media
12 Mar 2010
The ABC Of Climate Denial
Maurice Newman's attack on the ABC's editorial standards shows he is unfit to remain chair of the national broadcaster, writes Ben Eltham
On the internet, it has become increasingly hard to have a reasoned debate about the scientific observations relating to climate change without a parliament of denialists descending on the comments pages to fill up the thread with their endlessly recycled myths, lies and obfuscations. You’ve heard them before: the "hockey stick" is a statistical distortion (no, it’s not); "the world has been cooling since 1998" (no, it’s been warming); "Phil Jones cooked the data" (no, he didn’t), and so on.
We’ve all had the conversation, in which a seemingly sane friend or family member suddenly begins to spew denialist invective. Mine was with a wealthy second uncle who just happened to be a mining engineer. Out came all the old chestnuts: the hockey stick, cooling since 1998, the hacked emails. As I patiently tried to deal with each falsehood in turn, it quickly became obvious that I wasn’t going to change his mind: that had been made up about the time he associated the concept of "global warming" with the term "environmentalism".
It’s one thing when you hear this kind of guff from a reactionary relative. It’s quite another when it’s coming from the Chairman of the ABC in a speech to ABC management.
"Climate change is a further example of groupthink where contrary views have not been tolerated, and where those who express them have been labelled and mocked," Newman reportedly told a gathering of 250 ABC executives.
Really? "Groupthink"? The term itself is a strange one to apply to journalists, a notoriously fractious bunch. First coined by organisational psychologist William Whyte in a Fortune article in 1952, Whyte defined it as "a rationalised conformity — an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well".
Newman seems to be arguing that the media are somehow dismissive of those who don’t subscribe to the anthropogenic global warming thesis. I find that hard to believe. Many parts of the media, especially the conservative parts, love a good denialist beat-up as the acres of newsprint devoted to the "climate-gate" hacked emails demonstrated.
As The Guardian’s great editor C.P. Scott once said, "comment is free, but facts are sacred". Newman needs to be reminded of this remark, because he appears to have fallen prey to one of the most pervasive myths of the entire climate debate: that there is some kind of unspoken media conspiracy that favours the anthropogenic global warming thesis and locks out those with differing views.
The truth is almost the reverse: the media have given far more attention to the Australian visit of prominent denialist Christopher Monckton than they have to the Australian visit of leading climate scientist James Hansen. Indeed, the ABC, through its new opinion site The Drum, has been enthusiastic in its embrace of the views of denialists, running several pieces such as this one by Bob Carter that can only be described as loopy conspiracy theories. More broadly, the media have consistently portrayed the climate change issue as a kind of dialectic, often comparing the views of climate scientists to those of sceptics and denialists as merely opposing sides of the debate in a mistaken attempt to provide "balance".
In fact, the balance of scientific evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of the "warmist" thesis. In the mid-2000s, when the science of climate change was less firm than it is now, prominent American historian of science Naomi Oreskes examined 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on the topic of climate change. She found that every single one agreed with the anthropogenic global warming thesis. So did the International Panel on Climate Change, whose various reports together represent one of the largest exercises in the peer-review of available scientific literature in history. Across the thousands of pages of the IPCC reports, despite all the attention and controversy, sceptics have been able to uncover only a tiny handful of errors: for instance, a referencing mistake about Himalayan glaciers, where a non-peer reviewed paper was referred to — the glaciers are still melting, by the way. Only those with an axe to grind could use this as the basis to discredit the IPCC’s overall assessment.
Of course, that won’t stop the denialists, who have long abandoned the idea of evidence and who, in any case, often believe that climate science is a new kind of "religion", to be foisted on the world by crusaders in white coats and koala bear outfits.
There’s no doubt that significant numbers of Australians don’t accept the science of climate change. If you believe the ABC’s Jonathan Holmes, that should be reason enough for our national broadcaster to present the arguments of denialists and sceptics. But what about the facts? Shouldn’t they take precedence over audience opinion? Veteran ABC science journalist Robyn Williams certainly thinks so. He told The Australian: "We don’t interview people who say HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, petrol sniffing is good for kids or smoking doesn’t cause cancer, but they’re out there." Perhaps it’s time for some articles on intelligent design or the flatness of the earth on The Drum?
In any case, why is Newman commenting on editorial matters at all? The ABC’s CEO, Mark Scott, is also its Editor in Chief; it’s the board’s responsibility to appoint management and supervise the governance of the organisation, not comment on editorial matters. In 2004, Newman resigned from the board after documents about the independent monitoring of the ABC were leaked. If he feels that strongly about governance matters, why is he now flouting them to lecture his staff on how they cover one of the most important scientific issues of our time?
It’s time for a new chair of the ABC board. The current one has demonstrated he is unfit for the role.
He has also revealed he is something of a reactionary dunderhead who understands nothing about climate science. Mind you, there are plenty of those in Australian public life.
A note on terminology: I’ve referred to those who don’t subscribe to the thesis that the world is warming due to the emission of greenhouse gases (by humans) as "denialists" or "sceptics" — that is, in the sense that they deny or are sceptical of the warming thesis. I don’t think this is an insult — just as I am happy to be called a "warmist" because I do indeed subscribe to the thesis that the world is warming.
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I’m starting to think the sceptics have got it wrong. Then again they may not be right. Either way it is obvious their views have taken up to much time on the ABC and it is about time opinions where stopped from being presented as facts.
I think the real question is whether or not we can get on with addressing our CO2 emissions. We have banned smoking without waiting for a consensus that smoking is bad. We removed lead in petrol without waiting for consensus, banned asbestos and took aersols and refrigerants that damaged the ozone layer from the shelf without waiting for public opinion to catch up.
Does it really matter if some people believe that climate change is not man made?
Furthermore we do not have to wait for the rest of the world. We can just go ahead and introduce a carbon tax with a 100% dividend (ie all tax payers receive the income generated from the tax) and implement a transition process that sees us get to a zero carbon economy by 2030 at the outside. (Beyond Zero Emissions argues it can be done by 2020 and of course the sooner the better.) It is all feasible and can go ahead with little or no pain so what are we waiting for? Waiting for the sceptics to see the light will be like waiting for Godot.
I see the reasons for denying climate change (fear of change loss of money etc etc), but what is wrong with cleaning up polluting industries, are denialists wanting to be allowed to keep on polluting? Maybe the arguement should be changed from human induced climate change to human induced pollution!
“It’s time for a new chair of the ABC board. The current one has demonstrated he is unfit for the role.”
Yes Ben I agree with you, after I heard the Maurice Newman’s interview I said “that man should be looking for another job tomorrow!”.
But it goes further. Kevin Rudd retained a whole layer of Howard-appointed bureaucrats, contrary to normal procedure of a new government replacing the senior bureaucrats with people ideologically aligned with their side of politics. I believe this oversight by Mr Rudd has lead to stagnant thinking and “more of the same ” policy. Its about time a shakeup took place. If Mr Rudd retained these people to ensure continuity and rapid implementation of policies from an experienced team, well think again. That is the opposite of what has happened.
A couple of examples would do. I am sure you can think of hundreds, but I would start with Brendan Nelson and Amanda Vanstone. Then Mr Rudd should dismiss all Federal Departmental Heads who are all on contract and easy to sack. You could start here with the head of the Department of Environment, the head of Defence, the head of PM&C and the head of Immigration. And finally Mr Newman must go from the ABC (and Mr Rudd may as well get rid of all Howard’s boards). Get my drift?
David Booth
Bywong NSW
I wondered about his outburst so I didn’t the modern thing and stuck his name in a search engine.
“Newman was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of local think tank the Centre for Independent Studies in the 1970s… Newman later became the centre’s chairman and the think tank did much to emphasise, if not form, his political thinking and personal style.
The CIS is a right wing propaganda unit that is anti-government intervention. What he is doing with his snout in the trough when he is ideologicaly oppossed to organisations like the ABC is anyones guess. I suppose he wanted to make the ABC an extension of the CIS.
It’s a tragedy that the Left is now like a shag on a rock on the AGW controversy. Economically and politically, it’s dead. Scientifically, it’s not well at all. The data sets are short. The data needs reassessment after the shambles created by the climate modellers. They are neither statisticians nor observational scientists, but a coterie of marginal, provincial academics who have pursued a hypothesis which took them from the wilderness to centre stage. Awash with research money at the very point their prognostications were seriously questioned, around 2000, they fought desperately to shore up their position- like any other academics. Very dirty. Data was hidden, FOI was traduced, heresy within their own ranks was relentlessly suppressed, peer review was corrupted, journals were fought over or vilified, as were scientific opponents. It’s all there in the emails- but you have to read them all to see the context.
