Global warming confirmed beyond doubt: what does it mean for tourism

Calls for industry players to work together: The graph says it all after 20 years time is running out 

The Earth's surface really is getting warmer, a new analysis by a top US scientific group – including this years Nobel prizewinner – has concluded.

The Berkeley Earth Project has used new methods and some new data, but find exactly the same warming trend seen by groups such as the UK Met Office and NASA.

Ironically, the project also received funds from sources that back organisations lobbying against action on climate change.

The project was established by University of California physics professor Richard Muller, who was concerned by claims that established teams of climate researchers had not been entirely open with their data.

He gathered a team of 10 scientists, mostly physicists, including such luminaries as Saul Perlmutter, winner of this year's Nobel Physics Prize for research showing the Universe's expansion is accelerating.

Funding came from a number of sources, including charitable foundations maintained by the Koch brothers, the billionaire US industrialists, who have also donated large sums to organisations lobbying against acceptance of man-made global warming.

“Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously” Said Richard Muller Berkeley group founder

"I was deeply concerned that the group [at UEA] had concealed discordant data," Prof Muller continued. "Science is best done when the problems with the analysis are candidly shared."

The group's work also examined claims from "sceptical" bloggers that temperature data from weather stations did not show a true global warming trend. The claim was that many stations have registered warming because they are located in or near cities, and those cities have been growing – the urban heat island effect.

The Berkeley group found about 40,000 weather stations around the world whose output has been recorded and stored in digital form. It developed a new way of analysing the data to plot the global temperature trend over land since 1800.

The result was a graph that looks the same as all the rest  – thus confirming the findings yet again.
"Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK," said Prof Muller. "This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change sceptics did not seriously affect their conclusions."

Since the 1950s, the average temperature over land has increased by 1 degree C, the group found. They also report that although the urban heat island effect is real – which is well-established – it is not behind the warming registered by the majority of weather stations around the world.

They also showed that in the US, weather stations rated as "high quality" by Noaa showed the same warming trend as those rated as "low quality".

Prof Phil Jones, the CRU scientist who came in for the most personal criticism during "Climategate", was cautious about interpreting the Berkeley results because they have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. "I look forward to reading the finalised paper once it has been reviewed and published," he said. "These initial findings are very encouraging, and echo our own results and our conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal."

The Berkeley team has chosen to release the findings initially on its own website. See: http://berkeleyearth.org/

They are asking for comments and feedback before preparing the manuscripts for formal scientific publication. For Richard Muller, this free circulation also marks a return to how science should be done. "That is the way I practised science for decades; it was the way everyone practised it until some magazines – particularly Science and Nature – forbade it," he said.

"That was not a good change, and still many fields such as string theory practice the traditional method wholeheartedly."

This open "wiki" method of review is regularly employed in physics, the home field for seven of the 10 Berkeley team.

Said Bob Ward, policy and communications director for the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in London, "So-called 'sceptics' should now drop their thoroughly discredited claims that the increase in global average temperature could be attributed to the impact of growing cities,"

"It is now time for an apology from all those, including US presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who have made false claims that the evidence for global warming has been faked by climate scientists."

Commented Nikki White, Head of Destinations and Sustainability of ABTA and Travelife:
“This new research further highlights the need for the travel and tourism industry to address climate change as a real and serious threat.  It is a call to action for all industry players to work together to tackle the issue and take the necessary steps to safeguard the future of destinations.”

Said Professor Stefan Gossling, tourism and climate change specialist: "There is nothing essentially new to this – results mirror and re-validate the findings in the first, second, third and fourth assessment reports by the IPCC, though with higher reliability.”

“If anything, it means that after having waited for now quite exactly 20 years, it is now time that tourism stakeholders act on climate change – beyond the greenwash. This should nevertheless be easy, given the many benefits associated with reducing energy use.”

Valere Tjolle
Valere is editor of the Sustainable Tourism Report Suite 2011 Special Offers HERE