The Climate War

Climate is changing. This is like an obvious conclusion if you are old enough to remember how it was only 20 or 30 years ago. “Non c'è più la mezza stagione” (“There are no more middle seasons” which is the Italian equivalent of “Things are not what they used to be”) is one of the most used expression when travelling on the train in Italy, like a mantra used to start any conversation.

Less commonly accepted among the general public is that the cause of this change towards a warmer climate is CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) we humans release into the atmosphere. It is not uncommon to hear people say this is not true. Many, not only in the USA, think that “the left-wing political agenda is behind the global warming (GW) hoax”. What is quite surprising is that among scientists there is not such a controversy. All climatologists (but a few outliers…) agree on the fact that anthropogenic gases are responsible for the GW. So, how is it possible that we have such a schizophrenic society in which scientists and the general public have different opinions on scientific issues? If the public do not base their opinion about science on what scientists say, where do those opinions come from?

Well, there is now a very interesting book on sale that explains it all. The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, by Michael Mann. Mann is a climatologist who has been involved, for the last 10 years, in the big battle that is being fought between scientists, on one side, and conservative journalists, politicians and corporations on the other side. I really enjoyed reading it for several reasons: you get quite a good understanding of how Science works; you end up learning a lot about climatology and you get a thorough historical reconstruction that provides you with a fair answer to the questions above. If you have sufficient economic means, you can take one of the basic principles of science (nothing is “true”, everything is under scrutiny) and sell it to the public as “they don’t know what they are talking about”.

I strongly recommend the book. If you are a scientist or you already know enough about climate science, this book can offer you a valuable historical reconstruction of one of the saddest examples of what happens when Science falls under political intimidation. If you belong to those who still do not have a clear idea about what is going on with the so called “climategate”, or who call themselves “sceptical”, this book can give you a precise idea of what the “climategate” actually is and will make you far less “sceptical”. On the other hand, if you believe that GW is a liberal hoax, don’t buy the book. Science is not for “believers”. Science is for the real sceptical, who can change idea once enough evidence is provided.

Ref.

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines by Michael E. Mann

Mann, M., Bradley, R., & Hughes, M. (1998). Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries Nature, 392 (6678), 779-787 DOI: 10.1038/33859

The Science and the rhetoric of climate change in the Bolivian Amazon

Comunicación.

Este Blog está en Ingles porque mi esperanza es que sea un espacio de discusión entre investigadores que pertenecen a varias disciplinas y de varios países. Y, aunque a mi también me cueste mucho, el idioma de la ciencia es el Ingles. Pero me doy cuenta que los Bolivianos (y quizás no solo ellos) podrían estar interesados en muchos de los temas que se encaran aquí y que el ingles puede ser una barrera a su participación. Por lo tanto me comprometo, desde el próximo post, a escribir en ambos idiomas. Mientras tanto, los Castellano hablante que tengan ganas de traducir los viejos posts al Español son muy bien venidos. Podéis poner la traducción en la sección de los comentarios y yo luego me encargaré de ponerla a continuación del texto principal. Espero que haya muchos voluntarios/as.

Development organizations are calling for funds to finance projects aimed at the mitigation of climate change risk in the Llanos de Moxos. 

Oxfam International in its web writes: “Climate change will increase both the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as flooding or droughts. Beni, a district of Bolivia prone to alternate flooding and drought, is an example of a region where people are being forced to adapt to the changing climate.” A few weeks ago, AlertNet pointed out that climate change represents a threat to people in lowland Bolivia: “Widespread flooding in Bolivia, which prompted the government to declare a national emergency last week, shows the vulnerability of one of South America's poorest countries to changing weather patterns linked to climate change.” In the same article: "Roger Quiroga, emergency coordinator for Oxfam GB in Bolivia, described Beni as one of the "largest lakes in the world" during the annual rainy season, when 150,000 sq kms is covered, an area equivalent to the size of Ecuador or Nicaragua."

