A recent visitor to the Academy brought this article from the National Post to my attention. After visiting our Altered State: California and Climate Change exhibit, reading the article raised some questions for our visitor. The article is very typical of a certain segment of the media that tends to politicize the science of climate change in a skeptical manner. I responded to both our visitor’s questions and the article, and I’ve posted my response below. I should point out that there is also certainly politicization of climate change science on the other side of the issue, and I will take this up in another posting.

Dear Visitor,

Thank you for your comments on the museum and the climate change exhibit.
And thank you for the link to Lorne Gunter’s article in the National Post. I
will indeed comment on it, but first let me address your question about solar
inactivity and cooler temperatures.

Solar activity is indeed one of the major influences on global temperature
and climate (see my blog entry here).
This activity tends to wax and wane cyclically on a couple of different
frequencies. The first is a seasonal one and is very easy to understand; it’s
based on the orientation of the Earth’s northern and southern hemispheres as
it orbits the sun. The second is a frequency that is roughly decadal, and is
more difficult to understand. It obviously has something to do with the
internal fluid mechanics of the sun, which in turn is influencing how much
heat is produced, but we don’t understand exactly why it cycles in such a
regular fashion.

Now, what does this have to do with ongoing global warming? Not much. The
influence of the sun has not varied very much for a very long time, and while
the amount of heat that it contributes does indeed vary over time, the
Earth’s warming trend is progressing independently of solar output. We have
considered solar activity very carefully, and it simply cannot explain the
observed warming. The fact that this keeps coming up again and again in
the “skeptics” media is, frankly, an annoying and dishonest misrepresentation
of science.

Mr Gunter’s article…I’ll pick this apart in a sequential manner. First,
notice that he refers to a string of news stories, not scientific articles.
He is simply wrong in implying that it is difficult to publish scientific
articles skeptical of global warming. A more accurate observation would be
that there are constantly articles questioning, checking, and re-checking
ideas and observations of the warming, and many of them run counter to our
current ideas. For example, it was recently demonstrated that the Greenland
ice sheet might not be melting as rapidly as previously thought (whew).
Another example would be the worry first raised a few years ago that deep
water circulation in the Atlantic was slowing down as the Arctic warmed. We
know now that the slowdown is part of a long-term cycle that is not being
driven by global warming (yay). And I could go on. What Mr. Gunter should
state is that the “string of news stories” really refers to the
self-perpetuating and unvetted output of an agenda-driven group of
journalists, himself included, and not the scientific literature.

The number of climate skeptics in the scientific community is not growing
at all. I believe that I am better informed of this than Mr. Gunter is. I do the science, I
read the journals, I write articles, I review articles, I go to conferences
and meet, chat and argue with colleagues. Mr Gunter does not.

The thrust of his article is summarized by the statement, “Because a funny
thing is happening to global temperatures — they’re going down, not up.”
Well now, doesn’t global temperature always go up and down on certain
timescales? Isn’t is cooler in winter and warmer in summer? What he is
referring to is the recent discovery of a multi-decade trend in North
Pacific/northern hemisphere temperatures, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation,
and we are indeed entering a cool phase. So yes, we can expect a slight
cooling over the next 20 years (that’s good news). However, and this is a
very important “however”, this cooling trend is imprinted on a longer-term
and constant rise in temperature, the global warming trend. So while the
cooling will occur, it will not be as significant as it would be in the
absence of human-caused, greenhouse gas-driven warming, nor will it be
permanent. As soon as the cycle begins to wane, the global warming trend,
which will have continued in the background, will make itself felt.

And who ever said that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) “had to be made to
disappear”? This one made me laugh. The MWP is an absolutely fascinating
paleoeclimatic episode, and lots of scientists study its causes and effects
every day. Just look it up on Google Scholar. But it’s surrounded by
questions such as, how long did it last? How widespread was it? Did it occur
at the same time in all places? Whatever the answers, it seems that the MWP
was a real phenomenon, but that it was not a synchronous nor global event.
Note that even Mr. Gunter concedes, “…the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was
unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.” Ah, if only the world
consisted only of Northern Europe, how much easier it would be to understand.

