Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia and founding director to the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, has been in the news again recently. His new book Why we Disagree about Climate Change has led to sceptics – who I suspect have not read it – welcoming him to their fold. Even the Daily Mirror, which is not a publication that one might choose to rely on for scientific information, has reviewed the book. So has this eminent scientist who has been at the heart of the climate debate for decades really changed sides?
It is certainly true that he wrote an opinion piece for the BBC News website in 2006 warning his colleagues not to exaggerate their findings in order to attract attention. He even went further and condemned the conference – and associated media campaign – which Tony Blair used as a launch-pad for his newly discovered commitment to the crusade against global warming:
The Exeter conference of February 2005 on “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change” served the government’s purposes of softening-up the G8 Gleneagles summit through a frenzied week of “climate change is worse than we thought” news reporting and group-think.
By stage-managing the new language of catastrophe, the conference itself became a tipping point in the way that climate change is discussed in public.
In the same article he said that:
The language of catastrophe is not the language of science. It will not be visible in next year’s global assessment from the world authority of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
This seems to have been a triumph of hope over experience. No one who has consulted the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report could be left in any doubt about the intention of the authors to create alarm, and this was reinforced by the press campaign that accompanied its release. Since then, Hulme has been prepared to criticise the IPCC process too.
Hulme was back in the news again in 2007 with an article in The Guardain exploring the notion that the principles of ‘post-normal science’ should be applied to the climate debate. He suggested that in cases where ‘facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes are high and decisions urgent’ the stringent standards of proof that have underpinned scientific investigation for centuries should be relaxed. This carries with it a tacit acceptance that our present knowledge of the climate is insufficient to justify the conclusions that researchers are drawing if the usual standards of the scientific method are applied to them. Only by the less rigorous standards of ‘post-normal’ science can the alarmists case be made.
Anyone who subscribes to the notion of ‘post-normal science’ must, therefore, accept that in order to justify radical action to mitigate global warming, they must also accept that the debate is not yet over for all rational people and that the science is not settled. If it were, then dalliance with notions like ‘post-normal science’ would be unnecessary.
Such views fall far short of scepticism on Hulme’s part, but they do bring a breath of fresh air to the fetid and polarised debate over what is claimed to be the most important issue of our times. Even so, it is disturbing that an eminent scientist seems to be contemplating the prospect of revising, and watering down, the philosophical framework that has guided scientists since The Enlightenment.
Earlier this month, Hulme gave an interview to Stuart Blackman of The Register, a web site that regularly publishes highly sceptical articles about climate change. In a world where anyone who expresses such views is routinely labelled with the puerile term ‘denier’, and otherwise ignored by those who should be best placed to respond and debunk sceptical views, this is remarkable. Can anyone imagine James Hanson, Al Gore or Ravendra Pachauri risking an interview in the pages of a publication that is so hostile to their views?
From this interview it is clear that Hulme has move well beyond the suggestion that the standards of ‘post-normal’ science need to be applied to the interaction between politics and science in the climate debate. He argues that global warming is not a problem that can be solved, and that we are wrong even to consider that scientific evidence should be the determining factor in what we believe, or do not believe, about climate change. He suggests that global warming is a cultural matter that we must learn to live with, and if possible benefit from, using it as an incentive to solve more specific and tractable problems concerning our relationship with the natural world, such as pollution. Hulme considers that the issues surrounding global warming are so complex that they are not capable of any solution.
Does this make him a sceptic? Far from it; there seems to be no doubt in his mind that humans are capable of influencing the climate. Yet, unlike others who share this view, he is prepared to recognise that the input of sceptics is valuable in the climate debate, indeed that it is crucial. Without the sceptical point of view being recognised and fully addressed, the position of those who support the orthodoxy, including the IPCC, is undermined. These are brave sentiments for someone in Hulme’s position to articulate publicly. And warning that the present overselling of climate catastrophism is ‘…like the classic case of the dodgy dossier’ is unlikely to win him friends among fellow scientists, politicians or environmental activists.
