The science behind a climate change headline

BPSDB NB: Nov 10, World Science Day for Peace and Development

Rachel Pike: The science behind a climate headline

In 4 minutes, atmospheric chemist Rachel Pike provides a glimpse of the massive scientific effort behind the bold headlines on climate change, with her team — one of thousands who contributed.

Many of the more idiotic climate change Denier Fables grossly misrepresent the vast scale and scope of the science and scientific evidence underlying what we know about climate change. Let’s have a look at some of those fables and how they compare to reality.

“The IPCC scientists blah blah …”

If ever there were a confession that the person making this claim knows absolutely nothing about climate science:

“The IPCC does not itself commission or conduct research, but analyzes and weighs findings by scientists in many nations.

The IPCC: A Guide For Journalists

…Doh!

IPCC report has only blah blah authors

Actually it was

• • 450 lead authors from 130 countries
  • 800 contributing authors (links to their work)
  • 2500 expert reviewers

Scientists blah blah FUNDING blah blah

This claim is idiotic in so many ways that it will take multiple posts to expose all of the false assumptions and ignorance that would allow someone to believe it, but some of them include:

1. There are relatively few scientists involved;
2. The scientists are from the US or only a few agencies/countries;
3. The science is new (since climate change started getting funding as a field);

Of course reality is somewhat different. Thanks to Jim Prall we have is a list of the 2907 most frequently cited authors of climate research with links to their work (10s of thousands of papers). That’s just the work with direct relevance to climate change.

Grumbine describes 6 tiers of scientific endeavour that support climate reserch

from What fields are relevant?

Brave New Climate also discusses the breadth of climate studies; here is a partial list which Barry gives:

Atmospheric and Physical Sciences: Climatology, Meteorology, Atmospheric dynamics, Atmospheric physics, Atmospheric chemistry, Solar physics, Historical climatology

Earth Sciences: Geophysics, Geochemistry, Geology, Soil Science, Oceanography, Glaciology, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction

Biological Sciences: Ecology, Synthetic biology, Biochemistry, Global change biology, Biogeography, Ecophysiology, Ecological genetics

Mathematics, Statistics and Computational analysis: Applied mathematics, Mathematical modelling, Computer science, Numerical modelling, Bayesian inference, Mathematical statistics, Time series analysis

Quite a diverse field and I’ve not listed many sub-disciplines …

So just who does climate science?

To get a sense of the scope, have a look at part of of Buchdahl’s excellent Global Warming Student Guide. Below is the table of contents for just Section 3 of the Guide.

3. Empirical Study of the Climate 3.1. Introduction
3.2. Climate Construction from Instrumental Data
3.2.1. Measurement of Climate Elements
3.2.1.1. Measurement of Temperature
3.2.1.2. Measurement of Rainfall
3.2.1.3. Measurement of Humidity
3.2.1.4. Measurement of Wind
3.2.2. Homogeneity
3.2.3. Statistical Analysis of Instrumental Records
3.3. Palaeoclimate Reconstruction from Proxy Data
3.3.1. Historical Records
3.3.2. Ice Cores
3.3.2.1. Stable Isotope Analysis
3.3.2.2. Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Ice Cores
3.3.2.3. Dating Ice Cores
3.3.3. Dendroclimatology
3.3.4. Ocean Sediments
3.3.4.1. Palaeoclimatic Reconstruction from Biogenic Material
3.3.4.2. Palaeoclimatic Reconstruction from Terrigenous Material
3.3.5. Terrestrial Sediments
3.3.5.1. Periglacial Features
3.3.5.2. Glacier Fluctuations
3.3.5.3. Lake-Level Fluctuations
3.3.6. Pollen Analysis
3.3.7. Sedimentary Rock

Global warming blah blah just based on computer models

I think that one’s been dealt with, no?

Global warming blah blah in the ’70s blah blah

The basic global warming science is almost 200 yrs old. The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824, CO2 identified as one of the gases causing it by John Tyndall in 1859, and it was first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.

• • “The man who discovered greenhouse gases”
  • “Global warming: blast from the past“

See also these timelines for other notable discoveries and events in the long history of climate change science:

• • Timeline: Climate Change
  • The Road to Copenhagen: A brief history of climate change

and this wonderful series from Doc Snow

• • The Science of Global Warming In The Age of Revolution
  • The Science Of Global Warming In The Age Of Napoleon
  • Global Warming Science In The Age Of Queen Victoria
  • Global Warming Science And The Dawn Of Flight

or some popular press stories about the evolving science:

• • Time Magazine 1953 “Science: Invisible Blanket“
  • and 1953 Popular Mechanics article about global warming
  • July 1959 Carbon Dioxide and Climate in Scientific American

1958 – Global Warming

Related, see Google Timeline reveals triumph of denialism for analysis of climate in the popular press over the decades.

New study blah blah

As discussed before, one of the favourite recurring Denier memes is that ‘New Study disproves/overturns/undermines global warming / climate change science/models/theory!“ (New study, climate Deniers are “fundamentally wrong”)

Never mind that:

• they repeat this meme every few weeks with a completely different study;
• none of the Deniers seem to even remotely understand the study they refer to;
• none of the studies ever turn out to say what the Deniers believe/claim;
• the fact that it is “new” means it should be treated with caution since review by the entire scientific community can lead to:
  • discovery of subtle errors that the authors and reviewers missed;
  • a way of understanding the data different from how the authors had;
• the probability that a single study could overturn the thousands upon thousands of studies that support our understanding of climate change is remote in the extreme

This one has been discussed in more detail:

• The scope and scale of climate science
• Evolution / Global Warming Deniers just don’t get it

The idea that this incredible mass of scientific evidence would be somehow overthrown by a single study, much less the Three Stooges misunderstanding their own work, a Potty Peer ranting about delusional conspiracies, or Anthony Watts doodling on a climate plot, simply defies belief.

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“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

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