Bishop Hill The Lords do battle
Jul 26, 2013 Climate: sensitivity Deben Matt Ridley After the House of Lords debate on the Energy Bill, Lord Deben wrote to a group of peers attacking the statements made by Matt Ridley in the debate. The letter and the ensuing correspondence was as follows:
Deben's first letter was sent on 4 July 2013:
My Lords,
During the debate on July 2, on the Energy Bill, I stated that the arguments on the science presented by my noble friend Lord Ridley were at variance with the views of the overwhelming majority of scientists whose expertise bears on these issues. I owe it to Lord Lawson, upon whom I intervened, and the noble Viscount to justify that statement. I therefore list the basis for that assertion and append two recent articles which address the points that he raised.
- Climate sensitivity measures the increase in temperature due to a doubling of carbon in the atmosphere.
- Climate sensitivity has always been uncertain, and remains so.
- When we, the Committee on Climate Change, advised the Government and Parliament on the 2050 target in the Climate Change Act, we modelled climate sensitivity on the range suggested by the IPCC.
- There have been a number of studies since then which have found climate sensitivity within the range that we modelled, some at the lower end of the range, and some at the higher end of the range.
- There is no scientific evidence to suggest that the range has significantly changed, or that the probability distribution within this range has significantly changed.
- Matt Ridley draws in particular on a recent study published in Nature Geoscience, which gives a best estimate of climate sensitivity at the low end of IPCC range. However, this study makes assumptions on highly uncertain variables, and should not be regarded as definitive (as no single study should be).
- It is appropriate to consider the full range of uncertainty in order to make decisions that appropriately balance future risks.
- Assessment against the full range of uncertainty suggests the need to cut UK emissions by at least 80% in 2050 as part of global emissions reductions to limit risks of dangerous climate change.
- Within this, it is essential to move to a low-carbon power sector. Not to do this would raise the costs and risks of meeting the 2050 target.
The following articles provide additional support:
This article provides a useful summary of the evidence on climate sensitivity and also highlights the issues surrounding the use of climate science in mainstream media articles. In mainstream explanation, such as in The Economist, climate science is often misunderstood and there is a failure to adequately reflect complexities and uncertainties. The article concludes that the evidence on climate sensitivity is such that we need to reduce emissions significantly in order to limit the risks of very dangerous climate change that we currently face.
This article focuses on how Matt Ridley misinterprets the science and highlights that there is more than one way to estimate climate sensitivity. There is emphasis on the range of estimates of climate sensitivity within climate models, and from other methodological approaches. The fact that a particular study suggests a lower estimate of climate sensitivity does not mean that all other evidence should now be negated. Rather, new studies should be considered in the context of the vast evidence base that exists. While some (notably Matt Ridley) have taken the results of particular studies and rejected this wider evidence, it is essential to consider the evidence base as a whole. The article concludes that the range of estimates of climate sensitivity remains unchanged, and that urgent action is required to reduce global emissions.
Lord Deben
Later the same day, Ridley replied as follows:
My Lords,
My noble friend Lord Deben has written to you today on the topic of climate sensitivity to justify what he said about my speech in the debate in Grand Committee last Tuesday. I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond, because the evidence he links to in fact rather well support the points I made. He said in the debate that the “facts that were presented [by me] would be denied by almost every climatologist in the world”, yet the sources that he supplies in his email actually vindicate the remarks I made, as I detail below.
For example, I said that the full greenhouse effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide is about 1.2C of warming. Lord Deben refers to the article by Dana Nuccitelli in the Guardian, which explicitly confirms that I am correct: “if we double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the increased greenhouse effect will cause the planet's average surface temperature to warm about 1.2°C (2.2°F) in response.” While I would not rely on the Guardian for accuracy, this is indeed widely agreed by scientists. So this point alone makes Lord Deben’s assertion that my facts would be denied by almost every climatologist false.
