“IMAGINING OTHER…”
Protecting the Planet
(a WEA course)
Week 6: Global Warming (i) the science
Links:
Protecting the Planet 1: Introduction Protecting the Planet 2: key industries Protecting the
Planet 3: cases and solutions
Protecting the Planet 4: strategies Protecting
the Planet 7: effects of global warming Protecting the Planet 8: species decline
Protecting
the Planet 9: energy policies Protecting
the Planet 10: the movement
Updated: November 2019.
SUMMARY:
1.
Summary/overview: #overview
Global warming – man-made (anthropogenic) climate
change - the most serious environmental danger we face.
Greenhouse effect, role of CO2, CFCs, methane...
‘Climate’ is not the same as ‘weather’. Effects are
uneven.
2. Brief History of
International Agreements on Climate Change #history
3. More detail on Global Warming – evidence and
scale: #evidence
(i) Is it a
scam? #scam
- 97% of climate scientists agree the world is
warming as a result of our activities, mainly through carbon dioxide
production.
- the Intergovernmental
Panel on climate Change (IPPC) agrees, having scrutinised thousands of
peer-reviewed studies.
- the Academies
of Science of 34 different countries all signed the IPCC statement.
- the recent Paris agreement
on climate change was signed by 194 countries.
(ii) Correlation of changes in CO2 with temperature
change. #correlation
Evidence (Al Gore 2006): ice cores can be used to
measure CO2 (bubbles) and temperature (isotopes of oxygen).
Ice ages and interglacial periods: during the ice
ages the concentration of CO2 was below 200ppm, and large
parts of the earth were covered with a sheet of ice a mile thick!
The ‘warm periods’ show levels of
up to 260ppm. ‘At no point before the industrial era did the CO2
concentration go above 300 parts per million.’
Temperatures show
dramatic and steady increase of around 0.5 degrees since the mid-20th century. Global
temperatures have risen by almost 1 degree since 1880 (NASA).
Levels of CO2 now: 403.3ppm (parts
per million) – highest for 3 million years. (WMO)
Recent high global temperatures. Increase
in CO2 still going on (and effects will last, and we cannot remove it).
4. What does NOT cause global warming (sceptics claim these do): #other things
(i) Sunspots, (ii) the
earth’s orbit or tilt, (iii) CO2 is heavy, how can it cause global warming?
(iv) volcanoes... Other sceptics’ arguments
(and response): (v) We cannot trust scientists: UEA emails, (vi) An
Inconvenient Truth film taken to court (but no evidence of misrepresenting
facts) (vii) Arctic ice is getting thicker, (but it’s covering less ground)
(viii) There have been periods (mediaeval) when warming has not occurred (but
short!) (ix) It’s a Chinese plot to
undermine the USA, or a socialist plot (but US economy would
benefit from change to low-carbon/renewables)
5. Who are the climate
sceptics? #who?
5.1 NB: no refereed scientific papers deny
global warming, while most (53%) newspaper articles give the
‘sceptical’ point of view equal space to the mainstream view.
5.2 ‘Doubt is our product’ – (tobacco company 1960.
5.3 Lobbying: American Enterprise Institute –
contributions to Exxon Mobil.
5.4 key figures: Phillip Stott, Piers Corbyn, Nigel Calder, Nigel
Lawson: not scientists, but mostly pro-market and on the right
politically (see also Donald Trump!).
5.5
Representation in the press: three sceptics - Christopher Booker (Sunday
Telegraph), Peter Hitchens (The Mail on
Sunday), Matt Ridley (Times, former chair
Northern Rock) vsone for consensus: George Monbiot
(Guardian).
NOTES:
Many observers believe that the most serious threat
facing the earth today is climate change as a result of global warming. The
aspect of air pollution that is involved here is “the greenhouse effect”. When sunlight warms the
earth, some of that heat is lost through radiation (bouncing off the earth)
back into space. But there are some gases in the atmosphere that retain or
reflect the heat back to earth – like the glass in a greenhouse. The effect, as
noted below, was first discovered in the late 19th century.
Here we have another example of the precise balancing phenomenon
at work in the ecosphere, since we are kept at just the right temperature for
life to exist! (See the Gaia hypothesis). The most notable of these ‘greenhouse
gases’ is carbon dioxide. In itself
this is a harmless gas: we breathe it out all the time, when the oxygen we
breathe in has been used in the lungs. (We could not live in an atmosphere of
pure carbon dioxide, however). The balance of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide
and other gases is just right for life.
However, human industrial activity
- especially the burning of fossil fuels - including cars, has resulted in an
increase in the amount of carbon dioxide, which has been carried up into the
atmosphere and now keeps in some of the sun’s heat. Other contributing gases
are CFCs (see notes on the ozone layer...) and methane: the latter is naturally produced by
rotting vegetation, in ponds etc, but the amount of methane produced by human
activity has actually increased with the industrialisation of farming, since
cows’ flatulence contains the gas! A large proportion of greenhouse
gases some from this source.
With regard to carbon dioxide emissions in
the UK, levels are likely to be higher than government statistics suggest,
and everyone agrees they are going to keep on rising so long as we continue to
burn fossil fuel (especially coal and oil, but also gas).
There are a few people who say there is a
correlation but not cause and effect – but given some of the changes to weather
etc, and the measured warming of the globe, something is causing the
temperature to rise, and the vast majority of climate scientists are convinced
it is due to the greenhouse effect. (See the section on ‘sceptics’ below).
How does global warming occur? The role of CO2:
From
https://www.livescience.com/58203-how-carbon-dioxide-is-warming-earth.html
Sunlight enters the atmosphere as ultraviolet and visible
light; some of this solar energy is then radiated back toward space as infrared
energy, or heat. The atmosphere is 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen, which are both gases made up of molecules containing
two atoms. These tightly bound pairs don't absorb much heat.
