Climate Change In Charts: From Record Global Temperatures To Science Denial

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

The world's hottest year on record has prompted much media coverage. But there haven't been enough charts and graphs

The year 2015 was the hottest on the modern record. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Much has been written about climate change in recent months, what with that record-breaking hot year we just had and the qualified success of the Paris climate talks.
But if there's one criticism I'd have of the media coverage, it's this.
Not enough graphs.
So here are six that you might have missed, but that tell us a few things about the state of the climate and the state of the public's thinking on global warming.

Chart showing average global temperatures from 1850 to 2015 according to three major datasets Photograph: Met Office, UK

So how have global temperatures been recently? You know, while human-caused global warming has been on that pause that didn't happen.
Above is a chart from the UK's MetOffice showing the three main global temperature data sets. These, for the hardcore among you, are known as HadCrut4 (MetOffice), GISTEMP (NASA) and MLOST (NOAA).
Pretty clear, right? All three show 2015 was the hottest year on record.
The chart shows "anomalies" (that's the temperatures above or below a long-term average), in this case, against the average temperature between 1961 and 1990.
So for the MetOffice data, 2015 was 0.75C above the long-term average.
In December 2014, the MetOffice guessed (and when I say guess, I mean they used some powerful, skilful and sophisticated modelling) that 2015 would be between 0.52 and 0.76C above average. So they were right. Just.

Chart showing the MetOffice estimate of global temperatures in the upcoming five years to 2020 Photograph: Met Office

And while we're talking about forecasts from the MetOffice, here's another one of theirs from a few days ago.
The MetOffice now makes "decadal" forecasts – that is, another of their guesses (same caveats apply as before with the term "guess") on "near term" conditions globally over the next five years.
The black line shows actual temperature measurements. The red band are previous predictions and the green band shows the expected range according to climate models.
In short, according to the MetOffice, the forecast is "for continued global warming largely driven by continued high levels of greenhouse gases".

Chart showing the rising heat content of the world's oceans Photograph: NOAA

You can't really talk about global warming without talking about the oceans, given that this is where the vast majority of the extra heat and the extra carbon dioxide ends up.
The above chart, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows the latest temperature readings from ships and from a network of almost 4,000 floats – known as the Argo array.
A study published a couple of weeks ago found heating of the oceans was accelerating, particularly in the deeper ocean.

Chart showing how often thinktanks that oppose climate action argue that CO2 is good and how those funded by Exxon or the Koch brothers make that argument more often. Photograph: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

One of the most popular talking points among climate science denialists is that CO2 is just great and the more of it that we pump out, the better things will be.
This goes against the advice of every science organisation of repute on the planet. But who needs science when rapper BoB can apparently just nudge us off the edge of the Earth?
Anyway, as I've written here before, there's an industry that has grown up around climate science denial and its epicentre is the network of US-based "free market" conservative thinktanks.
The chart above is from a paper by Yale University's Dr Justin Farrell in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published in October 2015.
Farrell examined the output of 164 thinktanks – mostly based in the US – that form a "climate counter-movement" by attacking science and working against policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
After writing a program to analyse some 39m words worth of reports, letters, blog posts and the like, Farrell found something interesting (actually, he found lots of interesting things).
As the chart above shows, thinktanks that had taken funding from either oil giant Exxon or groups linked to the oil billionaire Koch brothers were far more likely to say that "CO2 is good" than those that didn't.

Chart showing the views of Australians on the causes of climate change. The dashed line shows each group's opinion and the bars show how many people they think agree with them. Photograph: Nature Climate Change

While most people accept that climate change is happening, there continues to be a roughly even split among the public about its causes.
Some think it's mostly natural, some think it's mostly human-caused. This split is in no small way thanks to the misinformation campaigns run by the groups mentioned above.
In Australia the public is still split on the causes of global warming, according to a CSIRO survey of about 5,000 people.
But one fascinating aspect of a CSIRO survey on public attitudes to climate change isn't what people think, but what people think other people think – if you follow me.
The chart above is taken from a 2013 study published in Nature Climate Change and illustrates how fabulously crap most people are at gauging the climate opinions of others.
For example, 7% of Australians think climate change is "not happening" – as shown by the dotted line on that bar. But that group thinks that about half of Australians think the same. Wildly wrong.

