Category: Climate science

Something for the weekend: poles, podcasts and Chomsky

Casanova - 1996Something for everyone this weekend: a few podcasts to grab, ice news from both ends of the planet, interesting reading, and a great interview with Noam Chomsky. Audio first: Radio NZ National’s Bryan Crump interviewed Prof Jean Palutikof, Director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University in Queensland at the beginning of the week. It’s a wide-ranging discussion: Palutikof is an engaging speaker and frank about the dangers we confront. Grab the podcast now, because it’ll disappear from the RNZ site on Monday.

Continue reading “Something for the weekend: poles, podcasts and Chomsky”

Russian roulette with a rainforest

I reported in a November post that it appeared likely that the 2010 Amazon drought was even more severe than the 2005 drought, itself identified as a 1-in-100-year event. Now Simon Lewis of Leeds University and Paulo Brando of Brazil’s Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and others have published a paper in Science with rainfall analysis showing that the 2010 drought was indeed more widespread and severe than that of 2005.

The 2005 drought killed billions of trees within the rainforest. On the ground monitoring showed that these forests stopped absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere, and as the dead trees rotted they released CO2 to the atmosphere.

 

The press release reports that this new research, co-led by Dr Lewis and Brazilian scientist Dr Paulo Brando, used the known relationship between drought intensity in 2005 and tree deaths to estimate the impact of the 2010 drought.

They predict that Amazon forests will not absorb their usual 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere in both 2010 and 2011, and that a further 5 billion tonnes of CO2 will be released to the atmosphere over the coming years once the trees that are killed by the new drought rot. For context, the United States emitted 5.4 billion tonnes of CO2 from fossil fuel use in 2009.

They can’t be sure, of course, until they have completed forest measurements on the ground and they describe their results as an initial estimate, one which incidentally does not include any emissions from fires which can be extensive during hot and dry years.

The danger is that this could be a precursor of the Amazon rainforest no longer playing the part it does in regulating atmospheric CO2. Simon Lewis:

“Two unusual and extreme droughts occurring within a decade may largely offset the carbon absorbed by intact Amazon forests during that time. If events like this happen more often, the Amazon rainforest would reach a point where it shifts from being a valuable carbon sink slowing climate change, to a major source of greenhouse gasses that could speed it up.”

Of course it is possible that the two droughts are just an unusual natural variation, but Lewis points out that they are consistent with climate models which project a grim future for Amazonia.

Tropical ecologist Daniel Nepstad  is Director of International Programs at IPAM and one of the paper’s authors. He was  interviewed a couple of months ago during the Cancún conference.

“It’s about as bad as we’ve seen. I’ve been working in the Amazon for about 25 years now, and I haven’t seen anything like it. We thought we had the worst drought of the century in 2005, and this one is worse.”

The interviewer comments that the drought in 2005 was called a once-in-a-century drought, just five years ago.

“I know. And, there was a drought in 2007 that didn’t even capture any immediate attention, it wasn’t even worth it because drought is really becoming part of the fabric of the Amazon.”

The cause?

“You know, statistically, it’s just very hard to take an individual event like this mega-drought of the Amazon, and say that it is a direct cause of climate change. But, with both this and the 2005 and the 2007 drought, they’re all consistent with the scenario of increasing accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.”

How does the drought affect the rainforest?

“The forest actually makes the rain in the Amazon. By the end of the dry season, a lot of Amazon trees are sucking water from the soil- it could be 60 feet beneath the ground surface. So, they’re going way down deep to get that water, so that they can keep their green lush canopy, even though they’ve been deprived of water for a few months. And, that water going into the atmosphere makes the clouds that make the rain. Similarly, the rain coming down, if it weren’t for that rain, if those dry seasons got longer on a permanent basis, then that forest would cease to be. It would be replaced by grassy vegetations, savannahs, woodlands and scrub that would burn periodically, and that would look very different and have far fewer species.”

What are scientists supposed to think when confronted with possibilities such as those represented by recent Amazon droughts? That it will be interesting to see whether this is the start of a trend which would confirm predictions of the impacts of increasing greenhouse gases? That without further evidence they must be careful not to sound alarmist? In fact Simon Lewis and Daniel Nepstad are properly cautious, acknowledging that as scientists they can’t say with certainty that these droughts are part of human-caused climate change. But they are also very aware of the magnitude of the danger represented by the droughts if they are the result of increased greenhouse gas emissions. A statement by Lewis reported in a Guardian article expresses succinctly why we can’t just wait to see whether further evidence accumulates.

“We can’t just wait and see because there is no going back. We won’t know we have passed the point where the Amazon turns from a sink to a source until afterwards, when it will be too late.”

