Follow Up: Revisiting the 2010 IPCC Press Release on Economics of Disasters

As I prepared for my lunch seminar which I am giving later today. I had a chance to revisit the press release issued by the IPCC on January 25, 2010 in response to an article that appeared in the UK Sunday Times one day earlier which detailed failures of the IPCC AR4 related to claims made about climate change and disasters.

The Sunday Times article was about how the 2007 IPCC AR4 mishandled the issue of the economic toll of disasters and climate change. With the advantage of hindsight, we can now see that the claims made in the Sunday Times article have been completely vindicated and the IPCC press release was full of misinformation (to put it kindly).  This post has the details.

The IPCC press release of 26 January 2010 started out as follows (PDF):

The January 24 Sunday Times ran a misleading and baseless attacking the way the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC handled an important question concerning recent trends in economic losses from climate-related disasters

What did the Sunday Times article claim?

The United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough. . .

The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC's 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had "suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s".

It suggested a part of this increase was due to global warming and cited the unpublished report, saying: "One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.

None of these claims are "misleading and baseless" but are factually correct. (Note that full text of the Times article can be found here.)

In its press release, the IPCC explained its position by re-asserting what was claimed in the report:

one study detected an increase in economic losses, corrected for values at risk, but that other studies have not detected such a trend

We now know that the "study" that was cited by the IPCC (a white paper from a workshop that I had organized) did not contain any analysis of trends. Instead, that paper was intentionally miscited by one of the chapter's authors to circumvent the deadline for inclusion of relevant publications. When the miscited paper actually did appear in the literature it said this:

“We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and normalized catastrophe losses.“

Thus, the paper that the IPCC wanted to cite did not say what the was claimed in a specially invented graph that was made up for the report but which did not appear in the miscited paper. Further, the IPCC intentionally miscited it to get it into the report in the first place. Three bad moves.

The IPCC press release also said that

In writing, reviewing, and editing this section, IPCC procedures were carefully followed to produce the policy-relevant assessment that is the IPCC mandate.

The IPCC did not follow its procedures for citing grey literature, for following its own deadline for publications, for proper citation of source material and included a graph that cannot be found in any literature anywhere. The IPCC press release was thus wrong again -- the procedures were ignored, not "carefully followed."

The bottom line is that the Sunday Times article has proven correct comprehensively on the substantive and procedural aspects of the IPCC's failures (the substance of which has recently been reaffirmed by the IPCC SREX report).

The IPCC 26 January 2010 press release still sits uncorrected on the IPCC website (here in PDF). If the IPCC has a commitment to getting things right, shouldn't it correct "baseless and misleading" claims that it has made?

The IPCC Sinks to a New Low

Back in May, Chris Field, co-chair of IPCC Working Group II emailed me with a request:

As per your request, the IPCC is prepared to take another look at the AR4 text on disaster trends. The spirit of these "second looks" is to evaluate whether the assessment should have said something else, based on the literature cited and on the information that was available within the window for AR4 literature.  The error protocol does not allow a new assessment based on literature published since the AR4 literature cutoff, and it is not intended as a broad reinterpretation of the information assessed by the authors.

To clarify your request, can you send a specific statement of the alleged error or errors that you would like to see addressed?

As my request to Field was informal, and not one I ever expected to see action on, this initiation of contact with me seemed to me like the IPCC was turning a corner, and taking seriously scientific accuracy on disasters and climate change. So I prepared a concise and specific reply to Field's request. Today I heard back from the IPCC. The response is laughable, and indicates that the IPCC is more interested in playing games than in scientific accuracy. Nothing below is complicated or nuanced.

Here are the details from the response that the IPCC sent to me today, annotated with my comments. In the material below the four passages under "Text from Roger Pielke, Jr." is that which I provided to Chris Field in May in response to his email request. Under each of those I have blockqouted the IPCC response to my claims, which is titled "CLA Finding." Below that I highlight my comments today in response to each of the four responses.

With that, let's have a look . . .

Alleged errors in the treatment of disaster trends in Chapter 1, WGII, AR4
CLA response from Cynthia Rosenzweig and Gino Casassa
August 23, 2012

Alleged Error #1

Text from Roger Pielke, Jr.

Error #1: IPCC p. 110: “These previous national U.S. assessments, as well as those for normalised Cuban hurricane losses (Pielke et al., 2003), did not show any significant upward trend in losses over time, but this was before the remarkable hurricane losses of 2004 and 2005.”

FACTUALLY INCORRECT: Figure 5 in the following paper, in press prior to the IPCC AR4 WGII publication deadline, clearly shows that the addition of 2004 and 2005 losses do not alter the long-term trend in hurricane losses:

Pielke, Jr., R. A. (2006), Disasters, Death, and Destruction: Making Sense of Recent
Calamities. Oceanography 19 138-147.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2449-2006.02.pdf

This same information was also in the report of the 2006 Hohenkammer Workshop on Climate Change and Disaster Losses, which was cited by the AR4 WGII: http://cstpr.colorado.edu/sparc/research/projects/extreme_events/munich_workshop/pielke.pdf

RECOMMENDED CORRECTION: ““These previous national U.S. assessments, as well as those for normalised Cuban hurricane losses (Pielke et al., 2003), did not show any significant upward trend in losses over time, and this remains the case following the remarkable hurricane losses of 2004 and 2005.”

CLA Finding

There is no error in the statement. No correction is needed and the text can stand as is.

Rationale

The clause about the published analyses being before the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons is a statement of fact about the time line, and it is not a statement that the results were different after including 2004 and 2005. The statement does not infer that the overall pattern of losses would be different; instead it suggests that 2004 and 2005 were remarkable years in terms of hurricane losses, which they were.

PIELKE RESPONSE SEPTEMBER 13:  This boggles the mind. The time line was such that published analyses (I provided 2!) that were available to the IPCC when drafting the AR4 included 2004 and 2005. The IPCC is say that up is down, and with a straight face. Did they not even read what I wrote?

UPDATE: Here is how the IPCC handled this issue in the 2007 AR4 review process.

Alleged Error #2

Text from Roger Pielke, Jr.

Error #2: IPCC pp. 110-111: “Global losses reveal rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s. One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend.”

That “one study” is Muir-Wood et al. (2006), a white paper prepared as input to a workshop that I organized.

FACTUALLY INCORRECT: (a) The first sentence should say “1950s” not “1970s,” which is the starting point of the Munich Re dataset being referred to. (b) Several normalization studies (not “one study”) available at the time of the AR4 had noted that a dataset that begins in 1970 and ends in 2005 will show an annual rate of increase, including papers parallel to the Muir-Wood et al. (2006) presented at the Hohenkammer workshop as well as the IPCC TAR (2001) and Munich Re (2000). All such studies find no evidence of “an underlying rising trend” over longer time periods.

RECOMMENDED CORRECTION: ““Global losses reveal rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since at least the 1950s. Multiple analyses have found an increase in normalized losses since 1970, due entirely to US hurricanes, but such studies are in agreement that no such trend can be found over longer time periods (dating to 1950 globally and 1900 for US hurricanes).” In addition, the full text of this section should be clarified along these lines.

CLA Finding

There is no error in the statement. No correction is needed and the text can stand as is.

Rationale

The year 1970 was used in the analysis of Muir-Wood 2006. They used a data set with information going back to 1950, but they decided to omit the period prior to 1970 because they are limited in completeness. The “correction” proposed by Pielke acknowledges that analyses for the period starting in 1970 observe an increasing trend, which is all that is reported in the text. The qualifier about “one study” documenting a trend indicates the limited foundation for the conclusion, in the context of other studies showing the large importance of trends in exposure.

