So Cook et al¹ confirms that there really is a consensus in climate science: 97% of the peer-reviewed literature over the last 20 years supports the fact that humans are responsible for the warming. It’s a solid result, confirming the earlier work of Oreskes and others, but its importance lies in the fact that public perceptions of that consensus lag behind reality. As John puts it:

Quite possibly the most important thing to communicate about climate change is that there is a 97% consensus amongst the scientific experts and scientific research that humans are causing global warming. Let’s spread the word and close the consensus gap.

Indeed. Count this as my small contribution. Meanwhile, another recent paper very nicely demonstrates that the existence of a consensus on the basic facts of warming does not mean that scientists have to agree about everything.

A letter by Otto et al in Nature Geoscience discussing estimates of transient climate sensitivity² has been hailed as suggesting that near-term warming might be slightly less than expected. Unsurprisingly, this has been seized upon by the usual suspects as evidence we don’t need to do anything, but the paper really contains little to gladden a sceptics heart. Here’s Myles Allen (one of the authors of the paper) in the Guardian:

…at face value, our new findings mean that the changes we had previously expected between now and 2050 might take until 2065 to materialise instead. Then again, they might not: 1.8C is within our range of uncertainty; and natural variability will affect what happens in the 2050s anyway.

There’s plenty of room for debate within the climate science community about the new paper’s findings and methodology³, at the same time as there’s an overwhelming consensus about the bigger picture. That’s science in action. But transient climate sensitivity is a highly technical metric, and as Allen points out, not really very relevant to working out what to do about climate change. We have a a very good idea about the planetary carbon budget, and we know we have to cut emissions — the sooner the better.

The bigger picture — one that’s missed in technical debate, and in the communication of a fairly conservative consensus — is that our experiment in planetary geoengineering is already running out of control. The rapid loss of Arctic sea ice shows no signs of slowing down, and is well ahead of even the most aggressive model predictions. We can already detect significant impacts on northern hemisphere weather patterns.

Long before we reach CO₂ doubling, the Arctic will be ice free all summer and the northern hemisphere climate will have changed beyond anything experienced in the history of humanity. Now that really is policy relevant, and it needs to be communicated with considerable force…

1. Yes, that Cook — the one from Skeptical Science and The Climate Show. Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, John Cook et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024
   doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
2. The response of the climate system to a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ over pre-industrial levels, at the time of doubling — that is, before most of the climate system has a chance to catch up.
3. And to judge from my emails, there’s a lot of that going on at the moment.

You can take the boy out of politics, but you can’t take the politics out of the boy — at least, not if you’re former ACT party leader Rodney Hide. In my Daily Blog column this week, I take a look at Rodney’s latest dalliance with climate denial, and wonder why it is that the extreme right think that refusing to accept the facts makes for good politics. Comments over there, please…

It had to happen eventually. The creaking old laptop that was once my pride and joy¹ has finally gone to the great orchard in the sky, and I have been forced to visit the grocer for a new piece of fruit. Being that I am a creaky old geek, I couldn’t just nip down to the computer store and buy an off-the-shelf model. No, I had to have the processor upgrade, the maximum memory and a Fusion drive, which means it will be about a week before I can access all my files². Until then I will be servicing the digital world from this iPad, which is a wonderful device for everything but writing. Posting will be (even more) intermittent, at best, and brevity will be my watchword. You have been warned…

1. It was new when Hot Topic was born.
2. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, etc.

Big fleas have little fleas,

Upon their backs to bite ‘em,

And little fleas have lesser fleas,

And so, ad infinitum.

The Siphonaptera

We’ll start in the middle, shall we, with “high priest of climate scepticism” Chris Monckton still railing against the failure of the halls of NZ academe to bow down before his obvious intellect. You could say that Chris is doing his best to be a flea in the fur of climate science, what with all his attempts to irritate scientists with scattergun accusations of fraud and libel. But the potty peer is also collecting his own fleas, attracted by his conspiracist thinking and intent on feasting on his fanaticism.

A few weeks ago, John O’Sullivan — the serial liar behind vanity crank science startup Principia Scientific International — wrote an open letter to Monckton, taking him to task for dismissing people who don’t accept the existence of the greenhouse effect as cranks. It’s a question of credibility amongst cranks and their peers, and Monckton could not resist a snotty response.

One John O’Sullivan has written me a confused and scientifically illiterate “open letter” in which he describes me as a “greenhouse gas promoter”. I do not promote greenhouse gases.

It’s a minor classic of a minuscule genre¹. Monckton goes for the straightforwardly rude dismissal:

The series of elementary errors he here perpetrates, delivered with an unbecoming, cranky arrogance, indicates the need for considerable elementary education on his part.

