Cherry Picking, Black Swans and Falsifiability
By Doug L. Hoffman – 02/28/2010
Whenever a skeptic points out a new paper or journal article refuting some claim made by the theory of anthropogenic global warming, climate change alarmists often shout “cherry picking!” Evidently, most climate change true believers do not understand how science works or how theories are tested. Scientific theories must make predictions by which they can be tested. Providing evidence that AGW has failed in its predictions is not cherry picking, it is refutation. Unfortunately, when confronted with failed predictions the standard alarmist answer is to disavow the predictions. They will say that those are not predictions at all, they are projections—and that means AGW is not a scientific theory at all.
I recently received a long email from a friend, who is a global warming believer, regarding my earlier post, “Why I Am A Global Warming Skeptic.” This friend is an educated person, a philosopher but not a scientist. In reading his objections and counter arguments to my points I found a number of common misunderstandings that arise when laymen try to jump into a scientific debate. In this report I will address some, but by no means all of my friend’s objections.
Having written previously on how to judge global warming as a scientific theory, perhaps it is time to recap some of that discussion. In The Resilient Earth, we wrote about the philosophy of science and how scientific theories are formulated and then validated. Science is both a body of knowledge and an approach to understanding nature by gaining more knowledge. It is based on gathering empirical evidence.
Empirical means simply what belongs to or is the product of experience or observation. If you can touch it, smell it, feel it, see it or measure it, it’s empirical. Collecting empirical data through observation or experimentation is how the correctness of theories is established. It is also how theories are found to be invalid.
An important point is that, in order to be testable, a theory must make predictions about how nature behaves. This idea comes from the work of Karl Popper who made the following observations as to what makes a good scientific theory:
- It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations.
- Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.
- Every “good” scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
- A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
- Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
- Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of “corroborating evidence.”)
- Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status.
Popper made a distinction between what he termed conditional scientific predictions, which have the form “If X takes place, then Y will take place,” and unconditional scientific prophecies, which have the form “Y will take place.” It is the former rather than the latter which are typical of the natural sciences. This means that predictions made by scientific theories are typically conditional and limited in scope—taking the form of a hypothetical assertion stating that certain specified changes will come about if particular preceding events take place. Conversely, if X takes place and Y does not, then the hypothesis must be false.
The Cherry Picking Argument
The first point of contention in this discussion is the time worn claim of “cherry picking.” This charge is often heard when a skeptical article cites papers in support of its position. The complaint as lodged by my friend goes like this:
You are surely here guilty of cherry picking a couple of published articles that go your way (at least when read in a certain way) out of all the thousands of articles in the literature, most of which don’t go your way. To form a fair assessment of the state of the science you need to look at all of it, not just take one or two articles out of context.
The problem here is, if you don’t cite some recent papers then you have provided no references and will be accused of making unsubstantiated claims (unless, of course, you are presenting experimental observations of your own). If you cite a few representative articles to underline your point you are accused of cherry picking. According to Wikipedia, cherry picking is the act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. While this is certainly a bad thing when dealing with data and collections of repeated experimental results, the definition does not necessarily extend to general scientific argumentation.
The reason for this lies in the concept of falsifiability—a condition that must be met by all valid scientific theories. Popper noted that it is easy to obtain evidence in favor of virtually any theory, and he consequently held that such corroboration should count scientifically only if it is the positive result of a genuinely “risky” prediction. Risky here means that the prediction could conceivably have been false. For Popper, a theory is scientific only if it is refutable by a conceivable event. Every genuine test of a scientific theory, then, is logically an attempt to refute or to falsify it, and one genuine counter-instance falsifies the whole theory.
Basically, a theory must make predictions about how nature behaves so that the validity of the theory can be tested through experimentation and/or observation. For example, say I claim that all swans are white, based on my direct observation of a sample of swan populations. If someone finds a single black swan and is able to document the observation (e.g. by taking a picture or capturing the beast) then the white swan theory is disproved. In this case a single contradicting observation is sufficient to invalidate the theory.
It is possible that a disproved theory can be modified to better fit nature as observed—the white swan theory could be amended to say “most swans are white.” In this case the new theory could not be disproved by a single black swan siting, it would take finding a numerical majority of non-white swans to disprove it. Scientific philosophy would say that the first white swan theory is a stronger theory, the assertion that all swans are white being much more restrictive than the modified “most swans” theory. Simply put, the stronger the theory the simpler it is to disprove, the argument being that an easily disprovable theory which stands the test of time is stronger than a theory, which would take a much larger effort to debunk. It takes a deeper understanding of the assertions made by a theory to know what kind of argument is needed to disprove it.
When it comes to the AGW theory, which states that human generated CO2 is the reason for increasing world temperature, there is some wiggle room for its proponents, but not much. If it can be shown that the sum total of other contributing factors is more influential than CO2 then the theory is proven false. Any valid observation which shows CO2‘s influence is less important to climate change than other factors diminishes the validity of the theory. Moreover, if many of the predictions made by the theory are shown to be false then the theory is weakened—the death of a thousand cuts scenario.
If a theory claims to explain climate change and new work shows that there are phenomena that the theory does not explain then that theory is incomplete. If nature shows assertions made by the theory to be wrong then the theory is false. The papers I cited showed that there is dispute among scientists, that nature is still serving up big surprises that climate science is at a loss to explain, that the science is not settled. Given this evidence, for any layman to state otherwise is preposterous but as Popper himself said, “irrationalism will use reason too, but without any feeling of obligation.”
Furthermore, scientific arguments are not won by counting the number of papers written either for or against a particular theory. As was demonstrated above, a single counter example can be sufficient to disprove a theory, no matter how many scientists think the theory to be correct. In science there is an ultimate arbiter—nature.
