Reprinted here by request from Harold Ambler – Anthony
What follows is an open letter to the Salon writer Peter Dizikes, who recently published an article about a new book by NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt on climate change.
The water level of Lake Powell, like that of all reservoirs in the American West, has fluctuated since the day it was dammed.
Dear Mr. Dizikes:
I recently saw your overview of Gavin Schmidt’s new book as well as your interview with him on Salon.
I was surprised to see that you consider the effects of manmade global warming to be “oddly invisible.” Having studied the subject for a couple of years now, while performing my own research, it has been my observation that newspapers, magazines, and television news sources show images of supposed manmade climate change on a daily basis. Such images include: floods, polar bears, glacial calving, etc. If anything, images of global warming might be said to saturate western media.
As with so many other products generated by the AGW industry, Schmidt’s book Climate Change: Picturing the Science is part of an ongoing effort to frighten the credulous. Its messages include: weather will kill you, our moment on Earth is unique, climate did not used to change.
Had you wanted to fulfill the responsibilities of an objective and hard-hitting journalist, you might have asked Schmidt about the image of Lake Powell on his book’s cover book. Now, of course, we are all told never to judge a book by its cover – but this is a visual book that demands to be judged on visual terms. There are a lot of people, unfortunately, who don’t know enough about the facts to perform this kind of analysis themselves. Failing to do so for them is a pity.
Were you aware, may I ask, of the controversial nature of the damming of the Colorado River that led to Lake Powell? Environmentalists were and are appalled by this particular dam. It has changed an important piece of the American natural landscape. But, like all manmade dams on Earth, it has changing water levels. Dammed lakes in the American west are particularly prone to fluctuating water levels, within single years, year to year, and on the decadal level. Water use varies as well, although it can be counted on to slowly increase. Using an image of lowered water level on Lake Powell, which is a reservoir, sitting in a desert, to indicate anything about climate change is perverse. I would even go to far as to call it anti-science.
The assumption that industrial production of co2 has altered precipitation patterns is exactly that, an assumption. Further, what you are going to find, in the next decade, is that global temperatures are going to remain flat (as they have since 1998) and/or start to decline. What you are also going to find is that science writers in the American media establishment are going to peel off, one by one, from the AGW heterodoxy.
Group-think has affected many societies negatively, and it has not disappeared during our own time. The fact that neither Mr. Schmidt’s editor, nor his publisher, nor you, nor the photographer, nor Mr. Schmidt himself would stop to reflect on the oddity of this cover is enough to give one pause.
Sincerely yours,
Harold Ambler
I don’t know if the book ever explicitly says that “climate didn’t used to change”, but the title “Climate Change” itself implies that change in climate is new and noteworthy.
DJ (14:32:41) :
If I was Gavin I would have put a dead tree on the cover – http://www.pnas.org/content/106/17/7063.full
The most interesting part of this link is the bibliography. It’s amazing what one can do with all the doomsday papers of the last several years.
-DJ
If one can’t evaluate an argument or weigh evidence on one’s own, that is, if one is incapable of critical thinking, then I can see how looking for letters behind a name saves one a lot of pointless effort.
DJ,
Do you regard Prof. Richard Lindzen as lacking “any evidence of expertise”?
When you’ve answered that question, I have the next name ready, so let’s get it on.
Also, what particular level of “expertise” would you assign to your HE-RO, Al Gore?
Go on Freddy, tell us what it said on p105-106 of Gavin’s book. I’m so excited I can’t bear to wait for the book to arrive from Amazon.
I’m relatively new to all this scepticism stuff, and I actually started out on Realclimate looking for an intro to climate change science. I then started to read the blogs and was particularly struck by Dr Schmidt’s comments. Now I can understand (to an extent) his attitude to those who expressed sceptical views, but I found unforgivable his impatience with contributors who had a simplistic view of climate science or who simply misunderstood topcs.
I have a question for any meteorological professionals who may actually know Dr Schmidt – is he really as unpleasant and arrogant as he comes across on his blog, or is he just being aggressively defensive?
Free gift for the first one hundred people to buy Gavin’s Picture Book: click
I conduct my own little study – I live on a canal connected to the Gulf of Mexico.
See http://www.sandysays1.wordpress.com
Smokey (12:28:38) :
Free gift for the first one hundred people to buy Gavin’s Picture Book.
Does it come with a complete assortment of “cool” blues, or only “hot” red?
George E. Smith (11:19:06) :
I have been taking SA for something like 40 years; but I am likely to stop any time soon, because in recent years, SA editors have fully intoxicated themselves on the looney left coolade; and the Mag has tended to become more of a political rag, than a scientific mag.
I’ve recently allowed my subscription to Skeptical Inquirer to lapse for much the same reason. Funny how a skeptical rag could become so un-skeptical.
Ivan says:
Yeah…I would say he was more in a coordinating editor role than the author of the book, although I think there is at least one other essay that he was a co-author on that you missed.
I looked at the book in Barnes & Noble and actually found it to be quite good. For example, Tim Hall’s essay on the forcings is very good. And, the introduction by Gavin makes cogently some of the same points about how science actually works as I have constantly been making here.
