Given intellectual leaders like Rush “Why don’t you just go kill yourself?” Limbaugh, it’s no surprise the state of the conservative-side of the debate is so very coarse, as these reposts from Think Progress underscore:

In a new interview with Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS), Politico asks the congressman what the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus does. Harper’s response:

We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.

Harper represents Mississippi’s 3rd congressional district, which contains Neshoba County — the place of one of the most infamous race-related crimes in American history. In 1964, white supremacists lynched three civil rights workers. In recent months, sportsmen around the country have been joining up with “tree-hugging” liberals on climate legislation. In April, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus and other sportsmen’s and environmental groups “called for Congress to pass global warming legislation that includes increased funding for natural resource protection.”

Politico’s Glenn Thrush reports that Harper is unrepentant about his remarks. Harper’s spokesman said the remarks were “supposed to be fun. … It’s having a good time.” Here’s the second story from Think Progress: A coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, under the name Operation Free, is on a 21-state bus tour to alert the public about the dangers of global warming and its threat to national security. Upon hearing about the group’s visit to Pennsylvania, State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R) blasted the veterans as “traitors” and compared them to Benedict Arnold:

“As a veteran, I believe that any veteran lending their name, to promote the leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change, in an effort to control more of the wealth created in our economy, through cap and tax type policies, all in the name of national security, is a traitor to the oath he or she took to defend the Constitution of our great nation!” Mr. Metcalfe’s email reads. “Remember Benedict Arnold before giving credibility to a veteran who uses their service as a means to promote a leftist agenda. Drill Baby Drill!!!”

Rep. Metcalfe, who served in the U.S. Army from 1980-84, today defended the remarks, saying that “if the type of policies that an individual promotes undermines the Constitution and the law of the land in our country, then they are not patriots.”

Global warming is inextricably linked to national security, with the potential to “aggravate existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions” around the world, which “could increase the pool of potential recruits into terrorist activity.” In the past, Metcalfe has refused to support Domestic Violence Awareness month in Pennsylvania because the resolution referenced domestic abuse suffered by men, which Metcalfe interpreted as part of a “homosexual agenda.” He also opposed a vote to “honor the 60th anniversary of a Muslim group in the state, because ‘Muslims don’t recognize Jesus Christ as God.’”

Un-friggin-believable.

Nathan Myhrvold, who Levitt and Dubner call the “polymath’s polymath” — who is one of the primary “experts” the authors rely on to make the case for their central geoengineering-only approach to global warming — has just publicly repudiated that approach. Apparently he never read the chapter — or didn’t understand it if he did.  And apparently in their rush to print this “rebuttal” to my debunkings, the Superfreaks didn’t bother to read it closely, since he just wrote this jaw-dropper on their blog:

Geoengineering is proposed only as a last resort to try to reduce or cope with the even greater harms of global warming!

… The point of the chapter in SuperFreakonomics is that geoengineering might be good insurance in case we don’t get global warming under control.

You can’t make this stuff up.

As the Union of Concerned Scientists posted here about Myhrvold’s amazing defense repudiation of Superfreakonomics:

That is exactly the opposite of what the book argues and represents a complete repudiation of the chapter from one of the main sources on which Levitt and Dubner relied.

Or go to the Bloomberg interview of Dubner and Caldeira that backs up my reporting on error-riddled Superfreakonomics for an independent view of what the book is about — and what the authors think the book is about:

Caldeira, who is researching the idea [of aerosol geoengineering], argues that it can succeed only if we first reduce emissions. Otherwise, he says, geoengineering can’t begin to cope with the collateral damage, such as acidic oceans killing off shellfish.

Levitt and Dubner ignore his view and champion his work as a permanent substitute for emissions cuts. When I told Dubner that Caldeira doesn’t believe geoengineering can work without cutting emissions, he was baffled. “I don’t understand how that could be,” he said. In other words, the Freakonomics guys just flunked climate science.

Are you baffled also?  The two leading experts (well, one expert and one F.A.K.E.R.) that Dubner and Leavitt relied on for their geoengineering-only solution don’t believe in it!  Well, Caldeira doesn’t believe in it.  As we’ll see, it’s impossible to figure out what Myhrvold believes.

Myhrvold is not a ”polymath’s polymath.”  He repudiates the Superfreaks, so he’s a contrarian’s contrarian.

Why exactly does Myhrvold think the Superfreaks were so desperate to push the (incorrect) statement about Caldeira that his “research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain”?  Since the Superfreaks made me take the PDF of the book down, go to the NPR interview of Levitt (transcript here):

So we’re not – look, I’m not a scientist and Steven Dubner’s not a scientist either, but we’ve managed to interact with some of the greatest scientists in this country. I think what we conclude is that the nature of the debate is just completely wrong. The real problem isn’t that there’s too much carbon in the air. The real problem is it’s too hot.

Ouch.  But now it looks like the greatest scientists in this country don’t even agree with them.

Read the Times online excerpt whose subhead actually claims “This time they claim that CO2 may be good”!

The book itself says:

It’s not that we don’t know how to stop polluting the atmosphere. We don’t want to stop or aren’t willing to pay the price.

And then there is Myhrvold himself in the book — for extended quotes see “Error-riddled Superfreakonomics’, Part 2“:

“If you believe that the scary stories could be true, or even possible, then you should also admit that relying only on reducing carbon-dioxide emissions is not a very good answer,” he says.  In other words:  it’s illogical to believe in a carbon-induced warming apocalypse and believe that such an apocalypse can be averted simply by curtailing new carbon emissions.  “The scary scenarios could occur even if we make Herculean efforts to reduce our emissions, in which case the only real answer is geo-engineering.”

As I said in Part 1, not only is it not illogical, but I suspect most of the world’s leading climate scientists believe that if you could curtail all new carbon emissions (including from deforestation) starting now (or even starting soon), you would indeed avoid apocaplyse.  In fact, as Caldeira makes clear, the reverse of Myrhvold’s final statement is true:  ONLY if we make Herculean efforts to reduce our emissions, could geo-engineering possibly contribute to the solution.

But Myhrvold says (from the Times online excerpt):

Myhrvold is not arguing for an immediate deployment of the sulphur shield but, rather, that technologies like it be researched and tested so they are ready to use if the worst climate predictions come true.

Good for him.  He’s ”not arguing for an immediate deployment” of something that doesn’t exist.  Good strategy.  If only his former company, Microsoft, had applied that approach with the Windows Vista operating system.  Zing!

So why is he pushing this approach?

He is also eager to get geoengineering moving forward because of what he sees as “a real head of steam” that global warming activists have gathered in recent years.

“They are seriously proposing doing a set of things that could have enormous impact — and we think probably negative impact — on human life,” he says. “They want to divert a huge amount of economic value toward immediate and precipitous anti-carbon initiatives, without thinking things through.

“This will have a huge drag on the world economy. There are billions of poor people who will be greatly delayed, if not entirely precluded, from attaining a First World standard of living.”

Ah, those extremist, nutty “global warming activists” — like, say, climatologist Ken Caldeira himself who has said:

I believe the correct CO2 emission target is zero. I believe that it is essentially immoral for us to be making devices (automobiles, coal power plants, etc) that use the atmosphere as a sewer for our waste products.  I am in favor of outlawing production of such devices as soon as possible….

Every carbon dioxide emission adds to climate damage and increasing risk of catastrophic consequences. There is no safe level of emission.

I compare CO2 emissions to mugging little old ladies … It is wrong to mug little old ladies and wrong to emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The right target for both mugging little old ladies and carbon dioxide emissions is zero.

I am in favor of fire insurance but I am also against playing with matches while sitting on a keg of gunpowder. I am in favor of research into geoengineering options but I am also against carbon dioxide emissions.

Nathan is apparently pushing geo-engineering research because people like Caldeira (and me) want to immediately and precipitously cut carbon.

But wait, Myhrvold now says on the Superfreaks blog:

Geoengineering is proposed only as a last resort to try to reduce or cope with the even greater harms of global warming! The global-warming community has treated us to one scary scenario after another. Some are predicted by the science, some are extrapolations beyond current science, and some are not much better than wild guesses, but they could happen. Should we fail at cutting enough and those things occur, geoengineering might offer a better option….

This kind of attack [by Romm] makes it very difficult for people to suggest new ideas. I have thick enough skin to laugh it off when Romm attacks me, but plenty of people don’t. The politicization of science has a terrible impact on the unfettered discourse of ideas that is so important to making progress. This has been a big impediment to geoengineering. Serious climate scientists who are privately interested in geoengineering are loathe to discuss it publicly because they worry that somebody like Romm will attack and ridicule them if they do. Indeed, part of the reason I chose to work on geoengineering and chose to go public about it is to try to get the topic to be more widely discussed.

The point of the chapter in SuperFreakonomics is that geoengineering might be good insurance in case we don’t get global warming under control.

Except, of course, I have only been attacking and ridiculing people who support the geoengineering-only approach — the very approach that Myhrvold himself utterly rejects here.

Yes, good old reasonable Nathan Myhrvold, who just sees geoengineering as an insurance policy “in case we don’t get global warming under control.”  But then, of course, he trashes the “global warming activists” who want to do just that in the book.  It is Myhrvold and the Superfreaks who have poisoned the dialogue.  Indeed, they go out of their way to attack and ridicule those who want to try to get global warming under control sans geoengineering.  As I note in “Error-riddled ‘Superfreakonomics’, Part 2,“ Myhrvold and the geniuses groupthinkers at IV, however, dismiss all of the solutions:

In the darkened conference room, Myhrvold cues up an overhead slide that summarizes IV’s views of the current slate of proposed global warming solutions.  The slide says:

• Too little
• Too late
• Too optimistic.

Too little means that typical conservation efforts simply won’t make much of a difference. “If you believe there is a problem worth solving,” Myhrvold says, “then these solutions won’t be enough to solve it.  Wind power and most other alternative energy things are cute, but they don’t scale to a sufficient degree. At this point, wind farms are a government subsidy scheme, fundamentally.”  What about the beloved Prius and other low-emissions vehicles?  “They’re great,” he says, “except that transportation is just not that big of a sector.”

[Pause for laughter.  Then for weeping.]

Yes, as I noted, globally “Transport accounts for around a quarter of total CO2 emissions.”  In fact, transport is the key sector, because reducing carbon emissions in electricity generation is so damn easy (see “An introduction to the core climate solutions“).

That’s why I call Myhrvold and his ilk, F.A.K.E.R.s — Famous “Authorities” whose Knowledge (of climate) is Error-riddled.

And, then we get this multi-whopper piece of nonsense:

Too optimistic:  “A lot of the things that people say would be good things probably aren’t,” Myrhvold says.  As an example he points to solar power.  “The problem with solar cells is that they’re black, because they are designed to absorb light from the sun. But only about 12% gets turned into electricity, and the rest is reradiated as heat — which contributed to global warming.”

As discussed in Part 1, this may set the FAKER record for howlers in one paragraph.

