h/t Greenfyre, we’re glad he’s back.

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The Arctic is getting so warm in winter that James Hansen had to add a new colour to the standard legend - pink, which is even warmer than dark red:

The official NASA maps – the ones you can generate yourself – didn’t add this new colour, though. They simply extended the range of dark red on the legend to whatever the maximum anomaly is – in some cases, as much as 11.1C:

The legend goes up in small, smooth steps: a range of 0.3 C, 0.5 C, 1 C, 2 C. Then, suddenly, 6 or 7 C.

I’m sure this is a result of algorithms that haven’t been updated to accommodate such extreme anomalies. However, since very few people examine the legend beyond recognizing that red is warm and blue is cold, the current legend seems sort of misleading. Am I the only one who feels this way?

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Johan Rockström recently appeared on TED to present the ‘planetary boundaries’ approach, published in Nature last year. It’s a great presentation well worth the time. (You can get the paper the approach is based on, or read Nature’s special feature.)

I’ve heard a few scientists complaining about what they see as arbitrary boundary choices, or the false confidence such an approach can arouse.

Nature’s editorial acknowledges:

[E]ven if the science is preliminary, this is a creditable attempt to quantify the limitations of our existence on Earth, and provides a good basis for discussion and future refinement. To facilitate that discussion, Nature is simultaneously publishing seven commentaries from leading experts that can be freely accessed at Nature Reports Climate Change (see http://tinyurl.com/planetboundaries).

Defining the limits to our growth and existence on this planet is not only a grand intellectual challenge, it is also a potential source of badly needed information for policy-makers. Such numerical values, however, should not be seen as targets. If the history of environmental negotiations has taught us anything, it is that targets are there to be broken. Setting limits that are well within the bounds of linear behaviour might therefore be a wiser, if somewhat less dramatic, approach. That would still give policy-makers a clear indication of the magnitude and direction of change, without risking the possibility that boundaries will be used to justify prolonged degradation of the environment up to the point of no return.

Shame about the chart junk:

Here’s a (slightly) better version by New Scientist:

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• Climate experts agree: Global warming caused unprecedented Russian heat wave – “I agree with Michael Tobis’s take at Only In It For the Gold that something systematic has changed to alter the global circulation and you’ll need a coupled atmosphere/ocean global model to understand what’s going on. My hunch is that a warming Arctic combined with sea-surface-temperature teleconnections altered the global circulation such that a blocking ridge formed over western Russia leading to the unprecedented drought/heat wave conditions. Without contributions from anthropogenic climate change, I don’t think this event would have reached such extremes or even happened at all.”
• Myth of the climate science gravy train: scientists studying Greenland forced to pay their own airfares – One of the more absurd claims made by the denialists is that climate science offers scientists a veritable “gravy train” of funding. I’ve always found it a curious argument: after all do biomedical researchers need to “make up cancer” in order to obtain funding? Do biologists make up evolution in order to get grants? How about those wacky physicists over at CERN who managed to scare up nine billion US dollars to build an atom smasher?  That’s your tax money being scammed by leftist-pinko-scientists who believe in relativity! Did they fabricate quantum physics in order to get some hot grant money? I mean, who has actually seen a sub-atomic particle?
• Lords distance themselves from climate sceptic Christopher Monckton – Monckton argues his use of the portcullis emblem, which has appeared on his letterheads and lecture presentations, does not breach any rules: “My logo is not a registered badge of parliament, and is plainly distinct from parliament’s badge in numerous material respects. The Lords do not use the portcullis at all on their notepaper: they use the Royal Arms within an elliptical cartouche.” A House of Lords spokeswoman said: “The emblem is property of the Queen, and Parliament has a Royal Licence granted for its use.” … In June, following the death of Viscount Colville of Culross, Monckton, as a qualifying hereditary peer, put his name forward as a candidate at the resulting byelection to find the replacement elected peer. However, he failed to secure a single vote among the 29 crossbench hereditary peers eligible to vote.
• RealClimate: Expert Credibility in Climate Change – Having lived through the plate tectonics revolution, I can clearly see the differences between that scientific revolution and this one. In the case of plate tectonics, there were initially few convinced but they kept coming up with exciting new data. When others tried to falsify the idea, they found more interesting observations that got them excited. It really didn’t take long to convince almost everybody, except a few diehards, that the science was right. Meanwhile these diehards (e.g., the Meyerhoffs) continued to publish for decades about ‘problems with plate tectonics’.For all I know, they are still publishing. In the scientific (vs media) discussion of global warming, all the interesting new data points to warming changes in the system… It is no wonder why the Lindzen idea of strong negative feedback is not well regarded in the scientific community–it doesn’t lead anywhere and doesn’t match with the other data available. Nevertheless he will probably keep publishing.
• A dark ideology is driving those who deny climate change – In each case the tactics are identical: discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, and promote doubt. As the authors state: “Small numbers of people can have large, negative impacts, especially if they are organised, determined and have access to power.” In Britain, links between deniers and big business are less obvious. Yet it is clear lessons have been learned and tactics copied. Consider these examples: the leaking of the “climategate” emails and the wild over-reaction to the mistaken insertion of a paragraph in the IPCC’s last climate assessment, that suggested wrongly that Himalayan glaciers are melting rapidly. Both created a furore with the former revealing “a massive fraud” that represented “the final nail in the coffin” for the theory of global warming, deniers argued. This claim was later shown to be nonsense, though it took three inquiries to establish the point.

