Resisting climate hysteria
by Richard S. Lindzen on Quadrant Online
July 26, 2009
A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.
excerpts:
For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. Supporting the notion that man has not been the cause of this unexceptional change in temperature is the fact that there is a distinct signature to greenhouse warming: surface warming should be accompanied by warming in the tropics around an altitude of about 9km that is about 2.5 times greater than at the surface. Measurements show that warming at these levels is only about 3/4 of what is seen at the surface, implying that only about a third of the surface warming is associated with the greenhouse effect, and, quite possibly, not all of even this really small warming is due to man (Lindzen, 2007, Douglass et al, 2007). This further implies that all models predicting significant warming are greatly overestimating warming. This should not be surprising (though inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus, Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community).
…
Climate alarmists respond that some of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past decade. Given that we are in a relatively warm period, this is not surprising, but it says nothing about trends.
Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly implies that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished. However, a really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal (a leading modeler refers to it as essentially guesswork). Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring are almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts of famine for the 1980’s, global cooling in the 1970’s, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean.
…
In view of the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 4 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence, and donations are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true. After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for ‘saving’ the earth. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further. The case of ENRON (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative in this respect.
…
And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.
With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming as was seen being due in significant measure to man, disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.
Read the complete essay with references at Quadrant Online
Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
h/t to Bob Carter
I still haven’t seen any discussion on whether or not anthropogenic GHG warming properties (or solar forcing for that matter) are additive to natural temperature pattern variations or are simply buried in it. There are many things in nature that when combined, are not additive in the strict sense. Is this one of them?
eric (06:13:28) :
Eric, the term I am going to use here is “disingenuous” rather than the one which starts with the same three letters but keeps getting snipped on this site when I try to use it.
Let’s put this in perspective. We would not be having this conversation if the temperatures had not risen since the late 70s. In fact, those of us who were alive and sentient then were pretty sure that the Coming Ice Age Alarmism (much like Club of Rome neo-Malthusian disaster) was over-blown and that it was a good bet that temperatures would rise. So they did, but that hasn’t stopped some researchers from investigating what causes Ice Ages and some alarmists (even here, on occasion) from screaming we have to take action now. In twenty years we will probably have some other argumentative troll insisting that the fight against global cooling started way back in the middle of the last century.
Eric, Dr. Lindzen never stated or even implied that a concern with CO2 and climate was the result of the last few years of warming (ignoring the fact that over the last few years it hasn’t warmed!) rather that the hysteria of people like yourself has been fueled by very minor changes that have been hyped to support predictions of Apocalypse Now. You’ve set up a straw man and valiantly hacked away at it. I call that dis… err, “disingenuous”.
Now that you’ve got my undivided attention, for the moment, I’d like to address your rather naïve theory of politics:
“As a matter of fact, climate change has the opposite characteristics of an issue attractive to politicians.”
Eric, the issues of revenues and social control have always appealed to the State, its agents and various special interest groups. Putting in place mechanisms to control CO2 is the Statists wildest dream. If you have any doubts about the lengths people will go for control, look at North Korea, which has turned every social institution, including the family and religion, into an arm of the State. A bit closer to home, read Michel Foucault, whose intellectual origins are very close to those of the Greens, and get his take on what modern society has already become.
R.E. Phelan
timetochooseagain (08:39:27) : Even in the 1985 paper, Hansen does not prove the climate sensitivity. After he creates “yet to be realized warming” out of whole cloth, he then tries to engender fear in an attempt to influence policy. He should have been fired right there on the spot. The man is all about influencing government policy and could give a damn less about the science.
“The factors that determine climate response times were investigated with simple models and scaling statements. The response times are particularly sensitive to (i) the amount that the climate response is amplified by feedbacks and (ii) the representation of ocean mixing. If equilibrium climate sensitivity is 3°C or greater for a doubling of the carbon dioxide concentration, then most of the expected warming attributable to trace gases added to the atmosphere by man probably has not yet occurred. This yet to be realized warming calls into question a policy of “wait and see” regarding the issue of how to deal with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and other trace gases.”
