Comments On The Hill’s Post “Scientists Ask Congress To Put Aside Politics, Take ‘Fresh Look’ At Climate Data”
By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
There is an article in The Hill’s Energy and Environment Blog on February 1 2011 by Andrew Restuccia titled [h/t/ Bob Ferguson]
Scientists ask Congress to put aside politics, take ‘fresh look’ at climate data
The news article starts with the text
More than a dozen scientists took aim at climate skeptics in a letter to members of Congress late last week, calling on lawmakers to put aside politics and focus on the science behind climate change.
In the Jan. 28 letter, 18 scientists from various universities and research centers called on lawmakers to take a “fresh look” at climate change.
“Political philosophy has a legitimate role in policy debates, but not in the underlying climate science,” the scientists said in the letter. “There are no Democratic or Republican carbon dioxide molecules; they are all invisible and they all trap heat.”
Other excerpts from the news article read [with my comments right below each excerpt]
“The scientists took aim at climate skeptics. “Climate change deniers cloak themselves in scientific language, selectively critiquing aspects of mainstream climate science,” the scientists said. “Sometimes they present alternative hypotheses as an explanation of a particular point, as if the body of evidence were a house of cards standing or falling on one detail; but the edifice of climate science instead rests on a concrete foundation.”
My Comment
Actually, the focus almost exclusively on the radiative effect of CO2 and a few other grenhouse gases is a house of cards. As we documented in our paper (in which each author is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union)
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union
“In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, other first-order human climate forcings are important to understanding the future behavior of Earth’s climate. These forcings are spatially heterogeneous and include the effect of aerosols on clouds and associated precipitation [e.g., Rosenfeld et al., 2008], the influence of aerosol deposition (e.g., black carbon (soot) [Flanner et al. 2007] and reactive nitrogen [Galloway et al., 2004]), and the role of changes in land use/land cover [e.g., Takata et al., 2009]. Among their effects is their role in altering atmospheric and ocean circulation features away from what they would be in the natural climate system [NRC, 2005]. As with CO2, the lengths of time that they affect the climate are estimated to be on multidecadal time scales and longer.
Therefore, the cost-benefit analyses regarding the mitigation of CO2 and other greenhouse gases need to be considered along with the other human climate forcings in a broader environmental context, as well as with respect to their role in the climate system.”
and
“The evidence predominantly suggests that humans are significantly altering the global environment, and thus climate, in a variety of diverse ways beyond the effects of human emissions of greenhouse gases, including CO2…….Because global climate models do not accurately simulate (or even include) several of these other first-order human climate forcings, policy makers must be made aware of the inability of the current generation of models to accurately forecast regional climate risks to resources on multidecadal time scales.”
The failure of this group of climate scientists to consider this broader perspective illustrates their inappropriately narrow view of climate including the role of humans in affecting it, as well as of other social and environmental threats as discussed in the weblog post
A Way Forward In Climate Science Based On A Bottom-Up Resource-Based Perspective
The Hill post also writes
“Congress should, we believe, hold hearings to understand climate science and what it says about the likely costs and benefits of action and inaction,” the scientists wrote. “It should not hold hearings to attempt to intimidate scientists or to substitute ideological judgments for scientific ones.”
The letter of January 28, 2011 to the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate is from
John Abraham, University of St. Thomas
Barry Bickmore, Brigham Young University
Gretchen Daily,* Stanford University
G. Brent Dalrymple,* Oregon State University
Andrew Dessler, Texas A&M University
Peter Gleick,* Pacific Institute
John Kutzbach,* University of Wisconsin-Madison
Syukuro Manabe,* Princeton University
Michael Mann, Penn State University
Pamela Matson,* Stanford University
Harold Mooney,* Stanford University
Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton University
Ben Santer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Richard Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Warren Washington, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Gary Yohe, Wesleyan University
George Woodwell,* The Woods Hole Research Center
*Member of the National Academy of Sciences
The letter is reproduced in the news article and has the following excerpts which I will comment on.
First, two excerpts separated by a few paragraphs illustrates an inconstant claim of the above individuals. They write
“It is not our role as scientists to determine how to deal with problems like climate change. That is a policy matter and rightly must be left to our elected leaders in discussion with all Americans. But, as scientists, we have an obligation to evaluate, report, and explain the science behind climate change.”
but then later state
“We and our colleagues are prepared to assist you as you work to develop a rational and practical national policy to address this important issue.”
