Dr. Roy Spencer went to Washington to give testimony today to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Here is his presentation. While not as technical as Lord Moncktons paper at APS (since it had to be simplified for a congressional hearing), it nonetheless says the same thing – climate sensitivity is overstated by models and not supported by observational data. – Anthony
Update: See the complete testimony on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzf6z-oHP8U
Testimony of Roy W. Spencer before the
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on 22 July 2008
A printable PDF of this testimony can be found here
I would like to thank Senator Boxer and members of the Committee for allowing me to discuss my experiences as a NASA employee engaged in global warming research, as well as to provide my current views on the state of the science of global warming and climate change.
I have a PhD in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and have been involved in global warming research for close to twenty years. I have numerous peer reviewed scientific articles dealing with the measurement and interpretation of climate variability and climate change. I am also the U.S. Science Team Leader for the AMSR-E instrument flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
1. White House Involvement in the Reporting of Agency Employees’ Work
On the subject of the Administration’s involvement in policy-relevant scientific work performed by government employees in the EPA, NASA, and other agencies, I can provide some perspective based upon my previous experiences as a NASA employee. For example, during the Clinton-Gore Administration I was told what I could and could not say during congressional testimony. Since it was well known that I am skeptical of the view that mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions are mostly responsible for global warming, I assumed that this advice was to help protect Vice President Gore’s agenda on the subject.
This did not particularly bother me, though, since I knew that as an employee of an Executive Branch agency my ultimate boss resided in the White House. To the extent that my work had policy relevance, it seemed entirely appropriate to me that the privilege of working for NASA included a responsibility to abide by direction given by my superiors.
But I eventually tired of the restrictions I had to abide by as a government employee, and in the fall of 2001 I resigned from NASA and accepted my current position as a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Despite my resignation from NASA, I continue to serve as Team Leader on the AMSR-E instrument flying on the NASA Aqua satellite, and maintain a good working relationship with other government researchers.
2. Global Warming Science: The Latest Research
Regarding the currently popular theory that mankind is responsible for global warming, I am very pleased to deliver good news from the front lines of climate change research. Our latest research results, which I am about to describe, could have an enormous impact on policy decisions regarding greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite decades of persistent uncertainty over how sensitive the climate system is to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, we now have new satellite evidence which strongly suggests that the climate system is much less sensitive than is claimed by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Another way of saying this is that the real climate system appears to be dominated by “negative feedbacks” — instead of the “positive feedbacks” which are displayed by all twenty computerized climate models utilized by the IPCC. (Feedback parameters larger than 3.3 Watts per square meter per degree Kelvin (Wm-2K-1) indicate negative feedback, while feedback parameters smaller than 3.3 indicate positive feedback.)
If true, an insensitive climate system would mean that we have little to worry about in the way of manmade global warming and associated climate change. And, as we will see, it would also mean that the warming we have experienced in the last 100 years is mostly natural. Of course, if climate change is mostly natural then it is largely out of our control, and is likely to end — if it has not ended already, since satellite-measured global temperatures have not warmed for at least seven years now.
2.1 Theoretical evidence that climate sensitivity has been overestimated
The support for my claim of low climate sensitivity (net negative feedback) for our climate system is two-fold. First, we have a new research article1 in-press in the Journal of Climate which uses a simple climate model to show that previous estimates of the sensitivity of the climate system from satellite data were biased toward the high side by the neglect of natural cloud variability. It turns out that the failure to account for natural, chaotic cloud variability generated internal to the climate system will always lead to the illusion of a climate system which appears more sensitive than it really is.
Significantly, prior to its acceptance for publication, this paper was reviewed by two leading IPCC climate model experts – Piers Forster and Isaac Held– both of whom agreed that we have raised a legitimate issue. Piers Forster, an IPCC report lead author and a leading expert on the estimation of climate sensitivity, even admitted in his review of our paper that other climate modelers need to be made aware of this important issue.
To be fair, in a follow-up communication Piers Forster stated to me his belief that the net effect of the new understanding on climate sensitivity estimates would likely be small. But as we shall see, the latest evidence now suggests otherwise.
2.2 Observational evidence that climate sensitivity has been overestimated
The second line of evidence in support of an insensitive climate system comes from the satellite data themselves. While our work in-press established the existence of an observational bias in estimates of climate sensitivity, it did not address just how large that bias might be.
But in the last several weeks, we have stumbled upon clear and convincing observational evidence of particularly strong negative feedback (low climate sensitivity) from our latest and best satellite instruments. That evidence includes our development of two new methods for extracting the feedback signal from either observational or climate model data, a goal which has been called the “holy grail” of climate research.
The first method separates the true signature of feedback, wherein radiative flux variations are highly correlated to the temperature changes which cause them, from internally-generated radiative forcings, which are uncorrelated to the temperature variations which result from them. It is the latter signal which has been ignored in all previous studies, the neglect of which biases feedback diagnoses in the direction of positive feedback (high climate sensitivity).
Based upon global oceanic climate variations measured by a variety of NASA and NOAA satellites during the period 2000 through 2005 we have found a signature of climate sensitivity so low that it would reduce future global warming projections to below 1 deg. C by the year 2100. As can be seen in Fig. 1, that estimate from satellite data is much less sensitive (a larger diagnosed feedback) than even the least sensitive of the 20 climate models which the IPCC summarizes in its report. It is also consistent with our previously published analysis of feedbacks associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations3.