Pamela Gray (11:09:25) :
I still haven’t seen any discussion on whether or not anthropogenic GHG warming properties (or solar forcing for that matter) are additive to natural temperature pattern variations or are simply buried in it. There are many things in nature that when combined, are not additive in the strict sense. Is this one of them?
No way to really know, since the linearity (if you will) of the climate system is not known. There are many processes involved, and they almost certainly vary in linearity. Over relatively small ranges (a few watts change in total forcing, a few degrees temperature change), most people probably expect roughly additive effects, but in cases where extreme (and very non-linear) changes are suggested (eg. a “tipping point”), very wild responses are usually supposed.
Urederra (06:13:03) :
Try Eppure, si rinfresca.
Jim (12:41:07) : I link because Hansen makes the straight-forward argument that climate response time is closely related to the ocean’s mixing and the sensitivity-this is NOT an endorsement of Hansen’s actual estimates. Frankly, I happen to think that the climate responds rather rapidly to perturbation, implying much lower sensitivity.
For a skeptical take on the same issue which more or less agrees with Hansen about the relation between sensitivity and response time but disagrees about the implications, see:
R.S. Lindzen and C. Giannitsis (1998) On the climatic implications of volcanic cooling. J. Geophys. Res., 103, 5929-5941.
http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/184_Volcano.pdf
timetochooseagain:
I am not arguing for dismissing the data. I am sure scientists will continue to work to better understand both the data and models and to what extent they disagree on this issue and why. That is as it should be. (Unfortunately, however, I think it is rather difficult to come up with ways to remove the tropospheric amplification from the models at multidecadal timescales while keeping it at the monthly-to-yearly timescales where the data definitely shows it occurs.)
However, I do not believe in elevating this data above all other evidence, as you seem to want to do. I also don’t believe in selectively deciding which data set to use when there are two that disagree and there has been no generally-accepted resolution to the issue.
Perhaps you are looking in the mirror when you see strong political bias. After all, your pseudonym itself expresses what I presume are some strongly-held political beliefs. On the other hand, my views are well within the mainstream of scientific thinking on the issue, reflecting those of the IPCC, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the analogous bodies in all the other G8+5 nations, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, pretty much all of the relevant professional organizations of scientists (APS, AMS, AGU, …). Are all of these groups infected with the same political bias?
@Steve Fitzpatrick
Thanks.
From the conviction with which you made the initial post about the 1oC rises I assumed you were citing some article which had investigated the matter. I doubt Google would result in the information I wanted but I could of course search the journals I just thought you knew one already as I good place to start.
You calculation can be simplified as radioactive forcing would increase by ~3.71 watts per square meter which you can put into the Stefan-Boltzman equation and get a 0.983oC increase. I was interested in where the forcing number came from but your right I’ll look it up.
By the way why’d model the temperature increase per watt/sqM as a linear relationship when the real calculation was easier and make the warming less? Not that it makes a lot of difference just thought it odd.
On 24 July 2009 BBC Hard Talk presenter, Stephen Sackur, published a balanced report on the Greenland ice sheet to be found at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8167209.stm. His report stated for example:
“The answer does not seem to be entirely straightforward. ”
and
“The Ilulissat glacier has indeed retreated dramatically in recent years – more than 15km in the last decade alone – but plenty of evidence suggests such rapid change in the ice is not unprecedented.”
and
“So when the more excitable climate campaigners claim that Greenland’s ice sheet – which contains roughly 10% of the world’s fresh water – is “melting” and that catastrophic rises in sea level can be expected within a century, it is advisable to take a deep breath and ponder the complexities of the ice.”
On tonight’s BBC1 News at 10.00 there was a report from Sackur with all the balance removed and nothing but warmist propaganda. Watts Up at the BBC?
Joel Shore (14:05:19) : 1. What is it you think you know about my pseudonym?
2. “On the other hand, my views are well within the mainstream of scientific thinking on the issue” And that a bunch of people agree with you is significant…how?
3. “Are all of these groups infected with the same political bias?” You don’t even seem to get what you said that set me off! Have all those groups advocated for “policy” or “doing something”? If so, well, yes, they are politically biased. Because frankly, that’s advocacy, not science.
