Declines since 1982!!! (A global warming analogy)

I get the occasional email from my skeptic friend highlighting the latest study he's seen on Watt's Up With That and how the entirety of global warming science is thrown into question.  He included this statement in his last email:

". . .the earth has been cooling now for the last 15 years, while CO2 is still rising."

This is a common meme among the skeptics: that there has been no warming recently despite increasing CO2, therefore global warming has stopped.

The main problem with this argument is that 15 years is too short a period to make any definitive statements about long-term trends.  It also fails to take into account other forcings, such as solar intensity (down), ENSO (more La Nina lately) and increased aeresols from Chinese coal burning (study here).

For today, though, I want to show this:

Monday What's on the Web: The Geological Society Climate Statement

Last November, the Geological Society of London issued a "Statement on Climate Change."  It's a relatively clear and straightforward statement that summarizes the current state of our climate and relates it to significant climatological changes in the past.

The Geological Society of London was founded in 1807. It is the UK national society for geoscience, and the oldest geological society in the world.  As a highly regarded professional, scientific organization, one should take statements like these very seriously.  When individual scientists make statements, it is possible they are tainted by personal bias.  When the Geological Society of London makes a statement, it represents thousands of scientists, and carries much greater weight than any one particular scientific paper or one individual scientist's perspective. There are 10,000 members of the Geological Society.

 The Geological Society's statement is mirrored by statements made by virtually every other reputable scientific organization on the planet.  There are no reputable scientific organizations that dispute the scientific consensus that: 1) the planet is warming; 2) humans are partially to mostly responsible; and 3) the outcomes are likely to be significant and negative for human civilization.

Monday What's on the Web: Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors

Each Monday I highlight other bloggers or web contributors who are making important or interesting contributions to climate, sustainability, transportation or market transformation. Check back each week for another installment.
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Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors is one of the leading climate change investors in the world.  From my perspective, however, the key role they play is as a word of reason from the business side of the ledger.  There are so many old-line businesses: industry, banking, manufacturing, etc., that are often pushing against taking strong action on climate change.  DBCCA is the opposite.

As a business in the investment industry, they need to be as knowledgeable and insightful and accurate as possible if they intend to succeed in the long run.  They have identified climate change as a "mega-trend."  From their site:

"Deutsche Asset Management identified climate change as one of the mega-trends that would drive the global asset management business for the next generation and beyond. We saw that the rapidly growing level of carbon in the atmosphere meant that the world had to take action now, and that this would require massive capital investment over several decades. That in turn would produce exciting new investment opportunities from which our clients could benefit."

In the last two years, DBCCA has put out about two dozen investment reports that provide key insights into how climate change interacts with investing and business in general.  These reports are well researched and thorough and make strong cases for action on climate as well as taking more in-depth looks at particular industries and trends.  Some recent examples include:

Natural Gas and Renewables: A Secure Low Carbon Future Energy Plan for the United States

Climate Change: Addressing the Major Skeptic Arguments
(I particularly like this one for its thorough look at debunking the skeptic arguments.  In my opinion, this paper is more influential than many due to its source from a major investment player rather than an advocacy group.)


Investing in Climate Change 2010 - A Strategic Asset Allocation Perspective

I receive an email when new research comes out from DBCCA.  I was not able to find a place on their web site where you can sign up.  If you are interested, though, try sending an email to Bruce Kahn, and he will put you on his list.

Monday What's on the Web: Climate Crock of the Week

Every Monday I highlight other bloggers or web contributors who are making important or interesting contributions to climate, sustainability, transportation or market transformation. Check back each week for another installment.

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This week I debut my first "What's on the Web" YouTube personality: Greenman 3610, who puts out a series of videos entitled "Climate Change Crock of the Week."  Although not always weekly, the producer of these videos, Peter Sinclair, regularly posts extremely well produced  YouTube videos that primarily debunk various climate change skeptic arguments, like this one.















There are currently about 40 videos in Greenman3610's list.  Visit Climate Crock of the Week, and share with your skeptic and non-skeptic friends.  The videos are entertaining and informative.

Deutsche Bank Crushes Skeptic Arguments

Earlier this week, Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors issued the report, Climate Change: Addressing the Major Skeptic Arguments.  In it, they deconstruct the main arguments skeptics have been using over the last decade to resist the need for stronger action on climate change.  Climate Progress also has a good post on this paper.

