Climate Progress

Science journalist Chris Mooney, author of the must-read Republican War on Science, has a post at Science Progress titled, “Enablers: Sometimes Refuting Unscientific Nonsense Reinforces It.” This is a provocative and timely post, given the recent tussles I’ve been having with deniers and delayers.

I’ve talked to Chris, and his occasional co-blogger, Matthew Nisbet (who has a related post here), many times. And while we are probably 95% in agreement on most things climate, I don’t quite buy their argument here:

So we’ve reached a point where we may well be wasting our energies if we continue to battle climate skeptics. Indeed, we run the risk of propping them up far more than they deserve.

For that’s the other problem with constantly rebutting anti-science forces–not only does it waste our time, but it may play right into their hands. Consider: Over at his blog Framing Science, Matthew Nisbet makes a very strong case that the rhetorical strategy of the Heartland Institute is exceedingly similar to that of the anti-evolutionist think tank the Discovery Institute. If so, it follows that the defenders of climate science ought to be at least as leery of outright engagement with Heartland as the defenders of evolutionary science are when it comes to engaging with Discovery.

The reason is that if you actually bother to rebut the Heartlands and Discoverys of the world, you instantly enter into a discourse on their own terms. The strategic framing these groups employ to attack mainstream science heavily features the rhetoric of scientific uncertainty….

The key issue is what Chris means by “battle climate skeptics.” I tend to agree it is pointless to debate them one on one, as the listening audience can hardly be expected to adjudicate scientific arguments, so it is a losing proposition, and I rarely waste my time doing it any more. And as I’ve recently blogged, I think it is also a waste of time (for me) to keep rebutting long-debunked denier talking points that someone posts in the comments of this blog.

But I do a lot of radio shows, and conservatives and libertarians (most, but not all, well-meaning people) inevitably call in, repeating old and new denier talking points. The same for lectures I give. I must rebut those points clearly and succinctly, or I will convince nobody. All progressives need to have that ability, even if they don’t give talks on the subject, but merely argue with a non-progressive friend or relative. So I feel some obligation on this blog to rebut new denier talking points — like the “Earth is cooling” crap. Indeed, that was one of the reasons this blog was created.

The other advantage of doing it on a blog is that one can build up an entire database of links about the problem and the solution, so I (and others) don’t have to keep rebutting the same points — you can just refer people to the relevant posts, either here or at the few other sites that do this.

That said, I am a big believer in strategic framing, which is why I use the word “delayer” more than “denier” [I still use the term denier occasionally, in headlines for instance, since it is better known]. Delayer or delayer-1000 focuses the debate on the need for action and makes clear that the goal of the deniers is to delay action. And that’s why I insist people who want to engage in a debate answer the question: “If you were running national and global climate policy, what level of global CO2 concentrations would be your goal and how would you achieve it?”

Because if we go to 1000 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, then all debate and uncertainty in the science disappears — the planet’s livability will be destroyed for hundreds if not thousands of years.

I do not believe the climate issue has much analogy to the evolution issue. The creationists/intelligent-designers are mainly arguing over science in the public arena primarily because they don’t want evolution taught. The stakes are very low — at best you end up with some poorly educated kids and the country falls behind in bio-tech research that someone else will do.

The deniers/delayers are mainly arguing over science in the public arena because they don’t want action on climate. The stakes are enormous. If they succeed in delaying action much longer, we will be condemning the next 10 billion people who walk the earth to untold misery and strife. The public (and hence the media) needs to get the facts on climate science and climate solutions, much more than they need to get the facts about evolution (don’t get me wrong, though — scientists need to vigorously defend evolution).

And that means everybody needs to be educated about the science. Matt writes:

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[JR: Geo-engineering is to mitigation as chemotherapy is to diet & exercise. You can find some more specific reasons geo-engineering is unlikely to make sense at these posts: “Geo-engineering remains a bad idea” and “Geo-Engineering is NOT the Answer.” Note I will be blogging again on this shortly. Absent strong mitigation efforts, geo-engineering will not stop catastrophic outcomes, like the end of most ocean life.]