I am delighted to have this opportunity of emphasizing the general agreement among scientists on this point because it is often overlooked among journalists and politicians thatdoubling carbon dioxide alone cannot produce dangerous levels of global warming. As I said in the debate, this risk comes from putative net water-vapour and cloud feedbacks, as confirmed in Mr Nuccitelli’s Guardian article cited by Lord Deben. Mr Nuccitelli claims that a recent study finds water vapour concentration rising as predicted in the models. But this is just one paper and others find no such effect. For example a paper published last year concluded:
“Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL052094/abstract
And a recent essay summarized the data thus:
“Climate models predict upper atmosphere moistening which triples the greenhouse effect from man-made carbon dioxide emissions. The new satellite data from the NASA water vapor project shows declining upper atmosphere water vapor during the period 1988 to 2001. It is the best available data for water vapor because it has global coverage.”
(http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/NVAP_March2013.pdf)
Besides, the IPCC AR4 report itself is clear that on top of any effect from water vapour, changes in clouds can either amplify or dampen warming by at least as much as water vapour and CO2, so there is no consensus about likely amplification of CO2-induced warming.
Furthermore, as I stated in my speech, the empirical data on global mean temperature confirm that warming has been much slower than predicted in all models, as shown in the following chart from Reading University, used by The Economist:
Lord Deben claims that I have chosen a few unrepresentative studies of climate sensitivity. This is not the case. I show below a chart on which are the 95% confidence intervals for observationally-based peer-reviewed studies on climate sensitivity published since 2010, all of which are on average lower than the IPCC’s central 3C estimate. Far from me being the one who is cherry-picking a study to suit my prejudices, it is Mr Nuccitelli who is cherry-picking by citing a single study of climate sensitivity that gives a climate sensitivity estimate based on a number of sources, all of which are derived from paleoclimate work, a notoriously unreliable way of estimating this variable.
Many climate sensitivity studies depend on highly complex global climate models (GCMs), and reflect the characteristics of the model concerned rather than those of the real climate. Even GCM-based studies that purport to provide properly observationally-constrained estimates of climate sensitivity, by running many simulations of the GCM with different parameter settings and comparing the results withobservations, may in fact rule out a priori the possibility of climate sensitivity being below the IPCC likely range. A good example is two recentstudies by Met Office scientists, Sexton et al 2012 and Harris et al 2013, the techniques of which formed the basis for UKCP09, a set of projections for UK climate for the 21st century. The use of the Met Office's HadCM3 model for these studies guaranteed that they would produce high climate sensitivity estimates, almost regardless of what best estimates the observational data used pointed to.
In case I should be accused of misrepresenting the studies finding low climate sensitivity, let me quote from them directly:
From Ring et al. (2012):
“Additionally, our estimates of climate sensitivity using our [simple climate model] and the four instrumental temperature records range from about 1.5°C to 2.0°C. These are on the low end of the estimates in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. So, while we find that most of the observed warming is due to human emissions of [long-lived greenhouse gases], future warming based on these estimations will grow more slowly compared to that under the IPCC’s “likely” range of climate sensitivity, from 2.0°C to 4.5°C.”
From van Hateren (2012):
“The millennium-scale response to doubling of the CO2 concentration found here, 2.0 ± 0.3°C, thus has presumably not yet reached full equilibrium, and can therefore only be cautiously compared with the equilibrium climate response of the 2007 IPCC report (Meehl et al 2007). It is at the lower end of the range considered likely (2-4.5°C), and lower than its best estimate (3°C).”
From Aldrin et al. (2012):
“The mean is 2.0°C… which is lower than the IPCC estimate from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC,2007), but this estimate increases if an extra forcing component is added, see the following text. The 95% credible interval (CI) ranges from 1.1°C to 4.3°C, whereas the 90% CI ranges from 1.2°C to 3.5°C.”
