1) Lennart Bengtsson: He Knows How Little We Know
Basler Zeitung, 7 May 2014
Hans Jörg Müller
One of the most eminent climate scientists, the Swede Lennart Bengtsson, has defected to the camp of climate sceptics. For the climate debate, this could have beneficial effects.
“Only partially understood”: The Swedish climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson calls for prudence and moderation.
How the global climate will develop in coming years and decades, and what influence mankind has upon the climate, is a question that has been discussed with almost religious fervor until a few years ago. That is, there were no discussions really; rather, one of the two parties declared the other insane: “climate denier“ was the term used for those who were of the opinion that global warming does not take place or that it may be warming less rapidly as most scientists believed. In any case, the human impact on climate change was far from proven.
The similarity between “climate denier” and Holocaust denier was intentional: the term should insinuate that anyone who deviated from the widely prevailing consensus was a crank, possibly driven by sinister motives. Above all, very few climate sceptics were leading experts, and this was probably the alarmists’ strongest argument. While climatologists and meteorologists warned and warned, those who were becalming and moderate were often economists. As one of the leading climate sceptics, one ex-politician stood out: Nigel Lawson, Britain’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer and the chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
Thaw
Gradually, however, the ice seems to be melting – if not at the polar caps, then at least in the climate debates: for the first time, a widely recognized expert has changed camps. Lennart Bengtsson , the Swedish climatologist, meteorologist and former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, has now joined the GWPF’s academic advisory council.
After his decision was announced Bengtsson was attacked, says Lawson, which shows what kind of emotions the issue can still generate. The reason cited by the 77-year-old scientist for his decision comes in a bone-dry scientific language: The relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming was “complex and only partially understood,” Bengtsson wrote in a commentary for the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
Apart from that, all empirical observations showed that global warming has been “no serious problem up to now.” How the climate would develop in the future only model simulations could show, and these were rather “problematic”.
Nothing is settled
Bengtsson’s conclusion: “It would be wrong to conclude from the IPCC report and similar reports that the science is settled.” Against this background, so the professor, it would be wrong to undertake any energy transition hastily.
Bengtsson’s arguments do not sound like the radicalism of old age. Rather, he exhorts his colleagues to be more prudent and empirical. For the uninitiated, this approach may be comforting, because the climate debate has long been a highly complex issue. Now, for the first time, an expert like Bengtsson admits that he and others like him fare little better: how the world’s climate will develop in coming years and decades remains pure speculation.
Translation Philipp Mueller
2) Dispute Over Global Warming: Respected Meteorologist Joins Climate Sceptics
Spiegel Online, 5 May 2014
Axel Bojanowski
A delicate academic matter has disrupted the climate science community: One of the most respected climatologists, Emeritus Max Planck Director Lennart
Bengtsson, has switched to the camp of climate sceptics. In this SPIEGEL ONLINE interview he explains his surprising decision.
One of the most renowned climatologists has changed sides. Lennart Bengtsson, former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, one of the world’s leading climate research centres, has joined the Academic Advisory Council of theGlobal Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)…
Bengtsson has always been known for his moderate viewpoints during the hot climate debates of the 1990s. In a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview, he explained his move into the camp of skeptics.
About the person
The meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson, born in 1935, was director of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts from 1981 to 1990, then director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, one of the world’s leading climate research centers. Since his retirement in 2000, he has worked as a professor at the University of Reading in England. He has been given many awards, among them the German Environmental Award of the Federal Foundation for the Environment. He has dealt mainly with the modeling of climate and weather.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Bengtsson, why have you joined the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation?
Bengtsson: I think it is important to enable a broad debate on energy and climate. We urgently need to explore realistic ways to address the scientific, technical and economic challenges in solving the energy problems of the world and the associated environmental problems.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why do you think the lobby (sic) group GWPF is particularly suitable?
Bengtsson: Most members of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council are economists, and this is a chance for me to learn from some of these highly qualified experts in areas outside my own expertise. I want to contribute there through my meteorological knowledge to open the debate.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the people at GWPF do not have the reputation of reconsidering their opinions. Have you also become a so-called climate sceptic?
