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
A front page article that would have been unheard of a year ago:
“Scientists using selective temperature data, skeptics say”
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2465231
Odd this, as I received a comment on my blog http://hayduke2000.blogspot.com/ saying things in suspiciously similar verbiage:
“You’re an idiot and a Denier. Climate change, like gravity, is an observed phenomena. Ignoring it doesn’t make you right.” Pangolin
But then, Pangolin also said, “STFU.”
“WOULD I LIE…?”
“From: Eystein Jansen
To: Richard Somerville
Subject: Re: [Wg1-ar4-clas] Responding to an attack on IPCC and ourselves
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 08:16:33 +0100
Cc: wg1-ar4-clas@xxxxxxxxx.xxx“
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/15/news-on-the-new-non-scientist/
(lots more there)
Oh, yeah, he’s an “objective” bystander, all right! ;=P
@photon without a Higgs (17:26:18)
“Richard Somerville is a theoretical meteorologist whose research interests include geophysical fluid dynamics, thermal convection, computational methods, predictability, atmospheric modeling, numerical weather prediction, radiative transfer, cloud physics, and climate.”
http://myprofile.cos.com/somerv96
You got it.
whoa they go a bit nuts with the “science” word near the end there
jorgekafkazar (18:12:15) :
Hmm. Maybe it’s due to the fact that it rains in California.
Whoever wrote this song must have been a denier. 😉
It never rains in California
but girl don’t they warn ya
It pours, man it pours
It did pour today, man it poured!
“Which Side Were You On?” I look forward to asking that.
What I I wish is that these know-it-alls would put their money where their mouth is. Supposedly (according to Hansen, Gavin, and several other big names) 2010 is shaping up to have a “better-than even likelihood” (e.g., 3 in 5) of being the hottest year on record, following 2009’s upthrust to second-highest status. And yet the odds available on that bet at https://www.intrade.com are only 1 in 4. It’s free money for the taking — so why aren’t they picking it up?
The first association of the word ‘Denier’ with ‘Global Warming’ came from a linguist named Deborah Tannen. In a PBS interview on March 27, 1998, Tannen said:
“Holocaust denial has had far more success in the United States than any other country. In our eagerness to show both sides, sometimes that means giving a forum to people who claim that the Holocaust never happened. A woman broke a book discussing their tactics–the Holocaust denier’s tactics–and she was invited on television if she would also allow them to invite deniers and debate them. She said, but there’s nothing to debate; this is history; it’s fact. And she was told, don’t you think the audience has a right to hear the other side. So often we give a platform to marginalized or even totally discredited views in our eagerness to show the other side. This also is why global warming everywhere in the world is accepted as a problem, and the question is: How do we approach it? Just the other day I mentioned global warming to a taxi driver, and he said, “Do you believe that? There’s no such thing.” Only in the United States have we given a lot of air time to just a few discredited scientists who say this isn’t a problem, just so that we can show the other side. ”
So its clear that the term ‘Denier” is intended to associate climate skeptics with Holocaust Deniers and to use this linguistic device to intimidate people and shut down debate.
A Response to Climate Change Denialism
That’s the first of Mr Somerville’s problems. Most of us here are not “denialists” so much as we’re skeptics of anthropogenic climate change. Climate has been changing for anywhere from three to four and a half billion years. We don’t deny that. We DO have a very healthy skepticism that the current warming is being caused by the burning of fossil fuel. Mr Somerville isn’t very smart if he doesn’t know that, or he’s an outright fraud, creating a straw man to attack, rather than the truth. Strike one.
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.
Is it? Really? Apparently it was from about 1970 up until about 1998, but since then, it’s either maintained an equal temperature or is cooling. We’ll have to wait to see if the warming returns, or the cold intensifies. That particular statement blows “settled science” right out of the water. Sorry, Mr. Somerville, your battleship is sinking. As for “the essential findings of mainstream climate change science” being firm, we don’t even know all the questions to ask, much less how to find the answers. At the same time, half the “climate scientists” try to either deny or hide the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age – all events with historical records to confirm them. Strike two.
There are many kinds of evidence: air temperatures, ocean temperatures, melting ice, rising sea levels, and much more.
