Claims of Himalayan glacier meltdown based entirely on a single short phone call
timesonline.co.uk
timesonline.co.uk
Between stories like this and the release of the emails / climategate, you really have to wonder especially about the validity of some of the most alarmist claims. On one hand, I wonder how much of this is because of confirmation bias but how much is the result of outright fraud? Something else that I've been reading more about lately (because of another story here) is the reporting by Gary Taubes on 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' and I can't help but wonder about what supposed scientific consensus means and the importance of skepticism.
Obviously there's a massive body of work out there when it comes to climate science and it would be ludicrous to dismiss it all, but surely it's time to agree that we need a lot more skepticism especially when these claims are being used to advocate policies that will at least cost hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars.
You get one shot. The scientific method is not for matters involving life and death. It is for the models we have of the world, our understanding, our plans. It is for trying, by way of modeling and analogy, what we might see given what we might do. But as for the decision, that requires judgment. Why can't people understand this?
As a species, and as part of all animal life, we have. It's called flight distance, we as humans are skittish as anything. A completely wild chipmunk can easily be attracted to sit in a persons hand with time and patience. Wolves, Bears and even Lions will allow humans to walk amongst them if the person knows how to handle themselves without the predators fleeing. I've managed to approach birds to a distance of feet, and I've managed to get wild hares not to run at only a yard.
Humans, however. We're currently achieving fight/flight-like responses to stimuli we can't even recognize. The reaction to 9/11 was, biologically speaking, quite absurd. Humanity has invented a way to stimulate our base instincts that allow us to practice sheer terror to things that have no appreciable effect on our lives. Similar is occurring with the climate, people are physically worried about it, when realistically for 90% of the western population will likely not experience a drastic change to their environment for the next 100 years.
As a species humanity needs to act calmly and collectively, not as panicked masses. This is where science needs to take its place.
Where are you getting this? Americans have already seen a massive change to their environment. The further you can get from a McDonald's in the contiguous united states is 107 miles! [1] Three quarters of the Earth's ice-free land has been reshaped by human actions, and much of the remaining land is barren: only 10% of natural production now occurs in lands that are wild. [2]
We are part of a world economy. The mispricing of derivatives of a small portion of loans in America's housing market is effecting nearly all sectors of the world's economy. Today, we are probably hitting peak oil, due to the recession. The dust bowl of the 1930's helped touch off the great depression. What might happen if the billions of south and east Asia, spurred on by cheap coal based power, switch, as they seem to be, from a largely plant based to a largely meat based diet, consuming many times the amount of water and land per kg of food (e.g. 1 kg of beef takes about 15,000 L of water, 1 kg of wheat only 1,000 L). What might happen then if the strip southwest of a Himalayas and the river deltas of China; bread baskets of south and south east asia, were hit by major drought? Can you imagine the disruption? The wars, the anger, the refugees, the starvation, the global economic meltdown? How many more and how much worse droughts would you expect were the planet's temperature to increase by 2C? 4C? 6C? How many more floods would you expect to see? There must be a stopping point, yes?
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6380...
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/11/spencer-on-lindzen-choi.ht...
In essence, all the input to the IPCC climate models assume a negative relationship between outgoing radiation and temperature increases, while observational data indicates that the relationship is in fact opposite. This basically the opposite of what the greenhouse effect is believed to do.
The wildcard is in the heat capacity of the varying components of the earth, and convective heat transfer between them. While the greenhouse effect is likely to work in the steady state (e.g. as confirmed by much of planetary science) over the short term temperature increases may be driven more by openings in cloud cover than the residual planetary greenhouse effect. Cloud cover, being a function of water vapor, also a greenhouse gas, will increase reflection and cut heating to the surface, while simultaneously reducing infrared outgoing radiation. However, since CO2 doesn't form clouds, it will have the primary effect of cutting outgoing radiation.
Quite a few of these haven't even been resolved!
Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: "If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments."
In other words, we'll remove this particular Jenga block in our little tower of preconceived conclusions, but everything else is AOK. What he should be doing is ordering/performing an immediate review of the origins of all similar "evidence" in the IPCC reports, and a close examination of process to ensure this kind of balls-up can never happen again.
Honestly, the IPCC has less credibility than Wikipedia. Maybe they should just ask Wikipedia to do the research for them - at least the WP admins have shown some basic ability/willingness to do due diligence on what gets published.
And the worst thing is, we only shine the spotlight on the IPCC because climate change is a controversial subject. How many other government departments are practising this "well I read this in a magazine somewhere" style of policy-making? All of them?
It doesn't even sound like he cares that part of his report might have been based on nothing more than thin air. It sounds like he cares more about having to do work to undo his gross incompetence.
The problem is that more skepticism means less action, and it's obviously very important to act soon. None of these news stories call into doubt the fundamental science (global warming is real, man made and has dire consequences) and we've been doing nothing but debate these established facts for the last 20 years.
George Bush (Senior) knew it in 1989 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=17765 well before those emails were ever written...
It wasn't important enough to get the science right the first time....
> None of these news stories call into doubt the fundamental science (global warming is real, man made and has dire consequences)
Actually, they do.
