Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News

As reported on Climate Science, our article

Is There Agreement Amongst Climate Scientists on the IPCC AR4 WG1?

was rejected by Fred Spilhaus, Editor-In-Editor of the AGU publication EOS (and subsequently by Nature Precedings). He said that our article “did not fit EOS policy.”  In our weblog we concluded that

“From this experience, it is clear that the AGU EOS and Nature Precedings Editors are using their positions to suppress evidence that there is more diversity of views on climate, and the human role in altering climate, than is represented in the narrowly focused 2007 IPCC report.”

Thus it was not a complete surprise that EOS published a clear advocacy article entitled

“Improving How Scientists Communicate About Climate Change” by Susan J. Hassol. The long article starts with the text

“Science meets policy in the most important challenge of our time: global warming.”

and includes the recommendation that

“Rather than accepting the premise of a poorly framed question, reframe it. When people ask if global warming can be blamed for a particular hurricane, heat wave, fire, or flood, a simple “no” does not respond to the essence of the question. What they really want to know is whether global warming is having an effect on such events, and the science suggests that it is. You can reframe such questions to explain that global warming is increasing the chances of such events occurring, and you can also explain some of the connections.”

In the same issue, there is an insightful Forum article by Syun-Ichi Akasofu entitled “A Suggestion to Climate Scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” which does provide some balance, but his was not listed as an article. as was Susan Hassol’s contribution.

I have no issue with the publication by EOS of  a contribution by Ms. Hassol. While she is not a climate scientist, she has been involved with communicating science issues to the wider community for years, and as been effective in organizing meetings on climate at the Aspen Global Change Institute [which I have attended and she did permit the diversity of viewpoints to be presented in that forum]. Thus, her obvious advocacy position should not prevent her contribution from being published in EOS, but it should be in the Forum section as was done with Dr. Akasofu.

More importantly, the failure to permit our article 

Brown, F., J. Annan, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2008: Is there agreement amongst climate scientists on the IPCC AR4 WG1?

to even be published in EOS as a Forum contribution, documents the use by the  Editor in Chief of his position to suppress evidence that climate scientists have more diversity of viewpoints on the role of humans in the climate system than reported in the EOS published article by Susan Hassol.

There continues to be misunderstandings on my viewpoint on the role of humans within the climate system. This weblog is written to make sure it is clear, and can be used whenever someone asks the question as to where does Pielke Sr. stand on this issue.

 As I have written in the Main Conclusions of Climate Science

“Humans are significantly altering the global climate, but in a variety of diverse ways beyond the radiative effect of carbon dioxide. The IPCC assessments have been too conservative in recognizing the importance of these human climate forcings as they alter regional and global climate.”

and that

“Attempts to significantly influence regional and local-scale climate based on controlling CO2 emissions alone is an inadequate policy for this purpose.”

These conclusions are different from those who claim that the global average radiative effect of carbon dioxide is by far the major human climate forcing, as well as from those who conclude that natural climate variations dominate climate change and that the human climate forcings are inconsequential.

My viewpoint is also well articulated 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

and you are encouraged to read the Executive Summary of that report [a report which whas been ignored by the media despite its broad base of authorship and its extensive review before it was published].

The reason that  that those who focus on the global average radiative forcing of carbon dioxide are missing the bulk of human climate forcings include the following:

1. Atmosphere and ocean circulations respond to regional forcings not a global average (e.g. see and see)

2. The other human climate forcings include

• the diverse influence of human-caused aerosols on regional (and global)  radiative heating (e.g. see).
• the effect of aerosols on cloud and precipitation processes (e.g. see)
• the influence of aerosol deposition on climate (e.g. see and see)
• the effect of land cover/ land use on climate (e.g. see and  see)
• the biogeochemical effect of added atmosopheric CO2 has a greater effect on the climate system than the radiative effect of added CO2 (e.g. see).

Natural climate variations and change, have also been underestimated (and are only poorly understood) based on examination of the historical and paleo-climate record (e.g. see and see).

Human climate forcings have a more significant role in altering the weather than does a global average increase in the radiative effect of an increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2.  This does not mean that we should not work to limit the increase of this gas in the atmosphere, but it is not the dominate climate forcing that affects society and the environment.

Policies that focus on CO2 by itself are ignoring definitive research results (such as reported in the 2005 National Research Council report) that humans have a much broader influence on the climate system than was communicated in the 2007 IPCC report.  To neglect these other climate forcings represents a failure by policymakers (and the media) to utilize this scientifically robust information.

The neglect of including the diversity of human climate forcings indicates that the real objective of those promoting the radiative effect of  the addition of atmospheric CO2 as the dominate human climate forcing is to promote energy and lifestyle changes. Their actual goal is not to develop effective climate policies. 

The news reports on the breaking off of a portion of floating ice in Antarctica have received wide distribution (i.e. do a google search under news for Antarctic sea ice and hundreds of reports appear on this event). These news reports claim that this breaking is due to global warming. As just one example of the statements in the news, The Guardian wrote 

 ”The collapsing shelf suggests that climate change could be forcing change much more quickly than scientists had predicted.

“The ice shelf is hanging by a thread,” said Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). “We’ll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be.”

The Wilkins shelf covers an area of 5,600 square miles (14,500 sq km). It is now protected by just a thin thread of ice between two islands.

Vaughan was a member of the team that predicted in 1993 that global warming could cause the Wilkins shelf to collapse within 30 years.”

This media reporting has become typical of the bias that many journalists have. Not reported in the media (but well reported on ICECAP by Joe D’Aleo)  the media has ignored in their reporting the increase in Antarctic sea ice cover in recent years, with, at present, a coverage that is well over 1 million square kilometers above average (see)!

