—Kevin B Korb
I have a lot of respect for Crikey, the online Australian newsletter. They report on a lot of things other media outlets won't touch, especially bias and disinformation in those other media outlets. But the other day, while reading a piece by Bernard Keane on the inconsistency of Tony Abbott's rejection of a carbon tax, after his having previously advocated one, I read:
Insistence that the planet is not getting warmer — or, as Abbott until recently insisted, is getting slightly cooler — has become more difficult to maintain publicly, despite the faulty logic of linking weather to climate. (B Keane, Crikey, 5 Feb.)
It is certainly the case that weather is not the same as climate. This is pretty clearly revealed by the fact that many global warming deniers are weather forecasters, whereas hardly any climatologists are deniers. (NB: there are a lot more forecasters than climatologists!) But denying a link between weather and climate is simply absurd. The relation between climate, the prevailing weather in a region and season, and the weather itself, on any given occasion, is stochastic: the climate system, plus specific, highly variable, conditions together determine the specific weather. That establishes a kind of probabilistic dependency —i.e., a link —which is widely recognized in society.
For example, only ignorant people or fools now deny that smoking causes lung cancer. This is so despite the fact that many smokers never get lung cancer. Some of them die too soon from other causes, such as emphysema. But many smoke contentedly for decades with no sign of the cancer showing up. Lawyers for tobacco companies used to point this out in trying to make the case that specific complainants had no basis for complaint, because their lung cancers might have been amongst those caused by pesticide exposure or smog or a stray cosmic ray striking a susceptible cell in the lung. But these defences have been abandoned, with even tobacco companies accepting some culpability for the disease in specific cases. The situation is analogous with weather and climate change. Was Katrina specifically due to global warming? Well, obviously not in its totality; but global warming heating the Gulf of Mexico likely contributed to its intensity. Specific events will never be entirely attributable to a broad-scale change, because the broad-scale change will never be entirely responsible for a specific event in all its specificity. Denying a linkage on that basis, however, is a nonsense. An accumulation of extreme weather events, and a statistical assessment showing that the probability of their extremity without global warming is rapidly vanishing, will eventually silence those who claim weather tells us nothing about climate.
Probabilistic dependencies are real. The link they establish, in fact, is just that between a stochastic hypothesis and the evidence which confirms it. Denying such a link is tantamount to denying the statistical foundations of empirical science.
If you want to "sound reasonable" by making some concession or other to global warming deniers, then you should do so by reporting something that is factual, rather than counterfactual. You can point out that many deniers have good dress sense, or sometimes use grammatical sentences, for example. Buying into their dogma about weather versus climate change can all too easily turn into buying into their rejection of science.
Though it is fashionable to label sceptics "deniers" and carry on about their irrationality, the biggest problem I see regarding action on global warming is the sloppy science in the warmist camp. After all, it's Flannary's Australian Climate Commission and the IPCC that are advocating dramatic change to Australia's economy and the way people live today so it is incumbent on them to be scientifically robust. The problem is that they are not and this gives oxygen to the denier camp.
Flannery is running a PR shop promoting action on climate change. There is no objectivity, no null hypothesis and no chance whatsoever that any new data at all will change his message. By definition, that is unscientific.
Maybe someone can disprove the null hypothesis that extreme weather events in 2013 are random. Shouting that it must be obvious to a reasonable person that they are not random is like a punter standing at the roulette table absolutely convinced that because the last 5 numbers were red, the next one is more likely to be black.
Hey, if the science that extreme weather events are increasing is so obviously true, someone should be able to put forward the evidence just like they have with global temperatures.
The other problem the climate industry has is that all the debate and heartburn in the public arena is completely unnecessary. They only have to convince a few dozen people in Washington, Beijing and Dehli that action is urgent and vital. They have completely failed to do it.
Well, I agree that those directly involved in the science of global warming have a responsibility to put together the best evidence and arguments that they can, and not just shout down opposition. From the sidelines, though, it is quite clear that most of the shouting is coming from the deniers, not the IPCC, Flannery or other skeptics (of business as usual).
It'd certainly be good to see a serious statistical analysis of weather extremities. My guess is that it's statistically moderately clear, but with the high variability of weather it's not likely easy to show it. I don't know anyone shouting that it's obvious, but I do know of some claiming on behalf of skeptics that they say it's obvious. Global temperatures are obvious, as you say, and still deniers deny it.
