Among the findings of the 2005 National Research Council report
Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: Expanding the Concept and Addressing Uncertainties
are
I. “Determine the Importance of Regional Variation in Radiative Forcing
Regional variations in radiative forcing may have important regional and global climatic implications that are not resolved by the concept of global mean radiative forcing. Tropospheric aerosols and landscape changes have particularly heterogeneous forcings. To date, there have been only limited studies of regional radiative forcing and response. Indeed, it is not clear how best to diagnose a regional forcing and response in the observational record; regional forcings can lead to global climate responses, while global forcings can be associated with regional climate responses. Regional diabatic heating can also cause atmospheric teleconnections that influence regional climate thousands of kilometers away from the point of forcing. Improving societally relevant projections of regional climate impacts will require a better understanding of the magnitudes of regional forcings and the associated climate responses.
PRIORITY RECOMMENDATIONS:
Use climate records to investigate relationships between regional radiative forcing (e.g., land-use or aerosol changes) and climate response in the same region, other regions, and globally.
Quantify and compare climate responses from regional radiative forcings in different climate models and on different timescales (e.g., seasonal, interannual), and report results in climate change assessments.
II. Determine the Importance of Nonradiative Forcings
Several types of forcings—most notably aerosols, land-use and land-cover change, and modifications to biogeochemistry—impact the climate system in nonradiative ways, in particular by modifying the hydrological cycle and vegetation dynamics. Aerosols exert a forcing on the hydrological cycle by modifying cloud condensation nuclei, ice nuclei, precipitation efficiency, and the ratio between solar direct and diffuse radiation received. Other nonradiative forcings modify the biological components of the climate system by changing the fluxes of trace gases and heat between vegetation, soils, and the atmosphere and by modifying the amount and types of vegetation. No metrics for quantifying such nonradiative forcings have been accepted. Nonradiative forcings have eventual radiative impacts, so one option would be to quantify these radiative impacts. However, this approach may not convey appropriately the impacts of nonradiative forcings on societally relevant climate variables such as precipitation or ecosystem function. Any new metrics must also be able to characterize the regional structure in nonradiative forcing and climate response.
PRIORITY RECOMMENDATIONS:
Improve understanding and parameterizations of aerosol-cloud thermodynamic interactions and land-atmosphere interactions in climate models in order to quantify the impacts of these nonradiative forcings on both regional and global scales.
Develop improved land-use and land-cover classifications at high resolution for the past and present, as well as scenarios for the future.”
Did the IPCC WG1 Statement for Policymakers adequately discuss these issues? The answer is NO. However, these topics are discussed in Chapter 7, where, for example, it is written,
“The consequences of changes in atmospheric heating from land changes at a regional scale are similar to those from ocean temperature changes such as from El Niño, potentially producing patterns of reduced or increased cloudiness and precipitation elsewhere to maintain global energy balance. Attempts have been made to find remote adjustments (e.g., Avissar and Werth, 2005). Such adjustments may occur in multiple ways, and are part of the dynamics of climate models. The locally warmer temperatures can lead to more rapid vertical decreases of atmospheric temperature so that at some level overlying temperature is lower and radiates less. The net effect of such compensations is that averages over larger areas or longer time scales commonly will give smaller estimates of change. Thus, such regional changes are better described by local and regional metrics or at larger scales by measures of change in spatial and temporal variability rather than simply in terms of a mean global quantity.”
Why was not this conclusion headlined in the policy statement that was transmitted to the politicians?
Chapter 8 of the IPCC Report is much more poorly written on this subject
where while they write
“Evaluation of the land surface component in coupled models is severely limited by the lack of suitable observations. The terrestrial surface plays key climatic roles in influencing the partitioning of available energy between sensible and latent heat fluxes, determining whether water drains or remains available for evaporation, determining the surface albedo and whether snow melts or remains frozen, and influencing surface fluxes of carbon and momentum. Few of these can be evaluated at large spatial or long temporal scales. This section therefore evaluates those quantities for which some observational data exist”
they fail to identify the rich peer-reviewed literature on this subject but only provide a very limited presentation on this subject in the Chapter.