The sociological naivete of the aptly-named Mr Eltham and the shrinking band of cult believers is a testament to the corporatision of the universities since the 1980s. Critical social theory is out. They know nothing of the history or sociology of science. Instead they cling to a fantasy model of science, science the pure. For once the cliche is apt: get real.
Fatuous analogies comparing AGW to evolution, gravity, brain surgery or lung cancer simply highlight your lack of comprehension.
“a seemingly sane friend or family member suddenly begins to spew denialist invective.” Both sides of the cult, denialists and believers, spray invective. The cult has focused and empowered the disoriented Right. That’s why we have Neanderthal Abbott. The lunatic Right in the USA has made gains also.
And for what? We all know Copenhagen was a fiasco. We know that Australia is rapidly expanding both fossil fuel use and export. We know that Chindia will carry on as before. Futile gestures like the Toyota Pius, insulation and wind turbines achieve nothing. Denmark, with 20% nominal windpower capacity, has increased its CO2 emissions.
Meanwhile, the environment is savaged. The Greens and the Left are too busy preparing for Armageddon.
And how patronising you are Eltham to your relative: “As I patiently tried to deal with each falsehood in turn…”. No wonder the Left is losing friends and allies.
Eltham claims that journos are fractious- in fact journos are no more immune from dominant paradigms than any other group. The ABC, BBC and mainstream media generally, with the exception of some Murdoch ratholes, never gave any space AT ALL to AGW sceptics or deniers before Copenhagen. Since then, crackpots like Lord Planckton have had a free run. But why? Because the cult has lost its magic power. Climategate and a raft other factors caused that- but mainly it was Copenhagen. Emissions are NOT going to decrease in the next 20 or 30 years (at least). According to Kevin Anderson, Prince Charles and Savonarola Hamilton, that’s far too late. We’re doomed. But few people now believe this. So hysteria from Hamilton et al is counter-productive. It just turns everyone off. Look at the result in Higgins. The Left pundits thought Turnbull would be vindicated. This shows the sheer political obtuseness of Eltham and the rest.
A good article by Ben Eltham. He is spot on when he questions the suitability of Maurice Newman to hold the job of ABC Chairman.
Bywongbooth is wrong when he calls for the whole top layer of bureaucracy to be sacked and replaced. Senior public servants are, by-and-large, very supportive of the elected government of the day and will do their best to implement its policies. Trouble is, appointees to statutory bodies like the ABC have not been so well-credentialled - just look at some of the other appointments to the ABC Board alone. Lots of bias.
A major problem with the climate change debate is that so-called investigative journalists have taken the lazy and sensationalist path by picking up, with little analysis, material fed to them by the small number of climate change deniers. If the media did its job properly it would not let the sceptics get away with their vandalisation of the very solid science that has gone into climate change research. The media should also name the affiliations and sources of support the deniers enjoy, which can be very instructive as to the veracity of material presented.
I pity the denialists (well, a little). They are stuck with the deadweight of denialism because they found that there were no free-market solutions to anthropogenic CO2. So they were forced to backtrack and try to discredit AGW itself, turning themselves into a laughingstock in the process.
“Awash with research money at the very point their prognostications were seriously questioned, around 2000, they fought desperately to shore up their position- like any other academics. Very dirty. Data was hidden, FOI was traduced, heresy within their own ranks was relentlessly suppressed, peer review was corrupted, journals were fought over or vilified, as were scientific opponents. It’s all there in the emails- but you have to read them all to see the context. ”
There we go again… Frank, you are trading in recent urban myth, globalising wildly: ‘awash with research money’, ‘peer review corrupted’. Do you think all of climate science is tucked away at the University of Eash Anglia? And do they have all that money???
Coal and oil companies have tried to buy up science for their own purposes. If it was research grants they wanted, they could have sold out at great profit. A few have, of course.
The scientists seem to be in such furious agreement that no Moncktonian opinions exist among them, whether friends or otherwise of the East Anglia ‘plotters’. Deniers with a scientific background are either in their dotage and professionally offended by younger women and men (Carter??) or on the coal and oil teat (Plimer, who hasn’t published anything of value on climate - only a pile of rubbish that his erstwhile colleague Mike Archer has commented that he has forfeited his scientific credentials).
By the way, the deniers aren’t sceptics, they are credulous accepters of the contrary view in denial of the evidence.
On the face of it, the statement “Climate change is a further example of groupthink where contrary views have not been tolerated, and where those who express them have been labelled and mocked” has some truth, and even may apply to this article and some of the comments.
Also, C.P. Scott’s statement, “Comment is free, but facts are sacred,” may need to be taken more literally by some. In the absence of scientific proof, scientific facts are not determined by popularity, political pressure or anything else. And due to the nature of the system under investigation, scientific proof is scarce – from all quarters – in the issue of climate change.
This is the result of Howard’s tinkering, with a political objective in mind, with the appointments to the ABC Board. It is a disgrace for the Chairman of an institution not to go directly to that institution if there is some concern, so that it can be properly dealt with. For Newman to attack his own institution is an act of gross disloyalty and when the facts show how wrong he is it is an act of ultimate betrayal.
It is wonderful that Robyn Williams has had the courage to set the record straight. He has personally interviewed climate change sceptics including Ian Plimer, Don Aitken, Nigel Calder and Richard Linson. In his last programme he “talked to a panel of the world’s top scientists about recent mistakes by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”. He added “We don’t interview people who say HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, petrol sniffing is good for kids or smoking doesn’t cause cancer, but they’re out there.” Balance is not weighing fact up against stupidity.
Maurice Newman’s stance is in defence of a political ideology, not the ABC’s integrity.
And people are returning to a clearer position on Climate Change in spite of Mr Murdoch’s publications being relentless in promoting the sceptics, dowever absurd and irrational their claims.
Ben I think that you misunderstand just what the ABC should be doing about any science issue and that is to discuss the issues in an entirely non partisan manner. There are some journalists who have caught religion when it comes to AGW and instead of presenting the facts they have been pushing the AGW liturgy at every possible opportunity.
This discredits the ABC as a source of impartial information and the entire nation is poorer for it.
Even if the doomsayers are right as you believe there is no chance whatsoever that the “carbon reduction” prescription can be filled politically so all of the argument about “mitigation” become moot . A true believer like yourself should stop grumbling about those who don’t believe as you do and put your efforts into working out how to adapt instead.
Frank Campbell clearly hasn’t actually read any climate science. The stuff in the
journals. Claiming that the datasets are short is rubbish … do you know how
long the longest ice core is Frank? Literally kilometers of ice with a solid record
going back hundreds of thousands of years. There are literally thousands
of datasets showing warming. James Hansen has just
released a book (his only book) called “Storms of my Grandchildren”. He derives
most of the key results without fancy models at all, just data, physics and a little
arithmetic.
The stolen emails prove that scientists are human and that the process of
science is messy. No surprises there. But even if Isaac Newton was
a raving nutter, does it prove his laws of motion are false? No. Similarly, it wouldn’t matter
how loopy, dishonest, or plain silly any climate scientist was, that would be
irrelevant in relation to their explanations of why the planet is warming.
All you need to prove the planet is warming is a satellite with
a couple of sensors … one on top to measure incoming energy, and one on the
bottom to measure outgoing energy. Are there such satellites? yes. What do they
find? They find that more energy is arriving than leaving. End of proof. The
planet will warm up … and is. Where is the extra energy? Mostly it has been warming
the oceans and melting ice.
Hidden away on page 20 in last Weekends Australian was an article criticising the IPCC. Usually this would be on the front page but guess what this article said the IPCC had got the speed of global warming wrong, they had been too conservative.!!! It also said that there is less than a 5% chance that global warming is due to natural phenomena. We insure our cars, houses etc at much higher odds. clearly we do not want to reduce our lovely lifestyle. Much easier to deny global warming. I don’t know the answer as the net allows such “unreason” to dominate.
jnightin: “Deniers with a scientific background are either in their dotage and professionally offended by younger women and men (Carter??) or on the coal and oil teat”
That is simply false. And reveals more about the writer than the target.
“Do you think all of climate science is tucked away at the University of Eash Anglia? And do they have all that money???” Read all the emails. The climate modellers are a tiny group, intimately linked over decades. New recruits are dependent on the senior cohort. Sociology 101, now extinct.
