Man to walk 350 miles to highlight climate change – no mention of how he's getting there and back

posted by chuckwiese on the Oregonlive.com comments section to the story
September 18, 2009, 6:08PM
Phil Carver: I listened to the 58 minute piece of work you call science, put on by Professor Naomi Oreskes.
There is no science in her lecture. The only thing she did was use her time to smear and discredit the respectable physicists, Fred Singer and the late Fredeick Seitz for their work to discredit the AGW movements claim the science about AGW is settled.
Instead of using science to make her point, she claimed without offering any proof of AGW that the only reason Seitz and Singer don’t believe in AGW is political and tied to special interest groups such as the tobacco lobby.
Miss Oreskes offers such a convoluted opinion about two respectable scientist without being one or trained in climate expertise herself. Miss Oreskes is a professor of history and not a very good one. As someone who is not, I know the history of radiation physics better than her, or she deliberately left out some important discoveries and conclusions along the way. Between Tyndall, Arhenius and the 1970’s there were two respectable scientists she forgot to mention who’s opinions about CO2 are contrary to her claimed “consensus” ( which doesn’t exist ) that supports the AGW hypothesis. They are Alfred Schack and William Elsasser. Both were physicists and Elsasser was from Harvard. Schack was the first guy to come along and measure the specific absorbing wavelengths of IR from CO2 and determined they are sufficiently long so that CO2 acts more as a facilitator of transporting thermal energy out of the troposphere rather than act as creating a true greenhouse effect to the earths surface. He also discovered the higher energy absorption bands near 4 microns which become active in high pressure combustion chambers. William Elsasser was the first physicist using quantum mechanics born out of the Planck/Einstein era to actually compute CO2’s absorption spectra in the troposphere at the 15 micron wavelength and create a working model of it coupled to water vapor that can be used by meteorologists. Elsasser’s radiation model is still considered the “gold standard” of other models used in radiation calculations and was republished in “Atmospheric Radiation” by Goody and Yung less than ten years ago. But unlike what Oreskes claims is “consensus science” concerning Co2, Elsasser’s work never contended CO2 could modify the earth’s radiation balance and alter climate. This position was taught at all major Universities during the 70’s. I know. I was at Oregon State University and studied Elsasser’s work. Back then, if anyone would have asserted that CO2 can modify the earths radiative balance and cause climate change, they would not have passed any courses in atmospheric science. This opinion contradicts the founding work. Since then nothing has changed except the advent of computer climate models which supplanted the founding work with unprovable construct that has already failed in many respects.
For it was this subject, along with claims that side band absorption from CO2 is significant to the climate system that concerns any skeptic. This is what concerned Seitz and Singer. There has been no proof offered that this is important to the earth’s climate system to date, and no measurements of the claimed radiative forcing. There has been provable failure of climate modeling to emulate this signal in the tropics, which would be a red flag to any respectable scientist. Oreskes doesn’t even mention this in support of asserting AGW is a true and scientifically proven argument which makes her lecture scientifically frivolous.
Oreskes attacked Seitz and Singer as being dishonest and outdated charlottans who’s recent work was only to keep the pot stirred, lie and create doubt about AGW. But, she conveniently left out the despicable traits of some of the people she reveres as true and honest scientists. One such person was professor Justin Lancaster who had some sort of political tie to the Clinton White House when Gore was in power as our VP. Gore’s new book back in the early 90’s “Earth In The Balance” was released at about the same time an artice was published that contradicted his beliefs about AGW from the late respectable Geophysicist, Roger Revelle. Singer and Revelle knew each other well and were friends through their careers. But Gore didn’t like Revelle’s contradictory article to his newly published book, and misused his political power in the White House to pressure Lancaster to get Singer to retract the article after Revell’s untimely death, since both Singer and Revelle worked on the article together before it was published. Singer, being a respectable and honest guy refused to put words in a dead mans mouth he knew were never intended and said, which led to professor Lancaster making untruthful and defamatory statements about Singer, claiming he put Revelle up to the task of publishing his article and then changed his opinions on it after his death and before it was published, taking advantage of what Lancaster referred was a non functional and senile Roger Revelle, which was all a lie.
Professor Lancaster was sued by Singer for defamation and slander and lost. He was forced into making a retraction to his vicious comments about Singer. I have a copy of this retraction by Lancaster and I will reproduce it for anyone interested in it.
Where was Oreske’s discussion about this since she spent all of her time on talking about academic dishonesty of skeptics and called Seitz and Singer just that?
This is far too typical of people like you. You can’t defend your preposterous statements about CO2 and climate when attacked on the merits of science, so you piss in the wind dumping on credible scientists with whom you disagree with, just like Gore and Lancaster did with Singer, and all of the other skeptics you and Oreskes claim don’t exist. And then, she, like you dismisses the opinion of a meteorologist and the likes as a “nobody”, not worth paying attention to.
If you and Oreskes are concerned about dishonesty, I suggest you start addressing it by first looking in the mirror. This is pathetic and transparent.
And by the way, Oreskes is wrong when she claimed scientists have concluded the absorption bands of CO2 and water vapor are completely separate wih no overlap. The HITRAN and other spectra used in radiation models clearly have the bands overlapping at several wavenumbers that reduce the effective absorption of CO2 in the presence of water vapor by 30%.
Her temperature chart that claims unprecedented warming of the arctic is also bogus and misleading. She used the data base of comparison for 2001 thru 2005 from the last cooling trend between 1951 and 1980. The trends are entirely different depending on the average sets used. Have her try using a 100 year mean. The arctic would not show near the warming then as the PDO shift to warm phase in 1977 was unprecedented and coupled near the peak of the Grand Solar maximum of 1960. This is more academic dishonesty to promote the falsely claimed projection skill of climate models.
Chuck Wiese
Meteorologist
PHIL CARVER WROTE:
“If you will actually watch the video of the Naomi Oreskes’ lecture at
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=13459
you will see that the U.S. National Academies of Science through both Republican and Democratic administrations fully investigated and supported the AGW theory multiple times since 1979, including during the administrations of Reagan, GHW Bush and GW Bush. This is available by examining the NAS web site. What possible reason would there be for the NAS and the GW Bush administration to engage in a vast conspiracy to suppress anti-AGW science? The NAS is not just climate scientists.
The AWG denier claims fail the test of the scientific method. They do not propose consistent logical explanations that can make falsifiable predictions. Many of the people and institutions that are AWG deniers also denied the acid rain theory, the stratospheric ozone depletion theory, and the connections between pollution and smoking and disease. “