Continued from post #28 above ↑
This is my second installment of excerpts from Daniel B. Botkin's written testimony before the House Subcommittee on Science, Space, and Technology. MAY 29, 2014 [emphases added -JR]
This is my second installment of excerpts from Daniel B. Botkin's written testimony before the House Subcommittee on Science, Space, and Technology. MAY 29, 2014 [emphases added -JR]
13. The reports suffer from the use of the term “climate change” with two meanings: natural and human-induced. These are both given as definitions in the IPCC report and are not distinguished in the text and therefore confuse a reader. (The Climate Change Assessment uses the term throughout including its title, but never defines it.) There are places in the reports where only the second meaning—human induced―makes sense, so that meaning has to be assumed. There are other places where either meaning could be applied. In those places where either meaning can be interpreted, if the statement is assumed to be a natural change, then it is a truism, a basic characteristic of Earth’s environment and something people have always known and experienced. If the meaning is taken to be human-caused, then in spite of the assertions in the report, the available data do not support the statements.
Some of the reports conclusions are the opposite of those given in articles cited in defense of those conclusions.
For example, the IPCC 2014 Terrestrial Ecosystem Report states that “there is medium confidence that rapid change in the Arctic is affecting its animals. For example, seven of 19 subpopulations of the polar bear are declining in number” citing in support of this an article by Vongraven and Richardson, 2011. That report states the contrary, that the “‘decline’ is an illusion.
In addition, I have sought the available counts of the 19 subpopulations. Of these, only three have been counted twice; the rest have been counted once. Thus no rate of changes in the populations can be determined. The first count was done 1986 for one subpopulation.
The U. S. Marine Mammal Commission, charged with the conservation of this species, acknowledges “Accurate estimates of the current and historic sizes of polar bear stocks are difficult to obtain for several reasons–the species‘ inaccessible habitat, the movement of bears across international boundaries, and the costs of conducting surveys.”
According to Dr. Susan Crockford, “out of the 13 populations for which some kind of data exist, five populations are now classified by the PBSG [IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group] as ‘stable’ (two more than 2009), one is still increasing, and three have been upgraded from ‘declining’ to ‘data deficient’. . . . That leaves four that are still considered ‘declining’‐ two of those judgments are based primarily on concerns of overhunting, and one is based on a statistically insignificant decline that may not be valid and is being reassessed (and really should have been upgraded to ‘data deficient’). That leaves only one population – Western Hudson Bay – where PBSG biologists tenaciously blame global warming for all changes to polar bear biology, and even then, the data supporting that conclusion is still not available.“
15. Some conclusions contradict and are ignorant of the best statistically valid observations. For example, the Terrestrial Ecosystems Report states that “terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems have sequestered about a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere by human activities in the past three decades (high confidence).” I have done the first statistically valid estimate of carbon storage and uptake for any large area of Earth’s land, the boreal forests and eastern deciduous forest of North America, and subtropical forests in Queensland, Australia. The estimates of carbon uptake by vegetation used by IPCC and in major articles cited by the reports are based on what can best be called “grab samples,” a relatively small number of studies done at a variety of times using a variety of methods, mainly in old- growth areas. The results reported by IPCC overestimate carbon storage and uptake by as much as 300 percent.
16. The report for policy makers on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability repeats the assertion of previous IPCC reports that “large fraction of species” face “increase extinction risks” (p15). Overwhelming evidence contradicts this assertion. And it has been clearly shown that models used to make these forecasts, such as climate envelope models and species-area curve models, make incorrect assumptions that lead to erroneous conclusions, over-estimating extinction risks. Surprisingly few species became extinct during the past 2.5 million years, a period encompassing several ice ages and warm periods. Among other sources, this is based on information in the book Climate Change and Biodiversity edited by Thomas Lovejoy, one of the leaders in the conservation of biodiversity. The major species known to have gone extinct during this period are 40 species of large mammals in North America and Northern Europe. (There is a “background” extinction rate for eukaryotic species of roughly one species per year.)
17. THE REPORT GIVES THE IMPRESSION THAT LIVING THINGS ARE FRAGILE AND RIGID, unable to deal with change. The opposite is to case. Life is persistent, adaptable, adjustable.
18. STEADY-STATE ASSUMPTION: There is an overall assumption in the IPCC 2014 report and the Climate Change Assessment that all change is negative and undesirable; that it is ecologically and evolutionarily unnatural, bad for populations, species, ecosystems, for all life on planet Earth, including people. This is the opposite of the reality: The environment has always changed and is always changing, and living things have had to adapt to these changes. Interestingly, many, if not most, species that I have worked on or otherwise know about require environmental change.
19. The summary for policy makers on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability makes repeated use of the term “irreversible” changes. A species going extinct is irreversible, but little else about the environment is irreversible. The past confirms this. Glaciers have come and gone repeatedly. The Northwest Passage of North America has gone and come again. The average temperature has greatly exceeded the present and forecasted and has declined only to rise again.
Implicit in this repeated use of irreversible is the belief that Earth’s environment is constant — stable, unchanging — except when subjected to human actions. This is obviously false from many lines of evidence, including the simple experience of all people who have lived before the scientific-industrial age and those who live now and so do such work as farm, manage rivers, wildlife and forests.
