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Five issues that are shaking climate change science
Are glaciers really growing? Is the Arctic sea ice bouncing back? Five key battlegrounds between climate sceptics and believers
Climate science is going through a period of soul-searching following a torrid two months. The leak of the so-called Climategate emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit led to accusations of intimidation of climate sceptics and suppression of inconvenient data.
The Copenhagen climate conference was a disaster, with no firm commitments on curbing emissions. Then this month, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was accused of massively overstating the risk to Himalayan glaciers.
So what does this very public series of embarrassments amount to? Is the so-called "consensus" that climate change is being caused by human activities really in pieces? The First Post seeks to answer five key questions which concern climate change believers and sceptics equally ...
Are Himalayan glaciers melting or growing?Melting glaciers are seen as a key indicator of global warming. In a report published in 2007, the IPCC made a shocking claim: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high." Very high, in IPCC terminology, means a probability of 90 per cent. Up to half a billion people rely on water from Himalayan glaciers.
The claim was not peer-reviewed and has been traced back to an interview with Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain published in the popular science magazine New Scientist in 1999. Most glaciologists say that glaciers in the Himalayas are so thick it would take centuries, not decades, for them to disappear.
The false claim was made in just one paragraph of the 3,000-page IPCC report. But it has been used to discredit the whole report and to refute mainstream scientific opinion that most of the world's glaciers are indeed disappearing.
Yet the World Glacier Monitoring Service has published annual data today that supports the mainstream. The WGMS director, Professor Wilfried Haeberli, says the trend over the past 10 years has been towards an "unbroken acceleration in melting".
He adds that even assuming a medium global warming scenario, "in the Alps about 70 per cent [of glaciers] will be gone by the middle of the century, and mountain ranges like the Pyrenees may be completely ice-free". Glaciers in the Himalayas and Alaska are likely to last centuries and could even grow in the short-term, if global warming increases snowfall in these areas.
Does 'Climategate' cast doubt on climate change?The dispute over emails at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit leaked by a hacker rumbles on. Yesterday, the Information Commissioner ruled that the CRU had illegally withheld raw data from people sceptical of climate change. There is an unlimited fine for this breach of the Freedom of Information Act, but the university cannot be prosecuted because the complaint was not made within six months. Meanwhile, an independent investigation into the affair is yet to report.
Climategate, as it became known, led to suggestions that one of the world's most respected climate research groups was suppressing inconvenient data and victimising those who disagreed with their analysis that anthropogenic global warming is a reality. The CRU's head, Phil Jones, has been forced temporarily to step down.
However, the CRU's defenders claimed that the emails weren't so much evidence of fraudulent science as the result of constant harassment by obsessive climate sceptics.
The jury is still out: last week a parliamentary investigation into the UEA emails was announced. The Science and Technology Committee will hear evidence in March. The latest probe brings to six the number of organisations looking into the affair. The others are: the Met Office, the IPCC, Penn State University and the Norfolk police.
Are global temperatures rising?Much of the furore surrounding the climategate emails centred on the reliability of temperature data that was used to produce the celebrated 'hockey-stick curve' - so-called because it showed global temperatures largely stable from 1000AD until 1900, before rising sharply, presumably due to emissions produced by the industrial revolution.
But tree ring data was used to work out global temperatures from 1000AD until 1980, after which thermometer readings alone were used. Sceptics say this was because the tree ring data was beginning to show a cooling trend.
But last week, Nasa claimed that the past decade was the warmest ever. Moreover, 2009 was the second-warmest year since modern records began in 1880. Average global temperatures are now 0.8C higher than in 1880, suggesting a long-term upward trend, despite temperatures levelling off temporarily in the 1940s and 1970s.
This data is sourced from over 1,000 meteorological stations worldwide, but it will not change any minds, since it provides a mere snapshot when seen in a geological timeframe.
Are sea levels rising?During last month's UN Copenhagen climate summit, the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research published a claim that sea levels would rise by 6ft by the end of the century - aided by a collapse of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, who led the research, used the fact of a seven-inch sea level rise between 1881 and 2001 and extrapolated using a global temperature rise of 6.4C - a figure possible if nothing is done to cut emissions.
Jason Lowe, a researcher at the Met Office, said of the 6ft
prediction: "Such a big rise by 2100 is actually incredibly unlikely.
