From Globalwarming.org
Yesterday the Cooler Heads Coalition hosted Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Video of Dr. Lindzen’s presentation, “Deconstructing Global Warming,” will be available shortly, but his power point presentation is online now. (see below)
His presentation is both technical and entertaining at the same time.It is well worth your time to read.
Here is the Dr. Lindzen’s preface:
Why do we need to deconstruct global warming? Simply because it has been an issue that has been routinely treated with misinformation and sophistry abetted by constant repetition, institutional endorsements, and widespread ignorance even (perhaps especially) among the educated. Because of the increasingly dangerous and expensive approaches being promoted to deal with this alleged problem, it is, I think, important to understand what is being said as well as to understand how climate actually works.
I will begin with a few items that illustrate how this issue has been manipulated, and how, to a great extent, global warming has been merely a device for implementing broader agendas. I will then continue with an emphasis on the science.
From the 1970’s, there was a general feeling that ‘climate change’ would be an excellent vehicle for a variety of agendas. People openly espousing this included Bert Bolin, who was an adviser to the Swedish prime minister, and later the first head of the IPCC.
Once the global issue emerged on the public scene, two cooperating institutions were formed in the 1990’s with interlocking leadership: The Tyndall Centre for Climate Studies at the University of East Anglia, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The latter is headed by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and the former by Michael Hulme. These institutions epitomize the exploitation of the climate issue. Their members constitute numerous participants in the IPCC.
Recently, Hulme came out with an interesting book.
Read Dr. Lindzen’s entire presentation here (PDF)
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Indiana Bones:The only problem with MIT’s backing alternative energy research and development is its unfortunate link to global warming. We need to develop non-fossil sources of energy regardless of climate. MIT has been forced to back the failed AGW campaign in exchange for government/industry favor.
You make it sound like a small thing to tell outright lies (what MIT is doing). Do you and Susan Hockfield perhaps share the same ethics…which is that honesty is secondary to getting the funding necessary for a good cause. The end justifies the means…we need a new source of energy to replace fossil fuels so it is justified to fabricate and propagate alarmist nonsense in order to scare people away from fossil fuels, increase taxes on industry, drive up the price of food (ethanol debacle) and seek billions in funding for pet research projects (money that comes from other perhaps more noble scientific or public policy pursuits – like health, welfare…)
George Smith — Your theory suffers from two flaws. The first is the assumption that an increase in total evaporation must lead to an increase in cloud cover. This is not necessarily true. Possible, but not necessarily. For example, the increase in temperature, and the increase in evaporation, is partly due to the increase in the saturation vapor pressure of water in the warmer atmosphere. Loosely translated, it means the air can hold more water *without condensation*. It does not necessarily translate that the increase in water vapor will result in more clouds. In fact, it could result in less.
In addition, your assumption that more clouds results in a negative feedback is also suspect. It is believed that more low clouds will result in an increase in albedo, how ever an increase in high clouds is expected to result in a positive feedback, where there will be a net greenhouse effect. High clouds are to be expected over low clouds, because of the change in lapse rate in a warmer atmosphere… although Lindzen argues that low coulds will form at the tropics, and so provide a desired negative feedback.
Basically, clouds generally form at the altitude where temperatures have dropped to the point where water vapor can condense. That’s why on a normal afternoon you can look up and all of the clouds seem to be floating at the same altitude. Moist air warms, rises to the altitude where the temperature is low enough for condensation, and clouds form at that altitude. A higher temperature raises this altitude. It’s not entirely that simple, but that’s my point…
Using basic common sense *to a point*, but only to a point, is fallacious. It’s much more complicated than that. And the people who are being paid to do it (whether you think they should be paid or not) are putting a lot of time and thought into this.
Snowing here today (somewhere in the Pacific Northwest) where it just about never snows until mid December.
I guess this is what an “outlier” and an “anomaly” looks like. 😉
Jeremy (13:54:37) :
Indiana Bones:The only problem with MIT’s backing alternative energy research and development is its unfortunate link to global warming. We need to develop non-fossil sources of energy regardless of climate. MIT has been forced to back the failed AGW campaign in exchange for government/industry favor.
You make it sound like a small thing to tell outright lies (what MIT is doing). Do you and Susan Hockfield perhaps share the same ethics…which is that honesty is secondary to getting the funding necessary for a good cause.
I made no comment re: honesty. If you are “forced to back a failed AGW campaign,” it’s sorta like backing the local despot. You do so to stay alive and hope the despot meets an imminent end. We are all aware of the poor ethical behavior of the AGW community. Implicit in my comment is the idea that such a failure is caused by problems with ethics.
The need for domestic energy independence remains.
ThinkingBeing (15:30:23)
“Lindzen argues that low coulds will form at the tropics, and so provide a desired negative feedback.”
