Swindled!
) By William and Gavin
On Thursday March 8th, the UK TV Channel 4 aired a programme titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle". We were hoping for important revelations and final proof that we have all been hornswoggled by the climate Illuminati, but it just repeated the usual specious claims we hear all the time. We feel swindled. Indeed we are not the only ones: Carl Wunsch (who was a surprise addition to the cast) was apparently misled into thinking this was going to be a balanced look at the issues (the producers have a history of doing this), but who found himself put into a very different context indeed [Update: a full letter from Wunsch appears as comment 109 on this post]
So what did they have to say for themselves?
CO2 doesn't match the temperature record over the 20th C. True but not relevant, because it isn't supposed to. The programme spent a long time agonising over what they presented as a sharp temperature fall for 4 decades from 1940 to 1980 (incidentally their graph looks rather odd and may have been carefully selected; on a more usual (and sourced!) plot the "4 decades of cooling" is rather less evident). They presented this as a major flaw in the theory, which is deeply deceptive, because as they and their interviewees must know, the 40-70 cooling type period is readily explained, in that the GCMs are quite happy to reproduce it, as largely caused by sulphate aerosols. See this for a wiki-pic, for example; or (all together now) the IPCC TAR SPM fig 4; or more up-to-date AR4 fig 4. So… they are lying to us by omission.
The troposphere should warm faster than the sfc, say the models and basic theory. As indeed it does - unless you're wedded to the multiply-corrected Spencer+Christy version of the MSU series. Christy (naturally enough) features in this section, though he seems to have forgotten the US CCSP report, and the executive summary which he authored says Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies. See-also previous RC posts.
Temperature leads CO2 by 800 years in the ice cores. Not quite as true as they said, but basically correct; however they misinterpret it. The way they said this you would have thought that T and CO2 are anti-correlated; but if you overlay the full 400/800 kyr of ice core record, you can't even see the lag because its so small. The correct interpretation of this is well known: that there is a T-CO2 feedback: see RC again for more.
All the previous parts of the programme were leading up to "so if it isn't CO2, what is it?" to which their answer is "solar". The section was curiously weak, and largely lead by pictures of people on beaches. It was somewhat surprising that they didn't feature Svensmark at all; other stuff we've commented on before. Note that the graph they used as "proof" of the excellent solar-T connection turns out to have some problems: see figure 1c of Damon and Laut.
Along the way the programme ticked off most of the other obligatory skeptic talking points: even down to Medieval English vineyards and that old favourite, volcanoes emitting more CO2 than humans.
It ended with politics, with a segment blaming the lack of African development on the environmental movement. We don't want to get into the politics, but should point out what the programme didn't: that Kyoto exempts developing nations.
[Also: other discussion at InTheGreen, Stoat, The Guardian and
Media lens.]
[Update: What Martin Durkin really thinks!]
[Update for our german readers: A german version of the "swindle" film was shown on June 11 on German TV (RTL); here is a german commentary by stefan.]
9 March 2007 at 5:54 PM
They also stated that volcanic emissions of CO2 far exceeded those from human activity. This is untrue. Annual emissions from volcanoes are only 1% of the amount emitted to the atmosphere by humans.
A free download on this is at http://www.bgs.ac.uk/programmes/landres/segs/downloads/VolcanicContributions.pdf
The programme also used the link between the ocean and the atmosphere and CO2.
It was an inconvenient truth though not to also include in this description the fact that with business as usual CO2 emissions our oceans will acidify.
see http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/document.asp?id=3249
Reason enough to urgently curb CO2 emissions- regardless of whether or not there is an anthropogenic factor in the current warming world.
The programme was irresponsible and lacked a basic duty of care to the audience- and it now appears to some who appeared on the programme itself.
9 March 2007 at 6:03 PM
I’m delighted to see this swift response on RC - thanks!
I got so annoyed with Channel 4 that I actually emailed them a complaint, which I’ve never done before. I’m sure that polite, articulate responses to the broadcast would be well received; C4 do generally seem to try to be responsive to viewer complaints.
Their contact form is accessible from here:
http://help.channel4.com/tv/contact/
9 March 2007 at 6:40 PM
What I find so depressing is that both sides of this debate are as bad as each other. For Gods sake we might have a problem here, so lets debate like adults, something devoid from real science, climate audit and Durkin. Stop being so petty and lets act like scientists are supposed to do - debate.
It is so depressing, as essentially I agree with real climate, but you do your self no favours. Your stance preaches to the converted, but if you want the masses you need to change your focus.
9 March 2007 at 7:29 PM
#3 - Sam, the point you miss is that these issues have been debated, again, and again, and again… In science, that is done through the peer reviewed literature, not through the mass media. When you cannot win the debate in the normal process, then take to the media. Though not a climate scientist, I am frankly sick of reading that T leads CO2, as though that is the end of the discussion. Have these people never heard of strongly coupled variables? Feedback is real. When it happens, the physics of the problem says that increasing CO2 will increase T. Applying the equations through the models describes the observed temperature trends. Does this have to go on until our great-grandchildren are left with no hope?
It is especially annoying to see people attack AGW folk in the guise of defending the future of the developing world. Just who do you think is going to suffer most under the BAU scenario? Do you think Americans will accept massive tax increases to help the developing world adapt? Okay, this is not part of the science, but skeptics have raised it, even though the downside risk for the developing world is far greater (in my opinion) under BAU.
9 March 2007 at 7:38 PM
Its amazing that you guys manage to keep on top of the UK climate change mass media as well as your own US situation.
Well done, keep it up
9 March 2007 at 8:09 PM
“The correct interpretation of this is well known: that there is a T-CO2 feedback”
Hum… from what I read, I’d say there’s first an astronomic solar forcing (orbital/ regional, not TSI except for eccentricity cycle), and then diverse feedbacks including ice, CO2, vegetation, dust… and T of course. Your “T-CO2″ feedback is quite restrictive. For Al Gore, OK (climate science from ex-president) ; but we’re on RC (climate science from climate scientist), so you should be more careful with vulgarized explanations. Unless you consider ice/vegetation/dust and other poorly constrained feedbacks or circulation changes as negligible, of course.
9 March 2007 at 8:28 PM
I just read the Damon and Laut paper. Their most striking claim is that the key part of the graphs of Friis-Christensen and Lassen showing a strong link between solar and climate are the result of “trivial arithmetic errors”. As a non scientist, I’m thrilled. Seems like on this topic, at least, we ought to be able to come to a conclusion that everyone agrees on. So, in the 2.5 years since Damon and Laut published, what has happened ? Did Friis-Christensen and Lassen own up to their error ? Do they still maintain that they are right ? If all you guys with PHD’s can’t get to the bottom of “trivial arithmetic errors” in 2.5 years, the planet is in trouble from more than AGW !
9 March 2007 at 8:55 PM
I purposely didn’t watch “it”. This was partly because, like that reporter chappy over at the Guardian, I didn’t want to feel like I had to put by boot through the screen, but mostly because I’d never got around to watching Master and Commander before last night, and there it was on Film 4. Wonderful scheduling that, C4!
I did catch 2 minutes of “it” in one ad break, when they were “talking around” the satellite and sonde data mismatch. Well, if that was an exemplar of the level of disinformation being imparted, then I’m glad I missed the other 97% of it and all its probable vaingloriousness.
One thing that has intrigued me since is the world temperature plot they attributed to NASA, which can now be seen at various places (like at Stoat). They have a manilla(ish) shaded portion called “Post War Economic Boom”, which, fair enough, starts in 1945 and goes to about 1978/1979. So why do they have two labels, one saying “1940″ which is pointing to about 1945 and one saying “1975″ pointing to about 1980? And another point. Why is the “Post War Economic Boom” given to end in 1979? My recollection of events was that the Western world was thrown into recession (and some regions of stagflation) from about 1970, helped along in no uncertain terms by the 1973 oil crisis. So what were they trying to convey? The 70s were not a period of economic boom anywhere on the planet! Anyway, that’s a diversion into politics and economics, which is for another place, perhaps.
I was further intrigued by that small upward blip in that “shaded” temperature downturn in that world temperature plot. “Seems” significantly above the long-term trend. So I got to wondering what could have caused it. I have a theory. The peak of this blip looks as if it’s the summer of ‘66. Why of course … it’s all that hot air in the press in the lead up to the ‘66 footie World Cup in good ol’ Blighty, culminating in all those kettles going on and the ensuing mega CO2 output required to meet the electrical load when Hurst’s hat-trick goal went in. Of course, if the 1940 and 1975 labels are to be believed, then my 1966 is in fact 1961, and that shoots my theory down in flames.
Daft hypothesis? Why yes, and as daft as the C4 programme it would seem! Yes, I’m glad I watched Master and Commander. There certainly seemed as if there was more science in that with their sojourn around the Galapagos Islands than there might have been in that main-channel C4 “science” programme. Hollywood for science, now there’s a first. Al Gore gets an Oscar; Durkin gets a Golden Raspberry. (Mind you, I’ve seen neither in their entirety. So, have I got those awards the right way around?)
