Bishop Hill How policy is made
Sep 30, 2011 Climate: WG2 Climate: WG3 Having heard Lord Turner the other day I wondered what sort of policy recommendations somebody with his approach to facts might come up with and so I decided to take a look at some of the outputs of the Climate Change Committee, on which he sits alongside such luminaries as Sir Brian Hoskins and Lord May.
This is the report I've been reading, and in particular I've looked at the bit where they try to determine what the global target for temperature stabilisation should be.
As far as I can tell the process is this:
1. Examine a section of the IPCC AR4 WGII report on impacts which looks like this:
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Click for full size
and this...
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Click for full size2. Note that above 2°C things get really bad.
3. Decide that 2°C should be the target.
I'm a great one for keeping things simple but, assuming I've got things straight, this seems to err rather on the side of the back of an envelope. Is that really all there is to informing climate change policy in the UK?
And another thing. Why are they only examining costs? What about the benefits of climate change?
Reader Comments (69)
If they were to examine the benefits, they would have to face some inconvenient truths.
The direct impacts of a warmer, more CO2 rich environment, i.e. better crop yields, less people dying from cold etc.
But also the multitude of indirect impacts from the developing world gaining access to cheap power, better healthcare, education etc.
In the kindest of interpretations, they are sheep following the route determined for them by more penetrating, and more devious minds, with some of the details filled in by the useful toilers of the IPCC. Is that being too kind to them? I wonder if they can point to a single thought, a single insight, a single deviation from the IPCC script that they could call their own. Have we ever had such a supine, such a thoughtless, such a group-think-bound establishment as we have today?
John Shade,
Well put. No. These days there's a lot more of them.
Cheap power, Buck? Cheap power?!
Don't you realise that would be "... the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun." [Paul Ehrlich}
Have a serious word with yourself.
And another thing. Why are they only examining costs? What about the benefits of climate change?
It's there - increase in wheat yield potential!
@'Buck' :
The direct impacts of a warmer, more CO2 rich environment, i.e. better crop yields, less people dying from cold etc.
What parochial nonsense. IF Scotland gets warmer (seems like that prob. won't happen - in Winter anyway) then maybe less people will die of cold, but what about the places where people are already too hot? What about the faster warming in the Arctic resulting in colder winters here?
The idea that rapid warming would good for human society generally is laughable and shows a total lack of understanding of the relationship between climate stability and food production.
Why no examination of benefits?
Because if they show that there are any benefits to climate change, it'll be difficult to sell a "You've all been very naughty and must be taxed to expunge your sins" message to the public.
Simples!
I really don't like that table from AR4, it's far too simplistic and open to misinterpretation. I didn't like its equivalent in the Stern Review either. I have similar issues with Figure TS.6 in the AR4 WG2 technical summary.
As Buck says, by focussing on levels of global warming, it doesn't allow for direct impacts of CO2 on plants and also knock-on effects on the water cycle (through increased plant water use efficiency. (And also, on the flipside, there's the impact on ocean pH).
The inverse of the climate sensitivity uncertainty is that there is uncertainty in the level of CO2 that would go with any particular level of warming, say 2 degrees. If climate sensitivity is high then it would only require a small rise in CO2 to get there, so the beneficial effects of CO2 on crops etc would be small. On the other hand, if climate sensitivity is small, it would take a large CO2 rise to get there, so the beneficial effects of CO2 on crops etc would be large. They key thing we need to know (but don't) is where the trade-off is.
Similar issues arise from the fact that CO2 is not the only anthropogenic GHG - there is also methane and others, which don't directly affect plants. So the trade-off of the plant physiological effects vs radiative effects of CO2 is affected by which GHGs are cut and by how much - if we cap CO2 but methane keeps rising, we get the warming effects of methane but without the benefit of CO2 fertilization.
(There's also timescale issues of course - the actual impacts depend on vulnerability as well as the physical changes, and this is turn could be affected by, say, energy or land use policy. Also the impacts of 2 degrees as you pass through on the way to higher temperatures are probably quite different to those at a stabilised 2 degree climate. To be fair I think the AR4 authors did try to address this, but it doesn't come across in many instances of when this table is presented.)
There's more on this in my commentary in Nature Reports Climate Change.