Returning to the charge of cherry picking, the reason I chose the papers I did was because they were both recent, written by known climate scientists who are not fringe denier kooks, and (yes) they help to support my position. The intent is not to provide an argument from authority, another typical logical fallacy, but to show that the arguments presented do originate from trustworthy sources. Even so, that is immaterial to the real argument.
Those papers explicitly stated that mechanisms other than CO2 are noticeably involved in climate regulation. Moreover, the postulated positive feedback mechanism linking CO2 and water vapor does not respond in the expected way. Far from being a minor detail, this directly refutes part of the AGW theory as presented to the public.
If someone purposefully selects data or data sets so a study will give desired, predictable results—which may be misleading or even completely contrary to actuality—then the charge of cherry picking is valid. Michael Mann’s use of selected tree ring data sets and then manipulating them statistically to produce the infamous “hockey stick” graph, that was cherry picking. Citing specific evidence that refutes fundamental assertions made by a theory, that is not cherry picking. Under the latter circumstance, the cherry picking retort is weak argumentation and intellectually lazy to boot. Dispute the articles, challenge the assertions, or provide some counter examples of your own but for heavens sake, argue the matter at hand.
Judged and found wanting
Returning to the subject of proving or disproving the theory of anthropogenic global warming, there are only three possibilities here: AGW makes no predictions and hence is not a scientific theory; AGW depends on vague feedback mechanisms that must be constantly reinterpreted, making AGW a very weak theory and scientifically useless; or the predictions made by climate scientists about the effects of AGW are just that, predictions, and if those predictions can be shown to not be true then AGW is a false theory.
It is hard to believe that any pro-AGW climate scientist would agree to the first interpretation, that AGW is simply not a scientific theory, so we can eliminate all that crap about AGW not making any predictions. If it is a theory it must make predictions, it must be falsifiable based on empirical evidence.
In the second scenario, the argument is often made that AGW is correct but not perfect, that it is getting better and its predictions more accurate every day. This fits Popper’s final observation about theories, where ad hoc modifications are constantly needed to rescue a theory from falsification. Since such actions rescue a theory from refutation only at the price of destroying or lowering its scientific status—again an outcome that no AGW true believer would accept—we will move on to the final possibility.
The final scenario is that AGW as formulated does indeed qualify as a scientific theory. In this case it must make specific predictions that permit the theory to be falsified. So what are the strongest predictions made by the AGW theory? Let us first identify AGW’s primary tenant. That is that human CO2 emissions are causing Earth’s temperature to rise. What are the observed facts?
- Are CO2 levels rising? The evidence seems to indicate that this is true.
- Is the increase in atmospheric CO2 being caused by human activity? There is some debate over how much is due to nature and how much due to man but let’s simply accept this assertion as well.
- What does AGW theory predict should happen as a result of these conditions? The obvious answer is that global temperature should rise.
In fact, back in 1988, NASA’s in house climate alarmist James Hansen presented a prediction of steadily rising temperatures to Congress. Has this prediction been substantiated, proving that AGW is a valid theory? It should be obvious from the graph below that Hansen got it wrong.
Not only was Hansen wrong back in 1988, all the models used by all the AGW proponents managed to miss the leveling off and slight downturn in temperature rise that started in 1995. In an email to Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), asked “where the heck is global warming?” He went on to explain:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Trenberth was a lead author of the 1995, 2001, and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change. If he had any sense of shame he would give back that Nobel Prize he shares (as a member of the IPCC) with Al Gore.
Furthermore, Dr. Phil Jones from the UK’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), has recently conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now–suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon. He is quoted as saying that for the past 15 years there has been no “statistically significant” warming. Yet the yearly averaged atmospheric CO2 level has continued to steadily rise. What we have here, as Popper showed, is a false theory.
When contradicting evidence is found you must reevaluate the theory that made the discredited assertions. Based on direct measurement, AGW’s fundamental prediction that an increase in CO2 levels causes an increase in temperature is false, therefore AGW is a false theory. The correct answer might not be known but the wrong answer is still wrong. In the mean time, climate scientists must stop making unsubstantiated claims or accept that their theory has been proven false by the very predictions they use to argue their case.
More Fictitious Hurricane Predictions
Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell intimate association with nature and its phenomenon are more able to lay down principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations. – Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption
By Doug L. Hoffman – 02/24/2010
According to the AP, top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming, seeming to settle a scientific debate on the subject. But they say there’s not enough evidence yet to tell whether that effect has already begun. Despite warnings by scientists that identifying an actual trend in storm variability is impossible due to a lack of reliable historical data, a new report in Nature Geoscience is being cited as a solid prediction of future trends in tropical cyclone activity. The other thing not mentioned is that this research is based on models of questionable accuracy.
The review article by Thomas R. Knutson et al., entitled “Tropical cyclones and climate change,” was published online on Sunday, February 12, 2010. In it, the authors warn that there is precious little that can be predicted from past data. But this does not stop them from blithely predicting the future based on new “high-resolution” models. Here is part of the paper’s abstract:
Large amplitude fluctuations in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones greatly complicate both the detection of long-term trends and their attribution to rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Trend detection is further impeded by substantial limitations in the availability and quality of global historical records of tropical cyclones. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes. However, future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100.
Once again, climate scientists are predicting future climate behavior based, not on emperical data, but on computer models. They go on to state that confidence in some of their predictions is low “owing to uncertainties in the large-scale patterns of future tropical climate change, as evident in the lack of agreement between the model projections of patterns of tropical SST changes.” Their approach is to combine a number of different models into an “ensemble,” manipulating the output until it converges on what historical observations we have. In the end they predict fewer but stronger storms because of global warming, though “the actual intensity level of these strong model cyclones varies between the models, depending on model resolution and other factors.”
