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)
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——
Steven Mosher,
Interpolation between the lines of Lindzen’s recent testimony should perhaps be done with due respect to a wider background that includes him and his wider body of work.
Regarding agreement: I think agreement between people is at best of secondary importance. It is of primary importance to protect peoples rights to disagree in any argument; that is fundamentally what I learned from the problematic ‘consensus/ accepted’ climate science spectacle that has played out in the past several years. The argumentative process must run its full cycle(s) to establish a minimum threshold level of fairness/balance in any conclusions.
Argue on!
John
Instant Classic. Concise and crystal clear. So simple, even a caveman (or politician) can understand it.
I hope to see this paragraph quoted over and over again in every forum and blog. How amazing this is! Considering where we were exactly one year ago, when such heresy on Capitol Hill could never be imagined. Thank you to Professor Lindzen, and a real big THANK YOU to the Climategate whistleblower!
It is a shame that a top scientist like Prof Lindzen should find it necessary to tell Rep Bartlett about being “Profoundly dishonest”. Still, he did it well, as usual. (About 1 hr 04).
Not long before, Rep Roscoe had said “We don’t now agree on facts”. So much for settled science.
Oh dear, this whole episode again exposed the weakness of climate science, as a budding science. The frequet use of “may” (when”might” is correct English), the caveats, the weasel words – there are simply too many. These people have long interludes in which they do not speak or think like scientists. I guess it’s too late for reform School.
Slide on page 19 is excellent!
It shows how stupid Hanssen is.
His “homogenized” surface data even contradict the moist adiabate!
POST POST-NORMAL SCIENCE?
a.n.ditchfield
______________________________________________________________________________
Post-normal Science is claimed to be the key to understanding complexity in nature and is invoked to promote a new world order with sustainable progress on a limited planet.
What is progress? To many it is some-thing that comes from increasingly efficient use of energy and materials, capital and labour, that translates into lower costs, better income for all, freedom from want and ultimately to more means to care for the environment.
Not all agree. The bitterness of Green extremists that swept with gale strength at the Copenhagen 2009 conference on climate pointed to the opposite direction: to limiting world economic activity and even casting away the fruits of two centuries of the Industrial Revolution that they blame for a global warm-ing bound to render the planet uninhabitable. This is a controversial meaning of progress.
Green scare mongering is too puny to be compared to the 20th century ideologies of Fascism and Communism. Although Green activists are prone to alarmism, the harm they cause is still small when compared to the havoc brought about by two world wars and the waste of a long cold war.
Totalitarians had weapons for their mischief whereas Green extremists can only brandish words that suggest they would have already capsized the planet, were it not for the ballast of common sense possessed by ordi-nary folk. They promote public policies too reactionary to be tolerated if implemented. The political reality is that the West resists being rolled back to an idealised Green rural past. Forget China and India.
Again, the world is divided into two camps. One side of the climate issue is epito-mised by MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen, who sees global warming as a politi-cal and journalistic phenomenon, not a physi-cal one. He expects future generations to look back in wonder at the turn of the century hys-teria about climate. On the other side stands Jerome Ravetz, theorist of a fashionable Post-normal Science, who contributed to the uncriti-cal acceptance of anthropogenic global warm-ing as settled science. It is not.
Ravetz is no common-or-garden Leftist; he holds a Cambridge PhD degree in mathe-matics. Steeped in Marxism at the Philadelphia home of his Russian/Jewish parents, his US passport was withdrawn during the McCarthy era, although later restored. He then adopted UK citizenship. A disgruntled Ravetz is the kind of articulate intellectual that Oxford likes to keep for a while to enliven debate, and cer-tainly fits the role with his Post-normal Sci-ence. He admits that the scientific method cannot be surpassed in its realm of simple phenomena; he argues that there is another realm, of complex matters such as climate, in which the stakes are high and scientific cer-tainties low, requiring a new approach. Enter the Precautionary Principle: if the cause is just and the science unsettled, uncertainties should not stand in the way of acts of government promoted by official propaganda. Enter the Ministry of Truth…
The truth is that we don’t know – and may never know – how much of global climate change comes by hand of man or by hand of nature, to what degree and when. We do know that hiding uncertainties essential to risk as-sessment is fraud. It is the sin of omission of UN IPPC Summaries for Policy Makers.
The uncertainties of complexity are not new; they been around since the time of the philosophers of Ancient Greece. After them, Hegel and Marx believed they had the instru-ments to navigate on uncharted and turbulent waters of history, politics and economics. Oth-ers argue that questions concerning human nature will always remain in the domain of the intuition of statesmen, of the religious, of the mystics, poets and artists who have the feel, not the thought, to discern in matters beyond the reach of reason – and therefore of science. Their intuition cannot be generalised into a soulless ideological system.