“the deniers aren’t sceptics, they are credulous accepters of the contrary view in denial of the evidence.” Correct. How often do I have to say it? They are two sides of the same cult. You have actually created them, empowered them. AGW politically is dead meat, but we’re stuck with this ravenous horde of denialists, who savage the Left in myriad ways. Thank you so much.
G. Russell: “Frank Campbell clearly hasn’t actually read any climate science. The stuff in the
journals. Claiming that the datasets are short is rubbish … do you know how
long the longest ice core is Frank?”
Very reluctantly I’ve had to read up on what passes for science in the embryonic world of climatology. So you’re wrong. as for short data sets, any climate modeller will tell you that obervational data sets are pathetically short: 30 to 150 years at best. You are referring to proxies. Proxies are, as the modellers have belatedly discovered, replete with problems.
As for global warming, why do you assume I deny that? There has been a warming trend for 150 years. The question is why. AGW is simply one of many hypotheses. Read some journals.
superb article as always ben.
i too have a denialist relative. i asked what evidence it would take to make them believe in AGW and their answer? No evidence would sway them. it was then that i realised it was all about emotion and not intellect.
personally, i believe that denial is the last stage before acceptance. then perhaps we can get on and do something constructive.
http://furrygardener.wordpress.com
The discussion appears to have to have two threads - climate change and suitability of an ideologue to chair the ABC. Dealing with the latter, the legislation supporting a merit-based appointment process for ABC Board members and restitution of the staff-elected member of the ABC Board is clearly sorely needed. I understand its passage through the Parliament has been blocked in the Senate by Senator Fielding and the Coalition senators. Shame.
Eobrien, it’s a good point you make. The current controversy shows exactly why we need independently-apointed board members, rather than the culture warriors foisted on the ABC board by John Howard (see, Albrechtsen, Janet).
Frank Campbell,
It’s all very well to make snippy remarks about “Sociology 101” or the quality of climatology datasets, but when you make remarks like “Very reluctantly I’ve had to read up on what passes for science in the embryonic world of climatology”, I can only suggest your engagement with climate science is less than thorough.
As I never tire of repeating to those who enjoin me to “read some journals” (believe it or not Frank, I have), those who claim to have either new evidence or superior interpretations of the available evidence should immediately submit their work to a peer-reviewed scientific journal, for assessment and publication by the scientific community.
Those who can’t should refrain from baseless accusations like “they are neither statisticians nor observational scientists” - a ridiculous claim given the vast weight of statistically significant, painstakingly verified climatic observations reported and published by literally thousands of climate scientists worldwide.
Iain Hall,
By comparing climate science to religion you do a disservice to both. Climate science is about evidence and observation, backed by the best current understanding of the physics and chemistry of our climate. Religion is a matter of personal spiritual belief. Scientists hold all number of religious views, but to claim that climate science - a falsifiable theory based on the available evidence - is a religion is to completely misunderstand what religion is.
A note on terminology: In the following I refer to those who subscribe to the thesis that the world is warming and said warming is due to the emission of greenhouse gases (by humans) as “waraholics” or “alarmists” — that is, in the sense that they accept the AGW hypothesis without question i.e. as an addiction or religious belief and attempt to create panic or alarm about climate. I don’t think this is an insult — just as I am happy to be called a “sceptic” because I do indeed subscribe to the belief that all good scientists should be sceptical that the world is warming due to human emissions of CO2. However I am offended by the term denialist or denier because they are an obvious and deliberately vindictive attempt to link anyone who questions the dogma of AGW with the Nazi inspired mass murderer of the Jews, Russians, gypsies and other races during the Second World War.
Ben the warmholic doing your alarmist masters good work again? That the ABC is biased towards alarmist AGW doctrine is so overt and so blatant that it is not even within the realms of question. In fact I even have it in writing from the senior complaints investigator of the ABC that they are not required either to investigate alarmists claims about the science of human caused global warming or to even present a balanced view to the warmaholics.
I applaud Newman for his very courageous stand against the politically charged news and current affairs staff at the ABC. As far as I am concerned they should disband the whole ABC News and current affairs staff and start again.As to Ben’s comments global warming we have had these arguments ad infinitum in these and other forums and he knows he is completely wrong but like most warmaholics he keeps repeating the mantra regardless of any evidence to the contrary and nothing anyone says or does will change that because this has become a quasi-religious belief system and has no basis in reality or fact.
Although I doubt there will be any real outcome I do hold some slim hope that the independent investigation by the Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council (IAC), into the processes and procedures of the IPCC AR4 report (just announced Mr Ban Ki Moon) will at least inhibit some of the perversions of both science and ethics that occurred in the previous IPCC report.
One measure of Ben’s success is the degree of absurdity reached by the delusionals in their comments above - sceptics they are not! Great writing Ben.
In response to icedvolvo, on the Internet discussion newsgroupsthere is a rule called Godwin’s law which statesthat as a thread grows, the probability of a reference to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1.00. When such a reference is made, it is generally recognised that the poster has lost the argument.
It seems so strange that someone who admits to trying to understand the complex science behind climate change is considered by fools to be in “climate denial”. These same clods believe that the cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels.
If that’s not weird enough, when you ask these ignoramuses about the sources or reasoning they used to form their beliefs, not only do most have no credible answers, but you are promptly branded as a heretical “climate sceptic”.
Perhaps it’s the ‘dumbing-down’ of the school curriculum over the past forty years that’s responsible for the lack of basic scientific knowledge within the general community, journalists not excepted.
Ben Eltham: “I can only suggest your engagement with climate science is less than thorough.”
Why? Because I was reluctant to do it? A dumb comment. I was even more reluctant to spend three weeks over Xmas reading everyone of of the climategate emails/documents. A turgid mass of semi-literate, bilious detail. I edited the million or so words down to 120,000, to extract the many complex strands- most of which are ignored or not understood by the few who have read them. What I should do now, even more reluctantly, is spend far more time turning that edit into something which clarifies the mess.
“they are neither statisticians nor observational scientists” - a ridiculous claim given the vast weight of statistically significant, painstakingly verified climatic observations reported and published by literally thousands of climate scientists worldwide.”
More obtuseness: the climate modellers observe nothing. They take the proxy and observational data and convert it into scenarios. They are third-tier statistical manipulators who are not statisticians, which is why they have endless trouble with the stats, make numerous errors and call for help frequently. That, amazingly enough, is the single most prolific item in the emails. This isn’t rocket science, evolution or brain surgery, it’s modelling.
Sooner or later you’ll have to let go. The bullying and intimidation practised by the cult (both sides, but the believers had the whip hand until 4 months ago) is now counter-productive. While the alarmist cult lives, the Right is empowered more each day. You know full well that Trenberth and many other modellers were and are panicked by the failure of observational data to support predictions after 1999. There is now a desperate ad hoc defence- all manner of short-term variables have been invoked to explain the discrepancies and to buy time. Everything hangs on this, but the plethora of gap-filling sub-hypotheses simply highlights the theoretical shambles they rest on. Assumption piled on proxy laid on dubious data in a sea of unknown or half-understood variables in what they call themselves a “chaotic” natural system. The modellers, provincial academics from East Bumcrack institutions (Crabb was inadvertently right), know they will lose everything if the AGW hypothesis collapses. Their fate will be ridicule and early retirement, a fate entirely of their own making.
And what of the propagandists like you, Hamilton the Hysteric, Williams, Rundle, Keane…? You’re already reduced to ritual denunciation. there’s nowhere left to go. Your support base is vanishing. Politically the cause is dead. But while the corpse rots, AGW apologists are doing serious damage to the Left and to the real environment.
Excellent article by Ben Eltham. The ABC is a disaster zone and indeed an utter disgrace when it comes to balanced reportage or indeed even any reportage at all about extremely important matters.
Here is a very topical example (many, many more can be given). I recently attended a great lecture in Melbourne by Professor Peter Seligman, University of Melbourne, sponsored by the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group (see: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/Home ) entitled “A realistic sustainable energy plan for Australia” and based on his new book “Australian Sustainable Energy - by the numbers” (available for free download at : http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/uploads/Australian_Sustainable_Energy-by_th… and http://www.energy.unimelb.edu.au/ ) .
This very timely and important book by brilliant bionic ear electrical engineer Professor Peter Seligman (I have downloaded and read it carefully) gives a clear account of Australia’s renewable energy potential and systematically sets out a mere $280 billion cost for 24/7, baseload renewable energy for Australia. It is based on the important book “Sustainable Energy - without the hot air” by UK Government adviser David J.C. MacKay FRS, professor of natural philosophy in the department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, UK, and chief scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (see:. http://www.withouthotair.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._C._MacKay ).
