Tag: Hansen

Like being savaged by a dead sheep (again)

Denis Healey‘s memorable description of an attack by the mild mannered Geoffrey Howe seems an apt title: it appears that I’ve earned the attention of Anthony Watts and the denizens of his Watts Up With That? (aka µWatts) blog. Apparently he takes my µWatts coinage personally — though I reserve it for the blog, not the man.

Watts post is hilarious. He fulimates about the 10:10 film, links to Wishart to establish my credibility (might as well ask the Pope to give Richard Dawkins a reference), pontificates at length on the fact that he gets more hits than Hot Topic, — a bit like boasting that the USA (pop 307 million) has more ships in its navy than New Zealand (pop 4 million) — and rather digs a hole for himself over Delingpole’s call for a Nuremburg trial for warmists. Apparently Delingpole’s “discovery” that the Bilderberg group had talked about “global cooling” was “important”.  Unfortunately Watts seems to have missed a very early comment under his own post, warning him that the web site Delingpole uses as evidence is a hoax.

The comments don’t disappoint either. Cameron “Whaleoil” Slater chips in to assure Watts that I’ve called him worse (and gets moderated in the process!). Slater’s memory appears a little fallible — he was the one calling me names, as I recall, and the Watts commenters posting here in the last day certainly don’t think I’m moderating harshly. Then there’s a touching little exchange between Watts and Treadgold, in which Treadgold manages to mistake a plastic airline eating utensil for a rapier.

Finally: a word to the wise. Don’t mess with the international truffle grower cabal. It has contacts everywhere. I can reach Jim Hansen via one connection, Pat Michaels via another, and Prince Charles through a third — and they all like truffles. I’ll leave Denis Healey to the Bilderbergers (he was a founding member).

Got myself arrested

“More than 200 years after the founding of our nation, we face a great moral crisis. Human-made climate change pits the rich and powerful against the young and unborn, against the defenseless, and against nature. The moral issue is comparable to slavery and civil rights.”

James Hansen was speaking at Freedom Plaza in Washington this week prior to a march and a sit-in in front of the White House, an act of non-violent civil disobedience which resulted in his arrest along with a hundred or so other participants. They were protesting against the Appalachian mountain top removal coal mining.

Hansen’s speaking style is hardly that of an orator, but his address included some striking statements which convey very adequately the urgency he feels as the result of his work as a climate scientist.

“First, the government is failing to protect the future of young people, knowingly allowing and even subsidizing actions that benefit the few at the expense of the public and at the expense of all life sharing this Earth.

“Second, the legislative and executive branches of government knowingly propose actions that demonstrably and utterly fail to preserve our climate, and the environment for life.

“Third, our government allows and contributes to a great hoax, perpetrated on the public by moneyed interests, aimed at confusing the public about the reality of climate change.

“We are in danger of becoming the land for the rich and the home of the bribe.”

This is not the first time Hansen has been arrested. And it may not be the last. He was arrested in June of last year when with others he deliberately trespassed on the grounds of the Goals Coal plant, in Sundial, West Virginia, again to protest mountaintop-removal mining.

A parallel with the civil rights struggle is very much in his mind. After the words which open this post he went on to point out that the solution for civil rights came from a combination of street protests and the courts “which provided equal protection of the laws and ordered desegregation.”

He looks to the possibility of similar court action on the issue of climate change, and rightly stresses the focus of civil disobedience on achieving change:

“We should not be begging courts to forgive the brave people who protest. We must ask the courts to order the government to present plans to phase down fossil fuel emissions at a pace dictated by science, a pace stabilizing climate, preserving nature and a future for young people, providing young people equal protection of the laws.”

But whatever path may be open for action in the US Hansen continues to put emphasis on the education of the public.

“We can bring that case. But we can win only if the public understands the situation, sees through the lies of the moneyed interests, sees what is needed to solve the problem.”

As a scientist who has done a great deal to explain the situation resulting from rising greenhouse gas emissions and to articulate the solutions Hansen has already contributed greatly to the educational process.  His willingness to engage in civil disobedience highlights the gravity of what he and other scientists have uncovered in our deteriorating environment. We salute him for his continuing engagement.

[Gomez]

Bjorn again: Lomborg’s convenient change of heart

Climate protestors at AberdeenBjorn Lomborg is in the news again. He’s changed his tune, says a Guardian headline, announcing the forthcoming publication of a new book edited by him, Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits. That was a pretty quick change, I thought, recalling what I heard him say on a panel at the PEN World Voices Festival, back in May. He followed the famed Norwegian novelist Jostein Gaarder and the leading climatologist James Hansen. I wrote about it on Hot Topic at the time. Neither the passion of Gaarder nor the scientific logic of Hansen was for him. He admittedly presented himself as an advocate for tackling global warming, but without a shred of scientific reference he spoke of the need for “balanced information” and a move from the end-of-world kind of story.  “Apocalyptic information” turns people off, he said, and is part of the reason why there has been a decline in public concern about global warming over the past year. That, plus problems in the IPCC report such as those relating to the Himalayan glaciers. In other words, it’s the scientists who point to the great danger we are in who are to blame for the lack of public concern. The relentless denialist campaign seemingly has nothing to do with it. As I listened I simply thought you obviously haven’t bothered to follow the science. You’ve sniffed out a strategic political position, safely positioned between science and denial. Perhaps that was unfair of me. But I’d reviewed Howard Friel’s painstaking book The Lomborg Deceptiona few weeks previously, and what Lomborg was saying fitted Friel’s analysis.

