This is an essay professor Richard Lindzen of MIT sent to the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va for their Opinion Page in March, and was recently republished in the Janesville, WI Gazette Extra where it got notice from many WUWT readers. It is well worth the read. – Anthony
To a significant extent, the issue of climate change revolves around the elevation of the commonplace to the ancient level of ominous omen. In a world where climate change has always been the norm, climate change is now taken as punishment for sinful levels of consumption. In a world where we experience temperature changes of tens of degrees in a single day, we treat changes of a few tenths of a degree in some statistical residue, known as the global mean temperature anomaly (GATA), as portents of disaster.
Earth has had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a 100,000-year cycle for the last 700,000 years, and there have been previous interglacials that appear to have been warmer than the present despite lower carbon-dioxide levels. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th century, these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat, and, indeed, some alpine glaciers are advancing again.
For small changes in GATA, there is no need for any external cause. Earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Examples include El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, etc. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all change in the globally averaged temperature anomaly since the 19th century. To be sure, man’s emissions of carbon dioxide must have some impact. The question of importance, however, is how much.
A generally accepted answer is that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (it turns out that one gets the same value for a doubling regardless of what value one starts from) would perturb the energy balance of Earth about 2 percent, and this would produce about 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming in the absence of feedbacks. The observed warming over the past century, even if it were all due to increases in carbon dioxide, would not imply any greater warming.
However, current climate models do predict that a doubling of carbon dioxide might produce more warming: from 3.6 degrees F to 9 degrees F or more. They do so because within these models the far more important radiative substances, water vapor and clouds, act to greatly amplify whatever an increase in carbon dioxide might do. This is known as positive feedback. Thus, if adding carbon dioxide reduces the ability of the earth system to cool by emitting thermal radiation to space, the positive feedbacks will further reduce this ability.
It is again acknowledged that such processes are poorly handled in current models, and there is substantial evidence that the feedbacks may actually be negative rather than positive. Citing but one example, 2.5 billion years ago the sun’s brightness was 20 percent to 30 percent less than it is today (compared to the 2 percent change in energy balance associated with a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels) yet the oceans were unfrozen and the temperatures appear to have been similar to today’s.
This was referred to by Carl Sagan as the Early Faint Sun Paradox. For 30 years, there has been an unsuccessful search for a greenhouse gas resolution of the paradox, but it turns out that a modest negative feedback from clouds is entirely adequate. With the positive feedback in current models, the resolution would be essentially impossible. [Note: readers, see this recent story on WUWT from Stanford that shows Greenhouse theory isn’t needed in the faint young sun paradox at all – Anthony]
Interestingly, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from manmade gases is already about 86 percent of what one expects from a doubling of carbon dioxide (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons, and ozone). Thus, these models should show much more warming than has been observed. The reason they don’t is that they have arbitrarily removed the difference and attributed this to essentially unknown aerosols.
The IPCC claim that most of the recent warming (since the 1950s) is due to man assumed that current models adequately accounted for natural internal variability. The failure of these models to anticipate the fact that there has been no statistically significant warming for the past 14 years or so contradicts this assumption. This has been acknowledged by major modeling groups in England and Germany.
However, the modelers chose not to stress this. Rather they suggested that the models could be further corrected, and that warming would resume by 2009, 2013, or even 2030.
Global warming enthusiasts have responded to the absence of warming in recent years by arguing that the past decade has been the warmest on record. We are still speaking of tenths of a degree, and the records themselves have come into question. Since we are, according to these records, in a relatively warm period, it is not surprising that the past decade was the warmest on record. This in no way contradicts the absence of increasing temperatures for over a decade.
Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) suggests that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, so too is the basis for alarm. However, the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc., all depend not on GATA but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind and the state of the ocean.
The fact that some models suggest changes in alarming phenomena will accompany global warming does not logically imply that changes in these phenomena imply global warming. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred, and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.