In his “rebuttal,” Myhrvold never actually debunks the central critique I make of that paragraph.  I have a little bombshell to drop on that tomorrow, which some readers have asked to see, so for now, let me end by noting one typically nonsensical thing Myhrvold says in his rambling, ad hominem attack on me:

Strangely, he gives comparatively little attention to the main point of the chapter, which is geoengineering.

Please do go check the quote at the Freakonomics blog here.

I give “comparatively little attention to the main point of the chapter, which is geoengineering.”???  You can’t make this stuff up — unless of course you’re a ”polymath’s polymath.”

So now we know that not only didn’t he read the chapter of SuperFreakonomics he is defending repudiating defending repudiating, he didn’t even bother to read “Error-riddled Superfreakonomics, Part 1,” which he links to in his defense repudiation (!), in which I repost Caldeira’s devastating critique of the geoengineering-only approach (and add some of my own) or “Error-riddled Superfreakonomics, Part 2,” which focuses on him, in which I actually repost Robock’s entire critique of the geoengineering-only approach, complete with citations.

His post vindicates my original assessment.

I believe the correct CO2 emission target is zero. I believe that it is essentially immoral for us to be making devices (automobiles, coal power plants, etc) that use the atmosphere as a sewer for our waste products.  I am in favor of outlawing production of such devices as soon as possible….

Every carbon dioxide emission adds to climate damage and increasing risk of catastrophic consequences. There is no safe level of emission.

I compare CO2 emissions to mugging little old ladies … It is wrong to mug little old ladies and wrong to emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The right target for both mugging little old ladies and carbon dioxide emissions is zero.

I am in favor of fire insurance but I am also against playing with matches while sitting on a keg of gunpowder. I am in favor of research into geoengineering options but I am also against carbon dioxide emissions.

Carbon dioxide emissions represent a real threat to humans and natural systems, and I fear we may have already dawdled too long. That is why I want to see research into geoengineering — because the threat posed by CO2 is real and large, not because the threat is imaginary and small.

From today’s The Rush Limbaugh Show (via Media Matters):

LIMBAUGH: I think these militant environmentalists, these wackos, have so much in common with the jihad guys. Let me explain this. What do the jihad guys do? The jihad guys go to families under their control and they convince these families to strap explosives on who? Not them. On their kids. Grab your 3-year-old, grab your 4-year-old, grab your 6-year-old, and we’re gonna strap explosives on there, and then we’re going to send you on a bus, or we’re going to send you to a shopping center, and we’re gonna tell you when to pull the trigger, and you’re gonna blow up, and you’re gonna blow up everybody around you, and you’re gonna head up to wherever you’re going, 73 virgins are gonna be there. The little 3- or 4-year-old doesn’t have the presence of mind, so what about you? If it’s so great up there, why don’t you go? Why don’t you strap explosives on you — and their parents don’t have the guts to tell the jihad guys, “You do it! Why do you want my kid to go blow himself up?” The jihad guys will just shoot ‘em, ’cause the jihad guys have to maintain control.

The environmentalist wackos are the same way. This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?

Yes, one of the few remaining intellectual leaders in the conservative movement — whose views dominate conservative discourse because few if any conservative politicians will publicly disagree with him — has just told the lead climate reporter for the New York Times to commit suicide.  Who among the deniers and delayers will have the courage to denounce Limbaugh here?

What incited Limbaugh?  Here is Revkin’s NYT blog today (emphasis added by MM):

More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions. And recent research has resulted in  renewed coverage of the notion that one of the cheapest ways to curb emissions in coming decades would be to provide access to birth control for tens of millions of women around the world who say they desire it. A study by researchers at the London School of Economics and commissioned by the Optimum Population Trust came to the following conclusion:

Contraception is ‘Greenest’ Technology

U.N. data suggest that meeting unmet need for family planning would reduce unintended births by 72 per cent, reducing projected world population in 2050 by half a billion to 8.64 billion. Between 2010 and 2050 12 billion fewer “people-years” would be lived — 326 billion against 338 billion under current projections. The 34 gigatons of CO2 saved in this way would cost $220 billion – roughly $7 a ton [metric tons]. However, the same CO2 saving would cost over $1 trillion if low-carbon technologies were used. (Here’s a link to a pdf of the report.)

I recently raised the question of whether this means we’ll soon see a market in baby-avoidance carbon credits similar to efforts to sell  CO2 credits for avoiding deforestation. This is purely a thought experiment, not a proposal. But the issue is one that is rarely discussed in climate treaty talks or in debates over United States climate legislation. If anything, the population-climate question is more pressing in the United States than in developing countries, given the high per-capita carbon dioxide emissions here and the  rate of population growth. If giving women a way to limit family size is such a cheap win for emissions, why isn’t it in the mix?

Let me make three points.

1. First, I would not have written the post Revkin did for reasons I have explained before and don’t intend to repeat — see “Consumption dwarfs population as main global warming threat“).  For all the reasons discussed in that post, this blog is not going to focus on population.  I have more than enough to write about on the policies and strategies that must be enacted if we are to have a chance at preserving a livable climate — even assuming I knew of and believed in viable, high-impact population-related strategies, which I don’t.
2. Second, relatedly, the 34 Gt of CO2 over 40 years Revkin cites sounds like a lot but remember we’re currently at about 30 Gt CO2 per year.  The condensed stabilization wedges I analyze (major mitigation efforts spread over 40-years rather than Princeton’s 50 years), save 20 Gt carbon (73 Gt of CO2) through 2050.  Nearly half a wedge could be significant, but then again if we do the wedges we must to achieve 450 ppm (let alone 350) then CO2 per capita will drop very, very sharply and the likely CO2 savings from population efforts will also be dramatically reduced — see “How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution.”
3. Third, Limbaugh’s remarks are far beyond the pale even for his brand of extremism.   Urging another human being to commit suicide is grotesque.

Comments are welcome as always, but please be more civil than Limbaugh.

Revkin responds here.

Related Posts:

• Who will win the battle for the soul of the GOP — Rush Limbaugh or their climate-wise governors?
• “Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh.”

More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions. And recent research has resulted in  renewed coverage of the notion that one of the cheapest ways to curb emissions in coming decades would be to provide access to birth control for tens of millions of women around the world who say they desire it. A study by researchers at the London School of Economics and commissioned by the Optimum Population Trust came to the following conclusion:

Contraception is ‘Greenest’ Technology

U.N. data suggest that meeting unmet need for family planning would reduce unintended births by 72 per cent, reducing projected world population in 2050 by half a billion to 8.64 billion. Between 2010 and 2050 12 billion fewer “people-years” would be lived – 326 billion against 338 billion under current projections. The 34 gigatons of CO2 saved in this way would cost $220 billion – roughly $7 a ton [metric tons]. However, the same CO2 saving would cost over $1trillion if low-carbon technologies were used. (Here’s a link to a pdf of the report.)

I recently raised the question of whether this means we’ll soon see a market in baby-avoidance carbon credits similar to efforts to sell  CO2 credits for avoiding deforestation. This is purely a thought experiment, not a proposal. But the issue is one that is rarely discussed in climate treaty talks or in debates over United States climate legislation. If anything, the population-climate question is more pressing in the United States than in developing countries, given the high per-capita carbon dioxide emissions here and the  rate of population growth. If giving women a way to limit family size is such a cheap win for emissions, why isn’t it in the mix?

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) released its third quarter (Q3) market report today.  Their news release noted:

Since the early July announcement of rules to implement the stimulus bill, the wind industry has seen over 1,600 MW (enough to serve the equivalent of 480,000 average households) of completed projects, and over 1,700 MW of construction starts. These projects equate to about $6.5 billion in new investment….

The total wind power capacity now operating in the U.S. is over 31,000 MW, generating enough electricity to power the equivalent of nearly 9 million homes, avoiding the emissions of 57 million tons of carbon annually and reducing expected carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 2.5%.

Thank you President Obama and Congressional Democrats (see “EIA projects wind at 5% of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14%, thanks to Obama stimulus!”

Here are some more factoids from the release:

The state posting the fastest growth rate in the third quarter was Arizona, which installed its first utility-scale project. Pennsylvania ranked 2nd in growth with 29%, followed by Illinois with 22%, Wyoming with 21%, and New Mexico with 20%.

And from the report:

Texas again gains the largest amount of new capacity bringing the state closer to the 9-GW mark.

A 201-MW project completion in Illinois makes it the tenth state in the “Gigawatt club.”

Arizona saw the addition of the first utility-scale wind farm, making it the fastest-growing in the third quarter.

There are now utility-scale wind power installations in 36 states.

Now we need to pass the climate and clean energy bill.

Related Post:

• Wind Power — A core climate solution

Clearly, pretending to loft your kid across the countryside in a balloon is the big story.

But what about the fairly extraordinary effort that the kids at 350.org and Bill McKibben are mounting next weekend?

They’ve taken serious scientific analysis—the contention first raised by Jim Hansen that 350 ppm co2 is the target we should be aiming for—and turned it into a real movement. On Saturday, their day of global action, there will be at least 3,800 events and rallies and demonstrations in almost 170 countries. It’ll be one of the most widespread days of political action in the planet’s history.  People are rallying all over the place:

• in Kabul
• in Iraq
• in the coup-ridden capital of Honduras
• on the shores of the dwindling Dead Sea, Israeli activists will make a giant human 3 on their beach, Palestinians a huge 5 on their shore, and the Jordanians a 0 on theirs.
• across the U.S.—there will be at least a thousand actions, one of the best chances to make a loud cry for strengthening the climate bills on Capitol Hill.   There’s one near you—here’s a link that will show you what’s going on in your neighborhood.
• in China, where there will be at least 300 rallies—this is something new for the Chinese people, to be part of a global environmental movement. And with the leading environmental groups, top Chinese websites, and famous universities on board, it’s got full support from top to bottom.  Here’s the website up in Mandarin.

They’ve gotten plenty of coverage in the blogosphere, and in the foreign press:

• If you read Spanish, go here
• Arabic here
• Russian here
• or English, but in India, here.

But in the bigtime U.S. press? So far nothing much.

Maybe editors think it’s too complicated—that people can’t deal with that much science. But clearly they can—and as I pointed out last week, given new research like Tripati’s paper in Science they’re going to have to (see Science: CO2 levels haven’t been this high for 15 million years, when it was 5° to 10°F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher — “We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with an increase in CO2 levels of about 100 ppm”).

We’re not going to get back to 350 anytime soon, obviously, but it’s a good sign that people all over the world are calling for it. And a bad sign that our press, who have plenty of time to deal with the political realism of climate, seem to think that scientific realism is hopelessly idealistic. As Bill McKibben keeps saying, Republicans and Democrats need to negotiate, and Americans and Chinese—but at root, it’s a debate between human beings on the one hand and physics and chemistry on the other.

Take a look at the slideshow of stuff that’s already happened—this is a small taste of what the weekend will bring. It’s what a movement looks like, and it’s about time.  We’ll see thousands more of these images on Saturday—the question is whether newspaper readers and tv viewers will see them too.

