Thursday
Feb112010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The Richard and Roger show
Feb 11, 2010 BBC Climate: CRU Climate: Sceptics Richard North and Roger Harrabin go head to head on the subject of Climategate on the Gaby Logan show on BBC Radio. Richard isn't very gentle.
Audio starts from about ten minutes.
Reader Comments (30)
The problem for Harrabin is surely that lots of blog commenters are likely to understand far more about the issues than he does. I have experience in temperature measurement, IR spectroscopy for measuring CO2 concentrations, radiative heat transfer, computational fluid dynamics, mathematical modelling of physico-chemical systems, and statistical data analysis Consequently it's entirely obvious to me that much of "climate science" is bollocks, and that many of the climate scientists are duds, never mind crooks. My background is deficient for understanding the satellite measurements without my doing a bit of reading, otherwise I dare say I might be rather sceptical of them too. What does Harrabin bring to the party?
Just listened to the Radio 5 link. Richard North did a fine job, but it was interesting to hear Roger H later in the discussion talking about how the discussion is now opening out, and that the blogosphere is now an important part of the whole thing that can't be ignored. He even mentioned having to change his own approach to journalism as a result. My own view is that the non-science trained journos have been rather startled by how much accumulated knowledge is sloshing around the blogs, and outdistancing the specialist reporters by some way.
A degree in English and what used to be seen as impeccable green credentials?
Harrabin is clearly coming from a believer's point of view, but does seem to be making an attempt to present himself as more open to listening to the skeptical point of view. Whether this is a 'front' or not is still to be seen. He says his main problem is judging the credibility of the commentors - maybe he should be taking the interesting questions and a blog expert and facilitate discussion on specific issues (such as the Peilke debate, but with a better posed question). Personally, I'm not sure which question I'd start with, or who is best placed to argue it. The Journos ought to be able to sort out the conflict of interest issues easily enough - what are the keystone science issues?
I find Harrabin's statements about the need for a balanced and open debate rather hypocritical. Consider, for example, this statement from Page 40 of the following document…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/impartiality_21century/report.pdf
"The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus.”
My understanding is that Harrabin was a key player in this seminar. However, when asked about who the participating 'scientific experts' where, the BBC was very reluctant to give any details (e.g. http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=218) and has even claimed exception from the Freedom of Information Act.
Don't expect too much from the MSM. The trouble is that most journalists have merely press-release recyclers.
Has Newsnight just hinted that Campbell's resignation was pre ordained?
I wouldn't be too hard on Mr Harrabin for his past statements.
I do think he's trying to catch up. I suspect that he has been shocked by recent revelations and is struggling to make sense of it all.
As much as I disagreed with his earlier scribblings, I've never, ever, doubted his sincerity!
Keep digging Roger. KBO!
If the debate should be closed to everyone without the scientific credentials, as Mr Harrabin suggested, this would leave out 95% of all politicians, who seem to base their crude and simplified statements on the newspaper headlines.
Also, a public debate without broad public participation, credentials or not, is something of the past. If it was not for public demand through the sheer number of skeptical contributors on blogs, forums and in newspapers, there would have been no chance of bursting the climate bubble, as now - at least to some degree - seems to be happening.
That people in the establishment don't like to be contested is nothing new. This goes as much for scientists as for politicians. Of course they would rather keep the debate in the back room.
But now, since they were not able to contain this debate in the back room, there seems to be a real chance of busting climate science wide open, have everything on the table and see what is actually there.
And if after an open and transparent process, with broad and unbiased participation, there is factual evidence of catastrophic global warming caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2, then I will have no other choice than to become a believer.
Hysterical, even!
But not a moment before.
@ dearieme
You write
It seems to me that one very important issue re the science is that of climate sensitivity. Do you question the consensus that the most likely value of climate sensitivity is 3C but very high sensitivities can't be ruled out (i.e. do you think it's "bollocks")?