One may ask why there has been the astounding upsurge in alarmism in the past four years. When an issue like global warming is around for more than 20 years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence and donations are reasonably clear. So, too, are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of carbon dioxide is a dream come true. After all, carbon dioxide is a product of breathing itself.
Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted to save Earth. Nations see how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. So do private firms. The case of Enron (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, Enron was one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon-emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to trillions of dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions.
It is probably no accident that Al Gore himself is associated with such activities. The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense.
Finally, there are the well-meaning individuals who believe that in accepting the alarmist view of climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue. For them, psychic welfare is at stake.
Clearly, the possibility that warming may have ceased could provoke a sense of urgency. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, the need to courageously resist hysteria is equally clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever-present climate change is no substitute for prudence.
Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric science at MIT. Readers may send him e-mail at rlindzenmit.edu. He wrote this for The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va.
Well, Dr. Lindzen’s comments are quite good.
The trite, rather predictable responses by anu came up quite short, attempting only to make a mountain out of the molehill of meteorology versus atmospheric science in the job position held. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the most obvious fault mentioned here. That is that climate science itself is the conglomeration of many different sciences which means that it is NOT actually a separate science. For that matter, neither is meteorology which concerns itself with with thermodynamics and fluid mechanics before one even gets started with the basics.
To make any assumption that that somehow or another that a job position or a degree in meteorology precludes one from being an expert in climatology is to preclude the concept that there could possibly even be a climatology or a meteorology expert in the first place.
Of course anu’s concept is ludicrous on the front end because the vast majority of those feeding at the CAGW trough are not even founded in the actual science associated with this area. Instead, you find economists, biologists of all ilk, and other misc. perveyors of softer sciences who concentrate on trying to tell us what they feel is likely to happen in the event that CAGW actually does occur.
As for Mann, Jones, Hansen, and the other usual culprits, none are actually trained as climatologists as there was no such training per se when they were students. The closest would be undoubtedly be physical meteorology back in the mid-60s. That, of course, is merely yet another area of applied physics, just like electrical or mechanical engineering.
What makes a scientist is one driven by curiosity to find out about things and who will follow the scientific method and not become confused over what they know and what they only think they know or know that they don’t know and who do not accept theories, claims, or even experimental results without some level of skepticism. After all, sometimes experiments have unknown problems and biases – witness the rejection of the sun centered universe falsification (rejection) due to the failure to detect stellar parallax due to Earth’s orbital position around the Sun – something present but too small to detect for many centuries.
mikael pihlström (09:09:52),
I can’t imagine what it’s like being scared of your own shadow. Nothing unusual is happening with our planet, it’s just that we can see what’s going on in much finer detail. It’s like looking at a scary insect under a microscope. Some of them look like space aliens. But in reality, they’re harmless.
What you’re worried about is the natural ebb and flow of the climate: click
I think if there were a way to convince you that the climate is normal, and mankind had nothing to do with it, you would find something else to frighten you. Being scared seems to fill a need in a lot of folks, and devious people feed on that need for their own benefit. Remember that the next time you see a scary CO2 graph with a truncated y-axis: click
When a normal y-axis starting at zero is used, here’s what the same data shows: click
@ur momisugly mikael pihlström (09:09:52) :
The next ice age is more distant in time than warming.
Says who?
Smokey (09:57:14) :
mikael pihlström (09:09:52),
“I can’t imagine what it’s like being scared of your own shadow. Nothing unusual is happening with our planet, it’s just that we can see what’s going on in much finer detail. It’s like looking at a scary insect under a microscope. Some of them look like space aliens. But in reality, they’re harmless.”
Thank you for asking, but i am not particularly scary and not of insects of
any kind. Let’s start from a solid locked-in sceptic position: no AGW whatsoever.
Would you agree that the natural climatic variation will have different social
consequences depending on what kind of world it acts upon? I keep
repeating myself: the word alarming has different connotations if you look at it from a MIT armchair or look straight into an empty well in India or China.
Next step; even Lindzner conceeds that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have some influence; niceties aside it has been rather warm (GMT) lately?; a
sceptic seriously doubts too confident conclusions, but he/she doesn’t dogmatically exclude that they might be at least partly true, right?