For the science behind 350, see “Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al.” Since the science is preliminary and it is not not yet politically possible to get to 450 ppm, let alone 350, my basic view is, let’s start working now toward stabilizing below 450 ppm.  I think we will need ultimately to get back to 350, and the faster the better.  But since it ain’t easy, I hope climate scientists will shed more light on how fast is really needed.  Either way, this is what needs to be done technology-wise:  “How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution (updated).”  The difference between the two targets is that for 450 ppm, you need to do the 12-14 wedges in four decades.  For 350 ppm, you (roughly) need 8 wedges in about two decades plus another 10 wedges over the next three decades (and then have the world go carbon negative as soon as possible after that), which requires a global WWII-style and WWII-scale strategy (see “An open letter to James Hansen on the real truth about stabilizing at 350 ppm“).

The great environmental writer and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, helped me research this post

We often allude to the industry-funded attacks against climate change science, and the dubious cast of characters involved, here at RealClimate. In recent years, for example, we’ve commented on disinformation efforts by industry front groups such as the “Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute, and a personal favorite, The Heartland Institute, and by industry-friendly institutions such as the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and other media outlets that assist in the manufacture and distribution of climate change disinformation.

When it comes to the climate change disinformation campaign, we have choosen to focus on the intellectually bankrupt nature of the scientific arguments, rather than the political motivations and the sometimes intriguing money trail. We leave it to others, including organizations such as SourceWatch.org, the sleuths at DeSmogBlog, authors such as Ross Gelbspan (author of The Heat is On, and The Boiling Point), and edited works such as Rescuing Science from Politics to deal with such issues.

One problem with books on this topic is that they quickly grow out of date. Just over the past few years, there have been many significant events in the ‘climate wars’ as we have reported on this site. Fortunately, there is a book out now by our friends at DeSmogBlog (co-founder James Hoggan, and regular contributor Richard Littlemore) entitled Climate Cover Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming that discusses the details of the contrarian attacks on climate science up through the present, and in painstaking detail. They have done their research, and have fully documented their findings, summarized by the publisher thusly:

Talk of global warming is nearly inescapable these days — but there are some who believe the concept of climate change is an elaborate hoax. Despite the input of the world’s leading climate scientists, the urgings of politicians, and the outcry of many grassroots activists, many Americans continue to ignore the warning signs of severe climate shifts. How did this happen? Climate Cover-up seeks to answer this question, describing the pollsters and public faces who have crafted careful language to refute the findings of environmental scientists. Exploring the PR techniques, phony “think tanks,” and funding used to pervert scientific fact, this book serves as a wake-up call to those who still wish to deny the inconvenient truth.

There are interesting new details about the Revelle/Singer/Lancaster affair and other tidbits that were new to me, and will likely to be new to others who been following the history of climate change contrarianism. Ross Gelbspan who has set the standard for investigative reporting
when it comes to the climate change denial campaign, had this to say about the book:

absolutely superb-one of the best dissections of the climate information war I
have ever seen. This is one terrific piece of work!

There is an important story behind the climate change denial effort that goes well beyond the scientific issues at hand. Its not our mission at RealClimate to tell that story, but there are others who are doing it, and doing it well. Hoggan and Littlemore are clearly among them. Read this book, and equally important, make sure that others who need to do as well.

Brazil seeks climate target for all Amazon nations

Brazil wants to forge a common position among all Amazon basin countries for a global climate summit later this year, the country’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said on Monday.

Brazil has been seeking a growing role in climate talks designed to agree upon a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for global warming.

Lula was considering inviting the presidents of all Amazon states to discuss the issue on November 26, he told reporters after a meeting in Sao Paulo with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Brazil, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters, is expected to announce its own targets for the December summit in Copenhagen by the end of this month. It is considering freezing its total greenhouse gas emissions at 2005 levels.

Lula last week said Brazil, which harbors the vast majority of the Amazon rain forest, would cut deforestation 80 percent by 2020 from a 10-year average through 2005. Other countries of the Amazon region include Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana.

White House Announces Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Program as Major Part of `Recovery through Retrofit`; Renewable Funding Envisioned the Model and is National Leader in Financing PACE Programs

Today at the White House, Vice President Biden released his `Recovery through Retrofit` plan to expand green job opportunities in the United States and boost energy savings for middle class Americans by retrofitting homes for energy efficiency. The `Recovery through Retrofit` report, which was developed by the Vice President`s Middle Class Task Force, is a roadmap to create new green jobs, provide financial relief to middle-class families, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The plan includes a national pilot program to provide significant federal funds to support the development and implementation of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs across the country. PACE programs, which are public-private partnerships with state and local governments, allow private property owners to pay for energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements through a voluntary property tax assessment. `Recovery through Retrofit` includes a detailed policy framework for implementing pilot PACE programs (http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/PACE_Principles.pdf). The founders of Renewable Funding developed the PACE concept and the firm is now the national leader in administering and financing PACE programs.

“Renewable Funding is a strong supporter of the Obama Administration`s efforts to create jobs, reduce energy costs for families, and reduce our carbon footprint,” said Cisco DeVries, President of Renewable Fundingand originator of the PACE concept. “The upfront costs of undertaking clean energy projects often prevent property owners from going solar or improving the energy efficiency of their homes and businesses. By spreading the project costs over up to 20 years through a property tax assessment, PACE overcomes this hurdle and enables homeowners and businesses to make retrofits with no up-front capital costs.”

Renewable Funding provides services to programs in several municipalities in Colorado and California, with dozens more in the planning phase. To date, legislation to enable PACE programs has been adopted in 14 states. Former President Clinton recently announced an effort by the Clinton Global Initiative to push for 50 municipalities to adopt the PACE model on an accelerated schedule. Renewable Funding is part of the PACE NOW Coalition and is an “implementation partner” in the Clinton Global Initiative effort.

‘Green jobs’ supported at Senate hearing held in Pittsburgh

Clean energy and the “green jobs” attached to it enjoyed wide support in testimony at a U.S. Senate hearing in Pittsburgh yesterday, but differences remain about how and how quickly federal policies should push those goals.

Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who hosted the hearing, acknowledged those tensions between “competing interests” in Pennsylvania coal, natural gas and alternative energy industries as the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began work on legislation titled “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” introduced earlier this month.

Michael Peck, North American spokesman for Gamesa USA, a Spanish wind turbine manufacturer with factories and 850 employees in Pennsylvania, urged establishment of a national standard mandating 12 percent renewable energy by 2012. That would send a strong message to investors and boost demand and job creation, he said.

“We’re predicting a 40 percent drop in new wind projects this year and the recession has crippled demand. Our factories are idle,” Mr. Peck said. “The U.S. is at the brink of losing manufacturing jobs to India and China and implementation of a near-term renewable energy standard would send a strong message and would do the most to boost demand.”

Jason Walsh, representing Green For All, a national organization supportive of “green” economic growth, and Holly Childs, executive director of the Green Building Alliance of Western Pennsylvania, said up to 13,000 new blue-collar jobs could be created in the Pittsburgh region by federal training programs included in the draft legislation under consideration.

CEOs no longer refute climate change

U.S. chief executives no longer reject claims of human-caused climate change, putting to rest a dispute that has raged in boardrooms for decades, said the head of PG&E on Thursday.

Members of the Business Council, a group of executives from the top 120 U.S. companies, have altered their beliefs about climate change significantly, said PG&E Chief Executive Officer Peter Darbee in an interview. Darbee was attending the Business Council’s October gathering in Cary, North Carolina.

“No one among the group was arguing the science of climate change,” said Darbee. “That debate, at least in that forum, appears to be over. The discussion was really about, ‘climate change is happening, it is a challenge of vast proportions and it will require an effort on the part of mankind to respond to this challenge.’”

Darbee also said a tangled web of state and federal laws governing energy use and conservation was delaying action.

“The greatest challenge we face getting our business done is the unintentional gauntlet of government regulation,” he said. “What renewable energy developers have to go through — the hoops and hoops and hoops.”

Largest ’smart grid’ test hopes to shock consumers about energy use

On Sunday nights, Philip DiStefano fills up his car. In most towns, this would not be a noteworthy event, but in this campus town, it is. DiStefano is chancellor of the University of Colorado’s sprawling campus here, and his car, a hulking Ford Escape, gets 54 miles per gallon.

That’s because it is a plug-in hybrid and he fills it by plugging into the wall in his garage.

As he and most other residents here readily admit, Boulder is not a normal American city. That is one reason why Boulder and DiStefano’s embassy-like home have been selected for the first big demonstration of the value of what is called the “smart grid” concept.

While other towns may claim to be working toward a smart grid, Xcel Energy, the local utility, has rechristened Boulder “SmartGridCity,” calling it in a recent press release the “first fully functioning smart city in the world.”

The smart grid idea can mean different things to different people. On a national scale, though, it may be the most ambitious move the United States could make toward cutting its emissions from burning fossil fuels. Fifty percent of the nation’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. Americans are accustomed to using far more electricity than any other large nation on the planet. The smart grid effort is about finding ways to change the electricity grid so that utilities can help reduce peoples’ juice-guzzling habits.

Take DiStefano’s house, for example. A four-bedroom showplace designed for holding university functions, it has a big solar array on its roof and an automated wiring system that turns off unneeded lights and tweaks down the heating, the water heater and other appliances when DiStefano and his wife, Yvonne, are away. Just before they return, it turns things back on again so he can sit cozily in his office and view his electricity use through a special portal installed on his laptop.

Since this summer, the DiStefanos have cut their electric bill by 14 percent. During times of peak energy use next year, they will save more money by selling Xcel some of the electricity from the solar array on their house, or from the big storage battery in the car. “If we’re gone and there is a power outage,” DiStefano added, proudly, “the electricity we have will go to power the refrigeration, the security system, the sprinkler system and our home office.”

This is a Roll Call op-ed by Lincoln Chafee, former Republican Senator from Rhode Island, and John Podesta, former White House chief of staff and CEO of the Center for American Progress.  The source of the graphic is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

It is imperative that the United States find effective and economically viable solutions to the climate crisis. Our elected officials and business leaders ask how we can afford the global transition to a low-carbon economy. Around the globe, developing nations ask how they can afford to reduce their emissions without sacrificing their hopes for a better life. There is no single answer, but there is one unexpected solution that offers hope on both fronts.

To date, the climate debate has focused on reducing fossil fuel emissions and ramping up crucial clean energy alternatives. Far too little attention has been paid to the role tropical deforestation has in warming the planet. It accounts for 17 percent of global emissions — more than all the world’s cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined. This is a serious oversight; if left unaddressed, deforestation will undermine all our efforts to solve the climate crisis.

The good news is that protecting “climate forests” is a major global warming solution that can be implemented immediately and affordably. Many developing nations, including Brazil and Indonesia, which together account for 50 percent of global deforestation, are eager to partner with the United States to protect their climate forests. Indeed, Brazil has established a goal of reducing emissions from the Amazon by 80 percent by 2020 and is already making impressive progress in that direction, including robust monitoring and verification systems. Indonesia is moving in a similar direction. These efforts could be focused, honed and replicated globally.

