A link on Planet Ark‘s website happened to catch my eye when I was looking for something else on Google recently. This is one of the oldest and most evangelical of the environmentalist websites and it has been very successful in spreading the message of global warming. Sadly Planet Ark seems to be unable to do this without straying into the realms of exaggeration and speculation.
A Featured Link from Planet Ark leads to a page on the University of Arizona website that is rather like Google Earth. There it is possible to see the extent of land areas that would be inundated if sea levels rise as a result of anthropogenic, or any other kind of climate change (here). This would seem to be a perfectly reasonable way of drawing attention to the vulnerability of low lying land, a recurrent theme of advocates of impending global catastrophe. Indeed Planet Ark’s owes its name to fear of rising sea levels; we might all end up in the same boat as Mr Noah.
It’s east to relate to predictions of devastating floods. These happen from time to time, and dramatic images in the media have become embedded in our minds. Little effort of the imagination is required to envisage the consequences of a rapid increase in sea levels. So what predicted degree of sea level rise have the researchers at the University of Arizona used in this very interesting simulation?
The predicted effects of global warming on sea levels is one of the many areas of geophysical science where there is little or no agreement, so it must have been quite a problem. It would seem sensible and safe to use predictions from the IPCC’s latest report as this is supposed to be an objective assessment of the very latest data that is available. But when we look at what the folk at the University of Arizona have done it becomes clear that they have crossed the border from science into the murky world of political advocacy. The object of this exercise is not to present a balanced and well informed contribution to a complex and scientifically controversial subject, but to proclaim a dramatic warning.
A handy set of check boxes on the right hand side of the window allow the visitor to select the amount of sea level rise they would like to see. The choices range from 1m to 6m, or from a little over 3 feet to nearly 20 feet. All you need do is choose an option that suits your degree of pessimism and the software does the rest. There is no indication on the page as to what research these estimates are based on, or even what time scales are involved. We might be talking about 6m in a century or 1 m in a millennium, so just how do you decide which check box to select?. The only thing that seems to matter to the authors is that predictions of a global catastrophe should be reinforced in the minds of the public by the dramatic use of computer graphics.
If we look at the IPCC’s most recent report, this provides very little help. Their prediction for sea level rise by 2100 falls outside the range that the check boxes offer. According to the Summary for Policymakers, applying the worst case scenario with global temperatures increasing by up to 6 C – ten times more than during the last century – the projected increase in sea level is only 0.59m, or about 18 ins. So the Universtity of Arizona’s most conservative option for inundation more or less doubles the IPCC’s most pessimistic estimate.
There was a time, not so very long ago, when any academic institution that presented such sensationalised speculation in the guise of science would have become a laughing stock. This is no longer the case if the discipline concerned is climate science. And to make things worse, this apparent exercise in alarmism is not the work of some maverick student at the University of Arizona. One of the scientists who has put his name to this page is Jonathan Overpeck, a leading palaeoclimatologist whose research has played a part in convincing policy makers that recent warming is unprecedented. He is also listed by the IPCC as one of the drafting authors of their 2007 IPCC report, so it is reasonable to suppose that Overpeck knows precisely what that report says about sea levels.
Hi again Tony ………. yet another thing that i disagree about. I’ve followed, and look forward to reading, Planet Arks newsfeed for some years now and I would not at all class it as ‘evengelical’ (which, as far as I’m concerned, are those who preach to receptive gullible souls for their own benfit). As you know, its composed of mainly Reuters articles from many sources that, like any newsmedia, must be viewed critically and its easy enough to go to the source for ultimate proof – whether believable or not.