9 March 2007 at 8:58 PM
Re #7 and arithmetic errors.
I believe degrees for radians usage has led some astray, too.
9 March 2007 at 9:10 PM
I too left a comment on the Channel 4 website (based on transcript excerpts and web coverage, as we don’t get this channel here in Canada), and based on the rogues gallery of contrarians they used.
) At first I was depressed over this: yet another tin of red herrings to rebut! But then I remembered that I’m not alone, and plenty of sensible people are helping out. I googled the show title, and came upon this blog repsonse:
I’ve looked at some blog responses to the show that have built up already (my goodness they accumulate fast, with so many unwashed masses allowed to express their views freely
http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820
which has already summed up a lot of good rejoinders to the show.
As for “dT causes d[CO2]”, we can stress the basic physics behind the opposite direction. Skeptics love to quibble about attribution of recent dT, but the key issue for AGW is that basic physics tells us CO2 at current concentrations definitely does absorb IR. This is quantifiable, laboratory tested fact. The finer points are working out what the climate sensitivity is; here there’s some range in expert estimates, but it can’t be zero, as hard-core skeptics regularly imply. Even Lindzen admits it’s non-zero.
So many skeptic sites are filled with “intuitive” arguments to the effect that CO2 can’t possibly have any effect, or that its spectral range is already saturated (no), or that [CO2] was much higher hundreds of millions of years ago (so!?), {insert red herring here}
Anyway thanks to all RC contributors for carrying the ball.
9 March 2007 at 9:22 PM
I thought William lived and worked in the UK? And comparing with Stoat, this appears to be mostly his work. (Of the other RC folks not in on this particular piece, I thought Rasmus lived in Norway, and Rahmstorf in Potsdam.)
9 March 2007 at 9:26 PM
“The troposphere should warm faster than the sfc”
I didn’t see the program in question, but of course the NASA GISS model for one, indicates a large maxima of warming centered on the tropics around 300mb.
This maxima is not observed in the RSS MSU, nor in the UAH MSU, nor in the RATPAC Raob set over the the MSU era.
Clearly this model is not verifying this feature.
[Response: Over the period when there are satellite measurements the model simulations span the response seen in the data. Thus there is no obvious contradiction between the models and the data. To be sure, stronger signals are seen for longer periods and for larger forcings, but you can only compare current observations with similar period transient runs. See the CCSP report for more details. -gavin]
9 March 2007 at 9:36 PM
Re #3 You seem to be confusing the comments posted by RC readers, most of whom are not climate scientists, with scientific discussions that go on in university laboratories and seminar rooms, scientific conferences, and peer-reviewed journals. The debates that go on in the comments to the RC threads have no bearing whatsoever on the scientific issues of AGW and what can be done about it, except that some of us come away with a better understanding of the issues.
I’m curious - in what way should the climatologists change their focus? They conduct their research, they publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, they respond to requests for comments from journalists writing stories on AGW, they appear in TV documentaries on AGW, and sometimes they publish papers on AGW for the general public in non-specialist journals. What else should they be doing?
10 March 2007 at 3:01 AM
Distortions are hardly suprising. This programme was not a scientific documentary in any normal sense: it was a piece of political polemic.
The writer and presenter of the programme was Martin Durkin who is closely affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party which has a strong ideological opposition to environmental science. In 1997 Channel Four was forced to issue its first ever broadcast apology over extreme editing distortions in a similar series knocking environmentalism. It is a great shame that Carl Wunsch and the other legitimate scientists in the programme did not do a quick web search on Durkin before agreeing to contribute
There was only one scientific advisor on the programme, Martin Livermore, whose sole scientific qualification is that he is the Director of a web-based think tank, The Scientific Alliance. The Alliance was set up by in 2001 by Robert Durward, the fiercely anti-green director of the British Aggregates Association, and Foresight Communications, a Westminster public relations and lobbying company, to “counter scare-mongering by the so-called green lobby”. The Scientific Alliance has no affiliation with any recognised scientific body but, like most of the contributors to the programme, it does have very strong links with the US public relations and lobbying organisations that have been so effective in setting the Bush agenda on climate change.
Many of the people who appeared on the programme were captioned to institutions and universities that they left years ago in order to pursue their political campaigning work: Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, Philip Stott and Tim Ball are among them. Richard Lindzen is a practising scientist, but a highly politicised and criticised one. All of them have close associations with the Washington public relations and lobby groups that front for the fossil fuel companies and the libertarian right (whose ideology is often strangely indistinguishable from the Revolutionary Communists. Strange things happen at the political extremes).
Is it any surprise then, that these “scientists” were so persuasive. Most of the people on the programme are professional communicators who are more familiar with the chat show than the lab. Of course they give good interviews - it is what they do for a living.
And let us not forget that they are effective because they have a very willing audience. We would all like to believe them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to believe that the science is unsettled, that all that carbon dioxide that we are pumping into the atmosphere really has no effect, and that we do not have to worry about the future.
I believe it is crucial that Wunsch, other distorted contributors and the scientific community as a whole puts in a formal complaint to the Channel Four and the Independent Television Commission. Please don’t leave it to the NGOs to stand up for your science.
This is an except from a longer analysis of the track record and associations of the contributors to this programme on www.climatedenial.org Please visit the site and contribute to the growing discussion.
10 March 2007 at 3:10 AM
RE: 13
…”The debates that go on in the comments to the RC threads have no bearing whatsoever on the scientific issues of AGW and what can be done about it, except that some of us come away with a better understanding of the issues.”…
Scientific issues are not even the issue. Real people have significantly more power than any scientists due to their ability to capture the attention of the congressmen/women who can indeed, change or enact legislation that WOULD effect a change.
Whether it be climate change, pharm, or online predators, the people with the power are you and I.
And ultimately, at the end of the day, ones view on the matter of climate change, hinges on how they feel the possible outcomes
could or could not be, and weighing the costs of doing something against nothing against the reflection of various possible scenarios of the outcome of who is right or wrong on the matter climate change and responsibility for it.
Statistical Analysis Debunks Climate Change Naysayers
[Thompson Rivers University] Newswise, (08 Mar 2007)
http://www.connotea.org/user/msredsonyas?start=10
…” ‘A Type I error implies that you have accepted that global warming is caused by humans when in fact it is not, while a Type II error implies the opposite,’ he says”…It is obvious that a type II error, being unaware that global warming is caused by humans and maintaining our current living styles, is much more serious than a type I error which argues that humans are the cause when they are not, in terms of the costs,” he says.”…”The cost of changing behaviour and taking action now is estimated at one percent of global GDP and this can be seen as an investment from a long-term perspective: investing in cleaner technologies and also putting a price tag on the use of our atmosphere. If we delay as we would do if we accepted that climate change is not human-caused when this conclusion was false, we would be faced with a huge cost,” warns Tsigaris.”
10 March 2007 at 3:35 AM
Carl Wunsch should sue them for frauding him and the public. Frauding- missleading the public should be considered a big crime!
10 March 2007 at 4:55 AM
Temperature leads CO2 by 800 years in the ice cores. Not quite as true as they said, but basically correct; however they misinterpret it. The way they said this you would have thought that T and CO2 are anti-correlated; but if you overlay the full 400/800 kyr of ice core record, you can’t even see the lag because its so small. The correct interpretation of this is well known: that there is a T-CO2 feedback: see RC again for more.
Where is the misinterpretation? If T rise precedes CO2 rise by eight centuries then CO2 cannot be forcing T rise.
Unless of course you’re claiming that positive feedback implies going backwards in time, in which case all bets are off.
Carbon dioxide rise appears to be a delayed response to temperature rise. The fact that the current T rise is happening during a CO2 rise implies nothing at all, because its almost certainly a spurious correlation that does not imply causation.
Also in the ice core record, carbon dioxide continues to rise AFTER temperatures begins to fall, so no feedback is event there either.
[Response: Try and get your head around the idea that two different things can be happening at the same time. One, the ocean and terrestrial carbon cycle is affected by climate. Two, the amount of CO2 in the air affects the greenhouse properties of the atmosphere. Part I is obvious from the paleo-record, Part II is measured in lab experiments and in observations. Together they do a pretty good job at explaining how cold it gets during the ice ages - which are paced by Milankovitch forcings. Without the radiative effect of the GHG changes, the ice ages would not have been so icy. There, that wasn’t so difficult, was it? - gavin]
10 March 2007 at 4:58 AM
Let’s see…according to you, the program was basically correct, just subject to different interpretations caused by backwards-looking GCMs. Thanks for your opinion. Move on now, nothing here…
RL
CO2 doesn’t match the temperature record over the 20th C. True but not relevant, because it isn’t supposed to.
The troposphere should warm faster than the sfc, say the models and basic theory. As indeed it does - unless you’re wedded to the multiply-corrected Spencer+Christy version of the MSU series.
