Daniel Botkin wrote a great piece on global warming that appeared in the WSJ recently. He argues that our concerns about global warming are overblown:
Global warming doesn’t matter except to the extent that it will affect life–ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.
Case in point: This year’s United Nations report on climate change and other documents say that 20% to 30% of plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction in this century due to global warming–a truly terrifying thought. Yet, during the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the millions of species on Earth went extinct. The exceptions were about 20 species of large mammals (the famous megafauna of the last ice age–saber-tooth tigers, hairy mammoths and the like), which went extinct about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and many dominant trees and shrubs of northwestern Europe. But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct, and few mammals.
Read the entire article, it really puts things in perspective. Here’s my favorite line, “Good thing that Erik the Red didn’t have Al Gore or his climatologists as his advisers.”
Here is the response from “realclimate.org” which is ” a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. ”
If it doesn’t reproduce well below you can read it at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/about/
Global Warming Delusions at the Wall Street Journal
Filed under: Climate Science— david @ 6:58 PM
Daniel Botkin, emeritus professor of ecology at UC Santa Barbara, argues in the Wall Street Journal (Oct 17, page A19) that global warming will not have much impact on life on Earth. We’ll summarize some of his points and then take our turn:
Botkin: The warm climates in the past 2.5 million years did not lead to extinctions.
Response: For the past 2.5 million years the climate has oscillated between interglacials which were (at most) a little warmer than today and glacials which were considerably colder than today. There is no precedent in the past 2.5 million years for so much warming so fast. The ecosystem has had 2.5 million years to adapt to glacial-interglacial swings, but we are asking it to adapt to a completely new climate in just a few centuries. The past is not a very good analog for the future in this case. And anyway, the human species can suffer quite a bit before we start talking extinction.
Botkin: Tropical diseases are affected by other things besides temperature
Response: I’m personally more worried about dust bowls than malaria in the temperate latitudes. Droughts don’t lead to too many extinctions either, but they can destroy civilizations. It is true that tropical diseases are affected by many things besides temperature, but temperature is important, and the coming warming is certainly not going to make the fight against malaria any easier.
Botkin: Kilimanjaro again.
Response: Been there, done that. The article Botkin cites is from American Scientist, an unreviewed pop science magazine, and it is mainly a rehash of old arguments that have been discussed and disposed of elsewhere. And anyway, the issue is a red-herring. Even if it turned out that for some bizarre reason the Kilimanjaro glacier, which is thousands of years old, picked just this moment to melt purely by coincidence, it would not in any way affect the validity of our prediction of future warming. Glaciers are melting around the world, confirming the general warming trends that we measure. There are also many other confirmations of the physics behind the predictions. It’s a case of attacking the science by attacking an icon, rather than taking on the underlying scientific arguments directly.
Botkin: The medieval optimum was a good time
Response: Maybe it was, if you’re interested in Europe and don’t mind the droughts in the American Southwest. But the business-as-usual forecast for 2100 is an entirely different beast than the medieval climate. The Earth is already probably warmer than it was in medieval times. Beware the bait and switch!
—
Botkin argues for clear-thinking rationality in the discussion about anthropogenic climate change, against twisting the truth, as it were. We couldn’t agree more. Doctor, heal thyself.
For years the Wall Street Journal has been lying to you about the existence of global warming. It doesn’t exist, it’s a conspiracy, the satellites show it’s just urban heat islands, it’s not CO2, it’s all the sun, it’s water vapor, and on and on. Now that those arguments are losing traction, they have moved on from denying global warming’s existence to soothing you with reassurances that it ain’t gonna be such a bad thing.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…well..uh..you ain’t gonna fool me again.
-George W. Bush
What evidence are does the post reference to say that this warming is unprecedented? I don’t trust the work of Lonnie Thompson, Michael Mann (an co-author at realclimate) and other paleoclimatologists who refuse to archive their data. If they release their data, I’ll be more predisposed to truth their analysis. Are they afraid of the scientific method?