As for a few dozen people acting alone, you are not being very serious, David. In the political world we are in, even if a most powerful 24 decide action is necessary, the action required directly hurts a lot of other powerful people. Talking about a "climate industry" is overheated; but there really is an oil/gas/carbon industry, or group of industries.
Of course i'm being serious.
If a unified group of scientists told the elites of China, America, Russia and India that an asteroid was going to strike the earth in two years time, there would be little hesitation about devoting a significant percentage of the earth's GDP into diverting it. Pressure groups and industry lobbyists simply would not count.
That is because laws of physics, gravity and orbital mechanics have been proven to the extent that there would be no doubt. The highly accurate predictions of eclipses and orbital transits demonstrate it. There would not be a public relations campaign about it.
Activists promoting action on climate change like to position themselves in the scientific community with the same absolutism. The trouble is that scientists themselves are not so certain. They are certain that the world has warmed but less certain why and only making educated guesses about what might happen. The much touted 400ppm equals 2 deg warming is a guess: it may be worse but it may be less.
The way this is manifested in our community is Flannery predicting that Brisbane dams will never fill up again. This led to a change in the operating protocols of the Wivenhoe dam to include water supply which led to a policy to maintain the dam as close to 100% full as possible. The conflict built into those protocols directly caused the Brisbane floods and the Queensland State government is likely to be liable for class actions of hundreds of millions of dollars through the mistakes made first by Flannery and then by the dam management engineers.
Even a serious blogger like you is guessing what a statistical analysis of extreme climate events might say. So you haven't seen one either. The climate activist lobby is not interested in the science any more. When it started raining, extreme weather events suddenly became the cause celebre of the Climate cult. If you think the shouting comes from the deniers, you clearly don't watch or listen to the ABC.
One more thing. I believe the earth has warmed in the past 100 years and I believe human created carbon emmissions have caused it. But I am dismayed at the unprofessionalism and integrity of the Australian Climate commission and the IPCC, which in my view would have more credibility if it met annually in Washington, Dehli and Beijing and not Cancun, Durban and Bali. They're a joke and it's no wonder no one is taking any notice of them.
I'm still inclined to think you're not that serious. Asteroidal trajectories are well-understood and can be predicted with great accuracy. Many scientific problems are not as simple, involving far more stochasticity or even "chaotic" behavior, e.g., social sciences, medicine, epidemiology. Weather is one of those. But even more to the political point, no one on Earth would have any motive, short or long term, to resist action against an asteroid impact (except in a fanciful SF setting). Things are radically otherwise with carbon emissions.
It's a cheap "victory" to note that I know of no good statistical analysis of the weather-gobal warming relation: not only am I no expert, I haven't even bothered looking for one. Tell you what, I'll look around and if I find one I'll post info about it for you. It may take awhile, as I'm pretty busy. Alternatively, some reader may advise us.
Re 2 degrees: at a conference last year Wendy Parker summarized the results of
the main GW simulations. She said there was no consensus in their predictions. Staring at the temperature graphs overlaid, however, each of the distributions put over 90% of its mass to the right of 2 degrees. Of course, the simulations may be wrong. Or, they may be right and we may be in the lucky <10%. But it is not the case that it is as likely as not that the warming will be less than 2 degrees on the basis of simulation results. Calling it a guess underrates it: it is a prediction, with a good deal of theoretically justified modeling behind it.
I also think it a little bit precious to complain about Cancun, when the professional conferences I attend, at any rate, have visited such pestilential places as Acapulco (*since 2003*, to be sure, a place to be avoided), Stockholm, Barcelona. IMHO you are paying too much attention to the wrapper and too little to the content.
I'd be happy to see the quote re Flannery. If he made such an overenthusiastic claim, he should be ashamed.
I agree with all your sentiments expressed here and of course, climate science is not blessed with the exact predictability of orbital mechanics. My point all along has been that the climate cult, represented here by Flannery, has actively downplayed such nuances as chaotic outcomes because it confuses the message. In their drive to influence policy, probability, levels of confidence and doubt are unwelcome to them so they don't mention them. Then people look sideways at them when their absolutist predictions fail to occur.