TIME magazine has declared geo-engineering one of “10 Ideas That Are Changing the World.”

“Messing with nature caused global warming,” TIME wrote. “Messing with it more might fix it.”

What are they thinking?

For the record: I have a lot of respect for engineers. They have taken us into space and landed us on the moon with incomprehensible precision. Every time we cross a bridge or speed down the freeway at 75 miles per hour, we trust our lives to engineers. Thanks to engineers, we keep our beer cold and our showers hot, and wake up every morning with confidence that our coffee has been brewed. There’s virtually nothing in our material life that has not been touched by engineering.

I should also define the type of geo-engineering I’m about to address. It includes attempts to mitigate global warming by deploying mirrors in space, using high-altitude balloons to inject dust and soot into the atmosphere, using aircraft to spray aluminum particles into the troposphere, burning sulfur to increase cloud cover and dumping iron oxide into the ocean to stimulate plankton growth.

Should we depend on measures such as these to reverse climate change? For ethical and practical reasons, the answer is no.

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Yes, I know you’ve all heard we’ve had “record” refreezing of Arctic ice. Big shock, there. We had record melting followed by a temporary cooling La Niña event. What those denier/delayer-1000 talking points don’t tell you is that the refrozen ice is very thin and still at record low levels following the staggering ice loss this summer.

To set the record straight, on Wednesday, the National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA had a teleconference to show the surprising and alarming new data from NASA’s ICESat satellite, which revealed over the past year “the steepest yearly decline in perennial [i.e. old, thick] ice on record” (click to enlarge):

The key point is that ice volume is ice area times ice thickness. The seasonal ice (1 year or less old) is thinner and will quickly melt away and disburse in the wind. This is global warming, folks:

On March 18 the scientists said they believe that the increased area of sea ice this winter is due to recent weather conditions, while the decline in perennial ice reflects the longer-term warming climate trend and is a result of increased melting during summer and greater movement of the older ice out of the Arctic.

The Washington Post has a must-read story on this today:

“Because we had a cold winter, the public might think things have gotten better,” said Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “In fact, the loss of the perennial ice makes clear that they’re not getting better at all.“

The surprising drop in perennial ice makes the fast-changing region more unstable, because the thinner seasonal ice melts readily in summer….

Flying over the Arctic, one might perceive the sea ice cover as broad, Meier said, but that apparent breadth hides the fact that the ice is so thin. “It’s a facade, like a Hollywood set,” he said. “There’s no building behind it.”

What a perfect metaphor for the delayers. Their arguments seem solid and impressive, but “It’s a facade, like a Hollywood set. There’s no building behind it.”

All of this thinning data comes comes on the heel of the February data reported from NOAA’s National Climactic Data Center, which pointed out that the area of Arctic ice is still historically small:

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…. and you’ll see a picture of Japan Steel Works Ltd — “the only plant in the world … capable of producing the central part of a nuclear reactor’s containment vessel in a single piece, reducing the risk of a radiation leak.”

The bottleneck: In a single year, they can currently only make “four of the steel forgings that contain the radioactivity in a nuclear reactor.” They may double capacity over the next two years, but that won’t allow the huge ramp up in nuclear power that some are projecting for the industry.

Given Japan Steel’s limited capacity, the math just doesn’t work, said Mycle Schneider, an independent nuclear industry consultant near Paris. Japan Steel caters to all nuclear reactor makers except in Russia, which makes its own heavy forgings.

“I find it just amazing that so many people jumped on the bandwagon of this renaissance without ever looking at the industrial side of it,” Schneider said.

At the same time, that capacity increase represents a gamble that the nuclear renaissance is here to stay, even in the face of a US recession, safety concerns, and a historically volatile industry.