With Post-normal Science, Marxists try to bring back, as serious, their Alice in Wonderland thought. Their tactics have changed. They now follow the book of Antonio Gramsci, founder of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920s. As an exile in Moscow, Gramsci saw the brutal realities of Stalin’s regime and realised the futility of seizing power with revolution and holding onto power with armed force. It led to oppression, not liberty. Christianity is the strongest foe of Marxism; a revolutionary assault on Christian societies entrenched behind a rampart of values held for two thousand years is doomed to failure. Gramsci proposed an alternative approach: evolution, not revolution, is the way to the ideal classless society, in a long but sure process. Marxism should spread in concentric circles until it grows into a consensus. First win over the opinion formers; then the university profes-sors, the intellectuals they educate, the jour-nalists, teachers, leaders of civic and religious organisations, political parties. Finally, with the leadership in the fold, the masses would fol-low. Marxism would rule with no compulsion, in place of societies based on religious values.
After Communist regimes collapsed into universal discredit Gramsci’s suave ap-proach gained favour, and in now under way. This was perceived by Alan Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, who col-lected clippings of amusing things written by post-modernists (mainly Marxists) about hard science, especially those who use abstruse mathematical terms to make their text incom-prehensible, so as to pass as profound. He grew weary of nonsense written about physics, held by social “scientists” to be white, male and euro-centric. He came to the conclusion that there is no such thing called a social sci-ence, because anything goes. He submitted his opinion to experimental proof.
PROPOSITION
That a prestigious sociology journal would publish an essay full of absurd state-ments, provided it was:
· Well written, of scholarly appearance;
· Cloaked as incomprehensible physics;
· Attuned with prejudices of the editor.
Sokal’s essay announced his discovery of Quantum Gravity, the synthesis of relativity theory and quantum mechanics, on a superior plane that supersedes both. He suggests he had done it with the methods of social sci-ences, in a feat that did away with the outworn formal logic and systematic experiment, still in use and unduly so. The implications were so revolutionary that the essay had been rejected for publication in peer-reviewed journals of physics, and this was the reason to seek its publication in Social Text, known for a mind open to innovation.
The essay contains nonsense galore immediately perceptible as a hoax by an engi-neering student. The essay favoured mathematics freed from the shackles of the rules of arithmetic and stood against the teaching of the outworn geometry of Euclid, a tool for oppression of the working class. There was anti-feminist prejudice in fluid mechanics. Truth is relative. Constants such as the speed of light, (299 792 km/s), universal gravitational constant G (6.67438×10-11N(m/kg)2), and the number pi (3.1416) have values set by the cur-rent social context but such values may change in a different future social context.
No absurdity was contrived by Sokal; all were extracted from what was stated by post-modern thinkers about hard science and he supports it with more than one hundred references to published articles.
PROOF
Sokal’s essay, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Her-meneutics of Quantum Gravity was indeed published as submitted, with no comment, al-though Sokal repeatedly asked whether there were any questions to be clarified.
“Social Text” #46/47, pp. 217-252 (1996).
QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM
In another journal, at the time of publi-cation, Sokal explained what he had done at Social Text and regretted that a silent tide of irrationality threatened institutions of higher learning to dictate, from a blind and intolerant pulpit, what is right to do, say and think.
An inquiring mind shuns Gospel according to St. Marx. Reviewers at Social Text could have asked: if a future society de-crees that pi = 4 will circles be squares and heavenly bodies cubes? None asked.
With its pretence of a short cut to deal with complexity, Post-normal Science amounts to sophistry of the kind ridiculed by Sokal. Its previous failure was in economics and the new one in climate. It is a grab for power to ration use of energy worldwide and thus control the lives of every human being. Its followers are not above deceit to exploit emotions of a guilt-ridden West.
A confident West had worked wonders. French contributions to mathematics are found in the work of Descartes, Pascal, Fermat, D’Alembert, Delambre, Fourier, Lagrange, Monge, Poisson, Laplace, Cauchy, Galois, Poincaré, Benoit Mandelbrot. Then came Post-normal Science with Humpty Dumpty scruple: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”. It is Mock Science with Mock Turtle arithmetic of: Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, Derision.
No Post Post-normal Science is needed to dialectically supplant Post-normal Science; a return to Science would do.
Sokal’s essay is available on Internet at: http://www.sablesys.com/sokal.html. See:
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/
Steven Mosher-“if more people would take lindzen’s position ( C02 warms, we just dont know how much)”
I don’t think Lindzen could be construed as saying “we don’t know how much”-as in, no idea whatsoever-when he calculates highly constrained figures for what he thinks are realistic estimates.