Joel-It’s clear to me-and I think many others-that you have little interest in exploring the possibility that [snip] be wrong. And I think it is pretty obvious why (not that it matters). The point is that you aren’t worth talking to if you are so damn inflexible.
Reply: No accusing people of religious behavior directly. This is allowed in the abstract, but it is disrespectful to imply that that someone you are debating is arguing from faith rather than logic. ~ charles the moderator
timetochooseagain (15:51:31) : I would also note that I have never to my knowledge said anything WRT policy other than how outrageous I found it that you were openly exposing you political motivations. You on the other hand actually read bias into my name.
Please explain to me how “I pretty much agree with it but I would say that, while there is a distribution of urgencies depending on the climate sensitivity, I would say that distribution is centered around doing about what the consensus of the scientific community seems to believe is necessary (as opposed to the extremes of what Hansen seems to think is necessary…i.e., getting back down to 350ppm…and what those who essentially don’t believe it is a problem think is necessary, i.e., having no restrictions.) This middle course of action is also the one that will allow us to either ratchet up or ratchet down our emissions cutbacks as future science gives us more certainty.” Is not a political, rather than scientific, statement (other than the fact that you apparently think that scientists, when taken “as a whole” (provided they agree with you of course!) should make the political decisions-which is the most un-democratic thing I’ve ever heard)?
James (14:06:59) :
Not sure what you mean by radioactive forcing. A more exact calculation for sensitivity of the temperature of a radiating blackbody to change in applied energy is (assuming I hit the right keys on my calculator):
dT/dE = (4.4092X10^6)/T^3
Where T is the blackbody tremperature in Kelvins, and E is the energy being radiated in watts per square meter. For a blackbody of 255K, this works out to 0.2659 degree per watt/M^2, or 0.986 degree for a doubling of CO2. I don’t know of any publications about this…. maybe from back in the days of Stefan.
James (14:06:59) :
Just to be clear: As far as I am aware the “about one degree per doubling of CO2” came from this simple blackbody calculation, rather than some more detailed analysis. If you find a more sophisticated analysis that reached the same value by some other means, then please let me know.
timetochooseagain says:
Well, here are some of the various statements:
Academies of the G8+5 countries: http://royalsociety.org/downloaddoc.asp?id=5450
AAAS: http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0218am_statement.shtml
APS: http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm
You tell me if you think they cross over the line in your view. And, on the other side, what about statements by “skeptical scientists” whether they are speaking out to the Canadian government, the U.S. Congress, or writing editorials in the Wall Street Journal?
As for scientific vs political statements, sure, any statement that advocates for certain policies technically has some political component to it. I mean, technically speaking, a scientist advocating, say, a policy to intercept a huge asteroid that would likely hit the earth and cause cataclysmic destruction would be mixing in some values along with science. If he wanted to stick only to science, he would just describe the consequences of such an impact and describe the possible technologies that could be used to avert it just in case the value judgement is made that this is a good thing to do. However, I don’t think that people would think it too presumptuous of the scientist if he did mix in the value that he thought cataclysmic destruction was a bad thing.
So, are you saying that scientists should never be allowed to make such statements? Do you find Richard Lindzen’s pieces to be completely free of all value judgements or political statements?
And no, I don’t think scientists should make the policy decisions. I think that such decisions should be made through a democratic process. However, I think scientists should inform the debate on the policy decisions. And, occasionally this may go beyond speaking purely of the scientific issues. In fact, I have no trouble with Richard Lindzen expressing some of his policy views even though I don’t agree with them. Rather, where I get testy is when I think he is distorting the science. (And, that I think is the real problem…when scientists let their own personal values distort their view or explanation of the science. And, I don’t think this is completely unavoidable, i.e., it is not possible for any human to be completely “objective”. But, I think it is still important to strive to be as objective as one can about the science.)
timetochooseagain: Maybe your objection to my statement “I would say that distribution is centered around doing about what the consensus of the scientific community seems to believe is necessary…” is that you are wondering “necessary for what”? If that is the problem, I would say that I mean how much cutback in greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (which is a goal that nearly all nations signed on to in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to in Rio in 1992, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Change_Convention ). Of course, admittedly, that phrase is itself is vague enough that it has both scientist and value-laden components.