Anthony Watts has proven beyond any argument that the United States Weather Service stations cannot provide reliable information, for any one of dozens of reasons, satellite records don’t go very far back, ocean temperatures change because of current activity that has existed probably for 10,000 years (PDO, ENSO, AMO, etc.). Ice melts for many reasons, including changes in ocean currents as the result of the evidence presented above, the fact that the earth is recovering from the Little Ice Age that ended about 170 years ago, and because winds shift back and forth, sometimes bringing moisture, sometimes not (Kilimanjaro, for instance). Strike three.
Human activities are the main cause. The warming is not natural.
Any person that makes a blanket statement like that is NOT a scientist, he’s either a politician, or he’s a snake-oil salesman. Strike four.
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.
Did you actually say that? What we are able to do is to measure how much carbon dioxide human activity is pumping into the atmosphere, based pretty much on consumption records. From all that I’ve read, the leading cause of warming of the earth is the retention of heat from the sun. So little of the heat trapped by the earth comes from sources other than the sun that they may as well be considered non-existent. We’ve also learned in the last decade that the sun has a far greater effect upon the earth than we previously believed: sunspots (number and intensity, effect on cosmic rays, etc.) , solar variability (output by type, axial “wobble”, rotation, etc.), variations in magnetic field strength, and many other, lesser solar variables. As for being able to “measure the effect of man-made carbon dioxide”, you might be able to CALCULATE is effects, but there is no way to accurately determine which portion of atmospheric carbon dioxide is “man-made”. Strike five. You’re well on your way of retiring your entire side.
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.
First, if the “greenhouse effect” is so well known, why don’t any of you ever mention that water vapor is the primary component of all atmospheric greenhouse gasses, comprising 95%. Carbon dioxide makes up only 4% of atmospheric greenhouse gasses. Humans contribute less than 4% of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide. How can 0.0016% (human contribution to atmospheric greenhouse gasses) control, dominate, and master the other 99.9984% of all greenhouse gasses? While the science of greenhouse gasses may be “well-understood”, it doesn’t appear that “climate scientists” fit that category. Strike six.
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.
Another bullshit statement with no true scientific evidence to back it up.
I’m not going to continue to address each issue. You, sir, are NOT a “scientist”. I’ve worked daily with many scientists, from geologists and geophysicists to cultural anthropologists to astrophysicists to biological scientists to computer scientists. I spent 26 years in the US Air Force as an imagery analyst. I only know that if I’d done something as poorly this, other people would probably have died. If I had ever produced such a sloppy, unverified, and patently FALSE report as this, I would have been court martialed, stripped of all rank, and probably spent several years making small rocks out of big ones. You are lucky that you work for “academia”, where such sloppiness is tolerated, perhaps even encouraged.
Robin (13:59:40) : “I laugh uproariously at most of the responders here.”
Thanks for stopping by, Mrs. Somerville.
Old PI (18:56:43) :
LOL! Good thing for him he doesn’t work for you, …bad thing for us.
as I look at his list of works I see he has worked with James Hansen
http://richardsomerville.com/
Two Essential videos disproving AGW
(1) CONGRESSMAN LINDER DISCUSSES CLIMATE CHANGE ON CBS NEWS, “WASHINGTON UNPLUGGED”
Congressman Linder states that if drug company researchers or cancer scientists funded by federal monies hid their data, and coded programs to skew results, they would be ARRESTED, and JAILED.
* * * * *
(2) GLOBAL WARMING – DOOMSDAY CALLED OFF – 5 PARTS
Written and directed by Lars Oxfeldt Mortensen
The 5-part video series includes statements from these academics:
Climatologist:
Dr. David Legates
Center for Climate Research
University of Delaware
A computer model is a very sophisticated computer program that attempts to simulate all of the processes associated with the atmosphere. In particular therefore, what we need to have is as much data as possible to be able to fire the model, to be able to understand the processes. Generally what we find is that many of the processes that work in the climate work at a variety of scales that a computer model simply cannot resolve. One of the things we do not do well in climate models is simulate precipitation. And again precipitation is affected by virtually every component of the climate system, and in turn, every component of the climate system affects precipitation. So precipitation is a very good diagnostic as to how well the climate model is doing. And most climate models don’t do precipitation well at all.
A computer does only what it is programmed, and in particular, … (part 5 of 5) garbage in , garbage out.
Kyoto – Japan – 1997
Glaciologist,
Jorgen Peder Steffensen
Curator
Niels Bohr Institute, Department of Geophysics
Ice from Viking age – 1.5 degrees warmer than today
Inland icesheet, Greenland, 2003
NORDGRIP = Greenland icecore project
DRILL down to rock at bottom of Greenland icesheet – ice core is 3 kilometers in length
Get temperatures back 10,000 years.