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The Guardian’s recent “Climategate” event – picking over the fallout from UEA’s hacked emails – was always going to be a weird one, and I left with decidedly mixed impressions. For some, this event clearly represented the rehabilitation of climate denial in even the more progressive end of the mainstream media. One friend described it as “like being in 1998”, which was not far off the mark. Two of the panellists – Doug Keenan and Steve McIntyre – fall broadly into the “sceptic” camp, while a good third of the room at least seemed to be composed of elements of the denial lobby. Benny Peiser – a serial paid advocate for mining industry front-groups – was in attendance, as was the eccentric weather theorist Piers Corbyn – whose constant heckling at one point saw him threatened with ejection from the room (to loud applause).

Tammy Boyce of the King’s Fund (and co-editor of Climate Change and The Media), who was in the audience, was visibly angry at the prominence accorded the “deniers”. “Policy is not made on the basis of evidence”, she reminded the panel in an impassioned point from the floor, going on to vociferously challenge the “sceptics”’ agenda. Her implication, I took it, was that, in attempting to pick holes in climate science, Keenan and McIntyre were effectively engaged in a battle to influence public perception, with all the potential adverse implications for public policy. Certainly at the very least the event often had a tendency to focus astonishingly narrowly on minutiae at the margins of a gravely and overwhelmingly important issue. Another friend found the level of assumed knowledge and intensive focus on detail absurdly frustrating – and, dare I say it, peculiarly male.

The question of how the prominence of events like this will impact on the public perception of climate change, then, hung over the event like a bad odour. Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Adviser to Defra and former chair of the IPCC (before US pressure forced his ouster) had to repeat the now ages-old critique of the media’s “balanced” portrayal of climate science, and the inherently distorting effect of converting a 95:5 distribution of scientific opinion into an even 50:50 split. Even so, I got the impression that Watson still didn’t quite “get it” as far as the role of the media is concerned. Like many climate scientists, he appeared to perceive the problem as one of relatively innocent failures or mistakes. The reality – implicating the persistent influence of vested interests – surely makes the problem all the more intractable, and more troubling. Nevertheless, Watson’s performance was largely flawless, and by far the most consistently assured, honest, reasonable and convincing of anyone on the panel.

Despite reservations though, I found myself not wholly able to agree with the severest critics of the event. Firstly, there are some legitimate doubts about how far the “sceptical” panellists – or at least Steve McIntyre – fall into the agenda-driven “delayers” camp home to most climate change denial – even if his links to vested interests remain very real. Others perceive McIntyre as more of an obsessive (though inept and deluded) amateur; and he himself asserted during the event – albeit cautiously – that he would expect Governments to take action on the issue. Moreover, it seems clear that, in at least one instance revealed by UEA’s emails, the “sceptical” groups exposed a real problem – namely that flaws in a particular piece of research were glossed over by at least one of its authors. Equally troubling has been scientists’ apparent closing of ranks around this issue – suggesting that in some cases, publicly engaged climate scientists have been not only – and commendably – defending good science, but sometimes simply protecting their own profession and its members. Sadly, the slippery performance of UEA’s Pro-Vice Chancellor and former CRU head Sir Trevor Davies only served to reinforce this impression.

It is worth reminding ourselves, then, that in any field of study, assiduous attention to detail from obsessive outsiders – even including those who are largely incompetent, deluded or ideologically driven – can sometimes produce findings of real importance. This is even true in such stark cases as the historical study of the Holocaust, where deniers’ criticisms have apparently played a real role in producing genuine discoveries. If climate scientists are given license to waive such criticism where it is legitimate, clearly this is a problem for the open and transparent scrutiny of research. For that reason, the outside “auditors” on the panel to my mind deserved a hearing in at least some measure.

Even so, legitimate worries persist. If a pair of Holocaust deniers – to stretch the analogy – had helped produce an important historical discovery, we should still harbour major reservations about according them the privilege of an open platform from which to speak. In some quarters, to make matters worse, the embrace of Keenan and McIntyre was demonstrably utterly naive. Veteran environmental journalist for the Guardian and New Scientist Fred Pearce characterised them as “a new generation of sceptics” more properly seen as “data libertarians”, from whom CRU had closed themselves off. But it quickly became clear that Pearce’s account was utterly delusory. Early on in the event, for instance, McIntyre held up Phil Jones’ “trick to hide the decline” as evidence of scientists’ mendacity (comically, a quotation from Jon Stewart of The Daily Show was the only evidence McIntyre offered to substantiate this judgment). Later on, Keenan stated that of the substantial amount of climate science he had looked at, “none of it stands up to scrutiny”, and proceeded to lay into the incompetence and fraudulence of the entire profession. These two, we are being asked to believe, are merely “data libertarians”?

But there was more ill-thought-out commentary to come from Pearce – in particular in his treatment of the IPCC. According to Pearce’s account, the body institutionally forces scientists to form consensual views and eliminate uncertainties. It is fair to say that across the room the jaws of those familiar with the IPCC were hitting the floor at this point. The IPCC report is perhaps the most caveat-riddled text it is possible to imagine, acknowledging degrees of uncertainty all the way through – even including a formalised glossary of terms used to express uncertainties. It also includes among its “Supplementary Materials” a rigorous and careful document called “Guidance Notes for Lead Authors … on Addressing Uncertainties” – which reads rather like the reverse of everything Pearce described. It was left to Bob Watson to point out that the IPCC does discuss uncertainties – constantly. Personally I couldn’t help feeling Pearce deserved to have the point put to him a good deal more forcefully.

