A few days ago the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) published a report by Nic Lewis and Marcel Crok (A sensitive matter: How the IPCC buried evidence showing good news about global warming), criticising the IPCC for its dealing with the issue of climate sensitivity, ie. the question of how temperatures will respond to greenhouse gas forcing. Judith Curry wrote the foreword to the report, admitting she had initial reservations about doing so ('I did think twice about writing a foreword for a GWPF publication. I try to stay away from organizations with political perspectives on global warming. That said, GWPF has done some commendable things, notably pushing for inquiries into the Climategate affair. And there really are very few options for publishing a report like this.')
In the report Lewis and Crok come to lower numbers for climate sensitivity, both with regard to Transient Climate Response (TCR) and Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS), thus making the case for some more optimistic evaluation of the future impacts of climate change. While I am in no position to comment on the merits of this technical discussion, I can offer some observations about the politico-scientific landscape in which the climate change discourse is located.
The report was commented upon by various blogs, and by the Science media Centre which collected statements from Ed Hawkins, Myles Allen and others who gave the report a 'lukewarm' welcome, according to the BBC's environment correspondent Matt McGrath. He thinks that this episode might signify an emerging consensus between diehard contrarians a la GWPF and the IPCC mainstream. Writes McGrath:
Here was one of the world's foremost bastions of contrariness when it comes to man-made climate change, admitting that temperatures were actually rising in response to human emissions of greenhouse gases.
And according to the study, the 2C threshold of dangerous warming would be crossed later on this century.
This raises the interesting question how much of the Lewis/Crok paper is actually endorsed by the GWPF. Providing a platform for an IPCC critical analysis does not mean the organisation shares the details, or the broader message of the paper. Maybe the motivation was to undermine the IPCC's authority. Be that as it may, the perception seems to emerge that there is general agreement between the GWPF and the mainstream in that continued GHG emissions will lead to a warming of global temperatures.
Lewis is quoted as saying 'I am not denying that it's a considerable policy challenge, I am not saying let's bury our heads in the sand, this is trying to present the science.'
And Ed Hawkins says 'If we broadly agree on this, the debate can crucially move on to what action is needed to deal with a warming planet.'
However, McGrath is aware of the fact that 'the GWPF are not highlighting this acknowledgement that man-made emissions are driving rapid changes in our climate, compared to the historical experience' -- which he finds 'strange'.
If my reading is correct that the GWPF does not commit to this implication but is mainly interested in IPCC bashing, the invitation to Lewis and Crok may have led to a new dynamic. Commentators read this as a sign that there is some agreement emerging, despite the appearance to the contrary (because the GWPF emphasises that the sensitivity analysis is different between Lewis/Crok and IPCC).
It is now up to the GWPF to re-state their position with regard to climate policies: is there reason to act or to bury the head in the sand?
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35 comments:
It has been amusing to watch the apparent surprise of many climate scientists at their discovery that many "climate sceptics" are actually lukewarmers. Taking a rough and ready definition, that lukewarmers believe in AGW but doubt catastrophic AGW, one could reasonably place many of the more famous sceptics (Liljegren, McIntyre implicitly, Montford, Watts explicitly) in that camp, together with a number of "maverick" climate scientists (Curry, Lewis, Lindzen). Indeed it has long seemed to me that the unspoken position of Klimazwiebel itself has sympathy for lukewarmerdom.
What does not follow from this, however, is Ed's suggestion that "the debate can crucially move on to what action is needed to deal with a warming planet". Or to be more precise that is, as it always has been, a reasonable question, but a perfectly reasonable answer at the moment would be "little or nothing". Many lukewarmers are also "policy sceptics", and their view that current policy responses are hopelessly ineffective, with costs far exceeding any conceivable benefits, remains unchanged.
And straying briefly into more dangerous territory, lukewarmers can and do remain highly critical of the IPCC, the hockey stick, the climategate fiasco, the Lewandowsky nonsense, and the bizarre idea that sceptics are a bunch of "fossil fuel funded deniers". True peace in our time requires mainstream climate science to acknowledge a few uncomfortable truths.
I don't think the GWPF has any need to endorse or reject this work from Lewis and Crok. Nor do I see any agreement emerging. I see the take home message as:
- Inside "IPCC's paradigm", the real situation is things are better than we thought. Quite the opposite of what they tell you.
