Bishop Hill Paul Nurse on geoengineering
Sep 9, 2011 Climate: Models Royal Society Paul Nurse has a letter in the Guardian (where else?) on the subject of geoengineering. It's less bad than you might expect.
A time may come when mankind will need to consider geoengineering the climate to counteract climatic effects of greenhouse gases. If that time comes, we need to have a good understanding of whether such efforts will work and, just as importantly, whether they will have any negative side effects. Those who oppose such exploratory research on the grounds that we do not know what its effects may be ... are missing a fundamental point of research, which is to allow us to potentially rule out any technology that would have negative effects that outweigh the positive.
Researching stuff probably does little harm, although one can certainly question whether geoengineering research, or indeed any scientific research, should be a priority for government spending at the moment. Outside the ivory tower, times are hard, but it is not obvious that Sir Paul has noticed.
One little snippet of his letter caught my attention:
Geoengineering research can be considered analogous to pharmaceutical research. One would not take a medicine that had not been rigorously tested to make sure that it worked and was safe.
As Delingpole knows to his cost, Sir Paul likes his analogies, but I think that he may have erred this time. Because if we demand that putative medical treatments are thoroughly tested to see if they actually do what they claim, should we not demand the same from the climate models that Sir Paul and so many others believe justify us redesigning our economies on neanderthal lines.
Reader Comments (80)
@golf charley If Dessler 2011 is being redrafted, will it have to be peer reviewed again,
Again?
Science: only what can be supported by the evidence
Climate "science": anything you damn well please so long as no one can think of any obvious evidence that the sceptics can get hold of to prove it wrong.
Mike Haseler, having been politely ticked off by Maurizio, I was trying to be more polite!
golf charley - sorry if my sarcasm didn't transpire 8-)
It's called "peer" review from "peer"="person of the same level".
So if Dessler's peers let through something that Spencer can now correct, Spencer is not a "peer" anymore, he's superior to the lot of them.
Well concerning fast-tracking Dessler's paper this is what the Skeptical Science website has to say on that.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=987
This what Skeptical Science has to say on the Dessler paper itself (original draft).
http://www.skepticalscience.com/dessler-2011-rebuttal-revisions.html
Since Dessler is now embarrassingly involved in re-drafting his fast-tracked paper, i.e. correcting it, will Skeptical Science's John Cook resign and offers his apologies to Spencer?
PaulM - thanks, I was looking for a summary of which calcs Dessler says he is reexamining. From the quick skim I've had of Roy Spencer's blog it is hard to say exactly which aspects of the substance Dessler himself has conceded as problematic. Perhaps I just need to have a closer read.
Maurizio, none taken!
If it was Pal review by the Team, Team credibility is now shot to pieces.
It is time for GRL to redefine the peer review selection process, and as you point out, Roy Spencer is now top of the list.
Trenberth should resign from all positions and spend the rest of his life looking for his missing heat, in silence.
Mac, great links to John Cook's Skeptical Science, could somebody copy it all before it quietly disappears?
If John Cook says it was not fast tracked could everybody quote this back when Dressler and the Team try to blame time constraints for any mistakes made
Let's see -- we are guilty of raping Mother Gaia's lovely planet simply by burning carbon based fuels, yet these geniuses are going to experiment with her in ways unexplained -- in the name of scientific research. Given their track record with regard to scientific integrity I shudder. I think Mike Haseler @ Sep 9, 2011 at 11:17 AM summarized it beautifully.
I am myself resigned ...to the fact that John Cook will never write anything sensible on climate stuff ...
I have no idea whatsoever why any intelligent person would bother to read anything on the ridiculous 'Skeptical Science' blog. Cook is the type of person who, when a youth, was encouraged by misguided parents to assume he owns a staggeringly high IQ and now casts his presumptuous silliness far and wide.
He is a Hockey Team acolyte and there is nothing of the honest sceptic about him. He belongs in the same bin as trolls.
Rebut in haste, repent at leisure.
