Horizon on global weirding

This is a thread for anyone whose stomach was strong enough to both sit through BBC's Horizon and talk about the experience afterwards.

Comments

[3x2]

OK, Paul Butler, I'm normally an easy going guy but if I ever have to go to "Wikipedia" again to find out what someone does for a living I will take it all out on you - big time.

Sclerochronology - Mannian Manipulation of Mollusc Mathematics or Mmmm... as we call it in the trade.

[Richard Drake]

I alerted Indur Golkany of this thread and the question about drought and famine and he's been kind enough to elucidate by email:

1. The data I have used are all from the International Disaster database (EM-DAT). So if they erred, so did I.

2. There is a lot of confusion between drought and famine. Not all droughts lead to famines. It used to be that droughts would often lead to famines. But that is no longer true. Nowadays--what with the World Food Program, international trade, and international disaster relief literally fueled by fossil fuels--it takes deliberately poor economic and agricultural policies coupled with political mismanagement, failed or failing states, war and/or civil strife to convert droughts into full-fledged famines. In other words, today droughts are due to nature, but famines are man-made. And I don’t mean “man-made” as in anthropogenic global warming. Most, if not all, the famines in the last few decades are of the latter variety, so they are, appropriately, excluded from current lists of natural disasters (including EM-DAT’s lists). [Side note: these days droughts lead to “food crises” rather than famines.]

3. The death tolls from famines in Africa over the last few decades, while terrible (and mainly avoidable), are relatively small compared to the famines that China, India and the Soviet Union experienced in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the late 20th century the deadliest famines have been man-made (e.g., China 1959-61, Cambodia in the 1970s, North Korea, Sudan, Congo), although I have not yet seen mortality estimates for the recent food shortages in Somalia and the Horn of Africa.

4. I believe the EM-DAT database includes indirect deaths from the European heatwave of 2003 since it ascribed a death toll in excess of 72,000 to this event in its 2010 version (compared to 46,000 in its 2005 version). See p. 11 at http://reason.org/files/deaths_from_extreme_weather_1900_2010.pdf I think, but am not sure, but the treatment of this particular heatwave may be anomalous. It does not matter much, because normally their contribution to the global death toll from extreme weather events is relatively small.

I hope this helps.

Thanks Indur.

[Josh]

Richard, wow, most interesting and, yes very helpful.

[Paul Butler]

Richard and Indur

Thanks for that clarification and for making the effort. Given the relatively small number of deaths attributed to extreme weather events in the EM-DAT database compared with the relatively large number attributed to famines (which I agree are mostly man-made but which of course do sometimes involve a weather/climate component), I think it is possible that a slightly different interpretation of the numbers in a small number of large famines could significantly skew the final result.

So I'd be cautious about using these numbers in any argument about the consequences of climate change. And of course the same goes for the very large numbers sometimes produced by political Greens as a way of suggesting that the "C" part of "CAGW" is already happening.

Best wishes

Paul

[Josh]

Paul B, what numbers would you use then? I have the twinges of a suspicion you don't quite get the arguments here - so please do put me right ;-)

[Mac]

From the IPCC's SREX report

FAQ 3.1 | Is the Climate Becoming More Extreme?

While there is evidence that increases in greenhouse gases have likely caused changes in some types of extremes, there is no simple answer to the question of whether the climate, in general, has become more or less extreme. Both the terms ‘more extreme’ and ‘less extreme’ can be defined in different ways, resulting in different characterizations of observed changes in extremes. Additionally, from a physical climate science perspective it is difficult to devise a comprehensive metric that encompasses all aspects of extreme behavior in the climate.

That is the IPCC's way of keeping on message when faced with no hard evidence of whether the climate is becoming more extreme.

Reading between the lines the emiprical evidence at hand is suggesting a less extreme climate than in the recent past, whilst the AGW hypothesis as ever is demanding a more extreme climate. You can see the difficulty the IPCC have to deal with here. To retain faith in AGW you have to discount real data.

What the report does do is kill off the notion of "global weirdness".

The only thing weird about climate science is the scientists who practice it.

[Richard Drake]

Thanks Paul, Josh and Mac. I admit I've not read the full SREX report as yet. But I assume that in line with the SPM it doesn't highlight the historic record of deaths from extreme climate events at all. And that's a very strange omission indeed.

Compare the treatment of the very slippery statistic the time series since 1850 of the global averaged temperature anomaly (GATA) - as Richard Lindzen taught me to call it. This has had vast attention paid to it - but in and of itself it is (or should be) of very little interest to a hard-headed policy maker.

But when it comes to something as central as the number of deaths from extreme climate events everything goes terribly quiet for 24 years or so - so that Paul Butler can't even cite an alternative treatment from the great Dr Goklany's - and he's great only because he's bothered to look, unlike everyone else.

It's utterly shameful, it's totally wrong-headed and it's going to change.

[Paul Butler]

Josh

I wouldn't use any numbers. It's clear that numbers of deaths that can be exclusively and unambiguously associated with extreme weather events have been falling, presumably because of advances in infrastructure and healthcare.

But where a large catastrophe can be partly attributed to the climate or weather - and it could always be argued that this is the case with a drought event - then numbers from that event alone could easily be sufficient to overwhelm the much smaller numbers resulting from other extreme weather events. It's not my area of expertise to do that exercise, but I expect you would end up with something much more variable than Goklany's numbers.

