Esta história é sintomática de mais de uma coisa - leiam, e cheguem às vossas conclusões. Começa assim:
"Climate models, and the predictions they make, are based on physics. We know how much more energy is trapped on Earth when we increase the greenhouse effect, and we have a good idea how much this trapped heat will warm the planet. We’ve understood these physical scientific concepts for over 150 years.
When climate contrarians make their own predictions, they tend to throw physics out the window. For example, as documented in my book and a paper I recently published with Rasmus Benestad and colleagues, contrarians have made climate predictions based on things like the orbital cycles of Jupiter and Saturn, ocean cycles and sunspots, and “natural fluctuations,” but they often completely disregard the basic, long-understood physics of the increasing greenhouse effect.
And so we have the latest such unphysical climate prediction, made in a report by Loughborough University statistics professor Terence Mills, on behalf of the anti-climate policy advocacy group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The report essentially fits a statistical model to past global and local surface temperature
changes, and then uses that statistical model to forecast future
temperature changes. It’s an approach that’s been used to predict
financial market changes, for example. ...."
"Jane Mayer’s remarkable new book makes it abundantly clear that the
Kochs, and the closely connected group of billionaires they’ve helped
assemble, have spent thousands of times that much over the past few
decades, and that in the process they’ve distorted American politics in
devastating ways, impairing the chances that we’ll effectively respond
to climate change, reducing voting rights in many states, paralyzing
Congress, and radically ratcheting up inequality.
In this election
cycle, for instance, the Kochs have publicly stated that they and their
compatriots will spend $889 million, more than either the Republican or
Democratic parties spent last time around. According to a recent
analysis in Politico, their privatized political network is
backed by a group of several hundred extremely rich fellow donors who
often meet at off-the-record conclaves organized by the Kochs at desert
resorts. It has at least 1,200 full-time staffers in 107 offices
nationwide, or three and a half times as many as the Republican National
Committee. They may be the most important unelected political figures
in American history.
As a result, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money—a
detailed accounting of their rise and rise—is absolutely necessary
reading for anyone who wants to make sense of our politics. Lay aside
the endless punditry about Donald’s belligerence or Hillary’s ambition;
Mayer is telling the epic story of America in our time. It is a triumph
of investigative reporting, perhaps not surprising for a journalist who
has won most of the awards her profession has to offer. But she had to
cut through the secrecy that these men have carefully cultivated,
unraveling an endless list of front groups. And she had to do it despite
real intimidation; apparently an arm of what some have called “the
Kochtopus” hired private investigators to try to dig up dirt on her
personal and professional life, a tactic that failed because there
wasn’t any. She’s a pro, and she’s given the world a full accounting of
what had been a shadowy and largely unseen force."
Estava a pensar em fazer um comentário mais desenvolvido sobre este artigo da Naomi Klein, mas falta-me a pachorra. Em todo o caso, permitem-me sublinhar que este artigo é o melhor que li durante muito tempo em termos de esquerda e de esquerda radical (na acepção que dou ao conceito de radical, que não será decerto o de muita gente).
Na ausência do comentário, o bold e o sublinhado permitirão perceber o que considero relevante e o que, em princípio, concordo (mas, talvez, com algumas qualificações) - o bold com o sublinhado indicam aquilo em que estou absolutamente de acordo. O simples sublinhado é uma chamada de atenção para algo que, a meu ver, naturalmente, deve ser tido em linha de conta, mas que, nalguns casos - atenção, só nalguns casos - pode também não ser (factual ou programaticamente) correcto, ou que deve merecer qualificações. Isto não é mesmo uma forma eficiente de fazer um comentário?
There is a question from a gentleman in the fourth row.He
introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he
ran for county commissioner in Maryland’s Carroll County because he had
come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were
actually “an attack on middle-class American capitalism.” His question
for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, DC, Marriott Hotel in late
June, is this: “To what extent is this entire movement simply a green
Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic
doctrine?”
As duas primeiras notas historiam como apareceu a gasolina com chumbo, como lidaram com ela e as suas consequências. O interesse óbvio da história é que rima [citando Mark Twain, de memória: a história não se repete, mas rima muitas vezes] com outras histórias acontecidas, também nos EUA, como a do tabaco, a dos medicamentos, a dos alimentos, e claro, com a história em curso relativa ao CO2. Os processos são sempre os mesmos: desacreditar a boa ciência com a ciência marcenária, imputando a existência de controvérsia onde ela é tão somente fabricada; comprar o poder político e por aí adiante.
A última história é sobre a indústria tabaqueira chinesa e lembra-nos que as coisas acontecem, também, em outros lados.
