This is a letter professor Richard Lindzen of MIT sent to the Boston Globe and was published today. It is well worth the read.
KERRY EMANUEL’S Feb. 15 op-ed “Climate changes are proven fact’’ is more advocacy than assessment. Vague terms such as “consistent with,’’ “probably,’’ and “potentially’’ hardly change this. Certainly climate change is real; it occurs all the time. To claim that the little we’ve seen is larger than any change we “have been able to discern’’ for a thousand years is disingenuous. Panels of the National Academy of Sciences and Congress have concluded that the methods used to claim this cannot be used for more than 400 years, if at all. Even the head of the deservedly maligned Climatic Research Unit acknowledges that the medieval period may well have been warmer than the present.
The claim that everything other than models represents “mere opinion and speculation’’ is also peculiar. Despite their faults, models show that projections of significant warming depend critically on clouds and water vapor, and the physics of these processes can be observationally tested (the normal scientific approach); at this point, the models seem to be failing.
Finally, given a generation of environmental propaganda, a presidential science adviser (John Holdren) who has promoted alarm since the 1970s, and a government that proposes funding levels for climate research about 20 times the levels in 1991, courage seems hardly the appropriate description – at least for scientists supporting such alarm.
Richard S. Lindzen
Cambridge
The writer is Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
JonesII (11:55:27) :
climate research about 20 times the levels in 1991
Many will change sides…
We have a saying for that here in the US: “Chicago on the Potomac”
Emily Daniels (18:47:51),
You’ve got to give Robert a little time to respond. He has to dial up the answers to your questions on his iPhone. ☺
Smokey (19:13:03)
Thanks for digging that up. I see it is more an approximation than an actual plot of the raw data but interesting nonetheless.
Robert (16:41:17) :
“Testable prediction in 1989 — and it’s passed every test with flying colors. “
Wow. As others have pointed out, the only semi-accurate prediction was based on the assumption that we would do things we haven’t done. You are losing touch with reality.
Somehow I see too many parallels between what is happening right now with AGW and the good ol’ ozone hole
http://www.wunderground.com/education/ozone_skeptics.asp
methinks you really don’t want to get at the truth, just demolish the lives and careers of the scientists you disagree with.
Smokey (18:48:26) :
[takes 10 – 15 seconds to load for some reason]
Does it say ‘Adjusting…….’ as a little red bar fills up?
In all seriousness, check out what RC says in my post above (Dave F (15:50:57) : ) about ice sheets taking 10,000 years to respond to temperature. According to RC, they are supposed to be melting now! Not only that, but if we begin to warm the planet, they should not respond for 10,000 years, as opposed to in ~100. Wattsupwiththat indeed!
I can not be nearly as calm about Kerry Emmanuel’s propaganda piece as Prof. Lindzen. It infuriates me when someone of Emmanuel’s position misleads the public on a very important issue, assuming that they are too stupid to know the truth. It made my skin crawl when he wrote:
“It is easy to be critical of the models that are used to make such predictions – and we are – but they represent our best efforts to objectively predict climate; everything else is mere opinion and speculation.”
Objectively? He can’t be serious! Are there no assumptions in the models, Kerry? Even if those assumption neutralized climate change in the models, they could not be called objective. They are assumptions based on ignorance, not objectivity. The fact that all the assumptions enhance the warming in the models means the models are anything but objective! And what did we have before we had climate models? Just “mere opinion and speculation?” Did science not exist before computers? Was objectivity impossible before the 1960s? Do you take us all for fools, Mr. Emmanuel?
He ends the piece with:
” We might begin by mustering the courage to confront the problem of climate change in an honest and open way.”
The whole climategate scandal has been about some AGW scientists being dishonest and extremely closed in sharing their data and methodologies. For Emmanuel to then call for the skeptics to be open and honest is the height of hypocrisy. Even his on column is blatantly dishonest in implying that the recorded warming of the last 120 years matches the AGW/CO2 theory, when much of the warming preceded the CO2, and global cooling coincided with the first 30 years of truly enhanced CO2. For 2/3rds of the 20th Century, the temperature record did not fit the CO2 warming theory. So far, the 21st Century isn’t fitting the theory either. Claiming that the theory is meshing well with the data is a lie, plain and simple!
There are only two possibilities here: Emmanuel is a fanatic in sheep’s clothing or he is not very intelligent.
Of course, both could be true.
We need a Devil’s advocate here as I couldn’t be bothered to go to RC. Be nice to Robert. He could be you daughter!
harvey (19:52:04),
That link is the most slanted, biased, agendized globaloney I’ve read in a long time.
