I had dinner with Richard Lindzen (along with Lucia, Steve McIntyre, Jeff Id, and others) last night after a hectic day of airline roulette. He’s easy to talk to and easy to like, so it is no surprise to me that he and Kerry Emanuel could have been friends as discussed in this Boston Globe article.
It is no surprise they grew to be friends.
Richard Lindzen and Kerry Emanuel are both brilliant and convivial. Both study the atmosphere and climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where their offices overlooking the Charles River are one floor apart. In an academic world often dominated by liberals, both have strong conservative streaks and once agreed that the evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming just wasn’t there.
But then the climate changed between them. Friends became intellectual foes, dueling icons in one of the world’s most acrimonious political debates.
Friends had a hard time staying friends.
Lindzen, a leading specialist on atmospheric physics, has emerged as one of the most prominent climate change skeptics in the world. At age 70, he speaks at home and overseas, arguing that there is little to worry about from emissions of heat-trapping gases from power plants, factories, and cars. We should “go back to dealing with real science and real environmental problems such as assuring clean air and water,’’ he wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Earth Day.
Emanuel, an equally respected researcher, emerged as a preeminent voice on climate change’s potential dangers after he published a paper three weeks before Katrina that suggested global warming might be making hurricanes more powerful. Named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine, Emanuel, 55, says he has been persuaded by the evolving science that man-made climate change is a real threat.
“I don’t see how a climate scientist can look at the evidence and not see risk,’’ he said recently.
Emanuel thinks Lindzen’s key theories don’t hold up, and just two weeks ago went public with his criticism, penning a tart letter to the editor rebutting Lindzen’s Journal piece — “irresponsible and misleading,’’ he called it, “advancing spurious hypotheses.’’
Lindzen has implied that Emanuel is hyping the evidence and making a play for fame and funding in the age of Obama and Gore. In a letter savaging an opinion piece by Emanuel in the Globe, he branded the reasoning “more advocacy than assessment.’’
In the Ivory Tower, these are fighting words.
The story of the scientists’ relationship is much more than a curiosity. The fact that these serious-minded colleagues and longtime friends disagree so vehemently highlights the immense difficulty of finding common ground on human-caused global warming. That’s because their disagreements are not just about interpretations of scientific data, but about how they assess the risks, amid the uncertainty over global warming’s future impact.
Their divide mirrors a much larger political split, as the US Senate begins to debate a climate bill written in large part by Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry. All parties to the debate have the same evidence to draw on; their conclusions are another matter. Lindzen and Emanuel’s collision spotlights the ultimate sticking point: What steps should we take, and at what cost? That is: How much insurance against the possibility of catastrophe should a prudent planet buy?
“If these two guys can’t agree on the basic conclusions of the social significance of [climate change science], how can we expect 6.5 billion people to?’’ said Roger Pielke Jr., a University of Colorado at Boulder professor who writes a climate blog.
read the rest of the story here at the Boston Globe
My goodness. I was expecting some good strong stuff from Emanuel, but he’s just a parrot for the IPCC report! All the old cliches – glacier retreat, wars etc, nothing of substance at all.
Does this mean that Kerry Emanuel has proven the link from man’s CO2 to climate?
After all, that is the foundation of the whole controversy. If you cannot prove that man’s CO2 is guilty, then no amount of climate change matters, politically, since it cannot be shown to be caused by man.
And if it is not, in fact, caused by man, no amount of cutting CO2 will be effective against climate change (only against man’s well being!)
Thanks
JK
Skepticism is its own machine.
================
Sounds like Kerry Emanuel has found it is easier to do politics than good science and the pay is not only equal but has added perks.
Where is his paper on the missing hurricanes in the preceding few years after the sun went dormant, how long will it take for the symmetry in science to occur?
It’s interesting that Emanuel claims that changes in the science have convinced him, because nothing has really changed in climate science for several decades now-no earth shattering developments that have truly changed the “mainstream” view (the current official estimates of climate sensitivity are exactly where the Charney report put them thirty years ago, for instance). Only the rhetoric has gotten more intense. No, what convinced Emanuel, I am absolutely certain, was how convinced everyone else insisted they were. How much they insisted that their confidence had grown ever larger. How self assured, how confident their tone was. Who can argue with that?
“If these two guys can’t agree on the basic conclusions of the social significance of [climate change science], how can we expect 6.5 billion people to?’’ said Roger Pielke Jr., a University of Colorado at Boulder professor who writes a climate blog.”
What a devious and clever line of reasoning. We can never agree on any
course of action if two colleagues, who Holy smoke!, sit in the same university
building cannot even agree betwen themselves.
Widget again shows zero, is it broken or is reality showing. Emanuel says not interesting, Soon says very interesting. I think we are starting to see very interesting.
mikael pihlström says:
May 16, 2010 at 5:58 am
“If these two guys can’t agree on the basic conclusions of the social significance of [climate change science], how can we expect 6.5 billion people to?’’ said Roger Pielke Jr., a University of Colorado at Boulder professor who writes a climate blog.”
What a devious and clever line of reasoning. We can never agree on any
course of action if two colleagues, who Holy smoke!, sit in the same university
building cannot even agree betwen themselves.
===
I was struck by that one too. Surely Roger Pielke Jr. doesn’t believe the scientific community is evenly divided on the issue.
I make it a rule of thumb that anybody who honestly believes we are experiencing catastrophic warming because of CO2 must be a strong & vocal supporter of buidling massive numbers of new nucleasr reactors as the only practical way of cutting CO2 release. Anybody opposed to nuclear simply cannot honestly believe the spin about catastrophic warming even if they are strongly pushing it. I can’t find Kerry having said anything on either side of this.
“Named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine, Emanuel, 55, says […]”
That says more about Time magazine than about Emanuel. Never heard of him before this article.
mikael pihlström says:
“[…]
What a devious and clever line of reasoning.”
Yeah those devious Pielkes. Watch out for them, they’re clever!
The point is, that science is NOT about risk!
In other words ‘risk’ is NOT a subject for scientists!
According to the inventor of the scientific method, the goal of the sciences is …. “that human life be endowed with new discoveries and powers”. As ‘climate risk’ does not fall into this category, it is by definition NOT science.
Someone ought to tell Kerry Emanuel that he is NOT doing science, but something else.
That is for others. The scientific method is aimed at finding out new stuff, so that mankind can gain understanding
The sharply worded vs. the sharply reasoned.
Pretty good Boston.com article, considering the source. It shows how money has corrupted climate scientists like Kerry Emanuel:
So Kerry Emanuel is in it in large part for the money, and Lindzen is in it for the basic science. Can there be any other conclusion from Emanuel’s quote?
mikael pihlström,
Roger Pielke Jr. is a well respected voice on climatology. His quote refers to “social significance.” The only thing ‘devious’ about it is your labeling it as devious. Pielke is simply commenting on the different views between Lindzen and Emanuel on the proper course of action regarding the CAGW scam.
Show me two scientists who agree on everything, and I’ll show you two scientists cashing in on the same grant. Emanuel is by his own admission putting a high priority on his new found loot, while Lindzen is doing his climate research without the lure of the easy money gravy train clouding his results.
Watched the video. Emanuel is a salesman. Like the Weizsäckers in Germany (bunch of brothers with a lot of political and Club Of Rome connections; thinking of themselves as very intelligent).
I don’t want scientists stating normative arguments about policy as scientifically based. I want scientists explaining a hypothesis, providing me with ALL of the data that supports or refutes that hypothesis, and the uncertainties involved in that data. Their opinion on the normative arguments about what, if anything, to do about their hypothesis is no more important than mine.
Not only is Emanuel’s opinion directly contradicted by the later work of Ryan Maue, that opinion appears to be contradicted by Emanuel, in a FAQ that he published in January of 2006, which said in the first anwer:
The global, annual frequency of tropical cyclones (the generic, meteorological term for the storm that is called a tropical storm or hurricane in the Atlantic region) is about 90, plus or minus 10. There is no indication whatsoever of a long-term trend in this number.
