Dan Moutal

This week: The US Senate surrender, denynig the undeniable, deniers turn on each other, more blacklist hypocrisy, where has all the phytoplankton gone?, happy 35th birthday global warming, and the skeptic debunk of the week.

Irregular Climate is now accepting donations.
Feedback is always appreciated.

This week: Some good news, and some sad news, IOP oh no!, it’s not about saving the planet, the skeptic debunk of the week and Ken Cuccinelli doesn’t know when to quit

Irregular Climate is now accepting donations.
Feedback is always appreciated.

This week: Journalismgate, Cuccinelli strikes back, Prawngate, and the skeptic debunk of the week!

Irregular Climate is now accepting donations.
Feedback is always appreciated.

This week: An assessment of the assessment, The exoneration of Mann, The final nail in the climategate coffin, bad reporting, dishonesty and hate, and the skeptic debunk of the week!

Irregular Climate is now accepting donations.
Feedback is always appreciated.

This week: Money minds its own business, Oh No! It’s Monckton again!, Where do the deniers keep their skepticism?, My blacklist is longer than yours, Godwin’s law, Blacklist paper wrap up, The word is authority, but who has it (and where did they get it?), The skeptic debunk of the week

Irregular Climate is now accepting donations.
Feedback is always appreciated.

This week: EPA says CO2 reduction is cheap, Idiot politician of the week, Expert credibility on climate change, lying deniers, A 5 month old apology from the Sunday Times, lies polls and damned lying polls, the skeptic debunk of the week, whale poop and carbon dioxide.

Irregular Climate is now accepting donations.
Feedback is always appreciated.

This week: The Bonn talk-fest, Lindsey Graham’s flip-flop, Respect the EPA’s authority, Biodiversity at the UN, Lawyers don’t do science, and the skeptic debunk of the week

Irregular Climate is now accepting donations.
Comments on the new format (the music and co-host) are welcome.

This week: The great co-host experiment, Cuccinelli vs Mann, warming of the oceans, melting glaciers, shape-shifting islands, Lord Monckton is wrong, the idiot politician of the week, and grasping at 4th grade straws.

Irregular Climate is now accepting donations.
Comments on the new format (the music and co-host) are welcome.

This week: More skeptisim vs Denialism, Attribution, Denialism in the Chicago Tribune, The Skeptic debunk of the week

Irregular Climate needs your help!

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

Dan Moutal

by Chris Bodenner

Michelle Cottle is tired of partisans latching onto tragedies like the one at Discovery this week:

I was more surprised, I confess, by a post at the liberal blog Think Progress, detailing how Lee’s online manifesto “Echoes Anti-immigrant Groups’ Malthusian Screed,” then walking readers through the sinister phenomenon of nativism’s greenwashing. It’s not that I think liberals are necessarily above that sort of opportunistic bashing. But linking Lee’s behavior to an ugly right-wing ideology took considerably more creativity and chutzpah than the right’s gloating about Lee’s fondness for An Inconvenient Truth.

So, if we were forced to pick sides between James J. Lee: left-wing enviroradical and James Lee: militant right-wing nativist, the data points favor Option A.

But, to state the obvious, we’re not forced to pick sides. Lee wasn’t an ideologue driven by his own political extremism to do something drastic. He was, first and foremost, batshit crazy. We’re talking about someone who so lost touch with reality that he thought the best way to save the planet was to force a television network to run game shows promoting the ideals of “human sterilization and infertility.”

Cottle's closing point is well worth the click-through.

Alden Griffith at Fool Me Once has released a new presentation, this one debunking Christopher Monckton's critique of the IPCC predictions of global warming. It's an in-depth critique where Alden directly compares the IPCC projections to observations and Monckton's graphs. He's also included  detailed notes and graphs beneath the video presentation (yes, I've already asked if I could use his notes as an Advanced Rebuttal so stay tuned for that). In the meantime, check out his fantastic presentation.