However a search of the “entire ABC site” (the best of the Australian Mainstream media) reveals ZERO results for the phrase “Peter Seligman” and 80 results for non-scientist climate change denialist “Lord Monckton”.
Balance for the ABC means positioning itself between the extreme right wing , pro-coal, pro-war Labor Government and the extreme right wing , pro-coal, pro-war Coalition Opposition.
With a worsening climate emergency the Australian public mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed manure) urgently need to hear from top climate scientists and top biologists rather than from non-scientist politicians, bureaucrats, corporate lobbyists and Murdochracy journalists.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
Frank, I’m going to engage with you on your substantive points in good faith, and ignore your insults.
On the statistical validity of climate change detection: the technique commonly used for the statistical analysis of climate change is optimal fingerprinting.
Here is a good reference to begin your reading:
Hegerl G.C., H. v. Storch, K. Hasselmann, B. D. Santer, U. Cubasch and P.D. Jones, 1996: Detecting greenhouse gas induced Climate Change with an optimal fingerprint method. J. Clim. 9, 2281-2306.
You can read it online at http://w3k.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/hegerl_etal_1996.pdf
Here is a more recent paper, which uses a Bayesian method to infer anthropogenic climate forcing:
T.C.K. Lee, F.W. Zwiers, G.C. Hegerl, X. Zhang, and M. Tsao. 2005. A Bayesian
Climate Change Detection and Attribution Assessment. Journal of Climate,
18(13):2429–2440.
Frank - Terry Lee, you’ll be pleased to know, is a real-life statistician. It’s hard to debate you, though, when you conflate me with other commentators, misconstrue my position and rant about “provincial academics” and “propagandists”.
Iview,
I explained my use of the words “denialist” and “skeptic” at the bottom of the article. They’re not intended as insults, merely descriptions of those who are skeptical of, or explicitly deny, the AGW thesis.
It’s worth repeating that words like “heretic” really don’t mean anything in the context of falsifiable empirical science.
Frankn, just another point about the modelling.
It’s simply untrue to posit that the “modellers don’t observe anything.” Climate models explicitly use available climate observations (what else would they use? how else would you expect the inputs to be generated?)
ben.eltham,
Now, no need to be defensive. You’ll note that in my comment, I didn’t refer to your article, but to the common warming attitude.
As you have drawn our attention to your terminology footnote, it’s just too odd to go without a response. While you are happy to be called “warmist”, we all know that to call a person a climate change “denialist” or a global warming “sceptic” is indeed insulting, whatever apparent disclaimer you may include in any footnote.
However, the point I was making in my comment was that while an attitude of scientific enquiry reflects an open mind, it certainly seems that most warmers possess a fundamentalist righteousness concerning their beliefs, generally rooted in abject ignorance.
“I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything.” - T.H. Huxley
In dealing with climate change denialists (or people ignorantly, inexpertly and irresponsibly advocating smoking or opposing vaccination, antibiotics, and blood transfusions etc) we [laypersons and indeed scientists in other disciplines] need to resort to extraordinarily well-credentialled scientific authority. Thus, for example, the umpteen-Nobel-Laureate UK Royal Society has been associated with the following 3 key documents relating to the urgent need for action on man-made climate change.
1. “Climate change controversies: a simple guide” (2007): http://royalsociety.org/Climate-change-controversies/ , quote: “This is not intended to provide exhaustive answers to every contentious argument that has been put forward by those who seek to distort and undermine the science of climate change and deny the seriousness of the potential consequences of global warming. Instead, the Society - as the UK’s national academy of science - responds here to eight key arguments that are currently in circulation by setting out, in simple terms, where the weight of scientific evidence lies.” [In short, we all as individuals can’t invent the wheel, go back to university, do Honours Physics, a PhD, postdoctoral research, and decades of further cutting edge research on climate change – we must rely on top climate science experts].
2. J.E.N. Veron, O. Hoegh-Guldberg, T.M. Lenton, J.M. Lough, D.O. Obura, P. Pearce-Kelly, C.R.C. Sheppard, M. Spalding, M.G. Stafford-Smith and A.D. Rogers Royal Society Working Party on Coral) , “The coral reef crisis: the critical importance of <350 ppm CO2”, Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 58, (10), October 2009, 1428-1436: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V6N-4X9NKG7-3… , quote: “The coral reef crisis: the critical importance of <350 ppm CO2”, Marine Pollution Bulletin, October 2009: “Temperature-induced mass coral bleaching causing mortality on a wide geographic scale started when atmospheric CO2 levels exceeded 320 ppm. When CO2 levels reached 340 ppm, sporadic but highly destructive mass bleaching occurred in most reefs world-wide, often associated with El Niño events. Recovery was dependent on the vulnerability of individual reef areas and on the reef’s previous history and resilience. At today’s level of 387 ppm, allowing a lag-time of 10 years for sea temperatures to respond, most reefs world-wide are committed to an irreversible decline. Mass bleaching will in future become annual, departing from the 4 to 7 years return-time of El Niño events. Bleaching will be exacerbated by the effects of degraded water-quality and increased severe weather events. In addition, the progressive onset of ocean acidification will cause reduction of coral growth and retardation of the growth of high magnesium calcite-secreting coralline algae.” [In short, atmospheric CO2 is currently about 390 ppm and increasing at about 2.5 ppm per year. We cannot destroy what we cannot replace; extinction, let alone mass extinction, of species is totally unacceptable. The current species extinction rate is 100-1,000 times above normal].
3. Royal Society Statement on Climate Change, 15 February 2010: http://royalsociety.org/Climate-Change/ , quote: “International scientific consensus agrees that increasing levels of man-made greenhouse gases are leading to global climate change. Possible consequences of climate change include rising temperatures, changing sea levels, and impacts on global weather. These changes could have serious impacts on the world’s organisms and on the lives of millions of people, especially those living in areas vulnerable to extreme natural conditions such as flooding and drought.
Climate Science
Facts and fictions about climate change
Global Climate Change Policy
UK and EU Climate Change Policy
Policy reports and statements .”
Please use this information in dealing with climate change denialists and make a point of also establishing their scientific and specifically climate science credentials - if they aren’t or won’t quote top climate scientists at the cutting edge of climate science research they simply lack credibility.
Does one turn to the ABC Board or to brain surgeons for advice on brain surgery?
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
I won’t bother respond to Ben directly because there is no point, he has “got religion” as they say but others reading this may think that by quoting a couple of “scientific” papers and mentioning some technical terms that he struck some killing blow to the heart of sceptics. However like a lot of the warmaholics AGW campaign it is a smoke and mirrors con job.
Firstly the fact that someone has published a scientific paper even in the respected journals has unfortunately become almost irrelevant. As the recent climate gate e-mails showed to the general public (but scientists have known for considerable time) the peer review process has been perverted and corrupted. It is the subject of blackmail, blacklisting, threats, conspiracy and in some cases outright fraud. Whereas previously the publication of a scientific paper in one of the prestigious peer-reviewed journals would assume some stature of the paper every single scientific paper must now be assessed on its merits. even the funding process required to do the very expensive research into climate is now limited only to those organisations which support and AGW agenda. For example to run a relatively small scale large grid climate scenario requires multi-billion-dollar computers which are only available through government departments and which are only provided to those groups who adhere to the warmaholics alarmist agenda.
Both of the papers that Ben quotes use various techniques to compare the empirical observations of temperatures with those predicted by the computer models. Any discrepancy between the two is automatically attributed to human influence (there is no question entertained that it may be the model that is in error or that the observations have been manipulated to produce such results!). There are two fundamentally flawed assumptions that are replete throughout the climate science publication record.
The first of those scurrilous assumptions is that the computer models are an accurate representation of the extraordinarily complex chemistry, physics and mathematics of the real world and that their output is accurate. This assumption is both patently absurd and provably false and Ben knows this. The second is that the surface observations, that are both used as part of the initial conditions of the models and for the final comparison are both accurate and reliable; again this is both patently absurd and provably false.
All these papers (and a multitude of others) prove is that either the models are inaccurate (which we know for example because predictions about stratospheric temperature profiles are completely the inverse of those observed by satellite and relationships between cloud and water vapour are inverse etc) and/or that surface temperatures have been manipulated with secret algorithms (called urban heat island corrections for which the original data has been lost), are predisposing the [desired] outcome to indicate some man-made influence.
Ben
This would only be the case if AGW believers not arguing for the theory on the basis of faith, As they are consistently doing this the comparison is both valid and obvious.