I've been trying to encourage the community to view the CO2 physiological effect as a "forcing" on a similar footing to radiative forcing - I coined the term "physiological forcing" in our paper on CO2 effects on runoff in Nature in 2007 in which we concluded:
If anyone is interested in either of those papers but can't get hold of them because of a paywall, email me and I'll send a copy.
The idea that rapid warming would good for human society generally is laughable and shows a total lack of understanding of the relationship between climate stability and food production.
Sep 30, 2011 at 10:33 AM | ScotsRenewables
Why should we want a stable climate when it has never existed before and why discount the simple truth that 2 recent warm periods had improvements in living conditions (even the slaves).
Roman Empire and the Medieval Warm period.
Why do people retire to warmer countries, to live longer and enjoy it.
"Why do people retire to warmer countries, to live longer and enjoy it."
Sep 30, 2011 at 10:48 AM | breath of fresh
What a peurile argument. People like hot weather so it's a good thing. I'll give you a clue, even by your own bizarre reasoning, you're wrong. They go to warm countries, not to hot ones. You don't get people retiring to live in Ethiopa or Nigeria very much. If, over the longer term, the warm countries themselves become hot ones due to AGW, then where are people going to want to live?
D'Oh, places like the UK. Have you got room for another 20 people in your house Breath of Fresh Air?
Have you heared about the New York whine?
"I wanna go to Florida".
They have to err on the side of the back of an envelope because envelopes will be threatened by global warming.
"freshwater resources may be less limited than previously assumed under scenarios of future global warming"
Sep 30, 2011 at 10:45 AM |Richard Betts
Interesting comment considering the Australian government mothballed the $1.126 billion desalination plant in Queensland, last year, southeast Queensland's water security projects made a loss of $330 million!
By the way, ZDB. I would hazard a guess you have never been anywhere near Nigeria and have no idea at how many expats live, reside and own companies there!
All on the decisions made from IPCC reports.
Now the Tugun desalination plant is costing $32,000 a day to produce water Australia does not need. The controversial Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme lost $35 million and the SEQ Water Grid Manager is $285 million in the red. It is suggested that the Tugun plant is being needlessly operated in order to help pay for these costs and that is before Australia follows Europe in a senseless chase for ridiculous CO2 reduction targets.
Makes me wonder Richard why people working on "Climate" cannot understand why we are upset over the issues. I have just travel from my home in Larnaca, Cyprus to the capital, Nicosia this a.m. I have made the same 30 minute trip everyday at the same time for some weeks now. Everyday I pass a new windfarm. Everday all the blades are turning with the units facing roughly North. This morning, along with a friend, we cut off the motorway and drove up hill close by with a hand held anemometer. The bloody wind was so low it would not turn! So I guess they were rotating using power from the grid! Just another waste of bloody resources that could be fed into medical research, where it would do much more good to humankind than the farce of the IPCC and it useless fake reports!
Nothing personal Richard, at least you come on here and try your best but.......
I will not take the bait and would appreicate it if no one else replies to the troll on my behalf.
Do not feed the Troll !!!!!!
Richard
You mention methane which I know is also a GHG but with all the emphasis on CO2 it barely gets a look-in.
Question ... (when you have a spare minute) ... what is the generally understood anthropogenic contribution to the amount of methane in the atmosphere and is the level and the potency sufficient to make it relevant in the GHG=GW equation?
1.9999999 C - GOOD!
2.0000001 C - CATASTROPHIC!
That is the reality of living in the IPCC's virtual world.
"1.9999999 C - GOOD!
2.0000001 C - CATASTROPHIC!
That is the reality of living in the IPCC's virtual world."
Sep 30, 2011 at 11:19 AM | Mac
Yet anothe completely daft comment on this bog. Are you really under the delusion that the IPCC view a global temperature raise of just under 2 degrees as a good thing?
I suspect not. Your post is fatuous.
Good question. How is policy made? Far more work needs to be done on this issue. It is the greens weakest link and one which is far more likely to win the debate against their policies.
BTW has anyone found the link to Bryony's original carbon budget document written for Friends of the Earth? I'd just like it for a report I am writing on the history of the Climate Change Act.
Sep 30, 2011 at 11:11 AM | breath of fresh
I do find it ever so funny how some people here have to pretend that pointing out how ridiculous and evidence-free their arguments are, is trolling.
You're quite literally doing the equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and going 'la la la la I'm not listening'.
Not something people generally do when they have defensible views with lots of evidence to support them.