These projects often receive important press coverage, like that of the most important News media of the world: 

James Painter -  BBC News wrote: “If, as predicted by many experts, the cycles of El Nino/La Nina are going to increase in intensity and frequency, then the [Oxfam’s] project has the capacity to help poor families cope better with the extreme weather events and unpredictable rainfall that are to come.”

So, I decided to dig a bit deeper on what these many experts are actually predicting. 

The first step is to see how big the floods actually are. Hamilton et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research  measured, for the Llanos de Moxos, a maximum flood extension of 92,094 Km2

and an average flood extension of 29,460 Km2, 5 times smaller than that asserted by Oxfam!!

The second paper I want to draw your attention to is Aalto et al. Nature  425, 493-497 (2003). Here he states that “transient processes driven by the El Niño/Southern Oscillation cycle control the formation of the Bolivian flood plains and modulate downstream delivery of sediments.” This basically means that the extreme flood events are related to El Niño. Thus, the frequency and intensity of future floods depend on how global warming will affect El Niño. 

I looked then for studies that assess this issue and I found a paper by Collins et al. published in 2010 in Nature Geoscience (3, 391-397). Title: The impact of global warming on the tropical Pacific Ocean and El Niño. Quote: “despite considerable progress in our understanding of the impact of climate change on many of the processes that contribute to El Niño variability, it is not yet possible to say whether ENSO [El  Niño  Southern Oscillation] activity will be enhanced or damped, or if the frequency of events will change.” Well, it seems that there is no scientific basis for claiming that climate change will cause more severe floods in the Llanos de Moxos.

 Ok, but what will happen on average? Maybe there will be more floods because there will be more total rainfall regardless of El Niño effect. So I looked for climate models at the IPCC website site but I didn’t know how to deal with them…too many models and scenarios to choose from…and I am not a climatologist. So I looked at papers of people who have already done this work like Mayle et al. and Malhiet al.…and what have they found out? That the increase of temperature will be coupled with a decrease in precipitations! It seems that the big problem might be coping with prolonged drought rather than severe floods.

If there is a climatologist out there, I would like to know his/her opinion!

Meanwhile…I wonder if overstating the effects of climate change  might be contributing to the growth in the number of climate skeptics, like my virtual friend Guidorzi :-)

La Ciencia y los cuentos sobre el cambio climático en la Amazonia Boliviana.
En este post tomo el proyecto de Oxfam en lo Llanos de Moxos como un ejemplo del mal uso que a menudo se hace de los datos científicos. Oxfam está construyendo campos de cultivo elevados (camellones) en los alrededores de Trinidad –Beni -Bolivia con un doble objetivo: proveer las poblaciones locales con una antigua herramienta productiva usada por los pre-Colombinos, supuestamente más efectiva del chaco (agricultura del “quema y roza”) y mitigar el riesgo de las graves inundaciones que supuestamente en el futuro golpearan los llanos de Moxos a causa del cambio climático. Bueno, ambos objetivos carecen de base científica. He discutido el porqué lo camellones pre-Colombinos de los Llanos de Moxos nunca fueron más productivos del chaco en un articulo que acaba de ser publicado en el Journal of Archaeological Science (y que he mandado a Oxfam hace meses sin recibir respuesta), y no voy a discutir ese aspecto ahora. Lo que quiero evidenciar aquí es que el ciclo de las inundaciones/sequías catastróficas del Beni está relacionado (aunque menos estrechamente de lo que parece) con el ciclo del El Niño/La Niña. Por lo tanto, la manera de cómo el cambio climático afectará las inundaciones de los llanos depende (en parte) de cómo cambiará la frecuencia y/o la intensidad del Niño. Bueno, los estudios científico actualmente disponibles nos dicen que NADIE tiene la menor idea de lo que pasará al Niño en el futuro. Otro factor que afectará el régimen de lluvias en los Llanos es la cantidad de vapor que se forma en la Amazonia,  y este valor es muy sensible a la deforestación. Pero de esto hablaremos mas adelante. Bueno, si no estáis de acuerdo o queréis añadir o preguntar algo, podéis hacer clic en “comments” aquí abajo :-)