Well, now there will never be any question about whether Scripps is political or not. They even made up a graphic to go with the story here. When a prominent scientific organization allows a member to resort to name calling on an issue in an official communications on their website, it cheapens the whole organization.
This appears to be a response to John Coleman’s hour long video special. It was dated the same day as the video release, Jan 14th. Of course, when you read his website at richardsomerville.com you may come to understand that he may not be speaking for everyone there at Scripps. Here’s his page at Scripps. Perhaps the UCSD President might benefit from some communications about the use of his institute to label people with differing views on science.
A Response to Climate Change Denialism
Richard Somerville, a distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, issued the following statement in response to a recent request to address claims recently made by climate change denialists:
1. The essential findings of mainstream climate change science are firm. This is solid settled science. The world is warming. There are many kinds of evidence: air temperatures, ocean temperatures, melting ice, rising sea levels, and much more. Human activities are the main cause. The warming is not natural. It is not due to the sun, for example. We know this because we can measure the effect of man-made carbon dioxide and it is much stronger than that of the sun, which we also measure.
2. The greenhouse effect is well understood. It is as real as gravity. The foundations of the science are more than 150 years old. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat. We know carbon dioxide is increasing because we measure it. We know the increase is due to human activities like burning fossil fuels because we can analyze the chemical evidence for that.
3. Our climate predictions are coming true. Many observed climate changes, like rising sea level, are occurring at the high end of the predicted changes. Some changes, like melting sea ice, are happening faster than the anticipated worst case. Unless mankind takes strong steps to halt and reverse the rapid global increase of fossil fuel use and the other activities that cause climate change, and does so in a very few years, severe climate change is inevitable. Urgent action is needed if global warming is to be limited to moderate levels.
4. The standard skeptical arguments have been refuted many times over. The refutations are on many web sites and in many books. For example, natural climate change like ice ages is irrelevant to the current warming. We know why ice ages come and go. That is due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, changes that take thousands of years. The warming that is occurring now, over just a few decades, cannot possibly be caused by such slow-acting processes. But it can be caused by man-made changes in the greenhouse effect.
5. Science has its own high standards. It does not work by unqualified people making claims on television or the Internet. It works by scientists doing research and publishing it in carefully reviewed research journals. Other scientists examine the research and repeat it and extend it. Valid results are confirmed, and wrong ones are exposed and abandoned. Science is self-correcting. People who are not experts, who are not trained and experienced in this field, who do not do research and publish it following standard scientific practice, are not doing science. When they claim that they are the real experts, they are just plain wrong.
6. The leading scientific organizations of the world, like national academies of science and professional scientific societies, have carefully examined the results of climate science and endorsed these results. It is silly to imagine that thousands of climate scientists worldwide are engaged in a massive conspiracy to fool everybody. The first thing that the world needs to do if it is going to confront the challenge of climate change wisely is to learn about what science has discovered and accept it.
— Robert Monroe
Jan. 14, 2010
h/t to WUWT reader Skepshaka
Here we go again:
“settled science”
“carefully reviewed research journals”
“leading scientific organizations of the world”
“thousands of climate scientists”
Only 75% pass rate. The third one should include the magic words ‘peer reviewed’ to qualify as a proper Warmbot.
“Our climate predictions are coming true.”
Oh yeah?
BBQ Summers?
More Hurricanes?
Warmer winters?
New York under the waves?
Lack of warming since 1998?
Himalayan Glaciers?
NO discernable sea-level rise (I have lived at the seaside for over 50 years. NOTHING has changed!)
I don’t know of a single correct prediction, just the usual chanting of ‘Global Warming, Global Warming, Global Warming, Halleluiah’ every time some poor s*ds get hit by a storm, flood or whatever.
As usual no explanation at all for previous warming and cooling events apart from ice-ages. Just a series of declarations about cherished beliefs and the usual crap about since it cannot be one thing (the sun) it must be AGW. This is laughable and of course it is not science.
If I had known it was possible to be this stupid and still become a “distinguished professor emeritus and research professor” when I was at school I would have taken a very different career path.