On the issue of disease, temperature is important, but more important is money. A poorer world, as the people like Gore promote will make all diseases more difficult to fight, especially malaria.
What is the evidence of increased drought? The global climate models do not have sufficient precision to predict drought at regional level. It’s fine to be worried about drought, but what’s the evidence of increasing drought?
The post from realclimate nicely avoids the issue of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The post needs to rebut the arguments made in the article. The post doesn’t do that. Botkin didn’t use the example of Mt. Kilimanjaro to dispute global warming predictions as realclimate argues, but he uses to dispute those, like Al Gore, who want to use it as a poster child. Read the article Botkin sites and you’ll understand why you can’t use Mt. Kilimanjaro as a poster child for global warming. For one, the changes on Mt. Kilimanjaro started in the late 1800s and the air temperature near the glaciers never rise about freezing. The ice is sublimating, not melting.
Botkin doesn’t argue that the medieval optimum was a good time, he argues that the during the medieval optimum Greenland was warmer than today and that didn’t result in a climate catastrophe.
If you are going to argue that the WSJ has been lying about the existence of global warming, please provide some citations.
Typical attack the messenger stuff. It’s amusing to suggest that Dr. Mann, a renowned Berkley and Yale trained scientist who has published over 100 papers in peer reviewed journals should follow your lead and embrace the scientific method. Maybe once he does the great paleoclimatologist conspiracy will fall apart.
The post clearly does address Mt. Kilimanjaro. Your concern is that they missed the point that the Kilimanjaro glacier is being used for propaganda purposes. They didn’t miss this point, it was clearly addressed. They described this attack as a red herring given the fact that glaciers all around the world are receding and this is due to climate warming: “It’s a case of attacking the science by attacking an icon, rather than taking on the underlying scientific arguments directly.”
I agree that the post does not do a great job of addressing the substance of the scientific argument about the Kilimanjaro glaciers (presumably because it is, in fact, a red-herring). I also agree that the shrinking of these glaciers is not due primarily to rising atmospheric temps: http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/55553. However, from this same article: “It is possible, though, that there is an indirect connection between the accumulation of greenhouse gases and Kilimanjaro’s disappearing ice: There is strong evidence of an association over the past 200 years or so between Indian Ocean surface temperatures and the atmospheric circulation and precipitation patterns that either feed or starve the ice on Kilimanjaro. These patterns have been starving the ice since the late 19th century—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say simply reversing the binge of ice growth in the third quarter of the 19th century.”
Also from this American Scientist article: “Around the globe, mighty glaciers are retreating. In the European Alps and many other mid- and high-latitude locations, evidence clearly implicates global climate change—heat fluxes from warm air feeding processes that turn mighty glaciers into rivers of meltwater.”
Kilimanjaro shouldn’t be used as evidence of the effects of global warming. But it also should not be used by the WSJ and you to play the dishonest game of trying to undermine the scientific foundation of climate change by attacking an icon.
Regarding the WSJ, there have been many opinion posts that attempt to undermine global warming. Many, if not most or even all, have been misleading or dishonest. Here are a few examples:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000D5C47-C124-1509-805C83414B7FFDB0
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/09/some_climate_change_fallacies.html
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/02/monckton_curious_take_on_the_s.php
The Scientific American article is particularly worth reading.
John,
I asked you to back up your assertions and you say, “Typical attack the messenger stuff.” It is not attacking the messenger to ask for citations.
