Guest post by Bill Gray Professor Emeritus, Colorado State University
(AMS Fellow, Charney Award recipient, and over 50-year member)
June 2011
I am very disappointed at the downward path the AMS has been following for the last 10-15 years in its advocacy of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis. The society has officially taken a position many of us AMS members do not agree with. We believe that humans are having little or no significant influence on the global climate and that the many Global Circulation Climate Model (GCMs) results and the four IPCC reports do not realistically give accurate future projections. To take this position which so many of its members do not necessarily agree with shows that the AMS is following more of a political than a scientific agenda.
The AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter and the other AMS higher-ups and the Council have not shown the scientific maturity and wisdom we would expect of our AMS leaders. I question whether they know just how far off-track the AMS has strayed since they foolishly took such a strong pro-AGW stance.
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) was founded in 1919 as an organization dedicated to advancing scientific knowledge of weather and climate. It has been a wonderful beacon for fostering new understanding of how the atmosphere and oceans function. But this strong positive image is now becoming tarnished as a result of the AMS leadership’s capitulating to the lobby of the climate modelers and to the outside environmental and political pressure groups who wish to use the current AMS position on AGW to help justify the promotion of their own special interests. The effectiveness of the AMS as an objective scientific organization is being greatly compromised.
We AMS members have allowed a small group of AMS administrators, climate modelers, and CO2 warming sympathizers to maneuver the internal workings of our society to support AGW policies irrespective of what our rank-and-file members might think. This small organized group of AGW sympathizers has indeed hijacked our society.
The AMS should be acting as a facilitator for the scientific debate on the pro and con aspects of the AGW hypothesis, not to take a side in the issue. The AMS has not held the type of open and honest scientific debates on the AGW hypothesis which they should have. Why have they dodged open discussion on such an important issue? I’ve been told that the American Economic Society does not take sides on controversial economic issues but acts primarily to help in stimulating back and forth discussion. This is what the AMS should have been doing but haven’t.
James Hansen’s predictions of global warming made before the Senate in 1988 are turning out to be very much less than he had projected. He cannot explain why there has been no significant global warming over the last 10-12 years.
Many of us AMS members believe that the modest global warming we have observed is of natural origin and due to multi-decadal and multi-century changes in the globe’s deep ocean circulation resulting from salinity variations. These changes are not associated with CO2 increases. Most of the GCM modelers have little experience in practical meteorology. They do not realize that the strongly chaotic nature of the atmosphere-ocean climate system does not allow for skillful initial value numerical climate prediction. The GCM simulations are badly flawed in at least two fundamental ways:
- Their upper tropospheric water vapor feedback loop is grossly wrong. They assume that increases in atmospheric CO2 will cause large upper-tropospheric water vapor increases which are very unrealistic. Most of their model warming follows from these invalid water vapor assumptions. Their handlings of rainfall processes are quite inadequate.
- They lack an understanding and treatment of the fundamental role of the deep ocean circulation (i.e. Meridional Overturning Circulation – MOC) and how the changing ocean circulation (driven by salinity variations) can bring about wind, rainfall, and surface temperature changes independent of radiation and greenhouse gas changes. These ocean processes are not properly incorporated in their models. They assume the physics of global warming is entirely a product of radiation changes and radiation feedback processes. They neglect variations in global evaporation which is more related to surface wind speed and ocean minus surface and air temperature differences. These are major deficiencies.
The Modelers’ Free Ride. It is surprising that GCMs have been able to get away with their unrealistic modeling efforts for so long. One explanation is that they have received strong support from Senator/Vice President Al Gore and other politicians who for over three decades have attempted to make political capital out of increasing CO2 measurements. Another reason is the many environmental and political groups (including the mainstream media) have been eager to use the GCM climate results as justification to push their own special interests that are able to fly under the global warming banner. A third explanation is that they have not been challenged by their peer climate modeling groups who apparently have seen possibilities for similar research grant support and publicity by copying Hansen and the earlier GCM modelers.
