Anyway, Skeptical science has launched a new Climate Science iPhone app  which may be useful next time you are sitting down to someone like Sheehan or other commentators who somehow believe thousands of climate scientists are conspiring against the world. 

Penny Sackett, the chief scientist was interviewed and was spot on when she talked about the politicisation of science and the dangers of this in our society - listen in to what she has to say.

An example of this politicisation of science can be viewed at Andrew Bolts comments on my interview - this guy just cant accept any evidence beyond himself.  Take a look at how Bolt tries to say I’m somehow a spokesperson for the ‘left’ in my quote about Monckton.Here is my quote from the interview:

Lord Monckton is a former political adviser for a UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. I think it’s very dangerous for us to take scientific advice from someone like that.

Then Bolt says this in his blog:

But check instead the truly pathetic kind of arguments - mere political sloganeering from the Left - advanced by McNeil, who calls himself a scientist

Andrew, I know you cant help yourself in politicising science when it doesn’t suit your world view, but the point I was trying to make was that taking ANY advice from ANY political advisor (left or right) on scientific development is immensely dangerous, just as it is for Bin Laden to take advice on the evils of western liberal democracies from his own ideological cave.  Are you going to accept Lord Monckton to do brain surgery aswell? He must be an expert in that too right?  It may be an ideological decision and make you feel good before the surgery  but just slightly on the stupid side.  Thats why the politicsation of science from the likes of Bolt, Lord M et al is so dangerous in growing the worlds future all-round prosperity.

The Prosperous Greenhouse: Part 2

Now being in Copenhagen and having great expectations, I regret coming at all.  The Copenhagen Diagnosis team had a press conference at 11:30am on Tuesday. We thought we’d head out to the conference centre to register.  Heading out there with Matt England, we got to the centre at ~1pm on the Monday.  There was about 100 people in a que out the front which seemed fine - well, that’s what I thought. Although this was supposed to be a que, it actually was a place to stand and go nowhere for hours in freezing conditions with no communication or ability to know if you would ever see people get let in, let alone yourself get in.  This que after a couple of hours turned into a mosh-pit with some people being there for 7 HOURS - then it turned ugly with the police a very restless and cold crowd of delegates shouting, chanting and pushing. At one point the crowd parted like the  Red Sea - and Al Gore slide past on his way out. It was a freezing disaster and I was not prepared for it - after 2 hours in the mosh-pit I went home and hoped tomorrow morning would be better. How wrong was I.

My friend, Michael Molitor and I got out to the conference centre at 7:30am on the Tuesday and the line was already about 200m.  By the time they opened the doors, the line was apparently 3km! We had no chance to get in for our press conference at 11:30am- but we tried desperately, calling everyone from the head press officer of the conference to a friend in the UNFCCC executive. The thing is, the mosh-pit was filled with state government/city officials, ngo’s, press and all types of high-flyers. Saw NYTimes columnist Thomas Friedman in the line and let him know his next column: If the UNFCCC cant organise a conference, then how on earth can we expect them to help negotiate a global new deal on climate change!

Some of our scientists got through (another Stefan Rahmstorf waited 8 hours in the line!) and we were able to have the Copenhagen Diagnosis press conference - which I watched online from my hotel bed! With much hope I am heading home from Copenhagen deflated and frustrated, not at just our experience, but also the horrible impasse between haggling nations trying to do their best to not cut carbon emissions unless others do it!

Some people still question whether Earth’s climate is changing as rapidly and profoundly as the majority of climate scientists suggest. But, what if the complexity of the Earth’s climate were distilled down to one number, in the same way that the Dow Jones Index condenses volumes of data into a single figure? What, then, would be the general trend?

The IGBP Climate-Change Index is a first attempt to do just that. It brings together key indicators of global change: carbon dioxide, temperature, sea level and sea ice.  The index gives an annual snapshot of how the planet’s complex systems – the ice, the oceans, the land surface and the atmosphere - are responding to the changing climate. The index rises steadily from 1980 – the earliest date the index has been calculated. The change is unequivocal, it is global, and, significantly, it is in one direction. The reason for concern becomes clear: in just 30 years we are witnessing major planetary-scale changes.

The index dips in just three years, 1982, 1992 and 1996 and looks effective at capturing major natural events that affect climate, and their knock-on effect on the planet. The dip in the curve in 1992 may have been caused by the massive Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1991. The eruption was large enough to affect temperature and sea level on a planetary scale. The other falls coincide with the El Chichon volcanic eruption in Mexico in 1982 and the volcanic eruption on the Caribbean island of Montserrat in 1996. If this link proves robust, the index is an excellent visual tool to show how external events can have rapid planetary-scale effects. Of course, the overall direction of change – a climbing cumulative index – highlights the extent human activities are having on the planet’s climate system.

This is taken from our report about the ‘global cooling’ claims - I have edited the full version for brevity you can see full response in report.

Has global warming recently slowed down or paused?
No. There is no indication in the data of a slowdown or pause in the human-caused climatic warming trend. Since 1985 the world has warmed on average about 0.5°C (see Figure above). This is entirely consistent with the climatic warming trend of ~0.2 °C per decade predicted by IPCC, plus superimposed short-term variability (see Figure above). The latter has always been – and will always be – present in the climate system. Most of these short-term variations are due to internal oscillations like El Niño – Southern Oscillation, solar variability (predominantly the 11-year Schwabe cycle) and volcanic eruptions (which, like Pinatubo in 1991, can cause a cooling lasting a few years).

Global cooling has not occurred even over the past ten years, contrary to claims promoted by lobby groups and picked up in some media. In the NASA global temperature data, the past ten 10-year trends (i.e. 1990-1999, 1991-2000 and so on) have all been between 0.17 and 0.34 °C warming per decade, close to or above the expected anthropogenic trend, with the most recent one (1999-2008) equal to 0.19 °C per decade.

It is perhaps noteworthy that despite the extremely low brightness of the sun over the past three years (see Figure 5 in report); temperature records have been broken during this time. For example, March 2008 saw the warmest global land temperature of any March ever measured in the instrumental record. June and August 2009 saw the warmest land and ocean temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere ever recorded for those months. The global ocean surface temperatures in 2009 broke all previous records for three consecutive months: June, July and August. Every single year of this century (2001-2008) has been among the top ten warmest years since instrumental records began.

Download the summary of the report in 11 different languages here and download the full report and figures here.

The goal of ‘The Copenhagen Diagnosis’ was to provide a robust and objective update of the latest climate science for policy-makers worldwide, particularly emphasising on the major developments from the observations over the past three years since the scientific input into the IPCC 2007 report. This synthesis is unfiltered from government, industry or NGO’s and is directly from climate scientists in the field.

The report is not opinion, but based on published peer-reviewed scientific research and different to the IPCC 2007 report in style, with a focus on writing it in plain a language as possible.  Also, there are several ‘misconception’ boxes which have simple explanations of questions like ‘Has global warming slowed down or paused?’ and ‘Isn’t climate always changing?’

Main conclusion: We find some calming news on some fronts (tipping points and lower land clearing) but mostly unexpectedly bad news, particularly with respect to ice melt around the world from the warming (Antarctic, Greenland, Arctic and Glaciers). More about these details later.

I will be blogging about various aspects of the outcomes and process over the coming weeks, but in science there is the diagnosis and the cure. The main outcome from the climate diagnosis is that the world needs to heavily move towards resourcing the cure - enabling and committing to the rapid upscale in low carbon technologies and a new Clean Industrial Revolution.  I urge you all to at least read our summary of the main points.

Another point: None of the authors were paid or profited to undertake this work - it was a public service they felt necessary.