And I’ve been reading a lot.
Suggestion: push and hold the [left] ALT key and [on the keypad] enter 0176 to get the ° [ring or degree] symbol
CodeTech (15:28:23) :
Apologies to you – posted my suggestion to David (14:16:57) before reading yours.
quote
[], models show that projections of significant warming depend critically on clouds and water vapor, and the physics of these processes can be observationally tested (the normal scientific approach); at this point, the models seem to be failing.
unquote
Has anyone seen results from the VOCALS team, a study of boundary layer clouds off South America? In my normal swivelly-eyed way I have suggested they check the cloud droplets for pollution, especially in those interesting bits where the clouds are absent which remind me of the work on bacterial manipulation of CCNs over rainforests.
JF
I admire Robert. He disrupts the choir here, preaching happily to itself about how right it is, how purely objective it is in the pursuit of truth, unlike that other, nefarious opposing choir.
You need more Roberts here, just as more (let me pick a name) Smokeys are needed on RC, etc. Otherwise you just end up with more highly tuned choirs, bouncing very resonant echos about the chapel.
Smokey (20:24:02) :
I see. You cannot refute what they say.
So you just wave it off. Typical.
I want to know the truth.
I’m as big a skeptic as you all here, but I am not as naive as many here seem to be.
Smokey (19:13:03) : c james (19:02:19),
OK, I found it. It was posted by Steve Keohane here: click @09:16:22.
Yes I did that, wondering what reality might be closer to sans adjustments. The original was saved 1/09. These days I suspect it’s worse than I thought, and considering all the massaging of data we’re probably another .5-1° below that shown.
mazibuko;
I admire Robert. He disrupts the choir here, preaching happily to itself>
I’ve only been following this blog for a couple of months, but I’ve not noticed all that much happy preaching. Glee when another house of cards collapses yes. But after the flurry of glee, the argument about what key to be in and the right tempo begins. Don’t jump in unless you know something about the music.
“Robert” is more like a drunken lout stumbling through the choir, over turning furniture, and accusing the choir of speaking in tongues. It’s distracting, but of little value.
[REPLY – Bear in mind, though, that all points of view are welcome here. One thing I am sure of is that neither “side” of this debate is 100% right in all theories and/or speculations. That leaves us room for serious and respectful scientific debate. ~ Evan]
johnnythelowery (19:59:21) :
I agree. Poor old Robert certainly looks like a troll, but my daughter sounds like one as well. She’s scared to death that we’re all going to die (note the irony), and its worse than we thought! I was such a scared person myself a few years ago, until I stopped assuming that I wouldn’t understand, and started reading for myself.
The iphone app Robert is enjoying is based on a site that I found early in my travels. It’s entire tone put me off, but checking the claims from the site, with other sites and finding it was wrong, was fascinating and fun! Thank you Anthony, and mods for keeping these comments nice!
mazibuko, do you ever wonder why there are no Smokey’s at real climate?
==========================================
[REPLY – Bear in mind, though, that all points of view are welcome here. One thing I am sure of is that neither “side” of this debate is 100% right in all theories and/or speculations. That leaves us room for serious and respectful scientific debate. ~ Evan]
Which, by the way, I should make clear I appreciate. I learn more from the posts that are wrong on the science from the debate that ensues (even when it was me that was wrong which turns out to be more frequent than I thought but less frequent than my wife claims).
Oops, see what happens when you hit the tab key!
Robert’s posts make me think that he is reading from a prepared script. I think he comes from a call centre testing the new iphone app.
Richard Lindzen hits the Warmers for Six. Uses RealPlayer. I would advise downloading Real Alternative, which is free and doesn’t muck up your system.
http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/100210Lindzen/f.htm
davidmhoffer (16:48:47) :
OT but over on RealClimate I noticed that they are no longer calling sceptics “deniers”, but now all them “dissidents”.
David, please inform Gavin and his diciples that I prefer “Refutnik”.
So, the science is in – AGW is a hoax at best and a fraud at worst.
Mike Alker (14:37:48) :
Mike, I use this web-site here for gas-percentages;
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
The close match between GHG concentrations and temperature increases, predicted 20 years ago and now an observed fact, is strong empirical evidence of global warming theory.
Well yes. If his 1989 model was complete. But we know the PDO and other ocean circulation stuff was not in there.
So all you can say for sure is maybe he was correct. Maybe he was lucky.
And the fact that we keep adding to the models shows that we don’t even know enough yet to make proper models. i.e. ones that can be relied on for trillion dollar a year bets.