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Friday, April 19, 2024

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Friday, April 19, 2024
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IPCC assessment to challenge Australia’s collective climate denial

Giles Parkinson
23

The 5th assessment report from the United Nations climate body should leave no-one in doubt: climate change is unequivocal, the role of mankind is clear, the changes experienced already are unprecedented and the world has no time to waste.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Friday released the first of a series of reports – its first wholesale assessment of the climate science since 2007 – that underpin the science of climate change and warn that the world is heading to disaster if it fails to act.

The report says the world has already warmed 0.9C since pre-industrial times and will likely rise by more than 2C and up to 4.8C by 2100 if emissions are not reduced quickly and dramatically. The world risks rising temperatures, rising seas, shrinking glaciers and ice caps and significant changes in local weather patterns.

(A more detailed report on its findings can be found here, including an explanation of the warming “hiatus”. And a couple of compelling graphs can be found here, and some really scary ones here. A summary of the headline findings can be found here).

“The heat is on, now we must act,” said UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.

The UN body called on world leaders to use the new report to push for concerted global action and a binding treaty. They said world leaders were kidding themselves if they believed that the worst impact could be avoided if action was delayed.

The IPCC painted four scenarios, but only one envisaged the possibility that the world could avoid more than 2C average warming in surface temperatures.

“Some may think we have time, but it is quite the opposite,” said Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation “The low band comes only if very quick and urgent action is taken. That is very important for climate negotiations.

The call by the UN body for governments to accelerate action puts the newly elected Coalition government in Australia a difficult position, considering that – despite being a wealthy and high polluting country – it is proposing to remove the institutions and policies, such as the carbon price, that could achieve that increased ambition.

Australia is one of the countries most at risk – economically, as HSBC identified this week – and environmentally, as the IPCC report highlights. This graph below shows that at best, Australia – which has just recorded its hottest 12 months on record – will experience average temperature rises of between 0.3C and 0.7C over the next 20 years.

Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 8.29.26 PM

By 2100, an increase of 1.0C to 1.5C appears inevitable, which will create more temperature extremes. But Julie Arblaster, from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and a lead author of the IPCC report, said 4C to 5C was also possible. “A  4C change may not seem like a lot, but consider that the last ice age was just 4C cooler.”

Australian environment minister Greg Hunt said on Saturday, he accepted the science, and the IPCC report.  Hunt is a champion debater who knows how to articulate the words, but the Coalition government is yet to articulate a credible policy.

The Direct Action plan is clearly inadequate to achieve anything that approximates the science, and many say it will fail to achieve even the promised 5 per cent reduction target by 2020.

The biggest test for the government will be in the release of the Climate Change Authority report within next month, which will recommend emission reductions targets and caps and caps, and for the first propose a carbon budget for the country. In the light of the IPCC report, this carbon budget could be tighter than anyone has imagined.

The IPCC report warns that the world’s climate budget could be exhausted within 30 years at current rates, and as we explain here, the world may only be able to exploit 10 per cent of its fossil fuel reserves if it is to meet its climate goals. This will come as a crushing disappointment to Australian coal miners, and possibly its gas producers. And it will be a severe reality test for the new government and its fossil fuel industry. Australia’s share of this carbon budget will be hotly debated.

The Coalition, of course, has tried to suppress the CCA report by vowing to dismantle the institution, but it does not have the legislative power to do that, so the report will be released. The Coalition has also closed the Climate Commission, which provided independent scientific assessment, but this has now re-appeared as a community-funded Climate Council.

Ironically, on Friday, the same day as the IPCC released its research, and as Hunt mouthed the words of accepting the science, his department shut down the Climate Commission website, so its taxpayer funded research over the last two years could no longer be accessed by the public.

However sincere Hunt might like to appear in interviews, the reality is that Tony Abbott owes his position to the cabal of climate deniers that elevated him to leadership, and climate denial remains rife within the Coalition. He has appointed a vocal climate denier as his main business advisor.

Even where Coalition politicians, business leaders and media commentators do not reject the existence of man-made climate change outright, they have sought to embrace the likes of Denmark’s Bjorn Lomborg, who argues that action is not urgent and solutions should be put back into the test-tube.

Abbott’s ability to implement even Direct Action is compromised by the rag-tag group that will hold the balance of power in the Senate, including at least two, and possibly three Senators from the Palmer United Party.

Clive Palmer, who will also sit in the lower house, is one of the main developers of the mega coal mines proposed for the Galilee Basin, identified by environmental groups as one of the world’s biggest “carbon bombs.”

The one factor that may galvanise action from the conservative side of politics is the coal seam gas issue and its intrusion on to farming land.

