Gerald North Andrew Dessler
Guest essay by Robert Bradley Jr.
“I did worry that my comment on my not being willing to sign on to Kyoto right now got into the [Houston] Chronicle and in our local paper. I do not like being too public on policy matters. It ain’t my thing.”
– Gerald North (email communication, October 2, 1998)
“In his article Sunday, Rob Bradley reminds us of the errors made about dire climate predictions proffered by some climate science outliers…. Virtually all of these dire predictions were never made or endorsed by the mainstream climate community of researchers in the field.”
– Gerald North, “Fringe Predictions,” Letter to the Editor, Houston Chronicle, April 1, 2008.
“So what is the argument about? The answer is policy…. [W]e both support balanced action to address the clear and present danger of climate change.”
– Andrew Dessler and Gerald North, “Climate Change is Real and Denial is Not About the Science,” San Antonio Express News, October 6, 2013.
If Texas A&M scientists calculated that an asteroid was heading our way, we would likely head for the hills with a lot of pills. But when Texas A&M climatologists warn of dangerous man-induced global warming and call for government action (think new taxes and regulation), many of us roll our eyes and watch our wallets.
We live in a postmodern world where emotion and desire substitute for reason and scholarship. With climate alarmism in deep trouble on a variety of data fronts, from temperature increase to sea-level rise to hurricane frequency and intensity, elder Texas A&M climate scientist Gerald North joined climate scientist/campaigner Andrew Dessler to write (sign on to?) a disingenuous opinion-page editorial for the San Antonio Express, “Climate change is real and denial is not about the science.”
The Dessler/North wolf cries of recent years have been made in the face of growing contradictory evidence. While alarmism may have once gotten attention, the two are are now like the Enron carnival barkers of 2000/2001, proclaiming surety and shouting ‘you just don’t get it’ at the skeptics. Andy Dessler and Jerry North are, indeed, the smartest guys in the climate room.
Emotional Scientists, Bad Science
The tight-knit climate scientist-activist community was exposed by the Climategate emails to be to be working from a Malthusian, alarmist script. Instead of going from science to real-world implications, the cabal was caught going from an agenda to ‘science.’ Remember “hide the decline”? Remember the chatter about keeping their critics out of the peer-reviewed journals? Even physically attacking a critic at a forthcoming climate conference?
Climategate’s mendacity and trash talk have made many thousands of non-climate scientists skeptical and disappointed in academic and government climatologists who are, indeed, giving physical science a bad name. Critics might say that a few dozen scientist/activists are turning a hard science into a soft one.
Take Gerald North, who I hired as Enron’s climate consultant in 1997. I pressed him on the what and why of climate alarmism. He explained that the climate community was a very close group with personal relationships valued greatly. Some top scientists were husband/wife teams. Others were close friends. The buddy system went far and deep.
North did not need to tell me that most of the same considered modern society as ‘unsustainably’ intruding on ‘optimal’ nature. And that this community was dependent on government grants for research dealing with problems–so climate change needed to be a problem.
But it was Dr. North who privately said a lot of things to me that he did not want repeated in public. And in a number of emails, indeed, he questioned the great climate alarm. I made these emails public when North inexplicably went political several years ago at the urging of his activist colleague Andrew Dessler. I value truth over political power, and the Internet gives truth a powerful voice against professional misconduct.
North Goes Strange
Funny thing: Global temperatures have not increased since North was back at Enron, frankly telling me about the excesses of his profession. He was cautious, even skeptical, about high climate sensitivity estimates—and climate models in general (see the Appendix below for some of his quotes).
Now, he and Dessler write an editorial that assumes (rather than debates) a coming climate crisis–and jumps to political ad hominem to explain why the public does not agree on either the ‘problem’ or the ‘solution’.
So a question to Dr. North: what has changed in the last 15 years to make you more, rather than less, concerned about a catastrophic warming?
And just where do you get your expertise to tell us in this op-ed that there is a cost-effective solution for the United States and the world from governmental caps or taxes on CO2? Why aren’t you sticking to the physical science rather than jumping to other disciplines (economics, political science, public policy) far removed from your area of expertise?
In fact, climate economists such as Robert Mendelsohn of Yale might just tell you that the social cost of carbon dioxide, the green greenhouse gas, is positive, not negative, given the lower climate sensitivity that even the politicized, alarmist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now accepts in its forecast range.
