This is quite something. Sixteen scientists, including such names as Richard Lindzen, William Kininmonth, Wil Happer, and Nir Shaviv, plus engineer Burt Rutan, and Apollo 17 astronaut Dr. Harrison Schmidt, among others, write what amounts to a heretical treatise to the Wall Street Journal, expressing their view that the global warming is oversold, has stalled in the last decade, and that the search for meaningful warming has led to co-opting weather patterns in the blame game. Oh, and a history lesson on Lysenkoism as it relates to today’s warming-science-funding-complex. I can hear Joe Romm’s head exploding all the way out here in California.
Excerpts:
No Need to Panic About Global Warming
There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.
Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:
…
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.
…
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.
Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
…
Signed by:
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
Full letter is online here at the Wall Street Journal
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Smokey: “As Brendan H makes clear, when lacking the scientific facts, discuss the Republican primaries instead.”
Smokey, I have not accused Lindzen and Co of lacking scientific facts. I have merely placed the letter in the context of current events.
physicist,
science is about the scientific method and not about predictions. The publication of Rahmstorf et Hansen et altri tells you everything you have to know about their use of the scientific method and the state of the peer review process.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/03/the-secret-of-the-rahmstorf-non-linear-trend/
With that and climategate and beyond that, I would strongly recommend to build chinese walls between those who make projections and those who control the data.
The actual identity of ‘a physicist’ has already been posted, so his complaint is moot.
And ‘a physicist’ defends Hansen’s failed predictions as being almost accurate. They aren’t. Furthermore, Hansen has GISS “adjust” the past temperature record in order to make his wrong predictions appear to be almost correct.
jjthoms, well, I’m sorry if you got unwarranted e-mails, I’ve released my real name and if anybody wants to hassle me I say, go ahead.
The difference is, I’m not telling everybody else how they MUST live, am I?
I live on a dead end street and we still have the right to protect ourselves here in the USA.
So, anybody that wants to come here and enforce your views about what my “carbon footprint” should be, come ahead…..
Kevin.
The heat stratification of the earths surface is uniform, regardless of its composition, as are the oceans and atmosphere.
The path to today´s destruction of Science into Junk Science, and the Global Warming Hoax, started with the Birth of Environmentalism in 1962 with the release of Rachel Carson´s “Silent Spring,” and then the neo-Malthusian book “The Population Bomb” in 1968 by Paul Ehrlich, as well as, the foundations of WWF in 1961, The Club of Rome in 1968, EPA in 1970, Greenpeace in 1971, EPA´s banning of DDT in US in 1972, largely due to Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich, the 1960s: The Beginning of the End for DDT, and Malaria As Population Control, Immorally Killing 35 – 40 Million Humans, the conference “Study of Man´s Impact on Climate” in 1971 in Stockholm, Sweden, the 1975 “Endangered Atmosphere” conference in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, US, led by Anthropologist Margaret Mead (= Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born), the foundation of IPCC in 1988, James Hansen´s testimony on climate change (= Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC)) in Congress in 1988, UNFCCC/the Kyoto Protocol in 1992, and the emerging of AGW/Global Warming Hoax propagandists as Al Gore, Michael Mann, Phil Jones since the 1990s, et cetera, emerging into Climategate 1 and 2, in 2009 and 2011, with a major crisis for Science, due to the violation of the Scientific Method, due to “MBH98s” (= Michael Mann´s et al infamous “hockey stick” graph) non-reproducible scientific data, and turning Science into Junk Science, as well as, its final objective of a Global Governance. (The inception of the uneffective, and unreliable “Green Energy,” and the anti-Free Market “Green Economy” since the 1970s – 1980s are further turning Science into Junk Science, with its final objective of a Global Governance.)
SAY NO TO GLOBAL WARMING HOAX
SAY NO TO JUNK SCIENCE
SAY NO TO GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
DEFEND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
DEFEND FREE MARKET CAPITALISM
>> Lindzen also has claimed how weakly lung cancer is
>> linked to cigarette smoking.
“Smoking causes lung cancer” is the accepted mantra.
As an part-time philosopher, and a professional analyst of survey
data, I am obliged to point out that Lindzen’s misgivings are correct.