20. The extreme overemphasis on human-induced global warming has taken our attention away from many environmental issues that used to be front and center but have been pretty much ignored in the 21st century. The Terrestrial report in a sense acknowledges this, for example by stating: “Climate stresses occur alongside other anthropogenic influences on ecosystems, including land-use changes, nonnative species, and pollution, and in many cases will exacerbate these pressures (very high confidence).”
....
Do the problems with the se reports mean that we can or should abandon any concerns about global warming or abandon any research about it? Certainly not, but we need to put this issue within an appropriate priority with other major here-and-now environmental issues that are having immediate effects.
To be continued...
Some of the reports conclusions are the opposite of those given in articles cited in defense of those conclusions.
For example, the IPCC 2014 Terrestrial Ecosystem Report states that “there is medium confidence that rapid change in the Arctic is affecting its animals. For example, seven of 19 subpopulations of the polar bear are declining in number” citing in support of this an article by Vongraven and Richardson, 2011. That report states the contrary, that the “‘decline’ is an illusion.
In addition, I have sought the available counts of the 19 subpopulations. Of these, only three have been counted twice; the rest have been counted once. Thus no rate of changes in the populations can be determined. The first count was done 1986 for one subpopulation.
The U. S. Marine Mammal Commission, charged with the conservation of this species, acknowledges “Accurate estimates of the current and historic sizes of polar bear stocks are difficult to obtain for several reasons–the species‘ inaccessible habitat, the movement of bears across international boundaries, and the costs of conducting surveys.”
According to Dr. Susan Crockford, “out of the 13 populations for which some kind of data exist, five populations are now classified by the PBSG [IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group] as ‘stable’ (two more than 2009), one is still increasing, and three have been upgraded from ‘declining’ to ‘data deficient’. . . . That leaves four that are still considered ‘declining’‐ two of those judgments are based primarily on concerns of overhunting, and one is based on a statistically insignificant decline that may not be valid and is being reassessed (and really should have been upgraded to ‘data deficient’). That leaves only one population – Western Hudson Bay – where PBSG biologists tenaciously blame global warming for all changes to polar bear biology, and even then, the data supporting that conclusion is still not available.“
15. Some conclusions contradict and are ignorant of the best statistically valid observations. For example, the Terrestrial Ecosystems Report states that “terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems have sequestered about a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere by human activities in the past three decades (high confidence).” I have done the first statistically valid estimate of carbon storage and uptake for any large area of Earth’s land, the boreal forests and eastern deciduous forest of North America, and subtropical forests in Queensland, Australia. The estimates of carbon uptake by vegetation used by IPCC and in major articles cited by the reports are based on what can best be called “grab samples,” a relatively small number of studies done at a variety of times using a variety of methods, mainly in old- growth areas. The results reported by IPCC overestimate carbon storage and uptake by as much as 300 percent.
16. The report for policy makers on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability repeats the assertion of previous IPCC reports that “large fraction of species” face “increase extinction risks” (p15). Overwhelming evidence contradicts this assertion. And it has been clearly shown that models used to make these forecasts, such as climate envelope models and species-area curve models, make incorrect assumptions that lead to erroneous conclusions, over-estimating extinction risks. Surprisingly few species became extinct during the past 2.5 million years, a period encompassing several ice ages and warm periods. Among other sources, this is based on information in the book Climate Change and Biodiversity edited by Thomas Lovejoy, one of the leaders in the conservation of biodiversity. The major species known to have gone extinct during this period are 40 species of large mammals in North America and Northern Europe. (There is a “background” extinction rate for eukaryotic species of roughly one species per year.)
17. THE REPORT GIVES THE IMPRESSION THAT LIVING THINGS ARE FRAGILE AND RIGID, unable to deal with change. The opposite is to case. Life is persistent, adaptable, adjustable.
18. STEADY-STATE ASSUMPTION: There is an overall assumption in the IPCC 2014 report and the Climate Change Assessment that all change is negative and undesirable; that it is ecologically and evolutionarily unnatural, bad for populations, species, ecosystems, for all life on planet Earth, including people. This is the opposite of the reality: The environment has always changed and is always changing, and living things have had to adapt to these changes. Interestingly, many, if not most, species that I have worked on or otherwise know about require environmental change.
19. The summary for policy makers on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability makes repeated use of the term “irreversible” changes. A species going extinct is irreversible, but little else about the environment is irreversible. The past confirms this. Glaciers have come and gone repeatedly. The Northwest Passage of North America has gone and come again. The average temperature has greatly exceeded the present and forecasted and has declined only to rise again.
Implicit in this repeated use of irreversible is the belief that Earth’s environment is constant — stable, unchanging — except when subjected to human actions. This is obviously false from many lines of evidence, including the simple experience of all people who have lived before the scientific-industrial age and those who live now and so do such work as farm, manage rivers, wildlife and forests.
20. The extreme overemphasis on human-induced global warming has taken our attention away from many environmental issues that used to be front and center but have been pretty much ignored in the 21st century. The Terrestrial report in a sense acknowledges this, for example by stating: “Climate stresses occur alongside other anthropogenic influences on ecosystems, including land-use changes, nonnative species, and pollution, and in many cases will exacerbate these pressures (very high confidence).”
....
Do the problems with the se reports mean that we can or should abandon any concerns about global warming or abandon any research about it? Certainly not, but we need to put this issue within an appropriate priority with other major here-and-now environmental issues that are having immediate effects.
To be continued...
Comment