Deltoid

Archibald's effort is a fine example of the Beck school at work. If you can bear to waste the bandwidth to download his "paper", take a look at Fig 20 - Projected Temperature Profile to 2030. Archibald chooses a single temperature record from the USA as his "global" record up to 1979, stitches it onto the satellite record, and then extrapolates a line pointing downwards based on his solar prognostications. The word risible doesn't do it justice...

Posted by: Gareth | July 8, 2007 6:37 PM

I had an interesting correspondence with David Evans awhile back on this subject. I wrote him:

"One paragraph in your recent article puzzled me. You stated:

"Better data shows that from 1940 to 1975 the earth cooled while atmospheric carbon increased. That 35 year non-correlation might eventually be explained by global dimming, only discovered in about 2003."

Now, the cooling period from 1940 to 1975 was well documented prior to 2000, so I'm not sure which "new data" you are referring to. What really puzzles me, though, is the assertion that "global dimming" was discovered in 2003. The cooling effects of aerosols has been known for quite some time (see, for example, the chart on radiative forcings in the 2001 IPCC TAR: http://www.ipcc.ch/present/graphics/2001syr/large/06.01.jpg ). The 1996 IPCC SAR also included a section on negative radiative forcing from aerosols (see http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sarsum1.htm#two for an overview)."

He replied:

"Initially (early 90's?) the temperature record from the last century was pretty fuzzy and disputed (eg heat islands), and the cooling 1940-75 wasn't obvious or well known. Might have just been a measurement artifact or something. The big picture for the last century was just "atmos carbon increasing, temp increasing". When the data firmed up, the cooling period presented a bit of a problem.

This is a popular article, and the dates are more for knowledge at the New Scientist level. And I got the global dimming date a bit late, sorry. But whether it should have been 1996 or 2000 or 2003 makes little difference to the main point -- after we were mainly convinced that carbon emissions caused GW, we discovered a huge new phenomenon we hadn't even known about! Hmm, makes you wonder what else we don't know, and how good the models were before finding out about global dimming.

Another possibility to bear in mind with aerosols and upper atmospheric chemistry is that there may be other significant interactions going on that we don't know about yet."

To which I responded:

"David,

I think you are underestimating the awareness of the 1940-1975 cooling. After all, it did lead to the sophism often trotted out by Senator Inhofe that there was a "scientific consensus" of an imminent ice age in the 1970s. William Connolley has a rather comprehensive collection of articles from the period noting a cooling trend: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/

Rasool and Schneider, Science, July 1971, p 138, "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate" has a good discussion of the importance of aerosols in climate forcings, though it actually overstates the magnitude of their effects in retrospect.

Clearly we didn't "discover a huge new phenomenon we hadn't even known about" in the 1990s; research on the cooling effect of aerosols has a much longer history. You are correct in pointing out that considerable uncertainty remains in the radiative forcing aerosols, at least compared to GHGs (see http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/stratplan2003/final/graphics/images/SciStratFig2-3.jpg for example, or the more recent figure in the AR4 WG1)."

And the conversation pretty much ended after that, though I guess he wasn't convinced enough not to spout out these sophisms again...

Posted by: Zeke Hausfather | July 9, 2007 12:56 AM

In all fairness, I like the title of the workshop:'Rehabilitating Carbon Dioxide'. I think that the next one should take the concept a bit further and call itself: 'Carbon dioxide wuz framed! Free the C.O. Two!'

Posted by: Brian | July 9, 2007 6:23 AM

3, #5

It is funny indeed how easy it is to poke holes in "An Inconvenient Truth".

Posted by: Richard Tol | July 9, 2007 7:02 AM

"Huh, well, I found two blatant errors in "Ponder the Maunder" in the first 15 seconds of skimming the first couple of paragraphs.

If you can't, you're not trying."

Don't forget that one of the characteristics of credulists is that they give up very easily when it suits them.

Posted by: Chris O'Neill | July 9, 2007 11:23 AM

Kristen Byrnes is, or claims to be 15 years old. She has a better understanding of the science of climate change than many people many years her senior -- although she did copy some errors from others. She is clearly not at university level, but so are many others. For instance, a senior member of the Stern Review does not know the difference between ice melt and ice displacement -- after 18 months of working full-time on climate change.

The point is, however, that a novice can poke holes in what purports to be well-founded documentary by someone who used to be admired as a policy wonk.

