Monday 12 October 2009

The BBC does 'balanced reporting'. Seriously!

Via John Page, the following article, which I shall cut and paste in its entirety so that we can watch it being edited and watered down again:

"What happened to global warming?

By Paul Hudson, Climate correspondent, BBC News Page last updated at 15:22 GMT, Friday, 9 October 2009 16:22 UK.

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998. But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on? Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming. They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly. Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences. The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature. And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees. He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures. He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month. If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores. According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated. The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically.

The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too. But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles. Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

So what does it all mean?

Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along. They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid. The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new. In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models. In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling. What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years. Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers. But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly. It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up."

17 comments:

graveley sceptic said...

Mark:

I think you missed what is probably the most apt description of the global warming hoax made (I think by Piers Corbyn) which was "global warming, a weapon of mass taxation"!

Pavlov's Cat said...

Sunny thinks this is just plain wrong to give this a hearing over at Liberal Conspiracy

and in the comments it's pointed out that Piers Corbyn is a well known climate crank

Ah yes the old 'someone who doesn't agree with me, must be mad' argument.

Mark Wadsworth said...

GS, PC, to be fair, some of Piers Corbyn's other views seem a little 'left field'. But so what? Isaac Newton subscribed to a lot of stuff that was demonstrably drivel, but that does not invalidate all the stuff he churned out that was nigh spot on accurate.

Bill Quango MP said...

But here the argument is solved.
IF temperatures are at a higher level than in 1998 in half the years between 2010-2015 then the climate change lobby have won.
If they are cooler than 1998 then the ocean/solar band have won.

All we need to do is sit tight for 5 years, which we are pretty much going to do anyway. Reduce our most polluting , least efficient power sources, which makes sense to do and avoid signing up to any super subsidy, may not work, very expensive to build, may only work if the wind is blowing or the sun is out but it at least give you a warm, caring feeling stuff until we know the real answer.

Mark Wadsworth said...

BQ, *ahem* since when have our two major parliamentary parties ever adopted the 'do nothing' approach, which is the best one in 9 out of 10 cases? */ahem*

Dr Melvin T Gray said...

Let me briefly draw you away from this to another (almost) contemporary scientific debate. Most of you will have heard of the late great Professor Sir Richard Doll. He was credited with establishing a link between smoking and lung cancer/heart disease and his case was won through epidemiological studies of mammoth proportions. There were many attempts by other experts to scuttle Sir Richard and discredit him by any means. You will not be surprised that these experts were commissioned by and in the pockets of, BAT, Imperial Tobacco et al. Up until 2003, Imperial Tobacco were still arguing in the High Court that there was no link between smoking. It is a matter for you to accept or reject a parallel with the climate debate.

As a student, I often wondered what had sustained Sir Richard through the worst of his epic struggle. I had the honour of sharing a sandwich with him in an Oxford park and asked that very question. With a great modesty typical of the man, he told me that what sustained him was the common sense of his objective.

What I ask of scoffers who care nothing for passing a critical point in polluting and changing our planet, is this - do you have somewhere else reserved for a move?

roym said...

really dont see how you can mention Piers Corbyn in the same sentence as Issac Newton.

Anonymous said...

Dear Melvin,

Please provide PROOF that a naturally occuring organic gas (CO2) which occurs as a trace gas currently occurring at an average of 383 ppm by volume, is the single contributing factor to global warming, climate change or whatever other buzzword you care to use this week.

We've had doom-mongers and end-of-the-world predictions since the publication of the Book of Revelation...AGW is nothing that hasn't been tried before, except that this time the snake oil salespeople have managed to turn it into a money making scheme.

AntiCitizenOne said...

Exactly Melvin,

When we damage the world economy through massive worldwide taxation we won't have anywhere to go to.

The precautionary principle says we shouldn't do anything that has a risk of harm.

dearieme said...

"The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre... says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models." That is as preposterous a claim as you'll ever see. I first wrote a program to model physico-chemical interactions in 1967, and have written - or supervised the writing of - such models ever since. Based on my experience, I judge that if The Hadley Centre means "accurately accounted for" when it says "accounted for", then (i) they are suffering from hubris, or (ii) they are, by the standard of physical scientists, unusually stupid, or (iii) they are crooks. Those categories are not mutually exclusive.

JuliaM said...

"Some reader comments on the BBC's website said the broadcaster had made a "U-turn" over its readiness to acknowledge the views of scientists who believe cooling is here to stay. However the BBC said: “We have always reported a range of views and this article is no different.

"The point the article is making is that views about climate change are hotly contested. To characterise this as some sort of change in position is simply wrong.”"


We have always been at war with Eastasia...

Umbongo said...

There's no need to get excited. This is the BBC, not some impartial news organisation devoted to providing an assumedly educated listenership/readership with the unmediated arguments of both sides of a debate. One swallow does not make a summer.

A single article implying that scepticism might have a place in a scientific argument does not suddenly upset the reality that the BBC was and still is the major transmission belt of the warmist religion in the UK media. As the quote by JuliaM implies, the publication of the article is a sop to the sceptics (as well as a useful piece of evidence of BBC "impartiality" to be used in a future when the warmist case is thoroughly discredited). However, for the BBC to say that "we have always reported a range of views" begs innumerable questions concerning what views and how the BBC reports such views (cf the endless references to "climate change denial" like this one from some clerical idiot faithfully retailed by the BBC).

Mark Wadsworth said...

@ Melvin. I think you'll find that two thirds of the world's land area is uninhabitable (too hot, too dry, too cold, whatever). So we live in the habitable bits. If MMGW were true (which I doubt) then we'll all just shuffle inland a bit or away from the equators and that'll be the end of that.

During the last big Ice Age, people lived on what is now the bed of the North Sea, the ice melted, so they scarpered to Britain or the still dry parts of North Europe. Problem solved.

@ Roym, well you just did.

@ Everybody after Roym, agreed.

Dr Melvin T Gray said...

This is wonderful news, Mark. I had not realised that the options to cope with climate catastrophe could be so clear and simple. So we don't need to think about terraforming Mars either?

Mark Wadsworth said...

Melvin, firstly there ain't no MMGW, I'm just saying, even if there were, it's no Big Deal. As to Mars, don't forget that the solar cycle has been heating up that planet as well.

Dr Melvin T Gray said...

Were you to react to disagreement with the bigoted rage of Inspector Gadget, I might already find myself branded bonkers and diverted to the nastiest porn site known.

I sense Mark, that your site permits contrary views to civilised ape standard.

Mark Wadsworth said...

@ Melvin, I'll take that as a sort of back-handed compliment, if I may?