Temperature leads CO2 by 800 years in the ice cores. Not quite as true as they said, but basically correct;
[Response: I think you might be getting it after all. The errors made are usually in what observable facts imply, only occasionally are the ‘facts’ in error too. You are supposed to think that the radiative impact of CO2 somehow means that nothing else affects climate, or a long term trend implies that there no short term fluctuations are possible, or that a very slow connection between climate and CO2 implies that there is no connection the other way around. Logical fallacies all. Surely they can do better than that? -gavin]
10 March 2007 at 7:13 AM
Thanks for these answers, guys. This post, especially when combined with the ones that you’ve linked at the bottom have been very helpful in answering questions I’ve received. It sure beats researching each specific claim.
10 March 2007 at 7:39 AM
I guess it’s possible to imagine, being charitable to the C4 executives, that they thought commissioning this may foster debate. It’s a misconception - dissemination of information fosters debate; dissemination of misinformation only fosters confusion.
It seems that there’s a great opportunity for a budding internet broadcaster here! Edit out the key points from the documentary and then add in the scientific rebuttles outlined above. There’s even scope to approach Wunsch to add some material and maybe anyone else who was swindled into appearing. To do it properly, put in some of the genuine big names in climate change, and add a 5 minute piece at the end on political involvement in scientific broadcasting ala comment #14 above.
Then the ball is in Channel 4’s court - would they have the guts to broadcast something like that? Maybe back to back with Al Gore’s film for a night on climate change?! Or if they’re scared of the baton, how about the BBC? And if not, there’s always youtube and free Internet broadcasting…
10 March 2007 at 7:54 AM
re #5
Good old Pete Best - beat me to the punch again. On another associated media matter is BBC’s “Have Your Say” website. Their “Most Recommended” comments list on GW is an eye opener for me and makes me realise just what a mountain you chaps’ll have to climb to get your message across.
Keep up the good work
Mike
10 March 2007 at 7:56 AM
In the UK, TV has to follow certain guidelines, one is:
“Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy and Undue Prominence of Views and Opinions”
Rules include:
“5.7 Views and facts must not be misrepresented. Views must also be presented with due weight over appropriate timeframes.”
Because the show was advertised as being ‘partial’ to start with, it was probably legitimate. In other words, viewers were given fair warning of the content. However 5.7 could have been broken??
If anyone in the UK is interested in complaining about the show then Ofcom has a complaints prodedure. The full set of rules are also available on the site.
Ofcom
10 March 2007 at 8:29 AM
Re #7 and #9: Talking about “trivial arithmetic errors” please remember the embarassing 02Feb07 edition of IPCC’s SPM. Even good (and many!) scientists are not immune to errant calculations!
10 March 2007 at 8:46 AM
Re #13
While I don’t think I disagree with your overall point, I am somewhat amused whenever I read or hear someone say something like this:
“Scientific issues are not even the issue. *Real* people have significantly more power than any *scientists* due to their ability to capture the attention of the congressmen/women who can indeed, change or enact legislation that WOULD effect a change.”
I also understand why the *real scientists* of RealClimate try to keep political discussion out of this blog as much as possible and attempt to keep the focus on the science of global warming.
They just want us all to keep it *Real*!
10 March 2007 at 9:17 AM
[[They also stated that volcanic emissions of CO2 far exceeded those from human activity. This is untrue. Annual emissions from volcanoes are only 1% of the amount emitted to the atmosphere by humans.]]
Even better — according to the USGS, humans emit 150 times more CO2 than all the volcanoes in the world.
10 March 2007 at 9:21 AM
The blogosphere hoopla over “the swindle” was less than I expected. I haven’t seen it (didn’t get it in my area), but from what I’ve heard, it wasn’t even very good as propaganda goes. Also, a number of sites have done a good job debunking it.
Someone commented that RealClimate isn’t really well-tuned to the skeptical lay reader. Perhaps that’s true, but I think RC fills a more useful role by helping to educate those of us who are scientists, or very science-savvy lay readers, but not climate scientists, giving us a pretty solid non-researcher’s foundation in climate science. This enables lots of us to carry the message forward much more effectively.
RC is not just a source for reliable, detailed climate science. It’s also helping to create an army of advocates who advance the cause with considerably more rigor and correctness. This not only helps us refute the oft-ridiculous claims of close-minded skeptics, it also makes for a stark and illuminative contrast between those who actually work at learning about the issue, and those who just “spout off” without getting their facts, or their reasoning, anywhere near correct.
So RC, keep up the good work, and don’t change your approach. You’re not just setting the record straight, you’re helping the “disciples” fight the good fight, with truth and reason. Rabbet, Reasic, Lynn V., myself, and others, all rely on you — and we’re carrying the banner forward.
10 March 2007 at 9:50 AM
Is anyone going to make a formal complaint to Ofcom? I had a look at the regulations before the show was aired, and I couldn’t see anything that they broke. As long as you aren’t claiming that you are presenting the news, there is no requirement for impartiality, I think.
Thoughts? I’m a UK resident, and would be happy to partake/help out in a complaint - if there was any grounds for it.
10 March 2007 at 10:30 AM
Critique by Sir John Houghton
of Channel 4 “Great Global Warming Swindle”
10 March 2007 at 10:32 AM
Re #23, Francis Massen
Yes. The very thought occurred to me as I penned my comment, but …
The difference, surely, is between peer-reviewed published material (IIRC in both instances) and a policymakers’ document that was undergoing constant revision up until the moment it was published.
The difference is that the SPM errors were acknowledged and rectified immediately, and were no more that drafting errors resulting from a decision to change to consistent units (presumably from disparate sources with regard to the now Table 1), whereas I don’t think the errors “elsewhere” have been acknowledged as errors and corrected in print/retracted (Or have they? Someone tell, please, so that I don’t labour under a false premise.) and they lead to false results that naysayers still seem to raise/use as fact in contrarian arguments.
No contest, no comparison, I think. Errors are a fact of life: confess/retract/amend and move on; don’t retreat and hope people forget and then use your results as scientific fact.
10 March 2007 at 10:36 AM
Question to experts please.
Items which were new to me.
1. The graph comparing “Sun” with Arctic-wide Surface Air temperature Anomalies over last century.
They actually referred to a paper! I managed to find the source i.e.
Willie W-H. Soon ,2005 Geophys Res.Lett.Vol. 32,L16712
Now Realclimate have criticised earlier work by him but not referred to this one (as far as I know). The icon in TAR from e.g. the Hadley centre shows that you can only account for the GLOBAL temp. over a similar period without BOTH solar and CO2 (and aerosols). So these two pieces of work appear to disagree.
Unlike that work, this is not based on a model but on a correlation. I have not had time to read the paper yet but that probably means that they just multiply the solar energy by a scaling factor and plot it on the same graph as T. Unlike the other comparison, both curves include the last thirty years warming. The Sun curve is a bit too flat over the recent period but it does not look too bad. The temperature is not of course the global value but it seems to have similar trends. I wonder what the experts think? It is not only CO2 which Soon appears to omit but also the aerosols during the global cooling phase after 1940.
Has there been any fiddling here? There is more to the paper than this graph (but not much more to the TV programme, the rest of it was just recycled stuff).Some time ago I read a similar comparison by Solanki et al which still concluded that you needed to include CO2 to get a good fit. That was also done without a theory)
2. In the case of the very long term changes it is believed that the orbital changes might act like a pacemaker with CO2 feedback acting as the amplifier. Is it possible that something similar might happen when you combine cosmic rays with CO2 ? (This question has nothing to do with Soon). That assumes that the correlations between solar and T are real.
3. As I remember the direct solar effect would not cool the stratosphere which is an argument against solar being responsible for all the warming.
What about the indirect effect (cosmic rays)? I have only a vague idea but here is a start:
If short wave radiation is reflected from a low level cloud it might just
be aborbed on its way out by the stratosphere ; this could warm the stratosphere or if the effect is too small it would produce zero effect. hence less low level clouds=> more warming and zero or slight cooling of stratosphere. On the other hand some clouds produce a greenhouse effect and reducing those would reduce the stratospheric cooling. This ramble suggests that this is not the right discriminator. Is it possible that there is another signature which could discriminate between cosmic rays (clouds) and CO2?
4. Another Lindzen crit. of climate models. He said (in the program) that extremes of weather were caused by the difference in T between the poles and the equator. This difference is projected to fall so you would expect that this would reduce the incidence of extreme weather events. Am I right in think that this appears reasonable but that it would have to be combined with the opposite effect produced by shifting a normal distribution sideways which increases the frequency of what were previously rare events? This leads to the next question : Is it possible that Lindzen’s effect is actually there in the output of the models? (this would turn the topic into a straw man).
5. My main conclusion from the film is that there is a need for something to replace/add to Al Gore’s film. Something between Realclimate (a bit too technical) and Gore (too little physics and too open to questions about lags). In a popular account it does not matter if SOME of it is a bit too advanced for some people. Being too simple makes it easier to misrepresent. Channel 4 can always claim that they have carried other programmes puting the consensus view. The trouble is that they have not been nearly as good as some of the material on the web. The right level used to be that of the early Horizon (BBC2). Unfortunately the recent versions of Horizon emphasise entertainment rather than education.
10 March 2007 at 11:00 AM
So, who paid for that program? Advertiser-sponsored?
10 March 2007 at 11:08 AM
I’ve posted some more of the screenshots from the programme here.