Best wishes

Paul

[Josh]

Paul B. "I wouldn't use any numbers." What a great quote! Yes, a lot of us feel that would be a good idea ;-)

Trouble is people will go on using numbers - completely daft ones - and then point to them and say "Panic now! It's alarming!" That is what CAGW is all about, no?

And if it is not about numbers then what is it about - a feeling? "I woke up this morning and felt terribly concerned about the weather, that at some point in the future it might cause some inconvenience to someone somewhere..."

I am still twinging with suspicion here - help me out!

[Paul Butler]

Josh

I can't help you out, I'm afraid. If you're 'suspicious' that I'm a warmist you'd be right!

I'm concerned about climate change because the physics, embedded in climate models, tell us that increasing concentrations of GHGs are likely to have significant effects on the environment. The actual effects and the timescales are not at the moment easily predictable (which of course provides ample scope for people to critique the models), but the rate at which CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere is unprecedented on timescales of hundreds of thousands of years, and its role as a feedback in the glacial cycles suggests that this rapid increase should be taken seriously and its potential consequences should be addressed.

So yes, obviously it's a lot more than just a gut feeling.

Cheers

Paul

[Richard Drake]

Paul, don't you find it strange that that the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers on Extreme Events doesn't mention either Goklany's time series of deaths over the last 110 years or an alternative? Why do you think that is? Is this area really more difficult to say anything about than the role of CO2 in glacial cycles over many hundreds of thousands of years?

[Paul Butler]

Richard

My immediate response is that (for the reasons I've mentioned upthread) it's too difficult to give an authoritative answer.

Also (for reasons we've both mentioned upthread) the number of deaths is not in any case related directly to changes in the number of extreme events.

Is this area really more difficult to say anything about than the role of CO2 in glacial cycles over many hundreds of thousands of years?

IPCC synthesizes scientific research on climate and there is much more scientific research on the role of CO2 in glacial cycles than there is on the attribution of human deaths to extreme weather events. So yes, within their terms of reference it would be more difficult for them to say anything about the latter.

Best wishes

Paul

[Edward Bancroft]

With its superficial, background music swamped, and scatter gun 'geewhiz' facts, this programme did nothing to enlighten, nor to cut through the hype smothering the topic. One longs for an old style Raymond Baxter approach to science presentation, with a clear incisive explanation and the ability to challenge the consensus.

[Josh]

Paul B, that is great, good answer. I am very glad you are commenting here and I look forward to reading more - I am sure I will learn a lot!

You have summarised the problem very well. The climate models "tell us that increasing concentrations of GHGs are likely to have significant effects on the environment."

Some feel the "significant effects" will be alarmingly catastrophic and therefore we should drastically alter our lifestyles, energy policies etc etc immediately.

But the data ( those numbers! ) does not look so alarming. Global temperature used to be the catastrophists yardstick but approx 0.8 degrees C in 150 years, with no increase for the last decade or so, does not seem very scary. The physics, CO2 warming per doubling at 1 degree C, does not look scary either. Sea level rise is another catastrophist yardstick but that seems to rising rather uncatastrophically. Sea ice was another one but again looking at the actual data it looks pretty normal at the moment. And, of course, if you want to know about another stick - the infamous Mann made Hockey Stick - then you have come to the right blog. Andrew's book, The Hockey Stick Illusion, is a great read - hope you have a copy!

So now it is Global Weirding, which I presume is tv speak for what used to be called weather but is now also known as 'extreme events'? And this is supposed to have something to do with GHGs? Roger Pielke Jr has a v helpful Big Red Button ;-)

If you have time please let us know what the "significant effects" are, how you quantify, measure and test them. I am very interested to know, seriously.

[Richard Drake]

Paul:

IPCC synthesizes scientific research on climate and there is much more scientific research on the role of CO2 in glacial cycles than there is on the attribution of human deaths to extreme weather events.

We are in violent agreement on that. But why? Because a focus on one of the central humanitarian questions in the field would at once relegate anthropogenic global warming to an issue much less urgent for policy makers? Such an omission cannot be an accident.

In the Summary for Policy Makers on SREX there is no mention of the death trend since 1900. I repeat this because it is so extraordinary. Has the IPCC exercised any influence on what research is carried in the climate field for the twenty years and more it's existed? In other areas, a massive yes. And we are meant to give it a free pass over this gross omission?

[James Evans]

Paul Butler:

"I'm concerned about climate change because the physics, embedded in climate models, tell us that increasing concentrations of GHGs are likely to have significant effects on the environment. The actual effects and the timescales are not at the moment easily predictable (which of course provides ample scope for people to critique the models)..."

This is where I get lost. We should believe the models when they tell us that "increasing concentrations of GHGs are likely to have significant effects", even though "the actual effects and the timescales are not at the moment easily predictable." For a start, why is the word "easily" in there? I don't care whether making an accurate prediction is easy or hard. Either you can do it or you can't. There are no special merit badges for effort.

So we can strike out the word "easily", and we get:

"... the physics, embedded in climate models, tell us that increasing concentrations of GHGs are likely to have significant effects on the environment [though] the actual effects and the timescales are not at the moment predictable..."

So we're left with an untestable hypothesis.

[Alex Cull]

Horizon: Global Weirding is now on YouTube (for the moment, at least):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi7WOQde7fI

[The Libertarian]

I actually criticised this incredibly sensational and rather scarmongering edition of Horizon on the POV messageboard.

Unsurprisingly, it actually got removed by the over zealous moderator, Peta, but another thread has now appeared.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbpointsofview/NF1951566?thread=8422859