How can one claim that A causes B, when 90% of potential instances
are non-conforming ??
jjthoms says: January 27, 2012 at 7:10 pm
here we are – we cannot even agree about LIA MWP RWPs yet the site referenced has plots of temperature and CO2 going back 600My. And these are of course to be believed, without question.
The CO2 of course is derived from a MODEL (we don’t believe in models – do we?)
——————————————————————————————
No. The historical data plots are based on measurements, not models. The measurements have large error bands, but they are based on reproduceable and verifiable data. And as for the recent rewriting of Medieval Warm Period, I point to the 13th century farms in Greenland as evidence of higher temperatures then than now.
@ur momisugly A physicist (7:00 pm):
….Thirty years later, Hansen’s 1981 prediction looks pretty solid. In particular, there’s no doubt among hard-nosed shipping company CEO’s that Hansen’s “fabled Northwest Passage” is now a reality….
===========================================================
Thirty years later, any warming due human CO2 emissions is still buried in the noise and there was little or no net warming during the 80s: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:1990/plot/gistemp/from:1980/to:1990/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/to:1990/plot/uah/from:1980/to:1990/trend
Makes you wonder about the scientific basis for his 1988 predictions:
http://www.climate-movie.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/hansenjan20091.gif
There’s nothing “fabled” about the Northwest passage.
A Soviet ship crossed in one season during the early 30s.
The passage was reported ice free in 1940 but most of the developed countries in the region were otherwise engaged at the time. A Canadian ship made the crossing in 1942.
A Physicist: “If in the next thirty years, Hansen’s predictions remain similarly accurate as they have been in the past thirty years”
You mean like his prediction 20 years ago that today NYC’s West Side Highway would be underwater from CAGW warming?
That you cite an anti-human, anti-science far left political activist (and bought-and-paid-for toady of George Soros) for your beliefs says far more about you than it does about Hansen.
Richard M: “Since you obviously must know “the extent of dissent”, why didn’t you tell us?”
My argument doesn’t depend on my knowing the extent of dissent (although that’s not to say that I can’t make a reasonable guess). I’m saying that the signers don’t know the level of dissent.
I say that because I have read the relevant claims, namely:
“Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse.”
The “growing” claim is the first giveaway. If the number of publicly dissenting scientists is substantial, you don’t need to append “growing”. The term “growing” is a pollyanaish modifier one uses when the actual number is relatively low, but you would really like to think it will go higher.
Another giveaway is the “many” young scientists with doubts. How many is “many”? Ten, 100? (And note the fudge on “young scientists”. Not young climate scientists.)
The third is “furtively”. This implies that the dissent is very deep, only to be revealed in secretive, late-night confessions. But in that case, how much can the signers know about such deeply buried dissent?
Fourth, the signers provide no empirical evidence, not even a survey, to support their claims. So we’re very much in the realm of the anecdotal, or “I once met a man on a boat, and he told me some stuff”.
So I think I’m on pretty safe ground in claiming that these scientists don’t really know the extent of dissent.
Sorry, but this is hypocrisy. Anthony doesn’t demand the same of supportive commenters such as Smokey or Crosspatch, or any of a hundred others. Either you have a policy of real names only or you don’t. And you don’t, so berating people for being “anonymous cowards” while condoning anonymous cowardice by your supporters is, IMNSHO, bullshit.
[REPLY: Jeff, WUWT does not have a “policy of real names” but the policy page does encourage the use of real names. Anthony’s targets are usually those who claim some special status or engage in extended personal vilification. As it happens, Smokey does have a very good reason for anonymous comments and, to the best of my knowledge, crosspatch has never claimed special status or engaged in vilification and has been pretty much polite and on-topic. THIS will be the last word on this topic. -REP]
“”Rex says:
January 27, 2012 at 9:16 pm
>> Lindzen also has claimed how weakly lung cancer is
>> linked to cigarette smoking.
“Smoking causes lung cancer” is the accepted mantra.
As an part-time philosopher,””
Philosophy, hmmm, if they knew exactly what causes cancer, they have it licked.
Richard Lindzen and others are NOT latecomers to this debate. Read this WSJ article by Lindzen and note the date – June 11, 2001.
I’ve included the excerpt from Lindzen for one more reason – the man writes with true beauty and precision.
Excerpt:
The full IPCC report is an admirable description of research activities in climate science, but it is not specifically directed at policy. The Summary for Policymakers is, but it is also a very different document. It represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom are also their nations’ Kyoto representatives), rather than of scientists. The resulting document has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.
Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens. This is what has been done with both the reports of the IPCC and the NAS. It is a reprehensible practice that corrodes our ability to make rational decisions. A fairer view of the science will show that there is still a vast amount of uncertainty — far more than advocates of Kyoto would like to acknowledge…:
Scientists’ Report Doesn’t Support the Kyoto Treaty
By Richard S. Lindzen,
Wall Street Journal
June 11, 2001
http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/OpEds/LindzenWSJ.pdf
How can any rational person question the creditably of these 16 scientists?
How many of these scientists have:
– Dodged FOI requests (and are now in court fighting their release)?
– Refused to release their Raw Data?
– Refused to release their Adjusted Data (and explain why it was adjusted)?
– Refused to release the Model that produced the end results (Graphs)?
– Have admitted that no one would likely be able to replicate their results (including them)?
– Black-balled scientists who questioned their results?
– Deleted emails?
– Deleted data?
And on and on…
Who would you trust? Seriously.
How can anyone in their right mind ever believe anything a climate scientist has to say?
A phycisist says:
Thirty years later, Hansen’s 1981 prediction looks pretty solid. In particular, there’s no doubt among hard-nosed shipping company CEO’s that Hansen’s “fabled Northwest Passage” is now a reality.
Henry says to a great phycisist:
you are right about that being a fable,
because as we now know, it must have been OPEN ca, 1000 years ago, during the Medeviel Warm Period….So that fable was not a myth.
That is why one of my countryman, Willem Barentz, in the 16th century, was convinced it (must have) existed. He lost his life trying to find it. Hence, it is now called the Willem Barentz sea.
So there is nothing new under the sun, and without any figures from you from any actual physical testing showing to me the exact warming and cooling properties of the CO2, (both radiative) and the cooling itproduces by taking part in the photosynthesis, how do you know for sure that the warming is due to the CO2? Was the warming of the MWP also due to an increase in CO2?
What about if the warming is simply caused by the increase in greenery on earth?
Is that not much more probable?We know that vegetation traps heat. In fact, a lot. That is why you donot find trees where it is cold on earth.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
“HenryP says:
January 27, 2012 at 11:39 pm
A phycisist says:
Thirty years later, Hansen’s 1981 prediction looks pretty solid. In particular, there’s no doubt among hard-nosed shipping company CEO’s that Hansen’s “fabled Northwest Passage” is now a reality.”
Henry, we know, in their hand, is but sand.
Asking this question may seem to be a bit like asking CAGW supporters if they have stopped beating their wife (or husband) yet, but the question I would to ask of CAGW scientist/supporters (Physicist? Brendans? jjthoms? others?)
In regards to Mann’s famous Hockey Stick would you say
1) It is an accurate representation of temperature over the past 1000+years
2) It is a poor representation of temperatures over the past 1000+ years as there was clearly a MWP and the LIA.
As any knowledgeable person knows, Mann’s Hockey Stick has been thoroughly discredited, even among many members of the “Team” as exposed in private emails, yet CAGW supporters will never admit to 2, because if they do, then the whole concept of “unprecedented” goes up in smoke and current temperatures are nothing out of the ordinary for earth’s recent history. Instead of admitting to #2, they would rather destroy any ounce of credibility they might have and go for #1.
By the way, I would agree that the WSJ article is pretty much politics, but CAGW is pretty much all politics too so? Hansen is still predicting the real possibility of 5m of sea level rise by 2100 I hear. Guess you CAGW supporters on board for that prediction as well?
I would like to see a website (WUWT?) with a list of scientists throughout the world who are prepared to state whether or not they believe in AGW. The definition of “Scientist” and the details of their belief will be as stated in the Petition Project:
http://www.petitionproject.org/
Each person should hold a science degree from a recognised and reputable university.
With each name, please state if any of the following subjects were studied and passed as part of their degree at any level.
Physics, Statistics, Geology
People who claim to believe in Creation or “Intelligent Design” shall be excluded from the lists, to save arguments.
There will of course be two lists. If there are, say, 300 scientists who believe in AGW, they will be about 1% of the 30,000+ scientists who have already stated that they do not believe in AGW.
Scientists are free to add or delete their names from either list at any time.