I agree with the premise but (and it is a big but) the problem with climate science is that the evidence of paleo climates is at best very scanty and hardly comparable with what we can know about “the physics and chemistry of our climate ” without an equivalent (in quality) quality data set for paleo climates to what we know about current climate conditions any claims about significant warming require a leap of , dare I say it, Faith
Agreed, so the personal spiritual belief from the likes of Robin Williams in climate change has no place in any science programing on the ABC
Please cite any experiment consistent with the scientific method that has been done that tests the theory of AGW
Time to halt the thread.
Mr Newman has been vindicated by the trolls. His statement to the ABC staff and reported nationally on ABC has further emboldened the troglodytes. Expect a torrent of new vitriol flowing onto the screens and radio. What a sterling example of what ails our Australian Society in 2010.
Thanks Ben for trying to reason with the clowns.
David Booth
Bywong NSW
Ben Eltham: “Here is a good reference to begin your reading:”
I just love it Ben. So patronising. So pompous. So pedestrian.
If ever you needed an example of why it is impossible to debate the skeptics and denialists on this issue, than this thread is it.
I’ve patiently responded to some of the comments here, posting references to peer-reviewed scientific journal articles in the hope of engaging with commenters on the science of climate change.
Unfortunately no-one has wanted to respond on that level, instead accusing me of being pompous, a righteous fundamentalist, in the grip of religion, and so on. It’s frustrating, but I’m going to continue.
Iced Volvo, ignoring the various insults and cutting to the matter of the models: while you attack the quality of the climate models (without advancing any technical reason as to why they don’t reflect the complexities of atmospheric chemistry and physics), it’s easy enough to demonstrate climate change without reference to climate models. The observed temperature increases since 1900 are not a model, they are an observation. So are retreating glaciers, melting ice-shelfs, changes in forestry patterns and so on.
FAQ section 8.1 from the IPCC’s fourth assessment deals very well with the issue of modelling and how accurate the models are; of course, if you aren’t prepared to accept the IPCC assessment’s premises concerning the available data and the physical laws underpinning atmospheric temperatures, there is little point in further debating its conclusions.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-8-1.html
Iain Hall, all the literature published in scientific journals is consistent with the scientific method. But I can suggest to you an experiment you yourself could carry out, consistent with the scientific method, to verify the theory of AGW. Park you car in the sun on a hot day for 30 minutes with the windows wound up. Measure the temperature. Now open your windows for 30 minutes. Measure the temperature. Is it hotter or cooler with the windows up? The greenhouse effect is not fundamentally difficult to describe or understand - the physics behind the concept was first described by Arrhenius.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect
The climate denialists are in the same intellectual and moral ball park as those who (for what ever reason) deny the medical science-established link between smoking and lung cancer and cardiovascular disease.
However while 5 million smoking-related deaths per year will yield some 0.5 billion such deaths this century, it is independently estimated by top climate scientists Professors James Lovelock FRS and Kevin Anderson that only about 0.5 billion people will survive the century due to unaddressed, man-made global warming (i.e. about 10 billion deaths at an average rate of 100 million per year, about 5 times greater than the current, already climate change-impacted avoidable death rate from poverty of 22 million per year).
I like Professor Hansen’s idea of criminal prosecution of corporate climate change denialists for the horrendous consequences of their actions.
Perhaps accountability will also eventually be sheeted home even to anonymous climate denialist bloggers.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
It isn’t called scientific “debate” when on the one hand you have peer reviewed, published scientific literature and on the other you have delusionals like some of the commenters here.
Ian, icedvolvo, and friends: when you’re patently incapable of contributing to the published literature of a scientific field (and please correct me if that does not apply to you), it takes a special degree of self-delusion to thrust yourself forward for “debate” against the published expertise of that field. You may well be qualified to debate the politics of things that concern you - why not settle for that?
Meanwhile Frank Campbell won’t even get that far but will opt instead to waste his time reading through other people’s stolen private correspondence. And so it’s always been ….
Can we get the terminology right? Describing someone as a “sceptic” or a “denialist” in the context of climate change clearly suggests that individual doesn’t think climate change happens. I have never met a so-called “climate change sceptic” or “CC denier” that is sceptical about climate change!
This planet has a long history of significant climate change and there is no credible scientific evidence to assert that for some reason the natural causes of climate change have somehow paused and the only reason we now have climate change is because of man’s CO2 emissions.
Newman is another person that does not question climate change but questions the extent to which it’s caused by man compared to the perpetual and natural causes that have always shaped climate. The natural causes have been very aggressive; Earth has had six Ice Ages and pretty warm periods between. There is a mountain of scientific evidence on natural climate change that is not seriously questioned by either side.
To me the real debate is about resources; we’re about to embark on an incredible allocation of resources to “fight” climate change.
We are not short of worthy causes for resources of this magnitude; what about malaria, AIDS, depletion of water resources in poor countries, habitat destruction for a start? Tackle these and you save real lives in their MILLIONS and advance the security of our natural environment.
I’d love to think than that mankind has discovered a “magic dial” called CO2 Emissions - if we dial it up we warm our planet and if we dial it back we cool the planet. But since Man’s daily energy production is the equivqlent of 8 seconds of sunlight compared to the 86,400 seconds of sunlight striking earth each day I’m not so optimistic man has the “dial” to control climate. It’s also worth remembering that the Victorian bushfires last year, horrendous though they were, covered less than one percent land area of our smallest mainland state. But the CO2 emitted was more than Australia’s transport CO2 emissions (every car, truck, train, ship and plane) for 3 years. Preventing a small bushfire does more to reduce CO2 emmissions than completely eliminating every car/truck from our roads for 3+ years!
Does mankind really have the lever, through controlling CO2 emission levels, to control the climate of this planet?
It’s a big claim to suggest mankind can control Earth’s climate and surely that’s something to sceptical about!
EvenKeel
The short answer is yes. Humans are influencing the climate of the planet, and quickly, through the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.
As the IPCC reports make clear, there is a natural carbon cycle in the biosphere which includes things like bushfires; furthermore, sunlight is of course a major driver of climatic conditions. The issue is that because humans are artificially increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, more heat from the sun is retained in the atmosphere, land and oceans.
On the issue of resources, as Nicholas Stern established in his report for the UK Treasury, the costs of acting to mitigate and reduce warming now, while large in absolute terms, are quite small as a percentage of the global economy. The costs of inaction are likely to be much higher. To take your example of malaria, infectious tropical diseases will probably expand their range as the world warms. similarly, global warming will exacerbate water security and habitat destruction.
Ben
Your so called experiment is just utter bunkum!
It is no way analogous to the earth’s climate and it does not prove the AGW theory at all.
As some one else here pointed out no one who is sceptical about AGW in any way denies the existence of the Greenhouse effect Yet you patronisingly offer a link to that when the it is the quantum of man’s contribution to “warming” that is the actual bone of contention here.
I asked you to provide a citation that tests the theory of AGW by the scientific method and you give me some vague nonsense about the stuff published journals. Sorry but I give no credence at all to such a vague appeal to authority.
I think that you will finds that there is in fact no acknowledged test for this theory at all.
So perhaps you are one of the faithful who is arguing from a religious conviction after all.
Iain,
I guess I was trying to offer a simple experimental idea. .
So, you want a citation that test the theory of AGW by the scientific method?
How about this one by James Hansen and co-authors in the prestigious journal Science? This paper proposes a hypothesis (in other words, it builds a model), and then tests the hypothesis against precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content. I would have thought that the increasing heat of the oceans would be an excellent test for global warming?
Hansen, J., L. Nazarenko, R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, J. Willis, A. Del Genio, D. Koch, A. Lacis, K. Lo, S. Menon, T. Novakov, Ju. Perlwitz, G. Russell, G.A. Schmidt, and N. Tausnev, 2005: Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications. Science, 308, 1431-1435, doi:10.1126/science.1110252.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2005/2005_Hansen_etal_1.pdf
Alex Njoo
To all those who don’t believe that we have a climate change problem, the holocaust and other humankind-related disasters, remember one thing: remember Galileo.He, too, faced the kind of deniers similar to yourselves. And you know what, he was right!
I guess that the responses in this thread are predictable. The mere mention of the term climate change and everyone is off on their own particular tangent. Ibdeed the first paragraph of Ben’s article has proved to be remarkable prescient. However that is surely not what the article was about. Newman’s role as chairman is not to pontificate on editorial issues - whether he is right or wrong about these issues is irrelevant - it is not his job.