Fig. 1. Frequency distributions of feedback parameters (regression slopes) computed from three-month low-pass filtered time series of temperature (from channel 5 of the AMSU instrument flying on the NOAA-15 satellite) and top-of-atmosphere radiative flux variations for 6 years of global oceanic satellite data measured by the CERES instrument flying on NASA’s Terra satellite; and from a 60 year integration of the NCAR-CCSM3.0 climate model forced by 1% per year CO2 increase. Peaks in the frequency distributions indicate the dominant feedback operating. This NCAR model is the least sensitive (greatest feedback parameter value) of all 20 IPCC models.
A second method for extracting the true feedback signal takes advantage of the fact that during natural climate variability, there are varying levels of internally-generated radiative forcings (which are uncorrelated to temperature), versus non-radiative forcings (which are highly correlated to temperature). If the feedbacks estimated for different periods of time involve different levels of correlation, then the “true” feedback can be estimated by extrapolating those results to 100% correlation. This can be seen in Fig. 2, which shows that even previously published4 estimates of positive feedback are, in reality, supportive of negative feedback (feedback parameters greater than 3.3 Wm-2K-1).
Fig. 2. Re-analysis of the satellite-based feedback parameter estimates of Forster and Gregory (2006) showing that they are consistent with negative feedback rather than positive feedback (low climate sensitivity rather than high climate sensitivity).
2.3 Why do climate models produce so much global warming?
The results just presented beg the following question: If the satellite data indicate an insensitive climate system, why do the climate models suggest just the opposite? I believe the answer is due to a misinterpretation of cloud behavior by climate modelers.
The cloud behaviors programmed into climate models (cloud “parameterizations”) are based upon researchers’ interpretation of cause and effect in the real climate system5. When cloud variations in the real climate system have been measured, it has been assumed that the cloud changes were the result of certain processes, which are ultimately tied to surface temperature changes. But since other, chaotic, internally generated mechanisms can also be the cause of cloud changes, the neglect of those processes leads to cloud parameterizations which are inherently biased toward high climate sensitivity.
The reason why the bias occurs only in the direction of high climate sensitivity is this: While surface warming could conceivably cause cloud changes which lead to either positive or negative cloud feedback, causation in the opposite direction (cloud changes causing surface warming) can only work in one direction, which then “looks like” positive feedback. For example, decreasing low cloud cover can only produce warming, not cooling, and when that process is observed in the real climate system and assumed to be a feedback, it will always suggest a positive feedback.
2.4 So, what has caused global warming over the last century?
One necessary result of low climate sensitivity is that the radiative forcing from greenhouse gas emissions in the last century is not nearly enough to explain the upward trend of 0.7 deg. C in the last 100 years. This raises the question of whether there are natural processes at work which have caused most of that warming.
On this issue, it can be shown with a simple climate model that small cloud fluctuations assumed to occur with two modes of natural climate variability — the El Nino/La Nina phenomenon (Southern Oscillation), and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation — can explain 70% of the warming trend since 1900, as well as the nature of that trend: warming until the 1940s, no warming until the 1970s, and resumed warming since then. These results are shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. A simple climate model forced with cloud cover variations assumed to be proportional to a linear combination of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index. The heat flux anomalies in (a), which then result in the modeled temperature response in (b), are assumed to be distributed over the top 27% of the global ocean (1,000 meters), and weak negative feedback has been assumed (4 W m-2 K-1).
While this is not necessarily being presented as the only explanation for most of the warming in the last century, it does illustrate that there are potential explanations for recent warming other that just manmade greenhouse gas emissions. Significantly, this is an issue on which the IPCC has remained almost entirely silent. There has been virtually no published work on the possible role of internal climate variations in the warming of the last century.
3. Policy Implications
Obviously, what I am claiming today is of great importance to the global warming debate and related policy decisions, and it will surely be controversial. These results are not totally unprecedented, though, as other recently published research6 has also led to the conclusion that the real climate system does not exhibit net positive feedback.
While it will take some time for the research community to digest this new information, it must be mentioned that new research contradicting the latest IPCC report is entirely consistent with the normal course of scientific progress. I predict that in the coming years, there will be a growing realization among the global warming research community that most of the climate change we have observed is natural, and that mankind’s role is relatively minor.
While other researchers need to further explore and validate my claims, I am heartened by the fact that my recent presentation of these results to an audience of approximately 40 weather and climate researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder last week (on July 17, 2008 ) led to no substantial objections to either the data I presented, nor to my interpretation of those data.
And, curiously, despite its importance to climate modeling activities, no one from Dr. Kevin Trenberth’s facility, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), bothered to drive four miles down the road to attend my seminar, even though it was advertised at NCAR.
I hope that the Committee realizes that, if true, these new results mean that humanity will be largely spared the negative consequences of human-induced climate change. This would be good news that should be celebrated — not attacked and maligned.
And given that virtually no research into possible natural explanations for global warming has been performed, it is time for scientific objectivity and integrity to be restored to the field of global warming research. This Committee could, at a minimum, make a statement that encourages that goal.
