frankhagan.com

Several media outlets are reporting a donneybrook in Denmark as the Copenhagen climate summit attendees grapple with a leaked document.

The UK’s Guardian reports:

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

. . .

“It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process,” said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.

Australia’s News.com.au expands on the controversy:

The agreement, leaked to the paper, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol’s principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act.

The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks”, the paper reports.

President Obama is expected to commit the US to a “politically binding” goal of reduction of our emissions of carbon dioxide to 17% of 2005 levels by 2050. If this goal is a total reduction, rather than a per-capita reduction, it means the average American in 2050 will be “allowed the carbon dioxide emission of the average citizen in 1867″ according to the Cato Institute.

Can you cut your CO2 emissions by 82 points? Just over a quarter of America’s CO2 emissions are from automobiles; driving a Prius or similar car can help reduce your CO2 emissions from driving by half, so you are 12 points along the way already. Reduction in energy use from other sources, including electricity … remember it has to be generated somewhere … can help you gain a few extra points. Forgoing the expensive big screen TV in favor of a used tube set will save another point or two, and turning off appliances when not in use can shave a fraction of a point.

Today’s technology can’t get us there without large disruptions. We can wait to see if technology will help empower our efforts, but those individual efforts, while noble, are probably not a practical way to reach the goals.

Replacing coal as an energy source would provide the most bang for the buck, with wind, solar and nuclear as the most viable of the clean alternatives. But the time-line on those efforts is measured in decades rather than months.

From a political standpoint, being able to pollute more than the developing nations will be popular (here, at least). One of the most potent objections to the Koyoto Protocol was the feeling that developed nations would have to sacrifice while developing nations could continue to pollute. That was the primary reason the Bush Administration refused to consider it. President Obama seems to have a better idea: change the game to allow the rich countries more leeway.

Of course, the poor countries might not see it our way.

Cross posted to Donklephant

Climate climate change, copenhagan, obama

The AP is reporting that Dr. Phil Jones, one of the main figures in the ClimateGate scandal, is stepping down during the investigation:

LONDON (AP) — The chief of a prestigious British research center caught in a storm of controversy over claims that he and others suppressed data about climate change has stepped down pending an investigation, the University of East Anglia said Tuesday.

The university said in a statement that Phil Jones, whose e-mails were among the thousands of pieces of correspondence leaked to the Internet late last month, would relinquish his position as director of Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent review.

The university’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research Trevor Davies said the investigation would cover data security, whether the university responded properly to Freedom of Information requests, “and any other relevant issues.” The statement said the specific terms of the review will be announced later in the week.

Cross posted to Donklephant

Climate climate change, climategate, Phil Jones

ABC News affiliate WHSV in Virginia is reporting that Sen. Jim Webb, D-VA, has sent a letter to President Obama expressing concern over some statements regarding the upcoming Copenhagen conference:

Dear Mr. President:

I would like to express my concern regarding reports that the Administration may believe it has the unilateral power to commit the government of the United States to certain standards that may be agreed upon at the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The phrase “politically binding” has been used.

Although details have not been made available, recent statements by Special Envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern indicate that negotiators may be intending to commit the United States to a nationwide emission reduction program. As you well know from your time in the Senate, only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country.

I would very much appreciate having this matter clarified in advance of the Copenhagen meetings.

Sincerely,

Jim Webb
United States Senator

Senator Webb, often described as a politician with a independent streak, has not hesitated to speak out against other Obama Administration decisions. That independence earned him a reputation for being either rude or courageous (depending on your point of view) during the last administration.

Cross posted to Donklephant.com

Climate, Politics climate change, Copenhagen, Sen. Jim Webb

To paraphrase Julie Andrews, “The Blogs are Alive …”, but this time with stolen emails rather than “Music”.

Documents and archived emails were stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Center (CRU). The first accounts indicate that 1,072 emails and 72 documents were stolen and then posted anonymously on file servers.

The stolen property appears to be the genuine article, as the CRU director has confirmed them. Less certain is what all this means.

Much has been made about the tone of the emails. Scientists are complaining about those with whom they disagree, insulting them and acting like normal, partisan human beings. There are some “plain English” misunderstandings afoot as well, as evidenced by this quote from an email that is being reproduced in several blogs:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

The blogs typically highlight or bold the word “trick” and the phrase “hide the decline” as evidence of a smoking gun.