Nevertheless, the event also seemed to mark a distinct shift in the discourse in a more positive sense. We began to hear more about policymaking as a matter of managing uncertainty and risk. Every one of those on the panel advocating action on climate change, indeed (which was most of it) did so with reference to “decision-making under uncertainty” – a near-constant condition across diverse areas of public policy, we were reminded. Troubling questions remain – particularly at an event like this – as to how far the denial lobby may be able to exploit and skew the perception of such uncertainty in the public realm. Yet if the nature of the underlying science and its wider public communication are becoming more closely aligned, this can only be a good thing. Whether the general public will get the message in a serious way any time soon, however, remains an urgent question, and one that still confronts us.

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Anthony Watts’ latest source of information is none other than the British National Party – yes, those known to the rest of us as the British Nazi Party.

Garman continues:

Anthony Watts blogged today at 15.30 GMT about how “climate scepticism could become a criminal offence in UK” – and his source? BNP leader, Nick Griffin. Unsurprisingly, by 16.11, the page had disappeared. No doubt, after one of his friends in the UK pointed out it doesn’t look great when you post Nazi propaganda on your blog and twitter feed.

But Left Foot Forward caught screen grabs here, here – and here.

Ouch.

You may remember Watts Up With That from such hilarious climate science fails as:

• Wrongly claiming Arctic sea ice was growing 50,000km² per year. (To their credit, they did correct this obvious error, but it didn’t stop them coming out with other howlers like suggesting the ‘Arctic ice looks generally healthier than 20 years ago’ or that sea ice has returned to ‘normal‘. Both completely wrong.)
• Once claiming anyone wanting a price on carbon was ‘criminal’, the same as ‘murdering people’.
• Painstakingly asserting that global warming is due to the ‘Urban Heat Island’ effect, something scientists are already aware of and correct for. And then in arguing their case, providing data scientists used to show they were completely wrong: temperature stations they argued were causing a warming bias in the temperature record were actually causing a cooling bias!
• Not understanding basic statistics
• Falsely claiming that the Antarctic ice sheet can’t and won’t lose mass, because air temperatures are below 0°C. Unfortunately they failed to look at any ice mass data to see what was actually happening. If you don’t like the data, just ignore it!
• And finally, they recently concluded that the Greenland ice sheet can’t be melting. Their evidence? Temperature data from a single weather station and some photos taken while flying over the ice sheet! They conveniently failed to mention the ice mass data which pretty conclusively shows that Greenland IS losing mass. Again, if you don’t like the data…

We thought Watts up With That had reached as low as they could go with shoddy fact-checking, but citing the BNP plunges them to new depths.

On the other hand, at least Anthony Watts had the decency to take the story down when he realised where it came from. Monckton’s outfit, the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), hasn’t even done that. So while Monckton is happy to dish out words like ‘fascist’ willy-nilly, at the same time he apparently has no qualms about using genuine fascists as a source of material.

Certainly brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘grey literature’.

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Yet now that this fake scandal has been exposed, including in an important account by the Guardian’s George Monbiot, North has – perhaps unsurprisingly – been pouring scorn all over that paper’s comment pages. More significantly, after Monbiot noted North’s well-deserved reputation as an “egregious fabulist” “nearly all of” whose “concocted” “stories” (and Booker’s) “fall apart on the briefest examination”, North proceeded to threaten Monbiot and the Guardian with libel action. North referred to “all references to myself” in Monbiot’s blog post “as being libellous and highly damaging”.

Certainly the audacity of North’s double-standards alone here is fairly remarkable. Elsewhere on his blog, he not only berates environmentalists for their censorious tendencies (“These big girls’ blouses can dish it out but when it comes to dealing with disagreement … [a]lways they have to be in control of the message”) but attacks WWF as “an organisation which is turning lying into an art form”. Clearly, if North’s litigious standards were redirected back towards him, he would find himself in serious trouble.

But more importantly, in the tradition of unintentional self-satire in which he has become a master, North appears to have been endeavouring to confirm every one of Monbiot’s accusations even in his comments on the blog post in question. Virtually every one of these – which culminate in his legal threat – produces a flat-out falsehood, painfully embarrassing error or egregious misrepresentation.

Perhaps this sounds like an exaggeration. So in case readers are inclined to be sceptical, let us take a few examples.

Did the IPCC predict that 40% of the Amazon will be decimated?

Falsehood (in North’s 15th comment):

“the IPCC [made] a cataclysmic prediction about 40 percent of the biggest rainforest on the planet.”

Falsehood (in North’s 19th comment):

“And, unless I got it terribly wrong, it was the IPCC saying that the 40% of the Amazon basin was going belly-up.”

Needless to say, North got it terribly wrong. The first sentence of the statement made by the IPCC was the following:

“Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation”.

The statement made is purely hypothetical. Clearly, the IPCC was doing no more here than outlining a major sensitivity and therefore serious risk to up to 40% of the Amazon in response to small changes in precipitation.

Does the IPCC identify climate change as the cause of this hypothetical “slight reduction in rainfall”?

Falsehood (in North’s 13th comment):

“the IPCC statement … misidentif[ies] climate change (as in its “slight reduction in rainfall”) as the proximate cause of the forest decline.”

The relevant IPCC statement actually makes no mention of climate change: it is purely hypothetical, and does not in and of itself identify any proximate cause of any forest decline.

Was the claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 a “deliberate mistake”?

Falsehood (in North’s 12th comment):

“It is vital to the IPCC which has build its Maginot Line on “Glaciergate”, conceding one mistake and only one mistake (not that it was a mistake – it was deliberate).”

To date there has been no evidence that the IPCC “deliberately” made the mistake about the date Himalayan glaciers could disappear – a mistake it has acknowledged and corrected.

Was the claim about the Amazon’s sensitivity backed up by the peer-reviewed scientific literature?