He is very conscious of the perils of his own position. Referring to the travails of Bjørn Lomborg, the sceptical environmentalist, he says:
“It was interesting as to why he received such hate-mail from very well respected academics rather than simply engaging in the arguments,” says Hulme. “It became very very heavily and easily personalised, when actually Lomborg’s position is an entirely defendable position. I mean, you can disagree with it, and you can find flaws in his argument, but let’s find those flaws and let’s have a disagreement, rather than suddenly becoming reactionaries overnight. And I think there’s too much of that. And it’s an interesting question as to why it is that people feel that climate change is somehow is the issue beyond all other issues today that one has to stand on shoulder to shoulder and not allow any chink in because it would allow the powers of darkness to somehow gain the upper hand.”
It would seem unlikely that Hulme is alone among climate scientists in feeling that climate alarmism has got out of hand. What is worrying is that although sceptics are listening to what he says (even if they sometimes misinterpreting him) there seems to be little reaction from his colleagues. Those of us who have followed the climate debate will be familiar with the ability of perfectly reputable scientists who adhere to the ‘consensus’ view to close their minds to any challenge or questioning of their position that cannot be dismissed as misinformation, ignorance, political manipulation or bad science. This can even extend to ignoring blatant examples of bad scientific practice, or even misconduct, within their own discipline, as Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit has so often pointed out. His preferred term for such acquiesce in malpractice is ‘the silence of the lambs’.
Professor Mike Hulme is no lamb, and nor is he a climate sceptic. He is a courageous and fair minded authority who is prepared to take a fresh look at a controversy in which science has become so contaminated by politics that it is now impossible for anyone, either scientist or lay person, to distinguish fact from fiction. Only when the rest of the climate science community begins to respond to what he is saying will the issue be resolved in a way that derives from rationality rather than dogma.
This is a climate scientist who deserves to be listened to very carefully, even by those who are not convinced that recent global warming is anthropogenic in origin. Whether the arbiters of the suffocating climate change orthodoxy upon which major public policy decisions depend will open their minds to what he is saying is quite another matter.
I am pleased at Mike Hulme’s fairly recently aquired opposition to climate alarmism. However, as founding Director of the Tyndall Centre, a major propagandist social science network spawned from the University of East Anglia, we are all reaping what he has helped to sow in the past:
From Tyndall Press statements:
7 November 2000
What can we do about climate change?
As Britain battles through floods and major transport disruption, and the nations gear up for the UN climate conference at the Hague, how can responsible businesses and organisations prepare for climate change?
Dr Mike Hulme, the Centre’s Executive Director, said: “Society is at last waking up to climate change. What might once have been considered unusual weather conditions for the UK – the recent storms and flooding, for example – are likely to be much more frequent occurrences.
5 September 2001
At Risk from Climate Change: Wildlife, Plants … and Scotland
Two University of East Anglia scientists will give stark warnings next week (3-7 September) about the risks posed by climate change to two very different, but familiar, elements of our society.
Plants native to this country could be forced to find new habitats and the well-known bracing Scottish climate could find itself a great deal warmer, wetter and windier if global warming continues unabated.
Professor Andrew Watkinson and Dr Mike Hulme are speaking in separate sessions at the Festival of Science, taking place in Glasgow next week (3-7 September).
“Direct intervention by humans will almost certainly be necessary if we are to mitigate the impacts of climate change on biodiversity,” said Professor Watkinson, of UEA’s Schools of Biological and Environmental Sciences.
“We will have to consider the creation of ‘habitat corridors’ for the dispersal of some species, as well as changes in habitat management and even the translocation of some species” he continued.
Earlier research carried out by Dr Hulme for the Scottish Executive modelled the possible effects of climate change on Scotland: “over the coming century warming of up to 3 degrees Celsius could take place across Scotland; this would be accompanied by increases in average wind speeds at all time of the year and increases in rainfall intensity, especially in winter. Information of this type should be incorporated into planning regulations and design guidelines for new infrastructure,” he said.
23 October 2001
“The impacts of climate change are significant whether you herd goats in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco or work in a river-side office block in central London,” says Dr Neil Adger, from the Tyndall Centre and University of East Anglia. “Climate change is arguably the most persistent threat to global stability in the coming century.”
