This press release was provided by Sandia National Labs:
In an effort to shed light on the wide spectrum of thought regarding the causes and extent of changes in Earth’s climate, Sandia National Laboratories has invited experts from a wide variety of perspectives to present their views in the Climate Change and National Security Speaker Series.
Predictions by climate models are flawed, says invited speaker at Sandia
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, a global warming skeptic, told about 70 Sandia researchers in June that too much is being made of climate change by researchers seeking government funding. He said their data and their methods did not support their claims.
“Despite concerns over the last decades with the greenhouse process, they oversimplify the effect,” he said. “Simply cranking up CO2 [carbon dioxide] (as the culprit) is not the answer” to what causes climate change.
Lindzen, the ninth speaker in Sandia’s Climate Change and National Security Speaker Series, is Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology in MIT’s department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and is the lead author of Chapter 7 (“Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks”) of the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Third Assessment Report. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.
For 30 years, climate scientists have been “locked into a simple-minded identification of climate with greenhouse-gas level. … That climate should be the function of a single parameter (like CO2) has always seemed implausible. Yet an obsessive focus on such an obvious oversimplification has likely set back progress by decades,” Lindzen said.
For major climates of the past, other factors were more important than carbon dioxide. Orbital variations have been shown to quantitatively account for the cycles of glaciations of the past 700,000 years, he said, and the elimination of the arctic inversion, when the polar caps were ice-free, “is likely to have been more important than CO2 for the warm episode during the Eocene 50 million years ago.”
There is little evidence that changes in climate are producing extreme weather events, he said. “Even the IPCC says there is little if any evidence of this. In fact, there are important physical reasons for doubting such anticipations.”
Lindzen’s views run counter to those of almost all major professional societies. For example, the American Physical Society statement of Nov. 18, 2007, read, “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.” But he doesn’t feel they are necessarily right. “Why did the American Physical Society take a position?” he asked his audience. “Why did they find it compelling? They never answered.”
Speaking methodically with flashes of humor — “I always feel that when the conversation turns to weather, people are bored.” — he said a basic problem with current computer climate models that show disastrous increases in temperature is that relatively small increases in atmospheric gases lead to large changes in temperatures in the models.
But, he said, “predictions based on high (climate) sensitivity ran well ahead of observations.”
Real-world observations do not support IPCC models, he said: “We’ve already seen almost the equivalent of a doubling of CO2 (in radiative forcing) and that has produced very little warming.”
He disparaged proving the worth of models by applying their criteria to the prediction of past climatic events, saying, “The models are no more valuable than answering a test when you have the questions in advance.”
Modelers, he said, merely have used aerosols as a kind of fudge factor to make their models come out right. (Aerosols are tiny particles that reflect sunlight. They are put in the air by industrial or volcanic processes and are considered a possible cause of temperature change at Earth’s surface.)
Then there is the practical question of what can be done about temperature increases even if they are occurring, he said. “China, India, Korea are not going to go along with IPCC recommendations, so … the only countries punished will be those who go along with the recommendations.”
He discounted mainstream opinion that climate change could hurt national security, saying that “historically there is little evidence of natural disasters leading to war, but economic conditions have proven much more serious. Almost all proposed mitigation policies lead to reduced energy availability and higher energy costs. All studies of human benefit and national security perspectives show that increased energy is important.”
He showed a graph that demonstrated that more energy consumption leads to higher literacy rate, lower infant mortality and a lower number of children per woman.
Given that proposed policies are unlikely to significantly influence climate and that lower energy availability could be considered a significant threat to national security, to continue with a mitigation policy that reduces available energy “would, at the least, appear to be irresponsible,” he argued.
Responding to audience questions about rising temperatures, he said a 0.8 of a degree C change in temperature in 150 years is a small change. Questioned about five-, seven-, and 17-year averages that seem to show that Earth’s surface temperature is rising, he said temperatures are always fluctuating by tenths of a degree.
As for the future, “Uncertainty plays a huge role in this issue,” Lindzen said. “It’s not that we expect disaster, it’s that the uncertainty is said to offer the possibility of disaster: implausible, but high consequence. Somewhere it has to be like the possible asteroid impact: Live with it.”
