UPDATE 1/28: Full text of Dr. Theon’s letter has been post on the Senate website and below.
This is something I thought I’d never see. This press release today is from the Senate EPW blog of Jame Inhofe. The scientist making the claims in the headline, Dr. John S. Theon, formerly of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Arlington, Virginia, has a paper here in the AMS BAMS that you may also find interesting. Other papers are available here in Google Scholar. He also worked on the report of the Space Shuttle Challenger accident report and according to that document was a significant contributor to weather forecasting improvements:
The Space Shuttle Weather Forecasting Advisory Panel, chaired by Dr. John Theon, was established by NASA Headquarters to review existing weather support capabilities and plans and to recommend a course of action to the NSTS Program. Included on the panel were representatives from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Air Force, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
For those just joining the climate discussion, Dr. James Hansen is the chief climate scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and is the man who originally raised the alarm on global warming in 1988 in an appearance before congress. He is also the keeper of the most often cited climate data.
EPW press release below – Anthony
Washington DC, Jan 27th 2009: NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice-President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.
Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fear soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of man-made global warming fears.
“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results,” Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained.
“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote. [Note: NASA scientist James Hansen has created worldwide media frenzy with his dire climate warning, his call for trials against those who dissent against man-made global warming fear, and his claims that he was allegedly muzzled by the Bush administration despite doing 1,400 on-the-job media interviews! – See: Don’t Panic Over Predictions of Climate Doom – Get the Facts on James Hansen – UK Register: Veteran climate scientist says ‘lock up the oil men’ – June 23, 2008 & UK Guardian: NASA scientist calls for putting oil firm chiefs on trial for ‘high crimes against humanity’ for spreading doubt about man-made global warming – June 23, 2008 ]
Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.
“As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research,” Theon wrote of his career. “This required a thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate science since retiring by reading books and journal articles,” Theon added. (LINK) Theon also co-authored the book “Advances in Remote Sensing Retrieval Methods.” [Note: Theon joins many current and former NASA scientists in dissenting from man-made climate fears. A small sampling includes: Aerospace engineer and physicist Dr. Michael Griffin, the former top administrator of NASA, Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt, Award-winning NASA Astronaut and Physicist Walter Cunningham of NASA’s Apollo 7, Chemist and Nuclear Engineer Robert DeFayette was formerly with NASA’s Plum Brook Reactor, Hungarian Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA’s Ames Research Center, Climatologist Dr. John Christy, Climatologist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Atmospheric Scientist Ross Hays of NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility]
Gore faces a much different scientific climate in 2009 than the one he faced in 2006 when his film “An Inconvenient Truth” was released. According to satellite data, the Earth has cooled since Gore’s film was released, Antarctic sea ice extent has grown to record levels, sea level rise has slowed, ocean temperatures have failed to warm, and more and more scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made climate fears as peer-reviewed studies continue to man-made counter warming fears. [See: Peer-Reviewed Study challenges ‘notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming’ & New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears ]
“Vice President Gore and the other promoters of man-made climate fears endless claims that the “debate is over” appear to be ignoring scientific reality,” Senator James Inhofe, Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee.
A U.S. Senate Minority Report released in December 2008 details over 650 international scientists who are dissenting from man-made global warming fears promoted by the UN and yourself. Many of the scientists profiled are former UN IPCC scientists and former believers in man-made climate change that have reversed their views in recent years. The report continues to grow almost daily. We have just received a request from an Italian scientist, and a Czech scientist to join the 650 dissenting scientists report. A chemist from the U.S. Naval Academy is about to be added, and more Japanese scientists are dissenting. Finally, many more meteorologists will be added and another former UN IPCC scientist is about to be included. These scientists are openly rebelling against the climate orthodoxy promoted by Gore and the UN IPCC.