My Comment
It’s actually hard to find a more self-contradictory statement!
The next excerpt is
“But no one who argues against the science of climate change has ever provided an alternative scientific theory that adequately satisfies the observable evidence or conforms to our understanding of physics, chemistry, and climate dynamics.”
The authors of the letter do not even define what is “the science of climate change”. From the context of the letter, however, they clearly mean the dominance of the radiative effect of CO2 and a few other gases as being the primary forcing that alters long-term weather statistics and other aspects of the climate. However, it is straightforward to refute this hypothesis as we did in our paper listed above [Pielke et al, 2009] where we documented that the hypothesis
Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is CO2. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades.
has been rejected.
The only hypothesis that has not been rejected is
“Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and involve a diverse range of first-order climate forcings, including, but not limited to, the human input of carbon dioxide (CO2). Most, if not all, of these human influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades.”
We agree that “human activity is changing the climate” e.g. see
Inadvertent Weather Modification: An Information Statement of the American Meteorological Society
(Adopted by the AMS Council on 2 November 2010)
but this statement documents that the influence of humans on the local, regional and global scale is much more than due to the radiative effect of CO2 and a few other greenhouse gases. The narrow perspective presented by the authors of the letter to Congress is not supported by the current scientific knowledge.
The next excerpt is
“Climate change deniers cloak themselves in scientific language, selectively critiquing aspects of mainstream climate science. Sometimes they present alternative hypotheses as an explanation of a particular point, as if the body of evidence were a house of cards standing or falling on one detail; but the edifice of climate science instead rests on a concrete foundation. As an open letter from 255 NAS members noted in the May 2010 Science magazine, no research results have produced any evidence that challenges the overall scientific understanding of what is happening to our planet’s climate and why.”
My Comment
Without commenting on their very inappropriate use of the term “denier”, their claim that “no research results have produced any evidence that challenges the overall scientific understanding of what is happening to our planet’s climate and why”, is blatantly wrong. Examples of major international assessment reports that refute their claim include
Kabat, P., Claussen, M., Dirmeyer, P.A., J.H.C. Gash, L. Bravo de Guenni, M. Meybeck, R.A. Pielke Sr., C.J. Vorosmarty, R.W.A. Hutjes, and S. Lutkemeier, Editors, 2004: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system. Springer, Berlin, Global Change – The IGBP Series, 566 pp
and
National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp
In National Research Council (2005) it is written
“…..the traditional global mean TOA radiative forcing concept has some important limitations, which have come increasingly to light over the past decade. The concept is inadequate for some forcing agents, such as absorbing aerosols and land-use changes, that may have regional climate impacts much greater than would be predicted from TOA radiative forcing. Also, it diagnoses only one measure of climate change—global mean surface temperature response—while offering little information on regional climate change or precipitation. These limitations can be addressed by expanding the radiative forcing concept and through the introduction of additional forcing metrics. In particular, the concept needs to be extended to account for (1) the vertical structure of radiative forcing, (2) regional variability in radiative forcing, and (3) nonradiative forcing.”
“Regional variations in radiative forcing may have important regional and global climatic implications that are not resolved by the concept of global mean radiative forcing. Tropospheric aerosols and landscape changes have particularly heterogeneous forcings. To date, there have been only limited studies of regional radiative forcing and response. Indeed, it is not clear how best to diagnose a regional forcing and response in the observational record; regional forcings can lead to global climate responses, while global forcings can be associated with regional climate responses. Regional diabatic heating can also cause atmospheric teleconnections that influence regional climate thousands of kilometers away from the point of forcing. Improving societally relevant projections of regional climate impacts will require a better understanding of the magnitudes of regional forcings and the associated climate responses.”