Protecting climate forests doesn’t just make environmental sense — it’s an economic imperative. By including tropical forests in U.S. climate policies, the United States can help reduce future carbon prices confronting U.S. companies by 50 percent and help save the United States $50 billion by 2020 compared with the costs of domestic action. Capturing these savings, however, will require substantial new financial and technical resources, including investing $1 billion in public funding before 2012, growing gradually to $5 billion in public funding and $9 billion in private-sector investments annually by 2020.

Saving climate forests would also strengthen U.S. national security by reducing environmental degradation and international instability caused by climate change, which acts as a threat multiplier for conflict. It would contribute to alleviating global poverty by channeling substantial new revenues to the forest-dependent rural poor and conserve invaluable biodiversity and ecosystem services by protecting some of the world’s most important natural places.

This is the thrust of the recommendations issued by the Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests, a bipartisan and multi-sector panel of leaders we co-chair, which recommends that the United States lead a global effort to halve emissions from tropical deforestation by 2020 and achieve zero net emissions from the forest sector by 2030.

In the context of the cap-and-trade approach endorsed by President Barack Obama and being debated in the Senate now, the way to achieve these ambitious goals is to allow U.S. companies to invest in reducing tropical deforestation in order to meet a substantial portion of their domestic emissions reduction obligation. We must leverage these private-sector investments by using public funds to provide technical assistance that enables nations to participate in U.S. carbon markets. This can also support countries that prove unable to attract private capital and engage nations where deforestation threats are growing.

The climate bill passed by the House of Representatives in June would mobilize private-sector investments and would fund new technical assistance programs with a percentage of revenue from domestic emission-allowance auctions. The climate bill released last month by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) allows for a similar approach. While these are for the moment among the least-understood parts of pending climate change legislation, they deserve broad bipartisan support.

Coupled with meaningful reductions in domestic emissions, protecting climate forests is one of the most important as well as the most readily available and most cost-effective means of finding a path forward on climate change. For economic, security, humanitarian and environmental reasons, tropical forest conservation must be a centerpiece initiative of U.S. climate legislation and diplomacy. The alternatives — further delaying climate action, neglecting our responsibility as a global leader and failing to include robust protections for forests — threaten the vital national interests of the United States. We have the chance to lead, and we must take it.

Related Posts:

• Indonesia pledges CO2 cut of 26% to 41% by 2020, “We will change the status of our forest from that of a net emitter sector to a net sink sector by 2030.”
• A plan to save rainforests gains momentum
• Brazil’s President: “I foresee that by 2020 we will be able to reduce deforestation by 80 percent; in other words, we will emit some 4.8 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide gas.”

Caldeira, like the vast majority of climate scientists, believes cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions is our only real chance to avoid runaway climate change.

“Carbon dioxide is the right villain,” Caldeira wrote on his Web site in reply. He told Joe Romm, the respected climate blogger who broke the story, that he had objected to the “wrong villain” line but Dubner and Levitt didn’t correct it; instead, they added the “incredibly foolish” quote, a half step in the right direction. Caldeira gave the same account to me.

Levitt and Dubner do say that the book “overstates” Caldeira’s position. That’s a weasel word: The book claims the opposite of what Caldeira believes. Caldeira told me the book contains “many errors” in addition to the “major error” of misstating his scientific opinion on carbon dioxide’s role….

Caldeira, who is researching the idea [of aerosol geoengineering], argues that it can succeed only if we first reduce emissions. Otherwise, he says, geoengineering can’t begin to cope with the collateral damage, such as acidic oceans killing off shellfish.

Levitt and Dubner ignore his view and champion his work as a permanent substitute for emissions cuts. When I told Dubner that Caldeira doesn’t believe geoengineering can work without cutting emissions, he was baffled. “I don’t understand how that could be,” he said. In other words, the Freakonomics guys just flunked climate science.

That’s award-winning journalist Eric Pooley in his terrific Bloomberg story today, “Freakonomics Guys Flunk Science of Climate Change.” Pooley has been managing editor of Fortune, national editor of Time, Time’s chief political correspondent, and Time’s White House correspondent, where he won the Gerald Ford Prize for Excellence in Reporting.  His story vindicates my original reporting in Error-riddled ‘Superfreakonomics’: New book pushes global cooling myths, sheer illogic, and patent nonsense — and the primary climatologist it relies on, Ken Caldeira, says it is an inaccurate portrayal of me and misleading in many places.

For me, the “villain” quote was not actually the main issue.  The main issue for me was the misrepresentation of Caldeira’s core belief that you have to cut emissions dramatically for geoengineering to even have a chance of making any sense.

That misrepresented view is the one that actually represents a real threat to humanity — should enough people come to believe it.  That’s why I am still writing about this — that, and the fact that the Superfreaks are going to be spreading their confused misrepresentations for weeks to come.  Their amazing press schedule is here — they’re getting a full hour on 20/20 on Friday, plus Good Morning America (twice!) and The Daily Show.

Who can really be opposed to geo-engineering research — as long as humanity is NOT foolish enough to come to believe that pursuing geo-engineering research is a substitute for aggressively reducing emissions starting now?  Secondarily, it would be a mistake to believe with any certainty that such research will in fact ever lead to a viable and practical “cooling” strategy.  But, of course, calling for “research” into geo-engineering as Caldeira does would hardly form the basis of a particularly provocative chapter in a contrarian book seeking publicity and best-sellerhood.

When I first saw the PDF of the Superfreakonomics chapter, I knew that it had utterly misrepresented Caldeira’s view.  How did I know that?  First, I can read.

In September, Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post had a story about Bjorn Lomborg who had proposed the exact same geoengineering-only approach, which noted:

Several scientists questioned whether focusing on geoengineered solutions at the expense of major carbon reductions would adequately address the effects of climate change. Carnegie Institution senior scientist Ken Caldeira, a geoengineering expert, said such a strategy “misses the point.”

“Geoengineering is not an alternative to carbon emissions reductions,” he said. “If emissions keep going up and up, and you use geoengineering as a way to deal with it, it’s pretty clear the endgame of that process is pretty ugly.”

Pretty clear, no?

Second, in an email interview, I sent Caldeira an email titled, “Can you elaborate on Washington Post quote.”  The full contents of that email were a reprinting of the quote followed by “Can you explain this for my readers?  Have you or someone else written about this?”

I reprinted his full reply here on September 5 — Exclusive: Caldeira calls the vision of Lomborg’s Climate Consensus “a dystopic world out of a science fiction story.” Here is an excerpt (the ellipsis is his):

Nobody has written about this that I know of, but ….

If we keep emitting greenhouse gases with the intent of offsetting the global warming with ever increasing loadings of particles in the stratosphere, we will be heading to a planet with extremely high greenhouse gases and a thick stratospheric haze that we would need to main more-or-less indefinitely. This seems to be a dystopic world out of a science fiction story. First, we can assume the oceans have been heavily acidified with shellfish and corals largely a thing of the past. We can assume that ecosystems will be greatly affected by the high CO2 / low sunlight conditions — similar to what Earth experienced hundreds of millions years ago. The sunlight would likely be very diffuse — maybe good for portrait photography, but with unknown consequences for ecosystems.

We know also that CO2 and sunlight affect Earth’s climate system in different ways. For the same amount of change in rainfall, CO2 affects temperature more than sunlight, so if we are to try to correct for changes in precipitation patterns, we will be left with some residual warming that would grow with time.

And what will this increasing loading of particles in the stratosphere do to the ozone layer and the other parts of Earth’s climate system that we depend on?

So that’s how I knew when I was sent the Superfreakonomics chapter on October 9th (by someone familiar with my reporting on Caldeira and geoengineering) that it had misrepresented his views utterly.  And that’s why I sent him this email (sorry for the repetition here, but this is for completeness’ sake):

Ken

You need to read this and see how your words have been taken out of context and give me a reply (by Sunday, if possible)….

Lines about you like (page 184) “Yet his research tells him carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight” seriously abuse your reputation and your extensive publications and warnings about the threat of ocean acidification….

I’d like to do a major reply.  I have attached the entire chapter for you to read (and you can confirm it is genuine by going to Amazon and searching for your name).

I’d like a quote like, “The authors of Superfreakonomics have utterly misrepresented my work.” plus whatever else you want to say.

I assume you stand by the Post quote:

“Geoengineering is not an alternative to carbon emissions reductions,” he said. “If emissions keep going up and up, and you use geoengineering as a way to deal with it, it’s pretty clear the endgame of that process is pretty ugly.”

and your email to me, including “dystopic world out of a science fiction story” that I can requote.

http://climateprogress.org/ 2009/ 09/ 05/ caldeira-delayer-lomborg-copenhagen-climate-consensus-geoengineering/

Was it wrong for me to ask him for a quote like that?  Again, from my perspective I was in an extended interview with him on this precise subject, so I knew exactly where he stood.

I respect Pooley a great deal, and I asked him for his answer to that question, which I reprint at the end.  But first, I’m going to reprint his entire story because it’s just that good — and the context is important:

Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) — Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are so good at tweaking conventional wisdom that their first book, “Freakonomics,” sold 4 million copies. So when Dubner, an old friend, told me their new book would take on climate change, I was rooting for a breakthrough idea.

No such luck. In “SuperFreakonomics,” their brave new climate thinking turns out to be the same pile of misinformation the skeptic crowd has been peddling for years.

“Obviously, provocation is not last on the list of things we’re trying to do,” Dubner told me the other day. This time, the urge to provoke has driven him and Levitt off the rails and into a contrarian ditch.

Their breezy take on global warming unleashed a barrage of highly detailed criticism from economists and climate experts, including a scientist who is misrepresented in the book.

Dubner wonders why everyone is so angry. In part, it’s because the book’s blithe remedies — “We could end this debate and be done with it, and move on to problems that are harder to solve,” Levitt told the U.K. Guardian newspaper — are an insult to the thousands of scientists who have devoted their careers to this crisis.

One of the injured parties is Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at Stanford University who is quoted (accurately) as saying that “we are being incredibly foolish emitting carbon dioxide.” Then Dubner and Levitt add this astonishing claim: “His research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.”

Provocative, Untrue

That’s provocative, but alas, it isn’t true. Caldeira, like the vast majority of climate scientists, believes cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions is our only real chance to avoid runaway climate change.

“Carbon dioxide is the right villain,” Caldeira wrote on his Web site in reply. He told Joe Romm, the respected climate blogger who broke the story, that he had objected to the “wrong villain” line but Dubner and Levitt didn’t correct it; instead, they added the “incredibly foolish” quote, a half step in the right direction. Caldeira gave the same account to me.

Levitt and Dubner do say that the book “overstates” Caldeira’s position. That’s a weasel word: The book claims the opposite of what Caldeira believes. Caldeira told me the book contains “many errors” in addition to the “major error” of misstating his scientific opinion on carbon dioxide’s role.

Why does this matter? Because there’s a titanic battle going on over whether and how to reduce carbon emissions, and this soon-to-be bestseller tries to convince people that we don’t need to do so. Dubner and Levitt trumpet their “wrong villain” line in their table of contents and promotional material. On National Public Radio the other day, Levitt said, “The real problem isn’t that there’s too much carbon in the air.”