I am not really impressed by your variations on y-axis; why start from zero?
or then again, use the amplitude 0 – 10 000, if a straight line on a graph reasures you in your belief. It could be applied elsewhere; monitor US deficit on a graph with y-axis 0-10 000 trillion $. So, that your citizens shall not
fear their shadows.
Francisco (08:25:54) :
Norman (08:18:05) :
Neither of you understand the point at all!
Norman’s graphs are completely irrelevent, they simply show the effect I am stating which is that when cloud cover is higher, temperatures are lower – and vice versa.
The point is that in order for clouds to be an effective negative feedback to CO2 forcing there needs to be a gradual and persistent increase in global cloud coverage as the temperature of the earth rises. By persistent I mean cloud coverage that stays higher all the time. In other words as the earth gets warmer, the skies get cloudier – and in order to be an effective negative feedback they would need to stay cloudier, all the time.
But just think about that for a moment. Let us say that did happen and the earth was cloudier. What would that do to temperatures?
Keep thinking…
Yes! They would go down – and quite quickly I would bet.
Now we have a colder earth. What would that do to cloud cover?
Keep thinking…
Right, you’ve got it – the cloud would have to decrease, because there would not be enough heat getting through to evaporate the water to create the clouds.
Now, what would that decline in cloud cover do to temperatures?
Keep thinking…
OK, hopefully you are there by now – they would go up.
Now do you get the picture? Clouds act as a negative feedback only in the very short term – a matter of hours, days or seasons. However, CO2 does not rise and fall with the temperature on an hourly, daily or even yearly basis. It stays more or less the same, with a slight positive shift in response to temperatures over decades. It is a positive feedback to rising temperatures.
Now find me a long term, stable and persistent negative feedback to rising temperatures. There is only one, and that is the Stefan-Boltzmann effect. Radiation from the earth rises with the 4th Square of temperature. This acts to limit the effect of rising temperatures and stops a runaway greenhouse effect. However it does still mean that temperatures rise – and at any given level of CO2 forcing this effect will mean a higher equilibrium temperature.
Climate models cannot predict weather and take account of internal variability. That is the job of the weather forecaster. Climate models are what happens when you calculate changes over a long enough period of time for the fluctuations in weather to average out so that you can see the underlying trend.
I work in finance, and modelling rising temperatures in the climate is very similar to calculating, say, the price of copper in the long term. In the short term, prices swing wildly up and down. So that buying in year 1 and selling in year 2 is profoundly affected by short-term movements (weather).
However financial growth, inflation and a rise in the use of electricity and electrical devices mean that in the long term there is a gradual rise in prices. You won’t be able to pick the right price in 50 years time, but you can be pretty sure it will be a lot higher than today – and even have a good idea of the magnitude if you know how the supply of copper reacts to demand. This is what the climate modellers are doing.
@ur momisugly TLM (10:59:00) :
That is simplistic, but yes, the main point is there.
Why have temperatures over the last 15 years exhibited no statistically significant trend, while CO2 has exhibited a statistically significant upward trend?
From mikael pihlström (09:09:52) :
First off, I would have to find validity in CO2 being a miraculous greenhouse gas that could provide the extra insulating properties to retain the heat needed to offset such a global cooling trend. Research presented here and at other credible locations has shown CO2’s effect to be logarithmic with possible offsetting by negative feedbacks rather than amplified greatly by positive feedback mechanisms.
Allowing CO2 to have that property for the sake of argument, normal ice ages last for tens of thousands of years. Due to normal carbon sequestration as found in the oceans and elsewhere, we don’t have enough fossil fuels to cover that long a period anyway. We would need a more technologically robust solution, such as solar reflectors in space directing extra energy at the planet as needed.