I anticipate that we are going to experience a modest naturally-driven global cooling over the next 15-20 years. This will be similar to the weak global cooling that occurred between the early-1940s and the mid-1970s. It is to be noted that CO2 amounts were also rising during this earlier cooling period which were opposite to the expected CO2-temperature association.
An expected 15-20 year cooling will occur (in my view) because of the current strong ocean Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) that has now been established in the last decade and a half and ought to continue for another couple of decades. I explain most of the last century and-a-half general global warming since the mid-1800s (start of the industrial revolution) to be a result of a long multi-century slowdown in the ocean’s MOC circulation. Increases of CO2 could have contributed only a small fraction (0.1-0.2oC) of the roughly ~ 0.7oC surface warming that has been observed since 1850. Natural processes have had to have been responsible for most of the observed warming over the last century and a half.
Debate. The AMS is the most relevant of our country’s scientific societies as regards to its members having the most extensive scientific and technical background in meteorology and climate. It should have been a leader in helping to adjudicate the claims of the AGW advocates and their skeptical critics. Our country’s Anglo-Saxon derived legal system is based on the idea that the best way to get to the truth is to have opposite sides of a continuous issue present their differing views in open debate before a non partisan jury. Nothing like this has happened with regards to the AGW issue. Instead of organizing meetings with free and open debates on the basic physics and the likelihood of AGW induced climate changes, the leaders of the society (with the backing of the society’s AGW enthusiasts) have chosen to fully trust the climate models and deliberately avoid open debate on this issue. I know of no AMS sponsored conference where the AGW hypothesis has been given open and free discussion. For a long time I have wanted a forum to express my skepticism of the AGW hypothesis. No such opportunities ever came within the AMS framework. Attempts at publication of my skeptic views have been difficult. One rejection stated that I was too far out of the mainstream thinking. Another that my ideas had already been discredited. A number of AGW skeptics have told me they have had similar experiences.
The climate modelers and their supporters deny the need for open debate of the AGW question on the grounds that the issue has already been settled by their model results. They have taken this view because they know that the physics within their models and the long range of their forecast periods will likely not to be able to withstand knowledgeable and impartial review. They simply will not debate the issue. As a defense against criticism they have resorted to a general denigration of those of us who do not support their AGW hypothesis. AGW skeptics are sometimes tagged (I have been) as no longer being credible scientists. Skeptics are often denounced as tools of the fossil-fuel industry. A type of McCarthyism against AGW skeptics has been in display for a number of years.
Recent AMS Awardees. Since 2000 the AMS has awarded its annual highest award (Rossby Research Medal) to the following AGW advocates or AGW sympathizers; Susan Solomon (00), V. Ramanathan (02), Peter Webster (04), Jagadish Shukla (05), Kerry Emanuel (07), Isaac Held (08) and James Hansen (09). Its second highest award (Charney Award) has gone to AGW warming advocates or sympathizers; Kevin Trenberth (00), Rich Rotunno (04), Graeme Stephens (05) Robert D. Cess (06), Allan Betts (07), Gerald North (08) and Warren Washington and Gerald Meehl (09). And the other Rossby and Charney awardees during this period are not known to be critics of the AGW warming hypothesis.
The AGW biases within the AMS policy makers is so entrenched that it would be impossible for well known and established scientists (but AGW skeptics) such as Fred Singer, Pat Michaels, Bill Cotton, Roger Pielke, Sr., Roy Spencer, John Christie, Joe D’Aleo, Bob Balling, Jr., Craig Idso, Willie Soon, etc. to ever be able to receive an AMS award – irrespective of the uniqueness or brilliance of their research.
What Working Meteorologists Say. My interaction (over the years) with a broad segment of AMS members (that I have met as a result of my seasonal hurricane forecasting and other activities) who have spent a sizable portion of their careers down in the meteorological trenches of observations and forecasting, have indicated that a majority of them do not agree that humans are the primary cause of global warming. These working meteorologists are too experienced and too sophisticated to be hoodwinked by the lobby of global climate modelers and their associated propagandists. I suggest that the AMS conduct a survey of its members who are actually working with real time weather-climate data to see how many agree that humans have been the main cause of global warming and that there was justification for the AMS’s 2009 Rossby Research Medal (highest AMS award) going to James Hansen.