As George Monbiot writes evocatively in this piece, the opposition to CSG may help to bring home the realities of climate science in much the same way as opposition to wind farms encouraged many into the embrace of climate deniers. Given the strong feeling on both issues, there is a real risk that conservatives are split right down the middle.

The other risk for Australia is its isolation. The Coalition government contends that the rest of the world is not acting. But China is not only introducing carbon trading schemes, it is also putting a limit on coal use and banning new coal fired generators in many of its industrial regions. The US has also effectively banned new coal generation.

China’s Qin Dahe, the co-chairman of the IPCC working group, told media on Friday, that business as usual would be unthinkable, even in China. “If every Chinese family has 3 cars (like they do in the US) it will be a disaster for the world. If china can manage its business well, it will be great contribution.”

(This story has been updated to include the closure of the Climate Commission’s website).

 

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Comments

23 responses to “IPCC assessment to challenge Australia’s collective climate denial”

  1. Marko Simatkovich Avatar
    Marko Simatkovich

    “The Direct Action plan is clearly adequate to achieve anything”… Understand this should read ‘inadequate’…

    1. Peter Webb Avatar
      Peter Webb

      Abbott and most of the front bench are climate skeptics. They just want to deflect this as an issue at the lowest economic cost possible. So they announce the same targets as Labor and put this quite dubious Direct Action Plan together, which mostly funnels the money back into rural economies through soil abatement, which keeps the Nats happy.

      Don’t be surprised if they never get around to spending one cent on Direct Action which is not a thinly concealed cash gift to farmers for trivial changes to agricultural practices. And if the global air temperatures don’t increase to at least 1998 levels by the next election, probably nobody outside of Balmain and Carlton will care anyway.

      And don’t be surprised if despite doing nothing, we still achieve a 5% reduction by 2020. Our energy consumption is dropping, and as a percentage of GDP has been dropping for 40 years. Nothing to do with the carbon tax; this affects only electricity consumption and this has continued to rise. A lot more to do with far more fuel efficient vehicles and systems in general, which is the normal economic response to increased supply costs. And there is a long way to go on these economies, simply not increasing natural gas excise as quickly as petrol excise could convert almost our entire national vehicle fleet to gas within a decade, cutting CO2 at very low cost. We romped in on our Kyoto allocations for CO2 under Howard despite him not doing a thing other than allowing the market to take its course, and the same is likely under Abbott.

  2. Peter Webb Avatar
    Peter Webb

    The earth is now somewhat cooler than it was in 1998. Despite us dropping more CO2 into the atmosphere in this period than at any time since 1850.
    The only experimental evidence that we have now that we didn’t have 6 years ago (when the last IPCC report came out) is that the earth has spent another 6 years without significant warming.
    In real sciences, if experimental evidence comes in which does not support your theory as strongly as previous evidence, your confidence in the theory is weakened. Its called the scientific method. Bizarrely, the IPCC is apparently more confident in its theories than it was 6 years ago, despite the experimental evidence having become weaker than it was 6 years ago.
    Of course, the IPCC is not about science, which is why they don’t seem to know about the scientific method and the role of experiment in testing theory. Its about lobbying. And power. And conferences in exotic locations. So as the evidence gets weaker, they simply get shriller. All hoping the gravy train can last until retirement.

    1. Bob_Wallace Avatar
      Bob_Wallace

      “The earth is now somewhat cooler than it was in 1998.”

      One could think that were they ignorant of ENSO patterns and how we experienced a massively warm El Nino in 1998.

      Actually the issue is whether one is ignorant or intentionally spreading misinformation.

      1. Peter Webb Avatar
        Peter Webb

        Yet nobody predicted this. Despite the fact that we knew in 1998 that we were experiencing an El Nino. The believers kept saying “and the earth will get warmer still”; not one said “this is atypical; because of this we shouldn’t experience any more warming for 15 years”.
        The truth or falsity of a scientific theory is determined by how well it predicts the outcome of future experiments. Climate “science” is extremely poor at this. Which means that it is a poor scientific theory.
        What climate “scientists” are good at is predicting the past. And offering post-hoc excuses for their failures – like the excuses you provide.
        It is not science. Science is explored using the scientific method. This says that if new experiments (eg temperature data for the last 6 years) do not match the theory as well as previous experiments (temperatures pre-2006), and they certainly don’t, then your confidence in the theory being correct must decrease. Bizarrely, the IPCC has used the opposite principle – the new data does not support their theory as well as the old data, but instead of less confidence they have more confidence. Perhaps if the earth cooled by another degree they would have 100% confidence in anthropogenic global warming instead of the 95% they now profess.
        It isn’t science. It is political lobbying designed to induce a scare campaign which will lead to more money for climate “science”. Totally self-serving, and a prostitution of real science.

