Back to basics on climate change

The climate change debate has become shrouded in hot air. We need to step back and look at the larger picture

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• • Khaled Diab
  • guardian.co.uk,
  • Friday July 25 2008
  • Article history

Tonight marks the exciting climax of the eco-drama Burn Up, which I enjoyed watching. Despite its simple political message, the characters were complex and interesting, the acting strong and the drama unrelenting.

Aside from the unnaturally high percentage of beautiful people and the stunning scenery, a similar climate change drama has been playing itself out here on Cif's own narrative threads in recent weeks. This was triggered by the emission of Ofcom's report on Channel 4's The Great Global Warming Swindle which caused the temperature of the debate to rise alarmingly, raising concerns about Cif's delicate ecosystem.

In fact, I have found

the growing fixation on climate change over the past few years worrying, because the entire debate has become sidetracked. What should have become by now a broad debate on the environment and our place in it has actually been reduced to a single issue. The whole environmental debate is being shoehorned through the funnel of global warming.

In a way, this is understandable, because people find it easier to focus on individual political issues than try to tackle the intricate complexities of reality.

Environmentalists and greener politicians can scare us with stories of the coming inferno, while big business and free-wheeling politicians can assure us that in consumer heaven our actions have no consequence, and even if the temperature does rise a bit, this particular hell ain't no bad place to be.

Meanwhile,

mainstream thinking has focused on the idea that a low-carb Kyoto energy diet will save our obese societies. And, like the formula of any successful dietary programme, it acknowledges pain in one aspect of our life but promises that our broader lifestyle will remain intact.

Those unable even to contemplate cutting back, cast doubts on whether the climate is actually warming up, whether temperatures will rise as much as models project, whether it is our fault and how much responsibility we bear for it.

Of course, I don't believe that our oil-based economies are sustainable and I think that switching to renewable energy is essential to our future. But even if our energy supply becomes predominantly renewable, will our woes end there?

By weaning us off oil, this will help avert a massive energy crisis that already appears to have begun. After all, at most we only have a few decades' worth of petroleum left.

According to a 1999 estimate by the American Petroleum Institute, the world's oil supplies would be depleted between 2062 and 2094.

This was based on estimated proven reserves of 1.4 to 2 trillion barrels and consumption at 80 million barrels per day. As we have learnt since then, both Opec and oil companies have had a vested interest in overstating the amount of oil that is still out there, and, already in 2005, daily oil consumption already passed the 83.5 million barrel per day mark.

The trouble is that it is not just the oil that is running out – everything is. Coal at current production levels is likely to run out within 150 years. If it is used as an oil substitute, many decades would be knocked off this projection.

Many relatively common metals, such as copper, are at risk of serious depletion, if the global economy continues its rapid upward trajectory. Even relatively abundant iron ore could disappear within six decades if demand continues to grow at 2% per year,

according to Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute.

At the current rate of deforestation, all tropical forests in the world might disappear by 2090. One model even suggests that the Amazon could be no more within half a century and that more than half of Papua New Guinea's rain forest – the third largest in the world – could disappear by 2021.

This is not just about the devastating effect on biodiversity and protecting cuddly and not-so cuddly animals, but it also means

we will be facing a global food and wood shortage pretty soon, as well as the collapse of the farming land that will replace the forests, due to soil erosion and depletion.

Droughts and desertification are also threatening millions of people. The Sahara desert is growing at a rate of up to 30 miles a year; Nigeria loses hundreds of square kilometres of land to the desert annually, and as much as 80% of arid Afghanistan's land is subject to soil erosion and desertification.

Even in more temperate Europe, droughts have dramatically increased over the past three decades – the areas affected have gone up by a fifth between 1976 and 2006. The 2003 drought affected about 100 million Europeans and southern Spain might become desert in the coming decades.

Within a couple of generations, the global economy will have outgrown the globe. Without access to other planets, exponential economic growth cannot go on indefinitely. Finite resources cannot be used to fuel infinite rises in our standards of living. One day we will hit a brick wall. Our reckless lifestyles pose some risks for ourselves and even more for future generations.

There is a desperate need to rethink our attitudes to consumerism, the disposable culture, overpopulation and the economic growth orthodoxy so as to find ways to spread the joy more equitably without necessarily committing mass suicide in the process. Humanity will probably survive our irresponsibility but our modern industrial civilisation may not, and we may become the Atlantis myth for future societies.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Climate Change 2007

Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis - Contribution of Working Group I (WG1) to the Fourth Assessment. Published February 2007.