Let us be precise. Lindzen is arguing that could be the mechanism to explain why his empirical data show negative feedback. But, regardless of whether that is the correct mechanism or not, his data show a negative feedback.
Bart — That is still be evaluated (that his data show a negative feedback). In particular, he relies heavily on the concept that the system has already reached equilibrium, when his measured time scales for SST increases are in mere months. This is true in an insensitive climate, as he argues, but there is a lot of evidence that the climate is not so insensitive, and so the crux of the paper has a major issue. I personally read both his recent paper, and the 1994 paper on which it heavily relies, and found a lot of holes in his logic. At the same time, I have seen a number of references to the fact that the data he used still doesn’t seem to jibe with what’s been published elsewhere.
That being said, yes, you are right, Lindzen doesn’t give a mechanism, just an argument against AGW, and I have a big problem with that. It’s not how science should work. Coming up with a hypothesis is part of the process. The hypothesis of “I don’t want AGW to be true and I’m going to disprove it” is rather lame.
Not being a climatologist, I will wait to hear what the experts have to say before going too far in any direction, but my own gut reactions are:
(1) Such a convenient safety net in a climate system that clearly is not so stable as he implies would be just too good to be true (“go ahead and be careless, humanity, God has everything covered”).
(2) The lack of an explanation for the observed behavior is a big hole. Science isn’t about proving that the sun comes up every day, it’s about understanding how and why the sun comes up every day.
(3) The tone and content of the presentation referenced here is, too me, extremely unprofessional and makes his own work suspect. In particular, there are any number of obvious fallacies in the arguments he presents. If he only put forth good, valid arguments he’d be credible. When he puts forth as many arguments as he can, many of them suspect, then I suspect all of his arguments, even the ones that seem good on the surface.
(4) He has a decades long history of trying to argue this same point, that everything is fine and the climate will take care of itself, no worries. Each time his arguments are insufficient, he goes back to the well one more time, trying to find another angle. After a while, it just doesn’t seem like science anymore. It seems more like a wife nagging her husband to cut the grass.
But, as I said… I will wait for climatologists to finish their reviews of his work. For now, it’s hardly the “stake in the heart of AGW” that deniers seem to think it is, though.
Hey ThinkingBeing (10:14:48) :
Iam sure you are just as skeptical of the AGW alarmists relying entirely on econometric type models to calculate positive feedbacks, which have not even be observed by actual data, as you are of Lindzen hypothesizing why his data shows negative feedback. Oh wait, you are waiting for the alarmists to review and tell you what to say. Gosh you’re a sap. in point of fact, Lindzen is following the scientific method. He has real climate data, and he is fiting a hypothesis to that data. Does that end the science. No, he will have to show future data predictably, and repeatedly, fitting his hypothesis. The difference between Lindzen and AGW alarmists putting together models with their own assumptions of how the climate will behave and then pumping out the results they want and claiming the ‘debate is over’ is stark. Do yourself a favor, reserve some of your skeptism for the AGW nonsense.
ThinkingBeing (10:14:48) :
“That being said, yes, you are right, Lindzen doesn’t give a mechanism, just an argument against AGW, and I have a big problem with that. It’s not how science should work.”
You have it exactly backwards. That is precisely how science should work. You start with data, then form an hypothesis, not the other way around. Lindzen is starting with the data. The AGWers started with the hypothesis, and have been trying ever since to fit the data to it. The data inform the science, the science does not inform the data.
Someone on another board quoted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character in this respect. I though it was extremely apropos, so I saved it.
‘“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” Sherlock Holmes.’
NK:
Personal attacks on me are unnecessary and unproductive.
General statements equating all climatologists to alarmists betrays a level of extremism and a locked-in position that puts the value of your own statements into question.
Your interpretation of Lindzen’s paper is not in agreement with mine, but I won’t argue it. As I said, I’ll wait for the scientific process to work through it.
Your interpretation of the approach of “alarmists putting together models with their own assumptions” is flat out wrong. Your problem is that you’ve decided what you want to believe, and now you’re simply grabbing at whatever evidence you can to support your position or refute the other.
Contrary to what you may think, based on a few paragraphs I’ve posted here, I have not closed my mind. I am constantly reading, and studying, and learning, and understanding. I trust no one and nothing. As soon as I saw Lindzen’s paper I downloaded it, read it many times, then got his 1994 paper, and downloaded and read that, too.
The difference between you and I is that I never labeled Lindzen’s work “nonsense”. I don’t label anyone’s work nonsense. I give it all a chance, and weigh it as I see fit. It’s just that in this case, to me, Lindzen’s paper has come up lacking, while his obvious politic bent does cast suspicions on his intent… so I will wait for people who are more knowledgeable on the subject to either confirm my own interpretation, or refute it. Either is fine. I only want to understand, and to arrive at the truth.