From Masters (2013) (not yet included in the chart):
"This method yields a median estimate for ECS [equilibrium climate sensitivity] of 1.98 K, with a likely (67 %) range of 1.47–2.95 K and a 90 % confidence interval of 1.19–5.15 K." (1 K = 1°C).
From Lewis (2013, in press [Journal of Climate]):
"Employing the improved methodology, preferred 90% bounds of 1.2-2.2 K for ECS are then derived (mode and median 1.6 K). ...Incorporating forcing and observational surface temperature uncertainties, unlike in the original study, widens the 90% range to 1.0-3.0 K."
In addition, there is the Otto et al (2013) study in Nature Geoscience to which I referred in my speech and which has been characterized as follows by one of its authors, Nic Lewis:
“Using what is probably the most robust method available, it establishes a well-constrained best estimate for TCR that is nearly 30% below the CMIP5 multimodel mean TCR of 1.8°C (per Forster et al. (2013), here). The 95% confidence bound for the Nature Geoscience paper’s 1.3°C TCR best estimate indicates some of the highest-response general circulation models (GCMs) have TCRs that are inconsistent with recent observed changes. Some two-thirds of the CMIP5 models analysed in Forster et. al (2013) have TCRs that lie above the top of the ‘likely’ range for that best estimate, and all the CMIP5 models analysed have an ECS that exceeds the Nature Geoscience paper’s 2.0°C best estimate of ECS. The CMIP5 GCM with the highest TCR, per the Forster et. al (2013) analysis, is the UK Met. Office’s flagship HadGEM2-ES model. It has a TCR of 2.5°C, nearly double the Nature Geoscience paper’s best estimate of 1.3°C and 0.5°C beyond the top of the 5–95% uncertainty range.”
Mr Lewis has also written as follows in response to a comment from Mr Nuccitelli:
“If climate sensitivity is two-thirds or less than the IPCC's central estimate, then for any greenhouse gas emissions scenario ultimate anthropogenic global warming will be at least a third less than previously expected.”
In short, I stand by my assertion in the debate that recent scientific opinion has not been moving in the direction of greater alarm, but the reverse.
I am surprised that Lord Deben should cite an article on a blog called the Carbon Brief. This was based largely on a Guardian article by Myles Allen, which misrepresented me. I append below the text of a letter I wrote to Professor Allen in response.
Finally, I am delighted to see Lord Deben concede that "Climate sensitivity has always been uncertain, and remains so". However, this flies in the fact of his repeated assertions of sufficient certainty about climate risk to base veryexpensive policy upon it.
Yours sincerely,
Matt Ridley.
The following day, Deben had another go.
My Lords,
In his response to my explanation, Viscount Ridley dismisses vast swathes of the scientific evidence base:
- He assumes away positive feedbacks which amplify the initial warming due to increased carbon in the atmosphere, without having robust evidence to justify this.
- He rejects climate modelling, and methodologies which estimate climate sensitivity based on historical data, both of which are major areas of research.
- He focuses on a particular study within the energy balance modelling approach. What he doesn’t say is that this paper suggests estimates of climate sensitivity that are largely unchanged based on recent temperature data, and that it implies the need to cut global emissions significantly in order to limit currently high risks of very dangerous climate change. Neither does he refer to other studies within this approach which find a higher sensitivity. He does not highlight the limitations of energy balance modelling, which is no more certain than climate modelling.
It is the job of the Committee on Climate Change to consider the scientific evidence in its entirety, and in a balanced and open-minded way. The scientific evidence continues to suggest significant risks of very dangerous climate change. We should insure against this through reducing emissions, which we can do at relatively low cost.
I do not propose to continue this discussion further in public but will instead seek to arrange a meeting between Viscount Ridley and the climate scientists who work for the Committee on Climate Change.
Lord Deben
And finally
6.7.13
My Lords,
Lord Deben has once again written to you. In response, briefly, to his letter I would make three points:
First, far from "assuming away" positive feedbacks that amplify the initial warming due to increased carbondioxide levels, I pointed out that recent observational evidence pointed topositive feedbacks in the real world being much weaker than those exhibitedwithin complex global climate models' virtual worlds.
