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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL VS. THE SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS
RealClimate.Org
June 22, 2005

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=167

We are disappointed that the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has chosen to yet
again distort the science behind human-caused climate change and global
warming in their recent editorial "Kyoto By Degrees" (6/21/05) (subscription
required):

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111931466624264760,00.html

Last week, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and 10 other leading world
bodies expressed the consensus view
<http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf> that "there is now strong
evidence that significant global warming is occurring" and that "It is
likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human
activities". And just last week, USA Today editorialized that "not only is
the science in, it is also overwhelming":

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-06-14-our-view_x.htm

It is puzzling then that the WSJ editors could claim that "the scientific
case....looks weaker all the time".

While we resist commenting on policy matters (e.g. the relative merits of
the Kyoto Protocol or the various bills before the US Senate), we will
staunchly defend the science against distortions and misrepresentations, be
they intentional or not. In this spirit, we respond here to the
scientifically inaccurate or incorrect assertions made in the editorial.

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"Since that Byrd-Hagel vote eight years ago, the case for linking fossil
fuels to global warming has, if anything, become even more doubtful."

....

This statement stands in stark opposition to the actual findings of the
world scientific community (e.g. the various National Academies
<http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf>, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC))
<http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/005.htm>, and the vast majority of
actual peer-reviewed scientific studies
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=80>.

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"The Earth currently does seem to be in a warming period, though how warm
and for how long no one knows."

....

If we interpret to "know" as "is judged to be the case based on the
available evidence", the statement is patently false. As detailed in
previous discussions at RealClimate (see here
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=129> and here
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=122> and here
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=7>) it is the consensus of the
scientific community, based on more than a dozen independent studies using
both empirical data and theoretical models (including the most recent
studies in Nature <http://tinyurl.com/8lju6> and Science
<http://tinyurl.com/83c3q>), that average surface temperatures over the
Northern Hemisphere during the past few decades appear to be unprecedented
in a very long term context, probably over at least the past 2000 years.

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"In particular, no one knows whether this is unusual or merely something
that happens periodically for natural reasons."

....

This is incorrect. The natural causes of past climate variations are
increasingly well-understood, and they cannot explain the recent global
warming. As discussed elsewhere on this site
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=7>, modeling studies indicate that
the modest cooling of hemispheric or global mean temperatures during the
15th-19th centuries (relative to the warmer temperatures of the 11th-14th
centuries) appears to have been associated with a combination of lowered
solar irradiance and a particularly intense period of explosive volcanic
activity. When these same models are forced with only natural radiative
forcing during the 20th century [see e.g. Crowley (2000)
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/289/5477/270>] they actually
exhibit a modest cooling trend. In other words, the same natural forcings
that appear responsible for the modest large-scale cooling of the "Little
Ice Age" should have lead to a cooling trend during the 20th century (some
warming during the early 20th century arises from a modest apparent increase
in solar irradiance at that time, but the increase in volcanism during the
late 20th century leads to a net negative 20th century trend in natural
radiative forcing). In short, given natural forcing factors alone, we should
have basically remained in the "Little Ice Age". The only way to explain the
upturn in temperatures during the 20th century, as shown by Crowley (2000)
and many others, is indeed through the additional impact of anthropogenic
(i.e., human) factors, on top of the natural factors.

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"Most global warming alarms are based on computer simulations that are
largely speculative and depend on a multitude of debatable assumptions."

....

This is not correct. Concern about global warming is not based primarily on
models, but rather on an understanding of the basic physics of the
greenhouse effect and on observed data. We know from data that we have
caused the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to rise sharply during the
past century: it is now much higher than any time during the past 650,000
years (which is as far back as reliable ice core data exist). And we know
that this rise in CO2-concentration changes the radiation balance of the
planet and leads to a warming of global surface temperature. This is
scientifically undisputed and well-established physics, which has been known
since in the year 1896 the Swedish Nobel prize winner Svante Arrhenius
calculated the climatic effect of a rise in CO2.

Since there is a continued increase in emissions of (in particular) CO2,
continued greenhouse warming is highly likely to continue. The models serve
merely to quantify these basic facts more accurately, calculate the regional
climate response, and compute effects (such as the expected increase in
ocean heat content or sea level) which can be tested against observed data
from the real world.

The editorial then returns to the issue of paleoclimate reconstructions and
the so-called "Hockey Stick" <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=7>,
repeating literally each of RealClimate's documented "Hockey Stick" myths
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11>:

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"Then there's the famous 'hockey stick' data from American geoscientist
Michael Mann. Prior to publication of Mr. Mann's data in 1998, all climate
scientists accepted that the Earth had undergone large temperature
variations within recorded human history."

....

