A survey conducted on behalf of SPIEGEL found a dramatic shift in public opinion -- Germans are losing their fear of climate change. While in 2006 a sizeable majority of 62 per cent expressed a fear of global warning, that number has now become a minority of just 39 per cent
Climatologists face inconvenient truths
Axel Bojanowski, Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter
For a quarter of a century now, environmental activists have been issuing predictions in the vein of the Catholic Church, warning people of the coming greenhouse effect armageddon. Environmentalists bleakly predict global warming will usher in plagues of biblical dimensions -- perpetual droughts, deluge-like floods and hurricanes of unprecedented force.
The number of people who believe in such a coming apocalypse, however, has considerably decreased. A survey conducted on behalf of SPIEGEL found a dramatic shift in public opinion -- Germans are losing their fear of climate change. While in 2006 a sizeable majority of 62 percent expressed a fear of global warning, that number has now become a minority of just 39 percent.
One cause of this shift, presumably, is the fact that global warming seems to be taking a break. The average global temperature hasnt risen in 15 years, a deviation from climatologists computer-simulated predictions.
This is a difficult state of affairs for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which will release its next assessment report on global warming on Friday, Sept. 27.
This much, though, is certain -- the new predictions will be essentially the same as the old ones, albeit a little more precise. The only adjustment the IPCC is expected to make is an increase in the predicted rise of sea levels. The new report is expected to forecast that coastal waters may rise by between 29 and 82 centimeters
(11 and 32 inches) by the end of the century.
The crucial question, however, is: How will the IPCC address the pause in global warming? And how reliable are the computer models on which the predictions are based, if they failed to foresee the current temperature plateau?
Despite resistance from many researchers, the German ministries insist that it is important not to detract from the effectiveness of climate change warnings by discussing the past 15 years lack of global warming. Doing so, they say, would result in a loss of the support necessary for pursuing rigorous climate policies. Climate policy needs the element of fear, Ott openly admits. Otherwise, no politician would take on this topic.
Germanys Federal Ministry of Research would prefer to leave any discussion of the global warming hiatus entirely out of the new IPCC report summary. In climate research, changes dont count until theyve been observed on a timescale of 30 years, claims one delegate who participated in the negotiations on behalf of German Research Minister. The Ministry for the Environments identical stance: Climate fluctuations that dont last very long are not scientifically relevant.
At most, German delegates at the conference would be willing to include an admission that the pace of temperature change has slowed -- a reinterpretation that doesnt correspond to the latest research findings.
Germanys highest-ranking climate researcher, physicist Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, in Hamburg, is fighting back against this refusal to face facts. Marotzke, who is also president of the German Climate Consortium and Germanys top scientific representative in Stockholm, promises, We will address this subject head-on. The IPCC, he says, must engage in discussion about the standstill in temperature rise.
Marotzke calls the claim that a temperature plateau isnt significant until it has lasted for over 30 years unscientific. Thirty years is an arbitrarily selected number, he says. Some climate phenomena occur on a shorter timescale, some on a longer one. Climate researchers, Marotzke adds, have an obligation not to environmental policy but to the truth. That obligates us to clearly state the uncertainties in our predictions as well, he says.
The researchers problem: Their climate models should have been able to predict the sudden flattening in the temperature curve. Offering explanations after the fact for why temperatures havent increased in so long only serves to raise doubts as to how reliable the forecasts really are.
Despite this, most Germans have not yet lost their faith in climate research. According to the SPIEGEL survey, 67 percent of Germans still consider the predictions reliable.
In any case, scientists have discovered some possible indications as to why temperatures are not currently rising. One explanation involves the Pacific Ocean, which, calculations indicate, has absorbed an unusually large amount of heat from the Earths atmosphere in recent years. If this proves to be true, then the warnings are still in effect, Marotzke says. He explains that it would mean the greenhouse effect is adding more and more energy into the climate system, exactly as the simulations predict, just with a larger portion of that energy than expected disappearing temporarily into the ocean.
Another possible explanation is that the large quantity of soot emitted into the atmosphere by cars and factory smokestacks in Asia has had a cooling effect on the atmosphere. What will happen when China installs modern filtering systems on a massive scale in its vehicles and at its coal power plants? In this case, global warming would also then continue unchecked.
In other words, says glaciologist Heinz Miller at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, The stagnation in temperature does not negate the physical evidence of global warming. Still, he says, the IPCC needs to make clear to the public and politicians alike that scientific study is not a guarantee for infallibility. Miller also believes, There is still a considerable need for more research.
Environmental policymakers within the IPCC fear, though, that climate skeptics and industry lobbyists could exploit these scientific uncertainties for their own purposes.
The IPCCs response has been to circle the wagons. To ensure it remains the sole authority on climate predictions, the panel plans not to publish the complete report for some time after the release of the summary and not even release transcripts from the negotiations in Stockholm.
This despite the IPCCs promise for more transparency after hair-raising mistakes in the last assessment report -- from 2007 -- emerged three years ago and tarnished the panels credibility. One result of that scandal was a commitment to avoiding future conflicts of interest.
Yet scientists who previously worked for environmental organizations still hold leading roles in the creation of the IPCC report. This includes at least two coordinating lead authors who are responsible for individual chapters of the report.
Spiegel Online International