Second, I am always happy to meet any scientists to discuss climate change. It would be most profitable if we wereaccompanied by other scientists who have reached different conclusionsthan those the CCC has consulted, so that the exchange could be a two-way one. I assume Lord Deben would agree to attend also.
Third, you should know that this is not the first time I have been wrongly cited in this way. Lord Deben made an unprovoked attack on me several months ago in a lecture in Oxford, charging – on the basis of a blog post written by a novelist – that I had not cited the mainstream scientific literature when writing about ocean acidification. In fact I had included direct quotations from 17 papers in the mainstream scientific literature, including a major meta-analysis of 372 peer-reviewed papers. Despite being requested twice to do so, LordDeben declined to write to the organisers of the lecture to correct his mistake.
Yours sincerely
Matt Ridley
Bishop Hill
I inadvertently missed the final email in this exchange. I've added it now, so if you read the original post before 9:30 you might like to revisit.
Reader Comments (75)
Phillip Bratby
I am exceedingly grateful that you did not ask for Deben to be taken out and shot ^.^
I have had people cite the "Guardian" at me before. Makes me want to hand them a roll of toilet paper.
Now we have two open ended invitations to discuss the science - from Lawson and Ridley - I have to say, I am interested into how The Royal Society will now respond.
"I have had people cite the "Guardian" at me before. Makes me want to hand them a roll of toilet paper."
Redundant if they read the Guardian. Not good enough for fish and chips.
string theory *would* be discussed in this way if wielded similar political and economic 'benefits'. - Dave Salt.
Alas, I must confess to being in the pay of 'Big String'.
As for Deben - if he were on fire, I wouldn't.
Follow the money - Lord Deben is.
Lord Debent could be suffering from self inflicted madcowdisease his thinking is certainly not up to rigorous examination and his ethics are well below par unlike his contempt for the taxpayer.
I am sorry to return again to further comment on this section. But it occurs to me that sceptical scientists should concentrate much effort on the feedback business. We know that the warmists have assumed this from day one. We also know that they have no empirical justification for accepting the hypothesis. But has this point been put over and over again to policy makers? I doubt it. The unexpected temperature hiatus, the now famous Climategate travesty, is far better explained by suggesting a reduced feedback parameter, than arm waving about heating the oceans. Surely, even politicians will understand this.
Please Matt, if you read this, don't let Deben get away with his grotesque repeated references toCO2 as "carbon."
All power to your elbow.
Gillespie Robertson
A perfect example of the difference between evidence based policy making and policy based evidence making that so characterises this debate.
That said, I fear it is going to take widespread power cuts and many thousands of unnecessary deaths of pensioners who cant afford rising energy bills before the self-serving charlatans who have such a grip of government policy on energy and climate are winkled out. It is not enough to defeat their arguments when so much personal capital and public face - never mind the vested financial interests - are committed by so many in positions of power to utterly mad and increasingly indefensible policies. Getting onto a sensible track is going to require an upheaval at least on the scale of our exit from the EMU in John Major's government. It makes one despair...
"What is a "climatologist"? Is there a recognised definition of their skill set and expertise?"
With a few notable exceptions, a climatologist is akin to a witch doctor, only with more degrees and less ethics:
http://lifeinthethumb.blogspot.com/2012/05/saturday-snapshot-witch-doctor-is-in.html
(Could that be...a hockey stick?)
The only reason Ridley, Monckton, Lawson etc. are involved in this debate is that they are right wing crazies who have zero scientific credibility. They always get things spectacularly wrong and make idiots of themselves and every other sceptic.
Who taught these people about climate science ? Am I supposed to believe that Monckton who is at least half mad taught himself professional level climate science ? What about Ridley ? Is someone else pulling their strings.
