Looks like another GISS miss, more than a few people are getting fed up with Jim Hansen and Gavin Schmidt and their climate shenanigans. Some very prominent NASA voices speak out in a scathing letter to current NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Jr.. When Chris Kraft, the man who presided over NASA’s finest hour, and the engineering miracle of saving Apollo 13 speaks, people listen. UPDATE: I’ve added a poll at the end of this story.
See also: The Right Stuff: what the NASA astronauts say about global warming
Former NASA scientists, astronauts admonish agency on climate change position
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Blanquita Cullum 703-307-9510 bqview at mac.com
Joint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence
HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012.
49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for it’s role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question.
The group, which includes seven Apollo astronauts and two former directors of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, are dismayed over the failure of NASA, and specifically the Goddard Institute For Space Studies (GISS), to make an objective assessment of all available scientific data on climate change. They charge that NASA is relying too heavily on complex climate models that have proven scientifically inadequate in predicting climate only one or two decades in advance.
H. Leighton Steward, chairman of the non-profit Plants Need CO2, noted that many of the former NASA scientists harbored doubts about the significance of the C02-climate change theory and have concerns over NASA’s advocacy on the issue. While making presentations in late 2011 to many of the signatories of the letter, Steward realized that the NASA scientists should make their concerns known to NASA and the GISS.
“These American heroes – the astronauts that took to space and the scientists and engineers that put them there – are simply stating their concern over NASA’s extreme advocacy for an unproven theory,” said Leighton Steward. “There’s a concern that if it turns out that CO2 is not a major cause of climate change, NASA will have put the reputation of NASA, NASA’s current and former employees, and even the very reputation of science itself at risk of public ridicule and distrust.”
Select excerpts from the letter:
- “The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”
- “We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”
- “We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.”
The full text of the letter:
March 28, 2012
The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001
Dear Charlie,
We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.
The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.
As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.
For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.
Thank you for considering this request.
Sincerely,
(Attached signatures)
CC: Mr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for Science
CC: Ass Mr. Chris Scolese, Director, Goddard Space Flight Center
Ref: Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, dated 3-26-12, regarding a request for NASA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims that human produced CO2 is having a catastrophic impact on climate change.
/s/ Jack Barneburg, Jack – JSC, Space Shuttle Structures, Engineering Directorate, 34 years
/s/ Larry Bell – JSC, Mgr. Crew Systems Div., Engineering Directorate, 32 years
/s/ Dr. Donald Bogard – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 41 years
/s/ Jerry C. Bostick – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 23 years
/s/ Dr. Phillip K. Chapman – JSC, Scientist – astronaut, 5 years
/s/ Michael F. Collins, JSC, Chief, Flight Design and Dynamics Division, MOD, 41 years
/s/ Dr. Kenneth Cox – JSC, Chief Flight Dynamics Div., Engr. Directorate, 40 years
/s/ Walter Cunningham – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 7, 8 years
/s/ Dr. Donald M. Curry – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Leading Edge, Thermal Protection Sys., Engr. Dir., 44 years
/s/ Leroy Day – Hdq. Deputy Director, Space Shuttle Program, 19 years
/s/ Dr. Henry P. Decell, Jr. – JSC, Chief, Theory & Analysis Office, 5 years
/s/Charles F. Deiterich – JSC, Mgr., Flight Operations Integration, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Harold Doiron – JSC, Chairman, Shuttle Pogo Prevention Panel, 16 years
/s/ Charles Duke – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 16, 10 years
/s/ Anita Gale
/s/ Grace Germany – JSC, Program Analyst, 35 years
/s/ Ed Gibson – JSC, Astronaut Skylab 4, 14 years