Falsehood (in North’s 11th comment):

“this is not “science” talking, but money talking. And what does “money” say? …. er

““Well chaps, we can’s [sic] actually find any peer-reviewed stuff that says “40 percent of the Amazon forest may be drastically altered by even a slight drop in precitation” … so we’ll fudge it …”

Falsehood (in North’s 11th comment):

“But what about [scientific paper] Nepstad 2004? “New rainfall data showed that half of the forest area of the Amazon Basin had either fallen below, or was very close to, the critical level of soil moisture below which trees begin to die” [a quotation from Nepstad’s own clarificatory statement when the original “Amazongate” story broke]. Are we referring to a “slight drop in precipitation”? … Er … no. Scratch Nepstad 2005 [sic] … irrelevant.”

So can we “actually find any peer-reviewed stuff that says “40 percent of the Amazon forest may be drastically altered by even a slight drop in precitation””? “Are we referring to a “slight drop in precipitation”?” Er, well yes we are, and yes we can. In their 2004 paper in Global Change Biology, Tropical forest expert Dan Nepstad and his team are explicit:

“This study points to the widespread effect of drought on Amazon forests, and the vulnerability of Amazon forests to small declines in rainfall or increases in ET [evapo-transpiration]. Rainfall and ET are nearly equal across the Amazon during most years, with total rainfall falling below ET during years of severe drought. Such droughts may become more common if ENSO [El-Nino] events continue to be frequent and severe, if rainfall is inhibited by deforestation or smoke, and if warming trends continue. Increases in ET of only 15% or similar reductions in rainfall can lead to severe soil moisture deficits over roughly half of the Amazon (Fig. 9).

“The increase in forest flammability associated with severe drought poses one of the greatest threats to the ecological integrity of Amazon forests.”

Not only does the peer-reviewed scientific literature support the IPCC’s claim – that “[u]p to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation” – directly, then, but it actually surpasses it. Roughly half the Amazon is of course a great deal more than “up to 40%” (though note that a range of possibilities is implied in both cases). Is Nepstad’s 2004 paper “irrelevant”? Hardly.

Did the IPCC’s statement on the sensitivity of the Amazon exaggerate?

Falsehood (in North’s 13th comment):

“the IPCC statement is … a major overstatement of the case …”

The IPCC’s departure from the peer-reviewed scientific record normally causes all manner of vociferous complaint from North. Yet as we have seen, Nepstad’s peer-reviewed 2004 paper states that “roughly half of the Amazon” could suffer “severe soil moisture deficits” in response to even small rainfall reductions; stresses “the vulnerability of Amazon forests to small declines in rainfall”; and states that “[t]he increase in forest flammability associated with severe drought poses one of the greatest threats to the ecological integrity of Amazon forests.” The IPCC, on the other hand, suggests that “[u]p to 40% of the Amazonian forests” could “react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation”. Exaggeration? Not exactly.

Is the IPCC’s statement in its entirety supported by the peer-reviewed scientific literature?

Falsehood (in North’s 4th comment):

“Certainly, in the context, of the IPCC statement, [sic] its supporters have not yet been able to offer any single paper or combination of papers which supports the statement in its entirely.”

We have already seen that the peer-reviewed literature supports the IPCC’s first claim here, about the Amazon’s sensitivity to small reductions in rainfall. What of the statements that follow, then? The IPCC goes on to state that:

“this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation”.

Could this claim possibly be supported by a “single paper or combination of papers”? Well, er, yes. As Simon Lewis of the University of Leeds notes in a 2006 paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:

“There are critical thresholds of water availability below which tropical forests cannot persist and are replaced by savanna systems.”

Lewis further lists among his “four plausible routes” for the future of the Amazon “widespread forest collapse via drought, and widespread forest collapse via fire”. As he goes on:

“A warming and drying world leading to the loss of half of the world’s largest tract of tropical forest, and accelerated climate change is, therefore, a plausible scenario requiring urgent attention.”

Could such a collapse happen rapidly in the Amazon? Some of the key evidence on this question is provided in a 2004 paper in Theoretical and Applied Climatology by the Hadley Centre’s Peter Cox and his team. As these authors state, in one global climate model run:

“the extreme warming and drying eventually lead to abrupt reductions in the forest fraction”.

As they continue in commentary on modelled projections:

““When the forest fraction begins to drop (from about 2040 onwards) C4 grasses initially expand to occupy some of the vacant lands. However, the relentless warming and drying make conditions unfavourable even for this plant functional type, and the Amazon box ends as predominantly bare-soil (area fraction >0.5) by 2100 … it seems clear that the HadCM3LC [climate model-derived projections of] climate change in Amazonia would lead to rainforest loss (perhaps via increased fire frequency), and therefore drastic land-cover change.”

The precipitous collapse of the Amazon rainforest produced by one such model run is captured in a graph Cox and colleagues include in their paper – made more conservative in that it “ignore[s] both direct anthropogenic deforestation and also natural fire disturbance”:

This “alarming loss of the Amazonian rainforest”, Cox and his colleagues write, “would have catastrophic impacts on the biodiversity and “ecosystem services” of Amazonia, similar to those anticipated under the most extreme scenarios of direct human deforestation”.

Did the IPCC make an erroneous, unfounded statement?

Falsehood (in North’s 11th comment):

“So what [evidence] have we got? Nothing … rien … nada … SFA.”

Falsehood (in North’s 14th comment):

“the IPCC allegation is still unfounded.”

Falsehood (in North’s 13th comment):

“the IPCC statement … is also wrong”

Falsehood (in North’s 13th comment):

“The only way, therefore, to fix Amazongate is for the IPCC to do the decent thing and admit it is wrong.”