I’ll just skip ahead toward the end of the article where the NASA record is
discussed. Look at the graph. To draw the conclusion that global
temperatures “have given back” (whatever that is supposed to mean) most of
the warming that has occurred since 1980, from that graph, is a terrible
conclusion. I suppose that in the same way that some economists are
apparently inept at reading financial charts, there are apparently folks
applying the same ineptness to climate science.

In summary, let me just say that this non-scientific skepticism is
intellectually challenged. Scientists don’t “believe” in this or that
conclusion (see this blog post,
June 2007). We observe, we measure, we
hypothesize and test, and we reject our hypotheses or we fail to reject them.
It is what we are trained to do. It underlies the care with which we designed
the Academy’s climate change exhibit. If we did not discuss solar influence,
it is because it has no meaningful impact on the problem. Mr. Gunter and his
friends would do well to visit our exhibit with an open mind.

Again, thank you for visiting the Academy, and your kind words regarding our
efforts. And thank you for your questions. The Academy is here because we ask
questions.

Just when you think that messages and understanding are spreading, recent personal observations suggest otherwise. The data are increasing, we may already be experiencing impacts, and there is a growing awareness globally of the climate change problem. At the same time, however, I see both an increase in alarmism, and the perhaps predictable reactionary responses from disingenuous and ill-informed skeptics.

Geerat Vermeij and I recently published a short article in Science outlining our predictions of some of the effects that a future ice-free Arctic will have on the diversity of molluscs and other animals in the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. The main predictions are that (1) species in the Bering and Chukchi seas (see figure) will migrate and invade the Arctic and North Atlantic, and that (2) as a consequence, diversity will increase in both those regions. We point out that although the invading species will most likely be competitively superior to their native counterparts, that we remain agnostic, or at least uncertain, of the ecological consequences of the invasion. (See, for example, this press release.) It was very interesting to see the story picked up by news agencies around the world. Nevertheless, it was also interesting, and somewhat amusing, to see negative comments posted on many blogs and newsites accusing us of all sorts of things. For example, several commentators wondered why we expect an increase in diversity to be “harmful”. My response is simple: We never said that it would be harmful, and my advice to those individuals is that they spend more time reading, and less time writing. One fellow, presumably from a state on the East Coast, said, “I’ll happily keep my SUV chugging if it means more shellfish on the table.” That’s funny! It really is. Some of you who know me well wouldn’t be surprised to hear me say something cynically funny if I were standing on the foredeck of the Titanic. I would, of course, also have realized the gravity of the situation (no pun intended), and the futility of my unrecorded comment.

Another example was brought to my attention recently in a comment to the blog regarding an article by Wall Street writer Bret Stephens. Mr. Stephens expounds, in this article, the usual agenda-driven skepticism that I’ve come to expect from short-sighted and frankly, unintelligent economists. He leaps upon a recent error in NASA’s reporting of the hottest year since instrument records have been kept, noting that it was 1934, not 1998. NASA made a boo-boo, but shame on Mr. Stephens. NASA is not responsible for keeping and reporting on our temperature records, NOAA is. And the far more accurate and reliable NOAA records remain unequivocal. Mr. Stephens also makes reference to recent reports that the planet is undergoing a cooling trend, and rather cynically (I could like this guy in another lifetime) questions the reliability of "apocalyptic" predictions. He is presumably referring to this article (apparently journalists, unlike scientists, are trustworthy enough to not have to cite their sources) which reports a cooling trend over the next 20 years. Indeed correct. Those scientists report on the increasing trend of a long-term oscillation in climate which will imprint a cooling signature onto anthropogenic warming for the next two decades, after which, it’ll be all warming again. This is not refutation folks, it’s a reprieve! Let’s put those 20 years to good use. My point is that skeptics such as Mr. Stephen’s would do well to separate science from their own professional concerns. I’m not even sure what those concerns are, since economic reports and forecasts seem to be so far removed from the current reality of negative experiences by many of the people enrolled in those economies.