[....] They’re
the conservative white men (CWM) of climate change denial, and we’ve
all gotten to know them in one way or another. But we haven’t had
population-level statistics on them until recently, courtesy of a new
paper in Global Environmental Change (apparently not online yet, but live
in the blogosphere as of late last week) by sociologists Aaron
McCright and Riley Dunlap. It’s entitled “Cool Dudes: The denial of
climate change among conservative white males in the United States.”
Among other data, McCright and Dunlap show the following:
— 14% of the general public doesn’t worry about climate change at all, but among CWMs the percentage jumps to 39%. —
32% of adults deny there is a scientific consensus on climate
change, but 59% of CWMs deny what the overwhelming majority of the
world’s scientists have said. —
3 adults in 10 don’t believe recent global temperature increases are
primarily caused by human activity. Twice that many – 6 CWMs out of
every ten – feel that way.
What’s
more, and in line with a number of post I’ve written in the past,
McCright and Dunlap also find among these CWMs a phenomenon I sometimes
like to call “smart idiocy.” Even as they deny mainstream climate
science, conservative white males are also more likely than average
U.S. adults to think they understand the science they deny—that they’re right, the scientists are wrong, and they can prove it. Indeed, they’re just dying to debate you and refute you.
The
authors bring up two possible explanations for the broad CWM
phenomenon, both based on literature in the social sciences. The first
is “identity-protective cognition” theory (or what I would call motivated reasoning). The second is “system justification” theory,
which is just what it sounds like: the study of why people, often
implicitly and subconsciously, are motivated to ratify and reaffirm the
status quo—why their default position is against, rather than for,
progressive change.
Muito interessante, ainda que nada animador. E não é nada animador porque a tese de que dificilmente se arranja uma solução (para as consequências do aquecimento global) no contexto descrito afigura-se-me muito próxima de uma correcta avaliação do que está em jogo. Menos interessante é o que se diz do que poderá ser feito.
I believe part of the meta-problem is this: people no longer inhabit a single reality. I mean people collectively and individually: collectively, there is no longer a single cultural arena of dialogue. We have the simulacrum of one, in the form of Question Time and governmental “Big Conversation” initiatives, but in reality we have fragmented off into a thousand little sub-sectors of paradigmatic dissension. Whilst there are all sorts of interesting cultural phenomena that fit this description, this relates most relevantly, in our terms, to the tear-jerking incomprehension of techno-scientists when faced with, for example, climate deniers. [....]
[....] "Anyway, what many techno-scientists fail to understand - and thus find most frustrating - about dealing with the deniers is that the denier has no real interest in engaging at the scientist’s level of reality. The disputed content is not really the issue; if they want, the deniers can always just fabricate an even more complicated and detailed response to the techno-scientist’s latest rebuttal, and the exchange simply becomes an arms race of who can put the most time and energy into producing copy that supports their own paradigm." [....]
Yet the sins of the Post are mild when compared with those of the real centerpiece of Murdoch’s American holdings, the Fox News Channel. Since being launched in 1996, Fox has had a profound and toxic effect on the press and politics in this country. With a daily prime-time viewership of around 2 million—more than that of CNN and MSNBC combined—it has become the Republican Party’s most powerful booster. “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox,” David Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, has observed. Fox has put several Republican presidential hopefuls on its payroll and allowed other candidates to fund-raise on its shows. After appearing on Sean Hannity’s program, for instance, 2010 senatorial candidate Sharron Angle boasted that that she had raised $40,000 before even leaving the studio.
Fox has helped to foster the Tea Party and amplify its message. In the days prior to the nationwide Tea Party gatherings on April 15, 2009, Fox ran more than 100 promos touting both its coverage and the movement. (“Americans outraged over unfair and crippling taxes,” went one. “They fight for their future. Neil Cavuto [a Fox anchor] is giving them a voice.”) The endless publicity given the Tea Party, in turn, helped make possible the sweeping Republican gains in the 2010 midterm elections. According to New York magazine, FOX News president Roger Ailes, disappointed with the Republican presidential field, called New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to urge him to enter the race—one of a number of king-making bids by Ailes, who, the magazine observed, has in a sense become “the head of the Republican Party.” [....]
Wunder Blog : Weather Underground: "According to the National Climatic Data Center, March 2011 was the driest March and 17th warmest March in Texas since 1895. Temperatures averaged 2 - 6°F above average over most of the state, but over the western portion of the state, where the worst wildfires are burning, temperatures averaged between 6 - 10°F above average."