Bloomberg has a very thorough article on the company, its potential competition, and “the precision and patience required to fashion a 600-ton steel ingot into a tube with walls 30 centimeters (12 inches) thick”:

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Seriously! In a post ironically titled “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” (actually you can — that’s what most deniers do), Roger Pielke, Jr. responds to my last post (that challenged his absurd defense of the “Earth is cooling” nonsense) as follows:

And people wonder why some people see the more enthusiastic climate advocates akin to religious zealots.

Who are these “some people” Pielke cites? Go to his link — why, “some people” is none other than NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who became famous in the climate arena for saying:

To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.

That would seem to be “making it up” for the head of NASA, and it put Griffin square in the middle of the denier camp and makes him a major delayer. As I blogged at the time:

So it is arrogant to want to preserve the climate that gave us human civilization, to avoid 80 feet of sea level rise, mass desertification, and the like. He really needs to talk to one of his employees about just what dangerous climate change means for this planet.

So Pielke cites denier/delayer Griffin his defense. And yet Pielke’s upset I called him a delayer. I realize rereading it that one could perhaps read my post to say I called him a denier, but I merely meant to call him a delayer. Note to Pielke — if you aren’t a delayer, I’d love to hear your answer to the key question:

“If you were running national and global climate policy, what level of global CO2 concentrations would be your goal and how would you achieve it?”

But it is absurd for Pielke to naively write on his blog:

Now according to Grist Magazine’s Joe Romm I am a “delayer/denier” because I’ve asked what data would be inconsistent with IPCC predictions. Revealed truths are not to be questioned lest we take you to the gallows.

No, you aren’t a delayer because you’ve “asked what data would be inconsistent with IPCC predictions.” You are because you wrote a long post giving credence to the notion — which is clearly at odds with the data — that the climate is in a cooling trend. In fact, you begin with a graph that implies we’ve been in a major cooling trend since 2001 and you yourself write of “the recent cooling in the primary datasets of global temperature.”

Roger, do you think the data shows it has been cooling since 2001? If so, then I don’t know what to call you but “delayer” is the mildest thing I can think of. Denier of science would be fair, I think — since that ain’t what the data shows, as the Hadley Center (and NASA) folks I cite explain.

If you don’t think the data shows it has been cooling since 2001, then why not say so in your post — rather than titling it “Update on Falsification of Climate Predictions,” which, given the graph and your comments, sounds like you are saying recent data has falsified climate predictions, which they have not.

So I stand by my comments — Shame on you!

The deniers/delayer-1000s cite recent UK Hadley Center data to promote their “climate is cooling” disinformation. Even Roger Pielke, Jr. is peddling this nonsense with his recent inanely titled post, “Update on Falsification of Climate Predictions.” Falsification? Gimme a break!

The 8 warmest years in the 150 global temperature record are, according to the Hadley Center, in order, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2007 – those are also the 8 warmest years in the NASA record, in a different order, starting with 2005, then 2007 tied with 1998). Where the heck is the cooling trend? Shame on you, Pielke for lending your name and website to this delayer-1000 nonsense.

It is only fair to ask what the Hadley Center thinks its data shows (much as we’ve heard NASA explain that its data shows unequivocal warming). Answer: they believe it unequivocally shows we are in a warming trend, including this decade. They make one of the best analytical points I have seen in the whole discussion of this cooling nonsense:

Another way of looking at the warming trend is that 1999 was a similar year to 2007 as far the cooling effects of La Niña are concerned. The 1999 global temperature was 0.26 °C above the 1961-90 average, whereas 2007 is expected to be 0.41 °C above this average, 0.15 °C warmer than 1999.

[And this explanation doesn’t even note that total solar irradiance in 1999 was 0.3 W/m2 higher than in 2007, which might actually reduce 2007’s temperature relative to 1999 by some 0.1°C!]

