Lonnie G. Thompson’s Kilimanjaro Fallacies

Is the Kilimanjaro losing ice because of man-made global warming? Now, that would be a challenging thing to properly demonstrate (never mind it would run against the gist of the IPCC work for example, where no particular weather-related occurrence can be attributed to “Global Warming”, let alone of the anthropogenic variety).

Little wonder then if scientists publishing a study “Glacier loss on Kilimanjaro continues unabated” have “reached no consensus on whether the melting could be attributed mainly to humanity’s role in warming the global climate“.

Regardless…step forward lead author Lonnie G. Thompson, concluding “that the melting of recent years is unique” (in the sense of unseen for “over the last 11,700 years“). And how does he know that AGW got anything to do with it?

Dr. Thompson emphasized that the melting of ice atop Mount Kilimanjaro was paralleled by retreats in ice fields elsewhere in Africa as well as in South America, Indonesia and the Himalayas. “It’s when you put those together that the evidence becomes very compelling,” he said.

This quote from somebody that has just published an article containing the following texts:

• An energy balance study (7) concluded that mass loss from the upper (horizontal) surfaces of the ice fields has been dominated by sublimation although there is physical evidence of melting as well
• The limited satellite observations have yet to confirm any unambiguous trend toward drier atmospheric conditions (1979–1995) and the lack of radiosonde observations over less-developed countries has limited the accuracy of tropical water vapor trends
• Over recent decades there has been a continual transformation of the landscape surrounding Kilimanjaro into agricultural land, thus, unraveling large-scale climate forcing from regional forcing caused in part by landscape changes is difficult.

Oh well.

Let’s have a look at how many logical fallacies can be found in statements like the below:

Regardless of the relative importance of the multiple drivers responsible for the loss of Kilimanjaro’s summit ice fields, [the] widespread glacier mass loss, shrinkage, and retreat at high elevations (>5,000 m above sea level) in lower latitudes (30° N to 30° S), particularly in the thermally homogeneous tropics, suggests the likelihood of an underlying common driver on which more localized factors such as changes in land use, precipitation, cloudiness, and humidity are superimposed.

This is my list so far:

• Conjunction fallacy
• Proof by example
• Fallacy of the single cause

I am sure there’s more.

As every hammer knows, the world is made of nails…

‘How Bold Predictions Hurt Science’

UPDATE: Read also Richard Gallagher’s “Authors of our own misfortune“

“How many expert assurances or warnings must turn out to be conspicuously wrong for the authority of science and scientists to be diminished?“: that’s the ominous conclusion of a beautifully no-holds-barred article today:

Promises, Promises – Ill-judged predictions and projections can be embarrassing at best and, at worst, damaging to the authority of science and science policy. by Stuart Blackman – The Scientist, Vol 23, Issue 11, Page 28

The article is full of interesting quotes. Excerpts:

• It doesn’t take anything so extreme as scientific fraud to scupper what may have seemed, at the time, to be a well-grounded scientific prediction. At its most enthusiastic, science has always been prone to promise rather more, and sooner, than it has managed to deliver
• Scientists have a strong incentive to make bold predictions—namely, to obtain funding, influence, and high-profile publications. But [...] unfulfilled predictions [...] can be a blow for patients, policy makers, and for the reputation of science itself
• [The 1995 Varmus NIH expert panel concluded that] ‘overzealous representation of clinical gene therapy has [led to] misrepresentation [that] threatens confidence in the field and will inevitably lead to disappointment in both medical and lay communities‘
• says Brian Wynne, professor of science studies at Lancaster University, UK. ‘Every research proposal these days [...] has got to include an [impact]  statement [...] basically requiring scientists to make promises, and to exaggerate those promises.‘
• As British fertility expert Robert Winston told the BBC in 2005: ‘We tend often to really have rather too much overconfidence. We may exaggerate, simply because [...] we need support [...] We can go about persuading people a bit too vigorously sometimes.‘
• Predictions can also create a sense of haste and urgency that can impede cool, calm reflection on how to proceed at the policy level. [Nik Brown, co-director of the Science and Technology Studies Unit, University of York, UK] says it can create a pressure to legislate before experts properly understand a new research path and its potential.
• Research [by Joan Haran, Cesagen Research Fellow at Cardiff University, UK shows that] ‘Because of the high esteem in which scientists are held, it becomes very hard to mount a critique of their promises,‘ [...] Scientists defending their corner is understandable, says Haran, but it should be recognized that it can be at the expense of healthy skepticism.
• Predictions can also create a sense of haste and urgency that can impede cool, calm reflection on how to proceed at the policy level. [Brown] says it can create a pressure to legislate before experts properly understand a new research path and its potential. [Sociologist Christine Hauskeller, Senior Research Fellow at the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society, University of Exeter, UK adds that] this is not only a waste of financial and legal resources [...] but it serves to narrow social and scientific possibilities
• Hilary Rose [professor emerita of the sociology of science at the University of Bradford, UK and Gresham College London] believes that an overemphasis on certain research trajectories, and overoptimistic expectations of what they can deliver, can obscure political and social solutions to problems

Parts of the article are specific to climate science.

The last line in a “Some famous (and infamous) predictions” table classifies as “Right or Wrong? PENDING” this 2007 “prediction“

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 4th Assessment Report projects that global surface air temperatures will increase by between 1.1 and 6.4°C over preindustrial levels by the end of the century

A speech at the Copenhagen Climate Conference of February 2009 by the then Danish Prime Minister is mentioned as example of “politicians [trying to] ‘fob off responsibility to scientists’“

‘[Don’t] provide us with too many moving targets, because it is already a very, very complicated process,‘ he said. ‘I need fixed targets and certain figures, and not too many considerations on uncertainty and risk and things like that.‘ Such demands, says [Dan Sarewitz, director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at Arizona State University], can tempt scientists into providing simplistic and unqualified extrapolations from the current state of knowledge to possible future scenarios.