Chart showing global CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel use and industry since 1990 and emissions intensity CO2 /GDP. The red symbols are projections for 2015. Photograph: Nature Climate Change

Rising CO2 emissions and economic growth have been like two kids who met as childhood sweethearts and just never broke up. It has always seemed like the two were made for each other.
But if you want to keep an economy growing but tackle the critical issue of rising emissions, then there has to be a break-up. Decoupling economic growth from rising emissions is the big challenge.
This chart comes from a December 2015 paper, also in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The black squares show the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted for every unit of GDP. Clearly, that's been dropping. The white circles are carbon dioxide emissions, and clearly they've been going up.
Success would mean both those lines heading rapidly south. The study showed that for the first time, emissions had dropped slightly while the world's economy grew.
So is there a break-up on the cards?
Commenting on the finding, Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford said: "Is this the beginning of the end of global warming? Probably not. But let's hope it is the end of the beginning."

Links

• Era of climate science denial is not over, study finds
• Like cheap Christmas giftwrap, environmental laws fail to protect against climate threat
• Paris agreement a victory for climate science and ultimate defeat for fossil fuels
• Veteran climate scientists hopeful a historic Paris deal is only hours away

Renewables Agency Stripped Of Members And Run By Bureaucrat

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Board terms expire, leaving body tasked with investing in emerging technology in hands of department secretary for second time in two years

Heliostats at the world's largest solar thermal power plant in California. The Australian government agency responsible for investing in emerging technologies has no remaining board members. Photograph: Alamy

All appointed board members of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency have had their terms expire and have not been replaced, leaving it governed by the secretary of the Department of the Environment, Guardian Australia has learned.
The same thing happened in 2014 while Tony Abbott was prime minister, and the move has now been criticised as an attempt by the Turnbull government to remove the independence of the agency.
According to legislation, the board must consist of the secretary of the Department of the Environment and up to six others appointed by the minister. The agency can operate with the secretary being the only board member, since it reaches quorum when a majority of the board members are present, which now occurs with one.
Parliament sits for the first time in 2016 on Tuesday, with bills abolishing both the renewable energy agency (Arena) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation still before parliament, despite having been rejected by the Senate. Signs indicate the Turnbull government intends to keep them.
Arena is tasked with investing in emerging renewable energy technologies, while the CEFC invests in commercially viable renewable energy technologies. Disruption in the government's handling of renewables has been blamed for a huge drop in clean energy investment in Australia.
If Arena is not abolished before July, it is set to receive almost $57m from the commonwealth and then almost $500m the following year.
The agency would not answer any questions about the matter and instead referred Guardian Australia to the Australian government boards website, which shows all positions are vacant.
The last three directors had their terms expire on 16 January.

Screengrabs from the Australian Government Boards website showing the term dates for the recent board members of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena). Photograph: Australian Government Boards

"Everyone has been assuming with the change of leader, and a Senate that wouldn't repeal it, that they were going to hang on to Arena," said Tom Swann from the Australia Institute. "So given that, it's pretty strange that they've let the board lapse and it raises questions about the future of Arena."
The Greens environment spokeswoman, Larissa Waters, told Guardian Australia the move was an attempt to remove the agency's independence. "The Senate won't let the Liberals destroy this innovative, job-creating organisation, and so the Liberals are arrogantly trying to cut off its independence and expertise," she said.
"Major proposals come to Arena's board for decision and having only a time-poor department secretary on the board is bad due diligence and a wasted opportunity for injecting high-level, diverse expertise," Waters said.
Swann said the agency's empty board and the bills abolishing it and the CEFC still being before parliament continue to discourage the renewable energy industry. "Given that we've had such a huge drop-off of renewable energy [investment] in Australia, the last thing we need is confusing signals," he said.
The chief executive of the Solar Council, John Grimes agreed the bills were bad for his industry and called on the government to remove them. "If Malcolm Turnbull doesn't act on this then people will start to think he's just another Tony Abbott," Grimes said.
Waters said the bills were unlikely to be debated by parliament, but were being kept to keep peace within the Liberal party. "It's duplicitous for the prime minister to talk up innovation, economic diversification and the achievements of Arena and CEFC, while keeping both of these cutting-edge agencies on the chopping block, presumably to placate climate-sceptic colleagues and donors," she said.
"Given the Senate's opposition to passing either abolition bill, listing them for debate sends an unnecessary and damaging investment message to the clean energy sector," Waters said.
Labor environment spokesperson, Mark Butler told Guardian Australia: "The fact that Arena and the CEFC are still on the chopping block shows that the Liberals' attacks on renewables hasn't stopped under Malcolm Turnbull. Greg Hunt has confirmed that these two agencies will remain in the Turnbull Liberal government's sites."
A spokesman for the environment minister, Greg Hunt, said the government's policy was still to abolish the two bodies, but said "there is little prospect of support in the Senate". He said the new Office of Climate Change and Renewables Innovation, which was being established inside the Department of the Environment, "will bring a fresh focus to the role of innovation in supporting emerging renewable and low emissions technologies that will drive down emissions".