> we've been doing nothing but debate these established facts for the last 20 years.
Actually, during 10 of those years, we've had stable to decreasing temperatures, which CO2 has increased. The models used to argue for global warming don't predict that.
> George Bush (Senior) knew it in 1989
In what universe is Bush an authority that I should accept?
However, by asserting that I should accept him as an authority, you've accepted him as an authority. I'll keep that in mind for future discussions.
What? You're not willing to accept him as an authority?
This is a global issue. You will find hyperbole and mistaken predictions, and yes, fraud, on both sides. Nature doesn't care. The question is: by how much can we alter the planet's ecosystem before it is unsafe? The IPCC's models predict about a 2C temperature rise in the 2090s from the 1990s if we have 450 ppm in the atmosphere. That temperature rise is further predicted to be the point we had better not go past, to avoid more severe damage. We are currently at 385 ppm, over 280 ppm from before the industrial revolution. That means we've used up 60% of the slack we had towards a pretty hard (and hardening) limit. Clearly, with the knowledge we have about the physics of greenhouse gases, there is some amount of CO2, some amount of radiative forcing, that is beyond what the world can handle without risking severe changes to the ecosystem and our way of life. It is not enough for skeptics to claim 'we don't know what that amount is, we have our doubts,' if it is followed by words or actions that support business as usual. There must be some agreement towards an acceptable limit to the dumping of a disruptive chemical, in massive quantities, into a finite atmosphere on a finite planet.
For what it's worth, I think it's more likely that carbon reduction policies will create a positive, rather than negative, effect on the economy.
What definition of "unsafe" are we using? What effects are you assuming? (Ice has been growing in the artic since 2007.) (I can't find my reference to the non-existent sea-level increases....)
As many have asked, what is the "correct" temperature? Is it the one during the medieval warming period? The one during the depths of the little ice age? Now? 1934?
We know that Earth has had considerably higher CO2 concentrations in the past. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide... (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology )
That doesn't tell us what said acceptable limit is.
The point is that this is how to structure the debate. There are certain acceptable limits. They are different for every person. If we're to succeed, as a species, on a finite planet, we're going to need to figure out how to make democracy and diplomacy work for this, possibly grandest tragedy of the commons. Surely we can't risk a global temperature rise of 10 C? Right?
Do they? Or, do they want a given sea level?
Note that sea level may well be independent of CO2. (That's part of why I mentioned artic ice, which has been increasing.)
> There are certain acceptable limits.
And you're assuming quite a bit about a lot of things, such as the relationship between CO2 and temperature and sea level.
> Surely we can't risk a global temperature rise of 10 C?
I don't know and that may not be the question. I've posted links showing CO2 levels several times what it is now. What was the temperature then? (Since those times were in the past, it's absurd to argue that whatever happens at those concentrations is irreversible.)
http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/9972_large_daily.gsia.jpg
But that's rather immaterial since it's land based ice, as in greenland and antarctica, that will influence sea levels. Greater fluctuations will cause more permanent loss of land based ice than sea based ice.
But that's rather immaterial too, since much of the expected and currently visible sea level rise comes from thermal expansion of the oceans. This is a pretty clear temperature link.
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Perhaps the most relevant limits of which I speak are regarding the extent to which we are willing to change our world. This is a separate question from the action of CO2 -- for example we already fix more nitrogen as all other life on this planet, and three quarters of the land based biomes on this planet have been dramatically influenced by our actions. We have changed this planet. Are we to become conscious of this or are we to continue claiming innocence and practicing ignorance as we accelerate our ecological impact?
A return to the atmospheric conditions of the Triassic might well be the best thing for the world, but as long as people continued to be confused, lazy and stupid about what kind of future we want, we will continue to argue about tiny details having little to nothing to do with the global atmospheric, ecological, biological climatic change that is taking place, and we will continue to be at odds as our actions annihilate biomes that we scarcely know about.
I put the question back to you. What change in the world would be acceptable to you? If we have reconcilable goals for our shared planet, then at least the debate becomes on of science, of planning, of what must be done. If, however, like many seem to think, you too believe that the changes we are making to the world are ultimately inconsequential, the loss of biodiversity acceptable, and our gambling with the ecosystem immaterial, then we are at odds that this conversation will not mend.
Your link doesn't support that conclusion.
> But that's rather immaterial too, since much of the expected and currently visible sea level rise comes from thermal expansion of the oceans. This is a pretty clear temperature link.
And yet, you don't bother to provide any water temperature argument or tell us the magnitude of the sea level change from said temperature change.
> Perhaps the most relevant limits of which I speak are regarding the extent to which we are willing to change our world.
You're assuming that we're producing significant changes.
> but as long as people continued to be confused, lazy and stupid about what kind of future we want,
Your position appears to be "now is best" but I've yet to see any supporting argument.
> the loss of biodiversity acceptable,
There's no loss of biodiversity from CO2 unless there's climate change, so you don't get to throw that in.
> three quarters of the land based biomes on this planet have been dramatically influenced by our actions.
That's a combination of poverty and population. Reducing poverty increases CO2 emissions. Since you oppose that, you're arguing for reducing population. Who do you think should get to live?