If the IPCC was a "professional conference", I'd agree with you. But it is represented as the bastion of beleaguered scientists toiling an uncaring self-obsessed world under the spell of evil corporations. To maintain such an image, going to Cancun is a stuff up.
Don't worry about the statistical analysis. My point here is that the climate council, the IPCC and the panoply of government agencies trying to save us from global warming should have produced one. And they haven't. The media is full of records as extreme climate event reporting grows and we all suspect the the adjective "extreme" has more to do with the reporting and less than the climate event. Here's a worked example. We were told that the heat wave in Jenuary was Australia's longest period of national high temperature since records began. Can you recall the last time you heard of "national temperature statistics"? Here's an ides. Maybe a climate activist dreamed up a new way of measuring Australia's temperature that was a record and the media duly reported it.
This is what Flannery said publicly. Imagine what he was saying to policy makers behind closed doors. Read it and weep.
Editorial: Australia – not such a lucky country
16 June 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Tim Flannery
Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming. Similar losses have been experienced in eastern Australia, and although the science is less certain it is probable that global warming is behind these losses too. But by far the most dangerous trend is the decline in the flow of Australian rivers: it has fallen by around 70 per cent in recent decades, so dams no longer fill even when it does rain. Growing evidence suggests that hotter soils, caused directly by global warming, have increased evaporation and transpiration and that the change is permanent. I believe the first thing Australians need to do is to stop worrying about "the drought" - which is transient - and start talking about the new climate.
While the populated east and south of Australia have parched, rainfall has increased in the north-west. This has prompted some politicians to call for development of the north, including massive schemes for dams and pipelines. Some have even called for a large-scale shift of population to follow the rain. Yet computer models indicate that the increased rainfall is most likely caused by the Asian haze, which has pushed the monsoon south. This means that as Asia cleans up its air, Australia is likely to lose its northern rainfall. Australians need to leave behind their dreams of opening a new frontier and focus on making the best of the water remaining to them where they live today.
To achieve this, much has to be done. Industry, power plants, farmers and households pay too little for their water, so they waste it. Water thrift is an absolute prerequisite for life in the new climate. The country also needs to shift to a new energy economy. Australia's coal-fired power plants consume around 2 tonnes of water - for cooling and steam generation - for every megawatt-hour they produce. They also emit much of the CO2 that is the ultimate cause of the drying. Dwindling water supplies are raising the price of electricity, and to avoid an economic and environmental disaster the old coal clunkers need to be closed as quickly as possible and replaced with cleaner, less thirsty means of power generation. These could include geothermal, solar thermal, solar, wind or wave energy, and possibly clean coal.
Australia needs to design and build an irrigation system fit for the 21st century. It is tempting is to try to fix the existing system, but that is hopeless. The country needs to move to highly efficient irrigation and to think laterally about water use. As the climate becomes more variable it may make sense, for example, to plant rice and cotton during the odd wet year, rather than persist with permanent plantings of grape, citrus and so on, which need water year-round.
The cities need drought-proofing by, for example, installing water tanks in all dwellings that can accept them. Because in affected areas the decline in river flow is three times that in rainfall, water tanks that use roofs as catchments are now far more effective than dams for supplying drinking water in cities such as Sydney and Brisbane. Recycling can help too. This needs new investment and in some instances will require state government water monopolies to be broken up. It will cost more, but the benefits in terms of water security and recapture of nutrients in solid wastes are immense.
Desalination plants can provide insurance against drought. In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months. Of course, these plants should be supplied by zero-carbon power sources.
Last, but by no means least, Australia must ratify the Kyoto protocol and agitate globally for a swift and decisive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Our best theories show that Australia is suffering early and disproportionately from climate change. As one of the two renegade developed nations not to have ratified the treaty (the other is the US), and as the world's worst per capita emitter of CO2, some may say that Australia deserves its fate. If it is to save itself from even more severe climate impacts the country needs to change its ways, and fast.
Tim Flannery is professor of earth and life sciences at Macquarie University, chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, and the 2007 Australian of the Year
From issue 2608 of New Scientist magazine, 16 June 2007, page 5
You may be right that the "climate cult" has played down contrary evidence and been overly enthusiastic in defending their views. These are failings most of us are prone to. Read it and weep? I see nothing in Flannery's opinion piece to weep about. Why shouldn't he advocate on behalf of Kyoto, etc., at any rate given it was 2007?
