From Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. Climate Science Weblog
There is a letter to the President published by the Cato Institute that headlines [thanks to ICECAPand Dr. Patrick J. Michaels to alerting us to it];
With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true.
The letter is signed by over 100 scientists.
Climate Science wants to comment on the specific statements of science in the letter which is reproduced below:
“We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now.1,2 After controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather-related events.3 The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior.4 Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.”
Comments by Climate Science
- “Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now.”
This is correct using the global average surface temperature. An effective analysis of this issue has been presented at the weblog http://rankexploits.com/musings/category/climate-sensitivity/. However, using the global average upper ocean heat content changes, the warming in the 1990s and early 2000s ended in 2003, so the more rigourous metric for global warming indicated “no net global warming” for 6 years.
- After controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather-related events.
This is a correct statement which has been extensively discussed and summarized at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/category/climate-change; see also Chapter 2 in Pielke, R.A., Jr. and R.A. Pielke, Sr., 1997: Hurricanes: Their nature and impacts on society.
- The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior.
This is a robust conclusion both on the global scale (e.g. see) and on the regional scale (e.g see and see).
The dismissive response on Real Climate and on Grist to this letter do not provide the objective scientific rebuttal to these science claims. This is unfortunate and is misleading policymakers, but, as we have learned and reported many times on at Climate Science and elsewhere (e.g. see and see), this is the way the IPCC and CCSP community deals with solid science that disagrees with their perspective.
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Tom in Texas (15:38:22) :
So it’s an April fools joke?
Antonio San (10:34:38) : Every time, for sake of discovery, I venture on reading either Monbiot’s column or a Desmogblog type website, every single time, I feel the chill of the “green star”
It’s good to see that Monbiot’s respondents are demolishing him more and more; yet he hasn’t apparently noticed.
DJ (11:55:14) : Many on that list have no qualification or expertise in climate and many have never published a science paper relevant to human induced climate change.
So a brain only works if it has specific indoctrination, no cross discipline study is valid. How may AGW alarmist studies that that torpedo? OK, what are the specific climate qualifications and expertise of Dr. Hansen and Mr. Gore? (Other than Hansen having writting some particularly horrid GIStemp code…)
And what quantity of dead trees are required to make a brain functional? Just wondering how many I have to go cut down to make my poor brain have merit in your eyes…
Perhaps someone here might cull the list to those who have actually taken the time to contribute to the science in recent years.
Oh Dear! Apparently brains expire if not published. Golly. How many peer reviewed scientific papers has Mr. Gore done with his science PhD.? What, he doesn’t have one? Oh deary me…
So exactly what short list of hand picked “peers” is valid by having exactly the “right” degrees and exactly the “right” number of dead trees with exactly the “right peer” approvals in exactly the “right” period of time? And while your at it, exactly when did Ensteins work expire so we can “cull” him from the list of worth scientists? After all, he spent his last days at Princeton making comedy movies… surly that means he must be expunged from the list of the skilled…
This combined sideways ‘ad hom’ wrapped in a slanted appeal to authority of yours is a pretty poor excuse for clarity of thought. Maybe we ought to apply your requirements to you to determine the validity of your opinion? Hmmm?
Whatever SOD’s personal beliefs, and whether he knows it or not, he makes a valid point.
CATO, in retaining and publishing Professor Blick’s signature, diminishes the impact of the letter. It has allowed the alarmists to attack Blick’s creationist writings rather than discuss or debate the message in the letter.
I personally am disappointed in Dr. Michaels for not catching this.
Nice article in today’s UK Times…
‘Chill winds take heat off global warming
LA Notebook: Climate change scepticism is going mainstream’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/chris_ayres/article6011157.ece
solenadon (12:46:14) : engineer is right out, as is […] the computer scientist.
So the entire AGW thesis rests on some lousy temperature data processed by computer into data food product then run into computerized fantasy models, but a computer scientist is not qualified to have an opinion? You actually believe that?
The mind boggles at the capacity for self deception among the AGW tribe.
Tim McHenry (10:58:30) :
Well said. And as for Dr. Blick’s beliefs about things that are nonobservable and nonrepeatable, that falls outside the realm of operational science. I’m sure that this will be a hard concept for BTW to grasp, but etiology does not equal science. The question of origins is forensic, not scientific.
Mike Strong quoted Joe Romm as deriding:
“… the claim that the Arctic ice cap isn’t melting — decades ahead of the models — or that sea levels aren’t rising, and double what they were two decades ago. You need to move beyond the conspiracy and actually cite some peer-reviewed studies — I follow the literature closely and none of them support you.”