The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists’ equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. Reports from the conference found that Skeptical scientists overwhelmed the meeting, with ‘2/3 of presenters and question-askers hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC’ ( See full reports here & here ] In addition, a 2008 canvass of more than 51,000 Canadian scientists revealed 68% disagree that global warming science is “settled.” A November 25, 2008, article in Politico noted that a “growing accumulation” of science is challenging warming fears, and added that the “science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.” More evidence that the global warming fear machine is breaking down. Russian scientists “rejected the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming”. An American Physical Society editor conceded that a “considerable presence” of scientific skeptics exists. An International team of scientists countered the UN IPCC, declaring: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate”. India Issued a report challenging global warming fears. International Scientists demanded the UN IPCC “be called to account and cease its deceptive practices.”
The scientists and peer-reviewed studies countering climate claims are the key reason that the U.S. public has grown ever more skeptical of man-made climate doom predictions. [See: Global warming ranks dead last, 20 out of 20 in new Pew survey. Pew Survey: & Survey finds majority of U.S. Voters – ‘51% – now believe that humans are not the predominant cause of climate change’ – January 20, 2009 – Rasmussen Reports ]
The chorus of skeptical scientific voices grow louder in 2008 as a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses, real world data and inconvenient developments challenged the UN’s and former Vice President Al Gore’s claims that the “science is settled” and there is a “consensus.”
On a range of issues, 2008 proved to be challenging for the promoters of man-made climate fears. Promoters of anthropogenic warming fears endured the following: Global temperatures failing to warm; Peer-reviewed studies predicting a continued lack of warming; a failed attempt to revive the discredited “Hockey Stick“; inconvenient developments and studies regarding rising CO2; the Spotless Sun; Clouds; Antarctica; the Arctic; Greenland’s ice; Mount Kilimanjaro; Global sea ice; Causes of Hurricanes; Extreme Storms; Extinctions; Floods; Droughts; Ocean Acidification; Polar Bears; Extreme weather deaths; Frogs; lack of atmospheric dust; Malaria; the failure of oceans to warm and rise as predicted.
# # #
ORIGINAL FULL TEXT LETTER SENT VIA EMAILS:
From: Jtheon [mailto:jtheon@XXXXXXX]
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 10:05 PM
To: Morano, Marc (EPW)
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 12:50 PM
To: Morano, Marc (EPW)
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James Hastings-Trew (19:11:11) :
Here’s my confusion: This paper was published 2 years ago. To my knowledge it has not been scientifically refuted by other physicists. Why then, are we still talking about greenhouse gasses, in any capacity, at all?.
There is nothing to refute in the statement that the “greenhouse” designation of the property of some gases to increase the heat capacity of the atmosphere is a misnomer. This is accepted even by the most strident AGW supporters.
Their physics statements are solidly based on thermodynamics, too.
From then on everything is models, and refutation of models can only come from data, which is happening. If the data invalidates the models, it means that the physics principles have been used wrongly within them, but it is hard to pin point exactly what, within the models, there is such a confusion of physics in the assumptions they are built on: thermodynamics, mechanics, statistical mechanics and quantum statistical mechanics are in there in a pot pourri according to the taste of the modeller. The paper you quote uses purely thermodynamics to refute the existence of the “green house effect”.
It has been attacked in the blogs, see Real Climate, because of course there is an effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ( think deserts at night, how cold they get without the humidity “cover”), but not on the physics grounds it stands on (thermodynamics) so nobody has written up a refuting paper on par with it.
Adam Sullivan (18:24:44) :
Has anyone ever suggested an open source climate model?
Since I’m slogging through GISStemp I’d be happy to provide a review of what they do (as I finish each part!), including file format, source code commentary, process commentary, etc. It’s about 6000 lines or code and comments all told, and much of that is duplicate file, variable, etc. declarations; and lines that recompile every FORTRAN program prior to use, then delete it afterwards.
STEP0 521
STEP1 1050 (python)
STEP2 1319
STEP3 1560
STEP4_5 1631
total 6081
I would suggest a central database that has the raw temp data plus variations for ‘accepted’ corrections. (TOB, Eq.). The ‘snap on’ would be a report writer function that lets you ask: Given the data set I’ve chosen and this process, what happens? That ought to be something that could be distributed over a COW (Collection Of Workstatons).