You say “…we need to transit to a low-carbon society now…” and I wonder who is “we.” India and China aren’t joining in the proposed global carbon dioxide reduction agreements, among others. Also there are lots of poor countries needing cheap energy to develop. “Alternative energy” like wind and solar won’t cut it. Nuclear has been proposed, if you don’t mind lots of third-world countries having access to nuclear materials, but the electrical distribution systems aren’t there to take advantage of it and in many places it is cost-prohibitive to physically impossible to provide power lines wherever needed. A highly-portable form of stored energy is needed, with good energy density, that can be easily transported and preferably able to be stored for long periods until utilized. Which calls for liquid and solid fuels, such as fossil fuels, that are carbon based.
“We”, the entire human population, thus need to use more carbon. We need to advance living standards beyond poverty and misery and improve the quality of life. We need more energy just to cope with the climate(s) we have right now, and to generate the wealth needed to fund the improvements. Once we have achieved that level, and have established the near-worldwide coverage of interconnected electrical distribution grids that can provide however much energy is required, then we can switch over to cost-effective low-carbon energy.
The surge in carbon dioxide emissions is happening. The big boys are not joining in on the carbon-limiting games. The little guys need the carbon-based energy to get to where they can afford to go low-carbon. Saving the fossil fuels to combat future global cooling is not a long-term solution. Therefore all dreams of mankind going quickly to low-carbon should cease as our efforts should properly be directed at mitigating whatever harmful effects will come from the increased carbon dioxide emissions, as soon as we agree what those consequences will be and to what degree, if there will be any.
TLM (10:59:00),
I don’t think you understand. Do a search of “iris effect’. I’d explain why your ad hoc examples are wrong, but it’s more fun responding to…
mikael pihlström (10:58:40):
“Thank you for asking, but i am not particularly scary and not of insects of any kind. Let’s start from a solid locked-in sceptic position: no AGW whatsoever.”
The insect analogy went right over your head, but your incorrect understanding of the scientific method and scientific skepticism needs to be set straight. It is wrong.
Show me a scientific skeptic who takes a ‘solid locked-in’ position that there is no AGW whatsoever. Show me just one, and I’ll show you a pseudo-skeptic.
Skeptics are always open to evidence. In fact, they crave verifiable evidence, just as they crave falsifying anything that can be falsified. That is how scientific truth is arrived at, and truth is what the scientific method is all about. The scientific method uses skepticism to strip away everything that cannot be empirically verified and replicated.
What is required with to support the AGW hypothesis is testable, empirical evidence showing that human emissions of CO2 will cause runaway global warming. The AGW hypothesis would have been long forgotten if it only postulated a slight rise in temperature to a fraction of a degree warmer, more pleasant and fruitful world. But the default AGW hypothesis is catastrophe. Because without that scare, no one cares.
You are very confused about what a skeptic is. Every honest scientist is a scientific skeptic, first and foremost. That is why we don’t go to faith healers or Sanataria witch doctors to treat diseases: their juju has been falsified by the scientific method, which requires skepticism as the null hypothesis. The fact that so many don’t understand how skepticism works within the scientific method is truly scary.
All it takes to verify the catastrophic AGW [CAGW] hypothesis is empirical evidence that is testable and reproducible by others, using the same raw data, code and methods.
But no such evidence has ever been produced. Instead, the promoters of CAGW hide behind their ever-changing ad hoc excuses of why they can’t/won’t allow skeptical scientists to attempt to reproduce their claimed results: the raw data has been “lost,” or they say there are [undisclosed] agreements requiring confidentiality [while they freely share the same data with their pals], or the raw data has been so intermingled with the adjusted data that it is no longer recoverable, or the data is somewhere in China, etc., etc.
Evidence is raw, verifiable data, not computer climate models. Models are simply tools, and not very good ones when it comes to predicting the climate. They are fine for fluid dynamics, but they fail at climate prediction. Yet models are the central supporting argument of the CAGW crowd.
Skeptics can easily be convinced of any hypothesis. All it takes is empirical evidence. The fact that there is no empirical evidence supporting the CAGW hypothesis, after decades and tens of billions of dollars spent trying to find it, points to one conclusion: CAGW fails as a scientific hypothesis, and the only thing that keeps it alive is the annual infusion of more $Billions, with $Trillions in prospect.