But the greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide,
water vapor and methane, each have at least three
atoms in their molecules. These loosely bound structures are efficient
absorbers of the long-wave radiation (also known as heat) bouncing back from
the planet's surface. When the molecules in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases re-emit this long-wave radiation back toward Earth's surface, the result
is warming.
How
do scientists measure CO2?
Scientists monitor carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by pumping air into an artificial chamber and shining an infrared light through the sample. Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared light very efficiently, ... so the amount of infrared absorbed can be used to calculate the amount of CO2
The research, published in Nature Geoscience, produces the clearest picture yet of the Earth’s
average temperature over the most recent two millennia and reinforces concerns
about the future impacts of global warming.
The study includes an update of the original ‘hockey stick’ curve, published by Mann, Bradley & Hughes twenty years ago. It was the first to note that late
20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at
least the last 1000 years. Since then, scientists from the palaeoclimate
community have been working to construct an improved and expanded data set, and
enhance the statistical methods underlying their reconstructions of global
climate. In past millennia, we didn’t have the luxury of modern technology such
as ocean buoys and satellites to gauge temperature, but nature recorded the answers
for us. We just have to learn how to read those clues.
Corals, ice cores, tree rings, lake sediments and
ocean sediment cores are examples of proxy data sources that provide scientists
with a wealth of information about past conditions. This proxy data can be
brought together to tell us a lot about the global climate system in the past.
Teams of scientists around the world have spent many
thousands of hours of field and laboratory work collecting samples and
analysing data. They publish and make freely available their precious data so
that other teams of scientists can undertake further analysis. Previously, our
team and other experts around the world, meticulously analysed, vetted and
collated temperature-sensitive proxy data from around the world. We then made the
full dataset publicly available.
With this unique dataset in hand, our team set about
reconstructing past global temperatures.
Scientists are notoriously sceptical of their own
analysis, but we are more confident about our findings when different methods
applied to the same data yield the same result. In this latest paper, we
applied seven different methods to a common underlying dataset. We found a
remarkable resemblance in the multi-decadal fluctuations in temperature between
the seven methods. We also found that climate models performed very well in
comparison to our reconstructions, capturing the amplitude of natural
variability in the climate system. This gave us the confidence to delve
further, to try to understand what drove global temperature fluctuations before
the industrial revolution took hold. To do this we used climate models and
reconstructions of external climate forcing – a term which refers to influences
from outside of the climate system such as volcanic eruptions and solar
variability.
We determined that prior to the industrial revolution,
global temperature fluctuations from decade to decade were mainly controlled by
aerosol forcing from major volcanic eruptions - not by variations in the Sun’s
output. So, in the centuries before human activity began to affect the climate
– volcanoes controlled global temperature. There are, of course, natural
changes in Earth’s temperature from decade to decade and century to century.
With our new reconstructions, we were able to quantify the rate of
warming and cooling periods across the past 2000 years. We found that at no
time in that period has the rate of Earth’s warming been so high.
In statistical terms, all instrumental 51-year
temperature trends starting after the 1950s exceed the 99th percentile of
reconstructed pre-industrial 51-year trends. For increasing timescales,
particularly those longer than 50 years, the probability that the largest
warming trend occurred after 1850 swiftly approaches 100 per cent.
What does this mean in a nutshell?
It is yet further evidence of human-induced warming of
the planet and illustrates that Earth is getting warmer, faster. Our
understanding of Earth’s past temperature variations contributes to our
understanding how life evolved, where our species came from, how our planet
works and how modern climate change will unfold due to human activity. We know
that over millions of years, the movement of tectonic plates and slow interactions
between the solid earth, the atmosphere and the ocean affect global
temperature. Over tens to hundreds of thousands of years, our planet’s mean
temperature is gradually influenced by small variations in the geometry of the
Earth and the Sun, like wobbles and variations in the Earth’s rotation and
tilt.
At the Last Glacial Maximum about 26,000 years ago, huge ice sheets covered large
parts of the Northern Hemisphere landmass.
The Earth then transitioned into a 12,000-year warm period called the Holocene.
This was a time of relative stability in global
temperature, apart from the temporary cooling effect of the odd volcano.
With the development of human agriculture, our
prosperity and population grew. Following the industrial revolution, rapid
warming commenced due to human activity. Now, with a clear and concerning
picture of temperature variations of the past few millennia we have a greater
understanding of the nature of Earth’s recent warming. Is this what we really
want for the future of our planet?
Researchers in this study include Neukom,
R., Barboza, L.A., Erb,
M.P., Shi, F., Emile-Geay, J., Evans, M.N., Franke, J., Kaufman, D.S., Lücke,
L., Rehfeld, K., Schurer,
A., Zhu, F., Brönnimann, S., Hakim, G.J., Henley,
B.J., Ljungqvist, F.C. & Von Gunten,
L.
We owe the teams of proxy experts much gratitude. It
is their generous contribution to science and human knowledge that has supported
this and other compilation and synthesis studies.
A version of this article also appeared in The Conversation.
Summary of the main
effects of global warming:
The
average surface-air temperature globally has risen by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit
(0.8 degrees Celsius) since the beginning of the industrial age. That's
according to the fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), released in 2014.
Sea-level
rise has gone up globally by about 7.4 inches (0.19 meters) on average since
1901. According to the IPCC, the rate of sea-level rise since the middle of the
1800s has been higher than the rate during the previous two millennia.
2. Brief History of
Climate Change (from Earthmatters, published by Friends of
the Earth, Summer 2009, extra notes
from Wikipedia and from Jonathan Watts, Guardian 10th Oct 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/oct/09/half-century-dither-denial-climate-crisis-timeline).
1750
– 1800 start of industrial revolution –
rises in average global temperatures are measured as from pre-industrial level.
1896 Swedish
Chemist Svente Arrenhuis describes
how greenhouse gases work and predicts a doubling of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere could increase global temperatures by 5 degrees.
1957
David Keeling measures changes in CO2 (Hawaii), correlates
with fossil fuel use. Climate scientists now use the Keeling curve to describe
the increase in CO2.
