WSJ Editorial Board: Head Still Buried in the Sand
) While the rest of the world has basically accepted the conclusion of the latest IPCC report, one small village still holds out against the tide - the Wall Street Journal editorial board. This contrasts sharply with the news section of the paper which is actually pretty good. They had a front-page piece on business responses to global warming issues which not only pointed out that business was taking an interest in carbon reduction, but the article more or less took as a given that the problem was real. However, as we have pointed out before, the editorial pages operate in a universe all their own.
This would not be of much concern if the WSJ wasn't such an influential paper in the US. However, the extent of its isolation on this issue is evident from the amusing reliance on the error-prone Christopher Monckton. They quote him saying that the sea level rise predictions were much smaller than in IPCC TAR (no they weren't), that the human contribution to recent changes has been 'cut by a third' (no it hasn't), and that the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) was written by politicians (no it wasn't - the clue is in the name).
Even more wrong is the claim that "the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous 'hockey stick' ". Not only are the three original "hockey stick" reconstructions from the IPCC (2001) report shown in the (draft) paleoclimate chapter of the new report, but they are now joined by 9 others. Which is why the SPM comes to the even stronger conclusion that recent large-scale warmth is likely to be anomalous in the context of at least the past 1300 years, and not just the past 1000 years.
Thus on any index of wrongness, this WSJ editorial scores pretty high. What puzzles us is why their readership, who presumably want to know about issues that might affect their bottom line, tolerate this rather feeble denialism. While we enjoy pointing out their obvious absurdities, their readers would probably be better off if the WSJ accepted Jeffery Sachs' challenge. For if they can't be trusted to get even the basic checkable facts right on this issue, why should any of their opinions be taken seriously?
7 February 2007 at 8:53 AM
I’m curious about Sachs’ challenge. The link just goes to http://realclimate.org
[Response:fixed - thanks. -gavin]
7 February 2007 at 9:08 AM
Have you contacted any senior WSJ staff members regarding your concerns? I would be interested in hearing their response.
7 February 2007 at 9:15 AM
Why indeed, however for some hard liners of which the editorial section of the WSJ seems to be one they will never capitulate on this subject, well not until money can be made from it and not just a cost. Trouble is when your entire political system in many important ways is directly related to how business operates and how funding and lobbying takes place indicates to me one thing, that science should play a far more prominent role in some aspects of Government and how it operates, fat chance of that.
The scientific method is by far the best method of doing politics in certain areas, however emotion, sentiment, resistance to change, profits, backstabbing, doublecrossing, vested interests etc will always be a part of the political system. It explains to me why the bottom line in the USA revolves around the need to deny climate change in order to maintain prosperity and progress at all costs. The American way of life is non negoitable as I have heard GW Bush say, roll on 20 tonnes per head of capita until it all runs out.
7 February 2007 at 9:16 AM
It puzzles RC that the WSJ readership tolerate the editorial board’s denialism. Well they may not do so for very long if it gets in the way of factual reporting, but I doubt many serious businesspeople base their decisions on WSJ editorials. They will mostly know that the Gospel of the Free Market, as preached by the WSJ board, is just politically useful hogwash, helping to disguise the ways governments (and particularly that of the USA) side with big business against the general public. The WSJ board, on the other hand, are True Believers (which is why they have to be denialists, since anthropogenic climate change shows that their theology is nonsense); and as long as the WSJ readership want the message preached, it’s best to have True Believers preaching it, as they are likely to be most convincing. So the news pages / editorial disconnect is quite functional.
7 February 2007 at 9:17 AM
Bravo, RealClimate, for continuing to challenge the WSJ editorial board, which ought in simple civic fairness to offer its commentary page readers a comprehensive debate even if, for whatever reasons, its own minds are made up. I wish that RC scientists would submit op-eds regularly to the WSJ, and then, if turned down or stonewalled, I wish you’d post the op-eds on your site and let the world see that the WSJ won’t support open civic discussion. The world is watching.
7 February 2007 at 9:25 AM
This is fine - as far as it goes. Have you sent a version of it to the Letters Editor yet? You don’t have to convince us. You have to have a dialogue with them.
7 February 2007 at 9:30 AM
You are making another category error, although a common one. There is ONE Wall Street Journal, and as long as people (RC is not the only group) keep affirming part of the paper, their position will NEVER change.
The WSJ is written for the financial community. What they need to know is on the news pages, what they want to believe in the editorial section. This is by design. Anyone who affirms any part of the paper is buying into this strategy. Frankly, it’s all day old fishwrap. Perhaps the best way of putting this is that if the WSJ wishes to regain any credibility they will have to abandon their ignorant stance on climate change (among other things). In talking to reporters from the WSJ, one should say, how can I trust you? Your paper has zero credibility on these issues. Always point out examples such as the Monckton provocation. If they protest that the news division is different, point out strongly that it is one paper, and they don’t sell the news and the editorials separately.
7 February 2007 at 9:38 AM
I’ve noticed that since the release of the SPM, the blogosphere has erupted in an explosion of activity. On the one hand, denialists are in a frenzy, trying (in vain, it seems to me) to stem the tidal wave of public opinion. On the other hand, advocates are increasing their warnings and the hitherto-apathetic are awakening.
In the public debate over global warming, the denialists aren’t just losing. They have lost. Now we need to get the public to take the issue to the voting booth; then the politicians will swing into action. And when we persuade the public to take the issue to the marketplace, the WSJ editorial board will do an “about face” with dizzying speed.
7 February 2007 at 9:46 AM
I disagree with tamino (a dangerous thing to do). In the debate over the science involved in global warming the denialists have lost. In the debate over what to do, they are winning;)
7 February 2007 at 9:53 AM
Ditch WSJ and start up with FT.
7 February 2007 at 9:56 AM
tamino: You’re not the only one who’s noticed this change in the debate. I’m convinced that this sudden clatter is just the warmup act for the main show. As more people learn about CC and demand action, those with a vested interest in “business as usual” will fight like the proverbial cornered rat.
Because the reduction of GHG emissions touches so much of our daily lives in a country like the US, I expect the CC “debate” to mushroom into an issue at least as polarizing and contentious as abortion, school prayer, flag burning, free speech, etc. are in the US. And there will always be a few high profile op-ed outlets, like the WSJ, that will stake out an extreme position, regardless of the facts. No matter how much evidence one can assemble, they will continue to pander to their base of true believers (or deniers).
And thanks once again to RC for continuing to fight the good fight. I also think, as others here have already said, that RC should forward their thoughts to the WSJ and follow-up here if/when the WSJ refuses to publish them.
7 February 2007 at 10:08 AM
Apparently, Congressional Republicans are avid readers and believers in the WSJ editorial page. A poll published by the National Journal (http://syndication.nationaljournal.com/images/203Insiderspoll_NJlogo.pdf) of congressional attitudes toward climate change reveals only 13% of 10 Republican senators and 45 House Republicans (names of those surveyed are included) answered yes to the question, “Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?” This figure has actually dropped by 10% since a similar poll in April, 2006, while the affirmative response among Democrats has risen from 88% to 95%, indicating a remarkable polarization and illustrating the difficulty of accomplishing anything on a national level until 2009, or perhaps even beyond.
7 February 2007 at 10:08 AM
RE # 9
AGW scorecard:
a) debate over the science of AGW — the denialists have lost.
b) debate over what to do — denialists are winning
c) AGW long term impacts to corporate infrastructure and
investments — corporations are losing……
how and where to relocate Houston, Galveston, Bay Town petrochemical
industry (40 percent of US petro-chem production capacity)located at
sea level which (gosh!) is slowly rising.
7 February 2007 at 10:13 AM
The responses to the WSJ editorial are as interesting as the editorial itself. Our own experience mirrors this. Every time the paper that I write editorials for prints an article about AGW they are inundated by hyperbolic letters to the editor from foes. There are apparently a significant number of individuals who will never accept the notion of AGW and those who write to us tend to object on religious grounds when you get to the bottom of things. To them the science doesn’t mean anything. Now that the majority of public opinion has shifted it’s time to move on.
Scientists and skeptics have challenged psychics, voodoo health care practitioners and others of their ilk for years and not accomplished much. Sometimes you have to just ignore the lunatic fringe.
7 February 2007 at 10:18 AM
I disagree with Eli on the WSJ thing. The editorial and news sections are completely walled off at the WSJ. That is by design. I’ve met numerous WSJ reporters and they don’t agree with the editorial page, but it’s not under their control and haranguing the reporters about this will accomplish little. You’d be preaching to the choir.
On another note, Senator Inouye is holding a hearing in the Commerce committee on climate change as I type. I noticed that he brought up the problem with federal scientists being suppressed from discussing their research.
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/
What is wrong with Senator Inouye? Doesn’t he read Roger Pielke Jr.? There is no problem.
7 February 2007 at 10:34 AM
Several of the posts here assume that the entire business world has a vested interest in “business as usual.” That is true only for limited parts of the business world. Other parts are aggressively investing in new business opportunities created by the need to address AGW and the related need for energy security. See, for example:
http://www.forbes.com/energy/2006/11/15/energy-solar-investing-biz-energy_cz_kd_1115solar.html
The WSJ editorial board seems to be dragging its feet in an effort to protect the interests of energy companies, a limited, but large and influential segment. However, it should at least be honest in how it does that. Eventually, it too will be swept up by the gathering tsunami of creative new approaches to energy production driven, not by moral imperative, but by recognized business opportunies. Note in the above article, however, the importance of tax policy in encouraging such efforts.