 

Then just last month he produced an article (accessible from here) claiming that we have the capacity to readily adapt to even a 6 metre sea level rise. Only 400 million people would be affected, about 6% of the world’s population, and most of them live in cities where they could be protected relatively easily.

“94% of the population would not be inundated. And most of those who do live in the flood areas would never even get their feet wet. […] The point isn’t that we can or should ignore global warming. The point is that we should be wary of hyperbolic predictions. More often than not, what sound like horrific changes in climate and geography actually turn out to be manageable – and in some cases even benign.”

This hardly presaged a change of tune. I haven’t seen a copy of the new book, nor will I be seeking to. But books take time to publish and the things that an author is saying and writing in the months preceding release are unlikely to be at variance with what the forthcoming book will have to say.

Joe Romm, who is deeply unimpressed by the news of the book, quotes from its penultimate paragraph:

“It is unfortunate that so many policy makers and campaigners have become fixated on cutting carbon in the near term as the chief response to global warming.”

“Seriously” is Romm’s one-word response.

It’s not that Lomborg thinks we can avoid responding to global warming. It’s rather that he has a better way than cutting emissions. His final paragraph:

“If we care about the environment and about leaving this planet and its inhabitants with the best possible future, we actually have only one option: we all need to start seriously focusing, right now, on the most effective ways to fix global warming.”

That involves using money raised by a carbon tax (a small one of $7 a ton, in case that alarms anyone).

“Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century.”

Sounds like good news. And in some ways it is. The areas that Lomborg and his fellow writers propose spending money on include research and development of clean energy options, planting more trees, reducing soot and methane, and investigating geo-engineering projects such as “cloud whitening”. There’s little to argue with there, and presumably that’s how he managed to get a commendation of the book from Rajendra Pachauri, who welcomed Lomborg’s statement that we have ‘long moved on from any mainstream disagreements about the science of climate change’.

So it looks like a change of emphasis from Lomborg, though he maintains he has never denied anthropogenic global warming. He even acknowledged to the Guardian reporter that there could be “something really bad lurking around the corner”. But it’s hardly change enough. Cutting carbon emissions is our only hope of avoiding really serious multiple consequences from global warming. That is the clear message of the science. The notion that we can get by without seriously addressing that need is not founded on science. Lomborg’s message is welcomed by fossil fuel vested interests because it suggests we can carry on doing what we are at the same time as covering any damage we may be laying up for the future. Gerry Brownlee’s draft NZ Energy Strategy fits very nicely into that delusion.

I’ll give Howard Friel, writing in the Guardian, the last word.

“Lomborg still argues in this book, as he did in the others, that cost-benefit economics analysis shows that it is prohibitively expensive for the world to sharply reduce CO2 emissions to the extent required by the scientific evidence.

“…what will happen to the earth and human civilisation when atmospheric CO2 concentrations rise – essentially unchecked, if we followed Lomborg’s recommendations – to 450 parts per million, 550ppm, 700ppm, 800ppm; and when the average global temperature rises by 2C, 3C, and 4C to 7C?

“Climate scientists have set 350ppm and a 2C average temperature rise (from 1750 to 2100) as the upper range targets to prevent a global climate disaster. Since we are already at 390ppm and since a 2C plus rise is a near certainty, how does Lomborg’s appeal to forgo sharp reductions in CO2 emissions reflect climate science? He argues that there are ‘smarter solutions to climate change’ than a focus on reducing CO2. This is hardly smart: it’s insanity.”

Time to ring some changes

Climate protestors at Aberdeen The results of the first climate trial in Scotland’s history were declared a few days ago when the court imposed modest fines ranging from £300 to £700 on each of nine activists who had broken into the Aberdeen airport in protest against the soaring carbon dioxide emissions caused by aviation.

Dan Glass, one of the nine, has commented:

“We’re not terrorists, we’re people who believe delivering our message on climate change is worth being charged and fined…We are secretaries, parents, cooks, community workers, architects and saxophonists. We are part of a growing movement of concerned citizens who are prepared to put our bodies in the way of dangerous high-carbon developments.”

