At the ICCC4 conference yesterday, I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Richard Lindzen give his keynote address at the luncheon. As always, he made some very salient points.
I took this photo from my Blackberry and just moments later emailed Dr. Lindzen to ask for a copy of the presentation while he was still speaking. He graciously provided it. and you’ll find the link to it below.
Lindzen_Heartland_2010 (PDF)
Live web streaming coverage at Pajamas Media here for today’s speeches.
You are all right and wrong. Dead right on the Science. Dead wrong on the politics. The Green movement is more popular than the truth. Unless the skeptical thinkers are willing to band together and take action, do something: march, protest, etc. in a way that makes us more ‘popular’ than the Green movement……the game is over. Power based on popularity which we call ‘politics’ which could be called ‘popularitics’ is where it’s at. We are being steam rolled by the sheer volume of stupidity out there.
Most peoples of the world at some time in their history have been steam rolled by the warped ideas of a few manifesting itself as a Zeigeist and against their own wishes, carried along by the tide of the time. WUWT is covering only a small fraction of the headlines appearing daily and without a dedicated staff will never be able to counter the volume of the onslaught. Let me think of a joke to explain what i mean……
What government funding do skeptics get? What government funding do the “catastrophic AGW fabulists” get? As is usually the case, follow the money. Prostitution is not limited within a sexual context alone.
From Dr. Lindzen’s concluding remarks:
“Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition.”
Hear, hear. I am not skeptical. I am in complete disagreement with the proposition.
Thank you Anthony and thank you Dr. Lindzen.
………….AL GORE !
Poptech,
There’s a difference between McIntyre and Lindzen. McIntyre is a guy narrowly but intently focused on particular questions he was drawn to. Lindzen has dedicated his life to the climate field and hence has a reputation that allows for broader assessments.
Off Topic: found it on the Drudge Report just now.
It’s a bit mean spirited but too good to pass up.
Dr. James Hansimian’s Hurricane Forecast
My gut feeling is that the AGW CO2 alarm and politic is a gift of a cod piece for the Think Tank’s recommended response to the reality of ‘peak oil’. What does Rand, etc. tell the Govts to do about Peak Oil? My guess is it’s indistinguishable from what Govt’s are prescribing as a response to invented CO2. They didn’t think they’d have the political capital to deal with peak oil for another 50-60 years. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me. The development of a Nuke by Iran threaten’s Saudi’s fields…..the U.S.’s lifeblood. We should ween outselves off of the need for oil. This CO2 malarky will get us 1/2 way there, bogus as it is. Big thanks to Richard, staff @ur momisugly WUWT. I’m going to forward the PDF to a top biologist acquaintance of mine and watch him launch of like a rocket in denial!
This is evidently a gathering of apostates. Faithful believers, their official “Church”, his most holy prophet Al Gore and their “mulahs” of the MSM, will excomulgate them to never publish sinful skeptic papers.
Off Topic: found it on the Drudge Report just now.
It’s a bit mean spirited but too good to pass up.
Dr. James Hansimian’s Hurricane Forecast
Submitted twice to fix the broken link. Editable comments would be nice.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/editable-comments/
I hope Dr. Lindzen is not just preaching to the choir. He makes strong points about how we do and how we should do science.
Forgot the links above, about snow storm over the driest desert on the world (atacama):
http://www.terra.cl/actualidad/index.cfm?id_cat=2104&id_reg=1222334
http://www.chilevision.cl/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=263361&Itemid=81
Mike Jowsey says:
May 18, 2010 at 7:13 am
The best way to get through that dirt road is to adapt to its ever changing condition. Those that won’t adapt will break their eggs and starve to death. Unfortunately, the AGW promoters want to tax people in order to remove a few pebbles off that road and try to get rid of its imperfections. Removing a 50 pebbles out of a million won’t make the road smooth.
LarryOldtimer says:
May 18, 2010 at 8:36 am
… but intellectual prostitution is!
BBC news item? I have to say any mention is a breakthrough, regardless of tone. They can’t ignore it anymore.
As Oscar Wilde said ‘there is only one thing worse than being talked about behind your back, and that’s not being talked about behind your back!’
cheers David
Regarding Johnneythelowery’s comment as the AGW hypothesis is a way to address peak oil.
If getting us off of imported oil were the goal of the AGW folks, then the Kerry bill would not be full of all kind of cap and trade give-aways for the Goldman Sachs and Millenium Investment crowd.
The government would just put a 10-20% (and rising) tax on only IMPORTED oil or gas.
This would spur domestic production and discourage imports.
But NO, that is not the real goal.
It will be interesting to see what press coverage the conference gets in the US.
-Jay
Enneagram says:
And yet, the story of what is actually happening is not that there are brilliant “skeptic” papers that aren’t seeing the light of day in peer-reviewed journals but rather that there are deeply flawed “skeptic” papers that have been published even though they contained errors that, in many cases, should have been caught by a good referee.
