CO2 non-science journalism is not doing the World a favour

Remember the last time you tried to reason with someone who constantly took your words out of context in an attempt to argue an opposite futile point? If that left you smiling politely while shaking your head, you probably felt like me after reading the article “Coral Reefs and Climate Change: Unproved Assumptions” by the Idso family posted on their website “CO2 Science” at the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. The article is another sad addition to their more than 500 un-reviewed pieces – all with the obvious agenda of making their readers believe that climate change science is nothing but alarmist propaganda.

In their latest anti-science scribble (Vol 12, No 3) the Idso’s attempt to build the case that “it is premature to suggest that widespread reef collapse is a certain consequence of ongoing bleaching” and that “nature is far more resilient [to climate change] than many people give it credit for..”  All of their quotes are from a recent paper by a group of young and excellent Australian marine biologists, Maynard, Baird and Pratchett published in Coral Reefs (27:745-749). Contrary to the Idso’s claims, Maynard et al.’s paper does not question that climate change is a threat to coral reefs.  The purpose of Maynard et al.’s paper is to provoke debate around some specific assumptions of thermal thresholds and coral reef’s adaptability to climate change and the functional link between reef degradation and fisheries.

Rest assured, Maynard et al. will get the debate they have provoked within the scientific community. Critiques and responses are part of the quality control system of the scientific process and add to the foundation on which our knowledge system is built across disciplines from physics and engineering to medicine. However, by running with a few bits of quotes, stitched together in a fabricated “they say” story, the Idso’s are not doing their readers any favours. Instead, the Idso’s demonstrate two points quite clearly: (1) they have very limited understanding of the science, and (2) their agenda is to write journalism that systematically attempts to discredit the best available climate-change science.

After reading a number of their smear campaigns, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change takes shape of a law firm defending a client’s case (wonder who they could be?) that is up against an overwhelming amount of opposing evidence. Like rookies, they fumble in their exhibits folder, hoping to win the jury over by causing confusion. The danger of their practise is that they generate disinformation about climate change in a time when the public, the media and governments are in urgent need of good information.

Here’s an analogy that adds perspective. Although most addicted smokers don’t like to hear that smoking is unhealthy, confusing them about the medical recommendations based on decades of rigorous science is a crime. With good information, people can make informed choices. Similarly, keeping the media and the public confused about the seriousness of climate change by producing demagogic journalism – has the effect of delaying critical action on an issue that needs immediate action to minimise damage in the future.

Emissions pathway to return global warming beneath 1 degree Celsius

Leading climate scientist Bill Hare has published the first emissions pathway to date that brings expected global warming beneath 1°C, albeit after peaking beneath 2°C and on the scale of centuries.

This is an immensely significant research topic for coral reefs as a rise in mean global temperature of 1°C appears to be the highest target that should be set if coral reefs are to be protected from serious degradation (see previous Climate Shifts post here).

Figure 2-1 depicts the global emissions pathway that Hare (2009: 25) suggests “is plausible technically” and “goes beyond the technically and economically feasible pathways published elsewhere”. It requires getting fossil CO2 emissions down to close to zero in 2050 and being carbon negative thereafter – a commitment to action that spans centuries.

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Hare (2009: 27) suggests that under this emissions pathway “global temperatures should peak below 2 degrees Celsius around mid-century and begin a slow decline, dropping to present levels by the last half of the twenty-third century.”

The means of achieving such an emissions pathway, including being carbon negative after 2050, are discussed by Hare and other authors in subsequent chapters of the Worldwatch Institute publication, ‘State of the World 2009‘. This report is peer reviewed, but Hare will hopefully publish his new modelling in a peer reviewed climate journal shortly to improve its acceptance in the scientific community.

Hare (2009: 25) acknowledges that achieving negative CO2 emissions on a global scale will be extremely difficult and “evaluation of the implications of the technologies required to achieve this are only just beginning.”

Hare’s emissions pathway builds on the recent publication by Jim Hansen and his colleagues which argued “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that.”

The ambition of the emissions pathway suggested by Hare (2009) is far beyond any contemplated in the mainstream policy debate at present but it is likely that such radical proposals will become much more prevalent in the future.

References

Demise of newly discovered Australian deep water reefs, 4000m below the oceans of Tasmania

Using a submersible robot to penetrate depths of up to 4000m, a joint US-Australian team have reported some extraordinary organisms off the coast of Tasmania.

“Our sampling documented the deepest known Australian fauna, including a bizarre carnivorous sea squirt, sea spiders and giant sponges, and previously unknown marine communities dominated by gooseneck barnacles and millions of round, purple-spotted sea anemones”

However, a news report by the AFP suggests that even at 4km beneath the surface, there is cause for concern:

“Modern-day deep-water coral reefs were also found, however, there is strong evidence that this reef system is dying, with most reef-forming coral deeper than 1,300 metres newly dead,” he said.

Though close analysis of samples was still required, Thresher said modelling suggested ocean acidification could be responsible.