7 February 2007 at 10:42 AM
I agree with the comments of others that RC should respond to the WSJ via an op-ed. I would also suggest that an op-ed in the Washington Post would be timely and would be read by most members of Congress. It should addess the efforts to discredit the science, and would best be done before the policy recommendations are published by the IPCC. That way, you can focus on the science and not give the appearance of getting involved in the policy discussion.
7 February 2007 at 10:58 AM
I have been a WSJ subscriber and reader for decades. I’m also the publisher of a local business newspaper (Charleston, South Carolina). I would never allow the tripe that passes for informed opinion on the WSJ’s editorial page into my publication. The bias is so obvious it’s laughable.
While the politics of business owners and managers is most likely skewed to the right of center, it’s a mistake to stereotype business people that way. Progressives, moderates, liberals and just plain pragmatists populate the upper echelons of business, along with “conservatives” however defined.
I’d bet if The WSJ did an unbiased survey of readers, they’d find a large percentage who, like me, simply ignore the editorial page. Yes,the members of the editorial board are “true believers” in their conservative causes, but if they believe they are really that influential, I’d also call them “legends in their own minds.”
7 February 2007 at 11:08 AM
RE: “business as usual” interests, I want to make it clear that my prior remarks in (11) were meant to say that there are some such interests, but that they’re by no means the entire economy. (In reading Ron’s (16) just now, I realized that I did a poor job of explaining my thoughts.)
I’m an economist by training (but I’m a good guy, really), and I’m convinced that there’s an enormous amount of economic good to be had from GHG mitigation steps. As I like to say–who do you think will build and maintain and eventually replace all those wind turbines and solar panels we’re making? Martians? The arrival of peak oil and our awareness of AGW will trigger a massive rebalancing and restructuring of economies around the world. It won’t be a quick or painless transition, by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s one we’ll find a way to make even if we have to drag the deniers along, kicking and screaming.
7 February 2007 at 11:11 AM
1) Canada has a national right wing would-be rival to the Globe and Mai-the National Post. Over at DeSmogBlog, there’s a very sad link to a “news” series on how valid the denialists’ arguments are. The “news” side, not the editorial side.has an excellent survey on attitudes to climate change and what to do about it (you have to register to read the whole thing.) The really disturbing nugget is in the slicing of attitudes by education and party affiliation. Republicans who are college graduates are way less likely to believe climate change is happening than those who are not. Maybe those college grads all read the WSJ editorial page, It’s the opposite for the Dems. Must be all the liberal media.
2) Kudos to Miles Coburn (#12) for the National Journal (*not* to be confused with the National Review!) for the reference to the Congressional so-called Leadership.
3) the Pew Research Center
7 February 2007 at 11:15 AM
With respect to the poll cited by Miles Coburn #12–National Journal insiders–and the WSJ article. I think emotion, attitude, and ignorance explain much in this context.
Affective attitudes act to filter and gate information–kind of analogous to the ozone hole confirmation by NASA delayed by the data acquisition routines that hid satellite data reporting the hole, that was in contrast to empirical ground source data Of course, later it was found that the ozone hole was there, just that anomalous data was tossed out.
Consequently, knowledge and interpretation can and should change as evidence presents itself; an emotional attachment can explain why a scientist such as Lindzen holds onto ideas, that in themselves have portions of validity, but fail in the context of the whole. The name of the American scientist who dismissed plate tectonics to his death escapes me, but clearly forces of emotionally mediated attachment clouded his view.
Moreover, I’ve heard this *relegion* portrayal about anthropogenic climate change from at least two house staffers in the last six months. In their context, aspects of climate change are beyond their comprehension, since learning the relationships of climate change is on many orders and levels of understanding, and the concepts can be abstract. With a basic understanding of the natural world and the physics involved, there will be no way to even consider the ramifications. For example, one staffer asked me if volcanoes were the main source of increased carbon dioxide in the air today. He categorized those who present humans as the source of warming as religious zealots.
If one is unable to understand the abstract factual relationships that resolve to very real risks, the tendency is to apply patterns of known relationships and established order. In as much as matters of spirit and religion preclude a hard edge of logic, dismissing the very real risks of a gross alteration of the constituency of the atmosphere on the basis of belief, while foolish and stupid, can at least be explained in a cause and effect context.
7 February 2007 at 11:23 AM
There is a way to get free access to the Wall Street Journal with a netpass from: http://news.congoo.com
This has been in several blogs lately.
7 February 2007 at 11:30 AM
The effort that is going into the contrarian effort is really remarkable, and seems to center around a list of talking points that have been passed around; the stance hasn’t changed much in around a decade. I’ll post a few examples here so people can see how this works:
Just to be clear, these are the talking points that are distributed to denialists via the network of groups described by http://www.exxonsecrets.org
From the “National Center for Public Policy Research”
1) Sun Is Real Culprit Responsible for Global Warming, released June 1998 (a replay of Charles Muller’s arguments, i.e. #240 IPCC SPM thread)
2) Global warming is a natural phenomenon, May 1998 (the tendency now is not to use the words ‘global warming’, but rather ‘climate change’)
3)Global warming ‘consensus’ claims don’t hold water: Scientists simply don’t agree that global warming is occurring Includes an attack on the IPCC as a political rather than a scientific process - a claim that Roger Pielke Jr. has picked up on, and is riding for all it’s worth.
4)Myths and Facts about global warming, July 1997 This one has the statement “whether or not the planet is warming depends on one’s reference points” - which is why I find the use of the 1971-2000 and 1980-1999 baselines for NOAA and the IPCC disturbing.
5)Why global warming might be good, July 1997 Agriculture flourishes, we’ll be saved from a new ice age, etc.
6)Why President Clinton’s Global Warming Plan is a Bum Steer, Aug 1994 This is just to show how long this has been going on.
7)The Hole in Ozone Alarmists’ Dire Predictions, Sept 1994 Yes - their favorite word - Alarmists.
9)The EPA Global Warming Report, “Cooking the Books” This one is interesting, because it lists “the 10 second response”, “the 30 second response”, and “the discussion” - ready for regurgitation.
10)Global Warming: Latest National Academies of Science Study Poorly Reported again, it lists the 10 sec, 30 sec, and discussion talking points.
Finally, a wrap-up:Bonn Global Warming Earth Summit Fact Kit, NCPPR
Here, the NCPPR listed the ‘top ten charges’ behind the Kyoto Protocol and provided ’succinct talking points for rebuttal’ - I’ll leave out the policy/economic issues and stick to the science ones:
5. Charge: We have already seen man-caused global warming in this century.
Response: Actually, we have seen no sign of man-induced global warming at all. The computer models used in U.N. studies say the first area to heat under the “greenhouse gas effect” should be the lower atmosphere, known as the troposphere. Highly accurate, carefully checked satellite data has shown absolutely no warming. There has been surface warming of about half a degree Celsius, but this is far below the customary natural swings in surface temperatures.
The satellite record clearly shows tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling. The surface warming continues as well.
6. Charge: Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are the primary cause of global warming.
Response: There are many indications that carbon dioxide does not play a significant role in global warming. Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel on climate change estimates that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would produce a temperature increase of only one degree Celsius.
In fact, clouds and water vapor appear to be far greater factors related to global temperature. According to Lindzen of MIT and scientists at NASA, clouds and water vapor may play a significant role in regulating the earth’s temperature to keep it more constant.
Lindzen again, displaying his psychological obsession with the stable equilibrium notion of climate - sort of a ‘Gaia theory’ of the self-regulating climate - completely unsubstantiated.
11. Charge: Still, the warming we have seen so far is unprecedented.
Response: Actually, it is not. A thousand years ago the earth was in a very warm period, but around 1300 the Northern Hemisphere entered an ice age. Over the last 200 years, the earth has been steadily warming. It is also interesting to note that just 30 years ago, there was great concern about global cooling.
Again, this is a blatant piece of disinformation.
12. Charge: But what about all those computer models that show global warming? They can’t all be wrong.
Response: But they have been wrong - continually. In 1988 the IPCC computer models predicted temperatures would rise 0.8 C per decade. By 1990, the estimates were down to 0.3 C and by 1995 it was 0.2 C. So, the recent changes of estimates are nothing new nor are they any more likely to be right. As shown in item 5, in fact, none of the predicted warming has occurred. See the IPCC report…
In addition, the computer models leave out a wide variety of major climate mechanisms, including clouds. Most notably they leave out a natural heat vent phenomenon over the South Pacific that appears to have a self-regulating effect of the earth’s temperature.
Yes - that’s a reference to Lindzen’s IRIS nonsense- that guy is shameless!
Sorry if this is a bit long- but this is how the denialist camp works - distribute a set of talking points to public relations types and have them repeat the same set of disinformation over and over, in every forum they can get into.