Is it time to design guidelines to “predict responsibly” then? These are Blackman’s suggestions:

1. Avoid simple timelines: “try to communicate the complexities of the process rather than make a specific prediction”
2. Learn from history: “heed the lessons of past predictions and promises”
3. State the caveats: “inform the public also of the current limitations”
4. Remember what you don’t know: “scientists know a lot less about technology and innovation and political context”

‘Elders’ And Grandchildren Fly To Istanbul To Praise Virtual Conferencing

Yet another consequence of AGW…an increase in hypocrisy:

a group of 20th-century leaders called the Elders — whose members include Archbishop Tutu of South Africa, former President Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson, a former Irish president [...] on Thursday (Oct 29) [...] traveled to Istanbul for a symbolic photo shoot accompanied by young relatives [and] described advantages of using technology for virtual conferences rather than using airplanes to attend meetings

In other news: a former Irish President shows either too much rhetoric or not enough understanding of the science of AGW:

Ms. Robinson [...] added that coming generations would not have a planet to enjoy unless action was taken now to resolve the problem

‘Cold’ Scientist Cool About Global Warming (Hysteria)

Glowing reviews for Bill Streever’s “Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places”, admittedly with some questioning about the book lacking somewhat in the AGW catastrophe department.

For example, Mary Roach in The New York Times:

Global warming makes an inevitable appearance, but it’s not in Streever’s nature to mount the pulpit. His usual spark is missing here. His molecules have cooled. He is a man beguiled by nature’s complexities, and he knows too much to make the simplified arguments of the Gores and the anti-Gores. “The good new is this: the planet is not warming evenly. As ocean currents change, temperate Europe may become pleasantly frigid. And the Antarctic interior, surrounded by swirling winds thought to be driven in part by the hole in the ozone layer, has cooled.” he writes. And he impishly points out that the first two scientists to write about the greenhouse effect looked forward to a warmer planet.

David Laskin in The Washington Post:

Another problem is the treatment of global warming. Streever opens with a nod at the greenhouse effect, and halfway through he curses an unseasonable mid-winter warm-up in Anchorage for ruining his cross-country skiing, but it’s not until the last few pages that he addresses the issue of climate change head on. His discussion is (predictably) adroit, pointed, clipped and alarming — but it doesn’t connect the many scattered dots that came before. “Warmth is not always a good thing,” Streever declares heatedly.

I’ll definitely look to buy or borrow “Cold“. In the meanwhile, here’s an interesting quote from the book (my emphasis):

We are in the midst of a warm spell, we are worried about global warming, but the fact remains that even in summer, whole regions remain covered with snow and ice. An area of land five times the size of Texas is in the permafrost zone, underlain by permanently frozen ground. If the mathematical predictions are right, we are at the tail end of an interglacial period, dramatically increasing its warmth with greenhouse gas emissions. But nevertheless we remain in what a geologist one hundred thousand years in the future would clearly recognize as part of the Pleistocene Ice Age.

A Quick Note About Corbyn’s Solar Weather Technique Conference

Not many words out yet about WeatherAction’s “Climate Change, The Solar Weather Technique & The Future of Forecasting”, the conference organized by Piers Corbyn and hosted by the Imperial College in London on Oct 28. Amazingly, BBC’s Roger Harrabin just spoke about it during the midnight BBC Radio4 news, in rather neutral and very appropriate tones as far as I can remember (nothing has surfaced in the BBC News site as yet).

Myself, I have been able to get to the conference and back, just in time and only to hear Corbyn’s opening remarks, when he lamented the immorality of the mainstream obsession with CO2 and compared his work to longitude measurer Harrison, rejected by the scientific and political establishment for a long time despite being right and only winning acceptance by winning the acceptance and trust of users (the Royal Navy, according to Corbyn)

Tipping Points Revisited – 2- Swedish And Depressed Planetary Boundaries

Is that a Masada I can see in Stockholm? Introducing another group of scholars interested in exploring new (and sad…very sad!) depths of environmental science: the Stockholm Resilience Center (SRC), and its scientists-authors of famous research and policy framework “Planetary Boundaries” (see also J Rockström et al., “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity”, Ecology and Society, In Press 14th September 2009).

SRC have identified nine Planetary Boundaries (PB):

• Climate change
• Ocean acidification
• Stratospheric ozone depletion
• Atmospheric aerosol loading
• Biogeochemical flows: interference with P(hosphorus) and N(itrogen) cycles
• Global freshwater use
• Land system change (to cropland)
• Biodiversity loss
• Chemical pollution (eg persistent organic pollutants (POPs), plastics, endocrinedisruptors, heavy metals, and nuclear waste)

(yes there is a reason why SRC do not list then in alphabetical order)

I have several criticisms about the above (I am not alone). What “stewardship” can we provide to the planet if we consider our existence as under siege? Do Planetary Boundaries exist, and even if they do, what can they scientifically tell us about the real world? And even if they are really, mostly useful as a policy tool, is it prudent to take any decision based on them?

-1- A PLANET UNDER SIEGE, or THE MASADA MENTALITY
The “joyous and optimistic” (not my words) goal of SRC appears to be computing the limits of essential resources (essential to us, that is), in order to help better manage those same resources better.

Crucially though, those “limits” are considered “boundaries” in the sense of “thresholds”: once a certain threshold is passed, SRC say, the tipping point (“non-linear changes in the functioning of the Earth System”) starts looming. That is, passing the limits means risking “unacceptable, potentially disastrous” changes, jumping into the dark, most likely straight into a ravine.

In this respect, SRC’s all-too-desperate attempt of communicating a “message” (“The Planet is in peril! It’s all our fault!”) is just too blatant to convince the unconvinced. Consider for example the way they describe PBs in their website. From the PB homepage, aptly titled “Tipping towards the unknown”:

Within these boundaries, humanity has the flexibility to choose pathways for our future development and well-being. In essence, we are drawing the first — albeit very preliminary — map of our planet´s safe operating zones. And beyond the edges of the map, we don´t want to go

Look also at the video “Whiteboard seminar with Johan Rockström: Introducing Planetary Boundaries”. Here’s what you see Rockström drawing around 3m20s:

Going down...

Just like that graph, every diagram invariably goes downwards. For some reason, it is taken as given that every change wll mean thing are going to worsen.

Fast forward to 8 minutes and 30 seconds:

Planetary fortress

What does that resemble, if not of a fortress on top of a mountain, as beyond the boundary everything goes sharply downhill? And there it is: Masada.