Dessler now has a new reviewer one Dr Roy Spencer who I think should be congratulated for the way he is handling the situation:-
"I have been contacted by Andy Dessler, who is now examining my calculations, and we are working to resolve a remaining difference there."
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/09/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-my-initial-comments-on-the-new-dessler-2011-study/
Maybe, just maybe this is the start of breaking down the intransigence?
Research and testing on geoengineering projects? There was a disastrous flood at Lynmouth in Cornwall, way back - about 1952 or 3. It was never officially admitted there was a link to geoengineering research projects but when government documents were relased in the 1970s it turned out the Ministry of Defence had in fact been experimenting with seeding cloud around that time.
And some of the experiments were carried out near Lynmouth.
Climate research can only be done on the real climate thus reral people will always bear the consequences.
Re Paul Nurse
"A time may come when mankind will need to consider geoengineering the climate to counteract climatic effects of greenhouse gases."
Funding pitch, basically saying "you are going to need scientists to keep you alive", make yourselves ready, you cannot survive without us!
Maybe, maybe he is right, trouble is that now, following the intransigence and blatent establishment backed whitewashing that has gone before, a large and significant percentage of the population no longer have any trust in Paul Nurse and his band of merry saviours.
That perception is the real danger that has always been lurking behind the "science is settled" statements.
One of the reasons why it is very difficult to take climate modelling seriously is to imagine the following scenarios.
Scenario A: The scientists at CERN discover, by physical experiment, a brand-new, but totally unexpected particle or force. This renders string theory useless. It is totally debunked.
What would happen next?
Scenario B: Some climate scientist discovers, by physical experiment, a brand-new, but totally unexpected agent. This renders current climate theory useless. It is totally debunked.
What would happen next?
Despite careers being ruined, reputations being trashed, and funding being diverted I suspect that scenario A would result in whoops of excitement in the scientific community – even amongst those ruined.
In scenario B, however, well, we've already seen how scenario B players response to criticism and new information. The science is settled. The models are correct. There can be no paradigms shift.
Scenario A is science.
Scenario B is something else…
Perhaps we should take "geo-engineering" discussions away from the climate pscience mob and telly-pundits like Nurse - and get some proper engineers to look at it.
You know - the guys who would get fired and sued if it all went wrong.
I'm fairly sure that they'd conclude it's all too impractical and dangerous anyway.
If engineers are supposedly not qualified to do science, what makes scientists think they're qualified to do engineering?
Exactly
The answer.
How anyone who calls themselves a true environmentalist can contemplate geoengineering the climate without shaking with rage defies logic.
The Royal Society should wake up from its narcissistic conceit and learn some humility first, and then some geology second. Do they realise we are still in a Ice Age? Within a brief respite interval -the Holocene interglacial, true, but somewhere near the end of it, with the threat of descent into a new full glacial, imminent on the geological time scale (sometime next 500-5000 years?)
All the main life forms on Earth evolved under significantly higher ambient global temperature and CO2 levels than the current situation, and which they thrived prolifically in. Global temperature has been geologically on a down trend ever since the Dinosaurs died out in the Cretaceous, culminating in the current Quaternary Ice Age. Each full glacial has been more severe than the previous, plunging life ever closer toward a CO2 level questionably insufficient to sustain life, and certainly to stress it severely.
If there were to be any logical justification for engineering the climate, it would be to try and allay a full glacial advance. Better still, apply their elite science on understanding the natural drivers causing it, so they can give a decent prediction of when it is to be expected!
How the Royal Society would plan so to do, I would very much like to know. In their arrogant conceit, I doubt the heretic risk of cooling has even entered their inflated heads.
Richard Betts
quote
[] this then allows them to be tested against data over a few years. See this work by Smith et al at the Met Office Hadley Centre which published a forecast for the 10 years following 2006, which can be compared to observations.
unquote
It might be instructive for all parties if you would engage Lucia at the Blackboard about testing 'projections'. IIRC her last look at the AR4 scenario showed it teetering on the edge of failure. I'd be very interested in her take on the paper you reference which to my untutored eye looks like it's heading for a fall already.