Ridley is famous for one thing. The biggest bank failure in modern times. Wayne Rooney has more intellectual kudos than Ridley. The GWPF is a pathetic joke.
eSmiff says
Well spoken.
"Wayne Rooney has more intellectual kudos than Ridley"
Hard to judge, as I haven't read any of Rooney's books. Ridley's seem OK though.
Wayne Rooney has more credibility in climate science because he isn't drive by lunatic politics, his inherited wealth or his inherited peerage.
Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley, FRSL, FMedSci, DL (born 7 February 1958), known commonly as Matt Ridley, is a British businessman, scientist, journalist, and popular author[1] and a member of the House of Lords.[2]
Ridley was chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, during which period Northern Rock experienced the first run on a British bank in 150 years. Ridley chose to resign, and the bank had to be bailed out by the UK government leading to the nationalisation of Northern Rock.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley
***
Phil Plait's total contempt for Matt Ridley who he rightly treats as a complete clown. I had no idea who he is and I have no desire to know.
Arguing with deniers of any stripe gets tiresome quickly. They trot out old, already-debunked points, misuse known science, or sow confusion where none exists. Countering their nonsense is like trying to dig a hole in water.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/07/10/global_warming_wall_street_journal_writer_matt_ridley_doubles_down_on_global.html
This just demonstrates clearly again what an arrogant supercilious idiot Deben is. His ignorance is breath taking.
I think after this demonstration of stupidity, it's time for Deben to feed mad cow burgers to some unsuspecting child to distract the general public who may rightly wonder why they are paying for this fool to inhabit the House of Lords.
When will his conflicted position of having his nose in the trough of renewable subsidies be reported on by the media. He should have gone when Yeo was kicked out.
Plait had a thing about him, but he's now only a Mann mouthpiece.
As they say. if there were a climate revolution Plait would be safe from the guillotine, as the executioner wouldn't be able to find a head.
@esmifff: you haven't a clue about the forces you and your ilk have released.
The power of our Establishment when it reacts against corruption is immense.
Here is the highly credible, politically non controversial, Roger Pielke Jr's recent EXPERT testimony to the US senate.
http://www.globalwarming.org/2013/07/26/are-weather-extremes-getting-worse-roger-pielke-jr-shares-the-data-with-senate-panel/
Andy Revkin tweeted #AGW testimony provides good chance for point-by-point rebuttal by critics. Anyone out there?
Silence - tee hee.
Lord Deben, in this exchange, has demonstrated that his evangelism, quite apart from his potential business conflict of interests, is wholy unsuitable to sit on this committee and should resign from it. His ideological objectives, obvious through his association with Globe International, clearly compromise public confidence in his objectivity.
Gummer, a comical twerp, is a pompous oaf, a man on the take and it can hardly be surprising that he backs climate catastrophe scenarios and boondoggle technology - because he personally stands to profit greatly.
Graft, embezzlement, fraud - there is rampant trouser-ing of baksheesh - in the upper and lower houses. Scum is what they are, Westminster is full of it and most of them signed up to the climate change act.
Green edicts, renewable white elephants and the green agenda:
The barely concealed contempt in which the British populace are held in by the British political elite is manifest in the drafting of the 2008 climate change act.
Recently, the talk has been about the shallow recovery the economy is making and about how wonderful it is............really?
They haven't begun - have they?
The public sector gravy train is overloaded, with green loons posing as civil servants, in the DECC, in Defra, in the EA and numerous other off-shoots, up and down the country councils employ "climate change officers", recycling officers and a host of other such ridiculous titles. Claim salaries, pensions wasteful policies and the rest - eco-catastrophe chicken littles, man made warming shenanigans: runs into £billions - all for what exactly?
There is another way, we have abundant resource, hundreds of years of fossil fuels, with deep sea methane Clathrates - possibly thousands of years supply and it is cheap too [when compared to the 'green alternatives'].