Masada (1)

Masada (2)

What good could ever come out of this “siege mentality” in managing the planet (no less!), I simply cannot understand.

For the record, in 73AD all 960 inhabitants of Masada “committed suicide rather than face certain capture“.

- 2- DO PLANETARY BOUNDARIES EXIST?
According to SRC, no tipping point has been reached so far. That is, simply none of the expected “non-linear” changes of state has happened. What are we talking about, one wonders? Every “unacceptable environmental change” that would “drive the Earth System[…] abruptly into states deleterious or even catastrophic to human well-being” is firmly in the future.

The PB framework is only loosely connected to reality. In fact, too many of the foundations of the PB framework are taken for granted rather than demonstrated. Are we really in the “Anthropocene”? Only if we believe so. Can we seriously link Arctic ice extent and the increase of atmospheric CO2? (more about this later). Etc etc.

And in any case…do planetary thresholds/boundaries exist?

It is true that the simplest spinning top can show what a tipping poin is. On the other hand, is there anything about the environment or any of its aspects that suggests they behave like spinning tops? That is, do we have any example where a minor perturbation has resulted in a major shift from one relatively stable status to another relatively stable status?

Say, has the temporal evolution of any environmental indicator about the now-mostly-dry Aral Sea followed a similar path to the graphs used by SRC?

Limnologist Marten Scheffer has written a whole book on the topic of tipping points in environmental and social contexts, and IMNSHO we are none the wiser, in the realm of the environment including climate. Mr Scheffer for example has “discovered” that there are more than just two stable states a lake environment can switch to, thereby invalidating the Rockström “Masada” diagrams.

- 3 – WHAT COULD PLANETARY BOUNDARIES TELL US ABOUT THE REAL WORLD?
SRC admit that they can do quantifiable work in only seven out of nine PBs. In other words, discussions of PBs for “Biodiversity loss” and “Chemical pollution” are on the threshold of being science-free.

Among the remaining seven PBs, SRC state that only in three cases they have solid data to estimate the “threshold” has been “transgressed”. In other words, even if thresholds exist, there is little indication we are near danger for “Atmospheric aerosol loading”, “Biogeochemical flows”, “Global freshwater use” and “Land system change”.

Among the remaining three “transgressed” PBs, regarding “Ocean acidification” and “Stratospheric ozone depletion” the tipping point “into states deleterious or even catastrophic to human well-being” is still far away in the future.

Finally, for Climate Change, the one remaining PB where the threshold has been (perhaps) transgressed and the tipping point (perhaps) reached, all the SRC work appears to be pivoting around a single published work:

Johannessen, O. M. Decreasing Arctic Sea Ice Mirrors Increasing CO2 on decadal Time Scale, in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1 (1): 51-56 (2008)

From the abstract (my emphasis):

The author presents an empirical relation between annual sea-ice extent and global atmospheric CO2 concentrations, in which sea-ice reductions are linearly, inversely proportional to the magnitude of increase of CO2 over the last few decades

Hopefully the esteemed Johannessen will be magnanimous with whomever will state that his findings are contrary to other research, e.g. done by NASA.

Who knows, perhaps there is a case for awaiting more analysis and confirmatory studies? It is not one swallow that bringeth in summer.

- CONCLUSIONS – WHAT ARE PBs GOOD FOR?
Based on unremittingly pessimistic and undemonstrated assumptions, observation-free, with admittedly shaky foundations, and the one promising application based on a single article… would it be wise to follow SRC and base public policy on the concept of “Planetary Boundaries”?

One can expect the usual criticisms…who am I to dare critically reading some scientist’s work…

Let’s hear it from some experts then (a collection of comments is in Nature’s “Climate Feedback” blog).

These are the views of William H. Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York:

Thresholds are comforting for decision-makers […] But is a threshold really a good idea at all? […] Waiting to cross the threshold allows much needless environmental degradation. […] Unfortunately, policymakers face difficult decisions, and management based on thresholds, although attractive in its simplicity, allows pernicious, slow and diffuse degradation to persist nearly indefinitely […]

Schlesinger’s insight is important. The concept of “Planetary Boundaries” is written in the language policymakers will understand. On the other hand, under PB scientists and anybody caring about the environment become second-class players, in this paradoxical locking up of the study and preservation of our planet to the service of those who make “policy“.

That’s the way of the worst kind of management techniques, geared up to handle not what should be managed, rather just whatever happens to be measurable. A quick look at the proverbial efficiency and low costs of the British National Health System (NHS) will be enough to understand what can this all end up as.

—

Obviously, the PB concept is not unadulterated rubbish to be thrown away. Just as obviously, it is not (even remotely) the ultimate solution to our problems. My wild guess is that PB is valid and useful in two out of seven of the listed “boundaries”, but the thresholds need to be understood in terms of the range of possible scenarios (some good, some bad) that the reaching of the tipping point may bring.

And I realize that these questions do not have as much sense to most of the catastrophiliacs now, but let me ask their selves, reading this in 2029:

(1) Why were you scared silly of the future?

(2) On what logical basis did you take any possible change as something necessarily negative?

(3) Why did you fill your “scientific” thoughts of “tipping points” before having ever experienced even one of them?

(see also : Tipping Points Revisited – The Impossibility Of Action Between Rare Examples And Complex Behavior)

NOW On BBC World Service (Radio): The Importance Of AGW Skepticism

Just started (00:30GMT, Oct 25) on BBC World Radio: “Letter from…Clive James reflects on the importance of scepticism in every walk of life“

Listen live

BBC iPlayer link

UPDATE: The programme lasted around 8 minutes.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to Alex for pointing to the programme transcript.