To a sympathetic questioner who said, “You are like a voice crying in the wilderness. It must be hard to get published,” Lindzen said, adding that billions of dollars go into funding climate studies. “The reward for solving problems is that your funding gets cut. It’s not a good incentive structure.”
Asked whether the prudent approach to possible climate change would be to prepare a gradated series of responses, much as insurance companies do when they insure cars or houses, Lindzen did not shift from his position that no actions are needed until more data is gathered.
When another Sandia employee pointed out the large number of models by researchers around the globe that suggest increases in world temperature, Lindzen said he doubted the models were independently derived but rather might produce common results because of their common origins.
The Climate Security lecture series is funded by Sandia’s Energy, Climate and Infrastructure Security division. Rob Leland is director of Sandia’s Climate Security Program.
Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness.
h/t to Marc Marano
Gail,
How could either 2012 “lame duck” session (Republicans control House) or 2013 Congress do this without massive Republican defections? (Chance that Dems control House in 2013 is extremely low.)
Lindzen or Curry deserve a prominet role in Romney’s upcoming government.
Gunga Din:
>From KR’s link “A large amount of warming is delayed, and if we don’t act now we could pass tipping points.”
They want it both ways.
When we say “The why is it not getting warmer over the last 15 years, they say:
“The warming will not occur until it’s too late to stop it, 2-4 C over the next 100 years. The lack of warming today is lulling us to sleep!”
Then when a heat wave hits the USA this summer:
“Wait a minute, we meant to say the warming will occur immediately! Yes, that’s right … it’s already here. See, we told you so!”
HenryP says:
July 25, 2012 at 12:37 pm
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
it seems there are natural 50 year global warming and global cooling cycles
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Yes they seem to be linked to the ocean cycles.
AMO
PDO
PAPER: Persistent influence of the North Atlantic hydrography on central European winter temperature during the last 9000 years
ENSO vs water vapor levels
Global Temps and ENSO
Solar radiation at vs ocean depths
Heat Capacity of Oceans vs Atmosphere
Global Relative Humidity 1948 to 2004 This graph is very important because it blows the “Global Warming” crap right out of the water. As one commenter here at WUWT keeps saying the HEAT content of the atmosphere is dependent on the water content. In other words there is more heat energy in 25C air at 90% humidity than there is in 25C air with 5% humidity therefore using temperature to measure the HEAT content of the air is just plain bad science.
Another one of those little bits of info the Warmists leave out of the debate.
Excellent, Dr Lindzen! Let’s hope they listen.
Is it my imagination, or are some governments (and some of their organizations) showing signs of waking up? I wonder when the media will twig to that and start giving the people real scientific opinion and drop the consensus nonsense they’re so fond of.
Juan, we have a DNS routing problem here, or possibly a DDoS attack, unsure.
Big D in TX says:
July 25, 2012 at 10:44 am
…So it’s time to lay off all the ridiculous carbon obsession, and the enormous wastes of time and money that could be spent, for example, on truly humanitarian efforts (which is how “green” is sold to us – save the world or feel guilty destroying it).
*
Wow, Big D, to your whole post. I want you in my corner! 🙂
Repeated for truth!
Brian R Adams says:
July 25, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Gail,
How could either 2012 “lame duck” session (Republicans control House) or 2013 Congress do this without massive Republican defections? (Chance that Dems control House in 2013 is extremely low.)
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The same way that Richard Burr (R-NC), whose office told me he was dead set against the Food Safety Modernization Act could turn around and co-sponsor the darn bill after the 2010 election. MONEY and LIES. That is why it would be passed during a lame duck session in hopes voters would forget by the time the next vote comes around. That is why Obamacare is slated to go into effect AFTER the next election. Politicians are not dumb they just think we are. They are just slipping the stuff in one at a time.
I suggest you read Dr Evans Climate Coup the Politics on the ‘Regulating Class’ Democrats vs Republicans is a dog and pony show for the masses. As Evans points out it is actually the Regulating Class vs the Tax Payers. Once you can wrap your head around that idea politics becomes much clearer.
Tell me, just how many laws have politicians actually repealed? Just how many politicians have suggested the Federal Reserve Act should be repealed? How many want to get rid of or even rein in the EPA?