When you look at CAGW through the eyes of a true skeptic, you see the scam. When you look at it through the eyes of an alarmist, then everything you see points to a looming climate catastrophe.
Pick you side: skepticism, or juju.
Like a pearl of sanity in a sea of absurdity.
Thank you. Please keep it up.
What people (Anu et al) don’t understand about climatology is this :
Climatology cannot exist without the inclusion of other disciplines like geology, physics, statistical science, meteorology, etc etc… along with every other science that branches from those like heliophysics, various paleo branches, oceanographics, etc etc.
Basically they take all other sciences, slap them together, and call it their own science : “climatology”… go figure.
Thus climatologists cannot possibly be the only authorities on the science behind climate… it would be intellectually dishonest to claim otherwise and a disservice to the other science disciplines and its experts involved to make it a whole.
Each piece of the climatology puzzle has an individual expert on that particular piece… So if a physics expert or geologist expert disagrees, it’s because their particular science is being distorted from its origins and principles.
“We cannot hope to understand the causes of climatic stability or change by restricting ourselves to any one field of earth science. Nature is ignorant of how our universities are organized…” — Peter Weyl
” Smokey (09:57:14) :
mikael pihlström (09:09:52),
I can’t imagine what it’s like being scared of your own shadow. Nothing unusual is happening with our planet, it’s just that we can see what’s going on in much finer detail. It’s like looking at a scary insect under a microscope. Some of them look like space aliens. But in reality, they’re harmless.
You are not addressing my question, but OK, let’s take another angle:
1/ You, your fellow real skeptics Lindzen are, based on your description, giving some consideration to possibility of anthropogenic CO2 effect on climate and if next month you get some credible evidence in that direction
you reconsider your position?
2/ Do you agree, I asked you before, that even normal climate variation
could depending on the world it at the particular time acts on (refering to socioecological resilience) could be alarming, since the threshold for
e.g. drought effects is not far awai in places?
3/ If you agree on point 1 and 2, given that Western nations have put most
of the CO2 into the air, would it not be reasonable to support reducing
CO2, support REDD etc – measures I have advanced under the term
‘solidarity agenda’. You do support other policies based on a risk assessment, meaning you are not sure, but since a probability exists and
the consequences are serious if that probability is realized?
4/ If you say no to point 3, would it help if we take funding for climate
reserach of the list, since you consider it a scandalous use of money?
Note, I am not saying I agree with your analysis of skeptics or insects.
But, as reasonable people can we have a conclusion on the questions
1 to 4?
@ur momisugly TLM (10:59:00) :
But just think about that for a moment. Let us say that did happen and the earth was cloudier. What would that do to temperatures?
Keep thinking…
Yes! They would go down – and quite quickly I would bet.
Now we have a colder earth. What would that do to cloud cover?
Keep thinking…
Right, you’ve got it – the cloud would have to decrease, because there would not be enough heat getting through to evaporate the water to create the clouds.
Now, what would that decline in cloud cover do to temperatures?
Keep thinking…
OK, hopefully you are there by now – they would go up.
Now do you get the picture? Clouds act as a negative feedback only in the very short term – a matter of hours, days or seasons.
================
There is no reason to stop the process at any arbitrary point of your own choosing in the cycle, and proceed to call it short lived. If this interaction exists, it exists between surface temperature and cloud cover, and goes on indefinitely doing what it does, which is to exercise a negative feedback on surface temperature variations.
Whether the oscillations are quick or slow, has nothing to do with the process being short-lived or long-lived.
All you would need in order to cancel out the effect of a whole doubling of CO2 (a process that takes centuries) is an increase in cloud cover sufficient to increase the amount radiation they *block* by some 2%. On a year to year basis, the cloud variation wold be totally indetectable.
I should also add (an after thought from my earlier post) that this explains why Professor Lindzen (an atmospheric physicist) is pissed at climatologists… they are distorting various science disciplines in order to make their own story(s) pliable.