The original paper: M. Ogi, K. Yamazaki, and J.M. Wallace, 2010: Influence of winter and summer surface wind anomalies on summer Arctic sea ice extent. Geophysical Research Letters, 37, L07701. (No. 13 as listed here).

Nature (research highlights, 18 March 2010): Geoscience: Wind-blown ice. (Nature's short headlines are like riddles, and I do not want to comment on this. I just include it for its content which the journalists probably read.)

Guardian (David Adam, 22 March): Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study finds. (Fair headline.)

Telegraph (Geoffrey Lean): Good news as research suggests global warming does not directly cause all the melting of Arctic ice. (This is a commentary in a blog, and the headline shows what the commentator thought rather than what the paper said.)

Daily Mail: Arctic winds and not global warming 'responsible for much of record loss of sea ice'. (Misleading.)

Fox News: Winds, Not Warming, Leading to Arctic Ice Melt. (False.)

After wading though political opinion online for a couple years, I've come to the conclusion that you can't ever really "win" an argument online. No matter how sound your logic or forceful your writing someone, somewhere will continue to disagree. But you can arm your fellow travelers and opponents with better or worse argumentative ammunition. When Mark Levin calls all progressives "statists" or Kos labels conservatives "Taliban" they not merely pummeling straw-men, they are doing their readers and listeners a disservice. If someone wants to actually engage with the opposing side and try to change minds, blunt, hyperbolic labels are the among the flimsiest of rhetorical weapon.

I understand the financial incentives that cause authors and publishing houses to choose these kinds of titles. But I don't know why anyone thinking strategically about political impact cheers them. It's a marketing strategy that basically guarantees a book will never be read by anyone who disagrees with it. The emotional satisfaction some people get from extreme vitriol is an astonishingly powerful driver of counterproductive political behavior.

Homebuilt meat smoker texts your phone when the meat is ready! - Gadget Freak Case #170: Smoking Permitted, but Bring a Roast...

Peter Rauch used a proportional-integral-differential (PID) controller that modulates electrical power to a heating element to create a home-built electronic meat smoker. A touch-screen display let him manage the controller set point and control-loop parameters. A J-type thermocouple in the top of the smoker provides a voltage signal so the feedback loop can control the smoker's temperature. A second sensor, which reads meat temperature, is used only for monitoring and alarms. A user can enter a desired meat temperature, and receive an alert via a text message when the temperature reaches a preset value. Additionally, when the temperature reaches this setpoint, the controller can 'hold' the meat at a preset temperature to avoid overcooking it until you can remove it.

Prime Minister Harper has come up with a bizarre goal: he thinks so highly of the US's Fox News that he wants to create a similar propaganda organ up North. Incredible — isn't Canada supposed to learn from our terrible mistakes?

Here's an idea: sign this petition. It can't hurt. But then, the plan was certifiably crazy from the beginning, so I don't know how much a cry of horror will help. Is there also a petition to have Harper committed anywhere?

I do not think journalists should "join the team". They bridle at
that, for good reason. Power-seeking and truth-seeking are different
behaviours, and this is how we distinguish politics from journalism. I
think it does take a certain detachment from your own preferences and
assumptions to be a good reporter. The difficulty is that neutrality
has its limits. Taken too far, it undermines the very project in which
a serious journalist is engaged.

Suppose the forces that want to convince Americans that Barack Obama
is a Muslim or wasn't born in the United States start winning, and
more and more people believe it. This is a defeat for journalism—in
fact, for verification itself. Neutrality and objectivity carry no
instructions for how to react to something like that. They aren't
"wrong", they're just limited. The American press does not know what
to do when neutrality, objectivity, balance and "report both sides"
reach their natural limits. And so journalists tend to deny that there
are such limits. But with this denial they've violated the code of the
truth-teller because these limits are real. See the problem?

1. Thou shalt not plant too many roses
A Rancho Santa Fe, California, homeowners' association targeted Jeffery DeMarco for exceeding the prescribed number of rose bushes allowed on his four-acre property. When DeMarco balked, the HOA levied monthly fines, threatened foreclosure, and ultimately defeated DeMarco in court. After a judge ruled that the willful rose enthusiast had violated the community's architecture design rules, DeMarco was forced to pay the HOA's $70,000 legal bill -- and lost his home to the bank.