Bengtsson: I have always been a skeptic, and I think that is what most scientists really are.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But were you not one of the alarmists 20 years ago? Do you think your position at that time was wrong?
Bengtsson: I have not fundamentally changed my opinion in this area. And I have never considered myself an alarmist, but as a scientist with a critical eye. In this sense, I have always been a skeptic. I have used most of my career to develop models for predicting the weather. I have learned the importance of forecasting validation, i.e. the verification of predictions with respect to what has really happened. So I am a friend of climate forecasts. But the review of model results is important in order to ensure their credibility.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: And here you see a demand for climate research?
Bengtsson: It is frustrating that climate science is not able to validate their simulations correctly. The warming of the Earth has been much weaker since the end of the 20th century compared to what climate models show.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the IPCC report discusses these problems in detail.
Bengtsson: Yes, but it does not do so sufficiently critical. I have great respect for the scientific work that goes into the IPCC reports. But I see no need for the endeavor of the IPCC to achieve a consensus. I think it is essential that there are areas of society where a consensus cannot be enforced. Especially in an area like the climate system, which is incompletely understood, a consensus is meaningless.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You complain about the strong tendencies towards politicisation in climate research. Why do you join now a political (sic) organisation?
Bengtsson: I was fascinated my whole life by predictions and frustrated by our inability to make forecasts. I do not think it makes sense to think for our generation that we will solve the problems of the future – for the simply reason that we do not know future problems. Let us do a thought experiment and go back to May 1914: Let us try from the perspective of that point in time to make an action plan for the next hundred years – it would be pointless!
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you suggest we should carry on with business as usual just because forecasts are complicated?
Bengtsson: No, but I think the best and perhaps only sensible policy for the future is to prepare society for adaptation and change. In 25 years the world will have nine to ten billion people. This will require twice as much primary energy as today. We need to foster new science and technology. We need a more open approach, especially here in Europe, which includes the issues of nuclear energy and genetic engineering, in order to supply the growing world population with energy and food.
Translation Philipp Mueller
3) Judith Curry: U.S. National Climate Assessment Report
Climate Etc., 6 May 2014
My main conclusion from reading the U.S. National Climate Assessment Report report is this: the phrase ‘climate change’ is now officially meaningless. The report effectively implies that there is no climate change other than what is caused by humans, and that extreme weather events are equivalent to climate change. Any increase in adverse impacts from extreme weather events or sea level rise is caused by humans. Possible scenarios of future climate change depend only on emissions scenarios that are translated into warming by climate models that produce far more warming than has recently been observed.
Some of the basic underlying climate science and impacts reported is contradictory to the recent IPCC AR5 reports. Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger have written a 134 page critique of a draft of the NCADAC report [link].
Even in the efforts to spin extreme weather events as alarming and caused by humans, Roger Pielke Jr. has tweeted the following quotes from the Report:
- “There has been no universal trend in the overall extent of drought across the continental U.S. since 1900″
- “Other trends in severe storms, including the intensity & frequency of tornadoes, hail, and damaging thunderstorm winds, are uncertain”
- “lack of any clear trend in landfall frequency along the U.S. eastern and Gulf coasts”
- “when averaging over the entire contiguous U.S., there is no overall trend in flood magnitudes”
As a I wrote in a previous
post on a draft of the report, the focus should be on the final Chapter 29: Research Agenda, which outlines what we DON’T know. Chapter 28 Adaptation is also pretty good. Chapter 27 Mitigation is also not bad, and can hardly be said to make a strong case for mitigation. Chapter 26 on Decision Support is also ok, with one exception: they assume the only scenarios of future climate are tied to CO2 emissions scenarios.
An interesting feature of the report is Traceable Accounts – for each major conclusion a Traceable Account is given that describes the Key Message Process, Description of evidence base, New information and remaining uncertainties, Assessment of confidence based on evidence. The entertainment value comes in reading the description of very substantial uncertainties, and then seeing ‘very high confidence’. This exercise, while in principle is a good one, in practice only serves to highlight the absurdity of the ‘very high confidence’ levels in this report.
