BBC Wants Evidence of Climate Science Bias

Amtiskaw writes "Discussion of climate change is rife with claims and counter-claims of partisanship and bias. Some of the most serious of which being that the scientific community is smothering more skeptical research in the field. Now the BBC is asking for evidence of this self-censorship. From the article: 'Journals are meant to publish the best research irrespective of whether it accepts that the sky is blue, or finds it could really be green ... So the accusations that all is not well at the heart of climate science, and that censorship is rife in organisations which award research grants, the editorial boards of journals and the committees of the IPCC, should be examined seriously. Readers are asked to submit evidence of bias, which the the BBC will then investigate.'" Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of.

Comments

Global climate has never been static

[stankulp]

The Physical Evidence of Earth's Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st279/

Re:Journalism?

[AndyTheSayer]

I work in a related field, and don't think that any counter-claims are being stifled. Although it is entirely possible they are escaping my notice, I've not heard of cover-ups or censorship happening. I think the truth simply is that there is a general consensus that the IPCC reports are a good summation of our global knowledge--attempting to give equal space for climate change skepticism is unrepresentative of the scientific community, and in my opinion it creates an illusion of controversy when there really isn't controversy.

Peer-reviewed literature on global warming/climate

[cerulean_blue99]

The journal Science published a review of 928 peer reviewed publications and whether reports from organizations like IPCC "might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions". The review found that 75% explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view, that 25% took no position one way or the other and that none disagreed with the consensus view.

"Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/570 2/1686/

Wrong about Lomborg

[jeremyp]

Lomborg does not claim that anthropogenic global warming does not exist. He claims that we should be using a different strategy to overcome it, or rather not overcome but live with it.

At least, that's what he said in the Skeptical Environmentalist. He may have changed his mind since then.

Lomborg

[spencerogden]

Born Lomborg, the author of the Skeptical Environmentalist, that Hemos mentioned certainly does NOT deny that global warming is real. The best I can sum up his points are:

* The level of anthropogenic heating is unclear.
* Climate predictions routinely exaggerate changes or use worst case scenarios
* Cost calculations of warming frequently omit: benefits of warming (fewer people dying of cold weather, better crop yields), technological improvements, and behavior adaptation
* Given that the mechanisms driving warming (and there for the effectiveness of proposed solutions) is unclear, and the cost usually exagerated, it would be unwise to devote huge sums to this problem. Instead look for problems where the benefit is clear and a solution is available (such as providing clean water to the worlds poor) to spend this money on.

Anyone who is interested in this and other environmental issues must read his book. He set out years ago to debunk the claims of Julian Simon, and found himself changing his mind the more statistics he researched.

He does claim that everything is hunky dorry, or that there are no problems. What he advocates is a rational examination of problems and their costs so that we can evaluate the best course of action.

Re:Journalism?

[ronanbear]

Lomborg doesn't dispute the current scientific position. He supports it. All he's arguing about is the effectiveness of mitigation strategies. He uses IPCC figures.

In his case the reaction to his work was unfavourable and he was censured initially by FUD and personal attacks. IPCC are responsible but he was vilified for pointing out WWF errors and inaccuracy.

How can you make correct policy decisions if the information you are getting has been deliberately distorted? It's the same problem whether it's environmentalists or Big Energy.

If they're both allowed to fire lies at each other then the debate is stifled and confusing as people can't trust either side. By separating what he calls the Litany which is pseudoscience apart from credible peer reviewed science he's done a service to the global warming debate.

Lomborg set out an economic case based on the costs of mitigation that showed that flaws in the way Kyoto work will make it very ineffective and excessively expensive.

Kyoto has damaged the environment by diverting resources and mindshare away from efforts which would have been more effective at reducing global warming.

Even the Stern report contains such admissions. Certain mitigation strategies (carbon sequestration in biomass) will not be discussed for years because they are not covered within the scope of Kyoto and the barriers against implementing them were primarily political and not technical.

By that I mean that more effort to save rainforests wasn't made despite interest in the method because participants in the treaty couldn't agree on how to count the reduction and who should get credit for it.

Re:The key problem

[morgan_greywolf]

But these questions are being asked. And more importantly they are not being asked by 'global warming is a hoax' crowd because they don't believe that global warming even exists, despite the overwhelming scientific data that shows that it does.

• If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?

According to NOAA and NASA data, the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4F since 1900. The warmest global average temperatures on record have all occurred within the past 15 years, with the warmest two years being 1998 and 2005. Most of the warming in recent decades is likely the result of human activities.

Source

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)

If greenhouse gases continue to increase, climate models predict that the average temperature at the Earth's surface could increase from 2.5 to 10.4F above 1990 levels by the end of this century. Scientists are certain that human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases will change the planet's climate.

Source

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).

See these pages:

• Future Atmosphere Changes in Greenhouse Gas and Aerosol Concentrations
• Future Temperature Changes
• Future Precipitation and Storm Changes
• Future Sea Level Changes

Re:Journalism?