Before the industrial revolution, the CO2 content in the air remained quite steady for thousands of years. Natural CO2 is not static, however. It is generated by natural processes, and absorbed by others.

As you can see in Figure 1, natural land and ocean carbon remains roughly in balance and have done so for a long time – and we know this because we can measure historic levels of CO2 in the atmosphere both directly (in ice cores) and indirectly (through proxies).

Figure 1: Global carbon cycle. Numbers represent flux of carbon dioxide in gigatons (Source: Figure 7.3, IPCC AR4).

But consider what happens when more CO2 is released from outside of the natural carbon cycle – by burning fossil fuels. Although our output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons moving through the carbon cycle each year, it adds up because the land and ocean cannot absorb all of the extra CO2. About 40% of this additional CO2 is absorbed. The rest remains in the atmosphere, and as a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati 2009). (A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20,000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years).

Human CO2 emissions upset the natural balance of the carbon cycle. Man-made CO2 has increased  atmospheric CO2 by a third since the pre-industrial era, creating an artificial forcing of global temperatures which is warming the planet. While fossil-fuel derived CO2 is a very small component of the global carbon cycle, the extra CO2 is cumulative because the natural carbon exchange cannot absorb all the additional CO2.

The level of atmospheric CO2 is building up, the additional CO2 is being produced by burning fossil fuels, and that build up is accelerating.

This post is the Basic version (written by Graham "The Machine" Wayne) of the skeptic argument "Human CO2 are a tiny percentage of CO2 emissions". We're currently writing plain English versions of all the skeptic rebuttals. If you're interested in helping with this effort, please contact me. 

Not all of the CO2 emitted by human industrial activities remains in the atmosphere.  Between 25% and 50% of these emissions over the industrial period have been absorbed by the world’s oceans, preventing atmospheric CO2 buildup from being much, much worse.

But this atmospheric benefit comes at a considerable price.

As ocean waters absorb CO2 they become more acidic.  This does not mean the oceans will become acid.  Ocean life can be sensitive to slight changes in pH levels, and any drop in pH is an increase in acidity, even in an alkaline environment.

The acidity of global surface waters has increased by 30% in just the last 200 years.  This rate of acidification is projected through the end of the century to accelerate even further with potentially catastrophic impacts to marine ecosystems.

Endorsed by seventy academies of science from around the world, a June 2009 statement from the InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP) stated the following.

"The current rate of change is much more rapid than during any event over the last 65 million years. These changes in ocean chemistry are irreversible for many thousands of years, and the biological consequences could last much longer."
- The InterAcademy Panel, June 1, 2009

As surface waters become more acidic, it becomes more difficult for marine life like corals and shellfish to form the hard shells necessary for their survival, and coral reefs provide a home for more than 25% of all oceanic species.  Tiny creatures called pteropods located at the base of many oceanic food chains can also be seriously impacted.  The degradation of these species at the foundation of marine ecosystems could lead to the collapse of these environments with devastating implications to millions of people in the human populations that rely on them.

The IAP also stated that, if atmospheric CO2 were to reach 550 parts per million (ppm) along its current rapid ascent from its pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, coral reefs around the globe could be dissolving.

This post is the Basic version (written by Michael Searcy) of the skeptic argument "Ocean acidificatino isn't serious". We're currently writing plain English versions of all the skeptic rebuttals. If you're interested in helping with this effort, please contact me.

Recently, a friend asked me about my earliest childhood memories, and two very vivid ones came to mind. First, there is this image of a sycamore seed falling from the sky; the aerodynamic wonder that can helicopter down from the tall heights of a tree. Second, and also involving the act of looking up, I remember seeing the underbelly of a blue whale, the largest animal on the planet, suspended in air in the London Natural History Museum's great Mammal Hall. In fact, I remember thinking it was the most massive thing possible, no doubt reflecting my own childish perspective. It is also the the emotional reason of why I'm doing a sabbatical there.

