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
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“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.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
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. ….
__________________________________________________________________________
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?
.
.
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 …
.
.
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.