Bishop Hill Stott and Shuck - the transcript
Sep 29, 2013 Climate: other ;)
Reader Lapogus sends this transcript of the interviews of Emily Shuckburgh and Peter Stott on Friday. Both Lapogus and I were struck by some of the statements made, and felt they were worthy of fact-checking.
BBC Radio 5 Live, Shelagh Fogarty Show, 27.09.2013: Matt McGrath (BBC Environment Correspondent) interview with Peter Stott (UK Met Office) in Stockholm on release of the IPCC SPM5.
Source: http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/FogertyshowAWM.mp3
Shelagh Fogarty (studio, 2.10) … where does this report fit into the IPPC’s history, because it has been an interesting history, not without its issues and not without its attackers…
Matt McGrath (2.30): … Indeed, not without its controversies, it is rather is a bitter day here in Stockholm, the wind blowing in off the water, but I think there is a sense of, I suppose, quite warm delight amongst some of the scientists here today, who see this I suppose, as reclaiming the some of the ground they may have lost in some ways because of the controversies of the last report, chief among them was the error, the blooper if you like, that the Himalayas might all melt by 2035, but there were other issues too that followed in the years to come, I think that one of the clear things that comes out of today’s report is the focus on the science, the absolute, that, you know that Thomas Stocker said that we are not here just to make headlines, we are here to assess the science, and a very serious and sober approach to it. And with me is one of the serious and sober scientists, Peter Stott, from the Met Office, and one of the [IPCC] co-ordinating authors on Detection and Attribution and this is very important, Peter, because… this is saying who dunnit… who is responsible for climate change… so tell us who is it?
Peter Stott (3.25): Well exactly, it is looking at what has caused, eh, the unequivocal warming we have seen, and now we have got this new evidence, which shows very clearly that the dominant cause of the warming is human influence through basically what we have done to the climate system, we have warmed it up, emitted greenhouse gases, so human influence on the climate system is clear, and now we have had this extraordinary thorough analysis of evidence this week, and this is a really strong and robust conclusion about the dominant role of human influence on the climate system.
Matt McGrath (3.55): well, I imagine you are in good voice for someone who has have been up for days, through the night here… um, lots of people talk about the pause, and the fact that the climate temperatures, surface temperatures over the last 15 years have not risen as fast as they were rising before that, and that people have pointed at that and say that there are some holes in your theory, what’s your take on that, after being here?
Peter Stott (4.10): We have always expected to have variability around the longer term trend, and that is exactly what we have seen, in fact we have done a very thorough assessment in this report about the last 15 years, and shown about the important role of the ocean, and also, our understanding of what’s called climate forcing, so these are drivers of the climate system, and we have put all this together, and in fact it is evidence from the last 15 years… the, the warming ocean, the retreating snow and ice, the changing rainfall patterns, the continuing sea-level rise, and this evidence is so strong, of the dominant role of human influence on the climate system.
Matt McGrath (4.45): People have said that the heating, the heating from the pause, might have gone into the oceans, is there enough evidence to substantiate that at the this point ?
Peter Stott (4.55): Um, we have got very clear evidence that the ocean is warming, and that a huge amount of energy that is going into the ocean, and that reflects this imbalance of the climate system that we have, and so we got, we have this beautiful illustration that I presented to the delegates here in Stockholm, that shows that, that continuing rise in energy in the climate system, expressed through not just the warming oceans, but then that melt of the Arctic Sea ice, we had record Arctic sea ice extent, it has changed global rainfall patterns, its, its, its changed extremes as well, more extreme weather…
Matt McGrath (5.25): and it is a clear linear relationship, so that the more you pump into the atmosphere, the more the temperature goes up, its… in a very complex system it is as simple as that?
Peter Stott (5.35): This is a very important new piece of science actually, that again, we explained it in great detail to the delegates here, we all wanted to look at it very very thoroughly, and, despite all the complexities of the climate system, there is this very clear linear relationship between the overall emissions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, and the global temperature rise, so the more we emit, the more the temperature increases.
Matt McGrath (6.00): And people talk about the dangerous 2 degree level, from what you have seen, from what we know now, are we going to blow right past that, and if so, when? Peter Stott (6.05): Well there is still, still time, we showed we showed different scenarios, and the point about this is that what happens about the future depends very much on what we emit, and there is still a chance to avoid 2 degrees if you like, but it very depends on the scenario of the next, of the coming years, the next few years actually.
Matt McGrath (6.25): And we have had conversations like this before, in 2007, 2008 and 2009, leading to political inaction, why will things be any different now?
Peter Stott (6.30): We have this new report, and this is the the most thorough report, if you look at the document released today in Stockholm, it goes right across the climate, it is the most thorough document, it is the most thoroughly reviewed ever, and so this is really something the policy makers have owned in Stockholm, and now they have to take this document on and and, take it into account.
Matt McGrath (6.25): Okay, that remains for another day, Peter Stott, thank-you very much for talking to us, and back to you in in, in Falsham (?).
Shelagh Fogarty (studio, 7.00): Thank-you, that’s exactly where we are, thank-you Matt, Matt McGrath, the BBC’s environment correspondent. Listening to that was Dr Emily Shuckburgh, the head of Open Oceans, at the British Antarctic Survey, and I will talk to Andrew Montford in a moment as well, who is a writer, blogger and climate change sceptic. Dr Shuckburgh, on that question that Matt was raising there with Peter Stott, about this pause, the hiatus as it is called in the report, since I think ‘98 that there has been no evidence, or the Earth’s temperature sorry, hasn’t gone above the global average, and sceptics have leapt on this, perhaps understandably, and said ‘now where’s your continuing endless climate change’, what’s your thought on why that pause has happened?