The actual prevailing view of the paleoclimate research community that
emerged during the early 1990s, when long-term proxy data became more widely
available and it was possible to synthesize them into estimates of
large-scale temperature changes in past centuries, was that the average
temperature over the Northern Hemisphere varied by significantly less than 1
degree C in previous centuries (i.e., the variations in past centuries were
small compared to the observed 20th century warming). This conclusion was
common to numerous studies
<http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/070.htm> from the early and mid
1990s that preceeded Mann et al (1998). The Mann et al (1998) estimates of
Northern Hemisphere average temperature change were, in fact, quite similar
to those from these previous studies (e.g. Bradley and Jones, 1993; Overpeck
et al, 1997), but simply extended the estimates a bit further back (from AD
1500 to AD 1400). In reality, the primary contribution of Mann et al (1998)
was that it reconstructed the actual spatial patterns of past temperature
variations
<http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/animation/mannanimate.html>,
allowing insights into the complex patterns of cooling and warming in past
centuries. In fact, regional temperatures changes (e.g. in Europe) appear to
have been significantly larger, and quite different, from those for the
Northern Hemisphere on the whole. Neglecting the significance of the large
regional differences in past temperature changes is another classic pitfall
in the arguments put forward by many climate change contrarians (see Myth #2
here <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11>).

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"This included a Medieval warm period when the Vikings farmed Greenland and
a 'little ice age' more recently when the Thames River often froze solid."

....

The sentence, first of all, perpetuates two well-known fallacies regarding
the so-called "Medieval Warm Period" and "Little Ice Age". See the
RealClimate discussions of the Little Ice Age
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=32> and Medieval Warm Period
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=33> for explanations of why both the
Viking colonization of Greenland and the freezing of the River Thames
actually tells us relatively little about past climate change.

The actual large-scale climate changes during these intervals were
complicated, and not easily summarized by simple labels and cherry-picked
anecdotes. Climate changes in past centuries were significant in some parts
of the world, but they were often opposite (e.g. warm vs. cold) in different
regions at any given time, in sharp contrast with the global synchrony of
20th century warming
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/302/5644/404>.

....

The WSJ then continue with a statement that is problematic on several
levels:

"Seen in that perspective, the slight warming believed to have occurred in
the past century could well be no more than a natural rebound, especially
since most of that warming occurred before 1940."

....

Firstly, the overall warming of the globe of nearly 1 degree C since 1900 is
hardly "slight" <http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/>. That warming
is about 1/5 of the total warming of the globe from the depths of the last
Major Ice Age (about 20,000 years ago) to present.

Secondly, the argument that the climate should have naturally "rebounded"
with warming during the 20th century defies the actual peer-reviewed
scientific studies which, as discussed earlier, suggest that the climate
should have actually cooled during the 20th century, not warmed, if natural
factors were primarily at play. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases are required
to explain the observed warming. Also, it is incorrect that most of the
warming occurred before 1940; in contrast, the warming since 1970 is larger
than that up to 1940.

The WSJ proceeds with the claim that key scientific findings that are common
to numerous independent studies (specifically that late 20th century
hemispheric warmth is anomalous in the context of past centuries) can
somehow be pinned on one particular research group or even individual (see
Hockey Stick Myth #1 here <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11>):

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"Enter Mr. Mann, who suggested that both the history books and other
historical temperature data were wrong. His temperature graph for the past
millennium was essentially flat until the 20th century, when a sharp upward
spike occurs -- i.e., it looks like a hockey stick. The graph was embraced
by the global warming lobby as proof that we are in a crisis, and that
radical solutions are called for."

....

This is patently incorrect.

The WSJ then echoes the final of the "Hockey Stick" myths discussed on
RealClimate (see Myth #4 here <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11>),
claiming that the "Hockey Stick" has now been discredited:

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"But then, in 2003, Canadian mathematician Stephen McIntyre and economist
Ross McKitrick published a critique calling Mr. Mann's work riddled with
'collation errors, unjustifiable truncations or extrapolation of source
data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculations of
principal components, and other quality control defects.' "

....

In fact, these claims have been demonstrated to be incorrect by an
independent group of scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR) <http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/ammann.shtml>. These
authors have shown that the 'alternative' reconstruction promoted by
McIntyre and McKitrick (which disagrees not only with the Mann et al
reconstruction, but nearly a dozen independent reconstructions that agreee
with the Mann et al reconstruction within statistical uncertainties
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=7>) is the result of censoring of
key data from the original Mann et al (1998) dataset. Unlike the original
reconstruction of Mann et al (1998), the reconstruction that McIntyre and
McKitrick produced using the censored data set fails standard statistical
tests for validity, and, in the words of the NCAR group, is "shown to be
without statistical and climatological merit" <http://tinyurl.com/c9gon>.

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"Correct for those errors, they showed, and the Medieval warm period
returns."