REFERENCES
1. Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell, 2008: Potential biases in cloud feedback diagnosis:
A simple model demonstration. J. Climate, in press.
2. Allen, M.R., and D.J. Frame, 2007: Call off the quest. Science, 318, 582.
3. Spencer, R.W., W. D. Braswell, J. R. Christy, and J. Hnilo, 2007: Cloud and radiation
budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations. Geophys. Res.
Lett., 34, L15707, doi:10.1029/2007GL029698.
4. Forster, P. M., and J. M. Gregory, 2006: The climate sensitivity and its components
diagnosed from Earth Radiation Budget data. J. Climate, 19, 39-52.
5. Stephens, G. L., 2005: Clouds feedbacks in the climate system: A critical review. J.
Climate, 18, 237-273.
6. Schwartz, S. E., 2007: Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of the Earth’s
climate system. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S05, doi:10.1029/2007JD008746.
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Joel Shore said:
>>>>
The “skeptic” crowd would stand itself in better stead if it acknowledged total pseudoscientific junk when it is used to support your point-of-view. The lack of discrimination, i.e., the willingness to use anything as a basis of support no matter how bad it is, really doesn’t do much to help your cause.
<<<<
I agree with this.
However, by the same token I was starting to be pretty convinced about the credentials of the folks at RealClimate until I read their rebuttal regarding the Mann Hockey Stick controversy. This really damaged their credibility for me. It is pretty easy for me to see for myself how Mann et al’s study was deeply flawed. I really don’t understand how they can try to say otherwise and expect to maintain their credibility. And then to see the rest of the paleo’s rally to Mann’s defense with more highly questionaable studies is actually a bit eye opening for anyone (or – at least me) who is looking for objective evidence for bias in the scientific work going on within AGW.
It seems pretty clear to me that there was a MWP and LIA and that these were natural variations. Moreover, based on the new solar data we have it is pretty clear that these cannot currently be explained. The old explanation (for LIA) was based on LEAN’s reconstruction of solar variability which LEAN does not even believe in anymore (she was a co-author of WANG). Here is the latest reconstruction of TSI from Leif Svalgaard: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-LEIF.pdf
Also, I believe that the early 20th century warming is in large part attributed to an increase in TSI which we now know did not happen – thus we cannot explain this either. To my knowledge the modelers have not yet taken this new information into account. I believe Hansen 2007 is still using the old LEAN reconstruction which, again, LEAN does not even believe in anymore.
To me this is convincing evidence that we do not yet have a satisfactory understanding of natural climate variation within which we can say with any reasonable amount of certainty what the additional warming effects of some particular amount of CO2 are.
Roy Spencer said:
<<<>>>
Your work is very compelling. My biggest question so far is: does the slope of the linear striations vary with the length of the number of day averaging that is done. It appears that they do not even show up in a 7-day average and that they show up very clearly in a 91-day average but what happens at the 60-day average or the 365-day average? Does this affect the slope?
John McLondon
Let’s get back to the original question – what does it take to convince a critic about AGW?
You wrote: “In fact peer-reviewers make sure that components used in any work are in itself repeatable.” To paraphrase the fictional character Detective John McClane, in the Die Hard movies, ‘Welcome to climate science, pal.’ You really do owe it to yourself to read the Wegman Report. You wrote a very long paragraph about not being able to trust any company anywhere, and yet you appear to trust so completely in the AGW field. I do not share your faith and I urge you to read enough to know why.
“On that range, Hansen’s prediction (the middle one – curve B – I am assuming that you have seen it) was very good. Also what would be your response to the Youtube version? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ob9WdbXx0”
I am not as impressed with Hansen as you seem to be, particularly since his predictions fell completely apart by 2008. Also, Hansen continues to adjust past temperatures at GISS — so much so that his temperature series now look like an outlier to all the others. I can accept that someone should evaluate a hypothesis that rising CO2 can change the climate of the future, but I refuse to believe that anything is capable of changing the past. I am kind of a stickler on the whole ‘cause comes before effect’ thing. 😉
(BTW, if you want a good discussion of that particular Hansen graph, see: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/what-forcings-did-hansen-use/ . In the comments you can follow Steve McIntyre’s links to more than most people actually want to know. Steve makes it clear his analysis had detractors. Use the dates to track the other side of the discussion at Realclimate, Tamino, etc.)
As far as the youtube version goes, why would you think I would be impressed with Attenborough’s worship of computer models based on my writings so far? I must be getting too vague with age. 😉
“Well, Engineers had so many opportunities to study that. With slow changing climate, we do not have that much opportunity to study precisely the effect of each variable.”
Then why in heck would anyone believe in a house of cards built on variables that have not been precisely studied? Parameterized models are highly susceptible to initial, boundary, and propagated errors. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/the-poor-hapless-butterfly-a-haiku/ provides a very accessible discussion that illustrates key points in a simplified way. Googling Tom Vonk and Gerry Browning at ClimateAudit will take you to more in-depth material, although I have to warn you that Browning’s aggressive responses can be hard to bear even as a lurker.
“But placing trust in a company? Not a good idea at all.” Yet, your writings indicate nearly unlimited trust in bureaucratic government programs. Tell you what – you watch companies and keep them honest, I’ll watch government and try to do the same thing. But just remember one thing – everyone is allowed to say ‘no’ when a company wants to sell you something. Will anyone be allowed to say ‘no’ to the climate change juggernaut? That remains to be seen. Hansen’s recent call for criminal trials for people who disagree with him is not very encouraging in that regard.
