Despite the propoganda from denialists and a couple of glaring but insignificant errors in the AR4, the IPCC has been shown to be extremely conservative in its forecasts, as climate change is running ahead or in line with the modelling.

There are three working groups involved in the report, with the following NZ scientists on the team:

Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report  Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis

Chapter 5: Information from Paleoclimate Archives

Tim NAISH, GNS Scinece, Victoria University (Antarctic Research Centre)

Chapter 14: Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change

James RENWICK, NIWA (Energy)

David WRATT, NIWA

Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

Climate Change 2013: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

Chapter 6: Ocean systems

Phil Boyd, NIWA

Chapter 11:  Human health

Alistair Woodward, Auckland University (Population Health)

Chapter 25:  Australasia

Andy Reisinger, Victoria University

Paul Newton, AgResearch

Andrew Tait, NIWA

Blair Fitzharris, Otago University

Working Group III Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

Climate Change 2013: Mitigation of Climate Change

Chapter 8:  Transport

Ralph SIMS, Massey University, IEA

Chapter 11:  Agriculture, Forestry and other land uses (AFOLU)

Harry CLARK, AgResearch

This is a pretty good showing for New Zealand. I won’t go on about punching above our weight and all that, I just want to congratulate some of our leading lights who are contributing to what is the most important challenge facing humanity today.

With the physics of global warming long settled and the science of when and how much a perpetual moving feast, it is truly important work.

Perhaps some insight into how the IPCC works will put a few minds at rest:

From http://blogs.abc.net.au/events/2009/11/conspiracies-and-the-ipcc.html (emphasis added)

While it is called a ‘panel,’ the IPCC is actually one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings in history bringing together hundreds of scientists and other experts who are generally nominated by their governments or by non-government organisations (such as the Australian Academy of Science or the CSIRO). But the IPCC is also policy-neutral. Its job is to present the best science. There is not a single policy recommendation in its reports.

A different group of scientists is picked for each report and it is not just climate scientists – but biologists, physicists, geologists, economists, engineers, health experts and so on. Each report deals with three categories: the physical science, or how climate change works; impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, or how to deal with it; and mitigation, or how to minimise it.

Each of these working groups is headed by two scientists, one each from a developed and developing nation, supported by up to 500 other scientists known as lead authors who in turn are supported by up to 2000 further expert reviewers. Together they evaluate thousands of pieces of peer-reviewed research from around the globe.

Here is how Queensland University’s Professor Ove Heogh-Guldberg, a world expert on coral reefs and climate change, describes what happened when he contributed a small slice of the 2007 IPCC report:

“The IPCC has one of the most rigorous review processes I have ever experienced. There are various stages of review. The first round involves the working groups picking over the text (hundreds of eyes and opinions). If you have been involved in this process, it is a quite an experience taking months and years – involving a lot of pedantic haggling over detail – but always using the peer-reviewed literature as the base.
“When this is complete, then the documents are sent to signatory governments for review. Leading scientists from each of the countries pick over the details. And after this, the documents are placed for open comment (on the web). At this point, any government, industry, science group, special interest group, or individual is invited for comment, recommendations, amendments etc. At each of these points, the lead and contributing authors are required to respond to each comment or suggestion in a precise fashion, however correct or off-the-wall they may be.

“The responses from the specialists are independently reviewed to ensure that the documents have been amended or the comment/suggestion/objection refuted scientifically (i.e. with peer-reviewed literature). I had to respond to 87 comments on a relatively small contribution to the Australian and NZ chapters within working group 2 of the IPCC report in 2007. At the end of the day, I don’t think you could have a more rigorous process. The only problem is that it ends up being conservative (e.g. failure to predict the dramatic decline of Arctic sea ice). That may be its only flaw.”

There were more than 30,000 comments from the open public review process for just one of the 2007 working groups – all of them given a written response that is publicly available.

One of the lead authors on the 2001 and 2007 reports, UNSW’s Professor Andy Pitman, also worries it is unduly cautious especially because in the final stages all governments, including those with vested interests in fossil fuels like Saudi Arabia, have to approve what has been written “line by line.”

A lot has changed in the last three years. The picture is becoming clearer and clearer, and it’s not pretty.

pundit.co.nz has an excellent summary, and here are a few tidbits

Scientists believe that our greenhouse gas emissions to date have already committed the world to average warming of 2.4 degrees celsius – surpassing the two degrees previously identified as a dangerous risk.

The IPCC’s worst-case emissions scenarios have been exceeded. Man-made emissions have risen 38 percent above 1990 levels. They rose on average 3.5 percent per year for the period 2000-2007, an almost four-fold increase on the previous decade’s average of 0.9 percent per year.