Falsehood (in North’s 12th comment):

““Amazongate”, however, “lives” because the IPCC got it wrong … made an unfounded assertion and has since been trying to cover up …”

Yet, as can easily be demonstrated, judging by the peer-reviewed scientific evidence readily available at the time, the IPCC did not “get it wrong” or make an “unfounded” statement. North, on the other hand, did – repeatedly and unrepentantly.

That a published writer should issue this many blatant falsehoods in a comment thread is pretty extraordinary. To do so and then to threaten legal action on the basis that references to oneself as an “egregious fabulist” whose concocted stories “almost all … fall apart on the briefest examination” are “libellous and highly damaging” is … well, frankly suspicious. We are inevitably tempted to the conclusion that Richard North is an ingenious satirical creation – a kind of Dave Spart for the UKIP fanbase.

The bungling continues

North’s criticisms here are fairly easily rebutted with reference to the peer-reviewed scientific literature. It should be stressed, though, that none of these papers claims to provide a perfect, crystal ball-style vision of the future. Rather, they build on rough projections based on our current knowledge – in all its varying degrees of provisionality, approximation and incompleteness. Sometimes this will involve looking for lessons from similar examples in biological history. In other cases it will involve feeding the observed dynamics of complex systems into powerful computerised models. Such models are not just guesswork – they can generally be projected back into the past as well as the future, allowing us at least a rough test of their accuracy through direct comparison with our observations. The evidence assembled will produce a variety of results and scenarios among scientists and in the scientific literature, from the ultra-conservative to the utterly cataclysmic. What none of them provides – or claims to provide – is absolute certainty.

Yet when Monbiot presented some of the scientific data North had ignored – including Cox’s 2004 paper and another alarming paper on potential future scenarios for the Amazon from Theoretical and Applied Climatology by Richard Betts and his team – in a further post, North’s response proved extraordinary.

North claimed that the papers’ “application of GCM [global climate models] and coupled climate models to the Amazon … has been questioned by Oyama and Nobre (2003) and Merengo [sic] 2006” – another pair of scientific papers, from Geophysical Research Letters and the Revista Brasileira de Meteorologia respectively. It took another commenter to inquire how – in the first case – a 2003 paper could possibly have criticised two papers published in 2004. North replied: “Well, that’s how things often work … the Cox et al work wasn’t particuarly new …” There is a half-truth dangling here, as the 2004 paper followed an earlier, 2000 Nature paper by the same authors. Yet as a brief look at the citations confirms, neither Cox’s 2004 paper, Betts’ 2004 paper, nor any other paper by either of these authors is referenced by Oyama and Nobre.

As for Jose Marengo’s paper, what scathing criticism does this make of global climate models? Here’s what it has to say (in a slightly broken English translation) in its abstract:

“… more complex models and representations on the dynamics of vegetation on regional climate have allowed to more realistic simulations of climate change due to changes in land use and in the concentration of greenhouse gases on the recent years.”

Devastating stuff. But it gets worse. North’s sole reason for citing Marengo is an attempt to rebut Cox and Betts’ papers on the Amazon. Here’s what Marengo has to say specifically about these two papers:

“New developments in physical parameterizations, including more sophisticated and complex schemes for clouds and the dynamics of the vegetation have provided new insights on possible future climates in Amazonia as consequence of global warming (Cox et al. 2000, 2004, Betts et al. 2004).”

Witness the blistering, evidence-based rebuttal of Richard North. A paper that does not reference – and was even published before – those North disputes; and another whose evaluation of these papers is explicitly positive.

Given all this, you might wonder what on earth North is talking about. Why does he cite either paper at all? He gives us a brief clue in a further comment on Marengo’s paper:

“What struck me was the observation that: “Even though we know now more than we knew 20 years ago, still there are some uncertainties in the tendencies of climate and water resources during the 20th Century.” That and his discussion of “significant uncertainties” tends [sic] to act as a counterbalance to the apparent certitude offered by some modellers.”

Which begs the – frankly exasperated – question: what “apparent certitude”? A search of the 2004 Cox paper for the term “certainty” produces 8 results. Of these, all 8 are expressions of uncertainty. Nepstad’s 2004 paper yields 2 results, both expressions of uncertainty. Betts’ paper yields a starker picture: 28 results, 27 relevant (1 using “certain” in a different sense) of which all 27 are references to uncertainties in predictions and areas of understanding. Any “apparent certitude” can only be a result either of failing to read the papers in question, or of a painfully exacting, wilful misreading of their contents.

The implications for journalism

All this may seem rather like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, albeit a very persistent nut. Yet one of the most profoundly disturbing conclusions to be drawn from the “Amazongate” episode is that North’s claims are in no way assured the utter obscurity they so richly deserve. They find their way onto the Telegraph’s blogs and comment pages, frequently via North’s collaborator Christopher Booker. Last week, Booker was at it again, accusing the IPCC of making a “wildly alarmist claim it cannot justify”; stating that “it seems clearer than ever that there is no good evidence” to support the IPCC; that “other papers in support of their claim [were cited] – but none of these provided any support for the specific claim about the impact of climate change made by the IPCC”; and that it “seems to be [un]true” that “the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence”. In this case, they found their way onto the pages of Times, in a murky episode that may have involved top-down editorial changes to an article producing grossly distorted reportage.

Moreover, this is part of a wider disturbing picture. Editorial pressure to go after climate scientists has been applied in newsrooms since February (a claim that comes via a reliable inside source). Elsewhere in Murdoch outlets, top-down pressure is known to have distorted and distended reporting on climate change. For any journalists managing to survive this institutional firestorm intact and considering using North as a source of material in future, I hope his performance here will give them pause. Try as he may to defend it with legal threats, nothing has been more fatal to North’s “professional reputation” than the man’s own shocking record of falsehood and misrepresentation.