News Release: IPCC adopts major assessment of climate change science

Paris, 2 February 2007 – Late last night, Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) adopted the Summary for Policymakers of the first volume of “Climate Change 2007”, also known as the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

“Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis”, assesses the current scientific knowledge of the natural and human drivers of climate change, observed changes in climate, the ability of science to attribute changes to different causes, and projections for future climate change.

The report was produced by some 600 authors from 40 countries.

In this Summary for Policymakers the following levels of confidence have been used to express expert judgments on the correctness of the underlying science:
very high confidence - at least a 9 out of 10 chance of being correct;
high confidence - about an 8 out of 10 chance of being correct.

The following terms have been used to indicate the assessed likelihood, using expert judgement, of an outcome or a result:
Virtually certain > 99% probability of occurrence,
Extremely likely > 95%,
Very likely > 90%,
Likely > 66%,
More likely than not > 50%,
Unlikely less than 33%,
Very unlikely less than 10%,
Extremely unlikely less than 5%.

In general, uncertainty ranges for results given in this Summary for Policymakers are 90% uncertainty intervals unless stated otherwise, i.e., there is an estimated 5% likelihood that the value could be above the range given in square brackets and 5% likelihood that the value could be below that range.

* the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assesses scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.

* Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values (Fig. SPM-1).

* Global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.

* Carbon dioxide is the most important anthropogenic (def: Caused by humans) greenhouse gas. The global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased from a pre-industrial value of about 280 ppm to 379 ppm in 2005.

* The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in 2005 exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years (180 to 300 ppm) as determined from ice cores.

* The annual carbon dioxide concentration growth-rate was larger during the last 10 years (1995 – 2005 average: 1.9 ppm per year), than it has been since the beginning of continuous direct atmospheric measurements (1960 – 2005 average: 1.4 ppm per year).

* Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.

* Observations since 1961 show that the average temperature of the global ocean has increased to depths of at least 3000 m and that the ocean has been absorbing more than 80% of the heat added to the climate system. Such warming causes seawater to expand, contributing to sea level rise.

* The average atmospheric water vapour content has increased since at least the 1980s over land and ocean as well as in the upper troposphere. The increase is broadly consistent with the extra water vapour that warmer air can hold.

* Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres.

* Widespread decreases in glaciers and ice caps have contributed to sea level rise (ice caps do not include contributions from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets). Losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have very likely contributed to sea level rise over 1993 to 2003.

* Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003, about 3.1 mm per year.

* There is high confidence that the rate of observed sea level rise increased from the 19th to the 20th century. The total 20th century rise is estimated to be 0.17 m.

* Arctic temperatures increased at almost twice the global average rate in the past 100 years.

* since 1978 annual average Arctic sea ice extent has shrunk by 2.7% per decade, with larger decreases in summer of 7.4% per decade.

* the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1300 years. The last time the polar regions were significantly warmer than present for an extended period (about 125,000 years ago), reductions in polar ice volume led to 4-6 metres of sea level rise.

* Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1300 years.

* Global average sea level in the last interglacial period (about 125,000 years ago) was likely 4 to 6 m higher than during the 20th century, mainly due to the retreat of polar ice.

* Ice core data indicate that polar temperatures at that time were 3 to 5°C higher than present, because of differences in the Earth’s orbit.

* The Greenland ice sheet and other Arctic ice fields likely contributed no more than 4 m of the observed sea level rise.

* Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.

* Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns (see Figure SPM-4 and Table SPM-2).

* global average surface warming following a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations is likely to be in the range 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded.

* Water vapour changes represent the largest feedback affecting climate sensitivity and are now better understood than in the TAR.

* Cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty.

* It is very unlikely that climate changes of at least the seven centuries prior to 1950 were due to variability generated within the climate system alone. A significant fraction of the reconstructed Northern Hemisphere interdecadal temperature variability over those centuries is very likely attributable to volcanic eruptions and changes in solar irradiance, and it is likely that anthropogenic forcing contributed to the early 20th century warming evident in these records.

* Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century.

* Sea ice is projected to shrink in both the Arctic and Antarctic. In some projections, Arctic late-summer sea ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century.

* It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.

* it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become
more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs.