Very quick summary of the relevant points:

• It is notable that on the issue of man made climate change the language used is hard to distinguish from the language used centuries ago against heresy
• Whoever shows skepticism is called a “denialist” – a nasty word that suggests equivalence to denying the holocaust
• In Australia somebody suggested that climate change skeptics are worse than Holocaust denialists, as this time it’s the whole human race that is at risk
• But the Holocaust has actually happened, the destruction of the Earth by man made climate change hasn’t
• The number of skeptical scientists in on the  increase. But Mr James claims he knows next to nothing about the subjects
• The one thing he knows is that many of the commentators don’t know much either, since they keep saying that the science is settled. And it is not.
• Now fewer are repeating that assertion. and their voices are raising harder, as if protecting their faith
• Skeptics are accused not to care about the future human race. That is the opposite of the truth. Modern medicine for example raised from skepticism
• At the end of the day, no matter what effort is put in protecting a conjecture, a theory must suit  the facts

Boehmer-Christiansen: BECC Sponsor List May Show True Face Of AGW Lobby

(a note by Sonja A. Boehmer-Christiansen inspired by the news of the “Behavior, Energy and Climate Change (BECC) Conference: Nov 15-18, Washington, DC“. Published with the consent of the author)

RE: the sponsors:

Co-conveners: The 2009 Behavior, Energy and Climate Change Conference is being convened by The American Council for and Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE); the California Institute for Energy and Environment (CIEE),  University of California; and the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center (PEEC), Stanford University.

This supports my hypothesis, pushed since the early 1990s, that the most active ’villain’ in the show is the technological research lobby, found in WG III of IPCC.

You have all been discussing WG 1! WG III (the solutions/ responses people) are served by WG 1, and is the place where the governments, NGOs and ‘technologists’ meet and propose the solutions..this is now down to one thing at last, a price for carbon above what? At least $40. It is much less at the moment, but please correct if you can find out.

As a political science student pointed out to me, in politics it is not unusual to have solutions searching for, and finding a problem.

Tipping Points Revisited – The Impossibility Of Action Between Rare Examples And Complex Behavior

“American Scientist”, solidly warmist yet likely to be among the first publications to recognize the failure of AGW sometimes in the future, has a topical book review article (Runaway Change by John R. McNeill) of what appears to be a more-reasoned-than-most “tipping point” book, Marten Scheffer’s “Critical Transitions in Nature and Society“:

Runaway Change by John R. McNeill
November-December 2009, Volume 97, Number 6
Page: 506
DOI: 10.1511/2009.81.506

Scheffer defines “critical transitions” as “sharp shifts in systems driven by runaway change toward a contrasting alternative state once a threshold is exceeded.” His interest includes but also goes beyond doom and gloom, as the aim is to apply system dynamics to nature and of society so that we might in the future have  “the possibility of predicting, preventing, or catalyzing big shifts in nature and society.”

However, Sheffer’s ultimate goal (large-scale “predictability” e.g. in lake ecosystems as it is already possible in “petri dishes“) doesn’t appear easy to reconcile with all the examples he describes.

For one thing, transitions (critical or otherwise) do not necessarily include just one beginning state and one final state. And what a “state” actually is, gets less clear the more an example is studied

Scheffer begins with lakes, one of his areas of expertise. Lakes, especially small and shallow ones, can tip from one fairly stable state to another easily enough. But the more closely one looks, the less the behavior of lakes matches theory, because the theory is too simple. There are more than two possible states; indeed, there are infinite gradations. Moreover, as Scheffer notes, the notion of stability is fraught.

The situation is even more difficult about climate:

Scheffer turns next to climate systems. In contrast to lakes, the opportunities for controlled experiments on climate systems are nil, and our knowledge of critical shifts, positive feedback and runaway trends is all inferred from slim evidence.

Among possible example of climate-related critical tranistions, Scheffer lists “the oxidation of 2.4 billion years ago“, “snowball Earth”, “glaciation“, “Milankovitch cycles“, “Younger Dryas” and ENSO. Buf if McNeil is right in stating that “climate history (as currently understood) presents many examples of critical shifts on various timescales“, then doesn’t that also mean there is no such a thing as a stable climate?

Natural history doesn’t clarify much about tipping points either. The underlying theme is that “critical transitions are rare“:

A chapter on oceans shortens the timescale, discussing regime shifts in Pacific and Atlantic waters and focusing on sardine-anchovy cycles, the famous cod collapse of the North Atlantic, and, in coastal ecosystems, on coral reefs, kelp forests and estuarine oyster beds. These matters remain comparatively mysterious, and the role of human actions in them is uncertain, but the pattern of sudden dramatic shifts from one state to another is unmistakable. Scheffer follows with a chapter on terrestrial ecosystems that includes several more examples of transitions between alternative stable states on geographic scales ranging from the Sahara desert to peat bogs. Here he emphasizes that critical transitions are rare, which is true in other contexts as well, but which he does not emphasize elsewhere in the book.

The argument appears to collapse when human sciences are included, where Sheffer is mostly guided by his own preferences  (Jared Diamond, “the role of charismatic opinion makers“). That is a pity as obviously the most important aspect of being able to manage tipping points, is to be able to effectively inspire people in..managing tipping points.

Consider also the fact that

the existence of alternative states within a system and the nearness of tipping points often prove hard to figure out, especially with larger-scale systems

and, regarding climate change,

We do know that there are potential alternative states and probably tipping points. But we don’t know what those alternative states are; nor do we know where the tipping points lie.

The end result can only be that effective action, of the kind that might benefit all but only if everyone participates, would be next to impossible even if everybody suddenly became an AGW believer.

And so at the end of the day for all the efforts activists will ever put in the idea of AGW, the most likely way forward will be, as usual in the history of humanity, “to act blindly in the future, as we have in the past”.

Paul Ehrlich’s Advice To Climate Modelers And Other Soothsayers

An important morsel of wisdom has surfaced in Tom Turner’s (June 2009?) interview-profile of mythical Paul Ehrlich (“The Vindication of a Public Scholar Forty Years After The Population Bomb Ignited Controversy – Paul Ehrlich Continues to Stir Debate“):

So does Ehrlich have any regrets? Things he’d have done differently? “I wish I’d taken more math in high school and college. That would have been useful.” And if he were writing The Population Bomb now, he’d be more careful about predictions

Opinator Cura Te Ipsum

“Opinion-leader heal thyself!”
(doesn’t seem to have found its way onto the pages of the International Herald Tribune)

Dear Editors

It’s very good for Paul Krugman (“The Politics of Spite“, Oct 5) and Tom Friedman (“Where Did ‘We’ Go?“, Sep 29) to lament the decay of contemporary US political debate into mutual accusations and “puerile spite“. Could anybody therefore please explain if those are the same Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman that regularly describe in unyieldingly negative tones anybody not sharing their opinions on global warming/climate change?