18 March 2002
CLIMATE CHANGE EXTENDS GROWING SEASON
Two climate scientists from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, based at the University of East Anglia, have studied UK growing seasons dating back over 200 years. They found that the season is beginning earlier and finishing later. “If the trend continues, it is possible that we will have a year-round growing season within a generation,” says Dr Tim Mitchell.
It is likely that the increase in growing season length is due to human emissions of greenhouse gases. “It demonstrates the need to consider ways to adapt to changes in climate that are already occurring, as well as reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases in the future”, he says.
4 April 2003
Climate change – can the natural world cope with the damage already done?
We have changed our environment significantly throughout our history. Global climate change poses a different type of threat: the rate of warming already exceeds anything experienced in the last 10,000 years. But can we survive this dramatically changing climate and are the Earth’s ecosystems resilient enough to survive in their current form given the other pressures they are subjected to by human development?
This is the major challenge laid down today (8 April 2003) by Professor Mike Hulme, a senior climate change scientist at an international conference on Global climate change and biodiversity at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.
“Climate change will certainly continue. It will probably accelerate and we could see unprecedented changes in the Earth’s climate over the coming years and decades. These changes in such a powerful influence on ecological development will introduce new challenges for the way we conserve our natural world.
17 July 2003
Caribbean corals decline 80% in 25 years
Coral reefs across the Caribbean have suffered a phenomenal 80% decline in their coral cover during the past three decades, reveals new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research,published this week in the international online journal Science Express. The amount of reef covered by hard corals, the main builders of reef framework, has decreased on average from 50% to just 10% in the last 25 years. Although the majority of the loss occurred in the 1980s, there is no evidence that the rate of coral loss is slowing. (surely these two statements are antagonistic?)
22 January 204
The Climate Change Context of the Aviation White Paper: This week’s Aviation White Paper gave an unduly low priority to the anticipated environmental impacts of aviation expansion, writes Dr Paul Upham of Tyndall North in a Policy Note in this month’s Journal of Environmental Planning and Management. His analysis, conducted earlier this year and confirmed by the White Paper, shows that with the recommended expansion by 2020, over a quarter of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions could be due to aviation alone. In 2000, aviation was responsible for 6% of UK emissions. Only ten months ago the UK Government endorsed an emissions reduction target of 60% by 2050.
7th January 2004
CARBON RATIONING…TO SAVE THE PLANET
Scientists devise ‘equal rights’ system to combat climate change:
Scientists at UMIST’s Tyndall Centre have devised a system to combat climate change giving each and every adult in the country an equal greenhouse gas ‘allowance’. Unlike a carbon tax system, where people emit as much carbon dioxide as the amount of fuel plus carbon tax they can afford, each adult would be given a smart card that only allows them to use a certain amount of carbon ‘units’.
20 March 2004
Climate change predictions for the UK include an increase in extreme weather events (like floods and heat waves) and will explore possible issues arising from these. Including: illnesses and deaths caused by heat waves, flooding and diseases transmitted by insects, food or contaminated water. Other issues are the indirect impacts, such as higher exposure to UV radiation from increased sunbathing during warmer and sunnier summers, and how politicians might address these.
05 July 2005 A low carbon future could cost G8 Leaders less than they think
(This was the forerunner to the Stern Report, which was largely written by Tyndall Staff)
The cost of a low carbon future may be no greater than the costs of investing in current energy technologies concludes a major set of studies published by a network of senior economists through the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
They show that the net cost of climate change mitigation technologies depends crucially on the extent to which policy measures can reduce and stimulate innovation to reduce the costs of new technology.
And to answer the ‘how much cost?’ question last, their answer is in between 0-2% of world GDP by 2050. This is equivalent to delaying reaching the global economic output of 2050 to a year later in 2051. By this time, GDP is likely to have risen by two to three hundred percent in most economies. (sound familiar, from Stern?)
21 September 2005
Everyone’s carbon dioxide emissions must go to zero to allow for aviation pollution reveals major analysis of UK climate change targets
All householders, motorists and businesses will have to reduce their carbon dioxide pollution to zero if the growing aviation industry is to be incorporated into Government climate change targets for 2050 reveals new research from the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The report shows that even if
aviation’s current growth is halved from today’s level, the rest of the economy will require carbon dioxide cuts far beyond Government targets.