–Joseph Romm Senior Fellow Center for American Progress Editor, ClimateProgress.org
1. Regarding the Arctic ice cap, see section 3.2 (pages 38-41), “Sea Ice in the Arctic Ocean,” of Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu’s paper, “Two Natural Components of Recent Climate Change,” here (as a 50-Mb PDF):
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/little_ice_age.php
He writes, on p. 40: “the satellite data show a much steeper decline than all the model results. Since the models take into account the observed amount of CO2 during the observation period, it is interesting to speculate that some processes other than the CO2 greenhouse effect must have been in progress that are not considered or not properly taken into account in GCMs.”
And on p. 38: “The recent rapid retreat of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, particularly in 2007, is partly caused by the inflow of warm North Atlantic (Karcher et al., 2003; Polyakov, 2006) and North Pacific (Shimada and Kamoshida, 2008) waters into the Arctic Ocean and also the effects of winds and currents. Figures 12a and 12b show results of the ocean monitoring effort by an international group led by the International Arctic Research Center. It was shown by Polyakov (2006) that this inflow is a quasi-periodic phenomenon, as shown in Figure 12c. This warm water was melting sea ice from the bottom until 2007, but sea temperature in 2008 was significantly colder than in 2007 (Polyakov, 2008). Thin ice tends to break up easily by stormy water and is then easily forced to flow by winds and currents. This was exactly what happened in the fall of 2007.”
His 2006 reference to Polyakov is to a private communication. Here are his bibliography entries (pp. 51-53) for three Polyakov papers, as well as the Karcher and Shimada entries:
” Karcher, M., R. Gerdes, F. Kauker, and C. Köberle (2003), Arctic warming: Evolution and spreading of the 1990s warm event in the Nordic seas and the Arctic Ocean, J. Geophys. Res., 108, C2, 3034, doi:10.1029/2001JC001265.
Polyakov, I.V., G.V. Alekseev, R.V. Bekryaev, U. Bhatt, R.L. Colony, M.A. Johnson, V.P. Karklin, A.P. Makshtas, D. Walsh, and A.V. Yulin (2002), Observationally based assessment of polar amplification of global warming, Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(18), 1878.
Polyakov, I., et al. (2007), Observational program tracks Arctic Ocean transition to a warmer state, EOS, 88, 398.
Polyakov, I.V., V.A. Alexeev, G.I. Belchansky, I.A. Dmitrenko, V.V. Ivanov, S.A. Kirillov, A.A. Korabley, M. Steele, L.A. Timokhov, and I. Yashiyaev (2008), Arctic Ocean freshwater changes over the past 100 years and their causes, J. Climate, 21, 364.
Shimada, K., and T. Kamoshida (2008), Mechanism on further catastrophic reduction of arctic sea ice: influence of oceanic change, Drastic Change under the Global Warming (ISAR-1 held in Tokyo 4–6 November, 2008).”
2. Sea level rise: Akasofu deals with this in section 2.3, Sea Level (pp. 32-34). He writes:
“A recent study of sea level changes is shown in Figure 10a (Holgate, 2007). During the period of his study, Holgate noted that the rate of sea level rise was about 1.7 mm/year. The sea level change should reflect the expected rise associated with the thermal expansion of seawater (which depends on the depth) and glacier melting during the last half century. Although the data cover only the period after 1907, this coverage is sufficient to find the absence of accelerated sea level increase after 1946. In fact, comparing the slope between 1907–1960 and 1960–2000, there occurred even a slightly smaller gradient (1.4 mm/year) in the latter period. Figure 10b shows a satellite study of sea level changes (Nerem and Choe, 2008; Mitchum and Chambers, 2008). After increasing from 1993, the sea level rise began to decrease after 2004. Pilke (2008) showed that the heat content of the oceans has been decreasing from 2004.
“Figure 10c shows the global sea level from 1800 (the upper diagram) and its rate of change (the lower diagram). It is clear that the sea level began to increase in about 1850 and continued almost linearly to the present, approximately with the same rate as that which is shown in 10a (see also Jevrejeva et al., 2006, 2008), namely 100 years before 1946. The rate of increase/decrease during the 1920–1960 period will be discussed in Section 3; it should be noticed also that the increase during that period was much more noticeable than that after 1975; see Section 3 and Figure 16.”
Here are his bibliographical entries for three of the references cited above (two of them he forgot to list!):
Holgate, S.J. (2007), On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L01602.