What did he really say? Rather than take the Boston Globe’s word for it, it is probably worth understanding.
““Named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine, Emanuel, 55, say
what is this “Time magazine” of which you speak?
The funding method for these folks MUST change. Lies are being bought!
There’s a report out – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7127706.ece – suggesting that Iceland may become a more significant player in global climate over the next few years. If Thor’s prognosis comes to pass it would put a significant crimp in AGW plans.
“They have reconstructed a timeline of 205 eruptions in Iceland, spanning the past 1,100 years, and found that they occur in regular cycles — with the relatively quiet phase that dominated the past five decades now coming to an end.
At least three other big Icelandic volcanoes are building towards an eruption, according to Thor Thordarson, a volcanologist at Edinburgh University.
“The frequency of Icelandic eruptions seems to rise and fall in a cycle lasting around 140 years,” he said. “In the latter part of the 20th century we were in a low period, but now there is evidence that we could be approaching a peak.”
Since so much of this AGW alarm is an ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusion and Madness of the Crowd’, I wonder what his reaction would be to the revelation of his role in instigating this mad crowd behaviour?
==================
“Curiousgeorge says:
[…]
If Thor’s prognosis comes to pass […]”
Well, with that name…
Everyone on the planet agrees that people are filthy beasts. Most also agree, that there are far too many of them on the planet and that they use and abuse the natural resources like crazy idiot teenagers. The problem is that each of us has a very different sense of how filthy and dangerous the beasts are, and how much damage they’re doing to Mother Earth based on our own proximity (and prejudice) to the infestations.
The “science” is not settled; after all people are really very stupid. Ergo: the only course of action when in doubt, we must use every means we have to protect ourself and our family and friends. How do we do this? With our position in society and our big fat mouth. I hear some even put money where their mouth is.
My fellow peasents, remember that the only things we have to fear are fear itself, and each other.
PS: We are NOT arguing with each other about “Global Warming”, “Climate Change”, “CO2”, “Melting Ice Caps”, or anything else. We are positioning ourselves for our own safety against “them”*.
(* – “them” is not you or me, “them” is those who would harm us, and there are a lot more of “them” than you and me)
I his recent interview with Examiner.com, Dr. Willie Soon of Harvard absolutely ripped Stephen Schneider, professor of environmental studies at Stanford University. I wonder what he would say about Kerry Emanuel?
Perhaps I should inteview Dr. Soon a second time. Here is Dr. Soon’s Q&A, in which he advises Al Gore to “shut-up.”
http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2010m5d11-Harvard-astrophysicist-dismisses-AGW-theory-challenges-peers-to-take-back-climate-science
In the mid-1980’s (yes, 80’s) a Boston University grad student acquaintance laughed when I asked him about global warming, explaining that one had to include it in BU science grants in order to get funding.
I guess they’ve been doing the same thing on the other side of the Charles.
Dr. Kerry Emanuel is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In public appearances like the video above, he puts up a nice image as a reasonable scientist.
However, it is clear from less ‘shaped’ venues that this is all a front.
Case in point: the MIT debate mentioned in the Boston.com article
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/730
Here he talks about the ‘big coal’ funding for skeptics, etc etc.
Good day Anthony,
With the text running into the shaded borders,it is very difficult to read.
“Mr. Lindzen clings to his agenda of denial,’’ Emanuel wrote.
And so Professor Lindzen wins the argument, the science however remains unsettled.
Did Emmanuel make quick admission about the MWP when he said Greenland ice has melted before.That doesn’t fit with his AGW argument.
Wren says:
I was struck by that one too. Surely Roger Pielke Jr. doesn’t believe the scientific community is evenly divided on the issue.
Explain the significance of consensus, or even majority regarding science. Relate it to the pre-existing consensus prior to new discovery surrounding flat earth, Charles Darwin, earth-centered solar system, anti-matter, solar influence, hurricane frequency and intensity, Keynesian economics, etc.
Whose bread one eats, whose words one speaks.
Think Kerry, and Kerry.
By the way, yet another consensus seems to have been smashed,
I’ve got a short blurb about it at yours truly. Could be interesting for Anthony, and even Steve.
and RP Jnr seems to be falling behind things – the population is over 6.8B.
Let’s not discount 300 milion like that.
Science Wars: I’m currently reading Lee Smolin’s book The Trouble with Physics for a second time. There is a ‘debate’ going on in physics between string theorists and others, including the author. I was struck by the similarities with the ‘debate’ in climate science. ‘Debate’ here being a euphemism for something far ruder. Readers should note that string theory hasn’t explained anything yet and probably never will because there are 10^500 possible string theories, although that’s just my view. See how many of these extracts from the introduction have parallels with this post and the wider climate science:
First we have the models: Gerard ‘t Hooft, a Nobel prize winner for his work in elementary particle physics, has characterized the state of string theory this way : “Actually, I would not even be prepared to call string theory a ‘theory,’ rather a ‘model,’ or not even that: just a hunch.
Then we have ‘what else can it be?’: “the most likely reason why no … person has convinced others about [an] alternative to string theory is that there probably exists no alternative to string theory”.
One result of the rise of string theory is that the community of people who work on fundamental physics is split… The split is not always friendly. Doubts are expressed on each side about the professional competence and ethical standards of the other, and it is real work maintaining friendships across the divide.
Many adherents and critics of string theory are so confirmed in their views that it is difficult to have a cordial discussion on the issue, even among friends.
One reason to take these issues public goes back to the debate that took place a few years ago between scientists and “social constructivists,” a group of humanities and social science professors, over how science works. The social constructivists claimed that the scientific community is not more rational or objective than any other community of human beings. [They] argued that our claims about how science works were mainly propaganda designed to intimidate people into giving us power, and that the whole scientific enterprise was driven be the same political and sociological forces that drove people in other fields.
I would like to read the opinions from the pro AGW camp on what effect, if any, they believe “group think” has on the climate debate. The con men like Al Gore et. al. have pushed and pushed and pushed the message that if you don’t believe in the religion of global warming then you are somehow evil and uncaring about the environment. You’re a “denier” which instantly creates the impression that the skeptic also approves on the mass killings of millions of Jews during WWII.
The rift between Dr. Emanuel and Dr. Lindzen in my opinion, illustrates the psychosocial divide between the two men far more than any scientific dispute. The people in society that are vulnerable to the group think marketing message that caring and concern for the environment must be expressed through the crusade of global warming become trapped and are forced to parrot the AGW scriptures.
An individual like Dr. Lindzen who is not vulnerable to this group pressure sets a great example for all young science students to learn from. Dr. Lindzen is following in the footsteps of Galileo and other great people of history who dared to stand up to the group think pressure of the day. Thank you Dr. Lindzen for having courage to stand up for real science.
c1ue writes:
“Case in point: the MIT debate mentioned in the Boston.com article
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/730
Here he talks about the ‘big coal’ funding for skeptics, etc etc.”
I heartily recommend this video. If you trust your judgement, you can see that Lindzen is the only adult in the group. The female professor spouts fine examples of the absurdities that come from those who have not gotten over Kuhn’s once-upon-a-time interesting criticisms of scientific method. In my humble opinion, Emmanuel is enjoying the celebrity that came to him because he predicted stronger hurricanes just before Katrina. He is now closer to Al Gore than to science.
Smokey
“So Kerry Emanuel is in it in large part for the money, and Lindzen is in it for the basic science. Can there be any other conclusion from Emanuel’s quote?”
That is Lindzen’s story, not a quote from Emanuel…
——
“Roger Pielke Jr. is a well respected voice on climatology. His quote refers to “social significance.”
Whether about climate science or social significance, he says that a
community cannot decide on a policy, because two scientists in the
same building disagree – that is either populistic or a thought that
shouldn’t have been voiced.
——
“Show me two scientists who agree on everything, and I’ll show you two scientists cashing in on the same grant.”
Why do you always choose the most unlikely explanation?