But, the clue is "inside IPCC's paradigm". Lewis / Crok work does not say anything about the validity of the paradigm - which the GWPF may very well reject.
The only difference I see, is "alarmists" understanding "negationism" is not a single opinion or proposal.
I'm afraid both Matt McGrath and Reiner Grundmann misunderstand the GWPF and our work. They should know better.
Our mission statement and philosophy has been known ever since we launched the GWPF in 2009 and is prominently posted on our website:
* We have developed a distinct set of principles that set us apart from most other stakeholders in the climate debates:
* The GWPF does not have an official or shared view about the science of global warming – although we are of course aware that this issue is not yet settled.
* On climate science, our members and supporters cover a broad range of different views, from the IPCC position through agnosticism to outright scepticism.
As a matter of fact, we don't even have a collective view on the excellent new report by Nic Lewis and Marcel Crok.
We are promoting an open debate, our opponents are trying to close it down.
Sorry, of course, is "denialism" instead of "netationism" @ 12:38 PM
The Hawkins quote ...
'If we broadly agree on this, the debate can crucially move on to what action is needed to deal with a warming planet.'
Yes and no.
Yes: we should get beyond the point that 'something' has to be done without further specifying it (vs the position of 'nothing' by old-fashioned sceptics). The public discussion on the 'what' is virtually not there, while instead laymen verbally kill each other over tenths or hundreds of degrees of trend warming.
No: The statement also seems to suggests that we are still disucssing science without doing 'anything'. This is dead wrong: climate policies ARE in place already in large parts of the industrialized world and costs billions over billions already.
For me, the more and more empirically-based discussion on climate sensitivity, esp. TCR, should be seen as part or a mid-term review for current climate policy approaches.
Benny
you raise an interesting point about the official goals of the GWPF and its perception (as the leading sceptical think tank in the UK, or something like this).
How would you describe Lord Lawson's role in the recent BBC Today service? Did he speak for the GWPF? Would others in the GWPF contradict him?
@ Reiner Grundmann
You ask questions which are difficult to be responded in public. Are you aware of this (wikipedia)?
"There have been calls for the Charity Commission to reconsider the GWPF's charitable status. Campaigning statements made by Lawson have been said to misrepresent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports,[13] and the Charity Commission insist that charities must use factually accurate material when campaigning.[14]
In June 2013 it was reported that Bob Ward had filed a formal complaint to the Charity Commission, alleging that the GWPF had "persistently disseminated inaccurate and misleading information about climate change as part of its campaign against climate policies in the UK and overseas", and that this was an abuse of their charitable status. The Charity Commission stated it was "assessing the concerns to determine whether there is any regulatory action for the Commission to take". It would give the foundation an opportunity to respond, and if it was considered to have breached charitable status conditions the foundation would have a chance to show it had corrected the problem before a formal investigation was instigated. Peiser issued a response denying the allegations, stating that "The GWPF has never participated in any campaigning and does not promote any particular line of opinion". Ward described this as untrue, citing what he considered to be examples of inaccurate campaigning statements."
Andreas
Yeah, but studies that indicate lower sensitivities are a real problem for the AGW people, Ed Hawkins notwithstanding. First, many economists feel that renewable energy sources will become cheaper than fossil fuels around mid-century; at that point most of us will start using renewables without any mitigation schemes. Electric cars may be mature by then too. CO2 will not keep going up forever.
So then the question becomes, how much damage will result from that half-century? TCR and ECS are an important piece of answering that question, and making them smaller may make the total damage enormously smaller (a la Richard Tol).
Second, at least some of us care much more about the right-hand-tail of climate sensitivity than about the median. I would probably prefer adaptation for most standard warming scenarios. What worries me far more is the less likely possibility of really disastrous outcomes, "tipping points". Those are what could convince me that the world has to shift to starvation wages and a crash program to prevent the tipping point. - And while we can't really predict the likelihood of Black Swans, smaller TCR and ECS may completely wipe out that right-hand-tail.
There's a reason so many AGW activists keep mentioning enormous unlikely impacts.
Reiner
Nigel Lawson always speaks for himself. We are not a party and have made clear over and over again that we don't have a collective position on any issue.
GWPF members have different views on most subject matters. The only issue we all agree upon: that there is a manifest lack of an open, frank and critical climate debate.