        1. Rikaishi Rikashi Avatar
          Rikaishi Rikashi

          You’re nit-picking a single aberration of the sort which is currently impossible to accurately predict, and using it to try and disprove an overwhelming amount of evidence about the overall trends which we can and do reliably predict with a high degree of confidence.

          It’s a very convincing-sounding argument, and like many shallowly convincing arguments it is just plain wrong.

          1. Peter Webb Avatar
            Peter Webb

            The single aberration being the last 15 years of no increase in global temperatures?
            Like I said, climate “scientists” are great at predicting the past but hopeless at predicting the future. You would think that with “7,000 scientists” involved, one by chance would have predicted a plateau in temperatures. But no. I bet if you had asked 7,000 astrologers for a prediction as to 2013 temperatures in 1998, more than zero would have got it correct.
            The validity of a scientific theory is determined by its predictive power. Climate “science” apparently has less than astrology.

          2. Bob_Wallace Avatar
            Bob_Wallace

            Let’s look at some pretty (scary) pictures Peter.

            There are three factors which make year to year changes in global temperature aside from human caused GHG increases. One, as you seem to grasp, is the ENSO cycle. El Ninos add deep ocean heat, warming the air. La Ninas bring cold water from underneath the ocean surface and cool the air.

            These are cyclic, they come and go,but not in a fixed pattern. We don’t yet understand what controls these events. But we do know that in a strong El Nino, it’s hotter. And we know that since 1998 we have had not strong El Ninos.

            Since 1998 we’ve had mostly La Ninas and ENSO neutral years. The ocean has given us a break.

            The other factor is small, but large enough changes in solar output. The Sun heats and cools a little on roughly a 11 year cycle. As solar input changes, so do global temperatures.

            Then there are volcanic eruptions. A big blow out can toss immense amounts of fine particles into the atmosphere. Those bits and pieces act like a big sun shade, reflecting solar input back into space. A really big volcano can cool the Earth for a couple of years.

            Now, let’s look at the planetary temperature record with the solar cycle, ENSO events and volcanic events taken out.

            That’s the first figure. Notice how the Earth has not ceased to warm?

            Then, let’s remember that there is more to the planet than just the few miles of air above our heads. There are massive amounts of water and earth that dwarf the volume of air in our near atmosphere. Let’s look at how things have been going on there.

            Take a look at the second figure. Look at the massive amount of heat we’re packing into the deep ocean. Look how Global temperatures have not cease to rise.

            Now, let’s circle back to something you do seem to know, El Ninos make us hot.

            Imagine a future El Nino fueled by the tremendous amount of heat we’ve been storing in the ocean’s water.

            Can you say “Damn, it’s really hot!”?

          3. Peter Webb Avatar
            Peter Webb

            As I understand your argument, if things had happened differently then the earth would have continued to warm, and the predictions of climate scientists would have turned out to be correct. So although they were wrong in this universe, in a parallel universe with different weather they might have been correct.

            Indeed, you don’t even seem to appreciate they were wrong. You say “That’s the first figure. Notice how the Earth has not ceased to warm?” No. The earth has not warmed since 1998. What I see is a graph which shows that if the global temperatures were different to what they were, the earth could have warmed since 1998. But it hasn’t. The temperatures in your graph were never measured temperatures; they are the theoretical predictions based on your climate model. Which turned out to be wrong. When faced with experimental evidence which contradicts your theory, its no use saying if the data had been different it would have supported your theory.
            Interesting that climate “scientists” are now claiming that the deep ocean is soaking up more heat than their theory suggested. Apparently this has been enough to change a predicted warming since 1998 into an actual cooling. This mismodelling of ocean heat transfer would seem to be an extremely serious flaw in climate science models, completely invalidating their output (eg changing a warming into a cooling).
            Hopefully climate “scientists” will stop publishing predictions of global temperatures until they find and fix the errors in their programs which caused them to make such bad predictions. That should take them a couple of years.

          4. Bob_Wallace Avatar
            Bob_Wallace

            You are making a couple of mistakes. (Actually more.)

            First, you’re almost certainly taking your “hasn’t warmed since 1998” from the HadCRUT3 database. That’s a somewhat restricted measurement of air temperature that under measures polar temperatures.

            The HadCRUT3 was started in 1850 and used temperatures from land stations and “ships at sea”. Back in 1850 we simply didn’t have temperature measurements in the polar regions to any great extent. We’ve seen the greatest warming at the poles and if a dataset under measures that part of the globe then warming will look less extreme.

