Transformational Climate Science

[Jim Hunt]

I've only just discovered that there's a major climate conference taking place just down the road from me 

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/climate2014/

International experts will discuss the future of climate change research following the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.

The Transformational Climate Science conference, hosted by the University of Exeter in partnership with the Met Office and University of Leeds, takes place on 15 and 16 May.

I'm off to see if I can get into the public session in a hour or so! In the meantime you can all watch the live UStream instead:

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/climate2014/live/

[TeaPotty]

Conference was live-tweeted about as #climate2014:
https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23climate2014&src=hash

[Jim Hunt]

An astonishing evening.

I discovered Catherine Mitchell was brought up in the house I now live in.

I had a chat with Gavin Schmidt and Reto Knutti about human psychology and my "healthy obsession" with Arctic sea ice.

I've obtained a press pass for tomorrow.

Some initial visual impressions:

[Jim Hunt]

Things finished earlier on the final day, so I'm back home already. Here's a few snaps from today's proceedings. They include a "cheeky" previously unpublished graphic from Prof. John Barrett of Leeds University:

[Neven]

Great stuff, Jim!

[Jim Hunt]

Thanks Neven. I can't wait to see the videos when they're done, to make sure I haven't been dreaming for the last two days.

According to my notes, not only does Dame Julia Slingo recommend "citizen science" in the highest possible terms, she also suggests that the creative arts, music and even poetry will be essential methods of communication in the battles that lie ahead. On hearing this news I nipped up the front and handed her my business card hastily embellished with the URL of my "healthy obsession" and drew her attention to my "Arctic Sea Ice Forum" press pass.

Yesterday Catherine Mitchell said that she had "very little faith in any governments" and "we really need a completely new way of thinking about this" (i.e. UK energy policy)

[icefest]

I hope you don't mind Jim, but I couldn't read the text on the graphic so I opened it up in some imaging software and improved the contrast.

I've reuploaded it here but if you'd prefer me to delete it just tell me.

[Jim Hunt]

I hope you don't mind Jim, but I couldn't read the text on the graphic so I opened it up in some imaging software and improved the contrast.

No problem icefest. With the benefit of hindsight I rather wish I'd taken a decent camera with me. I'll endeavour to get a better copy of John's graphic graphic, but in the meantime hopefully the message is now clear enough to be received and understood?

The rightmost column is the richest 5%.

[icefest]

It seems that means that mitigation costs the richest 5% the most. At least that seems a bit fair.

[Jim Hunt]

It seems that means that mitigation costs the richest 5% the most. At least that seems a bit fair.

And which may anecdotally help explain why not enough mitigation has occurred before now?

[Jim Hunt]

The slides from the Transformational Climate Science conference are now available:

View the slides from Thursday's presentations.
View the slides from the Public Forum on Thursday evening.
View the slides from Friday's presentations.

There's still no sign of John Barrett's "graphic graphic" though 

[Shared Humanity]

Jim....thank you for these pdf's.

[Jim Hunt]

I hope you don't mind Jim, but I couldn't read the text on the graphic so I opened it up in some imaging software and improved the contrast.

No problem icefest. With the benefit of hindsight I rather wish I'd taken a decent camera with me. I'll endeavour to get a better copy of John's graphic graphic, but in the meantime hopefully the message is now clear enough to be received and understood?

The rightmost column is the richest 5%.

P.S. I've now updated the image in question with a slightly clearer version

[Jim Hunt]

Here's a report in our local newspaper about the conference:

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Time-game-climate-change-leading-scientist-warns/story-21105978-detail/story.html

The comments section is already degenerating into the traditional "mud wrestling with pigs"

[icefest]

The comments section is already degenerating into the traditional "mud wrestling with pigs"

It doesn't seem too bad, only two crazies.

Here in Australia we have plenty of mud too: http://theconversation.com/we-all-need-to-pay-for-climate-change-mitigation-24776

[Jim Hunt]

I sent Dame Julia a musical message of support on Twitter earlier:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/statuses/467977818258030592

Any chance of some retweets?