The idea that rapid warming would good for human society generally is laughable and shows a total lack of understanding of the relationship between climate stability and food production.
Sep 30, 2011 at 10:33 AM | ScotsRenewables
And your evidence is?
Biology thrives warmth, dies in cold. You know this.
And about this 'rapid warming' then - we've seen 0.2 degrees C per decade several times over the past hundred years or more - this clearly defies objective description as 'rapid' warming by since it represents about 1-2% of temperature changes we experience daily - and over ten years. Not scary.
And about food production. Temperate cereals such as barley can grow from the tropics to the Arctic Circle. Likewise wheat, it also evolved in the semi-arid Middle East, but can tolerate 1m+ of rainfall. If we want to grow in warmer climate, C4 maize is the answer - even then it's resilient enough to be productive from the equator to latitudes as high as northern Britain. Sure, we could probably do with more staple food crops, but a warmer world offers more opportunities here too - lots of very productive ones are C4 too - sorghum, millet, etc. Not many grow well under ice though.
"And another thing. Why are they only examining costs? What about the benefits of climate change?"
Because if you say, 'the world is going to end', and only you know how to fix it, people will listen. Oh, and the way to fix it is to do EXACTLY what I tell you from this point onwards.
If you say, 'things are going to improve if we carry on as we are', there are no new levers of control for you and your friends to pull.
Richard Betts, are you alone in not liking those tables from AR4?
You have expressed your disquiet here before, but according to IPCC, all contributing scientists were happy bunnies, so how much censorship and/or dissent is there?
Good question GC.
Does the quest for consensus silence individual scientific dissent and quell proper reporting?
"Because if you say, 'the world is going to end', and only you know how to fix it, people will listen. Oh, and the way to fix it is to do EXACTLY what I tell you from this point onwards."
Sep 30, 2011 at 11:59 AM | Stuck-Record
This is another total strawman. Nobody actually is saying either of these things.
The World's not going to end, but likely scenarios are widely available for anybody to view. Most aren't much fun, which is why it's a problem.
Also nobody is witholding solutions. We need to drastically reduce CO2 emissions. Everybody knows this, anybody can do it. The problem is that many people don't, which is why governments need to take steps to make it happen.
Frankly, your comment comes accross as a little paranoid.
Can't find a document of that precise description Faye - but this FOE doc gives the timeline of the whole sorry saga:-
www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefing_notes/history_of_the_big_ask.pdf (PDF)
A depressing tale of the corruption of democracy by special interests - FOE breathlessly recount that, at the peak of their campaign for a climate bill, no less than 130,000voters had contacted their MP's.
I make that roughly 0.06% of voters - who, led by an unaccounatble pressure group and a few brain dead celebs and pop concerts, were able to thrust millions of old people into fuel poverty.
Read it and weep.
Increased temperatures will lead to more agricultural capacity. The limiting factor is water.
IPCC predictions to date on increased/decreased rainfall have been a joke, so if that is the sum total of the science, best ignored.
ScotsRenewables, thank you for confirming that global warming so far has led to colder winters in the UK. That was not predicted by IPCC, so is another classic case of altering the predictions to match the observed outcomes.
This is another total strawman. Nobody actually is saying either of these things.
The World's not going to end, but likely scenarios are widely available for anybody to view. Most aren't much fun, which is why it's a problem.
Also nobody is witholding solutions. We need to drastically reduce CO2 emissions. Everybody knows this, anybody can do it. The problem is that many people don't, which is why governments need to take steps to make it happen.
Hi deadzedbed
I have not seen any evidence for any of the above anywhere, sure we need to cake care of our environment but C02 produced by industrialisation is a drop in the ocean and humanity cannot make much of a difference. Anyway as the temps drop and C02 still rises, why do we need to? I am much more concerned about global cooling.
Is it possible to create a BullShyte Factor for IPCC "facts" and "predictions"?
ie review the scientifc credentials of the authors, whether they have involvements/funding from the likes of WWF, Greenpeace, FotE etc, how much grey literature they have had to rely on, for their chapter conclusions, and then by taking into account their own interpretation of the level of their own uncertainty, apply a BSF 1-10. 1 being "yes the climate changes" to 10 "Himalayagate, Amazongate etc
As the IPCC has proved incapable of excluding BSF 10 rubbish in the past, and it has been left to AGW sceptics to carry out the scientific checking and diligence bit, I am calling these charts out as BSF 7
Does Richard Betts agree? :-)
"I do find it ever so funny how some people here have to pretend that pointing out how ridiculous and evidence-free their arguments are, is trolling."
