Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Paul

Bumblebee Success

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I’m into my second year as a member of The Bumblebee Conservation Trust. I was considering burying a bumble bee nest box in my garden, but the other day I noticed that there is no need – the little critters have already made a nest utilising a pre-existing hole in a flower bed next to our conservatory. Now, I’m no Neil when it comes to wildlife photography, particularly as I don’t currently have a sophisticated digital camera, but I’ve done the best I can by capturing a couple of bees in flight during the frequent trips to and from the nest.

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Bumblebees are important pollinators of wild flowers and crops in the UK. Already 3 species are extinct and 9 more are threatened. No, not due to ‘global warming,’ but habitat loss. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust explains the problem:

“It is thus essential that we take steps to conserve our remaining bumblebee populations, and if possible restore them to something like their past abundance. This cannot be achieved with existing nature reserves. Bumblebee nests are large, containing up to 400 sterile workers, each of which travels more than 1 km from the colony in search of suitable flowers. Each nest needs many hectares of suitable flower-rich habitat, meaning that to support a healthy population which is viable in the long term, large areas of land must be managed sympathetically. UK nature reserves are simply too small. The only way to provide sufficient areas of habitat for bumblebees is if the wider farmed countryside and the vast areas covered by suburban gardens are managed in a suitable way. To do this we need to educate people…

We need to and encourage farmers to adopt wildlife friendly farming methods through uptake of the Entry Level Stewardship scheme (ELS). We need to support the replanting of hedgerows and the recreation of hay meadow and chalk grassland habitats. These activities will not be at the expense of farming, but will actually benefit it, by improving crop yields at the same time as enriching the countryside. Meanwhile, in gardens nationwide we need to use wild flowers and traditional cottage-garden plants.”

A worthy cause, not tainted by the global warming bandwagon like the WWF or the RSPB, which is partly why I joined the the BBCT and am an ex-member of the RSPB.

For some professional, close up photos of bumblebees, check out the BBCT gallery.

Divergent Climate Histories for East and West Antarctica Over 14 Million Years

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There is an interesting News Focus story in this week’s Science journal, that helps to confirm the different climate histrories for the East and West Antarctic ice sheets – a phenomenon that persists in modern times:

ANTARCTICA: Freeze-Dried Findings Support a Tale of Two Ancient Climates

A surprising cache of ancient plant material adds evidence for divergent climate histories of the East and West Antarctic ice sheets over the past 14 million years

Excerpt: These findings appear to be contradictory at first glance, but in fact they buttress an evolving view among scientists that the two major features of the continent, the western and eastern ice sheets, have experienced vastly different climate histories. Data from the Dry Valleys reveals an East Antarctic Ice Sheet that is high, dry, cold, and stable, at least in its central area. And the ANDRILL cores suggest a more volatile West Antarctic Ice Sheet that is subject to the changing temperatures of the sea in which it wades. “It reaffirms the fragility of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet [WAIS] and the stability of the central part of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet,” says Peter Barrett, a sedimentologist at the Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) in New Zealand, who advised the ANDRILL project.

Nature Journal Finally Catches Up with Climate Audit

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I find this really amusing for a number of reasons. I refer to an article in this week’s Nature entitled ‘A large discontinuity in the mid-twentieth century in observed global-mean surface temperature’ by Thompson, Kennedy, Wallace and Phil Jones.

The abstract states:

“Data sets used to monitor the Earth’s climate indicate that the surface of the Earth warmed from approx 1910 to 1940, cooled slightly from approx 1940 to 1970, and then warmed markedly from approx 1970 onward. The weak cooling apparent in the middle part of the century has been interpreted in the context of a variety of physical factors, such as atmosphere–ocean interactions and anthropogenic emissions of sulphate aerosols. Here we call attention to a previously overlooked discontinuity in the record at 1945, which is a prominent feature of the cooling trend in the mid-twentieth century. The discontinuity is evident in published versions of the global-mean temperature time series, but stands out more clearly after the data are filtered for the effects of internal climate variability. We argue that the abrupt temperature drop of approx 0.3 °C in 1945 is the apparent result of uncorrected instrumental biases in the sea surface temperature record. Corrections for the discontinuity are expected to alter the character of mid-twentieth century temperature variability but not estimates of the century-long trend in global-mean temperatures.”