Indeed, while land processes are discussed in the Report, the focus is on its role in the carbon budget and in its effect on the global average radiative forcing.
To document missing papers, as with Part I (see and see) we have cross-referenced Climate Science with the IPCC WG1 Report on just one aspect of the above two topics (regional radiative forcing and nonradiative forcing), namely the role of land use change within the climate system.
This cross-referencing is given below where a bold face means that it appeared in the IPCC Report and the Chapter in which it appears is given. The IPCC Chapters referred to below have the titles
Chapter 2 Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing
Chapter 6 Palaeoclimate
Chapter 7 Couplings Between Changes in the Climate System and Biogeochemistry
Chapter 8 Climate Models and their Evaluation
Chapter 10 Global Climate Projections
Chapter 11 Regional Climate Projections
II. ROLE OF LAND-USE CHANGE AS A MAJOR CLIMATE FORCING
Avissar, R., and Y. Liu, 1996: Three-dimensional numerical study of shallow convective clouds and precipitation induced by land surface forcing. J. Geophys. Res., 101(D3), 7499-7518, 10.1029/95JD03031.
Avissar, R., and D. Werth, 2005: Global hydroclimatological teleconnections resulting from. tropical deforestation. J. Hydrometeor., 6, 134–145. IN CHAPTER 7 & CHAPTER 11
Brovkin, V., M. Claussen, E. Driesschaert, T. Fichefet, D. Kicklighter, M. F. Loutre, H. D. Matthews, N. Ramankutty, M. Schaeffer, and A. Sokolov, 2006: Biogeophysical effects of historical land cover changes simulated by six Earth system models of intermediate complexity. Climate Dynamics, 1-14, DOI: 10.1007/s00382-005-0092-6. IN CHAPTER 2 & CHAPTER 8
Cai, M., and E. Kalnay, 2004: Response to the comments by Vose et al. and Trenberth. Impact of land-use change on climate, Nature, 427, 214, doi:10.1038/427214a.
Chase, T.N., R.A. Pielke, T.G.F. Kittel, R.R. Nemani, and S.W. Running, 2000: Simulated impacts of historical land cover changes on global climate in northern winter. Climate Dynamics, 16, 93-105. IN CHAPTER 2 & CHAPTER 11
Chase, T.N., R.A. Pielke, Sr., T.G.F. Kittel, M. Zhao, A.J. Pitman, S.W. Running, and R.R. Nemani, 2001: The relative climatic effects of landcover change and elevated carbon dioxide combined with aerosols: A comparison of model results and observations. J. Geophys. Res., Atmospheres, 106, 31,685 -31,691.
Claussen, M., C. Kubatzki, V. Brovkin, A. Ganopolski, P. Hoelzmann, H.-J. Pachur, 1999; Simulation of an abrupt change in Saharan vegetation in the mid-Holocene. Geophys. Res. Lett., 26(14), 2037-2040, 10.1029/1999GL900494. IN CHAPTER 6, CHAPTER 10 & CHAPTER 11
Cotton, W.R. and R.A. Pielke, 2007: Human impacts on weather and climate. Cambridge University Press, 330 pp.
Cox, P. M., R. A. Betts, C. D. Jones, S. A. Spall, and I. J. Totterdell, 2000: Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model. Nature, 408, 184-187. IN CHAPTER 7, CHAPTER 8, CHAPTER 10 & CHAPTER 11
Cui, X., H.-F. Graf, B. Langmann, W. Chen, and R. Huang, 2006: Climate impacts of anthropogenic land use changes on the Tibetan Plateau, Global and Planetary Change, 54, 1-2, 33-56.
Eastman, J.L., M.B. Coughenour, and R.A. Pielke, 2001: The effects of CO2 and landscape change using a coupled plant and meteorological model. Global Change Biology, 7, 797-815.
Eugster, W., W.R. Rouse, R.A. Pielke, J.P. McFadden, D.D. Baldocchi, T.G.F. Kittel, F.S. Chapin III, G.E. Liston, P.L. Vidale, E. Vaganov, and S. Chambers, 2000: Land-atmosphere energy exchange in Arctic tundra and boreal forest: available data and feedbacks to climate. Global Change Biology, 6, 84-115.