The mathematical approach used to calculate the rise is simplistic and unsatisfactory."
A 2007 IPCC report which factors in thermal expansion of the water in the oceans as well as melting of mountain glaciers outside of the poles - but not the polar ice sheets - says a maximum 2ft rise is more likely by 2100.
The big problem is that nobody really understands the dynamics of such colossal ice sheets as those in Greenland and the Antarctic. Rahmstorf accepts the criticism of his research, but says: "As a scientist I have to look at the evidence... my figures for sea-level rise are likely to be an underestimate of what the world will face by 2100."
Is the Arctic becoming ice free?Much has been made of the melting of the Arctic sea ice - particularly the implications for ships, which will be able to shorten the route between the Far East and Europe by cutting out the Suez and Panama canals. The melting of such ice wouldn't have a major impact on sea levels, as it floats in the water already. However, it is an indicator of global warming.
Nasa announced last summer that ice cover in the Arctic Ocean, despite showing an increase compared to previous years, had reached its third lowest level on record. Some people have taken the increases in ice cover over the past two years as evidence against climate change.
However, the lowest 10 readings of ice cover since records began in 1979 have all been in the last 11 years.
Scientists think the slight increase in ice may mean the Arctic won't be ice-free in the summer for another 30 years - an improvement on previous estimates of an ice-free Arctic by 2013. ·
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vconcerned: You're in great company, that's one of Al Gore's favourite sites too http://blog.algore.com/2009/07/realclimateorg.html as well as the Guardian newspaper http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/series/guardian-environment-network RealClimate is desperately biased. Atmospheric Physicist James A. Peden wrote, "'Real Climate' is a staged and contracted production, which wasn't created by 'scientists,' it was actually created by Environmental Media Services, a company which specializes in spreading environmental junk science on behalf of numerous clients who stand to financially benefit from scare tactics through environmental fear mongering." Lead blogger Gavin Schmidt was harshly criticized by atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a prominent scientist from the Netherlands, who wrote a scathing denunciation of Schmidt in which he said he was 'appalled' by Schmidt's 'lack of knowledge'. Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv said "The aim of RealClimate.org is not to engage a sincere scientific debate. Their aim is to post a reply full of a straw man so their supporters can claim that your point 'has been refuted by real scientists at RealClimate.org'" Roger Pielke Sr, the former Colorado State Climatologist and currently a senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder says RealClimate are "erroneously communicating the reality of the how the climate system is actually behaving...Media and policymakers who blindly accept these claims are either naive or are deliberately slanting the science to promote their particular advocacy position". I wouldn't touch RealClimate with a bargepole if you seek truth.
Haven't heard from Pete for a few days, hope he's not over ... er...warmed! However, must pick up on the tirade he posted at me about "deniers" - just as we all know what the word means, so most of us - with one loud exception! - accept that we are not denying anything.
However Pete thinks that if you're not in the AGW lobby, then you are a denier, but there is a third way ( as Tony Blair once said) - you can accept that GW may well be happening but are not convinced about the "A" bit. Perhaps we should refer to it as NGW ("N" for Natural)?
Keep 'em coming, Pete!
Pete, Pete, calm down lad, you'll give yourself a coronary and furthermore alienate many possible allies.
As a previous intelligent contributor has noted but you don't seem to be able to grasp, not only are the deniers NOT denying Climate Change merely questioning its cause but they are also suggesting that as EVERY previous instance of 'global warming' and their have been many, has been a natural phenomenon then we should be examining ways of handling an inevitable outcome rather than spending billions trying to reverse it especially as large amounts will be misappropiated by fraudently politicians etc, even in the scenario of us being the root cause their would be so much stored warming still waiting to be released that a serious outcome would still be inevitable and handling its effects would be a more sensible approach than trying to stop it, remember, King Canute. Anyway if you are unable to handle the fact that you are unable to convince the whole world that Pete Simmonds is right and the well regarded scientific community supporting the non man made theory is irrefutably wrong I suggest you get yourself a wooden crate and join the other loonies in Hyde Park with your own Megaphone
Perhaps the most accurate information source on Global Warming available to the public: realclimate.org. Many here would benefit by searching out "medieval warm period" and other issues.
