The head of the UN IPCC is sounding like a salesman who is worried about the quality of his product:
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Panel said he would look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century. “One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this really represents,” he told Reuters, adding “are there natural factors compensating?” for increases in greenhouse gases from human activities.
So, Pachauri has noticed that the natural ‘El Nino’ driven record year for instrumentally measured ‘global average temperature’ remains as 1998. We are now in 2008, Rather than admit to the possibility that ever increasing CO2 emissions don’t seem to be pushing up global temperatures, he is looking for another excuse.
Read more on Pielke Jr’s excellent Prometheus blog.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Keeping up with the chase Paul?
“A European Climate Plan”
An intriguing approach that meshes well with bills on Capitol Hill”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/27/AR2008012701591_pf.html
It’s a plan, but not a climate plan.
Paul – you really can’t help youself can you?
(1) salesman?
(2) product?
I thought he was the head of a commission charged with reviewing the state of climate change science issues.
So do denialists also have alternative “products” to “sell”.
So the guy can’t win can he? If he says nothing “he’s hiding something” and if he says anything else “he’s looking for an excuse”.
He’s projecting a need to the science community to better explain and track what we’re observing.
And now this is a problem for the skeptics ?
Wow – cranky lot aren’t we.
Gavin, the EU plan is a mess. See here, for example:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/27/nbook127.xml
Trust the EU to find anyway it can to continue subsidizing its farm community with the biofuels scam. Bad for the environment. Bad for the economy. Good for the vested EU farm interests. Think I’ll buy a tractor and start blocking roads with it!
Luke, re “salesman” and “product”. It’s an analogy, which my dictionary says is a “likeness between two things in respects”.
Pachauri is NOT “the head of a commission charged with reviewing the state of climate change science issues”.
The role of the IPCC, according to its documents, is to ‘assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.’
Pachauri’s rhetorical question about whether natural factors are compensating needs to be examined in the light of (a) the IPCC’s role and (b) his continued defence of what amounts to 4 very weak pieces of evidence for man-made warming.
If he had any integrity he would also have said that there has been little volcanic activity that might keep temperatures down over the last 4 years and that the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) over that time has been very much towards El Nino conditions rather than the cooler La Nina state. Only for the last few months of 2007 did the ENSO move towards La Nina.
John, solar irradiance has been decreasing over those years. That may be why the temperatures haven’t been rising as rapidly. Only HadCrut has 2007 as cooler than 2006 (and not by much). This no warming since 1998 is just due to a poor understanding of statistics.
Here’s more evidence of Global Warming.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2008/2008012826149.html
Mr T, two points… (a) from 1998 to mid 2006 (end of data) outside the tropical zones there was a decrease in low level cloud and in increase in mid-level cloud. Cloud cover controls how much of that irradiance reaches the earth’s surface. (b) Who says that solar irradiance is the only way that the sun can influence climate?
John,
a) I thought mid level clouds would act to cool, rather than warm the climate. The north polar regions have had warmer years than 1998.
b) I don’t know if anyone has said that. I haven’t seen any other way other than GCMs (and there’s no process that describes how this works). I assume you are talking about cosmic rays? I thought it was only Galactic cosmic rays that thought helped create clouds (that is csomic rays not from the sun).
I am interested to hear what other ways there are.
You comment about the clouds is too much of a generalisation. For one thing, more diffuse radiation will get through mid level clouds than through low cloud. Then we might consider that mid level clouds tend to form or build more at night than during the day. (Ever watched a cloud disappear on a hot sunny day?)
I can think of solar particle flow (and a UK company makes money from weather predictions based on just that), and solar magnetism that NASA recently found to be like twisted worms. Whether the sun’s movement around the barycentre of the solar system has any effect is still being debated.
John, so what is the process by which solar particle flow affects climate? Got any papers? Sounds intriguing. And what about the magnetic field? How does that affect climate? Any papers?
I would have thought the movement of the sun would affect the TSI as it moves further away, we get less.
I think all the effects are still being debated. That’s where the argument currently stands. It’s “How much warming can we expect?” The climate modellers are using as much information (including TSI) as they can to try and determine what sort of warming we can expect. You may not like the models, but you are certainly free to create your own and try and give an answer. You may question whether they include enough data or factors, so again make your own and give a better answer.
Mr T,
as climate modellers cannot model climate, by definition, then their modelling must be the climate of the world of OZ.
We have no data for that world. Well not us mining and engineering types who are responsible for the material ecumbrances enhancing your lifestyle.
Oh, and Mr T, don’t be too smart – I actually stay with the ALP devout when in Perth – we just don’t discuss politics but, I do KNOW 🙂
Mr T, solar particle flow and solar magnetism means solar winds and there’s some very plausible theories that say that the solar winds interact with Earth’s winds, particularly at the poles.
I believe there’s quite a few papers around on the subject but I’ve never explored them too deeply because I understand that most are vague when it comes to a mechanism (and I think that a lot of climate variability can be explained without them).
There’s even a paper by a couple of Russians that talks about abnormalities in Antarctic winds about 3 months prior to El Nino events. (I have a problem with this because El Nino and La Nina are two ends of the one scale and there’s sudden switch, so anyone who talks only in terms of an El Nino “event” bother me.)
John, I haven’t heard of solar wind interacting with wind… Got any more info?
As far as I was aware, the magnetic field of the Earth is affected by solar wind. Wouldn’t have thought the atmosphere was dense enough at that altitude to be affected by solar wind.
Yes, that’s the problem. People often see a correlation, but they need a process to really show that the two things are linked.
El Nino and La Nina are like day and night. Do you have problems with people talking about day and night? I think it’s a false dichotomy, but there are worse ones than El Nino and la Nina