Some comments:
(1) Such a convenient safety net in a climate system that clearly is not so stable as he implies would be just too good to be true (“go ahead and be careless, humanity, God has everything covered”).
It is not merely convenient. It is no coincidence. The climate must be very stable, else we would not be here.
(2) The lack of an explanation for the observed behavior is a big hole. Science isn’t about proving that the sun comes up every day, it’s about understanding how and why the sun comes up every day.
But we start with the data, which says the sun comes up every day.
(3) The tone and content of the presentation referenced here is, too me, extremely unprofessional and makes his own work suspect. In particular, there are any number of obvious fallacies in the arguments he presents. If he only put forth good, valid arguments he’d be credible. When he puts forth as many arguments as he can, many of them suspect, then I suspect all of his arguments, even the ones that seem good on the surface.
You would have to walk a mile in Prof. Lindzen’s shoes. It is the very model of restraint compared to what his opponents have put him through.
(4) He has a decades long history of trying to argue this same point, that everything is fine and the climate will take care of itself, no worries. Each time his arguments are insufficient, he goes back to the well one more time, trying to find another angle. After a while, it just doesn’t seem like science anymore. It seems more like a wife nagging her husband to cut the grass.
This could be said of the other side, as well, except they have huge media support to provide backup and flush inconvenient prior assertions down the memory hole. I see it right now in the AGWers furious attempt to minimize the inconvenient cooling spell we are going through which they never expected.
One more comment:
“…he relies heavily on the concept that the system has already reached equilibrium…”
I think you mean (correct me if I am wrong), he is assuming a steady state response without transient behavior. But, the CO2 forcing is very smooth, so I would expect this to be a reasonable assumption.
Excuse me, I mean the SST forcing of flux. I forgot which analysis we were discussing. What a drag it is getting old…
Bart — on your last post, only…
“But, the CO2 forcing is very smooth, so I would expect this to be a reasonable assumption.”
No, not quite. First, the CO2 forcing itself isn’t the only issue. The increased water vapor in the atmosphere is more important. In addition, heat uptake by the ocean is important, because of the amount of mass (and therefore heat capacity) involved, so no… a matter of months is hardly appropriate.
But that isn’t really relevant anyway. The point behind his 1994 paper (a point that I don’t think he adequately made) was that in low sensitivity climates (i.e. ones that wil not change much due to unexpected forcings), there would be negative feedbacks that occur very quickly to keep the system in balance. This is contrasted with a climate with high sensitivity, where positive feedbacks, according to Lindzen, would take longer to show their effects and exacerbate the problem.
So his position is very simply that in any system, regardless of the nature of the forcing, if the system has low sensitivity, there will be negative feedbacks that hold the system in place (hence the low sensitivity), and those feedbacks will take hold very quickly (otherwise positive feedbacks would battle them), while in a system with high sensitivity, there would be positive feedbacks that push the system further out of whack before it stabilizes, and no negative feedbacks to hold them in check.
All of this has nothing to do with the nature, duration, regularity or intensity of the forcing. Low sensitivity, fast negative feedbacks versus high sensitivity, slow positive feedbacks. That’s his position.
His paper says that since he detected outgoing radiation through ERBE that is in line with radiating out all of the incremental heat detected in the SST, that therefore it is evidence of some negative feedback that is in line with his hypothesis, and therefore positive feedbacks, even if the logic behind them is accurate, will never have a chance to take hold.
ThinkingBeing (12:42:13):
You seem to be saying that, yes, there may be an initial positive correlation (negative climate feedback) between delta-SST and delta-ourward flux, but that does not preclude the possibility that the relationship could invert later.
But, what you appear to have missed is that all of the current climate models, upon which the current alarm is founded, show a negative correlation from the get go. Does this not call into question those models?
Am I not right in concluding that, if I take your cautious stance, and assuming the analysis has been carried out correctly and the data are valid, Lindzen may be wrong, but the other modelers are definitely wrong?
Bart —
You highlight another problem with Lindzen’s paper. All of the current AMIP models do show a positive feedback. His approach necessarily could not include CMIP model runs, which are the ones that are used to measure climate sensitivity and to make future projections, not the AMIP models. But he couldn’t use the CMIP models because they aren’t tied to specific SST observations.
So your statement that “all of the current climate models…” is wrong; only the AMIP models exhibit this behavior. Your statement “upon which the current alarm is founded” is also wrong, because it’s not the AMIP models at all, it’s the CMIP models that are used for that purpose.
“You highlight another problem with Lindzen’s paper.”
You have not established that there are any problems with it.
“it’s not the AMIP models at all, it’s the CMIP models that are used for that purpose…”
Are you conceding and/or declaring that the AMIP models are fundamentally flawed and their results virtually useless?