Multiple Villains

“SuperFreakonomics” never identifies the “right villain,” so I called Dubner and asked. “I don’t think anybody knows for sure,” he told me. Then he acknowledged that the chapter’s most newsworthy claim “could have been better phrased, as ‘carbon dioxide is not the only villain.’ ”

Note to self:  Wow!

That’s a huge admission. No climate scientist believes carbon dioxide is the only villain: methane, nitrous oxide and other gases need to be reduced too. But that basic truth wouldn’t have drawn attention. It wouldn’t have given Levitt a bold contrarian line for NPR.

Dubner and Levitt acknowledge that the planet has warmed but pretend that cutting emissions is a hopelessly old-school response. “It’s not that we don’t know how to stop polluting the atmosphere,” they write. “We don’t want to stop.” They ignore the fact that U.S. emissions have dropped 9 percent since 2007 — not just because of the recession but also thanks to energy efficiency and cleaner fuels.

Chance of Catastrophe

They exaggerate the cost of climate action and underestimate the likelihood of runaway global warming, pretending that the “relatively small chance of worldwide catastrophe” isn’t worth getting bothered about.

They dismiss global warming as a “religion” and rehash the so-called “global cooling” scare of the 1970s, a favorite skeptic myth. (A handful of scientists warned of a coming ice age, a false alarm in no way comparable to today’s scientific consensus on warming.)

They trumpet the “little-discussed fact” that the average global temperature has decreased in recent years. This is accurate according to one set of global data — the other shows an increase — but scientists say it proves nothing. Imagine the Dow climbing to 14,000, with a wobble to 13,950. That’s what global temperatures have done. Even with small fluctuations, this decade is by every measure the hottest in recorded history. The second hottest is the 1990s. The third hottest is the 1980s. Get the picture? Levitt and Dubner don’t.

Shooting Sulfur Dioxide

Having downplayed the problem, they try to solve it with a set of silver-bullet technologies known as geoengineering. One would shoot millions of tons of sulfur dioxide 18 miles into the air to artificially cool the planet. This could work; it also could have dire unintended consequences.

Caldeira, who is researching the idea, argues that it can succeed only if we first reduce emissions. Otherwise, he says, geoengineering can’t begin to cope with the collateral damage, such as acidic oceans killing off shellfish.

Levitt and Dubner ignore his view and champion his work as a permanent substitute for emissions cuts. When I told Dubner that Caldeira doesn’t believe geoengineering can work without cutting emissions, he was baffled. “I don’t understand how that could be,” he said. In other words, the Freakonomics guys just flunked climate science.

(Eric Pooley, a former managing editor of Fortune magazine who is writing a book about the politics of global warming, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

The bottom line is that the story I broke was dead on.

And the Superfreaks still don’t get that the primary climatologist they spoke to completely disagrees with their primary thesis, which they continue to attribute to him.  Consider this October 18 Times online excerpt (whose subhead, actually claims “This time they claim that CO2 may be good”!), which ends:

It is one thing for climate heavyweights such as Crutzen and Caldeira to endorse such a solution. But they are mere scientists. The real heavyweights in this fight are people like Gore.And what does he think of geoengineering?

“In a word,” Gore says, “I think it’s nuts.”

You may be interested to know that Gore spokesperson Kalee Kreider told me they didn’t interview Gore for the book nor was he given a chance to review the chapter prior to publication.

The only remaining question for me is — Was it wrong for me to ask Caldeira for a quote like that?  My parents were award-winning journalists, and I certainly criticize journalists all the time.  So I put it to Pooley, and here is his full reply:

I don’t think journalists should rough out quotes in advance for their sources. Some folks do it; I never have. I think your case is a little different, not because you’re a ‘blogger’ and not a ‘journalist’ (those distinctions are fading fast!) but because you’re an expert who was already having a conversation with Caldeira on this subject and could see that Dubner and Levitt had misrepresented his views.

That said, I think everyone’s rule needs to be, don’t put anything in an email that you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the Times.  If you had emailed Caldeira and said, “It seems clear to me that they utterly misrepresented your work; if you agree and are willing to say so, I’d like to quote you on it,” then no one could say boo.

Fair enough.  I wasn’t acting exactly as a journalist nor was I just acting as someone who was coming to this story cold.  I knew they had misrepresented Caldeira.  But Pooley’s phrasing is obviously what I should have written in retrospect — even with my dual role as an expert and a blogger.

I am very glad that I did go back and explicitly ask Caldeira if I could use the quote he did give me.  I think that is good journalism, although as I say only about half of the reporters I deal with do that.  Had Dubner done that, he could have avoided some of this, but then he wouldn’t have had the catchphrase he wanted for the book and the Table of Contents and the publicity.

The second bottom line:  This was an extremely special case whose circumstances I doubt will ever be repeated again in my life.  Given the circumstances, I don’t think I did anything wrong.  But in the future I will follow Pooley’s sound advice.

Comments welcome, if you’re still reading!

Columbia Journalism Review itself reports the startling and depressing news:

For the first time since it was created fourteen years ago, Columbia University’s highly regarded dual-degree graduate program in environmental journalism will not be accepting applications for next academic year.

In a letter to faculty at the Graduate School of Journalism, the Department of Environmental Sciences, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the program directors cited falling employment in the field, the rising costs of education, and a lack of financial aid for students as the reasons for their decision:

“As you know, media organizations across the county are in dire financial straits and thousands of journalists’ jobs have been eliminated. Science and environment beats have been particularly vulnerable. Although our graduates have done well in their careers, even those still employed are finding few opportunities to do the kind of substantive reporting for which the dual degree program has trained them, as they scramble to do their own work plus that of laid-off colleagues.”

Maybe not a total surprise to readers of this blog and Chris Mooney’s book, Unscientific America,” but very untimely decision for two reasons.  First,”The scientific community is failing miserably in communicating the potential catastrophe of climate change.”  And second, the issue of global warming has already emerged as a top tier issue — and it’s increasingly obvious that it will become “the Story of the Century,” as I called it in my book.  Indeed CJR quotes one of the graduates pointing this very fact out:

Dina Cappiello, who covers environmental issues out of The Associated Press’s D.C. bureau, has worked at some half dozen news outlets since she completed Columbia’s dual-degree program in 1999. She says she has managed to stay “one step ahead of the crashing wave” of layoffs that has battered the industry. And having an environmental degree has, at times, been a nuisance when applying for jobs where editors mistook her for an environmentalist or didn’t understand the need for the rigorous scientific training she received. But once on the job, Cappiello adds, editors always recognized the value of her training, and never more so than over the last couple years.

“You have legislation on Capitol Hill that rivals the environmental statutes of the 1970s, at the beginning of the environmental movement,” she says. “You have an administration that made climate and energy its number-two priority, behind healthcare. It’s a beat that I, as one person, struggle at times to keep up with, and I wouldn’t be able to cover it as well as I do without my experience and training. At my last job at Energy & Environment Publishing, there were ten people that break my beat into ten slices.”

So this is just amazingly shortsighted of Columbia University, where I briefly taught as an adjunct professor nearly two decades ago.

Here’s the rest of the story:

The letter stressed that the two-year program—which offers two master’s degrees, in environmental science and journalism—will be suspended, rather than cancelled, so that its directors, Kim Kastens and Marguerite Holloway, can evaluate “its accomplishments to date and prospects for the future.”

Layoffs and buyouts have been rife among environmental journalists (whether more or less so than in the rest of the industry is hard to say). Many newspapers with reputations for strong coverage on that front, from the Sacramento Bee to the Columbus Dispatch, have let go of talented specialists. At Columbia, applications to the environmental journalism program have not seen a marked drop-off, Kastens says, but the number of students who accept offers to enroll has declined over the last three years. Although the classes have always been small, with no more than six students, this year, only one of eight matriculated.

“Although our students are assuming huge debt for knowledge and skills that we think are valuable,” Kastens and Holloway wrote in their letter, “we do not feel comfortable exhorting young people to take on that burden when their chances of repaying it have so diminished.”

Environmental journalists and both current and former students widely regarded the decision as a loss for the field. While many sympathized with Columbia’s predicament, not everybody thought suspending the program was the right move, myself included. In full disclosure, I am a graduate of the dual-degree program and was very satisfied with the education I got. Kastens also invited me to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory a few weeks before the final decision was made to discuss the matter. I tried to persuade to her keep the program running while evaluating its financing and direction, and I am not alone in my opinion.

“I have a lot of respect for the decision and the people who made it, but strongly disagree,” says Dan Fagin, the director of New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program, which enrolls 15 or 16 students every year and competes with the Columbia two-year program for students. “We’ve never needed well-trained science, health and environmental journalists more than we do right now. Yes, the market is tough, but with persistence, flexibility, and the right training, it is possible to find professional work even in this difficult environment. It can be done; it is being done.”

Indeed, the woes of environmental journalism are not universal. ProPublica—perhaps the most prominent of the new nonprofit startups—recently advertised for two investigative reporters with experience covering environmental issues. The staff at Energy & Environment Publishing, which runs Greenwire and ClimateWire, has grown considerably in recent years. And though they don’t offer much in the way of fulltime employment, online outlets such as Grist and Yale Environment 360 have won praise for their commentary and analysis, and offer freelance reporters a place to make a name for themselves.

None of this is meant to sugarcoat the situation for environmental journalists. It is much harder to find work today than it was three years ago, and Fagin stressed that it is very important to be honest with prospective students about the difficulties they will face when entering the job market.

Yet the fact remains that numerous outlets are, in fact, making environmental coverage a priority, and the reason is simple: topics like energy and climate change are at the forefront of the national agenda.

Jeers to Columbia.

The letter stressed that the two-year program—which offers two master’s degrees, in environmental science and journalism—will be suspended, rather than cancelled, so that its directors, Kim Kastens and Marguerite Holloway, can evaluate “its accomplishments to date and prospects for the future.”

Layoffs and buyouts have been rife among environmental journalists (whether more or less so than in the rest of the industry is hard to say). Many newspapers with reputations for strong coverage on that front, from the Sacramento Bee to the Columbus Dispatch, have let go of talented specialists. At Columbia, applications to the environmental journalism program have not seen a marked drop-off, Kastens says, but the number of students who accept offers to enroll has declined over the last three years. Although the classes have always been small, with no more than six students, this year, only one of eight matriculated.

“Although our students are assuming huge debt for knowledge and skills that we think are valuable,” Kastens and Holloway wrote in their letter, “we do not feel comfortable exhorting young people to take on that burden when their chances of repaying it have so diminished.”

Environmental journalists and both current and former students widely regarded the decision as a loss for the field. While many sympathized with Columbia’s predicament, not everybody thought suspending the program was the right move, myself included. In full disclosure, I am a graduate of the dual-degree program and was very satisfied with the education I got. Kastens also invited me to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory a few weeks before the final decision was made to discuss the matter. I tried to persuade to her keep the program running while evaluating its financing and direction, and I am not alone in my opinion.

“I have a lot of respect for the decision and the people who made it, but strongly disagree,” says Dan Fagin, the director of New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program, which enrolls 15 or 16 students every year and competes with the Columbia two-year program for students. “We’ve never needed well-trained science, health and environmental journalists more than we do right now. Yes, the market is tough, but with persistence, flexibility, and the right training, it is possible to find professional work even in this difficult environment. It can be done; it is being done.”