Finally, I would like to suggest some caution to the "other" side of the debate. Alarmist statements without sound scientific underpinnings are not helpful. There are still a lot of open questions; they’re the ones that keep me optimistic. I’ve heard recent reference to the consequences of a 5 meter rise in sea level this century. Uhm yes, that would be horrific, and yes, it’s possible. But it is not, to the best of our current knowledge, probable. So let’s keep it honest. I don’t know if Pacific shellfish will devastate the North Atlantic. I am fairly certain that their bags are packed and they’re ready to go. Perhaps the guy with the chugging SUV will agree to send me his notes.

Many of you are now familiar with the major ongoing and predicted impacts of global warming: warmer air temperatures, changes in rain and snowfall, melting ice, rising sea levels, etc.. A more subtle change which is taking place, and one that escaped serious attention until a few years ago, is the acidity of the oceans.

Acidity is usually measured in pH units, a metric of the amount of free hydrogen ions in the liquid; those little buggers cause a liquid to be acidic. The acidity of seawater is determined almost entirely by the amount of carbon dioxide being dissolved into it from the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide gas dissolves, and undergoes a series of somewhat complicated transformations to eventually yield, among other things, carbonate ions. The world’s ocean is a vast volume of water, and it is normally buffered, meaning that it is very very difficult to alter its chemistry. The bright side of this is the fact that for a long time, the ocean has been absorbing a lot of carbon dioxide and heat from the atmosphere, and has therefore helped to slow down the impacts of our fossil fuel emissions. But, as I mentioned once before, there’s no free lunch, and it seems that all good things must come to an end. So too with the ocean’s gift. The ability of the ocean to absorb our bad stuff from the air is now declining rapidly; it’s filling up! One consequence is that the pH is declining noticeably (lower pH = more acidic).

So what does this all mean? Technically, one major consequence is the decline in available carbonate ions in seawater. As the pH falls, more carbon dioxide enters a bicarbonate ion phase. And again you ask, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??! It means this. Calcium carbonate ("chalk") is the material used most commonly by marine organisms to build their skeletons. Corals, clams, snails, many algae, and so on, use it. As the amount of carbonate ions in seawater declines, it will become increasingly difficult for these organisms to build, and even maintain, their skeletons. The skeletons will begin to dissolve. This is a huge and looming disaster. Coral reefs are the most diverse marine ecosystems, and are of tremendous economic value in the tropics. Microscopic planktonic algae with carbonate skeletons are the major producers of food and oxygen in the oceans. Clams are one of the major groups of algal consumers in the oceans, providing a vital link between the producers and consumers. Tens of thousands of years of accumulated carbonate skeletons in the ocean could begin to dissolve and release their carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Ocean acidity could well be the elephant in the room.

Is it all doom and gloom? Maybe not. It is shocking, personally shocking, that we know so little about the effects of pH on marine organisms. But unlike temperature and salinity, pH does not vary very easily, and so we scientists perhaps paid less attention to it. Now, new studies are suggesting that it’s not all hopeless, and that the responses of organisms could be more varied than we realize. I’ll talk about that in my next post, and we’ll also chat about the last time that this happened, 55 million years ago.

I’m really welcoming myself back to the blog. For the past few months we have been moving the Academy to its new facility in Golden Gate Park, which has involved a lot of packing, moving, unpacking, and so on. Many of you know about moving, but in this case, moving includes the more than 22 million specimens in the natural history collections, as well as all the live animals, etc. We are also very busy getting the place ready for the grand re-opening to the public on September 27th!

But, I’m in the new facility and settled into my new digs. The blog is back, and I will post something new soon!

The new California Academy of Sciences is headed toward completion, and the process of preparing the new facility, readying the exhibits, and moving the more than 20 million specimens in our natural history collections is keeping many of us very busy. You can find out more about the happenings here, and view a very nice video here.

Nevertheless, science goes on. While discussing our planned exhibit on climate change with some external designers a couple of weeks ago, one of them commented on the topic of “uncertainty.” She said that we should avoid the word at all costs because the general public already does not trust scientists, and that everytime they hear that particular word, it reinforces the notion that we scientists don’t know what we’re talking about (”You can’t even predict the weather 12 days from now!”). Is this true? Please send comments if you have any! Anyway, nothing could be farther from the truth. Let me tell you, Uncertainty is part of the beauty of the Universe.