To encourage open discussion and critical assessment is the main raison d'être of our work and existence.
The debate that GWPF claim to want to promote should be about what action we should take to address AGW. The strategy GWPF and their tiny number of members and wealthy supporters is to endlessly debate and to oppose any action that will be damaging to the fossil fuel industry and to those that grow rich from fossil fuels.
Anonymous, I don't think you're listening. The reason everyone is interested in Nic Lewis is that his results say to many of us, The right action to take is none.
If you want to claim that that is wrong, you have to convince us.
In short Nic Lewis suggests to ignore all other evidence for ECS.
Most skeptc blogs empasize Lewis paper in the sense of showing the IPCC is wrong, but there's no real discussion of the fact that even with Lewis values of ECS there's AGW.
No, there won't be a "skeptical consensus" beyond "The IPCC is wrong and Al Gore is fat".
Andreas
@Anonymous
"even with Lewis values of ECS there's AGW."
You're still not listening. There's AGW, but it may be slow enough that the total problem gets a lot smaller and a lot less severe. Adaptation may become the preferred response.
Again, if you disagree you have to convince us, not just throw around stuff like "those that grow rich from fossil fuels". Since I know that I am not in that category, and that none of the skeptics I respect are in that category, the only thing that convinces me of is that you are out of touch with the realities of this topic.
Benny
So was Judith Curry wrong to say that 'I try to stay away from organizations with political perspectives on global warming'? Meaning that she sees the GWPF as such an organisation?
You are trying to paint the GWPF as a group without clear direction as every member has different views. I think this is misleading. The GWPF occupies a well defined space in the ecosystem of climate change discourse.
Lord Lawson did not emphasize to the BBC journalist that he was speaking in personal capacity. The GWPF printed the transcript with the headline 'BBC Today Programme: Sir Brian Hoskins, a member of the Committee on Climate Change, and Lord Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and founding chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation'
"It has been amusing to watch the apparent surprise of many climate scientists at their discovery that many "climate sceptics" are actually lukewarmers."
It is even more amusing to note the apparent surprise of those "sceptics" own followers. It seems these leading "climate sceptics" have been horribly misunderstood all these years, by nobody so much as those who read what they write. While the 'leading sceptics' have been valiantly working the coalface to inform everyone that AGW is real somehow, inexplicably, their readers have come away with the impression that there is no warming, and there is cooling, and that the warming that isn't happening is caused by the sun and ocean cycles, and that this is entirely natural and caused by UHI, that there is too much uncertainty to conclude anything apart from that climate sensitivity is certainly low and warming is good for you, and that the observations are too unreliable to show warming show that it isn't warming, and that these same observations that show no warming are routinely adjusted upwards to show warming, and so on.
All in all it seems that this "lukewarm" message is the most tragically misunderstood message since Christianity.
Reiner
What political perspectives on global warming is the GWPF to have precisely?
We have explained for years what we stand for. It's your right to question our position.
However, you then have to spell out which 'well defined space' in the climate discourse you think the GWPF occupies.
Let's see if you can can up with a better definition.
Frank O'D: I'm a sceptic and I had to have someone explain to me why Ed Hawkins and Richard Betts were so exultant at this paper.
Ed and Richard spend a lot of their time pondering how to communicate with sceptics. It now transpires they would have done better to have spent their time pondering how to listen to sceptics.
They both should realise that they're not in the policy loop, that's the exclusive reserve of environmentalists, do they can agree all they like with sceptics on what to do, but it won't fly without the environmentalists agreeing.
"I'm a sceptic and I had to have someone explain to me why Ed Hawkins and Richard Betts were so exultant at this paper. "
Perhaps because being afflicted with scientific and logical worldview, they thought that the GWPF might draw the conclusion of their own argument. But of course many 'sceptics' treat an argument as a bus journey, they get off at their stop.
Still if Benny Peiser is right and this is not the "GWPF's argument" - in other words if the GWPF can't even agree amongst themselves that their own reports are any good, and are already distancing themselves from this one (because don't like the answer?) - then I suppose nobody else should pay too much attention to them either.
@Frank O'Dwyer
"Perhaps because being afflicted with scientific and logical worldview, they thought that the GWPF might draw the conclusion of their own argument."