Good luck in your engagement with the 'denier' blogs: treating both sides of the debate with good manners is the only way forward. Have fun with Lucia's delightfully eccentric graphs and enjoy her lucid explanations of the statistical errors she excoriates.
JF
Richard Betts,
I understand that the MET at one time used your climate models to make seasonal forecasts.
I also understand that these have proved to be so accurate that the MET have decided that it is no longer necessary to publish these for the use of the general public in the future.
would you like to comment please?
Richard Betts,
Further to your claims of the success of testing your old forecasts against future data.
Would you please provide us all with forecasts made in say the first part of 1999, when you successfully foreast the temperature for say the following fifteen years?
It would be useful if you could superimpose the actual temperatures for say the period 1999 to 2010.
That would go a long way to reassuring us skeptics that your models are up to the task of forecasting the next fifty years or so.
I'm sure that BH would be more than willing to let you make a full post on this subject with charts and all.
Alternatively, you could just put it up on the MET blog and give us the link to it here.
Regards.
Richard Betts,
You may say that ten years or so is too short a period to be representative of the changing climate.
In that case, please provide a long term forecast prepared by the met in say 1970 and compare it with actuals from 1970 to today.
But as I write this, I wonder if this is too much to ask and that your models were not perfected by 1970.
In case they are much more recent, would you not agree that you do not yet have the track record to justify recommending any substantial change to our industrial structure?
Some of us are old enought to remember the MET forecasts of mild winters for the last three years.
Track record is SO important, don't you agree?
Richard Betts,
you may have surmised that my expertise is slanted more towards the financial markets than to climate forecasting.
New investors are often attracted towards start ups in brand new industries which are hyped to have unlimited possibilities.
Experienced investors however much prefer a long track record of successful performance against promise.
Do your models meet this test?
The costs of de-fossilation are tremendous.
We would like some reassurance that your theories and your models stand up to the hard test of time and relality.
I know that is tough, but as one former Australian Prime Minister once said:
"Life was not meant to be easy".
Green religion:
GM (genetic modified Organism) = bad [can contaminate the local area]
GE (geo engineering) = good [will be beneficial for the whole planet]
Amen.
Here is a comparison of Hansen's predicted 0.5 C decadal increase made in 1988 with reality 20 years later. As predictive scientists go he underperforms a roomful of monkeys. http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/23/hansencheck.gif
Foxgoose I think the eruptions of Krakatoa and Yimbora followed by "year(s) without a summer" shpws the suphur crystal geo-engineering would work. That doesn't mean we should do it - until CAGW has proven (A) real & (B) damaging but I have seen no credible evidence to dispute this.
AusieDan
The paper I referred to above, which forecast 0.6 degree warming by 2000 compared to the early 1970s (a reasonably good forecast given that the actual warming was around 0.5 degrees), was in fact by a scientists from the Met Office:
Man-made Carbon Dioxide and the “Greenhouse” Effect
J. S. SAWYER
Nature239, 23-26 doi:10.1038/239023a0
If you are not a Nature subscriber and don't want to pay for the article, drop me an email (easy to guess my address) and I'll send you a pdf.
You are right that seasonal forecasting is extremely challenging and we've had difficulties communicating the uncertainties in this in the past. I don't think it's as bad as you say though.
But don't get me wrong, I'm the last person to say the models are perfect or even near-perfect, they have lots of problems still - we've discussed this a lot here and I'm very up front about this. However, they are not completely useless either, and they are all we have to go in on trying to estimate further changes - but they have to be regarded as just that, an estimation based on best current synthesis of knowledge of a highly complex system.
I regard climate science as still being in its infancy. It's very exciting and we've made a lot of progress, but there's so much more to learn....
But New Scientist says geoengineering experiment with our real precious one-and-only atmosphere to start next month
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128294.000-geoengineering-trials-get-under-way.html
JaneHM Sep 10, 2011 at 11:29 PM
Thanks for the link, not read in full yet as I suspect it may sour my nightcap.
If Richard Betts says climate science is in its infancy, I guess much of the "anger" here is misdirected.
OTOH who would want to trust the world in the findings of an infant?