When we (scientists) use the term Uncertainty, we mean either unknown, not understood, or unknowable. Let me attempt to explain using climate change science as an example. There is uncertainty in our predictions of the future’s climate because there are unknown quantities in our reasoning. Some of these quantities include important feedbacks in climate change processes that we simply have not recognized. For example, who would have thought ten years ago that as ice sheets melt, that they would lubricate and accelerate their own slide towards the sea? Other important unknowns include all the human ones. How quickly will the developing world increase its carbon emissions over the next 100 years? How much international economic cooperation can we all count on? Then there is the “not understood.” There are processes and phenomena whose science still escape us. E.g. we know that clouds play a role in climate, but will it be an important role as the planet continues to heat up? Will it be a cooling role? I don’t know, though there are some very clever people out there trying to figure it out.

And then there is the unknowable. The notion that once we’ve understood the mechanisms at work in the world, and have measured the right things, that we will be able to predict the future the way that we predict the ticking of a clock, is a deep-rooted consequence of the Newtonian and Cartesian revolutions. It is a dangerous hubris. The Universe does not work that way. The revolution of quantum physics told us that the Universe is random at the smallest scales. More recently, areas such as Chaos Theory and Catastrophe Theory have revealed that even the most innocent looking phenomena, such as weather(!), can be full of surprises. Take a look at this little equation.
X(t+1) = rX(t)(1-X(t))

It simply tells us that the size of an animal’s population, X, at time t+1 is the product of the population’s size at time t, multiplied by the typical birthrate of the species (r). If r is 3 (members of the population have 3 offspring per breeding season in excess of deaths), then we see that one can predict population size well into the future; it’s a simple cycle (upper graph). Sir Isaac is happy. Now, however, let’s say that r is 3.6 (I know, you can’t have three and a bit kids, but just indulge me). At this value, and for most values beyond, population size is effectively unpredictable! There’s no randomness here folks. This is a deterministic but inherently unknowable system! Welcome to Chaos Theory. And welcome to weather prediction. In this case, Uncertainty is not the result of ignorance, it is part of the inherently unknowable Universe. The system cannot tell us where it’s headed if the system itself doesn’t know. Beautiful.

Btw, if any of you yougsters out there think that you can predict where the second population is headed, then you deserve a Fields Medal (let me know; I’ll nominate you). In the next posting we’ll get back to our modeling, touch on Catastrophe Theory, and chat about tipping points.

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Happy New Year to everyone (even if this is not your particular New Year), and I hope that you all had something nice for the holidays! I thought that at this time we could take stock of some of the major happenings of the past year. From my perspective, it was a mixed year.

Some of the highs included the release of the long-awaited IPCC report, the awarding of the Nobel Prize to both the IPCC and tireless campaigner Al Gore, and the growing awareness of global warming by both the global population, and the people here in the United States. Depending on which poll you believe, anywhere from 60% to 80% of persons questioned in the United States now accept the reality of global warming, and a majority of those believe that human activities are the main drivers. Less clear to me is what fraction of those believers think that something positive can be done about the problem, and the extent to which they are willing to modify their own lifestyles to accomplish change. Another high would be the convening of the Bali conference in Indonesia, which brought together most of the world’s governments to discuss the problem, and to seek solutions.

Some of the lows: The Bali conference. In spite of great hopes going into the conference, most concerned citizens were disappointed by the almost complete lack of any firm committments by almost every governing body. The United States continues to refuse to set mandatory cut-backs on emissions within an effective timeframe, and this simply reinforces the resolve of China and India to do likewise. An associated low-point would be the almost complete lack of effective action here in the United States. A well-meaning Congress accomplished almost nothing. Representatives of coal-producing states (including Democrat legislators), and primarily Midwestern states, effectively killed an effort that would allow the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to strengthen limits on greenhouse gas emissions if warming predictions exceed a certain level. Likewise, perhaps partly as a consequence, California’s efforts to do the same have now been blocked by the EPA! And to complete this negative note, many of us in the public, while growing in our awareness and acceptance of the problem, are still unwilling to take any measures that might affect the pocketbook (taxes, changes in purchasing habits, etc.), and are unwilling to recognize that the United States leads the world in per capita harmful emissions.