Spencer Weighs In
Fellow climate scientist Roy Spencer called the two out on their false analogies and postmodern view of: Assume a problem, imagine a governmental solution … Assume market failure, but not government failure in solving it….
Spencer complains:
… Dessler and North [hide] the fact that global temperatures stopped rising 15 years ago, in contradiction to most, if not all, IPCC climate model forecasts.
They could have said, “The lack of warming is good news for humanity! Maybe global warming isn’t a serious problem after all!” Or even, “We have more time to solve the problem!” But, no.
Instead, they do exactly what they accuse Republicans of doing…letting their views of the proper role of government (and their desire for more climate research funding) determine what they believe (or profess to believe) about the science.
Spencer concludes:
So, stick to the ivory tower, guys. Better to let the people who work to support you wonder about your cluelessness, rather than open your mouths and remove all doubt.
This is a hard rebuke, but Dessler/North picked the fight … again. (And Dr. North, how many times do I need to resurrect the level-headed, less emotional North of old to counter the new, politicized you? Don’t we both have better things to do?)
Let’s hope that good science can continue to drive out bad despite the effort of some climate-turned-political scientists to keep the great false climate alarm going for more research grants and more and bigger Government.
Appendix: North on Climate Models
“We do not know much about modeling climate. It is as though we are modeling a human being. Models are in position at last to tell us the creature has two arms and two legs, but we are being asked to cure cancer.”
– Gerald North (November 12, 1999)
“[Model results] could also be sociological: getting the socially acceptable answer.”
– Gerald North (June 20, 1998)
“There is a good reason for a lack of consensus on the science. It is simply too early. The problem is difficult, and there are pitifully few ways to test climate models.”
– Gerald North (July 13, 1998)
“One has to fill in what goes on between 5 km and the surface. The standard way is through atmospheric models. I cannot make a better excuse.”
– Gerald North October 2, 1998)
“The ocean lag effect can always be used to explain the ‘underwarming’…. The different models couple to the oceans differently. There is quite a bit of slack here (undetermined fudge factors). If a model is too sensitive, one can just couple in a little more ocean to make it agree with the record. This is why models with different sensitivities all seem to mock the record about equally well. (Modelers would be insulted by my explanation, but I think it is correct.)”
– Gerald North (August 17, 1998)
and on Climate Politics
“I did worry that my comment on my not being willing to sign on to Kyoto right now got into the [Houston] Chronicle and in our local paper. I do not like being too public on policy matters. It ain’t my thing.”
– Gerald North (October 2, 1998)
– See more at: http://www.masterresource.org/2013/10/political-science-north-dressler/#sthash.XSOtpSJW.dpuf
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Great quotes from North in 1998!
Wave ’em large & often!
N.B. Dessler, not Dressler.
Kurt in Switzerland
North has zero cred with me, especially after his despicable cover-up the the Mann fraud.
He was against being quoted in the Houston Chronicle, before he was for it. – The Kerry defense.
Dessler is quoted on the NASA website as having published a paper in 2010 proving that cloud feedback was positive. His r^2 was 0.02, and to get that henhad to bung together two disparate satellite datasets. When using the alternative (more internally consisten)data from just one, the cloud feedback was negative and the statistical fit better. SMc posted on it then. So much for Desslers academic qualifications and quality of science.
“We live in a postmodern world where emotion and desire substitute for reason and scholarship.”
I find the word postmodern meaningless; let’s call it what it is: a Post-Bernays, Post-Lenin, Post-Wundt culturally marxist world. The elite thinks of humans as instinct-driven animals and try to control them by trying to manipulate their emotions. They have given up on explaining their actions; they have also given up on educating humans; instead their interest is to make humans more animal-like (therefore atheism; declaring humans and animals equal – the goal is not to elevate animals but to bring humans down to the level of animals; soulless and rightless both); and keeping them as dumb as possible to facilitate control.
Dessler and North are laughing at the peons.
This would have a much greater impact if published in the San Antonio Express News. Keeping old correspondence is priceless.
It is a pity that [intelligent] people prefer to use guilt by association when the scientific arguments are ebbing out. What has Obamacare and gun restriction to do with climate sensitivity?
Dr. Spencer is quoted: “Better to let the people who work to support you wonder about your cluelessness,…”
This is the real problem all the media and academics forget. If all the taxes, raised costs, high unemployment etc continue we middle class will not be able to buy papers, products advertised on TV, cars, or send our children or grandchildren to college. Then they are out of work.
