Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News

There is considerable discussion on the relative roles of adaption and mitigation with respect to the findings in the 2007 IPCC report (e.g., see).  Thus, I have concluded that it is worthwhile to specifically define my views on this subject, as I did on the related subject of the human role within the climate system; see

Roger A. Pielke Sr.’s Perspective On The Role Of Humans In Climate Change

First, it needs to be emphasized that climate and energy policies, while there are overlaps, are distinctly different issues. As reported on Climate Science (e.g. see and see), the 2007 IPCC approach, and other related reports, are actually energy policy proposals cloaked in the guise of climate change.

Following is a short summary of my view on climate and energy policies with respect to adaptation and mitigation:

• Climate policy in the past has been, with the limited exception of deliberate weather modification (see), focused on adaptation. Dams, zoning so as to limit habitation in flood plains, etc are examples of this adaptation. 
• For the coming decades, adaptation still needs to be the primary approach. As reported in the 2005 National Research Council report (Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties) the human influence on the climate system involves a diverse range of forcings. Thus, a focus on controlling the emissions of carbon dioxide by itself (i.e. mitigation) is an inadequate approach for an effective climate policy.
• Energy policy, however, clearly must emphasize an active management policy since a vibrant economy and society requires energy. However, all energy sources are not the same in terms of how they affect the environment and their availability. For example, the dependence of the United States, Europe and other countries on oil from politically unstable regions of the world needs to be eliminated.
• The current focus of the IPCC and others on climate change with their emphasis on global warming, as a guise to promote energy policy, therefore, is an erroneous and dishonest approach to communicate energy policy to policymakers and the public. The optimal energy policy requires expertise and assessments that involves a much broader community than the climate science profession.

There is a valuable news article by Karl Ritter of the Associated Press entitled

 ”Climate change dissenters say they are demonized in debate”

This article is worth reading, as there is no question (from personal experience included) that there are active attempts to marginalize and ignore scientific results that conflict with the narrow view presented by the 2008 IPCC WG1 report.

For objective media, it is straightforward for them to document that critically important information that has appeared in the peer-reviewed literature is ignored (e.g., see the summaries on Climate Science

Documentation Of IPCC WG1 Bias by Roger A. Pielke Sr. and Dallas Staley - Part I

Documentation Of IPCC WG1 Bias by Roger A. Pielke Sr. and Dallas Staley - Part II

Media who do not provide balanced reports which include the actual diversity of peer reviewed viewpoints on each issue in climate science have done a serious disservice to the public and to policymakers.

There was a candid admission in the newspaper Colorado Daily on February 22 2008  (Thanks to Chris Wells for providing the link) with respect to why the global warming issue is being promoted so vigorously in the media and in articles published in science journals. It also provides the reason that the actual diversity of human climate forcings, such as summarized in

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

are being ignored by most policymakers and even USA Presidential candidates. The text from the article “Carbon dioxide: friend or foe? by Evan Sandsmark” has the relevant excerpt

 ”Many individuals, including a large portion of environmentalists, believe that a purely technological approach to stablizing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could lead to social apathy towards climate change.

Ted Parsons, a professor at the School of National Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, writes that the promises of air capture could carry a ‘moral hazard’ because political pressure for near-term efforts to curtail climate change may be reduced.

Air capture also addresses one of many factors adversely affecting the environment. The climate crisis is a powerful tool to motivate change - like checking the ever-expanding global population and excessive resource consumption - and if the urgency of climate change is compromised, other environmental projects may fall by the wayside.”

Thus we have the reasoning as to why the science issues on Climate Science have been mostly ignored - the issue is not about climate science. The goal is to use the term “global warming” (with “climate change” used to make the concept cover all aspects of climate)  not to ”motivate” change, but to force the public and policymakers to adopt specific policy and political actions that promotes particular agendas.

Clearly, this narrow approach is doomed to produce poor policy decisions. Unless the media starts to recognize this inappropriate use of climate science, we will continue down the road to many actions that will have unanticipated and undesirable consequences.

The University Coorporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) mission reads

 ”The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research promotes partnership in a collaborative community dedicated to understanding the atmosphere—the air around us—and the interconnected processes that make up the Earth system, from the ocean floor to the Sun’s core.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research and the UCAR Office of Programs provide research, observing and computing facilities, and a variety of services for the atmospheric and Earth sciences community. 

