About a week ago the Research Council of Norway issued a press release with the headline "Global warming less extreme than feared?" (see Grist below for the link). Its second graf is a quote from a researcher in Stockholm, not an author of the study, saying the results are sensational. A few news outlets pretty much ripped that from the digital wire and ran with it. More recently, media report that the paper is not even refereed and is in essence a new researcher's doctoral thesis. Others say it is just another of a class of studies that tend to be less alarming than is the field's overall consensus. At the same time already be assuming bedrock stature in contrarian literature. Oh my. The back and forth, and continuing reverberations, are an instructive display of how breaking science can be manhandled when it lands in the middle of what is in important ways an ideological struggle.
Also illustrated: the ability of a press release – despite the question mark in its hed – to lead some reporters and influential bloggers on, their brains either stuck in neutral or too delighted with the news's promotional label to check the ingredients for themselves.
The gist of the press release's boost is that there is good news here. This is according to a professor actually associated with the analysis. The study's reputed strength is that one must look at all historic data on correlations of CO2 levels with observed global and oceanic temperature – most important including the last dozen years or so when temperatures, while at the highest level in the instrumental record, seem to have paused their march yet higher. By including this recent plateau the study finds that while climate does warm with added CO2, its response or "sensitivity" to the gas's solar forcing may be at the very low end of the range calculated by most previoius big studies. That includes the IPPC. It means a doubled CO2 over preindustrial levels is likely to bring a global temperature rise of about 1.9 C rather than the 3 C that is the mean of all previous studies. So it says.
Already the world has gone up about 1.2 C. So if somehow this one paper happens to have a truth that the IPPC and various National Academy teams have missed, we've already been through the warming likely, if trends persist, to be in the pipeline by about mid-century. (I suppose that if nothing much is done about emissions by then, CO2 will keep on rising after that and eventually reach insufferable levels across much of the world anyway. But never mind that for now, huh?)
Media stories and high-level blogs on the analysis are all over the place. Let's sort them into piles. To start with, some smaller, partisan outlets and blogs, plus at least one large outlet, went with what the release says is so:
Stories that may be taken to say take THAT, you global warming alarmists (aka warmists):
- Bloomberg – Adam Ewing: Norway Data Shows Earth's Global Warming Less Severe Than Feared ; No daylight I can see between this and the release.
- Watts Up With That – Anthony Watts: Yet another study shows lower climate sensitivity ; Well of course Watts likes this one.
- Science 2.0 (no byline) Major Progress in CO2 and Global Warming Reduction ; This is a sufficiently multiply faceted roundup of goodish news on climate change that whoever wrote it should have his or her name attached. Comments strongly suggest it is one of the site's mainstays, Hank Campbell. He ties this study to recent levelings in CO2 emissions from the US and some other industrial nations to conclude that, combined with the study from Norway, holding temperature to a 2 C rise with doubled CO2 – a general goal of those hoping for merely bad news rather than global calamity – is doable. He takes the study and its press release at its word.
- Register (UK) Lewis Page: Climate shocker: Carry on as we are until 2050, planet will be FINE ; Hmm. Page takes the single-source quote in the press release and converts it to independent experts, plural, labeling the results truly sensational. Then he (or his editors) way down deep used the whole quote while attaching it to the single source. Huh? His reference to the "warmist-alarmist" community, apparently meaning the bulk of climate scientists, is a forthright revelation of his personal views. He adds a "comment" at the bottom underscoring his skepticism re global warming.
Stories that say wait a minute…
- NYTimes DotEarth blog – Andrew Revkin: two posts. Jan 26: Weaker Global Warming Seen in Study Promoted by Norway's Research Council ; including a Jan. 27 update that says the release is really old news but the study was published in a journal, and a fuller update Jan. 28 with answers to Andy's questions to the Research Council of Norway interleaved with Revkin's as-usual keen insights, plus links to more of the internet conversation than I've uncovered on my own. Revkin notes that he intends to write further on this topic, folding in remarks on Rich Muller's Berkeley Climate Project that, from a skeptical stance, confirms the reality of the recent warming record and the most likely culprit: human industry.
- The Carbon Brief – Roz Pidcock: Norway climate sensitivity research not yet peer reviewed ; This post, the result of the some of Pidcock's own enterprise, is emphatic in presenting evidence that the underlying research in Norway is tentative in authority, at best.
*UPDATE
- SkepticalScience – Dana Nuccitelli: Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome; SkepticalScience is a worldly site that pretends the the phrase "skeptical science" has not been turned on its head by the science contrarians. Which means, it means sensible science by regular scientists. It's based in Australia with writers are from all over. Dana N., a regular, lives in California and identifies himself as a climate consultant. This is not so much a story as an expert analysis, not journalism but is the sort of thing that science writers on the climate beat will be better off for reading.
The affair seems to have cooled. No major wire service or other large general media outlet – beyond Revkin's Dot Earth blog and that is aimed at a rather keenly interested and specialized audience – paid much attention to the press release. Good move. While the news blip lasted it revealed the usual fault lines in coverage and in public consumption of climate news. It would be helpful, and might have happened had this news gone bigger, if some reporter would beaver herself or himself into the Norwegian council's inner workings and learn why this study got this kind of play, now. It could simply be a flub at a small, understaffed and overworked outfit with a big agenda and little budget.
On that last note, here's a clue that Norway's scientific enterprise needs re-organization, from the Research Council of Norway itself:
- Physorg: Norway: Too many small regional research institutes ; Physorg is an aggregator, largely of press releases. This one is from the council.
Grist for the Mill: Research Council of Norway Press Release that set this post into motion;
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