Feddema, J.J., K.W. Oleson, G.B. Bonan, L.O. Mearns, L.E. Buja, G.A. Meehl, and W.M. Washington, 2005: The importance of land-cover change in simulating future climates. Science, 310, 1674-1678. IN CHAPTER 10
Foley, J.A., R. DeFries, G.P. Asner, C. Barford, G. Bonan, S.R. Carpenter, F.S. Chapin, M.T. Coe, G.C. Daily, H.K. Gibbs, J.H. Helkowski, T. Holloway, E.A. Howard, C.J. Kucharik, C. Monfreda, J.A. Patz, I.C. Prentice, N. Ramankutty, and P.K. Snyder, 2005: Global consequences of land use. Science, 309, 570-574. IN CHAPTER 11
Friedlingstein P., L. Bopp, P. Ciais, J.-L Dufresne, L. Fairhead, H. LeTreut, P. Monfray, and J. Orr, 2001: Positive feedback between future climate change and the carbon cycle. Geophys. Res. Lett., 28, 1543-1546. IN CHAPTER 7, CHAPTER 8, & CHAPTER 11
Gero, A.F., A.J. Pitman, G.T. Narisma, C. Jacobson, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2006: The impact of land cover change on storms in the Sydney Basin. Global and Planetary Change, 54, 57-78.
Gibbard, S., K. Caldeira, G. Bala, T. J. Phillips, and M. Wickett, 2005: Climate effects of global land cover change. Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L23705, doi:10.1029/2005GL024550.
Hoffmann, W.A., and R.B. Jackson, 2000: Vegetation-climate feedbacks in the conversion of tropical savanna to grassland. J. Climate, 13, 1593–1602.
Holt, T.R., D. Niyogi, F. Chen, K. Manning, M.A. LeMone, and A. Qureshi, 2006: Effect of land–atmosphere interactions on the IHOP 24–25 May 2002 convection case. Mon. Wea. Rev., 134, 113–133.
Kleidon, A., 2006: The climate sensitivity to human appropriation of vegetation productivity and its thermodynamic characterization. Global and Planetary Change, 54, 109-127. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2006.01.016
Lawton, R.O., U.S. Nair, R.A. Pielke Sr., and R.M. Welch, 2001: Climatic impact of tropical lowland deforestation on nearby montane cloud forests. Science, 294, 584-587.
Lee, E., R.S. Oliveira, T.E. Dawson, and I. Fung, 2005: Root functioning modifies seasonal climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, no. 49, 17576-17581.
Mahmood, R., S.A. Foster, T. Keeling, K.G. Hubbard, C. Carlson and R. Leeper, 2006: Impacts of irrigation on 20th century temperature in the northern Great Plains. Global and Planetary Change, 54, 1-18. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2005.10.004.
Marland, G., R.A. Pielke, Sr., M. Apps, R. Avissar, R.A. Betts, K.J. Davis, P.C. Frumhoff, S.T. Jackson, L. Joyce, P. Kauppi, J. Katzenberger, K.G. MacDicken, R. Neilson, J.O. Niles, D. dutta S. Niyogi, R.J. Norby, N. Pena, N. Sampson, and Y. Xue, 2003: The climatic impacts of land surface change and carbon management, and the implications for climate-change mitigation policy. Climate Policy, 3, 149-157. IN CHAPTER 11
Marshall, C.H. Jr., R.A. Pielke Sr., L.T. Steyaert, and D.A. Willard, 2004: The impact of anthropogenic land-cover change on the Florida peninsula sea breezes and warm season sensible weather. Mon. Wea. Rev., 132, 28-52.
Marshall, C.H., R.A. Pielke Sr., and L.T. Steyaert, 2004: Has the conversion of natural wetlands to agricultural land increased the incidence and severity of damaging freezes in south Florida? Mon. Wea. Rev., 132, 2243-2258.