A Pickax Against Climatology (Beware Of Your Friends!)

It is funny to notice how, bit by bit, excuse-prone scientists are unwittingly destroying climate science.

For example now we know that decade-long temperature trends are irrelevant (if they cannot be used to show a cooling, or a stability in temperatures, obviously they cannot be used to show an increase either).

We also know that the number of strong Atlantic hurricanes is irrelevant (if the fact that there have been very few of late, cannot be used to invalidate AGW, then even if they return in large numbers, that won’t be suitable to demonstrate AGW either).

In other parts of the blogosphere, we are now learning that past reconstructions are irrelevant too (even if they’re wrong, it doesn’t matter to future warming).

And of course, the IPCC itself has declared in 2007 that attribution of a particular weather event to AGW may as well be impossible. Based on that logic, no mention of “global warming” or “global cooling” or pretty much anything else climate-related, makes any sense when talking about weather (trouble is, somehow all that irrelevant weather magically transmogrifies itself into “climate” over 30 years).

At this rate, climatology will soon remain as a bunch of pure “irrelevants”.

Orders Countermanded, Comrades! Strong El Nino Is Good For You!

Thus spoke Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California on Sep 28. 2009:

A macho El Niño like that of 1997-1998 is off the board, but I’m hoping for a relaxation in the tropical trade winds and a surprise strengthening of El Niño that could result in a shift in winter storm patterns over the United States. If the trade winds decrease, the ocean waters will continue to warm and spread eastward, strengthening the El Niño. That scenario could bring atmospheric patterns that will deliver much-needed rainfall to the southwestern United States this winter. If not, the dice seem to be loaded for below-normal snowpacks and another drier-than-normal winter…Don’t give up on this El Niño. He might make a late break and put his spin on this fall and winter’s weather systems

Wait a moment…so now a non-weak El Niño is good? Is this the first time anybody has said anything positive about El Niño?

No, it isn’t. Still, the ENSO has often been described as some kind of scourge. For example, here’s an article from The Independent on Jan 1, 2007:

A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain’s leading climate experts has warned.

Professor Jones said the long-term trend of global warming – already blamed for bringing drought to the Horn of Africa and melting the Arctic ice shelf – is set to be exacerbated by the arrival of El Niño, the phenomenon caused by above-average sea temperatures in the Pacific.

The WMO said its latest readings showed that a “moderate” El Niño, with sea temperatures 1.5C above average, was taking place which, in the worst case scenario, could develop into an extreme weather pattern lasting up to 18 months, as in 1997-98. The UN agency noted that the weather pattern was already having “early and intense” effects, including drought in Australia and dramatically warm seas in the Indian Ocean, which could affect the monsoons. It warned the El Niño could also bring extreme rainfall to parts of east Africa which were last year hit by a cycle of drought and floods

And from a brochure published the UK’s Met Office in Nov 2006:

Dry spells are not unusual in the Amazon, but normally occur in El Niño years.

[...] the large number of Indonesian fires and associated increase in carbon emissions during the 1997-1998 El Niño event

And the IPCC (TAR)? Here it is:

El Niño is associated with dry conditions in northeast Brazil, northern Amazonia, the Peruvian-Bolivian Altiplano, and the Pacific coast of Central America. The most severe droughts in Mexico in recent decades have occurred during El Niño years, whereas southern Brazil and northwestern Peru have exhibited anomalously wet conditions

More recently, from the IPCC’s AR4, WG2, chapter 1:

After the accelerated shrinkage of the glacier during the 1990s, enhanced by the warm 1997/98 El Niño, Bolivia lost its only ski area

The Union of Soviet Climate Change Writers

The Union of Soviet Climate Change Writers
- a guest blog by Geoff Chambers

I have an unhealthy obsession with Guardian Environment and their Climate Change web site. As the unofficial voice of the worried middle classes, they have (of course) every right to express the consensus views of their readers on global warming – but twenty times a day?

In the year or so that I have been following their climate change coverage, the Guardian has foresaken all pretence of rational argument. Monbiot’s “Bullshit” campaign; the use of the terms “denier”, and “climate creationist”; and the savage censorship on the so-called “Comment is Free” blogs, all disgrace the reputation of this once respectable newspaper.

This weekend they have reached a new lowpoint with their invitation to “ten of our greatest writers” to treat the subject of Global Warming.

There’s a wonderful moment in “the Office” when a confused Brent is trying to dig himself out of the racist hole he’s dug for himself, and his colleague (the sane one) whispers “He’s going to mention ‘Melting Pot’” – and sure enough he does.

UPDATE – Geoff might be referring to this clip

You can get a similar buzz by clicking on Jane Winterton’s prose poem which begins:

I am your inner polar bear

or by reading Andrew Motion’s:

Here are the baffled species taking to high ground,
the already famously lonely polar bear and caribou

The most ardent warmist, the Greenest believer commenting on a Guardian blog would know better than to utter these ineptitudes, simply because a few hours on a climate change blog would make you savvy enough to know that polar bears are passé; everything that needs to be said about polar bears has already been said a million times.

The only people who don’t know that are the country’s greatest writers, apparently.

Not only is there not a single murmur of doubt or dissent from the consensus view of imminent catastrophe; but the sickening regurgitation of the tiredest warmist clichés demonstrates that not one of “our greatest writers” has spent a single hour researching the subject of AGW.

They don’t need to – They Know, and their warning to the doubters is terrible. Here’s Helen Simpson:

Nobody will be able to plead ignorance, either. We can all see what’s happening, on a daily basis, on television

That’s right. Our greatest writers know what’s going on, because they saw it on the telly.

These are proper writers, with talent. But so were the Union of Soviet Writers who extolled Stalin’s five-year plans. No-one is threatening our best writers with the labour camp if they don’t conform. So why do they do it? Are they too stupid, or too lazy, or too cowardly, to confront received opinion?