His discipline is all about getting to the bottom of the actual mechanisms of causation (physics) rather than dramatic jaw-dropping story telling.
I love the term “climatology”!
Rhymes with Scientology, if you don’t agree with them then you are just not thinking “clearly”, they hold the Absolute Truth, doubters need to be open-minded and willing to be presented with the Truth, it’s all based in solid scientific principles… And one way or another, everyone has to shell out whatever money is needed in service of the Truth.
Perfect!
Smokey (09:57:14) : (Responding to mikael pihlström (09:09:52))
“I can’t imagine what it’s like being scared of your own shadow. Nothing unusual is happening with our planet, it’s just that we can see what’s going on in much finer detail. It’s like looking at a scary insect under a microscope. Some of them look like space aliens. But in reality, they’re harmless.”
That is an interesting theory. For earthquakes it is correct. “ARE earthquakes becoming more frequent? This is a question that every seismologist is used to….It’s true that more earthquakes are recorded than used to be the case, but that’s simply because there are more monitoring stations that are able to pick up minor earthquakes that once went undetected. If we compare the average global rates of large earthquakes, we find that these are stable as far back as we can trace them.” See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/opinion/11musson.html
Apparently mainstream scientists can give the public reassuring news when appropriate. But, mainstream climatologists are telling us that the climate changes we are seeing are not normal as will increase if CO2 level continue to rise.
As for graphs, let’s not pick and choose: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
Smokey (21:32:48) :
You presume to be smarter than Prof Richard Lindzen, who holds the Alfred P. Sloan Atmospheric Sciences chair at MIT. You fail.
Try to keep up:
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology
http://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/person.asp?position=Faculty&who=lindzen
Professor Lindzen has forgotten more climate knowledge…
The Professor is 70 years old, but I don’t think you should be implying he’s senile. Don’t the moderators here have some rule about personal attacks ?
Neither Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, nor most of the other corrupt reprobates…
Oh, I guess not.
Good to know.
Earlier in this thread there was discussion (Bubbagyro, Tyn, George E Smith) about CO2 half-life in the atmosphere.
Using the annual decline at Mauna Loa (between Jul and Aug every year), I have calculated a half-life of between 121 and 125 months – 10 years or so. I claim no great authority for this figure; I have simply fitted exponential decay curves to the downticks in the earliest and most recent data.
My motive for conducting this casual exercise was this: the UK’s Royal Society on its website claims that manmade CO2 will persist for ‘thousands of years’. Scaremongering poppycock from a once-august body whose analysis weighs heavily on government policy and contributes to the gross waste of public money on this AGW hoax.
Dave F (21:49:59) :
Well, Lindzen may in fact teach the ‘Dynamics of the Atmosphere’ course at MIT, which would make him a professor of atmospheric science.
You don’t get to change a person’s title just because he’s teaching a different course this semester or because he wrote an editorial on some subject.
Fine, the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va. can’t do simple fact checking:
http://gazettextra.com/news/2010/apr/08/con-earth-never-equilibrium/
But isn’t every thread at WUWT all about the details and accuracy of all things related to climate ?
What if the newspaper called him the “Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Economics”, because he wrote an editorial expanding his economic views:
Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted to save Earth. Nations see how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. So do private firms. The case of Enron (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, Enron was one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon-emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to trillions of dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions.
You can’t give someone a more “relevant” title just because that was the topic of their essay. The title is set by their job:
http://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/person.asp?position=Faculty&who=lindzen
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm
Richard S Courtney (00:34:10) :
Yes, and the reason is that “… geologists” know much, much more about the mechanisms of the atmosphere and its variations over time…
I don’t think you know what geologists do.
harrywr2 (06:25:17)
So Hansen thinks temp has gone up 0.8C which is consistent with a straight radiation budget without multipliers or feedbacks; well, he’d be wrong on both accounts. The log effect of CO2 increase is one of the most fraught aspects of AGW; we’ve all seen these graphs for instance which show CO2 having a dominant part in the 33C greenhouse temperature component;
http://brneurosci.org/temperatures6.png
But as Lindzen says:
“The main absorbers of infrared in the atmosphere are water
vapor and clouds. Even if all other greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) were to
disappear, we would still be left with over 98 percent of the current greenhouse effect.”