In fact I would have thought all contributors to this thread would have agreed that it is far better to have an independent ABC than to have one that is simply following a particular political line.
Sometimes I wonder whether or not the ABC would be improved if it had the security of an income stream based on the number of television sets in the country - perhaps then it could match the BBC; perhaps then would we find the diversity of views and the eclectism that characterise the BBC - awash with a guaranteed stream of funds the views of a chairman would be treated with disdain.
Yes and thanks Iain Hall for nailing the logic.
There is a massive difference between:
1. acknowledging that global climate change is happening, in fact probably should be happening because climate has never been stable and
2. also acknowledging that there is a “greenhouse effect” and
3. actually asserting that any and all climate change is man-caused.
There never seems to be any discussion about when natural climate change actually ceased and why, or if it’s still a factor then how much of a factor and what is the theoretical basis by which some of the change is attributed to anthropogenic causes and some natutral?
I’ve got a copy of the IPCC report on my hard drive and can’t find anything useful on this.
To me the proportional mix of causes is the crucial issue but neglected in discussion.
Well, in the old days anti-social types were dragged to pillory and locked in there, exposed to public abuse. Nowadays we have blogs and comments so that AGW denialists can be exposed to public ridicule from the comfort of their own homes.
Carry on the good work denialists, just in case anyone doubted that when you’re hole, stop digging was good advice.
On Ben’s main point, I think the instinct of the ABC is always to be as craven and pro-government as they possibly can be, but it takes them a few years to catch up. Under Keating they were nauseatingly pro-Labor and it wasn’t until around 1998 they caught up to Howard. During the 2000s they were as disgustingly pro-Iraq War as any media outlet and basically gave up on real political analysis.Under Rudd they have been anti-Labor, not out of principle, but because of the Liberal political appointees they have on board.
?
Excellent ridicule calyptorhnchus.
Since you you’re so confident; then tell us all - when did the regular common-or-garden Climate Change that gave us 6 Ice Ages and Massive Warmings other times (including right now) cease… and Anthropogenic Global Warming (or AGW) kick in?
I think it’s sad that you think that I’m some dick that should be put in the stocks for asking the question…but it’s a fair question!
Ben
That does not prove the AGW theory AT ALL. At best all that it does is describe some of the thermal dynamics of the planet and even it that I suspect taht it is a far from complete picture of the contemporary climate.
I am no scientist but for there to be a proof of the AGW hypothesis we would have to have a way of accurately quantifying the climate sensitivity to Co2 and a way of experientially showing how that the addition of a minute (in proportional terms ) amount of extra (anthropogenic) makes a difference to the temperature. Also we would need a way of knowing what the climate of the planet was before the instrumental record that has a level of accuracy that is consistent with what we can do now. With out that The climate scientists that you are so keen to believe in are dong some slight of hand by suggesting that the climate proxies that they relying upon are as good as even the instrumental record (which is far from perfect) or the sort of climate data that we can gather now.
Look at it this way:
Proxy sources are like vague and fuzzy shadows
The instrumental record is like a pen and ink sketch
The modern data is like a daguerreotype image.
All have some value but they are not equal and with out without a great deal of “clever tricks” hardly comparable at all that is in essence the problem with any claims about the climate, we simply do not have the data to ever be absolutely definite about what it has done in the past so how can we believe that anyone can predict the future?
Evenkeel: naturally the climate has continued to change, however for the past 35 years co2 has been the main influence.
calyptorhynchus
And what proof do you have for this bold claim?
Clearly your claim has the certitude of religious faith and has just as much scientific basis
Global warming sceptics get away with their argument because it is not possible to prove them wrong except on the basis of probability and it is possible then to say that the probability is wrong.
However there is one measure that is accurate because it is capable of actual physical measurement and it is caused by CO2 from the atmopshere and it will have its own ecological disasters.
It is well known but sceptics like Newman and his ilk are never asked and I think they should be pushed to answer.
The measurement I refer to is rising acidity of sea water. This is a physical measurement on the same basis as might be conducted in a laboratory.
What do the Newmans of this world say about that? My guess is most of them are on the global warming band wagon and are so ill informed that most of them do not even know about it nor the cosequences. They should be questioned
What is Abbott’s position?
Iain Hall
I can certainly supply you with the basis for the assertion, but we’ve already been told by one of your confreres that the peer-review process isn’t to be trusted, so what would be the point?
I’m merely putting that figure out there so that if any of the denialists lurking around this thread rejoin the human race at some point, it may be in the back of their minds.
Billgale
It’s a great point and one that skeptics seem to be all too quiet about. Even if CO2 is not causing warming (we know that it is), it is definitely acidifying the oceans, with potentially catastrophic consequences for coral reefs, organisms with calcium shells, and perhaps the broader marine food chain.
Ian Hall,
sorry, but did you read the paper? Seriously, did you read it?
I wish I could get every thinking warmaholic (those who has not been converted to religious fervour) to read this thread in its entirety because it exemplifies perfectly the problems with AGW. As Ben has decided to dispense with the “denier” vindictive I will do likewise!
Ben laments the fact that we won’t “engaging with commenters on the science of climate change.” Well actually Ben when we have tried to do this previously the moderators of Matilda have moderated us out of the discussion!
Iced Volvo, ….. cutting to the matter of the models: while you attack the quality of the climate models (without advancing any technical reason as to why they don’t reflect the complexities of atmospheric chemistry and physics), it’s easy enough to demonstrate climate change without reference to climate models.
The Models:
I have debated Gavin Schmidt on the problems of models in open forum (for those of you who do not know Schmidt is the God of Models, he is Hansen’s code cutter and the project manager for NASA’s GCM model). When the discussion didn’t go Schmidt’s way he simply removed the thread from his RealClimate web site. Immediately afterwards many of the incriminating comments were also mysteriously removed form the code base as well! This is exactly as he (and other ClimateGate conspirators) agreed to do in the leaked emails. For those who missed the debate it went something like this;
The requirements for accurate solving of integro differential equations (GCM computer models) are:
1: accurate knowledge of initial conditions for the entire globe: although we have a reasonable picture of the atmosphere due to satellite coverage We don’t have this for ANY of the oceans below the surface where the vast heat sink of the earth is and won’t for at least a decade and that’s only if we deploy hundreds or even thousands of deep sea probes (currently we have half a dozen for the whole globe!)
2: accurate knowledge of the boundary conditions: as all of the calculations are carried out within each cell we need an accurate knowledge of what happens when certain threshold values are reached. For example if the temperature in a particular cell exceeds a particular value we need to know that a cyclone/Typhoon/hurricane will occur and how that will affect conditions in the rest of the cell and surrounding cells. In other words we need to have accurate knowledge of all of these threshold values which cause certain other events to occur whereas we actually have almost no knowledge of these events and in fact all current climate models simply ignore these global scale events let alone taking into account significant events such as huge storms.
3: the grid size of the cells used needs to be on the scale that accounts for turbulence and mixing events of significance. The current grid is a 2 x 4 (latitude by longitude) inside of which whole cyclones can be born, move vast amounts of energy between layers in the atmosphere and ocean and then disappear without ever being accounted for by the current models.
4: the models have to accurately represent the actual physical processes taking place. The fact that any climate scientist could claim that the current GCM models do this would be laughable were it not for the fact that these models are taken seriously by the policy makers of our governments. No existing GCM model even tries to model the single biggest climate determining characteristic on earth: the cloud cycle.
How can anyone claim that the models accurately reflect reality in the face of these glaring omissions?
Hopefully without being too technical this has given open-minded readers an insight into why many scientists, particular those like myself who are intimately familiar with solving integro differential models, are extremely sceptical of anyone who claims that climate models accurately represent the extraordinarily complex chemistry, physics and mathematics of our Earth. It is also the main reason why, with one exception, all of the models are kept secret from both the public and other scientists; because these glaring omissions and failures of the models, if made public, would open up the AGW protagonists to what can only be called ridicule by other mathematicians and scientists who do understand extraordinarily complex nature of these endeavours. Numerous calls for our own CSIRO, completely funded by our government taxes, to open up their GCM model code base and documentation for independent examination are completely ignored!
Ben Eltham continues: The observed temperature increases since 1900 are not a model, they are an observation. So are retreating glaciers, melting ice-shelfs, changes in forestry patterns and so on.