“instead of Rorbachers retarded “co2 is a only trace gas” position”
I don’t think the “tracers” are correct either, but abusive, and downright offensive language will never win such folks over. Indeed, your attacking them so harshly must only further convince them that you are wrong and they are right-after all, your a “big meany” 😉 Try using less abusive language, maybe?
“The case is that Lindzen gets lumped in with utter nutjobs and the strongest form of skepticism is sidelined.” Again, abusive language only further emboldens the forces of well meaning incorrectness.
Regarding Lindzen’s presentation, I thought the weakest part was claiming that the surface data are wrong because the temperature changes in the tropical atmosphere don’t follow the moist adiabat predicted for the surface change. Well, two problems with this: One might just as easily say that the atmospheric data are incorrect (although I don’t think so) in this respect, for one, and the second problem is that no one has, to my knowledge, demonstrated that temperature changes in the tropics always have to follow the moist adiabat. Sure, this happens in models, but this doesn’t mean that it must happen in the real world! Hasn’t Lindzen himself criticized this reasoning, that a property shared by models must be “robust” and therefore also present in the real world?
Andrew says:
November 19, 2010 at 6:49 am
I don’t think Lindzen could be construed as saying “we don’t know how much”-as in, no idea whatsoever-when he calculates highly constrained figures for what he thinks are realistic estimates.
He said the current figures are not with enough negative feedback from clouds figured in.
He also said there is more radiation leaving the earth than was hypothesized by the computer models. In other words, the hypothesis is proven wrong by the data.
He does not agree that co2 will cause warming. He is speaking in terms of what the computer models show when he talks about the doubling of co2, not what the real world is showing.
The man sitting to his left that said data is confirming computer models was wrong. Data is only showing computer models are wrong. I can supply links, after work tonight, to 3 works that shows they are wrong if you’d like.
@ur momisugly Richard Telford
Also have a look at: Roe, G. (2006), In defense of Milankovitch,
Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L24703, doi:10.1029/2006GL027817
@ur momisugly Steven Mosher
STRONGLY agree
Amino Acids in Meteorites-“He said the current figures are not with enough negative feedback from clouds figured in.”
How is this a contradiction with my statement that he is not saying “we don’t know”? He is saying he pretty much knowns the models are vastly wrong. And for the reason you just stated.
“He does not agree that co2 will cause warming.”
Um: “is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should.” From the PDF of his testimony…
The question is indeed, as Lindzen tried to communicate, how much. It will be some amount. Lindzen actually tries the calculate the real world amount, and doesn’t say “we don’t know”-he says, we can get a pretty good idea of the amount-which is more like “we do know” than “we don’t”
“He also said there is more radiation leaving the earth than was hypothesized by the computer models. In other words, the hypothesis is proven wrong by the data.”
This statement is a vast oversimplification of the statements he made which does really relate to what the was saying at all. It is not that the absolute amount of radiation currently being emitted is different from model predictions-that may or may not be the case, it is not really relevant to the sensitivity question. What Lindzen is actually saying is that, when the Earth’s temperature increases, the compensating loss of radiation to space is increased more than models predict. The sensitivity is DELTA FLUX per DELTA TEMP not just the flux by itself…But yes the models are contradicted by the data, in Lindzen’s analysis.
“The man sitting to his left that said data is confirming computer models was wrong. Data is only showing computer models are wrong. I can supply links, after work tonight, to 3 works that shows they are wrong if you’d like.”
I am not needing to be told that the models are wrong, I’ve probably already read the works in question. I happen to agree that the models are wrong. A little respect and credit to me, please, not constantly assuming what my opinion is on the basis of…wait, what the heck made you think I was saying that the models aren’t wrong anyway??
Is the ratio of record highs to record lows stistically the same in urban and rural areas? If not then Dr Meehl must have explaining to do.
Well I’m glad I read this here, because it wasn’t reported at all in the UK media.
Can you get your mate Delingpole to write a blog on it for the DT??
Rhys
Why don’t you just email Dellers and ask him to consider posting?
“”””” 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. “””””
This paragraph ought to be engraved into the surface of the desk of every member of the Congress. And maybe on the famous Oval Office desk too.
How about that sorry first sentence:- “”””” Discussion of other progress in science can also be discussed if there is any interest. “”””” …………….. if there is any interest. !!!!
So what the hell was the purpose of this meeting ? Clearly Professor Lindzen realized; that this committee had no interest whatsoever in learning anything about the real science behind climate. Good show Dr Lindzen for letting them know you were on to them. Remember that RINO dummy who said remember that all of this will be on the record.
Am I to understand that both Chairperson Baird, and his RINO bosom pal; were both TEA partied out into the cold; and this was simply their swan song.