NCAR and UOP are managed by UCAR, a nonprofit consortium of research universities, on behalf of the National Science Foundation and the university community.”

Additional information on UCAR is available on their website (e.g., see for an overview of what they are supposed to be working on), where they write

 ”The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research is a not-for-profit consortium of universities that grant Ph.D.s in fields related to atmospheric science.

UCAR’s primary activity is managing the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

UCAR also provides services to support, enhance, and extend the capabilities of the universities through the UCAR Office of Programs and by advocating for strong federal science budgets on behalf of the geosciences community.”

 The  funding summary for the National Center for Atmospheric Science, which is managed by UCAR, states

• NCAR’s primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation.
  
• NCAR is an NSF Federally Funded Research and Development Center. However, NCAR/UCAR/UOP is not a federal agency and its employees are not part of the federal personnel system. Our activities complement those of the federal agencies and we work closely with them
• Approximately 95% of funding comes from the federal government.

However, UCAR is moving from its stated goal of “understanding the atmosphere—the air around us—and the interconnected processes that make up the Earth system, from the ocean floor to the Sun’s core” to obvious political advocacy.

UCAR is distributing the following announcement

“UCAR is sponsoring a National Teach-In Day

 JANUARY 31: NATIONAL TEACH-IN DAY
Is your school ready to focus on the problem of global warming? If so, you are in luck because on January 31st you can be part of Focus the Nation, a national teach-in on global warming solutions for America — creating a dialogue at over a 1000 colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, places of worship, civic organizations and businesses. When your school joins Focus the Nation, you will have the opportunity to participate in a free, interactive webcast airing the evening of January 30th, featuring top scientists, sustainability experts and green jobs pioneers. The goal is to have 10,000 screenings and a determination TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING. Please encourage every high school teacher, student and principal that you know to sign up and join the Focus the Nation effort at http://www.focusthenation.org. Kyle Mumford kmumford@ucar.edu Education Specialist Public Visitor Program UCAR Office of Education and Outreach 303-497-1162″

The website Focus the Nation includes the text

“As a key part of Focus the Nation, students and citizens across the country will vote on five priorities for action. Focus teams will deliver this campus and citizen endorsed agenda to congressional offices across the nation, on February 18th, when members of congress are back in their districts for the Presidents Day recess. Click on the links above to read about the policies, and add your comments in the forum. The ideas on these pages are just starting points for discussion—there are no magic bullets. Each policy has costs and benefits, and each will create winners and losers. And yet, these ideas are critically important. Some mix of the actions on this page must be implemented soon if we hope to stabilize the climate at 3-4 degrees F. Done right, these actions will also revitalize America’s communities and economy.”

The Advisory Board is available also from their website (see).  The political foundation of this effort is quite obvious, where the website writes (see)

 ”Focus the Nation is on track to be, by far, the biggest national teach-in in U.S. history—and the most important component is what we are calling GREEN DEMOCRACY. We are urging every Focus the Nation team to end their event the same way, in a round-table dialogue with elected leaders answering questions by a panel of four students. Imagine every U.S. congressperson, U.S. Senator, governor, mayor, and state representativegetting multiple invitations to sit down and talk with young people about their future. Imagine Speaker Nancy Pelosi declaring Jan. 31, 2008 Focus the Nation Day—canceling business in the House of Representatives and urging members to get engaged. Imagine Governors from Maine to Arizona doing the same. Imagine thousands of elected officials facing the optimism,energy and moral authority of more than a hundred thousand students, forcing politicians out of complacency and fatalism, and helping them confront this challenge of our generation.”

I am associated with several Universities who are members of UCAR, and I am disappointed that this organization has diverged from its core mission to now engage in political advocacy. This new direction by UCAR raises valid concerns as to whether their support of scientific research and outreach taints the objectivity which must be the foundation of scientific research. I also was not aware that non-profit organizations, whose primary support is from federal contracts and grants, could engage in political advocacy.

The New York Times article entitled “Climate Talk’s Cancellation Splits a Town” raises the issue of whether presentations of climate science issues by credentialed climate scientists should be prevented when the audience does not hear other perspectives at the same time.   Climate Science was disappointed that Professor Steve Running was cancelled from a presentation.  This concern should be raised by everyone regardless of their view on the climate issue. A much more appropriate alternative would be for the school to invite other credentialed climate scientists who have alternate views on the climate issue. There are not just two views on climate change as Climate Science has repeatedly emphasized.