Greenland temperature was at its coldest in 1875, exactly when humans started measuring temperature by thermometer!!!
Other core samples from Greenland confirm that the little ice age ended about 140 years ago at the coldest point in the last 10,000 years.
The natural pronounced alteration of warm and cold periods has also been confirmed in other ways:
>Carbon 14 dating of organic matter from peet bogs and tree rings
>data from CyTi caves in China and North Africa
If Greenland and Antarctica melted tomorrow, sea level would rise about 100 meters. That process would take 2,000 to 3,000 years. If east Antarctica melted, sea level would rise 80 meters. But the temp in East Antarctica is so far below zero, that it will not melt. If temps rised 10 degrees, the result would be more humidity in the atmosphere from the evaporation of sea water, that would increase snowfall significantly in Antarctica, causing the ice to INCREASE. Therefore, if warmer climate, then East Antarctica will grow!!! The warmth of the tropical ocean generates enormous amounts of water vapor which is distributed to the rest of the world and falls as rain or snow. So water vapor, clouds and precipitation play a decisive role in the climate throughout the atmosphere. The United Nations Climate Panel bases its various scenarios on what will happen if we double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This would not only result in a climatic disaster, the calculations say that more carbon dioxide would also increase the amount of water in the atmosphere. It is this cocktail, more carbon dioxide and water that according to the theory must lead to a greenhouse effect many times as great as carbon dioxide on its own. The trouble is, temperature increases in the atmosphere just don’t seem to have happened to the degree that the models predict.
Professor John Cristy
University of Alabama, Huntsville
Used weather satellites – brought together data from 7 or 8 staellites- strung the data together- result: no change in atmospheric temperature!!!!
Climate scientist once said, “My model is right, it’s the real world that’s wrong.”
Professor Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner
Stockholm University
Male / Maldives
Sea level fell 20-30 centimeters in last 30 years, since 1970-1975
He thinks it is from strong evaporation of equatorial waters.
Evaporation of tropical seawater moves the masses of water to the poles where it falls as snow.
Cannot have increased precipitation at location “A” without increased evaporation at location “B”, and that is the balance of the globe.
David Hume had a perfect quote for such occassions:
“Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.”
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Hume
Seems to me that the Scots are a very level-headed bunch… Milord Monckton also springs to mind. Can’t wait to catch him in Perth on 8 January. I shall have to start practicing my curtsey 🙂
Ironic is it not that Dr Sommerville wrote a paper titled “The Ethics of Climate Change”?
Correction. (sort of) to my yonason (17:33:05) :
My very first link was to show that there was no ocean warming, and that it was in fact cooling. The link I gave there was only part of the story, since he subsequently repented of his initial finding. This one was supposed to supplement it.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/11/correcting-ocean-cooling-nasa-changes-data-to-fit-the-models/
It indicates that the change in Willis results were probably do to more than the “… certain amount of surprise and skepticism [his results were met with] by the climate science community,…” I’m guessing it was more like he got a visit from the climate orthodoxy enforcers, who “persuaded” him “kind gentle like” that if he ever wanted to work in the field again, he had better “correct” his “errors.”
…but the science is ROCK SOLID! Uh Huh!
What the rest of you don’t know is a bit of background on this. When KUSI committed to the special “Global Warming: The Other Side” the news department thought it was prudent to seek out response on the program from our important local institution, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. So the news team contacted Scripps and requested a representative to appear on our newscast immediately following the special to react to the program. Scripps refused to send anyone. After repeated contacts, finally Dr. Somerville agreed to answer written guestions via a recording the day before on the shore near Scripps. Our cameraman with camera and questions from the producer went there and recorded the interview. The day of the special a minute of Dr. Summerville’s response was edited and combined with the written statement from NASA as reaction to the program and ran on both on 10 PM and 11 PM newscasts.
Meanwhile, the response was posted on the website. I did not know about any of this until after the fact, by design of the news department.
Lo and behold a nasty editorial then showed up on a local website called City Beat.