/s/ Richard Gordon – JSC, Astronaut, Gemini Xi, Apollo 12, 9 years
/s/ Gerald C. Griffin – JSC, Apollo Flight Director, and Director of Johnson Space Center, 22 years
/s/ Thomas M. Grubbs – JSC, Chief, Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Branch, 31 years
/s/ Thomas J. Harmon
/s/ David W. Heath – JSC, Reentry Specialist, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Miguel A. Hernandez, Jr. – JSC, Flight crew training and operations, 3 years
/s/ James R. Roundtree – JSC Branch Chief, 26 years
/s/ Enoch Jones – JSC, Mgr. SE&I, Shuttle Program Office, 26 years
/s/ Dr. Joseph Kerwin – JSC, Astronaut, Skylab 2, Director of Space and Life Sciences, 22 years
/s/ Jack Knight – JSC, Chief, Advanced Operations and Development Division, MOD, 40 years
/s/ Dr. Christopher C. Kraft – JSC, Apollo Flight Director and Director of Johnson Space Center, 24 years
/s/ Paul C. Kramer – JSC, Ass.t for Planning Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Div., Egr. Dir., 34 years
/s/ Alex (Skip) Larsen
/s/ Dr. Lubert Leger – JSC, Ass’t. Chief Materials Division, Engr. Directorate, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Humbolt C. Mandell – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Program Control and Advance Programs, 40 years
/s/ Donald K. McCutchen – JSC, Project Engineer – Space Shuttle and ISS Program Offices, 33 years
/s/ Thomas L. (Tom) Moser – Hdq. Dep. Assoc. Admin. & Director, Space Station Program, 28 years
/s/ Dr. George Mueller – Hdq., Assoc. Adm., Office of Space Flight, 6 years
/s/ Tom Ohesorge
/s/ James Peacock – JSC, Apollo and Shuttle Program Office, 21 years
/s/ Richard McFarland – JSC, Mgr. Motion Simulators, 28 years
/s/ Joseph E. Rogers – JSC, Chief, Structures and Dynamics Branch, Engr. Directorate,40 years
/s/ Bernard J. Rosenbaum – JSC, Chief Engineer, Propulsion and Power Division, Engr. Dir., 48 years
/s/ Dr. Harrison (Jack) Schmitt – JSC, Astronaut Apollo 17, 10 years
/s/ Gerard C. Shows – JSC, Asst. Manager, Quality Assurance, 30 years
/s/ Kenneth Suit – JSC, Ass’t Mgr., Systems Integration, Space Shuttle, 37 years
/s/ Robert F. Thompson – JSC, Program Manager, Space Shuttle, 44 years/s/ Frank Van Renesselaer – Hdq., Mgr. Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, 15 years
/s/ Dr. James Visentine – JSC Materials Branch, Engineering Directorate, 30 years
/s/ Manfred (Dutch) von Ehrenfried – JSC, Flight Controller; Mercury, Gemini & Apollo, MOD, 10 years
/s/ George Weisskopf – JSC, Avionics Systems Division, Engineering Dir., 40 years
/s/ Al Worden – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 15, 9 years
/s/ Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller – JSC, Meteorologist, 5 years
===============================================================
hat tip to to Bob Ferguson, SPPI
UPDATE: I’ve added this poll:
Richard S Courtney, at April 15, 2012 at 10:32 am, wrote:
“At April 14, 2012 at 3:45 am I replied to your post at April 14, 2012 at 12:49 am and I then explained how your post clearly and unambiguously demonstrated you are a pseudoscientist.
You have not replied (which is not surprising).”
You are clearly overestimating the substance of your elaborations and the importance of your person. Replying to your palaver isn’t on the top of my priority list of the things I do in my life.
As for your alleged demonstration. What you really have done:
1. Applied straw man argumentation. You were babbling about how I didn’t understand that “mathematical proof” was not possible in science, and then you concluded, because I didn’t understand this, I did not know the difference between science and pseudoscience.
Yours is a strawman argumentation, since I didn’t say a word about “mathematical proof”. Again, you just misrepresented what I said. Your misrepresentation is based on redefining the word “proof” by postulating it means the same as “mathematical proof”.
The meaning of the word “proof”:
“Definition of PROOF
1 a : the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact
b : the process or an instance of establishing the validity of a statement especially by derivation from other statements in accordance with principles of reasoning
2 obsolete : experience
3 : something that induces certainty or establishes validity
4 :
.
.
.
8 : […]”
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proof)
Based on giving another meaning to the word “proof” you falsely equalize scientific proof and mathematical proof.
Mathematical proof is only a special case of proof. The word “proof” itself has a wider meaning. If both were just identical you didn’t need the adjective “mathematical” to specify it. “Mathematical proof” would be a pleonasm.