If academics and the media continue to advance policies that harm the people that pay their wages they are toast.
academic tenure should not protect those who engage in political activism, using their positions in academia to engage in particularist political endeavors and broadcast propaganda and alarms in order to panic and mobilize public opinion behind their political agendas.
In other words, academians like Dressler and North should be fired, academic freedom notwithstanding. No freedom is absolute, and neither is academic tenure. The Dresssler and North types are abusing their positions and public trust.
There is also the consideration of increasing funding for their Department at A&M by mobilizing public opinion through panic mongering. This public alarmism is just the way to go about it. Possibly it is the prime motivation of these two and others who employ alarmist tactics.
While we’re on the topic of controlling CO2, there is a wonderful opinion piece in today’s WSJ entitled “A Chemistry Breakthrough That Could Fuel a Revolution” by Dr. Olah, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and a Mr. Cox, a USC trustee.
Summary: “Now methanol can be made from natural gas and captured carbon dioxide.”
Already out of the lab and producing methanol in Iceland at the Olah Renewable Methanol Plant. This plant is converting carbon dioxide from geothermal sources into methanol, using cheap geothermal electrical energy.
A coal fueled power plant could convert its CO2 into methanol, a fuel suitable for gasoline and diesel fueled vehicles. No need for sequestration. No need to shut down coal plants.
Natural gas from a fracking operation can likewise be converted into a fuel with an octane rating of 100, cheaper per mile than gasoline or ethanol, does not raise food prices, and reduces NOx emissions and particulates.
So why aren’t we using this process in the US?
Because Congress continues to mandate the use of ethanol in gasoline. Only diesel and gasoline are mandated fuels and auto manufacturers will honor only vehicles using mandated fuels – gasoline and diesel.
Hmmmm….
Do you suppose a Green President would work on getting the regulatory barriers to this miraculous process lifted to bring down greenhouse emissions, lower fuel costs, lower food costs, improve energy independence of the US, solve the problem of coal fueled power plants, lower NOx emissions in vehicles, and lower particulate emissions in vehicles?
It seems to me this would make all sides of the energy, pollution, AGW debates happy.
Paul Ehrlich and his gang have made great careers and have risen to level of high government selling their apocalyptic trash.
Why should North and Dessler not follow that successful business model?
All it takes is an ability to sound sincere when pushing untrue and false information and using the mantle of science to push prepostrous ideas that they actually know nothing about.
For the record, Barack Obama never signed the Kyoto Protocol Treaty. These guys should be foaming at the mouth over that.
Left wing politics mixed in with a little funding from politicians. Most do not realize that as much as 90% of grants can go directly to the applicant.
Rud Istvan says:
October 11, 2013 at 8:17 am
Yes, Dessler’s ‘analysis’ in that case was very poor for a variety of other reasons as well, primarily the assumption of zero system delay. It was junk science.
Jack Simmons says:
October 11, 2013 at 9:14 am
“A coal fueled power plant could convert its CO2 into methanol, a fuel suitable for gasoline and diesel fueled vehicles. No need for sequestration.”
Yes, ethanol added to gasoline is a huge scam, which even Al Gore has admitted. But, I must point out to you that methanol burned as a fuel simply re-releases the CO2.
It doesn’t really matter, because our combustion of fuels is not what drives atmospheric CO2 levels anyway. But, I felt I needed to point the obvious response out to you so that you can better prepare your argument.
Take away the funding…they all disappear.
@DirkH, mpainter –
Yes, I think that the integrity of our academic institutions cannot be restored until they are purged of people of the mentality of North and Dessler. They are not only using their positions for inappropriate partisan political campaigning – at the taxpayers’ expense – but they are also corrupting the minds of the students they “teach.” (translate: indoctrinate in all sorts of non-science, leftist politics masquerading as science).
In Germany after World War II, during the de-Nazification process, academics that had supported Hitler and his various ignorances about science, race and economics were removed from their positions in the universities and high schools (Gymnasia). I believe that ultimately, a similar sort of de-Nazification process will be necessary here in the US to get rid of the hard leftists and doomsayers and other negative activists from our academic ranks, if we want our educational system to operate in a sane and beneficial manner.
It’s no surprise that we are turning out “college graduates” who can’t find their own home state on a map of the US, with all the feel-good crap they are being taught by these people. They bear a heavy responsibility fot the dumbing down of our people.
Of course climate change is real. Always has been, always will be.
Mr. North, Mr. Dressler: If you want to make a cogent argument, Define. Your. Terms.