PIELKE RESPONSE SEPTEMBER 13: Again, the IPCC is saying that up is down. Multiple studies showed disaster losses increasing from 1970 (I point them to several, including IPCC TAR). The reason for this was simple -- low hurricane damages in the 1970s and 1980s. Not new or interesting. To highlight one study and then now suggest that this was done to suggest that the conclusion is tenuous makes the IPCC look utterly clueless. The IPCC cherry picked a date to make a suggestive claim, and ignored contrary data. Not good. The cover-up is worse than the crime.

Alleged Error #3

Text from Roger Pielke, Jr.

Error #3: IPCC p. SM.1-4: Figure SM-1.1 and caption: “An example from the literature of one study analysing rising costs of normalised weather-related catastrophes compared with global temperatures. Data smoothed over ±4 years = 9 years until 2001 (Muir Wood et al., 2006).”

FACTUALLY INCORRECT: Neither the figure nor the underlying data appear in the scientific literature (peer reviewed or grey) at any time. The figure was created by Robert Muir-Wood and included in the report with an intentional mis-citation to circumvent the IPCC publication deadline, according to Muir-Wood himself (an audio recording of his admission is available on the website of the Royal Institution in London, and linked from my blog here:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/02/ipcc-mystery-graph-solved.html ).
He apparently believed that the figure would appear in a future paper – it did not, and that future paper, eventually published in 2008, found no relationship between temperatures and disaster losses.

RECOMMENDED CORRECTION: The figure and caption should be removed as well
as reference to it in the text.

CLA Finding

Post erratum to the caption of figure SM-1.1 clarifying the source of the data in the figure.

Rationale

The figure is a replotting of the data used for the analysis of Muir Wood et al. (2006). These data combined temperature data from CRU (Climatic Research Unit 2006),(University of East Anglia, Norwich) with the disaster loss database compiled by and described in Muir Wood et al. (2006). Since Muir Wood et al. (2006) did not cite CRU, the figure caption would be more accurate if modified to read:

Figure SM-1.1 Costs over time of normalized weather-related catastrophes compared with global temperatures. Data smoothed over ±4 years = 9 years until 2001. Based on the dataset used in Muir Wood et al.(2006) and temperature data from CRU, 2006*.
*ADD CRU TO THE REFERENCES FOR THE SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL.
(Climatic Research Unit (CRU) (2006).University of East Anglia, Norwich.
www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#sciref .)

Pielke Response September 13: This one takes the cake. Utterly remarkable. The graph was conjured up by Robert Muir-Wood based on data in his possession, he intentionally miscited the analysis and there is no scientific basis for plotting damages against temperature. None. The IPCC response on this issue is that their falsified graph was not fully cited, but otherwise OK is an insult to scientists everywhere and a mockery of the IPCC process. I cannot express this strongly enough. The IPCC has demonstrated that it is utterly incapable of correcting even the most egregious violation of its standards.

Alleged Error #4

Text from Roger Pielke, Jr.

Error #4: Erroneous IPCC Press release of 25 January 2010 (a) “one study detected an increase in economic losses, corrected for values at risk, but that other studies have not detected such a trend,” and (b) “In writing, reviewing, and editing this section, IPCC procedures were carefully followed to produce the policy-relevant assessment that is the IPCC mandate.”

FACTUALLY INCORRECT: (a) as documented above in Error #2, multiple studies had identified an increase in economic losses since 1970 (but not from earlier starting points), and (b) as documented above in Error #3, IPCC procedures were not carefully followed, but violated.

RECOMMENDED CORRECTION: The IPCC should withdraw its 25 January 2010 press release and issue a press release noting the inaccuracies in both the report and the release.

CLA Finding and Rationale

The January 25, 2010 IPCC statement is not part of an IPCC report, and the error correction protocol is therefore not relevant

PIELKE RESPONSE SEPTEMBER 13: Not that the IPCC has shown a commitment to accuracy, but here it relies on a bureaucratic dodge to ignore the false information it put out via press reslease. Not good. 

IPCC Statement on Trends in Disaster Losses

The IPCC has issued a statement in response to the Sunday Times article on errors in the IPCC treatment of disaster losses and climate change. The IPCC statement (PDF) is a remarkable bit of spin and misinformation. Here it is with my comments:

Geneva, 25 January 2010

IPCC STATEMENT ON TRENDS IN DISASTER LOSSES

The January 24 Sunday Times ran a misleading and baseless story attacking the way the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC handled an important question concerning recent trends in economic losses from climate-related disasters. The article, entitled “UN Wrongly Linked Global Warming to Natural Disasters”, is by Jonathan Leake.

The Sunday Times article gets the story wrong on two key points. The first is that it incorrectly assumes that a brief section on trends in economic losses from climate-related disasters is everything the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) has to say about changes in extremes and disasters.

RESPONSE: This is pure misdirection and is irrelevant. The issue here is specific to how the IPCC handled the rising costs of disasters and its relationship to increasing temperature. It is not about the general theme of extremes.

In fact, the Fourth Assessment Report reaches many important conclusions, at many locations in the report, about the role of climate change in extreme events. The assessment addresses both observations of past changes and projections of future changes in sectors ranging from heat waves and precipitation to wildfires. Each of these is a careful assessment of the available evidence, with a thorough consideration of the confidence with which each conclusion can be drawn.

RESPONSE: All of this verbiage is irrelevant to the issue.

The second problem with the article in the Sunday Times is its baseless attack on the section of the report on trends in economic losses from disasters. This section of the IPCC report is a balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue.

RESPONSE: Asserting balance does not make it so. The facts here are what the IPCC should respond to: The IPCC report highlighted a single non-peer reviewed study to make a claim that (a) that study did not support, and (b) that was countered by the entirety of the peer reviewed literature (much of which went uncited). My work was misrepresented in the text and in the IPCC response to reviewers. The latter included an outright lie. The only balance that was achieved was between misrepresentation and error.

It clearly makes the point that one study detected an increase in economic losses, corrected for values at risk, but that other studies have not detected such a trend. The tone is balanced, and the section contains many important qualifiers.

RESPONSE: This statement is remarkable for its untruths. (1) The "one study" did not detect a trend over the full period of record, only a cherrypicked subset, and when that paper was published it explicitly stated that it could not find a signal of increasing temperatures in the loss record, (2) The IPCC report did not note that other studies had not found a trend, except when citing my work in passing, and then undercutting it in error by mistakenly citing the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons to suggest something different (and untrue). (3) The Chapter includes the following figure, which has absolutely no scientific support whatsoever:

In writing, reviewing, and editing this section, IPCC procedures were carefully followed to produce the policy-relevant assessment that is the IPCC mandate.

RESPONSE: Carefully followed procedures? Let's review: (a) The IPCC relied on an unpublished, non-peer reviewed source to produce its top line conclusions in this section, (b) when at least two reviewers complained about this section, the IPCC ignored their compalints and invented a response characterizing my views. (c) When the paper that this section relied on was eventually published it explicitly stated that it could not find a connection between rising temperatures and the costs of disasters.

This press release from the IPCC would have been a fine opportunity to set the scientific and procedural record straight and admit to what are obvious and major errors in content and process. Instead, it has decided to defend the indefensible, which any observer can easily see through. Of course there is no recourse here as the IPCC is unaccountable and there is no formal way to address errors in its report or its errors and misdirection via press release. Not a good showing by the IPCC.

IPCC Lead Author Misleads US Congress

The politicization of climate science is so complete that the lead author of the IPCC's Working Group II on climate impacts feels comfortable presenting testimony to the US Congress that fundamentally misrepresents what the IPCC has concluded. I am referring to testimony given today by Christopher Field, a professor at Stanford, to the US Senate.

