Climate: Nigel Lawson vs The Facts

Climate scientists scoffed in amazement when Nigel Lawson, who began his career as a financial journalist before becoming Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and has since become Britain’s most prominent climate change denier, declared on BBC radio recently that global warming was “a non-problem.”

Lawson, who leads a denialist lobby group called the Global Warming Policy Foundation, told Radio Four on August 10 that “according to the official figures during this past 10 years, if anything, mean global temperature, average world temperature, has slightly declined.”

Genuine experts in the field marvelled at Lawson’s audacity and quickly pointed out that the global surface temperature over the last decade had clearly risen, with every indication that the three hottest years on record were 2014, 2015 and 2016.

In case anyone had any doubts about whether to believe Lawson or the experts, the most authoritative US government agency on the topic has now issued its own verdict, saying that statistics gathered from around the world have confirmed that 2016 was the hottest on record.

In what is seen as the most comprehensive US assessment of the effects of climate change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a report entitled “The State of the Climate in 2016” based on contributions from nearly 500 scientists from more than 60 countries.

It is emphatic and says that 2016 was the third year in a row that global average temperatures reached new record highs for the 137 years since record-keeping began.

The peer-reviewed report, which ran to 298-pages, says the global averages for sea surface temperature, sea-level and the temperature of the lower atmosphere all reached new highs, while Antarctic sea-ice coverage hit record lows. Surface temperatures also reached record warmth, the report added, aided by a strong El Nino early in the year.

In recent days a Russian tanker completed a crossing of the northern sea route in record time and without an icebreaker escort for the first time, highlighting how global warming is opening up the high Arctic.

“This is basically like an annual physical of the climate system,” said report co-editor Deke Arndt, NOAA’s climate monitoring chief.

He said it “compiles the facts… the observations from around the climate system and puts it is an annual manuscript.”

While President Donald Trump has gone out of his way to discourage US agencies from making public statements reinforcing the scientific consensus that human activity is fuelling climate change the NOAA is required by law to issue its National Climate Assessment each year.

Arndt said the NOAA doesn’t specify what global warming is caused by climate change and what is from weather events.

“The long-term climate change is like riding up an escalator over time and things like El Nino is like jumping up and down on that escalator,” he said.

There is no doubt at all about the overall direction of travel on global warming, he said, noting that “several markers  such as land and ocean temperatures, sea-levels and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, broke records set just one year prior.”

Among the report’s findings:

Sea-levels are the highest they’ve been since record-keeping began. Globally seas are about 3.25 inches higher than the 1993 average when satellite recording began. It is also the sixth consecutive year sea-levels have risen.

Precipitation cycles are becoming more extreme.

The Arctic is warming faster that the rest of the world.

Antarctic sea-levels are lower than ever recorded.

Alpine glaciers have declined for 37 consecutive years and have shrunk an average of 2.8 feet.

There were more tropical cyclones, with 93 storms in 2016, compared with an average of 82 between 1981 and 2010.

 

by Bob Graham

 

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