Joel Shore (14:05:19) :”Perhaps you are looking in the mirror when you see strong political bias. After all, your pseudonym itself expresses what I presume are some strongly-held political beliefs. On the other hand, my views are well within the mainstream of scientific thinking on the issue, reflecting those of the IPCC, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the analogous bodies in all the other G8+5 nations, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, pretty much all of the relevant professional organizations of scientists (APS, AMS, AGU, …). Are all of these groups infected with the same political bias?”
1. So you really don’t believe a political organization can’t influence the people on its payroll?
2. Since when did Mother Nature operate from consensus?
Joel Shore (17:20:20) :
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
I agree that Lindzen certainly mixes some politics with his science; I think much less than James Hansen, but comparable to the folks over at Real Climate.
Were I disagree with you is that Lindzen is “distoring the science”. I have read many of his published papers and listened to several of his oral presentations; I have seen no evidence of willful distortion or deceit. His arguments (whether you agree with him or not) are reasoned and consistent. That is not to say that he never made a misstatement due to innocent mistake or poor choice of words (for that matter, I know nobody who has not done these things), but to accuse him of willful misrepresentation seems to me a bit much.
Joel Shore (18:58:46) :
(Asking again… for the 2nd time)
Hi Joel,
With all respect, what events, if they were to occur, would you consider to be clear evidence of refutation of the following notions.
[1] That man made emissions of CO2 are causing global warming, and
[2] That warming caused by man made emissions of CO2 will be catastrophic.
I.e. what are the falsification criteria?
Thanks G.
Graeme Rodaughan (18:32:43) :
I think you are asking the wrong questions. Your definition of warming that is “catastrophic” is likely very far from Joel Shore’s definition.
Like most divisive political issues, debates on AGW mix a little bit of fact with a whole lot of personal values. People who want to move aggressively to curb CO2 emissions uniformly believe they are adopting the morally correct position, just like those who oppose any aggressive actions. For example, if you knew for sure that adopting draconian reductions in CO2 emissions could reduce global warming by 0.3 C over 60 years, but the resulting decline in economic growth would leave a billion people very poor over the next two generations, would it be best to adopt these CO2 reductions, or best to concentrate on economic development and reducing poverty and all the ills that come with it? Given this kind of choice, I think people come to honestly different conclusions, not based on the facts of the situation, but based on their personal values and morals.
I doubt that any discussion of the facts of AGW will change anyone’s mind. If you want to see this clearly, read a comment thread or two at Real Climate (don’t leave a comment, or you will be either ‘snipped’ or likely told 10 times you are a troll and an idiot). But if you just read the comments, you will see a huge amount of very sincere moral support for what Real Climate does. There is little real discussion of technical issues, and dissent is most unwelcome. Any scientist who disagrees with the GCM’s (Lindzen, Pielke Sr. or Jr., or any other) is routinely accused in the comment thread of being morally corrupt, a liar, or worse, and any published data that seems contrary to the GCM’s is shouted down as irrelevant, an outright misrepresentation, or simply wrong. The focus of the discussion at Real Climate is moral/political/social; all human influence on Earth’s climate (no matter the size) is morally bad.
I am close to the rather sad conclusion that discussion of AGW is pointless.
Steve Fitzpatrick,
“There have been a number or recent publications saying essentially that with a less than perfectly known lag profile (that is, a less than perfectly known profile of lags with different temporal scales), you need a huge amount of data (up to hundreds of years!) to extract accurate information about climate sensitivity, and such data does not exist. I noted that these objections to FDT analysis were published very quickly after a couple of publications based on FDT concluded that the existing data suggest a relatively low climate sensitivity, in conflict with GCM’s. These objections to FDT all rely upon the behavior of GCM’s to cast doubt on the results of analyses of real data; as a scientist, I find this most distressing, since they seem to me to have the process upside down.”
I was not aware of this literature. With the aid of google I have located a recent paper on this subject.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/813/2009/acp-9-813-2009.pdf
The author does say the same thing in his abstract, but adds two important statements to what you said.