In the situation reported by the New York Times, Steve Running is an internationally respected climate scientist (his expertise is in ecology and remote sensing of the landscape).  I have known and worked with him for quite a few years, and have the highest respect for his scientific contributions.  The time that he contributes  to outreach to students should be welcome. They would learn very much from his scientific knowledge and can challenge him, if they want, on the science and the basis of any policy advocacy positions that he presents. Such openness can only encourage discussion of the issues.  His presentation 5 Stages of Climate Grief , for example, can be viewed and accepted or rejected on its merits.

Climate Science does not agree with all of the conclusions that Steve Running presents, but as was written in On Professor Bill Gray and the Debate on Climate Change, personal attacks do not add to our advancement of the science.  Rather than cancel his presentation, the organizers should insist that alternative perspectives to that of Steve Running be presented.

There is a weblog on the New York Times weblog Dot Earth on December 20, 2007 by Andrew C. Revkin entitled “Climate Consensus ‘Busted’?”. Mr Revkin is a talented reporter, however, he clearly suspends his capabilities when he writes

“In science, what is more important than any individual study or collection of papers (particularly if assembled by someone with an agenda), is the trajectory of understanding. This is particularly true with a problem like the human-amplified greenhouse effect. Not only is it multidisciplinary; it is also not testable through experiments (we’re all in the test tube undergoing a one-time experiment).

First, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the extent and pace of warming from a particular rise in concentrations of greenhouse gases, and about how fast and far seas will rise as a result. (It’s important to keep in mind that uncertainty could result in outcomes being much worse than the midrange outcome, or much less severe). “

In making the claim that

“On the basics, the trajectory of understanding is clear…”

he ignores a large number of studies without the appropriate investigation of the merits of that research. As a very clear example, he ignored the findings of the book

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.

He has never reported on a key finding in the National Research Council report (on page 4) where it was concluded that

“….the traditional global mean TOA radiative forcing concept has some important limitations, which have come increasingly to light over the past decade. The concept is inadequate for some forcing agents, such as absorbing aerosols and land-use changes, that may have regional climate impacts much greater than would be predicted from TOA radiative forcing. Also, it diagnoses only one measure of climate change—global mean surface temperature response—while offering little information on regional climate change or precipitation. These limitations can be addressed by expanding the radiative forcing concept and through the introduction of additional forcing metrics. In particular, the concept needs to be extended to account for (1) the vertical structure of radiative forcing, (2) regional variability in radiative forcing, and (3) nonradiative forcing.”

Moreover, Mr. Revkin’s statement that

“…. with a problem like the human-amplified greenhouse effect. Not only is it multidisciplinary; it is also not testable through experiments (we’re all in the test tube undergoing a one-time experiment)�

shows a lack of understanding of the scientific method! If a hypothesis is not testable, it is not science! [actually, despite his claim, the multi-decadal global model projections, which are hypotheses, are testable, as discussed on Climate Science (e.g. see).

There are numerous other examples on Climate Science which refutes the claim of Mr. Revkin that the science is settled (e.g. see our summary of papers in the book Human Impacts on Weather and Climate).

Unless he broadens his reporting on the role of humans in the climate system, readers should interpret his contributions in the New York Times as the biased presentation of climate science by an advocate who, by his incorrect reporting on the understanding of climate science, is limiting the consideration of policy actions which would most effectively deal with climate variability and change, energy, and other environmental and social issues. With his abilities as a writer and his wide influence, it is unfortunate that he has chosen to erroneously limit the information to the public and policymakers.

A number of climate scientists have elected to take an advocacy position on policy actions with respect to climate change. It is titled the 2007 Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists

They include the statement

“The next round of focused negotiations for a new global climate treaty (within the 1992 UNFCCC process) needs to begin in December 2007 and be completed by 2009. The prime goal of this new regime must be to limit global warming to no more than 2ºC above the pre-industrial temperature…”

They state that if

“this trend is not halted soon, many millions of people will be at risk from extreme events such as heat waves, drought, floods and storms, our coasts and cities will be threatened by rising sea levels, and many ecosystems, plants and animal species will be in serious danger of extinction.”

Unfortunately, these scientists link their advocacy position to the value of the global average surface temperature trend (i.e., of “no more than 2ºC above the pre-industrial temperature“). This means that if the global average surface temperature cools or is not changing significantly in the next few years before substantial reductions in CO₂ emissions are achieved, questions will be raised on their scientific acumen.