I hate to keep repeating myself, but you-all are still not listening. Nic Lewis's paper increases the attractiveness of adaptation instead of mitigation. That is at least one conclusion of their argument. If you don't want to deal with that, you are the one who is refusing to deal with the conclusions of arguments. Which makes it hard to communicate.
@MikeR
"Nic Lewis's paper increases the attractiveness of adaptation instead of mitigation"
That is far from obvious. Indeed I don't see how you could conclude any such thing from an assessment of TCR or ECS alone. Intuitively they should affect the policy response somehow but it is not obvious how they would affect the mix of mitigation and adaptation. For that you need some kind of cost benefit analysis and the paper doesn't say anything about that.
A further problem is that the paper is based in large part on wholesale dismissal of models, which are the only clues we have as to what we might have to adapt to, and indeed who would have to do the adapting, and when. And rather weak clues at best, anyway.
Intellectual honesty would therefore appear to demand conceding that you haven't a clue what will happen (where people live) for any given level of CO2 or temperature increase, and no idea what to adapt to. You need to be ready for anything, including being totally blindsided by nasty surprises.
Even further, the ranges given by the paper are if I understand correctly 66% ranges. That means a 1 in 6 chance that the true value exceeds the high estimate. That is, literally russian roulette odds. Expand the interval to 95% and the high end becomes higher, and the consquences far more severe.
Of course, with a 95% range then there is only a 1 in 40 chance of exceeding the high end, but how much are you willing to spend not to have to press a button with a 1 in 40 chance of triggering a disaster movie scenario?
And that's without factoring in the possibility that the estimate is simply wrong and is too low in the first place, and there is reason to think it is.
(Your argument above re mitigation meaning 'starvation wages' and such is also clearly a strawman. Of course you'll find adaptation more attractive than mitigation if you think that's what it means. But nobody is proposing that.)
"it is not obvious how they would affect the mix of mitigation and adaptation." Actually it is obvious. The lower the sensitivity, the smaller the damage estimates for a given amount of CO2. According to Richard Tol, some go positive. Still a lot of variability as you described, but the whole curve goes down. Also, as I mentioned above, the really scary damage possibilities go down enormously.
That doesn't necessarily mean that adaptation instead of mitigation is the right choice, but it certainly pushes in that direction. At some low enough sensitivity, most of us are going to say, "That doesn't sound likely to require any action right now; we'll deal with it when it happens. There are plenty of more important issues demanding our attention and resources right now."
None of that proves that mitigating is the wrong solution, even if Lewis' work is correct, but it is silly to deny that it moves things in that direction.
From then on it's an economics and political issue, and there are economists on both sides. Certainly some hold that mitigation is a terrible use of our money; Lomborg's group has four economists with Nobel Prizes, and they say that even according to IPCC estimates mitigation only returns pennies on the dollar, whereas working on other current problems gets you fifty dollars back for every dollar you spend. According to Lewis's estimates it just gets much worse; the costs are the same and the benefits become much smaller.
Even if your economists disagree with my economists, so what? Are you an economist? Am I? Should we count Nobel Prizes? Where does your certainty that nothing matters but whether global warming exists come from?
Ben Pile challenges Reiner's questioning of the role of GWPF on his blog:
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2014/03/the-gwpf-crok-lewis-and-positioning-sceptics.html
@MikeR
"Actually it is obvious. The lower the sensitivity, the smaller the damage estimates for a given amount of CO2. According to Richard Tol, some go positive. Still a lot of variability as you described, but the whole curve goes down."
You write as though we must choose between adaptation and mitigation, one or the other, but work from Tol and others seems to suggest that there should be both. And a lower TCR/ECS should mean that mitigation is cheaper too (less of it needed and/or longer to do it), it is not only adaptation cost that changes. Some types of mitigation don't cost anything. That's why I wrote it is not immediately obvious how the *mix* would be affected, as long as any action at all is still needed. Perhaps it would be obvious to an economist but it is not to me.
According to Richard Tol the positive benefits are locked in and therefore sunk benefits. I do not know exactly how using NL's values of TCR or ECS would change that, nor even if they would. As far as I can see under some scenarios warming still goes past the point where CO2 is a negative externality, even under NL's numbers, which I think are overly certain anyhow.