“Several types of forcings—most notably aerosols, land-use and land-cover change, and modifications to biogeochemistry—impact the climate system in nonradiative ways, in particular by modifying the hydrological cycle and vegetation dynamics. Aerosols exert a forcing on the hydrological cycle by modifying cloud condensation nuclei, ice nuclei, precipitation efficiency, and the ratio between solar direct and diffuse radiation received. Other nonradiative forcings modify the biological components of the climate system by changing the fluxes of trace gases and heat between vegetation, soils, and the atmosphere and by modifying the amount and types of vegetation. No metrics for quantifying such nonradiative forcings have been accepted. Nonradiative forcings have eventual radiative impacts, so one option would be to quantify these radiative impacts. However, this approach may not convey appropriately the impacts of nonradiative forcings on societally relevant climate variables such as precipitation or ecosystem function. Any new metrics must also be able to characterize the regional structure in nonradiative forcing and climate response.”
The authors of the letter to the Members of Congress have failed to communicate these issues to them in their communication.
Summary
The authors of this letter to Congress clearly are advocates for particular policy actions based on their (in my view) inaccurately narrow view of the role of humans within the climate system. They are trying to claim they are only focusing on the science issues, but even a casual examination of their letter shows they are advocates. They still, unfortunately, have not read my son’s book
Pielke, R. A. Jr, 2007: The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2007) should be required reading to determine the role that each AGU member wants to serve with respect to their interface with the political process.
in order to educate them on the role they have chosen when interfacing with policymakers.
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“If we undertake to reduce U.S. CO2 emissions to X level by Y time, what effect will it have on average global temperature and sea level as of any future timeframe?
Given that China’s output of CO2 output will increase by 2X by time Y. What should the US response be?
Don’t forget to go through the list of 18 lobbying
“scientists” and add a pound (#) sign after the ones
who were authors or recipients of those Climategate
e-mails.
I believe at least a third of the folks writing the
“reconsider” letter to all those confused Congressfolf
qualify as Climategators.
Smokey/Anthony,
Ahhhh, thanks to Google I found the WUWT post where Peter Gleick was given three strikes and out by the moderator.
It was the WUWT post “Scientific American still running false warming story” posted on January 19, 2011.
Peter Gleick was given some precautionary principled warnings prior to WUWT policy implementation. : ) Finally, the precautionary principle applied correctly . . . . IPCC please take note.
John
William Gray
any ideas ?
For Australia ?
Yep,
keep killing the rabbits !
Mack the Knife ( Feb 4 2011 5.17 )
I would bring your attention to Australia where hundreds of millions of dollars of public money assigned to flood control was instead used to build desalination plants (which have been mothballed since completion waiting for global warming )
As Plato said,
those that are too smart to go into politics, end up being governed by idiots.
“[carbon dioxide molecules] …are all invisible and they all trap heat.”
I didn’t know that. Can CO2 actually “trap” heat and how much would one part in 2500 in the atmosphere need to “trap” to make a significant difference?
Why this obsession with CO2? Is it more efficient at “trapping” heat than (say) water vapour? Or are we into socio-politics by any chance (surely not!) where it just happens that a focus on that particular gas happens to suit those who would like to stop us using fossil fuels and all that?
I only ask because I want to know, you understand. I wouldn’t want to cause no trouble or nuthin’
Anthony Said,
REPLY: 77 respondents? hardly a valid representative sample of scientists, your example is ridiculous – Anthony
The example is not ridiculous. A sample of 77 , and a response of 97% implies that at 95% confidence, the percentage is correct to a level of +/-3.8%. Even the worst case is a high enough percentage of researchers to give one faith that an overwhelming majority of experts accept the theory of AGW.
In Pielke’s poll, the confidence interval is even smaller. With 140 as the sample size it is 2.83%.
When 2 independent surveys ask the same question of a different sample and get the same result, it is not ridiculous to trust the results. It reduces the confidence interval around the 97% figure quite a bit.
The 18 scientists who authored the letter have a good case for their argument that those who don’t accept AGW are a small minority of research scientists in the field.