Is global warming a black swan? « Climate Progress [....] One
of the defining characteristics of humans is our ability to ignore or
downplay facts that would shatter or overturn our world view. At the
same time, we tend to favor or selectively recall information that
confirms our preconceptions, which is called “confirmation bias.” I bring that up because, these days, pretty much everything that seems anomalous is called a “Black Swan,” a term popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in writings such as, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” [....]
Surface temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 mean.
Last month I reported on a new paper by NASA’s James Hansen and Makiko Sato (see Hansen: “One sure bet is that this decade will be the warmest” on record). Kate at ClimateSightsighted a new color in the chart, “pink, which is even warmer than dark red.” [....] Surface
temperature anomalies for the period 17 December 2010 to 15 January
2011 show impressive warmth across the Canadian Arctic…. The
largest anomalies here exceed 21°C (37.8°F) above average, which are
very large values to be sustained for an entire month.
The Space Review: Earthquakes and climate change: get the data: "Understanding global phenomena and planet Earth are principal benefits and goals of space programs. The earthquake got me thinking about climate change. Both will certainly happen. Both are inadequately understood. Computer models provide only approximate predictions about their timing and effects. Both earthquakes and climate change have huge effects on populations. Both require preparation and even civil defense. Both require environmental protection—in the form of safety standards for earthquakes, and in the form of pollution control for climate. And both have occurred throughout Earth’s history—which makes them no less of a concern now.
What bothers me most about the climate change “debate” is that it is so anti-science. The deniers oppose even the gathering of data about the phenomena. Earth science programs and earth observing satellites were cut back drastically in the previous decade, and now, once again, they are among the chief targets of budget cutters in the Congress. The deniers continuously and deliberately mix discussions of cause and effect. Let’s put aside the causes of climate change for a moment.
[....]
Now consider the following: scientists around the world studying climate make incremental improvements on understanding and even predicting it by gathering data from many sources. They create satellite maps of atmospheric data, set up monitoring stations around mapped areas, observe effects from past climate change in plants and on landforms, improve sensors. and build elaborate computer models. They begin to predict general trends, and even start to predict a few specific cases. The predictions are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but always approximate. More data improves the quality of the predictions. Does this seem worthwhile, like the case in the preceding paragraph? To those in Congress and elsewhere who oppose Earth science, it does not; they want to eliminate the satellites and monitoring and modeling.
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Pois! No entretanto, os dois últimos lançamentos de satélites dedicados ao estudo do clima, foram para o caneco. É verdade, e só estou só a constatar....
RealClimate: A mistaken message from IoP?:
"The Institute of Physics (IoP) recently made a splash in the media
through a statement about the implications of the e-mails stolen in the
CRU hack. A couple of articles in the Guardian report how this
statement was submitted to an inquiry into the CRU hack and provide
some background."
Como a ciência se defende, ou porque razão as pessoas pensam como pensam (ver aqui, também):
Should Scientists Fight Heat or Stick to Data? - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com:
"Some leading lights in environmental science have been pushing their
colleagues, and institutions like the National Academies, to come out
swinging against the ongoing barrage of assaults from organized
opponents of restrictions on greenhouse gases and climate
skeptics/contrarians/denialists/realists (pick your label depending on
your worldview).
The debate over a climate communications strategy was disclosed when a
string of e-mail messages was leaked to the Washington Times and
Greenwire (the Greenwire story was also published online by The New
York Times). Here’s one of the most trenchant comments, not
surprisingly from Paul Ehrlich, a battle-hardened veteran of such
fights: Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a
gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded,
merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules."
Debate the controversy! « Climate Progress:
"The serial misinformers and misrepresenters demand equal time for
their misinformation and misrepresentations. What should climate
science defenders and the media do?"
The trouble with trusting complex science | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian:
"The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on
science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald
Warner dismissed scientists as 'white-coated prima donnas and
narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role
of mad cranks … The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like
squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as
many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any
more.'"
Qualificações sobre o perigo do metano:
New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane|Skeptical Science:
"One of the positive feedbacks from global warming is the thawing of
Arctic permafrost. This releases methane, a greenhouse gas over 20
times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
Investigations into Arctic methane have tended to focus on land
permafrost. However, there are also vast amounts of methane held
underwater in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS). This encompasses
over 2 million square kilometres, three times as large as the nearby
Siberian wetlands, which have been considered the primary Northern
Hemisphere source of atmospheric methane. Underwater permafrost acts as
a lid to restrain methane stored in the seabed. Until now, it was
thought the permafrost was cold enough to remain frozen. However,
recent observations have found that over 80% of the deep water over the
ESAS is supersaturated, with methane levels more than eight times that
of normal seawater (Shakhova 2010). More than half of the surface water
is supersaturated also. The methane venting into the atmosphere from
this one region is comparable to the amount of methane coming out of
the entire world’s oceans."