Will program for beer 😉
p.s. in my anna v (21:44:24) : in this thread I expand on the mistaken methodology of GCModels which are covered on points 14 and 15 in their physics summary ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161 )
btw, I am a physicist
George M (20:22:36) : Your fourth point is in fact the case. I keep pointing out that Hansen is NOT a NASA employee. He works for Columbia University. On a BIG NASA contract. And thus………………..
Oh D**m and thanks to IRS rules for contractors you can’t specify a particular person be on a contract (by name) without violating one of the (26 last time I cared) rules for ‘independence’ in a contractor … So as long as Columbia gets the contract he’s protected and as long as his comments do not divulge NASA work related embargoed information he can talk all he wants. As long as when he’s at work he does what is assigned, he’s protected.
I now have great sympathy for Dr. Theon. Stuck with someone playing on the reputation of NASA but not a thing he can do to stop it. So he ‘soldiered on’. At least now he can ‘distance himself’ from the AGW mess as it hits the fan.
Maybe “Climate” is a myth.
What we actually have is weather, you can easily access weather, just step outside your front door…
I can’t point to climate, can’t see it, touch it, hear it, taste it, or smell it…
Climate seems to be rather abstract.
Perhaps too abstract to spend time and money worrying about it.
Now avoiding a flood, forest fire, storm surge, wind damage, water and food shortages etc… those are real problems that have real effects that could be mitigated by investment into more robust, cost-effective energy, water supply, extreme weather monitoring and mitigation systems.
Just a thought.
Joel Shore (12:05:30) :
“The actual forcings relative to those in Hansen’s scenarios fall a little below his middle scenario, Scenario B. And, the temperature has generally followed that scenario…There has been some deviation below it in the last few years but I don’t think the difference is statistically-significant.”
I cannot folow this comment. Temperatures compared to satellite data since 1990 were actually well beyond Hansens Scenario C, that implied drastic greenhouse gas reductions. His prediction was completely false.
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/06/gret-moments-in.html
Maybe you compared Hansens’s prediction with Hansen’s own GISS temperature data.
Following Steve McIntyre, this dataset is not reliable, as – among many other issues – the so called “corrections” are not plausible. For example, in this dataset about as many temperatures were “corrected” upward as downward, what is complete nonsense, because a proper inclusion of UHI would require many more downward “corrections”.
Your statement also completely misses the effect of ocean currents and the string of many El Nino events during the observation time. The temperature increase due to the El Ninos should be removed from the data so that trend should be even further below Scenario C.
DR:
Is it about the “absence” of hot spot in the tropics? First, as you say, there’s still debate about it, given the high variability of UAH and RSS data. Second, any type of warming (not only CO2- and H20-based greenhouse effect) should produce a hot spot, even warming due to the sun. Go check this model results:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/efficacy/
and this disucssion in RC
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/
As we know the earth temperature has been going up that means that IF there’s no hot spot, it’s because there’s something we don’t understand about the tropics. BTW, the rest of the planet is doing “as predicted” (with all standard deviations included).
James Hastings-Trew:
this paper has actually never been published in a peer-reviewed journal. ArXiv is a place where anyone can post papers. In my opinion, their math is in fact pretty bad, as discussed by Smith: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0802.4324 Go check and make your own idea…
James Hastings-Trew (19:11:11) :
I have to admit, I am a little confused. This paper http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161 argues that there is no greenhouse gas effect at all. I readily admit that I am not a scientist, and I did not check their math, but I found their argument convincing. That is to say, that it is impossible for gasses like carbon dioxide to contribute any kind of warming to the earth, at all. That the theory of reflected heat radiation from the ground to the air, and back to the ground is a pure fiction.
Here’s my confusion: This paper was published 2 years ago. To my knowledge it has not been scientifically refuted by other physicists. Why then, are we still talking about greenhouse gasses, in any capacity, at all?