The 18 write: ““But no one who argues against the science of climate change has ever provided an alternative scientific theory that adequately satisfies the observable evidence or conforms to our understanding of physics, chemistry, and climate dynamics.”
but this is again turning the null upside down. When one proposes a theory, it is necessary to demonstrate that it is a good one. Using 20 computer models and saying “look, they agree!” does not make the theory true, it merely reflects common modeling methods and assumptions. The degree to which the models mimic global climate over the 20th century is only vaguely adequate (mid-century warming missed, aerosols different in every model, absolute GMT diffs of 4 deg C between models, huge diffs in precip between models, tendency to throw of absurd model runs, tropical tropo hotspot not exactly evident, jet stream simulated poorly –I could go on). There is no sense in which their theory has been tested and produced results that are either robust or precise. Just because their models are “pretty good” in the researchy sense does not mean they are adequate for shifting to disruptive and inefficient “clean” technologies (many of which do not even exist, like CCS).
steven mosher says:
February 4, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Can you say Post Normal Science?
You see this kind of thing doesnt happen in Normal science.
I, for one, LOOK FORWARD TO WHEN Steven Mosher joins reality, along with the rest of us.
Occam’s razor says it does happen if you are talking about politically privileged science, cf, Lysenkoism. There now. NO PMS or ‘PNS’ needed! (There are many other examples like eugenics.)
Kuhn was simply WRONG to characterize science history and progress in terms of “normal” and “revolutionary” science. Physics is not the universalizable “one size fits all” model for all other sciences, physical or not. Non-conformity is not the relevant indicator here. Data sufficiency and falsifiability are.
What the ‘gang of 18’ scientists are doing was laid out by skeptic historian Michael Shermer in “Why Darwin Matters.” He argues for evolution against ‘Intelligent Design’ on the basis of coherentist standard of scientific truth: the theory fits the available evidence. Attacking or subtracting ‘cherry picked’ details still leaves the theory of evolution standing.
This is fine, except for what it leaves out. What if the evidence in close detail does not match the theory? What if the data is of very poor quality?-too poor to tease out any hypothesizied ‘discernible human influence’? Indeed, this is what Peilke, Sr and his co-author William Cotton argue in their textbook “Human Impact on Weather and Climate,”2007 (second edition): global warming from anthropogenically added CO2 cannot be determined from the available data (SEE p 243ff). Natural variability overwhelms the variable one is looking for. (Which is also his thesis above.)
A coherentist standard of scientific truth is vulnerable to other challenges. For instance, Shermer ignores the fact that virtually everyone educated can grasp evolution deductively: If a population varies genetically, and if reproduction of the population varies, then its gene pool will evolve. Therefore, evolution is a fact, observable to all; only it specific applications vary.
Similarly, deductions apply to climate science as it advances or fails to advance. For instance, by making falsifiable predictions. All climate models predict an accelerated rate of warming above the tropics (compared to the surface) in the lower troposphere. Available evidence, this far, fails to find it; therefore it is falsified – proved false.
The resistance of the field to come to grips with falsification of one of the hall-marks of their failed IPCC predictions. Likewise, Lysenko’s fall came from a failure of his theories to perform:
Not how this – “Lysenko’s reputation was also undermined by Soviet geneticist Zhores Medvedev’s samizdat…” – suggests a parallel with climategate today, exposing the dirty linen of scheming, lying, fraudulent scientists as a key to changing corrupt science practices.
In another parallel to the above story of “spectacular new advances in genetics” outside the Soviet Union bringing down Lysenko, perhaps finds a parallel in Roy Spencer’s empirical satellite-based explanations of temperature change following from changes in cloud cover – ie, nature not ACO2.
The recent many months dispute between Andy Dressler and Spencer is telling – particularly since Dressler is also one of the ‘Gang of 18.’
At any rate, no place for PNS in finding salient, realistic parallels to today’s debates between the well-funded Orthodoxy and the outsider critics. why not uphold science and use Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation for the evidence is generally preferred over the more complex one.
Why can’t Steven Mosher follow the common cannons of science nd find them applicable here, too? Others can….
“… Sometimes they present alternative hypotheses as an explanation of a particular point, as if the body of evidence were a house of cards standing or falling on one detail; but the edifice of climate science instead rests on a concrete foundation.” (From the paper of the 18)
They don´t get the metaphor / analogy right, either:
It does not at all matter if the foundation is made of concrete: The house of cards can and will still collapse when important cards are removed. In fact, every building will collapse if structural parts are removed. The house of cards that AWG is will simply collapse much easier, and very likely by itself. Unfortunately the “post-normal” proponents of the AGW “theory” are unable to realize this collapse. A case of distorted view of the reality, maybe? Certainly very “Post Normal”!