The two scientists just use their heads and come to the same
conclusion? There is a catch – ‘agree on everything’ – in your phrase,
but that is so evident, nobody does …
But, AGW proponents agree on the main issue and they are more
than two
Another example of the dishonest tactics of the CAGW contingent. I note that no one on the AGW side ever disavows slanders like this. As they say, silence is concurrence.
And Mikael: Dr Lindzen doesn’t chase after the money like Emanuel does. I also note that Emanuel does not refute Lindzen’s account. And you are still confused regarding the Pielke quote.
Given the ruinous economic policies of Obama and the natural competition from other science areas for funding, how much longer can Global Warming be the recipient of the R&D Gravy Train largesse?
The political value of AGW is fast fading. As the planet refuses to warm at a catastrophic rate as predicted, as people naturally worry more about their paycheck than what is happening to ice in the Arctic, politicians will jump off the bandwagon and abandon their fair wind science buddies faster than people leaving a fart filled elevator.
Obama, for all his faults as a money manager, has sensitive political antennae . . . he’ll throw anyone or anything under the bus if he thinks his political ambition is in jeopardy.
AGW, meet Obama’s bus.
Have a nice day.
Gotta run. Emmanuel and Landsea get along sort of:
http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/content/news/2010/02/27/lyons0228.html
I think this is separate stuff, but good:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/weather/hurricanes/article647649.ece
Glad Anthony made it to dinner.
DirkH says:
May 16, 2010 at 7:15 am
“Curiousgeorge says:
[…]
If Thor’s prognosis comes to pass […]”
Well, with that name…
Does make one wonder. 🙂 He’s published one book that I know of: “Iceland (Classic Geology in Europe 3) ” available at Amazon (of course ), but haven’t read it.
Emanuelle just does the same here as all the pro-AGW believers – he asserts all these “alarming” observations (or model projections) of warming, sea rises, etc as being evidence in themselves of man being the cause. Obviously I don’t have to tell anyone on this site what drivel that is. Worse, he starts preaching about political ramifications and the threat of war. Even worse, he compares AGW-sceptics with people who don’t believe HIV is linked to AIDS (but says “which is a good thing!”). And then he says “If you want proof, you’re not going to get it.” How about some evidence , Mr Emanuelle, and less unscientific, alarmist preaching?
Lindzen, on the other hand, coolly gives some irrefutable facts: climate has always changed, sea level has been rising since the beginning of the current inter-glacial, and temperature is always going either up or down. He tells us in so many words that ‘consensus’ is scientifically worthless. Now, will a pro-AGWist tell me: What’s to argue about any of that?
AlanG writes:
“The social constructivists claimed that the scientific community is not more rational or objective than any other community of human beings. [They] argued that our claims about how science works were mainly propaganda designed to intimidate people into giving us power, and that the whole scientific enterprise was driven be the same political and sociological forces that drove people in other fields.”
Scientists have the scientific method. It is a critical method. It is dedicated to criticism and refinement of all scientific hypotheses by anyone who has the ability to “weigh in” on a particular hypothesis. Beyond the work of criticizing and refining hypotheses, scientific method has nothing to say. However, scientists are perfectly free to move beyond scientific method and make policy recommendations, but in doing so they are not acting as scientists. Anyone remember Lyndon Johnson’s complaint that he was sick of hearing “on the other hand” and that he wanted one-handed scientists. Those who are willing to be allied with Al Gore are truly one-handed scientists. By the way, one of the Constructivists’ many errors is the simple-minded error that scientific method serves one-handed scientists.
As an Engineer, who has DESIGNED, BUILT, RUN, MAINTAIN systems which better mankind all my life, I have NOTHING but distain for K.E., as I imagine he probably hasn’t DESIGNED, BUILT, RUN or MAINTAINED the things that give him his FOOD, he WATER, his SHELTER..
Now the same can be said for R.L.
So I give you a new “gospel”. How about turning the Gorebull warming “debate” over to ENGINEERS? The problem is, then it would no longer be a debate, but it would lead towards a SOLUTION.
Intellectuals (psuedo – definition of same, anyone that thinks, is called by others, or SAYS tha they are an “intellectual”..) HATE that idea of “SOLUTIONS”.
Phooey on the the “intellectuals”. A pox on all their houses.
Max
It seems to me that Kerry Emmanuel got lucky in the timing of his article . Yes , Katrina was a disaster , but the havoc wrought on New Orleans was not a result of the hurricane’s strength but of the failure of the levies . Please remember that New Orleans breathed a sigh of relief after Katrina passed , only to experience devastation when the levies broke . Had they been properly maintained , the levies should have held . As has been discussed on this site on numerous occasions , hurricanes have increased neither in number nor intensity in recorded history and by the time Katrina made landfall it wasn’t that strong – cat three , if I rember correctly . Obviously , it was strong enough to catapult Emmanuel into the limelight .
The late Dr. Richard Feynman had much to say on confirmation bias, and more importantly, what he termed “incentive bias” at NASA with respect to the Challenger shuttle explosion. AGW proponents have a very large incentive bias.
see the linked article, and scroll down to “Nature Cannot Be Fooled.”
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_archive.html
Skeptics of AGW are doing what is right, what is scientifically supportable, and not succumbing to the allure of incentive bias.
Maybe some are more pagan than they care to admit. That vociferous faction wants us to pay homage to the CO2 idol as the way to quell the storms, assuage the earthquakes, and reinvigorate the sun. The modern twist is that the priests of the CO2 idol will take your homage in taxes (or else you’re fined) and the earth will moderate, mankind will be prosperous once again, and smiley faces will emblazon all t-shirts.
I’m wondering if their rush to impose this change is the fact that the CO2 idol has turned out to be invisible, odorless, and beneficial to plants—nothing like the nasty being first described. Their vituperative stranglehold on the masses is clearly breaking down.
Please tell me that K. Emanuel is not from the same gene pool as Rahm and Ezekiel.
US senators unveil climate change bill
US senators have unveiled details of a long-awaited bill on climate change – a key plank of President Obama’s domestic agenda. Senator John Kerry revealed that the bill proposes cutting US “carbon emissions” by 17% by 2020. He said he was aiming for the US to be the world’s “clean-energy leader”.
This is the same John Kerry who thought AGW was “hogwash” until he married his rich wife, who is a man-made global warming fanatic. Obama has given his backing to Mr Kerry’s proposals.
Republican sweeteners
The bill has been languishing for months after earlier versions raised vehement objections from Republicans. Mr Kerry said the stakes were now “sky high”. “This is a bill for energy independence after a devastating oil spill, a bill to hold polluters accountable, a bill for billions of dollars to create the next generation of jobs and a bill to end America’s addiction to foreign oil,” he said.
The bill proposes setting a price on “carbon emissions” (they can’t manage to use the words “carbon dioxide” any more) for large “polluters” such as coal-fired power plants. (Someone should tell these idiots that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it’s plant food, without which most of this planet’s life forms would be dead.)
Mr Kerry and Senator Joe Lieberman, who is also sponsoring the bill, say the farms and most small and medium-sized businesses will be exempt from the charges. And it will offer incentives of up to $2bn a year for firms to develop so-called clean coal technologies, including methods to capture and store “carbon emissions”. The senators inserted sweeteners for the bill’s potential opponents – including provisions aimed at boosting nuclear power.
But the bill is subject to a constrained political timetable. Immigration laws have been moved to the top of the agenda, and, with elections later in the year, it is uncertain whether the climate bill will even be discussed this year. After the elections, the Democrats may well lose their stranglehold on Congress, making it much harder to get the bill passed into law. Mr Kerry said it was the “last best chance” at framing climate change legislation.
The bill also includes provisions for relaxing rules on offshore oil-drilling – highly controversial in the wake of the huge Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Mr Obama had announced plans to ease drilling restrictions earlier this year, but the oil spill forced a rethink.
The bill unveiled by Mr Kerry now includes provisions to allow states to veto proposed drilling if they can prove it poses a risk. “The challenges we face – underscored by the immense tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico – are reason to redouble our efforts to reform our nation’s energy policies,” Mr Obama said.