The Arctic could be ice free in summer within 20 years, not the waning years of this century as had previously been thought.

A plausible range for global average sea level rise of 0.5 to 2.0 metres by 2100 is suggested, due to thermal expansion and ice melt – much more than the upper limit of 59 centimetres previously predicted by the IPCC.

Modelling shows that a 50 centimetre rise would produce tidal events every day that now occur once a year, and events expected once during the whole of the 20th century will occur several times every year by 2100.

This is pretty stark. Although it’s not surprising that the official IPCC reports have turned out to be very conservative, when every single line has to be agreed upon by so many people. Naturally, only the most common-denominator science is allowed through.

What do you reckon it take for Nick Smith to get real about this issue? If not this, what will?

Greens Sport the 350 Look

Green MPs support Bill McKibben’s campaign to reduce carbon in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, down from the current 389 ppm which is going up every year.  Scientists believe this would keep the global temperature rise to less than 2C.

Meanwhile, the NACT government struggles with denial.  National’s “target” is a 50% reduction by 2050.  And while the Nats have also adopted the IPCC target of 450 ppm, they’ve ignored that the IPCC also says an 80% emissions cut is needed by 2050 to achieve it.  

National’s targets are meaningless without a programme for reaching them.  After complaining last year that emissions went up during Labour’s reign, they’ve done little besides reverse the few positive steps Labour took during its last term and create confusion in the market by delaying the ETS.

New Zealand is looking increasingly silly overseas, last week “winning” the Fossil of the Day award in Bonn, given by a group of environmental NGOs to countries that block progress at the United Nations climate change negotiations.   With the successor agreement to Kyoto to be completed at Copenhagen in December, our Parliament is still mired in a false debate about the science. 

Perhaps they’re not bothered by this confusion as their true intentions were signalled in the budget.  Roads, roads and more roads will see any target not only missed, but will send Aotearoa in the opposite direction (and “clean” coal is just around the corner?).   Nick Smith says everything will be fine, but he seems to be talking to himself these days. Certainly his government is not listening.

If the government had a Green New Deal type of approach, it could put forward solutions that would build resilience into our economy by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, while at the same time allowing us to take a meaningful part in the global discussion on climate change mitigation.  Instead, this NACT government is making sure New Zealand won’t be joining the international consensus anytime soon.

The sceptics love to bash on about how water vapour is the real greenhouse culprit, how climate scientists ignore it and waste their time on CO2. This is a typical straw man for the sceptics who won’t engage with the real science. The facts are that the climate scientists have always been aware of the importance of water vapour in global energy retention and have sought to model how our rapid increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases effect it. Well, a new paper has been published that answers many of these questions.

An article at scienceblog describes the findings:

With new observations, the scientists confirmed experimentally what existing climate models had anticipated theoretically. The research team used novel data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite to measure precisely the humidity throughout the lowest 10 miles of the atmosphere. That information was combined with global observations of shifts in temperature, allowing researchers to build a comprehensive picture of the interplay between water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other atmosphere-warming gases. The NASA-funded research was published recently in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters.

“Everyone agrees that if you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, then warming will result,” Dessler said. “So the real question is, how much warming?”

The answer can be found by estimating the magnitude of water vapor feedback. Increasing water vapor leads to warmer temperatures, which causes more water vapor to be absorbed into the air. Warming and water absorption increase in a spiraling cycle.

Because the new precise observations agree with existing assessments of water vapor’s impact, researchers are more confident than ever in model predictions that Earth’s leading greenhouse gas will contribute to a temperature rise of a few degrees by the end of the century.

“This study confirms that what was predicted by the models is really happening in the atmosphere,” said Eric Fetzer, an atmospheric scientist who works with AIRS data at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Water vapor is the big player in the atmosphere as far as climate is concerned.”

No one ever asserted that the climate models used by the IPCC were anything more than crude approximations of a complex system. But they are amongst the best that human science can muster. Increasing support for the validity of key aspects of the models means that the next generation of model will be even more robust. This means the risks associated with rapid, human induced climate change can be better assessed and our responses refined. Those still demanding irrefutable proof of man’s fingerprint on climactic change will be waiting a long, long time. I for one will continue to monitor and take the advice of the best that modern science has to offer. Bjchip – did you say that you worked on the AIRS project? Perhaps you have a deeper insight.

Dot Earth commented:

More than half of global emissions, which totalled more than 34 billion tons of CO2 in 2007, are now from developing countries, the report said. Their dominance reflects explosive growth in the burning of coal and manufacturing cement, another big source of the heat-trapping gas.