7 February 2007 at 11:31 AM
I have always found that if you keep challenging businesses with the “Impact of businesses on the environment” they just roll it up into the entire Tax debate and circle the wagons.
There is a significant body of information now which identifies what impact the “Climate” is going to have on us over the next century.
Reports such as teh Lombard Street Research report recently released in the UK highlights that if we don’t do something “now” then the cost to businesses will be massively higher than doing nothing.
It’s high time we saw reports estimating the loss of manufacturing capacity, company impact by storms, flooding and storm surge which details the real cost of doing nothing.
It is time the analysis of impact by the “Environment” on the “Businesses” was publicly debated and put ito real $ terms so that businesses can do their own risk analysis and plan for the future.
After all it might be cheaper paying the piper than having the Climate call the tune….
7 February 2007 at 11:46 AM
There may be a Berlin wall between the WSJ editorial and news sides, but the bottom line is that there is one piece of fishwrap that you buy called the Wall Street Journal. If you go along with their “it’s not our fault” escapism, you are part of the problem, not the solution. Frankly I don’t care if they folk on the news side don’t agree with the editorial side or visa versa, I want to bring all possible reality to bear on the publisher.
Moreover it is a mistake to believe that the WSJ is aimed at businesses in general. It is aimed financial businesses, a subset with its own tribal customs. To have an impact you would have to show that climate change is negatively affecting insurance, real estate and stocks, not businesses in general. Emphasize the negative consequences for insurance and real estate if you want to speak to Dow Jones, the WSJ publisher.
7 February 2007 at 12:01 PM
Re #9 I disagree with tamino (a dangerous thing to do). In the debate over the science involved in global warming the denialists have lost. In the debate over what to do, they are winning;)
Maybe the denialists are winning the latter debate in the US - not in the UK, and I’d think not in Europe generally, nor in Australia, where I understand the current drought has woken people up. In China and India, the debate’s probably still confined to narrow elite groups, but I’d guess the situation among those is similar to that in Europe - lip service to the need for serious action, now a cross-party consensus in the UK, but very little more. However, the action-denialists haven’t given up here: the Fraser Institute’s “ISPM” launch event in London included not just the ludicrous Bellamy, but Nigel Lawson - long Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (tr: Treasury Secretary), and still a person of influence. His line was to admit climate change is happening, and human actions have played a part (while minimising the extent of this), but to argue that Stern badly miscalculated (underestimating costs of action and ignoring benefits of warming), and that action would involve huge near-term sacrifices for doubtful long-term gains. As the IPCC Fourth Assessment passes, and other issues come to the fore, I’ve no doubt the action-denialists will try to move out from their redoubts in the right-wing press and thinktanks to recapture the Conservative Party.
7 February 2007 at 12:06 PM
Re 25
That is interesting, because insurance companies are leading the charge on forcing recognition of the risks of global warming.
Re 19
Lou, as an economist, I hope you will have a look at Paul Samuelson’s op-ed piece in today’s Washington Post. It basically says to pass the KoolAid, that we are toast!
7 February 2007 at 12:10 PM
Well, I guess that Eli and I will have to respectfully disagree. News is news and opinion is opinion. The WSJ editorial page is about as bad as you can get, but it’s clearly labelled opinion.
On another note. the Senate hearings are discussing how NASA and NOAA have received around a 30% cut to their climate change budgets over the last couple of years. This is vitally important to note.
And then there is this question. Why does Sherwood Rowland at UC Irvine hate Roger Pielke Jr.? From his written testimony:
“In most of my experience, our colleagues in national laboratories have had almost as much freedom in their presentations. Presentation of one’s work as one sees it is the bedrock of the scientific enterprise. However, in the last several years, my scientific conversations have run into far too many instances in which the reports of the significance of the work have been subsequently changed by others, often by persons with less, or even no, expertise in the subject at hand. Some of these conflicts have been gathered together, with verified details, by the Union of Concerned Scientists and by the Government Accountability Project, and are presented here today.”
7 February 2007 at 12:40 PM
Re #14
lunatic fringe………..
you mean like those that claimed the earth was round when the consensus was it was flat…..
or do you mean the ones that said the earth orbits the sun when the consensus was the earth was the center of the universe…..
where is Einstein when you need him……
[Response: Usually I don’t approve witless and inflammatory statements like this one, but I think our readers could have a good time explaining why the consensus represented in the IPCC report is different from the situation described above. It’s the denialists that are in the position of the flat-Earthers. By the way, while there was clearly a consensus at one time for the geocentric picture of the Universe, the “flat Earth” picture was generally held only by the ignorant, and not by, say, Greek-inspired geometers who had studied the matter –raypierre]
7 February 2007 at 12:59 PM
[[Sorry if this is a bit long- but this is how the denialist camp works - distribute a set of talking points to public relations types and have them repeat the same set of disinformation over and over, in every forum they can get into. ]]
That’s exactly right. Whenever there’s a big story about climate change on AOL, the global warming board there gets about a hundred posts from denialists, and they all list the same misinformation — it’s the sun, can’t predict the weather, volcanoes pollute more. It’s very hard to believe they aren’t being coordinated in some way, if only by all getting their talking points from the same source or sources.
7 February 2007 at 1:00 PM
I hope this isn’t too off topic but I was wondering if anyone cared to comment on the Andy Revkin New York Times piece of 2/4/07 re: IPCC AR4 (SPM), “The Basics: a disaster epic (in slo-mo).”
Would you consider this another “curious piece” (see RC 1/3/07) - or not?
[Response: No, this was fine. What was ‘curious’ in the previous piece was the suggestion that only now have voices in the ‘middle’ been raised and that this was somehow ‘heretical’. Neither suggestion stands up to much scrutiny unless your only sources of information were Fox News and and Earth First. - gavin]
[Response: I actually have a slightly different take on this from Gavin. I was indeed a bit disappointed that there was no mention of the fact that the sea level projections in the report erred greatly on the conservative side (essentially ignoring the possibility of substantial contributions of melting ice sheets), and that there is a significant probability that non-trivial (e.g. a meter or more) rise in global sea level could actually take place over the next century. It is unclear that this problem will really unfold as slowly as was implied in the piece. See for example this Washington Post editorial from the other day. -mike]
7 February 2007 at 1:15 PM
Well, they wouldn’t print my comment to the article online. I’m shocked.
http://markyork.blogspot.com/2007/02/wall-street-tards.html
As I’ve said before two of the editors at opinionJournal don’t have college degrees in anything including journalism.
7 February 2007 at 2:18 PM
Re: the possibility of non-trivial sea level rises within a century
I can’t imagine all that ice and snow melting and swooshing into the sea. It just isn’t going to melt like snow in Atlanta since, even with a 6C rise in temps, it isn’t going to be above freezing in the Antarctic in the winter and probably not much above in the summer. 6C is still just 6C. But extend the horizon beyond 93 years and I can’t imagine sea levels NOT rising to a dangerous degree. Somehow or other the year 2100 has gotten enshrined as an outer limit of our concern. 2100 isn’t an outer limit of concern. I’m sure it’s just there as a way to focus attention.
7 February 2007 at 2:25 PM
I am a proud skeptic and know a politics-driven propaganda campaign when I see one. It is becoming very difficult to find unbiased scientific information on this topic. Like true journalism, it may in fact be dead. Most difficult to find are realistic assessments of the costs of change.
By all means, reduce US dependence on foreign oil. Even try to eliminate fossil fuels altogether. Wonderful. But also give realistic estimates of the costs involved. Just how many fly-over states in the US do you want to plow over to grow ethanol?
Above all, admit that energy research by large corporations encouraged by tax incentive generating governments is more likely to affect change than feel good carbon-dioxide footprint reduction plans and ecological sin taxation.
Fossil fuel is a very cheap and effective form of energy that is not easily replaced. It comes out of the ground, from many places on earth that are useless to almost any other purpose, and is easily transported.
Impress me by championing the expansion of nuclear power.
7 February 2007 at 2:35 PM
What concerns me here is that the publishers of the WSJ, Dow Jones are one of the major providers of investment advice. And, if they sincerely believe that climate change is not a real problem, then they will advise investors to avoid firms that undertake steps to mitigate climate change, and firms that provide products that are climate-neutral, directing capital away from the firms which are solving the problem. Persuading Dow Jones would make a huge difference. But how?
7 February 2007 at 2:44 PM
“Just how many fly-over states in the US do you want to plow over to grow ethanol?”
How many are not already plowed over? Real journalism is far from dead, but it lends credence to sources not deserving of the attention except as examples of false information.
“from many places on earth that are useless to almost any other purpose, and is easily transported.”
Well it depends how one defines “purpose,” such as nursery to most of the wildlife on the North American continent. I take it this is an unwise use in your view? I don’t call an 800-mile pipeline and tankers prone to crashing and fishery-ending spills either “easy” or risk free. Using the wasted natural gas would be beneficial in the short term to replace coal.
The scientific information is unbiased to all but the biased. They just don’t want to hear it so denial is their only option. I’m hearing the Song of the Dodo.
7 February 2007 at 2:50 PM
The WSJ editorial folks might want to talk with the reinsurance industry. Reinsurers (notably Swiss Re, the second largest reinsurer) are taking GW very seriously, for the simple reason that it has the potential to cost them a helluva lot of money.