Posted by: Richard Tol | July 9, 2007 2:11 PM

The point is, however, that a novice can poke holes in what purports to be well-founded documentary by someone who used to be admired as a policy wonk.

And the tiny holes, barely enough for gas exchange, are invariably inflated to gargantuan dimensions by quibblers and denialists, and trumpeted as "AlGore is fat".

Or fill in your own favorite inflated-importance talking points promulgated by wingnut welfare-supported media organs.

Best,

D

Posted by: Dano | July 9, 2007 2:49 PM

"The point is, however, that a novice can poke holes in what purports to be well-founded documentary by someone who used to be admired as a policy wonk."

More like, a novice can easily trawl the internet to collect a range of credulist arguments.

Posted by: Chris O'Neill | July 9, 2007 3:33 PM

14

Dano: If a 15-yr-old can punch tiny holes, then all credibility is gone. Anyone who does not want to believe Al Gore's message, just has to point to Kristen Byrnes and say "ha ha, he cannot even hold his own against a school kid". Debate over.

Unfortunately, this is the logical consequence of the hyperbole of An Inconvenient Truth. The movie is not rock solid, although very wrong in only a few places, but the result is that the entire movie is untrustworth.

Posted by: Richard Tol | July 9, 2007 4:55 PM

BTW, Guthrie: your hotmail addy isn't working for me.

Best,

D

Posted by: Dano | July 9, 2007 5:22 PM

Dano beat me to it but I'll chip in this comment anyway - Richard you ought to realise that you're setting yourself up for a fall, effectually inviting anybody with the interest to begin dissecting your own publications with a view to magnifying and trumpeting the flaws they will find therein. You agree that your own work is not flawless, right, and that Gore doesn't ever claim to be a scientist? What goes around comes around and you're encouraging people with a nitpicking, mean attitude and a different point of view to your own to take an interest in you, because of what you've done yourself to Gore and John Quiggin to name two. You could afford to be more generous I think.

Posted by: frankis | July 9, 2007 6:02 PM

Sadly, Ms. Byrnes also suffers from severe abscissa disease, an illness that characterized The Great Global Warming Swindle

Posted by: Eli Rabett | July 9, 2007 10:39 PM

Saldy the Australian published a piece from Martin Durkin on Staurday and a piece from Bob Carter today, both propoting The Great Global Warming Swindle in advance of its airing on Thursday.

Leigh Dayton, who is one of the best science journalists in Australia, gives the program a serve here.

She also attacked it in a tv review in the Weekend Australian.

Posted by: Ken Miles | July 10, 2007 2:50 AM

I really hope that Nir Shaviv has been misquoted. If your arguing that variations in cosmic rays effect clouds, then there should be next to no lag.

Posted by: Ken Miles | July 10, 2007 3:37 AM

Dano,

As usual you are spot on. Well done, sir.

Several points in response to Richards posts. First of all, the denial lobby doesn't give a hoot about 'science' or the 'scientific method'. They are distorting, mangling, twisting and otherwise mutilating science to promote a pre-determined view of the world through the bolstering of a political (i.e. corporate) agenda. No matter how rigid the empirical evidence is, this lot will find a way to stick to their guns. As David Viner, a scientist at the University of East Anglia said a few years ago, in the late 1980's and through much of the 1990's the idea of AGW was labeled as a 'doomsday myth' by the septics, and was treated accordingly by them. As the empirical evidence of a human fingerprint grew, many began to abandon this and they suddenly began to admit that the climate was changing rapidly, but that it was due to solar forcing or cosmic rays. This is the basis of much of their rhetoric these days, although as Viner says, in 5-10 years expect many of them to finally admit that human forcing is primarily responsible, but that its too late to do anything except adapt (assuming of course, that the ecological systems that permit human existence via a suite of provisioning services can adapt as well without a serious reduction in their efficiency).

But this is the crux of their strategy. I really and honestly don't believe that the agenda of most of the septics is anything other than one which is based on promoting the status quo, as far as western economic policy is concerned e.g. via free market absolutism, unlimited corporate profiteering etc. The denialists know that they'll never win the scientific argument, but they know that they don't need to. All they need to do is to sow enough doubt over the scientific processes underpinning climate change as to render mute any chance of mitigation. They have taken the undertaintly over the outcome of climate change and applied it to the actual processes responsible for climate change. Its a sordid strategy that has so far worked very well.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | July 10, 2007 3:57 AM

Richard, While Gore has his moments of hyperbole, and Stern uses some very debatable assumptions in crafting his estimates of the economic cost of climate change, I think you are giving a bit too much credence to the 15-year-old in question. If you glance through her site, its not hard to realize that its virtually all cherry-picking with a smattering of more substantive arguments and a bit downright fraud (e.g. the graph shown on Eli's site). Hardly "balloon-pricking".