Global Environmental Problems. There is no question that global population increases and growing industrialization have caused many environmental problems associated with air and water pollution, industrial contamination, unwise land use, and hundreds of other human-induced environmental irritants. But all these human-induced environmental problems will not go away by a draconian effort to reduce CO2 emissions. CO2 is not a pollutant but a fertilizer. Humankind needs fossil-fuel energy to maintain its industrial lifestyle and to expand this lifestyle in order to be able to better handle these many other non-CO2 environmental problems. There appears to be a misconception among many people that by reducing CO2 we are dealing with our most pressing environmental problem. Not so.
It must be remembered that advanced industrial societies do more for the global environment than do poor societies. By greatly reducing CO2 emissions and paying a great deal more for our then needed renewable energy we will lower our nation’s standard of living and not be able to help relieve as many of our and the globe’s many environmental, political, and social problems.
Obtaining a Balanced View on AGW. To understand what is really occurring with regards to the AGW question one must now bypass the AMS, the mainstream media, and the mainline scientific journals. They have mostly been preconditioned to accept the AGW hypothesis and, in general, frown on anyone not agreeing that AGW is, next to nuclear war, our society’s most serious long range problem.
To obtain any kind of a balanced back-and-forth discussion on AGW one has to consult the many web blogs that are both advocates and skeptics of AGW. These blogs are the only source for real open debate on the validity of the AGW hypothesis. Here is where the real science of the AGW question is taking place. Over the last few years the weight of evidence, as presented in these many blog discussions, is beginning to swing against the AGW hypothesis. As the globe fails to warm as the GCMs have predicted the American public is gradually losing its belief in the prior claims of Gore, Hansen, and the other many AGW advocates.
Prediction. The AMS is going to be judged in future years as having foolishly sacrificed its sterling scientific reputation for political and financial expediency. I am sure that hundreds of our older deceased AMS members are rolling in their graves over what has become of their and our great society.
[duplicate text removed ~ ctm]
No they don’t want to debate. Because every single time there is an open debate they lose! And Chris’ hero Gavin Schmidt got his butt handed to him and he had to go away with his tail between his legs then whine about why he lost so bad. So yes Chris you will get a good education at GISS
@ur momisugly Chris Colose, throughout this thread:
It seems to me that you may have a lack of knowledge in regard to how science, scientific discovery and the scientific method works – all of it, that is, not just the climate one. To help you out, as a first step, look up what Feynman had to say on that. I hope he is an authority which even you can accept …
As for assuming that everyone who posts here or on other blogs has to be a numpty who can be disregarded because they are not climate scientists with peer-reviewed publications (where are yours, btw?) – well, I find it sad that you are already narrowing your view and thus your intellectual capability at your age. A so-called scientist who is not prepared to spend their life learning, especially from those who hold opposing views, but relies on something called ‘consensus’ is not a scientist.
Um, and how was that “qualification” arrived at? You state one thing, then when called upon it, equivocate to another. Clearly you must have the Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring that allows you – and apparently only you – to determine who is qualified and who is not. Bill Gray, not having said ring, apparently talked to many people who you later decided to disqualify.
Condemn him for not have the Secret decoder ring, not for not talking to the people.
But then you are an “oceanic” student in the middle of a continent, where pronunciations by faux experts are god’s law – whatever.
Chris Colose provides an accurate stereotype of a wet behind the ears, baselessly arrogant, immature suck-up to his GISS masters. He knows where his bread is buttered, and he ignores the scientific method and professional ethics because his blind ambition requires it.
The entire AGW edifice is based on climate alarmism, and there is exactly zero real world evidence supporting it. AGW is based entirely on computer models programmed by people who have already arrived at their conclusions, and blinkered wannabes like Colose jettison their ethics in order to be on the side of alarmist grant recipients with their snouts deep in the taxpayer trough. Science is simply a self-serving veneer, and the truth is not in them.