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The respected BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin has published an original but controversial piece criticising the Royal Society, which concludes: “If the great science academies can’t find ways of including the best experts from the blogosphere in their deliberations they may find themselves badly left behind.”

Harrabin draws particular attention to well known “climate sceptic”, Steve McIntyre. He writes, “He has taken on the scientific establishment on some key issues and won. He arguably knows more about CRU science than anyone outside the unit – but none of the CRU inquiries has contacted him for input.”

But I disagree with Roger because the kind of ‘scepticism’ which is the meat and potatoes of bloggers is qualitatively unlike the organized scepticism which questions, refines and replaces theories about how the world works – i.e. it is unlike science.

What most ’sceptics’ do (and I include the benign ones here) is to look for ‘proof’ that confirms their preconceived ideas, looks for inconsistencies in data, bad referencing, sloppy language etc, and in doing so builds up enough of a ‘list of mistakes’ to give themselves and their friends the comforting illusion that they are doing the same as the climate scientists, only better.  But they are not.  They are extremely efficient proof-readers, who mistake book-keeping for an informed understanding of climate science.

Elevating these folk to the same status as professors of oceanography, for example, seems to me completely the wrong reaction to their onslaught.  Proposing to have them undertake reviews and sit in judgment on climate scientists is proposing the death of rational enquiry.  I just don’t think it’s sensible to give people who have no training in a particular scientific discipline, intellectual authority over those who do.  It’s a back-door to censorship by the inter-mob, and to abuse of science by those with a political agenda.

Just ahead of the Copenhagen summit, I wrote in The Times, “Nasa, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences — once we would have allowed these authoritative, trustworthy, dependable voices to shape those parameters. Instead, the scientists we rely upon have become a target for hackers and death threats. In the face of consumerism, these establishment institutions have been cast in the role of radicals.”

Harrabin would no doubt point out that the Royal Society is now being criticised by some of its own Fellows too, and not just bloggers. But the word is that none of these rebel Fellows are climate scientists, and they’re all refusing to explain publicly why they have doubts. As Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at LSE, said, “If these scientists have doubts about the science on climate change, they should come out and speak about it,” and Professor Martin Rees has very openly told the doubters, “It has been suggested that the society holds the view that anyone challenging the consensus on climate change is malicious – this is ridiculous.”

The only named rebel is an electrical engineer and a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank which refuses to say who funds it even as it seeks greater transparency from scientists, and whose head, Lord Lawson, has explicit links to the fossil fuel industry. Benny Peiser, not a climate scientist but a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University who is the foundation’s director, said in December last year: “We look out of the window and it’s very cold, it doesn’t seem to be warming.”

As the UK’s chief scientist, John Beddington, has said:  “This is just not science, its commentary.”

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Shellenberger and Nordhaus re-state a plethora of half-truths, misrepresentations and outright fantasies that have lately become almost canonical in the public sphere.

It is an extraordinary account in many ways, re-stating a plethora of half-truths, misrepresentations and outright fantasies that have lately become almost canonical in the public sphere. The pair provide minimal evidence and misrepresent what they do provide, cobbling the whole together with decidedly faulty reasoning. In order to correct some of these major miscues – sadly not confined to this article alone – it is worth examining their claims in more detail.

Demonising campaigners

The pair begin by casting recent attacks on climate science and the IPCC as a backlash against campaigners’ “[e]fforts to use climate science to threaten an apocalyptic future” and “to characterize present-day natural disasters as terrifying previews of an impending day of reckoning”, which have allegedly “undermine[d] the credibility of both climate science and progressive energy policy”. The denial lobby has little to do with the current media meltdown, the pair seem to imply: environmentalists have only themselves to blame.

It’s worth acknowledging what Shellenberger and Nordhaus get right here. Campaigners have often presented areas of climate science with excessive certainty, and been clumsy in handling uncertainty and risk. Some promote apocalyptic scenarios which might not be realistic; or present a simple, cause-and-effect relationship between climate change and present-day weather events – a practice with highly dubious scientific merit. This has in turn allowed the denial lobby to seize on irrelevant cold spells to “prove” that climate change is a myth.

But this indictment is vastly exaggerated. The denial lobby and associates might have had a marginal role in the current crisis, but this is far from self-evident – especially given their clearly discernible influence on the media – and the authors provide no evidence supporting alternative conclusions. In a world bristling with assorted weapons of mass destruction on a 5-or-6 degree trajectory, apocalyptic scenarios are a real threat. The denial lobby would undoubtedly fixate on cold snaps irrespective of the green movement’s messaging – as in turn would the media. And what exactly is wrong – as the pair suggest – in using natural disasters in the present to underscore the potential for devastating impacts in the future?

The denial lobby would undoubtedly fixate on cold snaps irrespective of the green movement’s messaging – as in turn would the media.

The political efficacy of campaigners’ flawed appeals may partly explain why they are made. But this is also simply a matter of the environmental movement’s inevitably imperfect grasp of the science. Campaigners’ understanding of this major field has been fairly rough and sketchy, but has also been steadily improving. The film The Age of Stupid, for instance, deliberately includes a note of caution from former Government climate science adviser Sir David King on connecting particular extreme weather events directly to climate change. Other advocates have increasingly demonstrated a similar degree of care in handling the science. If campaigners used this tactic simply because “it has worked so well for them”, why would such advances happen?