1959 Edward Teller
tells the American Petroleum Industry a 10% increase in CO2 would melt the
icecap and submerge New York. ‘I think that this chemical contamination is more
serious than most people tend to believe.’
1965 Lyndon
Johnson’s President’s Science Advisory Committee: ‘pollutants have altered on a
global scale the carbon dioxide content of the air’ with effects that ‘could be deleterious’. The
head of APIU: ‘Time is running out.’
1970s
Shell and BP begin funding scientific research in Britain to examine the
climate impacts from greenhouse gases. A recent lawsuit claims scientists told
Exxon management in 1977 that scientific opinion ‘overwhelmingly favoured’ the
view that fossil fuels were responsible for CO2 increases.
1979
first World Climate Conference highlights
CO2 levels.
1980, 1981
scientists from API and others set up task force, and are told of likely ‘major
economic consequences’ of a 2.5 degree rise. Internal Exxon memo warns of
‘later effects [that would be] catastrophic’.
1988 James Hansen of NASA
testifies to US Senate that the greenhouse effect is changing our climate now.
1989 Global Climate
Coalition established by US industry groups challenging the science and
arguing for delays to action. Exxon, Shell and BP join 1993-4.
1990
IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (established
by United Nations Environment Programme, and World Meteorological Organisation)
1st Report
says human activity likely to be contributing to climate change. Details
of working methods etc. of IPCC at: http://www.ipcc.ch/index.htm
1991 Shell produces film
acknowledging ‘possibility of change faster than at any time since the ice
age... too fast for life to adapt without severe dislocation.’
1992 Rio Earth Summit or UN Conference on Environment and
Development. 172 governments participate (2,400
representatives of NGOs, and 17,000 attended a parallel NGO Global Forum which
had ‘consultative status’. Issues addressed included: patterns of production
(toxic components such as lead in petrol, poisonous waste, radioactive chemicals),
transport, air pollution, water, protection of land of indigenous
peoples. à Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). US
had reservations about the Convention. Also: Convention on Biological
Diversity (US did not sign), and other statements. Criticised
for not recognizing need to fight poverty.
1990s: Exxon funds Dr Fred
Seitz and Dr Fred Singer who dispute the
mainstream consensus on climate change. Both had previously challenged the
hazards of smoking.
1995 2nd IPCC
Report.
1997
Mobil places ad in New York Times: ‘the science of climate change is too
uncertain to mandate a plan of action.’ (Mobil and Exxon later merge).
1997 Kyoto Protocol (building
on the Framework Convention) signed by 192 parties (Canada withdrew in
2012 and US has not ratified it), to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ‘to
a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the
climate system.’ To come into force in 2005, and expire 2012.
1998
US refuses to ratify Kyoto protocol.
1999
Exxon CEO: ‘projections are based on completely unproven climate models
(contradicting Exxon’s own scientists).
2000
Exxon ad: ‘Unsettled Science’ claims ‘scientists remain unable to confirm...
humans are causing climate change.’
2001 3rd IPCC
Report.
2001 George
W Bush opposes Kyoto ‘because it exempts 80% of the world from
compliance and because it would cause serious harm to
the US economy’.
2002 Larsen
B ice shelf breaks up – a piece of ice a quarter the size of Northern
Ireland falls into the Antarctic Sea.
2003 estimated
35,000 Europeans die in extreme summer temperatures.
2004 sudden
cold temperatures cause cracks in Empire State Building.
2005 Hurricane
Katrina hits New Orleans.
2007 IPCC
Fourth Report says there is a 90% chance that human activity is warming
the planet, and that global average temperatures will rise by
another 1.5 to 5.8C this century, depending on emissions.”
2007 IPCC
and Al Gore share Nobel Peace prize. Gore’s film/powerpoint
presentation An Inconvenient Truth wins an Oscar. ‘Washington Declaration’
initiates a ‘cap-and-trade’ system to apply to industrialised and developing
countries.
2008 Ed Miliband climate
change minister, UK passes Climate Change Act (world first).
2009 Barack Obama becomes president and puts billions into renewables.
2009 ‘Climategate’ – e-mails hacked
from Climatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia –
scientists accused of distorting evidence and suppressing opposing data. Attack
is led by US Senator Jim Inhofe, whose main donors are in the oil and gas
industry at the UN climate conference at Copenhagen, which ends in disarray.
2010 Reports by
Lord Oxburgh, Sir Muir Russell
and Commons Science and Technology Committee find no malpractice, no
withholding of evidence and no suppressing of dissenting views. Public trust in
climate scientists drops from 60% to 40%.
2009, 2010: Conferences
in Copenhagen Cancun
2012 Doha extension of
(1997) Kyoto Protocol: 37 countries adopt binding targets (of which 7 have
ratified), by July 2016 the number of countries adopting it rose to 66, but 144
are required for it to enter into legal force. EU and others agree to extend
treaty to 2020.
2013 Richard Heede of Climate Accountability Institute shows 90 companies
are responsible for two thirds of the CO2 entering the atmosphere since the
1750s.
2015 Paris Conference (UN Climate Change Conference – COP21: 21st annual
session of the Conference Of the Parties to the 1992 Framework Convention). 196 parties attended.
Agreement will enter into force when joined by at least 55 countries
representing at least 55% of global greenhouse emissions.
2016 Earth Day – 22nd April:
174 countries sign in New York. Goal: to limit global warming
to less than 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. Parties will
also ‘pursue efforts to’ limit the increase to 1.5 degrees. This will require
zero emissions between 2030 and 2050.
2017 Exxon, Chevron
and BP each donate at least $500,000 for Donald Trump’s
inauguration. Later he announces he will pull out of the Paris agreement.
2017 Nov 6th, COP23
in Bonn: 10,000 government delegates, 8,000 others. Fiji is chair.
2018 US, Saudi Arabia
Kuwait and Russia dilute a landmark UN report on dangers of global warming
beyond 1.5C.