* Increases in the amount of precipitation are very likely in high-latitudes, while decreases are likely in most subtropical land regions

* it is very likely that the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) of the
Atlantic Ocean will slow down during the 21st century. Temperatures in the Atlantic region are projected to increase due to the much larger warming associated with projected increases of greenhouse gases. It is very unlikely that the MOC will undergo a large abrupt transition during the 21st century.

* Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized.

* Climate carbon cycle coupling is expected to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as the climate system warms, but the magnitude of this feedback is uncertain.

* Contraction of the Greenland ice sheet is projected to continue to contribute to sea level rise after 2100.

* Current global model studies project that the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall. However, net loss of ice mass could occur if dynamical ice discharge dominates the ice sheet mass balance.

* Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium, due to the timescales required for removal of this gas from the atmosphere.

Al Gore debates climate change with sceptics

March 21, 2007

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06:23:43 pm, Categories: Global Warming and Climate Change, Politics and Science, 1374 words

Gore Returns to Senate to Butt Heads With Climate Change Skeptics, Propose Real Solutions

Update: The full video of Gore's testimony before the Senate Environment Committee is now up on the homepage of CSPAN. (Currently it's the second link under "Recent Programs")

As soon as the Democrats took both houses of Congress, one thing became inevitable: Gore was coming back to the Senate, if only to address his all-consuming passion, climate change.

Today at 2:30 EST, Gore got 30 minutes to speak before a packed house. Immediately after, noted climate change skeptic Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), who famously declared that global warming "is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American public," got a chance to lay in to the former vice president, at one point even attempting to ambush him by embarrassing him into signing a pledge that he reduce his emissions energy use to that of a typical American household.

Debate

The gloves were off: it was political theater at its finest. Unfortunately, that meant that, save Mr. Gore and, in his better moments, Sen. Inhofe, few of those present addressed the science of climate change in a way that made it sound like they'd done their homework. To wit:

• When Senator Kit Bond (R-Missour) declared that sun spots were just as likely a cause of global warming as human emissions of CO2, I just about fell out of my chair. So did Mr. Gore.

• Sen. Inhofe declared that the Antarctic is gaining ice, not losing it. This makes a nice sound-bite (gee, if the coldest place on earth is growing, not shrinking, doesn't that mean the earth is cooling and not warming, or something?) until you realize that the climate models actually predict increased snowfall over antarctica, mitigating to some extent the sea-level rise that will come about as a result of global warming. It's also worth noting that this data is patchy, at best, and only goes back a few decades.

• Inhofe also whipped out a poster with "over a thousand names" on it of scientists who don't agree with the consensus on global warming. This was a nice touch, but Gore responded appropriately: the IPCC just declared the evidence for anthropogenic climate change to be unequivocal.
  
• the IPCC say "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global
  average sea level" (page 5)
• Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. (page 10) (Summary for Policymakers pdf)
  
• The National Academies of Science of the 16 most developed countries all concurr. In other words, for every name on that poster, there are a dozen, maybe a hundred scientists, maybe more, who don't dispute the basics of anthropogenic climate change. (It was also nice to hear Gore cite the September 2006 single-topic special issue of Scientific American on the future of energy, even if it was only to note that in it the editor in chief declared that the debate on anthropogenic global warming is over.)

  To me, Inhofe's poster o' climate change skeptics is the equivalent of trotting out a bus full of young-earth creationists--sure, there are people on this Earth who think that dinosaurs and humans co-existed, but that doesn't make it so, nor does it mean that there is any real debate about whether or not our planet is 6,000 years old.

To his credit, Inhofe did bring up one point where Gore may have exaggerated in his film: the link between global warming and an increased number of hurricanes. Certainly scientists believe a warmer earth will cause more intense hurricanes. But more hurricanes overall? The jury's still out. Chris Mooney, who is about to come out with a book on just this subject, has more at his blog The Intersection.)

• IPCC say "it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of
  tropical SSTs. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. (page 16) (Summary for Policymakers pdf)

Solutions

Some folks may still think this is a political issue, but the many Republican Senators on the Senate Environment committee who were more interested in talking about solutions than debating the science would disagree with those folks. It was gratifying to finally see this becoming a bipartisan issue.

Here is Gore's 9-point plan for dealing with climate change, starting today, directly from his speech:

1) I think we ought to have an immediate freeze on co2 reductions and start from there.