It was refuted by many when it first came out, basically it’s junk and not worth the time (it’s also ridiculously long).
where all all those guys/gals who posted that Dr J Theon was an hoax ect? Well now you have the correspondence (above) between the parties and it is genuine. You should be ashamed of yourselves this does definitely not help your cause
Two things strike me as obvious:
One;
Everyone knows their boss is always right and never has any personal grudge against someone he/she doesn’t like.
Two;
Established and respected scientists have never, ever, in the history of science, been wrong about a new idea.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go talk to some people about this “round” earth idea, it sure looks flat to me.
To : VG
Why should we be ashamed of ourselves ?
Manfred (23:20:54) : “Your statement also completely misses the effect of ocean currents and the string of many El Nino events during the observation time. The temperature increase due to the El Ninos should be removed from the data so that trend should be even further below Scenario C.”
Manfred, why would you want to remove an essential mechanism that controls global surface temperatures like El Nino or other ocean oscillations from the data? Do you also suggest to remove the effect of the sun and the clouds from the data? They are ALL integral parts of our climate system!!
It is the melting of polar and continental ice that is CAUSING the cooling. The energy required (80 cal/gm) to convert ice at 0 deg. C to water comes from the atmosphere and the sea. The same can be said for the latent heat of vaporization (540cal/gm) and the latent heat of sublimation, the sum of the two or about 620 cal/gm. This cooling will continue until a “tippng point” is reached when melting slows. At that time a rapid rise in temperatue will begin. It is all nothing but an expression of the physical chemistry of water and its various states. I realize this is not a popular position here but I hope I will be allowed to present it.
Reply: This site does not censor opposing comments like many pro-AGW sites do. Differing points of view are always welcomed as long as they are reasonably polite and respectful. ~ dbstealey, mod.
Hansen’s projections did not include ocean currents, the sun or clouds.
He only projected the effect of the greenhouse gases
The climate of course is a sum of everything. If you try to verify or falsify Hansen’s projection, you need to remove the major non-greenhouse gas drivers, such as ocean currents and the warming effect of the much more frequent El Ninos compared with La Ninas during the last 20 years.
Flanagan:
It does not need to be peer reviewed. Gerlich is not presenting a theory. He is simply reviewing whether the greenhouse theories conform with the amply peer-reviewed laws of physics.
That people have a blind belief in something not demonstrable, one calls that faith.
That people stand on irrational belief in face of the experimental, physical, mathematical evidences, one calls that cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). This phenomenon has been recently demonstrated on capucin monkeys (Egan, 2007).
Related, below is what J. Sacherman (1997) said:
American and British history is riddled with examples of valid research and inventions which have been suppressed and derogated by the conventional science community. This has been of great cost to society and to individual scientists. Rather than furthering the pursuit of new scientific frontiers, the structure of British and American scientific institutions leads to conformity and furthers consensus-seeking…
This is the current situation.
It has been attacked in the blogs, see Real Climate, because of course there is an effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ( think deserts at night, how cold they get without the humidity “cover”), but not on the physics grounds it stands on (thermodynamics) so nobody has written up a refuting paper on par with it.
( think deserts at night, how cold they get without the humidity “cover”),
I did a comparison a few years back between Yuma, Az and Shreveport, La. Both have about a summer time population of 100,000 and are along the same latitude lines. The overnight lows where about the same. It was the day time highs that vary. Yuma was, on average, 15 F degrees hotter during the daylight hours. Of course, Yuma has very low humidity, very little cloud cover and almost no precipitation where as Shreveport has high humidity a lot more cloud cover and a higher precipitation rate.
So, would this indicate water vapor as a positive or negative feedback to “heat”? Or I could ask whats the difference in climate condition between Yuma and Shreveport?
Simon Evans
I replied to your post to Smokey re Ernsy Beck as follows;
“I’m afraid your memory is faulty. Becks data is taken from surviving measurements made by hundreds of scientists- several of them nobel winners.”