2019 secretary general of
OPEC: climate campaigners are the biggest threat to industry and are misleading
the public.
3. More detail on Global Warming – evidence and scale:
(Notes initially written
in response to a paper by a student on one of my WEA courses, who
said climate change is a ‘disaster myth’):
(i) Introduction: is it
a scam? ‘There is not agreement among scientists that global
warming is happening’:
It seems to me that a
small group of ‘sceptics’ manage to have an influence that outweighs their
number and their importance. It may be a bit odd to arrange these notes in the
form of a ‘reply to sceptics’, but I was prompted to do so, a few years ago, by
a detailed paper prepared by a student – until then perhaps I had been guilty
of assuming that everyone knew how global warming worked!
I have also recently
(2016) had cause to write to a local paper, because they have printed at least
two letters from a local councillor who is a climate sceptic! The councillor’s
argument was (in part) that changes in CO2 occur after changes in temperature,
not before.
I wrote two replies,
and the second (which they published) points out that no sources were
given for this claim, while:
- ‘97% of climate
scientists agree the world is warming as a result of our activities, mainly through carbon dioxide production.
- the Intergovernmental
Panel on climate Change (IPPC) agrees, having scrutinised thousands of peer-reviewed studies.
- the Academies of
Science of 34 different countries all signed the IPCC statement.
- the
recent Paris agreement on climate change was signed by 194
countries.’
I added that in the
light of this ‘It is just nonsense to talk of a 'scam' perpetrated by
mysterious 'interests' (which is what climate sceptics often say) - as it is
no-one's interests to deny that global warming/climate change is happening. The
World Health Organisation has said that 'climatic changes already are estimated
to cause over 150,000 deaths annually.'
My letter ended: ‘In
my view it is irresponsible of a local paper to keep printing these false
claims when across the globe people are already suffering from the effects of
climate change.’ However, this sentence was not printed!
I hope this explains
my concerns over ‘climate scepticism’!
Update: the same councillor
has repeated his claims more recently (2019)
and myself and a few other people have been
arguing against him.
An example is here: https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/recorder-letters-healthcare-funding-climate-change-1-6282731
I replied to various
points made in the student’s paper as follows:
(ii) Correlation of changes in CO2 with temperature change.
NASA has a graph on
their website: http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/ which takes a
mean temperature between 1951 and 1980 and plots the changes since 1880. It
shows that around 1880 the temperature was 0.4 (degrees Celsius) below the
mean, and now it is approaching 0.6 above. You can either say this
is a 0.6 rise or I guess you could say it is 1 degree. I have seen other
figures of 0.8 (Robin McKie – science
editor of the Observer newspaper) or even more... and if, as many argue, the
warming is a trend, then mean temperatures are likely to carry on increasing.
There is a great danger if the upwards curve
is, as Al Gore and others argue, exponential.
In his 2006
book, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore points out (p65) that scientists
(he quotes Dr Lonnie Thompson, School of Earth Sciences, glaciologist,
Distinguished University Professor at Ohio State University, and Senior
Research Scientist at the Byrd Polar Research Center
at Ohio) can measure both the past temperature of the earth’s atmosphere and
the amount of CO2 in it, by examining ice cores. The CO2 is
present in bubbles in the ice, and the ratio of
different isotopes of oxygen (Oxygen 16 and Oxygen 18) records
the temperature. He prints graphs (p64) which show the changes over the past
1,000 years. These show a dramatic and steady increase of around 0.5 degrees
since the mid-20th century. Andrew Simms, G2 19th Jan
2017 says ‘temperatures have risen by almost 1 degree since 1880.’
There have been other
fluctuations – such as the ‘medieval warm period’ – but this can be seen to
have been a small, short-lived ‘blip’.
Perhaps the most
striking chart, however, shows (p66-7) measurements
in Antarctica going back 650,000 years. Here it is really clear that
the changes in temperature and in CO2 concentration correlate very
closely. You can see ice ages with periods of warming in between. During
the ice ages the concentration of CO2 was below 200ppm, and this means large
parts of the earth were covered with a sheet of ice a mile thick! The ‘warm
periods’ show levels of up to 260ppm. ‘At no point before the industrial era
did the CO2 concentration go above 300 parts per million.’
Current levels of CO2
are around 408 ppm (parts per
million) – and this has increased in the last few years (2013 – 2017)
(Wikipedia, quoting National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration). Note
that this is (only) 0.04% by volume... [Note also: CO2 is essential for life,
as the carbohydrates in the plants we eat are our primary source of energy;
carbohydrates are made by plants through photosynthesis, which uses sunlight to
convert CO2 and water into carbohydrates]. There has been a 40%
increase (from 280 to 400) since the start of the industrial revolution in
the middle of the 18thcentury. The level of 280 ppm held for 10,000
years before the industrial revolution. The present concentration is the
highest in at least the past 800,000 years, and likely the highest in the past
20 million years (Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis). It is currently
rising at a rate of approximately 2ppm per year – and accelerating (Peter Tans,
Trends in Carbon Dioxide, NOAA/ESRL).
These increases may
appear small, but:
(a) only a few degrees (5 – 10) drop would produce an ice age,
and Robin McKie, drawing on UN
sources, says that an increase of 2 degrees would lead to 3 billion people
suffering water shortages, and global food production being disrupted: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/26/robin-mckie-carbon-emissions-up
(b) taking a global
average, the 20 warmest years have occurred since the 1970s, and the 10 warmest
years have occurred in the last 12 years (NASA) – the rate of change
seems to be accelerating (see the point below on exponential growth).
2016 has been the hottest year to date, and each preceding year has shown
warming.
