Archives for February 2007

There will be a federal election in Australia later this year and the leader of the Labor opposition, Kevin Rudd, has indicated he plans to make climate change a key issue.

There has been a big change in public opinion in Australia over the last year particularly following Al Gore’s movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Various opinion polls suggest that Australians are increasingly concerned about global warming and they want something done.

Until the last couple of days the general impression from the mainstream media has been that the Prime Minister, John Howard, is politically very vulnerable on this issue because he is seen as something of a climate change skeptic, though he describes himself as a climate change realist.

But could the issue end-up working against the Labor party in the same way the Tasmanian forestry issues worked against former Labor leader Mark Latham just before the last federal election by alienating blue-collar workers?

Graham Young explored the issue at his blog two days ago in a piece entitled ‘Climate Change Could Work Against Rudd’:

“Rudd is an enthusiast for all things AGW, which is where Howard’s potential benefit lies. If he is going to win the next election Howard needs to renew his compact with blue-collar Australia. He can do this by painting Rudd as a trendy inner-city elitist who wants to impose every currently fashionable notion on Australians, whether or not they work.

Amongst these notions is ratifying the Kyoto protocol. Yesterday’s announcement by the Chinese government that while they accept greenhouse gases are a problem, they don’t intend to stop building CO2 emitting power stations because they can’t afford to, shows just what a political problem it is.”

Then today on the front page of The Australian in an article ‘Nervous Labor Moves to Reassure the Coal Industry’ Joseph Kerr and Matthew Warren write:

“Opposition frontbenchers yesterday insisted the future of the coal industry was safe, amid fears within the party that an aggressive stance on climate change could unsettle mining and power workers, becoming a potent election liability.

Still living with the political fallout of the disastrous timber policy pushed by former leader Mark Latham – which alienated blue-collar workers on the eve of the 2004 election – Labor yesterday rounded on Australian of the Year Tim Flannery as “irresponsible” for his plan to close the coal industry, calling it a recipe for massive job losses.
Some elements within Labor fear that by appearing too bullish on climate change, the party could raise concerns among workers that jobs will be sacrificed to the environment. This could push workers’ votes towards an economically hard-nosed Howard Government. Others want their colleagues who represent mining seats to be more vocal.

New Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull last night warned, during his first live television debate with Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett, that Labor’s climate change policies risked “enormous damage to jobs”. Mr Turnbull accused Labor of scaremongering on climate change, but Mr Garrett used the debate on the ABC’s 7.30 Report to accuse the Howard Government of failing to respond to the “crisis” of global warming.”

Some saw the announcement of climate change crusader Tim Flannery as Australian of the Year as a potential disaster for John Howard because he will keep global warming as an issue in the spot-light during this election year. But the appointment may in fact work to the Prime Minister’s advantage particularly if Tim Flannery continues to suggest Australia close down its coal-fired power stations and the Labor party forced to defined the industry and its policies.

In the movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ Al Gore falsely claims that all climate change skeptics are in the pay of big oil.

Just last week there were more false claims inparticular claims that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is recruiting skeptics with bribes of $10,000 to scientists who will dispute the findings of a recent summary document published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Online journal TCS Daily has published a piece by Nick Schultz entitled ‘I Want to Demand This Freedom for Future Generations’ explaining and defending the actions of the American Enterprise Institute which he describes as paying scientists to “highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC process, especially as it bears on potential policy responses to climate change.”

There are some interesting comments following the article by Schultz incuding this one:

“What we see right now is climate scientists, perhaps even the vast majority of them, bringing their data and models, finding political allies, and demanding a solution that will be unquestionably economically costly. Skepticism is not just about the data or models. It is about incentives, consequences, and even motivations… I respect the data and the models. [But] before we apply them in a political context though, I want to see the scientists sweat a lot.”

There is certainly a need for proper scrutiny of the various IPCC summaries and reports and also the the likely consequences of the various actions proposed by government economists and scientists to curb greenhouse emissions. But most of the world’s politicians and journalists seem happy to just accept the findings. For example, has the new review from the Fraser Institute, which to some extent sets out to expose the strengths and weaknesses of the new IPCC report, been acknowledged in the mainstream media at all?

And what is opinion from a skeptic worth and who should pay for it?

Graham Young, the editor of e-journal On Line Opinion, wrote at his blog last year, “Isn’t it a pity that we have to rely on oil companies to finance the devil’s advocate position on global warming?”

I’m not sure that any of the scientists interviewed by Lawrence Solomon for a series of articles in the Financial Post entitled ‘The Deniers’ have anything to do with oil companies, but I think Graham Young nevertheless makes a good point.

Anyway, there are apparently 10 articles by Lawrence Solomon purportedly on scientists who “buck the conventional wisdom on climate science” but I have only been able to find the following four:

1. Will the sun cool us?
Friday, January 12, 2007

The science is settled” on climate change, say most scientists in the field. They believe that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are heating the globe to dangerous levels and that, in the coming decades, steadily increasing temperatures will melt the polar ice caps and flood the world’s low-lying coastal areas.

Don’t tell that to Nigel Weiss, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, past President of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a scientist as honoured as they come. The science is anything but settled, he observes, except for one virtual certainty: The world is about to enter a cooling period.

