Scientists face assymetries in public debates on climate change

“Since we know that the vast majority of scientists – literally thousands of humanity’s greatest minds – are of the view that there is a staggering chance, of 90 per cent, that climate change is caused by fossil fuel burning…”

There are really only a few score scientists working on climate change and its cause or not by human intervention – many others take their results and apply them to other areas.

90% isn’t ‘staggering’

“that climate change is caused by fossil fuel burning.” – a nonsensical statement. Climate has always been changing – some of the present change may be attributed to anthropogenic CO2 forcing, indeed anthropogenic forcing may be mitigated by a natural downward trend in temperatures (all else being equal) which would make it even worse. But present warming is neither ’caused by’ or ‘not caused by’ elevated CO2 – it is the extent to which it is that is important. This is an area of continual study – the science is far from ‘finished’

A few score, really Harry. How many work at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research Division, hmmm quite a few there, or how about those who work for the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Australia, hmm quite a few there as well and this is just Australia, or how about the BoM in the UK quite a few staff on climate change there, and of course CRU at the UEA, the Goddard Institute at NASA and also NOAA. This is so far excluding University Research Departments. So I think you need to get your facts straight next time.

As to the science being finished. Science is never finished that is what science is about. Doesn’t stop the scientists working in the field coming to the conclusion that the evidence is enough to make a strong statement like we are 90% sure that AGW is happening.

Why exactly does the fact that climate changed in the past preclude the possibility that we are changing it now?

Kevin

just to add an interesting quote

Roger Harabin (BBC) – When scientists say “the debate on climate change is over”, what exactly do they mean – and what don’t they mean?

Prof Phil Jones (of UEA emails fame) – It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.

Even Prof Jones doesn’t think the science is ‘finished’, a position I believe is reserved for such non-scientists as Al Gore, Ed Miliband and “100 weeks to save the planet” Brown/Blair – I don’t know which is which.

Thanks Harry for reinforcing my point. Science is never finished there is always something new to learn, but that doesn’t mean that we should ignore what our current understanding is saying when we have enough confidence in it. If those working in the field feel they have a 90% confidence in the science on what basis should we ignore there advice?

Why exactly does the fact that climate changed in the past preclude the possibility that we are changing it now?

@kevin

How many at CSIRO work on the causes of present warming? Hardly any. Don’t confuse environmental scientists (of which I am proud to be one) with the narrow field of paleoclimatology and climate modelling/change attribution.

Take CCRC at New South Wales that you mention – look at the publications http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/staff/pubs.html#2009. A lot of stuff there. A lot about weather, climate, El- Nino, bush fires etc. Not much on global climate change and it’s causes.

Apart from that, I agree about the science not being finished. The 90% likelihood was the estimate, given the literature, of a few scientists on the IPCC panel. That 10% uncertainty is big when you consider the effect on the world of a drastic emissions reduction of the order 80% that is talked about.

I believe the world is warming and that humans have been exerting an influence, I am not convinced and the literature does not convince me of the level that’s all. I believe it is work in progress and we will find out progressively over the next 20-30 years as we gain better temperature data (satellites) and our theoretical models of clouds, aerosols, volcanoes, black carbon, sun and their climatic effects improves.

@Kevin

“Why exactly does the fact that climate changed in the past preclude the possibility that we are changing it now?”

It doesn’t. But if for example there was a pronounced medieval warm period that the models don’t show (Professor Jones admits the jury is out on this one) then that means there is some natural cycle which is large and we don’t understand it. That means current warming could also be part of a natural cycle.

I regard myself as a sceptic in the scientific sense, not as a frothing right-wing AGW conspiracy theorist. But I think if you looked at the data – in an objective manner, you really could not be convinced to make such huge changes to society over such small time frames. The truth will out, but it will take a couple of decades.

Now, I’m all in favour of low carbon energy and and a good case can be made on the basis of energy security, geopolitics, pollution and the rest. I could easily be convinced by AGW – in time. It would take a lot of good evidence to make me believe we are heading for a ‘man-made climate catastrophe’ of the sort Jim Hansen seems to believe.

What do you mean hardly any at CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research Division?
What do you think Atmospheric means? Even the people there working on marine research are doing global ocean models that are coupled with the atmospheric models.

Please define hardly any, because to get to your 3 score we only need 60 people in total worldwide.

The Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC). So who do you think managed the writing, editing and significant contribution of the IPCC interim report that came out just before Copenhagen. See here: http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/Copenhagen/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_LOW.pdf

You need to do better with backing up your statement with facts.

