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
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:
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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
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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
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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!