Of course these kinds of conclusions about costs and benefits rely largely on the sorts of models you reject, or at least should reject if you like NL's approach: they include not only climate models but also economic models. It is a mystery to me how any one can confidently reject the results of the former yet confidently accept the latter, which depend on them should have even larger uncertainties. Less certainty about what to adapt to should mean that it costs more. (Of course there are other benefits to adaptation as even if the things you are preparing for don't happen due to CO2, they might happen anyway for some other reason). Also the people who need to do the adapting or the suffering are not necessarily the same people who can do the mitigating, and a lot of them do not have spare dollars to invest in anything.
So, intuitive and obvious? I don't think so. Far from it. Economics is rarely either. One might wait at least a few minutes for Tol and others to do the work before jumping to conclusions. It would also be nice if you showed the same scepticism for news you like as you do for news you don't.
"Even if your economists disagree with my economists, so what? Are you an economist?"
This remark is telling. I don't have "my economists". I listen to experts, or anyone who seems competent, especially ones who manage to persuade a lot of other experts/competent people, and not just the ones whose message supports some preconceived conclusion.
You've also written stuff about mitigation implying starvation wages and crashes - I have no idea where you get this from. In Europe we are already paying taxes even higher than the sort of carbon prices economists have suggested - even some of the higher ones like Stern, plus more inefficiency on top - we're not starving yet, though we've got some reason to be sceptical about economists maybe. I thought you guys were supposed to be sceptics and not alarmists?
"Where does your certainty that nothing matters but whether global warming exists come from?"
You are reading things I haven't written and presuming things. My position is that I do not share the certainty of those who think that we know what we are messing with, or that we can predict the future. I think the probability that we are wrong about or have missed something important is non trivial, and to my mind more uncertainty means more risk. Also, the uncertainties seem to be mostly on the bad side.
"The invitation to Lewis and Crok..."
I think there is an incorrect implication here. My understanding is that GWPF did not invite L&C to write a paper. L&C wrote a paper, then thought that GWPF might be a good place to publish it, and GWPF agreed to do this.
As has already been said, there is a great deal of misunderstanding about the GWPF. As Benny Peiser has patiently tried to explain, the GWPF does not have any official viewpoint. This is very clearly explained on the "who we are" tab on their website, where it states the bullet points listed by
Benny Peiser in comment #3.
It does not "occupy a well defined space" and does not need to "re-state its position".
Much of the misunderstanding arises as a result of misinformation put about by climate activists, who need a 'bogey man' to explain why they are not winning the arguments, and like to portray GWPF as a huge, well organised, lavishly funded and highly influential machine. The GWPF is in fact (sorry Benny!) much smaller, less well organised and less influential than than the impression given by, for example, the Guardian. Most of the items on its website - in fact almost all - are simply links to articles produced elsewhere.
Any serious student of climate scepticism will learn fairly quickly
that (a) sceptics are a very 'broad church' and cover an extremely wide range of views (b) they do not naturally form into groups organised around clearly stated positions.
Ironically the 'good news' of lower climate sensitivity by Lewis and Crok has not been greeted with enthusiasm. As far as I can tell (from some twitter feeds) the mainstream did not pay much attention to it and those with more sceptical views felt challenged by the suggestion that the mainstream and they themselves could be closer than they thought.
I stand accused of defining the GWPF as something which it is not. I said it is perceived as the major voice of climate scepticism in the UK ('leading sceptical think tank in the UK, or something like this'). Others respond by saying it does not have a position on climate science or policy.
Maybe this is the case, in which case the GWPF has not been successful correcting the public perception of its role. (I do realise that there is a lot of motivated badmouthing going on, and it is too convenient to blame the media or political opponents).
What is probably causing this perception are the public statements made by their chairman, Lord Lawson, who does have views with regard to climate science and policy. Benny Peiser has assured readers of this blog that Lord Lawson always speaks in private capacity - but being chairman of the GWPF and speaking as a private citizen about things closely related to the GWPF can only lead to confusion.
@Frank O'Dwyer
"And a lower TCR/ECS should mean that mitigation is cheaper too (less of it needed and/or longer to do it), it is not only adaptation cost that changes." No. If a person has a hangnail and a heart attack, and we're discussing whether he needs to go the doctor, I can probably talk him into going. If it turns out that all he has is a hangnail, he is not going to be as likely to go. It won't help to tell him how much cheaper a hangnail is than a heart attack - he had a hangnail before as well! That didn't change.