The 90% likelihood is v.high when considering the impacts they are talking about at the 90% level of confidence.

Kevin

Scientists face asymmetries in public debates on climate change …: Chris Rapley has lamented the political inep… http://bit.ly/aQA2Ua

For the medieval warm period see here:
http://oxfordkevin.carbonclimate.org/?p=176

Even if it was warmer then it still doesn’t contradict AGW.

As to models not showing, can you please show me any models where they have tried to model climate that far back in time considering the further back you go the less accurate the information is that you have and would be required for the input to the models? This is important for you to answer.

Kevin

@kevin

just because people are working in a group with the word ‘atmospheric’ in the title, it doesn’t mean they are working on present or past global climate change and its causes.

My point was just off the top of my head I could think of a number of institutions where climate change research is happening. Secondly the other people working in those same scienfitic institutions in the same field would not easily have the wool pulled over their eyes.

So about the CCRC now: Do you really think that they aren’t significantly involved in AGW? or was that report headlined on the front page of their website not significant for them as a research organization.

Kevin

@kevin

I agree, a MWP does not contradict AGW. It merely highlights our lack of understanding of the climate system.

I know of no climate models which will predict a medieval warming period and I don’t know if anyone has tried. The fact is we could not explain a MWP if one existed. If one existed then present warming is not unprecedented.

At CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric do you think the ocean modellers have also had the wool pulled over their eyes as well when they are working intimately with the atmospheric modelling team?

@Kevin

Don’t misread me. I’m not saying no-one in CCRC does climate change modelling, but it is a small percentage for sure. Most people working in Enviro, Climate Change, Meteorology …etc groups are not doing research into the causes of global climate change.

I dont think anyone has tried for the reasons I gave that the necessary input data for modelling that far back in time is not there. You cant make the claim you have based on our understanding of atmospheric and ocean dynamics, only on the fact that we do not have good enough input data for the models for the time period you are talking about. Please show me the models that failed to do what you claimed?

Kevin

How do you know that. The whole purpose of the creation of the climate change research centre was to look at AGW.

From the front page of the website:

====
About:
CCRC houses research expertise in the key areas Earth’s climate: atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial processes. We apply basic scientific principles to pressing questions on climate dynamics, global climate change, and extremes of weather and climate. Our atmosphere research includes studies of convection, radiation, climate feedbacks, and factors controlling precipitation changes and other meteorological impacts. Our oceans program involves large-scale physical oceanography, coastal ocean circulation, palaeoclimate dynamics, oceanic thermohaline circulation, wave breaking and global biogeochemical cycles. On the land surface, we focus on modelling terrestrial processes in climate models, to develop our understanding of the effects of carbon dynamics, hydrology and vegetation processes on climate.
====

All of the things mentioned are the necesary research areas for understanding AGW.

Kevin

I don’t understand ‘having the wool pulled over their eyes’. I am not alleging a conspiracy, it is my personal view that the science is not just not finished but is far from finished. Scientists take the results of other scientists’ work all the time.

If you were looking at changes to biodiversity due to potential future climate change and you are an ecologist then you take climate model results and apply to your species distributions. You don’t start climate modelling yourself, nor are you being hoodwinked. Neither would I call such a person a researcher into the causes of climate change.

@Kevin

“All of the things mentioned are the necesary research areas for understanding AGW.”

so are computers but it doesn’t mean computer scientists are investigating AGW

You have made a big claim that only 3 score people are researching AGW. Now 3 score to me means around 60 people, in science when you make a big claim you need to provide solid evidence for it, I want to see your evidence.

they use computers as a tool, computers aren’t a research area.

“computers aren’t a research area”

you think they fell out of the sky or something?

“You have made a big claim that only 3 score people are researching AGW. Now 3 score to me means around 60 people, in science when you make a big claim you need to provide solid evidence for it, I want to see your evidence.”

Calm down, this is a blog!

Now how about a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ManWearingTinFoilHat.jpg
and a horlicks and a quiet night in front of the telly?

computers aren’t a research for climate science.

I just want to see the evidence for your claims. Failed modelling of the MWP and that only 60 people are doing AGW research.

I know of no model (global circulation or otherwise) that has predicted a MWP. Considering a MWP is a significant aspect of past climate, then I regard this as a failure of the science of climate change.