Smokey says: “The general public may swallow AGW hook, line and sinker; propaganda such as polar bears stranded on ice floes is effective. But those who specialize in closely related fields know better: click”
Strange that you would use that link again after I called you on it last time, noting:
(1) That is completely unsourced, referring to a Gallup poll of the AGU and AMS but not giving any other details. The only such Gallup poll that I have seen referenced elsewhere was from 1991…i.e., 17 years old…and none of the responses I’ve seen quoted from it seem to align with what that pie graph that you linked to shows.
(2) Here is a link to an actual very recent (2008) poll of AGU and AMS members that reaches a very different conclusion: http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html In particular, it finds that 84% personally believe that human-induced warming is occurring while only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming (with the rest being unsure). Furthermore, a total of 85% believe that global climate change will pose a very either a great or moderate danger to the earth in the next 50 to 100 years (41% great and 44% moderate) while only 13% see relatively little danger. Finally, although they are generally quite critical of media coverage of climate change, a total of 64% find Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” to be either very (26%) or somewhat (38%) reliable. By contrast, less than 1% find Chrichton’s “State of Fear” to be very reliable.
So, are you going to modify your opinion in light of this evidence or are your opinions just independent of the evidence?
I have always been skeptical of the dominant positive feedback hypothesis simply because, as a feedback controls engineer, I know that positive feedback, no matter how small, will eventually assert itself and drive the system unstable all on its own. Since it has not done so in prior epochs when atmospheric concentrations of CO2 were higher than today, it follows that positive feedback is not dominant.
Now, I know that in nonlinear systems, one can reach a tipping point were previously negative feedbacks become marginally stable and then destabilizing. But, it does not appear plausible to me that the Earth’s climate system can be that mercurial given that it has survived to this day. That’s a judgment call, given the level of information I have had. But, this research by Dr. Spencer appears to support my intuition.
JC Stout,
Thank you for your reply.
“You really do owe it to yourself to read the Wegman Report. You wrote a very long paragraph about not being able to trust any company anywhere, and yet you appear to trust so completely in the AGW field. I do not share your faith and I urge you to read enough to know why.”
Really, I do not have any emotional attachment to AGW, I will have no problems in quickly changing my views if I find out tomorrow that AGW is wrong. Sometime ago I did scan through the Wegman report as well as the National Science Academy report came out after the Wegman report. Sure, there were statistical mistakes (Mann is not a statistician, so I am sure his treatment way not measure up to the strict statistical standards), but National Academy says those mistakes do not invalidate the overall results (of course there is problem for certain time span). Now, the problem is this, which side should I believe?
“.. particularly since his predictions fell completely apart by 2008. Also, Hansen continues to adjust past temperatures at GISS — so much so that his temperature series now look like an outlier to all the others…”
It is a little too early to make a decision for 2008, also we should not count just one year against his predictions, we should compare the average for a certain period of time. I am not sure (you have to give me a break here – I do not keep up with this field that carefully) what kind of changes Hansen is making – if he is changing just the anomalies, then he can change it for the past. If he is changing the absolute temperature, then I do not know why (can you please point me a specific case? Thanks).
I did go through the Hansen prediction discussion you cited, about the forcing. I am not sure what it really tells me. Do you know whether anyone has published any papers critical of Hansen’s predictions (I prefer to depend on journals than blogs, especially when I do not know exactly who the author is for that article)? I will also check it by looking at who cited Hansen’s paper.
“Parameterized models are highly susceptible to initial, boundary, and propagated errors…”
That is why one has to do sensitivity analysis, error estimates, etc. We routinely solve non-linear equations with many problems (it is common in many body problems), not all of them are chaotic, and even if some of them are, there are also rules and patterns one could find in randomness (eg. self diffusion coefficient in Brownian motion).
But we are not talking about just one computer model here – there are plenty of them, they repeat their computations many times, and look at error estimates. It would be little difficult to believe that all those models are predicting wrong answers resulting from their sensitive on non-linearity conditions.
“Googling Tom Vonk and Gerry Browning at ClimateAudit will take you to more in-depth material,”
I will go through that.
“Yet, your writings indicate nearly unlimited trust in bureaucratic government programs.”
I did not say that. If we are talking about the U.S. Government (and state governments), take for example the agent orange (or dioxins in particular) and how long veterans had to wait to receive a one time payment of $1,200, Japanese American internment camps, Trail of Tears (against the Supreme Court decision), and all that. There are a whole lot more to say about governments in other countries. We have to watch every organizations carefully, that is another reason I encourage AGW critics in their pursuit. But, as I wrote before, when I see the number of National Academies over the world, almost all Nobel Laureates in science, etc. endorsing AGW, I find the probability of AGW to be true is much higher than the probability that all these scientific organizations and scientists are either wrong or engaged in an huge international conspiracy.
“Hansen’s recent call for criminal trials for people who disagree with him is not very encouraging in that regard.”
Hansen did not ask for criminal trials for people who disagree, as I understand it, he asked for trials for the oil executives. There is a big difference.
