The Climate Show #4: Peter Gleick, the AGU, and climate sensitivity

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Our last show for 2010, and it’s over an hour of podcast/video goodness: featuring Peter H Gleick of the Pacific Institute discussing the news from the Fall AGU conference in San Francisco last week, John Cook discussing how we work out how sensitive the climate system is to the addition of heat, plus a roundup on Cancun, how French vignerons are looking to old vines to help them adapt to a warming climate, and London’s black cabs set to go electric.

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Show notes below the fold.

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Believing Cassandra

Believing Cassandra: How to be an Optimist in a Pessimist's WorldThe gift of foresight given to Cassandra was nullified by the accompanying curse that no one would believe her. Her warnings were ignored and ancient Troy fell. It’s a haunting myth which Alan Atkisson harnesses in his book Believing Cassandra: How to be an Optimist in a Pessimist’s World. If we believe Cassandra and take action to avoid the disasters she prophesies we prove her wrong. But the worst and most painful outcome for any Cassandra is to be proven right.

The book was first published in 1999 but has been revised and updated for this 2010 edition. The author comments on how much that was in the future tense in the first edition had to be shifted to the present or past tense, and yet how little of it had to be changed. This is not surprising. The book is rooted in the many warnings that have been sounded for some decades now about the limits of growth, and the dangers that await us as we exceed the boundaries for safety for human civilisation. Those warnings and dangers remain current. Atkisson starts with the dizzying exponential population growth of the past century, is fully alarmed by the level of biodiversity loss, and invites readers to consider the graph of rising global CO2 emissions as they would such horrific paintings as Picasso’s Guernica or Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son.

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Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip

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Excellent animation by Leo Murray explaining climate system feedbacks and the potential for us to pass “tipping points” that could make our efforts to reduce emissions completely redundant. More information (including script and references) at wakeupfreakout.org. Hat-tip to Peter “Crock of the Week” Sinclair for finding it…

NIWA’s new NZ temperature series: plus ça change…

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Earlier this afternoon NIWA released its recalculated NZ temperature record [full report], and as expected the changes from the “old” seven station series are more or less negligible. The trend over the last 100 years is identical, 0.91ºC per century, as the graph above shows. There are minor differences in some years, and larger ones at some stations, but the net effect to is confirm what we already knew: New Zealand warmed significantly over the last century. Commenting on the new report, NIWA CEO John Morgan said:

“I am not surprised that this internationally peer reviewed 2010 report of the seven station temperature series has confirmed that NIWA’s science was sound. It adds to the scientific knowledge that shows that New Zealand’s temperature has risen by about 0.9 degrees over the past 100 years”.

I’m not surprised either. But I confidently predict that the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition and Richard Treadgold will still find something to whinge about. After all, they’re trying to sue NIWA to have the original seven station series declared invalid. Now it’s been replaced — by something that looks rather similar. Which just confirms how shonky their original complaint and their subsequent silly suit really were. (More on this later, when I’ve had a chance to read the report in detail).