You’re coming across as being sceptical about much of what is being said about the changes of the global climate. I judge on facts alone – not heresay or manipulation – but I have noticed changes that are a concern eg. our local glacier is noticeably less in extent in summer than it was when I moved here 27 years ago. I think it’s a combination of factors, natural and man-made and it ain’t going to stop in our lifetime but I’m attempting to pollute less now anyway – if only out of concern for the future. Kind of makes one wonder though after reading this:
Re: #1, Malcolm J
When I used the term ‘evangelical’ I was not using it in a pejorative sense, but according to its dictionary definition: zealous in advocating or supporting a particular cause. This description seems to fit Planet Ark perfectly. No one could possibly describe such a site as being objective on climate change; they give no hint that there are well-founded and rational alternative views. The sea-level / Overpeck matter that I posted on is clearly alarmist and uses assumptions that are well outside mainstream scientific research. Why is there no caveat that explains this? The impression that it gives is that sea levels will rise between 1-7 metres in the near future.
So far as their use of news-feeds from the agencies is concerned, I do not see this as any kind of recommendation, particularly where matters touching on science are concerned. The days when hacks put on their trilby hats and raincoats before pounding the mean streets searching for stories are long gone. Now they sit in front of VDUs while the electronic media provide a constant flow of press releases. How is a journalist supposed to assess a story like the one that you have quoted? To verify the mass of statistics and assertions that it contains would take days. Editors want eye-catching stories, and they want them now!.
You are correct that I am sceptical about much that is being said about changes in the climate. It is websites like Planet Ark that have made me so. Good science does not need to be supported by exaggeration, misinformation and spin. I don’t think that there are many people who would argue that the climate has not changed. It would be foolish to do so as change is one of the things that the climate does, and has been doing, throughout the earth’s history. My problem is with the assumption that a fairly minor change in global temperature (see here) has been caused by human influences. And at this stage it really is just an assumption. If there is any empirical evidence to support this view then I have yet to find it, although there is a lot of circumstantial evidence and speculation that is presented as though it is conclusive evidence.
Your glacier is a good example of this. We have become conditioned by the media to think that glacier retreat is evidence of anthropogenic warming, but systematic observations of glaciers extend no further back than the mid 18th century when the climate was going through one of its cooler phases. In any scientific discipline it is dangerous to draw conclusions from short data sets, but in climate science such bad practice seems to be accepted without question. Glacier retreat is headline news, and researchers working in this field, like Lonnie Thompson, have become famous. But how much do we hear in the press – or on websites such as Planet Ark – about the organic matter that is emerging from glacial till that is now being exposed in the Alps, Southern Andes and Greenland? (here) Carbon dating of these relics of trees and plants place them in the Holocene, Roman and Medieval warm periods. Glaciers do not flow uphill, so the vegetation was obviously there before the ice advanced to cover it. Even if the present retreat is anomalous, and there is insufficient evidence to conclude that it is, then this is only evidence of warming, but it tells us nothing about what has caused temperatures to rise. Therefor glacier retreat can only become evidence of anthropogenic climate change after it is established that the recent warming was not just a period of natural variation.
The danger at the moment is the willingness of people to accept, without question, any argument that is presented to them with the label ‘climate science’ attached to it. You are cautious, judging information from sources such as Reuter’s on merit, but the majority are not. The article that you quoted, which I found on the Global Action Network website although it seems to have originated in the Globe and Mail under the by-line of Neil Reynolds, is an excellent example of confirmation bias, one of the greatest pitfalls in science. It is based on the assumption that domestic livestock is causing global warming and presents various statistics to support this. There is no acknowledgement that farm livestock have displaced other species that would otherwise be emitting gases, or that methane levels in the atmosphere are actually stabilising (here) in spite of the increase in agricultural animals. There is a very important difference between assembling evidence to support a conclusion and assessing observations imperially with a view to determining what is happening. The latter is the true scientific method; the former is a kind of advocacy.
I agree with you that it is better not to pollute, but pollution comes in many different degrees of seriousness and in various forms. Carbon dioxide certainly does not have a monopoly. There is also the new visual pollution I see in the British landscape; wind farms and the vast power lines that serve them. And there is the pollution of scientific debate by politics; a very dangerous trend indeed as it distorts the only rational paradigm that we have to explain the natural world. These are not things that are likely to happen before the end of the century, they have already happened because of fear of global warming.