The last paragraph of the Executive Summary reads:
Simply put, the science shows us that climate change due to emissions of greenhouse gases is a serious problem.  Furthermore, due to the persistence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the lag in response of the climate system, there is a very high probability that we are already heading towards a future where warming will persist for thousands of years.  Failing to insure against that high probability does not seem a gamble worth taking. (emphasis added)

It deals with each of these skeptic arguments and finds all of them lacking:

• The climate has not warmed since 1998
• It's all a hoax
• Climate models are defective
• The signature of greenhouse gases causing warming is missing in the atmosphere
• The Medieval Warm Period was warmer than now
• GHG increases lag temperature increases, they don't cause them
• It's the sun
• Water vapor is way, way more important than CO2
• The sensitivity in the models is wrong
• Increased CO2 is actually good
• We've adapted before, so we can again

Although the paper is long, the Executive Summary is not too long.  I strongly recommend it.

How I Decide What to Pay Attention to and What to Ignore When it Comes to Climate Change Research

Recently a friend of mine brought this article (The Logarithmic Effect of Carbon Dioxide) that appears on the Watts Up With That web site to my attention.  His note to me read:

"I'm curious how you might react to the attached short article.  It was written to reach out to the average concerned non-scientific type about the illogic of the IPCC climate change models.  It did impact public policy in Australia. Do you understand what the author is trying to say?  It would seem fairly straightforward to a typical technical type but I'm afraid it would still cause someone's eyes to glaze over if they weren't a technical person.  This is probably a good part of the communication problem for a fairly scientific issue?"

It's an interesting question, and I agreed with him that technical papers in general are generally going to be ignored by the public and often will be misunderstood (and misreported) by the media.  However, science is a technical subject, and there is constant research going on, much of which is very important.

(photo by Leo Reynolds)

So how does one go about deciding what research to pay attention to?  Or how to sort through it all?  Here's how I do it.

1) Since I am generally not qualified to completely understand most technical papers, I leave it up to those who are.  That means I am more likely to take into account research that has appeared in  peer-reviewed publications such as Nature or Science.  That means qualified scientists have looked at the research and deemed it worthy of publication.  This particular paper has not been peer reviewed.  It may be the greatest paper ever written about climate change or total hogwash.  I'm not qualified to determine that, and I don't have the time to try to figure it out myself--even if I had the requisite knowledge. 

2) There are dozens of papers on climate change published every month--many more if we include blog postings by anyone who wants to post.  Some of them point to different conclusions than others.  In my mind, each one represents just a single data point.  Therefore I am not that interested in what any one particular paper might say, such as this one.  What seems to me to be more prudent is to see what the overall research points to--the overwhelming preponderance.  From everything I have seen over the last twenty years, the overwhelming preponderance is:

• Greenhouse gases are being added to our atmosphere by humans at an unprecedented rate
• These gases are causing our world to absorb more energy, making it warmer
• The outcome of this rapid warming is detrimental to humankind and civilization

This particular paper addresses the second one of these, making the case that the warming will be much more mild than the peer-reviewed science indicates.  Fair enough.  That's one small data point (and a weak one, since the paper has not been peer reviewed) among many--most of which point to a different, more dangerous, conclusion.

3) Because there are bazillions of papers and postings and comments flinging around the Internet on this topic, I defer to the real experts--the scientists themselves.  However, I don't defer to any particular scientist, because any one person might have an agenda.  Instead I look for the most highly respected scientific organizations and see what they say.  Using this heuristic makes it easy.  Every single, well respected scientific organization in the world agrees with the three points above (or at least does not dispute them).  Every.  Single.  One.  Who am I to question the wisdom of the Royal Society, which was once headed by Isaac Newton and has included fellows like Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking?  Or the National Academy of Sciences, which was founded by Abraham Lincoln and has been advising our government for over 150 years?  It seems to me that listening to what they have to say would be a far more intelligent way to come to an understanding of the science than trying to figure it out for myself one paper at a time.  (If you think the scientists are all conspiring, read this previous post for my views on that.)