PS. Pete as I am in my seventies and live 400ft above sea level it is very unlikely I will find myself up to my neck in flood water unless my upstairs neighbours' water bed springs a leak or some other unforeseeable misadventure overcomes me.
Pete, Pete, calm down lad, you need to go back on the medication then everything won't seem as bad, if you continue as you are you will give yourself a coronary and furthermore alienate many possible allies.
As a previous intelligent contributor has noted but you don't seem to be able to grasp, not only are the deniers NOT denying Climate Change merely questioning its source but they are also suggesting that as EVERY previous instance of 'global warming' and their have been many, has been a natural phenomenon then we should be examining ways of handling an inevitable outcome rather than spending billions trying to reverse it especially as large amounts will be misappropiated by fraudently politicians etc, even in the scenario of us being the root cause their would be so much stored warming still waiting to be released that a serious outcome would still be inevitable.
Anyway if you are unable to handle the fact that you are unable to convince the whole world that Pete Simmonds is right and the well regarded scientific community supporting the non man made theory is irrefutably wrong I suggest you get yourself a wooden crate and join the other loonies in Hyde Park with your own Megaphone
OK, I just got one of the above sobriquets of the Simmons - and I think it was aimed at me too. 'Flatearthers'? Since when does Mr S ever use science in his missives? Does he attempt to debate the Svensmark theory of climate change? (For which, see book 'The Chilling Stars, 2nd ed., and the documentary program on DVD 'The Cloud Mystery', by Lars Mortenson on the development of the theory over the last 15 years, you can google to find it, buy direct from his website, packed with good science) Or does the interaction of the sun's magnetosphere, galactic cosmic rays, and cloud formation on earth controlling the warming sunlight reaching the earth's surface get too technical for him?
Simmons: "your world will be gone soon enough, and the consolation for me is that one day you'll all realise how wrong you were". Oh, you're expecting to live to be over 100 are you, when all the Himalayan Glaciers will have melted away "in forty years"? Ha Ha. You won't be around to see it, mate - you shrivelled your brain with all that pot in the 60s. You'll soon have to change your blog name to "Fool OVER the Hill". Your "grasp on reality" will soon come to a screeching halt, and I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when your reality check comes on the way to your eternal home. By the way, what's all that pot done for your grasp on reality? "You're all like kids who don't want to accept the party's over, so throw a temper tantrum". The way you argue, you sound like the primary school bully. As for science - you know nothing. Care to share with us your scientific qualifications and experience? I thought not. Sorry, being an anarchist, a hippie, a Greenie, a pothead, an atheist, a vegetarian and a photographer don't count. As for using the dictionary, you don't seem to know the meaning of basic terms. The words 'warming' and 'cooling' are not states but trends. It's quite possible for the last decade to have been WARM, even WARMEST, but still COOLING. And it has been cooling.
Jose. Can't be bothered to read most of your jabbering, but no global temperatures haven't fallen in the last ten years, it's been the hottest decade on record. But go on with your lies, you'll be up to your neck in flood water soon enough. Your grasp on reality is tenuous, but you're about to get a reality check.
You know nothing, you are as ignorant as the other two intellectually challenged non scientists. Yeah, go on shopping and consuming, your worlkd will be gone soon enough, and the consolation for me is that one day you'll all realise how wrong you were and will suffer what you are denying. You're all likekids who don't want to accept the party's over, so throw a temper tantrum. Flatearthers. Every age has had them. For your information Carruthers, deniers is the word, it means people who deny. Got it? Duh. I didn't expect you to be educated, but anyone could use a dictionary. Prat.
Well done, chaps - good to see the debate continuing! And great to see Pete's pitch up there as a target, still going on about "deniers" - as if the thickness of tights had anything to do with it...!
So let's all just accept that, as stated previously, nobody is "denying" anything - I am sure we all agree that the climate is constantly changing, and the world currently seems to be warming globally, and as Michael says, there may be some useful by-products of all that excess heat, such as quicker sea routes to and from the Far East.
What we are not agreeing on is why it is happening - is it, as some appear to think, anthropogenic? (to coin a phrase) or just the planet doing what it always did - and without our help?
Michael and I know the answer!