Indeed, the woes of environmental journalism are not universal. ProPublica—perhaps the most prominent of the new nonprofit startups—recently advertised for two investigative reporters with experience covering environmental issues. The staff at Energy & Environment Publishing, which runs Greenwire and ClimateWire, has grown considerably in recent years. And though they don’t offer much in the way of fulltime employment, online outlets such as Grist and Yale Environment 360 have won praise for their commentary and analysis, and offer freelance reporters a place to make a name for themselves.

None of this is meant to sugarcoat the situation for environmental journalists. It is much harder to find work today than it was three years ago, and Fagin stressed that it is very important to be honest with prospective students about the difficulties they will face when entering the job market.

Yet the fact remains that numerous outlets are, in fact, making environmental coverage a priority, and the reason is simple: topics like energy and climate change are at the forefront of the national agenda.

Dina Cappiello, who covers environmental issues out of The Associated Press’s D.C. bureau, has worked at some half dozen news outlets since she completed Columbia’s dual-degree program in 1999. She says she has managed to stay “one step ahead of the crashing wave” of layoffs that has battered the industry. And having an environmental degree has, at times, been a nuisance when applying for jobs where editors mistook her for an environmentalist or didn’t understand the need for the rigorous scientific training she received. But once on the job, Cappiello adds, editors always recognized the value of her training, and never more so than over the last couple years.

“You have legislation on Capitol Hill that rivals the environmental statutes of the 1970s, at the beginning of the environmental movement,” she says. “You have an administration that made climate and energy its number-two priority, behind healthcare. It’s a beat that I, as one person, struggle at times to keep up with, and I wouldn’t be able to cover it as well as I do without my experience and training. At my last job at Energy & Environment Publishing, there were ten people that break my beat into ten slices.”

Irony can be so ironic, as Brad Johnson explains in this Think Progress repost.

This morning, activists from the Yes Men troupe claiming to represent the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced the organization was reversing its years of opposition to any climate bill before Congress, saying in jest that the “Kerry-Boxer Bill is a good start to a strong climate bill.” CNBC and the Fox Business Network cited the many companies who have quit the Chamber as a reason for the fictional about-face.

The Chamber of Commerce quickly tried to quash the reports that it had reversed its “Scopes monkey trial” stance. Chamber of Commerce official Eric Wohlschlegel broke into the press conference held by the Yes Men at the National Press Club, shouting, “This guy is a fake!” After a “mild shoving match at the podium,” Wohlschegel told reporters, “It is a very sad day.” U.S. Chamber of Commerce official Thomas J. Collamore decried “public relations hoaxes” and called for “law enforcement authorities to investigate this event”:

Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change. These irresponsible tactics are a foolish distraction from the serious effort by our nation to reduce greenhouse gases.

Of course, it is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other right-wing corporate groups that have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting “public relations hoaxes” to “undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.” As PG&E Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee explained his company’s departure from the Chamber, “extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics seem to increasingly mark the Chamber’s stance on this issue.”

It’s doubtful that the Chamber — chaired by race-baiters and corrupt global warming deniers — will now be decrying clean coal carols, climate skeptics, fearmongering, and broken economic analyses as it spends over $100 million a year to lobby Congress.

Related Posts:

• Dirty coal group’s 14th forgery impersonated American veterans. Real vets support strong action on climate and clean energy — as does GOP Senator John Warner, former Armed Services Committee chair
• NPR takes on ‘clean coal’ astroturfers
• Leaked memo: Big Oil manufacturing ‘Energy Citizen’ rallies to oppose clean energy reform.
• Coal lobby hires top GOP voter-fraud company to run massive “grassroots” efforts to undermine climate and clean energy action

Why has Mr Justice Eady been allowed to conduct a one-man campaign against free speech?

Suddenly geoengineering is all the rage. Is it dangerous nonsense or a potentially useful insurance against catastrophe? (First published in the New Statesman.)

Many commentators have already pointed out dozens of misquotes, misrepresentations and mistakes in the ‘Global Cooling’ chapter of the new book SuperFreakonomics by Ste[ph|v]ens Levitt and Dubner (see Joe Romm (parts I, II, III, IV, Stoat, Deltoid, UCS and Paul Krugman for details. Michael Tobis has a good piece on the difference between adaptation and geo-engineering). Unfortunately, Amazon has now turned off the ’search inside’ function for this book, but you can read the relevant chapter for yourself here (via Brad DeLong). However, instead of simply listing errors already found by others, I’ll focus on why this chapter was possibly written in the first place. (For some background on geo-engineering, read our previous pieces: Climate Change methadone? and Geo-engineering in vogue, Also the Atlantic Monthly “Re-Engineering the Earth” article had a lot of quotes from our own Raypierre).

Paul Krugman probably has the main issue right:

…it looks like is that Levitt and Dubner have fallen into the trap of counterintuitiveness. For a long time, there’s been an accepted way for commentators on politics and to some extent economics to distinguish themselves: by shocking the bourgeoisie, in ways that of course aren’t really dangerous.

and

Clever snark like this can get you a long way in career terms — but the trick is knowing when to stop. It’s one thing to do this on relatively inconsequential media or cultural issues. But if you’re going to get into issues that are both important and the subject of serious study, like the fate of the planet, you’d better be very careful not to stray over the line between being counter-intuitive and being just plain, unforgivably wrong.

Levitt was on NPR at the weekend discussing this chapter (though not defending himself against any of the criticisms leveled above). He made the following two points which I think go to the heart of his thinking on this issue: “Why would anyone be against a cheap fix?” and “No problem has ever been solved by changing human behaviour” (possibly not exact quotes, but close enough). He also alluded to the switch over from horse-driven transport to internal combustion engines a hundred years ago as an example of a ‘cheap technological fix’ to the horse manure problem. I deal with each of these points in turn.

Is geo-engineering cheap?

The geo-engineering option that is being talked about here is the addition of SO2 to the stratosphere where it oxidises to SO4 (sulphate) aerosols which, since they are reflective, reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the ground. The zeroth order demonstration of this possibility is shown by the response of the climate to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 which caused a maximum 0.5ºC cooling a year or so later. Under business-as-usual scenarios, the radiative forcing we can expect from increasing CO2 by the end of the century are on the order of 4 to 8 W/m2 – requiring the equivalent to one to two Pinatubo’s every year if this kind of geo-engineering was the only response. And of course, you couldn’t stop until CO2 levels came back down (hundreds, if not thousands of years later) without hugely disruptive and rapid temperature rises. As Deltoid neatly puts it: “What could possibly go wrong?”.

The answer is plenty. Alan Robock discussed some of the issues here the last time this came up (umm… weeks ago). The basic issues over and above the costs of delivering the SO2 to the stratosphere are that a) once started you can’t stop without much more serious consequences so you are setting up a multi-centennial commitment to continually increasing spending (of course, if you want to stop because of huge disruption that geo-engineering might be causing, then you are pretty much toast), b) there would be a huge need for increased monitoring from the ground and space, c) who would be responsible for any unanticipated or anticipated side effects and how much would that cost?, and d) who decides when, where and how much this is used. For point ‘d’, consider how difficult it is now to come up with an international agreement on reducing emissions and then ponder the additional issues involved if India or China are concerned that geo-engineering will cause a persistent failure of the monsoon? None of these issues are trivial or cheap to deal with, and yet few are being accounted for in most popular discussions of the issue (including the chapter we are discussing here).

Is geo-engineering a fix?

In a word, no. To be fair, if the planet was a single column with completely homogeneous properties from the surface to the top of the atmosphere and the only free variable was the surface temperature, it would be fine. Unfortunately, the real world (still) has an ozone layer, winds that depend on temperature gradients that cause European winters to warm after volcanic eruptions, rainfall that depends on the solar heating at the surface of the ocean and decreases dramatically after eruptions, clouds that depend on the presence of condensation nuclei, plants that have specific preferences for direct or diffuse light, and marine life that relies on the fact that the ocean doesn’t dissolve calcium carbonate near the surface.

The point is that a planet with increased CO2 and ever-increasing levels of sulphates in the stratosphere is not going to be the same as one without either. The problem is that we don’t know more than roughly what such a planet would be like. The issues I listed above are the ‘known unknowns’ – things we know that we don’t know (to quote a recent US defense secretary). These are issues that have been raised in existing (very preliminary) simulations. There would almost certainly be ‘unknown unknowns’ – things we don’t yet know that we don’t know. A great example of that was the creation of the Antarctic polar ozone hole as a function of the increased amount of CFCs which was not predicted by any model beforehand because the chemistry involved (heterogeneous reactions on the surface of polar stratospheric cloud particles) hadn’t been thought about. There will very likely be ‘unknown unknowns’ to come under a standard business as usual scenario as well – another reason to avoid that too.

There is one further contradiction in the idea that geo-engineering is a fix. In order to proceed with such an intervention one would clearly need to rely absolutely on climate model simulations and have enormous confidence that they were correct (otherwise the danger of over-compensation is very real even if you decided to start off small). As with early attempts to steer hurricanes, the moment the planet did something unexpected, it is very likely the whole thing would be called off. It is precisely because climate modellers understand that climate models do not provide precise predictions that they have argued for a reduction in the forces driving climate change. The existence of a near-perfect climate model is therefore a sine qua non for responsible geo-engineering, but should such a model exist, it would likely alleviate the need for geo-engineering in the first place since we would know exactly what to prepare for and how to prevent it.

Does reducing global warming imply changing human behaviour and is that possible?

This is a more subtle question and it is sensible to break it down into questions of human nature and human actions. Human nature – the desire to strive for a better life, our inability to think rationally when trying to impress the objects of our desire, our natural selfishness and occasionally altruism, etc – is very unlikely to change anytime soon. But none of those attributes require the emission of fossil fuel-derived CO2 into the atmosphere, just as they don’t require us to pollute waterways, have lead in gasoline, use ozone-depleting chemicals in spray cans and fridges or let dogs foul the sidewalk. Nonetheless, societies in the developed world (with the possible exception of Paris) have succeeded in greatly reducing those unfortunate actions and it’s instructive to see how that happened.

The first thing to note is that these issues have not been dealt with by forcing people to think about the consequences every time they make a decision. Lead in fuel was reduced because of taxation measures that aligned peoples preferences for cheaper fuel with the societal interest in reducing lead pollution. While some early adopters of unleaded-fuel cars might have done it for environmental reasons, the vast majority of people did it first because it was cheaper, and second, because after a while there was no longer an option. The human action of releasing lead into the atmosphere while driving was very clearly changed.

In the 1980s, there were campaigns to raise awareness of the ozone-depletion problem that encouraged people to switch from CFC-propelled spray cans to cans with other propellants or roll-ons etc. While this may have made some difference to CFC levels, production levels were cut to zero by government mandates embedded in the Montreal Protocols and subsequent amendments. No-one needs to think about their spray can destroying the ozone layer any more.