Mitigation for Lewis's sensitivities is not any cheaper; it's the same as the cost was for the higher sensitivities - after you've mitigated first for the really major symptoms. All that has changed is that the urgency is less. If Lewis chopped off almost all the fat right-hand tail, the urgency is way less.
"It is a mystery to me how any one can confidently reject the results of the former yet confidently accept the latter, which depend on them should have even larger uncertainties."
"It would also be nice if you showed the same scepticism for news you like as you do for news you don't."
"This remark is telling. I don't have "my economists". I listen to experts, or anyone who seems competent, especially ones who manage to persuade a lot of other experts/competent people, and not just the ones whose message supports some preconceived conclusion."
"I thought you guys were supposed to be sceptics and not alarmists?"
Each of these comments implies that I am the one jumping to conclusions. However, I did not jump to any conclusions. You are the one who began this whole discussion by saying, "Perhaps because being afflicted with scientific and logical worldview, they thought that the GWPF might draw the conclusion of their own argument." In other words, you are claiming that scientific minds drew the only correct conclusions (which agree with yours), and the rest of us are just ignoring implications. You didn't allow the possibility that others might come to different conclusions, and that theirs might be as well-based as yours.
Where do you see that I agree with Nic Lewis, or that I consider myself competent to judge his work? I was only pointing out some _conclusions_ that seem to me to be warranted if his work is right. Where do you see that I have "my economists" (aside from a turn of phrase) any more than you have yours? All I did was point out that many of the top economists in the world draw very different conclusions from yours. You are the one who claimed that your conclusions - based on uncertainty, but you are certain what to do about the uncertainty - are the only scientific ones.
"We're not starving yet." I assume, though, that you're familiar with the concerns that Germany has to use even more coal now? And that England is worried about power failures and heating fuel? And that all this will delay global warming by some insignificant fraction of time even if they don't repeal it as soon as someone loses an election (see Australia)? I think Bjorn Lomborg's economists have a point: This is an attempt to feel good rather than actually do good, and a very expensive one when those same resources could have saved literally millions of lives if properly directed. You may disagree, but I don't understand why you would sneer (that's what you did earlier) at those who don't see this as laudable.
@MikeR
"Mitigation for Lewis's sensitivities is not any cheaper; it's the same as the cost was for the higher sensitivities - after you've mitigated first for the really major symptoms."
How would that not be less total cost for mitigation than it was before? Mitigation is about avoiding/reducing symptoms you don't yet have, but that you cannot tolerate (or that it would be cheaper to avoid/reduce than tolerate); adaptation is about preparing to live with those you can tolerate (or those that it would be cheaper to tolerate than to avoid, or that cannot be avoided).
Mitigation *should* be cheaper than it would have been otherwise, if you have longer to do it and/or there is now less that falls into the 'must mitigate' category in the first place.
In any case the situation may be more analogous to being warned that you will have a heart attack in your 40s if you don't cut down a lot on junk food, and then your doctor comes with the 'good news' you will have it in your 50s instead. You might have reason to be less aggressive about that diet, or start it a bit later, maybe you'd even continue as you were for a while in the hope some cheap treatment would be discovered before you needed it. But there's nothing there to suggest a heart attack wouldn't be so bad after all, and adapting to it would be more attractive.
"In other words, you are claiming that scientific minds drew the only correct conclusions (which agree with yours), and the rest of us are just ignoring implications. "
I am not saying anything different than you are as far as that goes: these figures imply something. You are just disagreeing about what it implies. There are no correct answers since it depends in part at least on your values. At least some answers are wrong or inconsistent, though.
""We're not starving yet." I assume, though, that you're familiar with the concerns that Germany has to use even more coal now? "
None of these things are starvation wages, you are changing the subject.
@Frank O'Dwyer
@Heart attack in 40s, heart attack in 50s.
As I pointed out above, since humanity may stop using much CO2 around mid-century without any mitigation efforts, just because alternates will be cheaper, that means the total damage will be less. Especially if the fat tail gets cut off, the total damage may be enormously less - your terrible disaster scenarios go from unlikely to incredibly unlikely. Don't know if it'll just be a hangnail, but it might be small enough that adaptation becomes the obvious response. As I've said repeatedly.