However, an increase
in global temperatures does not mean that everywhere gets
warmer! There is a difference between weather and climate, and
the weather effects of global warming are not easy to predict. However, Al Gore
(2006) - see point 9 below - lists not just glaciers melting but also some
places getting more rain, some having droughts, more hurricanes and other
extreme weather events; the more frequent closing of the Thames flood barrier
etc. The Association of British Insurers has pointed out that claims from storm
and flood damage doubled between 1998 and 2003 (to over £6 bn)
(sorry, I forget my source for this!).
Already Bangladesh suffers
damaging floods, and these could become worse. In Britain the Thames
Barrier has been raised more often recently (19 times in 2003, as against 3
times in 1983) – there is even talk of building another flood barrier. Just as
worrying is the possibility that weather conditions will change so that there
are more storms, hurricanes etc. Or, temperature changes (e.g. to the Gulf
Streamwhich warms Britain’s coast line) would
affect crops and even turn some areas to desert.
We have already had freak weather conditions in
Britain – the floods in Cornwall, at Boscastle in
2004 for example – and scientists such as John Schellnhuber,
of the Tyndall Centre, warn that things could get worse (Observer 7/11/2004).
Apart from the damage, Schellnhuber and
others argue that a point will come when insurers will not be able to pay for
the damage: Insurers Munich Re believe that by 2060 the “cost of our changing
weather will outstrip the total value of commodities and services produced by
the global economy” The United Nations reports that the number of natural
disasters has doubled over the past decade, and resultant economic losses have
more than trebled. (Observer loc cit)]
A piece in New York
Times (Sat Apr 15th 2012) asks whether the more variable weather
we now see in the northern hemisphere is a result of climate change. In March
parts of the US were very cold, after a freak heat wave – in France it was the
other way round...
An IPCC report issued
in late March (2012) suggested there is a link, and that climate change is
leading to increased frequency of heat waves, and of heavy rainfall, and
coastal flooding. The most likely explanation is that this is connected to the
melting of Arctic ice, which has shrunk 40% since the early ‘80s – an area the size
of Europe is now water, which does not reflect heat away from the surface as
ice does. Dr Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University (quoted in
the NYT article) says the question is ‘how can it not be’ (how can
the loss of sea ice not be affecting atmospheric circulation). In particular,
the heat is probably affecting the jet stream, producing ‘kinks’ which disrupt
the normal temperatures.
Andrew Simms (loc
cit) points out that in the Arctic in Nov 2016 the temperature was 20 degrees C
above normal! Giant icebergs are breaking off in Antarctica.
However, some
scientists dispute the link between extreme weather and climate change (loc
cit): John R. Christy, University of Alabama, says it is simply down to the
very dynamic nature of weather. Martin P. Hoerling, National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration analyst, says what is
happening in the Arctic is mostly staying in the Arctic, and some researchers
are in too much of a hurry to establish a link between weather and human
causes. But please note: these are arguments about the exact
effects of climate change/global warming, not about the underlying trends. The
same point needs to be made with reference to the criticisms of the IPCC report
which claimed glaciers would melt quickly: this section was written by a
separate group to the scientists who measured temperature change etc, and whose
task was to speculate about the impact. No errors have been pointed out in the
scientific summaries.
(c) the crucial point
is that previous rises/falls (going back 600,000 years) have correlated very
clearly with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the vast majority of
scientists believe the major cause of the increased global temperature is
increased CO2, not other factors such as:
4. Other things claimed to cause global warming; specifically
sun spots are the cause of any ‘global warming’:
(i) Sunspots:
There has been
a low level of sunspot activity between 2005 and 2010 – the
lowest levels recorded during the satellite era. This means that the earth has been
absorbing less energy from this source – recent (2011/12) calculations by the
Goddard laboratory for NASA (cited on the NASA website – see References below,
and in Hansen’s book) show about 0.25 watts per square kilometer.
But the earth’s ‘energy imbalance’ (the difference between energy absorbed by
the earth and energy returned to space) is 0.45 watts per square kilometer, that is: there is more energy generated inside
the system than the amount that exits (a positive imbalance). Temperatures have
been going up – but solar activity cannot be a cause of this. Solar activity
varies over 11 year cycles – usually pretty regularly, despite the latest dip
(see the next point).
(ii) Another key
factor is the orbit and tilt/wobble of the planet:
There are of course
natural cycles which affect the climate (including variations in solar
irradiation, La Nina etc) – and no proponents of man-made climate change would
deny this! The point is that these are natural changes, and pretty much predictable (because
their patterns are usually regular), which work over long cycles –
whereas the pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels is
not natural, and can be shown to have affected the composition of the
atmosphere dramatically in a short time:
The increase was
first measured by David Keeling in 1957 (Hansen p 116) – and he also noticed a
24 hour cycle as trees and plants absorbed CO2 during the day and gave off CO2
during the night. He also found that there were variations near to human
habitation – which is why he then made more measurements at a remote spot at
Mauna Loa, Hawaii.
His measurements,
which have never been refuted, (Robin McKie) show that CO2
increased from around 310 ppm to over 390 between 1957 and 2010. (*) There is no doubt that the
levels will continue to rise unless major changes are made in the way energy is
generated. Moreover, CO2 remains in the atmosphere for some time so that there
is a time-lag: even if we start reducing our output now, the results will not
be noticeable immediately.
Scientists believe it
is important to reduce the level to 350 ppm to restore the
energy equilibrium of the planet.
(*) This is a rapid
change over a short period of time – and the rate of change seems to be
accelerating. This is probably what is called exponential growth –
like a compound interest savings account where the amount of increase each year
goes up if the interest is left in. However, in nature exponential growth is
very dangerous: nothing serious seems to be happening at first, but when the
change gets more rapid we get to a ‘tipping point’ beyond which it is
impossible to reverse the change. (The example I usually use to illustrate this
is a pond in a garden: if weeds, say, are growing exponentially this means that
the time in which it takes them to double the space they take up gets shorter
and shorter. It is quite possible for weeks of growth to occur before the weeds
cover half the pond, but they will then fill it entirely overnight! Your fish
will suffocate before you have done anything about it.)
