[Back in December 2007, Dr David Whitehouse, who was for many years a science correspondent and then science editor at the BBC, wrote a very controversial article for the New Statesman entitled ‘Has Global Warming Stopped?’. This sparked a heated blog debate that accumulated some 3000 comments before the New Statesman closed it and the discussion then transferred to Harmless Sky. A further 7000 comments have been posted since then.
This is an update to that article and was written in response to a report by the BBC’s David Shukman which can be found here. It’s worth looking at this before reading on, and also noting that David Whithouse’s article pre-dates Paul Hudson’s What happened to global warming? story on the BBC website]
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It took quite a while for the fact that global annual average temperatures haven’t altered for a decade to become accepted by mainstream science, even if there are many who still doubt that it is either happening or important. Likewise one must also be glad that the media is catching up. Especially glad because it is the BBC.
One should take encouragement from the broadcast version of the Met ffice’s “Four degrees of warming ‘likely'” in that when referring to the recent temperature standstill it says that scientists have questioned it. The report did not call these questioners sceptics. Lets hope this nomenclature is applied consistently in the future by the organisation that said in 2005 that the science was settled.
However, the report did let a scientist get away with a biased interpretation of why the standstill has occurred, or rather bypassing the problematic nature of its existence. Dr Myles Allen said that one should look at the figures that are relevant, that is decade to decade changes. He said that temperatures are rising exactly as predicted as long as 30 years ago.
Well, I will leave the comment about as long as 30 years ago for your perusal in the context of climatic variations.
Dr Allen is wrong. The latest spell of warming began about 1980 following 40 years of standstill (still not adequately explained) and 90 prior years of warming. His decade to decade change is a less than two decade spell of warming, to the mid 1990’s, during which the warming increased at a rate much faster than the IPCC estimated the CO2 effect could account for. Since then there has been no change although of course it is warmer than it was in the 70s. This is another example of scientific double standards. The recent standstill is, of course, natural variability, the recent rise is, of course, man-made. It couldn’t possibly be the other way around? (Computer models can explain the recent trends, or more accurately, it is possible to select a few models that do from amongst the many that do not.)
Let’s look at decade-to-decade variability. In the past 15 decades it has warmed in 10 of them and stayed static in 5. But 8 of those decades were pre-1940 when we are told that man-made climate change had not taken effect. Since it has taken effect – a review of papers suggests a consensus of 1950 as a starting point – there have been 4 decades of standstill and 2 of warming. The recent warm decade is also no further above the mean global temperature than the cold Victorian age was below it.
It is alarming that the argument is moving away from real-world data and its inconvenience. The computer models point decades ahead and cannot be refuted. The UK Met Office says that global warming will resume 2009-2014, other scientists disagree. But even if the Met Office is proven wrong in its 2009-2014 forecast then it can still look to future decades and say it’s easier to predict 50 years ahead than 5!
The IPPC’s next assessment is due in 2014, but since the last one did not take into account the overwhelming major aspect of climate change of our time – the recent standstill – a more urgent review is needed.
[Dr Whitehouse’s comments were originally addressed to Benny Peiser of CCNet and I am posting them here with David’s kind permission. Another article by David Whitehouse, dealing with the controversy at the New Statesman, and particularly with the reaction of its environment columnist Mark Lynas, will be posted here shortly.]
This is an account of David Shukman’s previous claim to fame before becoming a climate expert.
BBC Seduced by Tale of ‘al Qaeda Diamond Trade,’ Now Being Sued
The Guardian – December 10, 2001
http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/Race_and_Class/BBC,_Seduced_by_'al_Qaeda_Diamonds,’_Now_Being_Sued_
A story connecting diamonds, terrorism and Osama bin Laden – it seemed too good a tale to be true. Unfortunately for the BBC, it was.
Now the writs are flying and the hunt is on to find a scapegoat
Thanks to David Whitehouse for an excellent summary on how scientists become AGW skeptics.
We have all seen the undoubted strengths of the AGW wave: strong political and financial backing, support by a majority of climate scientists (who are benefiting from this backing), excellent coverage by the media, glitzy reports by IPCC who have positioned themselves to be the “gold standard” climate organization, backed by alarming projections by multi-million dollar climate models, etc.
But as time moves on, we can also see the major weakness: the lack of empirical scientific data to support the premise that AGW is a potential serious threat, caused principally by human CO2 emissions.
As pointed out, this has become all the more obvious as surface temperatures have stopped warming since 1998, despite all-time record increases in atmospheric CO2, and as they have even started to cool since 2001.
We now have the absurd situation whereby the temperatures being reported by the Met Office are essentially being ignored by the same Met Office. We are told that it really is warming (because the models say that it should be) even though all the thermometers (even those next to AC exhausts and asphalt parking lots) are telling us that it is cooling.
The final “shot in the foot” by the Met Office was the recent, somewhat desperate press release assuring us that the underlying warming signal was only being temporarily masked by “natural variability”.
There are two reasons why this rationalization exposes the “fatal flaw” in the scientific support for the AGW premise:
Firstly, it tells us to forget what the actual empirical observations are telling us, but to “trust” the model projections instead. This approach would fit well for a religious belief (with the models replaced by prophets or “holy scripture”), but it is in direct contradiction to the basic principles of science.
Secondly, it demonstrates that the IPCC claim that natural forcing factors (i.e. “natural variability”) represented an insignificant forcing of our climate over a 250+ year period starting in 1750 is not scientifically compatible with the Met Office claim that these same (insignificant) factors have more than offset record increases in CO2 over the past decade.
Despite all its financial and political clout, the AGW charade is crumbling, precisely because of the fatal flaw in its scientific basis. Many scientists are becoming increasingly skeptical, as Whitehouse points out.
And, despite increasingly desperate efforts by those hoping to keep the AGW movement alive, the general public is also beginning to see that it is a sham.
Max
Reading this very good post, what I’m starting to look forward to is, eventually, a science book that is basically a story of the climate controversy from beginning to end, and that covers all the essential elements of the story – polar ice, greenhouse gases, GCMs, the Hockey Stick, ocean cycles and all the rest – written in a way that non-scientists can understand and appreciate.
(NB. I say “beginning to end”, knowing of course that it really never ends and there are always new things to discover and old paradigms to overturn.)
Some books I’ve enjoyed so far are The Chilling Stars by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder, and The Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan; Peter Taylor’s book Chill looks excellent too, & is on my reading list.
One day, will it be possible to read Climate Science – a Biography, by David Whitehouse? That would definitely be another one for the reading list.
Alex, it was written ahead of time in 1974 by Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman.
Cargo Cult Science
I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I’ve concluded that it’s not a scientific world.
He describes the scientific method and how many “scientists” just don’t get it. They wear white coats and take measurements in labs but their work is pointless.
Jack Hughes (4)
The 1974 speech by Feynman on the scientific method, etc. is very interesting.
His closing statement is:
It is sad to observe how many climate scientists today have lost their integrity by selling out for financial support to those who are promoting the multi-billion dollar AGW business.
Max
Now here’s an example of exactly what Feynman was talking about, I think, which happens to be fresh off the press today. Although unrelated to climate, it is rather illuminating.
A summary:
Government hires scientific expert.
Government asks for the expert’s scientific opinion.
Scientist gives his expert advice.
Government does not like this advice one little bit.
Government prepares to sack scientist.
My conclusion? Yes, the British government is “informed by the latest science” – just so long as said science doesn’t stray too far from the government’s agenda.