"The claim was not peer-reviewed and has been traced back to an interview with Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain published in the popular science magazine New Scientist in 1999." It's MUCH WORSE than that! The truth is far more devastating. It was known YEARS BEFORE the 2007 IPCC report that Hasnain's 2035 figure was fiction. It had been exposed as a myth and utter nonsense by one of the most highly respected experts on the Himalayan mountains, Jack Ives, in 2004, and in a peer-reviewed article in 2005. There can be no doubt that those who compiled the IPCC AR4 report knew that 2035 was a lie.
HMM. - THE SO-CALLED CONSENSUS - What consensus? On warming? If the graph goes up, it must be warming - unless the data is fixed. A common practice in this area. See the infamous IPCC -hockey stick- graph which magically eliminated the Medieval Warm Period to make the graph much more sensational (see also book -The Great Warming- by Brian Fagan for good historical account of vines growing all over Britain and our huge exports of wine to France in that period.) Consensus on manmade CO2 being the cause of the warming? - never been one. See DVD -The Great Global Warming Swindle-, where top US, Canadian, Japanese, Israeli, Danish, French, and British scientists destroy this political tax-grab nonsense. And that DVD is now a few years old.
ARE HIMALAYAN GLACIERS MELTING OR GROWING?
Is this a problem? Glaciers grow and recede under a variety of changing conditions, conditions are always changing. The glaciers and snow line of Mount Kilimanjaro are retreating, but this is due to decreased precipitation, which is due to human deforestation of the jungle near the base of the mountain. This is not climate change or warming, it is deforestation. Civilisation began to flourish in the middle east at the END of the last ice age - about 12,000 years ago roughly.
[Melting glaciers are seen as a key indicator of global warming.] Oh are they? Is the actual measured rising temperature by satellite and ground stations, which has on average DROPPED in the last decade, THE KEY INDICATOR of temperature change? Or do we not do physics on this website?
DOES 'CLIMATEGATE' CAST DOUBT ON CLIMATE CHANGE?
Is this an attempt to row back from the easily challenged phrases: -anthropogenic warming due to CO2-; and -global warming-? Could in reality anything cast doubt on climate change? Does climate change over centuries and millennia like the weather changes through the seasons? Answer, YES. (See also note on ice ages above.)
ARE GLOBAL TEMPERATURES RISING?
Are global temperatures falling, say, over the last decade? Do global temperatures go up and down over the decades, centuries, and millennia? Answer: YES. (See also ice core data from Antarctica and Greenland going back hundreds of millennia. See also note on ice ages above.)
ARE SEA LEVELS RISING?
Do sea levels go up and down as ice ages come and go? Answer: YES. You think anyone can stop this?! Are the low-lying Maldive Islands (off west coast of Sri Lanka - yes, I needed to check too, donâ??t feel bad), about to sink beneath the waves, as their president claimed them to be -the canary in the cage-, on national radio a year or two ago? Answer: NO. The world expert on sea-level change, Professor Nils-Axel Morner wrote an article for the global warming special in The Spectator, issue 5dec09, entitled -Why the Maldives arenâ??t sinking-. And they actually invited him out there to do extensive studies to check! Such a pity the truth is not politically correct.
IS THE ARCTIC BECOMING ICE FREE?
Is this actually bad? Shipping can come and go and trade will increase and prices will fall. Warmer waters support more biodiversity. Ice ages come and go anyway, have been doing so for millions of years. Does anyone really think we can do anything about this? Really?
Having argued with the deniers for years, I can quite see why the scientists at UEA felt harassed by them and desperate to shut them up since their stupidity is matched only by their scientific ignorance, making it impossible to explain even the simplest systems to them. They are like crazed religious zealots, refusing to accept the proof that the world isn't flat as it says in the bible/quran etc.
This is a sensible article, explaining clearly that small differences are mere blips in data, and that scientists can sometimes get small things wrong, but that the science of climate change is not challenged by peripheral inconsequentialities. Not that it will satisfy the anti-scientific stupids who will be along any minute pratting on in their usual way as if they understand the argument and aren't really just in denial because they want to continue with their greedy, selfish lifestyle, and copying and pasting from websites which clearly impress them but which are packed with unscientific nonsense. We all have everything to lose if we don't act, these people are slowing the response if nothing else. We will all regret we weren't harder on them one day.