So, if water is 98% of the greenhouse effect or 33C then CO2 and the other ghgs generate 2% of 33C or 0.66C, with most of that effect having already occurred at low levels of CO2 as this shows;
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0115707ce438970b-pi
But even this log or more accurately exponentially declining depiction of CO2 produces a temperature effect for CO2 of about 2.6C before asymptotic effects nullify any further heating from increases in CO2. So, what is the CO2 component of the greenhouse temperature of 33C. The propoganda of IPCC and the Hansens of the world is that effectively all of the greenhouse effect is from CO2; which of course is contradicted by their reliance on the enhanced greenhouse effect;
http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/07/ipcc-explains-the-greenhouse-effect/
Personally I think Lindzen is closer to the mark in respect of CO2’s effect.
@ur momisugly TLM (10:59:00)
Now find me a long term, stable and persistent negative feedback to rising temperatures.
========================
From Roy Spencer’s:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/climate-model-predictions-it%E2%80%99s-time-for-a-reality-check/
Excerpt:
[…]
“We have recently submitted to Journal of Geophysical Research a research paper that shows how one can tell the difference between cause and effect — between clouds causing a temperature change, and temperature causing a cloud change. And when this is done during the analysis of satellite data, it is clear that warming causes an increase in the sunshade effect of clouds. (While the data did suggest strong positive water vapor feedback, which enhances warming, that was far exceeded by the cooling effect of negative feedback from cloud changes.)”
“These results suggest that the climate system has a strong thermostatic control mechanism – exactly opposite to the way the IPCC models have been programmed to behave — and that the widespread concern over manmade global warming might well be a false alarm.”
“The potential importance of this result to the global warming debate demands a reexamination of all of the satellite data that have been collected over the last 25 years, with the best minds the science community can spare. Simply asserting that ‘Dr. Spencer does not know what he is talking about’ will not cut it any more.”
[…]
harrywr2 (06:25:17)
So Hansen thinks temp has gone up 0.8C which is consistent with a straight radiation budget without multipliers or feedbacks; well, he’d be wrong on both accounts. The log effect of CO2 increase is one of the most fraught aspects of AGW; we’ve all seen these graphs for instance which show CO2 having a dominant part in the 33C greenhouse temperature component;
http:brneurosci.org/temperatures6.png [// removed]
But as Lindzen says:
“The main absorbers of infrared in the atmosphere are water
vapor and clouds. Even if all other greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) were to
disappear, we would still be left with over 98 percent of the current greenhouse effect.”
So, if water is 98% of the greenhouse effect or 33C then CO2 and the other ghgs generate 2% of 33C or 0.66C, with most of that effect having already occurred at low levels of CO2 as this shows;
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0115707ce438970b-pi
But even this log or more accurately exponentially declining depiction of CO2 produces a temperature effect for CO2 of about 2.6C before asymptotic effects nullify any further heating from increases in CO2. So, what is the CO2 component of the greenhouse temperature of 33C. The propoganda of IPCC and the Hansens of the world is that effectively all of the greenhouse effect is from CO2; which of course is contradicted by their reliance on the enhanced greenhouse effect;
http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/07/ipcc-explains-the-greenhouse-effect/
Personally I think Lindzen is closer to the mark in respect of CO2’s effect.
Vincent (06:07:01) :
Your attempt to appear impartial and objective is risible.
Who said I was attempting to appear impartial ?
It’s amusing to think of you laughing, though – hearty guffaws, or an effeminate giggle ?
You wring your hands and inform us
There you go with that overactive imagination again.
Try to just read the words, ok ?
“Well you see, Lindzen is only a professor of meteorology, he’s not a REAL climate scientist.