I started to write a response today, but had to quit and get to work predicting and reporting on our big ole El Nino winter storm. It is now quiting down, so I can take a minute to share what I had written:
Richard Somerville, Ph.D. is a distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He has told San Diego “City Beat” that KUSI promised to present his written statement on-air but didn’t. He was talking about my January 14th hour long program “Global Warming: The Other Side”. KUSI contacted Scripps seeking a response to the program for our 10 PM newscast that night. Scripps referred our Producer to Somerville. The Producer who had that assignment assures me that no “promise” was made. But according to the nasty City Beat editorial, that slam-bams the program, Somerville said the station included only a couple of “garbled” sentences from a lengthy interview during a 10 p.m. newscast. He called KUSI and Coleman unethical.
I object to his statement and take particular exception to be called unethical.
First, I was aware the station was seeking a response from Scripps but un-ware that it had been obtained until shortly before the program aired. I scrambled to get some of it on the newscast. I was told to use less than a minute of the Somerville interview and to read the entire statement from NASA. I was attempting to accomplish good journalism. I don’t know that I totaled accomplished that, but I am sure that KUSI and I were not unethical.
I am going to go through the video of the Somerville interview done by one of cameramen using questions written by one of producers to see if I can put together a longer video which I will post on this website. I think that will help give more balance.
But please understand, equal time is not required or justified here. The media, including the KUSI newscasts carry frequent reports supportive of the global warming claims and agenda. The media frequently carries programs about the dire global warming predictions. “An Inconvenient Truth” shown over and over again in the schools is totally one-sided. Our one and only program debunking global warming falls far short of balancing the overall budget of global warming coverage on television or even KUSI.
Here is Dr. Somerville’s six point statement about the skeptical side of the global warming debate from the Scripps website. After each of his points, I offer a response.
A Response to Climate Change Denialism
Richard Somerville, UC San Diego, issued the following statement in response to a recent request to address claims recently made by climate change denialists:
The use of any form of the word “denier” when referring to another person or group of people is generally regarded as the strongest insult possible because the word has been only widely used in the past sixty years to describe people who deny the Holocaust of millions of Jewish people by the German Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s. I am offended by the use of this word by Dr. Somerville and the other Global Warming “Alarmists”, (A word first used by my friend Joe D’Aleo to refer to those who support the Global Warming science and agenda.) I would urge the professor to soften his prose and use the word “skeptic” when referring to those of us who regard man-made global warming as bad science.
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.
This is, indeed, the heart of the debate. Dr. Somerville, Al Gore, et al, regard the science settled and proven. To me this couldn’t be further from the truth.
First, the carbon dioxide greenhouse gas theory relies on a concept called radiative forcing by which the minor atmospheric gas CO2 interacts with water vapor, the primary greenhouse gas to cause significant warming. I have read, and understand, the scientific papers that present this hypothesis. Presenting a theory, arguing its case, calculating what impact it will have if correct; none of these are proof. And, peer review is not proof, either. It only means there are others who find the theory compelling. A vote of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is not proof either. The cadre of scientists who are on that panel are all totally dependent on the global warming issue for their livelihoods, professional status and the stability of their institutions. It would be very difficult for them to vote down this theory. By the way, researchers into the IPCC found that not many of the members of the panel are scientists and of those that are, few actually studied the radiative forcing research papers. So what do they have for proof? Computer models that use the radiative forcing theory to project future temperatures have projected steadily rising temperatures. The modelers used 1980 as the starting year so they could compare the forecast temperature rise against the actual rise since 1980. Into the late 1990’s they claimed the rise in temperatures matched the forecast and therefore radiative forcing had been proven. However, I see a couple of things wrong with this. One is that the temperatures stopped rising in 1998 and have been in a decline since (according to the best data I can find). The computer model predicts continued warming, but the temperatures go into decline. That seems to side track that so called “proof”. And, now there is another big problem with this computer model based “proof”. The new climategate findings, first reported on our television program, show there is extensive manipulation of the temperature data at the National Climate Data Center. It is the temperature data from there that the computer modelers rely on for their proof. So their proof is now under a serious cloud of doubt.
I hope to finish this tomorrow and post it as a blog on my website.
I may obtain the Somerville interview from News and edit and post some of it later. I may.
Meanwhile, I have just posted my complete interview with Joe D’Aleo on my webpage and plan to post the complete E. Michael Smith interview the first of next week.
John Coleman
yonason (18:15:00) :
“a climate modeller”
LOL! Sounds like it.
—————————————————————-
He is a modeller. From ‘Selected Publications’ at his web site:
A nonlinear spectral model of convection….