White House
Apparently President Obama is embracing this Report, and the issue of climate change, in a big way, see this WaPo article For President Obama A Renewed Focus On Climate. Motherboard has an interesting article How extreme weather convinced Obama to fight climate change.
In an interesting move, Obama Taps TV Meteorologists to Roll Out New Climate Report, which describes how Obama is giving interviews to some TV weathermen. It will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out, since TV weathermen tend to be pretty skeptical of AGW.
The politics on this are interesting also, see especially these two articles
White house set to lay out climate risks as it touts U.S. energy boom
Podesta: Congress can’t stop Obama on global warming
JC reflections
While there is some useful analysis in the report, it is hidden behind a false premise that any change in the 20th century has been caused by AGW. Worse yet is the spin being put on this by the Obama administration. The Washington Post asks the following question: Does National Climate Assessment lack necessary nuance? In a word, YES.
The failure to imagine future extreme events and climate scenarios, other than those that are driven by CO2 emissions and simulated by deficient climate models, has the potential to increase our vulnerability to future climate surprises (see my recent presentation on this Generating possibility distributions of scenarios for regional climate change). As an example, the Report highlights the shrinking of winter ice in the Great Lakes: presently, in May, Lake Superior is 30% cover by ice, which is apparently unprecedented in the historical record.
The big question is whether the big push by the White House on climate change will be able to compete with this new interview with Monica Lewinsky 🙂
4) We Can Easily Adapt To Sea Level Changes, New Report Says
Breitbart London, 7 May 2014
James Delingpole
Attempts to stem sea level rises by reducing CO2 levels in order to “combat” global warming are a complete waste of time says a new report by two of the world’s leading oceanographic scientists.
Over the last 150 years, average global sea levels have risen by around 1.8 mm – a continuation of the melting of the ice sheets which began 17,000 years ago.
Satellite measurements (which began in 1992) put the rate higher – at 3mm per year. But there is no evidence whatsoever to support the doomsday claims made by Al Gore in 2006 that sea levels will rise by 20 feet by the end of the century, nor even the more modest prediction by James Hansen that they will rise by 5 metres.
Such modest rises, argue oceanographer Willem P de Lange and marine geologist Bob Carter in their report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, are far better dealt with by adaptation than by costly, ineffectual schemes to decarbonise the global economy.
They say:
No justification exists for continuing to base sea-level policy and coastal management regulation upon the outcomes of deterministic or semi-empirical sea-level modelling. Such modelling remains speculative rather than predictive. The practice of using a global rate of sea-level change to manage specific coastal locations worldwide is irrational and should be abandoned.
It is irrational not least because it is based on a complete misunderstanding of the causes and nature of sea-level rises. There are parts of the world where the sea level is rising, others where it is falling – and this is dependent as much on what the land is doing (tectonic change) as on what the sea is doing.
In other words – a point once made very effectively by Canute – it is absurdly egotistical of man to imagine that he has the power to control something as vast as the sea. The best he can hope to do is to adapt, as previous generations have done, either by deciding to shore up eroding coastal areas or abandon them and move further inland.
And for those still in doubt, here is what Vincent Courtillot, Emeritus professor of geophysics at Paris Diderot University has to say in his introduction to the report:
Sea level change is a naturally occurring process. Since the last glacial maximum, some 18,000 years ago, de-glaciation has taken place and this natural global warming has led to sea-level rise of on average 120 m or so. At some times, pulses of melt water coming from large peri-glacial lakes led to rates of sea level rise as high as 3 m per century. The rate slowed down some 7000 years ago and since then has been naturally fluctuating by only a few metres. The remaining global sea-level rise has been about 20 cm in the 20th century. Has this led to global disasters? The answer is no. If the projected rise over the 21st century is double what was seen in the 20th, is it likely that it will result in global disasters? Again, the answer is most likely no; human ingenuity, innovation and engineering, and the proper material and financial resources should solve local problems if and when they arrive, as they have in the 20th century.
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