Posted by: Zeke | July 10, 2007 4:20 AM

LOL search/replace denial with alamist:

First of all, the alarmist lobby doesn't give a hoot about 'science' or the 'scientific method'

Which is why alarmists, of course, publish hundreds if not thousands of scientific papers on the subject in the peer-reviewed literature each and every year.

Now, do your search/replace on my sentence above, replacing "alarmist" with "denialist". What do you get? A provably false statement.

So much for the invariance of the search and replace operator on the semantic meaning of strings in the English language.

Thanks, Hans. I really did LOL when reading your post.

Posted by: dhogaza | July 10, 2007 5:57 AM

Richard, Nicholas Stern did and I read with interest the temperate and learned way in which you respond to criticism.

Of course, as you yourself admit you don't have a clue how to value many important things and thus your estimates of cost are, shall we say, elastic.

Posted by: Eli Rabett | July 10, 2007 7:58 AM

Dano,

You've hit the proverbial nail on the head, so to speak. Since our understanding of the myriad of intricate and complex ways in which ecosystems function is still in its relative infancy, we have no idea how much we can continue to nickel and dime them before they are unable to sustain themselves, and with that, us. Of course, to the likes of Hans, and the ranks of the contrarians out there, this is irrelevant since they they don't think that nature is of much utility in lieu of consumptive value.

I've noted this refrain from the sceptics time and time again. Because they don't understand even the basics of ecology and environmental biology, they dispense with it. Since Costanza et al. published their seminal study in 1997, it should have been obvious that the value of GDP is a tiny fraction of the value of services emerging over variable spatial and temporal scales from natural systems. Richard, please let me know what your 15 year old whiz-kid has to say about this.

Finally, as far as science is concerned, Hans, you are speaking out of your you-know-what. The empirical evidence underpinning AGW is massive. And it is published in the most rigid, peer-reviewed journals. Not in the crappy places you and your ilk generally publish your tripe. Why has industry invested billions of dollars in debunking the science it hates? What is the agenda of the corporate-funded think tanks ands lobbying groups? How much is their agenda driven by a true concern for humanity, for nature, and for our collective future? Or, Hans, do you really think for a milli-second that they and their paymasters are searching for the 'truth', as elusive as that is in any scientific endeavor?

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | July 10, 2007 9:46 AM

I agree with Eli that Prof. Tol's manner stands in welcome contrast to the spluttering that too often substitutes for reasoned response in these discussions. I believe I understand his point as he states it, viz.:

Hyperbole a la Gore and Stern is no basis for serious climate policy, because some 15-year-old will come and prick your balloon.

But I am starting to wonder if he has actually read the balloon-pricking review in question. Here's a sample:

[Gore's] graphic suggests that some of the outgoing radiation is reflected from the top of the atmosphere and back to Earth. This idea is the basis of anthropogenic (man made) global warming theory. He fails to mention that this effect has never been measured, only calculated, and by scientists on one side of the debate. This is one of the most hotly debated issues in the global warming debate. Not only does this issue involve complicated theoretical quantum physics, but water vapor absorbs infrared radiation. As is often the case in global warming presentations, he forgets that water vapor is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas; 3 to 4 percent of the atmosphere. And this is important because at most, man-made greenhouse gases are 1/ 10,000 of Earth's atmosphere.

So -- Prof. Tol, do you agree with the above, and do you consider it a good job of pricking holes in An Inconvenient Truth? And, if not, what in the world are you talking about?

Posted by: jre | July 10, 2007 2:38 PM

Erren: "They are distorting, mangling, twisting and otherwise mutilating science"

I wonder who it was who suggested that coral bleaching in early (January, February or March) 2002 was caused by the 2002-2003 El Nino that didn't begin in any form until about August 2002? Obviously, that person wasn't doing any distorting, mangling, twisting and otherwise mutilating science. Otherwise that person would be a hypocrite.

