review if he wasn’t being oppressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Prince Charles.

(…)

Time to close the phony debate on climate science

At a time when the oceans are accumulating heat at the rate of five Hiroshima bombs per second, are conspiracy theorists the people whom a nation should entrust with the future of our children?

The so-called “debate” on climate change has been over for decades in the peer-reviewed literature. It is time to accept the scientific consensus and move on, and to stop giving air-time to the cranks.

It is time for accountability.

Other articles on The Conversation that I enjoyed reading:

Part Two: The greenhouse effect is real: here’s why.

Part Three: Speaking science to climate policy.

Part Seven: When scientists take to the streets it’s time to listen up.

PS: Even though I chose not to use the word “denier” to describe those who don’t accept mainstream science, I did not change it from the original text as quoted. However, I do not intend to host a discussion here on the arguments pro and con of using this or the other label.

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Posted in English, Skeptics | 455 Comments »

IPCC SRREN: Conflict of interest or just a bad press release?

June 19, 2011 by

The blog discussion of the week seems to be about IPCC’s Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation. Question is, has a study headed by a Greenpeace employee been overly hyped? I think the short answer is that it has in the press release but it hasn’t in the underlying report.

One would think that that would be the end of it. It’s become the norm that press releases highlight an eye catching finding rather than trying to paint a full picture of the underlying report. The former draws media attention; the latter does not. Media need a news hook after all, as we’re frequently told by journalists. That’s not necessarily a good thing for science journalism and science literacy, but it’s the case nevertheless.

Then why does the bulk of the criticism go to the whole of the IPCC process? That’s a bit of a rhetorical question of course, as the answer is fairly obvious: There are legions of people looking for excuses to throw the IPCC under the bus. And sometimes even people who have a decent understanding of the issues are enclined to support such efforts, if they become convinced of serious wrongdoing. Think Monbiot with regards to “climategate” and now Mark Lynas with the SRREN. Mind you, I think the questions that Lynas posed to the IPCC are fair and deserve to be answered:

Here, repeated, are the questions I have posed to the IPCC’s Edenhofer:

1: what was the process for writing the press release, and who decided whether it faithfully represented the main conclusions of the SPM/main report?
2: why was the SPM released more than a month before the full report?
3: was Sven Teske in any way involved in the decision to highlight Teske et al, 2010 as one of the four ‘illustrative scenarios’ explored in greater depth as per Section 10.3.1?
4: what is the IPCC conflict of interest policy with regard to lead authors reviewing their own work, and having affiliations to non-academic institutions, whether campaign groups or companies?

The Carbon Brief has a good rundown of issues. One paragraph though struck me:

the use of word “could” in the IPCC’s press release (“Close to 80 percent of the world’s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century”) is likely to refer to future uncertainties, but may well have been perceived by journalists and the public as a straightforward statement about the technical potential of renewable energy.

I think it’s the opposite: I think the word “could” refers to “technical potential” rather than to future uncertainties. As in, if we really wanted to and put the effort (and money) in, this is what we could achieve. Whereas most reading this understand it in the other way and then interpret is as hopelessly optimistic and biased.

I agree that it’s not wise to put a rather unrealistic scenario forward as an example in the spotlights. My point is not so much to argue how silly vs wise, or how realistic vs unrealistic is it, but rather to distinguish that which is technically possible from what is societally and politically realistic. David Keith (in a different context) made some pertinent comments to this:

However when people and the political community hear technical people say “can’t be done” they assume we mean that technically can’t be done and that is untrue and destructive.
It’s destructive because it hides the central moral choice: we could cut emissions if we want to, we could have started decades ago when the scientific warnings about climate change were first raised, but we decided not to. It was a choice, implicit or not. A choice that, in effect, we cared more about current consumption than we did about preserving our grandchildren’s chances to enjoy a climate like the one in which our civilization developed.

McIntyre, in a comment at DotEarth, seems to agree that the central issue is the press release:

Andy, I don’t think that you adequately highlighted that the Greenpeace scenario was the one that was featured in the IPCC press release and covered by the world media. Had the problem been limited to the Chapter 10 discussion, it would be less of an issue.

Which leads Michael Tobis to remark:

It does appear that whoever wrote the press release did a disservice. This seems so common in press reports of science that I am starting to think of it as typical. If Mr. McIntyre had limited himself to such a claim, as he does here, I would have no quarrel with his behavior in this case. But he proceeds, on his blog, to use this incident to call for “Everyone in IPCC WG3 [to] be terminated and, if the institution is to continue, it should be re-structured from scratch.”

Thus he continues to play to the “climate science as fraud” crowd that frequents his blog while adopting a more reasonable pose here.  