For the 800 year lag, it is interesting that they cite Caillon et al.. They must have missed the conclusion, which says:
“Finally, the situation at Termination III differs from the recent anthropogenic CO2 increase. As recently noted by Kump (38), we should
distinguish between internal influences (such as the deglacial CO2 increase) and external influences on the climate system. Although the recent CO2 increase has clearly been imposed first, as a result of anthropogenic activities, it naturally takes, at Termination III, some time for CO2 to outgas from the ocean once it starts to react to a climate change that is first felt in the atmosphere. The sequence of events during this Termination is fully consistent with CO2 participating in the latter ~4200 years of the warming. The radiative forcing due to CO2 may serve as an amplifier of initial orbital forcing, which is then further amplified by fast atmospheric feedbacks (39) that are also at work for the present-day and future climate.”
By the way, what is your take on this?
10 March 2007 at 11:38 AM
has anyone ID’d the data set presented in the graph (capture.jpg). To me it pretty clearly disagrees with the series I usually see, and if it could be identified as being incorrect then that would be a basis for a formal complaint.
10 March 2007 at 11:49 AM
Since swindle means to practise fraud; deceive or cheat for purposes of gain; a specious or false representation; a pretence
I think all you non-fraudsters, non-deceivers and non-cheats out there in the climate community have a bona fide case against defamation by the programme maker and the broadcaster.
10 March 2007 at 12:34 PM
Regarding BBC HYS debates, I’m of the opinion that they get ‘hit’, not just on climate change.
Channel 4 is supposed, as part of it’s charter, to produce minority interest and controversial programmes. Of course if the programme contained substantial falsehoods and misrepresentations a concerted effort by bloggers and others might force a response from Channel 4. Widespread dissemination of Sir John Houghton’s response would be a good start.
On a related note - anyone hear BBC Fivelive’s Up All Night last night? They had a guest on, whose name I missed, who went through a real script of contrarian memes. Never heard anyone say ‘there is no science behind it’ so many times.
10 March 2007 at 1:20 PM
I have only one quibble with this article: the overly-polite usage of the word “skeptic” to describe doctrinaire denialists, as in the oxymoronic phrase “skeptic talking points.” A true skeptic would question this absurd script they have to parrot, though this performance presents no difficulty to mercenary denialists. Call ‘em what they are, and God bless ya.
10 March 2007 at 2:18 PM
Re:
“Of course if the programme contained substantial falsehoods and misrepresentations a concerted effort by bloggers and others might force a response from Channel 4. Widespread dissemination of Sir John Houghton’s response would be a good start.”
I would encourage those who are concerned about falsehoods and misrepresentation to write to Ofcom: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/, with special reference to Section 265 of the 2003 Communications act at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2003/30021–i.htm#265, and sections 5 and 7 of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code at http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/codes/bcode/.
Also see the update re. filling in of data at http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/03/the_use_of_damon_and_laut.php.
10 March 2007 at 3:01 PM
Carl Wunsch has emailed me again; some of the email is confidential but I am allowed to pass on the following statement from him:
10 March 2007 at 3:03 PM
It was a documentary expressing an opinion about the weather, not a speech denying the holocaust. It’s worth keeping that in perspective. As a member of the great unwashed, I found it quite interesting. The graph of solar activity certainly seemed a better fit to the temperature graph than the co2 graph was. And people ARE making a lot of money out of the current media “crisis”. The documentary contained a much more rational argument than any I’ve seen in the UK media, or heard from the UK government. People here in Scotland are getting rich by selling the “carbon rights” to trees which are currently 2 inches tall.These are bought by oil companies to justify air travel.
Humanity needs to clean up it’s environmental act. But that should be done for it’s own sake, not because we’re being terrorized into it. It seems very convenient that the west gets to cripple the developing world in the process.
I don’t know, I’ve got an open mind. Can anyone else here say that?
10 March 2007 at 3:55 PM
Are any of you scientists here able to join the Step it Up campaign to make the Fossil Fools in the Senate pass effective Climate Change Legislation? Barbara Boxer has developed legislation that per the UCS is effective:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/10/151341/862
10 March 2007 at 4:01 PM
Hi Dave
If you have an open mind, as you say, I trust that means you want to see the strictly scientific evidence, and not anyone’s spin; so I would strongly recommend you start by reading the following peer reviewed scientific paper about that graph:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf
.. and then read the following scientific evidence-based article and the links from it:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/
Dave
10 March 2007 at 4:03 PM
Re #39 Keep an open mind about AGW?
Dave,
Certainly it’s a good thing to keep an open mind if a question is still open. But the fact is that there’s lots of interconnected evidence that global warming is occurring, and that present warming is caused by rising CO2 levels because of anthropogenic emissions. (For a summary of that evidence, there’s for example IPCC’s AR4, or Al Gore’s movie.)
Then there’s a thing that seems to be overlooked by proponents of alternative explanations (e.g. the cosmic ray hypothesis). If I want to make an alternative explanation stick, not only do I have to make the case for that alternative, but also explain why the perfectly sound physics of the CO2-warming theory would NOT work in this particular case.
There comes a time when the evidence is so overwhelming that “keeping an open mind” just becomes silly. I am not open minded about the Earth being flat, about people having built the perpetuum mobile, or about the concensus view of AGW.
The jury has reached a verdict, Your Honour.
10 March 2007 at 4:23 PM
I was alerted to this programme when I saw it advertised on the front page of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s site a couple of weeks back. The CEI coordinates the US’s “Cooler Heads Coalition” and has received around $2 million from Exxon 1998-2005.
I hear also that Channel 4 wants there to be a huge controversy about the doco. That there’s not much attention being paid to it apart from some excellent blogs ripping apart the science, like RealClimate, is therefore a good thing. We’ve heard all the arguments endlessly, always aired by the same people: Singer, Lindzen, Michaels, Christy, Ball… blah blah.
That Carl Wunsch was misled was bad - possibly does form the basis of a complaint. I know of several other NGO’s and scientists who were also interviewed - but not included. They all debunked the rubbish run by Durkin.
10 March 2007 at 5:13 PM
Dave (Re: 1st.and last sentences of comment number 39).
Your term holocaust may appear far fetched especially if you live in the Northern part of the World, but imagine a future international court.
Witness for the prosecution: take a look at the projected rainfalls for North Africa for later in the 21st century, if the temperature were to rise (e.g. in the Summary report of the AR4). It was already rather hostile territory in 2007; then these projected rises showed a changed colour on a map which meant human casualties
in the future. The report also attributed these changed colours to human produced CO2. But the map was ignored and the casualties occurred. What has the defence to say? Witness for the defence decides to play a recording of this TV program.
As for the convenient crippling of the third world; this accusation is directed against enviromentalists rather than the scientists, but it is based on a straw man because (as far as I know) I have not heard of environmentalists who want to stop Africans increasing their tiny carbon footprint.
10 March 2007 at 5:13 PM
Is it possible to test for variations in low cloud with solar spot activity? I understand satellites can’t accurately measure this, because of overlying clouds. Is there any other way?
10 March 2007 at 5:45 PM
Re:29
>The difference is that the SPM errors were acknowledged and rectified immediately…
I was not aware that the IPCC ever acknowledged the errors. Is there a link where they did?
10 March 2007 at 6:12 PM
I have no idea where the truth lies in any of this, but I come down on the sceptic side, because I believe if there really was a problem, the government would, as an example, drop VAT to zero on all energy efficient goods, cars etc, to encourage the masses to buy items that are good for the environment. Simplistic i know, but if governments can wage war for no reason, then they have the power to do this.
I do believe that conservation of the earths resources is a sensible and responsible thing to do.
Could all you climate scientologist answer me a few questions?
Why can’t all you people who really know get together and present a totally unbiased and impartial, scientific paper on what is really happening, declaring all sources of funding etc? Ideally the funding should be blind i.e all industrial companies and all green companies should contribute, but without knowing which groups of scientists they were contributing to and without “leaning on” you guys to get the answer they want.
Why can’t the funding be completely without strings, i.e. “Here you are Mr. Scientist, here is a lot of money, go away and tell us the truth, no politics, just truth”?
Is this too much to ask?
10 March 2007 at 6:28 PM
Carl Wunsch’s predicament reminds me again of the divergence between the meanings of words in science and the common vernacular–and the near parity transormation between scientific and political jargon. We as scientists need to be aware that we don’t speak the same language as the general public. To this end, I would urge every scientist to read Helen Quinn’s excellent editorial in the January 2007 Physics Today: “Belief and knowledge - a plea about language”.
http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_60/iss_1/8_1.shtml
Especially in scientific issues that affect public policy, we need to learn to present our results to the public in language they will understand.
10 March 2007 at 8:03 PM
RE Comment #47, “Simplistic i know, but if governments can wage war for no reason, then they have the power to do this.”
Ever heard of capitalism? Corporations in America have more rights than human beings. Furthermore, corporations don’t have grandchildren and they don’t breath oxygen. No one can get elected to the government in America without millions of corporate dollars behind them.