(For a summary of much of the mainstream thinking on climate sensitivity see http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf)
If you don't, then given that global mitigation policy is what it is, you must accept that we appear to be heading for warming of 3C or more in fairly short order. Of course, one argument that can nevertheless be made against so-called "alarmists" is that the damages incurred by a 3C rise are not likely to be that great. But even if this were so (and it is surely contestible), Martin Weitzmann argues that robust mitigation is warranted as it constitutes the sensible purchasing of insurance against the small risk that sensitivity is, say,10C and the catastrophic damages that would ensue under such a sensitivity.
Be interested to hear your thoughts.
I couldn't find the broadcast segment, can someone point me in the right direction please? I.e. which day's Gabby Logan show is it, and how many minutes in to the programme is the relevant discussion?
Thanks!
"Do you question the consensus that the most likely value of climate sensitivity is 3C but very high sensitivities can't be ruled out ..."
What on earth is the point of introducing a claim of consensus into this question?
Science has nothing to do with consensus.
RichieRich,
3 degrees C can't be ruled out, nor can 10 degrees C or 0.5 degrees C. Hanson and many of the supporters of CAGW have selected 3 degrees C, but there is NO evidence that is reasonably supporting it. In fact, the small overall trend of about 0.4 degrees/ century from 1850 to the present (and also from 1940 to the present) is in reasonable agreement with a negative water vapor feedback acting on the direct CO2 plus methane gains, and the likely net is about 0.5 degrees C or possibly a bit more or less for doubling of equivalent CO2. Since the present trend was flat and now is expected to go down some (despite a January 2010 spike) over the next 20 or so years, what heating are you referring to?
elliott
click on the Bish's blue "head to head" link. Then click on the pink "listen again" link that appears first on the left side of the page, just below the full width photograph. The climate discussion starts about 10 minutes in, just after the house repossession item.
@ Alan Wilkinson
Oh come on! Clearly, a consensus about X doesn't make X true, but it is nevertheless true to say that there is a consensus about X. And I was simply stating that truth. Hope we can now move on.
@ Leonard Wilkinson
Is there really NO evidence? Is EVERYTHING in the Knutti and Heregl paper "bollocks"...including the section "Constraints from the instrumental period"?
@ Alan Wilkinson
Oh come on. I think we all recognize that the fact there is a consensus position about the most likely value of climate sensitivity doesn't make that position true. Nevertheless, it is true that there is a consensus position and there is no fault in observing (as I did) this fact.
@ Leonard Weinstein
Are you really saying that EVERYTHING in the Knutti and Hergerl paper is utter "bollocks", including the section "Constraints from the instrumental period"?
Alan, Leonard
Sorry about the repeat(ish) post. The first didn't seem to have posted so I did a second. Whoops!
[First of all, that audio was awesome.]
@Cumbrian Lad
This represents other comments here very well. Until recently I was only an occasional reader of CA and WUWT, but every time I'd come I was blown away with the healthy level of knowledge and expertise (I can't do stats at all) on all the anti-AGW blogs I'd visit. And then I'd hear, over and over and over again, (and still see all over the pro-AGW sites) how skeptics are all anti-science and ignorant asses. And the commenters on "our" sites who talk trash give them fodder - but, unlike Michael Mann, I say let them say their piece, too. It has become an emotional topic, so let's have some emotion. But mostly the comments are thoughtful, and people readily admit what they don't know. I have read almost no comments which seem willfully ignorant or are disrespectful of science, but mostly ones horrified at the distortion of science by egos and politics - and, apparently, hunger for grant moneys.
On the other side, visiting DailyKos and other Progressive blogs it is sad how there are almost zero links to data or scientific papers, even in the middle of "them" slamming skeptical sites and their commenters. They talk about ignorance, but they don't do anything to educate their own kind. My guess is that, like me, when they look into it they will see AGW is all The Emperor's New Clothes, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and Chicken Little, all wrapped into one.