I could go on, but the fundamental issue is that people’s actions can and do change all the time as a function of multiple pressures. Some of these are economic, some are ethical, some are societal (think about our changing attitudes towards smoking, domestic violence and drunk driving). Blanket declarations that human behaviour can’t possibly change to fix a problem are therefore just nonsense.

To be a little more charitable, it is possible that what was meant was that you can’t expect humans to consciously modify their behaviour all the time based on a desire to limit carbon emissions. This is very likely to be true. However, I am unaware of anyone who has proposed such a plan. Instead, almost all existing mitigation ideas rely on aligning individual self-interest with societal goals to reduce emissions – usually by installing some kind of carbon price or through mandates (such as the CAFE standards).

To give a clear example of the difference, let’s tackle the problem of leaving lights on in rooms where there is no-one around. This is a clear waste of energy and would be economically beneficial to reduce regardless of the implications for carbon emissions. We can take a direct moralistic approach – strong exhortations to people to always turn the lights off when they leave a room – but this is annoying, possibly only temporary and has only marginal success (in my experience). Alternatively, we can install motion-detectors that turn the lights out if there is no-one around. The cost of these detectors is much lower than cost of the electricity saved and no-one has to consciously worry about the issue any more. No-brainer, right? (As as aside, working out why this isn’t done more would be a much better use of Levitt and Dubner’s talents). The point is changing outcomes doesn’t necessarily mean forcing people to think about the right thing all the time, and that cheap fixes for some problems do indeed exist.

To recap, there is no direct link between what humans actually want to do and the emissions of CO2 or any other pollutant. If given appropriate incentives, people will make decisions that are collectively ‘the right thing’, while they themselves are often unconscious of that fact. The role of the economist should be to find ways to make that alignment of individual and collective interest easier, not to erroneously declare it can’t possibly be done.

What is the real lesson from the horse-to-automobile transition?

Around 1900, horse-drawn transport was the dominant mode of public and private, personal and commercial traffic in most cities. As economic activity was growing, the side-effects of horses’ dominance became ever more pressing. People often mention the issue of horse manure – picking it up and disposing of it, it’s role in spreading disease, the “intolerable stench” – but as McShane and Tarr explain that the noise and the impact of dead horses in the street were just as troublesome. Add to that the need for so many stables downtown taking up valuable city space, the provisioning of hay etc. it was clear that the benefits of the horse’s strength for moving things around came at a great cost.

But in the space of about 20 years all this vanished, to be replaced with electrified trolleys and subways, and internal combustion engine-driven buses and trucks, and cars such as the Model-T Ford. Almost overnight (in societal terms), something that had been at the heart of economic activity had been been relegated to a minority leisure pursuit.

This demonstrates very clearly that assumptions that society must always function the same economic way are false, and that in fact we can change the way we do business and live pretty quickly. This is good news. Of course, this transition was brought about by technological innovations and the switch was decided based on very clear cost-benefit calculations – while cars were initially more expensive than horses, their maintenance costs were less and the side effects (as they were understood at the time) were much less burdensome. Since the city had to tax the productive citizens in order to clear up the consequences of their own economic activity, the costs were being paid by the same people who benefited.

Levitt took this example to imply that technological fixes are therefore the solution to global warming (and the fix he apparently favours is geo-engineering mentioned above), but this is a misreading of the lesson here in at least two ways. Firstly, the switch to cars was not based on a covering up of the manure problem – a fix like that might have involved raised sidewalks, across city perfuming and fly-spraying – but from finding equivalent ways to get the same desired outcome (transport of goods and people) while avoiding undesired side-effects. That is much more analogous to switching to renewable energy sources than implementing geo-engineering.

His second error is in not appreciating the nature of the cost-benefit calculations. Imagine for instance that all of the horse manure and dead carcasses could have been easily swept into the rivers and were only a problem for people significantly downstream who lived in a different state or country. Much of the costs, public health issues, etc. would now be borne by the citizens of the downstream area who would not be benefiting from the economic prosperity of the city. Would the switch to automobiles have been as fast? Of course not. The higher initial cost of cars would only have made sense if the same people who were shelling out for the car would be able to cash in on the benefits of the reduced side effects. This is of course the basic issue we have with CO2. The people benefiting from fossil fuel based energy are not those likely to suffer from the consequences of CO2 emissions.

The correct lesson is in fact the same as the one mentioned above: if costs and benefits can be properly aligned (the ‘internalising of the externalities’ in economist-speak), societies and individuals can and will make the ‘right’ decisions, and this can lead to radical changes in very short periods of time. Thus far from being an argument for geo-engineering, this example is an object lesson in how economics might shape future decisions and society.

Finally

To conclude, the reasons why Levitt and Dubner like geo-engineering so much are based on a misreading of the science, a misrepresentation of proposed solutions, and truly bizarre interpretations of how environmental problems have been dealt with in the past. These are, in the end, much worse errors than their careless misquotes and over-eagerness to shock highlighted by the other critiques. Geo-engineering is neither cheap, nor a fix, and the reasons why it is very likely to be a bad idea are ethical and legal, much more than its still-uncertain scientific merits.

I believe the idea that galactic cosmic rays (GCR) play a role for the present global warming is unlikely to fade soon, despite a growing number of scientific arguments that normally would falsify a hypothesis and lay it dead (see links here and here). Despite all the arguments against the role of GCR, there was a solicited talk about ‘cosmoclimatology’ at the European Meteorological Society’s (EMS) annual meeting in Toulouse. Henrik Svensmark is further invited by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (NASL) to provide an introduction to their seminar on climate. So why is the GCR-hypothesis still perceived as an interesting explanation?

My impression from the solicited talk, is that the confidence in the GCR hypothesis now rests on two points that were made explicit in the presentation, and that we have not adequately addressed here. So, here they are:

Point I: When I asked Svensmark why he presented a curve describing low cloud-cover from the ISCCP – used for correlation study with GCR (link) – that differed from the curves presented at the ISCCP web site (link), he informed me that he used a corrected version that has been published. Nevertheless, the ‘correction’ of the curve is controversial, and the ISCCP team is clearly not convinced, despite the likelihood of instrumental degradation.

Good practice would then be to present all the curves that cannot be ruled out because of errors. When asked why he didn’t present the other cures too, he said that he only wanted to show the one curve. Not a very convincing answer, and not very reassuring.

Point II involves a ‘remarkable’ correlation, meant to demonstrate a link between high GCR flux and cold conditions. This analysis is based on a comparison between band-pass filtered ice-rafted debris from iceberg drifts (Bond, 2001) and Carbon-14 (a cosmogenic isotope) over the last 12,000 years (e.g. after the most recent ice age).

The relationship between temperature and drifting icebergs, however, is complicated and not so straight forward. Icebergs are formed when chunks of ice break off glaciers and icesheets – a process known as ‘calving’.

On the one hand, icesheets and glaciers grow when the accumulation of precipitation at below freezing temperatures (snow) exceeds the summertime melting. Very low temperatures, tend to be associated with low precipitation, however. One the other hand, iceberg calving does not require very low temperatures (as long as the ice is present), but is favoured by reduced friction at the base of ice caps, resulting in a faster flow towards the sea. Melt water can lubricate the ice sheets and hence affect the ice flow.

Once the icesheets have calved and produced icebergs, they will drift according to the winds and ocean currents. The most influential ocean currents for iceberg drift in the North Atlantic include the East Greenland Current EGC), which follows the east coast of Greenland and flows from northeast to southwest, the West Greenland current (WGC) into the Labrador Sea, and the Labrador current (LC), a coastal current following along the perimeter of the Labrador sea basin in an anti-clockwise fashion.

Many of the cores used to study the ice-rafted debris were from locations away from these currents. It is not clear whether anomalous cold conditions produced more southerly winds and ocean currents. However, many of the core locations are associated with a surface flow from the south in the present climate, so it is possible that the icebergs transported by the EGC, WGC, and LC end up in the North Atlantic current. One explanation is that the icebergs got caught in the warm currents from the south, and melted on their way north, but that does not necessary imply cold conditions in that region, as these warm ocean currents provide a heat transport and the melting of icebergs suggest higher temperatures.

Cold conditions favour the formation of sea-ice, which have very different characteristics to icebergs. Sea-ice forms when the sea surface freezes, and can affect the ocean circulation through their effect on salinity. However, sea-ice does not create debris of rocks and minerals, as the icebergs do when the bottom of the sliding icesheets scrape the rocks.

It is plausible that very cold conditions can produce thick sea-ice that will lock icebergs in place near their sources in the Labrador sea and along the east coast of Greenland, but seasonal variations in the sea-ice may also imply open water in the summer. Nevertheless, very cold conditions may not necessarily favour the production of icebergs, as freezing temperatures will prevent the formation of melt water acting as lubrication and the accumulation of ice is expected to be less due to lower precipitation.

In summary, the ‘remarkable’ correlation does not seem to support the hypothesis that high flux of GCR produces a very cold climate. The question is rather whether the ocean and atmospheric circulation were influenced by the level of solar activity and associated changes in the total solar irradiation (TSI) – without involving GCR. After all, GCR is affected by the level of solar activity through its influence of the inter-planetary magnetic field, and anti-correlated with the sunspots.

When taken in the context of the global warming, there are other problematic issues such as the lack of trend in GCR (here and here), stronger warming during nighttime than daytime, large unknowns regarding the physical mechanisms involved in the growth of ultra-small molecule clusters to much larger cloud condensation nuclei (here and here), and questionable data handling and statistical analysis (here). In addition, it is difficult to statistically distinguish between the apparent response to solar forcing in the observations and GCM which do not take GCRs into account (link to a recent paper by Gavin and myself), implying that GCRs are not needed to explain past global temperature trends.

So what makes the GCR-hypothesis so convincing that warrants a solicited talk at the EMS annual meeting and an invited presentation at the NASL? Is the support based on the attention in media, or does it have a scientific basis?

I want a response from the community still supporting the GCR hypothesis, explaining why they find it convincing after all these misgivings. The spirit of science is about discussing different ideas and challenge unconvincing points of view. So far, I feel that many of these issues have gone unheeded outside the climate research community. Perhaps an improved dialogue between various research communities can help resolving these issues – the counter-arguments and GCR hypothesis represent a paradox that should be sorted out if the science is to progress. Either the supporters of the GCR hypothesis should convincingly explain why these misgivings are unfounded or irrelevant, or the GCR hypothesis should be buried. However, I feel that there is a lack of dialogue and willingness to listen, so I think that progress is not likely to happen regarding a commonly accepted solution on the GCR hypothesis.

Update: According to a recent (October 16) news relsease from the International Ice Charting Working Group (IICWG), over 1,200 icebergs drifted into the trans-Atlantic shipping lanes in 2009, making the iceberg season in the North Atlantic the eleventh most severe since the tragic loss of the RMS Titanic in 1912.

P.S. So far in 2009, three articles have been published in the arXhive on GCR and clouds (here, here, here). It is possible that such articles are more accessible to communities other than climate research, and hence enhances the awareness about the controversy surrounding the GCR-hypothesis.