7 February 2007 at 2:52 PM
To Ed Barkley (#34),
I shouldn’t speak for them and I don’t read often enough to know if this is true all the time, but:
RC is not a policy discussion forum; it is a science discussion forum; RC does not want to champion taxation versus nuclear versus whatever else. I would hope that anyone could come here and be impressed with the science without having to find out where the authors stand on issues outside of their expertise.
7 February 2007 at 3:03 PM
Most of the people in your thread attribute the views held on climate in the WSJ editorial page to that newspaper’s desire to protect special interests. This is false. The WSJ believes in the primacy and efficiency of markets. They consequently believe that market mechanisms can address climate change and that many people who advocate radical policies in response to climate change are on the left and are trying to find a justification for government intervention.
The WSJ editorial page science may be bad. However, it is important to recognise that they are ideological rather than venal. Indeed the WSJ editorial pages has spoken out against market interventions that would benefit big business (such as ethanol subsidies). By calling them stooges of the energy industry you simply serve to confirm their prejudices. You would also do a whole lot better with their consituency if you could show how carbon caps would ameliorate the problem. (Particularly given how difficult Europe finds it to comply with Kyoto). The science may be clear, but poltically people are not going to vote for widespread quotas and taxes if all this means is a reduction of a fraction of calvin many decades in the future.
7 February 2007 at 3:04 PM
You write: “What puzzles us is why their readership, who presumably want to know about issues that might effect their bottom line, tolerate this rather feeble denialism”
One guess is that that this readership and the WSJ editorial board championing such denialism, understand climate change much more so than they admit, and have already reached the conclusion (right or wrong) that the 70-80% GHG reductions needed to forestall catastrophic climate change is, from a geo-political standpoint, a very unlikely scenario. So their apparent chosen strategy is to oppose the prospect of our world spending the enormous effort, and vast sums of money, (much of which they presumably conclude may come from themselves and their interests) while they go about the clandestine and very private task of determining exactly how they can best ride out the upcoming decades-long climate change ’storm.’
Even James Lovelock’s dire prediction of our planet’s future holds out hope that the higher altitudes will remain relatively habitable to humans. Don’t be surprised if the WSJ readership and editorial board busy themselves during upcoming decades not in finding ways to mitigate the increasing warming, but in finding ways to ensure the future of their progeny, (like, for example, by buying up large tracts of real estate in the higher altitudes).
WSJ readers generally comprise the population who has for 37 years opposed the U.N.’s 1970 resolution that the 22 richest countries donate 0.7% of their GNP annually to developing countries whose children die at the rate of about 29,000 each day. (The U.S., for example, has never given even 1/3rd of that pledged amount each year). WSJ readers have a long record of choosing self-interest over the desperate needs of large populations.
Those who publish and read the WSJ are, in general, not without a high degree of propensity and expertise in advancing and protecting their personal interests. Asking them to voluntarily act otherwise is, unfortunately, a prospect that scientists would be wise to seriously consider a “very unlikely” scenario.
7 February 2007 at 3:08 PM
re: 34. “I…know a politics-driven propaganda campaign when I see one.”
No. The only “politics-driven propaganda campaign” is the one driven by head-in-the-sand anti-science denialists and the Exxon/Mobils of the world. The climate science and methods use to research global warming are strong and valid. Peer-review has supported that. The research results are readily available for reading and learning. Try searching for and reading about the various IPCC reports via Google instead of close-mindedly believing and restating what someone else with little scientific credentials tells you to think or say. There are many links given here at this site.
7 February 2007 at 3:08 PM
I just heard the tail end of the hearing this morning on c-span, link in here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/7/111913/7560
and have a question for you climate scientists: worst case scenario: if we continue to do nothing:
1. how high could the Co2 ppm rise to, and
2. could that swing our climate from one suitable for oxygen-breathers like all life now, to one suitable only for carbon-dioxide-breathers, similar to the atmosphere enjoyed 3.8 billion years ago by the cyanobacteria?
Some scientist here (upthread on the IPPC day I think…?) described the cyanobacteria 3.8 billion years ago as “perpetrating the greatest fratricide ever” in COMPLETELY switching the air on this planet tfrom Co2 to O2.
(Mostly Co2/mostly O2, I mean…)So, is that possible?
Could we repeat (pre)history - in reverse?
7 February 2007 at 3:08 PM
What is happening on Realclimate?
More and more politics and less and less climate science?
However, there are many points to explicite in SPM.
For example, the main differences between the TAR and AR4, the introduction of C-cycle feedback in the AR4, the best precision of the forecasts, aerosols between 1990 and 2006,…
[Response:Understood. We will be focussing more on the scientific nuances in posts to come…. -gavin]
7 February 2007 at 3:10 PM
Re #34:
As has been pointed out a number of times in a number of RC threads, fossil fuels are comparatively cheap only as long as the producers and consumers are allowed to externalize the costs associated with dumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Make them internalize the costs and suddenly fossil fuels won’t seem so ‘cheap’.
An analogy I heard recently is that saying fossil fuels are cheaper than alternative energy sources is like saying it would be cheaper to dump raw sewage into rivers than to build a water treatment plants. That’s true, of course, unless you live downstream. The true cost of any activity includes the cost of cleaning up the waste.
7 February 2007 at 3:12 PM
People believe the shlock printed on this subject by the likes of the WSJ editorial board in part because scientific literacy in this country is pathetically low. Obvious, perhaps, but when scientists have to reduce their findings to the level of bumper-sticker thinking to get the message across, even the WSJ troglodytes armed only with degrees in philosophy and economics can engage in “debate” on the subject. Of course they wouldn’t know a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test if it bit them on the a##, but that’s irrelevant; read enough Wittgenstein or market theory and you won’t get bogged down in scientific details. Making falsifiable statements about the real world is so passe, you know.
7 February 2007 at 3:19 PM
Re #35, on anti-AGW investment advice by Dow Jones: I don’t think it matters much. DJ may mislead public whose investment decisions are misled for numerous other reasons anyway. But the prices are not determined by small investors but by big institutional money, managed by professionals. For them, DJ is just another advertisement agency.
[Off-topic: In general, worthwhile investment advice is really hard to find on the market where ordinary people operate. This is partly because of conflicts of interest, partly because of the unpredictability of the market, which is a highly competitive zero sum game around the index and therefore very unpredictable. Most are best served by index funds.]
7 February 2007 at 3:21 PM
> Most difficult to find are realistic assessments of the costs of change.
That’s why so many of us are concerned that this change is happening, before any realistic assessment of what it will cost was made.
It’s like driving off the paved road at high speed thinking, “hey, what could go wrong?”
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/thumb/d/d3/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png/350px-Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png
7 February 2007 at 3:22 PM
Pascal wrote: “What is happening on Realclimate? More and more politics and less and less climate science?”
I think part of what’s happening here, and everywhere, is that as the science becomes more and more clear that anthropogenic global warming is real, rapid and accelerating, and that the changes to the Earth’s climate and biosphere that it is causing present a grave and growning danger to humanity, and indeed to all life on Earth, the discussion naturally shifts from the science itself to what to do about it, which is an intensely “political” subject, since various proposals have differing costs and benefits for different stakeholders. And in this matter we are all stakeholders.
7 February 2007 at 3:25 PM
Re 27
It’s not the economist Paul Samuelson, whose book most of us remember using in high school (guns and butter, how prescient), but Robert J. Samuelson. Interesting article, however, followed by pages of thoroughly depressing comments. I even spotted a few rewrites of the sort listed by Ike in 23 (above), including references to Lindzen. It was reassuring to be able to recognise them so easily, so thank you.
I understand that this isn’t the proper forum for discussion of ‘doing’ as oppposed to ‘understanding’. But in reading around published comment, it becomes absolutely clear that science and education are key to helping people understand what’s at stake. Perhaps all scientists should get elected to their local School Board (or whatever they have where you live). You have to start somewhere. Perhaps then it would be less likely that we would be reading articles written by a schizophrenic WSJ. And tolerating it.
7 February 2007 at 3:43 PM
re#48
ok secularanimist but do you think, for example, that it is’nt important to know more precisely the total radiative forcing?
It’s not the same for climate sensitivity if we have 0.6 or 2.4 W/m2.
If RF equal 0.6 W/m2 we have 1.2°C.m2/W and if RF equal 2.4W/m2 we get only 0.3°C.m2/W.
So if aerosols concentration is decreasing the future effect on climate may huge or weak.
It’s not the same!
7 February 2007 at 4:13 PM
I have been a reader of the WSJ for years. It is a very good newspaper. It is reality based, since it is writen for people who are in the business of making money, not saving the world. They are not given to flights of fancy, at least for long. Being in business does that for you.
It is much more impartial than say the NY Times, which I read everyday, too. The NY Times is a joke, both on its front page and editorial page.
As for the Editorial page being not based in reality, let me give you a real world example of reality based writing.
Some years ago Philip Morris was selling for $75 per share and paying a nice dividend. Then, it lost some lawsuits (”What? Smoking causes cancer? They NEVER told me.”) and its stock price fell to $20. Most people thought that the company was going to go bankrupt.