What’s happening to the intellectual life of our country?

Coral Atolls and Sea Level Rise

Coral Atolls and Sea Level Rise
- a guest blog by Willis Eschenbach

Much has been written of late regarding the impending demise of the world’s coral atolls due to sea level rise. Recently, here in the Solomon Islands, the sea level rise has been blamed for salt water intrusion into the subsurface “lens” of fresh water under some atolls. Beneath the surface of most atolls, there is a lens shaped body of fresh water which floats on the seawater underneath. The claim is that the rising sea levels are contaminating the fresh-water lens with seawater.

These claims of blame ignore several facts. The first and most important fact, discovered by none other than Charles Darwin, is that coral atolls essentially “float” on the surface of the sea. When the sea rises, the atoll rises with it, and when the sea falls, they fall as well. Atolls exist in a delicate balance between new sand and coral rubble being added from the reef, and sand and rubble being eroded by wind and wave back into the sea.

When the sea falls, more sand tumbles from the high part, and more of the atoll is exposed to wind erosion. The atoll falls along with the sea level. When the sea level rises, wind erosion decreases. The coral grows up along with the sea level rise. The flow of sand and rubble onto the atoll continues, and the atoll rises. Since atolls go up and down with the sea level, the idea that they will be buried by sea level rises is totally unfounded. They have gone through sea level rises much larger and much faster than the current one.

Given that established scientific fact, why is there water incursion into the fresh water lenses? Several factors affect this. First and foremost, the fresh water lens is a limited supply. As island populations increase, more and more water is drawn from the lens. The inevitable end of this is the intrusion of sea water into the lens. This affects both wells and plants, which both draw from the same lens. It also leads to unfounded claims that sea level rise is to blame. It is not. Seawater is coming in because fresh water is going out.

The second reason for salt water intrusion into the lens is a reduction in the amount of sand and rubble coming onto the atoll from the reef. When the balance between sand added and sand lost is disturbed, the atoll shrinks. This has two main causes — coral mining and killing the wrong fish. The use of coral for construction in many atolls is quite common. At times this is done in a way that damages the reef as well as taking the coral. This is the visible part of the loss of reef, the part we can see.

What goes unremarked is the loss of the reef sand, which is essential for the continued existence of the atoll. The cause for the loss of sand is the indiscriminate, wholesale killing of parrotfish and other beaked reef-grazing fish. A single parrotfish, for example, creates about half a tonne of coral sand per year. Parrotfish and other beaked reef fish create the sand by grinding up the reef with their massive jaws, digesting the food, and excreting the ground coral.

In addition to making all that fine white sand that makes up the lovely island beaches, beaked grazing fish also increase overall coral health, growth, and production. This happens in the same way that pruning makes a tree send up lots of new shoots, and in the same way that lions keep a herd of zebras healthy and productive. The constant grazing by the beaked fish keeps the corals in full production mode.

Unfortunately, these fish sleep at night, and are easily wiped out by night divers. Their populations have plummeted in many areas in recent years. Result? Much less sand.

The third reason for salt water intrusion into the lens is the tidal cycle. We are currently in the high part of the 18 year tidal cycle. The maximum high tide in Honiara in 2008 was about 10 cm higher than the maximum tide in 1996, and the highs will now decrease until about 2014. People often mistake an unusually high tide for a rise in sea level, which it is not. There has been no increase in the recorded rate of sea level rise. In fact, the global sea level rise has flattened out in the last couple years.

What can be done to turn the situation around for the atolls? There are a number of essential practical steps that atoll residents can take to preserve and build up your atoll, and protect the fresh water lens:

1. Stop having so many kids. An atoll has a limited supply of water. It cannot support an unlimited population. Enough said.

2. Catch every drop that falls. On the ground, build small dams in any watercourses to encourage the water to soak in to the lens rather than run off to the ocean. Put water tanks under every roof. Dig “recharge wells”, which return filtered surface water to the lens in times of heavy rain. Catch the water off of the runways. In Majuro, they have put gutters on both sides of the airplane runway to catch all of the rainwater falling on the runway. It is collected and pumped into tanks. On other atolls, they let the rainwater just run off of the airstrip back into the ocean …

3. Conserve, conserve, conserve. Use seawater in place of fresh whenever possible. Use as little water as you can.

4. Make the killing of parrotfish and other beaked reef grazing fish tabu. Stop fishing them entirely. Make them protected species. The parrotfish should be the national bird of every atoll nation. I’m serious. If you call it the national bird, tourists will ask why a fish is the national bird, and you can explain to them how the parrotfish is the source of the beautiful beaches they are walking on, so they shouldn’t spear beaked reef fish or eat them. Stop killing the fish that make the very ground under your feet. The parrotfish and the other beaked reef-grazing fish are constantly building up your atoll. Every year they are providing tonnes and tonnes of fine white sand to keep your atoll afloat in turbulent times. You should be honoring and protecting them, not killing them. This is the single most important thing you can do.

5. Be very cautious regarding the use of coral as a building material. An atoll is not solid ground. It is is not a constant “thing” in the way a rock island is a thing. An atoll is an eddy, an ever-changing body constantly replenished by a (hopefully) unending river of coral sand and rubble. It is a process, wherein on one side healthy reef plus beaked coral-grazing fish plus storms provide a continuous stream of coral sand and rubble. This sand and rubble are constantly being added to the atoll, making it larger. At the same time, coral sand and rubble are constantly being eaten away, and blown away, and eroded away from the atoll. The shape of the atoll changes from season to season and from year to year. It builds up on this corner, and the sea washes away that corner.

And of course, if anything upsets that balance of sand added and sand lost, if the supply of coral sand and rubble per year starts dropping (say from reef damage or coral mining or killing parrotfish) or if the total sand and rubble loss goes up (say by heavy rains or strong winds or a change in currents) the atoll will be affected.

So if coral is necessary for building, take it sparingly, in spots. Take dead or dying coral in preference to live coral. Mine the deeps and not the shallows. Use hand tools. Leave enough healthy reef around to reseed the area with new coral. A healthy reef is the factory that annually produces the tonnes and tonnes of building material. You mess with it at your peril.

