Andy Revkin’s Recent Comments

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  IPCC dropped the graph at the heart of this paper

  One important aspect of the PNAS paper, explored on Dot Earth on Monday, was that the "burning embers" graph was DROPPED from the IPCC report in 2007 as too vague (some scientists) and too alarming (some fossil-fueled countries).
  http://tinyurl.com/dotIPCCembersOn Climate change risk underestimated: study posted 8 months, 4 weeks ago 3 Responses

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  Too eager for simplicity?

  Joe,
  Your eagerness for clarity in a complex world is a little unnerving to me. If it were coming from the "other side," it might be unnerving to many of your readers. A few things.

  1. Yes, that initial web headline was bad. I didn't write it. A harried copy editor did. I wrote the one you like. Welcome to journalism.

  2. The hedges are right; the Arctic short-term variations remain complex while the long-term prognosis is clear. That huge flush of thick ice years ago did pre-condition the system to enter its current melt-freeze-melt state. But the flush was largely a result of the Arctic Oscillation, a cyclical shift in atmospheric pressure and circulation, and the connection of that phenomenon to human-drive greenhouse warming is still not understood (glad to hear from RealClimate or any other climate experts on this, here or on my Dot Earth blog). This is the way the Arctic changes have unfolded according to many Arctic sea-ice experts (as distinct from the folks you call climate scientists, many of whom don't know much about sea ice). The team from U. of Washington that you cite is the same group I traveled with to the North Pole sea ice in 2003. Here's more on that North Pole ice project.

  - Andy Revkin nytimes.com/revkin

  On NYT editors confused about Arctic warming posted 1 year, 2 months ago 2 Responses

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  When Hedges Are Right (whether or not convenient)

  I posted a couple of rebuttals when this critique by Joe went up on Climateprogress.org. Better late than never, I'll post them here now, at least for the record:

  Andy Revkin Says:
  August 17th, 2008 at 12:42 am

  Joe,

  I think you've completely missed the boat this time in your chiding about inappropriate media multiple hedges (including mine). These are scientists' hedges, not mine. They are based on the extraordinary complexity of the Arctic Ocean system. Arctic sea ice is varying there because of dynamics AND thermodynamics on many time scales and driven by all manner of influences -- with much of the recent drop due to a big flush of thick old ice many years ago. For that October story [link above], I interviewed two dozen Arctic hands, almost all of whom said there had to be a human element.

  But hardly any would say there's sufficient evidence to characterize it as the dominant force up there. Marika Holland at NCAR warned that the same variability that caused the remarkable dip in 2007 (and less remarkable one this year) could just as easily throw a wrinkle in the other direction.

  In nearly 25 years of writing on humans and climate, I've learned to try to distinguish between the facets that are clear and those that remain uncertain. I think that is serving a greater public service than saying we know everything now only to have, say, the Arctic flicker back into cool, icy mode for awhile.

  So while there are few caveats any more about the basics (as in the IPCC saying that more than half of the global warming since 1950 is "very likely" human caused), when it comes to regions (Arctic particularly), the complexities and uncertainty rise. But don't take my word for it. Come with me to the sea ice some time, or simply to the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, or an Arcus meeting, and let me introduce you to 20 or 30 scientists working incredibly hard to clarify that Arctic Ocean pixel point in the climate picture.

  Click here for more about what's up with North Pole sea ice.
  

  [JR: Andy, I think this is one of those cases where you have let your own abundant knowledge of the Arctic blind you to the obvious. I am very well aware and have previously blogged that there are multiple factors that determine the degree of ice lost any given year -- but the literature is clear that even in 2007, global warming played "a large part" (see "What drove the dramatic retreat of arctic sea ice during summer 2007?").

  But your paragraph was not about the specific details explaining the full extent of the 2007 ice melt. It was about "the increasing summer retreats of sea ice." Again, to say that MANY POLAR scientists say that is PROBABLY being driven IN PART by global warming caused by humans is to eviscerate everything we know about climate science. I assert in the strongest possible terms that at the very least "many" should have been replaced by "most" and "in part" by "in large part" -- the latter of which is not mean "the dominant cause." Although again I challenge you to name even five polar scientists who do not think human-caused global warming is the dominant cause of "the increasing summer retreats of sea ice."

  Andy -- Four hedges is at least two too many.]
  

  
  
  Andy Revkin Says:
  August 17th, 2008 at 9:19 am

  I stand by what I said in the story and response above. You have a PhD and understand evidence and statistics and complexity. I'll send out a query, rather than speaking for the sea-ice community, and post anew at Dot Earth.

  But as a starting point, I'll propose now -- and I'll change this if they disagree -- the names of some leading scientists in this field who I'm quite sure would NOT say there is sufficient evidence to conclude that human-caused global warming IS the main cause of increasing summer retreats of sea ice (although they would say there is strong likelihood that it will eventually dominate):

  James Morison, U. of Washington
  Igor Polyakov, U of Alaska, Fairbanks
  Claire Parkinson, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
  Son Nghiem, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
  Marika Holland, National Center for Atmospheric Research
  John Walsh, U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (and UAF)

  I stand by the summation of ice experts' views in my 2007 story:

  "More than a dozen experts said in interviews that the extreme summer ice retreat had revealed at least as much about what remains unknown in the Arctic as what is clear. Still, many of those scientists said they were becoming convinced that the system is heading toward a new, more watery state, and that human-caused global warming is playing a significant role."
  

  - Andy Revkin nytimes.com/revkin

  On Note to media: Enough with the multiple hedges on climate science! posted 1 year, 3 months ago 1 Response

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  Speaking of unfair...

  It's kind of tiresome to see a recycled post from another blog pop up a day later here without the response I sent in to the original. In meantime, and more important, why is there no word here yet about Jim Hansen's new thoughts on climate policy?

  - Andy Revkin nytimes.com/revkin

  On Is NYT's Revkin pushing unjustified 'balance' in the Senate climate debate coverage? posted 1 year, 5 months ago 7 Responses

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  Fair and Accurate is My Goal - Not Balanced

  Several things:

  1. Joe, you did assert there's a significant gap in saying the paper doesn't say how long the concentration of CO2 could overshoot Jim's chosen goal of 350 ppm before tracking back to that level. That is a hugely important question in terms of how hard society has to work, and how quickly. Am I missing something?

  2. Jim and I go back a long way (1988), and I think -- even though he's focused on this "balance as bias" idea now -- he'd see most of my 20 years of coverage as fair and ACCURATE. I've written repeatedly about the "tyranny of balance" in traditional news coverage and how it impedes effective coverage of complex science. (A book chapter including a discussion of balance was posted when I did an On the Media interview on this issue.)

  That doesn't mean stories can't frame the range of discourse on a contentious scientific issue (see my piece tonight on ecological disruption and climate). What stories do need to do is to characterize the voices and not just include them.

  3) A Dot Earth post on a DRAFT paper posted by Jim expressly to gain review and comment is NOT the same as a news story written once that paper has been formally peer-reviewed and published in a journal. When Jim's paper has passed those hurdles, I'll write a fair and accurate story about it.

  Andy

  - Andy Revkin nytimes.com/revkin

  On NASA's Hansen responds to NYT's Revkin posted 1 year, 8 months ago 8 Responses