Learn more about capitalism here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
10 March 2007 at 8:08 PM
re Colin 47
First of all, they are ’scientists’ not ’scientologists’: see Wikipedia on the Church of Scientology.
Second, the IPCC reports seem to meet your requirements: they are signed off by most governments in the world so the views expressed are accepted not only by progressive countries eg Sweden but also deeply-fossil-fuel reliant places such as Saudi Arabia, or big industrial nations such as the USA or China.
10 March 2007 at 8:21 PM
For those of you who want to complain to Ofcom about it here is a model complaint I found on http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820 :
Model complaint to Ofcom and Channel 4
Submitted by jimroland on 9 March, 2007 - 20:20
The following complaint has been profferred as a model for anyone else who wishes to complain.
It was drafted by someone who used to work for the Advertising Standards Authority and the ITV internal regulator.
Feel free to use it in your responses to Ofcom and Channel 4, and forward it to anyone else who was outraged that Channel 4 aired the programme with no caveats. A copy of the Broadcasting Code items apparently breached appears at the foot.
(I’ll be adding that it appears Channel 4 profited handsomely by broadcasting this with a bumper crop of advertisers, in spite of the apparent breaches, so I hope Ofcom will fine them for more than this profit.)
You can complain via:
Ofcom: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/progs/specific/
Channel 4: >http://help.channel4.com/SRVS/…
Dear Ofcom
I am making a formal complaint about the Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.
This programme is grossly irresponsible in misleading Channel 4’s viewers about the impact of climate change and the need for action. In doing so I believe it breached the Broadcasting Code clauses: 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11 and 5.12.
The programme maker and all the sources used are well known for their lobbying against climate science. Indeed the presenter Michael Durkin has a previous ruling against him for a similar breech of the Code with Channel 4’s ‘Against Nature’. It is clear therefore that this team requires stricter regulation and I urge you to require pre-clearance for any further programming from this source.
Here are the specifics of my complaint:
Breach of clause 5.5: Man made climate change is clearly a matter of industrial, political and public policy controversy. The Great Global Warming Swindle failed to show due impartiality towards the science of climate change and failed to represent opposing views.
Breach of clause 5.6: Channel 4 made no indication of The Great Global Warming Swindle being part of a linked series of programmes and it is not part of any series that a viewer can identify.
Breach of clause 5.7: The Great Global Warming Swindle repeatedly expressed views as if they were facts.
Breach of clause 5.8: The professional and career track record of Michael Durkin where at no point explained to viewers nor was he introduced nor did Channel 4 add a caveat at the end of the programme.
Breach of clause 5.9: The programme comprised personal views (presented in the guise of facts) and no balancing views were included.
Breach of clause 5.10: The personal views in The Great Global Warming Swindle were not signalled as such.
Breach of clause 5.11: Climate change is clearly a matter “of national, and international, importance” and Channel 4 should be heavily censured for failing to apply the Code in this context.
Breach of clause 5.12: As for 5.11, given the gravity of the issue Channel 4 is seriously failing in its duty by not complying with your ruling that a “wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes. Views and facts must not be misrepresented.”
I am not a person who leaps to censorship or to stifle genuine scientific debate. But this programme falls far short of that, being merely the last gasp of lobbying by the US petroleum industry. Channel 4 has a track record of breaching Ofcom Codes and I urge you to exact the most severe punishment available to you for what I can without exaggeration call ‘a crime against humanity’.
Yours sincerely
……………….
Relevant Broadcasting Code clauses:
The preservation of due impartiality
(Rules 5.5 to 5.12 apply to television programme services, teletext services, national radio and national digital sound programme services.)
5.5 Due impartiality on matters of political or industrial controversy and matters relating to current public policy must be preserved on the part of any person providing a service (listed above). This may be achieved within a programme or over a series of programmes taken as a whole.
Meaning of “series of programmes taken as a whole”:
This means more than one programme in the same service, editorially linked, dealing with the same or related issues within an appropriate period and aimed at a like audience. A series can include, for example, a strand, or two programmes (such as a drama and a debate about the drama) or a ‘cluster’ or ’season’ of programmes on the same subject.
5.6 The broadcast of editorially linked programmes dealing with the same subject matter (as part of a “series” in which the broadcaster aims to achieve due impartiality) should normally be made clear to the audience on air.
5.7 Views and facts must not be misrepresented. Views must also be presented with due weight over appropriate timeframes.
5.8 Any personal interest of a reporter or presenter, which would call into question the due impartiality of the programme, must be made clear to the audience.
5.9 Presenters and reporters (with the exception of news presenters and reporters in news programmes), presenters of “personal view” or “authored” programmes or items, and chairs of discussion programmes may express their own views on matters of political or industrial controversy or matters relating to current public policy. However alternative viewpoints must be adequately represented either in the programme, or in a series of programmes taken as a whole. Additionally, presenters must not use the advantage of regular appearances to promote their views in a way that compromises the requirement for due impartiality. Presenter phone-ins must encourage and must not exclude alternative views.
5.10 A personal view or authored programme or item must be clearly signalled to the audience at the outset. This is a minimum requirement and may not be sufficient in all circumstances. (Personality phone-in hosts on radio are exempted from this provision unless their personal view status is unclear.)
Meaning of “personal view” and “authored”:
“Personal view” programmes are programmes presenting a particular view or perspective. Personal view programmes can range from the outright expression of highly partial views, for example by a person who is a member of a lobby group and is campaigning on the subject, to the considered “authored” opinion of a journalist, commentator or academic, with professional expertise or a specialism in an area which enables her or him to express opinions which are not necessarily mainstream.
Matters of major political or industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy
5.11 In addition to the rules above, due impartiality must be preserved on matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy by the person providing a service (listed above) in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes.
Meaning of “matters of major political or industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy”:
These will vary according to events but are generally matters of political or industrial controversy or matters of current public policy which are of national, and often international, importance, or are of similar significance within a smaller broadcast area.
5.12 In dealing with matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes. Views and facts must not be misrepresented.
The prevention of undue prominence of views and opinions on matters of political or industrial controversy and matters relating to current public policy
(Rule 5.13 applies to local radio services (including community radio services), local digital sound programme services (including community digital sound programme services) and radio licensable content services.)
5.13 Broadcasters should not give undue prominence to the views and opinions of particular persons or bodies on matters of political or industrial controversy and matters relating to current public policy in all the programmes included in any service (listed above) taken as a whole.
Meaning of “undue prominence of views and opinions”:
Undue prominence is a significant imbalance of views aired within coverage of matters of political or industrial controversy or matters relating to current public policy.
Meaning of “programmes included in any serviceâ�¦taken as a whole”:
Programmes included in any service taken as a whole, means all programming on a service dealing with the same or related issues within an appropriate period.
10 March 2007 at 9:09 PM
Re #46, Comment by Steve Reynolds
On the front page of the IPCC’s 4th SPM, prominently displayed, since 5 Feb, have been the words
Hands up! How many of you have read page 1? In fact, IIRC, the initial release had pretty much the same text about being subject to copy-editing, but with the issue date of 2 Feb.
Given such warnings on the front of that document, one should expect there to be typographical and transcription errors, particularly considering the amount of redrafting the final agreed text had to go through to meet the requirements of all interested parties by the self-imposed press deadline. There are over 50 drafting and draft contributing authors listed on the cover of the 4th SPM, each, no doubt, having editorial input and with varying degrees, also no doubt, in English language abilities. Added to that will undoubtedly be the slew of subeditors making their contributions. Errors are to be expected.
The 4th SPM is not peer-reviewed work; it is a distillation of published peer-reviewed work these last 4 years or so that will make up AR4. For anyone even to try to seek to compare the IPCC’s 4th SPM transcription/copy-editing errors with possible (and definite) errors in method in peer-reviewed publications (and I’m not saying you are) is ludicrous. Of course, if there are errors perpetuated from the original peer-reviewed work from which AR4 will be drawn and from which this 4th SPM was put together, then it is for the authors of those studies to issue errata, corrigenda, retractions, etc., in the journals in which their work was originally published. That would be a matter for them, not the IPCC. The IPCC would then, no doubt, respond.
As I said in #29
So, yes (at least in my mind), the IPCC have been about as upfront as possible with regard to acknowledging copy-editing errors in their document for policymakers. I can’t think of anything more prominent than putting that disclaimer and the date of amendment on the front page of the report.
But all this is to divert attention from that scandalous piece of TV on C4.
10 March 2007 at 9:13 PM
RE “Temperature leads CO2 by 800 years in the ice cores,” I don’t think they are claiming no correlation, but rather that if A causes B, then B cannot cause A. That’s very faulty logic.
I use this example in class: Which causes which — re education and income? And students answer that better education leads in general to higher income. Then I pose this situation: What if parents have higher incomes, won’t their children be able to get better educations, in general?
As for GHGs following temperature rises, that is just what I’ve been bleeping about many times: surely we are headed for a spiralling out of human control situation, if we do not reduce drastically. The initial warming, caused by our GHGs, could trigger nature to emit GHGs, causing further warming, causing further emissions, causing further warming. This is indeed a much more serious situation that simply GHGs causing warming (and no positive feedbacks involving GHGs) — which implies that we can more leisurely consider whether or not to reduce, and just how little to reduce, and, afterall, it’s sorta nice not to have to shovel snow.