I read one day an editorial in the WSJ to the effect that the “fix was in.” The agreement with the States Attorneys General had guaranteed the company’s survival and profitablity. Afterall, if big tobacco was to pay billions to the states, that required the states to become the protector of the tobacco industry. Politicians being venal and corrupt, they have eagerly protected big tobacco over the years.
So, I bought shares at $20, and stuck with the company through thick and thin for the next several years, and was amply rewarded.
BTW, the company never stopped paying its rich dividend,either.
NOW, HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE EVERY MADE ANY MONEY OFF INFORMATION YOU HAVE GOTTEN FROM THE EDITORIAL PAGE OF THE NY TIMES?
Now, those same politicians are telling you they are going to combat global warming. Who do you think is divorced from reality?
[Response: The ability of the WSJ to assess the political reality on that issue is miles away from the situation on climate change. The analogy would be instead of writing about the States lawsuit, they would have kept on going with the ‘tobacco doesn’t cause cancer’ line and not dealt with the political issue at all. Thus you would have missed out on your financial windfall. The problem is not the politics of the editorial board, it is their shortsightedness. Denialism is just stupid, and if they claim to be in the reality-based community, waking and smelling the coffee would seem to be wise. - gavin]
7 February 2007 at 4:15 PM
Sorry Pascal,
re: #48 getting too political here:
Its all us laymen like me coming here to get word directly from you climate scientists since it is becoming apparent to us that
1. these are truly horrific facts
2. the media (like the WSJ) is distorting and downplaying it
3. frankly at this point climate change IS a political discussion:
because the question now is
How to turn this ship around?
7 February 2007 at 4:26 PM
[[I am a proud skeptic and know a politics-driven propaganda campaign when I see one. It is becoming very difficult to find unbiased scientific information on this topic.]]
It’s not difficult at all if you go to the peer-reviewed journals. Find a university library and read through some back issues of Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Geophysical Research, Journal of Climate, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, and for that matter, Science and Nature. To get a grasp of the basic science involved, see if you can find some books like Hartmann’s Global Physical Climatology (1994), Houghton’s The Physics of Atmospheres (3rd ed. 2002), or Petty’s Introduction to Atmosphere Physics (2006).
7 February 2007 at 4:27 PM
[[Some scientist here (upthread on the IPPC day I think…?) described the cyanobacteria 3.8 billion years ago as “perpetrating the greatest fratricide ever” in COMPLETELY switching the air on this planet tfrom Co2 to O2.
(Mostly Co2/mostly O2, I mean…)So, is that possible?
Could we repeat (pre)history - in reverse? ]]
Probably not.
7 February 2007 at 4:40 PM
The WSJ is derelict in its duty to report actual changes in the investment climate:
I’ll bet these sectors are going to be affected even if there is no governmental action to stop AGW at all:
1. Insurance companies who cover coastline housing
2. Architects/builders who design/build gigantic houses: ie the luxury sector of the housing market
3. Tourism related industries: many markets: everything from areas where there was good trout fishing to 9already) New Orleans.
4. Govt reinsurers of disaster area expenditures
5. Incandescent lightbulb makers
7 February 2007 at 4:59 PM
Re #53, what are you talking about ? Pure gibberish to be honest.
7 February 2007 at 5:14 PM
Re 43, i.e. Pascal’s comment on science/politics split:
Sorry to go astray from the WSJ fray, but:
Say, didn’t I see something in Science the other day about turbulence models and jet streams? What’s the climate connection? That would be interesting to read about here, speaking as someone who’s a hydrodynamicist but not a climate scientist. It would get my blood pressure back down after reading the latest idiot musings of the WSJ editorial board.
7 February 2007 at 5:22 PM
Re #26: Nick, do you have any specific report of how the FI event went? It was pretty obviously a failure in terms of any broad media coverage (even the Torygraph, which must have come as a real “Et tu, Brutus?” moment for British denialists), but I’m very curious as to the extent of media attendance and other details.
7 February 2007 at 5:30 PM
Re:#55 Which industries will be affected?
Also every export business here that exports to any of the 46 nations that plan to carbon tax imports from non-co operative governments like the USA and China.
So economicly it comes down to a battle between all US businesses that export v these 2 business sectors that are being protected at the expense of all other businesses:
coal-fired electricity (40% of US Co2)
oil burning machinery (transportation 33% of US Co2)
Maybe it is not surprising that its major US corps that are urging Bush to end the coddling.
7 February 2007 at 5:39 PM
Re: #33 I completely agree. I’d like to see Real Climate take up the issue of where sea levels maybe in 200 years as the recent IPCC report clearly states that sea level wouldn’t stop rising for centuries even if we stopped all anthropogenic carbon emmissions today. I strongly believe that if the scientific concensus was that one-third of the State of Florida would be under water by 2200 or even 2300, that more U.S. citizens would be alarmed and demanding govt. action on AGW right now. This is an issue that should be explored.
7 February 2007 at 5:49 PM
Ike,
Not only can the models all be wrong, they were shown to ALL be biased in the same direction. (Roesch 2006)
The IPCC itself has admitted in the AR4 SPM that the level of understanding of solar radiative forcing is low. Even over the last two solar cycles sunspot/bright area based models were only able to explain 80% of the variation in radiative forcing.
You don’t seem to have read the Wigley and Meehl climate commitment papers that show that equilibration to new levels of forcing take decades to centuries, since you still subscribe to the simplistic signal processing argument that solar forcing hasn’t increased in the last few decades. The increase in solar forcing prior to the last 60 years likely contributed to the recent warming.
Given the low levels of understanding and the low explanatory power of current solar models, the large amount of unexplained solar correlation in the paleo-climate, and the documented deficiencies of the current state of the art models, consensus and claims of confidence are premature. The skeptics don’t have to have confidence in competing explanations, just confidence that the climate is complex and there is a lot of loose ends out there that require a explanation, yet remain unexplained under near 100% AGW theory. Claims of confidence and consensus and the repeated mentioning of unlikely extreme possibilities in light of these issues ring hollow, desperate and defensive.
This is all before we even get to other anthropogenic forcings and poorly understood internal climate modes.
7 February 2007 at 6:14 PM
Agreed! No one reads the WSJ for the editorials just like no one reads Playboy for the articles. Let’s spend our resources to win hearts and minds on the GHG issue in meaningful venues and ignore this last refuge for those who will never be convinced regardless of logic and overwhelming evidence.
7 February 2007 at 6:16 PM
Re: 61: Martin, you cite “climate commitment” as a possible mechanism for solar variations 50 years ago affecting temperatures today. The problem is that if that were true, the _fastest_ response would be expected in the early years, and an ever slowing response in later years. We see the exact opposite, with an accelerating response in recent decades.
btw: the climate is indeed complex, and there are loose ends. But you have to prove that a loose end is _likely_ to be significant before you can challenge a consensus. Otherwise, it would be impossible to _ever_ make a confident statement about anything complex, because there are _always_ loose ends. cf evolution and the intelligent design debate: there’s always another missing transitional fossil that hasn’t been found, or another protein whose evolutionary pathway hasn’t been elucidated yet. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have 99.99% confidence in the explanatory power of evolution. These “loose ends” are probably part of the reason that the IPCC uses “90%” confidence in attribution, and not 99% or more.
7 February 2007 at 6:17 PM
re: 61. That first sentence is disingenous. You repeat that mantra over and over, despite specific evidence and information to the contrary at
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/chinese-whispers-in-australia/, specifically in response to your comments 1, 3, and 14. How many times are you going to continue to post the same incorrect information about model bias over and over? It is misleading. Your point was addressed several times (per the reply to comment 1 in link above). Yet you continue to beat the drum, with no little recognition of the information provided to you which does not support your claim. One has to wonder why. It is not as if repeating misleading information makes it any more accurate.
7 February 2007 at 6:56 PM
Re: #61 Dan,
Those responses are not even on point, they are just denials and dismissals, not scientific discourse. Read the Roesch article and do the figures yourself. If you don’t have access to the full text, I cite enough of it in:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/02/the-ipcc-fourth-assessment-summary-for-policy-makers/#comment-25072
Re: Marcus #63,
I agree that everything being equal, most of the temperature equilibration will occur in the first few decades and that the energy imbalance will persist and increase ocean heat content for centuries. In this case, the for some reason the temperature equilibration did not occur immediately, but that doesn’t mean that suddenly the climate was in equilibrium. I admit it requires an explanation, my own theory is that the wars and nuclear testing may have had more impact than we currently understand. Nevertheless, the higher level of solar forcing has persisted, and is not expected to continue for much longer. Keep in mind that I am not the one (or thousands) claiming to have all the answers.
While I am firmly Dawkins camp on evolution, and appreciate its explanatory power, I admit that we can’t rule out the possibility that some cellular machinery may have evolved extra-terrestrially. Similarly, I appreciate and celebrate some of the qualitative insights we have gained from models, I admit that quantitative results must be kept in perspective.
7 February 2007 at 7:22 PM
I find the editorial to be vaguely outrageous, if not flat-out absurd. In presenting the IPCC report as unleashed hysteria, the editorial itself is responding in like kind. Talk about media distortion! What’s up with that?
