Confident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted.
A commentary by Richard S. Lindzen in the WSJ
Is there a reason to be alarmed by the prospect of global warming? Consider that the measurement used, the globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA), is always changing. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, and occasionally—such as for the last dozen years or so—it does little that can be discerned.
Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.
The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode. At the same time that we were emerging from the little ice age, the industrial era began, and this was accompanied by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most prominent of these, and it is again generally accepted that it has increased by about 30%.
The defining characteristic of a greenhouse gas is that it is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun but can absorb portions of thermal radiation. In general, the earth balances the incoming solar radiation by emitting thermal radiation, and the presence of greenhouse substances inhibits cooling by thermal radiation and leads to some warming.
That said, the main greenhouse substances in the earth’s atmosphere are water vapor and high clouds. Let’s refer to these as major greenhouse substances to distinguish them from the anthropogenic minor substances. Even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance between incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2%. This is essentially what is called “climate forcing.”
The full article may be found here.
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Peak:+ 6 dB, Valley: -30 dB
(That is to say, peaks average about +6 dB of nominal, and valleys/minimas average about -30 dB below mean)
Roughly what one sees from Rayleigh fading (multipath), and I dare say, from CO2 and atmospheric changes …
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.
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This may demand its own thread, Sir Moderator, as its intended to be an Open-Sauce Effort. All I have is a tune (‘Clementine’), the title (‘The Ballad of Hadley-CRU’), one verse and the chorus. Verses need to be of the ‘Clementine’ form (rhyming ABCCB), here’s a boot kit:
Settle down and hear my story
Of a brave intrepid Few
Who weren’t settled,
merely Nettled,
By the mess at Hadley CRU
Oh my data!
Oh my data,
Oh my data, Hadley CRU
Thou art lost and gone forever,
Dreadfull sorry, Hadley CRU
Y’all contribute verses, now, y’hear?
White House believes planet still warming
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/69797-gibbs-despite-research-dispute-climate-change-is-happening
nice article. It’s good to see someone of such great reputation not pulling punches when referring to these pseudoscientific punks who managed to acquire higher degrees in the hard sciences over the last couple of decades yet failed to acquire an understanding of science or the scientific method or to have the morality necessary to function in such a system.
A bit OT. However, does anyone have thoughts on the following paper that claims to demonstrate the falsification of CO2’s greenhouse effect? http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
For those unfamiliar, Prof Richard Lindzen is the internationally esteemed Chairman of the Alfred P. Sloan Meteorology, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
When Prof Lindzen says that predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted, he knows whereof he speaks.
Unlike, say, Andy Revkin.
Dr. Lindzen is hero of mine. Soft spoken , but wields an intellectual club of mighty proportion. Has maintained his decorum despite having mud flung at him from all direction for decades. Reminds me of one of my other heroes, ……
This gets more interesting every day. Excellent column by Professor Lindzen.
OT: “`Mad Monk’ Abbott Named Australian Opposition Leader in Election Catalyst”
He won a Liberal leadership vote 42-41.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYC3UJKOSF7k&pos=9
Bravo!
One example:
“The notion that complex climate “catastrophes” are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate.”
[snip] well said, Prof!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Keep up the good work, I’m glad this hoax has been exposed!
The experience of the Aussie politicians is a mere appetizer for what politicians in other democratic countries can expect in the wake of Copenhagen. I eagerly await the main course.
Sorry about the snip. Sometimes the mods let words slip by with *****, so from past experience, I thought that was OK.
I get a little “locker room” sometimes.
Regardless…my remark was a HEAR HEAR to Professor Lindzen’s expose.
😉
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Craig Moore: wrt http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf, I read an earlier draft of this paper about a year ago. Unfortunately, the author’s command of colloquial English is less than perfect and it is sometimes hard to follow his chain of logic. But, to cut a long story short, the author makes the valid point that even the ‘basic physics’ of global warming is open to question. To often climate scientists glibly use textbook results in their computer models without thinking carefully about the application of thermodynamics and radiation theory to a planetary atmosphere. As with all things in science, debate is never settled.
A clear & concise article as usual. Unfortunately, I would guess many if not most WSJ readers have some inkling of this already. What is needed is this same type of article in something like “Time” or “Newsweek” to communicate this with those less familiar
Jeff Kiehl notes in a 2007 article from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the models use another quantity that the IPCC lists as poorly known (namely aerosols) to arbitrarily cancel as much greenhouse warming as needed to match the data, with each model choosing a different degree of cancellation according to the sensitivity of that model.”
In high-school chemistry, we called Finagle’s Variable Constant — the number you multiplied your result by to get the right answer.
Thank You, Prof. Lindzen.
The Science is not settled, it’s only just begun.
The Scam is not yet settled either. We’ll be hearing how far the damage went for some time.
But it is time to settle down and disentangle the web that CRU wove and the awful mess they left the data in.
Well I, for one, am horrified by the graphic in the linked article that showed the Earth next to a mercury thermometer that was easily 12,000 miles long and probably 500 miles in diameter. It would contain enough mercury not only to so contaminate our oceans so that all life in them is extinguished, but to indeed raise sea levels to amounts not even imagined by Al Gore!
*shudders*
Anyway, aside from trying to convince us that the Earth might warm up a tiny bit, they’ve also been busy trying to convince everyone that human life can’t exist a hundred miles closer to the equator than you are right now.
Strangely enough, in truth, people aren’t actually concerned about the climate. Ask a hundred people in any city whether they’d consider moving to New York or Los Angeles for a new job. They’ll ask a dozen questions about salary, position, perks, housing, and other issues, but never once say that either city is as much as 0.1C too hot or too cold, even though the difference between the two is a hundred times greater than anything the IPCC warns us about.
I wish I knew more science and I curse my lazy teenage high school brain for my current state of ignorance. I’ve been plodding through this stuff for over a week now and am only just beginning to get past the acronyms and the terms you all use with such ease.
One thing I do know is people and the emails told me enough about the made-men of climate science to start digging. People confident in their expertise do not hide their light, or their data/code, so to speak, under a bushel. They willingly share it, almost to the point of obnoxiousness, as a shining beacon for others to follow.
In that spirit I thank you and others for shedding some light for me on what is a difficult subject. I am, indeed, learning.
“Y’all contribute verses, now, y’hear?”
So the sceptics did an audit
And the facts were something new,
Not alarming,
Not the warming,
Not the crap from Hadley CRU.
[refrain]
Great article by Lindzen. Gotta love the guy – he is a giant.
Also Brett Stephens has a piece in same paper- Climategate:Follow the Money which should raise some eyebrows. I hope lots of people read the Wall Street Journal. Surely this story will get a move on soon.
This will be the biggest story- a pivotal moment- of the Noughties.
“The Climate Science Isn’t Settled”
True. I’ll now go one more step and say “The Climate Science Is Unsettled” 😉
Smokey (19:51:03) :
However, Tom, Phil and the boys don’t like Professor Lindzen that much, as evidenced in their (alleged) Climate Cabal e-mails; for example:
Alleged CRU Email – 1257532857.txt
From: Tom Wigley
To: Phil Jones
Subject: Re: Revised CC text
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:40:57 -0700
Thanks, Phil.
A bunch of us are putting something together on the latest
Lindzen and Choi crap (GRL). Not a comment, but a separate paper
to avoid giving Lindzen the last word.
Tom.
—
That was a very interesting paper Craig. Has it been published somewhere? I am not physics major, but I did find many of the arguments very informative. Thanks for the link.