Which reminds me - we're not significantly changing the amount of cultivated land. That ship sailed 1000 years ago. (We are destroying it in the third world, but that's different.)
> and our gambling with the ecosystem immaterial,
and you're back to assuming man made climate change.
If, as seems increasingly likely, the CO2 changes we're making are irrelevant to climate, you're advocating spending tons of resources on non-problems.
Acting as if something in particular is happening is a huge obstacle to finding out what is going on. You claim to want to know yet ....
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/view/1.html (see Chapter 1, 3:30-6:30. The actual claim is at 6:00 in the video)
They can and will likely chalk this up to some administrative error, but the underlying contents of the leaked emails, charges of fraud of some of the most prominent authors of the IPCC reports is far more significant. More from a (formerly?) strong supporter of the IPCC reports here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov...
From the linked article: "As Climategate has shown, [the process of peer review] became compromised – causing an instability. As seen in the leaked emails, many within the climate establishment were interrelated and working together to ensure their message of global warming wasn’t diluted. There were even desires to redefine the peer review literature to punish journals that published skeptic’s papers."
It's not just climate science (as I've been reading on nutritional science with Gary Taubes and Robert Lustig).
Glaciers in the world, and yes, in the Himalayas, are in retreat. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850) The rate of retreat, given the seriousness and the surprise of the sound bite, may have been seriously and widely overestimated, and, yes, misrepresented. But in just the same way as the available reserves of oil are misrepresented to government officials everywhere (for they must be misrepresented some of the time, estimates being inconsistent, and varying over time: e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#OPEC_countries)
Yes, it is a case study in the spread of alarmist claims, it should be a rallying call for more scientific integrity, but to emphasize the existence of a widely-cited, less than supported claim as evidence of systemic scientific malfeasance, when it is but one amid a sea of measurements, predictions and threats, seems to me to be falsely elevating the form of scientific inquiry above its function: to understand the world better than we other wise would, perhaps to make better decisions, perhaps just to wonder. It is, in other words, to miss the avalanche for the snowflake.
I maintain though, as I always have, that the reduction of carbon dioxide waste is a POSITIVE aim as is anything seeking to minimize the effect of ourselves on our environment. The only things I'm calling into question are the tactics currently being employed. If this data-munging is a universal thing, I'd argue that the ends do not warrant the means. This should be a scientific debate, not an emotional one (as it has become).
[1] I say profitable because it's hard for contrarians to get grant money as they are generally believed to be 'quacks'.
The energy sector and other carbon emitters would have enough available money to make the government grant money look like small change. Imagine how much it would be worth to them to discredit man made global warming. I'm sure they do fund many of the contrarians one way or another. But the fact that they aren't able to fund reputable research that supports their position really does say something about how quacky the contrarians are regarded as being.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagen...
Well, hang on, the article identifies an an erroneous prediction about the impact of man made climate change. It's a bit of a jump you're making from there to "global warming isn't real" or "the tons of carbon we're emitting aren't what's causing the raise in temperature we're seeing".
These are the same organizations who are cited as the "scientific consensus" to deflect criticism and debate.
Were the glaciers the main point of the report, or just a footnote? Probably there was a lot of information in it, so the people who wrote it eventually got sloppy with fact checking.
Also, isn't science about double-checking? I would have thought that melting of glaciers would be easy to measure via satellite imagery.
Errors always happen - they should be corrected, maybe even organizations and procedures should be restructured. But it isn't shocking.
Maybe I just don't have some grand illusions about science, as others seem to (still) have. But somehow the whole thing still lurches forward, just like the big corporations that seem as if nothing should ever be possible to get done.
It is deceptive and wrong, regardless of your emotional reaction to it.
Not that I want to excuse sloppyness (was it deception, really). Maybe heads should roll. But still I am not sure why I should care much?
...because pretending that a group you don't like are conspiracy nuts makes them wrong.
If you're trying to correct misinformation, it's probably not most effective to make some more up and throw it into the fray.
It's not any prettier when it's used to argue against climate change.
"Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as "voodoo science".
You have to give it to him though, he didn't play Holocaust denier card at least.
Most glaciers melt at the margins, seasonally. Most glaciers refreeze somewhere, seasonally. Glaciers don't form at all at sea level at the equator, and haven't for a long, long time, but that hasn't stopped glaciers from forming elsewhere. As I experience an exceptionally snowy and gelid Minnesota winter (I have lived in temperate Minnesota or Wisconsin every winter of my life but for about six when I lived in subtropical Taiwan), I'm not seeing any radical climate change here yet, and the current weather pattern could hardly be called "warm" even on the historical pattern observed in my lifetime.
Weather varies all over the world. Climate change over broad historical time and especially over deep geological time is an established fact, but also has nothing to do with human activity. It's not entirely clear that the trade-offs of anthropogenic global warming, a phenomenon I accept as a fact, are all harmful trade-offs or even mostly harmful trade-offs for the majority of the human population.
Does that mean we can get rid of the stupid climate change articles and talk about something we actually know about and participate in, like hacking and startups?
Curve fitting?