I’d like to set something straight here re: the above conversation and many other related conversations on climate change.
“It is generally accepted that a doubling of CO2 will only produce a change of about two degrees Fahrenheit if all else is held constant.”
This is Dr. Lindzen’s statement in his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on 30 November, 2009, (http://online.wsj.com/article SB10001424052748703939404574567423917025400.html)
Thus:
1) Dr. Lindzen acknowledges that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, should, absent other feedbacks, warm the surface.
2) Given that our current path of emissions will likely take us to at least 5xCO2-equivalent (i.e. including the effects of increasing concentrations of other GHGs such as methane) by 2100, Dr. Lindzen believes that the resulting warming of 4-5F is, as noted in his op-ed, “unlikely to be much to worry about”.
First, in the feedback-free case, this statement is not scientific but instead is purely a value judgment: he believes that a warming of 4-5F globally (including larger regional variations) would not severely disrupt society in any way that one ought to be concerned.
Second, with respect to the real climate including all of its feedbacks, Dr. Lindzen’s statement hypothesizes that there is a net negative feedback in the climate system that will prevent the real climate from warming significantly more than feedback-free case–i.e. by an amount that might indeed severely disrupt society. While possibly true (and how great that would be!), he has not found much evidence to support this claim either in theory or models. Because of this, his assumptions are once again not scientific but instead purely value judgments for which he is advocating under the veil of scientific credibility.
Hope this clears up his views, particularly for many of those who categorically reject the science of climate change and cite Dr. Lindzen for support when in fact his scientific views do not substantiate those claims.
RockyRoad writes:
“Maybe some are more pagan than they care to admit.” . Many folks say that environmentalism, the green movement, whatever you want to call it, is becoming more like a religion. Excuse me. It is a postmodern expression of the oldest religion known to mankind, Paganism. Worship of Mother Earth, in all her myriad manifestations, cannot be anything else.
I’m glad to know you weren’t stuck at SFO and missed the dinner.
@Dan at 11:07 a.m, if there was a net positive feedback, the earth would have burned to a crisp long ago. The fact that it did not is proof positive of a net negative feedback.
No amount of jawboning or arm waving will alter that fundamental fact. See ice ages for the proof.
Case closed.
Mr. Lindzen makes a point that the bright eyed Mr. Emanual doesn’t address: global warming policies will cost trillions of dollars and do harm to large numbers of people.
Richard Lindzen makes the sad comment that all scientists are affected by government. It reminded me of a quote:
“Science is not value neutral. Science has a political dimension that is determined by the person who funds the science. So, it is by no means pure.”
~~Dr. Gary Shiller
-M.D. at UCLA
-from “Voices of the Shoah”
Dan says:
May 16, 2010 at 11:07 am
What’s you point? That we should ignore the negative feedbacks that exist and run around like our hair is on fire charging people trillions of dollars because of what incomplete computer climate models say?
Those climate models are already producing incorrect outputs:
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Peer-reviewed—computer climate model outputs not matching observation, in other words, what the computer models predict will happen isn’t happening
“Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement …..being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical-temperature-trends-with-model-predictions
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Peer-reviewed—-showing climate models are wrong. Published in the Hydrological Sciences Journal, the official journal of IAHS, the International Association of Hydrological Sciences. “All papers submitted to the Journal are peer reviewed by an international panel of Associate Editors and other experts.”
“The results show that models perform poorly…”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4364173/On-the-credibility-of-climate-predictions
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Dan says:
May 16, 2010 at 11:07 am
Here some more science on negative feedback that the climate models you are trusting don’t account for. Hope they clear up the inaccuracies in your belief system of the global warming religion.
Why the IPCC climate models are wrong,
Part 1
Why the IPCC climate models are wrong,
Part 2
“Dan says:
[…]
Second, with respect to the real climate including all of its feedbacks, Dr. Lindzen’s statement hypothesizes that there is a net negative feedback in the climate system that will prevent the real climate from warming significantly more than feedback-free case–i.e. by an amount that might indeed severely disrupt society. While possibly true (and how great that would be!), ”
Please learn about the Stefan-Boltzmann law and try to figure out why it results in a negative feedback. I’m not saying it’s the only negative feedback but you make it sound as if it was in question that there is at least one negative feedback.
Dan says:
May 16, 2010 at 11:07 am
2) Given that our current path of emissions will likely take us to at least 5xCO2-equivalent…… the resulting warming of 4-5F….
But you make a false claim. You say the earth is warming. The level of manmade co2 has continued to rise unabated for decades. But the earth is not warming. It has been cooling for 10 years. Manmade co2 is not doing what you claim it will.
It is also cooler on earth now than it was 1000 years ago when Vikings lived in Greenland and wine grapes were grown in the UK as far north as the border of Scotland.
It is science when people debate the facts and objective measurements and test hypotheses in an honest and forthright fashion. That I could hold hypothesis A and you hold hypothesis B is totally consistent with science. Indeed it is necessary for science. As Kennedy found out with groupthink in the “Bay of Pigs” when you all agree, the chances are that you are wrong. My only problem is that when the AGW crowd starts to fudge data and have confirmation bias.
Neil, I surely hope that this is sarcasm in its highest form. I strongly support the massive expansion of nuclear power in the US, not because of AGW reasons, but for national security reasons. Just as I support strong research in battery technology, so we can move our transportation structure from fossil fuel to electric.
Ironically, those who support AGW typically are also against nuclear power.
Neil Craig says:
May 16, 2010 at 6:16 am
I make it a rule of thumb that anybody who honestly believes we are experiencing catastrophic warming because of CO2 must be a strong & vocal supporter of buidling massive numbers of new nucleasr reactors as the only practical way of cutting CO2 release. Anybody opposed to nuclear simply cannot honestly believe the spin about catastrophic warming even if they are strongly pushing it. I can’t find Kerry having said anything on either side of this.
Neil Craig says:
Why must someone agree with your preferred solution? Why can’t someone think that the best way to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions is to put a price on such emissions and let the market decide which mix of new energy sources and efficiency and conservation are the best way to solve the problem? I am not against nuclear being part of the solution if a leveling of the playing field by having fossil fuels reflect their true costs makes nuclear more economically-feasible than it has been (and with proper attention to the real issues involved with nuclear power, such as proliferation, safety, etc.) but I see no reason to give it some special privilege.
Roger: that was not a coherent scientific statement. but you’ve apparently already closed the case, so there’s no need for discussion.
Amino acids: My point is that Drs. Emanuel and Lindzen both agree on the fundamental physics of greenhouse gases and their basic effects on the radiative balance of the atmosphere, but they disagree in their value judgments regarding the resulting risks: Lindzen sees the risk as inconsequential, while Emanuel sees the risk as cause for concern. Importantly, though, to claim that the risk is inconsequential is 1) a value judgment that 4-5F warming (feedback-free case) isn’t cause for concern, which is not a scientific claim and is absolutely disputable; and 2) if you accept (1), then a scientific claim of certainty in a net negative radiative feedback to the changes in atmospheric composition, for which there exists little supporting evidence at the moment. Furthermore, certainty in point (2) requires perfect models, which everyone agrees we won’t ever have.
Overall, my point is that if you want to disagree with a particular climate policy (of which there are many, and recognizing the risks posed by climate change does not automatically translate to support for a given policy) and use (or misuse) Dr. Lindzen to do so, you should be clear that your claims are based not in science but in values. The statement “I recognize the risks posed to global societies as a result of climate change, but I think Policy A is an overreaction” is a significant improvement from “Climate science is a hoax”.
Dirk: Of course there is a Stefan Boltzmann negative feedback, and it is included in the calculation of 2F warming for a doubling of CO2. To be clear: “negative feedback” doesn’t mean “temperature can’t change”. It means “the temperature increases, and as a result, something else changes that either further increases (positive feedback) or decreases (negative feedback) the temperature”.