In both cases, the memory relives not only what I saw, but also a sensation. This being a quickening of my heart, a very corporeal buzz, and a sense of clarity in my head that has stayed with me throughout my life. You see, this is what discovery feels like. And from an educator's point of view, this I think is biodiversity's greatest strength. The flora, fauna, and terrains of our graceful planet contain a whole world of discovery. It only takes a single child and a trip outdoors, to realize that it is arguably our planet's richest resource of intellectual query.

This is also why I think citizen science projects are particularly wonderful. Many of them do focus on wildlife spotting. And while there's obviously many caveats associated with these projects (i.e. can the non-expert provide valid observation), at their heart, they are a mechanism for people to get involved with science, and in a way which is meant to involve an element of relevancy (i.e. you're collecting data!) The fact that wildlife spotting also forces you to go outside is just an added bonus as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, the Natural History Museum has a few on the go that are just about perfect for folks who like going to the beach (The Big Seaweed Search) or hanging out in their garden (The Urban Tree Survey).

The seaweed one is pretty cool, just because I think the idea of knowing your seaweed is brilliant. Plus, who wouldn't want to help out the British Phycological Society? (definitely CV worthy).

The one involving urban trees is also interesting. Especially from the point of view that to scientists, the flora in everyone's backyard is a little bit of a black box. In other words, a biologist doing field work rarely gets the opportunity to examine what is growing on private land. This kind of data might be useful as a way of further equating a country's tree biomass, as well as exploring distribution patterns over time (i.e. is it changing, and if so, is there an interesting scientific question worth examining?) As an added bonus, this survey also has a pretty nice web friendly identification key you can use.

Anyway, in an effort to get just a few more people involved in citizen science, I've put up a new Science Scout badge. Game on!

Introducing the "who needs a post graduate degree? I can do science... CITIZEN SCIENCE!" badge (link).

Link to The Big Seaweed Search
Link to The Urban Tree Survey

NOTE: Although Maggie mentioned this a while back (and it's also been in the press generally), you should also totally (re)check out this other citizen science project called Foldit. Think of it as a polished video game for protein structure design, made for the Tetris mindhive.

We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.

That’s the pithiest expression I’ve seen on the subject of adaptation, via John Holdren, now science advisor.  Sometimes he uses “misery,” rather than “suffering.”

I’m going to start a multipart series on adaptation — in honor of the fifth anniversary of Katrina.  That disaster provides many lessons we continue to ignore, such as Global warming “adaptation” is a cruel euphemism — and prevention is far, far cheaper.

I draw a distinction between real adaptation, where one seriously proposes trying to prepare for what’s to come if we don’t do real mitigation (i.e. an 800 to 1000+ ppm world aka Hell and High Water) and rhetorical adaptation, which is a messaging strategy used by those who really don’t take global warming seriously — those who oppose serious mitigation and who don’t want to do bloody much of anything, but who don’t want to seem indifferent to the plight of humanity (aka poor people in other countries, who they think will be the only victims at some distant point in the future).

In practice, rhetorical adaptation really means “buck up, fend for yourself, walk it off.”  Let’s call the folks who push that “maladapters.”  Typically, people don’t spell out specifically where they stand on the scale from real to rhetorical.

I do understand that because mitigation is so politically difficult, people are naturally looking at other “strategies.”  But most of the discussion of adaptation in the media and blogosphere misses the key points:

1. Real adaptation is substantially more expensive than mitigation (see Scientists find “net present value of climate change impacts” of $1240 TRILLION on current emissions path, making mitigation to under 450 ppm a must, reprinted below).
2. Real adaptation without very substantial mitigation is just a cruel euphemism (see An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water).
3. Real adaptation requires much bigger and far more intrusive government than mitigation.  Indeed, if the anti-science ideologues get their way and stop serious mitigation, then the government will inevitably get into the business of telling people where they can and can’t live (can’t let people keep rebuilding in the ever-spreading flood plains or the ever-enlarging areas threatened by sea level rise and DustBowlification) and how they can live (sharp water curtailment in the SW DustBowl, for instance) and possibly what they can eat.  Conservative action against climate action now will force big government in coming decades to triage our major coastal cities — Key West and Galveston and probably New Orleans would be unsavable, but what about Miami and Houston?  I’ll do a separate post on this and would love suggestions for what kinds of things government would have to decide and spend money on if we listen to the maladapters and stay anywhere near our current emissions path.
   