Modeling and the Search for Scientific Truth
I have repeatedly stated that models can be a useful tool in any number of fields. Understand that there are different kinds of computer models. Some are quite exact and can be used for such things as aerodynamics and structural analysis. Those types of quantitative models are based in well understood natural laws and are relatively tractable. They give answers that engineers can use as actual guidance. But even then they are not always right. Recently Boeing had to reinforce the wing root attachment points on their new 787 airliner because the computer model simulations were not born out in actual testing.
Moreover, not all models are blessed with such passing verisimilitude with respect to nature. Most models are approximations for the systems being modeled. They are pressed into service when the system being studied is too complex for human intuition to predict system behavior. Computer models of this kind—which includes GCM climate models—should be used to provide insight, but instead are used to make authoritative predictions of things to come. This brings us to the philosophy of Sir Karl Popper.
Karl Popper was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th Century and a tremendous influence on modern scientific thought. One TRE reader, Peter Foster, pointed out to me that the 2007 IPCC report cites Popper’s 1934 book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Peter is the second person with a connection to Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand, to contact me this month. Unsurprisingly, both mentioned Popper. In 1937, the rise of Nazism and the threat of the Anschluss led the Austrian born Popper to emigrate to New Zealand. There he became a lecturer in philosophy at Canterbury University where he had a strong influence that evidently persists to this day.
According to Popper “the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.” By falsifiability he did not mean that a theory was false but that there exists a way to prove the theory false (for more see Popper’s essay “Science as Falsification”). A theory has to be testable. There have to be defined properties which can be predicted by theory and checked by measurement. It would appear that the IPCC authors agree, as shown in this quote from the AR4 section entitled “The Nature of Earth Science”:
Science generally advances through formulating hypotheses clearly and testing them objectively. This testing is the key to science. It is not the belief or opinion of the scientists that is important, but rather the results of this testing. Scientific theories are ways of explaining phenomena and providing insights that can be evaluated by comparison with physical reality. Each successful prediction adds to the weight of evidence supporting the theory, and any unsuccessful prediction demonstrates that the underlying theory is imperfect and requires improvement or abandonment.
Popper was among the first to state that discovering truth is the aim of scientific inquiry while acknowledging that most of the greatest scientific theories in the history of science are, strictly speaking, false. Scientists’ theories represent their current understanding of nature. As that understanding improves old theories are discarded and new ones formulated. Popper’s philosophy of science defined progress as the process of moving from one false theory to another, still false theory that is nonetheless closer to the truth.
Climate models are analogous to those false yet useful theories—models try to encapsulate science’s understanding of how the Earth system works. This has led many, including another friend of mine from Canterbury University, to make the argument that the models we have may not be perfect but they are at least usable. The question becomes, how much faith are you willing to place in a model’s results, starting from the acknowledgment that all such models are by definition wrong. Having spent many years modeling large, nonlinear systems I am not willing to base potentially world changing decisions on the output of current climate models.
This is because of how the models are constructed and how they are calibrated. In short, the models are tuned to produce a specific amount of temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 levels. It is unsurprising that the researchers then get the answers they expected. It is also unsurprising that, when faced with an unexpected response from the natural system like the recent leveling and possible decline in global temperatures, the models fail miserably. Worse than that, secondary predictions are often made based on the predictions of models or even models that use the output of other models as their starting data.
A New Hurricane Model
One of the references cited by the Nature Geoscienc hurricane modeling report was a recent paper in Science that can help fill in some of the technical details of how the modeling research was performed. In it, researchers did, indeed, report that fewer but stronger hurricanes will sweep the Atlantic Basin in the 21st century. This new modeling study by US government researchers from NOAA is predicated on climate change “continuing.” As explained in an accompanying perspective by Science writer Richard A. Kerr:
What makes the new study more realistic is its sharper picture of the atmosphere. In low-resolution models such as global climate models, the fuzzy rendition of the atmosphere can’t generate any hurricanes, much less the intense ones that account for most of the damage hurricanes cause. The high-resolution models used by the U.S. National Weather Service to forecast hurricane growth and movement do produce a realistic mix of both weak and strong storms, but those models can’t simulate global warming.
So, as a compromise the researchers took the output of some of those “fuzzy” GCM and used their projections for global environment at the end of the century as the starting point for the new “high-resolution” models.
Climate modeler Morris Bender of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, and his colleagues used a technique sometimes called “double-downscaling.” The group started with the average of atmospheric and oceanic conditions forecast for the end of the century by 18 global climate models. They transferred those averaged conditions into a North Atlantic regional model detailed enough to generate a realistic number of hurricanes, although still too sketchy to get their intensities right. Finally, the team transferred the regional model’s storms to an even higher-resolution hurricane forecast model capable of simulating which ones would develop into category 3, 4, and 5 storms.
Naturally this has led to a number of reports in the popular media that we are to expect fewer but stronger hurricanes in the future and those hurricanes are going to be caused by global warming. It should be noted that this study actually contradicts some reports that the recent “anomalous” rise in hurricane activity is linked to climate change. No consensus here.
Model tracks for all storms that eventually reached category 4 or 5 intensity. Bender et al./Science.
Given that the model predictions for 2100 are not testable except in the fullness of time, there is no convenient way to test to the new models future accuracy. As the researchers themselves state, “these findings are dependent on the global climate models used to provide the environmental conditions for our downscaling experiments.” It is, however, possible to run the model on known data taken over the past quarter of a century. The new modeling study attempted to reproduce recent conditions and they found:
The researchers note that the new modeling offers no support for claims that global warming has already noticeably affected hurricane activity. In the real world, the number of Atlantic hurricanes observed during the past 25 years has doubled; in the model, global warming would cause a slight decline in the number over the same period. Given that the mid-resolution model used by the group duplicates the observed rising trend, it may be natural.
