Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

MG is short for Major General (me)...it's a long story involving some aspects of my personal history to which spendius alone is privy.

MG is short for Major General (me)...it's a long story involving some aspects of my personal history to which spendius alone is privy.

Piffka wrote:

Actually, I do want to know the science. I am not personally worried for myself.

Now you're contradicting your own claim from about five pages back, which was that "Climatic change, particularly abrupt change, would be disastrous for most of us..."

Piffka wrote:

The rates of heatstroke have been rising.

Did your source correct for the effect of population growth and the age distribution, which means that there are now more people around to be killed than 100 years ago -- and that more of them are old? It doesn't look like it.

Piffka wrote:

I am reading and repeating what seemingly well-respected scientists are saying... these are not simply my foregone conclusions.

Your earlier claim was: "Climatic change, particularly abrupt change, would be disastrous for most of us." This claim is contradicted by your own source, the book from the National Academy of Sciences. Perhaps you want to re-read the chapter about ecological and economical consequences to see for yourself.

It would be useful to pay more explicit attention in integrated-assessment economic models to other kinds of potential shocks, perhaps focusing on major changes in water and agriculture systems for the United States as well as to shifts in monsoonal patterns or droughts in other regions. This effort is hampered to date, however, because there are few scenarios for abrupt climate change that have been handed off by geoscientists to the economic modelers. Attention to climate extremes in the wake of anthropogenic-induced gradual warming has been reported by Easterling et al. (2000~. This study examined outputs of general circulation models that show changes in extreme events for future climates under greenhouse warming scenarios, such as increases in high temperatures, decreases in extreme low temperatures, and increases in precipitation events. These authors suggested a range of impacts due to these extremes, including the impacts to natural ecosystems and society. In summary, climate change inevitably has impacts. Abruptness increases those impacts, especially on unmanaged and long-lived systems.

To date, however, relatively little research has addressed the possible costs of abrupt climate change or ways to reduce these costs, both because climatologists have not produced appropriate scenarios and because ecological and economic scientists have not concentrated on abruptness.

Piffka wrote:

As to Kyoto, I have said and will keep saying... what else can our scientists come up with?

With the suggestion to do nothing to stop global warming, and invest the money saved into adapting to its consequences -- and I still believe that's the best suggestion we have.

This included some serious misreporting by the Independent, a newspaper whose standing is comparable to the Washington Post's.

Global warming: scientists reveal timetable

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Correspondent
03 February 2005


A detailed timetable of the destruction and distress that global warming is likely to cause the world was unveiled yesterday.

It pulls together for the first time the projected impacts on ecosystems and wildlife, food production, water resources and economies across the earth, for given rises in global temperature expected during the next hundred years.

The resultant picture gives the most wide-ranging impression yet of the bewildering array of destructive effects that climate change is expected to exert on different regions, from the mountains of Europe and the rainforests of the Amazon to the coral reefs of the tropics.

Produced through a synthesis of a wide range of recent academic studies, it was presented as a paper yesterday to the international conference on climate change being held at the UK Met Office headquarters in Exeter by the author Bill Hare, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany's leading global warming research institute.

The conference has been called personally by Tony Blair as part of Britain's attempts to move the climate change issue up the agenda during the current UK presidency of the G8 group of rich nations, and the European Union. It has already heard disturbing warnings from the latest climate research, including the revelation on Tuesday from the British Antarctic Survey that the massive West Antarctic ice sheet might be disintegrating - an event which, if it happened completely, would raise sea levels around the world by 16ft (4.9 metres).

Dr Hare's timetable shows the impacts of climate change multiplying rapidly as average global temperature goes up, towards 1C above levels before the industrial revolution, then to 2C, and then 3C.