6. Reduce sand loss from the atoll in as many ways as possible. This can be done with plants to stop wind erosion. Don’t introduce plants for the purpose. Encourage and transplant the plants that already grow locally. Reducing water erosion also occurs with the small dams mentioned above, which will trap sand eroded by rainfall. Don’t overlook human erosion. Every step a person takes on an atoll pushes sand downhill, closer to returning to the sea. Lay leaf mats where this is evident, wherever the path is wearing away. People wear a path, and soon it is lower than the surrounding ground. When it rains, it becomes a small watercourse. Invisibly, the water washes your precious sand into the ocean. Invisibly, the wind blows the ground out from under your feet. Protect your island. Stop it from being washed and blown away.

7. Monitor and build up the health of the reef. You and you alone are responsible for the well-being of the amazing underwater fish-tended coral factory that year after year keeps your atoll from disappearing. Coral reseeding programs done by schools have been very successful. Get the kids involved in watching the reef. Educate the people that they are the guardians of the reef. Talk to the fishermen.

8. Expand the atoll. Modern coastal engineering has shown that it is quite possible to “grow” an atoll. The key is to slow down the water as it passes by. The slower the water, the more sand builds up. Slowing the water is accomplished by building low underwater walls perpendicular to the beach. These run out until the ends are a few metres underwater. Normally this is done with a geotextile fabric tubes which are pumped full of concrete. In the atolls the similar effect can be obtained with “gabbions”, wire cages filled with blocks of dead coral. Wire all of the wire cages securely together in a triangular shape, stake them down with rebar, wait for the sand to fill in. It might be possible to do it with old tires, fastened together, with chunks of coral piled on top of them. It will likely take a few years to fill in. Here’s a before and after picture of the system in use on a beach (not an atoll), taken three years apart. Note the low height and triangular shape of the wall extending out from the beach and continuing underwater (made of 3 concrete-filled geotextile fabric tubes). This triangular shape does not attempt to stop the water currents. It just slows them down and directs them toward the beach to deposit their load of sand. Eventually, the entire area fills in with sand.

“Growing a Beach” – before

“Growing a Beach” – after 3 years

Of course to do that, you absolutely have to have a constant source of sand … like for example a healthy reef … with lots of parrotfish. That’s why I said above that the single most important thing is to protect the fish and the reef. If you have beaked fish and a healthy reef, you’ll have plenty of sand and rubble forever. If you don’t, you’re in trouble.

Coral atolls have proven over thousands of years that, if left alone, they can go up and down with any sea level rise. And if we follow some simple conservation practices, they can continue to do so and to support atoll residents. But they cannot survive an unlimited population increase, or unrestricted fishing, or overpumping the water lens, or unrestrained coral mining.

FURTHER REFERENCES:

On sea level rise in Honiara: Pacific Country Report Sea Level & Climate: Their Present State Solomon Islands June 2006

On global sea level rise levelling off: University of Colorado at Boulder’s Sea Level Change

On Darwin’s discovery: Darwin, C., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, 1887

No other work of mine was begun in so deductive a spirit as this; for the whole theory was thought out on the west coast of S. America before I had seen a true coral reef. I had therefore only to verify and extend my views by a careful examination of living reefs. But it should be observed that I had during the two previous years been incessantly attending to the effects on the shores of S. America of the intermittent elevation of the land, together with the denudation and deposition of sediment. This necessarily led me to reflect much on the effects of subsidence, and it was easy to replace in imagination the continued deposition of sediment by the upward growth of coral. To do this was to form my theory of the formation of barrier-reefs and atolls. (Darwin, 1887, p. 98, 99)

On the results of coral mining and changing the reef: Xue, C. (1996) Coastal Erosion And Management Of Amatuku Island, Funafuti Atoll, Tuvalu, 1996, South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC)

On the same topic: Xue, C., Malologa, F. (1995) Coastal sedimentation and coastal management of Fongafale, Funafuti, Tuvalu, SOPAC Technical Report 221

On parrotfish creating sand: this link

On the cause of erosion in Tuvalu: Tuvalu Not Experiencing Increased Sea Level Rise, Willis Eschenbach, Energy & Environment, Volume 15, Number 3, 1 July 2004 , pp. 527-543

On expanding island beaches: Holmberg Technologies

On the dangers of overpopulation: Just look around you …

Climate Is Weather When It Is Not Climate, Weather Is Climate When It Is Not Weather. Or Not?

or…”Climate Belief In Disarray”

Front-page article today by Andrew C Revkin on the International Herald Tribune about the problem of “selling” any urgency for warming-stopping CO2 emission cuts to the public in a non-warming planet (now that that concept has been accepted even by the hardest climate integralist).

Parts of what is reported by Revkin is interesting as it appears there is no shortage of scientists providing all sorts of opinions on why the world has not been warming as expected. Trouble is, if the recent 10-year-long set of observations showing “non-warming” cannot be used to falsify AGW, then no 10-year-long set of any observation showing anything can be used to demonstrate AGW either.

Therefore there is no meaning in the just-released climate forecasts by the Met Office talking about “the odds of a 15-year pause” after analysing “how often decades with a neutral trend in global mean temperature occurred in computer modelled climate change simulations” (my emphasis).

In fact, some are fond to say that climate is a 30-year-long average of weather. Well, if that is true, all we should be scientifically able to talk about with any amount of knowledge, is the climate trends for… 1979.

Everything else is (interesting, but just) speculation.

ps Dr Mojib Latif says he “gives about 200 talks to the public, business leaders and officials each year“. There are 365 days, in most years. At what times during the year is then “climate science” studied at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, Germany? And shall we worry about the absence of private life for AGW scientist-advocates?

pps Shame to Revkin for publishing this absurdist remark by Joe Romm: “We need all the unmuffled warnings we can get“. Why? Because Romm is a known “muffler” himself.

Nobody Does Climate Change Gimmicks As Badly As Gordon Brown

UK Prime Minister (unelected) Gordon Brown, whose ascent to power has sadly coincided with the start of the global financial crisis, has given a little less than three minutes of his time to a blatantly orchestrated gimmick related to Avaaz.org’s “The Global [AGW] Wake Up Call“.