2) We should use the tax code. What I'm about to propose I know is is very much outside the range of what is now politically feasible.

I think we ought to cut taxes on employment and make up the difference with pollution taxes - principally CO2 taxes. Some countries are talking about it seriously.

In the developed world our big disadvantage is that these developed countries have access to tech and container shipping. We don't want to lower our wages - but we don't want to pile on top of those wages these taxes.

We ought to use some of the revenue [from carbon taxes] to help the poor with the adjustments that are coming forward.

3) I'm in favor of cap and trade and I supported Kyoto. but I understand the realities of the situation.

I think the new president should take office at a time when our country has a commitment to defacto compliance with Kyoto. And I think we should move the start of the new treaty period from 2012 to 2010. We need a tougher treaty that starts in 2010. And we need to find a creative way to get China and india involved sooner rather than later.

That's important not least of which because China's emissions will exceed ours in the next couple of years.

We need to ratify a cap and trade system so the market will work for us rather than against us.

4) We should have a moratorium on new coal plants that are not fixed with carbon capture and sequestration technology.

5) I think our congress should fix a date beyond which incandescent lightbulbs are banned. [aside: Australia is about to do this.]...

It's like wal-mart. It's not taking on the climate crisis simply out of the goodness of their heart. They care about it but they're making money at it.

6) The creative power of the information revolution was unlocked by the Internet.

We ought to have [an analogous] electro-net and we ought to encourage widely distributed power generation. We ought to take off the caps and let individuals sell back as much as they want on the grid.

7) I think we ought to raise the CAFE standards. Don't single out autos, but as part of it.

8) Pass a carbon-neutral mortgage association. Here's why: buyers of new homes and buyers and sellers all focus on purchase prices. But the expenditures that go into more insulation and window treatment and those that don't pay back immediately but pay back over 2-3 years, those don't get counted as savings. Put those in a separate instrument - then have a Connie May [like the government's Fannie Mae, which handles mortgages] which can create a separate instrument. So that people can save and reduce co2 at the same time.

9) Require corporate disclosure of carbon emissions. Investors have a right to know about material risks that could affect the value of their stocks in the future.

reposted from: sciam
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IPCC Climate report released

Key climate report sparks global call to action

• 18:02 02 February 2007
• NewScientist.com news service
• Catherine Brahic, Paris

Governments and environmental groups the world over have greeted the new UN report on the science of climate change with words of praise – and determination. The report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was released on Friday in Paris, France (see Blame for global warming placed firmly on humankind).

"It is another nail in the coffin of the climate change deniers and represents the most authoritative picture to date, showing that the debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over,” said David Miliband, UK environment minister.

The report considered all the research since the last IPCC assessment in 2001 and the 21-page summary (pdf) of its findings – approved by officials from 113 countries – says that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal”.

“The IPCC report embodies an extraordinary scientific consensus that climate change is already upon us, and that human activities are the cause,” says James Leape, director general of WWF International.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations' Environment Programme (one of the governing bodies of the IPCC), said the new report "gives us a stark warning that the potential impact will be more dramatic, faster and more drastic in terms of consequences" than previously thought. The impacts will change the way some people live in fundamental ways, he added.

Calls for action

Despite past scepticism by the US administration, the White House backed the report. "It is a comprehensive and accurate reflection of the current state of climate change science,” said Sharon Hays, associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Hays led the US delegation to the IPCC, which was praised by many for their constructive contribution to the final vetting of the report summary.

With the report being acknowledged as having clearly demonstrated the link between human activities and climate change, it has prompted strong calls for action.

The Democrat chair of the House Committee on Science and Technology, Bart Gordon said: "Expert scientists have provided us with a diagnosis of the problem and a prognosis for our planet's health. Now, it's time for us - the policymakers - to do our jobs."

"The clock is ticking and time is running out for us to avoid major climate change, with the real and serious threats to our economies and peoples' livelihoods it carries,” said Marthinus van Schalwyk, South African minister for environment and tourism.

"Faced with this emergency, now is not the time for half measures. It is the time for a revolution, in the true sense of the term," said French president Jacques Chirac. "We are in truth on the doorstep of the irreversible."

Post Kyoto

There was a hopeful feeling in Paris that the new report would pave the way for an agreement that would go beyond the Kyoto Protocol targets for 2012.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the European Commission’s calls for industrialised nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 60% to 80% by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels) were “exactly in line with what scientists say we need". The question now, he said, "is how do we convince other industrialised countries to sign up to the European rallying call?”