This is not a particularly nuanced or complex issue. What Field says the IPCC says is blantantly wrong, often 180 degrees wrong. It is one thing to disagree about scientific questions, but it is altogether different to fundamentally misrepresent an IPCC report to the US Congress. Below are five instances in which Field's testimony today completely and unambiguously misrepresented IPCC findings to the Senate. Field's testimony is here in PDF.

1. On the economic costs of disasters:

Field: "As the US copes with the aftermath of last year’s record-breaking series of 14 billion-dollar climate-related disasters and this year’s massive wildfires and storms, it is critical to understand that the link between climate change and the kinds of extremes that lead to disasters is clear."

What the IPCC actually said: "There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change"

Field's assertion that the link between climate change and disasters "is clear," which he supported with reference to US "billion dollar" economic losses, is in reality scientifically unsupported by the IPCC. Period. (More on the NOAA billion-dollar disasters below.) There is good reason for this -- it is what the science says. Why fail to report to Congress the IPCC's most fundamental finding and indicate something quite the opposite?

2. On US droughts:

Field: "The report identified some areas where droughts have become longer and more intense (including southern Europe and West Africa), but others where droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter."

What the IPCC actually said: "... in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, central North America ..."

Field conveniently neglected in his testimony to mention that one place where droughts have gotten less frequent, less intense or shorter is ... the United States. Why did he fail to mention this region, surely of interest to US Senators, but did include Europe and West Africa?

3. On NOAA's billion dollar disasters:

Field: "The US experienced 14 billion-dollar disasters in 2011, a record that far surpasses the previous maximum of 9."

What NOAA actually says about its series of "billion dollar" disasters:  "Caution should be used in interpreting any trends based on this [data] for a variety of reasons"

Field says nothing about the serious issues with NOAA's tabulation. The billion dollar disaster meme is a PR train wreck, not peer reviwed and is counter to the actual science summarized in the IPCC. So why mention it?

4. On attributing billion dollar disasters to climate change, case of hurricanes and tornadoes:

Field:  "For several of these categories of disasters, the strength of any linkage to climate change, if there is one, is not known. Specifically, the IPCC (IPCC 2012) did not identify a trend or express confidence in projections concerning tornadoes and other small-area events. The evidence on hurricanes is mixed."

What the IPCC actually said (p. 269 PDF): "The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados"

Hurricanes are, of course, tropical cyclones. Far from evidence being "mixed" the IPCC was unable to attribute any trend in tropical cyclone disasters to climate change (anywhere in the world and globally overall). In fact, there has been no trend in US hurricane frequency or intensity over a century or more, and the US is currently experiencing the longest period with no intense hurricane landfalls ever seen. Field fails to report any this and invents something different. Why present testimony so easily refuted? (He did get tornadoes right!)

 5. On attributing billion dollar disasters to climate change, case of floods and droughts:

Field: "For other categories of climate and weather extremes, the pattern is increasingly clear. Climate change is shifting the risk of hitting an extreme. The IPCC (IPCC 2012) concludes that climate change increases the risk of heat waves (90% or greater probability), heavy precipitation (66% or greater probability), and droughts (medium confidence) for most land areas."

What the IPCC actually says (p. 269 PDF): "The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses"

and (from above): "in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, central North America"

Field fails to explain that no linkage between flood disasters and climate change has been established. Increasing precipitation is not the same thing as increasing streamflow, floods or disasters. In fact, floods may be decreasing worldwide and are not increasing in the US. The fact that drought has declined in the US means that there is no trend of rising impacts that can be attributed to climate change. Yet he implies exactly the opposite. Again, why include such obvious misrepresentations when they are so easily refuted?

Field is certainly entitled to his (wrong) opinion on the science of climate change and disasters. However, it is utterly irresponsible to fundamentally misrepresent the conclusions of the IPCC before the US Congress. He might have explained why he thought the IPCC was wrong in its conclusions, but it is foolish to pretend that the body said something other than what it actually reported. Just like the inconvenient fact that people are influencing the climate and carbon dioxide is a main culprit, the science says what the science says.

Field can present such nonsense before Congress because the politics of climate change are so poisonous that he will be applauded for his misrepresentations by many, including some scientists. Undoubtedly, I will be attacked for pointing out his obvious misrepresentations. Neither response changes the basic facts here. Such is the sorry state of climate science today.

A Few Comments on the IPCC SREX Report

The IPCC SREX report came out today and there were no surprises in the report itself.  Here are a few thoughts on the report.

Most importantly, the IPCC should be congratulated for delivering a message that cannot have been comfortable to deliver.  The IPCC has accurately reflected  the scientific literature on the state of attribution with respect to extreme events -- it is not there yet, not even close, for events such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, bushfires and on other topics there remain enormous uncertainties.  That is just the way that it is, so that is indeed what the IPCC should have reported.

The IPCC has already been criticized by those who apparently would have preferred a less accurate message that hyped up the science, such as Joe Romm and Stefan Rahmstorf. I do agree with Rahmstorf that the IPCC should release its full report at the same time as it releases the SPM, but he knows as well as I what the literature says on this subject.

More generally, the reaction to the report has fallen out perfectly predictably. Those wanting to hype the report focus exclusively on its predictions of the future whereas those wanting to downplay it focus on the uncertainties. There is something here for everyone!

There was one interesting change related to the statement on the state of attribution with respect to normalized disaster losses.  The draft said:

"Long-term trends in normalized economic disaster losses cannot be reliably attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change, particularly for cyclones and floods (medium evidence, high agreement)."

The final version took out the emphasis on cyclones and floods and put in a content free clause -- a good example of how the IPCC process can reduce information content:

“Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded (medium evidence, high agreement).”

It is of course true that a role for climate change has not been excluded in attribution studies -- of course, the IPCC also did not exclude a role for solar influences, cosmic rays or for that matter, evil leprechauns.  What the draft said with respect to floods and cyclones remains the case, hiding it from view doesn't make it go away. What silliness.

Richard Klein, a colleague and a friend, is also a SREX lead author. He  left a comment at Joe Romm's blog soon after it was posted that  Joe has refused to post so far (as if anyone needed to learn more about how these guys operate):

Dear Joe, you know very well that the IPCC bases its findings on science, not on opinion polls of US Americans. Over the past week, while participating in the IPCC session in Kampala, I've been amazed to read the various opinions of 'experts' who weren't involved in the drafting process or even as a reviewer. While the summary of the report was still being discussed and had not yet been released (this will be done today at 1.30 pm local time in Kampala), these 'experts', either on their own accord or prompted by the media, chose to misrepresent both the report's findings and the process by which the IPCC arrived at these findings.

I have been impressed with the rigour with which my co-authors have assessed the climate science of both observations and projections of extreme weather and climate events. I am also impressed with the solid discussions that took place among governments and between governments and authors this week. The governments were keen to ensure an unbiased interpretation and presentation of the findings of the climate scientists, as well as those stemming from the assessment of experiences of disaster risk management at local, national and global levels, and of the opportunities to manage future climate extremes and reduce vulnerability.

Your reaction to the report's findings reflects badly on you and calls into question the sincerity of your previous enthusiastic defence of the IPCC.

Will better reporting of the science by the IPCC change anyone's opinion on climate change? Probably very few people.  But it may have allowed the IPCC to take an important step in the direction of renewed credibility.