RealClimate: Arctic Methane on the Move?:
"Methane is like the radical wing of the carbon cycle, in today’s
atmosphere a stronger greenhouse gas per molecule than CO2, and an
atmospheric concentration that can change more quickly than CO2 can.
There has been a lot of press coverage of a new paper in Science this
week called “Extensive methane venting to the atmosphere from sediments
of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf”, which comes on the heels of a
handful of interrelated methane papers in the last year or so. Is now
the time to get frightened?
No. CO2 is plenty to be frightened of, while methane is frosting on the
cake. Imagine you are in a Toyota on the highway at 60 miles per hour
approaching stopped traffic, and you find that the brake pedal is
broken. This is CO2. Then you figure out that the accelerator has also
jammed, so that by the time you hit the truck in front of you, you will
be going 90 miles per hour instead of 60. This is methane. Is now the
time to get worried? No, you should already have been worried by the
broken brake pedal. Methane sells newspapers, but it’s not the big
story, nor does it look to be a game changer to the big story, which is
CO2."
The ‘Real’ Take on Methane and Warming - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com:
"With a valuable reality check on Arctic methane in the climate
context, Realclimate.org (in this case David Archer) illustrates the
value of having scientists step into the uncomfortable, but
unavoidable, arena of direct public communication. In the post, Dr.
Archer, who has tested his chops with a couple of books for general
audiences (I forgive him for recycling “ Global Warming: Understanding
the Forecast,” the title of my 1992 book on climate ;-) , tries out a
nice analogy relating carbon dioxide and methane emissions to various
troubles that can endanger a driver"
Anomalias, ou de como, nomeadamente, alguns dos "opinion makers" portugueses se esqueceram que a Terra é redonda (existe - estou a ser pedagógico - o hemisfério norte, e o hemisfério sul, e quando está frio em Conpenhaga, faz calor, e de que maneira, na Austrália):
Há sempre muito para dizer sobre isto, mas confesso que para mim é mais fácil despejar o que vou lendo, e quem quiser, que faça o seu trabalho de casa, lendo aquilo que achar que deve ler.
O tom ressaibado do comentário tem a ver com o facto, de muita gente, alinhar as suas convicções nesta matéria do aquecimento global, não em termos do que os factos e o processo científico (digo, deliberadamente, processo científico) nos vão confirmando, mas em função das suas simpatias ideológicas.
Margaret Tachter (ver abaixo) prova que a aceitação da responsabilidade humana nas alterações climáticas não deveria decorrer de ser de direita ou de esquerda - é tão irónico ver intelectuais de direita, do centro-direita, e mesmo da esquerda democrática, portugueses, caírem na mesma tipo de cegueira ideológica de que acusavam, com razão, os intelectuais comunistas e afins, em tempos idos. Existe, contudo, uma diferença: estes tinham mais desculpas das que têm aqueles agora (a qualidade dos memes criados pela história e pela experiência dos países comunistas era superior à dos memes criados, nos dias que passam, pela extrema -direita norte-americana, e pelos serviços de marketing da Exxon e quejandas).
Freakout-nomics - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com:
"If you think conservatives are freaking out over the growing prospects
that health care reform will, in fact, happen, wait until you see the
freakout over climate change.
You see, a snowy winter in the northeast United States was supposed to
have proved the climate skeptics right, after all. But a funny thing
happened while they were celebrating: globally, this is shaping up as
the warmest winter on record"
Australia has hottest-ever summer|Climate Ark:
"Western Australia has sweated through its hottest ever summer,
recording average temperatures just shy of 30 degrees Celsius,
officials said on Monday.
Weather officials said the giant, dusty state roasted at an average of
about 29,6 Celsius during the southern hemisphere summer, 0,2 degrees
over the previous high in 1997-1998.
The state capital Perth also endured its driest summer since records
began in 1897, with just 0,2 millimetres of rain falling in December,
January and February.
State-wide information is only available since 1950."
New research sheds light on Antarctic ice melting|Climate Ark:
"Jane Ferrigno is the lead author of that new report. She says
scientists have known for a while that some of the peninsula's ice
shelves are breaking up.
Ms. JANE FERRIGNO (Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey): That started at
least a decade ago in the northern part of the peninsula, but we looked
at all the ice fronts on the peninsula from north to south.
In the southern area, we're finding that all the ice fronts are
retreating. In the northern part of the peninsula, the majority of ice
fronts are retreating, and that's something we neither expected but
we're highly interested in finding that out.