The problem is that the email is about a well-known and discussed issue, the “divergence problem.” As I understand the issue, historical proxies, like tree ring, lake sediment and ice core samples, provide a measure of accuracy in the aggregate, but are not as accurate for telling us what the temperature was in the last few decades. It evidently is a common and well-known issue, even though the pro-climate change advocates will tell you there are no problems in the data. The scientists involved debate this issue, and come to an agreement on how to best deal with it; the advocacy groups simply gloss over any difficulties, even if they do not alter the end result. So the average person can be forgiven if finding this issue is shocking; what about the “consensus”? This is the messy stuff that leads to that consensus; like sausage, you sometimes don’t want to know what’s in it.

Now, about the word “trick”. In this context, it is used to indicate there is a difficult task at hand, such as in this statement that might be made to a winter driver:

When you find yourself in a skid on ice, the trick is to keep from making it worse. Steer in the direction of the skid and keep your foot off the brakes.

So the hard part about reconstructing historical temperature records is merging the proxies with the instrument data, and we need to discuss how to do this; that seems like an OK statement.

Less clear is what the phrase “to hide the decline” means; it appears this is either to correct what they truly believe is an error in the data when you combine the proxies and instrument data (most likely in my view), or is the “smoking gun” of a conspiracy to hide warming data (extremely unlikely, at least in my view again).

As to the language of the emails, I am shocked, shocked to find there is emotion in them! As stated in our post Climate: Mistakes or Prevarication, scientists are surprisingly human underneath those white smocks with pocket protectors.

As the popular RealClimate blog explains:

Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published. These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

Cross-posted to Donklephant.com

Climate climate change, CRU, emails hacked

Climate science is a technical field. Modern measurements, reaching back only a few decades, provide us with a degree of precision not found in historical records (yet even modern measurements have problems). To calculate the tiny changes that may be the beginning of global warming we need modern precision for past ages as well. So scientists develop historical temperature records based on things like tree ring growth, ice core samples, and sediment at the bottom of lakes. These physical artifacts act like a proxy for a precision thermometer. At least in theory.

The scientific method requires that after the hypothesis is proposed, a period of testing ensues to prove the hypothesis. We tend to have a romantic view of science as dispassionate and reasoned, with white-coats and pocket protectors and mutual respect all around. We forget that Einstein called Monsignor Georges Lemaître a moron before finally accepting Lemaître’s hypothesis of the primeval atom (or, “Big Bang”). Scientists often protect their data and become entrenched in their positions long past the time the evidence indicates they should move on.

You can ignore the hysterical non-scientific accounts and the deconstructing of them as inconvenient hysteria. It doesn’t matter if former VP Al Gore got much wrong; he’s not the one doing the research. But when the ones publishing the data find they have major errors they … sometimes grudgingly … admit it and go back to the data for a re-write. Or not.

Work by statistician Steve McIntyre at ClimateAudit.com has resulted in an admission that much of the work going into one series of past temperature records (tree ring data) was inadequate and should not be used. Predictably, like Einstein, the supporters of the data at RealClimate.org are calling McIntyre a moron. But the original scientist compiling the data, Keith Briffa, has a much more reasoned (and scientific) response. Basically, “oops, don’t use this data yet”.

Now we find yet another past-temperature “proxy” has problems: sediment at the bottom of lake Korttajärvi cataloged by Finnish scientists. It seems that McIntyre and others first caught the error, and it has been confirmed by the original scientists: the data is sometimes presented “upside down” showing a warming trend when it shows nothing of the sort. Dr. Atte Korhola, at the University of Helsinki, is an expert in lake sediment studies:

Some curves and data have been used upside down, and this is not a compliment to climate science. And in this context it is relevant to note that the same people who are behind this are running what may be the world’s most influential climate website, RealClimate.

H/T to the Air Vent blog.

Science is often messy, with emotion and angst, recriminations and entrenched positions defended vigorously. That’s the way it works. Some prefer to accuse others of prevarication, but it hardly matters. The only thing that matters is whether or not the hypothesis is true, and proving that often takes years.

Before we begin to formulate public policy, adding burdens like Cap and Trade to our economy, we should be sure the consensus view is actually true.

Because in science, the consensus view is always wrong, until it is finally right.

Cross posted to Donklephant

Climate climate change, global warming, hockey sticks