Ignorance is Bliss

[UPDATE 2 11/30: Here are several remarkable statements from climate scientists, one from the emails showing Kevin Trenberth calling for Chris Landsea to be fired for holding the wrong views and and a comment today from Gavin Schmidt justifying gatekeeping in climate science on political grounds. With comments like that, who needs emails?;-)]

[UPDATE: Ross McKitrick has a timely op-ed and report (PDF) out on IPCC reform. McKitrick's report, as with the concerns I've raised, are not about the substance of the science, but rather, with the institutions.  He writes:

[I]t is not about science. It is about the policies, procedures and administrative structures in the IPCC.

This is a distinction that appears lost by much of the media and science community alike.]

I don't expect to spend much further time on the latest batch of UEA emails, though from what I've seen there is plenty to keep interested parties busy for a while (and further serious problems for individual climate scientists). I cannot understand how anyone can still think that the IPCC does not need major reform, beginning with a comprehensive and immediate implementation of the recommendations of the IAC. Yet, there are apparently plenty of people in the media, in science and of course on blogs who argue (unconvincingly) that there are absolutely no problems whatsoever in institutions of climate science. Ignorance is indeed bliss.

I'll leave this issue with the following vignette from the emails. In May 2005, I gave an invited lecture at the University of East Anglia on the need for the IPCC to be reformed. This is when I was working on my book, The Honest Broker, and it was also just about a month before Kevin Trenberth and Phil Jones decided in ad hoc fashion to keep out of the IPCC's assessment of extreme events a peer-reviewed paper I had led on hurricane and climate change.