Shellenberger and Nordhaus also take aim at some thoroughly implausible targets. They slate campaigners for “underestimat[ing] the economic and technological challenges associated with rapidly decarbonizing the energy economy”, though the most frequent analogy such advocates employ is with the Second World War – hardly “underestimating” the challenge, however vital addressing it may be. “In 2006,” we are told, “Al Gore used his “Inconvenient Truth” slide show to link Hurricane Katrina” to climate change. In reality, this charge has already been debunked. As climate scientist Gavin Schmidt pointed out:

“Gore talked about 2005 and 2004 being very strong seasons, and if you weren’t paying attention, you could be left with the impression that there was a direct cause and effect, but he was very careful to not say there’s a direct correlation.”

Fellow climate scientist Eric Steig noted the same thing:

“As one might expect, he uses the Katrina disaster to underscore the point that climate change may have serious impacts on society, but he doesn’t highlight the connection any more than is appropriate”.

This has obviously not stopped the denial lobby’s attacks on Gore for this alleged falsehood. But it is something else to see purported environmental advocates repeating the same canard. If Shellenberger and Nordhaus downplay this lobby’s influence, it is perhaps because they themselves are so thoroughly susceptible to it.

Smearing climate science

It is in dealing with the science, however, that the most seriously damaging misrepresentations enter this account.

Campaigners’ “ever-escalating set of demands on climate science”, the pair suggest, have consequently left it tainted.

“Greens pushed climate scientists to become outspoken advocates of action to address global warming. Captivated by the notion that their voices and expertise were singularly necessary to save the world, some climate scientists attempted to oblige. The result is that the use, and misuse, of climate science by advocates began to wash back into the science itself.”

Of course, there is nothing inherently blameworthy in scientists becoming “outspoken advocates of action” in the public sphere. If public advocacy automatically entails “misuse” of the science, we should conclude that Martin Luther King shamelessly distorted the facts underlying the civil rights movement simply by communicating them. Nor are scientists such other-worldly beings that they should be expected to respond to profoundly alarming findings with a shrug of the shoulders, before getting on with other business. This may be how many, even most, scientists do behave; but should it be encouraged? Indeed if the threat is severe, should keeping one’s head down and staying silent even be acceptable?

This contamination of the science, Shellenberger and Nordhaus allege, is demonstrated by CRU’s hacked emails. Really? In at least one obvious case (only a selection of the emails was ever made public) a senior scientist manifestly resented being used to support campaign statements and objectives, and said so, forwarding his objections to colleagues. Anyone familiar with climate scientists will be able to cite countless similar examples. This recalcitrant bunch, we are to understand, are simultaneously engaged in deliberate corruption of the science for their green movement overlords – as though the staff of Greenpeace were able to peer constantly over their shoulders?

Nevertheless, the authors seem determined to demonstrate their fundamental ignorance of the science at every opportunity. Here, for instance, is what they have to say about the so-called “hockey stick” graph:

“The most explosive revelations of Climategate involved disputed methodological techniques to merge multiple data sets (e.g., ice cores, tree rings, 20th century weather station readings) into a single global temperature trend line, the “hockey stick” graph. Whatever one thinks of the quality of the data sets, the methods used to combine them, or the efforts by some to shield the underlying data from critics, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that those involved were trying to fit the data to a trend that they already expected to see – namely that the spike in global carbon emissions in recent decades tracked virtually in lockstep with a concomitant spike in present-day global temperatures.”

It is difficult to know where to begin with a passage like this. The CRU emails do reveal a disagreement – subsequently resolved – over whether current temperatures might have been matched around 1,000 years ago. But this is entirely irrelevant to the question of the current spike in global temperatures, its relationship to carbon emissions, or any putative manipulation of data.

Moreover, the idea that scientists tried to ensure trends in carbon emissions fitted “in lockstep” with present-day global temperatures is simply bizarre. Firstly, it is not carbon emissions but all greenhouse gases that produce a warming effect. Secondly, this is not the direct result of emissions but of the cumulative concentrations collected in the atmosphere. Thirdly, all manner of further complexities permeate this picture: the effect of aerosols and other pollutants that dampen down warming; the uptake and release of carbon by the biosphere; the various “lags” in the climate system; natural background fluctuations that offset warming in the short- and medium-term; and so on. Accusing scientists of manipulating data to show emissions and temperatures changing “in lockstep” is thus profoundly, bewilderingly idiotic. Any scientist attempting such a ludicrous fabrication would inevitably (and rightly) be torn to shreds by her colleagues. Even then, the “hockey stick” graph does not attempt to show anything of the kind.

Accusing scientists of manipulating data to show emissions and temperatures changing “in lockstep” is thus profoundly, bewilderingly idiotic.

So where does this alleged attempt “to fit the data” to a preconceived conclusion come from? The authors don’t make it clear. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that they are thinking of Phil Jones’ “trick to hide the decline” – a contrived scandal debunked almost as soon as it was raised in November 2009. The “trick” refers to the redaction of post-c.1960 tree-ring data – established as divergent from the late-20^th-century temperature record – from a graph of global average temperature trends. This is not “disputed”: the “divergence problem” is acknowledged across the relevant scientific literature. Nor is it “fit[ting] the data” to a preconceived conclusion. Late-20^th-century records derive from direct temperature readings, yielding a very high degree of confidence – a very strong yardstick in assessing the comparative reliability of “proxy” records. Shellenberger and Nordhaus’s case here, it turns out, is founded on thin air.

Slinging mud at the IPCC

“Other faulty or sloppy claims in the IPCC’s voluminous reports”, we are told, “such as the contention that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035 … followed the same pattern” – of “efforts to move the proximity of the global warming threat closer to the present.” Again, no evidence is provided. Perhaps the authors are thinking of lead author Murari Lal’s quote to the British gutter press, that “[w]e thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action”? But this quotation was reported by a journalist known to be strongly sympathetic to the denial lobby, and subsequently exposed as a fabrication. Once again, Shellenberger and Nordhaus are promoting falsehoods that have already been debunked.