Links
Australia's carbon emissions are increasing, government report shows
Malcolm Turnbull lifts Abbott ban on government finance for wind power

Who Politicized The Environment And Climate Change?

The Conversation - Brian C. Black

Protector in chief: Theodore Roosevelt with conservationist John Muir at Yosemite in 1906. U.S. Library of Congress

An environmental activist friend of mine recently shook her head and marveled at the extraordinary accomplishments of the last several months. "Still lots of work to be done," she said. "But wow! This has been an epic period for environmentalists!"
From the rejection of the Keystone pipeline to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (COP21), "epic" may be an apt descriptor for someone who is an environmentalist.
However, nothing galvanizes opposing forces to action better than significant wins by their foes. And 2016 appears to promise that environmental issues – particularly climate change – will be more politicized than ever before.
It wasn't always this way.
By and large, environmental action since the 1960s proceeded in the U.S. in a bipartisan fashion, emphasizing issues of human health and resource conservation. That's no longer true: almost by default, the Democratic Party stands largely alone, rather than together with the Republican Party, to uphold the ethic that environmental protection is a united, American common interest.
How have we gotten to a point where the environment has become such a partisan issue?

From Teddy R. to Reagan
The intellectual roots of American environmentalism are most often traced back to the 19th-century ideas of Romanticism and Transcendentalism from thinkers such as Henry David Thoreau. These philosophical and aesthetic ideas grew into initiatives for preserving the first national parks and monuments, an effort closely associated with Theodore Roosevelt. By the close of the 19th century, a combination of resource exploitation and increasing leisure led to a series of conservation efforts, such as protection of birds from feather hunters, which were often led by wealthy women.
Today's environmentalism clearly harks back to these origins with aspects of being a social movement that seeks clear political outcomes, including regulation and government action. But much of what became known as the "modern environmental movement" originally coalesced around groups that formed under the influence of 1960s radicalism.

The large oil spill in Santa Barbara, California in 1969 provided some of the impetus for landmark environmental laws signed by Nixon, including the Clean Air Act, which he signed December 31, 1970. National Archives

The biggest impact of these organizations, though, came during the later 1960s and 1970s, when their membership skyrocketed with large numbers of the concerned, but not-so-radical, middle class. Through the formation of "nongovernment organizations" (NGOs), ranging widely from the Audubon Society to the Sierra Club, Americans found a mechanism through which they could demand a political response to environmental problems from lawmakers.
During the 1970s and 1980s, NGOs often initiated the call for specific policies and then lobbied members of Congress to create legislation. Such bipartisan action included clean water laws that restored Lake Erie and Ohio's Cuyahoga River or responded to dramatic events such as the Santa Barbara Oil Spill in 1969.

