American meteorologist George Taylor has done a review of the ‘Arctic Climate Impact Assessment’ for the Marshall Institute. Taylor has an interest in correlations and finding ‘matches’. This is what artic temperatures back to 1880 look like superimposed on a fish, specifically the black sea bass:
Read the full report at http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/309.pdf . The fish can be found on page 33 and in figure 38. There is some discussion of the famous hockey stick on page 32.
There is ample evidence that the earth’s climate has always changed, that there have been ice-ages and interglacial warm periods and sometimes dramatic shifts in temperature over relatively short periods. This is what I understand by ‘climate change’.
I understand that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change defines ‘climate change’ as that which is attributable directly or indirectly to human activity. I consider this definition to be wrong and subversive and I reject it.
Given that the earth’s climate has changed in the past, it is reasonable to assume that climate will change in the future – whether or not we do anything about rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Because I have often stated that there will be climate change whether or not we do anything about the increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, I have been accused of not caring, or suggesting we should not try and do something about carbon dioxide emissions.
Indeed Friends of the Earth misrepresent my position in their media release of last Thursday by stating that “Dr Jennifer Marohasy conceded that climate change is inevitable and we should adapt to what’s coming but not reduce greenhouse gas emissions” ( http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0507/S00436.htm ).
I have never said that we should not try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I have always said that we should be concerned about increasing carbon dioxide levels. I have suggested investment in new technologies as a better option to Kyoto.
Friends of the Earth accurately quote me: “I actually think that it’s good if we can get beyond this debate of whether increasing carbon dioxide levels are driving more extreme climate events. I think that we need to move beyond that and accept and recognise that whether or not we can reduce carbon dioxide levels, there will be climate change.”
On this basis governments need to develop reactive contingency plans. I do not believe that climate change will necessarily be ‘catastrophic’ – but I do suggest we should prepare for more extreme weather events, as well as the possibility that it could be either drier or wetter in the future.
Furthermore, I suggest that trends in climate change can and should be evaluated using empirical data as well as computer models.
In summary, I am concerned about climate change and I have always been concerned about climate change.
I do acknowledge that carbon dioxide is one of several greenhouse gases. The empirical evidence, however, does not show a clear relationship between increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures. Global temperatures have increased, but only slightly (0.6C over 150 years) and have jumped about from year to year. In contrast the increase in carbon dioxide levels has been significant and linear. Other things are clearly affecting global temperature.
I consider Thursday’s announcement of the new climate pact between the USA, Australia, South Korea, Japan, India and China to be great news (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1425101.htm).
Here is a commitment focused on reducing carbon dioxide levels that has a chance of delivering something significant because it includes the emerging superpowers of India and China.
I am amazed that this deal is being critised on the basis that it may deliver very little, when the Bob Browns of the world have always acknowledged Kyoto will deliver very little but they have said it is at least a first step.
Well, why not then consider the ‘Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate’ a second step?
I was on ABC Television’s 7.30 Report last night suggesting we move beyond the argument of whether or not rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are contributing to global warming and prepare for climate change anyway.
The program was focused on the release of a report titled ‘Climate change risk and vulnerability – promoting an efficient adaptation response in Australia’
Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell was on the same program suggesting that global warming is going to destroy the Great Barrier Reef.
The reality is that global warming is OK for Nemo, but no good for Bundie. (Bundie is the name of the polar bear on the Bundaberg Rum advertisements?)
As my friend and colleague Dr Peter Ridd wrote last November at OLO:
If the climate is warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, there could be many plausible consequences, such as melting ice and polar bears not having a home. However, of all the ecosystems in the world, coral reefs are in virtually the best position to come through unscathed. They are certainly not the worlds canary as has sometimes been stated.
Consider the following points
(1) Corals are a tropical species. They like warm water. Most of the species found on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), for example, are also found in areas with much warmer water.
(2) In a couple of hundred million years of existence, corals have survived through hotter, (and more seriously colder) periods.
(3) Coral tissue thickness, often seen as an indicator of coral health, is generally higher for corals in hotter water. Some of the highest tissue thickness’ measured have occur around PNG where the water is far hotter than the GBR.
(4) For all the hype about the bleaching events on the GBR, most of the reef did not bleach and almost all that did bleach has almost fully recovered.
(5) From the statistical viewpoint it is highly improbable that bleaching only started to occur in the last 25 years. Bleaching on the GBR occurs in summers when there is a combination of low cloud cover and light winds. This drives up water temperatures to a degree or two about normal. The water temperature has not increased by a degree over the last 25 years and thus bleaching must have been occurring previously, though quite possibly at a reduced rate. The apparent increase in bleaching is quite possibly due to the very large number of scientists and managers who are now interested in the phenomenon.
(6) Data of coral growth rates from massive corals indicate that there has been a small but significant increase over the last 100 or so years. This is related to the small but significant temperature increase that has occurred in the last hundred or so years. This is not surprising, coral, by and large like hot water.