This comes from a terrific page titled, “Climate Change Myths” by Prof. John Mitchell, Chief Scientist at the Met Office. One of the myths he debunks is “Myth 6 — 1998 was the warmest year in the global annual temperature record and this has led some to claim that temperatures have been decreasing ever since.” Here is his reply — it is worth reprinting and reading in its entirety:

1998 saw an exceptional El Niño event which contributed strongly to that record-breaking year. Research shows that an exceptional El Niño can warm global temperatures by about 0.2 °C in a single year, affecting both the ocean surface and the land air temperatures. It is therefore not surprising that 1998 appears as a warm outlier. Had any recent years experienced such an El-Niño, it is very likely that this record would have been broken. More recently, 2005 was also an unusually warm year, the second highest in the global record, but was not boosted by the El Niño conditions that augmented the warmth of 1998.

The fact remains that the rise in underlying surface temperature has averaged in excess of 0.15 °C per decade since the mid-1970s. A simple mathematical calculation of the temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade. The warming trend can be seen in the graph (right, top) of observed global temperatures. The red bars show the global annual surface temperature, which exhibit year-to-year variability. The blue line clearly shows the upward trend, far greater than the uncertainties which are shown as thin black bars. Recent slight slowing of the warming is due to a shift towards more-frequent La Niña conditions in the Pacific since 1998. These bring cool water up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, cooling global temperatures.

Prof. Mitchell then makes the comparison that 2007 was 0.15 °C warmer than 1999. Finally, he writes:

The diagram [below] ranks global temperatures for the last 150 years. It can be seen that the 17 warmest years all occur in the last 20 years.

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As if we didn’t have enough reasons to dislike corn ethanol (and here).

Some aquatic dead zones are primarily due to global warming, and some are due to fertilizer runoff. In the future the two will combine with acidification to wipe out most ocean life if we don’t change course soon. Now a new study says U.S. corn ethanol policy will aggravate the New Jersey-size (!) area of hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.

As Scientific American explains:

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Here is the draft of the long-awaited defense of why we need an ultimate target of 350 ppm for atmospheric carbon dioxide, by NASA’s James Hansen et al., “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” [Yes, they know we’re already at 385 ppm and rising 2 ppm a year.]

The paper does suffer from one inherent analytical weakness that makes it (a tad) less dire than it appears — and some people believe the core element of this analysis is wrong (see very end of post), although I don’t.

This paper is really just a continuation of Hansen’s earlier analysis arguing that the real-world or long-term climate sensitivity of the planet to doubled CO2 [550 ppm] is 6°C — twice the short-term or fast-feedback-only climate sensitivity used by the IPCC. [You might want to read this post first since it is a bit clearer on the difference between the two sensitivities.]

The key paleoclimate finding of the article:

We infer from the Cenozoic data that CO2 was the dominant Cenozoic forcing, that CO2 was only ~450 ppm when Antarctica glaciated, and that glaciation is reversible.

That is, if we stabilize at 450 ppm (or higher) we risk returning the planet to conditions when it was largely ice free, when sea levels were higher by 70 meters — more than 200 feet!

Three years ago, Hansen (and others) argued in Science that [due to fast feedbacks], we would warm another “0.6°C without further change of atmospheric composition” [i.e. with no more CO2 emissions]. Now he’s saying “Warming ‘in the pipeline’, most due to slow feedbacks, is now about 2°C.” So the paper concludes:

An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

The inherent weakness of the paper from a policy perspective is that even if you accept their analysis (which many will not), the authors do not know how long we can overshoot 350, which is a function of not just the duration of the overshoot, but the magnitude (i.e. how high concentrations go). They note: “The time needed for slow feedbacks to ‘kick in’ is uncertain. Current models are inadequate and no paleoclimate analogue to the rapid human-made GHG increase exists.” We are truly running a first-of-a-kind experiment on the climate.