Others echoed the idea that developed nations must take the lead. Kenneth Denman, a Canadian climatologist who led the work on one of the report’s chapters, told New Scientist that developed countries would be “moral hypocrites if we ask developing countries to reduce their emissions when they’re trying to catch up with the standard of living we’ve had for the past 50 years”.

“North America has 5% of the global population,” Denman pointed out, “yet we produce 25% of the fossil fuel emissions.” Developed nations must “clean up their act” first, he said.

reposted from: NS
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Climate change predictions go from bad to worse - IPCC report

IT TOOK three years to write and contains six years' worth of research. The full report, to be published later this year, will contain 11 chapters. One chapter alone, seen by New Scientist, runs to 150 pages and includes more than 850 references. The authors say it will resolve many critical questions about climate change and support the unequivocal language of the summary published last week.

Warming is now an "incontrovertible" fact for two reasons, the scientists say. First, because doubts raised by satellite data - which suggested that recent warming has been far less than surface thermometers indicate - have now been resolved. In short, the thermometers have been shown to be right (New Scientist, 20 August 2005, p 10). In any case, nothing else but global warming can explain the rapid melting of ice round the world.

The declaration that warming is "very likely" to be due to human activity is justified by an increasing agreement between measurements from the real world and the detailed predictions of statistical models of warming. "It is a very rigorous statistical analysis, comparing measurements and models in space and time in a more detailed way than ever before," says Susan Solomon, head of the US group that led the assessment. Key to this has been the observed greater warming over land masses compared with the oceans, and the combination of warming in the lower atmosphere with cooling in the stratosphere.

Researchers also claim to have a better idea of how much warming from greenhouse gases is being masked by dust and smoke aerosols put into the air by human activity. This again improves the match between models and the real world.

The team is also much more confident now about the unique nature of recent warming. The IPCC's 2001 summary report was heavily criticised for including a graph - known as the "hockey stick" - which purported to show that the world is now warmer than for at least the past 1000 years. The claim was based on sporadic proxy data such as tree rings, and was widely attacked. Now a huge amount of extra data collected since 2001 "all supports the interpretation that warming in the past half-century is unusual in at least the last 1300 years", the summary says.

Where does this leave the prognosis for the planet? The report sets the likely range of average temperature changes for a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations - expected around the end of the century - at between 2 and 4.5 °C. This is roughly in line with previous reports, though this time it adds, with a nod to possible positive feedbacks, "values substantially higher than 4.5 °C cannot be excluded".

This amount of warming will likely deliver an ice-free Arctic and a 30 per cent drop in rainfall in many subtropical regions, including a huge area from the Mediterranean and North Africa through the Middle East to central Asia, and another across southern Africa. Meanwhile, higher latitudes will get wetter as the air warms and storm tracks move, and hurricanes will become more intense.

Global warming, the report says, contains a deadly time lag. That's because 80 per cent of the extra heat currently being trapped by man-made greenhouse gases is being drawn into the oceans. As the oceans warm, more of that heat will remain in the air. Even if emissions of greenhouse gases were sharply reduced, the world would continue to warm by 0.1 °C per decade for some time.

From issue 2590 of New Scientist magazine, 10 February 2007, page 9

The solar effect

It is one of the few areas where the sceptics' argument has had some force. What role has the sun played in recent climate change? As if to underline the controversy, last week's debate on this issue lasted some 10 hours.

The IPCC scientists wanted to halve their previous estimate of the maximum possible solar influence on warming over the past 250 years, from 40 per cent to 20 per cent. Government delegations from China and Saudi Arabia refused to accept that, based on new ideas about cosmic rays from outer space.

Cosmic rays ionise the atmosphere, which could, the theory goes, create clouds. Thus, anything that reduces the amount of cosmic rays could diminish cloud cover and so warm the Earth's surface. An increase in solar activity would do just that - by deflecting cosmic rays away from Earth. China and Saudi Arabia were buoyed by claims that small changes in radiation from the sun could be amplified by their potential effect on clouds. Thus, they said, the sun could have a greater effect than the scientists claimed.