Thanks for keeping your head in reporting this when the WSJ clearly did not. Very odd, but only slightly surprising.
Steve Caratzas
scaratzas@ecotality.com
ecotality.com/blog
7 February 2007 at 7:25 PM
A re-reading of the post that starts this whole thread would be useful before accusing RC of going off on a self-proscribed political/policy tangent. At issue is that the WSJ editorial board refuses to acknowledge the existence of a serious problem that would require a serious and legitimate policy/political discussion. It cloaks that stance in a bunch of pseudo-scientific claptrap. Discussion of why their “evidence” is claptrap is very much the domaine of RC.
7 February 2007 at 8:17 PM
RE#61, Martin, I’ll just post a few links again
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=180
Real climate post on solar forcing
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/climate-04zzd.html
The Vanishing Solar Influence
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast15feb_1.htm
The solar maximum was in 2001
http://www.nationalcenter.org/TP40.html
Talking point#40 - it’s all the sun’s fault
Poorly understood internal modes? You mean temperature variability in the absence of external forcings - i.e. weather? Perhaps you should read Short and simple arguments for why climate can be predicted, RC Aug 2 2006 - a nice summary of the weather-vs-climate issue.
You know, if we were discussing the effect on infrared-absobing gases on the climate on Mars, the whole issue probably would have been settled about 20 years ago - but people tend to get emotional over massive economic changes, which will certainly be diffiicult. Similarly, many people don’t want to admit they are sick, and so put off visiting a doctor until their disease has progressed to an untreatable level - and if your livelihood is based on fossil fuel sales, a similar emotional dynamic must also occur. That’s why the ‘treatment program’ should have started two decades ago (i.e. switching to renewable energy systems) - the longer we wait, the worse it will get.
7 February 2007 at 8:25 PM
#61 crikey, there you are again Martin. I could have sworn i have read that post before, hold on a minute… oh yes, i did, about an hour ago.
Its good of you to have slightly rewritten it though, otherwise we might all be getting BORED.:-)
Talk about deja vu…
7 February 2007 at 8:28 PM
All the defence attempts for WSJ trying to spin their lies have been completely inane and missing the point entirely. The guy with the analogy about Philip Morris was completely clueless as well - it’s not about business, making money or even the politics of what should be done, it’s about outright misrepresenting science and lying.
How can one decide what to do if the “facts” one has are all wrong? You can’t get the right outputs if the inputs are all wrong. (Well, maybe by chance.) The whole “issue” can’t even be about policy yet since the real scientific facts are missed by the right wing (84% of republicans in power think humans aren’t causing global warming, according to a recent post by RPjr). Isn’t politics supposed to be making the right thing, decisions based on values and facts?
How can someone say “they don’t like leftist regulation of industry, so they don’t believe that AGW science is honest”? That excuse is completely on it’s head, and if the proponent doesn’t understand why, I don’t understand how he or she can understand anything about how the physical world works. It can only be seen as simply lying in the hopes of attaining a certain outcome in policy - it can NOT be seen as evidence that the scientific facts are not facts but just opinions based on political views, like the proponent tries to imply, and seems to be in many semi-skeptics’ repertoire nowadays.
With places like WSJ propagating their lie machine, the public will reach what the science is saying about the real world much slower (if ever). These lies have been debunked countless of times in scientific literature, but the public is remarkably boneheaded and easily led astray.
Lying is lying, regardless of politics or policy or anything. Every time you’re trying to link it to this or that, you’re on losing ground and admitting it and looking stupid. It would be ridiculous if it wasn’t an important matter.
Future generations will curse your name.
(ending furious rant.)
I think the skeptic bullshit bingo at Deltoid could perhaps be a useful tool for exposure. It could be educational and should be firmly scientifically based (If it’s not yet properly cemented, it should be made so by linking to good articles).
http://timlambert.org/2005/04/gwsbingo/
7 February 2007 at 8:28 PM
To illustrate the disconnect between the WSJ editorial board and its reporting, there are a couple of interesting GW/alternative energy-related articles in it today (2/7/07, pg A10, IIRC).
One describes a new - I guess you might call it “solar outsourcing” - investment opportunity, in which investment groups buy & install solar power for business, then are paid for the electricity at a rate lower than the utility cost. Here’s a link to an article (not the WSJ one) on such a project:
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=47009
Which I think goes to show that it’s not investors or business in general that’s anti-AGW or alternative energy. Trying to use the issue in support of an anti-business agenda, as some of the previous commenters do… Well, isn’t that playing right into the denialist claims that AGW is just a smokescreen for the left/liberal agenda? Much, much better to get business on board by showing all the ways that responding to AGW a) protects what they have, and b) creates lots of new profit-making opportunities.
7 February 2007 at 8:54 PM
re: 65. “Those responses are not even on point…” Excuse me? Did you even read the various responses re: solar radiative forcing? Or the numerous replies to yours and other periodic postings along the lines that “(t)he increase in solar forcing prior to the last 60 years likely contributed to the recent warming”? Talk about dismissive “science”. Your Roesch article interpretation has been discussed here in previous posts and threads.
7 February 2007 at 8:57 PM
Head in the sand? You mean they’ve got sand up there too? Sounds scratchy! The editorial board of The Economist has come around nicely. This leaves the WSJ and the Telegraph as just about the only two holdouts. And they’ve been reduced to recruiting pseudoscientists like Monckton.
7 February 2007 at 10:58 PM
I stumbled across these while perusing the AGU 2006 fall meeting abstracts:
“GC51A-0430
“Agent-based Model for the Coupled Human-Climate System
“* Zvoleff, A (azvoleff@ucsd.edu), Complex Systems Laboratory, IGPP, University of California - San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0225, United States
Werner, B (bwerner@ucsd.edu), Complex Systems Laboratory, IGPP, University of California - San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0225, United States
“Integrated assessment models have been used to predict the outcome of coupled economic growth, resource use, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, both for scientific and policy purposes. These models generally have employed significant simplifications that suppress nonlinearities and the possibility of multiple equilibria in both their economic (DeCanio, 2005) and climate (Schneider and Kuntz-Duriseti, 2002) components. As one step toward exploring general features of the nonlinear dynamics of the coupled system, we have developed a series of variations on the well studied RICE and DICE models, which employ different forms of agent-based market dynamics and “climate surprises.” Markets are introduced through the replacement of the production function of the DICE/RICE models with an agent-based market modeling the interactions of producers, policymakers, and consumer agents. Technological change and population growth are treated endogenously. Climate surprises are representations of positive (for example, ice sheet collapse) or negative (for example, increased aerosols from desertification) feedbacks that are turned on with probability depending on warming. Initial results point toward the possibility of large amplitude instabilities in the coupled human-climate system owing to the mismatch between short outlook market dynamics and long term climate responses. Implications for predictability of future climate will be discussed. Supported by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation and the UC Academic Senate.”
and
“GC23B-1354
“Economically optimal risk reduction strategies in the face of uncertain climate thresholds
“McInerney, D (dmcinern@geosc.psu.edu), Department of Geosciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 United States
* Keller, K, (kkeller@geosc.psu.edu), Department of Geosciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 United States
“Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions may trigger climate threshold responses, such as a collapse of the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC). Climate threshold responses have been interpreted as an example of “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” in the sense of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). One UNFCCC objective is to “prevent” such dangerous anthropogenic interference. The current uncertainty about important parameters of the coupled natural-human system implies, however, that this UNFCCC objective can only be achieved in a probabilistic sense. In other words, climate management can only reduce - but not entirely eliminate - the risk of crossing climate thresholds. Here we use an integrated assessment model of climate change to derive economically optimal risk-reduction strategies. We implement a stochastic version of the DICE model and account for uncertainty about four parameters that have been previously identified as dominant drivers of the uncertain system response. The resulting model is, of course, just a crude approximation as it neglects, for example, some structural uncertainty and focuses on a single threshold, out of many potential climate responses. Subject to this and other caveats, our analysis suggests five main conclusions. First, reducing the numerical artifacts due to sub-sampling the parameter probability density functions to reasonable levels requires thousands of samples. Conclusions of previous studies that are based on much smaller sample sizes may hence need to be revisited. Second, following a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario results in odds for an MOC collapse in the next 150 years exceeding 1 in 3 in this model. Third, an economically “optimal” strategy (that maximizes the expected utility of the decision-maker) reduces carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 25 percent at the end of this century, compared with BAU emissions. Perhaps surprisingly, this strategy leaves the odds of an MOC collapse virtually unchanged compared to a BAU strategy. Fourth, reducing the odds for an MOC collapse to 1 in 10 would require an almost complete decarbonization of the economy within a few decades. Finally, further risk reductions (e.g., to 1 in 100) are possible in the framework of the simple model, but would require faster and more expensive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.”
No kidding.
7 February 2007 at 11:02 PM
Two comments:
1. Re: 71; There are legit companies doing this in the commercial solar sector (they rent the solar panels from a non-utility and pay them their utility costs on a long-term contract, essentially hedging future electricity cost increases). However, a new one is claiming to enter the residential market and is more hype than hope. Read more here.
2. Should news organizations provide balanced coverage proportional to scientific understanding? Or should they keep a minority dissent “just in case”? Does it matter if the minority is introducing something “new” (i.e. the world is round) or holding onto something “old” (i.e. climate change)? Read a bit more here.
