The Autralian author and broadcaster Clive James once published a collection of poems under the title, ‘The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered’. This came to mind the other day when I found a huge stack of Tim Flannery’s ‘The Weather Makers’ selling for £2 each in a discount bookstore.As I didn’t own a copy of this seminal outpouring of global warming alarmism, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Opinion makers around the world had hailed its publication in 2005 (priced at £20) as a revelation, and I was interested to see whether this had stood the test of even such a short time.
So last night I settled down to get my two quids-worth with a quick flick through, starting at the back. You can learn a lot about a book in a very short time by reading the acknowledgements.
How would you react to a supposedly objective review of climate science if it had been funded by an American free market think-tank, enjoyed the support of the Bush administration’s energy minister, relied on Exxon’s research department for guidance, and the author was deeply indebted to Fred Singer for alerting him to the realities of global warming alarmism in the first place? If you are reasonably well acquainted with the climate debate, as I assume most people who visit these pages are, then you would probably not be expecting a wholehearted endorsement of the greenhouse gas hypothesis. Nor would you be surprised if environmentalists tried to discredit the book purely on the basis of who had assisted the author, without considering a word of what he actually had to say.
Well of course, this is not what I found tucked away in the acknowledgements on page 338 of The Weather Makers. Flannery thanks the Purves Foundation for the Environment for financial support, various employees the Hadley Centre for assistance and ideas, the Australian Environment Minister for leave of absence while he wrote the book, and Stephen Schneider for opening his eyes to the problem of climate change. None of this makes The Weather Makers a bad book, but I wonder how many readers for whom it may have been an introduction to the subject of climate change, would be put on their guard by the acknowledgements, even if they had been in the usual place, at the beginning of the book, rather than hidden away at the back.
When I glanced at the biographical note on the inside back cover. Apparently Flannery is a Zoologist by training, which would certainly be reason enough for him to worry if humans really are changing the climate. But how often have I heard advocates of global warming alarmism dismiss sceptical views that displease them simply on the grounds that they are being uttered by someone who does not have a qualification in climatology? There seem to be a double standard in operation here.
To get a quick idea of how the publisher marketed the book, I then had a look at the blurb on the front inside cover. This informed me that he author is well qualified to write with ‘complete authority’ about what the future holds. Had Flannery, perhaps, done post graduate work under the guidance of a descendant of the Delphic Oracle I wondered?
Then I turned to the index; and climate models seemed to be a good place to start in view of the publisher’s confidence it the author’s gift as a seer. Flannery devotes quite a few pages to the infallibility of computer predictions of future climate, and also the ability of models to ‘hindcast’ the somewhat erratic warming of the 20th century. He confidently explains that sulphate aerosols caused the mid-century cool period, and that the failure of earlier models to track this effect was simply because it was not included in the algorithms. He doesn’t mention that no reliable records of global aerosol levels for this, or any other period, exist. But I don’t suppose the Delphic Oracle drew too much attention to her past performance either.
Now that we seem to have entered another period when global warming has stalled, which the models have not predicted, I wonder how a new edition of the Weather Makers would explain this?
I galloped on to the section dealing with sea levels. Just three years ago, the idea of imminent catastrophic melting of the polar ice caps, with commensurate flooding of low-lying costal areas was really popular, and Flannery makes the most of this. But the idea of the world’s major capital cities being inundated received a grievous blow when the latest IPCC assessment report was published in 2007. Although the climate models had predicted polar amplification of the greenhouse effect, with rapid melting of the ice caps, supporting evidence is hard to come by. Incidentally, the Fourth Assessment Report also put an end to speculation about an imminent, global warming induced ice age caused by the disruption of Atlantic currents.
A hastily constructed Afterword has been added to the book, which was completed just before hurricane Katrina hit the western seaboard of the United States. Relying heavily on Kerry Emanuel’s claims that anthropogenic global warming has caused an increase in hurricane activity and destructive strength, this leaves the reader with what seems to be incontrovertible proof of all the author’s warnings in the main body of the text, and it must have had a profound impact on readers at that time.
During the three years since the book’s publication we have seen greatly reduced hurricane activity, and Emanuel has published a new paper that effectively contradicts his earlier findings. It seems that a new orthodoxy has developed in which the frequency of hurricanes is not likely to increase even if temperatures do continue to rise. Indeed there is some evidence frequency may decline. Although the strength of hurricanes could possibly increase slightly, their destructive power is unlikely to do so, as this is expected to take the form of greater vertical wind sheer.