We are on a runaway train, shovelling coal as fast as we can, headed for a big cliff. There will be a point, beyond which even if we reduce our GHG emissions to zero, the train will not be able to stop in time and it’s over the cliff for many of us & much of earth’s biota.
10 March 2007 at 9:20 PM
And they’re talking about being swindled out of what? Couldn’t be money, because measures to reduce GHGs save money. Couldn’t be freedom, because once you’re off the grid, you’re a lot freer than the matrix guys plugged into the grid. So what are we swindled out of???
But just for the sake of argument, supposing we do have to pony up some money at some point, after we’ve reduce our GHGs by 3/4ths and technology has not come up with any more new conservation/efficiency or alternature measures. What’s a few bucks, compared to losing lives — that’s the cost of not mitigating AGW, when it is indeed happening.
10 March 2007 at 9:38 PM
The arrogance of thinking that puny man is changing global climate is only exceeded by the stupidity of believing we can - and must - urgently do something to stop it. Colin is right (comment #47). We need impartial reports by scientists not scare stories. Unfortunately impartial reports don’t sell as well as scare stories, and don’t produce funding for more research (and more scare stories). It’s really all about money, and that’s what makes the world go around.
10 March 2007 at 10:16 PM
#12 and response
Gavin, I don’t understand your answer. The CCSP report you mention does indicate a divergence between models runs and satellite / radiosonde date over Tropics, as Al Bedo suggests it. So, this issue is open, as it is concluded.
Tropical Temperature Results (20°S to 20°n)
- Although the majority of observational data sets show more warming at the surface than in the troposphere, some observational data sets show the opposite behavior. Almost all model simulations show more warming in the troposphere than at the surface. This difference between models and observations may arise from errors that are common to all models, from errors in the observational data sets, or from a combination of these factors. The second explanation is favored, but the issue is still open.
I would also be interested to know if models and satellites/sondes converge on Antarctica, more broadly 60°S and poleward. Any information about that ? RSS or UAH database suggest a cooling trend 1979-2006 in lower troposphere, but most AR4 ensemble models runs indicate a sustained surface warming for this zone, already significative for the runs 2010-30, as well as of course for the rest of the century. Some say ozone play a particular role, but I don’t perceive why it should lead here to a cooling trend in lower layers of the atmosphere.
(Maybe Christy-Spencer are supposed to be “conservative” in their estimate, but the South Pole and low latitudes trend mentioned above appears as clearly in RSS analyze, look at maps thereafter)
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html
10 March 2007 at 10:33 PM
Re 52:
> I can’t think of anything more prominent than putting that disclaimer and the date of amendment on the front page of the report.
Directly stating what had been corrected and why would help improve transparancy.
Using a file name with a different date than the original would also be useful.
10 March 2007 at 11:35 PM
This is what you are up against. From Christopher Booker, a respected UK journalist who has campaigned relentlessly against government interference and bureaucracy:
A turning point in climate change
Yup, I’m as speechless as you are.
11 March 2007 at 12:00 AM
” Why can’t the funding be completely without strings, i.e. “Here you are Mr. Scientist, here is a lot of money, go away and tell us the truth, no politics, just truth”? ”
That’s how most government granted research works. Really, this is how the theory of global warming came about, through no-strings-attached kind of research.
11 March 2007 at 12:52 AM
But The Telegraph has long had an incredibly anti-AGW, anti-environment agenda - not so long ago they gave 52 entire pages to the noon-scientist Christopher Monckton’s ill-informed diatribe, so I would have been surprised if they hadn’t had some coveraage of this sort.
11 March 2007 at 1:01 AM
Re 24 (13)
…”I also understand why the *real scientists* of RealClimate try to keep political discussion out of this blog as much as possible and attempt to keep the focus on the science of global warming.”…
I appreciate your amusement although the source of it escapes me as the point I made had to do with the power of a person, not any political relations of climate scientists…
” Real people have significantly more power than any scientists”
The onus and burden for instilling individual mentality, conclusion inferring, action or non action, belief, and a logical rational thinking process would not fall upon a climate scientist.
Not unlike a physician, they provide information. What one chooses to do with that information (believe, seek out other opinions, conduct personal research, choose alternative treatment paths, become a non complaint patient, ect) is an individual action, reaction, and process.
The crux of my statement in relation to the power of the people is most assuredly reflected in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of our government which are responsible for enacting changes in current law or to remedy situations that constituents wish to be changed.
Which I previously stated and point out in my prior posting.
[edit] The EPA was sued by environmental groups/attorneys all the way to the Supreme Court regarding the responsibility of the EPA/government to regulate CO2. And certainly there are climate scientists who have testified for both sides.
However, that too, would have nothing to do with politics regarding a climate scientist because he was requested by an attorney to testify as an “expert” for said attorney’s case.
It’s a routine practice of the establishment to subpoena experts to testify on their behalf because the attorney feels that the testimony of the expert would support their litigation and arguments.
Regardless, the arguments and stance offered within any case, is a reflection of the litigants, not the expert witnesses.
More commonly, this is merely another form of mental compartmentalization, which most people practice in the medical or scientific fields, in order to function in their job capacities in order to operate without bias, preformed conclusions, speculations, and assumptions while carrying out their job functions.
Furthermore, many scientific and medical employers prohibit the espousing and engagement of their employees in activities in conjunction with an employees status as their employee that would not reflect the feelings or standing of the said establishment and or employer.
Glad to have provided some amusement in your day.
11 March 2007 at 3:03 AM
Regarding the issue of temperature changes in glacial-interglacial transitions and CO2 time lags, keep a few things in mind: (1) the current rate of CO2 increase is some 30X higher than anything recorded in the ice cores, meaning that what took 1000 years in the past is happening in about 35 years now; (2) we are in the interglacial now, not coming out of a glacial period, so the comparison is of limited use in understanding the current situation (similar to trying to understand how changes in global ocean circulation will affect climate), and (3) the ’solar issue’ is often poorly reported; the orbital solar forcing is the one that drives the ice ages, and that relies on the changes the distribution of sunlight on the surface of the Earth due to changes in the Earth’s orbit over thousands of years, not on changes in solar energy output.
The fact that CO2 reliably tracks temperature and doesn’t vary randomly in the ice core records should be a clue that the two are closely related - and we also know that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to fossil fuels by looking at the carbon-14 content (nil in CO2 produced from ancient fossil fuel deposits). CH4 also tracks temperature with a similar time lag. This also explains why we come out of glacials at all - because the orbital forcing alone is far too low to account for the observed warming.
By the way, note that when cows and other ruminants release methane, they are getting the carbon for the methane from grasses, which photosynthetically fixed the CO2 from the atmosphere (and the methane gets converted back to CO2 within a few decades in the atmosphere) - so it’s a different proposition from using buried fossil fuels for transportation.
As far as the political and public relations issues, it seems a lot like the tobacco campaigns aimed at disconnecting lung cancer and cigarette smoke, rather than the ongoing attempts to prevent evolution from being taught in schools - the only way to slow global warming and associated climate change is to stop burning coal and oil, and instead rely on renewables for energy - and it’s a rather large economic disruption for the fossil fuel industry. The methods used are similar to those of the tobacco campaigns - for example, CO2science.org digs up local temperature records that show cooling and presents them as evidence that the planet isn’t warming - rather like digging up a 80-yr old ‘lifetime smoker’ without lung cancer and claiming that that proves there is no link between cancer and smoking.
Incidentally (#60), much of the earlier work on climate, weather and the oceans was actually funded by the military, who wanted in-depth knowledge of the oceans, as well as information about how infrared was absorbed by the atmosphere. Some of the earliest evidence of global warming at the poles was collected by US submarines that measured the declining thickness of Artic sea ice. It’s also noting that most of the early work on global warming predates any concern about rapid climate change, but was simply aimed at understanding the glacial cycles and the behavior of the oceans and the atmosphere.
From the comments and discussion, it also seems that the film avoided discussing the polar regions and the high-altitude glaciers, where the evidence is pretty incontrovertible that decades-old predictions of the effects of global warming are becoming reality.
11 March 2007 at 3:26 AM
Muzzling discussion of polar bears
March 7, 2007
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/environment/archives/112466.asp
…”Check out this FWS polar bear 1″ notice http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/environment/library/FTApprovalPerham.PDF and this FWS polar bear 2″notice http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/environment/library/FTHohn.PDF sent from the regional office in Alaska to the director of Fish and Wildlife stating that workers will not comment on these issues. In one case “an official representative” from the department will travel with the worker and is allowed to speak on the topics, someone who “is knowledgeable on the administration’s position on climate change and related issues.”…
The House bears down on Fish and Wildlife policy on climate change
March 9, 2007
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/environment/archives/112521.asp
…”The congressmen asked for all documents related to foreign travel and all records and communications on the administration’s policy on climate change, polar bears and sea ice. Deadline for compliance is March 23.”…
11 March 2007 at 4:41 AM
Watching the film on YouTube, it strikes me that some of the graphs (e.g. one allegedly from NASA GISS, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/) look differently to what I remember them as. And Lindzen points out that the temperature between the Poles and the Tropics affects the storminess - as he state, the text books say - but he forgets that increased temperature also enhances the rate of evaporation. These are just a couple om impressions, but there are more… (mostly addressed elsewhere at RC.)