As Ben is well aware that temperature records going back to 1900 are almost completely useless. Prior to the advent of modern remote sensing and computerised temperature collection it was a farce. Temperatures were measured in a small outstation in the back of the local police station. The local copper, whenever he decided it was convenient, would walk out open the box next to his stinking hot car or horse or whatever structure he happened to build around it, write a measurement on a piece of scrap paper, and once a month or so when he happened to remember, send the list into some central collecting station. No seriously that’s how temperature records were taken in the world prior to 1960s or so when remote collecting stations started to be deployed. The only reliable temperature data we have on a global scale started in the late 1970s when satellite records began. Complicating this issue is the fact almost all of the original temperature data has now been “lost” and all we have is the “manipulated” data which has been corrected for urban heat island effects by algorithms which are also secret. The fact that the Earth’s climate is changing is a completely acceptable and natural occurrence.
Ben then continues: FAQ section 8.1 from the IPCC’s fourth assessment deals very well with the issue of modelling and how accurate the models are; of course, if you aren’t prepared to accept the IPCC assessment’s premises concerning the available data and the physical laws underpinning atmospheric temperatures, there is little point in further debating its conclusions.
And there we have a perfect example of the religious nature of the AGW debate. God and his henchmen (Hansen and a group of less than 30 fellow climate scientists) the vast majority of whom have been implicated in serious ethical issues by the climate gate e-mails leaks have laid down the holy law in the IPCC Bible. And it is written that thou shalt not question nor debate nor discuss or even think about the holy Scriptures of the IPCC and the word thy God (a.k.a. Jim Hansen).
Ben then continues on to show his complete and utter ignorance of the greenhouse effect by giving an example of a car in the hot sun. This is an absolutely perfect example of the fundamental flaws with the GCM computer models which do exactly as Eltham does: the Earth is not a closed car with no turbulence or mixing and that is why a car heats up to such temperatures in the sun: because there is no turbulence and mixing inside the car. And this is exactly what the GCM computer models do: they do not model turbulence or mixing on either the microscale (such as wind or storms) or even at the other extreme of global events such as El Niño or thermo haline flow.
I hope any thinking person who has even rudimentary understanding of mathematics or science can now see some of the most fundamental and basic flaws in the AGW debate.
Acidification of the oceans is another one of these completely and utterly scurrilous scare campaigns enacted on a public who does not understand the basic chemistry and physics of the ocean.
Here are the simple facts:
A doubling of CO2 atmospheric concn will have an ~0.1 pH decrease.
A ten fold increase of CO2 results in a change of ~ 0.5 pH.
These calculations are without including any of the buffering effect caused by organic and inorganic compounds in sea water.
And this is exactly what we saw during periods of the earth’s history when the atmospheric CO2 with up to 20 times its current level: there was hardly any effect on the oceans pH at all.
Please people do not be conned by the charlatans, they are deliberately trying to deceive you!!One of the most important things I learned in my half century career as a scientist was humility and respect for the opinions of the top scientists and scientific collectives in my own sub-discipline, my own discipline in general and even more importantly in other disciplines.
This was not an uncritical obeisance but a sensible, pragmatic judgement about quality, about who are the top scientists, the top scientific journals and the top scientific organizations.
Thus a practising scientist needs to be aware of the bigger picture and this is significantly provided by the top scientific journals Nature (UK) and Science (US) which publish the very best and most important work in a wide range of disciplines - one has to exercise that respect because it is simply not practical to drop everything and successively devote a decade at a time to achieving baseline professional competence in a succession of disciplines by doing further undergraduate degrees, honours, PhDs and post-docs in, say, mathematics, theoretical physics, atmospheric physics etc.
Thus when it comes to the biological consequences of the man-made warming and acidification of the oceans who better to turn to than the Coral Working Party of the umpteen-Nobel-Laureate Royal Society which declares (contrary to the variously ignorant, irresponsible, uncredentialled, defamatory, abusive and anonymous climate denialists):
“The Earth’s atmospheric CO2 level must be returned to <350ppm to reverse this escalating ecological crisis and to 320ppm to ensure permanent planetary health. Actions to achieve this must be taken urgently. The commonly mooted best case target of 450ppm and a time frame reaching to 2050 will plunge the Earth into an environmental state that has not occurred in millions of years and from which there will be no recovery for coral reefs and for many other natural systems on which humanity depends.” Working group signatories Professor John Veron (Coral Reef Research) Dr Mary Stafford-Smith (Coral Reef Research), Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (University of Queensland) [and 20 other eminent scientists including Sir David Attenborough FRS (working group co-chair)].
Reference - output of the technical working group meeting, The Royal Society, London, 6th July, 2009, “The Coral Reef Crisis: scientific justification for critical CO2 threshold levels of <350ppm”: http://www.carbonequity.info/PDFs/The-Coral-Reef-Crisis.pdf .
Faced with a worsening climate crisis sensible people have a no-brainer decision to make of having RESPECT for the considered individual and collective views of top climate scientists and biological scientists VERSUS the views of variously ignorant, irresponsible, uncredentialled, defamatory, abusive and anonymous climate denialists.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
DrGideonPolya
Your comment was just one long appeal to authority that ignores the reality of global politics.
The reality is that the desire by Warministas like yourself to reduce the atmospheric Co2 to 350PPM is just never going to happen,. China, India and the United States will just not be part of any emissions reduction regime within the suggested time frame.
Any one with a practical mind must realise that even if the alarmists were right about the science that humanity has no chance of making their “fix” work. So they should stop all of ” sky is falling” rhetoric and start putting their minds to the way that humanity can adapt to any changes that we may see in the climate.
Thinking that we can control or even influence the climate is as close as I think that you can come to the ancient notion of Hubris.
Ahh Polya another resident warmaholic alarmist with another unquestioning appeal to authority. I usually find these sorts of deference displayed by those who cannot understand the science themselves and thus cannot critically analyse and so just defer to a doyens in sort of sycophantic fashion.
When any paper or statement is published it must pass the test of facts and rationality.
Facts:
1: The equilibrium between CO2 and saline (as opposed to sea water) is a rather trivial chemical equilibrium which can be looked up in any Merk reference manual. The facts are as I stated above: doubling CO2 -> approx -0.1pH and pH7.9 and 10x CO2 -> -0.4pH or pH7.6. These are trivial changes and have no effect on biodiversity at all. The pH needs to get down to ~6 before any significant biological changes occur. Dissolved organic/inorganic will only serve to buffer the pH further.
2: The earth has had much more CO2, much higher and lower temps and the corals have survived just fine. That’s because they can adapt and change the algal partners to suit the conditions. However events such as large scale deoxygenation/acidification caused by OTHER mechanisms are now known to have been devastating.
3: Statements in the proffered PDF @ http://www.carbonequity.info/PDFs/The-Coral-Reef-Crisis.pdf
Statement 2: Temperature induced mass coral bleaching causing widespread mortality on the Great Barrier Reef and many other reefs of the world started wen atmospheric CO2 exceeded 320ppm.
This statement is simply FALSE! It is well known that a disease cause much of this. The disease is called “white syndrome.” The cause of the disease is unknown but healthy reefs with lots of coral cover are the ones most affected.
Statement 3. At today’s level of 387ppm CO2, reefs are seriously declining and time‐lagged effects will result in their continued demise with parallel impacts on other marine and coastal ecosystems.
There is not the slightest evidence to support this statement anywhere in the document. Any reef decline is automatically attributed to CO2 with no mechanism proposed rather it is just a given as an unquestionable God given fact that increased CO2 is the cause of reef decline.
Statement 4. Proposals to limit CO2 levels to 450ppm will not prevent the catastrophic loss of coral reefs from the combined effects of climate change and ocean acidification.
Again there is not the slightest evidence offered to this conclusion. The implied cause is that increased CO2 will cause acidification of the ocean to very low pHs whereupon calcification-based or corals will cease to be biologically viable. However it is simply not possible for the CO2 concentration to ever reach a point where these sorts of very low pHs are obtained.
Statement 5. To ensure the long‐term viability of coral reefs the atmospheric CO2 level must be reduced significantly below 350ppm.
6. In addition to major reductions in CO2 emissions, achieving this safe level will require the active removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.
And yet again there is not the slightest scientific justification to these statements. No mechanism is offered by which CO2 increasing to 400+ ppm will have a detrimental effect on coral growth in the long-term!
Conclusion:
Please people when you’re offered these papers to read if you don’t understand the science please please please do not just accept what you are told, The days of trusting some scientist who is living on bread and milk to save to world have gone the way of the family GP who used to make home visits! It is imperative that you critically analyse every piece of literature regardless of where it is published and who publishes it.