In other words the possible consequences are so dire that it is reckless to risk them.

“If greenhouse gas emissions contribute to Amazon droughts that in turn cause forests to release carbon, this feedback loop would be extremely concerning. Put more starkly, current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world’s largest rainforest.”

That’s a serious warning from a scientist. And the Amazon is not an isolated case.  Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, in the presentation Gareth has recently posted, is convinced with good reason that ocean ecosystems are already being seriously impacted under current elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 and that a 450 ppm level will be disastrous for ocean life and consequently for us. The world’s ice is clearly under assault from warming, with the likelihood of sea level rise of fearful consequence to human populations, as scientists like James Hansen now regularly warn. The list is long.

We’re playing Russian roulette with more than the rainforests, and the revolver has more than one chamber loaded. The longer we take to start reducing emissions the more we shorten the odds

Fools gold: cranks can’t count

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. 14 months on from the start of the Treadgold/Climate “Science” Coalition/ACT campaign to cast doubt on the long term New Zealand temperature record, after parliamentary questions, much mud slinging at Jim Salinger and NIWA, legal action, and the expensive and time-wasting reconstruction of a temperature series that’s pretty much identical to the original, diligent digging by Open Parachute/Sciblogs blogger Ken Perrott has revealed a stunning level of statistical incompetence in the “paper” that started it all. Written and published by Richard Treadgold of the Climate Conversation Group, that “paper” contained a graph purporting to show a long term NZ temperature series constructed without adjustments for station moves.

A day or two ago, Treadgold posted a link to the underlying data at his blog, and Perrott — who has been requesting this information for most of the last year — was quick to download it and take a peek “under the hood” of Treadgold’s graph. And what he found was truly remarkable. Treadgold makes no allowances for missing data, makes no attempt to create a valid composite series, simply averages the numbers and plots them on a graph. There are a lot of gaps in the data — especially in the early years — so the “NZ” temperature is in some years just Dunedin, or Dunedin plus Wellington, or Wellington plus Auckland, and so on. Treadgold’s incredible statistical naivete allows him to not just compare apples to oranges, but to feijoas and konini berries as well. The result, of course, is a dog’s breakfast. To make matters worse, he then computed a trend on the data, and announced:

Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.

A whole political campaign has been constructed on the back of this statistical idiocy. Variations of Treadgold’s claim have been used in questions in Parliament. Valuable scientists’ time and tax payer money has been wasted pursuing his folly. The Climate “Science” Coalition are still desperately trying to keep the issue alive, hoping that if they can create enough smoke everyone will assume there’s a fire somewhere. Unfortunately for Barry Brill and his colleagues, Treadgold’s statistical incompetence undercuts their whole campaign. Do they really think the NZ public and politicians will take the word of a bunch that sling mud and smear scientists, when they are incapable of doing their own simple sums?

Congratulations to Ken for unmasking this fraud. I eagerly await the fulsome apology Treadgold owes to Jim Salinger, NIWA and the public of New Zealand. Perhaps the NZ C”S”C might offer to repay some of the tax payer funds wasted on this affair. But I won’t be holding my breath…

Meanwhile, I think it’s worth repeating the conclusion to my first post on this affair:

None of these cranks should be accorded any respect in future. By their words shall we know them, and their words show them to be ignorant, bullying fools. De Freitas [science advisor to the CSC] should withdraw and apologise, or resign from his post at Auckland University, and if Treadgold, Dunleavy, McShane, Leyland,or any other member of the NZ CSC want to partake in public debate on the subject of climate science, they should expect derision to be heaped on them and their views.

 

[Update 10/2: Prompted by Manfred’s comment below, I checked back over the original 7SS data and Treadgold’s spreadsheet — as well as with one or two people who might be expected to know ;-) — and it appears that taking a simple average of the annual anomalies in years where some stations reported no data was NIWA’s practise for the original 7 station series. It’s not ideal, particularly in the very early years when there are large gaps in the data, but it’s how it was done. Treadgold was therefore following established practise, in that one respect. I therefore apologise to Richard for echoing that specific allegation without first checking the data. However, this does not get him off the hook for the rest of his “analysis”, nor prompt me to change my overall conclusions. I accused him of “statistical idiocy” and that charge stands — not least because he derives his anomalies by taking unadjusted or raw station data and relating it to a 1971-2000 baseline derived from different stations at different locations using different measurement equipment, and then pretends that he’s made the warming disappear. Tell that to the glaciers…]

[Stone Roses]

Just as the tide was flowing

Two disparate news items in New Zealand newspapers highlight some of the problems facing any switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. The first is the Environment Court’s welcome approval of Crest Energy’s application to sink 200 turbines to the sea bed of the Kaipara Harbour where the strong tidal flow will be used to generate electricity. The decision follows a 2008 appeal to the Court by Crest Energy against the Northland Regional Council’s decision to allow only 100 turbines. Environmental objection centred around the possible effect on the west coast snapper stocks and possible threats to the survival of the rare Maui’s dolphin. I wrote about the project and other NZ wave and tidal energy projects in a Hot Topic post a year or so ago.