(iii) CO2 is a heavy
gas and falls out of the atmosphere:
There is a CO2 or
‘carbon’ cycle – described by Hansen on pp 118 ff: plants, the oceans and the
land act as ‘reservoirs’ for CO2 (plants/trees hold 600 billion metric tons [gigatons or GtC] primarily as wood
in trees, soils contain 1,500 GtC, and the ocean holds 40,000 dissolved GtC – the
atmosphere holds about 800 GtC as CO2). Again, we know there are natural
cycles such as the glacial to interglacial periods due to the movement of the
earth in space. Also, when the ocean becomes colder it holds more CO2,
so the atmosphere then holds less and this leads to more cooling. But when snow
and ice melt, due to the earth’s changing orbit or tilt, then more CO2 is
released, leading to more warming. These are examples of positive
feedback – and Hansen says they account for nearly half the
interglacial global temperature change.
An estimated 30-40%
of the CO2 released by humans into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, rivers
and lakes which contributes to ocean
acidification: we will deal with the various consequences of global warming
later.
The crucial point,
once again, is how human activity is interfering with these natural cycles.
(iv) Other natural
phenomena such as volcanoes affect the picture:
Yes Mount Pinatubo
erupting in 1991 had an effect on global temperatures, by the aerosols it put
into the atmosphere: it ‘reduced solar heating of Earth by almost 2%... this...
however, was present only briefly – after two years most of the Pinatubo
aerosols had fallen out of the atmosphere.’ (Hansen: Storms of my Grandchildren, Bloomsbury
2009, p 5). If there were a series of volcanoes continually erupting we would
see a longer-term change.
Hansen in fact
identifies no fewer than 9 ‘climate forcings’ – factors that
affect the climate (p 6):
- CO2,
- other greenhouse
gases,
- ozone,
- black carbon
aerosols,
- reflective aerosols,
- aerosol cloud changes,
- land cover change,
- the sun
- and volcanoes.
Hansen gives precise quantifications
for the different amount of effect each has... and concludes
that CO2 is the most significant. This is neither a ‘myth’ nor what you call
‘denial’ (!) but scientific work based on real, detailed and thorough
measurements.
(v)
Global warming is being unfairly used by such scientists as those at East
Anglia University, to explain famines, when these are man-made:
(i) I am not aware of
any environmentalists who would say climate change is the only factor
in food shortages. UNEP (UN Environmental Programme) did suggest that
the Darfur problem originated in climate change, and it seems to me
incontrovertible that failure of rainfall causes crops to fail. Of course,
civil conflict is a crucial factor as well in these crises, and in some parts
of the world civil war has aggravated food shortage, (see John Vidal, Guardian
22.07.11, on the contribution of climate change + war to famine in Somalia) but
would you want to rule out climate change altogether?
(ii) Please remember
that ‘climategate’ originated when the
computer at EAU’s Climate
Research Unit was hacked into (by whom?) in order to release emails, which then
were publicised by Fox News and other anti-global warming media. Eight
committees have since investigated the CRU emails, and no evidence has been
found of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific findings are
not in doubt. The researchers did ‘fail to display the proper degree
of openness’ in responding to queries about their data. I suspect they were
bombarded with requests from would-be deniers and simply lost patience. Every
time I encounter a climate-change sceptic I get the same feeling!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy
(vi) The film
‘An Inconvenient Truth’ was so full of errors that is was banned from being
shown in schools:
The film has not been
banned, and the court that was asked to ban it did not disagree with its
central theme:
BBC (online)
News 11th Oct 2007: A campaign to stop the
government sending DVDs to all secondary schools as part of a climate change
package was started by a parent governor Stewart Dimmock (a member of
the [right-of-centre] New Party). ‘The judge said he had no complaint about
Gore’s central thesis that climate change was happening and was being driven my
emissions from humans.’ He had reservations about 9 specific points which were
not backed up by sufficient scientific agreement, including:
- the claim that
polar bears have drowned because they have had to swim further (some have died in storms);
- the claim that sea
levels would rise by 6 metres in the near future (it would take millennia said the judge);
- there was also ‘not sufficient
evidence’ that global warming caused hurricane Katrina;
- ditto for the melting
of snows on Mt Kilimanjaro, or evaporation of Lake Chad.
The judge said that
the film should have guidance notes accompanying it to draw pupils’ attention
to these points. ‘The government has sent the film to all secondary
schools in England, and the administrations
in Wales and Scotland have done the same.’ A 60 page
guidance document now goes with it.
The book has many,
many examples of the effects of global warming, and it seems significant to me
that the court ruled that only the specific ones cited were doubtful.
(vii)
Polar ice is not melting:
You can check out
details of all this on the NASA website, which has a ‘Global Ice Viewer’ that
illustrates dynamically the changes that have been taking place - e.g.
the annual minimum amount of Arctic ice (it shrinks in the
summer and grows in the winter) has been decreasing by 11.2% per decade over
the past 30 years, and in 2007 reached the lowest recorded level.
Greenland’s glaciers
are losing 100 – 250 billion tons of ice each year and 400 billion tons has
been lost from all glaciers per year since 1994, W. Antarctica has
been losing up to 150 billion tons of ice per year). It seems to me that even
if (as you claim) the ice is thickening - which the NASA figures
at http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ deny – still
the area occupied by the ice has shrunk, and so less heat is reflected
back into space and the warmer the planet gets (positive feedback).
Moreover, other
changes have occurred in the oceans:
- sea levels have
risen by 6.7 inches (17 centimeters) in the last
century (approx 4 mm per year)– the rate of change in the
last decade has been double that of the previous century.
- the oceans’ acidity
has also increased by 30% since the beginning of the industrial revolution
(NASA – full references on the webpage; a change of 0.1 pH = 30% acidification)
- plankton, which control
the carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle and part of the oxygen cycle (every second
breath we take is of oxygen from plankton), are dying off as the oceans warm.
(viii) There have
been other periods of temperature change.