This is what I sent…
Subject: Denialism
Text: Thanks for the clarification. I will no longer visit you’re aquarium or anything “Scripp” as I can’t support Political Science. My kids will miss the aquarium, but there are others that stick to science…which is never settled.
Professor Emeritus?
lol.
Stop trying to talk down to us Richard Somerville, your failure to engage with intelligently expressed skepticism about your beliefs tells us all we need to know.
This is garbage science that can’t be quantified:
“1. The essential findings of mainstream climate change science are firm. This is solid settled science. The world is warming. There are many kinds of evidence: air temperatures, ocean temperatures, melting ice, rising sea levels, and much more. Human activities are the main cause. The warming is not natural. It is not due to the sun, for example. We know this because we can measure the effect of man-made carbon dioxide and it is much stronger than that of the sun, which we also measure.”
Nobody knows the energy budget of the climate system. Nobody has been able to count the heat trapped by the sun or the heat generated by industrial activity. Nobody has been able to count how much is absorbed by the climate system, how much is radiated into space, or how much is stored in the ground, plants, under the sea or in the atmosphere. This was attested to in the climategate emails. Nobody knows the energy budget, it is so overwhelmingly vast, difficult to measure and complex that it is beyond our current ability to measure it. We don’t have the technology or the science.
What unmitigated arrogance.
Were this gentleman employed in private industry where he actually had to produce results, he wouldn’t be (i.e., employed)- not for long in any event.
“4. The standard skeptical arguments have been refuted many times over. The refutations are on many web sites and in many books. For example, natural climate change like ice ages is irrelevant to the current warming. We know why ice ages come and go. That is due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, changes that take thousands of years. The warming that is occurring now, over just a few decades, cannot possibly be caused by such slow-acting processes. But it can be caused by man-made changes in the greenhouse effect.”
This too is junk science. The causes of ice ages are numerous and complex. They can happen regularly and predictably, irregularly or not happen at all (as it has been for most of the planet’s past). For all we know a full on ice age could be starting right now. The Little Ice Age could have been the first stage and the current warming period just a temporary recovery before a major glaciation. If anyone says they know the answer they don’t. Any speculation about future climate, as Freeman Dyson and Michael Crichton both have said, is science fiction.
“5. Science has its own high standards. It does not work by unqualified people making claims on television or the Internet.”
Al Gore? BBC journalists? George Monbiot? James Hansen? Just about any eco-activist? ALL unqualified.
Blimey! What a foolish guy. This was obviously written in haste.
I’ve no doubt it will come back to bite him (and Scripps) big time, and fully expect his “settled science” comment to be filtered and homogenized soon.
Sam the Skeptic (10:19:52) : This has to be the weirdest piece of writing ever to come out of what I was led to believe was a reputable scientific institution… What’s the axe he’s grinding?
When I saw the headline, I thought… “the leader doth protest too much, methinks”… What has he got to hide?
His CO2 records? To say nothing of the unholy splice onto the ice CO2 records which I am certain are waaaaaay too low… The belief in “unprecedented” CO2 depends on MLO being ok, the splice being ok, and the ice CO2 records being ok. I think not. I suspect bad science at the very least. And this comparatively unchallenged belief is still a mainstay of AGW.
Follow the money and you will find the most crazy ideas in the institutions that receive the most research funds.
Thanks to corrupt practices of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS).
Scripps Institution of Oceanography has steep competition from Washington University here in Missouri, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and Caltech (to name a few).
What a sad state of affairs for science!
Oliver K. Manuel
“David (09:55:16) :
Prof Somerville clearly needs to get out more – or at the very least, get his head out from where the sun don’t shine…”
He obviously thinks it does…
“3. Our climate predictions are coming true. Many observed climate changes, like rising sea level, are occurring at the high end of the predicted changes. Some changes, like melting sea ice, are happening faster than the anticipated worst case. Unless mankind takes strong steps to halt and reverse the rapid global increase of fossil fuel use and the other activities that cause climate change, and does so in a very few years, severe climate change is inevitable. Urgent action is needed if global warming is to be limited to moderate levels.”