Dressler is a disgrace to climate science.
Jack Simmons says:
October 11, 2013 at 9:14 am
_____
The one thing you left out was using methanol to increase crop yields & quality and decrease water usage, both by 30 to 50%. See PNAS, Arthur M. Nonomura & Andrew A. Benson publication in late 1992 (’91?), “The Path of Carbon in Photosynthesis” The use of a methanol foliar treatment with an amino acid safener, wetting agent, and high dose NPK dramatically increases the growth of C3 plants under stress (light, heat, water, nutrient, etc.). The USDA did everything in it’s power to discredit the new technology in the ’90s by not following the protocol carefully laid out in the paper. They succeeded, but the technology really works. I’ve been using it since early ’93. That technology has improved dramatically over the past 20 yrs. Follow “The Path of Carbon in Photosynthesis” series if you are interested in the improvements.
BC
Many an honest physicist has been transformed into a climatologist by the promise of unending funding.
http://knowledgedrift.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/the-physicist-and-the-climatologist-follow-the-money-2/
Socialism has quietly infused the curriculum of public schools and universities in the west since the fall of the iron curtain, although it already had a firm foothold in Europe, its birthplace, before that. More than beleaguered people were released when it happened. The force of arms from totalitarian regimes had been recognized as an unlikely tool for spreading the ideology but a subtle, clever avenue presented itself once the ‘curtain’ was down: invade institutions and evolve their cultures. The process either required, or was a byproduct of it: the dumbing down of the people.
The one thing they knew well from their iron curtain days is that the world is full of useful idiots and these were anxious to serve. What is scary is that so few are troubled about financing it and following it to its end game. My children went through a different school than I. Awards, trophies, scrolls and plaques were handed out to everyone for “participation” for showing up “improvement” etc. and smart kids were not so subtly, discriminated against.
Climate science seems to have been a perfect petri dish for promoting the cause. It had global issues that could be interpreted as a threat to the planet that needed central planning and control. There was already in place a transnational body, the UN, with every country a member of it (a central dream of international communism). They created an institution in the UN to explore global warming specifically caused by human activities. They put the theory in place without evidence, other than a rant by Hansen to Congress. The USA had resisted all manner of pressures from the left and so it was a very cunning strategy used to breach this stubborn resistor: use money itself. Dole it out by the truckload to researchers who bought in and starve dissent. Hand out crackerjack™ Nobel Prizes. Hey, everyone has a price, right? Set it up so that governments will also cash in big time – taxes on carbon dioxide, even if it destroys their economies.
The behavior of Gerald North is the perfect example. Privately pooh-poohing models and the science but publicly playing along for the cash and the cameraderie.
Bart says:
October 11, 2013 at 9:33 am
Bart,
Right now, a coal burning plant releases its CO2 directly into the atmosphere.
With the Olah process, that same CO2 is captured and converted into methanol. The methanol is then consumed by vehicles and released into CO2.
In effect, you have cut the total amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by our coal plant in half, because the CO2 is recycled.
Isn’t that wonderful?
Coal miners get to keep their jobs. Coal plant operators get to keep their jobs. Vehicle operators get lower fuel bills. Less CO2 put into atmosphere, less particulates, less NOx, cheaper fuel per mile; what’s not to like about this process?
I agree with you, CO2 does not drive climate, manmade or otherwise, but this process attenuates the release of CO2 for those who think it is important.
In addition, we would save money on subsidies for corn ethanol, as well as the CO2 produced by the process of growing corn. More food for the poor. Less importation of fuels from other countries.
Two groups who lose: American farmers and oil dictators in foreign parts.
Expect a lot of resistance from the former. Impotent fury from the latter.
Hmmm…
Also control freaks in the ruling class.
Barry Cullen says:
October 11, 2013 at 10:24 am
Barry,
I was unaware of the use of methanol on the farm to save water while increasing crop yields. Another big winner for all concerned.
Thank you for pointing out yet another advantage of the Olah process.
Some more thoughts on the Olah process.
Today, EPA limits the amount of CO2 produced by coal power plants.
So, plant operator captures CO2 and converts it to methanol.
CO2 gas produced by plant is zero, meeting EPA standards.
Methanol cannot be used as a fuel here in US because of fuel mandates.
So plant operator ships methanol overseas where it is used as fuel.
CO2 is recyled. Trade deficit is diminished by sales of methanol overseas.
Oil dictators in foreign parts still filled with impotent fury.