RAZ: At a peninsula, the area where this research was focused on, is
sort of like a canary in the coal mine, right? I mean, what does it
tell us about larger trends?
Ms. FERRIGNO: The fact that the ice shelves are changing on the
peninsula is a significant signal that global change, climate warming,
is affecting the ice cover of Antarctica. It's affecting first the area
that's towards the north, that's slightly warmer, but the effect of the
warming has traveled from the northern part of the peninsula to the
southern part of the peninsula, where it's colder.
Our next concern is to see exactly what's happening in the continent
itself. We've seen some changes there, but we need to look closely and
see what else might be happening.
RAZ: Give us a sense of how much ice has been lost over the past, say,
10 years.
Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I'll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years,
I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and
that's comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and
the state of Alaska.
RAZ: So about the size of the state of Texas in terms of ice has been
lost in the past 20 years."
Tempestade na Madeira é "mais um sinal de um mundo que está em mudança" - Local - PUBLICO.PT:
"Portugal “vai viver muito as alterações climáticas” e a violenta
tempestade na Madeira é apenas mais um sinal de uma tendência global,
defende António Baptista, director do centro norte-americano de Ciência
e Tecnologia para a Observação de Margens Costeiras."
“Não é possível voltar ao passado nas zonas costeiras. É preciso
antecipar agora, tomar as medidas necessárias para ter zonas saudáveis,
que permitam aos animais ser saudáveis e aos homens também. Não há
ambiguidade ou dúvida. É profunda e irreversível a mudança”, afirma.
“Pode discutir-se qual é a grandeza das mudanças climáticas a nível
global, mas não há dúvida de que os gases com ‘efeito de estufa’ estão
a aumentar de forma espetacular. (...) A questão agora não é julgar a
sociedade pelo que fez para que chegássemos a isto, mas olhar para o
futuro e perceber o que fazer para gerir melhor os recursos”.
A 21st century catastrophe - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent:
"In April 1989 Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, gave her Cabinet
a seminar on global warming at No 10 and one of the speakers was the
scientist and green guru James Lovelock. A reporter asked him
afterwards what would be the first signs of global warming. He replied:
'Surprises.'"
Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming:
"There has been a shift in the climate debate over recent months. It
seems people are talking less about the science and more about the
alleged actions of a small group of climate scientists. Senator Inhofe
is an extreme example with his recent attempt to criminalize 17 leading
scientists. These accusations are largely based on stolen private
emails that are being quoted out of context and/or without
understanding of the science involved. Unfortunately, this is shifting
the focus away from the most important element of the climate debate:
the scientific reality of global warming. The empirical evidence that
global warming is happening and that humans are the primary cause has
been and continues to be observed, measured and documented in the
peer-reviewed scientific literature."
James Inhofe, Senate’s top skeptic, explains his climate-hoax theory | Grist:
"Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of the world’s most vociferous
climate skeptics, is practically giddy these days. He’s argued since
2003 that global warming is a massive “hoax” being played on the
American people, and now he believes he’s got more backing than ever
before for his claim, from “Climategate” emails to errors in the latest
report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the recent
blizzards in Washington, D.C. (He gleefully hyped an igloo built by his
grandkids as “Al Gore’s new home.”)"
Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions:
"A new skeptic argument has emerged that upon close inspection, is a
polar opposite to the scientific reality. This week, scientists who
published a 2009 paper on sea level rise retracted their prediction due
to errors in their methodology. This has led some to claim sea levels
are no longer predicted to rise. This interpretation was helped no
doubt by the unfortunate Guardian headline 'Climate scientists withdraw
journal claims of rising sea levels'. However, when you read the
article and peruse the peer-reviewed science on future sea level, you
learn that the opposite is the case."
The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | Is There Enough Food Out There For Nine Billion People ?:
"A threefold challenge now faces the world: Match the rapidly changing
demand for food from a larger and more affluent population to its
supply; do so in ways that are environmentally and socially
sustainable; and ensure that the world’s poorest people are no longer
hungry.This challenge requires changes in the way food is produced,
stored, processed, distributed, and accessed that are as radical as
those that occurred during the 18th- and 19th-century Industrial and
Agricultural Revolutions and the 20th-century Green Revolution.
Increases in production will have an important part to play, but they
will be constrained as never before by the finite resources provided by
Earth’s lands, oceans, and atmosphere. ...
Recent studies suggest that the world will need 70 to 100% more food by
2050. In this article, major strategies for contributing to the
challenge of feeding 9 billion people, including the most
disadvantaged, are explored. Particular emphasis is given to
sustainability, as well as to the combined role of the natural and
social sciences in analyzing and addressing the challenge."