Amusement number one is the fact that AGW supporters have tried to explain the 1940s to 1970s ‘cooling’ using emissions of sulphate aerosols as an excuse – an explanation that I have previously challenged

Amusement number two is the unverifiable data used by Phil Jones et al 1990, which was relied upon by the IPCC to diminish the effect of urbanisation on the surface temperature record.

Amusement number three is that Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit first noted the discontinuity in the sea surface temperature record in June 2005.

Zip over to Climate Audit and read Nature “Discovers” Another Climate Audit Finding

Enough Oil ‘For At Least 30 Years’

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AUSTRALIA’S rural economic forecaster has challenged predictions the world is about to run out of oil, saying it has enough to last at least another 30 years.

ABARE executive director Phillip Glyde told a Senate estimates committee that the peak-oil school of thought, which holds that reserves are near depletion, was wrong.

The Australian: There’s enough oil ‘for at least 30 years’

Decline in Victorian Autumn Rainfall

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VICTORIA has suffered a 40 per cent plunge in autumn rainfall since 1950 and climate change is a key factor, a new report has found.

Herald Sun: Victorian Autumn rain down 40 per cent since 1950: CSIRO

Fluctuations in sea-surface temperatures to the north of Australia and changes in atmospheric circulation patterns over the sub-tropical Indian Ocean have been identified as key factors leading to declining rainfalls in south-eastern Australia since 1950.

CSIRO: Understanding autumn rain decline in SE Australia

South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative

Thanks to Gavin and Luke.

Was 1998 the Warmest Year of the Millennium?

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Steve McIntyre’s recent Ohio State University presentation is now available online. This is an excellent summary of the ‘Hockey Stick’ debate and the climate debate in general, which extends to 45 pages (including references).

The presentation concludes:

So where does that leave us?

In my opinion, there are serious and probably fatal problems with the main proxies used as supposed evidence against a warm MWP – the Graybill strip bark chronologies, Briffa’s adjustment to the Tornetrask series, the inconsistency between Briffa’s Yamal substitution and the updated Polar Urals series and so on. For every proxy that supposedly shows a MWP cooler than the present, there seems to be one that is just as good or better evidencing the opposite. For the California and Urals proxies so fundamental to the Hockey Stick, the ecological evidence is further evidence against the Graybill and Briffa chronologies being interpretable as temperature proxies.

The selection of proxies in studies displayed by IPCC seems to me to be biased against proxies with a warm MWP. IPCC itself does not carry out any independent due diligence of the type that might be expected in a prospectus. Further, in 2007, as in 2001, the authors involved in preparing the paleoclimate section were active parties in controversies and, in the end, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report strongly reflects their partisan point of view.

Is there a wider lesson here for engineers? We are often told that the “Science is settled”. But engineers, of all people, know that, even if the “science is settled”, the engineering work may have just begun. One would hardly derive the parameters for a chemical process from an article in Nature without an engineering feasibility study.

The most critical question in climate is the estimation of a parameter – is the sensitivity of climate to doubled CO2 1.5, 2.5 or 3.5 deg C? Or could it be 6 deg C or 0.6 deg C?

In some ways, the estimation of such parameters through the development of complicated computer models is reminiscent of activities carried out by engineers. One important difference is that climate scientists typically report their results in highly summary form in journals like Nature, rather than in the 1000-page or 2000-page engineering studies that an aerospace engineering enterprise would produce.

Viewed from this perspective, a remarkable aspect of the climate debate has been the seeming inability of the climate science community to narrow confidence intervals on this estimate. In 1979, the Charney Report (National Research Council 1979) estimated the impact at 3 deg C with a 1.5 degree range either way. In 2007, IPCC AR4 estimates are virtually unchanged. With all the improvements in scientific knowledge and all the efforts of climate scientists over the years, why has the improvement of these confidence intervals proved so resistant? I don’t know, but it’s worth thinking about.