He spoke of their action as “justified, proportionate and necessary” in the face of catastrophic climate change, and quoted Michael Mansfield QC, one of Britain’s best-known defence barristers, who a couple of days prior to the sentencing said:

“As I write, one fifth of Pakistan, already blighted by earthquakes, is covered with flood waters threatening the health and safety of over six million people. Without conscientious and principled protest which focuses on the undoubted factors which contribute to this decimation of the environment, the urgency of the problem will not be addressed. I trust these entirely legitimate and selfless objectives will be reflected in the way the Climate 9 are judged by the court.”

It looks as if they were.

Continue reading “Time to ring some changes”

Keep right on to the end of the road

When one spends a good deal of time following what scientists working on climate change are saying, it’s hard to understand how the community at large and politicians in particular can appear so unaffected by the prospect ahead if we don’t radically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The only conclusion is that they haven’t yet understood the full reality of the science.

James Hansen is notably one scientist who has been much exercised by this fact. He and his co-writers offer some reflections on the communication of the status of global warming to the public in a summary discussion at the end of their revised paper Global Surface Temperature Change, which has been accepted for publication in Reviews of Geophysics. The comments on communication are carefully characterised as opinion and differentiated from the primary scientific contribution of the paper. But it is entirely understandable that scientists should be exercised about why there appears to be so much difficulty having a subject of such “surpassing importance” communicated clearly to the public.

 

The paper notes first that weather variability hampers lay people’s perceptions, a difficulty which can best be addressed by drawing attention to the changes in frequency and magnitude of changes from the norm apparent on decadal time scales as warming increases.

The writers then remark the media’s difficulties in framing long-term problems as news, the preference for sensationalism, the generally low level of familiarity with basic science, and the preference for ‘balance’ in every story.

The politicisation of reporting of global warming compounds these difficulties. The paper acknowledges that politicisation is perhaps inevitable given the economic and social implications of altering the course of human-made climate change. Alleviating it is made more difficult by attacks on the character and credibility of scientists, which appear to have been effective in causing many in the public to doubt the reality or seriousness of climate change.

What can scientists do about this? Keep on keeping on:

“…the best hope may be repeated clear description of the science and passage of sufficient time to confirm validity of the description.”

Hansen acknowledges the danger is that while we wait for this to happen the climate system could pass tipping points that cause major climate changes to proceed largely out of humanity’s control.

“Yet continuation of careful scientific description of ongoing climate change seems to be essential for the sake of minimizing the degree of future climate change, even while other ways are sought to draw attention to the dangers of continued greenhouse gas increases.”

The paper, these reflections apart, continues precisely such careful scientific description, updating and discussing the Goddard Institute’s analysis of global surface change and showing that contrary to popular misconception the rate of warming has not declined.

“Global warming on decadal time scales is continuing without letup… we conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.”

The Australian Academy of Science last week produced a worthy effort to communicate the science with the publication of Climate Change: Questions and Answers (web, pdf). It is a lucid account for the lay reader of the central features of climate science as currently understood by its practitioners. In his foreword the President of the Academy, Kurt Lambeck, points to some of the complexities which beset the communication of climate science. It is at the intersection of a number of science disciplines and sub-disciplines.

“It is at this intersection of the disciplines where uncertainty can and will arise, both because of the yet poorly understood feedbacks between the different components of the climate system and because of the difficulty of bringing these components together into a single descriptive and predictive model.”

Equal complexities may be evident in many other areas of experimental science, but they bear special weight in climate:

“What makes climate change different is that the consequences are not only potentially global and serious but also that they occur over long time scales (decades to centuries) so that actions need to be contemplated before full understanding is achieved.”

The Academy has produced the document to try to aid public understanding and to tread a path through the often contradictory public commentary on the science. Lambeck emphasises that it is not intended as a formulation of a public response, but as “an attempt to improve the public understanding of the science upon which any policy response should be constructed.”

The document is a model of clarity in its explanations of the science and restrained in its presentation of the impacts of global warming. Look at the careful language which communicates truly alarming but well-founded predictions:

“If emissions continue unabated, current mid-range estimates are for 4.5°C higher global average temperatures by 2100 which would mean that the world would be hotter than at any time in the last few million years. Sea level would continue to rise for many centuries. The impacts of such changes are difficult to predict, but are likely to be severe for human populations and for the natural world. The further climate is pushed beyond the envelope of relative stability that has characterised the last several millennia, the greater becomes the risk of passing tipping points that will result in profound changes in climate, vegetation, ocean circulation or ice sheet stability.”

What policy response should be constructed on that?  A 5% reduction in emissions in Australia by 2020 from a 2000 base says Tony Abbott, who prevaricates on whether humans are causing climate change.  It depends what a citizen’s assembly comes up with says Julia Gillard, who affirms she believes in human-caused climate change.

Scientific bodies must use measured language. But it shouldn’t be asking too much of policy makers and the educated public to translate it into the urgent awareness that it demands from anyone who takes the trouble to attend to it. How much longer will that be delayed?

[Harry Lauder!]