The nuclear power accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 fueled an antinuclear protest, a major concern of many environmentalists. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

Republican and Democratic presidents of this era signed laws that had begun with grassroots demands for environmental action. Environmental issues, whether they were the effects of acid rain or the ozone hole, had become a prime concern in the political arena. Indeed, by the 1980s, NGOs had created a new political and legal battlefield as each side of environmental arguments sought to lobby lawmakers.
These gains by environmentalists had a ripple effect politically. In "A Climate of Crisis," historian Patrick Allitt describes the opposition to environmentalism that emerged as a result of the bipartisan action on environment in the 1970s.
In particular, he describes the "anti-environmental" response manifested in policies of President Ronald Reagan, who slowed efforts to limit private development on public lands and set out to shrink the responsibilities of the federal government.

Antiregulation
Today, portions of this backlash appear to inform the views of candidates in the 2016 Republican presidential primary who reiterate the libertarian belief that it's best to severely limit government regulation of the environment.
And compared to the cooperative vision of past leaders including President Teddy Roosevelt and Congressman John Saylor, who fought in the 1960s for wilderness and scenic river legislation, the Republican environmental mandate of the past appears today to be stymied.

Climate change and environmental issues have barely come up in presidential debates, with candidates typically complaining that environment regulations will harm the economy. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz, for example, tapped into this spirit when in December 2015 he held a three-hour "hearing" titled "Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Climate Change" (which technically was convened by the science panel of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that he chairs).
Prior to his hearing on the topic, climate change had been little discussed at the party's presidential debates; however, Cruz proclaimed that the "accepted science" proving climate change was actually a "religion" being forced on the American public by "monied interests."
By contrast, Democrats stress the term "common sense" and appear more than content to allow their party to become the primary bastion for environmental concern. Hillary Clinton, as the likely Democratic presidential candidate, has often been publicly ahead of the Obama administration on environmental issues.
For instance, when in early 2015 Obama approved the expansion of Arctic drilling, Clinton openly opposed it. Also, Clinton was openly against the Keystone pipeline project long before Obama definitively rejected it.
In both Keystone and Arctic drilling, Obama allowed the issues a long and very public vetting process that has revealed a powerful, broad-based environmental lobby. NGOs such as 350.org and others have demonstrated a willingness for activist demonstrations, particularly due to a deep base of support for issues such as climate change and sustainable energy.
Republican candidates seem prepared to relent possible compromise on environmental questions in order to appeal to a special interest faction of their party. Overall, though, Gallup polling demonstrates broad-based support for environmental issues, including a solid 46 percent favoring protecting the environment over economic development.

Climate change worsens the political divide
Going forward, the most revealing flashpoint on issues related to the environment is likely to be climate change, particularly after the historic Paris Agreement of December 2015.
Global warming first made front page news in the 1980s when NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the Senate. Then in 2007, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made history by specifying the connection between temperature rise and human activity with "very high confidence."

An emerging political force: activists for action on climate change and sustainable energy. Steve Rhodes/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

In its relation to environmentalism, climate change represents a clear expansion of thinking. While local issues such as oil spills and toxic waste remain concerns, climate change clarified the possible planet-changing extent of the human impact. As a concept, it has had time to percolate through human culture so that today we are most concerned with issues of "mitigation" and "adaptation" – managing or dealing with implications.
In each case, these responses to climate change involve plans for regulations to, for example, limit carbon emissions. In response to the increasing call for structural changes to our economy and society, contrary voices (such as that of Cruz) have found traction by saying mitigation efforts will undercut economic development and, in general, disrupt our everyday lives.
Not surprisingly, concrete mitigation efforts, such as discussions of "cap and trade" legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions and international pacts such as COP21, have also spurred panicked responses among those destined to be impacted by the new thinking. For instance, coal companies and a number of states openly fight efforts by the EPA to monitor and regulate CO2 as a pollutant.
So who politicized the environment? Ultimately, voters have.
By tying environmental issues such as climate change to our system of laws and regulations at the end of the 1960s, Americans permanently chained these concerns to political vagaries in the future. Politics is now an integral part of the process of regulating the nation's environment and health.
Therefore, a better question might be: "Who exploits the issue of environmental protection for political gain?" That answer, it appears, unfolds today for American voters.

Links

• Why China and the US have found common purpose on climate change
• Will the presidential candidates have a substantive debate on climate change?
• The moral – and political – force of Pope Francis on climate
• Is lagging on climate change a political liability?