Here is the abstract of my May 2005 talk given at UEA:

~~~~ All Welcome~~~~
3 May 2005
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - honest broker or political
advocate? Understanding the difference and why it matters

Roger A. Pielke, Jr
Centre for Science & Technology Policy Research
University of Colorado, USA
4-5pm, Zuckerman Institute Seminar Room, UEA

The IPCC was created in the late 1980s to provide guidance to policy makers on climate change. Roger argues that since that time, the IPCC has seen its mandate and behaviour change from providing a guide to policy options to a much more narrow focus in support of a particular option at the center of intense political debate. This process has been accompanied by some in the IPCC leadership taking a more prominent role as participants in climate politics. All indications suggest that the fourth assessment will continue in this trend of narrowing it focus to advocate a particular approach to climate policy over other possible responses. This talk will explain the important differences between the IPCC serving as an "honest broker" and serving as a "political advocate." Roger will also explore the consequences for climate policy of these various alternatives, arguing that the IPCC is an important institution and that its role as an honest broker is worth preserving.

The new emails show Phil Jones' reaction to the announcement of my upcoming talk:

subject: Pielke !!!

This is all I need ! Must try and be somewhere else !

Jones was somewhere else during my talk, as were most all of the IPCC WG I folks at UEA. There is of course nothing wrong with scholars who don't like other scholars, or choose to close themselves off to hearing different or challenging perspectives.  Academics are like that sometimes ;-) This vignette is only meaningful in the context of the subsequent and arbitrary decision to keep our work out of the part of the IPCC overseen by Jones/Trenberth. That decision was not based on a careful assessment of the science, much less a rigorous process of review, but based on somewhat more pedestrian criteria.

The issue here of course is not whether or not our paper was included, but the process that was employed to make that decision. It is hard to reconcile the much touted IPCC review process with the arbitrary and even petty process that, in this case at least, was actually employed.

So if one wishes to understand the dynamics behind where the IPCC went off course, my advice is to look a bit less in the direction of big-time climate politics (though there is that), and more in the direction of petty academic politics.  How petty academic politics came to play a notable role in big-time climate politics through institutions of science is an overlooked aspect of the institutional failure of the IPCC, and a key part of the story revealed by the emails.

IPCC and COI: Flashback 2004

I briefly emerge from this summer blogging break to call your attention to a post of mine from October, 2004 on the IPCC and political advocacy:

Consider the following imaginary scenario.

NGOs and a few other representatives of the oil and gas industry decide to band together to produce a report on what they see as needed and unnecessary policy actions related to climate change. They put together a nice glossy report with findings and recommendations such as:

*Coal is the fuel of the future, we must mine more.
*CO2 regulations are too costly.
*Climate change will be good for agriculture.

In addition, the report contains some questionable scientific statements and associations. Imagine further that the report contains a preface authored by a prominent scientist who though unpaid for his work lends his name and credibility to the report.

How might that scientist be viewed by the larger community? Answers that come to mind include: “A tool of industry,” “Discredited,” “Biased,” “Political Advocate.” It is likely that in such a scenario that connection of the scientist to the political advocacy efforts of the oil and gas industry would provide considerable grist for opponents of the oil and gas industry, and specifically a basis for highlighting the appearance or reality of a compromised position of the scientist.

Fair enough?

Ok, let’s return to reality and consider a real world case. In this case the NGOs and other groups represent environmental and humanitarian groups that have put together a report (in PDF) on what they see as needed and unnecessary policy actions related to climate change. They put together a nice glossy report with findings and recommendations such as:

*Limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees (Celsius, p. 4)
*Extracting the World Bank from fossil fuels (p. 15)
*Opposing the inclusion of carbon sinks in the [Kyoto] Protocol (p. 22)

The report contains numerous references to specific weather events from 2004 as being caused by and evidence of human-caused climate change, which stretches the science to some degree (at least as assessed by the IPCC).

[From the press release is this statement: "This summer has been marred by the havoc wrought across the Caribbean by the hurricanes Jeanne and Ivan, and the worst flooding in recent years in Bangladesh. In a world in which global warming is already happening, such severe weather events are likely to be more frequent, and extreme."]

And here, finally, I get to the main point. The report has a forward written by R. K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC has adopted as a mandate an objective of being “policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive” (what this means is actually unclear).

It is troubling that the Chair of the IPCC would lend his name and organizational affiliation to a set of groups with members engaged actively in political advocacy on climate change. Even if Dr. Pachauri feels strongly about the merit of the political agenda proposed by these groups, at a minimum his endorsement creates a potential perception that the IPCC has an unstated political agenda. This is compounded by the fact that the report Dr. Pachauri tacitly endorses contains statements that are scientifically at odds with those of the IPCC.

But perhaps most troubling is that by endorsing this group’s agenda he has opened the door for those who would seek to discredit the IPCC by alleging exactly such a bias. (And don’t be surprised to see such statements forthcoming.) If the IPCC’s role is indeed to act as an honest broker, then it would seem to make sense that its leadership ought not blur that role by endorsing, tacitly or otherwise, the agendas of particular groups. There are plenty of appropriate places for political advocacy on climate change, but the IPCC does not seem to me to be among those places.

Let me also be clear on my views on the substance of report itself. Organized by the New Economics Foundation and the Working Group on Climate and Development, the report (in PDF) is actually pretty good and contains much valuable information on climate change and development (that is, once you get past the hype of the press release and its lack of precision in disaggregating climate and vulnerability as sources of climate-related impacts). The participating organizations have done a nice job integrating considerations of climate change and development, a perspective that is certainly needed.

More generally, the IPCC suffers because it no longer considers “policy options” under its mandate. Since its First Assessment Report when it did consider policy options, the IPCC has eschewed responsibility for developing and evaluating a wide range of possible policy options on climate change. By deciding to policy outside of its mandate since 1992, the IPCC, ironically, leaves itself more open to charges of political bias. It is time for the IPCC to bring policy back in, both because we need new and innovative options on climate, but also because the IPCC has great potential to serve as an honest broker. But until it does, its leadership would be well served to avoid either the perception or the reality of endorsing particular political perspectives.

Back to the blogging break for me ... please tune back in in a few weeks ...  Happy midsummer!

IPCC on Extreme Events: Getting Better but Still Not Great

Yesterday, Michael Oppenheimer from Princeton University and coordinating lead author of the IPCC special report titled Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, provided a briefing to the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming of the US House of Representatives (here in PDF).  Oppenheimer's testimony was far more in line with the state of the science on this subject than have been recent IPCC reports and press releases, but remains slanted and focused on advocating action on emissions.

Oppenheimer states:

So-called “joint attribution” the assignment of cause for the damaging outcomes of such extremes, such as wildfires or human mortality occurring during hot and dry spells, is a relatively new field, and it remains difficult to associate recent increases in most such impacts directly with greenhouse gas emissions, but indirect evidence is strongly suggestive of such a link in many cases.

This is a convoluted way of simply saying that the present state of the science does not support claims of attribution.  In suggesting that this is a "new" field he notably avoids discussing a large body of literature such as on tropical cyclones (in the US, Australia, China, India, Latin America, etc.), floods, European storms, Australian bushfires, etc. where peer reviewed work has explained damage trends solely in terms of increasing societal vulnerability.  Why is it so hard for IPCC authors to acknowledge any of this literature?  But, even so, I give Opeenheimer some credit for moving in the right direction.

Oppenheimer's conclusion acknowledges the importance of societal factors in driving disasters, but then completely ignores adaptation (which he does mention elsewhere in the presentation), which indicates to me that the desire to advocate among IPCC leaders will be a habit hard to control:

Finally, while extreme events are generally a physical phenomenon, circumstances where such events translate into disasters, like Hurricane Katrina or the great European heat wave of 2003, depend in large measure on individual and societal anticipation, planning, and response capacity and implementation. In other words, disaster is partly a social phenomenon. In both of these episodes, the toll was much higher than was imagined possible before the events. Unfortunately, if history is a guide, such situations may become ever more common. Even as we learn to cope better with certain extreme events, the climate may change faster than we learn about it, and faster than our ability to implement what we have learned. The only remedy for such a situation is to act to slow the climate change by slowing greenhouse gas emissions.

Oppenheimer's statement is a move in the right direction, but it is highly selective, slanted and gives some misleading policy advice.  The reality is that actions today to reduce emissions will not have an discernible effects for many decades.  By not mentioning the time scale of the effects of mitigation and the relative role of mitigation and adaptation for addressing future losses (another literature not mentioned), Oppenheimer is arguably misleading.

If I had to give a grade to the presentation -- if the IPCC 2007 was an "F," then Oppenheimer gets a "C-."  The IPCC leadership still has a ways to go on the issue of extreme events.  Its extremes report is not due out for another year (remarkably), so they have lots of time to up their game.

Questions from Congress, Part 1: Responses to Representative Lamar Smith

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
Subcommittee on Environment

RESPONSES OF ROGER PIELKE, JR. TO
Hearing Questions for the Record
The Honorable Lamar Smith

