The IPCC: "All About Modelling, Not About Protecting the Earth"

I've waited awhile to let the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) hype die down a bit. Man, it sure was loud! But I'm not sure which was worse: the deniers saying that the report "proved" (huh?) that global warming has stopped or the enviros claiming that the report says "we face a global climate emergency" when it doesn't say that at all (but should).

Both groups are wrong. But for different reasons. 

The deniers? Well, we've been pumping 90 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every DAY for ages (almost half of which has been absorbed by the oceans). Where do they think all the heat radiated by those extra greenhouse gas molecules has gone? (The answer, by the way, is that the oceans have been warmed and ice sheets and sea ice have been melted. It takes some heat to accomplish that!)

The enviro groups? Well, the mistake they've been making is not noticing how much the IPCC has left out — namely all positive (that is, amplifying) carbon and climate feedbacks. So the IPCC's new ("RCP") scenarios are actually underestimates of the dangers we are unleashing in the climate system. In other words, the situation is much worse, and much more urgent, than the IPCC's Working Group I (Physical Science Basis) report.

It's all very complicated and complex, and clearly the media have to simplify it for the public. But how can we rely on the IPCC's assessments when they don't include all possible sources of warming in their computer models (due to "carbon cycle uncertainties")? How can we trust the IPCC assessments when they offer a range, but then only speak to the "mean warming projections" (what they call "most likely")? 

Should not climate scientists use the upper end of the temperature range when talking of risk? Especially since risk equals probability multiplied by magnitude (and the upper range of possible temperature increases is the potential magnitude)? Yet we're not just risking the mean warming projections, are we? We're also risking the upper ranges. And we're not just risking the upper ranges, we're risking those upper ranges with several degrees caused by carbon feedbacks tacked on.

Unfortunately (and perhaps ironically), the IPCC does not "do" risk. This intergovernmental panel that synthesizes the science of climate change has a code of silence on dangerous, disastrous, or catastrophic climate change. They claim that they cannot define "dangerous" climate change because that is a "value judgement" that science cannot make. (Gee, last time I checked, doctors were scientifically trained and they can tell you what's dangerous and deadly to human life.)

I'm not sure why the IPCC hobbles its scientific contributors and their discussions this way. But perhaps if each country's general public asked for more scientific honesty and a scientific assessment of how dangerous climate change could become, they'd be able to change their terms of reference.

If human beings (and our food/agriculture systems) have never experienced the temperatures that we're heading for, doesn't that at least imply danger ahead? Not "Ooh, it's not looking good," but "Holy flying %$#!, we're heading into a dangerous climate change emergency!"

Worth writing a letter or two, anyone? After all, changing political will is about the only transformative action (beyond individual reductions in carbon emissions) the public still has the power to take.

So, with apologies to the great Welsh bard, I'll leave you with a Dylan Thomas rendition by my husband that reminds us what our response to the AR5 ought to be. 

Do not go gentle into this unnatural night.
Real people burn and rave at Mother Earth's deplorable plight.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Rage, rage, rage with all your might.
— Peter Carter 

p.s. That quote in the title is also from my hubby, someone who spends many, many hours every day reading and synthesizing research on climate change.

What's the Future Climate Going to Look Like? Check out Today's Wacky Weather

My husband (you know him; he's one of my favourite eco-heroes) attended probably his last climate change conference last week. Even through his jet-lagged stupor, he noted that while the conference was supposed to be about the impacts of climate change, most of the presentations were about modelling. Modelling, modelling, modelling ... while the Earth burns. Attendees seemed to be more interested in discussing their impact models than actual, potential and committed impacts. My husband was heartsick.

But on the day after the conference, some good news came his way. Climate News Network put out a story about the conference that quoted Peter's paper:

Another said the effects of climate change on food security in the Northern Hemisphere had been seriously underestimated. 

He said the further warming to which the world was already unavoidably committed meant that severe regional problems lay ahead, which would have a worldwide effect. 

He concluded: “The evidence from the science is overwhelming. Under our best ideas of mitigation, the Northern Hemisphere is committed… to large losses of all crops. We are clearly committed to a dire food security emergency situation in the Northern Hemisphere and, therefore, globally.”

The neat part about the quote is not just that it got picked up, not just that it's salient, but that it was book-ended by quotes from Dr. Martin Parry, visiting professor at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, and visiting research fellow at Imperial’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change. Parry said that if we want to know how climate change is going to affect us, we really need to see what the weather is doing.

In other words, if I understand him correctly, today's wacked-out weather is a glimpse of what's in store for us, climate-wise. 

This reminded me of one of my 2009 pre-Copenhagen posts in which I implored climate change educators to make the potential effects of climate change more graphic:  

We've done an extremely poor job of educating the public about the impending impacts on their children's future lives — not making the impacts visual / graphic enough for people, for example, or not personalizing / localizing them.... People have to be able to "see," in their mind's eye, what's going to happen to their children if we don't halt the carbon emissions.

Anyway, just wanted to share that again — the idea that it's becoming easier to point to and help people see what's going to become of us without drastic mitigation. 

A New Low in Criminal Negligence?

My online friend and blogger, Michael Murphy, found a very timely quote this week: 

“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”

— Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, 2004

Now, leaving hope aside for the moment (you know the mantra: hope is not an action verb; action is our only hope, so we don't get the luxury of hope until we've done the work of ensuring a future for our children), today I'd like to discuss something that's taking place because we're not "shedding our fear" or "shifting to a new level of consciousness" or "reaching a higher moral ground." 

I'm starting to view this as a form of criminal negligence. Or worse. (Perhaps recklessness? Or an intended cover up?)

According to Wikipedia, criminal negligence is an actus reus ("guilty act"), accompanied by mens rea ("guilty mind"), that is "careless, inattentive, neglectful, willfully blind" and for which "the fault lies in the failure to foresee and so allow otherwise avoidable dangers to manifest."

And the guilty parties? Arctic sea ice modellers and the peer reviewers and editors who are publishing their research. Okay, I know. Yawn, right? Climate change modellers as villains? Pretty boring story, eh?

But the problem is this: Climate scientists have the power to shift our consciousness, help us reach or at least reach for the moral high ground, and shed our fear to take action. Instead, they are carelessly, inattentively, neglectfully or willfully blindly basing Arctic sea ice models on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's mid-range greenhouse gas emissions scenario, not on what's actually happening in the world, emissions-wise. 

Still don't find that compelling? Well, we've been on the IPCC's highest emissions scenario (the A1FI) for many years now, but these "scientists" (are modellers truly scientists or are they glorified computer geeks who "use" science and advanced mathematics to make models that produce projections and "surprises," the latter admitted by the IPCC) are running their models using an irrelevant, outdated and now dangerous "scenario" (a concept invented for the study of climate change because it doesn't sound scary). 

Can you see how wasteful and careless (it sure seems they couldn't care less) and dangerous this is? They're basing climate "science" on irreality. So how could their projections possibly be real or helpful?

And what of their peer reviewers and publishers? Given the number of lives at stake if we get this wrong, you'd think they would demand the proper starting point or baseline for the modelling, so it doesn't look like they're all just playing around with numbers on computers.

We know the dangers of losing the Arctic summer sea ice. Russia of 2010, anyone? So are these people, these researchers, peer reviewers and editors, ignorant? Irresponsible? Willfully blind? Trying to cover up how bad the situation is? Working for the fossil fuel industries? In my view, no matter why they're doing it, the fact that they are "allowing otherwise avoidable dangers to manifest" makes them guilty of criminal negligence.