            If you look at one of the temperature records such as NASA’s GISS that includes ample polar measurements then you can see that 1998 was not the hottest atmospheric year, 2005 and 2010 returned higher annual temperatures than did 1998.

            Second, you’re intentionally ignoring the role of ENSO and solar activity.

            Third, you’re looking only at near-Earth air temperatures and intentionally ignoring increases in land and water temperatures.

            Now, it’s very clear that you are working very hard to deny the science and that you have every intention to keep on doing so. I won’t continue to argue with you because you are immune to facts and logic. Continuing would simply be a waste of my time.

            You’ve demonstrated your intention to continue to cherry pick a faulty database and to dismiss scientific facts in order to continue your bogus claims.

            (Actually I’m posting only what I’ve posted for someone who might stumble on your foolishness and be mislead.)

            Begone, troll.

          5. Peter Webb Avatar
            Peter Webb

            Umm, I didn’t claim that 1998 was the hottest year on record.
            So pretty much the first two thirds of your post are attacking a claim I didn’t actually make. (I merely claimed that 1998 was warmer than 2012, which in fact it was.)
            The last one third seems mostly just you going on about how you think I “deny science” and are “immune to facts and logic”.
            But as the only thing you identify as wrong in my post is that you think I claimed 1998 was the hottest on record, but in fact I didn’t actually make that claim. Whoops, your bad.
            So have you found a single thing in my posts here which you consider wrong? Preferably of a scientific nature? I am very keen on getting the science right.

          6. Ken Fabian Avatar
            Ken Fabian

            If warming had stopped the period in question would have resulted in a clear DROP in temperature. Going up and levelling off ahead of the next rise IS warming. Temperatures going up and going down in equal measure is what the graphs would be showing if it had stopped. They don’t show that. No predictions have ever claimed the ups and downs would vanish, only that the ups will continue to exceed the downs over periods long enough to be representative. 30 years is the usual minimum to avoid confusing variability with a trend.

            And, during this period ocean heat content continued to rise strongly, without any matching pause – which it would have if warming had really stopped. It is a much more representative measure of change to the climate system than the secondary effects on surface air temperatures.

            Simply looking at the natural shorter term influences – ENSO especially – reveals the lack of real foundation of this climate denialist bit of misinformation and misdirection; more el Nino’s than la Nina’s over a decade and a half in the absence of warming would (naturally) show rising global surface air temperatures and more la Nina’s would (naturally) show falling temperatures. But, unnaturally, a period of more la Nina’s have failed to show falling temperatures. That is global warming.

            Foster and Rahmstorf showed what recent temperatures would be like if the ENSO variability is removed (and solar variations and volcanic aerosols) – and there is no warming pause or slowdown or reversal since 1998.
            http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=52

          7. Peter Webb Avatar
            Peter Webb

            No. The standard definition of “warmer” is having a higher temperature. And cooler means a lower temperature.
            2012 had a considerably lower temperature than 1998, and a lower temperature means cooler (see above paragraph). For you to be able to claim that its now warmer than 1998, temperatures would have to be higher now than in 1998. The opposite is true.
            Any statement made about what temperatures would be like if ENSO variability is removed is not a scientific statement as it is not testable (falsifiable). It has as much scientific merit as a discussion of what the world would have been like if some historical figure had never been born. No scientific validity at all, as it cannot be tested.
            The validity of a science (according to the scientific method) is measured by its predictive power, its capability to predict the outcomes of future experiments. Climate “scientists” are great at predicting the past. And offering excuses as to why there predictions don’t come true.
            The predictive power of climate science is considerably worse than astrology (at leas some astrologers make accurate predictions some times, if only through chance), and accordingly climate “science” can have no more claim to be a science than is astrology.
            Or else your post wouldn’t simply be a list of excuses as to why climate “scientists” were wrong. They were wrong because their models are seriously wrong. So now we know the models can’t be trusted, people will stop trusting them. This attitude is now widespread, and helps explain why governments are running, not walking, away from mandatory CO2 emissions. At Kyoto, they thought the models were correct. By Copenhagen they knew they weren’t.

          8. Ken Fabian Avatar
            Ken Fabian

            Anyone who cannot grasp the concept of temperature trends being an average over a sufficient time period to be meaningful – in order to distinguish them short term natural oscillations and variation – has nothing of significance to say about temperature trends.

            I think this is a case of saying “this is what climate science says” – when it doesn’t.

          9. Bob_Wallace Avatar
            Bob_Wallace

            For those who are distracted by wiggles in lines, averaging over longer time spans makes the message clear.