4. Real adaptation is so expensive (and endless) that it is essentially impossible to imagine how a real adaptation bill could pass Congress — unless of course you paid for it with a high and rising price for CO2.  Hmm.  Why didn’t somebody think of that?
5. The only people who will pursue real adaptation are those who understand the latest science and are prepared to take serious political  action based on that understanding. Unfortunately, that doesn’t  include any of the people people who helped kill the climate bill.  There isn’t really much point in spending tens of billions of dollars to plan for, say,  a sea level rise of one foot if that isn’t what’s coming.  The point is,  you can’t even imagine doing the planning and bill-writing and then actually investing in  real adaptation — unless  you accept the science  and do serious worst-case planning.  But if  you accepted the science, you’d  obviously pursue mitigation as your primary strategy, while using  some of the proceeds from the climate bill to support adaptation.

So real adaptation is not more politically viability than  real mitigation — and what really is the point of pursuing something that is not more politically viable than mitigation when it  won’t actually prevent misery and suffering for billions of people?  Sure, we must pursue adaptation for Americans — and we are ethically bound to help developing countries adapt to the climate change that we helped create — but real mitigation is the sine qua non.

Real mitigation is an effort to keep emissions as far below 450 ppm as is possible — and if we go above 450 ppm, to get back to 350 as fast as possible (see How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution).

Let me expand on #1 and #2 below.

What is the cost of “adaptation”?  It is almost incalculable.  The word is a virtually meaningless euphemism in the context of catastrophic global warming.  Here is what we now understand we may very well face on our current emissions path:

• M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F
• Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year — and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual!”
• Ocean dead zones to expand, “remain for thousands of years”
• Sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated, could hit 6 feet by 2100
• Science: CO2 levels haven’t been this high for 15 million years, when it was 5° to 10°F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher — “We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with an increase in CO2 levels of about 100 ppm.”
• Nature Geoscience study: Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred

And that isn’t the worst case:

• UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”
• NOAA: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe

How exactly do you adapt to that?  What  precisely do you plan for in your adaptation strategy?  You  need to determine at some point whether you can save Miami, say,  because you wouldn’t want to waste $100 billion trying only to find out  you planned for the wrong scenario and it was hopeless.  Then again, who is going to get people out of their cities as long as one  political party is devoted to shouting down anybody who claims humans are actually warming the planet.

And how exactly do Muscovites “adapt” to  the possibility of 20°F Arctic warming?  What would a 1000-year heat-wave look like in 2100 if the  planet is 9°F warmer?  How  exactly would the world adapt to see levels 4 to 6 feet high in 2100 and then rising 1 foot a decade?

Fundamentally, massive prevention plus lots of adaptation (and some misery) is much, much, much cheaper than not bloody much prevention and incomprehensible amounts of adaptation and suffering and misery.

And as the IIED reported a year ago, the study Assessing the costs of adaptation to climate change: a review of the UNFCCC and other recent estimates concludes costs will be even more when the full range of climate impacts on human activities is considered.

Scientists led by a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [warn] that the UN negotiations aimed at tackling climate change are based on substantial underestimates of what it will cost to adapt to its impacts.

The real costs of adaptation are likely to be 2-3 times greater than estimates made by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), say Professor Martin Parry and colleagues in a new report published by the International Institute for Environment and Development [IIED].

The study finds that the mean “Net present value of climate change impacts” in the A2 scenario is $1240 TRILLION with no adaptation, but “only” $890 trillion with adaptation.