Other “researchers felt enormous pressure to demonstrate a link” “connecting global warming to [recent] natural disasters” we are told – without evidence. Consequently,

“in its 2007 report, the IPCC — ignoring evidence to the contrary — misrepresented disaster-loss science when it published a graph linking global temperature increases with rising financial losses from natural disasters.”

This is simply a bundle of egregious misrepresentations. The graph in question was provided to the IPCC by Robert Muir-Wood, a researcher for Risk Management Solutions (RMS) – a group which publishes analyses of disaster-related trends for the insurance industry. The IPCC included this (accurate) graph not in the main body of the text, but among its “Supplementary Material” – which, RMS point out, “were not published” (my emphasis). This would seem an entirely reasonable way of handling submissions of this kind without giving them undue prominence. It is hardly – to put it mildly – alarmist scaremongering.

Moreover, the graph itself does not “link” global temperature increases with rising financial losses from natural disasters – though it does present them alongside one another – and no accompanying statement “linking” them was ever made. Nevertheless, presenting the graph while “ignoring evidence to the contrary” could be construed as potentially misleading – for the infinitesimal number of people scrutinising the report in its entirety, “Supplementary Material” and all.

So what is this evidence the IPCC ignor[ed]”? Shellenberger and Nordhaus flesh it out:

“[R]esearchers are unlikely to be able to unequivocally link storm or flood losses to anthropogenic warming for several decades, if even then. This is not because there is no evidence of increasing extreme weather, but rather because the rising costs of natural disasters have been driven so overwhelmingly by social and economic factors — more people with more wealth living in harm’s way.”

The IPCC, then, allegedly “ignor[es]” these details. Really? Here’s what Chapter I of the IPCC’s Working Group II has to say:

“The dominant signal is of significant increase in the values of exposure [i.e. “more people with more wealth living in harm’s way”] … as has been widely acknowledged, failing to adjust for time-variant economic factors yields loss amounts that are not directly comparable and a pronounced upward trend through time for purely economic reasons. …

“Global losses reveal rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s. One study [the RMS study] has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend.”

The sensitivity of these results requires a caveat, however – which the IPCC includes:

“The significance of the upward trend is influenced by the losses in the USA and the Caribbean in 2004 and 2005 and is arguably biased by the relative wealth of the USA, particularly relative to India.”

Is this an attempt “to unequivocally link storm or flood losses to anthropogenic warming” that “ignores evidence to the contrary”? Or is it, in fact, precisely the reverse: a thoroughly equivocal account that includes such evidence? RMS themselves offer an unambiguous verdict:

“RMS believes the IPCC fairly referenced its paper, with suitable caveats around the results, highlighting the factors influencing the relationship that had been discovered between time and increased catastrophe costs.”

Yet again, this is simply a fake scandal. And yet again, Shellenberger and Nordhaus not only repeat it – misrepresenting the IPCC in the process – but actually use it to demonstrate that body’s hidden agenda.

What, then, of the “evidence to the contrary” these authors themselves simply ignore? Oceanographer Stefan Rhamstorf has recently noted the IPCC’s serious underestimates of sea-level rise – exposing a degree of conservatism that would surely elicit gales of hysteria had the forecasts been similarly overestimated. Rhamstorf writes:

“I mention this because there is a lesson in it. [The] IPCC would never have published an implausibly high 3 meter upper limit like this, but it did not hesitate with the implausibly low 59 cm. That is because within the IPCC culture, being “alarmist” is bad and being “conservative” (i.e. underestimating the potential severity of things) is good.”

Unlike the spurious evidence adduced to support Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ fallacies, this evidence is extremely robust – indeed the IPCC’s sea-level models have already been superseded by observations.

Conclusions

What, then, of the proposal “to free energy policy from climate science” in public communication? The authors may at least have a case here: robust as the science may remain in reality, its perception in the public sphere may now have become irreparably tainted. Yet this claim would be considerably easier to take absent the proposition that “climate science can [now] get back to being primarily a scientific enterprise”. Climate science has been a non- or even anti-scientific enterprise, we are to understand – not superficially or in part, but primarily? Even for these authors, this is a new low.

In any case, their proposed solution is beset by major problems. Shellenberger and Nordhaus acknowledge that “any prudent strategy to minimize future risks associated with catastrophic climate change involves decarbonizing our economy as rapidly as possible.” True enough. But what plausible case for urgent and comprehensive decarbonisation – inevitably meaning real restrictions on carbon rather than “aspirational targets” – can realistically stand without climate change as the fundamental basis for action?

Concerted efforts towards political, cultural, economic and social change remain vital – and are only undermined by baseless slurs against climate scientists and campaigners.

The only conceivable possibility – and Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s own preference – is all-out investment in “low-carbon energy research, development, and deployment”, yielding an entirely speculative new energy source – available in the near-term, cheap enough instantly to displace all fossil fuels, plentiful enough to offset exponentially rising consumption, and flexible enough to heat homes, propel vehicles (including aircraft) and generate electricity, everywhere.

It is as though, struggling to prompt action on the established causes of cancer, campaigners opted instead to cross their fingers and await a once-in-a-generation miracle cure. Coming from critics of environmentalists’ “underestimat[es of] the economic and technological challenges associated with rapidly decarbonizing the energy economy”, this is a little difficult to take seriously. Pursuing such a breakthrough is an entirely laudable goal, but is simply insufficient in isolation. Concerted efforts towards political, cultural, economic and social change remain vital – and are only undermined by baseless slurs against climate scientists and campaigners.

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