The theory of evolution is scientifically proven, i.e., there is an
overwhelming amount of evidence for that this theory is able to comprehensively explain a part of the real world. It is also proven that the moon is not made from green cheese. We have the data that prove this.
2. You invent statements I haven’t made:
“Your claim that consideration should only be afforded to information you like that is only available in or from sources you like is a proclamation of pure pseudoscience.”
I haven’t made such a claim anywhere. You are a falsehood disseminator. Projecting a lot?
3. You resort to appeal to majority to reassure yourself of the validity of your “arguments”, which is a logical fallacy.
“Anybody can see that I deconstructed your comments.”
Sure, the majority here will “see” and applaud you. It’s the same majority that very likely will applaud to anything, no matter how illogical or contrary to the data and published finding of science it is, as long as it confirms the preconceived views of the fake skeptic crowd.
You certainly make a lot of noise with your straw man arguments, falsehoods about what I said, and other logical fallacies which you apply, but the intellectual substance of all of it is rather meager.
Also, you don’t seem to know what “ad hominem” means. You say,
“Your comments concerning “scientific proof” demonstrate that your understanding of the difference between science and pseudoscience is severely lacking (n.b. this is a factual statement and not an ad hominem).”
Because it was a “factual statement” (allegedly) is couldn’t be an ad hominem?
“However, your unfounded suggestion that I have “bias” in my “perception and opinion” is an ad hominem. Indeed, it is an unjustified insult which tells much about its provider (i.e. you) and nothing about its target (i.e. me).”
Ad hominem means “unfounded suggestion” or “unjustified insult”?
An “ad hominem” argument is an argument “to the man”, about a person’s character, bias, beliefs, ideology, interest. The question whether an argument is “ad hominem” has nothing to do with whether it’s a factually true statement or not.
As for the greenhouse gas effect of carbon dioxide.
You weren’t satisfied with my explanation about the basic principles of the greenhouse gas effect exerted by carbon dioxide. You objected:
“It is a fact that CO2 is a GHG so – all other things being equal – an increase to atmospheric CO2 concentration would increase radiative warming of the Earth’s surface. But so what? That is not what you were asked because all other things would NOT be equal if atmospheric CO2 were to increase. Indeed, you admit that all other things would not be equal when you write;
“In reality, it’s a bit more complicated, since there are also turbulent, sensible and latent energy fluxes, and there is convection, there is a vertical lapse rate of the temperature, the atmosphere has different strata with different properties.”
The “mechanism” you were asked to show was how the entire climate system would respond such as to cause the atmosphere to warm up. You have not done that, and so it seems Babsy was right to claim “you cannot”.”
Let’s be clear what you are asking me. You are asking me to write an essay here, in which I explain the working of the whole Earth system in it’s total complexity, taking into account all essential aspects of this system, all essential interactions between its components, all positive and negative feedback relationships, and name all the evidence from measurements and observations for that it really works like this, referencing all the scientific publications where this evidence has been presented, and then, taking into consideration all of this, to explain how an increase in carbon dioxide leads to a warming of the surface and troposphere, and again, present all the evidence needed to show that it really works like this and reference all the scientific publications where the evidence has been presented.
All this in a comment in a thread of this opinion blog.
And you are faulting me that I haven’t delivered.
You are asking me to write here in a comment an essay of book length with many hundred pages that reviews and assesses the current knowledge about Earth’s climate.
Oh, wait. There is such a book with a comprehensive review and assessment. It’s called IPCC Report 2007, Volume 1, “The Physical Science Basis”. The next IPCC report with an updated status about the knowledge of the workings of the climate system is going to be published in 2013.
You wrote at April 15, 2012 at 12:03 am,
“You are using the pre-climate-science view that science is about understanding the natural world.”
I’m still waiting for the evidence for your assertion according to which my view was science wasn’t about understanding the natural world. The only way to prove your assertion, if it was true instead of just being absurd nonsense for the purpose to discredit me, would be to present statements made by me where I expressed such a view.
You also wrote:
“Climate-science practitioners use the post-normal method of studying models which they construct from their opinions, beliefs and prejudices.”