“But he couldn’t use the CMIP models because they aren’t tied to specific SST observations.”
CMIP and AMIP agree closely in their fundamental predictions. If you remove the positive feedback from the AMIP, they will diverge considerably.
In this paper, the authors state of the CMIP models:
The paper then discusses “two recently developed coupled models that do not use flux adjustment.” I read that as, the CMIP models were tweaked specifically to bring them closer in line to the AMIP results, i.e., the AMIP models were used as “truth” models to validate the CMIP. It follows that if the AMIP models are buggered, so are the CMIP models, yes?
Great report Dr. Lindzen! Global warming is a farce created to line the pockets of Al Gore & his cronies along with other wack jobs around the world. Stop the madness!!!!!!! No climate bill!!! ds
Bart —
“You have not established that there are any problems with it.”
Yes I have, repeatedly and I think quite clearly. This is typical “denial” behavior… just pretend not to see what’s right in front of you.
But it’s clear evidence that this isn’t a discussion for you, it’s a game. I don’t play games with this subject.
From listening to Monckton’s presentation of one of Lindzen’s plot I appreciate better the argument. It is the figure where :
Page 45 models, page 46 data., delta of the radiation flux leaving the earth versus delta of the sea surface temperature. Models give a negative slope, the larger the delta of temperature the smaller the delta of radiated energy, which is really the presumed effect of greenhouse gases, to delay the exit of energy from the earth system. Nevertheless, the data show that the higher the delta energy the higher the delta of radiation to space, showing that increases in temperature do not follow the models.
the final figure is just a recalculation of these facts, models versus data, extracting the sensitivity.
There is no doubt that the models are off and have to be scrapped and redone.
Now how the western world will handicap itself economically based on false models goes beyond logic and into cult mentalities.
All of the global average temperatures for the entire 20th century and on into the 21st century are accurately calculated with no consideration whatsoever needed of changes to the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse gas. See how in a new paper at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true . There is no Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) (and therefore no human caused climate change) from added atmospheric carbon dioxide.
“I don’t play games with this subject.”
Clearly, you do. If you were honest, you would have said, “yes, AMIP = CMIP, and if Lindzen’s analysis holds up, it will call model-based AGW into serious question.” But, you didn’t. How very disappointing.
I pinned your queen, and now you are taking your ball and going home, if I may engage in a painful yet vivid game-related mixed metaphor.
“I pinned your queen…”
Oh, yes, your brilliant analysis and rapier debating abilities, along with Lindzen’s oh so insightful deconstruction of every aspect of the AGW position, has completely eliminated the question of global warming. It’s all over, everyone. Bart has declared himself the winner. We can all go home in our SUVs and watch movies on plasma TVs now. Nothing more to be done.
[All you have done is to prove to me that you, like many of your ilk, cannot have a rational discussion, because your favorite argument is to simply declare that black is white, or that I just said that black is white. It’s easy for you to “pin my queen” if you do so by simply ignoring the rules and making up your own.]
So, farewell. Enjoy ranting and raving at like minded people that all agree with you… But Lindzen’s paper, even if it holds up, is not the end of the discussion. It’s a small piece. There’s no such thing as “pinning the queen” in this, and it’s not a game.
That’s a lot of the denial problem. You keep looking for one magic bullet that will topple the AGW house of cards, and there is none. It’s far too complex for that. That only works for the simple minded that think life is like the action movies you see in the theaters, where the lone good guy, who knows better than his clueless superiors and everyone else, breaks the rules to save the day.
Well, I should let you go. You must have an anger management class to attend.
The fact that you had to debase yourself to name-calling, and refuse to acknowledge the argument, shows that you have been stymied. You said to NK: “Personal attacks on me are unnecessary and unproductive.” I guess that was just a debating tactic, to be tossed lightly aside when you find yourself on the defensive.
I tried to be civil. But, two can play at this game, and truly, it is all a game to you, isn’t it? You are an intellectual lightweight. ‘ThiningBeing’ indeed! What a pitiful little presumptuous screen name.
Run home to your mamma, kid. You got whipped.
Gentlemen, let’s get the facts right. Global warming does not exist. At least to the degree that we can do a damn thing about it.Al eGore has done a great job of speading all the lies while laughing all the way to the bank. LOLOLOL LMAO! ds
thinkingbeing,
Lindzen’s paper does not stand alone.
There is my research presented in detail at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true . The latest paper there uses the simple analysis of the time-integral of sunspots and an oscillation attributed to ocean turnover to accurately calculate the temperatures of the 20th century and on into the 21st century.
Russian research also forecasts global cooling at http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2009/10/29/russian-research-forecasts-global-cooling/
There are many others. A list dated 18 April, 2008 is at http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/2008/04/peer-reviewed-articles-skeptical-of-man.html