Doug S says:
Where I think it matters, in the scientific community, I don’t think it has had a great effect. Sure, science can be a little bit fad-oriented, but this more influences exactly what gets studied than the general conclusions reached. And, if you look historically, the idea of CO2 causing warming actually spent a long time in the “scientific wilderness” as a hypothesis until a lot of the evidence came together to support it.
I think what has played a large effect, mainly outside of the scientific community (although also infecting a small part of the scientific community like Lindzen) is ideology. I.e., there are many people who don’t like the implications that go along with the conclusion that AGW is a serious problem and hence they would prefer to “cut it off at the pass” by convincing themselves that the science does not support the concern. There are also a few people who just like to be contrarian.
And, of course, there is also clearly the money that has been funneled toward the various ideological organizations by organizations with a financial stake in maintaining doubt, just as the tobacco industry did the same (with some of the same players involved). I don’t think such money is able to corrupt the science as a whole (which is how this differs very importantly from the sort of vast conspiracy theory one sees coming from the skeptic side of the debate). But I think it is able to keep enough confusion amongst the public to accomplish the goals of delay that these organizations have desired.
I’ve seen that connection made mostly by “skeptics” themselves, in fact, only by skeptics in the extreme way that you put it. And, many people have avoided that word or that form of the word (e.g., using “denialist”) as a way to explicitly disassociate it from such a meaning. Some of us think that the term “skeptic” is quite a misnomer when applied to people who are willing to believe almost anything that goes against AGW quite uncritically and who constantly repeat scientifically vacuous and debunked talking-points. (A few are truly more critical.)
For every Galileo, there are probably at least a thousand people who might think of themselves as Galileo but are simply just wrong. And, if Lindzen was following in Galileo’s footsteps, he would be presenting compelling scientific evidence to support his view. Instead, he is mainly publishing op-eds with lots of deceptive statements in the Wall Street Journal. He did publish one scientific paper recently but there have now been some comments that poke some very serious holes in it, and even Roy Spencer has expressed serious skepticism about it.
Maybe the two scientists should ‘homogenize’ their opinions (the way the ‘official’ temps are) and arrive at an entirely plastic opinion to suit a few?
At least Lindzen isn’t afraid to take on the ‘competition’ and discuss matters as they really are and not pretend some contrived nonsense.
Thor’s prognosis. That sounds very Nordic.
DirkH:
Just to amplify what Dan said: There seems to be some inconsistency in the discussion of the net feedback in the climate science community. Some (like Dennis Hartmann in the book “Global Physical Climatology”) think of the first-order effect of a doubling of CO2 to be the ~3.7 W/m^2 increase in radiative forcing and then consider the temperature dependence of thermal emission described by the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation to be a negative feedback. Others seem to think of the rise in temperature due to this radiative forcing that is implied by the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation (but in the absence of any other radiative changes) to be the first-order effect.
Of course, neither point of view is “right” or “wrong” and there is no difference in what they predict will happen, but there is an important difference in what they mean when they say whether the net feedbacks are negative or positive. Someone who uses the first description would say that the net feedbacks (including the S-B one) are negative but that they might be less negative than the S-B alone, which means the climate sensitivity is higher than in the case where these other feedbacks are not considered. (They would also say that a net positive feedback would lead to a true runaway effect, like is generally believed to have occurred on Venus.) Someone who uses the second description would call the net feedbacks positive if the equilibrium climate sensitivity is higher than predicted by the S-B Equation due to the CO2 increase alone…and, in their terminology, it is possible to have a net positive feedback and still not have an instability, but simply a magnification of the climate sensitivity.
As I understand it from the vociferous comments by the systems control theory folks here, the usage where the S-B Equation is considered as a negative feedback is the usage more compatible with how the terminology is used in that field…and this has led to some confusion, as is often the case when terms are used in subtlety different ways in different fields. People of that stripe should (almost) always re-interpret the phrase “net positive feedback” to mean “net positive feedback not including the known negative feedback due to the S-B Equation” and should understand that nearly all climate scientists are predicting the other feedbacks to be less positive than the f S-B equation feedback is negative, so that the net feedbacks including it are actually still negative.
Smokey:
You haven’t provided us with a quote from Emanuel. What you give us is a quote from Lindzen claiming that this is the sort of thing that Emanuel said to him. I am surprised that you don’t appear to understand the difference.
“Dan says:
May 16, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Dirk: Of course there is a Stefan Boltzmann negative feedback,[…]”
Okay, i actually overlooked the “net” in your post, you say “a net negative feedback” – now, i probably overlooked it because i would never think of feedbacks this way. It sounds like you add up positive feedbacks, subtract negative feedbacks and arrive at a number that is positive or negative. That’s too simplistic as each feedback can be nonlinear (and probably is) and can have its own time constant or lag. So i didn’t expect the “net” in the position it was in.
Oh, and even worse, let’s take feedbacks caused by clouds: that’s of course a highly localized effect, so i wonder how it would make sense to talk of a “net negative feedback” at all, is that a “global net negative feedback”? It’s difficult enough to talk of a global temperature average or trend…
So no, “net negative feedback”, that term just doesn’t make sense for me.
“Importantly, though, to claim that the risk is inconsequential is 1) a value judgment that 4-5F warming (feedback-free case) isn’t cause for concern, which is not a scientific claim and is absolutely disputable …”
—…—…
OK. I’ll bite.
Please tell me exactly what the “indisputable harm” will be from a 1 degree (Celsius !!!) increase in the average earth temperature over the next 100 years, or 2 degree in the next 200 years.
There is NO harm from that change. None.
Also, please tell me what energy sources we will be using 50 years, 100 years, 150 years, and 200 years from now. Be exact.
Now, as the the HARM that the enviro movement-AGW alarmists CAUSE. Their plocies directly caused the spiraling energy costs in the US between spring 2007 through 1 Oct 2008 – which caused the lowered economy and housing and banking failures in fall 2008 and the (increased) worldwide recession. Was any of that “good”?
Are ANY energy restrictions “good” for people, plants, animals? Please name one real benefit (to people, not socialist governments!!!) to taxing arbitrarily and uselessly people for 1.3 trillion dollars.
Enron invented carbon trading to enrich Enron’s patron’s and sponsors. Gore made his hundreds of millions from global warming. So did the IPCC and its corrupt leaders. So did (does) the UN. So do the international bankers who are pushing the idea.
Again. Be specific. Exactly what “good” will come from killing the poor and murdering millions, and threatening the health and lives of billions of others, just to enrich corrupt governments?
Dan says:
May 16, 2010 at 1:06 pm
they do not agree on the basics
you are making that up
If you want to be respected you can’t make things up
DirkH says:
May 16, 2010 at 2:07 pm
That’s too simplistic
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I’m not expecting as much from him as you are. Simplistic is the level he is at. If you lower your expectations of him you’ll understand him better.
Dan says:
May 16, 2010 at 11:07 am
Beware the bait and switch. In the first point, Dan accurately describes part of what Dr. Lindzen stated, the better to prepare you to accept unquoted statements as originating from the source. In the second, he begs the question of what the concentration of CO2 would be in 2100, and butchers Lindzen’s quote from the op-ed to make it seem that he specifically stated that a warming of 4-5F would be insignificant.
You should be ashamed of yourself, Dan.
Dan says:
May 16, 2010 at 11:07 am
Here is some quotes from the WSJ article you brought up
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“There is general agreement on the above findings. At this point there is no basis for alarm regardless of whether any relation between the observed warming and the observed increase in minor greenhouse gases can be established. Nevertheless, the most publicized claims of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deal exactly with whether any relation can be discerned. The failure of the attempts to link the two over the past 20 years bespeaks the weakness of any case for concern…….. the current models used by the IPCC couldn’t reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability—that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc……. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false.…… the IPCC claim that they are more confident about water vapor is quite implausible…… The notion that the earth’s climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible……. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2…………. Consider the following example. Suppose that I leave a box on the floor, and my wife trips on it, falling against my son, who is carrying a carton of eggs, which then fall and break. Our present approach to emissions would be analogous to deciding that the best way to prevent the breakage of eggs would be to outlaw leaving boxes on the floor. The chief difference is that in the case of atmospheric CO2 and climate catastrophe, the chain of inference is longer and less plausible than in my example.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574567423917025400.html
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You say Richard Lindzen and Kerry Emanual agree on the basics and you use this article to prove it? Please dude, where’s your had at!