Yes but these have
been short-lived and due to natural events – the current changes are mad-made,
and they show a steady rise of temperature which cannot be reversed.
(ix) It’s a Chinese (or
communist) plot!
This reveals the most
common denominator among climate sceptics: opposition to the state and to
governmental regulation. See below on lobbying... It is worth stating that
the US economy would benefit from a change to renewables (see Protecting
the Planet 7: effects of climate change) – provided government
subsidies are not used for other kinds of energy production. Lord Stern pointed
out that we would save money by trying to prevent global warming, as the costs
if it increases are huge....
5. Who are the ‘Climate Sceptics’?
5. 1 The biased
media:
Al Gore in his book cites a study done by Dr Naomi Oreskes of University of California,
which was published in Science magazine. She took a random sample (about 10%) of all the peer-reviewed science journal articles on
global warming from the previous 10 years. There were 928 articles in
the sample, none of which raised any doubts about the cause of global warming (though
only three-quarters addressed the 'central elements of the consensus' and the
rest were about specific issues not to do with CO2). On the other hand,
another study was done of all the articles in the previous 14 years
from what were considered as the four most influential papers in the US (New
York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and Wall Street Journal). Again a random
sample was taken, amounting to almost 18% of the articles, and this
time 53% gave equal weight to the 'consensus view' and to the
opposition (sceptics/deniers) - thus giving the impression there was
disagreement in the scientific community about the issue. (See more below).
5.2 Doubt
He follows this up with points about how the tobacco industry adopted
exactly the same tactics when the link with cancer was identified: a memo was uncovered
from the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, written in 1960: "Doubt
is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact'
that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the best means of
establishing controversy."
5.3
Lobbying:
Update: ‘Desmog’ has very useful details of climate crisis deniers,
and how they operate, for example: https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/06/20/chief-government-climate-advisor-cleared-wrongdoing-house-lords
The lobby group American
Enterprise Institute, (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded
think-tank, has offered scientists and economists $10,000 each for articles
questioning the report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC)…. The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil,
and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush
administration.
5.4 Names:
Robin McKie, Observer, 04.03.07(?),
points out that those who contest the scientific consensus, e.g. Phillip
Stott, Piers Corbyn, Nigel Calder, Nigel
Lawson, have often got a political agenda. To deal with global
warming, says McKie, quoting philosopher
John Gray, will require government action and intervention in
our lives – and probably bureaucracy – all of which is anathema to the
sceptics, several of whom have pronounced pro-market views. (We
are told, for example, that Europe will ban the inefficient
fluorescent light bulb: I wonder if the Daily Mail will start a campaign to
save it?!)
The names that McKie gives are of people who regularly can be heard on Today and
seen on Newsnight (so they cannot claim, as they do, that
there is a conspiracy of silence over their views!).
5.5 The Press (again)
Date? Mail
on Sunday criticised by UK press regulator, for claiming that global warming
data had been exaggerated in order to get agreement at Paris.
The paper said data from US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration had been treated. The
controversy arose over a ‘pause’ in global warming (used by deniers to claim
warming had been exaggerated) – 1998 was exceptionally hot owing to a strong El
Nino effect. But these years still showed an upward trend compared to the average,
so talk of a ‘pause’ was misleading. Fiona Harvey.
Dec 2017. Peter Wilby (New Statesman
16 Dec 2016 – 5 Jan 2017) says: ‘By my calculations, ten global-warming
sceptics – including the Sunday Telegraph’s Christopher Booker, The
Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens, and the Times’s Matt Ridley – have regular columns in the main
sections of national newspapers.’ According to Geoffrey Lean, environmental
correspondent (formerly of Telegraph, Independent on Sunday and Observer)
‘There used to be four of us [columnists in national newspapers accepting the
consensus]. But three of us have been sacked in the past 18 months.’ Only
George Monbiot remains...
****************
Updates (oldest first)
June 2011. Another argument that
comes up from time to time is that the solar minimum will cause a cooling. It
is said there was a solar minimum during the ‘little ice age’ – however, recent
scientific studies show that the most likely outcome would be very slight
cooling that would make no difference to overall warming:
https://skepticalscience.com/How-would-Solar-Grand-Minimum-affect-global-warming.html
Sep/Oct
2013. Denying Climate Change:
Mehdi
Hasan has a brilliant piece in new Statesman (27th
Sep – 3 Oct 2013)
Deniers are ‘merchants of doubt’, whose ‘doubts’
cost lives, and they are conspiracy theorists. To doubt the findings of
thousands of peer-reviewed articles, when of 928 articles produced between 1993
and 2003 not one rejected the consensus, and when 97% of climate scientists are
in agreement, you have to believe the unbelievable (‘the greatest hoax ever
perpetrated against the American people’, according to US Republican senator
James Inhofe).
Hasan
quotes an interview with Richard Lindzen, professor
of meteorology at MIT, who when asked why the national academies of 34
different countries all signed the IPCC consensus position, suggested they are
‘dependent on the goodwill of the government. And if they’re told ‘sign on’
they’ll sign on.’
According to the WHO ‘climatic changes already are
estimated to cause over 150,000 deaths annually.’
The Observer Editorial, 29th Sep 2013,
points out: deniers claim the global temperature is no longer rising, when the
rate of increase has only slowed down (and is expected to dramatically increase
in future), others say Arctic ice is not shrinking when it reached its sixth
lowest extent this year; one national newspaper claims the Arctic loss is
balanced by the Antarctic gain, when the Arctic loss is 3m sq km of ice in the
last 30 years, and the Antarctic has gained 0.3m (probably just year-to-year
variability). More worrying is the presence in Cameron’s government of such
people as: Peter Lilley (who voted against the climate change act of 2008), and
Owen Paterson, a sceptic as environment secretary(!).