I pointed out the newspaper got his title wrong. I then pointed out the obvious, that meteorology and climatology are two different fields.
Sorry if you missed this point while still giggling.
Then you offer up some wiki definitions of climate science and meteorolgy to make your case that Lindzen “knows nothing about climate.”
I never said he knows “nothing” about climate.
But Lindzen’s area of meteorology happens to be in studying earth’s radiation budget.
Yes, one of his many “areas”. Like monsoon meteorology and air-sea interaction in the tropics.
So he examines satellite data and finds that the radiation doesn’t conform to model predictions. As radiation budget is fundamental to the theory of man made warming by radiative forcing, Lindzen is indeed expert in climate.
I thought global warming skeptics were “prevented” from publishing their research ? No ?
Anyway, the original ERBE data used by Lindzen-Choi was not corrected for decaying altitude (caused by the satellite orbiting through very tenuous atmosphere). The incorrect altitudes led to spurious results for TOA longwave and shortwave fluxes. These things happen – it’s like the Josh Willis paper that found the oceans were cooling, until they corrected for faulty sensor data. Dr. Spencer at UAH has also had a lot of trouble correctly analyzing tricky, changing satellite orbits – it invalidated about two decades of his work.
But back to Dr. Lindzen:
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/~tak/wong/f20.pdf
http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/PRODOCS/erbe/quality_summaries/s10n_wfov/erbe_s10n_wfov_nf_sf_erbs_edition3.html
I’m sure if he ever gets some free time to revisit his study, with corrected data, he will do a good job.
Your whole argument is a thinly disguised ad hominem attack on Lindzen.
Let’s see, what was your reaction to Dr. Walt Meier who took the time to respond specifically to WUWT questions ? Not just an editorial that he wrote for some newspaper that was grabbed and posted here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/08/nsidcs-walt-meier-responds-to-willis
Does he really believe this or his he merely engaging in spin?
This is speculation again.
The author is either confused or
It is a circular argument based on slight of hand.
…but all I’ve seen is spin and propaganda. Not impressed, am I.
This argument is completely specious.
“It is a matter of concern that he is in a senior position.”
Agreed. Many have picked Meir’s arguments to peices until they are left resembling the rotting bones of a carcass on the Serengetti. All I can do is shake my head in disbelief.
Very colorful. In your “impartial and objective” style, of course.
Francisco (10:40:58) :
Since obtaining funding for climate research is virtually impossible unless you go along with the prevailing orthodoxy on AGW, and engage in research aimed to support it, there is no surprise that 97 percent of of those “who are active on climate research” agree with it.
Are you saying that, for example, Dr. Lindzen, Dr. Svensmark, Dr. Spencer and Dr. Christy have an almost impossible time “obtaining funding” to do the work they’ve been doing for decades ? And what about Dr. Josh Willis, who at first found that the oceans were cooling ? Do you think “they” made him give all the grant money back ?
Good science is good science. The results are not known ahead of time. Contrary to all the posters that said NSIDC was “cheating” with their website showing the Arctic ice growth not quite reaching the 1979-2000 average recently, scientists almost always report exactly what they find.
And when they don’t, it can become quite scandalous:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4554422.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-Suk
@ur momisugly kadaka (00:20:34) : “I’ve never used illegal mind-altering drugs, nor do I abuse legal “when used as directed” ones. Despite any pleas to be “open minded” and “don’t knock ‘em until you’ve tried ‘em” I continue to have no inclination to pollute myself in that manner, even amid anecdotal reports of “beneficial” side effects. Likewise I decline to visit realclimate. Sure there may be lost gold jewelry at the bottom of a septic tank, but it’s just not worth it for me to jump on in and go searching through that muck.”
This is the absolute epitome of closed mindedness. To refuse to read the views of one’s adversaries on the grounds that do to would be akin to taking drugs or diving into a septic tank shows a weak mind and shallow spirit. I certainly don’t think kadaka’s mindset is typical of climate skeptics, at least I hope not.