The PP’s use of the C word stirs the mighty behemoth that is the collective intellect behind PSI, and O’Sullivan’s rejoinder is also a minor classic of its kind: the goalpost shift. Monckton’s second reply is, if anything, even snottier than his first:

Here, O’Sullivan characteristically but unwisely assumes that, since he is himself bottomlessly ignorant, others are as ignorant as he. As will be seen, that is not so.

Hell hath no fury like a crank scorned, which is something Monckton discovered for himself during his NZ visit. Interviewed by the editor of Uncensored Magazine², Chris was rather dismissive of the reality of the chemtrails conspiracy. According to NZ’s chemtrails community, that means he’s playing “an active role in the chemtrail/geoengineering cover up”. Here’s more incisive analysis of Monckton’s real role from the same source:

Could it be that he’s functioning as a gatekeeper to keep people from knowing about the weather modification technology being used globally to create extremes, and exposing the IPCC, Al Gore, Michael Mann, Phil Jones and others as con artists, in order to win the public’s trust? He may be engaging in predictive programming regarding United Nations’ Agenda 21 – telling people that it is going to happen, so they will more readily accept it?

You could almost feel sorry for Monckton, were he not himself a conspiracy theorist, happy to tell his audiences that the UN is plotting to force humanity to live in concentration camps and that climate science is all a trumped up fraud. The potty peer wants to be accepted as a real scientist on a par with the people he defines as his peers³ — Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer chief amongst them⁴, even going to the extent of leaping to the defence of Spencer at µWatts when he was criticised by Skeptical Science recently⁵.

For Monckton, this could be a simple matter of self-esteem or self-importance, but it is also evidence of a need to retain what passes for credibility in the world of climate denial. He has to put clear blue water between himself and what he defines as the lunatic fringe. Unfortunately, his own descent into rabble-rousing and conspiracist thinking has drawn the rest of the fringe towards him like moths towards a flame — a perfect example of crank magnetism.

Further evidence of this need to reject the fringe can be seen in Anthony Watts refusal to espouse or promote the arguments⁶ adopted by O’Sullivan’s group of greenhouse deniers, and Roy Spencer’s various articles in defence of basic physics⁷.

These are all symptoms of a wider problem for the campaign to do nothing to reduce emissions — how do you maintain a credible case for inaction in the face of mounting evidence of a serious, perhaps even civilisation-threatening problem? As the evidence becomes quite literally undeniable, how do you keep the campaign going? How do you keep your sceptical foot soldiers happy?

These problems aren’t new. The answer was decided long ago: you feed the base. To keep the campaign going you tell your supporters what they want to hear, whatever the facts: that there’s been no warming for 17 years, that the Arctic ice melt isn’t a problem, that those heatwaves and floods and droughts are nothing to do with our emissions.

Unfortunately, that’s not what the science says, or most of the media report, so to make the lies credible you have to postulate a global conspiracy by climate scientists and environmentalists to distort the facts, commit fraud and create a chimera. And that’s Pandora’s Box you just opened.

As the years have gone by, and the accusations of conspiracy and fraud have become more strident, so the climate inactivists have drifted further and further from reality and into the orbits occupied by the chemtrail and crank physics conspiracists. They’ve sat down with the devil, and they’ve picked up his fleas. The result is quite a circus…

1. Crank replies to criticisms by other cranks of their own crankery.
2. Well, was Jack the Ripper Winston Churchill’s father? I think we should be told.
3. Yes, I know it’s the second time I’ve used that pun, but you find a better word…
4. Not setting the bar very high, it could be argued.
5. SkS deals with Spencer’s misrepresentation of the science, but the best bit in the Catholic Online interview is where he says “we will need to burn even more fossil fuels in order to find replacements for fossil fuels.” I mean, words fail, etc etc.
6. Many, various and mutually inconsistent.
7. He’s been at it since 2009, at least.

This year’s NZ climate change conference is fast approaching, and I’ll be heading up to Palmerston North at the beginning of next month to cover proceedings for Hot Topic. The conference runs over June 4th and 5th at the Convention Centre, and covers just about every aspect of work on climate and related issues in NZ, organised under four main themes:

• The Physical Science
• Impacts, Vulnerability & Adaptation
• Mitigation
• Integration & Cross-cutting Issues

Keynote speakers are Professor Jon Barnett from the University of Melbourne, Andy Reisinger, Dave Frame and Professor Robert Anderson. I’ll be blogging/tweeting from the conference, and plan to post some short audio interviews with key participants. I’ll have to sing for my supper too — my abstract for a short talk entitled When two worlds collide: Communicating climate science on the internet¹ was accepted by the organisers.