11 March 2007 at 4:43 AM
Re #57
Since when you hit the download link you go to the latest edition of the report with the last revision date prominently on, I see no benefit. I think it’s a non-issue.
If you think it is important, and you obviously do, then contact the IPCC about it. I’m sure they’ll be happy to receive your comment, and they may agree with you.
11 March 2007 at 5:32 AM
Thought I’d email the Telegraph:
Dear Sir,
Christopher Booker’s choice to defer to the views of such figures as Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer is of course his prerogative. To refer to them as “…almost every top scientist in the field” is a fiction.
Regards,
Iain ___________
11 March 2007 at 5:36 AM
My take on the following posts;
# 47 “I have no idea where the truth lies in any of this, but I come down on the sceptic side, because I believe if there really was a problem, the government would, as an example, drop VAT to zero on all energy efficient goods, cars etc, to encourage the masses to buy items that are good for the environment. Simplistic i know, but if governments can wage war for no reason, then they have the power to do this.”
As Benjamin Disreali once said “England is governed by Parliament not by logic”
#55 “The arrogance of thinking that puny man is changing global climate is only exceeded by the stupidity of believing we can - and must - urgently do something to stop it.”
So “puny man” was not responsible for punching a hole in the ozone layer by emitting CFCs (in the tiniest of quantities compared to the total mass of the atmosphere).
Actually that is what we need. Global agreement to limit CO2 greenhouse gas emissions directly- just like the Montreal Protocol has done for CFCs. Interestingly, the models that predicted in the 1970’s that CFCs would deplete ozone did not predict that the hole would develop. It was the shock of the discovery of the hole in 1985 that spurred international action to control CFC emissions. The models had not taken into account the role of Polar Stratospheric Clouds. So- a point that the skeptics miss is that models can actually underestimate how bad things can get. Prior to 1985 there were many arguments posed against limiting CFCs- that parallel what we hear today about not doing anything about GHGs- “too expensive- no alternative technology- will damage the economy- etc etc.
Do we ever learn from history? I hope that we do not need to wait for a “shock” re climate change before we get appropriate and binding global action to reduce GHG emissions.
Nick Riley
11 March 2007 at 6:36 AM
re 41 - cheers for those, Dave. Good sunday morning reading.It strikes me,as a non-scientist, that both sets of graphs are fairly meaningless unless we know whether the background cosmic radiation is a constant or not. Are there any hypotheses relating to this? Also, I’ve been looking at a couple of forums who take the opposite view to you guys. They cite that water vapour is a much more significant greenhouse gas than CO2. Could the current escalation in temperature have anything to do with the increase in atmospheric water vapour caused by the last 150 years of natural warming? It would seem to follow, at least to a layman like myself.
re 42 - I hate to tell you, but you don’t get to decide when a question is open or not. Hindsight will be our ultimate judge. If there are people who oppose you, then the debate’s still open. It would be so convenient if it were otherwise. I come from an Arts background, and studied the philosophy of science whilst at Uni. If I remember correctly ALL scientific truths are, and should be, open to debate and eventual revision. I find the “we’ve decided, and so that’s the truth” attitude that I see on this board reasonably abhorrent. I have some respect for the peer review system, but I do not let this blind me to the fact that scientists are humans and will fall into camps, hold allegiances, play politics, and dismiss their opponents out-of-hand just like the rest of us. The peer review system is also compromised by the inconvenient truth that the majority of climate-research funding comes from bodies who are trying to prove a specific point. This is no “golden age” of research. Anyone who begs to differ will be, effectively, working themselves out of a job. People (and I include scientists in this generalisation)don’t tend to do this. I imagine that the cell-phone in my pocket, which gives my a mild headache after 20 minutes use, was proved to be safe for children by a series of peer-reviewed articles.
re 44 - Thanks for likening me to a war criminal. Raised a chuckle on a dull sunday morning in Aberdeen. It strikes me that climate modelling is so tenuous that no court would ever entertain it as evidence.
In general - Like I say, I’ve got an open mind. I sympathise with the pro-warming camp. You’re saving the planet. The glamour of that must be overwhelming. But what if you’re not? That also has to be considered. Like I said previously, humanity needs to clean up it’s act. Our squandering of resources is disgusting on a fundamental level,regardless of any apocalyptic consequences. This needs addressed, no question.
Finally, please stop the Channel4-bashing. This is infantile, and smacks of pro-censorship. Channel 4 has a government mandate to produce challenging and controversial programming. It is obvious from this thread that it has sparked debate with this documentary. That can only be a good thing. It’s made me aware of some of the underlying issues that would otherwise have escaped me. This striving to “shoot the messenger” begs the question “what kind of world are you trying to save?”. One where the likes of myself get shown footage of random glaciers and hurricanes and are terrorized into doing our governments bidding, rightly or wrongly?
Oh yeah, as a seasoned documentary watcher, I have to ask: how does the global-dimming thing fit into modern climate modelling? Just curious…..
[Response: Global Dimming and Climate Models - gavin]
11 March 2007 at 6:58 AM
[[Critique by Sir John Houghton of Channel 4 “Great Global Warming Swindle” ]]
Houghton is one of my heroes, not just because he has the climate science right, but because he was willing to e-mail me, a complete stranger, electronic versions of the tables from his book “The Physics of Atmospheres” (2002 version). He is a gentleman as well as a scientist.
11 March 2007 at 7:05 AM
[[I don’t know, I’ve got an open mind. Can anyone else here say that? ]]
No. You are the only one. In fact, you may be the only one in the world. Lonely there at the top, isn’t it?
11 March 2007 at 7:08 AM
[[Why can’t all you people who really know get together and present a totally unbiased and impartial, scientific paper on what is really happening, declaring all sources of funding etc? ]]
That’s what the IPCC is all about. But the conclusions from there get called a fraud and a swindle by the denialists. Your mistake is in thinking that people want an unbiased review of the evidence. Most just want their own prejudices confirmed, and will ignore or denounce anything to the contrary.
11 March 2007 at 7:14 AM
[[The arrogance of thinking that puny man is changing global climate is only exceeded by the stupidity of believing we can - and must - urgently do something to stop it.]]
An individual man may be puny, six billion humans with an advanced industrial technology are not. We can, and must, urgently, do something to stop the increase in greenhouse gases that is heating up the world.
11 March 2007 at 7:41 AM
1. The graphs posed are only decent proof. Numbers can be manipulated, as made note of in the film. Their numbers must be regarded with skepticism.
[Response: The graphs were manipulated as well. The temperature changes claimed to come from NASA certainly did not: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp , the solar correlation used discredited calculations and were deliberately cut off around 1980 to hide the obvious disparity since then etc. - gavin]
2. The documentary’s filmmaker is very biased and misrepresents certain things, mostly the accreditations of the scientists. For example, one scientist labeled as the former head of the National Weather Center was really the former head to the National Satellite Weather Center. Furthermore, he used leading questions and was uncritical of weather data collected over hundreds or thousands of years using in my opinion, questionable methods. The only sound measurements we have are from statellites since the seventies. Everything else declines in quality.
Nonetheless, this is not a huge criticism. After all, the film does not pretend to be balanced, unlike Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine. Its filmmaker is no more questionable than Al Gore from An Inconvenient Truth. So, why should we automatically discredit what a lot of scientists say, because the filmmaker is nutty? We seriously give Al Gore’s and Moore’s ideas consideration, and ignore the messenger. Thus, we should care more about the arguments and science given, and not the filmmaker. The only reasopn people are so critical is because this is a right wing documentary. Quite frankly, we need to be objective.
[Response: No. we are critical because they were wrong on a huge number of issues and implications - not because they are partisan. - gavin]
Nonetheless, the film still has a lot to teach you. Furthermore, the arguments used against it from the press amount to ad hominems. Realclimate.org attempted a scientific refutation. Their slogan is “Climate science from climate scientists.” I will disprove their counter-arguments, not to show my brilliant understanding of the subject (I am not a climate scientist,) but the very poor understandings being peddled by “talented” scientists.
Their article can be found at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/
1. They try dodging the fact that CO2 does not correlate with temperture:
“CO2 doesn’t match the temperature record over the 20th C. True but not relevant, because it isn’t supposed to. The programme spent a long time agonising over what they presented as a sharp temperature fall for 4 decades from 1940 to 1980. . . . They presented this as a major flaw in the theory, which is deeply deceptive, because as they and their interviewees must know, the 40-70 cooling type period is readily explained, in that the GCMs are quite happy to reproduce it, as largely caused by sulphate aerosols.”