[IWannaBeAnAC]

That is really interesting. In which field did you work? In my field (theoretical condensed matter physics) claims that something is not so important are very hard to judge. It tends to be either testable via an experiment (and therefore right or wrong, in which case the importance is obvious), or untestable, in which case the importance is indeterminate but needs to be judged on its theoretical usefulness.

But I can imagine that a field of researchers, as a collective group, would be rather hostile to a claim that their entire field of study is not important. If you have built your career on a particular study, and it turns out that that study doesn't mean what you originally thought it did, then it is a life-changing moment. Did you plan for it? ie. were you planning to then move into some related (or unrelated) field? If not, how were you going to avoid going down with the sinking ship?

I know that there have been many examples of this in the past, but I am struggling to remember even a single instance just now: science is very harsh in that research that does not end up forming the body of work upon which future research depends, is very quickly forgotten.

There is of course a very large potential catastrophe looming, if it turns out in the end that string theory is a dead end. That would account for almost an entire generation of particle physicists!

Re:The key problem

[Orp]

If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?

It is real. Nothing is permanent. It is not due to solar forcing.

If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)

The primary forcing is greenhouse gas emissions, notably CO2 but also methane. Water vapor provides the strongest greenhouse forcing - and a warmer atmosphere will have more water vapor, which will lead to a warmer earth due to its greenhouse forcing, rinse, lather, repeat. This is known as a positive feedback. If it was the only game in town (it is not) we would probably end up like Venus.

Deforesteation and other messing with the carbon cycle may play a role which may go in either direction. One must look at the albedo effect as well.

Do not - ever - talk about ozone depletion and global warming in the same sentence. They are entirely unrelated. Thank you.

If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)

"Business as usual" will lead to a much different world in 100-200 years.

You can't just "grow more forests" to take up the extra CO2. Does not work that way. Even if it did: trees decompose. Guess what a product of decomposition is?

Some people are beginning to seriously consider carbon sequestering. This is a horrible situation we have set up for ourselves. I wonder where the energy is going to come from to power this sequestering technology? Fossil fuels?

And just wait until a reservoir of CO2 that didn't manage to form other compounds when you sequestered it manages to burp itself into the lower troposphere and suffocate life in low-lying areas.

I repeat: business as usual will lead to extremely different conditions across the planet in a couple hundred years.

Earth's climate system is nonlinear. This means a focring of A does not necessarily lead to a response of some fraction of A. If you push the climate system far enough it may (and indeed has in the past) flip into another very different regime. Once you reach this so-called tipping point you cannot get back to the original state.

If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).

Transition out of fossil fuel dependence. Pure and simple. Even then we may reach the tipping point. But it is thought we can turn things around if we begin to act now.

Seriously folks - educate yourselves. Learn some physics, raditive transfer, etc. Get an introductory meteorology textbook at the very least. This is about science, pure and simple, and in order to be taken seriously in this discussion you need to understand the science beneath it. Armchair climatologists are a dime a dozen and are mostly making fools of themselves simply because they don't understand the basic fundamentals. Unfortunately most people are not educated enough to realize this and think there is some sort of big debate on the causes of recent climate change. There isn't. It's all about how much, and when.

Fabricated? Show proof

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find from Wikipedia is the following:

In 1974 Frank Sherwood Rowland, a Chemistry Professor at the University of California at Irvine, and his postdoctoral associate Mario J. Molina suggested that long-lived organic halogen compounds, such as CFCs, might behave in a similar fashion as Crutzen had proposed for nitrous oxide. James Lovelock (most popularly known as the creator of the Gaia hypothesis) had recently discovered, during a cruise in the South Atlantic in 1971, that almost all of the CFC compounds manufactured since their invention in 1930 were still present in the atmosphere. Molina and Rowland concluded that, like N2O, the CFCs would reach the stratosphere where they would be dissociated by UV light, releasing Cl atoms. (A year earlier, Richard Stolarski andRalph Cicerone at the University of Michigan had shown that Cl is even more efficient than NO at catalyzing the destruction of ozone. Similar conclusions were reached by Michael McElroy and Steven Wofsy at Harvard University. Neither group, however, had realized that CFC's were a potentially large source of stratospheric chlorine -- instead, they had been investigating the possible effects of HCl emissions from the Space Shuttle, which are very much smaller.)