But how about this from the MIT brainiac.
“”””” 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. “””””
Now I don’t have the good Professor’s data base nor research tools (or grants) but I get the same results scratching with my stick on the beach sands; IT’S THE WATER !!
Ages ago, Leif Svalgaard pointed out that though one could calculate a 70 millidegree C shift in equilibrium Black Body Temperature at earth’s orbit; due to the observed 0.1% cyclic peak to peak change in TSI over an eleven year sunspot cycle; observations of the global Temperature anomaly over many decades, show no evidence of any such shift.
That’s Viking speak for; “there’s a feedback mechanism that wipes that out.”
Then we have Frank Wentz (RSS, Santa Rosa CA.) et al “How Much more rain will Global Warming Bring ?” SCIENCE july-7 2007.
They OBSERVED that a one deg C rise in mean global surface Temperature caused a 7% increase in Total Global evaporation; total atmospheric water content, and Total global precipitation; that’s 7% for EACH of those.
To which I conjectured that the 7% evap increase suggested a similar 7% increase in precipitable cloud cover: (combined area, optical density, and persistence time).
Now I don’t know about y’alls; but to me that 7% change for a one degree rise is an astronomically huge negative feedback.
No they did NOT observe a full deg C Temp rise during their Satellite observations; those are rates of rise; somehow 1/2 deg C seems to stick in my head . Read the paper for the details.
And remember that ANY water, either VAPOR, LIQUID, or SOLID , the latter two in the form of CLOUDS; anywhere in the atmosphere, anywhere on earth ALWAYS REDUCES the ground level sunlight; “no matter what” as Dr William Schockley would say. (If you never heard a lecture from him; or Dr Linus Pauling; then your education can hardly be considered complete.).
Well as I contemplated the extent of the cloud feed back effect; it occurred to me; that the same feedback could wipe out entirely, large changes in the TSI, so that the earth Temperature is regulated, even in the face of changes in solar output. (EM radiation).
If I understand the significance of what Lindzen just told these Congressional buffoons. His team now has credible scientific evidence that in fact that has happened. Now it evidently happened long before the ice ages came along.
I don’t have any idea how ice ages happen; particularly the current period of ice ages; that come and go with interglacial warm periods; so I just stand with my hands in my pockets looking in from the outside with curiosity. Now I get the Orbital shifts bit in principle; but not quantitatively; so as I say, I’m a curious bystander looking through the knot hole in the fence.
But I am even more convinced now in light of Lindzen’s testimony, that CO2 doesn’t stand a chance agaisnt the feedback due to water.
Remember it is CHANGES in atmospheric water that persist for times of climate relevence; not last night’s weather, that lead to the reduction in ground level sunlight (energy input); AND a net loss of solar energy to the entire planet; and regardless of what other mechanisms are in play (sans additional energy inputs). And a net loss of energy input cannot result in a rise in Temperature; no matter how much LWIR exit may be held up by GHGs (including H2O) via the “greenhouse effect” it eventually does escape, and the planet has no alternative but to get colder.
And as for that National Academy of Sciences Chap; I don’t care how big and fancy your computer is; or that you can use it to design nuclear bombs (so what); it’s your stupid program that is gumming up the works. Your fancy computer is delivering nonsense at unprecedented speed; but you can put lipstick on it; and it is still nonsense.
The committee should have listened to Lindzen and tossed the rest of them out (the science panel). I didn’t listen to the rest of them; if you can’t get the sicence correct; who cares what your mitigation planning might be.
“”””” PROOF
Sokal’s essay, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Her-meneutics of Quantum Gravity was indeed published as submitted, with no comment, al-though Sokal repeatedly asked whether there were any questions to be clarified.
“Social Text” #46/47, pp. 217-252 (1996).
QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM “””””
The hell you say ! All these years I thought it stood for: QUITE EASILY DONE !
Learn something new every day at WUWT.
Andrew
speaking of sensitivity, you might be a little sensitive.
Amino Acids in Meteorites-Guilty.
“bullshit (yes, that’s the right word, sorry if I offended your delicate senses)”
Har har har. Former USMC sergeant here. You’d need professional guidance to curse well enough to offend me. I’m offended more by lack of cursing or amateurish attempts at cursing. IMO in informal settings you should just write like you talk otherwise it robs your persona and cheats the reader. The only reason I don’t cuss more here is because it is not my forum and the rules seem to discourage the habit – one must follow the rules in someone’s elses domain lest one find oneself banished from said domain. So cuss all you want Anthony. The only thing I would ask is that there be no double standards. I find double standards to be inf*ckingtolerable and outf*ckingrageous, if you know what I mean. :=)