The blogosphere (and not only that) has been full of the “global warming is taking a break” meme lately. Although we have discussed this topic repeatedly, it is perhaps worthwhile reiterating two key points about the alleged pause here.

(1) This discussion focuses on just a short time period – starting 1998 or later – covering at most 11 years. Even under conditions of anthropogenic global warming (which would contribute a temperature rise of about 0.2 ºC over this period) a flat period or even cooling trend over such a short time span is nothing special and has happened repeatedly before (see 1987-1996). That simply is due to the fact that short-term natural variability has a similar magnitude (i.e. ~0.2 ºC) and can thus compensate for the anthropogenic effects. Of course, the warming trend keeps going up whilst natural variability just oscillates irregularly up and down, so over longer periods the warming trend wins and natural variability cancels out.

(2) It is highly questionable whether this “pause” is even real. It does show up to some extent (no cooling, but reduced 10-year warming trend) in the Hadley Center data, but it does not show in the GISS data, see Figure 1. There, the past ten 10-year trends (i.e. 1990-1999, 1991-2000 and so on) have all been between 0.17 and 0.34 ºC per decade, close to or above the expected anthropogenic trend, with the most recent one (1999-2008) equal to 0.19 ºC per decade – just as predicted by IPCC as response to anthropogenic forcing.

Figure 1. Global temperature according to NASA GISS data since 1980. The red line shows annual data, the larger red square a preliminary value for 2009, based on January-August. The green line shows the 25-year linear trend (0.19 ºC per decade). The blue lines show the two most recent ten-year trends (0.18 ºC per decade for 1998-2007, 0.19 ºC per decade for 1999-2008) and illustrate that these recent decadal trends are entirely consistent with the long-term trend and IPCC predictions. Even the highly “cherry-picked” 11-year period starting with the warm 1998 and ending with the cold 2008 still shows a warming trend of 0.11 ºC per decade (which may surprise some lay people who tend to connect the end points, rather than include all ten data points into a proper trend calculation).

Why do these two surface temperature data sets differ over recent years? We analysed this a while ago here, and the reason is the “hole in the Arctic” in the Hadley data, just where recent warming has been greatest.

Figure 2. The animated graph shows the temperature difference between the two 5-year periods 1999-2003 and 2004-2008. The largest warming has occurred over the Arctic in the past decade and is missing in the Hadley data.

If we want to relate global temperature to global forcings like greenhouse gases, we’d better not have a “hole” in our data set. That’s because global temperature follows a simple planetary heat budget, determined by the balance of what comes in and what goes out. But if data coverage is not really global, the heat budget is not closed. One would have to account for the heat flow across the boundary of the “hole”, i.e. in and out of the Arctic, and the whole thing becomes ill-determined (because we don’t know how much that is). Hence the GISS data are clearly more useful in this respect, and the supposed pause in warming turns out to be just an artifact of the “Arctic hole” in the Hadley data – we don’t even need to refer to natural variability to explain it.

Imagine you want to check whether the balance in your accounts is consistent with your income and spendings – and you find your bank accounts contain less money than you expected, so there is a puzzling shortfall. But then you realise you forgot one of your bank accounts when doing the sums – and voila, that is where the missing money is, so there is no shortfall after all. That missing bank account in the Hadley data is the Arctic – and we’ve shown that this is where the “missing warming” actually is, which is why there is no shortfall in the GISS data, and it is pointless to look for explanations for a warming pause.

It is noteworthy in this context that despite the record low in the brightness of the sun over the past three years (it’s been at its faintest since beginning of satellite measurements in the 1970s), a number of warming records have been broken during this time. March 2008 saw the warmest global land temperature of any March ever recorded in the past 130 years. June and August 2009 saw the warmest land and ocean temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere ever recorded for those months. The global ocean surface temperatures in 2009 broke all previous records for three consecutive months: June, July and August. The years 2007, 2008 and 2009 had the lowest summer Arctic sea ice cover ever recorded, and in 2008 for the first time in living memory the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage were simultaneously ice-free. This feat was repeated in 2009. Every single year of this century (2001-2008) has been warmer than all years of the 20th Century except 1998 (which sticks out well above the trend line due to a strong El Niño event).

The bottom line is: the observed warming over the last decade is 100% consistent with the expected anthropogenic warming trend of 0.2 ºC per decade, superimposed with short-term natural variability. It is no different in this respect from the two decades before. And with an El Niño developing in the Pacific right now, we wouldn’t be surprised if more temperature records were to be broken over the coming year or so.

Update: We were told there is a new paper by Simmons et al. in press with JGR that supports our analysis about the Hadley vs GISS trends (sorry, access to subscribers only).

A damning judgement on army killings suggests that officials at every level have covered up torture and murder.

A rainy day in July does not falsify climate change. But understanding why not requires some scientific knowledge. (First published in the New Statesman.)

Interesting news this weekend. Apparently everything we’ve done in our entire careers is a “MASSIVE lie” (sic) because all of radiative physics, climate history, the instrumental record, modeling and satellite observations turn out to be based on 12 trees in an obscure part of Siberia. Who knew?

Indeed, according to both the National Review and the Daily Telegraph (and who would not trust these sources?), even Al Gore’s use of the stair lift in An Inconvenient Truth was done to highlight cherry-picked tree rings, instead of what everyone thought was the rise in CO2 concentrations in the last 200 years.

Who should we believe? Al Gore with his “facts” and “peer reviewed science” or the practioners of “Blog Science“? Surely, the choice is clear….

More seriously, many of you will have noticed yet more blogarrhea about tree rings this week. The target de jour is a particular compilation of trees (called a chronology in dendro-climatology) that was first put together by two Russians, Hantemirov and Shiyatov, in the late 1990s (and published in 2002). This multi-millennial chronology from Yamal (in northwestern Siberia) was painstakingly collected from hundreds of sub-fossil trees buried in sediment in the river deltas. They used a subset of the 224 trees they found to be long enough and sensitive enough (based on the interannual variability) supplemented by 17 living tree cores to create a “Yamal” climate record.

A preliminary set of this data had also been used by Keith Briffa in 2000 (pdf) (processed using a different algorithm than used by H&S for consistency with two other northern high latitude series), to create another “Yamal” record that was designed to improve the representation of long-term climate variability.

Since long climate records with annual resolution are few and far between, it is unsurprising that they get used in climate reconstructions. Different reconstructions have used different methods and have made different selections of source data depending on what was being attempted. The best studies tend to test the robustness of their conclusions by dropping various subsets of data or by excluding whole classes of data (such as tree-rings) in order to see what difference they make so you won’t generally find that too much rides on any one proxy record (despite what you might read elsewhere).

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So along comes Steve McIntyre, self-styled slayer of hockey sticks, who declares without any evidence whatsoever that Briffa didn’t just reprocess the data from the Russians, but instead supposedly picked through it to give him the signal he wanted. These allegations have been made without any evidence whatsoever.

McIntyre has based his ‘critique’ on a test conducted by randomly adding in one set of data from another location in Yamal that he found on the internet. People have written theses about how to construct tree ring chronologies in order to avoid end-member effects and preserve as much of the climate signal as possible. Curiously no-one has ever suggested simply grabbing one set of data, deleting the trees you have a political objection to and replacing them with another set that you found lying around on the web.

The statement from Keith Briffa clearly describes the background to these studies and categorically refutes McIntyre’s accusations. Does that mean that the existing Yamal chronology is sacrosanct? Not at all – all of the these proxy records are subject to revision with the addition of new (relevant) data and whether the records change significantly as a function of that isn’t going to be clear until it’s done.

What is clear however, is that there is a very predictable pattern to the reaction to these blog posts that has been discussed many times. As we said last time there was such a kerfuffle:

However, there is clearly a latent and deeply felt wish in some sectors for the whole problem of global warming to be reduced to a statistical quirk or a mistake. This led to some truly death-defying leaping to conclusions when this issue hit the blogosphere.

Plus ça change…

The timeline for these mini-blogstorms is always similar. An unverified accusation of malfeasance is made based on nothing, and it is instantly ‘telegraphed’ across the denial-o-sphere while being embellished along the way to apply to anything ‘hockey-stick’ shaped and any and all scientists, even those not even tangentially related. The usual suspects become hysterical with glee that finally the ‘hoax’ has been revealed and congratulations are handed out all round. After a while it is clear that no scientific edifice has collapsed and the search goes on for the ‘real’ problem which is no doubt just waiting to be found. Every so often the story pops up again because some columnist or blogger doesn’t want to, or care to, do their homework. Net effect on lay people? Confusion. Net effect on science? Zip.

Having said that, it does appear that McIntyre did not directly instigate any of the ludicrous extrapolations of his supposed findings highlighted above, though he clearly set the ball rolling. No doubt he has written to the National Review and the Telegraph and Anthony Watts to clarify their mistakes and we’re confident that the corrections will appear any day now…. Oh yes.

But can it be true that all Hockey Sticks are made in Siberia? A RealClimate exclusive investigation follows:

We start with the original MBH hockey stick as replicated by Wahl and Ammann:

Hmmm… neither of the Yamal chronologies anywhere in there. And what about the hockey stick that Oerlemans derived from glacier retreat since 1600?

Nope, no Yamal record in there either. How about Osborn and Briffa’s results which were robust even when you removed any three of the records?

Or there. The hockey stick from borehole temperature reconstructions perhaps?

No. How about the hockey stick of CO2 concentrations from ice cores and direct measurements?

Err… not even close. What about the the impact on the Kaufman et al 2009 Arctic reconstruction when you take out Yamal?

Oh. The hockey stick you get when you don’t use tree-rings at all (blue curve)?

No. Well what about the hockey stick blade from the instrumental record itself?

And again, no. But wait, maybe there is something (Update: Original idea by Lucia)….

Nah….

One would think that some things go without saying, but apparently people still get a key issue wrong so let us be extremely clear. Science is made up of people challenging assumptions and other peoples’ results with the overall desire of getting closer to the ‘truth’. There is nothing wrong with people putting together new chronologies of tree rings or testing the robustness of previous results to updated data or new methodologies. Or even thinking about what would happen if it was all wrong. What is objectionable is the conflation of technical criticism with unsupported, unjustified and unverified accusations of scientific misconduct. Steve McIntyre keeps insisting that he should be treated like a professional. But how professional is it to continue to slander scientists with vague insinuations and spin made-up tales of perfidy out of the whole cloth instead of submitting his work for peer-review? He continues to take absolutely no responsibility for the ridiculous fantasies and exaggerations that his supporters broadcast, apparently being happy to bask in their acclaim rather than correct any of the misrepresentations he has engendered. If he wants to make a change, he has a clear choice; to continue to play Don Quixote for the peanut gallery or to produce something constructive that is actually worthy of publication.

Peer-review is nothing sinister and not part of some global conspiracy, but instead it is the process by which people are forced to match their rhetoric to their actual results. You can’t generally get away with imprecise suggestions that something might matter for the bigger picture without actually showing that it does. It does matter whether something ‘matters’, otherwise you might as well be correcting spelling mistakes for all the impact it will have.

So go on Steve, surprise us.

People who claim that population growth is the big environmental issue are shifting the blame from the rich to the poor