As reported on Climate Science, with respect to global warming (or cooling), it is the change in heat in Joules that is the proper metric, not the surface temperature. This is discussed, for example, in the weblogs,

http://climatesci.org/2007/04/04/a-litmus-test-for-global-warming-a-much-overdue-requirement/

Recent data, which will be summarized soon on Climate Science, show that any accumulation of Joules since 2004 has been quite small, such that global warming has essentially stopped, at least for now.

This lack of warming is consistent with the absence of lower tropospheric warming since about 2003 (see Figure 7 in the RSS MSU data), and also reported on ICECAP.

That the Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists uses the global average surface temperature trend shows their neglect to even read all of the relevant peer-reviewed papers on this subject. Evidence is accumulating to show that the use of this surface temperature metric to assess global warming is seriously flawed; e.g. see the summary of papers in

Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.

with more papers on this subject to be weblogged on Climate Science soon.

The 2007 Bali Climate Declaration By Scientists places them out on a limb, when they did not even need to do this. If they had focused on the increase of the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ by itself, this would be enough to raise concern on this particular climate forcing (one of many, as reported in the 2005 NRC Report Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties ).

This human caused change in atmospheric composition is altering land and ocean biogeochemistry and species competition (as are nitrogen deposition and land-use/land-cover change as two more examples). The 2007 Bali Climate Declaration By Scientists would not be out on a limb, if they had used the increase in ppm of CO₂ values by itself to raise concern with respect to this particular human climate forcing.

The linkage by The 2007 Bali Climate Declaration By Scientists to a global surface temperature trend as the primary climate change metric, however, with all of its inherent issues with accurate sampling, is fraught with risk to their credibility.

Climate Science has discussed the shortcomings, bias and errors with the 2007 IPCC Report (e.g. see, see, see, and see). My final Climate Science posting summarizes the fundamental problem with this assessment.

If instead of evaluating research in climate, suppose a group of scientists introduced a new cancer drug that they claimed could save many lives. There were side effects, of course, but they claimed that the benefit far out weighed these risks. The government than asked these scientist to form an assessment Committee to evaluate this claim. Colleagues of the group of scientists who introduced the drug are then asked to serve on this Committee, along with the developers.

If this occurred, of course, there would be an uproar of protest! This is a clear conflict of interest.

Yet this is what has happened with the IPCC process! The same individuals who are doing primary research in the role of humans on the climate system are then permitted to lead the assessment! There should be an outcry on this obvious conflict of interest, but to date either few recognize this conflict, or see that since the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda, they chose to ignore this conflict. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.

In a previous climate assessment, I made a recommendation as to how to correct this defective assessment process. This is discussed in the report

Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences”. 88 pp including appendices,

where I wrote

“Future assessment Committees need to appoint members with a diversity of views and who do not have a significant conflict of interest with respect to their own work. Such Committees should be chaired by individuals committed to the presentation of a diversity of perspectives and unwilling to engage in strong-arm tactics to enforce a narrow perspective. Any such committee should be charged with summarizing all relevant literature, even if inconvenient, or which presents a view not held by certain members of the Committee.

Assessment Committees should not be an opportunity for members to highlight their own research and that which supports their personal scientific conclusions without properly placing into perspective the diversity found in the peer literature. When the Chair of such a committee seeks to limit the focus of an assessment Report in a specific direction, such as was the case with this Committee, the advancement of our understanding of the scientific issues involved suffers.”

“….Unfortunately, the Report advocates a narrow perspective on science shared by the majority of the committee, rather than dealing comprehensively with the issues under its charge and found in the broader scientific literature. As such it does a disservice to those interested in a comprehensive review of the relevant science.”

We need recognition among the scientific community, the media, and policymakers that the IPCC process is obviously a real conflict of interest, and this has resulted in a significantly flawed report.

Real Climate has sought to argue that the IPCC process is transparent (see). They clearly contradict themselves in their post, however, where they write

“The authors of the report used the input from the reviewers to improve the report. In some cases, the authors may disagree with the comments - after all, it is them who are the authors of the report; not the reviewers.”

This means that the authors are gatekeepers who can prevent alternative perspectives from being presented. They did exercise that power in preparing the 2007 (and earlier) IPCC Reports. The conflcit of interest reported on in the current Climate Science weblog can be shown clearly in this admission from Real Climate.