Curioso, o nível de preocupação de alguns:
Possibilities in Solar Energy - Scitizen:
"Scientists say that fundamental advances that are more likely to come
from government research are what is needed to fix the carbon emission
problem. Yet the electric utility industry spends less as a percentage
of revenue on research and development than does the dog food industry.
"It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.
Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.
But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.
I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.[...]"
Although sceptics have been gnawing away at the credibility of climate science for years, over the last five months they have made enormous leaps owing to the hacking of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the discovery of a number of alleged mistakes in the benchmark reports of the IPCC.
While the “revelations” have been milked for all they are worth, and a lot more, the science remains rock solid. If instead of cherry-picking two or three that lend themselves to spin, you read the 1000 or so emails that were posted on a Russian server the picture that emerges is one of an enormously dedicated group of men and women doing their best to carry out research of the highest quality.
If there were a conspiracy among scientists to manipulate the truth, you would expect the evidence to be there in spades in these private emails. But it’s not. Instead they show scientists working their backsides off to do good science, with email exchanges stopping briefly on Christmas Eve to be resumed on Boxing Day, with apologies to colleagues for taking time out to have surgery or get married, all with a sub-text of worry about the implications of their work for the future of humanity.
Before the leak of the CRU emails, one colleague emailed others in response to attacks by sceptics on Phil Jones:
“The sad thing here is that Phil Jones is one of the true gentlemen of our field. I have known Phil for most of my scientific career. He is the antithesis of the secretive, “data destroying” character the CEI and Michaels are trying to portray to the outside world.”
And the emails reveal the enormous external pressure they were under. They show they were constantly accused of being frauds and cheats; their work was twisted and misrepresented; and they were bombarded with vexatious freedom of information requests orchestrated by denialists. In short, they were caught up in a hot political debate that they did not really understand or want to be part of, yet they were the target of savvy, secretive and ruthless organisations ready to pounce on anything they said or wrote.
This is the real story exposed of “Climategate”. Instead, the scientists in question have seen their professional reputations trashed in the world’s media for no cause, to the point where Phil Jones has been on the verge of suicide. It has been the most egregious and unfounded attack on the integrity of a profession we have ever seen.
Yet the science remains rock solid
Since the leaking of the CRU emails the worldwide press have reported a series of “mistakes” in the IPCC reports that have allowed the denial lobby to claim that the entire IPCC process and the body of climate science should be junked. It turns out that almost all of the mistakes are fabrications. How could this have happened?
The first and only significant error identified in the IPCC report is the claim that 80 per cent of Himalayan glaciers are very likely to disappear by 2035. This was a serious mistake for a scientific report that should not have got through the review process. But let’s be very clear about its significance:
The error occurred in Volume 2 of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), the volume on the impacts of climate change. Volume 1 reports and assesses the physical basis for climate science, including projections of warming. Chapter 4 contains an extensive discussion of glaciers, snow and ice. Projections for glaciers are also discussed in Chapter 10. No one has challenged any of the statements in these chapters, prepared by teams including the world’s leading glaciologists, which carefully lay out what is known.
The erroneous “2035″ claim was nowhere highlighted by the IPCC. It appeared neither in the chapter summary, the report summary or the crucial Summary for Policymakers. In no sense was it a central claim of the IPCC report, as some newspapers have said.
It was a glaring error that should have been picked up earlier, but it was so deeply buried in the report that denialists around the world, with all of their supposed scientific expertise, did not pick it up for two years. In fact, they did not pick it up at all; it was first pointed out by Georg Kaser and others. Kaser is an eminent glacier expert who was a lead author of Chapter 4 in Volume 1.
Although mistakes like this one should not occur, to suggest that it has any bearing on the credibility of the science of AR4 is absurd. The more remarkable fact is that so few errors have been identified in AR4, and none at all in the crucial Volume 1 which sets out the physical basis for climate change. On page 493 of Volume 2, where the “2035″ mistake occurs, I count 20 factual claims that are falsifiable. Multiply that by the 3,000 or so pages in AR4 and you can see how utterly trivial that single mistake is.
But haven’t many more mistakes been found in AR4? No. The only other claimed error that has any substance is the statement that “55% of its [the Netherlands] territory is below sea-level”. This figure was supplied by the Dutch Government. It is slightly misleading because the correct statement is that 55% per cent of the Netherlands is at risk of flooding, although the Dutch Ministry of Transport says that 60% of the country is below the high water level. The confusion may have implications for the Netherlands’ dike planning but has no bearing whatever on the science of climate change.