Mr Brown has agreed to appear in a video taking up a phone call from an Avaaz.org’s activist.

Of course it was just perchance that video recording facilities were available exactly where Mr Brown happened to pick up his phone. And of course the visage of the Avaaz.org activist was remarkably well lit, again due to chance.

The video has several low points: first Mr Brown is just too eager to agree on everything, thereby defying the point of the “wake-up call” (it’s like bringing a bucket of sand to the Sahara…).

Secondly, there is a pathetic attempt to claim that “hundreds of people” had shown up in Parliament Square. Despite plenty of video recording equipment, we are only shown a handful of the “hundreds”. There is mention of 300 activists in this eWeek article, but again no pictures or videos of them. Here’s a flickr page full of them (I wonder if there were more than 100 people at most?).

According to Google News, the eWeek article has been published at around 12.30PM London time, remarkably only a few minutes after the Brown phone call took place. And finally, what did Mr Brown promise? Why, to go to Copenhagen himself…the very thing Avaaz.org wanted to persuade him to do.

How strange.

AGW and Health: 2 Journals, 18 Professional Medical Organizations…And Still They Can Be Wrong

More almost-pure nonsense about AGW and health, this time even bigger than last time, from two famous medical journals and 18 professional medical organizations.

• The contents of their latest warning are next-to-irrelevant

Anybody could write them down by using a little catastrophical imagination (poverty, death, plagues, famines, the works). They should be titled “No University degree required”.

• The other big issue is that there is an “original sin”, the convenient forgetting of non-catastrophical peer-reviewed literature.

I demonstrated that a few months ago. And I was only able to analyze the bits I am familiar with…who knows how many more articles have been left out.

• There is however another sign that indicates there is something peculiar about all these reports.  They are supposed to be written by doctors for doctors, yet they don’t confine themselves to areas that require a doctor’s expertise. And so they end up in unsupported claims.

For example there are no “encroaching deserts in Africa” (the opposite might be happening…yet again, some say, because of global warming). And the forays into rainfall patterns and climate modelling in the earlier report can at best make one cringe.

Add to that some blatant untruths (there are no “clear facts…identified in relation to climate change“;and especially so about health issues).

The result can only be a full rejection of the latest claims. That’s why, whatever the intentions (and professional competence) of those writing them, they are almost-pure nonsense.

SciDev.net’s Plea: Get The Science Straight!

Questioning the soundness of climate-related science should not be the realm solely of climate skeptics. That’s what makes the following even more welcome.

“Get the science straight on climate change and disease – Climate change’s complex links with insect-borne disease need solid research — not alarmism that distracts from other crucial factors“

That’s the start of a courageous, no-holds-barred Sep 9, 2009 editorial by Sian Lewis on SciDev.net (“a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to providing reliable and authoritative information about science and technology for the developing world“).

In normal times, Lewis’ words would sound obvious in the extreme (and no: SciDev.net is not a hotbed of hard-core AGW skeptics – read also this). But these times of “climate porn” (see also here and here) are not normal times at all.

A few excerpts from Lewis’ article:

• research agendas must both respond to social needs and offer good science
• fulfilling the second condition is more tricky
• There is clearly a link between insect-borne diseases and climate
• But a whole host of non-climate factors also influence disease transmission…
• So we mustn’t go overboard, reading too much into the role of climate change at the expense of research into other triggers of these major diseases
• good science is crucial for good policy
• The task is urgent — but this must not lead to short-cuts

The editorial is an introduction to

“a series of articles [that] explore the evidence for (and against) the notion that climate change will worsen the burden of insect-borne disease, highlights gaps in our knowledge, and provides advice to policymakers“

Interestingly, given that

“how well models can predict these effects is a particularly thorny issue in the debate“,

then

“the solution, according to Jonathan Cox, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is to forget predictive modelling for the moment and focus on research with a better chance of improving disease control“.

“Forget predictive modelling”…if only!!

The Funnier Side Of Monbiot & Schmidt’s “Plimer Débâcle”

It is clear that George Monbiot has made himself the loser by not agreeing to publicly debate with Ian Plimer about global warming in London in November. The rule is very simple and universal: a no-show is invariably a loss.

The whole thing looks like an elaborate trap prepared by experienced debater Plimer with the goal of convincing Monbiot to run away from the debate. And it looks like it worked.

Talk about the elephant being afraid of the mouse. Yet again, one is glad not have the likes of Monbiot (and Schmidt) on one’s side!

But wait…it gets even funnier. What I just wrote might have crossed a few minds already, of people unfortunately too eager to bite the bait, therefore missing the chance to take their own reasoning to its natural conclusions:

• Take Schmidt’s blog on the topic, where he argues that Plimer’s list of questions “is quite transparently a device to avoid dealing with Monbiot’s questions and is designed to lead to an argument…” and then…marches on onto the device regardless!
• Greenfyre defines Plimer’s questions as “pure juvenile bafflegab” that should not be “dignif[ied]…with repetition“. Perhaps. Why then repeat that very same concept FOURTEEN times? It certainly looks like dignifying them to me
• Greenfyre even identifies as “possible answers…to answer them in the spirit in which they were asked…give answers equally convoluted and nonsensical“. If that is so, what is the meaning of going on and on with links to sites where Pilmer’s questions are taken instead at face value?
• Likewise for Tim Lambert: “I suspect that this is a tactic so he can weasel out of answering Monbiot’s questions” before a link to RealClimate to respond to Pilmer’s questions nevertheless…
• Chris Colose appears to have a vague idea that there is something going on: “all together this is jumbled up nonsense and shows that Plimer is intentionally trying to mislead others“. Mysterious cue then to “for other of Plimer’s questions, I’ll let commenters tackle those“. Isn’t that a way for Colose to participate in the misleading?
• Tamino…well, Tamino is obviously too superior a human being to recognize a thing.

=======

Dear Schmidt/Greenfyre/Lambert/Colose: one suggestion if I may dare.

If you are debating with anybody, and they use any logical device of any kind, please oh please DO NOT follow through along the device, for any reason whatsoever.

Otherwise, it’s not going to look pretty…

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/09/14/correspondence-with-ian-plimer/