You say statistical analysis hasn't been done. I'm sure you're wrong. You didn't find one? So what? In response to your post, Dr Balaji Rajagopalan sent me the following link: http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap3-3/final-report/ While I haven't read it, but only skimmed some, it appears that Chapter 2 has the kind of data and analysis you've been asking for. Read it and weep.
Balaji wrote to me: "It is often difficult to conclusively prove from limited data that extreme weather events are caused by climate change. This point is something the skeptics latch on to and make lots of noise. But the evidence is clearly against them and the statistics of extremes are clearly moving in a direction that is hard to explain from mere 'sampling' or 'natural' variability."
Campaigning against taking climate change seriously on the specious ground that not every variation in weather is attributable to it is exactly what I was complaining about in my original post.
Flannery and others are passionate about their science and their scientifically informed views. That is the nature of science now, as it always has been. Taking that as evidence that their views are ill-informed or flawed is another nonsense. You strike me as being just as passionate, David.
Thanks for pointing me to the report. I shall read it.
As far as Flannery is concerned, the view he and a lot of others put forward that Australia's climate had shifted to drought for the indefinite future contributed, in my view, to the flooding of 5000 homes in Brisbane in 2011. Remember that the Wivenhoe dam was spilling a massive amount of water at the exact critical moment when it should have been storing the flood surge. This was because the dam was too full, which was because it had a contradictory oparating protocol to supply drinking water, (keep it full) versus mitigate against flood (keep it empty). This contradictory protocol came about because , how did you put it?, Flannery was "passionate about his ..... scientifically informed view." But he was wrong. Badly wrong. Catastrophically wrong if you happened to own one of those flooded policies.
Saying he was advocating Kyoto, etc is spin. He advocated using dams to store drinking water as his "scientific" piece, based on "scientific evidence" in the "New Scientist" shows.
I am a believer in AGW. I despise druids and mystics hiding behind a veneer of scientific propaganda doing a lot of damage. They are far more dangerous than the nut-jobs in the denier camp. They adopt an absolutist certainty no real scientist would embrace. That's my point.
Ah, so you are taking Flannery's opinion piece as evidence that he held his opinions inflexibly and that he unduly influenced Queensland's dam policy. I think it at best weakly supports your claims. If Queensland took his opinion piece as justification for an ill-considered policy change, that is primarily Queensland's fault, not Flannery's. As for inflexibility, the opinion piece isn't exactly full of qualifications, but most such opinion pieces on most subjects are not. They are short and to the point. If you swallow them whole, then, again, I think you are at least in part responsible for your indigestion. In short, I don't see the evidence you've offered as very telling.
I don't know where you were in 2007 but if you were in Australia, it was widely accepted, received truth and of course, the science "was in" that it would never rain again enough to fill the dams.
Of course, one opinion piece on one occasion in one science magazine didn't do it. But if you weren't under a rock at the time, everybody in all media of all colours and flavours had accepted the climate lobby's dry Australia as "scientific truth". Governments were building desalinisation plants and of course, the Queensland government was rewriting the Wivenhoe's operating protocols. This piece from Flannery is useful because it is one documented example of the climate change lobby's propaganda campaign and of his feet of clay.
I for one didn't doubt the drought was in for ever but subsequent events has proven that wrong. The rain has shown that Flannery and his mates were making it up as they went along. They were taking a position that AGW is real and then observing actual climate events as proof when it should have been the other way round. There was no objectivity at all. It didn't really matter what was observed, the received truth was all that mattered. They needed to show that the El Nino conditions in the southern oscillation were caused by climate change but they couldn't. Worse, they effectively predicted that El Nino was in to stay and when La Nina inconveniently arrived, they have simply announced that its presence - lots of rain - is proof of climate change. It's a joke, mate. They have absolutely no idea.
This makes their current behaviour look like groundhog day. They look like they're making it up as they go along today as well. Hence my request for some documented evidence that the current villain - extreme weather events - has at least one skerrick of evidence to back it up.
Well I've got some reading to do.
I appreciate a frank discussion like this. It shifts my thinking.