The House Testimony on global warming yesterday had a number of excellent presentations, and you can watch the entire video here.
I’ve have professor Richard Lindzen’s presentation saved here in PDF form, and some key excerpts below. Part of his presentation looks like WUWT Sea Ice news. It is well worth the read.
Excerpts:
The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak –and commonly acknowledged as such.
…
Given that this has become a quasi-religious issue, it is hard to tell. However, my personal hope is that we will return to normative science, and try to understand how the climate actually behaves. Our present approach of dealing with climate as completely specified by a single number, globally averaged surface temperature anomaly, that is forced by another single number, atmospheric CO2levels, for example, clearly limits real understanding; so does the replacement of theory by model simulation. In point of fact, there has been progress along these lines and none of it demonstrates a prominent role for CO2. It has been possible to account for the cycle of ice ages simply with orbital variations (as was thought to be the case before global warming mania); tests of sensitivity independent of the assumption that warming is due to CO2(a circular assumption) show sensitivities lower than models show; the resolution of the early faint sun paradox which could not be resolved by greenhouse gases, is readily resolved by clouds acting as negative feedbacks.
…
We see that all the models are characterized by positive feedback factors (associated with amplifying the effect of changes in CO2), while the satellite data implies that the feedback should be negative. Similar results are being obtained by Roy Spencer.
This is not simply a technical matter. Without positive feedbacks, doubling CO2only produces 1C warming. Only with positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds does one get the large warmings that are associated with alarm. What the satellite data seems to show is that these positive feedbacks are model artifacts.
This becomes clearer when we relate feedbacks to climate sensitivity (ie the warming associated with a doubling of CO2).
…
Discussion of other progress in science can also be discussed if there is any interest. Our recent work on the early faint sun may prove particularly important. 2.5 billion years ago, when the sun was 20% less bright (compared to the 2% change in the radiative budget associated with doubling CO2), evidence suggests that the oceans were unfrozen and the temperature was not very different from today’s. No greenhouse gas solution has worked, but a negative cloud feedback does.
You now have some idea of why I think that there won’t be much warming due to CO2, and without significant global warming, it is impossible to tie catastrophes to such warming. Even with significant warming it would have been extremely difficult to make this connection.
Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating.
In the meantime, while I avoid making forecasts for tenths of a degree change in globally averaged temperature anomaly, I am quite willing to state that unprecedented climate catastrophes are not on the horizon though in several thousand years we may return to an ice age.
===============================================
Entire presentation is available here: Lindzen_Testimony_11-17-2010 (PDF 1.4 MB)
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
————-
owen from cornwall ontario,
I understand where you are coming from.
HOWEVER, please consider that Anthony IS the new MSM. Does anyone doubt all the key players in the future of climate science monitor this place on a regular basis?
Congratulations Anthony and team.
John
Brilliant testimony which will surely sway any “sentient” individual in Congress and the White House. Too bad they’re still in the minority.
—————
Steven Mosher,
As a ~5 min verbal testimony summary, Dr Lindzen’s is the best i’ve seen. But, he couldn’t do the subject even close to adequate justice within that timeframe. And also consider his audience for his verbal testimony. He scaled it to his audience, which means it couldn’t be as detailed as with a more scientific focused group. His written testimony was somewhat more detailed, but even so it did not appear to me to be a full exposition of Lindzen.
That said . . . . . I will sign up to the idea of him giving the best climate science summary (of a 5 min nature) that I have ever seen. : )
John
Michael T says:
Michael, you beat me to it! I have been writing to HMG for years – well before climategate – trying to draw attention to the madness of CAGW.
How can we organise a movement, here in the UK, to unseat the lunatics who have taken over the asylum? If people really knew what taxes were being raised, and wasted in the name of AGW, we could put a final nail in the coffin – if another feezing winter does not do this for us!
EthicallyCivil says:
November 18, 2010 at 9:10 am
>>His point in earlier presentations is that it’s all about phase space. If the feedbacks are positive we have an unstable system, with the attending catastrophes and tipping points for any proposed warming from CO2 doubling. With positive feedback — we are *already* diverging. In short, it’s already too late, we’re up a creek — period.