In other conference news, Wellington readers might like to pitch up to Parliament on Friday, June 7th, where Green MP Kennedy Graham is organising a one day meeting “with the aim of fostering cross-party and public dialogue on climate change”. Speakers will include the UNFCCC’s Christina Figueres (by video) Dave Frame, Andy Reisinger, Adrian Macey, Judy Lawrence, HT’s own Cindy Baxter, Peter Weir, Suzy Kerr, Simon Terry, Jonathon Boston and more. Should be an interesting and worthwhile day: register (for free) here.

1. Scheduled for 3-15pm on the 5th

Potty peer Chris Monckton’s complaint against VUW academics Jonathan Boston, David Frame and Jim Renwick has been roundly rejected by the university. An investigation carried out by a senior member of the academic staff found that Monckton’s allegations of fraud and libel were “not substantiated”. VUW vice chancellor Pat Walsh was unequivocal in his support of the VUW 3:

“I want to state clearly that I have faith in these academic staff. By speaking publicly in their field of expertise, they were doing exactly what we expect.”

It remains to be seen how Monckton will respond, but it will probably involve more empty threats. In a typically tasteless and intemperate article posted at WND last week, he fantasised about reporting VUW to the police:

If I do not receive a reply very soon, police will be asked to investigate not only the “professor” who had posted up the dodgy graph but also the vice-chancellor, the chancellor and the “university” itself as accessories during and after the fact of scientific fraud. Don’t send your child there, and don’t give it any money.

Despite hobnobbing with a High Court judge during his NZ visit¹, it appears that Monckton’s grasp of the law is as dodgy as his understanding of climate science and economics.

1. Or at least claiming to. It would be interesting to know to whom he refers…

This is a guest post by Dr Gavin Kenny¹, a New Zealand scientist who has worked on agricultural adaptation to climate change in NZ and world wide. He has a very interesting and informed perspective on the sorts of things NZ agriculture should be doing to address climate change as it happens — exactly the sort of conversation we need to have on this big issue. The article first appeared in the agriculture section at Stuff.co.nz last week.

For more than 20 years I have worked professionally on the “what ifs” of climate change, focused mostly on what it might mean for agriculture. I’ve done this work in New Zealand, Europe, the Pacific Islands and Asia. During that time I have experienced the progression from the hypothetical to real-world responses. Climate change, particularly as experienced through more frequent drought and flood events, is increasingly influencing what farmers are doing in many countries. It is not clear whether this is yet the case in New Zealand, but I suspect so.

With a record summer drought just behind us, and with negative and positive effects that will continue to unfold for farmers, it is relevant to ask: What if we get more frequent and intense droughts in the future? How might farming change and how might those changes affect wider society?

To help guide our thinking and acting for the future it is instructive to first look to the past, not just in New Zealand but to other societies and civilisations that have entered periods of more frequent and intense droughts.

In his book The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilisation, Brian Fagan explores the impact of climate shifts, including drought, on civilisations over the last 15,000 years. He writes:

“In our efforts to cushion ourselves against smaller, more frequent climate stresses, we have consistently made ourselves more vulnerable to rarer but larger catastrophes.”

The story of the city of Tiwanaku is a good example. Over a period of 500 years Tiwanaku thrived near the shores of Lake Titicaca in what is now Bolivia. The city was supported by agricultural intensification that was strongly reliant on water.

The onset of a climatic shift about AD1100 changed everything. Annual rainfall declined by 10 to 15 per cent over a prolonged period and Tiwanaku crossed a critical threshold of vulnerability. Fagan explains:

“The ability of the Tiwanaku state to adjust to the great drought was limited culturally by centuries of rapid population growth underwritten by the remarkable productivity of the raised fields. […] Tiwanaku’s economy was entirely dependent on this single agricultural technology, which in turn depended on abundant water. When the water failed, the entire system collapsed.”

Focusing back on present-day New Zealand we have seen a strong move towards intensification of farming over the last 20 years. Two obvious examples of this intensification are the increased focus on irrigation and the huge increase in use of urea fertiliser. The lesson from Tiwanaku is that it would be unwise to simply put our faith, and a huge amount of debt for infrastructure development, in more large irrigation schemes.

This is not a matter of cockies² versus townies. Agricultural intensification in New Zealand has been fuelled by our collective demand for consumer goods. We can’t criticise the negative things we see with farming without looking at our own behaviour.

And that gets to the crux of what climate change requires of us all: behaviour change. Simply put, we’re increasingly living beyond our means and the capacity of our land and water resources to sustain our wants.