And what is your supposed evidence for this assertion? Where have I chosen such an approach in my scientific work? I’m still waiting for the evidence that I have done so. You would have to provide the evidence on the basis of the scientific publications where I’m an author. But you won’t provide any, since you only have made this up. The question for me is whether you deliberately make these things up, then you are a deliberate falsehood disseminator. Or whether you believe what you say. Then your perception is highly distorted, looking for confirmation of your preconceived views making you see things how they are in your head, not how they are in reality.
Both of your assertions are ad hominem arguments. Both are to the man. It is telling that this was what you knew to come up with, after I had asked for the scientific evidence that a large part of the global scale warming over the recent decades is to be attributed to PDO. The scientific evidence for which I’m still waiting. The PDO claim doesn’t agree with the mainstream view in climate science. Asking for the scientific evidence is just legit. It looks like you felt the need to divert from a legit question.
Richard S Courtney wrote In the paper Dr. Sherwood Idso describes 8 natural experiments to determine climate sensitivity. His empirical (n.b. NOT model-derived) results are:
Actually, Idso does not claim to determine climate sensitivity in that paper. He attempts to determine an effect he calls “surface air temperature sensitivity factor” which he defines as “the rise in surface air temperature divided by the increase in surface-absorbed radiation that prompted the temperature rise.”. Since the Earth cools by space-bound radiation (and not by surface-bound radiation), the surface air temperature factor has little to do with climate sensitivity.
These issues with the surface air temperature sensitivity factor were pointed out to Idso already more than three decades ago by Leovy 1980, Schneider et al. 1980, and Idso himself admits at least part of the issues with his factor (the equilibrium issue) in this 1998 paper :
These caveats given, which (if any) of the 8 “natural experiments” still remains as a sound empirical determination of the climate sensitivity factor ?
If you identify the one that is most convincing for you, I would be happy to explore with you on why Idso obtains numbers that are a factor 4 to 10 off with what dozens of other researchers have empirically determined.
Rob Dekker: Indeed that paper by Idso is one of those things that shows how “AGW skeptics” like Courtney and Idso are not really making serious scientific arguments. They are just throwing a lot of nonsense around and hoping that most people won’t notice (which is why, of course, their arguments only gain traction with non-scientists, or at least people whose scientific expertise is well outside of this field).
For example, his Natural Experiment #3 is hopelessly contaminated by the fact that the effect of thermal inertia will be to reduce the response to a periodic radiative forcing (as long as the characteristic time associated with the thermal inertia is not much less than the period of the forcing). So, of course we are going to see the seasonal cycle damped…and it is not at all surprising that this damping is larger over the oceans and smaller over land. By contrast, here http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/knutti/papers/knutti06jc.pdf is a real scientific paper looking at how the seasonal cycle constrains climate sensitivity and it finds a sensitivity in the standard range with best agreement for a sensitivity of 3 to 3.5 deg C per doubling. [In fact, I am surprised that he didn’t use the diurnal cycle rather than the seasonal cycle, which would have yielded him an even lower sensitivity…although he probably realized that even many lay people would see the problem with such an argument.]
Natural Experiment #4 is even more amusing. It is basically the same argument made by Monckton and by Willis Eschenbach, using the total natural greenhouse effect to derive a climate sensitivity (see, for example http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/15/sense-and-sensitivity-ii-the-sequel/ ). However, those folks at least used a more correct value for the net radiative effect of the greenhouse gases (100-150 W/m^2) rather than Idso’s incorrect ~350 W/m^2. However, even their argument is wrong because this estimate considers all of the greenhouse gases (including water vapor) in the atmosphere to be forcings rather than feedbacks. So, what it is really deriving is the climate sensitivity in the absence of feedbacks like the water vapor feedback, cloud feedback, and the ice-albedo feedback. The only feedback it does effectively include is the one that is called the “lapse rate feedback”, which also happens to be the only significant feedback known to be negative. (That feedback really just says that the Earth’s surface temperature changes less than the temperature at altitude…and it is the temperature at altitude that is relevant for the Earth to restore its radiative balance.)
Rob Dekker asked :
Tom Wysmuller answered :
Tom, thank you for you response. We are looking forward to the subtantiation of the claims you and your ex-NASA collegues are making in this letter, and realize that without substantiation, the claims made in this letter remain embarrassingly “unsubstantiated”.