The Rowland-Molina hypothesis was strongly disputed by representatives of the aerosol and halocarbon industries. The Chair of the Board of DuPont was quoted as saying that ozone depletion theory is 'a science fiction tale...a load of rubbish...utter nonsense.".[2] Robert Abplanalp, the President of Precision Valve Corporation (and inventor of the first practical aerosol spray can valve), wrote to the Chancellor ofUC Irvine to complain about Rowland's public statements (Roan, p 56.) Nevertheless, within three years most of the basic assumptions made by Rowland and Molina were confirmed by laboratory measurements and by direct observation in the stratosphere. The concentrations of the source gases (CFC's and related compounds) and the chlorine reservoir species (HCl and ClONO2) were measured throughout the stratosphere, and demonstrated that CFCs were indeed the major source of stratospheric chlorine, and that nearly all of the CFCs emitted would eventually reach the stratosphere. Even more convincing was the measurement, by James G. Anderson and collaborators, of chlorine monoxide (ClO) in the stratosphere. ClO is produced by the reaction of Cl with ozone -- its observation thus demonstrated that Cl radicals not only were present in the stratosphere but also were actually involved in destroying ozone. McElroy and Wofsy extended the work of Rowland and Molina by showing that Bromine atoms were even more effective catalysts for ozone loss than chlorine atoms and argued that the brominated organic compounds known as halons, widely used in fire extinguishers, were a potentially large source of stratospheric bromine. In 1976 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released a report which concluded that the ozone depletion hypothesis was strongly supported by the scientific evidence. Scientists calculated that if CFC production continued to increase at the going rate of 10% per year until 1990 and then remain steady, CFCs would cause a global ozone loss of 5 to 7% by 1995, and a 30 to 50% loss by 2050. In response the United States, Canada, Sweden and Norway banned the used of CFCs in aerosol spray cans in 1978. However, subsequent research, summarized by the National Academy in reports issued between 1979 and 1984, appeared to show that the earlier estimates of global ozone loss had been too large.

The only thing I find unsubstantiated is your assertion that the facts were fabricated. Accusing Prof Rowland and Molina of using fabricated evidence is a serious charge that must be backed up by solid evidence.

Otherwise, I will assume that you are engaged in politically motivated slander.

Re:Institutional Bias

[SeePage87]

I don't think we should classify the IPCC's (or others) results as evidence from conducted experiments, nor conclusions developed from sound mathematical and scientific theory. Indeed, the overwhelming bulk of conclusions have been drawn from regressions and computer models. As a fellow /.er I tend to put a great deal of faith in these methods, but the level of uncertainty surrounding the parameters used in these models and regressions is staggering. For example, until recently the use of aerosols was believed to contribute to the greenhouse effect, however it has now been shown that, as they reflect a great deal of incoming solar radiation, aerosols actually have a cooling effect on the atmosphere. Simply put, there is a great deal of assumption in these models, much of which has little, if any, scientific foundation.

Case in point is the infamous "hockey stick" produced by Mann for the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). While this graph seems to conclusively show a global warming trend, the structure of the model used to create this "scientific result" is fundamentally flawed. For example, when fed random data the model tends to produce hockey-stick-shaped results, and the strongest weighted (by far) parameters were tree ring thicknesses, a measurement that has been shown to depend greatly on CO2 levels (which all agree have increased) and not just temperature. Mann does not correct for this. See McIntyre and McKitrick (note: not Lomborg and still significant counter-claimists) for more information.

Very OT: Home schooling

[Pfhorrest]

Afraid of a 6 billon year old world? Creationists. Afraid of space miliarization/the future? Moon landing deniers. Afraid of the free market? Communists. Afraid of disease? Homeopathy. Afraid of secular education? Home Schoolers.

This is just a pet peeve of mine, but fear of secular education isn't the only reason anybody home schools. That is, not all home schoolers are religious nuts trying to indoctrinate their children and keep them from some kind of "bad thoughts" out there. I was home taught for entirely different reasons (social troubles in big, lowest-common-denominator, shut-up-sit-still-and-memorize-this public schools, and the inability to pay for smaller, more progressive private schools that could cater to gifted students) and I'm about the most anti-dogmatic person I know. And I'm now almost through with university, with very good grades, so I can't complain about the quality of the education either.

That's all, just wanted to harp on that. Home school != religious indoctrination.

Re:Journalism?

[Scudsucker]

Then Al Gore forced us to buy low flow toilettes to save fresh water, but opened a Damn so he could take a canoe trip.

I don't know about the rest of your post but this is definitely a lie, Mr. Pot.

Re:Journalism?

[theodicey]

William Gray is an emeritus professor, over 70, and more evidence that scientific ideas don't go away until their proponents do. He's seized on a particularly paranoid explanation for his scientific irrelevance.

He "concedes that he hasn't published [his theory of how thermohaline circulation has caused recent warming of the planet] in any peer-reviewed journal. He's working on it, he says."

The impression I get from RealClimate and the Washington Post is that Gray is not capable of doing numerical modeling, or even, necessarily, understanding the models which dominate the field.

About the only scientifically respectable semi-skeptic, Richard Lindzen, says of Gray: "His knowledge of theory is frustratingly poor, but he knows more about hurricanes than anyone in the world. I regard him in his own peculiar way as a national resource."

That's a very complimentary way of saying he should be put out to pasture.

See the following articles:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305_pf.html

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006 /04/gray-on-agw/