“If the UK government does not curb aviation growth, all other sectors of the economy will eventually be forced to become carbon neutral. It will undermine the international competitiveness of UK industry”, says Dr Kevin Anderson who led the research at the Tyndall Centre at Manchester University.
This is the ultimate mind bender, the climate in the year 3000:
February 2006 – Climate Change on the Millennial Timescale, by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Environment Agency
New research released by the Environment Agency today shows that the decisions of this generation will leave a legacy of increasing climate change over the next millennium unless there is a major reduction in emissions.
With temperatures increasing by up to 15°C and seas rising by up to 11.4 metres, low-lying areas of the UK would be threatened with flooding and the UK’s climate could resemble that of today’s tropics by the year 3000.
Climate Change on the Millennial Timescale, is the first study to comprehensively examine impacts beyond the end of this century. The report implies that the UK will need to make major emissions reductions over the next couple of decades as part of a global effort to prevent abrupt climate changes.
The new study projects climate change over the next millennium, examining the impacts across the centuries. Increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions lead in one model to an abrupt climate change where sea temperatures plunge by 3°C as a result of the collapse of warm sea currents.
A second abrupt change occurs with the rapid disappearance of the Arctic sea ice. This warms Arctic seas by up to 8°C and land temperatures at UK latitudes by up to 5°C in the space of a couple of decades.
The report says that by the year 3000:
• Global and regional warming could more than quadruple after 2100: Temperatures could rise from1.5°C, if emissions are minimised to as much as 15°C, if we continue burning fossil fuels – more than four times the predictions for the year 2100. The EU says that “global annual mean surface temperature increase should not exceed 2°C above pre-industrial levels”;
• Sea levels will still be rising at the end of this millennium and could reach 11.4m by year 3000: This would mean that without action low-lying areas of the UK, including London, would be threatened by sea level rise.
This figure compares with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) global average sea level change of 0.16 to 0.69m by the 2080s. The definition of “dangerous” climate change adopted in the study is a global sea level rise of 2m – which will flood large areas of Bangladesh, Florida and many low lying cities, and displace hundreds of millions of people;
• Abrupt climate change events could occur: Business-as-usual emissions could lead to the collapse of currents in the Atlantic, causing North Atlantic sea temperatures to fall by 3°C, affecting agriculture and marine life particularly at the latitude of the UK.
If emissions continue, Arctic sea ice could completely disappear all year round, causing North Atlantic seas, previously cooled to heat up to 8°C accompanied by UK land temperature increases of up to 5°C within 20 years;
• These abrupt climate changes can happen long after emissions cease: Abrupt changes may be triggered many decades before they actually occur. Even after emissions have completely ceased there is still a legacy from decades past – a “sleeping giant” in the climate system;
• Ocean pH will fall dramatically: Ocean pH is predicted to fall dramatically posing a threat to marine organisms, such as corals and plankton. Such fundamental changes to plankton would have large implications for the rest of the marine ecosystem;
• Potential climate changes could be much greater, and avoidance of dangerous climate change even harder, than currently projected: Climate changes could be even greater if the climate system turns out to be more sensitive to the level of greenhouse gas emissions than the conservative assumptions made in this study. Only by minimising emissions, which means reducing them to zero in 2200 – can dangerous climate change be avoided.
Lead author, Dr Tim Lenton, Tyndall Centre and University of East Anglia, said: “We present a sobering picture of potential climate change on the millennial timescale. Whilst most studies stop at year 2100 with temperatures and sea level rising we explored where they are heading into the next millennium. “Only by starting to reduce CO2 emissions now, and continuing to reduce them can we avoid dangerous climate changes on the millennial time-scale, including the gradual melt of the Greenland ice sheet” he said.
“If we follow business-as-usual then we will commit future generations to dangerous climate change, and if we exploit unconventional fossil fuels we could return the Earth to a hot state it hasn’t seen since 55 million years ago,” Dr Lenton said.