….using a two-dimensional primitive-equation numerical model with rigid boundaries….
….the model simulates….
….Numerical models of thermal convection in the laboratory and in the atmosphere….
….in a general circulation model….
….Extended-range forecasts with the GISS model of the global atmosphere….
….an atmospheric circulation model….
….NCAR general circulation model….
….with the NCAR general circulation model….
….Using an efficient numerical model to simulate….
=================================================
=================================================
“My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.”
~~Freeman Dyson
….a numerical weather prediction model….
….barotropic models….
….Three-dimensional simulations of convection….
….Diagnostic modeling….
….Diagnostic modeling….Part II….
….in a general circulation model….
….climate model results….
….Single-column models….
….stochastic radiative transfer model….
….generalized energy balance climate model….
….Modeling springtime shallow frontal clouds with cloud-resolving and single-column models….
….simple aerosol climate model….
….an idealized model….
in previous comment I placed the Freeman Dyson quote in the middle of segments from Richard Somerville web site
opps
sorry for the confusing comment
photon without a Higgs (18:41:59) :
Yes, it does pour in California when the El Nino’s come in. And they go all the way back to the days of the 49er Gold Rush.
I have seen many of them in my lifetime, going back to 1955.
This one, however, is colder up North, with snow levels lowered to 4-5000′ where the El Nino’s go all the way up to 8-9000′.
photon without a Higgs (20:23:17) :
yonason (18:15:00) :
“a climate modeller”
LOL! Sounds like it.
—————————————————————-
He is a modeller. From ‘Selected Publications’ at his web site:
A nonlinear spectral model of convection….
….using a two-dimensional primitive-equation numerical model with rigid boundaries….
….the model simulates….
….Numerical models of thermal convection in the laboratory and in the atmosphere….
….in a general circulation model….
….Extended-range forecasts with the GISS model of the global atmosphere….
….an atmospheric circulation model….
….NCAR general circulation model….
….with the NCAR general circulation model….
….Using an efficient numerical model to simulate….
….a numerical weather prediction model….
….barotropic models….
….Three-dimensional simulations of convection….
….Diagnostic modeling….
….Diagnostic modeling….Part II….
….in a general circulation model….
….climate model results….
….Single-column models….
….stochastic radiative transfer model….
….generalized energy balance climate model….
….Modeling springtime shallow frontal clouds with cloud-resolving and single-column models….
….simple aerosol climate model….
….an idealized model….
=================================================
=================================================
“My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.”
~~Freeman Dyson
Anybody out there have vintage photos of coastlines as compared to present day…like this:
http://robertb.darkhorizons.org/WhatGlobalWarming.htm
In the middle of the page, the Lost Coast of California. It’s the only example I could find, but it throws cold water on these absurd catastrophic sea level rise scares.
Thanks belong to Anthony and all the commenters here for the superlative education I’ve received in “climate science” over the last two years. It certainly puts me equal with, and perhaps even ahead of, many of the “scientists” on the hockey team.
Ok so we have established that the guy is biased and towing the good old AGW lines.
What I am more concerned about is what this means for the ARGO data set since Scripps is shoulder deep in it. Has it too been Mann-ipulated and homogenized to hide the decline?
Dr. Sommerville is correct. Human activities are the main cause of the apparent warming; by cherry picking the temperature data, by selecting temperature data that support the theory, by tampering with the data bases, by ignoring other sources for temperature change, and by limiting time range of interest in climate to the last 50 years. Unfortunately, these human activies are by scientists with no integrity whether qualified by his standards or not. Finally the points made by Dr. Sommerville do not contain any substance. Al Gore could have made the same statements. Or did he?
“The warming is not natural”
The pre-war and pre-AGW warming 1900-1945 was steeper in gradient than the warming of the alleged AGW period until the 1998 super El Niño.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:1945/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1945/to:1997/trend
Perhaps the good professor believes that the global temperature had continued on a steady even downward slope since the Holocene optimum, as ‘hockey stick 1’ would have it, until c 1900.
In that case, how does he explain the 1900-1940 warming?
To my mind, the whole AGW edifice rests on one episode of warming, associated with the 1998 El Niño event, and, of course, that Mann graph.
The rest of his spiel is a hotchpotch of logical fallacies (straw man, red herring, authority and numbers) which he probably thinks are good enough for the hoi polloi.