It is not a failure of the science of climate change, it is a failure of those who lived during the MWP to measure temperature and solar radiation and other climate variables so that the modellers had reliable information to input into their climate models. Getting an output that matched the behaviour of the MWP would be pretty easy if we could input anything we liked into the model.

Kevin

The climate contains a large amount of variability. We have seen a rise in CO2 and temperatures over the last 150 years or so. That CO2 caused this rise in temperatures is not certain unless we can explain the natural variability. Which we can’t. The MWP is such an example of large climate variability. We have a good idea of solar forcing and volcanism (from ice cores) but we cannot use them to explain the MWP. Therefore the variability is still a large unknown and the current rise in temperature could largely be explained by it. We just don’t know.

Exactly how accurate is our knowledge of solar forcings, do ice cores really give data that is so accurate that you can say that solar radiation energy didn’t vary by half a percent or so*? Did the gulf stream become stronger during this time? The data needed is just not wide ranging and good enough, the modellers would still have so many unconstrained possible input variables that the they could justify almost anything for input to produce an outcome that matched the few locations where proxies provide a rough estimate of temperature in the few locations where there are temperature proxies.

For these reasons there would be very little scientific merit in actually doing the modelling unless we could get more wide ranging and higher quality data for input.

As to volcanos the models have managed to model the climate response to large volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo well, demonstrating that they can model natural variability.

*All you can get from ice cores appears to be a rough proxy for sunspot number and sunspot numbers do correlate roughly with solar output, but for example solar output increased between 1900 and 1950 as did sunspot numbers but sunspot numbers remained significantly below their 1955 peak after this whilst solar output remained at the new higher level. So the sun has demonstrated that it can vary in output that is not correlated to sunsport number. How can we know what the solar output was during the MWP if it wasn’t directly measured when the only estimate we have is a proxy (berylium 10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Activity_Proxies.png) of sunspot numbers which is itself a proxy of solar variation that has been demonstrated does not fully capture solar variation.

Kevin

I think your question abut the gulf stream is a good one. I think decadal climate variability is likely a strong function of ocean currents. So how do we know that the latest warming (and the MWP) is not a function largely of changes in currents rather than CO2? We don’t know.

We have measurements of the gulf stream in modern times.
Does that mean you now accept my point that modelling the MWP makes no scientific sense without better quality and more wide ranging input data?
Where is your evidence for only 60 scientists working on AGW?

RT @leftfootfwd: Scientists face assymetries in public debates on climate change http://bit.ly/aQA2Ua

MWP: What the science says: http://bit.ly/9C6ybx

“While the Medieval Warm Period saw unusually warm temperatures in some regions, globally the planet was cooler than current conditions.”

Thanks Ellis. I know that it is likely that the MWP was not global. That is why changes in ocean currents during the MWP could well be important as that could be the reason for the redistribution of heat during the MWP. Since current warming is global with a significant increase in average global temperatures then the issue is less about moving heat from one place to another but instead is an issue of a global energy imbalance.

Kevin

@Ellis – I wouldn’t trust that Mann hockey stick nonsense.

His methods give hockey sticks for random input data.

Even Jones has his doubts about the existence or not of the MWP

“There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.”

“an issue of a global energy imbalance”? Have you been at the ergot again?

The claims by McIntyre and McKitrick that the hockey stick is nonsense have been demonstrated to be completely false, firstly by many other studies by others confirming their results. But also in this peer reviewed paper published in http://www.realclimate.org/RuthetalJClim2004.pdf published in the Journal of Climate http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-archive&issn=1520-0442.

I think there are arguments on both sides. I also know the way they applied principal component analysis to the proxy records is utterly inappropriate.

Your first reference was a paper by Mann himself. Hardly independent!

I don’t know what your second link refers to.

It is very easy to slime people by making big claims like you have.

I would be interested in a paper by neither Mann nor colleagues that substantiates the hockey stick.

I would be surprised if the hockey stick makes it into the next IPCC – if there is one. The claims about Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035 and all the other nonsense surely won’t.

It was published in a peer reviewed journal demonstrating the minimum level that what they claimed was based on the evidence in the paper by other independent researchers. Secondly Mann is not the lead Author. McKitrick and McIntyre have the opportunity to reply in a peer reviewed journal if they wish, they have had 6 years to do so, it says a lot that they haven’t.

Lastly as I said multiple pieces of other researchers since have repeated their results which is the true demonstration that the results are robust.