03 May 2006 Archbishop of Canterbury launches Tyndall Centre’s new climate change research strategy: Dr Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury is tomorrow helping the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research launch its new research strategy. As guest of honour he is talking on the huge moral and practical problem of climate change.
“Climate change is not only about science and technology” says Professor Mike Hulme, Founding Director of the Tyndall Centre and Professor at the University of East Anglia. “Climate change raises profound questions about ethics, justice and equity affecting this and future generations and about humanity’s relationship with the planet. The Tyndall Centre recognises these dimensions as of fundamental importance and seeks to integrate them with our science, engineering and economic research.”
Sep 15 2006 – UK’s first climate road map published
The Government has only four years to implement a major new programme of action to cut carbon emissions if the UK is to play its part in keeping global temperatures below danger levels [1] warned a new report launched by The Co-operative Bank and Friends of the Earth today (15 September).
The report, ‘The Future starts here: the route to a low carbon economy’ is based upon research commissioned from The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester. It is the UK’s first comprehensive roadmap to a low carbon economy that would deliver on Government commitments to keep temperatures from rising beyond a critical point.
The report suggests that a carbon budget of around 4.6 Giga tonnes between 2000 and 2050 would allow the UK to play its part in keeping temperatures from rising two degree centigrade above pre-industrial levels – the danger level. If emissions continue at the current rate the UK would emit close to double this amount by 2050.
Only two months later in the BBC interview quoted, Hulme was backing away from the sort of scaremongering his own institution had been putting out for years. (It continues to do so with renewed zeal from his replacement, Bob Watson, good friend and former adviser to Al Gore.)
“Why is it not just campaigners, but politicians and scientists too, who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror and disaster with the observable physical reality of climate change, actively ignoring the careful hedging which surrounds science’s predictions?
I wonder who he was referring to?
Sorry for the length of the post, you lose the flavour if you cut too much.
Thanks for a very interesting contribution Dennis.
I followed Hulme’s pronouncements while he was at Tyndall too, and as your summary shows they were certainly in line with the alarmism that is standard output for such institutions. What interests me about his more recent contributions is that he seems to be willing to raise the debate to an adult level in a way that his coleagues are not willing or able to do.
If others are confident enough to follow his example, then we might move on from the present situation where one side yells ‘We know it’s happening becouse the IPCC says so’, and the other side tries to debunk the claim by shouting ‘No it isn’t’ and citing evidence that is no more conclusive than that contained in the assessment reports.
Only when that happens will it be possible to direct research towards understanding how our climate functions as a system over long periods rather than trying to prove that the IPCC are right, whatever they might say.
I find his present contributions very refreshing, regardless of what has happened in the past.
I am a global warming skeptic. Reading Professor Hulme’s article struck me as a breath of fresh air (no pun intended). One of the reasons that I am a skeptic is because “nearly every scientist in the world” not only supports the idea that fossil fuel emissions are causing harmful global warming (or is it really Northern Hemisphere warming?), but also because they refuse to look for alternative causes. These scientists seem closed minded. Can it be that science for the AGW hypothesis is too riddled with unsupportable or biased assumptions and cannot survive an assessment in the light of day? Can it be that governments of the world have injected a bias with their pro-AGW funding mechanisms?
In his farewell adress to the nation, President Eisenhower warned that “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” If these words have any meaning for us, can it be for the here and now?
If others follow Professor Hume’s example, DennisA can write up all of their past efforts to support AGW, too. It would mean nothing. There’s nothing wrong with finding an open mind or even changing your mind.
Al Gore may not have a scientist’s pedigree, but he has a nobel prize and an academy award. Yet he also refuses to be in the same room as anyone who would challenge his AGW stance, at least in public. NASA’s James Hansen follows Gore’s lead. Both men feel it’s OK to bend the truth if it supports their claims. How many other scientists, especially climate modelers, feel the same? If Gore or Hansen get on board with Professor Hulme’s call, the rest will follow. That doesn’t seem likely. Who else can galvanize the scientific community? Find him and sign him up.