Pamela Gray says:
July 25, 2012 at 1:38 pm
I believe the professor is referring to Hansen’s original worst case scenario. Based on the modeled rise in temp output as a function of CO2, we should be close to the equivalent forcing he references, but we are not. Correct me if I am wrong, but that worst-case model depends on CO2 driven water vapor increase creating most of the greenhouse temperature effect, not actual CO2.
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Yes, and what is water vapor actually doing? FALLING!
Don’t know anything about that but I do notice some drag from 3rd party scripts again (Kissmetrics, Google analytics, etc) on page loads.
I can see a request for an HTTPS secure connection right before these scripts begin pulling in their specific resources. I would guess maybe 3 to 5 seconds extra time is added.
NOTE: I am NOT complaining, just reporting. The last time I saw this server side lag was around July 1 and I mentioned it in this thread, and some people suggested switching browsers, blocking scripts and whatever (incorrect answer! these are upstream issues!). Most likely there are server problems (hardware, software, routing) on upstream systems involved with sidebar content, ads and analytics that Anthony obviously has no power over.
Thanks, Dr. Lindzen!
See “Global Warming: How to approach the science”, at http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/RSL-HouseOfCommons-2012.pdf (Richard S. Lindzen, 22nd February 2012).
See “Earth is never in equilibrium”, Richard S. Lindzen, Watts Up With That?, April 9 2010, at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/09/lindzen-earth-is-never-in-equilibrium/
See “Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?”, at http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.3762 (Richard S. Lindzen, 29 Nov 2008).
See “Some remarks on global warming”, at http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/139rmg~1.pdf (Richard S. Lindzen, 1990. Environmental Science and Technology, Vol. 24, Pages 424-427).
See “Taking Greenhouse Warming Seriously” (.pdf, 968 KB) at Publications by Lindzen, Richard, http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/230_TakingGr.pdf
It’s curious how KR changes his argument in response to criticism. Presumably he couldn’t address the criticism which is why he is now going off on other tangents. Wouldn’t it be less disingenuous to admit your error before presenting another point of view?
@KR & Dana:
Cornered? Just bring on more epicycles!
KR says: “As to historic records of aerosols, the best records come from snowcap/ice core measurements, wherein yearly aerosol particulate deposition can be _directly_ measured.”
Um, no, not at all. This is what is called “bullshit”. The reason one can use ice cores to determine the actual level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere there were in the past is that those gases disperse pretty evenly through the atmosphere. Particulates do not. We cannot know the time history, the geographic distribution of that history, and the kind of particulates involved. The ice cores can’t tell you what the aerosol forcing is. We don’t even know it’s present value. We certainly don’t know what it’s value was in 1750. The IPCC estimates are nothing more than the amounts necessary to make models work. They are not measured levels with effects calculated from physics like greenhouse gases.
“As to those effects, recent volcanic activity (such as the Pinatubo eruption) have shown _just_ the effects that were predicted from such an eruption. And modeled. Before the eruption occurred. Which is in itself quite a validation of those models.”
Now I see where some of your confusion is coming from. You don’t understand the difference between the aerosol forcing the IPCC uses to cancel most of the warming, and the volcanic ash that makes it into the stratosphere. Much of that does end up deposited at the ice caps, such that when we look in the ice cores, we can see major eruptions. But those are two different forcing effects. More over, you seem to think the claim of modelers to having modeled what a Pinatubo-like eruption would do-allegedly before hand, hadn’t heard that one before-and matched reality “exactly” is really good evidence that the models must be correct. But this is really just nonsense. In point of fact, one can relatively easily create a model, based on the volcanic aerosol forcing data (which is, again, different from the aerosols that are supposedly canceling the warming) that fits the observational data, and magnitude of the change will be about the same pretty much regardless of the model sensitivity (ie the eruption is consistent with very low sensitivity or very high sensitivity within measurement uncertainty) and therefore the Pinatubo eruption represents a very weak test of models. Not “quite a validation” at all.
“I certainly do not expect aerosols to suddenly drop to zero over the next century, and I’ve never heard anybody claim that (it’s a strawman argument). Air quality regulations (such as the 1970′s Clean Air act and similar legislation) will have an effect, particularly if China starts doing something about their aerosols, and any ongoing replacement of fossil fuel sources with renewables will also drop aerosol loading. Hence I do expect their forcing relative to energy consumption to drop over time.”