What do you have to say about your claim now that ice cores being able to predict solar output?

So, no independent verification then? Your ‘Mann is not the lead author’ does not make it independent. He was the second author.

I’ve still yet to see the results of the failed modelling of the MWP that you claimed at the beginning of this, please provide the evidence?

It is independent because it went through the peer reviewed process. As I said McKitrick and McIntyre have the opportunity to reply but haven’t done so in 6 years. Why not?

I’ve still not seen your evidence that only 60 people are working on AGW, please show me the evidence?

“Lastly as I said multiple pieces of other researchers since have repeated their results which is the true demonstration that the results are robust.”

Cite?

“It is independent because it went through the peer reviewed process” is laughable. Have you ever published in a scientific journal? Independent would be ‘independent’ people coming up with a similar results based on ‘independent’ analysis techniques. Preferably with ‘independent’ raw data but we can’t have everything.

ps your paper http://www.realclimate.org/RuthetalJClim2004.pdf was from 2004, the hockey stick was taken apart in 2006 by the Wegman report.

MBH98 and MBH99 were found to be “somewhat obscure and incomplete” and the criticisms by McIntyre and McKitrick were found to be “valid and compelling.”

The report claimed that the MBH method creates a hockey-stick shape even when supplied with random input data (Figure 4.4), and argues that the MBH method uses weather station data from 1902 to 1995 as a basis for calibrating other input data. “It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates even realized that their methodology was faulty at the time of writing the MBH paper. The net effect of the decentering is to preferentially choose the so-called hockey stick shapes.”

Can you cit the failed modelling of the MWP?

As I said before – “I know of no model (global circulation or otherwise) that has predicted a MWP. Considering a MWP is a significant aspect of past climate, then I regard this as a failure of the science of climate change.”

Null hypothesis papers don’t generally get into print.

You said “But if for example there was a pronounced medieval warm period that the models don’t show”. Where are the models that don’t show it?

In a study sure to ruffle the feathers of the Global Warming cabal, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT has published a paper which proves that IPCC models are overstating by 6 times, the relevance of CO2 in Earth’s Atmosphere. Dr. Lindzen has found that heat is radiated out in to space at a far higher rate than any modeling system to date can account for.
Editorial: The science is in. the scare is out. Recent papers and data give a complete picture of why the UN is wrong.
The pdf file located at the link above from the Science and Public Policy Institute has absolutely, convincingly, and irrefutably proven the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming to be completely false.
Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT’s peer reviewed work states “we now know that the effect of CO2 on temperature is small, we know why it is small, and we know that it is having very little effect on the climate.”
The global surface temperature record, which we update and publish
every month, has shown no statistically-significant “global warming”
for almost 15 years. Statistically-significant global cooling has now
persisted for very nearly eight years. Even a strong el Nino – expected
in the coming months – will be unlikely to reverse the cooling trend.
More significantly, the ARGO bathythermographs deployed
throughout the world’s oceans since 2003 show that the top 400
fathoms of the oceans, where it is agreed between all parties that at
least 80% of all heat caused by manmade “global warming” must
accumulate, have been cooling over the past six years. That now prolonged
ocean cooling is fatal to the “official” theory that “global
warming” will happen on anything other than a minute scale.
See details:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2009m8d18-Carbon-Dioxide-irrelevant-in-climate-debate-says-MIT-Scientist

natural cycles must play a large part in global mean temperatures. The CO2 level is going up relentlessly, yet we’ve been on a cooling trend for the last 15 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png

Fay, please see http://oxfordkevin.carbonclimate.org/?p=48

Lindzen and Choi left out black body radiation as a negative feedback. There results were also very dependent on the selection of starting points. This demonstrated that the ERBE data wasn’t of high enough quality for the information they were trying to get out of it. As a result there results aren’t robust.

kevin

As to the skeptics favourite temperature record why didn’t you go to the source of the information rather than a dated picture, try checking out Roy Spencers website and you will see very different results. http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

Kevin

How can you say cooling trend. For the last 15 years there has been warming of 0.12 degrees per decade, this only by the slimest of margins fails to meet the statistically significant 95 threshold which means the confidence in any trend could be considered to be robust. To call this cooling is a quite astounding claim.

RT @leftfootfwd: Scientists face assymetries in public debates on climate change http://bit.ly/aQA2Ua

RT @policynetwork: RT @leftfootfwd: Scientists face assymetries in public debates on climate change http://bit.ly/aQA2Ua

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