I believe people like Mann, Thompson, and other need to archive the data they use to generate paleoclimate reconstructions. Mann doesn’t have to follow my lead, as you say, but merely release the data and how his model works. Here’s more information on Mann’s work that you could ever care to know: http://www.climateaudit.org/?cat=2
The Scientific American article cites the National Research Council’s review of the “hockey stick” data. The article fails to note the NRC recommends that strip-bark tree forms such as bristlecone and foxtails should not be used, but Mann’s work uses them. Mann also uses a statistical technique called principle components. But statisticians believe that is a bad use of the technique because it creates “a strong tendency of the simulations also to show the hockey-stick shape.” http://www.amstat-online.org/sections/envr/ssenews/ENVR_9_1.pdf
The Scientific American article by Jeffery Sachs says that the WSJ’s editorial board completely ignored the NRC’s report. But the NRC’s report didn’t vindicate Mann, as Sachs suggests. The report was critical of Mann’s methods but came to the conclusion that the results were “plausible.” The NRC’s report is a mixed bag, not a slam dunk.
As for Mt. Kilimanjaro, I’ve never been dishonest about Kilimanjaro, as opposed to Al Gore—who featured it prominently in An Inconvenient Truth as a sign of impending global warming doom. The point about Kilimanjaro is that the climate is complex and all changes aren’t attributable to humans. Even things at look like they may be attributed to “global warming” aren’t necessarily caused by human activities. That’s my point about Kilimanjaro.
Also, I’m confused as to why you think Daniel Botkin, the biologist that wrote the WSJ piece is a liar. I suggest you read more of Botkin’s work before you criticize him. http://www.danielbbotkin.com/
Thanks for your comments.
You plainly were attacking the messenger by saying that you didn’t trust the RealClimate page or Dr. Mann. You summarily dismiss all his work and implicate the entire paleoclimatology community as well. This lack of trust, by the way, is completely unjustified given the careful review of Dr. Mann’s science by the NRC.
Here is the NRC’s own summary of the report:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=11676
Here’s an excerpt from the report:
“The committee pointed out that surface temperature reconstructions for periods before the Industrial Revolution — when levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases were much lower — are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that current warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence.”
This is from the NYTimes story about the report:
“…in a 155-page report, the 12-member panel convened by the National Academies said “an array of evidence” supported the main thrust of the paper. Disputes over details, it said, reflected the normal intellectual clash that takes place as science tests new approaches to old questions.”
So Sachs statement that the NRC “came down squarely on the side of the Mann study” is clearly accurate.
In this particular WSJ column, Daniel Botkin’s argument is very misleading. To state the thesis that there is little to no indication that global warming will have serious consequences (which is itself extremely dubious) and then support this statement with a discussion of the Kilimanjaro glaciers is dishonest. I have no comment on his other work except to say that he does, on his own website, seem to contradict the tone of his WSJ piece:
“We still must be concerned about global warming and threats to the diversity of life on the Earth. There is not just one threat from human activities to the diversity of life; there are several major ones, including disruption of habitats, introduction of non-native species into new habitats, and many effects of technology.”
John,
I wasn’t attacking the messenger. That implies a personal attack. I was attacking Mann’s methods. If you looked into Mann’s methods you would agree with me. As I noted above, “The report was critical of Mann’s methods but came to the conclusion that the results were “plausible.” The NRC’s report is a mixed bag, not a slam dunk.” You noted that the NY Times said that the array of evidence supports the “main thrust” of the paper. I don’t dispute that, but but you can get a “good” results, even if you use bad, unscientific methods.
The NRC faulted Mann for using tree types that don’t product good information. Yet Mann hasn’t stopped using Bristlecones in his reconstructions. Since the NRC report statisticians have faulted his statistical methods. The NRC itself didn’t do any research. They just took a look at the papers and just winged it. If you looked into Mann’s tree ring paleoclimate studies you would agree that his methods were suspect and therefore his results are as well.
As for Botkin, in the paragraph before the one on Kilimanjaro he discusses that models, not actual data is treated as reality. From there he talks about Mt. Kilimanjaro. He concludes the paragraph about Kilimanjaro, ” Although acknowledged by many scientists, the paper is scorned by the true believers in global warming.” His point is that true believers in global warming believe more in models than in evidence on the ground. For this reason we have Al Gore using Mt. Kilimanjaro as a global warming poster child, but we can’t attribute all changes occurring in the world to human activities.