The mean [annual] impacts in 2060 are about $1.5 trillion….  As usual, there is a long right tail, with a small probability of impacts as large as $20 trillion.

Don’t worry folks, it’s only a “small probability” (in their analysis) — but that “fat tail” by itself is enough to render all traditional economic analyses useless (see Harvard economist: Climate cost-benefit analyses are “unusually misleading,” warns colleagues “we may be deluding ourselves and others”).  Let’s put aside the fact we are on pace to exceed the A2 scenario (which is “only” about 850 ppm atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in 2100):  See U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” — 1000 ppm.  For this country, the A2 scenario means 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year.

But here’s the key point the media and the authors failed to convey.  In the “aggressive abatement” case (450 ppm), the mean “Net present value [NPV] of climate change impacts” is only $410 trillion — or $275 trillion with adaptation.  So stabilizing at 450 ppm reduces NPV impacts by $615 to $830 trillion.  But the abatement NPV cost is only $110 trillion — a 6-to-1 savings or better.

Bizarrely, the authors never point this out directly.  They are adaptation experts, so rather than focusing on the immense economic benefits of preventing catastrophic global warming in the first place, they offer up this secondary conclusion as their primary finding:

Parry and colleagues warn that this underestimate of the cost of adaptation threatens to weaken the outcome of UNFCCC negotiations, which are due to culminate in Copenhagen in December with a global deal aimed at tackling climate change.

“The amount of money on the table at Copenhagen is one of the key factors that will determine whether we achieve a climate change agreement,” says Professor Parry, visiting research fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London. “But previous estimates of adaptation costs have substantially misjudged the scale of funds needed.”

Uhhh, not quite.  What actually weakened the outcome of the Copenhagen negotiations is that the overwhelming majority of politicians, opinion makers, and journalists in this country (and around the world, I think) don’t get that 1) the cost of inaction is catastrophically high [and potentially beyond calculation] and 2) the cost of action is far, far lower [see also "Intro to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost -- one tenth of a penny on the dollar"].

Oh well.  If you’re interested in why the IPCC underestimated adaptation costs, the study focuses on several areas:

• Water: The UNFCCC estimate of US$11 billion excluded costs of adapting to floods and assumes no costs for transferring water within nations from areas of surplus to areas of deficit. The underestimate could be substantial, according to the new report.
• Health: The UNFCCC estimate of US$5 billion excluded developed nations, and assessed only malaria, diarrhoea and malnutrition. This could cover only 30-50% of the global total disease burden, according to the new report.
• Infrastructure: The UNFCCC estimate of US$8-130 billion assumed that low levels of investment in infrastructure will continue to characterise development in Africa and other relatively poor parts of the world. But the new report points out that such investment must increase in order to reduce poverty and thus avoid continuing high levels of vulnerability to climate change. It says the costs of adapting this upgraded infrastructure to climate change could be eight times more costly than the higher estimates predicted by the UNFCCC.
• Coastal zones: The UNFCCC estimate of US$11 billion excluded increased storm intensity and used low IPCC predictions of sea level rise. Considering research on sea level rise published since the 2007 IPCC report, and including storms, the new report suggests costs could be about three times greater than predicted.
• Ecosystems: The UNFCCC excluded from its estimates the costs of protecting ecosystems and the services they can provide for human society. The new report concludes that that this is an important source of under-estimation, which could cost over US$350 billion, including both protected and non-protected areas.

No surprise, really, given that the IPCC lowballs amplifying feedbacks and climate impacts, too.  In fact, even this study lowballs the  potential impacts of our  current maladapter-driven  climate policy,  especially the very fat tail or the plausible worst-case scenario.

Anyway, if you’re interested in the important stuff — the enormous benefit of stabilizing at 450 ppm — just jump to Chapter 8, page 103, here.

The bottom line on adaptation:  I’m all for it.  That’s  precisely why I support a comprehensive climate bill,  since it is the only plausible way to 1)  pay for domestic adaptation [and  the share of developing country adaptation that we are ethically bound to provide] and 2)   have a serious possibility of limiting future climate impacts to a level that one could actually adapt to.