To understand climate we must understand economics first:
Capitalism, along with climate science, is divided in two kinds:
1.Capitalism: Men who work and produce real “goods”(notice that “goods” are essentially good), helped by other working men.
2.Pseudo capitalism: Men who DO NOT work and have never worked, they are dedicated to counterfeiting money (plastic , credits ,etc.) and make a living from other peoples´effort, and these are usually helped by politicians.
Pseudo capitalists promote global warming, climate change,etc. with the purpose of scaring people (or buying people, if not scared and buyable) and achieving global government and absolute dependance from them.
Capitalist, working people, used to having “common sense”, are by nature, global warming/climate change skeptics.
Dan [11:07 am] writes, “… he [Lindzen] has not found much evidence to support this claim either in theory or models.”
Neither theory nor models provide any evidence whatever; models are simply expressions of a theory. Only observation and measurement provide actual evidence, and I note that there is still no evidence whatsoever for the CO2-driven AGW theory, only speculations based on the lab behavior of CO2 when irradiated — which is of questionable relevance when it amounts to a tiny trace gas in a chaotic system the whole effect of which is to move enormous quantities of heat and moisture from point A to point B.
Both Lindzen and Spencer have studied actual measurements and found that the evidence strongly favors a very large degree of overall negative feedback. And considering that the entire climate system has been remarkably stable over the last billion or so years, and that large positive feedbacks necessarily produce unstable systems, why do you believe that their conclusion is in error?
Here’s Lindzen’s colloquium presentation to Fermilab earlier this year, “The Peculiar Issue of Global Warming.” The link is to the Fermilab archive server, since I don’t always trust the postings to YouTube.
http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/100210Lindzen/index.htm
Abstract:
“I will briefly discuss why this is a peculiar issue, and illustrate this with various examples of how the issue is being exploited and portrayed. In particular, I will show how much of the science and phenomenology being presented is contradicted by both logic and data.
Although there is a profound disconnect between the commonly cited IPCC conclusion and the various projections of catastrophe, it is nonetheless worthwhile to examine the basis for the IPCC attribution of recent warming to man because the arguments are profoundly at odds with normative scientific logic. Even so, the claimed result, itself, is consistent with low, and hence unworrisome, climate sensitivity.
This talk will discuss how one can ascertain the sensitivity. Most approaches are faulty in that they use observed temperature behavior and assume its cause. We show how this trap can be avoided. There are several approaches, and they each lead to the conclusion that current models are substantially exaggerating sensitivity. However, because of the peculiar nature of this issue, it seems unlikely that either this or the evidence of data mishandling will serve to diminish the commitment of many individuals to the seriousness of the alleged problem.”
Dan says, “that was not a coherent scientific statement. but you’ve apparently already closed the case, so there’s no need for discussion.”
You have my sympathies for not being able to understand a simple, grammatical English sentence. Which part confuses you? By the way, isn’t one obliged to capitalize the first word of a new sentence?
Joel Shore, May 16, 2010 at 1:57 pm said:
“You haven’t provided us with a quote from Emanuel.”
OK, here’s Emanuel’s quote: [“…crickets…“]
See? Silence is concurrence. if someone pointed at me and said, “Smokey is a thief!”, and I didn’t promptly dispute it, I would look mighty guilty, no? It’s human nature to correct the record when someone makes up something about you [and Lindzen isn’t the type to fabricate a quote].
Emanuel certainly knows what Lindzen said about him; they work in the same building. But he didn’t dispute it.
Now, about your multiple posts here trying to set everyone straight, as usual. You make it look like you enjoy enlarging your circle of opponents. But you never convert anyone to CAGW, far as I can see. I suppose you could be right, and everyone else is wrong. But what are the odds? You know, it’s actually possible that you are arguing for a failed hypothesis.
An image of Joel the Black Knight comes to mind: “‘Tis but a flesh wound!”
I just had the opportunity to view the Kerry Emmanuel video interview with the Boston Globe linked in this post. I am struggling for a proper adjective to describe my reaction to it. Amazing? Jaw dropping? Dumbfounding? I can’t decide. His exposition on the dangers of sea level rise from AGW would be mildly embarrassing if it came from one of the slow kids at a middle school which had just been forced to endure a week’s worth of daily viewings of “An Inconvenient Truth”, that it came from the mouth of a guy who has held and apparently still holds a major faculty position in climate science at one of the premier scientific universities in the world is just…just…mindblowing! Warming at the high end of IPCC projections might lead to the melting of the Greenland icecap and 22 ft. of sea level rise? Yes Kerry it might, if you extend that trend line out for about a millenium or maybe two. If you instantaneously double the already dubious present rate of observed rise in MSL and straight line it to the end of this century you end up with about 22 INCHES of rise, less than a tenth of your 22 FEET.
If this mook is at all representative of the level of intellectual acumen present in the “consensus” science community, I’m feeling much better about my own inclination not to join that consensus, but I’m feeling much worse about the future of the planet which will be left to their tender mercies.
“If these two guys can’t agree on the basic conclusions of the social significance of [climate change science], how can we expect 6.5 billion people to?’’
If we accept that both Emmanuel and Lindzen are honest, well informed, competent scientists, experts in their field, this tells me that: despite at least 30 years intensive research, by thousands of scientists around the world, the fingerprints of AGW (if it is happening) are too faint to be discerned against the natural background; there is thus no clear evidence that anthropogenic CO2 is leading to any kind of climate catastrophe; and thus nor is there any evidence that if we are facing a climate catastrophe due to global warming reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions will avert or mitigate it.
MIT has sold its reputation long ago. Susan Hockfeld is an alarmist. She is part of the GE Obama Chicago clique. It is all about money and hype. It is easy to verify – simply pick up a copy of the MIT Technology Review – it is a bunch of hype and mostly advocacy garbage purporting to be “science”. Very embarrassing for what was once a high quality college.
Lindzen looks worn down, Emmanuel looks like he doesn’t believe a word he’s saying.
Dan says:
May 16, 2010 at 11:07 am
2) Given that our current path of emissions will likely take us to at least 5xCO2-equivalent…… the resulting warming of 4-5
Please tell me where the equivalant of 1300 ppm CO2 is coming from by 2100. Which, by the way is barely over two doublings, or 2 to 2.5 c depending on whos firgure you take for 2x CO2.
Also tell me how much more food the world could produce in such a senario?
It’s a fallacy that these men need to find common ground. But MSM writers frame it this way so as to give the alarmists a fighting chance with a country that mostly disagrees with their hysteria.
convivial??????
Really?
That’s where I stoped reading!!
” “If these two guys can’t agree on the basic conclusions of the social significance of [climate change science], how can we expect 6.5 billion people to?’’ said Roger Pielke Jr., a University of Colorado at Boulder professor who writes a climate blog. ”
Because we don’t look to 6.5 billion people to come to that decision. We leave it to the majority of scientists and politicians. The people are only guided by media and whatever they are convinced will be in their own best interest, they don’t care about the details. Anyway, this is crazy it’s not a 50/50 split between climatologists on AGW. The only details to be worked out really are the consequences given we know it is a very high probability (90%) that CO2 is causing more or less what the IPCC claims in terms of an overall increasing of temperature.
These arguments don’t even make sense anymore, I’m moving towards Kerry Emanuel in a big way because the amount of evidence and the explanations from ‘warmists’ has become far more convincing over my years of research.