Most climate scientists are unconvinced. "Right now there is no evidence," says IPCC author Piers Forster of the University of Leeds, UK. In any case, IPCC scientists believe, most of today's warming can be explained by man-made influences (see Charts). But with a book due from solar-radiation proponent Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center, this may not be the end of the matter.

reposted from: new scientist
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IPCC Climate report 'was watered down'

• 08 March 2007
• Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues
• Fred Pearce

British researchers who have seen drafts of last month's report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claim it was significantly watered down when governments became involved in writing it.

David Wasdell, an independent analyst of climate change who acted as an accredited reviewer of the report, says the preliminary version produced by scientists in April 2006 contained many references to the potential for climate to change faster than expected because of "positive feedbacks" in the climate system. Most of these references were absent from the final version.

His assertion is based on a line-by-line analysis of the scientists' report and the final version, which was agreed last month at a week-long meeting of representatives of more than 100 governments. Wasdell told New Scientist: "I was astounded at the alterations that were imposed by government agents during the final stage of review. The evidence of collusional suppression of well-established and world-leading scientific material is overwhelming."

He has prepared a critique, "Political Corruption of the IPCC Report?", which claims: "Political and economic interests have influenced the presented scientific material." He publish the document online this week at www.meridian.org.uk/whats.htm.

Wasdell is not a climatologist, but his analysis was supported this week by two leading UK climate scientists and policy analysts. Ocean physicist Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge, who made the discovery that Arctic ice has thinned by 40 per cent over the past 25 years and also acted as a referee on the IPCC report, told New Scientist: "The public needs to know that the policy-makers' summary, presented as the united words of the IPCC, has actually been watered down in subtle but vital ways by governmental agents before the public was allowed to see it."

"The public needs to know that the summary has been watered down in subtle but vital ways by governmental agents"

Crispin Tickell, a long-standing UK government adviser on climate and a former ambassador to the UN, says: "I think David Wasdell's analysis is very useful, and unique of its kind. Others have made comparable points but not in such analytic detail."

Wasdell's central charge is that "reference to possible acceleration of climate change [was] consistently removed" from the final report. This happened both in its treatment of potential positive feedbacks from global warming in the future and in its discussion of recent observations of collapsing ice sheets and an accelerating rise in sea levels.

For instance, the scientists' draft report warned that natural systems such as rainforests, soils and the oceans would in future be less able to absorb greenhouse gas emissions. It said: "This positive feedback could lead to as much as 1.2 °C of added warming by 2100." The final version does not include this figure. It acknowledges that the feedback could exist but says: "The magnitude of this feedback is uncertain."

Similarly, the draft warned that warming will increase atmospheric levels of water vapour, which acts as a greenhouse gas. "Water vapour increases lead to a strong positive feedback," it said. "New evidence estimates a 40 to 50 per cent amplification of global mean warming." This was absent from the published version, replaced elsewhere with the much milder observation "Water vapour changes represent the largest feedback."

The final edit also removed references to growing fears that global warming is accelerating the discharge of ice from major ice sheets such as the Greenland sheet. This would dramatically speed up rises in sea levels and may already be doing so. The 2006 draft said: "Recent observations show rapid changes in ice sheet flows," and referred to an "accelerating trend" in sea-level rise. Neither detail made the final version, which observed that "ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica... could increase or decrease in future". Wasdell points out recent findings which show that the rate of loss from ice sheets is doubling every six years, making the suggestion of a future decrease "highly unlikely".

Some of the changes were made at the meeting of government invigilators that finalised the report last month in Paris. But others were made earlier, after the draft report was first distributed to governments in mid-2006.

Senior IPCC scientists contacted by New Scientist have not been willing to discuss how any changes took place but they deny any political interference. However, "if it is true, it's disappointing", says Mike Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University in University Park and a past lead author for the IPCC. "Allowing governmental delegations to ride into town at the last minute and water down conclusions after they were painstakingly arrived at in an objective scientific assessment does not serve society well."

From issue 2594 of New Scientist magazine, 08 March 2007, page 10

reposted from: New Scientist
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Behind the scenes at the Paris climate change meeting

click for 9th February Podcast (9min to 17 minutes)

• IPCC final 2007 report (2nd Feb released) Scientist & Governmental concensus report says 90% (9/10) chance (ie. very likely) that climate change is caused by man
• Chinese & Saudia Arabia delegation argued that their was a 66% chance (likely) that climate change is caused by man. NB. The "likely" term was used in the final IPCC 2001 report. The Chinese arguement was dismissed in the final 2007 IPCC report.
• US delegation was cooperative and constructive
• unequivocal evidence that global warming is happening
  

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Scientific Method used in IPCC Climate Change report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was issued February 2007. Certain terms are used and defined to represent scientifically objective statements (eg Very Likely >90% chance).