As present world temperatures are already 0.7C above the pre-industrial level, the process is well under way. In the near future - the next 25 years - as the temperature climbs to the 1C mark, some specialised ecosystems will start to feel stress, such as the tropical highland forests of Queensland, which contain a large number of Australia's endemic plant species, and the succulent karoo plant region of South Africa. In some developing countries, food production will start to decline, water shortage problems will worsen and there will be net losses in GDP.

It is when the temperature moves up to 2C above the pre-industrial level, expected in the middle of this century - within the lifetime of many people alive today - that serious effects start to come thick and fast, studies suggest.

Substantial losses of Arctic sea ice will threaten species such as polar bears and walruses, while in tropical regions "bleaching" of coral reefs will become more frequent - when the animals that live in the coral are forced out by high temperatures and the reef may die. Mediterranean regions will be hit by more forest fires and insect pests, while in regions of the US such as the Rockies, rivers may become too warm for trout and salmon.

In South Africa, the Fynbos, the world's most remarkable floral kingdom which has more than 8,000 endemic wild flowers, will start to lose its species, as will alpine areas from Europe to Australia; the broad-leaved forests of China will start to die. The numbers at risk from hunger will increase and another billion and a half people will face water shortages, and GDP losses in some developing countries will become significant.

But when the temperature moves up to the 3C level, expected in the early part of the second half of the century, these effects will become critical. There is likely to be irreversible damage to the Amazon rainforest, leading to its collapse, and the complete destruction of coral reefs is likely to be widespread.

The alpine flora of Europe, Australia and New Zealand will probably disappear completely, with increasing numbers of extinctions of other plant species. There will be severe losses of China's broadleaved forests, and in South Africa the flora of the Succulent Karoo will be destroyed, and the flora of the Fynbos will be hugely damaged.

There will be a rapid increase in populations exposed to hunger, with up to 5.5 billion people living in regions with large losses in crop production, while another 3 billion people will have increased risk of water shortages.

Above the 3C raised level, which may be after 2070, the effects will be catastrophic: the Arctic sea ice will disappear, and species such as polar bears and walruses may disappear with it, while the main prey species of Arctic carnivores, such as wolves, Arctic foxes and the collared lemming, will have gone from 80 per cent of their range, critically endangering predators.

In human terms there is likely to be catastrophe too, with water stress becoming even worse, and whole regions becoming unsuitable for producing food, while there will be substantial impacts on global GDP.

... The 108 signatory Nobel Laureates (30 didn't sign) tell us that:

"The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world's dispossessed. Of these poor and disenfranchised, the majority live a marginal existence in equatorial climates. Global warming, not of their making but originating with the wealthy few, will affect their fragile ecologies most.... It cannot be expected, therefore, that in all cases they will be content to await the beneficence of the rich. If then we permit the devastating power of modern weaponry to spread through this combustible human landscape, we invite a conflagration that can engulf both rich and poor.... (W)e must persist in the quest for united action to counter both global warming and a weaponized world."

Never mind that over the last 20 years and more, almost all warming has been north of 30 ºN, with little or none in 'equatorial climates' or in the Southern Hemisphere. Never mind that Osama was not 'poor'; although, as the seventeenth of 52 siblings, he may well have suffered from a lack of paternal quality-time when young. However, you can see why the Laureates are worried. When the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its Third Assessment Report in 2000, the most-publicized conclusions were: an average global surface temperature increase of up to 5.8 degrees Celsius between 1990 and 2100, and (because warm water expands) resultant sea level rise up to 88 centimetres. Frightening!

An Open Letter to the Community from
Chris Landsea


Dear colleagues,

After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.

With this open letter to the community, I wish to explain the basis for my decision and bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC process. The IPCC is a group of climate researchers from around the world that every few years summarize how climate is changing and how it may be altered in the future due to manmade global warming.