What’s the alternative then? Since 2001 I have worked on documenting positive things farmers are doing that are relevant in terms of building resilience to climate change.

This includes increasing numbers, still a minority, who are shifting to biological soil management; changes in pasture species and management with a focus on longer covers (not grazing the grass so hard) and greater rooting depth; changes in stock policies aimed at greater flexibility; a focus on greater soil moisture retention; fencing of riparian areas; on-farm water storage; planting trees for multiple benefits; fencing remnant native bush and putting them into QEII Trust covenants.

We already have the ingredients for smart, resilient, farming systems. The vision I have for farming in New Zealand is consistent with Colin Tudge’s Campaign for Real Farming. In a New Zealand context this would involve developing a “Food First” policy to ensure that the basic food needs of all within New Zealand are met for now and for a future with climate change. We then export the surplus.

This would be founded on low carbon farming systems that are a functional part of, and working within the natural constraints of, local environments. There is a lot of unrealised ecological potential in this regard, which is strongly linked to unrealised economic potential.

To develop such a future we’ll all need to look at changing our behaviour. In Colin Tudge’s words “We are talking about the difference between a world that could endure effectively forever, in peace and conviviality, and one that could be in dire straits within a few decades.”

1. Gavin has a PhD in agricultural meteorology, managed a European Union climate change project at Oxford University in the early 1990s, followed by eight years with a research group at University of Waikato. He has worked independently since 2001.
2. NZ slang for farmers.

Why not devote 15 minutes of your time to a good cause? John Cook of Skeptical Science, one of the regulars on The Climate Show, who just happens to be a research fellow in climate communication for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, is crowd-sourcing a survey of the climate literature to try and measure the extent of any consensus that might exist. Here’s the full story, in John’s own words:

I’m seeking your assistance in conducting a crowd-sourced online survey of peer-reviewed climate research. I have compiled a database of around 12,000 papers listed in the ‘Web Of Science’ between 1991 to 2011 matching the topic ‘global warming’ or ‘global climate change’. I am now inviting readers from a diverse range of climate blogs to peruse the abstracts of these climate papers with the purpose of estimating the level of consensus in the literature regarding the proposition that humans are causing global warming. If you’re interested in having your readers participate in this survey, please post the following link to the survey:

Take the survey

The survey involves rating 10 randomly selected abstracts and is expected to take 15 minutes. Participants may sign up to receive the final results of the survey (de-individuated so no individual’s data will be published). No other personal information is required (and email is optional). Participants may elect to discontinue the survey at any point and results are only recorded if the survey is completed. Participant ratings are confidential and all data will be de-individuated in the final results so no individual ratings will be published.

The analysis is being conducted by the University of Queensland in collaboration with contributing authors of the website Skeptical Science. The research project is headed by John , and adheres to the Guidelines of the ethical review process of The University of Queensland.

Give it a try — you’ll be helping with an interesting research project, and it might even be educational…

Bill McKibben — that most thoughtful and interesting of climate campaigners — is bringing his very successful Do The Maths campaign to New Zealand next month, and will be speaking in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin. Bill’s argument is straightforward:

The maths are simple: we can burn less than 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. The problem? Fossil fuel companies have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five times the safe amount. And they’re planning to burn it all — unless we do the maths to change our future.

Talks are scheduled for:

• Auckland – Tuesday, 11 June, Epsom Girls Grammar School Hall, 7-8.30pm
• Dunedin – Wednesday, 12 June, venue tbc
• Wellington – Thursday, 13 June, The Embassy Theatre, 7-8.30pm

I had the great pleasure of sharing the stage with Bill in Wanaka during his last NZ visit, and would urge HT readers to go along and listen to what he has to say. Details and tickets are available at maths.350.org/nz.

[Edited to add the trailer to the soon-to-be-released documentary of McKibben's Do The Math tour of the US last year...]

Any day now the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide measurement station is going to bump through 400 part per million, and stay there for a week or two. In my Daily Blog column this week I ruminate on what that means by taking a look at the last time CO₂ stayed over 400 ppm for an extended period.

Pliocene climate is not something that crops up in many history lessons, but what it tells us needs to be much more widely appreciated. It shows where we are heading — where our apparently insatiable appetite for coal and oil is taking us: a drowned world. That simple fact needs to be shoved under the nose of anyone who argues that climate change isn’t happening, won’t be too bad, or will be something we can adapt to. It needs to be engraved on the hearts of the people negotiating international action on emissions, and the politicians legislating to do little or nothing.

My first post at The Daily Blog is also relevant. Comments over there, please.