Craig Loehle wrote:
The 18 write: ““But no one who argues against the science of climate change has ever provided an alternative scientific theory that adequately satisfies the observable evidence or conforms to our understanding of physics, chemistry, and climate dynamics.”
but this is again turning the null upside down. When one proposes a theory, it is necessary to demonstrate that it is a good one. Using 20 computer models and saying “look, they agree!” does not make the theory true, it merely reflects common modeling methods and assumptions. The degree to which the models mimic global climate over the 20th century is only vaguely adequate (mid-century warming missed, aerosols different in every model, absolute GMT diffs of 4 deg C between models, huge diffs in precip between models, tendency to throw of absurd model runs, tropical tropo hotspot not exactly evident, jet stream simulated poorly –I could go on). There is no sense in which their theory has been tested and produced results that are either robust or precise. Just because their models are “pretty good” in the researchy sense does not mean they are adequate for shifting to disruptive and inefficient “clean” technologies (many of which do not even exist, like CCS).
It is true that the models are relatively rudimentary, relying in part on empirical relationships, and many of the results are inaccurate. However this work has a history of about 40 years. Despite all the changes and refinements, they all predict that GHG’s will warm the earth, and that more extreme drought and rainfall events will be the result. The physical principles are unassailable, and the observations of the atmospheric phenomenon are not turning up any strong evidence that the models are wrong. The greatest uncertainty comes from the behavioral models of clouds. In fact many of the models have negative feedback due to clouds built in, and recent observations show strong evidence of positive feedback. The models are just as likely to be underpredict global warming as they are to overpredict it.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Clouds_Likely_Created_Positive_Climate_Feedback_In_Past_Decade_999.html
The tropospheric hotspot controversy has been largely settled. A hotspot is a consequence of any warming, and the balloon observations which indicate it is not there, were shown to be inaccurate, and the satellite observations were shown to have errors, which when corrected, showed warming of the troposphere.
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-execsum.pdf
Expressing this thought using S-Parameters (Scattering Matrix Parameters) as from an RF engineering POV:
Definitions:
If S12 is transmission up (the direction from surface (1) of earth to space (2)) and
if S21 is transmission down (the direction from to space (2) to surface of earth(1))
Considering an air parcel (or a sample stack of the atmosphere):
IFF (if and only if) if S12 does not equal S21 THEN CO2 can trap heat
IOW, if the transmission of LWIR (through the parcel, the atmospheric air ‘stack’) is not reciprocal (up and down thru or radiation or re-rad) and slightly unidirectional in allowing LWIR to propagate (through the sample) THEN it may trap heat … such is not the case however; I have not found it being described any different in the literature yet anyway.
.
bubbagyro said “The burden of proof is on the warm-earthers. There is no debate.”
Bubbagyro, for me the above is half right . . . the warm-earthers made a prediction, that prediction is not correct . . . the predictions are at least 10 years old and not accurate. Their hockey stick is wrong, & they know it. And thats because of infinitesimal changes in CO2 and infinitesimal changes in temperature as a whole. They started this whole scam by trying to make a “molehill turn into a mountain”.
Now, they are saying that instead of a hockey stick there will be hotter hots and colder colds. Why? Because that is what is happening already, it’s an extrapolation.
This is a credibility issue . . . there is lots of money invested in these prognosticators, as well as the institutes . . . . and in the end run all the money comes from the “commoners” and all the repercussions of the “experts” errors are suffered by the “commoners”.
Pin the guys down, for a short term, intermediate term, and long term forecasts.
It’s only a place to start . . . and we as a people have to STOP compartmentalizing . . . What happens or does not happen in a place (like the IPCC) effects everyone, and please don’t give me that butterfly effect nonsense, the IPCC has a great amount of “power” for want of a better word.
Here is a question I would like to ask, and I admit don’t know the answer. Where on earth can we pick that has the most stable climate. It would be somewhere on the “celestial” equator” that a place that has 12 hour days, 365 days a year . . . what are the changes there . . . what kind of data is there to work with.
But, in my reality, it seems that as soon as I ask, it just disappears. . .