Am I the only one that finds it interesting that although all the GCMs that provide the basis for the AGW hypothesis, require that rising temps from rising CO2 generate an increase in atmospheric water vapor and clouds to justify their predictions, the warmists seem very eager to leap on any random occurrence of drought as validation of their theory, and, aside from sea level rise and melting icecaps, drought is the propaganda image of choice for projecting fearful consequences of CO2. I realize that elevated cloud cover won’t eliminate, or even necessarily reduce the occurrence of droughts, but to suggest that it will cause droughts to increase seems awfully counterintuitive to me.
I first started reading Scientific American in the early 1960s. (I think it was an issue about how lasers worked.) Anyway around 2000, after 40 years, I quit my subscription as the magazine took on a lefty political agenda which can never be a part of scientific search for truth. I look forward to the day when the AGW crowd join the flat earthers and others in chapters on discredited movements in history of science books. (In 50 or 100 years from now, will Scientific American print a blurb about AGW in their 50 or 100 years ago column? Will the magazine even be around then?)
REPLY: Your experience parallels mine, I don’t bother with SciAm anymore either. – Anthony
Funny how they never show lush vegitation as a result of global warming.
Joel Shore:
…the introduction by Gavin makes cogently some of the same points about how science actually works as I have constantly been making here.
Please do explain “how science actually works”. I think I may have missed that lecture, and perhaps others here as well. We are your willing pupils. Thanks.
A picture is not an argument. Which is why the hockey team uses emotion and not reason. A well written response by Mr. Ambler.
Dave Wendt (19:49:18) : said:
Am I the only one that finds it interesting that although all the GCMs that provide the basis for the AGW hypothesis, require that rising temps from rising CO2 generate an increase in atmospheric water vapor and clouds to justify their predictions, the warmists seem very eager to leap on any random occurrence of drought as validation of their theory, and, aside from sea level rise and melting icecaps, drought is the propaganda image of choice for projecting fearful consequences of CO2. I realize that elevated cloud cover won’t eliminate, or even necessarily reduce the occurrence of droughts, but to suggest that it will cause droughts to increase seems awfully counterintuitive to me.
……
It’s my impression that the GCM’s are supposed to provide validation of the ‘Science’ of AGW, not the basis. It’s just that they haven’t yet been successfully ‘tuned’ to capture and redirect all atmospheric phenomena to point towards disaster. The modelers are working diligently on this, but it seems to get quite complicated. Reverse- engineering your own emotionally originated hypothesis and coming up with facts and physics to explain it takes a lot of effort, especially if non-believers are chuckling or jeering over your shoulder.
Astrologers have been doing it for centuries and have produced some lovely charts with circles and arcs and pretty colors. The image of the steer skull in the desert is a proven classic; why wouldn’t they want to claim it as their own?
Joel Shore,
I look forward to your first cogent point on science.
Cheers,
Geckko,
You asked is this jumping the shark?
You pegged the question.
Regards,
Dave Wendt:
First of all, while more water vapor is a robust prediction of the models, I am not sure more cloud cover is. One might imagine as a first approximation that because the increase in water vapor is supposed to be such that relative humidity remains approximately constant, cloud cover might too. In fact, I think many of the models do predict some increase in high cloud cover; I think there is considerable variation in what they predict for low clouds.
Second of all, I believe that the prediction of drought is based on two things: One is shifts in the weather patterns. And, a second is that the greater warmth will lead to more rapid drying out of soils and such. Also, it may be that rainfall when it occurs is expected to be heavier but that it is expected to be more variable in occurrence.
Bruce Cobb says:
Well, Gavin’s point and mine in a nutshell is that any scientific theory will have at any given time several areas where there are puzzles…i.e., some data that doesn’t seem to agree with the theory and so forth. To say that the theory is disproven because of this is silly. What it means is that one has to look more carefully at the data and the theory and try to understand what is going on.
Bruce,
It is really so so simple, when the data and the theory don’t really fit it means it’s time to look more carefully at the data and the theory and try to understand what is going on. In the “old school” science, the theory was discarded if it did not fit the data, however in climate “science” data is alive! It is vital. In this new age of computers, computer modeling and data homogenization and workovers, the data has become a product. This product must fit the theory or careers are at risk. The really neat thing is that you could write a program today and it will continue to improve all the data every time new data is loaded in. Nothing could be simpler.
I think that EM Smith compared it to a food product. Today, instead of having a ham and cheese sandwich, the better choice is spam and velveeta. It tastes the same every time and it is so so yummy.
So Bruce man get with the program.
Mike
PS Also in chat rooms you can be any age you wish and also slim and good looking. Computers are really grand.
Joel,
In your answer to David above, I couldn’t help noticing that your answer was a little equivocal.
1st sentence- Not sure
2nd sentence- Might imagine, might
3rd sentence- I think, I think
4th sentence- I believe
5th and final sentence- It may be
Is that the new Scientists Creed?
Mike
Mike Bryant:
Mike,
There is nothing new and unique about this. Have you ever wondered why if the problems with AGW are so apparent to you, they are not to the National Academy of Sciences and the analogous societies in the other G8+5 nations, the AAAS, the councils of the AGU, the APS, the AMS, etc., etc.? Might it in fact be that they understand the scientific process better than you?!?
Oh, never mind, this couldn’t possibly be! It must be that they are all either deluded or part of a conspiracy!
Mike,
As for my “equivocal” statements, that is because I actually try to state things cautiously and carefully and not to say things with absolutely certainty that I don’t know for certain. That approach might not be so popular here but I do think it is the wisest one to take.