I do not necessarily subscribe to the emergency action, “tipping point” advocacy. But I do believe that it makes full economic and environmental (and even national security) sense to reduce our use of fossil fuels, and do so as early as possible.
We are still left with our basic questions: what exact experiments and what kind of verification mechanisms could satisfy a skeptic (in precise clear language); and given the complexity of the system, what procedure would they recommend to replace computer models? If the skeptics are arguing that since the system is complex, we cannot predict the climate at all, well, that doesn’t help much either. Also, another major question, why so many AGW critics are so opposed to having any alternate energy source (why just oil)?
John McLondon says: “That is why one has to do sensitivity analysis, error estimates, etc. We routinely solve non-linear equations with many problems (it is common in many body problems), not all of them are chaotic, and even if some of them are, there are also rules and patterns one could find in randomness (eg. self diffusion coefficient in Brownian motion).”
To be more specific, it is true that climate models exhibit sensitivity to initial conditions. And, indeed, if you start them with perturbed initial conditions, you do find that the “jigs” and “jags” that you get are different. However, over a long enough period of time, the different runs show the same basic response to a forcing such as CO2, despite the differences in the internal variability. So, all this talk about chaos and sensitivity to initial conditions is basically a red herring…Yes, it is true and understood and it would certainly keep you from predicting the weather far in advance or even the yearly variations in climate far in advance; however, it does not keep you from determining a response to a significant external forcing such as an increase in CO2.
The one caveat on that is that it is known that nonlinear systems that are forced can exhibit “tipping points” beyond which they run off to a totally different state. Unfortunately, however, that should not be very re-assuring to us as we embark on the current experiment of raising CO2 to levels that haven’t been seen in millions of years.
Bart says: “But, it does not appear plausible to me that the Earth’s climate system can be that mercurial given that it has survived to this day.” Well, I think the paleoclimate evidence shows that the climate has been pretty mercurial in the past. In fact, I find that lots of “skeptics” argue (using bad logic) that the fact that the climate has been so changeable in the past is evidence against the current changes being caused by us. There are some hypothesized stabilizing feedbacks on geological timescales (see, e.g., this discussion of the “faint young sun paradox”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faint_young_sun_paradox ) but those occur far too slowly to help us in our current predicament.
At any rate, I think most of those who study paleoclimate actually tend to draw the conclusion that the earth’s climate system is at least as sensitive as the IPCC estimates, if not moreso. See, for example, here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;306/5697/821
re: John McLondon (11:29:45)
“Also, another major question, why so many AGW critics are so opposed to having any alternate energy source (why just oil)?”
No AGW critic I know is opposed to the development of proven “Practical”, Alternative Energy Sources.
Answer to your question: “Because, we currently have been DENIED access to VAST”quantities of “proven” EXISTING energy sources in “oil/coal/nuculear” that are already available in this great country.
To deny access to them for the last 20 years “has, is and will”
bankrupt our economy on the “Forced Green Quest” of currently impractical alternative energy sources.
I guess I’m just being a practical “Enviriomentist”.
John McLondon
I wrote another long response in our continuing conversation, but I am really troubled by something and I decided not to post it until we sort it out. Your last post included the following:
‘Hansen’s recent call for criminal trials for people who disagree with him is not very encouraging in that regard.’
“Hansen did not ask for criminal trials for people who disagree, as I understand it, he asked for trials for the oil executives. There is a big difference.”
Remember your statement:
“I do not know anyone (other than the radical left) demonizing oil companies, oil companies are just like any other company in search of improving their bottom line.”
So in the span of a couple of posts you are now willing to accept Hansen segregating people into ‘oil executives’ and the rest of us. Sound familiar in a historical context? Care to reconsider where you really are in your own views?
Just so you have no doubts about me. Hansen’s statement was a deliberate attempt to foster a climate of fear and to stifle debate. It is inexcusable – period – and it troubles me greatly that anyone accepted it. In fact, it is a clear sign of complacency about mental illness in our society that he did not immediately lose his job. It is neither cute nor funny to venture towards shared psychopathology, espicially when nobody argured it was some kind of joke. Mental health is precious and must be protected at all times. Lysenko happened, and people were murdered. The Banality of Evil should teach us a lesson about what can happen in every society, not just one special case.
So, at this point, I choose to refrain from discussing miscellaneous details until the premise of what is acceptable is resolved. If you really believe:
“he asked for trials for the oil executives. There is a big difference.”
we have nothing left to talk about.
To All,
My apologies for proving Godwin’s Law. I foolishly thought myself above it.
I do not regret standing up for the principles that all our citizens are all entitled to free speech and the same protections under the law. However, I do regret that I could not express myself effectively without providing more evidence in support of Godwin’s Law.
JC Stout,
I try to stay with the extreme syntactic and semantic interpretation – at least try. As I said before, I try to take exactly what they said, not what they implied.
“If you really believe: “he asked for trials for the oil executives. There is a big difference.” we have nothing left to talk about.”
I do not have to believe in anything here, it is simply so clear on what exactly Hansen said. He called for trials of oil executives. But not all oil executives disagree with Hansen (like some from BP and may be others) and not all people who disagree with Hansen are oil executives. So he is actually calling for trials for those oil executives who agree with him also. Just too obvious. That is why I interpreted the way I did.