And he’s right about Richard Lindzen, he is completely deluded, his iris effect is wrong and some of his papers are written as if he wants to achieve a desired statistical result. Which is astonishing because I’ve never seen any of the statisticians here go through his stuff with a fine tooth comb. I only agree that intrinsic variability is possible, but it is not at all nearly as well established as CO2 forcings. Some of his statements blatantly misunderstand things which are obvious, such as his definition of greenhouse effect. According to him, doubling CO2 leads to 4W/m^2 in the tropopause where LW radiation is 240W/m^2 thereby deriving 2% being the ‘greenhouse effect’. This is not even close to being true.
Personally, after many years of skepticism I’ve finally found myself feeling rather stupid to have tried to make so complicated something that is really rather simple to comprehend. The only thing to know is the effects, will plant matter grow better? It looks like yes, under doubling of CO2 and temperature increases its quite good for food productivity.. I’m not an alarmist yet haha.
I hear there is a new chair being offered at the Nostradamus Institute of Mythology in Asgard near Norway, perhaps Emmanuel should apply, he should not be at MIT.
Marvin,
Can you please show how Lindzen’s iris effect is wrong? Are you discounting the effects of clouds? Just wondering. Labeling the internationally esteemed head of MIT’s atmospheric sciences department as “deluded” seems a bit harsh.
Fred Hoyle summed it neatly last century – when scientists like the two reported here disagree, then clearly both are thinking with the wrong ideas – and that the solution to the problem lies in another approach.
I would suggest that the theory of the plasma universe etc would be a better approach.
Smokey says:
May 17, 2010 at 1:28 am
Lindsen requires us to believe that in a warming system, there is a negative feedback where less water vapor is created in an increasing heat system due to areas of subsidence (increased drying because of convection). Bizzarre much? That’s a lot more difficult to believe considering there’s absolutely no evidence other than statistics which to my mind look designed. And as for calling him out and saying he is deluded, well I believe he is, as does his old friend Kerry Emanuel.
Max Hugoson said: (May 16, 2010 at 9:01 am) : “So I give you a new gospel. How about turning the Gorebull warming “debate” over to ENGINEERS? The problem is, then it would no longer be a debate, but it would lead towards a SOLUTION. “
Respectfully Max, no, the problem is there is no problem, so we need no solution. The masses are gradually waking up to this, and with every awakening the elites know they must up the ante. And so we see ever more hysterical claims of skies falling due to warming and CO2 “pollution.”
They’d have us believe Polar bears are dying out, that hurricanes are on the increase, that sea levels are rising faster than ever, that there was no MWP, that plants will soon grow too fast to maintain nutritional value, that suicidal birds are flying into cliff faces, that human anger is more prevalent, that volcanic eruptions are set to increase due to decreasing ice weight, that malaria is on the increase, that coral is being killed by acidic seas… these are just a small number of baseless alarmist claims that I can pull off the top of my head right now.
The ray of sunshine is, that with every up-of-the-ante from the alarmists, more people are getting wise to their game.
Marvin says:
May 17, 2010 at 12:29 am
The only details to be worked out really are the consequences given we know it is a very high probability (90%) that CO2 is causing more or less what the IPCC claims in terms of an overall increasing of temperature.
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No Marvin, we don’t know this.
Athelstan says:
May 17, 2010 at 1:04 am
I hear there is a new chair being offered at the Nostradamus Institute of Mythology in Asgard near Norway, perhaps Emmanuel should apply, he should not be at MIT.
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He could try his hand at selling used cars.
Marvin says:
May 17, 2010 at 12:29 am
Because we don’t look to 6.5 billion people to come to that decision. We leave it to the majority of scientists and politicians.
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Ya, there you go Marvin. We have to just fall into line, hey babe?
Weather is like a beach, always changing, never the same.
Climate is like a beach, never changing, never the same.
___________
Humans are like lemmings, always changing, always the same.
Marvin said: “These arguments don’t even make sense anymore, I’m moving towards Kerry Emanuel in a big way because the amount of evidence and the explanations from ‘warmists’ has become far more convincing over my years of research.”
OK, I’m all ears (or eyes). Share this “evidence” of CAGW with us. And try to do better than Emanuel in explaining it. And that means taking these hints: Models are not evidence. Hypotheses are not evidence. Proxies which diverge from observed measurements in unpredictable and non-linear ways are not evidence. Climate change (which has always happened) is, in itself, not evidence. Temperature sensor station readings are great evidence that buildings and airports are warmer than open countryside.
So what is this “amount of evidence” and “the explanations” that have “become far more convincing” to you?
Tony says:
May 16, 2010 at 6:20 am
The point is, that science is NOT about risk!
You’ve never read about Schrodinger’s cat?
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
Ya, there you go Marvin. We have to just fall into line, hey babe?
It’s not about falling into line. We live in a democracy and we have our choice of how we want to live. Far more so than any other society I can name. After years of listening and reading and taking interest I have come to the point where skepticism of lots of the concepts is not overriding the good science of the climatologist scientists of the IPCC. I’ve read from other sources trying to balance the answers and find out the ‘objective truth’ and the responses to the skeptical arguments are more compelling; but that is not to say we have no reason to be dutiful to our betters. I still believe the ‘catastrophic’ is not all it seems and there’s room for much better work on consequences. If the ice continues to decrease and keeps an upward trend, we really are kidding ourselves because ‘instrinsic variation’ should not be so in sync with CO2 forcing and for us skeptics to have no alternate hypotheses. We should be able to have at least one alternate hypotheses which stands has evidence which coincides with the mounds of literature available. Otherwise it does fall into what I categorise as denialism.
David, UK says:
OK, I’m all ears (or eyes).
Sorry, it took me a very long time to come to my discovery and I spent ridiculous amounts of times reading over the years. If you’re anything like me, it’s very hard to not be super critical of every aspect you don’t understand yet. So you just have to keep reading, but not just wattsupwiththat. It’s great here, because it provides some aspects I haven’t read elsewhere. But it’s a counterweight to some great information from other souces such as realclimate (yes I know just ignore this if you want to be angry about me saying they’re good). I’m not trying to start a flamewar. I will grant you this, calling Lindzen deluded was wrong, because I normally reserve that for religious people heh :).
“The only details to be worked out really are the consequences given we know it is a very high probability (90%) that CO2 is causing more or less what the IPCC claims in terms of an overall increasing of temperature.”
Sure, more biomass at the Earth’s surface causes more metabolism and thus “heat”. It’s the cause producing the heat, not the heat, the cause.
Bart says:
May 16, 2010 at 2:52 pm
“…..Beware the bait and switch. In the first point, Dan accurately describes part of what Dr. Lindzen stated, the better to prepare you to accept unquoted statements as originating from the source. In the second, he begs the question of what the concentration of CO2 would be in 2100, and butchers Lindzen’s quote from the op-ed to make it seem that he specifically stated that a warming of 4-5F would be insignificant.
Dan is showing the typical mixture of fact and fiction that is used by snake oil salesmen, politicians and Marxists to sell their Con-games and Hoaxes. Thank you for pointing it out.
You should be ashamed of yourself, Dan.
Enneagram says:
May 16, 2010 at 4:11 pm
“To understand climate we must understand economics first:….”
Very neatly put. And of course, those who can not do – teach.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
May 17, 2010 at 3:54 am
Marvin says:
May 17, 2010 at 12:29 am
Because we don’t look to 6.5 billion people to come to that decision. We leave it to the majority of scientists and politicians.
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Ya, there you go Marvin. We have to just fall into line, hey babe
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Hey Marvin, ever hear of the French Revolution? Seems the time Katla erupted in 1783 it caused a famine that lead to a revolution. Now we have a world wide economic crisis and a bunch of politicians and scientists who want to kick people while they are down by taxing the heck out of themand take away their jobs.
I sure hope you have a good place to hide if that volcano goes off. The aristocracy (and banksters) just keep forgetting they can not push the people to the wall and not expect retaliation.
Marvin says:
May 17, 2010 at 6:55 am
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
Ya, there you go Marvin. We have to just fall into line, hey babe?