Millán, M. M., Mª. J. Estrela, M. J. Sanz, E. Mantilla, M. Martín, F. Pastor, R. Salvador, R. Vallejo, L. Alonso, G. Gangoiti, J.L. Ilardia, M. Navazo, A. Albizuri, B. Artiñano, P. Ciccioli, G. Kallos, R.A. Carvalho, D. Andrés, A. Hoff, J. Werhahn, G. Seufert, B, Versino, 2005: Climatic Feedbacks and Desertification: The Mediterranean model. J. Climate, 18 (5), 684-701.
Myhre, G., Y. Govaerts, J. M. Haywood, T. K. Berntsen, and A. Lattanzio, 2005:Radiative effect of surface albedo change from biomass burning. Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L20812, doi:10.1029/2005GL022897.
Nair, U.S., R.O. Lawton, R.M. Welch, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2003: Impact of land use on Costa Rican tropical montane cloud forests: 1. Sensitivity of cumulus cloud field characteristics to lowland deforestation. J. Geophys. Res. - Atmospheres, 108, 10.1029/2001JD001135.
National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp. Referenced as Jacob et al. in the IPCC; IN CHAPTER 2
Nemani, R.R., S.W. Running, R.A. Pielke, and T.N. Chase, 1996: Global vegetation cover changes from coarse resolution satellite data. J. Geophys. Res., 101, 7157-7162.
Niyogi, D., T. Holt, S. Zhong, P.C. Pyle, and J. Basara, 2006: Urban and land surface effects on the 30 July 2003 mesoscale convective system event observed in the southern Great Plains. J. Geophys. Res., 111, D19107, doi:10.1029/2005JD006746.
Notaro, M., Z. Liu, R. Gallimore, S.J. Vavrus, J.E. Kutzbach, I.C. Prentice, and R.L. Jacob, 2005: Simulated and observed preindustrial to modern vegetation and climate changes. J. Climate, 18, 3650–3671.
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2001: Influence of the spatial distribution of vegetation and soils on the prediction of cumulus convective rainfall. Rev. Geophys., 39, 151-177. IN CHAPTER 7
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2005: Land use and climate change. Science, 310, 1625-1626.
Pielke Sr., R.A., G. Marland, R.A. Betts, T.N. Chase, J.L. Eastman, J.O. Niles, D. Niyogi, and S. Running, 2002: The influence of land-use change and landscape dynamics on the climate system- relevance to climate change policy beyond the radiative effect of greenhouse gases. Phil. Trans. A. Special Theme Issue, 360, 1705-1719. IN CHAPTER 2 & CHAPTER 11
Pitman, A.J., G.T. Narisma, R.A. Pielke Sr., and N.J. Holbrook, 2004: The impact of land cover change on the climate of southwest western Australia. J. Geophys. Res., 109, D18109, doi:10.1029/2003JD004347.
Ramunkutty, N., C. Delire and P. Snyder, 2006: Feedbacks between agriculture and climate: An illustration of the potential unintended consequences of human land use activities. Global and Planetary Change, 54, 1-2, 79-93, doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2005.10.005
Ray, D.K., U.S. Nair, R.O. Lawton, R.M. Welch, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2006: Impact of land use on Costa Rican tropical montane cloud forests. Sensitivity of orographic cloud formation to deforestation in the plains. J. Geophys. Res., 111, doi:10.1029/2005JD006096.
Ray, D.K., R.M. Welch, R.O. Lawton, and U.S. Nair, 2006: Dry season clouds and rainfall in northern Central America: Implications for the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. Global and Planetary Change, 54, 150-162.
Salmun, H., and A. Molod, 2006: Progress in modeling the impact of land cover change on the global climate. Progress in Physical Geography, 30, 737–749.
Sturm, M., T. Douglas, C. Racine, and G.E. Liston, 2005: Changing snow and shrub conditions affect albedo with global implications. J. Geophys. Res., 110, G01004, doi:10.1029/2005JG000013. IN CHAPTER 7
TerMaat, H.W., R.W.A. Hutjes, R. Ohba, H. Ueda, B. Bisselink and T. Bauer, 2006: Meteorological impact assessment of possible large scale irrigation in Southwest Saudi Arabia. Global and Planetary Change, 54, 183-201.