Regg:
You really need to get a hold of your fear and panic. If a few tenths of a degree warmer causes such panic, what are you going to do when there is a real emergency. What is happening in the world, that has you so afraid, that you are ready to initiate drastic mitigation? We are currently benefiting from the modest warming from the LIA, and the subsequent increased food production has enabled us to feed 7 billion hungry. CO2 enhancement has helped us do this amazing feat.
Sea levels are not drowning the coastal areas and no directly linked catastrophic results have ensued. Even slightly reduced Arctic ice coverage has yet to cause any real hardships (more of a blessing, than not). Yet you insist on spreading your irrational fears, every chance you get, hoping to panic the herd. If you do not want to deal with flooding risk, then, be smart… Don’t build on a flood plain.
If you want to progress/impose social reform, then do so on it’s own merit. Do not try to slip this hidden agenda into scientific issues. There are many real dangers in the world. Weather is just one of them.
Please point out the disasters, caused by AGW, currently killing citizens, that requires action. I see a lot of real dangers, requiring action, on the part of many peoples. Climate just isn’t one of them. Not yet, anyway.
The one part of your statement that was valid, was that cooling represents a much bigger threat if and when it resumes. Warming is a pleasant walk in the park. GK
There are no Democratic or Republican carbon dioxide molecules; they are all invisible and they all trap heat.”
Yes, both of them…/sarc
Sam the Skeptic says:
February 5, 2011 at 3:39 am
“[carbon dioxide molecules] …are all invisible and they all trap heat.”
I didn’t know that. Can CO2 actually “trap” heat and how much would one part in 2500 in the atmosphere need to “trap” to make a significant difference?
Why this obsession with CO2? Is it more efficient at “trapping” heat than (say) water vapour? Or are we into socio-politics by any chance (surely not!) where it just happens that a focus on that particular gas happens to suit those who would like to stop us using fossil fuels and all that?
I only ask because I want to know, you understand. I wouldn’t want to cause no trouble or nuthin’
[trimmed]
CO2 like the other GHG’ molecules doesn’t actually trap the heat. They absorb and re-emit IR radiation within their spectrum, preventing half of the upward going radiation, originating from the earth’s surface, from traveling directly into space. This reduces the rate of flow of energy away from the earth into space raising the earths temperature about 33C above what it would be without GHG’s in the atmosphere.
This fact was discovered by the great physicist John Tyndall in 1859, who followed up on Fourier’s ideas published in 1824.
The concentration of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere is slow to change. The average life of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is about 5 years versus water molecule, which is about 10 days. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is quite stable for many years, and varies very slowly with temperature, while H2O concentration varies strongly with temperature. This means that increasing CO2 can drive an increase in water vapor, but not vice versa. That is why there is such a focus on CO2.
Response letter
cidso@co2science.org
The Truth About Climate Change Open Letter
Dear Friends:
As you may have heard, a group of 18 climate alarmists sent an open letter to members of Congress repeating the usual mantra of sea level rise, extreme weather, the spread of diseases, and so forth. Their letter appears below.
We have drafted a reply and are seeking other USA scientists willing to join us as signers. Our letter is attached.
Please review the letter and, if you agree with it and are willing to be publicly connected with it, please let me know by replying to this message, listing your affiliation. We would also appreciate your sending this note on to others of your colleagues that you feel would also be interested in signing this document.
Thanks for your attention, and for your own efforts on this important issue.
Craig Idso
Warning to the gang of 18, be careful of what you wish for?
@- Craig Loehle says:
February 5, 2011 at 5:29 am
“The 18 write: ““But no one who argues against the science of climate change has ever provided an alternative scientific theory that adequately satisfies the observable evidence or conforms to our understanding of physics, chemistry, and climate dynamics.”
but this is again turning the null upside down. When one proposes a theory, it is necessary to demonstrate that it is a good one.”
Several posters object to the requirement of those that opposed to the dominant scientific paradigm of AGW theory should provide a equally robust alternative. Some, as in your post, link this to some reversal of a null hypothesis.
Firstly the null hypothesis in science is a tool, useful in specific and defined conditions which is employed as part of an experimental method is a very small percentage of scientific work.
It may get bandied about in epistemological speculation, but in work on that staple of biology, the fruit fly, just over 1% of the scientific papers that mention work on the fruit fly also refer to a null hypothesis.