So the fuzzier mid-resolution model, presumably less accurate than the new one, gets the recent trend correct, which the researchers interpret as an indication that any rising trend is purely natural. The new high-resolution model doesn’t correctly predict current conditions. Here we have low-resolution models known to be inexact providing the hypothetical starting point data for other models—models which fail to correctly predict trends even based on real data—yet we are asked to uncritically accept the projections for hurricanes 90 years from now. It is to be expected that, if you start with wonky data input, you end up with wonky data output, but this carries the process a step further. Believing the results of this exercise seems more an act of faith than science. Is it any wonder that I mentioned the greatest sin of a modeler: believing that the model is the thing being modeled.
Computer simulation of the most intense hurricanes shows an increase from today (top) to a warmer world at the end of the century (bottom). Adapted from Bender et al./Science.
Rather amazingly, an earlier study in Nature stated that current climate conditions resemble those that led to peak Atlantic hurricane activity about 1000 years ago. I say amazingly because this study based on examining ocean sediments, included Pennsylvania State University meteorologist Michael Mann of hockey stick fame—a global warming true believer in anyone’s book. The paper states: “The short nature of the historical record and potential issues with its reliability in earlier decades, however, has prompted an ongoing debate regarding the reality and significance of the recent rise.”
Good modelers, like all cautious scientists, always use conditional phrases and qualifiers when writing of their work. “In the absence of a detectable change, we are dependent on a combination of observational, theoretical and modeling studies to assess future climate changes in tropical cyclone activity,” concludes the review by Knutson et al. “These studies are growing progressively more credible, but still have many limitations.” We have consensus and that consensus is “we don’t really know.” Unfortunately, such reservations do not make it into the news headlines.
What usually happens is more a sin of omission rather than commission. Climate modelers, and the climate science community in general, have not gone out of their way to stress the inherent unreliability of their predictions to the lay public. In the public forum, climate science has been happy to let overly excitable reporters and fringe eco-activists spin the GCM results into predictions of future catastrophe. This is disingenuous at best and can lead to the types of backlash recently visited on CRU and other research organizations over mishandling and manipulation of data. Sure, the IPCC calls them scenarios and projections, not predictions, as if that gives them deniability when the projections do not come to pass.
In 2007, the IPCC said it was “more likely than not” that man-made greenhouse gases had already altered storm activity, but the authors of the review said more recent evidence muddies the issue. “The evidence is not strong enough that we could make some kind of statement” along those lines, Knutson said. It doesn’t mean the IPCC report was wrong; it was just based on science done by 2006 and recent research has changed a bit, said Knutson and the other researchers.
The fact is, climate scientists have continued to use models to make predictions about future climatic conditions, and by attaching those predictions to the AGW theory they have weakened the very theory they are at pains to defend. Fortunately, Popper provides us with a way to filter truth from falsehood. The IPCC and other global warming alarmists have a choice—they can either say that AGW makes no predictions and is therefore not a scientific theory by definition, or they can stand by their model generated predictions and admit that their theory has been proven false time and again.
Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical.
Aletho News will be posting more on Karl Popper’s philosophy of science within the week.
A question to the USGS and NPR
Watts Up With That | March 3, 2010
Which of these states is closest to 20,000 square kilometers in area?
WUWT reader “DC” points us to this Gore-esque pronouncement from a USGS scientist about “Antarctic ice loss”.
Jane Ferrigno of the U.S. Geological Survey in a National Public Radio interview
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124178690 (Audio clip available)
Ms. FERRIGNO: The fact that the ice shelves are changing on the peninsula is a significant signal that global change, climate warming, is affecting the ice cover of Antarctica. It’s affecting first the area that’s towards the north, that’s slightly warmer, but the effect of the warming has traveled from the northern part of the peninsula to the southern part of the peninsula, where it’s colder.
…
“RAZ: Give us a sense of how much ice [on the Antarctic peninsula] has been lost over the past, say, 10 years.
Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.
RAZ: So about the size of the state of Texas in terms of ice has been lost in the past 20 years. ”
It gets better.
Ms. FERRIGNO: Well, this is a fairly small amount of ice when you consider the whole Antarctic continent consists of about 13 million square kilometers of ice.
RAZ: I mean, it sounds so dramatic, the size of Texas, right?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. FERRIGNO: It is. It is very dramatic, and it is larger than the size of Texas, but when you consider the entire Antarctic ice sheet, it’s still a fairly minimal amount. But the thing that we’re really interested in seeing is that this is a sort of a red flag because if the warming continues, if the retreat continues, if the amount of ice on the continent starts to flow into the water, then there will be substantial impact to the sea level.
RAZ: That’s Jane Ferrigno. She is a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
Jane Ferrigno, thanks for coming in.
Ms. FERRIGNO: Thank you.
Ms. Ferrigno might do well to have a look at this map of the USA and Antarctica compared at Texas A&M University’s Polar Science program to get a sense of scale.
Here’s the story on all the Southern hemisphere sea ice, which includes all Antarctic sea ice, from Cryosphere today:
click for a larger image
Maybe Ms. Ferrigno will be embarrassed enough by her geographic ineptitude and will heed Gavin Schmidt’s advice and stop trying to “persuade the public“.
###
Just The Facts :
Also of note. Arctic Sea Ice Extent is on an upswing;
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
and just a hair away from the arbitrary normal range used by NCIDC:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
Global Sea Ice Area appears to be making a run on average;
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
and Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is above average:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
A new paper comparing NCDC rural and urban US surface temperature data
Watts Up With That | February 26, 2010
There’s a new paper out by Dr. Edward Long that does some interesting comparisons to NCDC’s raw data (prior to adjustments) that compares rural and urban station data, both raw and adjusted in the CONUS.