Timbal, B., and J.M. Arblaster, 2006: Land cover change as an additional forcing to explain the rainfall decline in the south west of Australia. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L07717, doi:10.1029/2005GL025361.
van der Molen, M.K., A.J. Dolman, M.J. Waterloo and L.A. Bruijnzeel, 2006: Climate is affected more by maritime than by continental land use change: A multiple scale analysis. Global and Planetary Change, 54, 128-149.
Werth, D., and R. Avissar, 2002: The local and global effects of Amazon deforestation. J. Geophys. Res., 107, 8087, doi:10.1029/2001JD000717
Here are several summary points from this assessment:
1. The 2005 NRC Report was only cited in one chapter (Chapter 2), and its recommendations are not considered in any of the following chapters.
2. None of the papers were cited in Chapter 9 which is entitled “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change“. As documented in the papers listed above, the attribution of climate change cannot be accurately accomplished without including land surface processes, including land use change.
3. The important role of land surface processes in the IPCC chapters is presented in a sporadic fashion without the needed focused evaluation of its role, as recommended in the 2005 NRC Report. The 2007 IPCC Report did not adequately honor the charge of the IPCC WG1 Report to provide “A comprehensive and rigourous picture of the global present state of knowledge of climate change”.
Finally, if one suggests that the set of papers that were referenced in the IPCC report are a representative sample that cover the range of issues with the role of land surface processes (which Climate Science concludes is not the case), than refer us to the text in the IPCC report that addresses the issue of the importance of regional radiative and non-radiative climate forcings on the climate system. The IPCC Report fails on this much needed assessment of the role of humans in the climate system.
“Why was not this conclusion headlined in the policy statement that was transmitted to the politicians?”
Because the science already provides a more than sufficient basis for policy steps that politicians have been (putting it charitably) too slow to implement. Over-emphasizing uncertainties makes that problem worse while not helping anything else.
Comment by Steve Bloom — July 21, 2007 @ 9:00 pm
Steve B. - I recommend that you read the book
The Honest Broker Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics by Roger A. Pielke, Jr University of Colorado, Boulder. Cambridge University Press.
The book summary reads,
“Scientists have a choice concerning what role they should play in political debates and policy formation, particularly in terms of how they present their research. This book is about understanding this choice, what considerations are important to think about when deciding, and the consequences of such choices for the individual scientist and the broader scientific enterprise. Rather than prescribing what course of action each scientist ought to take, the book aims to identify a range of options for individual scientists to consider in making their own judgments about how they would like to position themselves in relation to policy and politics. Using examples from a range of scientific controversies and thought-provoking analogies from other walks of life, The Honest Broker challenges us all - scientists, politicians and citizens - to think carefully about how best science can contribute to policy-making and a healthy democracy.”
Climate Science is seeking to serve as an “honest broker”. Your approach, is certainly appropriate as an advocate, but it prevents the objective assessment of alternative views.
Comment by Roger Pielke Sr. — July 21, 2007 @ 9:13 pm
Roger, your use of the word “headline” made your post self-cancelling within the terms of your son’s book (and very much qualifies you as an advocate). Even had you not, it should be clear enough to you that if, e.g., the SPM had been expanded 50% by adding more discussion of uncertainties, the tone and effective content would have been quite different. Whether you think that’s a good idea depends on what you want politicians to take away from the SPM. If you want them to do nothing, I think it would be an effective approach. As I noted, they’re doing little enough as it is.
Comment by Steve Bloom — July 22, 2007 @ 12:40 am
Steve Bloom, it seems to be that you, like your friends and authorities on realclimate, are more interested in the “political truth” of climate science, than the scientific truth of climate science.
It is a comprehensive list of peer reviewed study Dr. Pielke listed in this article. How can the IPCC neglect such a growing body of evidence, that suggests the truth of climate change is a lot more complex, than what can be derived from first order climate forcing CO2 computer models (models that constantly disagree with each other)? At least they should give a detailed explanation. But they, like you, don’t want to provoke any feelings of uncertainty it seems, so that the strong political impetus for CO2 emission cuts can be better advanced.