2016. Extra notes from DeSmogUK – the Brexit connection:
There is a deep-rooted connection between UK climate science deniers and those campaigning for Britain to
leave the European Union, new mapping by DeSmogUK can reveal. Tying together this close-knit network
reveals how organisations residing behind the doors of Westminter's 55 Tufton Street share
many of the same members and donors. And the reach of this small group
of Brexit climate deniers extends beyond this Westminster building
to include prominent politicians such as former London Mayor Boris
Johnson, Justice Secretary Michael Gove, and Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom as well
as traditional British media outlets. Perhaps the epitome
of this nexus between climate science deniers and Brexit campaigners came
last week when former environment secretary Owen Paterson delivered a speech at this very
same address. Advertised by Grassroots Out and hosted
by Paterson’s UK2020 think
tank, Paterson argued “Why the UK environment would be improved by leaving the EU.” His speech was quickly criticised for being out-of-touch by
Green MP Caroline Lucas, who said: “I’m as likely to ask Donald Trump
for advice on race relations as I am to trust Owen Paterson on protecting
our environment.”
But it's hard to ignore the political movers and shakers
working inside the walls of this four-storey, multi-million pound building
located just steps from the Houses of Parliament. This small, mostly male,
contingent is a significant driving force behind the 'leave' side of the
23 June EU referendum and the same group
that wants less, not more, done to tackle catastrophic climate change.
The overlap stems from a common neoliberal ideology that fears top-down
state interventions and regulations which are perceived as threatening
values of individual freedom, economic (market) freedom, or the sovereignty of
national governments. Under this logic, we must reject both the European
Union and most climate policy.
It begs the question: If Britain leaves the EU, what will then happen to the country's climate
change policy?
Mapping the Bubble
Delving into the web, you’ll quickly get a sense of the deep-rooted
connection between these various organisations. DeSmog UK first reported on this relationship
in January when a slew of climate science deniers published comment pieces
blaming European bureaucracy, not climate change, for the
December flooding. Then, in February, the Independent revealed that
these inter-related groups all share the 55 Tufton Street address.
So now, with the Brexit vote less than two weeks away, DeSmog UK has for the first time mapped, in-depth, the climate-euro sceptic
bubble for you to explore.
How to use the map: Zoom in and out
to see the web of relationships between the residents of 55 Tufton Street and
its neighbours. Hover over the lines to see the type of relationship between
the two entities, and click on the person or organisation’s name to find out
more (this will open up a new tab where you can find out more information about
all of this entity’s various relationships and stance on climate change).
Looking at the map, you will see 55 Tufton Street at the centre. Above, you have the building’s owner,
Richard Smith, and below you have two rows: organisations which currently
reside (or did until recently) at this address, and key figures within each
organisation. And then you have the many other relationships that are derived
from this.
Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of all people affiliated
with each 55 Tufton Street organisation.
Nor is it likely to be an exhaustive list of all the relationships between the
entities included in the map. If you spot something we’ve missed, let us know
in the comments section below.
Below (and here – link) we highlight some of key relationships
contained in this map:
Who is Richard Smith? He keeps a low
profile and is perhaps best known for when he flew David Cameron to his home
in Shobdon, Herefordshire in
2007. The Midlands businessman owns HR Smith group, which works on advanced aerospace technologies. Not
only is he associated with several of the organisations at 55 Tufton Street, but as
the map shows, Smith has also donated money to the Vote Leave campaign, Labour
Leave, and the Bruges Group (via his company Techtest).
Meet Vote Leave’s climate science
deniers: The prominent Vote Leave campaign group draws several of its members
from Paterson’s UK2020 think tank and Lawson’s Global
Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), including Matt Ridley who’s a member
of both. UKIP MP Douglas Carswell is also a supporter of Vote Leave – Carswell is known for
saying his biggest regret is voting in favour of the 2008 Climate
Change Act.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance’s
ties to everyone: In 2010 following the general election, the TaxPayers’ Alliance hosted a roundtable meeting to discuss the
Conservative Party’s return to power. Among those in attendance included
the GWPF, Global Vision, the Centre for Policy
Studies, the Institute of Economic Affairs, as well as oil giant BP.
Matthew Elliott: While not at
the centre of the map, Elliott is definitely at the centre of many of the
55 Tufton Street
organisations, including the TaxPayers’ Alliance (and its donations wing, the Politics and Economics Research
Trust), Vote Leave, Business for Britain, and The European Foundation. It’s also
interesting to note that Elliott’s wife, Florence Heath, is a petroleum
geologist who at one time worked for Shell and was a Charles G. Koch fellow at
the Competitive Enterprise
Institute (known for promoting climate science denial) in
the summer of 2001.
July 2019: Excellent coverage of the different interest groups that deny climate
change: more from DeSmog.co.uk, for
example:
https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/07/11/historical-deception-global-climate-coalition-science-denial
The Global Climate
Coalition, GCC, worked for decades to deny global warming and to say the IPCC
was ‘politicised’.
Within the GCC, the Science and Technology Assessment Committee (STAC) took responsibility for assessing contemporary climate science and formulating strategic arguments to undermine it. The STAC was chaired by Mobil Oil’s Lenny Bernstein. Mobil, Exxon, and Texaco (now part of Chevron) all contributed five staffers to the committee.
An internal 1994 document outlining “issues and options” for the GCC to consider regarding “potential global climate change”
shows the group’s outright climate science denial.
The document concludes that “the claim that
serious impacts from climate change have occurred or will occur in the future
has not been proven” and “consequently, there is no basis for the design of
effective policy action that would eliminate the potential for
climate change.”
July 2019 reports show
consensus is probably over 99% that the earth is warming:
Aug 2019 civil servants in climate
change dept are flying more often! Last year civil servants in the Dept
for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) took more than 4,500
flights, compared with 2,700 the year before. The dept claimed to be making
progress in reducing its carbon emissions, however: total emissions fell from
30,000 tonnes the previous year to 22,700 last year. This was due to reduction
in amount of gas used to heat the dept building at 10 Victoria Street, after
energy efficiency upgrades.
************************