(…)

The persistent substitution of fake problems for real ones is a key to derailing serious conversations these days.

The important conversation that we should be having, connected with the issues in the SRREN, is about what kind of future we want.

“Those who want search for a way. Those who don’t want search for a reason.”

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Posted in English, IPCC | 29 Comments »

Climate change is real, we are causing it, and it is happening right now

June 14, 2011 by

A thundering open letter from the Australian scientific community has been published on “The Conversation”, as the start of a two-week series on climate science and “skeptics”:

The overwhelming scientific evidence tells us that human greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in climate changes that cannot be explained by natural causes.

Climate change is real, we are causing it, and it is happening right now.

Like it or not, humanity is facing a problem that is unparalleled in its scale and complexity. The magnitude of the problem was given a chilling focus in the most recent report of the International Energy Agency, which their chief economist characterised as the “worst news on emissions.”

Limiting global warming to 2°C is now beginning to look like a nearly insurmountable challenge.

Like all great challenges, climate change has brought out the best and the worst in people.

A vast number of scientists, engineers, and visionary businessmen are boldly designing a future that is based on low-impact energy pathways and living within safe planetary boundaries; a future in which substantial health gains can be achieved by eliminating fossil-fuel pollution; and a future in which we strive to hand over a liveable planet to posterity.

At the other extreme, understandable economic insecurity and fear of radical change have been exploited by ideologues and vested interests to whip up ill-informed, populist rage, and climate scientists have become the punching bag of shock jocks and tabloid scribes.

Aided by a pervasive media culture that often considers peer-reviewed scientific evidence to be in need of “balance” by internet bloggers, this has enabled so-called “sceptics” to find a captive audience while largely escaping scrutiny.

Australians have been exposed to a phony public debate which is not remotely reflected in the scientific literature and community of experts.

Beginning today, The Conversation will bring much-needed and long-overdue accountability to the climate “sceptics.”

For the next two weeks, our series of daily analyses will show how they can side-step the scientific literature and how they subvert normal peer review. They invariably ignore clear refutations of their arguments and continue to promote demonstrably false critiques.

We will show that “sceptics” often show little regard for truth and the critical procedures of the ethical conduct of science on which real skepticism is based.

The individuals who deny the balance of scientific evidence on climate change will impose a heavy future burden on Australians if their unsupported opinions are given undue credence.

And don’t miss this excellent article by Karl Braganza who describes in as few words as realistically possible how we know that we are warming up the earth:

fundamental understanding of the physics of radiation, combined with our understanding of climate change from the geological record, clearly demonstrates that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations will inevitably drive global warming. (…)

It’s now practically certain that increasing greenhouse gases have already warmed the climate system.

That continued rapid increases in greenhouse gases will cause rapid future warming is irrefutable.

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Posted in English | 55 Comments »

Open thread June 2011 – Earth warmed as much as expected

June 9, 2011 by

For discussing climate/energy things that are not the topic of other posts (hint, hint). E.g:

How (in)consistent is the instrumental temperature record with a climate sensitivity between 2 and 4.5 degrees (per doubling of CO2)? Turns out, within the admittedly large uncertainties they are entirely consistent (based on Ramanathan and Feng, 2009):

Global average surface temperatures have increased by about 0.75 degrees Celsius since the beginning of the industrial revolution, of which ~0.6 °C is attributable to human activities. The total radiative forcing by greenhouse gases is around 3 W/m2, with which we have ‘committed’ the planet to warm up by 2.4 °C (1.6-3.6 °C), according to a climate sensitivity of 3 °C (2-4.5 °C) for a doubling of CO2. The observed amount of warming thus far has been less than this, because part of the excess energy is stored in the oceans (amounting to ~0.5 °C), and the remainder (~1.3 °C) has been masked by the cooling effect of anthropogenic aerosols.

Dana over at SkS has an excellent post on this as well, using slightly different numbers and accounting for uncertainties. Over at the previous thread, RickA makes the common mistake of omitting the negative aerosol forcing and the ocean thermal inertia.

On low carbon technologies I don’t have terribly much to add at the moment, except to point to previous posts on technology (including lots of pointers to literature and/or other articles).

Posted in Climate science, English, Technology | 19 Comments »

New definition of lukewarmer

June 8, 2011 by

This self-description of a lukewarmer (at Bishop Hill) gave me a good laugh:

Now I’m probably some sort of a lukewarmer – I don’t e.g. agree with Turning Tide that the fact that CO2 concentrations are low means ipso facto that it is irrelevant.

Like luketoxers who acknowledge the fact that arsenic in low concentrations doesn’t ipso facto mean that it’s irrelevant. It’s like saying I’m not a total doorknob.