[BULK OF LETTER OMITTED link: http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/landsea.html]

It is certainly true that "individual scientists can do what they wish in their own rights", as one of the folks in the IPCC leadership suggested. Differing conclusions and robust debates are certainly crucial to progress in climate science. However, this case is not an honest scientific discussion conducted at a meeting of climate researchers. Instead, a scientist with an important role in the IPCC represented himself as a Lead Author for the IPCC has used that position to promulgate to the media and general public his own opinion that the busy 2004 hurricane season was caused by global warming, which is in direct opposition to research written in the field and is counter to conclusions in the TAR. This becomes problematic when I am then asked to provide the draft about observed hurricane activity variations for the AR4 with, ironically, Dr. Trenberth as the Lead Author for this chapter. Because of Dr. Trenberth's pronouncements, the IPCC process on our assessment of these crucial extreme events in our climate system has been subverted and compromised, its neutrality lost. While no one can "tell" scientists what to say or not say (nor am I suggesting that), the IPCC did select Dr. Trenberth as a Lead Author and entrusted to him to carry out this duty in a non-biased, neutral point of view. When scientists hold press conferences and speak with the media, much care is needed not to reflect poorly upon the IPCC. It is of more than passing interest to note that Dr. Trenberth, while eager to share his views on global warming and hurricanes with the media, declined to do so at the Cimate Variability and Change Conference in January where he made several presentations. Perhaps he was concerned that such speculation---though worthy in his mind of public pronouncements---would not stand up to the scrutiny of fellow climate scientists.

I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth's actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.

Sincerely,

Chris Landsea

17 January 2005

The Treatment of Economic Issues by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change*
David Henderson

Issues relating to climate change, and to the choice of policies for dealing with it, are now highly topical. [...] ...readers may be interested to hear of some recent exchanges relating to economic aspects of these issues. Aside from their intrinsic interest, the exchanges raise wider questions as to the role of economics and economists in the policy process. David Henderson, formerly (among other things) Head of the Economics and Statistics Department of the OECD, and now Visiting Professor at the Westminster Business School, has been one of the participants in the current debate. This is his personal report.


The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a joint subsidiary of two international agencies, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It was created by the member governments of these two agencies in 1988. Since then it has produced three full-scale Assessment Reports, issued respectively in 1990, 1995 and 2001. Work is now in progress on the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), which is due in 2007.

The Panel operates through three Working Groups. WGI is concerned with scientific aspects of climate change, WGII with the prospective impacts of such change and ways of adapting to it, and WGIII with mitigation of the impacts. Each of the Groups produced its own report as part of the Third Assessment Report. Alongside them was the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES), prepared for WGIII, which provided in particular a range of projections of greenhouse gas emissions, covering the period from 1990 to 2100.

[large parts omitted link: http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/hendersonRES.html#anchor2668951]
A critique and its reception
Over the past two and a half years or so, I and a co-author---Ian Castles, formerly Head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics---have put forward a joint critique of economic aspects of the work of the IPCC. While our main single target has been the SRES, our concerns extend to the IPCC process and milieu as a whole, including the Panel's sponsoring departments and agencies. Moreover, we have gone beyond criticism, by putting forward proposals for action.

The main heads of our critique of the SRES can be summarised as follows:

--For the base year of 1990 it compares real GDP across countries on the basis of market exchange rates (MERs), rather than purchasing power parity (PPP) converters. These comparisons greatly overstate the differences in GDP per head between developing regions and OECD member countries.
--It gives a misleading account of the factors that bear on the choice between MERs and PPPs, and of the implications of such a choice.
It builds in, for reasons that are open to question, rapid convergence in GDP per head between developing regions and OECD member countries. By thus assuming the substantial closure of a greatly overstated initial gap, it arrives at projections of output and GDP per head for developing regions which are higher than they would have been if the 1990 starting point had been correct, and high by comparison with other projections
--As a result, total projected world GDP is pushed up; and this in turn is reflected in higher projected emissions. Hence even the scenarios which show the lowest cumulative emissions over the present century do not in fact represent lower limits. The SRES projections do not, as is claimed for them, adequately encompass the full range of uncertainties about the future.