Posted by: Chris O'Neill | July 10, 2007 4:39 PM

re 33: I was talking about Al Gore, not about real scientists who share their data, of course, there are some good scientists about, but then they are not alarmists, as they don't have an agenda.

Posted by: Hans Erren | July 10, 2007 5:51 PM

these discussions re: Kristen are pretty fun. I assume since Exxon has already paid off enough "scientists" they can now recruit kids to prop up strawman arguments? It's not very surprising since this is the same crowd that touts "Creationism" as real science and similarly "pokes holes" in the fossil record etc.

If Kristen is a real honest-to-goodness precocious 15-year old girl who happens to be in the "septic" camp, I'm sure she's well on her way to a full-paid scholarship at Bob Jones University. But with some bona-fide scientific mentoring, she could instead have a shot to be a real science student at MIT (well Lindzen could help her I guess ;-)

Posted by: Carl | July 10, 2007 6:24 PM

18:

If a 15-yr-old can punch tiny holes, then all credibility is gone.

Which is exactly why her Republican daddy helped her on her website. When you have already lost the debate, bring out an adorable proxy. Plus there's college money. College money? Hmmmmmm....

I'll have a website by the end of the week. Just have to teach the two yea old to say "gwobl wahming is a wibwul scam."

Posted by: Boris | July 10, 2007 9:24 PM

Jeff Harvey wrote (39):

The idea -was that a warming climate will turn Canada into a bread basket and a paradise for tourists seeking the sun. Again, ignore the fact that acid soils characteristic of the Candian shield won't sustain much agricultural output, or that the wealth of boreal species living in northern temperate ecosystems will vanish.

Not to mention the environmental refugees who will migrate there if Canada doesn't adopt Murrica's policies, which likely will further limit arable land and likely stress socioeconomic systems (à la Katrina) and limit R&D into ag development.

Best,

D

Posted by: Dano | July 10, 2007 10:53 PM

This one lit up like a Christmas tree when I saw it.

"Also, the only person I am aware of who predicted ENSO events several years in advance used a model of solar changes with a hit rate of almost 90%. Al Gore never puts into consideration El Nino's or solar variation as a part of global warming which is one of his most crucial mistakes."

Now, I wish she has included a reference for this model with 90% hit rate, because I would dearly love to get my hands on it, as it would make my job a hell of a lot easier. For example, our current state of the art dynamic model used to predict the state of ENSO (http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/ocean/JAFOOS/POAMA/intro/index.htm#operational) only goes out 8 months. And while it's reasonably accurate and does include diabatic effects, such as incident solar radiation and re-absorbed long wave radiation, it also uses coupled ocean-atmosphere models, as well as convective cloud parameterisation, ocean mixing and inflows from various sources.

We could have saved a lot of time and effort had we just used a model of solar changes.

Posted by: Chris C | July 11, 2007 12:46 AM

There is a difference between credibility (in the public eye), and correctness. If a 15-yr-old (real or not) can protest and hold her ground for a while, something is wrong.

Stern is better than Gore on this scale. One needs a PhD to demolish Stern, but then it is easy.

My point is not the climate change is nonsense, or climate policy not necessary. The fact that I am pushed into that corner is a symptom of the feebleness of the arguments of the "climate action now" camp. A critical voice is simply not tolerated.

I have consistently argued for climate policy for over 15 years.

My point is that serious climate policy should be based on serious science, and not on the sort of nonsense that Gore and Stern sprout. I reject the notion that the message should be simplified, exaggerated and sweetened to convince the public. That works in the short term, but not in the long term.

As to Canada, I guess the burden of proof is on those who think that this country will suffer from climate change. Homo Sapiens is a subtropical species, and it is bloody cold up there. Besides such basic intuition, most studies have shown net benefits (that is, some losses, but greater gains; net benefits does not mean no losses). Again, it is a symptom of the unhealthy state of debate that a trivial conclusion like "climate change will bring more tourists to Canada" is picked up by the newspapers. (And indeed, that was not the main conclusion of the paper.)

Posted by: Richard Tol | July 11, 2007 1:59 AM

There is a difference between credibility (in the public eye), and correctness. If a 15-yr-old (real or not) can protest and hold her ground for a while, something is wrong.

Anyone, including you, can publish garbage on the web (as you prove with every post).

The mere fact that this 15-yr-old has published crap on the web does not mean it is not crap.