[Jim Hunt]

Here's my first full length article on the Transformational Climate Science conference:

http://econnexus.org/transformational-climate-science-at-exeter-university/

[Jim Hunt]

The University of Exeter has been kind enough to mention my blog post in dispatches on Twitter. Mat Collins amongst others has already "Retweeted" it.

https://twitter.com/UofE_Research/statuses/468351810248638464

Any other offers?

[Jim Hunt]

Lots of pictures from the Transformational Climate Science conference are now available at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/26126239@N02/sets/72157644346631800/#

The last one on page 2 includes co-chairs of all three IPCC working groups. Chris Field (WG II), Ottmar Edenhofer (WG III) and Thomas Stocker (WG I)

[Jim Hunt]

The Exeter videos aren't available as yet. However here's a video recording of a similar event held in London on Monday, with an audience of businesspeople instead of climate scientists:

http://www.climasphere.org/#!article/Climate-change-the-latest-evidence-and-implication

Fast forward to 20 minutes to watch Chris Field's WG II summary if you're short on time, and see also Prof. Dame Julia Slingo's summing up at 4:17:00. Alternatively watch the whole four and a bit hours!

P.S. The most enlightening slides from the Exeter conference's Public Forum are now available from:
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/research/newsandevents/ipccimages/presentations/Public_presentation.pdf

[Jim Hunt]

A new blog post today about the Transformational Climate Science conference:

http://angusferraro.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/transformational-climate-science-meeting-report/

Since Angus is a practising climate scientist at Exeter University you might find that some of his earlier posts are also of interest.

[Jim Hunt]

Another new blog post about the Transformational Climate Science conference, this time from a PhD student at Exeter.

http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/exeterblog/blog/2014/05/23/climate2014/

This one strikes me as being rather "unemotional". No mention of any of the novel stuff that got me so excited! Angus (see above) has also posted his second article out of three.

[Jim Hunt]

My own latest blog post about the Met Office's new mission to engage in dialogue with people who elect governments, since our currently elected governments don't seem to be doing a whole lot, and certainly nowhere near enough:

http://econnexus.org/climate-change-the-latest-evidence-and-implications/

To quote Dame Julia Slingo in the accompanying video:

At last we're into the phase of what I call "actionable science". This means we are in a place where science is mature enough, it's still not there in many respects but we as a global society must start to take action on the basis of that science. Of course it is uncertain, but that doesn't mean that we can't make risk based assessments and start talking about risk based actions, and accepting we don't all need to have the final decimal point, we just need to know what the scale of the challenge often is.

[Apocalypse4Real]

Jim,

Thanks for your time and effort to attend the Exeter Conference and share its resources. They will be handy for a paper I am writing.

A4R.

[Jim Hunt]

My pleasure A4R. I'm not sure what audience you're addressing, but an additional resource that might be useful is the Met Office's "summary for policymakers" from the AVOID programme. Read all about it (and download it) here:

http://econnexus.org/can-global-warming-be-limited-to-two-degrees/

The answer to that question was:

No – There's not a snowball's chance in hell!

The powerpoint slides mentioned in the comments may come in handy also?

[Jim Hunt]

My latest blog post, about massive media misrepresentation of a tiny Green shoot of hope over here in Soggy SW England:

http://econnexus.org/south-west-england-elects-a-green-mep/

According to Natalie Bennett (Leader of the Green Party in the UK):

Everyone else seems to be trying to "out UKIP" UKIP. Instead we should "stand up to UKIP".

[Jim Hunt]

A radio interview with Professors Mat Collins, Peter Cox and John Barrett about the Transformational Climate Science conference, starting at about 10:30

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01zc5fm

The Arctic is mentioned at around 15:00, and sea ice just before 17:00.  There is an interval before John Barrett gets an opportunity to speak, during which you can listen to Paul Simon. At around 34:00 John says that:

We need both global leadership and national leadership. We need politicians to actually stand up, to understand the science and portray the message to individuals that "I'm really sorry, but this is extremely serious and we're going to have to make some extremely tough decisions about this".

We need someone to stand up and not carry on questioning the science, not questioning the economics which is getting quite firm on how much this costs and what we need to do, and to start taking real action. Without that we can't expect individuals to be trying to push for a low carbon lifestyle without the leadership from above.