For an alternative view, with actual scientific justification to some of those views, please have a look at http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/corals/coralreefs.pdf
PS: moderator, if this appears twice please feel free to delete one or other :-)
Readers of this thread - giving prime consideration to the expert advice of relevant top cutting edge specialists in climate science, coral biology or medicine is simply sensible - to prefer the advice of variously ignorant, irresponsible, uncredentialled, defamatory, abusive and anonymous climate denialists, non-biologists or non-medicos simply ISN’T.
If the ignorant and uncredentialled climate denialists within the ABC, the Murdoch Empire and elsewhere expanded their denialism operations to medical protocol denialism and charged for their services they would quickly end up behind bars for a variety of offences ranging from fraud to manslaughter and murder.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
Shorter delusionals: “Hey - don’t trust the authority of the scientists in the field, the Royal Society and Academy of the Sciences! They’re the authorities but you’re an independently gifted and talented Free Thinker! No, you should trust the authority of this delusional blowhard website I just happen to have handy here, CO2JunkScience’rUs.com!”
And: “Of course the untutored, unskilled political appointee Chair of the ABC ought to be lecturing his journalists on the crying need to balance science with the ravings of unpublished delusional blowhards! Why - it’s obvious!”
There seems to be an intriguing disconnect scientific progress and the public’s understanding of the scientific method. Were there no policy implications to the question of climate change then the theory would now be done and dusted; ongoing research would be engaged with refining the hypothesis and making adjustments to our understanding of the process as additional data streams in - some projections would be discredited others would firm up. In short the debate would have moved on.
The problem is that this theory has uncomfortable policy implications and as a result there are those who do not wish to implement a considered policy response and, in the light of the way the debate is constructed, have there just one option to attempt to obfuscate and discredit the science.
BUT
Let us assume for the sake of argument that those in denial are right about climate change does that also mean that they are right in arguing against changes in public policy?
Consider the following:
A South Australian company has developed an airconditioning system that can be retrofitted to most commercial building resulted in an energy saving of up to 60% (The Art gallery of SA has been fitted with the system - the reduced energy bills meant that it paid for itself in two years)
Would we not want our government to apply that system to all buildings it operates? After all they are tax payer dollars that are being wasted.
Thanks to the Rudd stimulus package I was able to buy a new van for my business. I now have a bigger van - more suited to my work yet my fuel bills have gone down by a third.
Thanks to the same stimulus package I have been able get an audit done on my energy useage - the result is that once I purchased some more efficient appliances for my business my total energy bill went down by two thirds.
Should we not encourage our government to enact regulations that provide us with a positive incentive to reduce our overheads?
would we not want our governments to implement measures that reduce their overheads and thus save the taxpayer money?
Beyond Zero Emissions (google it) has developed a strategic plan that would enable Australia to switch to 100% renewables by 2020. There is a cost - of course there is a cost but when you consider the ongoing costs associated with a continued use of fossil fuels ( it is high time we force fossil fuel companies to factor in the costs of externalities in their pricing system) it is a cheap price to pay.
I would argue that implementing such measures is good public policy regardless of any debate about global warming.
Johntons
Fair comment. But I think you assume that AGW skeptics are not in favour of these policies because they are announced in the context of attempting to control the planet’s climate.
Whilst I don’t think they will have a meaningful impact on Earth’s climate, I absolutely support policy measures that encourage efficiency and get us to make sensible use of finite resources.
Plundering finite resources like oil and gas so we leave little for future generations is immoral.
We have planty of good reasons to develop alternative energy sources, but plundering ANY resource to exhaustion is immoral. Not just oil and gas!
If we bring an ETS the tradeable rights will be like introducing a new global currency; happy days for the currency brokers but it introduces a whole new layer of cost for very little gain.
Simply taxing non-renewable resources, whether oil, gas, aluminium or whatever is a sensible moral imperative if we are not to rob future generations blind! We don’t need to give an “ETS bonanza” to the banking system to encourage more frugal usage.
If it turns out that by increasing taxation on specific (limited lifetime) finite resources we actually change or control the planet’s climate let’s treat that as a bonus!
johntons,
As you know, the ‘Beyond Zero Emissions’ group you mention in your comment, as its name suggests, is dedicated to the elimination of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and the adoption of energy production from sustainable resources. Admirable as this ambition may be, it must be understood that CO2 is a 9% to 26% component of total greenhouse gasses.
Rarely mentioned by the media is an important constituent of total greenhouse gasses, Methane (CH4). It’s responsible for about 20% of the enhanced greenhouse effect, being 23 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100-year period. About 15% of global emissions are produced in the gut of animal livestock with atmospheric levels increasing by around 22 million tonnes per year.
Incidentally, many don’t realise that land use change, mainly deforestation in the tropics, is currently the cause of up to one third of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
This comment was offensive and has been deleted.
For those still connected the reference for anthropogenic Co2 taking over as the main driver of climate is
www.cawcr.gov.au/bmrc/clfor/cfstaff/jma/meehl_additivity.pdf
see Figure 1
The question I always like to pose to denialists is: suppose you are in your doctor’s consulting room and she proposes a course of treatment, you ask her what evidence she has this works and she replies she was taught this when she was trained, you carry on and if she remembers her course she will say… papers published in Nature/BMJ/…. [peer-reviewed journals].
Hi LifeMasque!
We’ll be deleting that comment, and I would like to remind everyone else to keep it civil in their comments. It’s not just manneers, it’s about not crowding out legitimate debate with a chorus of insults.
Cheers, Ben
IcedVolvo
I’m not entirely surprised that some of your comments have been deleted.
As I’ve written before, ultimately the appropriate forum for discussing the technical merits of climate models are in peer-reviewed scientific journals, not on the comments pages of websites such as this one. As a journalist, I’m not qualified to make a technical judgment on the relative accuracy of the models employed by James Hansen and other leading climatologists.
I am, however, convinced that the models show significant explanatory power. Climate models have repeatedly been shown to be able to accurately predict observed temperate increases before they happen, in a statistically significant manner.
Sadly, it’s simply not possible for most untrained readers to critically analyse climate papers - we simply lack the years of specialist knowledge required to accurately assess the claims made in them. This is why peer review sends important papers to the experts in that field.
Ahh Ben, you just don’t get it! How can you have faith in something you are not allowed to see, analyse, criticise, debate or discuss. You mean you just accept it on faith …. that’s called religion isn’t it?
Tell you what, if I pull out the predictions for every IPCC report and then show you that they have been wrong every single time (when compared to satellite surface and troposphere temps) will that put a [public] dent in your faith in the models?
I have said this before: ITS OBVIOUS WE HAVE TO CHANGE TO ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES but we need to stop wasting time thinking we can change the climate and spend every single cent we can on research into real alternatives. Let me give you a perfect example: at a very prestigious university in Australia the group that does plasma fusion physics [that’s an alternative energy source] has been effective;y kicked off the new super computer so that it can run more climate models. What we need is more solid stuff like the recent RMIT discoveries increasing solar panel efficiencies and lowering costs. But of course with journalists pushing the “political” line we won’t get it because we will waste our time and efforts in stupid things like putting tin foil in peoples roof spaces…..
Icedvolvo,
Now we’re talking.
There’s a matter of probability that swamps every other argument when it comes to resource allocation.
We can introduce an ETS and sequester CO2 and execute countless “feel good” policies.
Or we could perhaps agree, as Icedvolvo wisely suggests, that direct action and investment in alternative energy sources, energy conservation strategies and p[erhaps treating all finite resources as though….they are finite would be great policy.
Then we might have a decent policy framework.
I’m heartily sick of being treated like I’ve got two heads simply because I’m skeptical of AGW.
Many of the policy initiatives of the Man Controls Earth’s Climate folks are really worthwhile.
Other’s are a waste of resources and that irks me.
The point that unites us all is our concern for humanity and the ecosystem that sustains us.
Deploying resources on low-probability info is wrong and immoral. Let’s make more fuel-efficient cars, get better at generating geothermal power etc. These projects have a high probability of success.
But when it comes to sequestering CO2 and an ETS; well, can we put the funds against malaria and AIDS instead? I’d rather be confident in saving MILLIONS of lives than tossing it away on very speculative gains.
icedvolvo has a touching faith in the “science” carried out by groups and individuals generously supported by such disintersted organisations as ExxonMobil and Western Fuels Association.
To believe that such organisations do not pay for the results they desire strains credibility to the limit. It would be interesting to learn where icedvolvo’s true alliances lie. Who really is icedvolvo because to paraphrase Shakespeare he doth protest too much.