(7) Some corals clearly are killed by unusually elevated temperature. These are not the long-lived massive corals but rather the plate and staghorn corals. These susceptible corals have the living philosophy of a weed, i.e. live fast and die young. The massives are in for the long haul, they are like the forest giants that live for hundreds or years and must thus be able to withstand the extreme conditions, such as high temperature and cyclones, that will temporarily wipe out there frail but fast growing brethren.
(8) Even the susceptible corals seem to be able to adapt to higher temperatures by replacing the symbiotic plants (zooxanthellae) that are embedded within them with more suitable species.
(9) If we see a sealevel rise due to the thermal expansion of the ocean, we will see a great expansion in the area of the GBR under coral. This is because the reef flats, which now have almost no coral due to the FALL in sealevel of the last 5000 years, will be covered even by the lowest spring tides. The presently dead reef flats, which are a very large proportion of the reef (perhaps the majority), will come alive. So though rising sealevel might be bad if you live in a small South Pacific Island nation, it will be good for coral.
I have a very high regard for the hardiness of corals. The GBR was borne at a time of rapidly rising sealevel, very high turbidity and very rapidly rising temperature. Presently, they live in areas of extreme temperature (40 degree), in muddy embayments and in regions continuously affected by runoff. Provided they are not grossly overfished, as has happened in the Caribbean, they are very adaptable systems.
My message is that if you must make an argument for the Kyoto Protocol, then using coral reefs is a poor, and implausible choice. In the final analysis, corals like hot water, polar bears do not. Corals will do badly in an ice age, polar bears and alpine meadows can suffer in a warm period.
Some links:
The Report ‘Climate Change: Risk and Vulnerability: Promoting an Efficient Adaptation Response in Australia’ http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/impacts/publications/risk-vulnerability.html
Summary of ABC Television’s 7.30 report
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1423001.htm.
The detail of the Minster’s comments on the Great Barrier Reef are not in the summary transcript.
Both Alan Woods (columnist with The Australian) and Britian’s House of Lords have recently written on the economics of ‘global warming’.
I have received several emails asking me to post something about the House of Lords report. The first email arrived the day of the London Bombing and it got left in my growing ‘for the blog’ file.
Anyway an email received just yesterday read,
“In today’s Australian is an extremely well written piece by Alan Wood entitled ‘Kyoto is dead,let it be buried’ and subtitled ‘The Global Warming debate needs evidence’.
Rather than getting involved in never ending marginal debates about the science, which almost invariably end up with a lot of name calling (and even worse claims that because so and so doesn’t have a degree in whatever, he or she is disqualified from having both a brain and an opinion), the real issue is about the public policy of GW.
This turns around whether the Kyoto prescriptive model was a valid way treat a problem that is still in the porcess of being defined with any degree of certainty, or the USA way of throwing money at an energy effciency/technology solution is better. Wood is showing that it has already been decided that it is the latter, and we should all be thankful that common sense has prevailed.
Alan Wood refers to a House of Lords Committee report that is also extremely good and thorough. Not surprisingly both Wood and the Lords Committee are scathing in their criticism of the IPCC.
In my view whilst the ‘scientists’ are throwing bricks at each other, and being amazingly arrogant and manipulatve, the real issue once GW is established as being confirmed with an acceptable level of confidence will come down to how one solves the problem. Then it will get interesting.
Why not start a thread with either the House of Lords report or the Alan Wood article as the seed?”
Piece by Alan Woods
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15985290%255E31478,00.html
Report by House of Lords
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12i.pdf
Associated Media Release
http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/lords_press_notices/pn060705ea.cfm
Now on a related issue, can anyone tell me the history of the negotiations behind the establishment of Australia’s Greenhouse Office. I can’t find an email I was sent about a year ago with a story that it was part of the deal with the Democrats to get the GST through?
I have been asked the following question from a reader of this web-log:
What is the evidence for the medieval warm period?
My understanding is that the Vikings were able to settle Greenland and grow grapes in Canada over several hundreds of years because the climate was significantly warmer. Yet this period is not evident in the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph.
End of question.
I don’t like bullies – so I don’t like the environment establishment much anymore.
My first real experience of being at the wrong end of their big stick was when I worked for the Queensland sugar industry and WWF launched its “save the reef campaign”.
The newly launched campaign against Exxon Mobil in the US because of the company’s position on global warming shows a high level of intolerant to different perspectives and the environment movement’s propensity for intimidation and bullying.
According to the New York Times,
A coalition of environmental and liberal lobbying groups is planning a boycott of Exxon Mobil products to protest the company’s challenges to warnings about global warming.
And boycott a company because you think it should be a better environmental steward,
Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s executive director, said the goal was either to get Exxon Mobil to change or “to encourage other oil companies” to improve their environmental stewardship. The company was chosen, organizers said, because its record is worse than its competitors.
And boycott a company because you don’t like who they fund,
The company has also supported groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose work has challenged some generally accepted scientific models that predict the speed of climate change and the severity of its consequences.
This is the campaign site http://www.exxposeexxon.com.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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