There are three additional “errors” in AR4 that have attracted press attention and sparked denialist frenzies. They are analysed on the Realclimate website.
“Africagate” refers to the claim that AR4 overstated the potential decline in crop yields in Africa. The figures in AR4 have since been shown to be an accurate assessment.
“Disastergate” is the allegation that the IPCC erroneously attributed some of the rising costs of disasters to climate change. In fact, the section in question is hedged around with caution and the expert whose work was said to be misused by the IPCC has declared that the IPCC has fairly represented his findings.
“Amazongate”, a story that opened with the claim: “A startling report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise”. The story is plain wrong, with the expert on whose work the IPCC relied stating that the information is correct, although the referencing is incomplete.
Apart from the fact that these three “gates” are beat-ups with no basis in their criticism of the IPCC, they have one feature in common – the stories were all written by Jonathan Leake, science and environment editor of The Sunday Times.
Leake has close links with deniers and in fact based these stories directly on wild and unsubstantiated claims by sceptic bloggers, as uncovered by Tim Holmes. In the case of Amazongate, Leake had been informed by another expert that, while the referencing was inadequate, the claim in AR4 is correct and, if anything, an understatement. But Leake disregarded this and quoted that same expert in his story to exactly the reverse effect, as if he were a severe critic of the IPCC.
On the role of Leake I can do no better than quote Tim Holmes:
“While it is wholly unsurprising that the denial lobby should be attempting to push baseless and misleading stories to the press, what is surprising is the press’s willingness to swallow them. In this case, two experts in the relevant field told a Times journalist explicitly that, in spite of a minor referencing error, the IPCC had got its facts right. That journalist simply ignored them. Instead, he deliberately put out the opposite line – one fed to him by a prominent climate change denier – as fact. The implications are deeply disturbing, not only for our prospects of tackling climate change, but for basic standards of honesty and integrity in journalism.”
Leake’s stories have been reproduced in the other Murdoch broadsheets, The Australian and the Wall Street Journal and of course have been amplified on Fox News, and are themselves now being referred to as “Leakegate”.
Bloggers and columnists, who attack climate science without ever opening an IPCC report or speaking to a real climate scientists, imagine that the body of climate science is a house of cards, and taking away one or two will cause it to collapse. In fact the scientific case for global warming is like a mountain built up by adding one rock at a time over many years. Even if all of the alleged errors were true it would amount to picking off a handful of rocks from the top of the mountain, leaving the rest unchanged and unmoved.
Yet these alleged mistakes – non-existent or trivial – with no implications whatever for the robustness of climate science have been deployed in a sophisticated campaign to blacken the reputations of the scientists responsible for alerting us to the perils of global warming.
Perception versus reality
Unfortunately, the chorus of declarations that the climate scientists got it wrong has had no impact on the earth’s climate. Indeed, those who study the climate itself rather than the bogus debate in the newspapers and the blogosphere understand that climate science and popular perceptions of climate science are diverging rapidly, not least because the news on the former is getting worse.
Rather than rehearse the evidence for these warnings, well known to those who follow the science, let me make mention of a number of developments in climate science that have been published or reported in the five months since the leaking of the Climategate emails. It is evidence that warming is more alarming than previously thought yet which has been buried in the avalanche of confected stories claiming that climate scientists have exaggerated.
A new study concludes that an average warming of 3-4°C (which means 7-8°C on land), previously thought to be associated with carbon dioxide concentrations of 500-600 ppmv, is now believed to be associated with concentrations of only 360-420 ppmv, a range that covers the current concentration of 385 ppmv, rising at 2 ppmv per annum. If confirmed by further research, the implications of this are terrifying.
The rate of flow into the sea of Greenland and Antarctic glaciers is accelerating, adding to sea-level rise. This augments the evidence that IPCC cautiousness led to significant underestimation of the likely extent of sea-level rise in the 21st century. The East Antarctic ice-sheet, previously believed to be stable, has now begun to melt on its coastal fringes. The West Antarctic ice-sheet continues its rapid melt.
I have tried to find some new studies that go the other way in the hope I can counterbalance this bleak story, but have not succeeded.
Over the last five months, a vast gulf has opened up between the media-stoked perception that the climate science has been exaggerated and the research-driven evidence that the true situation is worse than we thought.
Just when we should be urging immediate and deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, the public is being lulled into disbelief, scepticism and apathy by a sustained and politically driven assault on the credibility of climate science. For this we will all pay dearly.
RealClimate: The Guardian disappoints:
"Part 1 of a series discussing the recent Guardian articles: Over the last few weeks or so the UK Guardian (who occasionally
reprint our posts) has published a 12-part series about the stolen CRU
emails by Fred Pearce that are well below the normal Guardian standards
of reporting. We delineate some of the errors and misrepresentations
below. ."