If, however, you have *negative* feedbacks — the impact of CO2 doubling in minimized and mitigated.
So let’s “play scientist” eh? What does the paleo record show? Does the the Earth system show strong run-away warming events? Is there evidences of accelerated warming in the presence increasing CO2 levels? Have we in fact diverged and become either Venus or Mars at any time in our history?<<
Exactly right. I learned about positive and negative feedback systems in first year engineering. Since CO2 levels have been much higher in the past and yet our climate has been relatively stable the positive feedbacks required by the IPCC models are obviously wrong. How can this be so hard to comprehend? Any engineer that believes in catastrophic global warming due to CO2 increases should have his/her designation revoked.
I have transcribed, so far, the very first part of Dr. Lindzen’s Nov 17 2010 US committee verbal testimony as follows:
Enjoy. I will try to transcribe more as I can.
John
The response was clearly too technical. The congressional makeup does not preclude itself to deep thought, specifically concerning mathematical or chemical equations. They are overwhelmingly lawyers. We just aren’t getting the message across. Sound familiar.
It’s time to build Nuke Power Plants just to cope with extremely cold winters and quit building up those silly Synchronous Condensers, wrongly called Windmill Generators 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser
“Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition.”
Hu McCulloch says: November 18, 2010 at 10:31 am
I respectfully disagree. Skepticism is the honorable scientific position. Its opposite is gullibility, naivete, or unwariness. A readiness to believe the sky is falling even when it’s not.
Read it in context. His point was the hypothesis was not plausible enough to be considered. It should be discarded, not treated with skecticism.
Steven Mosher says:November 18, 2010 at 9:07 am
How many here will sign up to Lindzen’s summary?
that’s a good poll question.
And like most poll questions, poorly worded.
I consider the points he made regarding the science issues he discussed to be scientifically valid.
At the end of the day, who knows whether or not there’s anything in CAGW. However, I do know an honest man when I see one, and Lindzen is beyond reproach. He’s quite the most impressive of all the climate scientists.
I don’t believe even the most bigoted person can fail to be impressed by him. Precise, measured, totally unflappable, resistent to any kind of intimidation. I think this will have impinged on the awareness of even the most cloth-eared and blinkered at the hearings. Hopefully he will get more of a say in the future and at some stage get through to the general public.
—————-
Michael Larkin,
Well said . . . well said indeed.
John
Richard Telford
I think Lindzen is saying glacial cycles can be explained without recourse to CO2 as a greenhouse gas. There are other quite acceptable feedbacks including but not limited to icesheet albedo, changes in land and ocean area, changes in vegetative cover, atmospheric dust, and atmospheric humidity and changes in oceanic circulation. These are sufficient to do the job.
Here is the deal.
if more people would take lindzen’s position ( C02 warms, we just dont know how much)
instead of Rorbachers retarded “co2 is a only trace gas” position, if people did that, if that was the unifying position of opposition, then maybe Lindzen could get people to do the experiments he wants to see with GCMs. But that’s not the case. The case is that Lindzen gets lumped in with utter nutjobs and the strongest form of skepticism is sidelined.
Steven Mosher says:
November 18, 2010 at 3:27 pm
I’m willing to bet Lindzen doesn’t see models as ‘experiments’. I don’t think he’s a Playstation sort of scientist.
Because of the terminology (negative feedback, radiation measured by satellite above the eaths atmosphere, surface radiation, etc.) I think his explanation about negative feedback went right over their heads.
If he had spoke as too a 5th grade level I am pretty certain he would have gotten more attention.
For example: if he had said, “According to global warming theory there should be less heat leaving the earth because it is being block by the layer of manmade co2. But, instead, satellite measurements are showing us there is more heat leaving the earth. Heat is not being trapped, as we have been told it is….. Clouds have a cooling effect. When heat is sent back to the earth because of the greenhouse effect it makes more water evaporate. That evaporation makes more clouds. And since clouds have a cooling effect the earth ends up being cooled. It’s a natural mechanism. So there is nothing to worry about.”