7 February 2007 at 11:05 PM
Re #73: Based on the Torygraph’s climate coverage around last weekend, in particular the Sunday editorial, the analysis piece (I forget which day) by the science correspondent, and the lack of any story on the Fraser Institute event, they too look to have abandoned the dark side. Even so, the WSJ still has the National Post (Canada) to lean on.
7 February 2007 at 11:20 PM
Re #75, point 2: Well, the only purported bit of science in that denialist’s letter was a claim that the satellite and balloon records don’t show warming, which is entirely wrong. I think more and more editors are deciding that the time has passed for publishing that sort of tripe, a stance with which I could not agree more.
7 February 2007 at 11:53 PM
People do read the WSJ’s op-ed pages and take them seriously: Recently, I’ve seen letters to the editor in my local paper citing as an authoritative source of scientific informationa a WSJ op-ed piece dismissing AGW. I’m not at all surprised when the paper’s editorial position on a subject like AGW runs contrary to its news stories on the subject - it did (maybe still does, though I no longer read the WSJ) run op-ed essays by avowed creationists denying evolution, while, sometimes in the very same issue, the news or business section featured articles about some new drug or gene therapy that could only exist because biological evolution is a reality. When I used to subscribe to the WSJ and read it regularly, I frequently used its sometimes bizarre op-ed essays on science topics (some on the Endangered Species Act were absolute howlers) in my college biology classes to stimulate students to read and think critically, and to dissect arguments built on flawed logic and the misrepresentation of scientific data.
8 February 2007 at 12:44 AM
Re: 74 Initial results point toward the possibility of large amplitude instabilities in the coupled human-climate system owing to the mismatch between short outlook market dynamics and long term climate responses. Implications for predictability of future climate will be discussed
Sounds like an admission that the human/Climate coupled system is likely to be chaotic. I would add that drastic measures and targets applied would only make unpredictability more likely. This would place climate prediction more in line with stockmarket prediction - Glorified guesswork and hunches - a job for the economists who are used to getting it wrong most of the time.
8 February 2007 at 12:49 AM
Once the WSJ gets over its odd belief that there is a conflict between preserving one’s habitat and economic progress, they’ll embrace the reality of climate change and the plethora of business opportunities represented by solutions to it, like recovering alcoholics who never miss an AA meeting.
8 February 2007 at 1:02 AM
Re #79: Would that it was chaotic in the sense you mean. All of the variability is on the side of the less pleasant outcomes, unfortunately. The history of human societies is very poor when it comes to planning very far ahead.
8 February 2007 at 1:27 AM
Dan,
The Roesch results have not been disputed in the literature. There probably has not been time for a rehabilitation of the credibility of the models in the scientific literature, and their credibility has been damaged both individually and since the error is correlated, their credibility is also damaged as ensembles. However, a proper scientific response would not be trying to prove that this 2.8 to 3.8 W/m^2 of positive surface albedo bias does not damage their ability to attribute and project the < 0.8 W/m^2 of recent energy imbalance. It would take “correct” models to do that anyway. Such efforts would instead be better spent just correcting the models, and restarting the ensemble runs that have probably already been underway for months. Trying to claim model validity in the face of such errors without doing the research, is not a scientific effort, but a face saving and hand waving exercise in denial. Any purely analytic argument that could fill this void would probably also be an advance in understanding non-linear systems apriori without the models now thought to be necessary.
Marc, the internal climate modes, are the poorly understood multidecadal oscillation behavior that models cannot yet reproduce. I look forward to the insights that the models will eventually be able to provide in this area.
[Response: Martin, this is the umpteenth time you’ve said this, and the hundredth time it’s been pointed out that your assesment of the importance of this result is grossly inflated. Enough. Come up with something more interesting to say or don’t bother. (hint, try reading about any of 634 other analyses of the AR4 models). -gavin]
8 February 2007 at 1:40 AM
All change is unpleasant. Unexpected change doubly so. I would be happy to accept BAU if it meant the changes could be known and dated in advance, but whatever happens, big disasters are certain anyhow. I like that research you quoted and how it frames our measures as reducing probabilities of certain events. That does help in cost benefit analysis at least.
8 February 2007 at 3:02 AM
As I recall the Scientific Method as I was taught it in college, a hypothesis will remain such unless it makes predictions that are testable and can be verified in experiments that are repeatable. As a skeptic, the warming of the globe does not surprise me; that humans contribute to the warming does not surprise me. But dramatic conclusions that “the north pole will be ice-free by 2040″, as this site referenced, are a dramatic departure from the human-caused warming hypothesis. That is clearly propaganda designed as a shock tactic that, if true, would certainly be a theory with short-term predictive and testable potential. Not like the IPCC’s hardly bold 93 years hence sea level predictions. Dramatic conclusions require dramatic evidence. Show me the predictions such a theory makes concerning sea levels by the end of this decade, for instance.
[Response: The debate over this stuff is complex enough without throwing in disinformation. As we reported the science is *not* conclusing that the NP will be ice free by 2040. Why not actually read the post rather than construct a fantasy of it? - William]
The fact that all of you “real climate scientists” gave that paper white space in advance of serious experimentation on the theory’s predictions is evidence of biased journalism, bad science and political propaganda. The climate science field is now so entrenched in overly abstracted simulations based on limited data sets that the supposedly “peer-reviewed” journals just read like constitutional law that piles personal opinion on top of personal opinion until a skillful propagandist could draw any conclusions he likes from the books without fear of judgement.
How can you criticize the WSJ for what it prints as editorial?
Show me the hard science that makes ethanol a reasonable alternative to gasoline - given that millions of acres of land would need to be dedicated to providing only a portion of the corn crop required.
Show me the hard science that wind or solar energy are likewise reasonable sources of global energy and not mere left-wing, feel-good solutions.
All I see is a massive propaganda campaign to America’s science teachers and semi-literates fueled by highly abstracted simulation, untestable predictions and feel-good solutions that will have kids running home to switch off the air-conditioner.
I hold you to a higher standard that the WSJ, and less sensationalism and more evidence.
8 February 2007 at 3:36 AM
I agree with the posts advocating more direct communication with widely-read media outlets, when possible. If it gets through, some readers might actually think a bit, and even raise an eyebrow at what their paper is printing. Or am I just dreaming?
8 February 2007 at 6:41 AM
re #18 by Bill Settlemeyer
Bill. The cynical view is that the WSJ knows its market, and its editorial page is a sail trimmed to that wind.
(I think that is genuinely the case with Fox News. Fox is quite a subversive TV station (The Simpsons!– probably the most anti-values programme on American tv) but Fox News is aimed at a particular demographic, and it targets it very well. Somewhat cynically to my mind, but very well).
In the case of the WSJ I think it is a bit like mistaking Inhofe for a corporate shill. No the Senator believes what he says– he genuinely believes there is a conspiracy against American prosperity and growth, embedded in the global warming movement.
Similarly, I think the WSJ believes this stuff. They really do think that this is a scientific conspiracy against the US of A.
As to businessmen, my own experience is that top businessmen, like BP’s John Brown and Shell’s Lord Oxenburgh, really do think there is a problem. And many of the more thoughtful commentators do as well (I refer you for example to the Financial Time’s Martin Wolf, probably the best economics commentator in the published media right now).
But the general run of businessmen are good at business. Just as doctors are good at medicine, and often lousy at business. Or lawyers are good at lawyering, and often lousy at business. And all of us (except doctors) would be truly lousy in an operating theatre.
Being good at business doesn’t make you a good student of climate science, nor of international economic policy to fight global warming.
So I think most businessmen, when they express an opinion about global warming, are talking out of their hat. They don’t know about GW any better than my surgeon does, or my lawyer, or my accountant– fine professionals though they may be.
So call most businessmen neutral about GW *but* because the solution to GW will almost inevitably involve more government intervention, they are opposed to 1). believing in it 2). doing anything about it.
It is interesting, I think, how much less business denialism there is about GW in Europe. I’m not sure why, but I think it has to do with a generally greater respect for science and for expertise in general, over here (if you want to be less charitable, you could call us more submissive to authority).
It’s a shame that we live in a world where we think that the fact that the WSJ is a leading business newspaper, means that it has something sensible to say about the scientific realities of GW.
8 February 2007 at 6:43 AM
[[Given the low levels of understanding and the low explanatory power of current solar models, the large amount of unexplained solar correlation in the paleo-climate, and the documented deficiencies of the current state of the art models, consensus and claims of confidence are premature.]]
If “the explanatory power” of Solar models is low, it means Solar isn’t as much of an influence as you think it is. “Explanatory power” has a specific meaning in statistics. Solar fails the statistiscal test. It’s responsible for about 20% of 20th century warming, almost all in the first half. It’s not causing the warming now.
8 February 2007 at 6:50 AM
[[Show me the hard science that wind or solar energy are likewise reasonable sources of global energy and not mere left-wing, feel-good solutions. ]]
The Solar constant averages 1,367.6 watts per square meter. The Earth’s radius averages 6,371,010 meters. The area of a circle is pi R^2. You do the math.