The website shall regularly calculate and publish the percentage of scientists who do not believe in AGW. i.e. probably around 99% of all scientists on the lists.
A Physicist says “Thus, my view is that Hansen is playing to win the AGW scientific debate outright, by a strategy whose pay-off period is 10-20 years”
Have to disagree with you, Hansen is simply scare mongering again, trying to keep the CAGW Titanic from hitting an iceberg and sinking beneath the waves with all hands on board. Hansen’s latest sea level rise graph shows little-to-no sea level rise until 2040. He has given himself 30 years of essentiallly no sea level rise (essentially admitting that contrary to models and earlier predictions, sea level rise has stopped). At his age, I doubt he will still be around in 30 years. HIs kids/grandkids will be though, to revel in his fame. Unfortunately for them however, I more suspect it will be a much less fond memory and no celebrations come 2040.
I think a lot of people are missing the point. The importance is not so much the credentials of the authors but more the fact that it was published.
@Peter Phail
It is important that it was published. It has become legitimate to question the dogma, though the warmists become yet more shrill and bizarre as they lose their grip. In 1988 Newsweek announced that ‘all scientists agree that…..’ Clampdowns started around that time.
It is also signficant that an eclectic international group of recognized scientists and engineers came together to stand behind this document. It could have been others, or many more, but they did. It recalls Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses on on door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg,
I have posted the following on Wall Street Journal comments board …
My understanding is that there are at least 31,000 scientists (9,000 of them with PhD’s) who have signed a similar statement.
However, I consider it unfortunate that the message has not yet “got out” that any radiation from cold layers of the atmosphere cannot have any effect on a (significantly) warmer surface – neither converting to thermal energy nor slowing its loss of such energy. This means that an atmospheric greenhouse effect is not caused by the assumed backradiation, whether or not it actually exists.
The IPCC has never produced empirical evidence that there is any warming effect from any backradiation. It does not, for example, melt frost that can lie in shady spots without melting all day long. And yet it is supposed to be about a quarter as powerful as direct sunlight at noon.
Last year Claes Johnson (a Professor of Applied Mathematics with many published papers to his name) published a note entitled “Computational Blackbody Radiation” in which he proved computationally that there is insufficient energy (as determined by frequency) in radiation from a cooler body for that radiation to be converted to thermal energy. The frequency of radiation from the cold atmosphere falls below a cut-off frequency which is proportional to the absolute temperature of the receiving body, that is the surface. When this is the case it will not warm the surface and it exits the surface with the same frequency (hence energy) and intensity that it arrived with, rather like having been reflected, though the process is different.
This is the real reason why we see absolutely no warming by carbon dioxide. All warming can be fully explained by natural cycles.
Furthermore, when short-term cycles are “corrected for” the longer-term (~1,000 year) cycle may be seen to be increasing at about 0.05 degrees C per decade, but its rate of increase is reducing, indicating a maximum within 200 years which would be only about 1 degree C warmer than at present. After that the world can expect about 500 years of cooling.
And there is nothing that mankind can do about either the warming rate or the cooling rate of the future.
I think there are several paragraphs which should be in italics, otherwise they don’t look like a quotation.
The letter in IMHO is written to investors, bankers, business people. Not scientists, not skeptics,
You see the battle is over the source funds. The goal is to free up the dollars, let the next great bubble start, we are at the starting line of a major economic boom. AGW is one of a few major obstacles to this coming boom. You see in the business world very few actually believe in AGW, but they are capitalists so they make money any way they can. I work in the renewable energy business and have made a good living thanks in part to government subsidy for that business.
Yet I can count one hand the peers that actually believe in AGW. What is most amazing to me and will always be a lesson to the wise, is how so few players actually started this entire AGW scare.
By the way, government subsidy when done carefully can be a good thing for the governed. There is more to renewable energy than wind and solar, with out subsidy we small players would not be able to get our non wind, non solar RE projects off the ground. We are the folks who are actually capturing waste energy and converting it to useful energy. We make good use of that subsidy.
My fear is that the greatest harm caused by the AGW crowd is the harm they have done to all good science.. Every time bad science is perpetrated on the regular non science majority, the less and less we believe new science. It is the cry wolf story. The AGW crowd needs to be prosecuted.
Back to the topic, one final thought, IMHO, the 16 scientists were picked for their titles and location. Sometimes 16 is all you need. I hope anyway.