Have American Thinker disproven global warming?:
"American Thinker have published an article The AGW Smoking Gun by Gary
Thompson who claims to disprove a key component of anthropogenic global
warming. The article begins by stating '...it seems that the only way
to disprove the AGW hypothesis is to address problems with the
science'. This is a fair statement and a return to an emphasis on
science in the climate debate is most welcome. So have American Thinker
discovered a flaw in climate science that has escaped the attention of
the world's climate scientists? Let's examine Thompson's article to
find out."
Op-Ed Columnist - Global Weirding Is Here - NYTimes.com: "Avoid the term “global warming.” I prefer the term “global weirding,”
because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and
the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to
get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent
storms more numerous. The fact that it has snowed like crazy in
Washington — while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada,
while Australia is having a record 13-year drought — is right in line
with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather
will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever;
others will become drier than ever."
Is “Global Weirding” here? « Climate Progress:"We are engaged in a multi-year messaging struggle here. The
planet is going to get hotter and hotter, the weather is going to get
more extreme. One of the reasons to be clear and blunt in your
messaging about this is that even if you don’t persuade people today,
the overall message will grow in credibility as reality unfolds as we
have warned. To shy away from telling people the truth because they
don’t want to hear it or they think it’s liberal claptrap is just
incredibly un-strategic. Some groups, like EcoAmerica, doesn’t want
people to talk about “global warming.” And — even worse — they don’t
want people to talk about extreme weather, which, as I have previously
argued, is in fact the same thing that the climate deniers want — see “Why do the deniers try to shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather?“ You must tell
people what is coming, not just because it is strategic messaging, but
also I believe because we have a moral responsibility."
Time series of global mean heat storage (from 0 to 1.24 miles).
Lacis at NASA on Role of CO2 in Warming - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com:
"Andrew A. Lacis, the NASA climatologist whose 2005 critique of the
United Nations climate panel was embraced by bloggers seeking to cast
doubt on human-driven climate change, has sent in two more commentaries
on the state of climate science."
Part 2: A Scientist’s Defense of Greenhouse Warming - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com:
"Here’s the second (and final) installment from Andrew A. Lacis of
NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies providing more detail on his
view of the evidence showing a human warming influence on the climate.
[A primeira parte está imediatamente acima.] This post builds on his earlier efforts here to
challenge arguments of skeptics of human-driven warming. (I’ve added a
link or two to Web sites explaining some of the acronyms.)"
Negacionismo:
RealClimate: Whatevergate:
"However, since the emails were released, and despite the fact that
there is no evidence within them to support any of these claims of
fraud and fabrication, the UK media has opened itself so wide to the
spectrum of thought on climate that the GW hoaxers have now suddenly
find themselves well within the mainstream. Nothing has changed the
self-evidently ridiculousness of their arguments, but their presence at
the media table has meant that the more reasonable critics seem far
more centrist than they did a few months ago. [...] All of
these stories are based on the worst kind of oft-rebunked nonsense and
they serve to make the more subtle kind of scepticism pushed by Lomborg
et al seem almost erudite." A dado passo, fala-se da Overton window: é um conceito interessante, e tem a ver com o modo como evoluem as percepções das pessoas sobre a razoabilidade, a plausibilidade, a aceitabilidade, das opiniões, das teses, das proposições - para dar um exemplo, quando um político do PSD regional, defendeu a necessidade de ligar algumas das ilhas dos Açores por túneis (à canal da Mancha), a reacção que recebeu demonstrou que a sua opinião estava, por uma grande distância, fora da Janela de Overton da problemática das comunicações insulares.
Did Phil Jones really say global warming ended in 1995?:
"A headline in the Daily Mail has spread like wildfire, claiming that
Phil Jones, ex-director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic
Research Unit, said 'there has been no global warming since 1995'. Not
only did Phil Jones not say these words, this interpretation shows a
poor understanding of the scientific concepts behind his words. To
fully understand what Phil Jones was saying, one needs to read his
actual words and understand the science discussed. Here is the relevant
excerpt from the BBC interview:"
Greenland: Fjords Contribute to Melting of Glaciers | Climate Ark:
"Greenland`s glaciers are melting faster than they used to,
contributing to the rise of sea levels worldwide. While warmer
atmospheric temperatures thin all the glaciers from above, scientists
have wondered if warmer waters are also melting the many glaciers that
flow into the fjords.
Two studies published in Nature Geoscience provide evidence that this
is the case."