Then I came upon this paragraph:
Nothing in predictive climate science is more certain than the extinction of many of the world’s mountain-dwelling species. We can even foretell which will be the first to go. This high degree of. scientific certainty comes from three factors. First, the effect of rising temperatures on mountain habitats is easily calculated, and past adjustments in response to warming are well documented. Second, the conditions that many mountain-dwelling species can tolerate are known. And finally, as the climate warms mountain species have nowhere to go but up, and the height of mountain peaks worldwide has been precisely ascertained. Given the rate of warming, we can calculate the time to extinction of mountain-dwelling species.
This belongs to what I think of as the Tony Benn school of polemics, although many others use the same technique. A perfectly rational and convincing argument is constructed on the strength of a highly contentious assumption that is barely mentioned, but treated as if it too obvious to require explanation or justification. What ‘high degree of scientific certainty’ is Flannery referring to?
There can, of course, be no doubt that if temperatures continue to rise, then mountain dwelling species will be at risk. But the only reason to suppose that this will really happen is the output of computer models that are as yet untested over long periods, and which failed to predict the present downturn in temperatures.
Tim Flannery is clearly sincere in his concerns about the planet. His book is well written and convincing, leading the reader through all the well worn evidence that, by the end of this century, we will face environmental disaster unless anthropogenic CO2 emissions are cut to almost nothing. Yet this evidence is predicated on one very narrow argument: climate models really can foretell the future. But if this proves to be a false belief, then all the other evidence which the author rehearses with such confidence falls away.
Sea levels, the extent of glaciers, the severity of drought or floods, the mass of polar ice caps and the abundance of polar bears – the whole canon of global warming alarmism – are relevant to the climate debate only if it is assumed that the predictive models are reliable.
information for you..
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Chilean glaciers retreating due to global warming !!!
SANTIAGO (AFP) – Chile’s glaciers are on the retreat, a sign of global warming but also a threat to fresh water reserves at the southern end of South America, a report has found.
In a November report, the Chilean water utility — Direccion General de Aguas de Chile (DGA) — said the Echaurren ice fields, which supply the capital with 70 percent of its water needs, are receding up to 12 meters (39.37 feet) per year.
Twenty of the glaciers studied receded between 1986 and 2007 in Campos de Hielo Sur, the third largest ice reserve in the world after Antarctica and Greenland. At the current rate of decline, Echaurren and other small glaciers close to Santiago could vanish over the next half century…
read more…
http://hernadi-key.blogspot.com
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STOP GLOBAL WARMING…!!
Tony,
There’s a picture of Australia in the middle of the book showing the apparent decline of rainfall “in the last 54 years”.
Is it possible for you to scan that picture and the accompanying text? Because there’s an interesting story to tell about it which should show what Dr Flannery’s scholarship is really all about…
TonyN,
How embarrassing that you draw attention to the world on this site, that the “Australian of the Year 2007”, may have been a bit flannelly in his book! I have to give him 110% for enthusiasm, for his continuing activism, and I guess most in Oz would agree he has more charisma-come-TV-appeal than Al Gore. However, there is little doubt that he has said a lot of silly things in his time. For instance, of his book, I have read reports that his explanation of the “greenhouse effect” is not actually in conformity with the accepted theory of the physics of it.
You may marvel at this recent article in the Melbourne Age newspaper.
Headline: Climate opposition ‘suicidal’: Flannery
Pardon me Whilst I go away and vomit!
Bob
I really wasn’t having a pop at the Aussie’s. Clive James is a favorite of mine and one of the few people who still has the guts to work the occasional sceptical comment into his BBC broadcasts. My problem with Flannery is that his book purports to be an authoritative exposition of the evidence for AGW but only reflects one side of the debate.
TonyN,
As reported by the ABC, (Oz equivalent of the BBC), extract:
If no image OR to read full article click:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/19/2249568.htm
This Former Australian of the Year makes me feel embarrassed!
Bob
Thanks for adding colour to Harmless Sky so neatly!
I don’t think you should feel embarrassment about Flannery, who has clearly lost touch with reality, but rather about an administration that can entertain such suggestions. We have the same problem here, and the more extravagant and improbable the warmer’s ranting get, the less credible their case is in the eyes of the public.
As an old style environmentalist, I recognise anthropogenic sulfur emissions, even in tiny quantities, as something we used to call pollution.
I think I’ve seen this book in my local library – now I’ll have to give it a whirl.
Tony, I think your final sentence sums it up nicely: the whole catastrophic edifice of AGW (floods/droughts/seas rising/cat-flea outbreaks, etc.) rests on the reliability of the climate models.
Interestingly, the writer of last week’s editorial in New Scientist magazine was stating basically that we no longer need to bother about the long-range accuracy of climate models, because we already just know what we have to do to combat Global Warming (bring the carbon-based economy to a juddering halt, naturally.)