KR, I don’t recall saying you were saying what aerosols would do over the next century at all. But over the twentieth century modelers typically assume that aerosol forcings have increased in sync with greenhouse gases (because that is necessary to cancel the excessive warming) whereas over the next century the cancellation is assumed to cease (this is different from say “suddenly drop to zero over the next century” which is a strawman-strawman of your own construction, because you didn’t understand what I was saying). Your emissions scenario is interesting, although it’s different from the one I mentioned. You seem to assume that China will regulate their emissions of particulates, and also that people will adopt “renewables” with the later reducing particulate emissions but not, somehow, CO2 emissions. That’s a little strange. In the first place, the driver of emissions reductions in terms of particulates will not be legislation but growth, as has always been the case. Besides, the environmental records of Communist governments are abyssmal so I’m not sure why anyone would assume they would do something. Will reductions in Chinese air pollution necessarily eliminate the aerosol cancellation of warming, if it is really significant? It might, if China was the only country in the world! Emissions scenarios for CO2 in the future involve growth not just from China but also Africa and other economies that may be expected to join emergent economies in several decades. They will presumably start their economies producing particulates. The global forcing from particulates cannot realistically be presumed to go away slowly or otherwise any time soon. But every scenario of large future warming is dependent on that forcing at the very least decoupling, suddenly, from CO2 forcing etc.
Will Nitschke – “…curious how KR changes his argument in response to criticism”
I haven’t changed my argument, Will, just clarified it. Lindzen claimed a doubling worth of CO2 forcing (3.7 W/m^2) change (that hasn’t happened, either in pure CO2 forcing of 1.66 or in total forcings of 1.6 W/m^2). He claims aerosol uncertainties mean he can claim they have zero forcing, but zero just isn’t supportable (estimated -1.3, range -0.4 to -2.7).
[I am, incidentally, unaware of _any_ publications or research Lindzen has done regarding aerosols – he hasn’t presented any data, any evidence to support his claims in that regard: http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/PublicationsRSL.html%5D
0.8C change with observed forcings since pre-industrial times supports (http://tinyurl.com/bu2w5a7) a climate sensitivity of roughly 2.4C/doubling, minimum of 1.2C, maximum not well limited by that data – which is consistent with the IPCC estimate of 3C (2-4.5)/doubling. And which excludes Lindzens claims of <1C/doubling.
Lindzens claim of “we’’ve already seen almost the equivalent of a doubling of CO2 (in radiative forcing)” is, as I stated in my first post, just unsupportable.
timetochooseagain – WRT aerosols versus GHG’s, any shift away from coal or other heavily aerosol polluting energy will decrease the aerosol load, and aerosols have an atmospheric lifespan on the order of only 3-5 years. CO2, on the other hand, has an atmospheric concentration lifespan of centuries to millenia (Archer 2009, http://ctserver.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2009.ann_rev_tail.pdf), meaning that the ratios _will_ change as energy mix and pollution regulations do.
I will not, however, attempt to make any predictions as to the _rate_ of aerosol change – that’s dependent on political and economic decisions around the world, and I won’t claim _any_ skill in predicting either politics or economics.
As to aerosol records – we do indeed have a pretty good idea of the levels, both from snowcap sampling for pre-industrial times and in addition from our records of energy usage – burning any fossil fuel puts out a certain amount of aerosols. See http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=historic+aerosol+emission+estimates for multiple examples of that.
KR,
Your numbers once again bring to mind my paraphrase of Archimedes.
“Give me a large enough error bar on which to place my model and I can try to rule the World”.
Gail Combs says:
July 25, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Pamela Gray says:
July 25, 2012 at 1:38 pm
I believe the professor is referring to Hansen’s original worst case scenario. Based on the modeled rise in temp output as a function of CO2, we should be close to the equivalent forcing he references, but we are not. Correct me if I am wrong, but that worst-case model depends on CO2 driven water vapor increase creating most of the greenhouse temperature effect, not actual CO2.
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Yes, and what is water vapor actually doing? FALLING!
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Humm???? Just like Temperature minus Mann made GW. A must post for any who are open about the T record
… http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/history-of-how-this-fraud-was-perpetrated/
Bill Yarber says:
July 25, 2012 at 9:21 am
It seems to me you know it’s a logarithmic response but you don’t understand logarithms. (Clearly you can’t spell them). I don’t know about your high shool, but I found out about logarithms in 8th grade algebra. Trig focused on angles, sines, tangents, and all that good stuff. Not many logs though.