John,
Here’s a good explanation of the problems with Mann’s paleoclimate reconstructions. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2322 The post contains information about the NRC report and other analyses of Mann’s work.
The National Academy of Sciences just winged it? I think you’re winging it. Of course they didn’t produce any new research data. Their job in this report was to review Mann’s work, not produce their own.
I read the page you linked to and the ASA newsletter discussed there. Did you read the entire page? I think you should take special note of McIntyre’s last paragraph. Here is Steve McIntyre’s concluding paragraph, which is a response to the suggestion in the ASA newsletter that we not lose site of the forest for the trees:
“As to the last sentence, I agree that it’s important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees. As a reviewer for AR4, it was my position that, if the paleoclimate issues were not relevant to the policy issues, then the Paleoclimate (and the hockey stick discussion) should be deleted from AR4 so that people could focus on what were the “real” arguments. The IPCC “consensus” was presumably that the paleoclimate arguments remained important and that’s why the chapter remained, despite my suggestions that it be deleted.”
Specific aspects of Mann’s paper are certainly controversial, but though it has brought considerable and valid criticism the conclusions of the paper seem to still stand when corrections have been made. There is an excellent and seemingly pretty fair-minded discussion of this at wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy). Anyway, there are nearly a dozen independent studies that have produced the same results. Furthermore, paleoclimatology is diminishing in relative importance in the study of climate change. If you’re interested at all in this topic you really should review the summary of the IPCC AR4 (www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf). You’re so focused on a single tree that you’ve lost site of the forest.
John,
I’m sorry John, but I’m not just “winging it.” I wrote that the NAS just winged it, but That’s not my description of what happened it was a direct quote from Jerry North the chair of the NAS panel of what they did. Here’s north on the subject http://www.met.tamu.edu/people/faculty/dessler/NorthH264.mp4
I agree with McIntrye’s concluding paragraph.
The conclusions of Mann’s papers do not stand because his methods are flawed. Many of the “independent studies” are not independent because they rely on the same data (the types of tree forms the NAS critized, for example) and they same techniques as Mann’s papers.
I have read summary for policymakers of IPCC AR4.
I disagree that paleclimatology is of diminishing importance because the only way we understand the magnitude of today’s warming is by comparing it to the past. Nobel Prize winner Al Gore sure thought that it was important to talk about paleoclimatology in his Oscar winning movie. That says something about the relative importance of paleoclimatology to the discussions of climate change.
Given your statements about paleoclimatology in your last post I find it hard to believe that you did read the SPM. Check out pages 5-9: the sections titled “Direct Observations of Recent Climate Change” and “A Paleoclimatic Perspective”. The first of these (Direct Observations) has 21 bullet points and the second (Paleoclimatic Perspective) has 2. Four and a half pages devoted to the former and half a page to the later. Of course, paleoclimatology is still very important. But given all the new data in the Direct Observations section it is diminished in relative importance (also see figures SPM.3 and SPM.4 which rely on direct observations not on ice cores, tree rings, sediment layers or other proxy data).
The American Statistical Association newsletter article concludes: “In the end, it’s important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees, where the “forest” refers to the totality of scientific evidence for global warming”. With regards to the totality of scientific evidence the IPCC’s fourth report states:
“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is
now evident from observations of increases in global
average air and ocean temperatures, widespread
melting of snow and ice, and rising global average
sea level (see Figure SPM.3)”
“The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere
and ocean, together with ice mass loss, support the
conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global
climate change of the past 50 years can be explained
without external forcing, and very likely that it is not
due to known natural causes alone.”
John,
I fail to understand you complaint. In the previous post I wrote, “I disagree that paleclimatology is of diminishing importance because the only way we understand the magnitude of today’s warming is by comparing it to the past.” What part of that does the Summary of Policymakers disagrees with that statement?
I also fail to see your point about the ASA statement?