In general, uncertainty ranges for results given in this Summary for Policymakers are 90% uncertainty intervals unless stated otherwise, i.e., there is an estimated 5% likelihood that the value could be above the range given in square brackets and 5% likelihood that the value could be below that range. Best estimates are given where available. Assessed uncertainty intervals are not always symmetric about the corresponding best estimate. Note that a number of uncertainty ranges in the Working Group I TAR corresponded to 2-sigma (95%), often using expert judgement. (page 2)

In this Summary for Policymakers, the following terms have been used to indicate the assessed likelihood, using expert judgement, of an outcome or a result (page 4):

• Virtually certain > 99% probability of occurrence
• Extremely likely > 95%
• Very likely > 90%
• Likely > 66%,
  
• More likely than not > 50%
• Unlikely <33%>
• Very unlikely <10%
• Extremely unlikely <5%

Examples

• Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the TAR’s 2001 conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.
  

In this Summary for Policymakers the following levels of confidence (page 5) have been used to express expert judgments on the correctness of the underlying science:

• very high confidence at least a 9 out of 10 chance of being correct
• high confidence about an 8 out of 10 chance of being correct.
  

Examples

• The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the Third Assessment Report (TAR), leading to very high confidence that the globally averaged net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming

Unequivocal example: Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, (not defined) as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.

Reference: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC pdf report

Billions face climate change risk

reposted from: BBC
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

The impact of climate change has been a major source of dispute

Last Updated: Friday, 6 April 2007, 15:54 GMT 16:54 UK

Billions of people face shortages of food and water and increased risk of flooding, experts at a major climate change conference have warned.

The bleak conclusion came ahead of the publication of a key report by hundreds of international environmental experts.

Agreement on the final wording of the report was reached after a marathon debate through the night in Brussels.

People living in poverty would be worst affected by the effects of climate change, the gathered experts said.

"It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Mr Pachauri said those people were also the least equipped to deal with the effects of such changes.

Key findings

READ THE IPCC FINDINGS Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability [547KB] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here Analysis: Stark picture Map: Climate change impact

Outlining the report's findings, Martin Parry, co-chairman of IPCC Working Group II, said evidence showed climate change was having a direct effect on animals, plants and water.

"For the first time, we are no longer arm-waving with models; this is empirical data, we can actually measure it," he told a news conference.

Key findings of the report include:

• 75-250 million people across Africa could face water shortages by 2020

• Crop yields could increase by 20% in East and Southeast Asia, but decrease by up to 30% in Central and South Asia

• Agriculture fed by rainfall could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020

• 20-30% of all plant and animal species at increased risk of extinction if temperatures rise between 1.5-2.5C

• Glaciers and snow cover expected to decline, reducing water availability in countries supplied by melt water

The report states that the observed increase in the global average temperature was "very likely" due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientific work reviewed by IPCC scientists includes more than 29,000 pieces of data on observed changes in physical and biological aspects of the natural world.

Eighty-nine percent of these, it believes, are consistent with a warming world.

Year of reports

Scientists and politicians have welcomed the report.

"This further underlines both how urgent it is to reach global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and how important it is for us all to adapt to the climate change that is already under way," European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told the Reuters news agency.

Farewell to a melting glacier Briny future for Malta

"This is another wake up call for governments, industry and individuals. We now have a clearer indication of the potential impact of global warming, some of which is already inevitable," said Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society.

"The challenge is now to support those people living in the most vulnerable areas so that they are able to adapt and improve their ways of life."

The wording of the summary of the report, which will be sent to world leaders in time for a G8 summit of industrialised nations in June, was finally decided after scientists and government officials from more than 100 countries worked through the night.

Several delegations, including the US, Saudi Arabia, China and India, had asked for the final version to reflect less certainty than the draft.

It is the second in a series of IPCC reports coming out this year, together making up its fourth global climate assessment.

The first element, on the science of climate change, released in February, concluded it was at least 90% likely that human activities are principally responsible for the warming observed since 1950.

The third part, due in May, will focus on ways of curbing the rise in greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature.

A fourth report in November will sum up all the findings.

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