Finally, as reported last week, this will be the last weblog on Climate Science. I invite everyone, however, to read the large archive of weblogs that have been posted over the last two years!

The url for the weblog’s archive will be posted Monday. Thank you again for your participation and spending time on Climate Science. I look forward to other climate scientists starting such a weblog!

A blatant example of masking an untested hypothesis as a scientific paper has been published in Science. The paper is

“Improved Surface Temperature Prediction for the Coming Decade from a Global Climate Model� Doug M. Smith, Stephen Cusack, Andrew W. Colman, Chris K. Folland, Glen R. Harris, and James M. Murphy (10 August 2007) Science 317 (5839), 796. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1139540].

The abstract reads,

“Previous climate model projections of climate change accounted for external forcing from natural and anthropogenic sources but did not attempt to predict internally generated natural variability. We present a new modeling system that predicts both internal variability and externally forced changes and hence forecasts surface temperature with substantially improved skill throughout a decade, both globally and in many regions. Our system predicts that internal variability will partially offset the anthropogenic global warming signal for the next few years. However, climate will continue to warm, with at least half of the years after 2009 predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record.â€?

The August 9, 2007 Reuters reports on this article by writing

“Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists reported on Thursday.

Climate experts have long predicted a general warming trend over the 21st century spurred by the greenhouse effect, but this new study gets more specific about what is likely to happen in the decade that started in 2005….

The real heat will start after 2009, they said.”

This is a very convenient and clearly contrived presentation to defer the expectation that significant global warming will occur for a few years, so that the particular policy actions (on energy policy as concluded on Climate Science; e.g. see) can occur.

The UK Met Office had a press release on this paper on August 10, 2007 titled

“The forecast for 2014…”

They write in this press release,

“These predictions are very relevant to businesses and policy-makers who will be able to respond to short-term climate change when making decisions today. The next decade is within many people’s understanding and brings home the reality of a changing climate.”

However, no one has shown any predictive skill on this time scale! That Science published this article speaks more for their use of this forum for advocacy, rather than as a science paper. Policymakers are bing misled if they accept that this prediction is skillful.

Climate Science has presented documentation on the inability of the multi-decadal global models to make skillful predictions (e.g. see and see, as just two examples).

Readers of paper such as Smith et al should recognize that the publication of climate process studies as predictions is misleading. Such predictions are just hypotheses, which can be tested only after the time period has passed.

The May 22 2007 issue of EOS had a book review of the publication “Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict The Furture” by
Orrin H. Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis.

The review is by Venkat Lakshmi of Stanford University.

This Climate Science weblog is not reviewing the Pilkey and Pilkey-Jarvis book, but is commenting on two statements that are made in the review.

The review included the following text:

1. “The authors view mathematical modeling of environmental problems in a very narrow spectrum. They fail to mention recent advances in data assimilation that use observations from ground sensors and satellites to help improve weather and climate predictions…”

This is a correct statement except with the very important caveat that climate predictions decades into the future can not use data assimilation since the real-world climate conditions have not yet happened! As discussed on Climate Science, this lack of the ability to constrain forecasts used to make multidecadal climate predictions is one of the reasons that this type of prediction is so different from short term weather predictions.

2. “The use of sensitivity studies of parameters used in a model gives modelers the understanding of the model robustness.”

This is completely wrong. Sensitivity studies do add information on our understanding of physical, chemical and biological processes in the real world, but model robustness is only achieved by comparing model results with real world data.

Climate Science does agree with the Reviewer’s statement that

“Of course, one of the valid arguments of the book is that outputs from models are misused by policymakers and politicians.”

Indeed, Climate Science has concluded that the IPCC process, by narrowing what climate issues it assessed, has misused the scientific process. The policymakers and politicians, either knowingly or inadvertently, are perpetuating this misuse. This perspective echos the conclusion written by Dan Sarewitz with respect to the Pilkey and Pilkey-Jarvis book, that

“In a complex, imperfect world quantitative models feed the delusion that society can predict its way out of its environmental dilemmas. The corrosive result is that politics and science have become inextricably interwoven to the considerable detriment of both. This engaging, wise, and far-reaching book diagnoses the causes and costs of our quantitative hubris, and in so doing points the difficult way toward a more productive relationship among science, democracy, and the vexing challenges of environmental stewardship.”