If they came out on the other side, how loudly would the MSM be trumpeting such a letter…?
Here, though, we get only the sounds of silence…
Joel, if these models have any validity at all, then they should be able to readily demonstrate this by the simple process of feeding in known historical data, running the model for a given time frame, and then showing that the results match subsequent historical data to within even a notable fraction of actual values (+/- oh, 3 degrees). They don’t, because these models are CRAP.
“The validity of a science is its ability to predict”
By that measure, Climate Science is in the Phlogiston Chemistry phase at best, and probably much closer to Alchemy than a “science”.
The history of AGW theory is positively LITTERED with predictions that were subsequently garbage — from “no snow in England” to “regular severe hurricanes in the Gulf” to “droughts in Australia”, it’s been shown time and time again to have no — repeat NO — ability to predict. Ergo, it has no validity worthy of the kind of TRILLIONS of dollars in expenditures which AGW advocates call for as a matter of casual recourse.
I know what computers are capable of, and have enough of a background in math to know what the math is currently capable of. And predicting with even the slightest hope of accuracy the temperature within a tenth of a degree even two decades, much less 5-10 decades, is such an utter sack of bovine excreta as to be laughed at. They can’t even reliably predict SNOW a week in advance.
’nuff said. When your models are worth a crap, you’ll be able to show that they are worth a crap. They’ll be able to take in any sufficiently large dataset of historical information, move it forward by a reasonable period of time, and predict what was known to have come after. Until then, all of you can siddown and STFU, you’re a bunch of self-serving quacks and charlatans and demagogues of the worst stripe, attempting to make a living pedaling doom and gloom to a bunch of idiots whose notion of an electron is a tiny little floating ball of electricity something about the size of a “BB”. To claim that the Anti-AGW opposition depends on the ignorance of **its** adherents is just flat out laughable.
>>>> The theory of evolution is scientifically proven, i.e., there is an
overwhelming amount of evidence for that this theory is able to comprehensively explain a part of the real world. It is also proven that the moon is not made from green cheese. We have the data that prove this.
Not to support either side, here, but
Mathematical proof is really the only real “proof” that there is, if there is any “proof”. It takes the minimum of assumptions and applies them through a rigorous set of rules to demonstrate that a proposition inherently follows or does not follow. “Scientific” proof is merely an instance of highly supported conjectures, for which we have not yet found any disputing evidence which did not have an alternative explanation other than disposing of the theory in question.
Hence the theory of evolution is merely the best current theory we have which fits the known evidence, and explains any evidence which appears to fly in the face of predictions made by the theory. It is hardly “proven” — nothing in science is ever truly “proven”. See “Phlogiston” and “Luminiferous Ether” for examples that were at least as well founded at one point as the ToE.
Not suggesting any doubt about the ToE, only that it ISN’T “proven” and no one who calls themselves a real scientist should even consider it as otherwise.
And as far as the moon being of green cheese, well, that, too, is hardly proven. It’s rather improbable on the basis of it, and certainly the narrow range of actual direct data shows at least PART of the moon isn’t green cheese (along with a considerable amount of spectroscopic evidence), but the justification for saying it’s not GC is still based in scientific presumptions about the validity of our techniques (spectroscopy) is a large, unpredictable universe, and a small handful of direct observations. So, once more — a true scientist would only ack that the evidence is strongly against the validity of the hypothesis that “the moon is made of green cheese.”
You see, THIS is how TRUE scientists discuss the notion of “proof”.
And you notice what’s missing completely from this discussion?
The word “Consensus”.
>>> (spectroscopy) is a large…
(spectroscopy) IN a large…
Sorry.
If Hansen had been in command of the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle program it would have turned out to be a two-faces foot-winged electric-powered bus ride around a Houston parking lot.
Haha, that photograph regarding Jim Hansen getting him self caught on the Whitened House protesting an oil pipeline claims it ALL….. He is a fanatical left-wing political activist, period. He or she figured out early on to be able to liven up his or her political agitprop using a pseudo-scientific veneer, but the purpose his or her result is so constantly mistaken is that it is all designed to function his or her political targets. http://freesixflagsticket.net