Just curious, Anthony – did Prof. Lindzen mention the locale used in Slide 11? Boston? (A very good graphic, indeed!) Thx.
But who will stop the EPA for whom bureaucratic bumbling is a way of life? They now have the power, the desire and their base of “green” idiots that can litigate stupidity into action. Just look at the wolves in Yellowstone. With the help of left wing federal judges there are way too many even by the standards that were set when they were “introduced” into that eco-system but the law suits fly while the elk are down to one third of their previous numbers and at this below where the numbers should be even given they were too high at their peak.
With the power of CO2 as a pollutant, the EPA and their sycophants can destroy our economy and turn us into a third world crap hole just like those some of our political leaders seem to admire.
The question that Pat Michaels asked him was right on-when he spoke of “normative science” I get the impression, from context, that he means “normal” in the idealistic Popperian sense, not the “normal science” of Kuhn. AGW definitely behaves like Kuhn’s “normal science” at times, although it is also going beyond that in many ways to be “post normal” to. And models are basically Popperian pseudo-science, explaining everything.
Layne Blanchard wrote:
“We’ve often heard about the great volumes of Grant money for those who stick to the warming narrative…. and I see a quote from Lindzen about how Kerry Emanuel received sudden recognition when he began to do just that. ”
I bet you believe Lindzen, eh?
In fact, Emanuel, a well-respect hurricane expert for 30 years, received recognition entirely by coincidence – when his paper on the effect of warming of sea temperatures on hurricane strength happened top come out just a month prior to Hurricane Katrina.
Two years later when he wrote an article in Boston Review on anthropogenic global warming, there was nary a whimper of protest.
“Phaeton’s Reins:The human hand in climate change”
See: http://e-courses.cerritos.edu/tstolze/Kerry%20Emanuel_%20Phaeton%27s%20Reins.pdf
Now, no one knows this better than Lindzen – and Lindzen knows full well he has misrepresented Emanuel and egregiously so. Which begs the question how people so easily fall for nonsense like Lindzen is feeding them, when, like Al Gore, they believe fervently that climate science is “all politics, all the time.”
“”” Joel Shore says:
May 18, 2010 at 6:49 am
kim says:
It’s the sensitivity, stupid.
On this, I think we should all be able to agree…Which makes one wonder why so many “skeptics” spend lots of time arguing such silly things as the greenhouse effect violating the 2nd Law, the rise in atmospheric CO2 not being due to burning of fossil fuels, the radiative effect of CO2 being saturated, and so on. All such arguments do is reduce their credibility. “””
Well maybe Joel, we can’t even agree on kim’s statement.
The one thing I have heard/read was Professor Lindzen’s Statement; which apologetically I must paraphrase here since I have already forgotten his exact words; but you can read them yourselves in his Powerpoint; and whatever it was he said, I agree with:- “THE SCIENCE IS WRONG.”
I’ve been saying that for quite a few years now; and nothing has happened to change that belief.
Now the legal disclaimer; do I believe that everything that is being done by thousands of climatologers is wrong ? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
I’m generally quite happy with the vast majority of the data that is being gathered by scientists all over the world; even barefootgirl catching some rays on her Hawaii beach; while her computer downloads satellite data (just kidding bfg). I think much of it is a waste of money though.
I’m less happy with what some of these people write in the Conclusions part of their papers.
As to kim’s statement; well in my view the very conception of “CLIMATE SENSITIVITY” is wrong. I’ve seen NO data, and know of NO Physics that would make the mean surface temperature of the earth, or any planet, vary as the logarithm of the atmospheric abundance of CO2.
Yet again Professor Lindzen says (or is it; says the IPCC says ?) that “climate sensitivity” is 1.5 to 5.0 deg. It bothers me greatly that Richard uses K (Kelvins on his Temperature anomaly and or climate sensitivity scales. The Kelvin scale is an absolute Temperature scale and 1 Kelvin is a specific and very cold absolute Temperature. Please stop using Kelvins as units of anomalies. But I digress; if the IPCC says that CS is 1.5 to 5.0 degrees C, then clearly the data is nowhere near precise enough to assert that the mean global surface Temperature falls on a logarithmic plot of the atmospheric CO2. With a 3:1 error factor you can match the mean global surface Temperature of the earth to some portion of the function:- y = exp (-1/x^2) simply by scaling the units of x and y appropriately.
If you aren’t familiar with that function; then your education has been sadly neglected. In that case match the Temperature and CO2 to the function y = m.x + c That will work just as well.
The whole notion that doubling the atmospheric abundance of the CO2 molecule raises the earth surface temperature by some fixed amount (maybe a fundamental physical constant) ; as a direct consequence of those CO2 molecules trapping certain wavelengths of the thermal radiation emitted from the earth surface, is just plain silly.