But they don't know it yet. Rational people who have read the emails have come over in droves to at least agnosticism since Climategate.
It brought tears to my eyes, listening to that audio, that those here and around the skeptical sites are beginning to hear respect where only 3 months ago they were being ridiculed. THANKS BE TO THE CRU LEAKER. The debate that should have taken place in the late 1980s is finally happening. And no where so much as in the anti-AGW blogs.
I enjoy the level of inquiry on these sites, and when this whole issue is dead and gone (and hopefully with some criminal scientists at least disgraced and out of work), I am going to miss it.
RichieRich, your question doesn't improve as it continues: "Do you question the consensus that the most likely value of climate sensitivity is 3C but very high sensitivities can't be ruled out."
My view is that we have little idea of what the climate sensitivity is. All we know is that the global temperature seems to be rising at around 0.1 deg C per decade with a lot of variability decade to decade but not so much century to century. So I regard anyone who thinks they can determine a likely value of climate sensitivity with any accuracy as a fool and neither high nor low nor unstable sensitivities can be ruled out.
Maybe Harrabin could follow up some of the blatant conflicts of interest ? Eg Raj Pachauri, Al Gore, The BBC pension fund etc.
Alan
Here's a pasage from the intro to the Knutti and Heregl paper.
So the authors clearly concede there is a "large uncertainty range". However, unlike you, they obviously hold that it makes sense to identify a most likely value within this range. Whilst you may disagree, I really don't think it helps to call the wide range of authors cited who do identify a most likely value as fools. It's hardly likely that all of them are.
What of the "well-constrained lower limit of climate sensitivity"? I'm aware that authors such as Lindzen, Christy and Schwartz have argued that the most likely value is around 1 to 1.5C but they disagree amongst themselves (see Christy's critique of Lindzen) and collectively their work has been the subject of considerable criticism. (And presumably, in your eyes, they're equally fools for suggesting a most likely value?)
But surely, the key question is: how should policy makers act when faced with a large uncertainly over the value of climate sensitivity? If 3C is said to be the most likely value and fat tails can't be ruled out, what should be their response to mitigation? Are you arguing that they have no grounds for considering robust reductions in greenhouse gases?
Re: RichieRich and Alan Wilkinson.
Haven't Knutti and Heregl begged the question here? They've started out from the explicit point that global temperatures are primarily controlled by CO2. If that premise is false, as I suspect it might be, all arguments about climate sensitivity to CO2 concentrations are much like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
To start from the basics, the ice core records show that CO2 lags temperature by between 400 and 1,000 years. To argue that "something" causes temperature to rise and then that the consequent CO2 rise keeps temperatures rising ignores what happens at the end of the rise, when CO2 is still rising but temperatures are falling. That can only mean that the "something" is now much stronger in order to overcome the heating effect of the accumulated CO2; so where is it?
An alternative view of my own is that as temperatures rise so peat bogs dry out, permafrost melts and soil bacteria increase their activity, all releasing CO2. Does not that make rather more sense than chucking an extra factor, CO2 heat retention, into the mix? Granted, in the lab CO2 certainly does absorb and re-emit IR, but it's a very long step indeed from the lab (where the science (of that alone) really is settled) to the turbulent, vast and little-understood real-life atmosphere.
Personally, I'm inclined to the gonad tendency.
RichieRich, you are correct to highlight the uncertainty over climate sensitivity, since this is ‘the’ fundamental issue that drives the political argument for immediate and significant action. Unfortunately, this is also the one aspect of the catastrophic AWG narrative that has no scientific evidence to support it, merely checks on probability distributions based upon multiple runs of the models using various ‘best estimates’ of weighting factors (Cf. AR4WG1, Chapter 10, Box 10.2, p.798)
The dominance of positive feedbacks within the Earth’s climate system is the key mechanism behind the so-called ‘enhanced greenhouse effect’ (Cf. IPCC TAR, Section 1.3.1), which amplifies the impact of a doubling of CO2 levels from a less than 2C to more than 4C and so raises the spectre of world-wide catastrophe.