The paper is titled Contiguous U.S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural and Urban Station Sets. In it, Dr. Edward Long states:
“The problem would seem to be the methodologies engendered in treatment for a mix of urban and rural locations; that the ‘adjustment’ protocol appears to accent to a warming effect rather than eliminate it. This, if correct, leaves serious doubt for whether the rate of increase in temperature found from the adjusted data is due to natural warming trends or warming because of another reason, such as erroneous consideration of the effects of urban warming.”
Here is the comparison of raw rural and urban data:
And here is the comparison of adjusted rural and urban data:
Note that even adjusted urban data has as much as a 0.2 offset from adjusted rural data.
Dr. Long suggests that NCDC’s adjustments eradicated the difference between rural and urban environments, thus hiding urban heating. The consequence:
“…is a five-fold increase in the rural temperature rate of increase and a slight decrease in the rate of increase of the urban temperature.”
The analysis concludes that NCDC “…has taken liberty to alter the actual rural measured values”.
Thus the adjusted rural values are a systematic increase from the raw values, more and more back into time and a decrease for the more current years. At the same time the urban temperatures were little, or not, adjusted from their raw values. The results is an implication of warming that has not occurred in nature, but indeed has occurred in urban surroundings as people gathered more into cities and cities grew in size and became more industrial in nature. So, in recognizing this aspect, one has to say there has been warming due to man, but it is an urban warming. The temperatures due to nature itself, at least within the Contiguous U. S., have increased at a non-significant rate and do not appear to have any correspondence to the presence or lack of presence of carbon dioxide.
The paper’s summary reads:
Both raw and adjusted data from the NCDC has been examined for a selected Contiguous U. S. set of rural and urban stations, 48 each or one per State. The raw data provides 0.13 and 0.79 oC/century temperature increase for the rural and urban environments. The adjusted data provides 0.64 and 0.77 oC/century respectively. The rates for the raw data appear to correspond to the historical change of rural and urban U. S. populations and indicate warming is due to urban warming. Comparison of the adjusted data for the rural set to that of the raw data shows a systematic treatment that causes the rural adjusted set’s temperature rate of increase to be 5-fold more than that of the raw data. The adjusted urban data set’s and raw urban data set’s rates of temperature increase are the same. This suggests the consequence of the NCDC’s protocol for adjusting the data is to cause historical data to take on the time-line characteristics of urban data. The consequence intended or not, is to report a false rate of temperature increase for the Contiguous U. S.
The full paper may be found here: Contiguous U.S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural and Urban Station Sets (PDF) and is freely available for viewing and distribution.
Dr. Long also recently wrote a column for The American Thinker titled: A Pending American Temperaturegate
As he points out in that column, Joe D’Aleo and I raised similar concerns in: Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception? (PDF)
Al Gore Is Lying Low — for Good Reason
By Rex McBride | February 24, 2010
Maybe Al Gore’s been advised by legal counsel to lie low. He may be the leader of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) movement, but he’s not defending it in public, not even when it’s falling apart and his new fortune is based upon it.
RICO was written in broad terms. To state a claim, a plaintiff must allege four elements: (1) conduct (2) of an enterprise (3) through a pattern (4) of racketeering activity… Each element of a RICO claim requires additional analysis: an “enterprise” is marked by association and control; a “pattern” requires a showing of “continuity” — continuous and related behavior that amounts to, or poses a threat of, continued criminal violations; and “racketeering activity” involves the violation of designated federal laws …
The Melting Case for Cap-and-Trade
What a Difference a Year Makes
By ROBERT BRYCE | February 23, 2010
What a difference 12 months makes. Almost exactly one year ago, the popular, newly minted president, Barack Obama, was telling Congress that he wanted “legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.”
The Democrats, fully confident of their new president and their grip on both house of Congress, were certain that they could pass yet another big energy bill that would finally push hydrocarbons off their pedestal and replace them with wind turbines, solar panels and every other type of alternative energy.
But a lot has happened since Obama delivered his first State of the Union address. The global economy has continued to show lackluster growth. And perhaps most important: unemployment rates in the US remain stubbornly high and are expected to stay high for at least the next two years. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that “roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments.” The same story, written by Peter S. Goodman, also contained this astonishing fact: Some 6.3 million Americans have “been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.”
Real estate foreclosures in the US are soaring, with up to 3.5 million homeowners facing the threat of foreclosure this year. And of course, there’s the changing balance of power in Congress. The Democrats’ brief stint with a super majority has ended in the Senate, where a Republican, Scott Brown, now sits in the chair held by the late Ted Kennedy.
Meanwhile, the reputation of the IPCC, due to sloppy work by its researchers, has been tarnished, perhaps irretrievably so. Over the past two months, much of Europe and the US has been hit with record-cold temperatures and record amounts of snow. (Supporters of the theory of global warming insist that the record snows are “consistent” with their theory.) And there has been “climategate.” Last year, someone hacked into the computers at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and released a spate of embarrassing emails that were exchanged among various climate scientists. The emails set off a firestorm of criticism of the scientists and their research methods.
Over the weekend, the global warming alarmists took yet another hit when the BBC published an interview with Phil Jones, the embattled scientist who heads the Climate Research Unit. The BBC’s environmental reporter, Roger Harrabin, asked Jones if he agreed that “from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming.”
Jones responded by saying “Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level.”
While that statement is enormously important, another Harrabin question was just as significant. Harrabin asked Jones to comment on the claim that “the debate over climate change is over.” Jones responded, “I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.”