Jevrejeva, S., A. Grinsted, J.C. Moore, and S. Holgate (2006), Nonlinear trends and multiyear cycles in sea level records, J. Geophys. Res., 111, C09012, doi:10.1029/2005JC003229.
Jevrejeva, S., J.C. Moore, A. Grinsted, and P.L. Woodworth (2008), Recent global sea level acceleration started over 200 years ago? Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, 08715.doi:10,1029/2008 GL033611.
Here is a link to a recent Watts Up thread, “Despite popular opinion and calls to action, the Maldives are not being overrun by sea level rise”, at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=maldives
Here is a link to a recent (March 28, 2009) article by Christopher Booker in the Telegraph, “Rise of sea levels is ‘the greatest lie ever told'”, at:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html&ei=tbLSSYXBMZGusQOop4XoCQ&sig2=g17TgETsVO03WiOVYooCbA&usg=AFQjCNFTT8eMtKSMEDZuNPQvF4VWZ4mpHQ
Ron de Haan (11:28:50) :
APRIL FOOL!!!
D. King (13:05:14) :
“solenadon (12:46:14) :”
Don’t you mean….Solenodon?
Chuckle! Reminds me of a song… what was it?… “What a difference ad A makes!” something like that… 😉
sod-a person who doesn’t understand what a smooth does has no business snarking around acting smarter than other people:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2641
The fact that you were being so thick and refusing to see where you were wrong shows how deep your thought processes go.
Regarding your claims about the trend it says OVER a decade-since 99 trend isn’t what they mean, so strawman lies dead, the claim still stands. You can do better than that, right?
Peter S (16:29:17) :
‘…yuppie self-loathing. ”
I like it!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/chris_ayres/article6011157.ece
solenadon (12:46:14) :
solenadon,
Is James Hansen a climatologist?
The implication of the Cato letter is basically that “things will be o.k.” When is the last time anyone saw a media piece touting “normal” or “O.K.”? That kind of message has no place in a blizzard of “grab ’em by the lapels” stories such as “Single virgin ejects eight babies into startled physicians lap!” or “We’re all going to burn up and die!”
What is needed to compete with Gore’s and Hansen’s death-grip on the news media is a statement by 100 concerned scientists that “The sun is dying and we’re all going to freeze to death!” Once the media’s imagination is properly aroused, a plathora of stories will burst forth with lives of their own: “California directly in glacier path to Mexico!” “Scientific studies show New York Harbor to be left twenty feet above sea level!” “Prince Charles says we’re at a ‘tipping point’ with only 90-days left to begin burning more coal before all is lost!” “Dr. James Hansen warns windmills are ‘death fans’!”
Re: D. King (11:04:55) :
“Do you actually think China, the world’s biggest contributor of GHGs, or
India, will follow the pied piper of progressivism?”
They wont have to – they will be forced to comply by big brother. From what I hear this administration and others signed up to Kyoto Mk II are pushing to place a “dirty tax” on imports from such countries.
See http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Sarkozy_backs_carbon_tax_on_imports_999.html
and http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE52M70S20090323
This is protectionism pure and simple. In my view it is also stealing from the poor (developing world) to give to the brainwashed rich (countries willing to sign up to Kyoto Mk II). How dare we impose our false doctrines on countries that are only starting to pull themselves out of abject poverty, fueled by Energy, Medicine and Technology.
But no, the UN, IPCC, Al Gore et al. say “repent for your CO2 sins”, take 40 lashes (taxes) for believing in the great satan “natural variability”. And we all say “Baaa” and “yeess master”.
JimB (14:16:46) : Have either of you explained why Hansen won’t release his algorithms for temp adjustments?
In preparation for the inevitable “But the code is published!”: Yes, the code is published. I’ve got it and I’m working through it (though I just had to take a few weeks off to let my brain recover from the gag reflex…)
The GIStemp code is clearly intended to be run by hand. It is not production quality and does not have a scripted, repeatable, controlled execution. At many points key parameters are either passed into the code (and not documented as to what values are used; you are left to hope it is the default) or the comments encourage the user to hand edit the executable code to run the parts they want to run as desired.
Thus the code publication, while a good step, is not adequate to state that the algorithm has been published. For example, ought the reference station used in “the reference station method” be inside 1000 km? or 1200 km? or 10 degrees? Each is used at some point in the code as the default, but is coded so as to be easily overridden during manual execution. (That is, it is a ‘passed parameter’ and there is no controlling script doing the passing so you can make it what you want. Thus changing the output as desired. )
deadwood (16:27:18) :
Maybe you should put the beliefs of alarmists scientists under the microscope.