Hard sciences like physics, chemistry or biology require that a theory should show how it can be falsified and, in so doing, provide a means to test its fidelity against real-world behaviour. I had, therefore, expected to find some sort of prediction from the models that would provide a unique signature for the dominance of positive feed-backs, which could then be checked against real-world observations. However, I see little evidence to suggest that this key step in the Scientific Method has been applied or even that it is considered important (N.B. I've even asked the question over at RealClimate but had no 'constructive' replies. I know about the predicted “hot spot” above the equatorial troposphere but am lead to believe that current observations are, at best, insufficient to support the theory or, at worst, appear to falsify it. Given this situation, I can fully understand why some regard climate science as more akin to what Richard Feynman described as a ‘Cargo Cult Science’ rather than a hard science.
Disputin
The "CO2 lags temperature" objection is something of an old chestnut and has been addressed many times. See for example
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
RichieRich, this ‘old chestnut’ may well have been addressed many times, but the explanations presented are still rather debatable. The statement that “CO2 amplifies the warming which cannot be explained by orbital cycles alone” has many implicit assumptions that need to be better understood before declaring CO2 as the culprit.
For example, New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659) says “Models suggest that rising greenhouse gases, including CO2, explain about 40% of the warming as the ice ages ended. The figure is uncertain because it depends on how the extent of ice coverage changed over time, and there is no way to pin this down precisely”. So, the positive feed-backs that are assumed to amplify the effects of CO2 may go some way to explain ice age temperature trends, but they don’t tell the whole story. Of course, this explanation is also based upon the implicit assumption that today’s model capture all of the relevant mechanisms, so using the models to prove that the models are correct seems like a rather peculiar way of applying the Scientific Method.
Worse still is the fact that there seems to be no satisfactory explanation as to why these positive feed-backs did not result in a run-away greenhouse effect. It is suggested that there are various limiting factors that eventually come into play, the most important being that infrared radiation emitted by Earth increases exponentially with temperature; so as long as some infrared can escape from the atmosphere, at some point heat loss catches up with heat retention. The problem here is that they also claim today’s temperatures and CO2 levels are higher than these historical levels, so we are already higher than the level where heat loss catches up with heat retention. Unfortunately, this leads to conflicting conclusions because, either they are correct and there is a strong compensating process which is not built into their models, or they are wrong and they still need to explain what keeps a positive feedback dominated process from running away.
Dave
Thanks for your reply.
This is not at all my field, but from what you say, the mechanism by which the earth comes out of an ice-age appears not entirely bottomed up. But my general point is that whilst there are occasions when CO2 follows temperature, this does not mean that there are not occasions, such as today, when temperature follows (amongst other things) CO2. Which, of course, takes us back to the whole climate sensitivity thang!
Richie Rich, Roy Spencer recently pointed out that the previous estimates of climate sensitivity depend on there being no unknown forcings, the existence of any of which would reduce the estimates of CO2 sensitivity. Given the present state of knowledge and poor fit of data to models together with the planets history of natural climate changes it seems extremely unlikely all forcings are accounted for - numerous changes to land use being just one of many likely candidates.
Contrary to your quote, the lower limit is not well constrained at all. I distinguish those who endeavour to produce an estimate from real world data from those who demand we all believe their numbers. The latter, and their adherents, are the fools.
Alan, I don't see how you can claim that those who seek to calculate CS from the instrumental record aren't using real world data. And nor do I see how publishing a paper in a journal constitutes a demand to believe.
RR, the short answers are "I didn't." and "it isn't". However, stating that there is a consensus, that the lower bound is well defined, and implying that all the uncertainty is on the upside of the "consensus" is just tosh.
Alan
"Consensus" can mean "majority view" as well as "unanimous view". I think using it to mean "majority view amongst researchers" is entirely accurate in this context but I can see why you'd find it unhelpful. So I shall desist.