Remember that over the past few years, the pro-global warming theorists have repeatedly trumpeted the claims from the IPCC and others that the scientific proof of global warming was overwhelming and therefore, there was no reason for any further discussion. Given that the science was settled, politicians had to act immediately to curb carbon dioxide emissions, in order to avert catastrophic climate change. The fervor around the science, and the belief that the issue was settled became so common that anyone who doubted the supposed consensus view was branded as a “denier.” The fervor against the “deniers” was so strong that in 2006, one journalist, David Roberts of Grist, even advocated “war crimes trials for these bastards – some sort of climate Nuremberg.” (Shortly after his piece was published, Roberts retracted his statement.) The denunciations of the “deniers” continued after Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and they continue to this day.
Last month, Rolling Stone magazine published a list of “the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming.” The article, called, “The Climate Killers” lambasted a range of people — Warren Buffett, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, Oklahoma US Senator James Inhofe, and columnist George Will, among them.
But less than six weeks after Rolling Stone published its list of “climate killers” Jones, one of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, told the BBC that a) there’s been no statistically significant warming of the earth over the past 15 years, and b) that the science of global warming is not, in fact, settled and that, in his words, “there is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties.”
It’s not clear what effect Jones’ interview has had on US businesses, but it’s interesting to note that just two days after the BBC published its Q&A with Jones, two multinational oil companies – BP and ConocoPhillips –announced that they were dropping out of the US Climate Action Partnership. Last week, industrial giant Caterpillar also announced that it was quitting USCAP.
About a year ago, USCAP, a coalition of major corporations and environmental groups, looked to be the odds-on favorite to set the agenda for global warming legislation in Congress. Led largely by Jim Rogers, the loquacious CEO of Duke Energy, USCAP was viewed as a new business model for big industries trying to grapple with the potential consequences of carbon legislation. On February 13, 2009, Rogers, speaking at the CERAWeek conference in Houston, declared “The signposts are clear: we’ll have legislation” on carbon emissions. Four months later, the US House of Representatives narrowly passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a 1,428-page monstrosity filled with loopholes and giveaways for favored industries. When printed out on standard paper, the 2009 bill (also known as Waxman-Markey or the cap-and-trade bill) creates a stack nearly 7 inches tall.
But since last June, and particularly since December, when leaders from 192 countries met in Copenhagen for what the Associated Press called “the largest and most important UN climate change conference in history,” the urgency for any type of substantive action on carbon emissions has vanished. Indeed, after two weeks of wrangling in Copenhagen, the result was laughably predictable: no legally binding agreement on any reductions in carbon emissions, only a promise to set targets and an agreement to meet again a year later in Mexico City to discuss all of the same issues one more time.
In announcing their decision to drop out of USCAP, BP and ConocoPhillips made it clear that they were concerned about how pending US climate legislation would affect their refining businesses. Conoco’s CEO, James J. Mulva, said that the pending legislation “left domestic refineries unfairly penalized versus international competition.” Caterpillar said it was dropping out so that it could focus on carbon capture and storage projects.
Whatever their reasons, the exit of those three companies from USCAP reflects the waning enthusiasm for any type of federal carbon legislation. Senate leaders say they will attempt to pass a different energy bill from that passed by the House last year, one that will tax refineries and put emission limits on heavy industry.
That might happen. But that kind of tax scheme is going to meet huge resistance from industry. And the departure of BP and ConocoPhillips from USCAP appears to indicate that the refining industry – which has been hammered by the recession and slack motor fuel demand – has decided to actively fight such legislation.
In summary, given the ragged state of the economy, persistently high unemployment – indeed, the highest number of unemployed people in modern US history – along with huge numbers of foreclosures, the suddenly much-weaker scientific case for cutting carbon dioxide emissions, and the changing balance of power in Washington, don’t count on any significant carbon emissions legislation out of Congress anytime soon. Democrats and Republicans alike are sensing political peril in any effort that will impose higher energy prices on taxpayers during tough economic times.
Seeds of discontent: the ‘miracle’ crop that has failed to deliver
A new ‘ethical’ biofuel is damaging the impoverished people it was supposed to help
By Cahal Milmo and Andrew Wasley | The Independent | 15 February 2010
A “miracle” plant, once thought to be the answer to producing renewable biofuels on a vast scale, is driving thousands of farmers in the developing world into food poverty, a damning report concludes today.
Five years ago jatropha was hailed by investors and scientists as a breakthrough in the battle to find a biofuel alternative to fossil fuels that would not further impoverish developing countries by diverting resources away from food production.
Jatropha was said to be resistant to drought and pests and able could grow on land that was unsuitable for food production. But researchers have found that it has increased poverty in countries including India and Tanzania.
Millions of the plants have been grown in anticipation of rich returns, only for growers to be hit by poor yields, conflict over land and a lack of infrastructure to process the oil-rich seeds.
Oil giant BP, which planned to spend almost £32m on a joint venture to set up jatropha plantations, has now pulled out and the charity ActionAid today warns that jatropha needs to be cultivated on prime food-growing land to produce significant yields.
According to one estimate, up to one million hectares of jatropha – an area equivalent to Devon and Cornwall combined – are being cultivated around the globe, despite little evidence that it can produce enough oil to make the crop commercially sustainable.
Meredith Alexander, head of trade at Actionaid and co-author of its “Meals per Gallon” report, said: “Jatropha is a real gold-rush crop, and the same amount of common sense that applies in a gold rush has been applied to the jatropha rush.
“Jatropha was the subject of an explosion of fabulous propaganda. But this was an untried crop at commercial levels and the many thousands of marginal farmers who have gone into production have been experimented on with disastrous results. They are simply not getting the income they were promised and now cannot afford food for their families,” she said.
A native of central America, Jatropha curcus was brought to Europe in the 16th century and subsequently spread across Africa and Asia. Until recently, its few uses included a malaria treatment and an indigestion remedy.