“Hansen’s statement was a deliberate attempt to foster a climate of fear and to stifle debate. ..”
His statement was just one man’s opinion. It doesn’t have any effect. We all know that. I do not know how it could foster fear. I also made it clear that Hansen should stay away from making such statements, and just do his science than getting involved in policy statements. Just like Spencer, who could improve his credibility significantly (at least in my opinion) by simply doing science and publishing it rather than spinning it in blogs, I think Hansen should improve his credibility by not making such political statements.
BUCKO36,
As a practical matter, I doubt we will be allowed to use coal without a carbon sequestration process, whether or not CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Some environmentalists won’t allow nuclear, and people in Nevada will not allow the safe storage of nuclear waste in their state. It is not clear from your statement whether you approve alternate fuel that are not proven yet but could be proven in the future. In any case such fuel has to be practical to be used widely.
[…] Click on more to read the full text of Spencer’s testimony to the U.S. Environment and Public Works committee follows. The text plus Spencer’s graphs and charts can be found at this site. […]
@JC Stout
I don’t know if I’m right here, but what you wrote a few postings above about Hansen’s graph, seems simply a matter of the base line.
I guess, a 30 years base line produces too much error deviation. To keep those error outliers small, I tried to reconstruct the data to a decadal base line, which is more adequate and reduces error outliers, as you can see here in Fig. 1
http://umweltluege.de/sceptics/giss_lie/index.php
This error corrected data is now plotted against MSU LT 5.2 data in Fig. 2 and there is nearly congruence with a correlation of 0.803.
I think, Hansens intention was to chose a 30 year base line only to show his doom more aggressive. He was calculating with the error deviation for eye-wiping, I guess.
JC Stout,
Please just ignore the Godwin’s Law and come back with your best arguments (preferably in a concise form). We are not here to win the argument, I hope; we are trying to understand.
Peter,
That makes perfect sense.
Exhaust the little moment. / Soon it dies. / And be it gash or gold / it will not come / Again in this disguise.GwendolynBrooksGwendolyn Brooks
Re: John McLondon (15:58:23)
What is practical about implementing “any fixes” proposed by the “A”GW crowd, without verified Scientific assurance that “A”GW influances verses nature, have had any quantitative impact on the climate?
1.) There have been significant improvements in the US in the last 60 years on the carbon sequestration process’s in the use of coal.
I have been to China and know how bad it is over there. Any thing we do here and share with them, will help them. As their economy grows, so will “their” polution concerns.
2.) What rights, other than Polictical, do Environmentalists have in the Nuclear issue? Storage of waste is a workable problem
3.) Yes, I do approve of alternate fuel source’s, but not at the expense of the earth’s “economy” or “food supply”.
An Environmentalist and also an AGW Skeptic.
bucko36
BUCKO36,
Almost all scientific societies, most Nobel Laureates in Science, and most scientists endorse the AGW theory. Exactly what it would take for AGW critics to accept that as a “verified scientific assurance”? Well, that is exactly what I was trying to find from JC.
China is a notorious place for pollution. I go there often and every time I am surprised to see that. But it will come to haunt them, in terms of human misery and health care cost. The so called Green GDP increase (after filtering out the environmental cost) is either flat or negative in China. I do not think we want that kind of a progress.
I am all for nuclear fuel. But I do not share your optimism of nuclear waste disposal. It took more than a decade for us to come with with a plan to store nuclear waste in the Yucca Mountain Repository, which was supposed to be working since 1998. But now they are talking about 2017 – may be.
“Yes, I do approve of alternate fuel source’s, but not at the expense of the earth’s “economy” or “food supply”. ”
I do not have any arguments here. Ethanol from corn is one of the most reprehensible development I have seen so far.
John Mclondon (20:47:46)
John, thank you for your responses and indulgence, but I personnally have more faith in the Earth and human “common sense”, than the polictical intelligence of the likes of the World body, IPPC and “Al Gore’s brainwashed generation of AGW believers”. They are nothing more that a “bunch of ignorant greedy Sheep” following of the “Chicken Little” syndrome that has recycled over the last (?) years.
I’m 72 years young and I like George Carlin (think plastic}, I would like to think this magnificant earth will survive in spite of what man does. I blame the education system of the last 50 years, that is forcing us to political solutions before the science is fully understood. God help us all!
Someday, after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energy of love; and for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.PierreTeilharddeChardinPierre Teilhard de Chardin
BUCKO36,
Thanks much for your response.
“I’m 72 years young and I like…”
Then certainly you have seen a lot more politics than I have, so I hope you will be proven correct in your optimism. Also, wish you a happy, healthy and productive long life.
“I would like to think this magnificant earth will survive in spite of what man does. I blame the education system of the last 50 years, that is forcing us to political solutions before the science is fully understood.”
I am assuming that you are referring to environmental movement in general. Our Earth will survive for sure, but I am not sure in what form and whether human beings will be a part of it, and if we are, exactly in what way. I personally do not even want to take that risk, if our actions have the potential to harm people. For example, when we look at the occurrence of specific types of caner, we can see patterns regarding where some of the specific cancer incidences are clustered. Often we can trace that to association with specific industrial chemicals, radiations, etc., related to environmental conditions. Same thing goes for respiratory illness (Chinese are prime candidates for that. Now, due to Olympics the Chinese authorities even banned spitting on the road – great thing in one way, but very ironic. When we breathe air with particulates in it, they collect in the throat and we have to get rid of it. In a way, the Chinese government banned one of the natural mechanisms that kept many Chinese alive). Of course I agree, the average life span is going up, and we are healthier in general, but that has more to do with modern medicine, and the connection between industrial pollution and health hazards are becoming clearer with each incident.