The emittance and the spectrum of the thermal radiation emitted from the earth surface, and addressed by the CO2 absorption bands, is itself a strong function of the very Temperature of that surface; and could (in principle) vary by more than an order of magnitide as you move from place to place on the earth, from the coldest spots to the hottest (surface Temp) spots; all at the very same moment.
Then there is the time factor; if CO2 increase CAUSES mean global surface Temperature to increase; there is a propagation delay (time lag) between CO2 increase and Temperature increase; and vice versa when CO2 goes down (which it does every year). Now Al Gore of course says that the propagation delay is negative, and the CO2 increase CAUSES the Temperature to increase BEFORE the CO2 rise; that’s exactly the way it is plotted in his book “An Inconvenient Truth.” on p66-67 if you want to look.
Now even Professor Lindzen included NO PROPAGATION DELAY in his model of his feedback circuit. At this point all the analog circuit designers or process control engineers are doing the ROTFLMAO thing.
Well maybe in climatology the time factor simply doesn’t matter. I should be able to plot the log of the atmospheric CO2 abundance since 1958 agaisnt the mean global surface Temperature that prevailed 800 years ago during the Mediaeval warming period, and get a straight line graph. Evidently I could use the Temperatures since 1958 instead; and still get a straight line graph.
Hey either the time relationship matters, or it doesn’t; and maybe all you climatologers; who believe in “climate sensitivity” should state what you believe in that regard; well do it in a peer reviewed paper of course; not on a blog like this; where people can say anything they feel like. And if you think it matters; then how about stating what the time lag is in your papers that purport to show evidence for logarithmic climate sensitivity.
But Joel; to your comments about greenhouse effect/ second law/ CO2 saturation/ human CO2 origin. Generally, I am in agreement with you. We know; ad infinitum, that real greenhouses do not work that way; but we do understand what we mean when we use the term “greenhouse effect” in climate related instances; a no brainer. And we don’t have much of a dispute about the fact that molecules like H2O, CO2, O3, and CH4 do absorb LWIR emitted from anything around them, including the land, sea, and air; another no brainer. There should be no confusion about the second law; Clausius makes it clear that it applies to cyclic machines. Nothing in it, allows EM radiation from the earth at a mean temperature of perhaps 288 K to fall on and be accepted by the dark surface of the moon; which may be way below288 K; yet somehow have the very same 0.5 degree full angle cone of radiation to be refused entry by the 6000 K surface of the sun.
I’m a little gray on accepting that ALL of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to manmade burning of fossil fuels. Apparently CO2 atmospheric mixing is not all that it is cracked up to be; otherwise why would it matter that the ML observatory is at 4000 metres up an active volcano in Hawaii; and needs “corrections” for volcanic CO2 emissions. North polar CO2 abundance goes through an 18 ppm p-p cycle every year; but the south polar CO2 hardly cracks 1 ppm, while ML is at 6 ppm p-p. Some uniformity isn’t it ? So let’s admit it CO2 is not uniformly mixed everywhere on earth; and why would it be; when there are various and sundry processes emitting it constantly or absorbing it; and it takes time to get from place to place.
So that simple observation causes me to be highly suspicious of the declarations of origin based on isotopic analyses.
However for me it is NOT a big issue; because basically, I don’t believe that CO2 has much effect at all, when it comes to regulating the mean global surface Tempertaure of the earth; so I am personally, quite unconcerned about the origins of any particular CO2 molecule; it’s irrelevent.
But it is refreshing to see in print; that Professor Lindzen says the science is wrong; of course it’s wrong;
“IT’S THE WATER !”
Lindzen is absolutely right with saying that one should not call himself a sceptic, for the reasons mentioned. So true.
From now on I will call myself a NCC-theorist (natural climate change).
I think the clear message from Prof. Lindzen’s slides is that the absolutely key issue for politicians is to require scientists to come to a concensus on what the feedback truth is, since this is the one thing which determines runaway warming or little/no warming at all.
To me, the simplest way to explain ice ages and interglacials is if, for some reason, that feedback coefficient went from a minus range to a plus range, prior to returning to a minus range at a new homeostatic temperature………
Does any research address this and, if not, is it simply because there are no tools to allow scientists to do so??
Thanks Dr Lindzen, I have copied the presentation and will forward a copy to anyone with whom I have a discussion about AGW in the next few weeks. It is an excellent calm rejoinder to the alarmists.
Hooray for the Heartland Institute! At least the Koch brothers know the value of truth.
I wonder though, why his temperature plots leave off the last 20 years of data?
Also, why did he not expand upon this? “The claims that the earth has been warming, and that man’s activities have contributed to warming, are trivially true”
Also, I don’t understand how he says “If one assumes all warming over the past century is due to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, then the derived sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C.” – we are well below a doubling, less than half way there, so we should have seen less than 0.5C warming vs his claim of 0.7C to date.