2) The FDT says that for a shorter time series, the climate sensitivity will be underestimated.
3)The addition of a second resevoir weakly coupled to the first aggravates the tendency to underestimate climate sensitivity
This would apply to the ocean, where the deep ocean which has a large heat capacity is weakly coupled to the upper layer which absorbs the heat in from the sun in a relatively short time frame. This explains the error that Schwartz 2007 made in his underestimate of climate sensitivity as 0.3K/W/M2 versus the more generally used estimate of 0.75K/W/M2.
This paper sheds a lot of light on this subject and is worth a careful read.
Joel-we have irreconcilably different views about the role of science in society. Whatever.
timetochooseagain (20:27:51) : “Joel-we have irreconcilably different views about the role of science in society. Whatever.”
Joel has a degree in Physics, yet appeals to authority (IPCC, etc.). He is not here to discuss science. He is here to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Joe Shore:
The points I wanted to make were twofold:
1. The published attacks on FDT analyses all rely on the assumed correctness of the GCM’s. That is, they use the model (set up with assumed characteristics of complex ocean lags and high climate sensitivity), calculate a long “simulated climate history”, and then apply FDT. The FDT “results” on their simulated data do indeed show what you note, but the credibility of the whole exercise depends on assuming the accuracy of the climate models. An example of circular logic if there ever was one.
2. Whenever ANY data analysis is published which appears to conflict with the results of GCM’s, the reaction of researchers involved with CGM’s is swift and consistent: the results are quickly described as “not consistent with accepted climate theory” (which I assume means GCM’s) and discounted as “probably incorrect”. In cases where the data is too credible to ignore, within a couple of months one or two modelers, along with one or two researchers who work with them, publishes a paper based on “simulated” GCM model outputs, pointing out that a) the real data is either too noisy or unreliable to yield the conclusions drawn by the original author, and b) given the enormous variation in the data, in the model runs, and between models, it is not possible to statistically prove that the models are not correct at 95% confidence. Where possible, they throw in some odd alternative analysis of the real data (wholly unsubstantiated, except by model simulations) which makes the models look right. Once again, the entire publication is an exercise in circular logic… the models are right because the models are right. I have seen the same sequence of events several times in the last few years alone; if you look, you will see this pattern too.
The modeler’s reactions are more like you would expect if someone was attacking thermodynamics instead of a complex computer model that is for certain a less than perfect representation of the Earth’s climate.
Based on my work in science over 35 years, I find this whole process bizarre. Data should guide theoretical constructs like models, not the other way around. You can’t uncritically accept some data because it agrees with your construct (like extremely uncertain estimates of aerosols drastically reducing net forcing) and reject what does not. Poor scientist in every field fight strenuously against conflicting data (and sadly, I have seen this many times), good ones accept it and try to understand it. What goes on with GCM’s seems to me quite crazy, and increases the chance that the GCM’s are not being critically evaluated and so are grossly in error.
Joel Shore:
One final point before I must do some real work: If you discount the very uncertain (according to the IPCC) aerosol effects that are used in GCM’s to substantially reduce net forcing, then the mid-1800’s to present temperature history is predicted almost perfectly by the historical record of greenhouse gas concentrations, converted to expected (IPCC again) radiative forcing, multiplied by Swartz’s “discredited” constant of ~0.3 C/watt/M^2.
Does this not give you even a bit of doubt about the GCM’s? If not, then I really do not understand how you evaluate data.
Steve,
There are people on both sides of the AGW question who say stupid stuff.
They may believe the stuff they say, but if I were running a web site that tried to enforce high standards in the discussion, I wouldn’t allow people to repeatedly rant and say stupid stuff, like human emissions are not responsible for CO2 etc..
Looking at RealClimate’s comment sections, I do see some skeptics post. They are addressing the issues with some science behind them.
Conspiracy theories and other stuff are kept off. I find that it does elevate the discussion.
The topical posts by scientists are informative in my opinion. I am glad that they take the time to explain their research to the general public. A large number of different scientists are invited to post.
Most of the posts here are by amateurs, which are not as valuable in my opinion.