The authors write “paleoclimate and ongoing changes, and the ocean response time, suggest that it would be foolhardy to allow CO2 to stay in the dangerous zone for centuries.” Well, of course, but centuries is a long time. The authors argue:

Humanity’s task of moderating human-caused global climate change is urgent. Ocean and ice sheet inertias provide a buffer delaying full response by centuries, but there is a danger that human-made forcings could drive the climate system beyond tipping points such that change proceeds out of our control.

That, of course, is a central point of this blog.

On the other hand, the authors make clear that reducing concentrations is not easy even if we do not key cross carbon cycle feedback tipping points. Moreover, recent analysis suggests that “if emissions were eliminated entirely, radiative forcing from atmospheric CO₂ would decrease at a rate closely matched by declining ocean heat uptake, with the result that while future warming commitment may be negligible, atmospheric temperatures may not decrease appreciably for at least 500 years.”

So I suspect the authors are right that 450 ppm is too high if maintained for even a few centuries. On the other hand, realistically, 350 ppm is simply not going to be seen again this century. The authors write:

This target [350 ppm] must be pursued on a timescale of decades, as paleoclimate and ongoing changes, and the ocean response time, suggest that it would be foolhardy to allow CO2 to stay in the dangerous zone for centuries.

The ill-defined difference between decades and centuries is key. What if we could keep the peak below 450 ppm, and start concentrations declining by 2100, which would almost certainly require near-zero if not net-negative global emissions, and then get back to near 350 ppm by, say 2150 and then even lower by 2200? Would that be good enough? As I argued in my book, I believe that with a World War II scale effort for the next few decades, we could stay below 450. My take away from this paper is that we would need to keep up that level of effort through 2100 — to get back below current levels.

The final point of the paper deserves reprinting:

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Here’s a continuation of the “It’s Easy Being Green” series from the Center for American Progress:

In response to the City of Buffalo’s plan to demolish 1,000 buildings a year for the next 10 years, Michael Gainer started Buffalo ReUse in 2006. The nonprofit’s full-time crew employs hybrid deconstruction–a combination of human labor and a telescopic forklift–as an alternative to demolition. They remove and reuse building materials, including lumber, fixtures, and architectural detail. What isn’t removed is recycled, which means less material in landfills.

In its first year and a half, Buffalo ReUse has deconstructed 10 houses, diverting nearly 30 tons of debris from landfills. They’ve obtained seed funding of nearly $250,000, developed a board of directors and a growing volunteer staff, and opened a retail store to sell the reused building materials from their deconstructions.

The organization is also supporting LEED building credits for developers to encourage more “green-minded” development and accepting donations from homeowners of new or used building materials.

To promote education about their practice, Buffalo ReUse has teamed up with the Building Materials Reuse Association and is sponsoring the first Great Lakes Deconstruction Conference in Buffalo in November of this year. The conference will explore the use of deconstruction, building materials reuse, and other creative solutions to address issues unique to abandoned housing and vacant lots in Great Lakes urban centers.

– Kari M.

“Record Glacier Thinning Means No Time to Waste on Agreeing New International Climate Regime,” said the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on Sunday.

That statement is based on the data of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), which “has been tracking the fate of glaciers for over a century. Continuous data series of annual mass balance, expressed as thickness change, are available for 30 reference glaciers since 1980.” Here’s the mean annual specific net balance:

“The Service calculates thickening and thinning of glaciers in terms of ‘water equivalent’. The estimates for the year 2006 indicate that further shrinking took place equal to around 1.4 metres [1400 mm] of water equivalent compared to losses of half a metre in 2005.”

Prof. Dr. Wilfried Haeberli, Director of the Service said:

“The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight…. This continues the trend in accelerated ice loss during the past two and a half decades.”

I know what you’re thinking: “Trend? No end in sight? But Dr. Haeberli, everybody knows the globe is cooling, and the apparent warming is just the urban heat island effect plus lousy temperature-recording stations.” As Dr. Haeberli might reply, if he had Jon Stewart’s sensibility, “Damn you, 30 reference glaciers!”

Why should we care about a bunch of melting glaciers?

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