Read the complete text here: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/archives/story.html?id=5c8d30c6-9d77-4ccc-99d9-c3a095750cdc

2. The limits of predictability
Friday, January 19, 2007

When Frans Nieuwstadt, a distinguished Dutch meteorologist, engineer, editor and professor, died in 2005, his obituary recounted seminal events in his accomplished life. Among the experiences worthy of mention: Nieuwstadt had studied under the celebrated professor, Henk Tennekes, and along with other colleagues had been instrumental in convincing Tennekes to return to Europe in 1978 to become director of research at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and later chairman of the august Scientific Advisory Committee of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts…

Tennekes became more than an inspiration for his students and a model for other scientists, however. He also became an object lesson in the limits of scientific inquiry. Because his critiques of climate science ran afoul of the orthodoxy required by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, he was forced to leave. Lesser scientists, seeing that even a man of Tennekes’s reputation was not free to voice dissent, learned their lesson. Ever since, most scientists who harbour doubts about climate science bite their tongues and keep their heads down.

Read the complete text here: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/archives/story.html?id=f53da8fc-4ece-455c-9591-a51c6fe18f97

3. Look to Mars for the truth on global warming
Friday, January 26, 2007

Climate change is a much, much bigger issue than the public, politicians, and even the most alarmed environmentalists realize. Global warming extends to Mars, where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries.

“One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age,” NASA scientist William Feldman speculated after the agency’s Mars Odyssey completed its first Martian year of data collection. “In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated.” With each passing year more and more evidence arises of the dramatic changes occurring on the only planet on the solar system, apart from Earth, to give up its climate secrets.

NASA’s findings in space come as no surprise to Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. Pulkovo — at the pinnacle of Russia’s space-oriented scientific establishment — is one of the world’s best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839. Heading Pulkovo’s space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world’s chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming.

Read the complete article here: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/archives/story.html?id=eabbe10d-3891-41eb-9ee1-a59b71743bec&p=1

4. The real deal?
Against the grain: Some scientists deny global warming exists
Friday, February 02, 2007

Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel’s top young scientists, describes the logic that led him — and most everyone else — to conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming…

Dr. Shariv’s digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence — only speculation — that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change– the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming — is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence.

Read the complete text: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106fef8763c6&k=0

So what is opinion from a climate change skeptic worth and who should pay for it?

Hi Jennifer,

I’ve only just noticed this week’s Jakarta floods.

Most of the reportage has concentrated on the immediate disaster and the associated political recriminations, but I see in the Sydney Morning Herald that, “meteorologists have claimed climate change contributed to the disaster, with a delayed monsoon season bringing unusually high rainfall.”

I think this could be worth a post in itself, for a number of reasons.

First of all, this is a major weather disaster. Almost half the capital of south-east Asia’s biggest country just spend a week under water. This is happening just to our north.

Second, it would be of interest to understand the cause and effect here. How often does this happen? Why does it happen? The capital is flooded annually and there were big floods in 1996 and 2002.

According to the Jakarta Post, “the floods are worse than the last major inundation in 2002. It has been argued they are the result of weather abnormalities that occur every five years.”

Third, perhaps we could have a general discussion about the evidential value, if any, of such large events in the AGW [global warming] debate. The debate over Atlantic hurricanes like Katrina may serve as a prototype.

Cheers, Mitchell Porter

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This is an edited version of a note from Mitchell originally posted as a comment here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001874.html . Thanks Mitch.

Canadian think-tank The Fraser Institute has just released a 64 page-summary of the the latest United Nation’s report on climate change concluding that:

• Data collected by weather satellites since 1979 continue to exhibit little evidence of atmospheric warming, with estimated trends ranging from nearly zero to the low end of past IPCC forecasts. There is no significant warming in the tropical troposphere (the lowest portion of the Earth’s atmosphere), which accounts for half the world’s atmosphere, despite model predictions that warming should be amplified there.

• Temperature data collected at the surface exhibits an upward trend from 1900 to 1940, and again from 1979 to the present. Trends in the Southern Hemisphere are small compared to those in the Northern Hemisphere.

• There is no compelling evidence that dangerous or unprecedented changes are underway. Perceptions of increased extreme weather events are potentially due to increased reporting. There is too little data to reliably confirm these perceptions.

• There is no globally-consistent pattern in long-term precipitation trends, snow-covered area, or snow depth. Arctic sea ice thickness showed an abrupt loss prior to the 1990s, and the loss stopped shortly thereafter. There is insufficient data to conclude that there are any trends in Antarctic sea ice thickness.

• Current data suggest a global mean sea level rise of between two and three millimeters per year. Models project an increase of roughly 20 centimeters over the next 100 years, if accompanied by a warming of 2.0 to 4.5 degrees Celsius.

• Natural climatic variability is now believed to be substantially larger than previously estimated, as is the uncertainty associated with historical temperature reconstructions.

• Attributing an observed climate change to a specific cause like greenhouse gas emissions is not formally possible, and therefore relies on computer model simulations. These attribution studies do not take into account the basic uncertainty about climate models, or all potentially important influences like aerosols, solar activity, and land use changes.

• Computer models project a range of future forecasts, which are inherently uncertain for the coming century, especially at the regional level. It is not possible to say which, if any, of today’s climate models are reliable for climate prediction and forecasting.

Read the complete review here: http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/books/files/Independent%20Summary.pdf

The press release with comment from Dr Ross McKitrick is here: http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=nr&id=783