For example, here’s something James Lovelock has to say :
“…homo sapiens, with his technological inventiveness and his increasingly subtle communications network, has vastly increased Gaias range of perception. She is now through us awake and aware of herself. She has seen the reflection of her fair face through the eyes of astronauts and the television cameras of orbiting spacecraft.”
~Sir James Lovelock, “Gaia: A New Look At Life”
“D. King (14:48:02) :
JimB (14:16:46) :
So instead of playing “lets pick out the nutjob on your side” games, lets talk about true transparency in science.
JimB
Boxer, on the Senate floor, just had her Cap and Trade
amendment voted into law.
They have no interest in transparency Jim!”
My point exactly, but my comment was directed towards the trolls, not the politicians.
JimB
If someone could go to the president with an alternative for funding 1/3 of his budget, I’m sure he’d be much more likely to listen. Until then?…talking to a brick wall.
JimB
If someone would back a plan to revitalize the railroad, modernize a clean-coal tech steam engine, the savings realized from cutting down on imported oil, increased tax revenue from new jobs (you have to transfer the cargo to local transport from rail), the reduced cost of transport reflected in the economy, and if that person had access to the President, there are far better ways to achieve the goals he has than taxing the bejezus out of what will become the American Peasantry.
As always, the consumer will pay, and pay dearly. So will the economy when it comes to this massive Energy Tax. If you think high fuel costs this past summer were bad, wait until this 2-headed monster is unleashed (Cap & Trade).
There are many different ways to recover this Economy. Cap & Trade is akin to mooning a speeding Van. The science of it is in the carnage generated.
Benjamin P:
Rueters has run pieces claiming that it’s $650Billion:
“WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama’s estimate of $646 billion in revenue for the first years of a carbon-capping program to curb climate change is realistic or possibly a little low, policy analysts said on Thursday.”
Some analysts say that”s low, some say it’s high.
JimB
D. King wrote:
“Boxer, on the Senate floor, just had her Cap and Trade
amendment voted into law. “
Napoleon enters Moscow.
(They’ll win and win until they lose.)
Cathy (15:29:41) :
Must watch video with accompanying essay on the symbolic dimming of civilization during Earth Hour:
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6970.html#
LOL at the helicopter filming the lights going out on Christ the Redeemer.
Reply: I’ve flown around that statue in a helicopter tour but with much less grand visions of purpose. ~ charles the moderator
agw has as much chance of being stopped as Rick Waggoner has of getting his job back.
Jesus Christ could come back and say agw is not true and obama would ignore it.
To: Roger Knights (16:41:33) : Thank You! Thank you. I forwarded your citings to Mr. Joe Romm…a person who, I hope, can gain a bit of education with facts, not just mainstream media hype based upon Hansenism and the Book of Goracle. I also hope the next time folks of his ilk and their websites, will tone down the the AGW “facts” and present BOTH sides. RealClimate and ClimateProgress should at least publish the reasonable skeptic comments rather than snipping them out-of-hand, regardless of merit of an argument.
Furthermore, I urge everyone to know the opposition: I am amazed by the underlying tones of RealClimate.org and ClimateProgress.org . They keep saying the “debate is over” (when we all know there wasn’t ever a debate. The alarmists refuse to debate anyway). And I am particularly annoyed when AGW folks say the skeptics (many of us) are using arguments that have been “debunked a long time ago”. I am sorry, science is never debunked, it merely gets more and more exact, and more conclusive after scrutiny of data, observation and review.
We all know the history of scientific “consensus”. Flat earth, junk DNA, pandemics, E=MC2, etc. We are still working on string theory, the benefits of vitamins… and my local forcaster STILL can’t get my San Diego weather correct for more than a day at a time.
Keep the facts coming about Urban Heat Islands, Icecaps recovering, oceans cooling. One day, President Obama will listen and Gore can go back to inventing IPv7.0 for the Internet.
This s Open Letter to President Obama from 100 scientists provides a prudent perspective.
Accommodation promises to be much less expensive than trying to control climate. CO2 was much higher in prehistoric time, causing lush vegetation. Increasing CO2 will benefit feeding the world’s rapidly growing population.
The critical issue facing us in the near future is to provide alternative fuels fast enough to accommodate 10%/year reduction in available oil EXPORTs, caused by Peak Oil combined with rapid domestic growth in oil exporting countries.