A Factual Look at the Relationship between Climate and Weather

Dr. Pielke

1. Everyone from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the President to the journal Nature have admitted it is very difficult to attribute specific weather events to climate change. However, Dr. Titley and Dr. James Hansen have argued that man-made climate has resulted in the deck being stacked toward more extreme weather events generally.

a. Is this characterization correct? Is there a detectable signal that these events have been made more likely over the scale of decades?

PIELKE RESPONSE: Debate over the influence of human-caused climate change on extreme events often conflates expectations for the future with observations of the past. The scientific literature, as assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, does include projections for some types of extreme events to become more frequent and/or more intense. At the same time, as I summarized in my testimony, there is very limited evidence to support claims that such increases in frequency and/or intensity have been observed in most types of extremes – notably, the incidence and impacts of tropical cyclones (hurricanes), floods, drought, tornadoes and winter storms. Given a set of projections for changes in frequency/intensity of particular extreme events, it is a mathematical exercise to calculate when such changes might be detected in the observational record. As I detailed in my testimony, such detection may lie in the distant future. Consequently, that no such signal is detected today is consistent with long-term projections. That is, we should not expect to see changes in most types of extreme at the present time and this is indeed what the data shows.

2. In light of the last decade and a half of global temperatures not rising, have we learned anything new about the relationship between temperature and extreme weather events?

a. In light of this “pause,” how can the President and others continue to project with medium and high confidence that certain extremes may get worse?

PIELKE RESPONSE: While the issue of the so-called “pause” in global temperature increases has attracted considerable attention, it is not of direct relevance to understanding either the historical patterns of most extreme events or long-term projections for their future evolution.

3. Dr. Titley’s testimony cites a single study regarding one climate model about tropical cyclone activity in the 21st century when making that claim that “our future may include more intense, and possibly more frequent storms.”

a. How is this claim consistent with the IPCC’s recently-revised projection that there is “low confidence” in any increase in intense tropical cyclone activity through 2050?

PIELKE RESPONSE: Dr. Titley is correct to say that “our future may include more intense, and possibly more frequent storms.” However, it would also be correct to say that “our future may include less intense, and possibly less frequent storms.” Looking across studies, rather than at any single study, the IPCC concludes, “there is low confidence in region-specific projections of frequency and intensity.”

4. Has man-made climate change contributed to increased intensity or frequency of wildfires is the U.S., as the President has indicated?

PIELKE RESPONSE: The IPCC AR5 does not detect or attribute a linkage between human-caused climate change and wildfire intensity or frequency. However, there is ample literature to suggest that such a connection is plausible. The many factors which influence wildfire incidence, many of which are related to human activities, make the detection and attribution of signals difficult.

5. Were the recent floods in Colorado driven by man-made climate change?

PIELKE RESPONSE: Attribution of causality to human-caused climate change for single-events remains a much debated topic and of questionable scientific value. Flooding in the US Southwest, including Colorado has decreased on climate time-scales (Hirsch and Ryberg 2012).

6. Is there evidence that recent historic droughts in Texas have been driven by man-made climate change?

PIELKE RESPONSE: You will find conflicting claims on Texas drought in the literature. A NOAA report does not find strong evidence for such a linkage. Another recent study is suggestive of a linkage. Attribution of causality to human-caused climate change for single-events remains a much debated topic and of questionable scientific value. Drought in the US, as I documented in my testimony, has not increased nation-wide or globally on climate timescales.

7. Were there any aspects of testimony received during the hearing regarding extreme weather events and climate change that you would like to elaborate on further?

PIELKE RESPONSE: No. I am quite satisfied with the breath of information that I shared in my testimony.

8. Were there any aspects of testimony received during the hearing regarding extreme weather and climate change that you disagree with? If so, please elaborate.

PIELKE RESPONSE: No.

FOIA2011 on The Shameful Paper

[UPDATE: Andy Revkin started an email discussion with relevant parties on this post and the following response from Kevin Trenberth and my rejoinder are part of that exchange. Posted here with Revkin's permission.

Trenberth:

Andy

I am just back from travel and I have not seen any of the new batch of emails yet.  Whatever is there is highly selective.

The full story wrt the hurricanes is given on this web page and all the related links:

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/landsea.affair/

The paper by Pielke et al was not pertinent to the material in Chapter 3 and neither it nor the Anthes et al paper were included.  It did not deal with physical science topics included in chapter 3 and was countered by Anthes et al.   There is a huge trail of emails between the Anthes et al authors and the editors of BAMS related to all this and the difficulties we had even getting a comment published.

Far more shameful is the fact that of the 5 papers listed at the bottom of the page given above, not one was included in SREX!
SREX is a sham. 

Kevin

My reply to Trenberth:

 Hi Kevin-

The webpage that you link to does not discuss Pielke et al. 2005.

The section of IPCC Chapter 3 (3.8.3) that is relevant deals with hurricanes and climate change.  Pielke et al. 2005 is a peer-reviewed literature review of ... hurricanes and climate change. I have no problem with your objections to the paper, however I find the decision making process employed to exclude it from your chapter a bit lacking.

Given that you were a co-author of Anthes et al. 2005 critical of Pielke et al. 2005 at the time you were deciding what literature to include in the IPCC, did you ever think that it may have been good sense to recuse yourself on this topic?  Lest one get the impression that you were waging a bit of a personal or academic vendetta against others?

Your comments on SREX help to underscore this.

Perhaps the IPCC should have better procedures in place under such circumstances.

All best,

Roger

SREX was a sham!?! Whoa.]

[Note: This post has been updated to link to the Chapter 3 of the IPCC AR4 WG I which was responsible for reviewing the science of hurricanes and climate change.]

Long time readers will recall that  in 2004 and 2005 (before Katrina), I led an interdisciplinary effort to review the literature on hurricanes and global warming. The effort resulted in a peer-reviewed article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (here in PDF).

That paper, despite being peer-reviewed and standing the test of time (as we now know), was ignored by the relevant part of the IPCC 2007 that dealt with extreme events. Thanks to the newly released emails from UEA (hacked, stolen, donated, or whatever) we can say with certainty why that paper was excluded from the IPCC 2007 report Chapter 3 which discussed hurricanes and climate change. Those various reviews associated with the release of the UEA emails that concluded that no papers were purposely kept out of the IPCC may want to revisit that particular conclusion.

First though, a bit of backstory ...

Upon our paper's acceptance for publication by BAMS in 2005 Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at NCAR here in Boulder and the person (along with Phil Jones) in charge of the 2007 IPCC AR4 chapter that reviewed extreme events including hurricanes, said this in the Boulder Daily Camera (emphasis added) about our article:

I think the role of the changing climate is greatly underestimated by Roger Pielke Jr. I think he should withdraw this article. This is a shameful article.

Trenberth personally disagreed with the paper, which is fine and appropriate -- academics disagree about the most trivial stuff all the time.  To get a sense of this issue, here is what we concluded in the "shameful article"and Trenberth disagreed with (more on Trenberth's views below):

To summarize, claims of linkages between global warming and hurricane impacts are premature for three reasons. First, no connection has been established between greenhouse gas emissions and the observed behavior of hurricanes . . . Second, the peer-reviewed literature reflects that a scientific consensus exists that any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small in the context of observed variability . . . And third, under the assumptions of the IPCC, expected future damages to society of its projected changes in the behavior of hurricanes are dwarfed by the influence of its own projections of growing wealth and population . . . While future research or experience may yet overturn these conclusions, the state of the peer-reviewed knowledge today is such that there are good reasons to expect that any conclusive connection between global warming and hurricanes or their impacts will not be made in the near term.

In the newly released emails there is a 2005 exchange between Trenberth and Phil Jones about this paper which shows them deciding together to exclude the paper from the IPCC for "political" reasons, and it was indeed excluded.

Jones to Trenberth on 22 June 2005:

Kevin,

I'll read the Pielke et al piece for BAMS that came over the skeptic email today. Presumably we'll get forced to refer to it [in the 2007 IPCC report].

Trenberth replies:

Don't see why we should refer to the Pielke piece. It is [n]ot yet published. It is very political and an opinion.

Jones soon comes around, despite noting its peer-reviewed status:

Kevin,

Read the article on the new patio at home with a glass of wine. I thoroughly agree that we don't need to refer to it. Wrote that on it last night. It is very political. Several sentences and references shouldn't be there. I don't know who was supposed to have reviewed it - maybe Linda [Mearns] will know, as she used to or still does have something to do with BAMS. The inference in the email (from whence it came) is that it has been accepted !

Cheers
Phil

The gatekeeping of the IPCC process is abundantly clear, and the shadowy suggestion that they can find out who the reviewers are from another colleague is a bit unsettling as well.

Here is some further background on the "shameful paper," which despite being ignored by the the IPCC, has been cited 179 times according to Google Scholar and appears to be consistent with the most recent IPCC report on the subject.

Even though the IPCC in 2007 didn't see the paper as worth discussing, a high-profile team of scientists saw fit to write up a commentary in response to our article in BAMS (here in PDF). One of those high-profile scientists was Trenberth.

Trenberth and his colleagues argued that our article was flawed in three respects, it was they said,