"We need to drastically reduce CO2 emissions. Everybody knows this,"
(with apologies to breath of fresh Sep 30, 2011 at 11:11 AM)
Calls me parochial then talks about Scotland getting warmer - now that's funny!
I'm sorry that you can't seem to process a fact, but nonetheless if the planet warms it is a fact that less people will die of cold. It's an item on the plus side of the balance sheet. You may argue that more people will die of heat that will not die of cold, but that is a different argument.
As for your statement about my lack of understanding of the relationship between climate stability and food production, would you care to tell me of a time in human history when world food production has been higher than it is today? If you can, I'll concede your point.
"would you care to tell me of a time in human history when world food production has been higher than it is today? If you can, I'll concede your point."
Sep 30, 2011 at 1:04 PM | Buck
Yet another Bishop Hill Strawman.
Key drivers for this are technology, knowledge and demand, not climate.
Deliberately missing the point ZDB?
Just as people live quite comfortably in very hot parts of the world (and I know this because I've lived in the southern states of the USA and worked in the Middle East) by adaptation and harnessing technology, so can people grow plentiful supplies of food by doing the same.
Where problems exist they mainly do so due to politics, not the environment. See the Oxfam story this week about Ugandans being thrown out of their homes so that a British company can plant trees there instead and claim a chunk of "climate change" cash.
I must take issue with both ScotsRenewables and Buck - "less people will die of cold" That is completely intolerable. It is "fewer".
The whole argument is a dead duck. GDP beats greenhouse gas every time and as economies collapse and people lose their livelihoods, interest in this unproven garbage is going to disappear like snow in July. Another harsh winter in this country should do it... shivering at -10C as the windmills don't turn, paying more than £1400/year for gas and electric will concentrate minds.
Forgive me Sebastian......I am shamed.......;-)
Several points-
1. The IPCC was created to de facto redistribute wealth by writing reports using cherry-picked peer-reviewed literature, NGO brochures and renewable energy investor documents to highlight only the negative impacts of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. By definition, there was never a need to look for benefits. It would be an own-goal.
2. With so many lead authors welded to the WWF at the hip, it is simply a government-funded WWF document.
3. The IPCC has never claimed to make predictions. Trenberth is clear on this. The IPCC accepts no legal responsibility for negative outcomes that may result from policy choices that are based on the IPCC report narrative. Until this changes, there is no reason to take the IPCC seriously.
I really suspect the IPCC job would have been made a lot simpler if humans were accused of reducing global CO2 concentrations and temperature. Historic warmings were not called optimums for perverse humour. Incidentally, where are equivalent charts covering the predicted effects of global cooling? Oh, I forgot, thats so unlikely that its not even crossed their minds. Even though we are in between glaciations at the end of an interglacial, with the sun doing strange things.
Much counter-consensual discussion of some of these topics in Heartland 'Climate Change Reconsidered' - the executive summary for a taster, or the full chapters for detail, particularly on mass extinctions and plant CO2 enrichment. Food for rational thought.
I wonder if anybody in government has been prudent and asked for due diligence to be carried out and run the process with -2 deg C? Or even -1 deg C? Or are they stating that it is now totally impossible for this planet to cool?
Have our wonderful "Climate Scientists" convinced our wonderful politicians that they can now control the temperature of the planet and therefore there will not be any more ice ages?
I fear we are in age of homo superbus.
Green Sand -
A few months ago I chanced upon this 1975 article discussing the possibility of global cooling. It had this to say: "The principal weather change likely to accompany the cooling trend is increased variability" -- and went on to discuss the meteorological reasons for this conclusion. So perhaps all change is bad, and Dr Pangloss was correct that we are living in the best of all possible worlds.
Disclaimer: I suspect that current climate models are wholly different from those of 1975, so perhaps current climate models would arrive at a different conclusion.
Buck
There is another "consensus" here- DNFTT, please.
There has been some new research which demonstrates that plants under conditions of warmer weather and higher CO2 yield more but use less water to do it. Seems like a win win to me.