Reminds me of a friend who used to maintain that it was the number of people which determined the temperature of a location. See, it’s usually warmer where more people congregate. In fact, you’ll notice that when a lot of people gather in a room, they take their coats off, and the room warms up even more! Simple, really.
/Mr Lynn
The level of scientific understanding is apparently a lot higher here than at your institution since even a freshman science major knows you do not “accept” science, you question, test and prove it. You do “accept” political campaigns and promises (often broken). I dare say if you are representative of your institution, it is no wonder why “Johnny can’t read”.
Well done Dr Gray for voicing this concern.never seen a more evident example of group think than that has happpened in the AMS.
Some times it takes a brave man to pull the pin and throw, let hope it has the desired effect of waking those complicit in this sleep walking on the AGW rail, and not labeling a brave and honest scientist just another “denier”,
A flood must start with at least one raindrop Lets hope other AMS member come out and back you.
Ok, now that Chris has been bashed to death, there are a number of points I struggle with in the letter above. I’ll stick to one. “James Hansen’s predictions of global warming made before the Senate in 1988 are turning out to be very much less than he had projected. He cannot explain why there has been no significant global warming over the last 10-12 years.”
James Hansens 20+ year old model yields a climate sensitivity of +4.2C per doubling of CO2, very much at the high end of the range 2.0-4.5C (please read http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf). This is not a crime. Nor is it an indication that all models are fundamentally flawed. I don’t know what source Professor Gray is using to claim James Hansen cannot explain “no significant global warming over the last 10-12 years”. My understanding is that the level of confidence in the trend has been around 90%, so given the relatively short run and the natural variability inherent in the climate system there is not much explaining to do.
Chris Colose says:
June 16, 2011 at 11:43 pm
“I will check back for initiation of some sort of reasonable (scientific) discussion here, but since everything seems mostly arguing about the significance of consensus or my level of education, I will just assume no one has anything to say about the physics of climate that the worlds scientists have not already thought of.”
OK. Let’s start a discussion of climate modeling, focusing on Model E since you’re at GISS. Could you please point us to some documentation which describes/defines ALL of the differential equations being solved, and discusses in detail the numerical methods (including the stability, and consistency of the formulation) and boundary/initial conditions. You can start with the Eulerian core for the atmosphere model. If you can’t find anything (and I doubt you will), that’s OK. Thanks.
Chris Colose says:
June 16, 2011 at 8:57 pm
Don’t underestimate the readership here. While I am concerned about the number of quick-on-the-trigger attacks against almost any scientific research, some of that comes with the territory. In the long run, those are the folks who stand to learn the most from WUWT.
Last November I wrote 35 years ago: The Witch of November Come Stealin in honor of the sinking of the Great Lakes ore carrier, the Edmund Fitzgerald and notes on similar storms.
Besides the weather connection, I figured that few WUWT readers outside those of us in the midwest are familiar with ore carriers and it would be nice to pass on my inconsiderable knowledge (i.e. I saw them occasionally on Lake Erie and thought they looked weird).
The comments were as good or better than my post. They included an ore boat deckhand for a couple months; someone who knew a crewman on a rescue chopper in the area then; Roy Spencer, who was at the NWS office in Sault Ste. Marie, when the report came in that the Fitzgerald had likely sunk; and someone noting how family discussions changed in tone whenever the Armistice Day topic was mentioned; and people who know a lot about the design of bulk carriers. I was very pleased – amazed – with the wide ranging and non-confrontational response, thanks in part to the mostly non-controversial subject.
WUWT has a huge readership, and only a small percentage of us comment. Assume that your comments are read by future (and current!) classmates, professors, employers, wives, landlords, bus drivers, owners of the local farmstand….