“If our analysis identifies this phenomenon as the cause of the reef system’s demise, then the impact we are seeing now below 1,300 metres might extend to the shallower portions of the deep-reefs over the next 50 years, threatening this entire community,” he said.

The lead researcher Dr Ron Thresher from CSIRO is blogging the voyage from the Research Vessel ‘Southern Surveyor’ in incredible detail, and is well worth a read.

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The submersible vehicle "Jason" pictured on board the RV Southern Surveyor, exploring the deep reefs of the Tasman Fracture Zone, southern Australia.

More good legislative news from the US

There is quite of bit of federal legislative action happening in the US that bodes well for marine conservation and coral reefs.   Rick MacPherson has a nice roundup at his always excellent Maleria, Bedbugs, Sea lice and Sunsets blog.

Also check out the Saipan Blog, for a great first hand account of how a small band of marine conservationist pulled off the conservation victory of the decade.  (also thanks to Rick)

Introducing the spookfish – the first known vertebrate to have evolved mirrored eyes

Researchers from Tuebingen University in Germany have made a startling discovery by finding the first known vertebrate to have evolved mirrors, which focus light into the eyes. This odd vertebrate is a species of fish (Dolichopteryx longipes), commonly known as the ‘spookfish‘ or ‘barreleye‘. Although the spookfish has been recognised for over 120 years, it was only recently (last year) that a live specimen was captured of the coast of Tonga.

The reason for their ellusive nature is that spookfish are resident in mesopelagic to bathypelagic zones (~400 to 2,500m depth), inhabiting the border between the photic and aphotic zones. In order to enhance visual acuity at such depths where sunlight barely penetrates, the spookfish has evolved an elaborate system of two sets of connected double eyes. One half of each eye points upwards, capturing the faint light from the surface, whilst the other half point downwards.

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The main eyes of spookfish (with the orange-yellow eyeshine from flash photography) are offset with reflective mirrors (indicated here in black) to focus light from above.

These “diverticular” eyes use an elborate mirror constructed of tiny crystals that focus reflected light onto the retina of the eye. Professor Julian Partridge, a co-author on the paper reasons that this system is the reason that the spookfish thrives in such dimly lit regions of the ocean:

“At these depths it is flashes of bioluminescent light from other animals that the spookfish are largely looking for.

The diverticular eyes image these flashes, warning the spookfish of other animals that are active, and otherwise unseen, below its vulnerable belly.

That must give the fish a great advantage in the deep sea, where the ability to spot even the dimmest and briefest of lights can mean the difference between eating and being eaten.”

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When viewed from the top of the head, the mirror inside of the diverticulum (marked with an arrow) is clearly visible through the transparent cornea of the eye.

Nature has evolved some absolutely incredible adaptions to environmental conditions – the really neat thing about this study is that it proves that image formation in vertebrate eyes isn’t limited to refraction, a trait that has evolved in nearly every other vertebrate (including mammals).

“In nearly 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, and many thousands of vertebrate species living and dead, this is the only one known to have solved the fundamental optical problem faced by all eyes – how to make an image – using a mirror” (Link)

Click here to read the full paper in Current Biology.

Bush establishes three massive marine parks

President George Bush has made good on his commitment to protect large areas of the Pacific from fishing:

WASHINGTON — Parts of three remote and uninhabited Pacific island chains are being set aside by President George W. Bush as national monuments to protect them from oil and gas extraction and commercial fishing in what will be the largest marine conservation effort in history.

The three areas -totaling some 195,274 square miles – include the Mariana Trench and the waters and corals surrounding three uninhabited islands in the Northern Mariana Islands, Rose Atoll in American Samoa and seven islands strung along the equator in the central Pacific Ocean.

It will be the second time Bush has used the law to protect marine resources. Two years ago, the president made a huge swath of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument, barring fishing, oil and gas extraction and tourism from its waters and coral reefs. At the time, that area was the largest conservation area in the world.

Read the entire story here

Update: no, this is not a hoax!

Nasa climate expert makes personal appeal to Obama

obama_hansen4The Guardian, 2nd January 2008
One of the world’s top climate scientists has written a personal new year appeal to Barack and Michelle Obama, warning of the “profound disconnect” between public policy on climate change and the magnitude of the problem.

With less than three weeks to go until Obama’s inauguration, Professor James Hansen, who heads Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, asked the recently appointed White House science adviser Professor John Holdren to pass the missive directly to the president-elect.

In it, he praises Obama’s campaign rhetoric about “a planet in peril”, but says that how the new president acts in office will be crucial. Hansen lambasts the current international approach of setting targets through “cap and trade” schemes as not up to the task. “This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity,” the letter from Hansen and his wife, Anniek, reads.

The letter will make uncomfortable reading for officials in 10 US states whose cap and trade mechanism – the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative – got under way yesterday. The scheme is the first mandatory, market-based greenhouse gas reduction programme in the US.