So in conclusion, I rarely try to dig into any particular scientific paper myself, since I'm usually not qualified to really understand how the science was determined (I do read the conclusions, however).  Then I wait to see what the highly respected organizations say--the ones that have generations of reputation to uphold--on the overall topic.  Should those organizations change their statements regarding the overall science of climate change, then I will most certainly sit up and take notice.  If however, they do not because of a single paper here or a blog post there, then I'll assume they have accorded that research its due and have determined that, by itself, it does not change the current overall understanding of the science.

Day Thirteen (final day): Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming in Thirteen Days

"13) Almost everyone wants to hear good news. They want to believe that dangerous global warming is a hoax. They, therefore, desperately want to believe the skeptics. This is a problem for all of us."

I might suggest that not everyone wants to believe it's a hoax.  The good news I would like to hear is rather that there are some countervailing feedbacks or other factors that will lessen the impact of climate change.  Or that unintentional errors have been found that indicate it will not be the catastrophe that many scientists are predicting.  I think that if we learned it was an actual hoax, that would create problems for many other issues that are reliant on science.

So, agreed that people want to hear good news.  Agreed that people don't want climate change to be as bad as predicted.  Agreed that hearing the bad news from the scientists is unpleasant.  Disagreed that people want to believe it's a hoax necessarily, but agreed that they would like to believe it won't be so bad.

Agreed that this is a problem for all of us.

If you would like to see any of the other posts in this series, search on the word Grantham for a list of all thirteen posts.
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[This one of a series of daily posts I am drawing from Jeremy Grantham's Summer 2010 Investment letter.  Mr. Grantham, a contrarian, is on the Board of Directors of GMO LLC, a global investment firm with over $100 billion under management.  Mr. Grantham takes a large, worldview perspective on investments--with an eye toward long-term trends.  He is right-on about the impact of global warming.]

Day Eleven: Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming in Thirteen Days

(from Wikimedia)

"11) Why are we arguing the issue? Challenging vested interests as powerful as the oil and coal lobbies was never going to be easy. Scientists are not naturally aggressive defenders of arguments. In short, they are conservatives by training: never, ever risk overstating your ideas. The skeptics are far, far more determined and expert propagandists to boot. They are also well funded. That smoking caused cancer was obfuscated deliberately and effectively for 20 years at a cost of hundreds of thousands of extra deaths. We know that for certain now, yet those who caused this fatal delay have never been held accountable. The profits of the oil and coal industry make tobacco’s resources look like a rounding error. In some notable cases, the obfuscators of global warming actually use the same “experts” as the tobacco industry did! The obfuscators’ simple and direct motivation – making money in the near term, which anyone can relate to – combined with their resources and, as it turns out, propaganda talents, have meant that we are arguing the science long after it has been nailed down. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: 'Have they no grandchildren?'"

Thank you, Mr. Grantham.  There is little I can add to this.
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[This one of a series of daily posts I am drawing from Jeremy Grantham's Summer 2010 Investment letter.  Mr. Grantham, a contrarian, is on the Board of Directors of GMO LLC, a global investment firm with over $100 billion under management.  Mr. Grantham takes a large, worldview perspective on investments--with an eye toward long-term trends.  He is right-on about the impact of global warming.]

Day Ten: Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming in Thirteen Days

One of the nuttiest skeptics - Christopher Monckton

"10) Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for … what? Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs, and by right-wing politicians and think tanks? Most hard scientists hate themselves or their colleagues for being in the news. Being a climate scientist spokesman has already become a hindrance to an academic career, including tenure. I have a much simpler but plausible “conspiracy theory”: that fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results."

It is amazing how often one reads on the web that people actually believe that global warming is some elaborate hoax.  Arrhenius predicted that the atmosphere would warm by adding more carbon dioxide way back in the late 19th century.  Aha!  But have you ever seen Arrhenius and Al Gore in the same room at the same time?  Conspiracy!!

Mr. Grantham's opinion that perhaps the people and industries with billions of dollars on the table would be more likely to bend the truth seems way more plausible.