In fact, over the globe, since the Arctic sea ice cover is not far below its average and the Antarctic sea ice coverage is well above average for this time of the year, the global coverage of sea ice is actually above average after being below last year (see). There is no way to know if this is just a short term perturbation, but at the very least the news media should have been honest and balanced in their coverage.

Unfortunately, it appears that most journalists just parrot the perspective of the first news release on these climate issues, without doing any further investigation. If this is inadvertent, they need to be educated in climate science. If deliberate bias, they are clearly advocates and the reporters should be clearly and publically identified as having such a bias. In either case, the public is being misinformed!

There is effective media recognition of the importance of landscape change on weather and climate. It is in a news article on March 15 2008 by Jim Konkoly in Highlands Today titled “Drained Wetlands Having Dramatic Effect On Our Area”. It reads

“Every day, the Archbold Biological Station’s weather station is providing data to help the federal National Climatic Data Center determine if, as weather data strongly suggests, south central Florida’s climate is getting hotter and drier during the summers while the winters have more deep freezes which are lasting longer and getting colder.

A recent study, which will be followed up by more research, suggests that the draining of the south central Florida wetlands may be responsible for the climate changes, which have huge implications on the water supply for agriculture and population growth and could threaten the citrus industry.

Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases may not be the biggest problem causing climate change that threatens local economies, the study suggests.

Right here in south central Florida, the draining of wetlands may have a bigger impact, according to the 2004 study by Roger Pielke, one of his students, Curtis Marshall, and their colleagues Louis Steyaert and Debra Willard.

Their report, “Deep Freeze and Sea Breeze, Changing Land and Weather in Florida,” can be read online at NASA’s Earth Observatory link.

NASA’s introduction to their report states:

“Combining their diverse expertise in climatology, environmental modeling, ecology, geography, geology and remote sensing, the team ended up with an explanation for how land-cover change in central and southern Florida could simultaneously be responsible for hotter, drier summers and wintertime deep freezes that are longer lasting and more severe.”

NASA’s introduction to the study also says:

“Three decades of research have brought Pielke to the conclusion that when it comes to the kinds of climate change people experience where they live, land-surface changes like deforestation, urbanization, and the draining of wetlands are at least as important – and maybe more important – than increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases.”

Pielke’s report begins by saying the drainage canals, dams, dikes and reservoirs built throughout south central Florida converted a huge area that was completely covered with various types of wetlands into today’s landscape with “dramatically reduced” water flow and wetlands.

Hilary Swain, executive director of Archbold, said while the Pielke research report is scientific, it can be read and understood by lay people.

To see the entire report, as well as the charts and maps, go to:

www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/DeepFreeze/dee…“

On March 20 2008, the Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein published a news report titled “Global Warming Rushes Timing of Spring“.  This article, unfortunately perpetuates the inaccurately narrow perspective that only “global warming” can produce an earlier greening up in the spring. Indeed, even though some areas are greening up later, the article has the audacity to write

 ” In much of Florida and southern Texas and Louisiana, the satellites show spring coming a tad later, and bizarrely, in a complicated way, global warming can explain that too, the scientists said.”

Thus, everything is attributable to “global warming”.

 This inaccurate characterization of climate science ignores the following issues:

1. Plants only know about their immediate microclimate. They are not a metric of global warming, but only whether local conditions are conducive to earlier green-up. This can clearly occur due to landscape change in the vicinity of the plants, thus this issue needs to be considered in any explanation of changes in phenology.

2. The biogeochemical effect of higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (both in the background atmosphere, and, if in an urban or suburban region, the local enhancement of CO2 levels)  can alter plant phenology. We found, for example, that the biogeochemical addition of added CO2 has a larger effect on temperatures and precipitation than the radiative effect of the added CO2 (in a regional model simulation);

 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.

3. The biogeochemical effect of human caused nitrogen deposition can significantly effect plant responses including phenology. Nitrogen deposition is a major issue, as reported on Climate Science;

Further Evidence of the Role of Nitrogen Deposition as a First-Order Climate Forcing

Is Nitrogen Deposition a First-Order Climate Forcing?

4. Land fragmentation due to human land management is well known to alter bird, insect and other animal migration, reproductive and other activites as well as to introduce invasive species which significantly alter the local and regional ecosystems; e.g. see

Plant diversity- Another Climate Metric

If Seth Borenstein really wanted to do balanced news reporting, he would have addressed these other issues in his article, before advocating “global warming” as the cause for the change in phenology of vegetation in the spring. Instead, the AP news story is yet another example of the misuse of science to promote the inaccurately narrow perspective that global warming is the main culprit whenever an environmental change is observed.

James Annan has published a valuable weblog on our preliminary poll on the 2007 IPCC WG1 report which was presented on Climate Science on February 28, 2008.  It is at James’ Empty Blog. [he has a wide range of very interesting other posts on it also; it is a website worth bookmarking].

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.

Recently I came across a letter that I wrote with respect to the 1995 IPCC report in which I had earlier been asked to serve as a contributing author on one of the chapters. My disappointment with the process is clear in this letter and continues to today. The IPCC never replied to my 1995 letter.

My son has an extremely informative interview on the website Breakthrough Institute. It is titled “The Cloth of Science: an Interview with Roger Pielke, Jr. - Instead of battles over morals or politics, we battle over science”.

 I recommend reading. He accurately captures my perspective on the climate science issue in answer to one of the questions.

Fergus Brown has weblogged on the article that was presented on Climate Science on February 22, 2008 entitled Is There Agreement Amongst Climate Scientists on the IPCC AR4 WG1?. His weblog invites constructive comments, and Climate Science encourages its readers to respond there. It will be very valuable to build on this very important contribution that was led by Fergus.