I think that in this subject, and this is just a layman opinion like yours, Mr. Pielke seems more interested in the complex truth of the matter than those who only seem to discuss CO2 and nothing else. Perhaps you could ask your friends on realclimate to answer to e.g. this article here, and let’s see what they can come up with in terms of scientific arguments and not in politicization of the matter!
Comment by Buddenbrook — July 22, 2007 @ 6:29 am
Steve B. - Climate Science has proposed the adoption of win-win solutions to environmental risk as articulated in the posting
A Win-Win Solution to Environmental Problems
This is hardly a do nothing recommedation.
Also, a focus exclusively on CO2 as the dominate environmental threat will likely result in serious unintended social and environmental threats; e.g. see
Will Climate Effects Trump Health Effects In Air Quality Regulations?
Comment by Roger Pielke Sr. — July 22, 2007 @ 7:51 am
If Roger is right, then it seems as if we ought to be considering a green tax shift that emphasizes certain land use taxes as much or more than carbon taxes. There are many small environmental groups that have been advocating a green tax shift that includes land taxes to reduce sprawl for sometime, but they have relatively little political clout (google “green tax shift” for several). They have not been designing their proposed tax shifts with the issues brought up by Roger in mind, but the way in which they are thinking about tax shifting to change land use could easily be adapted to address the land use issues brought up by Roger.
Given that the mortgage interest deduction in effect subsidizes larger houses on larger plots of land farther away from cities, I am surprised that those concerned with carbon emissions haven’t focused more on the ways in which land is taxed (or, in the case of the mortgage interest deduction, untaxed to encourage more aggressive use). While I realize that agricultural use has a larger impact, the mortgage interest deduction is of interest because it primarily benefits those who own homes over $300,000; it is among the most regressive features of our tax policy (see
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1341.html for a table summarizing who benefits from this deduction). And yet when the Bush administration tried to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction for large homes (roughtly those over $300,000), they did not receive the vocal support from the environmental community that they should have received.
In the coming years we are likely to see a broad, transpartisan coalition for a green tax shift of some kind. Smart environmentalists are appealing to free market principles to create such a coalition; the Sightline Institute, for instance, makes a compelling case for reducing or eliminating corporate, capital gains, and personal income taxes in favor of green taxes,
http://www.sightline.org/publications/books/tax-shift/tax
While carbon taxes may be part of that, it might well be worth considering various land tax changes as well. From the perspective of designing the best long-term policy advice, it is not clear to me why there should be such hostility to Roger’s scrupulous approach to calling attention to the complexity of the evidence.
Comment by Michael Strong — July 22, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
Nice work, Roger. If it weren’t for you, a lot of the good studies relating land use changes to measured temperature and “climate” changes would be lost. The media would never cover it, and the “Steve Blooms” of the world believe it detracts from the gospel of greenhouse gas catastrophe.
Face it: being an honest reporter/researcher is very difficult and controversial in this “climate” of politicized science.
Comment by Frederick Flanders — July 22, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
“Because the science already provides a more than sufficient basis for policy steps that politicians have been (putting it charitably) too slow to implement. Over-emphasizing uncertainties makes that problem worse while not helping anything else.”
You’re joking, right? The science with respect to the subject at hand is shoddy and incomplete and can be falsified…(why did the temperatures fall from 1930s to 1970s while co2 was on the rise?…ice core co2 lag wrt to temp etc…however the sfc data is a heterogeneous data set made to look like it’s homogeneous so I don’t really know what to believe with respect to that metric)
There are no more extremes in climate/weather than before except there are now more people living in more dangerous areas. From all the studies this meteorologist has read trends in long term weather extremes such as drought/flood indicies, tornado stats, extreme temperatures (record highs/lows/trends) hurricanes, sea level rise…whatever and the data show (as limited as it is in some cases) noise…nada trend except this perposterously ridiculous data set known as the global mean temp which shows +.5 in 150yrs…yay.
Yet everything, and anything that happens in the world today wrt to weather/climate is all blamed on the increase of CO2 and other trace gasses…and I mean everything. It is hysteria out there being caused by the likes of Gore, Hansen and (un)Realclimate, which is a biased, one sided website that hasn’t the time to discuss actual scientific issues/findings…no but (un)Realclimate has it all figured out. Gimme a break.