Instead of saying ‘radiation’ it is easier for people to understand the word ‘heat’. Instead of ‘negative feedback’ it’s easier for people to understand ‘a cooling effect’. These may technically be the wrong words. But in effect that is what is meant. When talking to a general audience things must be kept to a 5th grade (or lower) level.
The thing I came away from when seeing how Richard Lindzen was treated was they really don’t want to know the science. The want scientists around them who will say what they want to hear.
How telling—- Cicerone at one point says of Lindzen, “I don’t understand what he is saying”.
We have one mouth and two ears—a lesson politicians don’t understand.
One of the politicians said, in so many words, we’re using more fossil fuels than anyone else in the world and for that reason we have to cut back . So that means we will use something else. But he fails to understand that we will then start using that alternative more than anyone else in the world. Would he then say we are using more of that alternative than anyone else in the world and we have to cut back on it and use yet another alternative?
Maybe he will. After all, everything else in global warming makes about that much sense.
But I suppose part of what he meant was we are importing too much. But let’s take a for instance: what if they decide we have to go solar. That will require an immense amount of solar panels. Will all those solar panels be built in America? It is highly unlikely. It is likely that a country that can build them cheaper than America can will be building most of them. And opps, back into the problem of importing too much.
The biggest problem with the importing-too-much issue is that we have plenty of oil in Alaska and plenty of coal in the Ohio to West Virginia area. There’s no need to have an importing energy problem. That problem has been a creation of American politicians. No there is a manmade problem that truly needs to be addressed!
I hope it’s not similar to Galileo preaching to the pope and cardinals, before being consigned to the dungeons. I just hope the modern cardinals, hearing this scientifically erudite speech would open their eyes and abandon their hubristic denialism of scientific climate studies.
Professor Lindzen is, as many others have noted, one of the sane voices in the current hysteria.
In particular I like his matter-of-fact acknowledgment that, because of its complexity, climate science is primitive at this stage.
The ‘high priests’, who usually have a background in computer modeling, would have the general public believe that it is a highly developed science and that any objections to their pronouncements are “anti-science”.
watched it all, Thank You Dr. Lindzen
Steven Mosher says:
November 18, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Here is the deal.
if more people would take lindzen’s position ( C02 warms, we just dont know how much)
instead of Rorbachers retarded “co2 is a only trace gas” position, if people did that, if that was the unifying position of opposition, then maybe Lindzen could get people to do the experiments he wants to see with GCMs. But that’s not the case. The case is that Lindzen gets lumped in with utter nutjobs and the strongest form of skepticism is sidelined.
“”
If I was in his position I would feel forced to take the anti-“utter nutjobs” position because of all the “clever” people who have fallen for… well, anything other than the “trace gas” position and I would not want to appear to be, or be lumped in as, an “utter nutjob”.
CO2, being currently a trace gas, will (as it currently does) have so small an effect upon the “greenhouse” that it can, and should, be utterly ignored and disregarded – at the very least until it becomes other than a trace – about .1% would do it for me. I would expect to see a measurable effect around about then. A very, very, very small, yet measurable, effect.
Measurable mostly as a result of 22nd Century technological breakthroughs.
Possibly made by “utter nutjobs”.
As to how the real nutjobs treat one of the world’s most accomplished atmospheric physicists:
http://dieoff.org/page82.htm
“…Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services”.
Has been quoted ad nauseam.
I have read a few more. Smears. Anything rather than refutation or debate.
Complex lifeforms have existed on earth for at least the last 600million years. There was an extinction about 250million years that was probably caused by volcanic activity in turn causing climate change, and another one 80million years ago probably caused by climate change relating to an asteroid impact. In both cases the climate never changed sufficiently to wipe out all life, and recovered to its equilibrium reasonably quickly. From this we can conclude:-
1] The climate is remarkably resilient to dramatic external changes
2] The climate has strong negative feedbacks that rapidly force it back to its current equilibrium
It is clear that nothing humanity has done is anything like on the scale of these past events and the clikate can readily cope with the changes being introduced.