Curious, I went back to read what Turning Tide had written and came across this gem:

What I found most telling is how certain facts about the atmosphere are very hard to track down for the layperson. For example, I’m pretty sure the average joe has no idea how little CO2 there is in the atmosphere, and how small a proportion of that little amount is contributed by human activities. It’s almost as though there’s a conspiracy of silence to keep such information out of easily accessible sources.

Can everyone who has a CO2 concentration widget on their blog please remove it now? We’ve got to keep it a secret that its concentration is a meagre 395 parts per million.

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Posted in English, fun, Skeptics | 84 Comments »

Venus battle resolved?

June 7, 2011 by

Jeff Id took issue with Chris Colose for bringing up the high surface temperature at Venus in his SkS post: 

CO2 is a strong greenhouse gas, and it is important in impeding how efficiently our planet loses radiative heat to space.  We don’t often think of CO2 as a “pollutant” on Venus, yet it still allows the planet to support temperatures well above the melting point of lead or tin.

Jeff replied at his blog:

Venus does have a more reflective atmosphere but it is also closer to the sun than the Earth.  For the thinking mind, it is difficult to ignore that the atmosphere is a ridiculous 90 times more dense. (…) In fact, if you just used Nitrogen alone at the same mass you would get a ton of heat just by the insulating properties of a gas.

On a subsequent post he reiterates his thought that

the reason for Venus surface temeprature being so high was the pressure and that any gas would create a huge warming effect 

However, during the discussion he seems to be backpedaling:

#15, Chris, (…)

My reply was that it was the pressure and amount of gas which caused the temperature more than the specific greenhouse effect of some particularly powerful gas. I pointed out that even N2 would cause a ton of warming with wording that clearly recognized there would be less warming and a paper was referenced where even the 96.5 percent N2 atmosphere had 80C of warming. I was also careful not to claim that all gasses would definitely cause a hot Venus and intentionally phrased even that as a question. In other words, you are making assumptions of a point I didn’t state.

To be fair, I admit that a pure nitrogen atmosphere had less warming than I would have (but did not) guess.

Is it just me, or does that indeed sound like he agrees that the majority of the >500 degrees greenhouse effect on Venus stems from the radiative properties of its atmosphere (~96% CO2) rather than from its density/pressure? The impression I got from his post was that the opposite though. Makes me wonder what the argument is really about. So I asked:

Jeff, 

It seems that you agree that the high temperature on Venus is due primarily to a strong CO2 greenhouse effect (few hundred deg) and secondarily (?) to the high surface pressure (the ~80 deg number that was mentioned upthread).

If so, then I don’t understand the beef you have with Chris’ take, where he uses Venus as an example that shows that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.  

Jeff replied:

Bart,

I object to its comparison to Earth as a scare tactic in general. That’s all.

Argument resolved. Both agree that the greenhouse properties of Venus’ atmosphere are primarily responsible for its high surface temperature, and they disagree as to whether or how this could be mentioned in a discussion about Earth’s climate.

Quick rundown on Venus’ climate:

Venus is closer to the sun than the Earth, but its higher reflectivity more than compensates for that. Without a greenhouse effect Venus would actually be colder than the Earth would be without a greenhouse effect. In reality Venus is about 500 degrees warmer than this so called black body temperature (the greenhouse effect on the Earth is about 33 degrees). This is primarily due to the inception of infrared radiation by its thick atmosphere of almost pure CO2. The high density also helps, but is of secondary importance.

More reading:

Realclimate on Venus

SoD’s Venusian Mysteries

Brian Angliss at S&R

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Posted in Climate science, English | 25 Comments »

Judith Curry 2007: We should not ignore the risks of global warming

May 27, 2011 by

Good Curry quote:

There is no easy solution to this problem; the challenge is how best to develop options that are feasible, efficient, viable and scalable. It is correct to be concerned about the possibility of bad policy choices. But I have yet to see any option that is worse than ignoring the risk of global warming and doing nothing.

Update:

After I’d already posted this, Judith Curry amended the above comment (thanks Grypo for the heads up):

Note from JC: this post was NOT made by me. The words in this post were pulled from a 2007 op-ed I wrote for the WaPost
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101002157.html?hpid=opinionsbox1.
This was at the peak of my “warmist” phase, this is probably the strongest statement re policy that I made.

Bolding hers. Alas, apparently Curry is distancing herself from her more rational self a few years ago. The WaPo editorial she’s referring to is actually quite good. It’s peculiar though to see how she’s gotten in the limelight for becoming so vocally critical of the mainstream. That’s an indication for a dangerous dynamic in which extreme voices get amplified.

Title updated as well.

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Posted in English, musing | 40 Comments »

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