Where do we go in 2008? A friend recently expressed, over dinner, great pessimism about us doing anything positive at all. She also expressed surprise at my seeming optimism. I wouldn’t say that I am necessarily optimistic; I’m stubborn. I refuse to accept any worst-case scenarios, perhaps until they are actually upon me. There’s still time, and there’s a lot of work to be done. I hope that many, maybe all, of you out there feel the same way.

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A very belated but sincere congratulations to Vice-President Al Gore and the IPCC team for being awarded the Nobel Prize. There is no more widely recognized signature of accomplishment and, in this case, it was very well deserved. (To those who may think otherwise, e.g. certain media pundits, I ask, “What have you done for me lately?”)

We’ll go through this process together in upcoming entries, and I would love to have your feedback (comments, questions, compliments, expressions of outrage, etc.). In the meantime, here’s some reading (I will add these links shortly). Warning: the reading is technical in parts, but you can always do what many scientists do: read the Introduction, and Discusson/Conclusions, and leave the good bits alone!

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Legend has it that during the Great Fire of Rome (C.E. 64), the Emperor Nero “fiddled”, singing the Sack of Ilium while the city burned. It seems, in fact, that the Emperor was not in Rome at the time of the fire, and in reality organized tremendous relief efforts upon his immediate return (oh, and the fiddle had not yet been invented). Therefore, current accusations that world leaders are fiddling today as the world approaches the climate crisis are inaccurate. Oh, don’t get me wrong; they are indeed fiddling, but I don’t see the tremendous efforts of relief anywhere in sight.

And so we come to the coup de grace, the kernel of globalized anastomosis. China and India, the world’s hottest (no pun intended!) economies, have welcomed Bush’s comments. I thought it was because they are also among the world’s biggest emitters. Silly me. It’s actually about tea and spices, and easy, ice-free sailing. (I trust the Canadians to take their fair share of the profits and not get in the way of global commerce.) Wow, brilliant. Fiddle on dear sirs, fiddle on.

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Hello everyone, and apologies, again, for the long lapse between postings. Summer tends to be a busy time for researchers, what with field work, attending conferences, presenting at conferences, and so on. I recently returned from a workshop at the NMNH (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution) and thought that I would share some thoughts with you. This was a meeting of the long-running ETE (Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems) group. The topic of this meeting was the role of scale in paleoecology, meaning temporal and spatial scales. There were about 30 invited paleoecologists, including colleagues from Europe, and experts in terrestrial and marine ecosystems, plants, vertebrates and invertebrates, etc. I was there mostly, I think, as a member of the small group of theoretical paleobiologists. We covered a lot of ground in four days, focusing on the relationship between present-day ecology (neoecology), and the ecology of past ecosystems. A couple of key questions and points that were raised, and should be of interest to you readers, include:

Welcome back to models. I’ve been thinking about how to proceed with this thread, and I’ve developed three objectives:

1. Explain more about model construction, use, and limitations, using a model that I’ve developed myself. This model, CEG, is designed to examine the responses of biological communities and ecosystems to disruptions of various sorts, on the large-scale.
2. “Open source” (of which I am BIG fan) the model, in the sense that I would like feedback (no pun intended) from you, the blog readers, regarding questions to be addressed, and modifications to be made to the model. In other words, I’d like us to generate some experiments as a community!
3. I would very much like to bring this model, and the work that we’ve applied it to, to the general public, and we (myself and collaborators) have been thinking long and hard on the best ways to do this. The end-product would be something that would form part of the public offering of the California Academy of Sciences, whether an exhibit, visual show, online experience, etc. I’d like to open this effort also to the community, and as we discuss the model and play with it, let’s see what ideas could perhaps be generated. What would you like to see? What do you think would be most informative, exciting, educational?

So let’s begin the process now! Let’s hear your questions, and as I explain the model and objectives, let’s hear your ideas!

Next time, we’ll go through the exercise of actually beginning development of the model. We’ll also keep climate change models in mind, and refer to them often.

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