Bishop Hill Madrid, 1995 - the story continues
Jul 17, 2012 Climate: IPCC Climate: Models A few months ago I linked to the first part of Bernie Lewin's history of the shenanigans around the IPCC's second assessment report. Bernie has now published a long, two-part post examining the science behind the controversial detection and attribution sections of the report: Part one and Part two.
Could this really be it? The first faint image of man in the sky?
Ben Santer had just placed a transparency under the lens to project this colour pattern high upon the conference wall. It was the first afternoon of the Working Group 1 Plenary in Madrid, and this great council of nations from across the entire globe was persuaded to study the significance of its strange contours before getting down to their principle task. And so they should study it, for this is a game-changer striking at the nub of what the IPCC is all about. Although obscure, here is an image of the impact of human industry on the atmosphere above. At least part of the recent warming had at last been attributed to industrial emissions. If not for this, then why these near one hundred delegations flown in from all corners of the globe? There they were carefully positioned at arched rows of labelled bureaus across this cavernous auditorium. As they listened to live translations of Santer’s explanation, not a few of them must have gazed up in wonder: Could this really be what man hath wrought?
Reader Comments (9)
Thanks BernieL, this is invaluable material.... I will be staying awake now (3:18 am here) absorbed in this!!
[just an ''attaboy'' for the moment but I had to thank you]
OT (sorry):
In Up All Night on Radio 5 last night there was a section on scientific papers - sometime after 3:30. They discussed briefly a recent paper on tree rings that goes back 2000 years, based on trees in Finland that fell into a lake and so were preserved (i.e. not just trees that are alive today).
The take away points made were:
MWP warmer than expected (and the interviewee pointed out this corresponds to our knowledge of wine growing)
LIA coder than expected
Dark ages and pre 1000AD also colder than previosuly thought
A surprise - there is a small 2000 long term year cooling trend up to around 1800
A real tour de force, there, Bernie. Thanks for that.
((+1,00,000) + (-1,000,000))/2 = 0 or it could have just been 0 in the first place.
This story is super-important because in climate science/IPCC assessments, questions that are considered answered earlier are not tackled again. This is, broadly speaking, true of all scientific activity.
We've reached a stage where propagandists can proclaim 'vast evidence' exists for their favourite theories because the the IPCC climbed on the attribution ladder in the way it did.
Let's assume that all, yes that's right all, the warming since 1850 to the present has been caused by greenhouse gases. The warming according to HadCRU3T is about 0.75 °C. CO2 equivalent (CO2e) has risen from 290 ppm to 464 ppm. This represents a sensitivity to CO2e doubling of 1.1 °C – very close to the generally accepted figure of 1.0 °C in the absence of water vapour feedback. This means that either there has been no water vapour feedback since 1850, despite the fact that there have been three periods of rapid warming during that time, or that part of the warming is due to water vapour feedback, in which case the rise in temperature due to CO2e is less than 0.75 °C and the sensitivity to a doubling of CO2e is less than generally accepted.
Andrew:
I am disappointed that this splendid couple of articles is not getting the attention it deserves. It certainly looks like Santer was involved in more than just the rewriting of the Summary for Policy Makers. Could you ask Roger Pielke to comment from his insider view?
I want to add my thumbs-up. Thanks Andrew for drawing attention to this piece.
What Berniel has written is not just beautiful prose, it is also a historical story of huge importance, covering the crucial sea-change that took place at Madrid IPCC 1995.
Fred Singer pointed out the crucial (and unforgiveable) changes Ben Santer made at this point to the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, after discussion and open editing had ended. But Berniel shows a completely different side of Santer, and indeed of many others just as well-known: before Madrid, they come across far more as upholders of skepticism and scientific method, who refused to claim there was enough scientific evidence for "human attribution" to global warming.
For Ben Santer's key changes, see my pages here and here
Another thank-you to Bernie for his superb and scholarly work, which is unpaid, in the best traditions of learning. And, if anyone from SkS etc accuses him of being a shill of Big Oil or similar, I hope he sues the pants off them (just a bit of free legal advice to book reviewers everywhere).