The project scientists also said that the absorptive power of oceans, forests, and other “sinks” for carbon dioxide, which typically suck in more than half of the gas emitted each year, has not kept pace with the rising emissions. In 2007, the report said, these sinks took in 54 percent of the emissions, but that is a drop of 3 percent from the long-term average rate from 1959 to 2000.

Climate Progress puts it graphically:

And climate scientist James Wang notes:

The rate of increase for emissions lies at the upper end of the range projected by the IPCC, suggesting that we’re headed towards the most disruptive scenarios they envision.

For those who want refreshing here’s what those disruptive scenarios could include:

Actually that was only 4 degrees warming.  The IPCC’s upper estimates actually goes past 5 degrees (civilisation collapses) and 6 degrees (mass extinctions) to 6.4 degrees

1. 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded, closely followed by 1998 and 2007. Twelve of the 13 warmest years on record were between 1995 and 2007.
2. The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are based on the peer-reviewed, published work of 2,500 scientists in more than 130 countries.
3. Climate is average weather. It’s what all the weather adds up to over time, to give averages for temperature, rainfall, snow and frost.
4. The difference in climate between a warm period and the middle of an ice age is between 4°C and 6°C.
5. 125,000 years ago (during the last warm period between ice ages) temperatures were around 1.5°C higher than they are now; the sea level was 4-6m higher.
6. The world has already warmed 0.74°C over the past 100 years.
7. The oceans keep New Zealand cooler than the rest of the world. Since 1950 New Zealand has warmed by 0.4°C. Thank you, Pacific Ocean.
8. If we stop emitting all greenhouse gases today, the world will keep warming because of the gas already in the atmosphere. In 30 years it would be at least 1.6°C warmer than before the Industrial Age began 200 years ago.
9. The most serious consequences of global warming might be avoided if global average temperatures rise by no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
10. If greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, our grandchildren could face increases in global average temperature of up to 6°C by 2100. This will have a devastating impact on life on Earth.

Compiled from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) and Hot Topic by Gareth Renowden (AUT Media, 2007)

If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.

And then this today in the Dominion Post.

Please read the science. I think the evidence is so strong we would be ignoring it at our own peril and the peril of all living species.

Unfortunately while the climate change denial debate that we have on a regular basis here at frogblog has been a fun way to pass the time, passing time is increasingly exactly the problem.  It’s a shame that scientists like Pachauri need to step beyond their role as scientists and instead play advocates for the science that so many politicians are failing to act upon.  But it does indicate that the clear gravity of the story science is telling us.

according to data tracked by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, climate change failed to crack the top twenty most covered news stories of the year. Even during its peak weeks of attention-in and around the release of the IPCC reports and the Nobel Prize announcement-the issue remained eclipsed by the juggernaut narratives of Iraq, the economy, the presidential horse race, and several celebrity scandals.

Climate Progress argues that the media fails by continuing to seek out conflict (or ‘balance’  as it euphemistically refers to it) in the climate change story, thus both giving credence to the scientifically discredited climate change deniers and undermining efforts to give people a true understanding of the nature of the problem:

The real story doesn’t have much conflict: It is the growing scientific (and technological) understanding that if we don’t sharply restrict greenhouse gas emissions soon, we face catastrophe…

Every time [the media] do a story with a different, blander spin, they undermine the urgent need for action. Every time they say there is a middle ground, they push us closer to the certain catastrophe of inaction.

Meanwhile Dot Earth defends the media arguing:

the main impediment to effective societal responses to global warming lies less in the count of front-page headlines than in the basic disconnect between the nature of the issue – complex, spread in time and space, laden with some unavoidable uncertainty – and the nature of human nature.

The problem here in New Zealand is that while the debate should be ‘is the government going far enough?’ the conflicts that too often are being reported are ‘is the government going too far’?

Perhaps the sceptics are on to something when they complain that the models are poor and imprecise and that the IPCC has a strong political element. It is the imprecision of the models and the political interference at the table that means the message is horribly watered down. The scientific evidence is continuously mounting that the IPCC is forever under predicting the anthropogenic contribution to climate change. Jim Hansen calls this problem ‘scientific reticence’.

If you want a great collection and commentary on the latest wave of climate research, particularly as regards Arctic Sea ice and Greenland, download The Big Melt, Lessons from the Arctic Summer of 2007. I’d be tempted to call the authors alarmist, except that they’re quoting the IPCC scientist’s peer reviewed literature, not making stuff up on the fly the way so many sceptics do.

Now, if we could just convince the few remaining politicians and businesspeople around here to to pull their heads from the sand and acknowledge the science, we might be able to get on with the serious work of remaking our corner of the world into a sustainable and just community.