            Heating up.

            We.are.heating.up.

          10. Peter Webb Avatar
            Peter Webb

            “If warming had stopped the period in question would have resulted in a clear DROP in temperature.” This is your first line, and its very amusing.

            If something stops warming, it means it is the same temperature or less. That is because warmer means higher temperature, and so not warming is the same temperature or less. Nothing to do with a DROP, clear or otherwise.

            Average global temperatures decreased from 1998 to 2012, are you seriously claiming that a reduction in temperatures constitutes a “warming”? Does climate “science” really redefine warming to mean something other than a higher temperature? Does climate science also redefine “black” to meaning the same as “white”?

          11. Bob_Wallace Avatar
            Bob_Wallace

            Against my better judgement I’m going to engage with you one more time Peter.
            You know very well why 1998 temperatures were abnormally high.

            You know very well that you are engaging in dishonest argument.

          12. Ken Fabian Avatar
            Ken Fabian

            Your argument is nonsensical. Global heat content increased strongly from 1998 to 2012 (Mostly in the oceans); are you seriously claiming that ISN’T global warming?

          13. Bob_Wallace Avatar
            Bob_Wallace

            Peter has appointed himself a committee of one whose task it is to define global warming.

            And via the twisted definition created along with data selection/discarding by The Committee of Peter the Earth has been declared to be cooling.

            News soon to be released from TCoP – black is white, up is down, and 99% of all climate scientist know less than Peter.

            I get more rational thinking from the burned out wino who hangs out around the Post Office, babbling disjointed phrases.

          14. Peter Webb Avatar
            Peter Webb

            I have not attempted to define “global warming”, I have merely repeated the common definition of “warmer” as being an increase in temperature. And nor did I say the earth is “cooling” I said it is cooler than in 1998. Which it is.
            Although you do raise an interesting point. Climate “scientists” don’t provide a scientific definition of “global warming” sufficient to determine if it is occurring at any point in time. In all other sciences, something is said to be warming if the first derivative of temperature with respect to time is positive. This standard definition doesn’t work in climate science, as the earth has a diurnal variation in temperatures (of the order of a few tenths of a degree per day, which is a huge variation over such a small time) which means it warms and cools every day. The normal definition of warming (derivative of temperature over time is positive) is useless in this context.
            If you want to use some non-standard definition of warming – and the nature of the data set you are analysing means that you have to – you need to supply a scientific definition of warming. This is a formula that uses numeric data from observation and provides an answer as to whether the earth is warming. Unfortunately, you will have to provide a time benchmark, and that is completely arbitrary, and different time benchmarks provide very different answers. So how you pick the definition of “warming” will determine if it is or isn’t warming.
            If you think you can provide a scientific means of answering the question “is the earth warming”, then you should provide it. If you can’t, then you should do as I do, which is avoid using the term entirely, as it is not properly defined.
            Even astrologers do a better job of defining their key terms. Climate “scientists” choose to redefine standard scientific terms (such as the rate of warming is the first derivative of temperature) but don’t tell us the new definition. They just use it without definition. Astrologers don’t do that. Both are junk science.

    2. Giles Avatar
      Giles

      I define warming as temperatures going up, which they clearly have done on a yearly and particularly a decadal basis, if you read the IPCC report. You are obviously an astroturfed. Thankyou and goodbye.

  3. David Hamilton Avatar
    David Hamilton

    Giles, the Climate Commission’s web site was archived by Pandora, the National Library of Australia’s web archival service and is available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-136923 I suspect that many people would have taken the precaution of downloading the Commission’s reports.

    It seems clear that by closing the web site the Government has repudiated the Commission’s reports. It would be good to see Greg Hunt questioned about this: does he regard the Commission’s reports as inaccurate? If so, what are the specific inaccuracies? What expert advice was he relying on when he judged the reports inadequate?, and so on. If Mr Hunt is unable to answer such questions in detail, then it would be tempting to conclude that the web site was closed because the Commission’s reports were ideologically inconvenient, rather than inaccurate.

    1. Peter Webb Avatar
      Peter Webb

      No, closing down the web site does not mean the Government has repudiated the Commission’s reports. It simply means they think they are worthless. Which I am inclined to agree with.
      The Climate Commission reports repeated a great deal of material about the world’s climate which is easily found elsewhere. Where the Climate Commission makes specific predictions about Australia none of these have turned out to be correct.
      If you find any predictions as to future climate in the Commission’s website that were actually shown to be correct and not easily available elsewhere, you should tell us what they are. If there aren’t any, then the web site serves no purpose other than misinformation and should have been closed down.

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