Let me help you out. If the temperature gain is proportional to the log of the change in CO2, then 2X the CO2 means the pertinent number is log(2). It can be any base you like, but for here, let’s stick with base 10. Log(2) = 0.301. To see 50% of the effect, we need the antilog of 0.15, which is 1.414. (Of course, this is the square root of 2, a geometric progression would work just as well, but logarithms let us play with any ratio.)
So no, we haven’t seen “more than 60%” of the effect yet, we have seen very close to 50%.
BTW, a 50% increase – log(1.5) = 0.176. 0.176/0.301 = 0.585 or 58%. Hardly 80%. Please, please, please don’t spout off numbers you don’t really understand. If they’re important enough, someone else will do it for you. In the meantime, your advice “unitl [sic] you learn enough to post.” seems seems decent. I’d add “Count to 10 before replying. Among other things, it helps your spelling. Then ask if you know enough to not embarrass yourself.
When you read Phil Jones’ actual words, you see he’s saying there is a warming trend but it’s not statistically significant. He’s not talking about whether warming is actually happening. He’s discussing our ability to detect that warming trend in a noisy signal over a short period.”
If it’s not statistically significant then we accept the Null Hypothesis. There has been no warming.
You are abusing the term ‘noise’. There is almost no noise in the satellite temperature data.
What you should say is that there is a large natural variability component in global temperature changes, and this natural variability is noise when looking for the GHG warming signal.
Of course, there is no evidence for this claim. It is Ad Hockery – a reason invented in the absence of evidence for why measurements do not conform to predictions.
KR, a 40 plus% increase in CO2, plus other GHGs,, plus the logarithmic affect of the first 1/2 of a doubling having more weight then the second 1/2, and discounting your cooling forcing, which Lindzen does, all combined makes his statement correct, and your dismisal true in your own mind only.
Hansen tries to save his bad projections by asserting the other GHGs. I guess this places you in a catch 22.
KR says:
July 25, 2012 at 5:06 pm
> 0.8C change with observed forcings since pre-industrial times supports (http://tinyurl.com/bu2w5a7)
Why did you use a tinyurl? It’s not as though the target would break WordPress or anything, it just goes to http://www.skepticalscience.com/Earth-expected-global-warming.htm . Are you embarrassed you read SkS or just trying to trick people here to boost SkS’s page view count?
Lindzen said he doubted the models were independently derived but rather might produce common results because of their common origins.
It doesn’t matter if the models share common origins (although many do). What is important is that they share common theories and assumptions.
Averaging the model outputs, as the IPCC and others do, is merely deriving a numerical value for what on average climate modellers believe. To claim this is science is ludicrous.
Philip Bradley – “If it’s not statistically significant then we accept the Null Hypothesis. There has been no warming.”
No, that’s not how statistical evidence works. We reject the null hypothesis if the tested hypothesis is more than 2 sigma from the null. In the case of the Phil Jones statement, 15 years of data given noise and natural variability was too short to reject the null hypothesis, as it was outside only 92%, not 95% of the variability of the data. That is not a resounding acclaim for the null hypothesis of no warming, but rather an indication of a trend with a strong but not statistically solid likelyhood of rejecting the null. The data certainly did not reject the hypothesis of the upward trend.
And that natural variation (ENSO, solar cycle, etc) and noise is why folks look for ~30 year time periods to evaluate trends.
KR says:
July 25, 2012 at 8:46 am (Edit)
Thanks, KR. A doubling of CO2 is 3.7 W/m2 per the IPCC. And according to the IPCC FAR SPM, we’ve seen the following increases in forcing.
Forcing, W/m2
CO2 1.66
Methane etc 0.48
N20 0.16
Halocarbons 0.34
Ozone 0.35
Solar 0.12
These total 3.11 W/m2. Some are said to be offset by claimed negative forcings due to aerosols, but there is little observational data to back up that claim. Is 3.11 “almost the equivalent” of 3.7? I’d call that a bit of hyperbole, but not much.
In any case, your mistake was to misread Lindzen’s claim as being only about CO2 forcing …
w.