Posted by: dhogaza | July 11, 2007 3:14 AM

Richard writes, re: Canada: "Homo Sapiens is a subtropical species, and it is bloody cold up there". Canada is a pretty big country you know (its my land of birth), and the climate varies dramatically over the many diverse biomes that make it up. The extremes would be comparing biological processes in the Arctic tundra versus the broad-leaved forests of southern Ontario to the damp coastal temperate rainforests of British Columbia. You are generalising here, Richard. Furthermore, as I would expect from an economist (though not all: see work by Gowdy, Daly, etc), your take is 100% anthropocentric. It assumes that humans are exempt from natural laws and constraints.

Have you bothered to factor in what a rapidly changing climate would have on ecological systems, communities and the species and genetically distinct populations that make them up? These systems have long evolved under the abiotic conditions in which they exist. We know from the previous 'big five' extinctions that they were caused by extremely rapid shifts in conditions, such as climate, that cascaded through food chains, bearing in mind that the destruction of primary producers would reverberate through the system. Its without question that these extinctions also resulted in a massive reduction in the stability of the systems and of the services that emerged from them. Of course, in time, nature rebounded, but in some cases this took 5-10 million years or more. Fast forward to the present. No species depends more on, or utlilzes more of nature, than Homo sapiens. As you type away on your keyboard in your sheletered office you may be unaware of it, but its been demonstrated many times over that natural systems and the services they generate 'permit' humans to exist and persist (reviewed by Daily, 1997, and Levin, 1999). These systems do not exist in order to support the needs of Homo sapiens; rather, we exist because these systems permit it. Your discussion of the regional effects of warming totally expunge the effects on natural systems. Because your econometric models presumably dispense with nature, you thus assume that all of the conditions necessary for viable functioning will continue, irrespective of how fast and high the local temperature regimes go. You haven't considered the fact that there will be many losers, as the more thermophobic species disappear. Sure, there will be some winners too (thermophiles from the south, for instance, which will move northwards), but the rate of change is so rapid now that entire functioning systems cannot and will not adjust concurrently. There will be a great unraveling of food webs, and with that a spike in local (and global) rates of extinction of populations and species. Because species diversity and functional redundancy reinforce the stability of food webs, we will see a lot more entropy: systemic breakdowns, and with them wild fluctuations in conditions and services that were once quite reliable. All of these things certainly coincided with previous mass extinction events, so there is every reason to believe they will happen again (in fact, they already are).

You should get in touch with me and we could discuss this. I do believe that your intentions in predicting climate change effects are honorable, and that you are putting forth your ideas as you see them. But do you collaborate with any ecologists or environmental scientists? Geoffrey Heal (whom I expect you know) is an economist who spent a year at Stanford University learning from the excellent team of researchers there how vital natural systems are in sustaining civilization. He then wrote a book titled "Nature and the Marketplace" in which he argues that ecological services should be factored into cost-benefit analyses of economic planners. You should check this out, as well as Brian Czech's equally excellent book, "Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train", which examines the fallacies inherent in neoclassical economic theory.

As far a Kristen goes, I read her two page critique of Al Gore's film. She started out quite in a civil tone but I wasn't surprised that by the end she sounded like a spokesman from one of the libertarian think tanks (her tone became decidedly bitter and shrill). Perhaps this is a good way of encouraging private funders to cough up the bucks to send her to college (I feel that, based on the sheer economics of it, where the big money is in the denial lobby, she'd find it a lot harder if her views were the other way around). I am a population ecologist and not a climate scientist, but I noted that her proof usually came in the form of one or two references. Admittedly they were peer-reviewed studies, but what about the 20 or more that she didn't cite (e.g. on the history and temporal rate of glacial retreat) that provide an opposite interpretation? The tobacco lobby used this ploy for years. Cite a dozen studies which show no link between smoking and cancer, and ignore 1,500 that do. Her take on the effects of climate change on wild nature was pitifully weak. Her simple (and flawed) response was that Gore didn't mention 'evolution'. She doesn't mention a reduction in genetic variability caused by a range of other anthropogenic stresses on natural systems, and concomitant rates of extinction, which exceed the background rate by an estimated 100-1,000 times. This reveals that many species are not genetically predisposed to be able to adapt to the kinds of changes that humans are inflicting across the biosphere, as we nickel and dime the planet to death. The result is the current extinction spasm which will accelerate in the coming decades. And of course the results of this will be those I described earlier in this posting.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | July 11, 2007 4:16 AM