The claim from mainstream science that contrarians should propose a robust alternate theory is not unique to climate science. In medical research there are several examples where the dominant view of an issue is attacked, but the mainstream science reject the attacks because of that lack of an alternative. The classic example would be HIV/AIDS. There are a dwindling band of people who claim that the general medical understanding of this condition as a result of infection by a retrovirus that targets the immune system T-cells is wrong. They point to inconsistencies in parts of the evidence while ignoring the consilience of the overall explanation of the condition that the virus theory provides. Almost all medical science ignores those contrarian voices in large part because they have no causal explanation for the condition that fits in with the observed facts of the condition, and with so much of the extended knowledge we have of human disease processes.
Because of the lack of any credible alternative explanation almost all of those that make policy in response to HIV infection accept the ‘concensus’ medical understanding. In those few cases where policy does not follow the ‘consensus’ view of biological science it is invariably for ideological or politically expedient reasons.
As the tobacco industry found in the past, it is much easier to snipe and cast doubt on the main edifice of scientific understanding than it is to erect an alternative explanatory structure with comparable strength. But without a strong alternative there is nothing to provide a template for research that would invalidate the ‘group-think’ of the standard explanation which human society presently has about climate processes.
The implication by the 18 writing to congress is that the lack of an alternative hypothesis (beyond the descriptive hand-waving of ‘Natural variation’) eminating from the skeptical minority reduces the credibility of those skeptical positions. This is just the most recent in a long ‘tradition’ of the same argument advanced against the objections to policy on acid rain, asbestos, lead, tobacco, CFC’s, HIV, MMR … I suspect others could suggest more examples.
The position of R Pielke Snr that the AGW theory is incomplete because it fails to encompass ALL the possible causal factors of human origin that can alter the climate is at least a better counter than the blank rejection of AGW without any alternative. It does at least accept what is already considered to be a robust explanation as PART of the climate system. The issue then becomes the degree each factor influences the observed behavior.
Wombat says:
February 5, 2011 at 3:12 am
Wombat, what part of a group of “scientists”, many with
shared historical baggage (the Climategate e-mails) getting
together and lobbying Congress (the “reconsider letter”)
do you feel is not political ?
Many of you are making a big fuzz about an example i gave (the dams, dikes, ..). Poor man, can’t see an example from a proposal. I will explain it. When you foresee a problem, you take action about it – if not, it will only get worst. It was not a proposal to built dikes all along the east or west coast.
I did’nt proposed CO2 was the only issue – but most of the commenters about what i wrote said so. Go figure, i was putting emphasis that (as Pielke said) CO2 was part of the issue and not the only one.
I’m mostly in Pielke Sr camp about warming. Co2 is not the only thing to take care. So if you blast my point of view, you blast Pielke as well. That was my point, people here are bashing against the 12 – that’s your right. But when you bring arguments about warming, Co2 or other to claim it’s all false, then you’re also against what Pielke said, how can you say you agree with him if you don’t believe what he just wrote ?
For those saying it’s not warming, please read Pielke’s paper – and please don’t say you agree with him if you don’t see warming.
Someone said i was using rig data (jerry-rigged systems of measurement managed by pro-AGW zealots! – was the exact wording). Well i did’nt know RSpencer was a pro-AGW zealot. He’s usually one the reference for the skeptic.
GK, my biggest fear is not the warming or the cooling. Blindless point of view as i just pointed out is really scarry.
eadler says:
“The example is not ridiculous. A sample of 77 ,”
77 permutations for a sample amongst a community of tens of thousands?
How is that not ridiculous? But of course if you want to sample a chemical composition based on a sample of 77 representing a fantastical made up 95% confidence in reality out of tens of thousands . . . call any medical manufacturer to become a test subject for they would love you to death, breaking no sweat.
izen says:
February 5, 2011 at 1:15 pm
An alternative explanation/hypothesis to explain what?
From the context of the letter, however, they clearly mean the dominance of the radiative effect of CO2 and a few other gases as being the primary forcing that alters long-term weather statistics and other aspects of the climate. However, it is straightforward to refute this hypothesis as w
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This has the smell of a straw man argument.
As does a number of other points made in this criticism.