I jotted the editorial down and posted it in a comment on another blog here. In my opinion, it’s a good example of a perfectly circular argument.
Alex
Considering the current temperature trend what else can the warmers say about models?
Looking at your transcript at Maurizio’s place I was particularly struck by the admission that many politicians are still sitting on their hands. Somehow they seem unwilling to share this with the general public.
For a long time now I’ve been intending to go through a copy of the AR4 SPM and strike out each paragraph that depends on GCM output, just to see what’s left. I suspect that we could both guess what the result would be.
TonyN
Reur revisit of the Flannery book, the most frightening prediction for me (living in Switzerland) is:
“Nothing in predictive climate science is more certain than the extinction of many of the world’s mountain-dwelling species.”
Does this include me?
Right now I’m up to my knees in snow (which is rising as we blog), and I don’t even live on the top of the mountain.
Max
Max,
We’ve had snow on our very much smaller mountains since mid-November, and no one can really remember how long it is since this last happened. I’m not sure whether this says anything about long term temperature trends, but the fact that the media are completely un-interested in what is happenig says a great deal about how the AGW debate is presented to the public. If there had been unusually high temperatures during the same period, then that would have been news every day.
Of course its the fanatical conviction in that quote from Flannery that I find disturbing. After all, the man is a trained scientist, but he seems to have abandoned the reliance on facts which has been a foundation of the scientific method ever since the Enlightenment, and the silence of his peers makes them complicit in this.
I remember seeing photos of the summit of Snowdon in the National Trust handbook last year – these, I think were from a 2007 photo exhibition called “Exposed: Climate Change In Britain’s Backyard”. The photographer, Joe Cornish, compared the lack of snow in January 2006 to the abundance of snow in 1996. However, this year the snow returned with a vengeance – in April! – delaying work on the railway track. I’m wondering what the summit will look like in January. Also wondering if the NT will mention this reversal in their handbook for 2009 or in their yearly magazine; I wouldn’t count on it. They’re not the most alarmist of organisations, I’d say, but are definitely in the “climate change is real” camp.
Max Reur 9 and TonyN, Reur 10,
And perhaps particularly Max’s keynote quote extracted from Flannelly‘s just “WOW“ revelations:
As I understand it, this “Oz Royalty”, holds his professorship and early prominence in the 80’s, as a mammalian palaeontologist, and has been famously involved in discovery and description of some very interesting fossil species, which was meritorious. (He has a bio at Wiki’).
Putting aside that various avian and mammalian survivors from the Ice-Age, still hack-out a living in the UK, including seals bearing inapropriately white-fur pups, and that e.g. polar bears survived the warmer MWP, in their region, there is actually something even more stunning in the utterances from this “Australian of the Year 2007“.
OHHH, wail and groan I, in lamentation:
Have you heard that Oz not long-ago possessed mega-fauna, such as massive kangaroos and marsupial lions and stuff?
Timorous Tim has hypothesised that the aboriginal human invaders were largely responsible for their demise, and would like to reverse the situation, even by substitution of alien species introductions.
For instance, here is an extract from Wiki’ on the Komodo Dragon:
The Australian biologist Tim Flannery has suggested that the Australian ecosystem may benefit from the introduction of Komodo dragons, as it could partially occupy the large-carnivore niche left vacant following the extinction of the giant varanid Megalania. However, he argues for great caution and gradualness in these acclimatisation experiments, especially as “the problem of predation of large varanids upon humans should not be understated”. He uses the example of the successful coexistence with saltwater crocodiles as evidence that Australians could successfully adjust. [because S.W.Crocs feed mainly on Americans, and a few other overseas tourists]
I am speechless, concerning prior experience of introduced flora and fauna here. I must leave here now before I get really really cross!
Re: #11, Alex
From what I’ve seen of Snowdon’s summit over the last month, the builders would be having a very hard time of it indeed if there are any still up there. It would be interesting to know if the contractors factored global warming into their schedule when they costed the project.
I remember the NT exhibition well, and how silly I thought the concept was. Having spent a lot of time on top of mountains, in every season of the year, I know that snow accumulations in the Welsh uplands are fugitive and immensely variable, and that this can have little to do with temperature.
Good news, managed to get my copy of The Weather Makers at Chiswick Library this lunchtime. Glancing through it, I found this: after mentioning that the Club of Rome et al got it wrong when they “predicted catastrophe within decades”, he goes on to state: “The climate change issue is different. It results from air pollution…” Hmm, doesn’t bode well. But it will provide some interesting (if infuriating) reading over Christmas.