Greenman's latest:

Merchants of Doubt is a highly engaging read by Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes about the long war on science waged by anti-regulatory forces. Obviously, this extends to the problem of anthropogenic climate change.

One of the “Merchants of Doubt” is William Nierenberg, founder of the anti-regulatory, denialist, bullsh*t hub of disinformation, the George C. Marshall Institute.

Nierenberg’s son Nicolas has been engaged in an understandable effort to whitewash his father’s legacy in underplaying the risks posed by climate change. In doing so, Nicolas (ironically?) follows virtually the same pattern of doubt-mongering laid out in Oreskes’s and Conway’s book. He relies upon the scientific community’s tendency to dial in on details to the exclusion of all else, and thus tries to argue the minutia in order to distract from and cast doubt on the bigger picture.

I couldn’t have scripted a better example than the beginning of a recent comment of his over at William Connolley’s: “…Merchants of Doubt (MOD) is highly misleading. As a very specific and critical point…”

Please don’t get me wrong- I believe that Nicolas is engaging in good faith, and is not deliberately trying to be misleading. I encourage everyone to read his comments in full and discuss the issue with him personally- in my experience he is always prompt and courteous.

But as I said, Nicolas is depending on our failure to keep the big picture in mind. From a science standpoint, GMI is an inexcusable, disgusting organization. It is the antithesis of what genuine and honest inquiry should be. William Nierenberg’s part in its founding is terrible, and it is simply not credible to pretend that he was not engaged in the same anti-regulatory shenanigans as his organization- no matter how much Nicolas would like us to believe otherwise. No matter what Nicolas says about Oreskes and Conway’s writing, keep that in mind. Listen to what William himself said in his own words. On the likely effects of climate change:

In actual fact- the actual fact is, that calmer [vs. the scientific consensus] analysis has restricted the maximum likely CO2 to- the concentration- to slightly less than double and extended the time for the effects to the year 2150- that’s quite an increase. The global temperature change would be at most 1°[C], and the sea level rise would be barely one foot (or 30cm). The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is now believed to be stable for the foreseeable future. Despite this great relaxation in extremes, the dire predictions remain. [8:15-8:52]

On the atmospheric residency of CO2:

Well you see with [the scientific consensus of long atmospheric residency of CO2] in mind, you have a problem. No matter how sure you are that the effects will be minimal- you see- they are in effect irreversible. If you’ve made a mistake, if you’ve made a bad estimate, you’re stuck and you have a problem- you see- reversing what you’ve done. Now, that’s the problem, but what happened is, the change in our viewpoint- those who take the problem seriously… In fact we now know that the CO2- the excess C02- will not last for a thousand years, but in fact will decay away on the average in about 150 years. Now that alters the entire perspective of the problem. It makes a possibility of correctibility at any stage of the game, if you have made a mistestimate [about the severity of the problem], and so on. So this [atmospheric residency of CO2], however, is the reason that the problem seemed to agonizing to so many of us early, and that reason has completely disappeared today. [12:01-13:08]

Watch the video in full. There are a legion of strawmen, red herring, appeals to ridicule, and other fallacies intended to persuade an audience rhetorically at the expense of fact and logic. William Neirenberg wasn’t a Morano or Watts-type out and out denialist. He was always an interjector of “reasonable” disagreement and uncertainty to prevent meaningful action on the issue. Nicolas Nierenberg would like you to believe that his father was not a Merchant of Doubt.

Nicolas is simply wrong.

UPDATE: As it’s a particular interest to WC, I wonder how he’ll react to Nierenberg lying about the “coming ice age” bullsh*t?

UPDATE: Per request in the comments, the video I linked to was shot in 1999. I don’t believe that the date substantively excuses many of the lies and half-truths by Nierenberg, but if anyone wants to attempt to justify his claims that’s probably a persuasive place to start. Nierenberg died in 2000- I’m not sure why anyone would expect comments of his to be made much past that time…