But despite jatropha’s much-lauded ability to grow where food crops cannot flourish, campaigners say there is evidence that commercially viable yields can only be obtained in fertile soil.
In India, forecasted annual yields of three to five tonnes of seeds per hectare have been scaled back to 1.8 to two tonnes. The Overseas Development Institute, a leading international development think-tank, has stated that “as the mainstay of people’s livelihoods, jatropha looks distinctly marginal”.
ActionAid said its researchers found repeated cases of farmers being left with jatropha crops they could not sell and land previously used to grow food crops being taken over by sub-contractors who then employed locals on wages that could not compete with rises in the price of foodstuffs partially caused by biofuel production.
Raju Sona, a farmer in north-east India who gave up land that usually produces vegetables to grow jatropha, said: “No one will buy jatropha. People said if you have a plantation then surely you have a good market. But we didn’t see such a market. I threw the seeds away.”
A number of British companies are continuing to market jatropha as a “highly ethical and green” investment. One fund offers investors three packages for prices ranging from £7,500 to £15,600 in a brochure entitled “Money really does grow on trees”. That company says it has funded the planting of 32 million jatropha shrubs worldwide through a London-based provider called Carbon Credited Farming (CCF) Plc.
Jeff Reeves, head of global operations for CCF, which estimates it will have 300 million jatropha shrubs planted on 120,000 acres worldwide by the end of 2010, admitted that there had been problems establishing the crop.
He told The Ecologist magazine: “In many cases it is government policy and people that are to blame, rather than jatropha itself. Well-managed, jatropha … can work. But there have been countries where poor management has meant this is not the case.”
D1 Oils, a London-based biofuels company which has invested heavily in jatropha, insisted it was too early to write off the crop as a long-term biofuel source. But its former co-investor, BP, disagreed. A spokesman said: “As other [renewable fuel] technologies came up, we looked again at whether jatropha was going to be the best biofuel source that could be scaled up. There were problems with it. We have decided to look elsewhere.”
* Some of this research appeared in the Ecologist
CRU’s Jones: Climate data ‘not well organised’ and Medieval Warm Period debate ‘not settled’
By Roger Harrabin, Environment analyst, BBC News | February 12, 2010
Phil Jones, the professor behind the “Climategate” affair, has admitted some of his decades-old weather data was not well enough organised.
He said this contributed to his refusal to share raw data with critics – a decision he says he regretted.
But Professor Jones said he had not cheated the data, or unfairly influenced the scientific process.
He said he stood by the view that recent climate warming was most likely predominantly man-made.
But he agreed that two periods in recent times had experienced similar warming. And he agreed that the debate had not been settled over whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period.
These statements are likely to be welcomed by people sceptical of man-made climate change who have felt insulted to be labelled by government ministers as flat-earthers and deniers.
‘Bunker mentality’
Professor Jones agreed that scientists on both sides of the debate could suffer sometimes from a “bunker mentality”.
He said “sceptics” who doubted his climate record should compile their own dataset from material publicly available in the US.
“The major datasets mostly agree,” he said. “If some of our critics spent less time criticising us and prepared a dataset of their own, that would be much more constructive.”
His colleagues said that keeping a paper trail was not one of Professor Jones’ strong points. Professor Jones told BBC News: “There is some truth in that.
“We do have a trail of where the (weather) stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be,” he admitted.
Congenital Climate Abnormalities
By Willis Eschenbach | Watts Up With That? | February 13, 2010
Science is what we use to explain anomalies, to elucidate mysteries, to shed light on unexplained occurrences. For example, there is no great need for a scientific explanation of the sun rising in the morning. If one day the sun were to rise in the afternoon, however, that is an anomaly which would definitely require a scientific explanation. But there is no need to explain the normal everyday occurrences. We don’t need a new understanding if there is nothing new to understand.
Hundreds of thousands of hours of work, and billions of dollars, have been expended trying to explain the recent variations in the climate, particularly the global temperature. But in the rush to find an explanation, a very important question has been left unasked:
Just exactly what unusual, unexpected temperature anomaly are we trying to explain?
The claim is made over and over that humans are having an effect on the climate. But where is the evidence that there is anything that even needs explanation? Where is the abnormal phenomenon? What is it that we are trying to make sense of, what is the unusual occurrence that requires a novel scientific explanation?
There are not a lot of long-term temperature records that can help us in this regard. The longest one is the Central England Temperature record (CET). Although there are problems with the CET (see Sources below), including recent changes in the stations used to calculate it that have slightly inflated the modern temperatures, it is a good starting point for an investigation of whether there is anything happening that is abnormal. Here is that record:
Figure 1. The Central England Temperature Record. Blue line is the monthly temperature in Celsius. Red line is the average temperature. Jagged black line is the 25-year trailing trend, in degrees per century.
Now, where in that record is there anything which is even slightly abnormal? Where is the anomaly that the entire huge edifice of the AGW hypothesis is designed to elucidate? The longest sustained rise is from about 1680 to 1740. That time period also has the steepest rise. The modern period, on the other hand, is barely above the long-term trend despite urban warming. There is nothing unusual about the modern period in any way.
OK, so there’s nothing to explain in the CET. How about another long record?
One of the world’s best single station long-term records is that of the Armagh Observatory in Ireland. It has been maintained with only a couple minor location changes for over 200 years. Figure 2 shows the Armagh record.
Figure 2. Temperature record for Armagh University. Various colored lines as in Figure 1.
We find the same thing in this record as in the CET. The fastest rise was a long, long time ago. The modern rise is once again insignificant. Where in all of this is anything that requires billions of dollars to explain?