The 2 degree target is attributed to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), who admits it's a 'rule of thumb':
The Invention of the Two-Degree Target
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686697-8,00.html
Perhaps it is possible, but it is certainly painful, to have a serious exchange with people who are unaware of the distinction between 'less' and 'fewer': fewer lumps of sugar in the sugarbowl means less sugar in the sugarbowl. Never has the nation been so educated - or rather, never has so much been spent on ''teachers'' and ''schools''.
chris y | Sep 30, 2011 at 2:33 PM
The IPCC accepts no legal responsibility for negative outcomes that may result from policy choices that are based on the IPCC report narrative. Until this changes, there is no reason to take the IPCC seriously.
What a brilliant idea! We should be campaigning to make the individuals who are involved in the production of IPCC reports collectively financially responsible for any damages that might arise from errors/failed predictions etc etc.
Nobody would ever insure them and we would never see another IPCC report. Job done!
While I agree wholeheartedly with DNFTT, I would very much like to hear from Zed what s/he is doing. Zed, what is your carbon footprint? What lifestyle do you lead? What hardship or inconvenience have you undertaken to reduce whatever that footprint is? Are you yourself living with the amount ordained if all the regulations you seem to advocate would imply?
The linked report includes this caveat, on p 7.
'If future scientific analysis suggests that the probability of extreme climate change is higher than
presently envisaged, or that the human welfare consequences of climate change are significantly
greater than currently assessed, it may be appropriate to increase the reduction objectives further
at a later date. Furthermore, if emissions grow at a faster rate or emissions peak later than we have
assumed then the world will have to make more stringent emission cuts to meet our climate
objectives.'
So where is the recommendation should future scientific analysis suggest that the probability of extreme climate change is lower than presently envisaged, or that the human welfare consequences of climate change are significantly lower than currently assessed, always accepting, of course, that it has not already and increasingly been so concluded?
Sep 30, 2011 at 11:13 AM | Mike Jackson
Hi Mike,
Yes methane is significant.
Pre-industrial levels of methane are estimated (from ice core records) to be 715 ± 4 parts per billion, and by 2005 direct atmospheric measurements from 40 sites across the globe showed it to be 1,774.62 ± 1.22 ppb, with the historical rise mainly attributed to rice paddies, ruminant animals and biomass burning, with a bit from industry.
This is estimated to give a global mean radiative forcing of +0.48 ± 0.05 W m–2, which is the second largest anthropogenic contribution after the CO2 RF of 1.66 ± 0.17 W m–2 (again that's the 2005 estimate)
The total RF for all long-lived anthropogenic GHGs is estimated as 2.63 Wm-2.
So, at 2005 levels, methane exerts a bit less than one-third of the warming influence of CO2, and a bit less than one-fifth of the total influence of all anthropogenic GHGs.
However because the GHG influence is offset to a greater or lesser extent by the (highly uncertain) cooling effect of aerosols, the net anthropogenic RF is estimated as about 1.6 Wm-2 (but with a wide uncertainty range from 0.6 to 2.4 Wm-2).
So using the central estimate, methane contributes a bit less than a third of the net anthropogenic warming influence.
However it does seem to have stopped rising in recent years. It's fastest rate of rise seems to have been in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
(This is all from AR4 WG1 chapter 2)
Methane is natural gas. There is natural seepage from sedimentary basins, through faults fissures and overpressure induced microfractures in the overburden. It is so significant that gas plume disruptions are commonly recorded on seismic reflection profiles in the water leg of offshore profiles in hydrocarbon bearing basins worldwide. Estimates of the volumes released are pure guesswork. I dont care if it is the most eminent authority estimating it, it is pure guesswork. Like the volumes of CO2 from volcanism. It is hard enough to calculate gas volumes in a trap even when penetrated by multiple points of well control. Wild guesses, even peer reviewed, for the unknown, remain wild guesses, as does volume of CO2 breathed in and out by the oceans or emitted from the mid oceanspreading volcanic ridges and island arcs.
Sep 30, 2011 at 10:14 PM | Richard Betts
Hi Richard, many thanks or sticking around and making your points so well, I am learning, but slowly.
Just one question, have you or any of your colleagues been asked be your masters to run a model that would show the effects upon mankind of the planet experiencing a period of cooling?
Or are they and the Met Office/yourself convinced that we are in a one way track and the only way is up?
An Inspector General for the US Environmental Protection Agency has just ruled that the agency did not properly follow its own processes before declaring CO2 a pollutant in need of control. Any similar mechanism in the Mother Country?
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