I have two previous postings on this same topic:
Explain me to me
Scientists are corrupt (say the deniers)


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[This one of a series of daily posts I am drawing from Jeremy Grantham's Summer 2010 Investment letter.  Mr. Grantham, a contrarian, is on the Board of Directors of GMO LLC, a global investment firm with over $100 billion under management.  Mr. Grantham takes a large, worldview perspective on investments--with an eye toward long-term trends.  He is right-on about the impact of global warming.]

Day Nine: Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming in Thirteen Days

"9) Also, I should make a brief note to my own group – die hard contrarians. Dear fellow contrarians, I know the majority is usually wrong in the behavioral jungle of the stock market. And Heaven knows I have seen the soft scientists, who lead finance theory, attempt to bully their way to a uniform acceptance of the bankrupt theory of rational expectations and market efficiency. But climate warming involves hard science. The two most prestigious bastions of hard science are the National Academy in the U.S. and the Royal Society in the U.K., to which Isaac Newton and the rest of that huge 18th century cohort of brilliant scientists belonged. The presidents of both societies wrote a note recently, emphasizing the seriousness of the climate problem and that it was manmade.  Both societies have also made full reports on behalf of their membership stating the same. Do we believe the whole elite of science is in a conspiracy? At some point in the development of a scientific truth, contrarians risk becoming flat earthers."

Just like Jim Inhofe, the last flat earther--according to the Washington Post last year.  There is not a recognized scientific society left on the planet that is not on board with climate change--or at least not taking the opposing point of view--as pointed out here.


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[This one of a series of daily posts I am drawing from Jeremy Grantham's Summer 2010 Investment letter.  Mr. Grantham, a contrarian, is on the Board of Directors of GMO LLC, a global investment firm with over $100 billion under management.  Mr. Grantham takes a large, worldview perspective on investments--with an eye toward long-term trends.  He is right-on about the impact of global warming.]

Monday What's on the Web: Skeptical Science

Every Monday I highlight other bloggers or web contributors who are making important or interesting contributions to climate, sustainability, transportation or market transformation. Check back each week for another installment.
----------------------------Skeptical Science is a website and blog devoted to cataloging and responding to the arguments that are brought up in the media and elsewhere that run counter to the view that climate change is happening and that humans are responsible. The web site is run and maintained by John Cook, an Australian. The goal of the web site is to explain what peer-reviewed science has to say about climate change and apply it against the arguments that are frequently seen in the media and on the web. Currently he catalogs 114 of these arguments. The site does not get involved in any of the political arguments.

For instance, some of the common arguments he deals with are:

• It's the sun
• ClimateGate proves it's all a hoax
  
• Humans are too insignificant to affect climate

The home page is an active blog that focuses its discussion on the science of climate change. This blog is widely read--so much so, in fact, that Christopher Monckton, the infamous climate denier, has recently responded directly to a post on the site.

Monday What's on the Web: DeSmog Blog

Every Monday I highlight other bloggers or web contributors who are making important or interesting contributions to climate, sustainability, transportation or market transformation. Check back each week for another installment.
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This week's featured web resource is the blog DeSmogBlog. This blog was started in 2006 specifically to attack and debunk misleading and false claims from global warming skeptics, delayers and deniers. As they state on their site: "DeSmogBlog exists to clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science on climate change."

There are a lot of blogs out there--including mine right here--that address a broad spectrum of environmental and climate issues. What I like about DeSmogBlog is that it focuses on the specific topic of countering the claims from the skeptics. Because this is their focus, they do an excellent job of it. Recent posts include:

- Conservative Talk Show Host Brian Sussman Adds 'Climategate' to His List of Favorite Conspiracy Theories

- Unnamed Physicist Sponsors Global Warming Denial Video Targeting High Schoolers

- Tim (C-A-B-A-L) Ball: Climate Science is All a Conspiracy!

In addition, James Hoggan, a cofounder of the site, authored the 2009 book Climate Cover Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, which documents the deliberate and devious efforts of the oil and gas industries, along with others, to create doubt and delay efforts to address climate change.

You can also follow DeSmogBlog on Twitter @desmogblog

How It All Ends

If you've never seen this video, I think it is one of the most powerfully convincing efforts to help people understand the need to take action on climate change. If you like it, you can also watch the more than 6 hours of additional supporting video in the "Expansion Pack." . . . . . but you don't have to.

If you are committed to fighting global climate change and liked the video, feel free to pass it on.