Finally, what about the global record? Here, you don’t have to take my word for it. A much chastened Phil Jones (the disgraced former Director of the CRU of email fame), in an interview with the BBC on Friday, February 12, 2010, answered a BBC question as follows:
Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.
So in fact, according to Phil Jones (who strongly believes in the AGW hypothesis) there is nothing unusual about the recent warming either. It is not statistically different from two earlier modern periods of warming. Since these warming periods were before the modern rise in CO2, greenhouse gases cannot have been responsible for those rises.
So my question remains unanswered … where is the anomaly? Where is the unusual occurrence that we are spending billions of dollars trying to explain?
The answer is, there is no unusual warming. There is no anomaly. There is nothing strange or out of the ordinary about the recent warming. It is in no way distinguishable from earlier periods of warming, periods that we know were not due to rising CO2. There is nothing in the record that is in any way different from the centuries-long natural fluctuations in the global climate.
In other words, we have spent billions of dollars and wasted years of work chasing a chimera, a will-of-the-wisp. This is why none of the CO2 explanations have held water … simply because there is nothing unusual to explain.
SOURCES:
CET:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/data/download.html
ARMAGH:
ADJUSTMENTS TO THE CET:
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/004482.html
Jones also makes the interesting argument in the interview that the reason he believes that recent warming is anthropogenic (human-caused) is because climate models can’t replicate it … in other words, he has absolutely no evidence at all, he just has the undeniable fact that our current crop of climate models can’t model the climate. Seems to me like that’s a problem with the models rather than a problem with the climate, but hey, what do I know, I was born yesterday …
No, the Australian drought was not man-made
Another IPCC scare falls apart
By Andrew Bolt | Herald Sun | February 08, 2010
Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human acitivity” and:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd grabbed the scare and exploited it:
BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming…
In parliament yesterday, Kevin Rudd attacked Dr Nelson, accusing him of ignoring scientific facts.
“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”
But the latest evidence indicates that Rudd and Karoly were wrong. In fact, there’s no evidence in the Murray Darling drought of man-made warming, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters:
Previous studies of the recent drought in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) have noted that low rainfall totals have been accompanied by anomalously high air temperatures. Subsequent studies have interpreted an identified trend in the residual time-series of non-rainfall related temperature variability as a signal of anthropogenic change, further speculating that increased air temperature has exacerbated the drought through increasing evapotranspiration rates. In this study, we explore an alternative explanation of the recent increases in air temperature. This study demonstrates that significant misunderstanding of known processes of land surface – atmosphere interactions has led to the incorrect attribution of the causes of the anomalous temperatures, as well as significant misunderstanding of their impact on evaporation within the Murray-Darling Basin…
However, to accept the correlation [between temperature and rainfall] as the sole basis for the attribution of cause to human emissions is to implicitly assume that the correlation represents an entirely correct model of the sole driver of maximum air temperature. This is clearly not the case.
What’s causing the evaporation and temperatures is not (man-made) warming. It’s kind of the other way around: more sunshine, through lack of cloud cover, and lack of rain and therefore evaporation is causing higher temperatures.
Former IPCC Chairman says UN panel is losing credibility
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor | The Sunday Times | February 7, 2010
A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.
Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.
The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.
This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.
The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.
This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself.
In it he wrote: “By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.” The same claims have since been cited in speeches to world leaders by Pachauri and Ban.
Speaking at the 2008 global climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Pachauri said: “In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020.” In a speech last July, Ban said: “Yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by half in some African countries over the next 10 years.”
Speaking this weekend, Field said: “I was not an author on the Synthesis Report but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines.”
Watson said such claims should be based on hard evidence. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change. I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report,” he said.
The claims in the Synthesis Report go back to the IPCC’s report on the global impacts of climate change. It warns that all Africa faces a long-term threat from farmland turning to desert and then says of north Africa, “additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-20 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003)”.
“Agoumi” refers to a 2003 policy paper written for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Canadian think tank. The paper was not peer-reviewed.
Its author was Professor Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan climate expert who looked at the potential impacts of climate change on Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. His report refers to the risk of “deficient yields from rain-based agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000–20 period”.
These claims refer to other reports prepared by civil servants in each of the three countries as submissions to the UN. These do not appear to have been peer-reviewed either.
The IPCC is also facing criticism over its reports on how sea level rise might affect Holland. Dutch ministers have demanded that it correct a claim that more than half of the Netherlands lies below sea level when, in reality, it is about a quarter.
The errors seem likely to bring about change at the IPCC. Field said: “The IPCC needs to investigate a more sophisticated approach for dealing with emerging errors.”
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Iran UN ambassador calls for destruction of all nuclear weapons
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo
Press TV – March 29, 2017
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo has called for the total eradication of nuclear weapons.
Khoshroo reiterated Iran’s call during a UN conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons ban treaty in New York on Tuesday.
“Iran, as a victim of chemical weapons, strongly feels the danger posed by the existence of weapons of mass destruction and is determined to engage actively in international diplomatic efforts to save humanity from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Khoshroo stressed that Iran is committed to its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, which include negotiations based on effective nuclear disarmament measures.
He added that several countries continue to ignore international calls and treaties for nuclear disarmament and even continue to increase their nuclear stockpiles. “They do not have political determination to abandon doctrines of nuclear deterrence and nuclear terror,” he went on to say.
Iran’s UN ambassador noted that boycotting the talks by many countries, including the US, shows that the world’s nuclear powers are by no means committed to the eradication of nuclear arms. Britain and France were also among the some 40 countries that did not join the talks.
“We note that prohibition of nuclear weapons must be accompanied by the elimination of such weapons. There can be no doubt that without complete abolition of nuclear weapons, there will be no absolute guarantee against the danger of nuclear war and the use of such weapons,” Khoshroo added.
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