8 February 2007 at 7:07 AM
In Australia we effectively have a 2 sided political system that is too gutless to face up to the challenges that global warming presents. Howard is saying that the economy will be dramatically affected by reducing emissions, and Labor is suggesting that investing in green tech will solve the issue and create jobs.
They are both wrong. The largest obstacle to overcome in the movement forward to solutions of global warming is the love of the economy. Money is what got us into this problem. The solution is economic downturn, loss of jobs (especially polluting ones!), and lower of quality of “economic” life. We must reduce, improve efficiency, use less transport, pay carbon taxes, recycle..and inevitably this will result in economic downturn.
We are so indoctrinated by our culture that it is sacrilege to suggest economic downshifting. The earth is finite, and we are currently spending the future of our children.. the only sane alternative is to reduce our impact now. Meanwhile our media continue “the debate”, wasting valuable time, sprouting scientific fixes (such as carbon sequestration and nuclear) that are implausible, unfeasibly expensive, even more environmentally damaging than fossil fuel use and in many cases far, far too late to make any difference. Where does the responsibility for the planet start?
8 February 2007 at 7:43 AM
Oops! Forgot — the Earth’s bolometric Bond albedo is 0.30. Don’t forget that!
8 February 2007 at 7:44 AM
Re: #83
As someone who was driving a 100% ethanol powered Volkswagen fox in the mid 80’s in Brazil and lived through the economic chaos caused in part by that country’s dependence on foreign oil imports back then, I very much doubt that ethanol is a panacea for the US. Not to mention that burning ethanol still produces CO2. However it did help the Brazil to cut oil imports and Brazil is well on its way toward independence from at least that particular addiction. Many other problems not withstanding at least they showed that it is possible to change course and think outside the box, no small feat.
As for millions of acres of land needed to grow corn to produce ethanol in he U.S. we already do it to support the beef industry, maybe a little outside the box thinking here might be in order as well. In any case I’m not personally a big fan of ethanol as fuel.
As for the hard science that wind or solar energy are likewise reasonable sources of global energy and not mere left-wing, feel-good solutions.
While I can’t personally speak to the science, as someone who talks daily to executives of international business around the world I am begining to get the sense that there are a lot of hard nosed business people and governments out there who can’t exactly be categorized as left-wing by any definiton and are apparently willing to invest their hard earned cash in solar and wind energy. Though probably not yet a full blown trend it is certainly a shift in the direction of the breeze.
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=44188
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/41.
BTW there seems to be a lot of hard science to back up the claim that fossil fuel may not be so great either. Oh, I know, a consensus of thousands of climate scientists from around the world is probably really just Left-wing feel-good unscientific propaganda. I feel so sorry for the unsuspecting capitalists who are risking financial ruin by buying into these fly by night alternative energy schemes.
8 February 2007 at 8:19 AM
I apologize for being off topic, however I am not aware of any other place with a suitable audience that may be able to address my Global warming related question.
What are the estimated temperature limits of survivability of plants and animals (including insects such as honeybees). Take for example mass wild bird deaths in Western Australia (http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Mystery-bird-deaths-continue-in-WA/2007/02/08/1170524237193.html) that appear to be temperature related. I am also aware of Cattle deaths (due to temperature alone, not lack of water) last summer in Australia.
This is obviously outside the domain of Climate Scientists, however I could not find the answers. None of the obvious keywords work on a Google search (for meaningful results).
That is a biological question, an Engineering one: What is the temperature limit for most modern cars, stationary with the air-conditioner running? I am thinking of a freeway traffic jam scenario co-incident with an extreme heat wave. What ambient temperature in those conditions will cause cars to fail and be unable to start before the people start to “fail”. I have been in 48 degrees C (shade temperature) and that ain’t pleasant!
I notice that the skeptics dismiss the significance of extreme temperature events, their attitude seems to be: “summer is hot; get use to it”.
8 February 2007 at 8:48 AM
Oops, my last comment was in regards #84 and not 83.
8 February 2007 at 9:30 AM
I’m sure someone else has already noted it, but there is another “small village” holding out against the tide. That’s the editorial page of the Financial Post (part of the National Post in Canada). They had a great series on “CV of a denier”, 10 in all they covered I believe.
[Response: Try checking out DeSmogBlog’s commentaries. -gavin]
8 February 2007 at 10:16 AM
It can be warmer in thousand years and still not out of the natural variation. Check my blog for info.
Thanks.
8 February 2007 at 10:47 AM
The strategy being used by some to try to control the climate debate is that there is ‘consensus’.
But consensus over WHAT ?
That the there’a an obseved warming trend? So what- there was never much argument over that in the first place.
That man has influenced the climate? Again ,so what? There was never much argument about that either.
What there IS argument about is the DEGREE OF man’s influence and the projected degrees of warming in the future. To say there is scienticfic consensus on those things is disengenous at best and downright fraudulent at worst.
8 February 2007 at 11:32 AM
tom wrote: “The strategy being used by some to try to control the climate debate is that there is ‘consensus’. But consensus over WHAT ?”
The AR4 SPM from the IPCC says there is a consensus that it is 90 to 95 percent certain that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming of the last 50 years.
8 February 2007 at 11:37 AM
Re #96
Tom,
The simple fact is that there IS consensus, which has nothing to do with debating tricks. All those scientists who studied climate change agree about the main facts of climate change:
1- that there is a warming trend.
2- how large man’s influence is.
3- what the best estimates of (the range of) further temperature & sea level rise are.
This is the short version. For the long version, numerical values, statements of probability, necessary qualifications and so on: check out SPM AR4.
Regrettably there is no consensus on this yet:
4- there is now more than enough proof that the situation is bad, and we’d better start doing something about it in a hurry.
8 February 2007 at 12:04 PM
Well, I guess it wouldn’t be hard to get consensus on a broad statement like that, but there isn’t.
The IPCC document is NOT holy writ.
Now that it has been released, the debate will really start popping in the climate science community at large. For example, the very post that spurred this thread is being taken to task by Roger Pielke as we speak.
And yesterday I pointed out a glaring error in the post.
‘ and that the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) was written by politicians (no it wasn’t - the clue is in the name). ”
the WSJ article DID NOT say it was written by politicians.
[Response: WSJ said “Written mainly by policymakers (not scientists)” which is wrong - William]
8 February 2007 at 12:28 PM
re #86: It is still paradoxical. How come if you feel that some actions and policies that AGW could cause are uncomfortable, does it make you to dismiss the scientific basis? That is utter self deceiving. Hello? It doesn’t help!
You can’t change facts by having a feeling that they are uncomfortable. You should pay even more attention to such uncomfortable things.
If the thing is real, it has to be dealt with sooner or later, and the better the sooner. Accept the facts and then campaign and talk and argue on the _policy_ issues, don’t try to distort the scientific information.
You’re only doing a great disservice to humanity.
8 February 2007 at 12:31 PM
#82 Martin
I discussed (by mail) of that with A. Roesch. The 2-3 W/m2 bias in AR4 models for global surface albedo is just one but many biases in current models when they simulate ernegy fluxes troposphere-surface. For example, as Roesch recalled me, the paper of M. Wild (Solar radiation budgets in atmospheric model intercomparisons from a surface perspective, JGL, Vol. 35, 2005) finds that the global radiation (the albedo just gives the percentage of the reflected global radiation) of the AR4 climate models varies by 40 W/m^2, with a mean bias of 9 W/m^2 for surface insolation.
I agree with you on the poor conclusions we can draw from that in the exercise of attribution-detection of surface temperature change. But in fact, IPCC AR4 itself (the Second Draft, not the SPM) agrees too. Just read 9.1.2, and you will see a full acknowledgment of structural / parameters uncertainties in models. So the “likelihood” of any relative part of any forcing in any surface trend for any period is ultimately a solication of experts judgment, not a conclusion of a precise quantitative analysis. Because the later is simply not possible in 2007. But maybe I miss something. If somebody has a reference for a quantitative analysis of GHGs role in the 0,5 °C recent warming, I’m willing to buy. All that I read until now is the allways repeated general and trivial conclusion about the necessary inclusion of anthropic forcing in order to simulate the XXth trends. Nothing else.
8 February 2007 at 12:50 PM
[[The solution is economic downturn, loss of jobs (especially polluting ones!), and lower of quality of “economic” life.]]
Loss of jobs is not a solution. Are you quite sure you’re not an agent provocateur? It’s hard to believe any environmentalist or climatologist in his right mind would say something like the above.
8 February 2007 at 12:53 PM
[[What are the estimated temperature limits of survivability of plants and animals (including insects such as honeybees). Take for example mass wild bird deaths in Western Australia (http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Mystery-bird-deaths-continue-in-WA/2007/02/08/1170524237193.html) that appear to be temperature related. I am also aware of Cattle deaths (due to temperature alone, not lack of water) last summer in Australia.]]
I don’t remember figures offhand, but I do remember that a lot of those figures were collected in Dole’s 1964 book, “Habitable Planets for Man” (NY: Blaisdell). I’m pretty sure cattle were mentioned.
8 February 2007 at 12:54 PM
[[What there IS argument about is the DEGREE OF man’s influence and the projected degrees of warming in the fu