The following item on the programme is about the "collapse" of the WAIS, in case that is also of interest. The recording is available from BBC Radio York for the next 5 days or so.

[Jim Hunt]

The videos from the Transformational Climate Science conference are now available at:

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/climate2014/presentationsandrecordings/

Here's Prof. Catherine Mitchell's talk about UK energy policy in the public forum, that I referred to in my own blog post:
 

We really, really need to up our game in terms of increasing the efficiency of energy that we use, so we use a lot less of it and what we do use is efficient, and we really have to start making sure that we get more low carbon energy supply. It would be great if the Government was going to do that, but I have very little faith really in any of our governments at the moment to do that, and I think therefore it really is about businesses and NGOs and consultancies and, you know, society to really start to do these things.

I also think it's about having a huge amount of public engagement, and today is a really good thing. I think very few people understand what it is to live in a 3 degree, 4 degree, 5 degree world and that needs to change. Overall the thing that I want to try and get across is that I feel, as somebody who has been working in energy policy now for about 30 years and tried my best to move things along as quickly as possible, that we really need a completely new way of thinking about this problem to make sure that we do stay within that 2 degrees, lowest target.

The whole public forum session, complete with the associated slides, can also be seen at:

http://echo360.exeter.ac.uk:8080/ess/echo/presentation/81cb9808-59e4-46e0-a782-a8bb31acaa5d

You can see the back of my head from time to time, sat in front of Catherine Mitchell and next to Neil Adger. You'll also note me waving my arm in the air with monotonous regularity during the Q&A session at the end, all to no avail!

[Jim Hunt]

Returning from the wild and woolly world of working group three to the hard science of WG I, here's Prof. Peter Cox being "deliberately provocative" in the "public forum" session:



If you'd prefer to see the associated slides try starting the video of the complete session at around 21:35:

http://echo360.exeter.ac.uk:8080/ess/echo/presentation/81cb9808-59e4-46e0-a782-a8bb31acaa5d

Is it still possible to avoid 2 degrees using conventional mitigation? Two degrees is the target that has been set as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as a "dangerous level"... In fact it's likely to be blown out of the water!

For more on the UK Met Office's current thinking about the 2°C target see also:

"AVOIDing dangerous climate change. Can Global Warming be Limited to Two Degrees?"

[Jim Hunt]

Prof. Catherine Mitchell has also now published an article of her own on this topic:

http://econnexus.org/transformational-climate-science-at-exeter-university/#comment-219491

Her conclusion is that:

We as individuals and communities in civil society have to do all we can to get our politicians, neighbours, businesses, energy suppliers and so on to take climate change seriously. Climate and energy policy must take note of the IPCC warning and act now.

[Neven]

I did that yesterday after dinner with my wife's parents, talking about climate change. My mother-in-law stood up and said: You're depressing me, I'm out of here. She stood up and walked to the kitchen. In the end, I was the one depressed. 

[Jim Hunt]

Whereas I bumped into (metaphorically, not literally!) two total strangers from Texas on my bike ride this evening. I explained to them about about the climate conference held 5 miles away a fortnight ago. They seemed extremely pleased to hear my news, and encouraged me to keep on spreading the word!

[Jim Hunt]

Another new blog post about the Transformational Climate Science conference has just been published. This one's from Andy Extance, who I happened across as he was about to start "live tweeting" from the auditorium:

"IPCC: Millions of words on climate change are not enough"

[andyextance]

Thanks for sharing Jim!

[Jim Hunt]

My latest article which incorporates the Peter Cox video above, hot off the virtual presses this very morning. The view of some recent events in Washington DC from Soggy SW England!

http://econnexus.org/the-scientific-consensus-on-climate-change/

[Jim Hunt]

I've obtained permission from the BBC to publish the interview with IPCC climate scientists mentioned above. Here's the resulting article:

The Two Degree Target Is Close To Impossible

The title conveys the overall message. Be sure to click through to SoundCloud!

Prof. Mat Collins liked my initial publicity enough to "retweet" it:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/statuses/474942077546291200

Any other offers?

[Jim Hunt]

The Arctic Sea Ice Forum is glimpsed in passing over at Skeptical Science, along with my ugly mug:

http://skepticalscience.com/transformational-climate-science-exeter-university.html