Category: Climate science

Amazongate closes on Sunday Times: Simon Lewis fights back

Jonathan Leake and the Sunday Times got a lot of mileage out of his disgraceful Amazongate article, which I wrote about in February. It was pleasing to read yesterday in Climate Progressthat tropical forest researcher Simon Lewis has lodged an official complaint to the UK’s Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

The IPCC wrote:

“Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation.”

Jonathan Leake opened his article:

“A startling report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.”

Simon Lewis writes in the course of his 31 page PCC complaint (pdf, published by ClimateProgress.org):

“Specifically, I consider this article to be materially misleading. I am the scientific expert cited in the article who was asked about the alleged “bogus rainforest claim”. In short, there is no “bogus rainforest claim”, the claim made by the UN panel was (and is) well-known, mainstream and defensible science, as myself and two other professional world-class rainforest experts (Professor Oliver Phillips and Professor Dan Nepstad) each told Jonathan Leake.”

 

Lewis wrote this to Leake prior to the article: “The IPCC statement itself is poorly written, and bizarrely referenced, but basically correct.”  Leake, with the help (“research” they called it) of well-known denialist Richard North, strove to give the impression that the statement was scientifically dodgy and by highly selective reporting implied, by omission, that Lewis agreed with them.

Lewis posted a comment on the Sunday Times website saying that he was the expert referred to and that the article was misleading. His comment was deleted. He also wrote a letter to the editor, early enough to allow publication the following Sunday. The letter was neither acknowledged nor published.

However, the PCC complaint appears to have caused some reaction. As told on Climate Progress today Lewis had a message on his answerphone from the letters editor saying it has been recognised that the story is flawed and offering to print his letter, nearly two months old.  Lewis will not now agree to the publishing of his letter, since it would mean that he was associated with a “flawed” article.  He says to Joe Romm that the article ought to be taken down from the website and an apology be issued in its place, or that the PCC complaint should run its course.

Romm comments:

“I agree that this is no time for yet another uber-lame, after-the-fact correction/letter on a dreadful piece of disinformation that has ricocheted through the media and blogosphere, disinformation that has probably been seen by well over 10 times as many people as would ever see the correction or letter.

“The Sunday Times should simply take the piece down and issue a retraction and apology.  At the very least, now that they have admitted the story is ‘flawed’, they should take the piece down until the PCC issues its ruling.”

It’s good to see a scientist fighting back against deliberate misrepresentation which starts in one newspaper and then takes wings in the media. It would take some time to prepare a complaint of the length that Lewis has written, and is no doubt a considerable distraction from his work. But dignified silence from scientists who are misused or attacked plays into the hands of the denialists and the uncritical media who have loosed the extraordinary torrent of misinformation which has been abroad in recent months. Lewis is to be applauded for his action.

Late addition: Evidently the renewable energy industry in the UK is also considering making a complaint to the PCC regarding a misleading story Leake has written about wind farms. He cherry-picks the worst performing wind farms to make a case that wind farms are a “feeble” source of electricity. Tim Lambert at Deltoid has the details.

Talk in the town

Last night’s session with the Skeptics in the Pub in Christchurch was an interesting experience (some nice feedback too, thanks). It gave me a chance to develop a few of the thoughts that have been running through my mind recently — and it’s good to do that by presenting them to an audience willing to explore and challenge ideas. The question session at the end ran for about 40 minutes, and the best moment came when one sceptic (no “k”, he was clearly of the “not persuaded” variety) had been pushing me for a worst case. I said that it was conceivable that climate change could end our civilisation. The questioner turned to the rest of the audience and asked them if they really believed that, to receive a chorus of agreement and nods. That’s what happens in the real world: when sceptics leave the comfortable certainty of Wishart-world or Treadgold territory, µWatts or Morano’s depot, they find that the rational world is coming to terms with the real risks.

I promised the group I would make my slides available: they’re here [3.3MB pdf]. The first half of the talk dealt with some basics, and ended with a Katey Walter earth fart lighting session. I then moved on to explore some of the reasons why there is so much manufactured doubt about the reality or seriousness of climate change. The slides are reasonably self-explanatory, happy to discuss in comments.

References/credits:

Many thanks to John Cook at Skeptical Science for making so much of the necessary material so easy to find and use. And for the iPhone app…

[The (older) Pretenders]

What makes sea level rise uneven

An illuminating article by Michael Lemonick just published in Yale Environment, which I summarise here, communicates some of the developing understanding of just how uneven sea level rise is likely to prove.  It will vary greatly by region. There are a number of reasons for this.  One is that the land is actually rising in some places, including northern Canada and Scandinavia, which are still recovering from the crushing weight of the Ice Age glaciers, albeit from 10,000 years ago. Their sea-level increases are less than the global average would suggest, since their land areas are rising a few millimeters a year.   On the other hand land around the periphery of where the glaciers sat, such as Chesapeake Bay and the south of England, was squeezed upwards by the downward pressure nearby and has been sinking back by a few millimetres a year ever since, so sea level rise is greater than average in these regions. Land is also subsiding in coastal places where massive oil and gas extraction has occurred such as Louisiana.

 

A larger effect is from changes in prevailing winds, which can push water consistently toward the land or keep it at bay. The trade winds that blow west across the tropical Pacific, for example, boost average sea levels by as much as 24 inches on the western side of the ocean — in places such as the Philippines — compared with those in northern South America. If those winds shift with climate change, so would local sea levels.

Ocean currents also affect sea level rise. If the Gulf Stream were to slow, for example, that would force water to pile up behind what amounts to a partial blockage of the overturning current. That could force sea level along the U.S. coast to rise another 8 or so inches over the next century beyond the global average, given a medium-emissions scenario.