Please consider your time here as an opportunity to educate people who are interested in science but haven’t had the time to study it more. Remember your limitations. While you understand a lot more about radiative physics than I ever will, even though it’s something I need to learn more about, there’s a lot you haven’t touched on, like how to model the transition of water vapor from GHG to albedo increasing cloud. Above all, when you reply to some comment, don’t write to that person (there’s only one of him), but write to the thousands of readers here who never comment.
Thanks guys! 🙂
Chris Colose says:
June 16, 2011 at 5:18 pm
Theo,
“Madison’s Atmos. science program is best known for its world-renowned remote-sensing & radiation studies ( there are better schools for pure climate) but actually if you are curious enough, Prof. Galen McKinley teaches a graduate level course in Physical Oceanography here. We also have quite a few experts in fluid dynamics, and several people who work on paleoclimate problems related to the MOC, including Zhengyu Liu. If you really want to learn, I encourage you to take some classes.”
Well, you arrogant little child. I ask you to produce some reasonably well-confirmed physical hypothesis that goes beyond Arrhenius and supports the Warmista case on CO2 induced warming. You cannot produce any such hypothesis, so like any good Warmista you respond with an ad hominem. Is this kind of behavior what your professors taught in your classes? You are nothing but another Warmista troll; that part you have down pat.
Jim D says:
June 16, 2011 at 7:19 pm
“Bill Gray’s idea that AGW relies on models is wrong. It starts with Arrhenius and Tyndall over a century ago.”
Present one reasonably well-confirmed physical hypothesis created by Schmidt or some other Warmista that goes beyond Arrhenius. You cannot do it.
Chris Colose says:
June 16, 2011 at 8:57 pm
“Given that so many people are attacking my status as a student in the field, I am wondering if anyone here aside from Ryan Maue has even taken a 101 course, has given presentations or went to conferences in atmospheric physics related topics?”
Sir, this is a debate and you stated a position. You are expected to defend it. What you need to do is present one reasonably well-confirmed physical hypothesis that goes beyond the 19th Century work of Arrhenius. Can you do it?
I left the AMS this year after 20-some years of membership. I simply couldn’t take the drumbeat in BAMS month after month, not to mention the various policy statements.
Those who have the job flexibility to run for AMS office are more likely to be those who firmly believe in (C)AGW, so the pool of candidates tends to be skewed in distribution compared to the membership at large. Plus, like in any election, the time spent by the voters vetting candidates is somewhat inadequate (I freely admit to that early on in my membership).
The entire AGW edifice is based on climate alarmism, and there is exactly zero real world evidence supporting it.
I don’t think you do your argument any good by throwing out false statements like this. There is evidence supporting warming in the past couple decades — check out the new Temperature Normals for the USA, for example, that show that the new normal is warmer for most of the country, except the Southeast. (I think, that’s from memory), or changes in the Arctic. The ‘A’ part is questionable, I agree, but there is evidence of warming, so to say there is zero real world evidence supporting it is a stretch.
Kevin O’Neill says:
June 16, 2011 at 9:08 pm
“These are not alarmist or leftist environmental talking points – they’re basic physics. These basic physical insights have been known for 150 years. With larger and more accurate data sets, satellite observations, and high speed computers we now have the tools to expand upon the work of these early pioneers. That’s the way science works.”
This work has in it no physical hypotheses which can be used to explain feedbacks and which are reasonably well-confirmed. With no explanation of feedbacks, there is nothing connecting CO2 concentration and temperature.
You might as well be attempting to explain genetic engineering by appeal to Darwin. In case you don’t know, Darwin knew that there must be a physical mechanism of heredity but he went to his grave having not a clue about the actual physical mechanism. That’s a good analogy for climate science. Having discovered their Darwin, Warmista concluded that they had discovered their Crick and Watson.
Chris Colose says:
June 16, 2011 at 10:12 pm
savethesharks,
“Part of an education in any field involves asking the right questions and learning terminology that scientists do and do not communicate in, as well as the big areas of “debate” that open pathways to new research. I think this is a big stumbling block in the “debate” rather than the relative role of physical understanding between groups.”