"None of these are starvation wages." That's because you're not doing anything that works, just feel-good stuff. Real mitigation involves suppressing China's and India's future growth, followed by Africa's when they reach that point. Keeping the third world in dire poverty for longer is the only way to actually cut CO2 emissions enough to make any real difference. It has absolutely no chance of happening. If it did happen it would kill hundreds of millions of people, who would die in poverty when they could have been lifted from it, because the Wise decided that only this issue counts.
I'm curious why I have not seen the following reaction from believers in AGW to Nic Lewis's paper: "Oh, thank God! I don't know if this is right, but I pray that it is. It would be such incredible good luck. Mitigation was failing so badly, no one is serious, no one is doing it nearly fast enough. This would be such a gift: it would be like _several_ _successful_ Kyoto accords. Just like that, we have more time, total damage is much less severe. A wonderful reprieve."
Why do all the accounts look like this: "Lewis's paper just illustrates one of the possibilities, that climate sensitivity may be _slightly_ lower than we thought." Take a look - they all add the word "slightly", or "a little", or "a tiny bit". Or, "we'd have an extra _few years_." Remember that they are describing Lewis's value which is about a third smaller, and where very high sensitivites are almost wiped out.
Isn't this (potentially) great news for everyone?
I don't mean to be cynical. I imagine that they have already set their minds on severe mitigation, and therefore their only reaction is, "Enemy. Trying to stop us. Resist." They can't see anything else.
Of course, if some of them really like the de-industrialization that serious mitigation requires, low climate sensitivity would be a really annoying setback.
@ Reiner Grundmann
Mir ist das auch entschieden zu kompliziert. Bei der "Achse des Guten" erschien ein journalistischer Beitrag von Benny Peiser zum Lewis/Crok-Bericht (http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/article/new_report_climate_less_sensitive_to_co2_than_models_suggest). Kein Wort von GWPF, Autor Benny Peiser.
Gleichzeitig ist das wortwörtlich die Presseerklärung der GWPF.
Ansonsten: Ja, man braucht keine eigene Meinung, willkommen ist alles, was gegen das IPCC und Mitigationspolitik hat. Dem Angler muss der Wurm nicht schmecken.
Andreas
@MikeR
"humanity may stop using much CO2 around mid-century without any mitigation efforts, just because alternates will be cheaper, that means the total damage will be less."
You are describing a scenario in which mitigation is better than free, and adaptation is unnecessary.
Yet you claim the figures mean adaptation is more attractive than mitigation.
"You are describing a scenario in which mitigation is better than free, and adaptation is unnecessary.
Yet you claim the figures mean adaptation is more attractive than mitigation."
:) If you're happy with that variety of mitigation, I don't think too many of us will argue with you.
But no - adaptation would most likely be necessary there as well; there will still be some damage from warming from the CO2 till then. Just (hopefully) not enough to force pre-emptive measures.
Your premise is worth revisiting. You ask the GWPF to clarify its position about climate- "is there reason to act or to bury the head in the sand?"
You imply that the default position is we must act. That maybe the default social consensus, but it is certainly not an evidence driven statement of the issue.
Anon #33 (give yourself a name!)
'You imply that the default position is we must act.'
Where did you read that?
Jetzt, wo sich der Rauch etwas verzogen hat, noch eine kleine Anmerkung:
Zwei Leute machen ein ziemlich intransparentes "expert review". Man plädiert für bestimmte Werte der Klimasensitivität, ignoriert dabei den Großteil der existierenden Paper und verliert kein Wort über die Unsicherheit der eigenen Paper und über die Unsicherheit ihrer allgemeinen Bewertung. Da haben wir so ziemlich alles an Themen beisammen, für die sich Judith Curry in besonderem Maße interessiert.
Umso erstaunlicher, dass Curry ihre Lieblingsthemen im Vorwort allesamt ignoriert und das Ganze einfach prima findet. Möglicherweise gelten ihre Maßstäbe nur für seriöse Wissenschaft und seriöse Organisationen wie das IPCC, das wäre eine Erklärung.
Das Aufschlussreichste bei Curry (ob Testimony, ihr Blog oder ein Vorwort) ist selten das, was sie sagt, sondern eher das, was sie nicht sagt.
Andreas
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