Comment by tom — July 22, 2007 @ 7:25 pm
Steve Bloom:
It is apparent that you are an advocate for action on climate change. I believe this is not in any way financially advantageous to you, but rather is a firmly held belief that “we” must do something to improve our global environment. Therefore, I see this as a GOOD THING.
However, one cannot have any effectiveness in advocacy (from a political perspective, at least) without dropping scientific scepticism and balance. In other words, you must make a choice - do the science and report it complete with all uncertainties, corrolories, exceptions and so forth in the most honest and open way possible, OR be an advocate for change, emphasising those areas you feel are important, and playing down any doubt and/or uncertainty. There is no middle ground - at least, there is no HONOURABLE, effective middle ground.
So, which are you / will you be? Just so we all know.
Comment by Neil Fisher — July 23, 2007 @ 5:34 pm
Steve Bloom, you are not considering secondary effects of your preferred policy actions. A focus on CO2 - and especially should it turn out not to be the main driver of climate change - might cause unwanted side effects. E.g. a push for ethanol as a climate neutral replacement for gasoline might lead to an increase of land being used for agriculture and an increase of deforestaion. This may lead not only to lost habitats and disturbed ecosystems, but as Roger have thought us, it might in itself create more severe changes to the climate systems than the saved CO2 would have caused. Being a good environmentalist means waiting for the science to settle before rushing to action. I would also add, being a good human being means balancing long term ecological interests against short term human costs. Fast and significant reductions of CO2 emittance have the potential to restrict human development.
Comment by Lars Berg — July 24, 2007 @ 10:14 am
Some of the rhetoric depends upon accepting three things: The CO2 causes the temperature rise, the CO2 is the main factor in that rise, and that the rise is detrimental to humans and/or “the planet”.
My opinion on the subject is that the facts are irrelevant and a distraction. We should spend time, money and effort on whatever mitigation and adaption actions that make sense for us to do, regardless of the answer.
Obviously many would rather argue about the details.
Comment by Mike Nee — July 24, 2007 @ 6:30 pm
RE #11
“…the facts are irrelevant and a distraction.” Good heavens, man, what are you doing here? Go to realscience, where this perspective is the norm. You are correct to use the word ‘rhetoric’, certainly. This website and blog is intended to explore all science/policy issues regarding climate change in as objective a manner as possible. It has always been open to all points of view, without censure. The model bears repeating.
RE#1
“…the science already provides more than sufficient basis for policy…”
That is the least obstreperous statement yet read from you. Congratulations. It reflects the AGW point of view accurately. “Over-emphasizing uncertainties…” is a crucial and ongoing aspect of scientific inquiry. It is known as scientific scepticism.
Thanks to comments from all on this issue! It is good for those of us layment with a scientific bent to know that the science remains the issue, not the politics.
Comment by John Graves — July 25, 2007 @ 1:02 pm
Re #12 John Graves says “It is good for those of us laymen with a scientific bent to know that the science remains the issue, not the politics.”
There is too much political investment in CO2-AGW to allow the science to operate normally. The IPCC report was engineered to confirm CO2-AGW by who was chosen as the lead authors.
On a practical level, if we enter a cooling period or if the 1998 record temps isn’t surpassed in the next few years, a large part of the intelligentsia is going to look dumb.
Comment by Reid — July 25, 2007 @ 3:17 pm
>why did the temperatures fall from 1930s to 1970s while co2 was on the rise?
I have my suspicions. (Those of the historian, not the scientist.)
In a word, WWII. A smoky damn thing.
Full war production blasting away (during the Depression, 1/3 to 1/2 of all industry was shut down). A hundred cities bombed to flames and rubble, including several major firestorms and the A-Bombs.
That adds up to one heck of a lot of particulates.
Then, after all that, a resurgence of peacetime and toss in many hundreds of above-ground nuclear tests.
Perhaps we experienced the shadow of a “war winter”?
Comment by Evan Jones — August 12, 2007 @ 4:30 pm