Our critique thus covers not only the results of the exercise, in the form of specific projections of emissions, but also the approach, the analytical basis of parts of the Report.

Our arguments have been strongly contested by authors who were involved with the SRES. Interested readers are referred to a series of articles that has appeared in recent issues of the journal Energy and Environment: the first four of these---two on each side---comprise the exchanges between us and the SRES authors, and three further articles have since appeared. [FN 1] Those who would prefer to invest considerably less time can be recommended, first, to two articles from the Economics Focus page of The Economist (15 February and 8 November, 2003), which weigh in on our side, and second, to an official press release issued by the IPCC in December 2003 and now posted, in a somewhat less impolite form than the original version, on the Panel's website.*http://www.ipcc.ch/press/pr08122003.htm* This latter document is concerned to expose our critique as baseless. Among other things, it states that 'In recent months some disinformation has been spread questioning the scenarios used by the IPCC'; and it refers to Castles and me as 'so called "two independent commentators"'.

Along with our critique, our suggestions for change have been rejected by the Panel. The main proposals that we have made are three:

(1) That the SRES, because it is open to serious criticisms, should not be taken as the basis and starting point of AR4: an alternative and firmer basis should be sought, through less elaborate and more short-cut procedures than those of the SRES.
(2) That in assessing possible future developments in the world economy, and ways of projecting them, the involvement of economic historians and historically-minded economists should now be ensured---for the first time.
(3) That more generally, and going well beyond scenario-building, the IPCC process should be broadened, in particular through the active involvement, first, of national statistical offices in member countries, and second, of ministries of finance and economics.

The criticism voiced by C&H (Ian Castles and David Henderson) that the scenarios produced in the SRES imply "historically implausible" growth rates in developing countries was obviously put forward in haste. This even contradicts a comment by Ian Castles posted on a website called "Online Opinion" in July 2001 stating that "of the developing world's 4.8 billion people, 2/3rd live in countries that have attained faster growth rates in GDP per head than the United States since 1973". He further states that "growth has been accelerating in the most populous developing countries". More recently C&H in a paper published in the journal Energy and Environments have accepted that a higher growth in per capita income in poorer countries when compared to countries with higher levels of affluence, are both "plausible and well attested in economic history".

[...] Recently, in the wake of C&H's unfounded criticism, some further detailed model runs have been carried out by Alan Manne of Stanford University and R. Richels of the Electric Power Research Institute. Their results show very minor differences with PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) in comparison with the use of MEX (Market Exchange Rate). The claim of C&H, therefore, that there is an upward bias in the SRES scenarios is totally unfounded.

[...] C&H equate economic growth to proportionate increase in emissions of GHGs, since the world in their view seems determined by statistical regressions. They completely ignore the fact that higher economic growth generally results in higher R&D, more rapid capital turnover, higher resource use efficiency including energy efficiency and higher preference for pollution controls, all of which could lead to reduction in GHGs emissions. Have C&H looked at the trajectory of China's emissions* in the last 20 years? Has China's rapid growth not been accompanied by impressive improvements in energy efficiency and carbon intensity? Have they ever considered that lower GDP growth rates may actually lead to higher GHGs emissions in the absence of climate policy? There is absolutely no reason to believe that, in the longer term, lower economic development would, all other things being equal, result in lower emissions.

Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions Drop
While the U.S. economy was in the process of accelerating almost 4 percent last year and gasoline prices were dropping, CO2 emissions in the U.S. rose only 0.04 percent, according to a preview of a report by the Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency.

Despite 4 percent annual growth in gross domestic product last year, emissions from the U.S. industrial sector fell 1.4 percent.

Worldwide, emissions dropped 0.5 percent, according to a separate report from the Worldwatch Institute, based on data gathered by BP Amoco PLC.

They found that emissions declined 3.7 percent in China, 2.5 percent in Japan and 1.3 percent in Russia.

On the other hand, emissions rose 1.8 percent in India.