Emily Shuckburgh (7.40): Well first of all it is important to understand what is being described here, so in fact the last three decades have seen increasing temperatures, decade by decade, and so when people talk about a pause, it is more of a plateau actually, we are still at record warm temperatures, and as was described by Peter, um just now, if we consider the Earth as a whole, then, although the surface temperatures haven’t warmed significantly over the last 15 years, we have seen many other changes in, around the Earth, we have seen record Arctic sea ice decrease over this time period and we have also seen continued sea level rise, so what’s been happening is that we can tell from satellite data that the heat trapped by greenhouse gases, has continued, but that heat has been re-distributed, around other parts of the Earth.
Shelagh Fogarty (8.35): Well into the oceans? because that is far from proven, is it?
Emily Shuckburgh (8.40): Well we do have um observations of the ocean, which show that the oceans have been warming…
Shelagh Fogarty (8.45): But we don’t know why, do we? We don’t know why.
Emily Shuckburgh (8.48): Well we do know that the heat has been going from the atmosphere into the oceans, but we don’t have a long record of the temperatures of the deep ocean, and so it is that, that eh, deep ocean that we would like better understand how much heat is going into that deep ocean.
Shelagh Fogarty (9.00): What about what that report says on sea levels,. because its 2007 report was criticised for the claims it made on rising sea levels, and in this report, it is claimed that by the year 3000 (sic) I think it is, they expect sea levels to be what 2½ feet, 80cm higher than now, in your view what would that result in? In the UK for instance?
Emily Shuckburgh (9.25): So that’s by the end of this century, um, the upper projection is just under 1m of sea level rise, that is the maximum that is anticipated by this report, and to put that into a UK context, if you think of the Thames Barrier, which was built some 30 years ago now, to protect London from flooding, at the time it was built, it was built to protect London from a 1 in a 1000 year storm, um and associated flood, um if you had 50cm of sea level rise then that would reduce down to only protecting London from a 1 in say, 250 year storm flood, and if it went up to a metre, which is considered unlikely but possible, then that would only protect London um, from an event that would occur one in every 10 years.
Shelagh Fogarty (10.15): And if someone listening to this in their house, and is sitting listening to you, and looking at their 3 different types of recycling bins, and their environmentally friendly shopping bags from the supermarket, and they are putting a sweater on rather than turn on the heating because it is getting a bit chilly now it is nearly October, and thinking, this is so huge, surely, me and a few other people doing this, in one country isn’t going to make the difference.
Emily Shuckburgh (10.40): Well you know, I can understand easily how one thinks about it, it is difficult to imagine how our individual actions could make a difference to such a huge problem, but at the same time, our individual actions have generated the problem in the first place, so it is case that each of us, doing our bit, can make a difference, and one of the things that was mentioned in your report just now, is one of the key new messages from this new climate report, is that the temperature that we will anticipate in the future is absolutely dependent on the amount of emissions we put into the atmosphere, so everybody who puts in an extra little bit of greenhouse gas emissions is contributing to that future temperature rise…
Shelagh Fogarty (11.36): however small…
Emily Shuckburgh (10.36): however small.
Shelagh Fogarty (11.36): Okay, thank-you very much, Dr Shuckburgh…
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Reader Comments (60)
Pesadia and Clipe,
Re Skeptics in the desert, thanks for your interest. Sorry there is a difficulty. I think not all of the address "pasted" correctly.
Here is the link:
https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/7006caf1a9a4ebc519e11e1683944c5520130929181325/e25ec6ec7fc434e0c3894d6b97a36e8620130929181325/91f232
Pesadia and Clipe.
The link is correct when I see it before posting, but it gets truncated when submitted.
https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/7006caf1a9a4ebc519e11e1683944c5520130929
181325/e25ec6ec7fc434e0c3894d6b97a36e8620130929181325/91f232
Lets see what happens this time when split more evenly over 2 lines.
Keith
I've noticed truncation of long urls in comments here. Hyperlinks work better.
Japanese WW2 torpedoes ran on pure oxygen, so the exhaust was pure CO2, which is soluble. This was in order to leave no wake.
So perhaps the heating of the oceans was caused by the Imperial Japanese Navy?
the AR5 SPM as possibly the most dishonest public document to ever disgrace the name of science.
It is probably the most dishonest document aimed at influencing public attitudes since the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It must definitely take the palm for the science sub-section, with the runners-up being its antecedents.
Isn't it wonderful how the heating went into the atmosphere until the mid-1990s, when it suddenly decided to take a vacation into the deep oceans of the world, somehow bypassing the measurable top 2000 meters.
Another marvel of climate 'science'.
An expanded transcript of last week's interview on BBC Radio 5 Live (Stott, Shuckborough and our host) is now available, incorporating the segment transcribed by Lapogus:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20130927_r5
"We have always expected to have variability around the longer term trend, and that is exactly what we have seen" says Mr Stott but as the models didn't predict the observed variability where did his expectation originate? My guess would be wishful thinking.
Meh, linear, logarithmic, negligible - if you're a "climate scientist", it all means the same thing.
That said, you wouldn't have passed my first year of high school maths exam.
Alex Cull - thanks for translating the last interview with AM to make it complete, which I did not have time to do at the weekend.