Also regarding your statement, 240 million years ago the atmospheric oxygen content was 37 %, now it is 20.9 %, and falling. In a few million years oxygen could vanish (due to chemical reactions), and eventually CO2 could vanish dissolved in water and locked up as carbonates. Even the hydrogen economy is not going to save us here. Below 19 % oxygen, health problems will start showing up, and below 7 % we cannot survive. So, it looks like humanity will be gone eventually, the Earth will be still here. Apart from human activities in deforestation (increasing CO2 and reducing oxygen), I do not see any direct effect of AGW on human health. But if climate patterns change, as the AGW people are saying, the effect may be severe enough to create immense human misery, but so is the effect of a drastic shift from fossil fuel. This is where I take your statement “God help us all!”, I hope the people and the leaders will have the wisdom to do the right thing from a complicated set of options.
Let me ask you another question, I have been wondering for a while. I will have to agree that extremely passionate environmentalism appears, in some sense, similar to a religion. But when I look at AGW critics in general, some of them are of course lobbyists for oil companies, that is understandable. But a large fraction has no connection with oil companies. It seems to me (I would like to know if I am wrong) that a large number of critics are basing their criticism on a deeper belief, as you implied, that since God created everything, whatever human beings could do is not going to change God’s intentions with the Earth. In other words we are so insignificant to change anything on Earth, since God created the earth and is controlling it (or some other similar belief). Do you think that is one of the basic underlying reasons, at least for many, to disregard AGW predictions? In my view, as a Christian, we are also asked to take care of the Garden, the best way we know how.
John McLondon (08:10:04)
Thank you for your well wishes.
Yes, I was addressing the following:
1.) The current “The sky is falling” Environmental Movement.
Which to me, has always been around to some extent (ie.The tree huggers, save the whales and spotted owls etc., but their mass has now been further expanded to include those “brainwashed” by our
education systems, to achive a “Political agenda”. I don’t mean just in the US, but throughout the civilized world.
and
2.) Those, who’s goal (ie. the UN and the likes of Al Gore) it is to establish a “socialistic” World Order, political agenda in general, bent on financial gains and control of the World masses.
Not a world I want to live in.
I understand your concerns about polution effects on the longivity of man on this earth, but that is “way beyond” my knowledge and capibilities on how to effectively address all of those possiblities.
I don’t think that “band aids”, without understanding the “critical” drivers will do it. It is Just maybe the worlds population
explosion that is taking place, thas doomed mankind to go the
way of the dinosaurs.
I, like you realize that oil, natural gas and coal are polutants, but
they are currently available to us in large quantities and they must be utilized until a better solution replacement is found.
It is stupid that nucular power has been banned in this country because we haven’t found a waste storage solutionl.
Wind and solor technology are not an effieient replacement.
There are no easy/quick fixes.
With regard to your question on what influances the AGW critics:
Like you, I am also a Christian, but I do not believe that has been what has influanced my stance on this issue.
I am not a scientist, however, I first got interested in this subject, back when the crisis was “Global Cooling” in the late 90’s. I read everything I could find on the subject and I was somewhat concerned about it, because it had happened before in the LIA. Then all of a sudden we were told that that GC was no longer a crisis, because now the earth was going to face the crisis of AGW
(ie Al Gore). Again I spent my time reading everything I could
about the subject.
I found that the Earth had been much “warmer” and much “colder”
in the past and that we really don’t know to what degree man has had an impact.
In the line of work I was in before retiring, we had a joke
saying about computers models. It was “Garbage In/ Garbage Out”.
As complex as the contributing “variables” of the Earth’s Climate System is, if someone has an “agenda” he can develop a model that will provide “his desired answer”.
Enough said.
Joel Shore claims that the link to this chart [click] can not be found anywhere. It is completely unreferenced, unsourced, and unfindable by him:
That’s a statement which is very easy to disprove; a simple search of “Gallup poll”, along with the names of the two societies cited in the chart, brings up its provenance on the very first page.
So, a couple of observations:
1. Whether a source is 70 years old, 17 weeks old, or seven minutes old, it is either truthful, or untruthful. Truth does not change. I simply linked to a Gallup poll, the results of which Mr. Shore simply can not abide.
[I could have linked to a more current site, such as: click. But Mr. Shore doesn’t like that site, either.]
2. Because Mr. Shore claims that the chart is fictitious/non-existent is no reason for me to do the simple search that he avoids. But for those who are curious where the chart above came from, I’ll be glad to provide what anyone else could have easily found: click.
See, the chart comes directly from the National Center For Policy Analysis — and this very NCPA report was one of the primary factors in the U.S. Senate’s unanimous 95 – 0 rejection of the Kyoto Protocol [with Vice President Al Gore impotently presiding over the Senate’s vote].