It’s not about falling into line. We live in a democracy and we have our choice of how we want to live. ….
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You lost me right there. We live in a republic where banking and corporate interests buy politicians so their special interests are met. Take a neutral subject like food and read these then tell me we actually have freedom and not an illusion created by a media that is bought and paid for.
Remember Kissinger? He stated “”Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.” I do not know how much more blunt you can get about the objectives of those in control.
A very short list of references on the corporate take over of food production:
The Festering Fraud Behind Food Safety Reform:
Government-industry revolving door
Agriculture and Monopoly capital:
text
Food Supremacy: America’s Other War:
How to manufacture a global food crisis: The destruction of agriculture in developing countries
History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job:
Global Diversity Treaty:
Monsanto’s Seeds of Worry:
The Battle to Save Polish Farms:
International Guide to Good Farming Practices:
DirkH wrote…
“That says more about Time magazine than about Emanuel. Never heard of him before this article.”
That says more about how sadly politicized the subject mater has become. Emanuel, like most scientists, tried to stay out of the fray, but as soon as he voiced an opinion – Wham! – he become a political animal. It’s actually appalling the smearing that goes on on both sides of the issue.
Why don’t you all take a look at Emanuel’s work over the last 3 decades and appraise him on his science:
http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/home.html
Marvin says:
May 17, 2010 at 6:55 am
“After years of listening and reading and taking interest I have come to the point where skepticism of lots of the concepts is not overriding the good science of the climatologist scientists of the IPCC. “
I have made the opposite journey. After years of listening and reading and taking interest, I have come to the point where I see the climatologist scientists of the IPCC as amateurs who posit fantastic theories which abrogate key tenets of physical and mathematical theory, and back them up with GIGO computer models, selective “evidence”, and absolute faith in statistical artifacts with error bars, never disclosed, several times larger than the quantity presumably being measured. It is a faith-based community which relies on simplistic models and linear extrapolations over timelines it chooses as being significant to describe a vastly complicated MIMO feedback system which quite simply does not behave in a simplistic manner.
Where and when did he say/write that?
Who was in attendance?
Who witnessed it?
.
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In the past, you have failed to demonstrate how specific provisions ‘stamp out’ small, family farms in favor of larger corporate-owned facilities … so, this amounts to hand-waving and simply asserting regulation is ‘bad’ and favors is/will lead to, somehow, “the corporate take over of food production”.
Sorry to have to go off-topic and address this mods …
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Marvin, you need to read up on Miskolczi.
‘Gail Combs says:
You lost me right there. We live in a republic where banking and corporate interests buy politicians so their special interests are met. Take a neutral subject like food and read these then tell me we actually have freedom and not an illusion created by a media that is bought and paid for.’
Thank you Gail. Every well put.
I’m against corporate welfare as much as many social welfare program.
Government should be the rule maker that treats individual, consumers, small business, and large business equally under rules. It’s call a level playing field. Then government needs to be the referee with blind justice.
“Remember Kissinger? He stated “”Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.” Very true.
mikael pihlström says:
May 16, 2010 at 5:58 am
“If these two guys can’t agree on the basic conclusions of the social significance of [climate change science], how can we expect 6.5 billion people to?’’ said Roger Pielke Jr., a University of Colorado at Boulder professor who writes a climate blog.”
What a devious and clever line of reasoning. We can never agree on any
course of action if two colleagues, who Holy smoke!, sit in the same university
building cannot even agree betwen themselves.
Not so clever or devious, just the old “divide and conquer” routine that is by now blatantly apparent. Man made CO2 still represents .001155% of atmosphere and we are still waiting for data confirming it increases global temperature.
This thread has brought out another crop of earnest believers in the AGW hoax to make fools of themselves for our entertainment. However, I’m feeling more bored and irritated by their denseness than amused these days. Science needs to be taken back from the hucksters and rent seekers and be done as science.
_Jim says:
May 17, 2010 at 1:09 pm
‘Gail Combs says, May 17, 2010 at 10:26 am:
…
A very short list of references on the corporate take over of food production:
…
In the past, you have failed to demonstrate how specific provisions ‘stamp out’ small, family farms in favor of larger corporate-owned facilities … so, this amounts to hand-waving and simply asserting regulation is ‘bad’ and favors is/will lead to, somehow, “the corporate take over of food production”. ‘
Shall we start with the Commerce clause?
But this isn’t the blog to do that on.
QQ**Control oil and you control nations; control food and you … Henry Kissinger stated the premise succinctly in 1970: **QQ**Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.**QQ** …
Gail Combs says:
May 17, 2010 at 9:42 am
Now we have a world wide economic crisis and a bunch of politicians and scientists who want to kick people while they are down by taxing the heck out of themand take away their jobs.
I am a scientist and I just want to help make the world a better place. I don’t want to kick anybody. The world wide economic crisis was solely caused by a lack of government oversight. Allowing the free market to operate by creating overly complicated derivates which had unknown associated risks allowed them to be sold to fools. If this had regulation making it illegal, it would never have happened (by this mechanism but it bubbles always occur). Anyway, Republicans have been deposed by the GOP extreme wing and are basically in support of massive corporations and their own wallets. Fox News is the mouthpiece of the GOP propaganda machine. As far as ‘all politicians’ go, I’d say the majority of the crooked ones are GOP. Obama did next to nothing that I expected and that is very disappointing. It’s not a conspiracy though, it’s just a really lousy system with a really lousy media and a lousy society who can’t keep up with science and technology. Stalemated.
I know about how USA use CIA to economically damage other countries and companies so that their own corporate interests are competitive.
”Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
Whether or not its about controlling oil or not doesn’t mean they still aren’t right. You can figure out AGW has merit, and still reject that you want anything to do with the solutions. As I have, I don’t believe the ‘solutions’ are anywhere near adequate it’s applying bandaids to hemorrhage.
Prof. Lindzen used Emmanuel to illustrate a point in his presentation at the 2nd ICCC, last year:
“…nor does endorsing global warming make one, per se, a poor scientist. Most of
the atmospheric scientists who I respect do endorse global warming. The important point, however, is that the science that they do that I respect is not about global warming. Endorsing global warming just makes their lives easier.
For example, my colleague, Kerry Emanuel, received relatively little recognition until he suggested that hurricanes might become stronger in a warmer world (a position that I think he has since backed away from somewhat). He then was inundated with professional recognition.”
http://www.heartland.org/events/newyork09/pdfs/lindzen.pdf
[The key points that Lindzen made in that paper remain the key points.]
Marvin says:
May 18, 2010 at 7:06 am
‘I am a scientist and I just want to help make the world a better place. I don’t want to kick anybody. The world wide economic crisis was solely caused by a lack of government oversight. Allowing the free market to operate by creating overly complicated derivates which had unknown associated risks allowed them to be sold to fools. If this had regulation making it illegal, it would never have happened (by this mechanism but it bubbles always occur).’
The “fools” were Freddie and Fannie which our government push into buying sub-prime “paper”. Think Country Wide. (Canada did not have a sub-prime problem. Their government did not lowering credit standers.)
Our government created the problem, not the free market. The free market says if you fail you take the hit, but what we, the tax payers, took the hit. Why?
Marvin says:
May 18, 2010 at 7:06 am
‘I am a scientist and I just want to help make the world a better place.
One more thing
Too bad tar and feathering went out of style.
In the last two election cycles Democrates got more money from Wall Street than Republicans.
old construction worker says:
Fannie and Freddie were not the cause of the problem. They were fairly small contributors to it: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=09&year=2008&base_name=market_place_misleads_the_publ
The reason that they did not have a problem is that they regulate banks a lot more strictly and did not allow the shenanigans that were allowed in a U.S. enraptured by an extremist “free market” ideology, whereby the less regulation you have the better.
Because when the alternative is collapse of the financial system, governments…whether in the hand of liberals or conservatives…tend to “blink” and bail out the offending parties. Which is why you tend to need regulation in the real world, i.e., outside of the pure minds of free market ideologues.