Matt Ridley, writing in the Times reckons the shale gas revolution over the pond means consumers are saving on average £450p/a - kick start the economy...................we could do that here, no more worries about blackouts and endless quibbles over foreign supply and prices.
The politicians don't want you and me; to have cheap fuel, secure supply, cheap energy.
Why not, why do they hate us so much?
Why do the eco-fundo's hate mankind and technology so much - but no questions asked - most of them drive 4x4's and fly all over the world - just asking.
Sustainable living = cheap energy.
Athelstan.
The rise of the Greens - putting the hippies on the payroll
Green Capitalism: Manufacturing Scarcity in an Age of Abundance, by James Heartfield
"The rise of green capitalism is not just expressed in demands for restraining mass consumption, but also in changed attitudes towards production. A system that prioritises profit over people has little difficulty retooling its performance to engage in unproductive activities, as long as it can make money.
Just as the corporate raiders of the 1980s saw that it was possible to make money by breaking industry up rather than building it up, so today’s green capitalists realise that it is possible to make big bucks without doing very much at all – by ‘manufacturing scarcity’.
Here, Heartfield identifies carbon trading, ‘clean energy’, environmental land retirement and green belt housebuilding restrictions as the key examples where output is squandered in favour of (green) profits: ‘restricting output and so driving up prices is one short-term way to secure profits’ (p34).
http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2008-03/heartfield.htm
The irony is Gummer , like Yeo, is exactly the type of old school Thatcherite using this positions in government to gain personal financial wealth at the cost of the public , that papers like the Guardian and the left have long targeted for hate . Yet by the 'magic' of green wash they totally got away with it from the 'liberal' press and the left ,who much rather smear and attack those that point out this conflict of interest . Truly in the name of 'the cause ' all thing are justified.
It sounds as if Gummer is suffering from MCD - Mad Climate Disease.
Matt Ridley made some good points.
I wish Matt Ridley had pointed out that UK's attempts to decarbonize its electricity generation will have an insignificantly small effect on total global CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuel.
There needs to be a sense of proportion and perspective on these matters.
From engineerlive website : Power engineering :
Coal-fired power plants capacity to grow by 35 per cent in next 10 years
World coal-fired power plant capacity will grow from 1,759,000 MW in 2010 to 2,384,000 MW in 2020. Some 80,000 MW will be replaced. So there will be 705,000 MW of new coal-fired boilers built. The annual new boiler sales will average 70,000 MW. The annual investment will be $140 billion.
These are the most recent forecasts in Coal-fired Boilers: World Analysis and Forecast published by the McIlvaine Company.
Coal-fired power in Asia will rise to 1,464,000 MW in 2020 up from 918,000 MW this year. This will account for an increase in CO2 of 2.6 billion tons.
So even if the US and Europe were to cut CO2 emissions by far more than the targeted 20 percent, the total CO2 increase from Asia will offset it by a wide margin.
Coal-fired power in India will rise from 95,000 MW to 294,000 MW over the next 11 years. This accounts for the largest percentage rise (300) plus the biggest quantitative rise (199,000 MW). So India alone will increase CO2 by 955 million tons per year
The US presently operates coal-fired power plants at a much lower efficiency than those in Europe. Many of the new Chinese power plants are highly efficient. A number of small old power plants have been replaced. However within the last decade China has increased capacity from less than 50 per cent to more than 200 percent of the US capacity. Its CO2 emissions far exceed those from US power plants. Since coal is also still burned in residential and commercial boilers, Chinese total coal burning CO2 emissons far exceed the US.
China and India have coal resources. Other Asian countries have access to supplies from Australia and other nearby sources. The cost of coal-fired power is low compared to the alternatives in the near-term. Since planning of new coal-fired power plants occurs as much as a decade in advance, there is not likely to be a major change in the forecast through 2020. Any impact of renewable energy in Asia is only likely to happen after 2020.
McIlvaine Company tracks every coal-fired power project in World Power Generation Projects.