Professor Hulme’s call for scientists to open their closed minds on the issue is, nevertheless, a great start. An open debate will help politicians and their electorate cut through the lies, innuendo, and half truths we hear every day. An open debate also implies that “mainstream” scientists will participate in the peer review process for research done by “skeptics” for other causes of the warming. I imagine they would choke at that prospect, but they might do it for professional reasons.
The government spent $billions for AGW science. It seems they got what they paid for. At least for now. Doesn’t anybody want to find out that mankind is not causing harmful climate change… that the world as we know it isn’t doomed? So far, the big money has been spent trying to prove it is so.
Debate or not, I believe it might be too late. Efforts to curb fossil fuel use have become institutionalized, given the fantastic profit potential for large corporations. I believe that, if AGW science could be totally discredited tomorrow, that the efforts to curb fossil fuel use would continue unabated. It will materially affect the cost of living for us all. If someday another cause of climate change comes to light, scientists will scratch their heads, wondering how this could be. Social scientists will have a field day writing thesis, books, giving lectures and interviews on CNN, explaining how and why so many scientists were convinced it was AGW.
Good luck, Professor Hulme. I truly want your peers to follow your lead. I truly want them to have open debates with their black sheep bretheren. I truly want the research done by skeptics to be either accepted or proved wrong… once and for all.
Re JeffM
I am highly delighted that Mike Hulme is now questioning the extreme presentation of global warming, but that does not undo the enormous damage the organisation he founded has done and is still doing to the economy of our country.
What a pity a pity he didn’t do this at the time of the Exeter Conference in 2005, which he now decries but was so instrumental in organising and promoting.
The activities of the Tyndall Centre, in conjunction with NGO’s, are central to the recent unchallenged adoption of ridiculous, unattainable CO2 emission targets into law, which will have unmeasurable effects on climate, but massive impacts on the living standards of the people of this country.
I’m sorry, I am angry with him for helping to distort science and now taking the “it wasn’t me guv” stance that he has now adopted.
I’d have to agree with Dennis.
Mike Hulme’s Tyndall Centre has been in the vanguard of the most extreme and antiscientific pronouncements of climate apocalypse. For Hulme to now decry that sort of language without mention of his own culpability in creating it, is disengenuous at best and hypocritical at the very least.
I find myself wondering whether Hulme has simply reached the end of the line with announcing catastrophe realising that the rhetoric had nowhere to go but self-parody. Perhaps he’d realised that the skeptics he ignored were not the ignorant or the corrupted that he had imagined, but were in fact some of his colleagues.
As for his “post-normal science”, I’d call it “anti-science”. Nothing has more shaped the debate for me than the attack upon the scientific method itself, by people claiming to be scientists.
It reminds me of the talking heads of the dotcom boom forgetting the economic fundamentals of profit and loss and talking about a new language of “eyeballs”, “stickiness” and a “New Era”.
Most of all, what I object to in Hulme’s analysis is the deliberate distortion of climate history in the pursuit of the perfect climate modelling result – a technological mirage that was debunked by Lorenz nearly 50 years ago.
Hmm…Professor Hulme has been busy promoting doom and gloom? And you say he was good at it? Although I was unaware of that, we can all hope that he has mellowed, given his article. I hope he pursues his call for open mindedness, and that his effort doesn’t end here. Otherwise, I would question his sincerity, and lose my open mindedness toward his motives. If Professor Hulme can use his position to influence a few other AGW supporters to meet the skeptics halfway, he will have done all of us a great service.
It’s time to wait and see. I wish him good luck. I wish all of you good luck.
JeffM:
I haven’t come across that Eisenhower quote before, and it is an interesting one. Your views on Hulme seem to be broadly in line with mine.
JohnA and DennisA:
What is important about Hulme’s views, IMHO, is how his colleagues will react. Will they ignore, sideline or even attack him, or will his lead embolden others to take a more open-minded and less doctrinaire line?
I do not think that sceptics have anything to fear from a debate in which their views are fully scrutionised and taken into account; the dogmatists in the alarmist camp certainly do. Sadly this is likely to be the determining factor.
And whatever Hulme’s motivation might be, at least he is saying something new, and that’s a welcome change from the constant recitation of stale mantra (s?) that the two sides have relied on for years now.