The last sentence confirms the bogus quality of his points. He is asking for regulation, which only serves to tax and then reward corporations, to simply limit the warming. But since the warming is limited (nothing can be unlimited) then he is asking for governance over something that governance is not needed for. This is a typical tactic used by activists. Call for regulation over a non-problem. It’s like asking for government to enforce limits on population growth when the population replacement rate has been falling for decades and will continue to fall as modernity spreads.
Icecap Note: Scripps is a once great institution in the days of Jerome Namias but like many other organizations and the professional societies, Scripps has let the big AGW grant money pervert their science.
I went snorkeling this summer at The Cove down below Scripps. Sea level was at the same place and the beach was the same size that it has been for my entire life.
He should get out of his office sometimes and go down to the beach, instead of getting his education from watching Al Gore flicks.
When an internationally respected research institute issues an internal memorandum insisting its scientists do not challenge the science of manmade global warming, and enforce same through bullyboy tactics, the statements above are without credibility.
“Arctic and Antarctic ice are just about at the 30 year mean, but they are melting much faster than predicted.”
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
So, it took Somerville 6 paragraphs to say “Is not!”? Or rather, “It is too getting warmer because of man!!!” Other than the amusement I got our to reading his juvenile rebuttal, I didn’t really get any thing out of it. No insights, no information, just “I’m right and they’re wrong because I believe it so.” I guess that’s what they’ve been reduced to. Upon reflection, that’s as refreshing as last night’s election. Keep it up guys and gals!!!!
I think Somerville has just confessed to all who can read that he isn’t a scientists and that his arguments hold no merit. In fact he’s proved that as far as our climate is concerned he knows buga-all and has no credibility.
This reflects very badly on the once respected Scripps Institute!
lol, Trying to multi-task. Instead of “our to” (? where did I get that from?) It should read, “from”.
Recall that Somerville was a coordinating lead author in Working Group I for the AR4 and an organizer of the 2007 Bali Climate Declaration of Scientists:
http://richardsomerville.com/
I’m not surprised by his statements.
Peer manure?
ummm, slightly dumbfounded expression, that someone would put up so many strawman arguments in one page…
also Science and peer review are not synonyms. Peer Review wasn’t regularly practiced until the mid-20th C (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review#History for example).
Prior to C20 the process of Science advancement was largely carried out by amateurs, and “non-experts” who became expert in the field simply by studying it.
When we look at the current old-guard of “climate scientists” many studied other fields, and came to climate study later. e.g. Hanson is/was an astronomer
I wonder if there is anyone at Scripps actually studying the oceans so that we can know more about this relatively unexplored realm of our planet? Why is an oceanography institute involved in climate change? Research dollars I suppose, sigh…….
It is a rare occasion that you find a person, that is generally accepted as being pretty intelligent, to be in disagreement with in almost every word he says. Even when he is not talking about climate. All the stupid metaphors he makes. From his website: ” just as intelligent people listen to their physicians when their health is in question. Good science input can inform wise policymaking.” I have a debilitating disease if I had always followed this man’s advice I would now be in a wheelchair, finding my own way in science and talking to the good physicians makes I now run marathons. How can you be a scientist and be so arrogant? I’m a biologist and have done research for years and I know how much we don’t know. He should know that too and act like it.
Surely this wasn’t written by a scientist? It is more base, inaccurate and opinionated than even that written by the warmist journalists. By comparison Monbiot is measured and nuanced; Refkin is (was) thoughtful and balanced. It reads more like a troll posting on a blog. The article is so full of factual errors, crude assertions, irrelevant straw men, schoolboy howlers and alarmist politics that one doesn’t know where to begin. Fortunately Tilo Reber above has done an excellent job on deconstructing this vacuous nonsense.
Tilo has listed no fewer than 17 unsubstantiated assertions of which 8 are manifestly false. Of the remaining verbiage that comprises this article, six more statements are either irrelevant or straw men arguments.