So, you are retreating into the vague? Would you care to state a clear position on “the relative role of phsical understanding between groups?” You should begin with some well-confirmed physical hypothesis that explains some kind of forcing and, thereby, connects manmade CO2 to temperature. Yes, this is a trick question. Warmista have produced no such physical hypotheses.
Ammonite says:
June 17, 2011 at 5:31 am
“James Hansens 20+ year old model yields a climate sensitivity of +4.2C per doubling of CO2, very much at the high end of the range 2.0-4.5C (please read http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf). This is not a crime. Nor is it an indication that all models are fundamentally flawed.”
It shows that Hansen was dead wrong. Why do you switch from discussing Hansen to all models?
Reneissance comes when the people are ready and their minds are open to the truth! Today the dull and stupid rule and the wise hide and bite their nails in the shadows. One day, let us hope sooner than later, the windows will open again, fresh air and the light of reason will reenter the room, and fear will change to courage. Hope it doesn’t take too long. Lead on, Doctor Gray! Take another small step for man, and a giant leap for all mankind! You appear to have a few more miles to go before you sleep.
It’s kind of sad to see another blind acceptance of what an individual is taught. I see this as THE big problem with our educational system. Instead of being taught to think, students are taught to believe exactly what they are told. The result is little advancement of science.
I’ve ask, off and on, if anyone who believes in AGW can explain the “cooling effect” of GHGs. Not once has anyone even understood what that means. They are so caught up in what they’ve been told they have no ability to think outside the box.
The educational system is badly compromised by the socialists, who scourge any teachers and parents daring to exhibit any signs of independence and capability. Fifty years ago teachers were teaching the tests as is so often done today, which emphasized rote memorization of which answers to put on a test. The publishers of the textbooks habitually made errors in their end of chapter test questions and answers. When students correctly thought out the problem and wrote down the correct answer for the question, they were often marked down on their test score when their correct answer was graded as an incorrect answer due to the textbook answer being incorrect. When a student challenged the errors in the textbook question and/or answer and succeeded in getting the scoring of the student answers corrected, the teacher or principle would in som instances retaliate against the student who challenged the teacher and the textbook by correcting the grades of the other students, but refused to correct the grade of the student who reasoned out and challenged the error. fifty years later, this is still going on, with some college professors privately confessing to the student that they are teaching them a lesson in life what to expect when challenging their authority.
The educational system has been transformed into a system of political indoctrination into socialist thinking and conditioning, in which independent thought and action is discouraged and sanctioned. This has been going on for so many generations now, few people who have not lived or studied the history of things before the socialist educational establishment held sway even recognize what is going on, or that any other form of education existed or was possible.
Meh, our boy has taken his ball and gone home…
Actually, when I was that age, I knew someone who gave me a lot of the same kind of useful, real-world advice that he just got. I often wonder how much easier and more productive my life would have been if I had only listened.
Then again, I often work with students and I swear they are programmed like little robots these days. The internet, far from the ideal of helping to educate and create more knowledgeable people, has made it incredibly simple for the ones with agendas to push them, the idealogues to push their ideology, and the dishonest to fleece the masses.
D. Patterson says:
June 17, 2011 at 7:43 am
The educational system is badly compromised …
Agree with your analysis 100%. The problem today is the teachers themselves are so indoctrinated that they don’t even know it. IMO, all T/F and multiple choice questions should be eliminated. That would be a start.
CodeTech says:
June 17, 2011 at 7:56 am
BINGO!!!!!!
Scott says:
“There is evidence supporting warming in the past couple decades… so to say there is zero real world evidence supporting it is a stretch.”
Sorry for not being clearer. There is no evidence supporting the AGW hypothesis. AGW may exist, but the basis for the hypothesis is computer models, not measurable, testable, empirical evidence connecting the mild warming cycle of the past century and a half with the rise in CO2.
Based on the lack of evidence, the rise in CO2 and the rise in temperature may be coincidental. The gradually rising temperature trend since the LIA has not accelerated even though CO2 has risen by ≈40%. That fact alone makes the AGW conjecture questionable.