That is why those on the Left hate the National Center For Policy Analysis so. They hate every organization, and every individual, that refutes their Sacred Cow of Global Warming. Any questioning of the Al Gore globaloney orthodoxy must be attacked and destroyed by any means, ethical or not. That is the Left’s modus operandi.
Next, I note that my old friend John McLondon has now stated that “one year” of falling temperatures do not negate James Hansen’s increasingly wrong predictions. So just to keep the goal posts from once again being moved just beyond reach, would my ol’ buddy John care to pick a date by which this issue can be settled? If not, I suggest January 1, 2010. If by that date Hansen’s center temp prediction [curve B] is found to be accurate, say within 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit [a pretty generous error bar there], then John wins our bragging-rights bet, and he can publicly remind me that I was wrong forever afterward. And vice versa. Sound fair, John McLondon?
Finally, as BUCKO36 has alluded to, the environmental lobby’s criticism is almost always about 99% against America, and 1% against China and the rest of the world. Why is that? America is one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest, most environmentally conscious country on the planet, bar none.
Therefore, these reprehensible, one-sided attacks against America are entirely political, and not based on science. Politics =/= science. See? [snip of pejorative ending statement~charles the moderator]
The chart referred to in my opening paragraph was this one. Without a Preview pane, sometimes this happens. Sorry.
I haven’t been following up the back and forth here, but I have a personal history relating to Smokey’s find of the provenance of the chart. Those numbers were thrown around a lot on JunkScience.com five or six years ago and they seemed suspect to me. I discovered that while factually correct, they were definitely out of date and inappropriate to be citing. I notified JunkScience.com of this and Barry Hearn issued a statement about my research and they haven’t used it since. I’ll see if I can dig up the emails.
edit:
found it.
From: Barry Hearn
To: Charles xxxxxx
Date: Oct 04 2000 – 6:59pm
Thanks, I’ll post a supplemental note today.
b++
; —–Original Message—–
; From: Charles xxxxx [mailto:]
; Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 11:37 AM
; To: Barry Hearn
; Subject: RE: citation
;
;
; From USA today.
;
; One conservative group criticized the news media for accepting claims that
; there is widespread scientific agreement on global warming. The Media
; Research Center cited “a recent Gallup poll” that said only 19% of the
; members of the American Meteorological Society and the American
; Geophysical
; Union think that a warmer climate has been the result of greenhouse gas
; emissions.
;
; The Gallup organization said the poll was taken in October of
; 1991. It noted
; that some people, opposed to claims that human-induced global warming is
; occurring, “have used the study to support their position.”
;
; “These writers have taken survey results out of context that
; appear to show
; scientists do not believe that human-induced global warming is occurring.”
;
; The statement from Gallup noted that when asked if they thought
; human-induced global warming was occurring, 66% of the scientists surveyed
; said yes.
;
;
; http://www.usatoday.com/weather/clisci/wclis28c.htm
;
; I agree with the positions of EVAG, but I think it is important to cite
; information that supports the case, rather than information which
; is easily
; refuted or out of date.
BUCKO36,
Just few concluding comments (regarding your last post):
May be we don’t know everything, but I think we should do everything we can with what we know to improve the chances of human survival into the distant future.
In my opinion, rapid population growth is probably the one single cause for most of the environmental problems. No amount of conservation can compensate for the demand for resources from population growth. This certainly includes the U.S. also, where the per capita energy needs are much higher.
On wind and solar energy, please take a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy
We need 15 TW, which is a small fraction of 86,000 TW solar energy we get or the 870 TW of wind energy. I do not believe we are asking too much if we look for a technology to convert a very small fraction of this natural energy to meet our energy needs. Nuclear fusion is a relatively clean energy source, and we have an abundant supply of deuterium and plenty of Helium-3 on the surface of the Moon (according to the Chinese, just two trips to the Moon will give us enough Helium-3 to power the entire earth for a full year). Yet, the U.S. was not so enthusiastic in ITER, although the total cost of the ITER project is less than $ 10 billion. I think we can invest considerably more for alternate energy – the cost is very small compared to the almost $200 billion on the stimulation package, or what it costs per week in Iraq, or the annual U.S. electricity sale ( $210 billion), etc.
The earth might have been warmer and cooler in the past, but that was when we had a small and highly mobile population, without skyscrapers and financial centers developed on the edge of the sea. We didn’t have to feed so many people. But even then, human caused disasters were not uncommon, for example we now know what happened to the Mayan civilization from over population and deforestation.
Well, if we give “garbage in” to any system, we are going to get garbage out, computers are no exceptions. But we are not giving garbage in most cases. Quantum chemistry can be done entirely with computers and the results are verifiable with experiments. Computer design was the basic tool Boeing used for designing Boeing 777. We use computers for drug discovery, DNA sequencing, etc., the list is long. There is an impressive array of accomplishments with computer models. Just like with any other scientific tools, a determined person can develop a model (and computer program) to obtain the desired answer, but in general that will not survive the scientific scrutiny, especially in a field like climate science where the evaluation and scrutiny is more intense. Also, one could interpret that capability in both ways; a skeptic could design a computer code to support his/her view, but I have not seen a computer model (after surviving the scientific scrutiny) that does not predict warming with increasing CO2. As I said earlier, I do not find it to be probable that we have an international conspiracy by most scientists and scientific organizations in advancing AGW.