But the “gorilla in the room” according to Ronald Stouffer, of the U.S. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton NJ, is gravitation. The extra gravitational attraction of an undersea mountain range pulls water toward it, creating a literal, permanent bump on the surface of the sea, while the deficit of gravity near an undersea valley creates a depression in the water up above. A coastal mountain range pulls the water in its direction, raising sea level nearby. So do the massive icecaps that smother Greenland and Antarctica. They keep sea level higher than it would otherwise be for thousands of kilometers around both land masses, and correspondingly lower elsewhere.

If the polar ice sheets shrink, though – as they’re currently doing, especially in Greenland and West Antarctica –  their gravitational pull weakens and so does their hold on the surrounding water. Their loss of mass not only contributes to overall sea level rise through meltwater but also allows some of the water held by their diminishing gravitational pull to go elsewhere – including the threatened east coast of the US.  And it’s not a small effect. In Hawaii, for example, Stouffer estimates that a seven metre sea level rise caused by the disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet would have an extra two or three metres added to it. Whereas a beachfront property in Iceland would end up with more beach.

Jerry Mitrovica, a Harvard geophysicist who is working with Stouffer, comments that when he gives talks about this people don’t believe him. He doesn’t blame them. “It’s just wacky when you think about it, completely counterintuitive,” he says. “But it’s true.”

Mitrovica recalls that when he started looking at regional effects, some climate change deniers were noting that sea-level rise was happening at different rates in different regions, arguing that this proved there was no global trend, and thus no global warming. That was already a bogus argument, but now that he and others have begun investigating the gorilla in the living room, it’s even more absurd. The science is so straightforward, he says, that “if you saw that sea level was rising uniformly around the world, it would be proof that the big ice sheets are not melting.”

One wonders what the Christchurch City Council might make of all this. They’ve settled for planning for a 50 cm rise. “We’re following the Government’s advice and we’re not going out on a limb,” their spokesperson said primly.  Apart from the fact that 50 cms is now inadequate advice for the century, the dynamics of regional variation suggest that an already  complex set of considerations when planning for  future sea level rise may have to be open to even more complication. Nick Smith will surely have to descend from his high horse: “The Government is not going to consider adjusting its policy every week.”  Not that I’ve heard anyone asking for weekly adjustment – but annual reconsideration might be sensible.

Carterist science meets its Cartergate

homer.jpgThe peer-reviewed rebuttal to last year’s infamous McLean, de Freitas and Carter paper which claimed that the El Niño Southern Oscillation could explain most recent warming (see Mother Nature’s Sons and Big Guns Brought To Bear), has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Geophysical Research (Comment on “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature” Foster et al, 2010). Co-author James Annan has the details (and full text of the rebuttal), but what is perhaps most remarkable is that despite being given the opportunity to reply to Foster et al’s comment — normal practice in these circumstances — McLean et al’s offering has failed to pass review and will not be published by JGR. Tim Lambert at Deltoid has more feedback, and draws attention to the comments by Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg at Climate Shiftswho demands:

The five things we want to know are:

  1. Will McLean et al. retract the paper (and will Bob Carter admit fault or even discuss the errors publicly)?
  2. Will the denial0sphere and the MSM give this story (a climate change scandal!) the same coverage it has recently showered on various IPCC hiccups?
  3. Will there be an investigation as Bob Carter himself and so many other skeptics have insisted on over and over again, usually in response to bogus and unsubstantiated allegations.
  4. Will Bob now reverse his policy positions and urge (vocally) politicians that may have been swayed by his bogus science to do the same? After all Bob, shouldn’t the science drive the policy?
  5. Will The Australian cover this pending scandal! A scientist behaving badly!

Those look like damned good questions to me. New Zealand’s science community has been reluctant to publicly criticise Carter — he was once a respected and influential scientist who encouraged many talented students to forge their careers in the earth sciences — but surely this display of academic turpitude puts him beyond the pale. What it says about de Freitas is probably unprintable. I encourage readers to remember the extravagant claims being made for this paper by Carter and de Freitas, and the uncritical acceptance of those claims by a pliable media. High time the boot was on the other foot.

[This song’s for Bob: h/t caerbannog in comments at Deltoid]

[Update 23/3: Skeptical Science explains the rebuttal here. Worth a read.]

This perfect storm of calamities…

This guest post is by David Round, lecturer in environmental law at the University of Canterbury. It first appeared in the Christchurch Press on March 18.

It was once a truth universally acknowledged that good times never last. But we now seem to consider ourselves immune from the laws of nature and history. Times have been good and getting better for most of our lifetimes. All but the very poorest of us enjoy comforts beyond our grandparents’ wildest imaginings. We cannot imagine anything but the good life.

But actions have consequences, and if even half the articles we read in this newspaper every day are actually true – and surely The Press does not lie – then chickens are rapidly coming home to roost. We face the end of cheap and abundant oil, on which our entire civilisation and way of life depends. Oil we cannot afford is, for most purposes, little different from no oil at all. No adequate substitute exists. How will we manage if we cannot even get to work in the morning, and bring the groceries from the supermarket, let alone send our goods to the other side of the world and bring large numbers of tourists here?

There is no doubt significant global climate change is happening. The “challenge” to climate change science recently whipped up by vested interests is only a quibble over a couple of footnotes. We will inevitably see more extreme weather events, crop failures, famine, economic collapse, mass population movements and war. The earth’s human population increases each year by some 90 million, all of them wanting not just life but a life as good as ours. As all of this happens, we are running out of the most basic resources; not just oil, but water, soil and fresh air.

Continue reading “This perfect storm of calamities…”