....

This is just bizarre. The claimed reconstruction of McIntyre and McKitrick,
in fact, indicates anomalous warmth during the 15th century. This period
doesn't fall even remotely within the interval commonly referred to as the
"Medieval Warm Period" <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=33>. Instead,
it actually falls within the heart of the "Little Ice Age"
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=32> itself! The irony of contrarian
supporters of the claims of McIntyre and McKitrick is that, if their
reconstruction were valid (which it is not), it would actually argue for
unusual warmth during the heart of the "Little Ice Age".

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"Mr. Mann has never offered a serious rebuttal to the McIntyre-McKitrick
critique."

....

This is not true. In fact, Dr. Mann
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=47> has demonstrated the falsehood
of the various McIntyre and McKitrick claims in excruciating detail on
RealClimate (see here <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=8> and here
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=98>). More significantly, however,
McIntyre and McKitrick's claims have now been refuted by at least two
independent teams of climate researchers (see here
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=10> and here
<http://tinyurl.com/c9gon>).

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"He has refused to fully explain his methodology."

....

Quite to the contrary, the methodology used was described in detail not just
in the original 1998 publication, but in an expanded description
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=121> provided last year on Nature's
supplementary website. The original description was adequate for other
researchers with appropriate training to closely reproduce both the
algorithm and the published results. In fact, the NCAR researchers referred
to above have made their code for implementing the Mann et al (1998) method
publically available here
<http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/CODES_MBH.html>. In the
process (scroll down to bottom of this page) , they demonstrate the impacts
of the numerous fundamental errors made by McIntyre and McKitrick. With this
publically available code and data, anyone can reproduce and check the
reconstruction of Mann et al (1998).

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"Meanwhile, a review of about 200 different temperature studies was
published in 2003 by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the journal Climate Research.
It likewise reaffirmed the longstanding consensus that there have been large
temperature variations over the past millennium."

....

The irony here could not be more striking, for if the editors of the WSJ
were familiar with the news reported by the WSJ, they surely should have
been aware that the Soon and Baliunas study was discredited on the pages of
the Wall Street Journal itself
<http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/CR-problem/cr.wsj.pdf>. Indeed, as
described in that previous WSJ article, a team of leading climate
researchers detailed the numerous fundamental flaws in the Soon and Baliunas
paper in in the American Geophysical Union journal "Eos". This matter has
been discussed elsewhere at great length, including previously on
RealClimate both here <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=109> and here
(see "Myth #2" <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11>).

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"computer models ...suggest the upper atmosphere should have warmed
substantially in recent decades. But data from weather balloons and
satellites don't match the projections."

....

There is indeed a discrepency between some analyses (but not others) of the
satellite data in the lower troposphere and model predictions, yet the
satellite data continue to undergo quality checking and re-processing and
there are a few indications (such as Fu and Johansen, 2005) that problems
still exist. The jury is still out on this issue (but they may be about to
come back in to the room).
....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"There's also the matter of the alleged melting of the Antarctic ice cover,
threatening a catastrophic sea level rise. In fact, recent data suggest the
ice is thickening and temperatures are dropping in most of the continent."

....

Models actually predict that the interior of the ice sheets should gain mass
because of the increased snowfall that goes along with warmer temperatures,
and recent observations actually agree with those predictions. Some areas,
such as the Antarctic peninsula <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=146>
and the West Antarctic ice sheet are losing mass, consistent with
temperature trends there.

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"Finally, an increasing number of scientists are concluding that variations
in solar radiation associated with sun spots -- that's right, the heat of
the sun -- play a major role in Earth's climate."

....

Solar forcing of climate is indeed an important component, and in the
pre-industrial period appears to explain a significant share of the
century-scale variability (though there is large uncertainty in the
magnitude of the effect). There is likely an increase in the early 20th
Century as referred to above, however, since 1950 there is no evidence for
increases in solar activity (most indices are flat)
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=153> and so it is highly unlikely to
be able to explain the bulk of the current warming trend.

The WSJ editors then try to reverse nearly two decades of scientific
research by promoting a qualitative graph (which is not actually based on
any real data) that was offered simply as a schematic by the IPCC back in
1990 <http://www.realclimate.org/IPCC90graph.gif>:

....

THE WSJ WRITES:

"So what would be a fair representation of how most scientists view the
climate of the past 1,000 years? We'd suggest the graph nearby, which we
reprint exactly as it appeared in the first report of the U.N.'s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (hardly a group of oil-funded
hacks) in 1990. It shows that our own warming period is neither unique nor
all that hot."

....

The WSJ may prefer to use 15 year-old guesses on which to base their
opinion, but the scientific community has an understandable preference
towards up-to-date and quantitified research.

------------

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Published by David Sunfellow
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