To which you replied;
“Be assured that I have no real issue with the accuracy of the measurements taken – my scepticism is to do with the representativeness of what was being measured (and, frankly, with the plausibilty of the results in terms of Co2 flux). I’ll try to write some more tomorrow if it’s of interest, but for now it’s late here! :-)”
Just placing a marker here to continue our discussion as so many other comments have been posted and its very easy to lose trackl! I am British too so hopefully might catch up with you this evening.
TonyB
E. M. Smith While I don’t know the particular ‘presenter’ you are talking about, I do know that the guys who make it to TV often have rather good credentials (you know, things like PhD in botany or agronomy). So what are this guys credentials? (Not your ad-hom slur, his actual bio.)
Last year, Morano released a list of 400 individuals who he described as ‘prominent scientists’ who made AGW-sceptical statements during 2007. In fact once the non-sceptics, duplicates, economists, filmmakers, politicians etc were removed there were maybe 30-40 scientists. I let others decide on their ‘prominence’.
The gardener was UK TV presenter and popular novelist Alan Titchmarsh, best known for presenting the weekly ‘Gardener’s World’ on the BBC. Morano included him because he made some remarks in a newspaper article about there being more air pollution back in his childhood days. Titchmarsh is a thoroughly decent and deservedly popular guy, but prominent scientist he surely ain’t.
None of those included were informed or asked for consent, which lead to …
Take me off your list of 400 (Prominent) Scientists that dispute Man-Made Global warming claims. I’ve never made any claims that debunk the “Consensus”.
You quoted a newspaper article that’s main focus was scoring the accuracy of local weathermen. Hardly Scientific…yet I’m guessing some of your other sources pale in comparison in terms of credibility. You also didn’t ask for my permission to use these statements. That’s not a very respectable way of doing “research”.
We have climatic temperatures rising, greenhouse gas concentrations rising, any scientist that ignores this information because of a “lack of proof” is just irresponsible.
from George Waldenberger.
Hope this answers the question.
Joel Shore (11:54:25)
The theory of the magic molecule. Presumably it just sits there radiating back and forth. Gases conform to the same laws as fluids when heated and under pressure from gravity. They expand and having the same mass but more volume percolate upwards.
Although the initial response is feed back, it’s transient in the real world and leads to cooling due to the molecule being replaced by a less active and more receptive molecule, ad infinitum.
E.M.Smith (21:00:34) :
Simon Evans (13:58:59) :
” Leif Svalgaard (10:57:01) that is your opinion, and you are certainly free to have that opinion, wrong-headed as it is.
I think you should present your ‘evidence’ rather than resorting to ad homs”
Simon, I think if you look closely: Leif says that the ‘opinion’ is wrong-headed, not the person. That is, by definition, not an ad hominem since no person is attacked.
I was addressing Bruce Cobb, who’d made some remark about Leif’s ego, so you’ve misunderstood me there! I agree with all that you said regarding Leif’s remarkable contribution.
tmtisfree says:
That makes no sense at all. When a paper claims that an effect that has been studied for over 100 years is fictional and violates a basic law of physics, then it sure as heck has to be peer reviewed. And, by the way, I can tell you as a physicist that the paper is utterly ridiculous.
As noted by Flanagan, Arthur Smith (who was actually a colleague of mine in physics grad school) wrote an excellent refutation of one of their major claims (that there is no sensible way to define what the average temperature of the planet must be in the absence of an IR-absorbing atmosphere). And, their basic claim regarding the greenhouse effect being a violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is so easy to refute that a simple example illustrating where they go wrong could be given to first-year physics students!
In my opinion the real story in this post is summarized in the few words of
the retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, who declared that “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained.
“Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results.
In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists.
This is clearly contrary to how science should be done.
Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.
Yet this exactly what IPCC, Hansen and Gore seem to be doing in urging public policy based on uproven models to Congress and the rest of the world.
Can anyone tell me how there can be a positive feedback in a passive system? There is no extra energy input. Seems like a perpetual motion machine to me.