. . . incomplete and misleading because it 1) omits any mention of several of the most important aspects of the potential relationships between hurricanes and global warming, including rainfall, sea level, and storm surge; 2) leaves the impression that there is no significant connection between recent climate change caused by human activities and hurricane characteristics and impacts; and 3) does not take full account of the significance of recently identified trends and variations in tropical storms in causing impacts as compared to increasing societal vulnerability.

Our response to their comment (here in PDF) focused on the three points that they raised:

Anthes et al. (2006) present three criticisms of our paper. One criticism is that Pielke et al. (2005) “leaves the impression that there is no significant connection between recent climate change caused by human activities and hurricane characteristics and impacts.” If by “significant” they mean either (a) presence in the peer-reviewed literature or (b) discernible in the observed economic impacts, then this is indeed an accurate reading. Anthes et al. (2006) provide no data, analyses, or references that directly connect observed hurricane characteristics and impacts to anthropogenic climate change. . .

In a second criticism, Anthes et al. (2006) point out (quite accurately) that Pielke et al. (2005) failed to discuss the relationship between global warming and rainfall, sea level, and storm surge as related to tropical cyclones. The explanation for this neglect is simple—there is no documented relationship between global warming and the observed behavior of tropical cyclones (or TC impacts) related to rainfall, sea level, or storm surge. . .

A final criticism by Anthes et al. (2006) is that Pielke et al. (2005) “does not take full account of the significance of recently identified trends and variations in tropical storms in causing impacts as compared to increasing societal vulnerability.” Anthes et al. (2006) make no reference to the literature that seeks to distinguish the relative role of climate factors versus societal factors in causing impacts (e.g., Pielke et al. 2000; Pielke 2005), so their point is unclear. There is simply no evidence, data, or references provided by Anthes et al. (2006) to counter the analysis in Pielke et al. (2000) that calculates the relative sensitivity of future global tropical cyclone impacts to the independent effects of projected climate change and various scenarios of growing societal vulnerability under the assumptions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

This series of exchanges was not acknowledged by the IPCC even though it was all peer-reviewed and appeared in the leading journal of the American Meteorological Society. As we have seen before with the IPCC, its review of the literature somehow missed key articles that one of its authors (in this case Trenberth, the lead for the relevant chapter) found to be in conflict with his personal opinions, or in this case "shameful." Of course, there is a deeper backstory here involving a conflict between my co-author Chris Landsea and Trenberth in early 2005, prompting Landsea to resign from the IPCC.

So almost seven years after we first submitted our paper how does it hold up? Pretty well I think, on all counts. I would not change any of the conclusions above, nor would I change the reply to Anthes et al. Science changes and moves ahead, so any review will eventually become outdated, but ours was an accurate reflection of the state of science as of 2005.

Papers and links

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, 2005. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86:1571-1575.

Anthes et al. 2006, Hurricanes and global warming: Potential linkage and consequences, BAMS, Vol. 87, pp. 623-628.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C.W. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver, R. Pasch, 2006. Reply to Hurricanes and Global Warming Potential Linkages and Consequences, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 87, pp. 628-631, May.

Climate Science and the Financial Markets

Over at FT Energy Source Kate Mackenzie has a really interesting post about a report by Nick Robins of HSBC on the possible effects of recent public issues involving climate science (specifically, CRU and IPCC) on the HSBC Climate Change Index (CCI, details on the invest-able version here in PDF).

There are several really interesting things here. First, since 2007 the CCI consistently outperformed the MSCI World Index. When the release of the CRU emails occurred, there was no noticeable negative effect on the market index as compared to the global benchmark. However, following the issues associated with the IPCC, the CCI has underperformed with respect to the global benchmark. This is suggestive only, as I would have expected that the dismal outcome from Copenhagen to be much more important all along. So while we can conclude that the CRU leak has been irrelevant to the markets, it is not possible to conclude the same with respect to the IPCC.

And this brings us to another very interesting point and that is the perceived (and perhaps real) connection between what the IPCC says and the movement of markets. Reuters says of the HSBC report:

"We believe that any market impacts over climate science may be nearing its floor, with the results of the three independent reviews confirming the integrity of the climate science," the report said.

For the rest of this year, HSBC identified four factors that should catalyze a revival in public concern and market confidence.

A review on the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be finalized at the end of August and governments will meet in October to take any remedial measures.

"We believe that practical steps to strengthen the IPCC's procedures would represent a positive outcome from this saga. The IPCC also has the opportunity to regain momentum with its special report on renewables later in the year," Robins said.

Because the IPCC is perceived to move markets, as least the sliver of the market associated with climate change, and thus management of actual or perceived conflicts of interest are more than a matter of speculation, but very tangible.

And in case you are curious, the largest company in the HSBC CCI is Veolia Environment (PDF), a French Company. IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri sits on two of their committees and his home institution has received funding from Veolia Environment.

At FT Energy Source Mackenzie writes of the HSBC report:

They say three independent reviews into climate science - the key one being the Inter Academy Council review of the IPCC reports, due by August, will assuage doubts about climate science — adding that the IPCC’s general meeting in October and its reports, due out some time in H2, on renewable energy and managing the risks of extreme events will also provide opportunities for a confidence boost.

No kidding? Smart money says you'd better line up your investments in the HSBC CCI while the getting is good!

The "Shameful Article": A Review and Update

As the world continues to suffer a "depression" in global tropical cyclone activity with activity at 30-year lows, and hurricane forecasters try to keep busy while watching the listless Atlantic, I thought that for those who haven't been reading this blog for the past 5 years (which I assume is most everyone;-) it would be worth reviewing a bit of the history of the science on hurricanes and global warming, and how that science was ignored by the IPCC.

In 2004 and 2005 (before Katrina), I led an interdisciplinary effort to review the literature on hurricanes and global warming. The effort resulted in a peer-reviewed article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (here in PDF). Upon its acceptance Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at NCAR here at Boulder and the person in charge of the 2007 IPCC AR4 chapter that reviewed extreme events including hurricanes, said this in the Boulder Daily Camera (emphasis added) about our article:

I think the role of the changing climate is greatly underestimated by Roger Pielke Jr. I think he should withdraw this article. This is a shameful article.

Here is what the "shameful article" concluded:

To summarize, claims of linkages between global warming and hurricane impacts are premature for three reasons. First, no connection has been established between greenhouse gas emissions and the observed behavior of hurricanes . . . Second, the peer-reviewed literature reflects that a scientific consensus exists that any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small in the context of observed variability . . . And third, under the assumptions of the IPCC, expected future damages to society of its projected changes in the behavior of hurricanes are dwarfed by the influence of its own projections of growing wealth and population . . . While future research or experience may yet overturn these conclusions, the state of the peer-reviewed knowledge today is such that there are good reasons to expect that any conclusive connection between global warming and hurricanes or their impacts will not be made in the near term.

When Trenberth called the article shameful I responded on Prometheus with this comment:

Upon reading Kevin’s strong statements in the press a few weeks ago, I emailed him to ask where specifically he disagreed with our paper and I received no response; apparently he prefers to discuss this issue only through the media. So I’ll again extend an invitation to Kevin to respond substantively, rather than simply call our paper ’shameful’ and ask for its withdrawal (and I suppose implicitly faulting the peer review process at BAMS): Please identify what statements we made in our paper you disagree with and the scientific basis for your disagreement. If you’d prefer not to respond here, I will eagerly look forward to a letter to BAMS in response to our paper.

Climate change is a big deal. We in the scientific community owe it to the public and policy makers to be open about our debates on science and policy issues. We’ve offered a peer-reviewed, integrative perspective on hurricanes and global warming. I hold those with different perspectives in high regard — such diversity makes science strong. But at a minimum it seems only fair to ask those who say publicly that they disagree with our perspective to explain the basis for their disagreement, instead of offering up only incendiary rhetoric for the media. Given that Kevin is the IPCC lead author responsible for evaluating our paper in the context of the IPCC, such transparency of perspective seems particularly appropriate.

Not surprisingly the IPCC chapter that Trenberth led for the IPCC made no mention of our article, despite it being peer reviewed and being the most recently published review of this topic prior to the IPCC publication deadline (the relevant IPCC chapter is here in PDF). Even though the IPCC didn't see the paper as worth discussing, a high-profile team of scientists saw fit to write up a commentary in response to our article in BAMS (here in PDF) . One of those high-profile scientists was Trenberth. Trenberth and his colleagues argued that our article was flawed in three respects, it was,

. . . incomplete and misleading because it 1) omits any mention of several of the most important aspects of the potential relationships between hurricanes and global warming, including rainfall, sea level, and storm surge; 2) leaves the impression that there is no significant connection between recent climate change caused by human activities and hurricane characteristics and impacts; and 3) does not take full account of the significance of recently identified trends and variations in tropical storms in causing impacts as compared to increasing societal vulnerability.

Our response to their comment (here in PDF) focused on the three points that they raised:

Anthes et al. (2006) present three criticisms of our paper. One criticism is that Pielke et al. (2005) “leaves the impression that there is no significant connection between recent climate change caused by human activities and hurricane characteristics and impacts.” If by “significant” they mean either (a) presence in the peer-reviewed literature or (b) discernible in the observed economic impacts, then this is indeed an accurate reading. Anthes et al. (2006) provide no data, analyses, or references that directly connect observed hurricane characteristics and impacts to anthropogenic climate change. . .

In a second criticism, Anthes et al. (2006) point out (quite accurately) that Pielke et al. (2005) failed to discuss the relationship between global warming and rainfall, sea level, and storm surge as related to tropical cyclones. The explanation for this neglect is simple—there is no documented relationship between global warming and the observed behavior of tropical cyclones (or TC impacts) related to rainfall, sea level, or storm surge. . .

A final criticism by Anthes et al. (2006) is that Pielke et al. (2005) “does not take full account of the significance of recently identified trends and variations in tropical storms in causing impacts as compared to increasing societal vulnerability.” Anthes et al. (2006) make no reference to the literature that seeks to distinguish the relative role of climate factors versus societal factors in causing impacts (e.g., Pielke et al. 2000; Pielke 2005), so their point is unclear. There is simply no evidence, data, or references provided by Anthes et al. (2006) to counter the analysis in Pielke et al. (2000) that calculates the relative sensitivity of future global tropical cyclone impacts to the independent effects of projected climate change and various scenarios of growing societal vulnerability under the assumptions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

This series of exchanges was not acknowledged by the IPCC even though it was all peer-reviewed and appeared in the leading journal of the American Meteorological Society. As we have seen before with the IPCC, its review of the literature somehow missed key articles that one of its authors (in this case Trenberth, the lead for the relevant chapter) found to be in conflict with his personal views, or in this case "shameful." Of course, there is a deeper backstory here involving a conflict between my co-author Chris Landsea and Trenberth in early 2005, prompting Landsea to resign from the IPCC.

So almost five years after we first submitted our paper how does it hold up? Pretty well I think, on all counts. I would not change any of the conclusions above, nor would I change the reply to Anthes et al. Science changes and moves ahead, so any review will eventually become outdated, but ours was an accurate reflection of the state of science as of 2005. However, you won't find any of this in the IPCC.

Papers and links

Anthes et al. 2006, Hurricanes and global warming: Potential linkage and consequences, BAMS, Vol. 87, pp. 623-628.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver and R. Pasch, 2005. Hurricanes and global warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 86:1571-1575.

Pielke, Jr., R. A., C.W. Landsea, M. Mayfield, J. Laver, R. Pasch, 2006. Reply to Hurricanes and Global Warming Potential Linkages and Consequences, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 87, pp. 628-631, May.

Do Sloppy Policy Arguments Matter? Part I

The subject of this post is the EPA endangerment finding. But the focus is not on whether or not the finding is appropriate. I am not a legal expert, but I am of the view that the Obama Administration is perfectly justified in advancing the finding, which as I understand it requires a very low scientific threshold -- do specific human activities lead to changes in the environment? And might those changes potentially lead to some degree of harm? I think that both of these thresholds are easily met, though the politics of implementation are likely very difficult. However, the finding itself is not the focus of this post. This post focuses on how some of my research is presented in the EPA endangerment finding and in the EPA response to public comments.

To be clear, nothing in this post should be interpreted as opposing the EPA finding or more generally as opposing action on addressing accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This post should be read in the context of a continuing series on the systematic misrepresentation of the science of climate change and disaster losses. Does such misrepresentation matter? Well, it matters to me because it is my research being misrepresented. Here is the latest installment.

On p. 132 of the Technical Summary (PDF) that accompanies the endangerment finding is an image, shown below. The highlighted yellow circle shows a graph with a green line representing dramatically increasing hurricane damage.The endangerment finding does not provide an original source for the graph, but it does point to the IPCC as the source of the overall figure. The overall figure comes from p. 621 of Chapter 14, WG II of the 2007 IPCC report (PDF) and is shown below.

The highlighted text reads:

. . . economic damages, million U.S. dollars (adjusted to constant 2005 US dollars and normalized accounting for changes in personal wealth and coastal population to 2004), and deaths from Atlantic hurricanes since 1900 (data from Pielke Jr. and Landsea, 1998 updated through 2005)

So our work is the source of the graph showing dramatically increasing hurricane damage in the 20th century. The bibliography explains exactly where the data came from:

Pielke, R.A. and C.W. Landsea, 1998:Normalized hurricane damages in theUnited States: 1925-95. Weather and Forecasting, 13, 621-631. with extensions through 2005 at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E21.html

The Technical Summary of WGII, p. 55 (PDF) also shows the hurricane damage graph (TS.15) as follows:

Using an internet archive, I was able to access the NOAA page that presented a non-peer reviewed update of our 1998 paper as of December 2006, which was immediately prior to the release of the IPCC AR4 report. A problem with that data was immediately evident: The NOAA page at that time did not yet have data for the 2005 hurricane season. After publication of the IPCC in 2007 the NOAA page was updated with a value for 2005 of $120B (see it here). So the IPCC must have manually entered a 2005 value, and that value looks to be $100 billion (which is in error), based on my replication of the TS.15 figure shown below (as $120B doesn't match up with the IPCC graph).

There are two problems here insofar as the IPCC is concerned. One is that the IPCC failed to rely on peer-reviewed research in its presentation of the science of disasters and climate change, contrary to its mandate and how it represents its work to policy makers and the public. The second is that the IPCC engaged in its own analysis of data, which also goes beyond its mandate and representation of its activities. In doing so the IPCC introduced a misleading perspective on long-term trends in hurricane damage in the United States, one that found its way into the EPA endangerment finding despite the availability of correct, up-to-date information.

The real story of US hurricane losses can be seen in the following graph, which is peer reviewed (PDF) and has been readily available to the authors of the EPA endangerment finding for almost two years. For that matter it could have been available to the authors of the IPCC, as the paper was completed well before their deadline.

This graph shows clearly that normalized hurricane losses (see the black curve represented an 11-year moving average over 1900 to 2005) have not increased over the period of record. The lack of trends is consistent with the lack of trends in landfalling storms. Our paper concluded:

The two normalized data sets reported here show no trends either in the absolute data or under a logarithmic transformation: the variance explained by a best-fit linear trend line=0.0004 and0.0003, respectively, for PL05, and 0.0014 and 0.00006, respectively, for CL05. The lack of trend in twentieth century normalized hurricane losses is consistent with what one would expect to find given the lack of trends in hurricane frequency or intensity at landfall. This finding should add some confidence that, at least to a first degree, the normalization approach has successfully adjusted for changing societal conditions. Given the lack of trends in hurricanes themselves, any trend observed in the normalized losses would necessarily reflect some bias in the adjustment process, such as failing to recognize changes in adaptive capacity or misspecifying wealth. That we do not have a resulting bias suggests that any factors not included in the normalization methods do not have a resulting net large significance.

In the public comments and responses from the EPA (PDF) a number of reviewers noted that our work was contrary to the implications of the endangerment finding:

Several commenters (1616.1, 3136.1, 4528, 4632R18, 4666, 4670, 4766, and 7020) argue that increasing raw damage totals associated with tropical storm damage in coastal communities are not the result of climate change, but rather are caused by changes in coastal population, wealth of the population, inflation, and poor sediment management practices. A couple of these commenters reference Pielke et al. (2008) as supporting evidence.

The EPA apparently disagrees with the findings in our paper. However, one could argue that the EPA's response was off target (emphasis added in below, see original for the full non-responsive response):

With regard to insured losses from extreme weather events (e.g., coastal flooding), the USGCRP concluded that economic and demographic factors do not fully explain the upward trend in costs or numbers of observed increases in losses. For example, from 1980 to 2004, the U.S. population increased by a factor of 1.3, while losses increased by a factor of 15 to 20 in inflation-corrected dollars. Numerous studies indicate that both the climate and the socioeconomic vulnerability to weather and climate extremes are changing (Brooks and Doswell, 2001; Pielke et al., 2008; Downton et al., 2005), although these factors’ relative contributions to observed increases in disaster costs are subject to debate (Karl et al., 2009). Analyses asserting minimal or no role of climate change in increasing the risk of losses are limited in that they often 1) tend to focus on a highly limited set of hazards and locations; 2) fail to account for the vagaries of natural cycles and inflation adjustments; and 3) fail to normalize for countervailing factors such as improved pre- and post-event loss prevention (e.g., dikes, building codes, and early warning systems) (Karl et al., 2009). The USGCRP concludes that future increases in losses will be attributable to climate change with high confidence as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of many types of extreme weather (Karl et al., 2009). Please see Section 1 of this volume for our specific response regarding the Downton et al. (2005) paper and other studies

Note how the EPA uses Pielke et al. 2008 to suggest that both climate extremes and societal vulnerability are changing. I have shown above that Pielke et al. 2008 cannot be used to support such a claim. In fact, the USGCRP report cited by the EPA concluded that hurricane landfalls have decreased over the long-term.

In Part II, focused on floods, I'll show how Brooks and Doswell 2001 and Downton et al. 2005 also can't be used to support the claims being made by the EPA in the endangerment finding and in the EPA response to public comments (the former paper uses our methods and the second I co-authored).

What we have here is a clear case of extreme sloppiness by the IPCC followed by some very dubious interpretations of the literature by the EPA. Does it matter? Well, it matters to me.