So, the sulfate aerosoles stopped cancelling out the warming magically between the 40s and the 70s, but not before the 40s or after the 70s? This is nothing more than adapting the old logic of the disproven global cooling theory of the 70s. Nevertheless, one need look no further than the fact that there is data (Christy and Spencer’s satellite data, balloon data, antarctic temperatures) that show cooling until around 1998. So, their neat and tidy aerosal explanation is not air-tight. Quite frankly, neither is the solar only theory (at least using the solar data used in the film.) Data is easily manipulated and exceptions easily construed. We should avoid gross simplifications, but I do find it funny that when a skeptic makes such a simplification that they are called out for it, when climatology is chock full of them (and very poor ones.)
[Response: All single factor explanations are wrong. The only way to assess this is to have all factors weigh in and then see which (if any) dominate in any particular time. The factors over the 20th C are dominated by greenhouse gases but until recent decades variations in other components were still important. The difference between aerosols and CO2 is that CO2 accumulates, while aerosols are related to current emissions - implying that the CO2 effect will dominate in time. See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/planetary-energy-imbalance/ for some idea of what the factors look like in time and how the modeled temperature responds. - gavin]
2. They claim that the troposphere is warming more than the surface…
“The troposphere should warm faster than the sfc, say the models and basic theory. As indeed it does - unless you’re wedded to the multiply-corrected Spencer+Christy version of the MSU series. Christy (naturally enough) features in this section, though he seems to have forgotten the US CCSP report, and the executive summary which he authored says Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies. See-also previous RC posts.”
If you bothered reading the next paragraph of that report it said: “For recent decades, all current atmospheric data now show global-average warming that is similar to surface warming. . . . The majority of these datasets show warming at the surface that is greater than the troposphere.” Thus, the troposphere is not warmer “indeed” than the surface. [edit]
[Response: Over short periods (such as the satellite record) even the models show that you can’t expect monotonic behaviour. Indeed the model trends span the range of observed trends making any ‘discrepancy’ very hard to detect. Given the history of corrections to the satellite data, the significant difference between UAH and RSS products and problems with the radiosondes, claims that this disproves models are specious. -gavin]
3. They claim that the ice cores, which don’t show an increase in CO2 until a change in temperature first, is misleading:
“Temperature leads CO2 by 800 years in the ice cores. Not quite as true as they said, but basically correct; however they misinterpret it. The way they said this you would have thought that T and CO2 are anti-correlated; but if you overlay the full 400/800 kyr of ice core record, you can’t even see the lag because its so small. The correct interpretation of this is well known: that there is a T-CO2 feedback: see RC again for more.”
They add in an article they link at, “The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.”
“COULD in fact”??? Yet, this is the “correct interpretation”??? This makes NO sense. First, whatever made the world warm is STILL happening before the increase in CO2. Second, the most they can be claiming is that the world got warm naturally first for 800 years, and then the other 4200 years were caused by a new runaway CO2 warming. However, this is just guessing and does not explain why the CO2 would stop warming at year 5,001. What independent force stops the warming then? The fact is, they are coming up with seemingly logical excuses that do not hold up to even the most unintelligent (mine) scrutiny.
[Response: You would benefit from reading about Milankovitch forcings. The changes in the ice cores are (on these timescales) driven by wobbles in the Earth’s orbit that affect the seasonal distribution of solar radiation. These are independent of anything else going on. The carbon cycle, particularly in the ocean responds to these changes over a long time period - related to the ocean mixing time - and subsequent changes in CO2 also make it cooler and so on. This is a classic and well-known feedback. Your conceptual problem is that (as above) you need to accept that climate is not driven by any single factor, but that all need to be accounted for - including human behaviour. CO2 is leading now because we are changing it very directly and no amount of ice core data will shift that understanding. - gavin]
11 March 2007 at 7:51 AM
“They cite that water vapour is a much more significant greenhouse gas than CO2. Could the current escalation in temperature have anything to do with the increase in atmospheric water vapour caused by the last 150 years of natural warming? It would seem to follow, at least to a layman like myself.” Dave.
Dave, you’ve found realclimate, there is a good article about water vapour to be found right here. You might find that you have it backwards.
[Response:Water Vapour: Feedback or Forcing? - gavin]
11 March 2007 at 7:54 AM
Re 47, 55. Colin and Max, I make it a point to try to reach out to skeptics. If my extended hand is met with the back of yours, at least I am none the worse for it.
First, to address Max’s complaint. Actually Max, humans have had a tremendous effect on the planet. Humans caused extinction of all the large animals on Madagascar and in Australia. They may have played a role in the advance of deserts like the Sahara through overgrazing. There is strong evidence that in addition to “global warming”, we also influenced climate by dumping aerosols into the atmosphere (this is what called the cooling that skeptics often trumpet as “proof” that scientists don’t know what they’re talking about). You need to remember that we are talking about 6 billion puny humans, not just a few. A carpenter ant in isolation looks harmless, too, but a few tens of thousands can take down your house.
Now to address Colin’s post. First, the reason science and politics cannot be divorced is precisely because science is a human activity, and politics is how groups of humans get things done (polis–”the people” is the root of politics). The difference is that scientists have agreed to be bound by certain rules, and rule #1 is that the evidence prevails. Now, they can argue what the evidence means for a long time. Ultimately, however, a consensus emerges when there is just too much evidence for one particular theory to argue convincingly against it. There will still be “skeptics” and contrarians who argue against it–hell there are still particle physicists who don’t believe in the unification of the weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces. But rule #2 in science is that a strong consensus prevails–and experience shows that that consensus is very rarely wrong. (Note: Science is only about 300 years old, and medical science is really only about 100 years old, so don’t go all flat-earth and spontaneous-generation on me.)
In a way, science works like markets–some buyers are willing to pay too much or too little, just as some sellers have unreasonable expectations. Ultimately, though a price is agreed and those willing to sell and buy can do so. It is the best method we’ve come up with to determine a “fair” price.
Likewise, it is hard to look around you and argue that science doesn’t work. This is just science working normally. There is no more controversy over climate change within the scientific community than there is over evolution or relativity. It is just playing out under the spotlights and microscope of media attention.
One expert can be wrong, as can two. However, when nearly ALL the EXPERTS–people who have studied a field for decades–agree, and you reach the opposite conclusion and are not an expert, then you have to consider the possibility that they understand the field of their expertise better than you do.
11 March 2007 at 8:06 AM
Comment 50: re Colin 47
“First of all, they are ’scientists’ not ’scientologists’: see Wikipedia on the Church of Scientology.” Ouch! I assume you were not meaning to be patronising and yes I do know the difference. Now if only i could type
Comment 55: Comment by Max Anacker
Wow! I hope you are one of those scientist guys and not scientologists
11 March 2007 at 8:07 AM
Your “rebuttal” of the documentary seems very weak to me. You concentrate on the easier, more obvious points and ignore the more difficult ones. You don’t show any sense of uncertainty, despite the vast complexity of the matter in question. The reply to this documentary here and elsewhere has been 98% political above all. I consider myself a radical green, but not at the cost of rationality and free speech. The calls to censor these views are nonsense, compared to the much more wild and non-scientific stuff that has been printed in the name of raising GW awereness (a central green politician in my country even managed to mention the asian tsunami and GW in the same context). The role of the sun is the central question here I feel (not pretending to be a scientist). Because it offers a very logical and plausible explanation. “Even” the recent IPCC report admits that there is “10% possibility” man is not affecting the climate. And how do you really count it’s 8% or 17% or 24%. It either is, or isn’t. The figure is arbitrary, yet quoted over the world as some sort of statistical certainty.
Also it is true that Global Warming “hysteria” started as a very strong and fastly growing political movement some 17-18 years ago, when there was only very little data to back-up the hypothesis. And we do know how much Greenpeace have utterly lied and spread misinformation about nuclear energy.
Since then (the early 1990’s) government funding and man made GW being real have gone together, hand in hand. It is a very valid question to ask, whether this has affected the research. If there is no problem (or severe doubt whether a problem exists) then there will be less funds available, and unemployed climatologists out looking for jobs.
Also censorship of disagreeing peer reviews in the IPCC report strikes me as something that is foreign to science and open minded thought. Your comments on that?
The question about computer models being unpredictable, the role of water vapor etc. are also valid ones. And how much do we really know about cloud formation, cosmic rays etc.? All these things from sun to CO2, to whatever (because the world is very complex) should be somehow put together into one model. Now the models only can predict so much, or very little to be more exact.
The AGW (and I’d agree with the pre-cautionary principle) agenda doesn’t come across as very scientific. Even reading the IPCC paper, it is true, you keep asking yourself “isn’t this an assumption, how have you proven this, aren’t these factors too complex to assess” etc.
Yet.. the agenda is driven forward with 100% certainty and scientific disagreement is looked upon like it was some sort of environmental form of holocaust denial, while non of these scientists in the film are actually getting paid for it, they aren’t getting any grey corporate dollars like the greenpeace-minded lobby are claiming to. To the contrary it should be underlined, that these IPCC scientists do have a personal financial agenda to “prove” that no doubt or disagreement exists any longer on man made GW. The more central the agenda becomes, the more funds, more job opportunities, more recognition they will be getting. It would a career suicide for them to radically change the course, even if reasons for scien