24 July 2015, The Conversation, The ‘mini ice age’ hoopla is a giant failure of science communication. This month there’s been a hoopla about a mini ice age, and unfortunately it tells us more about failures of science communication than the climate. Such failures can maintain the illusion of doubt and uncertainty, even when there’s a scientific consensus that the world is warming. The story starts benignly with a peer-reviewed paper and a presentation in early July by Professor Valentina Zharkova, from Northumbria University, at Britain’s National Astronomy Meeting. The paper presents a model for the sun’s magnetic field and sunspots, which predicts a 60% fall in sunspot numbers when extrapolated to the 2030s. Crucially, the paper makes no mention of climate. The first failure of science communication is present in the Royal Astronomical Society press release from July 9. It says that “solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s” without clarifying that this “solar activity” refers to a fall in the number of sunspots, not a dramatic fall in the life-sustaining light emitted by the sun. The press release also omits crucial details. It does say that the drop in sunspots may resemble the Maunder minimum, a 17th century lull in solar activity, and includes a link to the Wikipedia article on the subject. The press release also notes that the Maunder minimum coincided with a mini ice age. But that mini ice age began before the Maunder minimum and may have had multiple causes, including volcanism. Crucially, the press release doesn’t say what the implications of a future Maunder minimum are for climate. Read More here
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23 July 2015, New York Times, Whiplash Warning When Climate Science is Publicized Before Peer Review and Publication: The study is “Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms: Evidence from Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations that 2°C Global Warming is Highly Dangerous.” The 66-page “discussion paper” (the authors’ description) was posted Thursday in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, the discussion forum of the European Geosciences Union journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The paper was was written by 17 prominent climate, ice and ocean scientists, led by James E. Hansen, the pioneering climatologist who since 2007 has argued that most of his peers have been too reticent in their projections of the possible pace of sea-level rise in a warming world. It is a sweeping and valuable cross-disciplinary description of ways in which climate and ocean dynamics, pushed by the planet’s human-amplified greenhouse effect, could accelerate sea level rise far beyond the range seen as plausible in the last report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the most recent review of what leading experts on sea level think, this 2014 paper: “Expert assessment of sea-level rise by AD 2100 and AD 2300.” Read More here
23 July 2015, The Conversation, Native forests can help hit emissions targets – if we leave them alone: The debate over native forest logging has been sparked once again, partly by the government’s successful push for wood burning to be included in the revamped Renewable Energy Target. However, the disagreement over the best way to manage Australia’s 9.4 million hectares of public native forest is thrown into sharp relief by analysis showing that ending native forest logging, and completing the the industry’s shift into plantations instead, would get Australia much of the way to its greenhouse gas emissions reductions target. Analysis done using the Australian government’s public native forest model suggests that stopping all harvesting in the public native forest estate would generate in the order of 38 million tonnes of potential credits (that is, the equivalent of 38 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions avoided) each year in the short to medium term.
While this is the technical capacity, the Kyoto Protocol’s rules cap credits from forest management at 3.5% of base-year emissions, or around 15 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. So if Australia ratifies the second commitment period of the Protocol, which runs from 2013 to 2020, the cap would limit forest management credits to 120 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent over the commitment period. The Australian government’s latest emissions projections estimate that, in order to meet its 5% emissions-reduction target in 2020, Australia has to reduce its emissions by 236 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent over the second commitment period. This means stopping harvesting in public native forests could provide 51% of the abatement task to 2020. Read More here