A very good post indeed. Mike Hulme’s and Bjorn Lomborg’s position is sure to be taken up by other scientists who object to the imposition of the left wing anti-capitalist, anti-development agenda in the climate change debate.
It offers too, a convenient bolt hole for those who have previously acquiesced to the green/left position.
Ayrdale:
I certainly hope that you are right about others following Hulme, for whatever reason. On the other hand I do wonder what the advantages in terms of career prospects, funding and peer approval will be for them if they do so.
Well, I guess that depends on how “robust” the science is behind AGW. I’m no PhD. but I think ongoing data from ARGOS sea temperature measurements, and satellite troposphere heat readings via IBUKI and other programmes, could prove the climate models totally wrong. It must be a nerve wracking time being involved in the field, unless they follow this dictum…
“…we must make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have.Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective,and being honest.”
Leading catastrophist, Dr Stephen Schneider (“Discover” Magagzine, Oct 1989)…
TonyN #9
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his NOT understanding it.”
(from the works of Upton Sinclair)
Tonyb
Can anyone here explain to me, in simple terms, what Mike Hulme is on about? He agrees with all the scientific predictions (3 degC warming, increased droughts, rising sea levels etc etc) and agrees that humanity is capable of creating the warming, but thinks we are incapable of stopping it. I’ve even read elsewhere that he is suggesting recruiting sociologists on to the IPCC. Is he being serious, do you think?
The choice is quite simple. If the science is right we need to act fast but if its wrong we can carry on as usual. The professor needs to make up his mind.
tempterrain:
Leaving aside for the moment my view that it isn’t a question of the science being “right” or “wrong”, but of recognising that, so far, all we have is an untested hypothesis, I can think of many examples of humans starting something that they are unable to stop. Can’t you?
Non-Neanderthal readers of this site may be interested in this paper by Von Deimling in which he discusses how the evidence from a study of paleoclimates can help predict future climate change.
http://pages2005.org/products/newsletters/2008-2/Special%20Section/Science%20Highlights/SchneiderVonDeimling_2008-2(20-21).pdf
Figure 1 is worth a look even if you’ve not time to read the rest of the article. It shows a range of estimates of the 2XCO2 warming figure from a variety of researches.
Its not totally impossible that the figure may be as low as 1deg C, but equally its not impossible, either, that it might be much higher than the commonly accepted 3 deg C figure.
Peter
your link comes up a 404-page not found
Tonyb
TonyB,
Yes the link seems to have been split in wordpress. Just copy and paste the whole thing, including the “(20-21).pdf ” bit on the end, into the address bar on your browser and it should be OK.
Incidentally I did mean this to go into the main blog rather thean the Mike Hulme blog but its not totally irrelevant to this discussion.
TonyN, Peter
The Schneider von Deimling et al. study on paleo-proxy data for predicting future 2xCO2 climate sensitivity is interesting (Peter’s #14).
This is all based on model simulations using paleo-proxy data of a period much colder than today (the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 21kyr BP), rather than physically observed real-life data from today. The climate models assume a dT2x range to see if this range can simulate a cooling that approximates the cooling estimated based on the LGM paleo-proxy data.
The writers tell us:
A table shows model-based dT2x estimates from various model simulations (ranging from 1°C to 9°C), the IPCC range assumption (2°C to 4.5°C) and compares these with the results of the LGM paleoclimate simulation (range of ~1°C to ~4°C).
The writers go on:
And:
This is certainly interesting background information.
It confirms the dT2x of 1°C with no feedbacks and then sees if the assumed dT2x range with feedbacks is reasonable when compared to the LGM paleoclimate data.
But it can in no way replace actual physical observations from today, such as the Spencer and Norris studies showing strongly negative net feedback from clouds, the Minschwaner + Dessler observations, showing a reduction in relative humidity with warming or the 60-year NOAA record of atmospheric humidity trends, showing a steady reduction in water vapor content with warming.
This is, of course, just my analysis. I would say, in general, that actual physical observations from today are worth more than paleo reconstructions, and that these are worth more than model-based estimates, because of the GIGO danger.
Max
because of the GIGO danger
We need a Gigo-counter.
Sorry.