 

The Environment Court approval is hedged with conditions. Crest can sink three turbines initially. If results with three turbines satisfy the Northland Regional Council, the company can add up to 17 more turbines, provided operation of the 20 turbines is monitored for a year to give sufficient information on the impact on fisheries. From there, the council will decide whether to allow turbines to be built up in further stages from 20 to 40, then 80 and then to a maximum of 200.

The director-general of conservation wanted the monitoring of the 20 turbines to last three years, not one. Another iwi-based objector wanted at least three years of monitoring after each stage. The environment court’s decision followed a year of mediation among four objectors.

It’s not my purpose to criticise the objections or the conditions imposed by the Court. Renewable energy development has environmental effects which must be taken into account and judgments made, and I’m certainly in no position to weigh the factors in specific cases. But one hopes that climate change carries very considerable weight in the process. I notice the judge is quoted as saying the proposal is very significant in terms of its contribution to power generation and the national economic interest. Maybe he also said something about the importance of renewable energy in combating climate change and it wasn’t reported. Maybe he linked the national economic interest to clean power and emissions reduction. But maybe that’s outside the Court’s scope.

Which brings me to the second news item where the Grey District mayor pleads for the Pike River mine to be turned into an opencast operation.  There’s billions of dollars’ worth of coal there and the mayor even goes so far as to say that the deceased miners would want to see mining continue. One has to sympathise with the anxieties of West Coast communities whose livelihoods are to a considerable extent bound up with mining. The mayor was explicit that the financial benefits of opencast mining outweigh environmental concerns. Unfortunately he’s wrong if environmental concerns include global warming. There are plenty of environmental concerns around opencast mining of any kind, but when the object is coal those concerns are far greater than the localised disruption and pollution caused by the mining. Climate change concerns overshadow all kinds of coal mining for that matter.

This is tricky territory. West Coast coal is generally of a quality which makes it suitable for steel making and as such is a valuable export product. The coal industry in New Zealand has been invigorated in recent years. Obviously for the time being steel-making is going to need coking coal. Why should New Zealand not benefit financially from supplying that need?

It’s a fair question. However it’s not apparent that anyone involved in the coal industry or in government for that matter thinks in terms of supplying an interim need while the world organises itself to live without coal. That’s not the impetus driving our coal industry. That doesn’t explain Solid Energy’s plans to exploit Southland lignite. The thinking behind the expansion of coal mining and exporting is that there is a lot of money to be made from exploiting our coal resources to their fullest extent. Any cautionary sentiments seem to be along the lines of making sure we don’t move too slowly and miss out on the bonanza.

What unites these two seemingly unrelated pieces of news? The need to give full weight to the enormous threat of climate change. In the one case it lends strong support to a new venture. In the other it warns that the days of coal mining must be considered near an end. At least that’s the logic of the situation we’re in. But apart from the Greens there’s hardly a politician in the country who seems willing to say just that. They seem to be overcome with a collective embarrassment at the thought of expressing deep concern at the prospect of climate change, let alone applying that concern to the coal industry. The embarrassment that appears to inhibit them is dwarfed by the embarrassment of watching them virtually ignore a matter of such consequence for the human future.

[Eliza Carthy]

An immediate halt to CO2 emissions is an absolute necessity…

[vimeo]18924324[/vimeo]

…if we are to maintain the health of ocean ecosystems, says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in this video presentation, given to a symposium at the recent Our Changing Oceans conference in Washington DC. It’s sobering viewing. Here are the primary messages from the symposium:

  • There is a large body of empirical evidence indicating that anthropogenic climate change is substantially impacting ocean ecosystems. The evidence comes from many taxa, locations and habitats.
  • Changes in biological function in the ocean caused by anthropogenic climate change go far beyond death, extinctions and habitat loss: fundamental processes are being altered, community assemblages are being reorganized and ecological surprises are likely.
  • These changes will have significant consequences for people.

Perhaps even more importantly, Ove suggests that 450 ppm atmospheric CO2 is not a comfortable target. Hat tip to Ove’s co-author John Bruno for posting this at Skeptical Science earlier today. See also Ove’s excellent climateshifts.org blog.