Hansen advocates a three-pronged attack on the climate problem.

Continue reading

Did global warming stop after 1998?

Anyone who has an interest in exploring patterns in global temperature should take a look  around WoodForTrees.org. Paul Clark, a British software developer and “practically-oriented environmentalist and conservationist” has developed an online interface that allows anyone to go examine basic longterm trends in climate time series data (including the HADCRUT3 / GISTEMP Global Temperature & HADSST2 Sea Surface Temperature, along with sunspot activity and CO2 datasets).

The interface is incredibly intuitive, and allows a variety of transformations, averaging and trend estimations within graphs. After having spent literally hours playing around on this site, I completely agree with the warnings of ‘cherry picking‘ a dataset (i.e. choosing a certain year to start the trend to exacerbate a trend). To illustrate this ‘technique’, Paul has produced this classic graph:

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Which goes to show that the temperature is either: 1) falling,  2) static, 3) rising, or 4) rising ‘really fast!’ -all depending on where you place the trendline.

As John eloquently explained in this comment a few days ago, “global warming stopped after 1998” is turning into one of the most common memes of the ‘skeptics’ and ‘deniers’. Alot of their argument relies on very heavily cherry-picked data – skeptical Science also have a great in detail discussion and counterpoint to this argument here. Contrast the above graph with the longer term view (consistent across multiple datasets), showing warming between 0.13-0.17°C/decade:

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Ocean acidification could impact jumbo squid metabolism

A new study published in PNAS (Rosa and Seibel 2008) indicates that decreased ocean pH could affect the metabolism of large squid.  See the summary article in the NYT here.

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Synergistic effects of climate-related variables suggest future physiological impairment in a top ocean predator

By the end of this century, anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are expected to decrease the surface ocean pH by as much as 0.3 unit. At the same time, the ocean is expected to warm with an associated expansion of the oxygen minimum layer (OML). Thus, there is a growing demand to understand the response of the marine biota to these global changes. We show that ocean acidification will substantially depress metabolic rates (31%) and activity levels (45%) in the jumbo squid, Dosidicus gigas, a top predator in the Eastern Pacific. This effect is exacerbated by high temperature. Reduced aerobic and locomotory scope in warm, high-CO2 surface waters will presumably impair predator–prey interactions with cascading consequences for growth, reproduction, and survival. Moreover, as the OML shoals, squids will have to retreat to these shallower, less hospitable, waters at night to feed and repay any oxygen debt that accumulates during their diel vertical migration into the OML. Thus, we demonstrate that, in the absence of adaptation or horizontal migration, the synergism between ocean acidification, global warming, and expanding hypoxia will compress the habitable depth range of the species. These interactions may ultimately define the long-term fate of this commercially and ecologically important predator.

Reference


Scientists continue to debunk “Consensus” in 2008

Good to see that the ‘official’ number of skeptics increased in 2008 to over 650 – up from the 400 reported in this groundbreaking report from 2007.

“This updated report includes an additional 250 (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the initial release in December 2007.  The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.”

In other (related?) news, over 600 doctoral scientists from around the world have now signed a statement publicly expressing their skepticism about the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution:

“Dissent from Darwinism has gone global,” said Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman, former US Ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna. “Darwinists used to claim that virtually every scientist in the world held that Darwinian evolution was true, but we quickly started finding US scientists that disproved that statement. Now we’re finding that there are hundreds, and probably thousands, of scientists all over the world that don’t subscribe to Darwin’s theory.”

Thanks to Jennifer Marohasy for the original link.

UPDATE (22/12/08):

Tim Lambert over at Deltoid Science Blog has written a great article discussing the ‘skeptics’, and comparing exactly which ‘scientists’ have signed both lists:

Here are the five people who couldn’t stop at rejecting just one science:

Edward Blick, Professor Emeritus of the Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering, University of Oklahoma. In an article published by the Twin Cities Creation Science Association, he wrote:

The predecessors of today’s unbelievers replaced the Holy Bible’s book of Genesis with Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Now with the help of Al Gore and the United Nations they are trying to replace the Holy Bible’s book of Revelation with the U.N.’s report Anthropogenic Global Warming. They tell us that man’s use of fossil fuels results in too much atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) which causes excessive warming and melting of polar ice caps. They say if we don’t take drastic steps (trillions of dollars of taxes, year after year, after year), we will either roast to death, or drown in the rising seas. The plan is for the U.N. to take control of the world’s economy and dictate what we can use for transportation (bikes?), what we can eat, where we can live, and what industries we must shut down. This whole scheme is a “Trojan Horse” for global socialism! …

For thousands of years our earth has undergone cooling and warming under the control of God. Man cannot control the weather, but he can kill millions of people in his vain attempt to control it, by limiting or eliminating the fuel that we use. How does God control our warming and cooling? Scientists have discovered it is the Sun! Amazing, even grade school children know this. The Sun’s warming or cooling the earth varies with sunspot and Solar flairs.