Climatologists Are No Einsteins, Says His Successor
by Paul Mulshine, The Star Ledger via the GWPF
Freeman Dyson is a physicist who has been teaching at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since Albert Einstein was there. When Einstein died in 1955, there was an opening for the title of “most brilliant physicist on the planet.” Dyson has filled it.
So when the global-warming movement came along, a lot of people wondered why he didn’t come along with it. The reason he’s a skeptic is simple, the 89-year-old Dyson said when I phoned him.
“I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic,” Dyson said.
…
Then in the late 1970s, he got involved with early research on climate change at the Institute for Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
That research, which involved scientists from many disciplines, was based on experimentation. The scientists studied such questions as how atmospheric carbon dioxide interacts with plant life and the role of clouds in warming.
But that approach lost out to the computer-modeling approach favored by climate scientists. And that approach was flawed from the beginning, Dyson said.
“I just think they don’t understand the climate,” he said of climatologists. “Their computer models are full of fudge factors.”
A major fudge factor concerns the role of clouds. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide on its own is limited. To get to the apocalyptic projections trumpeted by Al Gore and company, the models have to include assumptions that CO-2 will cause clouds to form in a way that produces more warming.
“The models are extremely oversimplified,” he said. “They don’t represent the clouds in detail at all. They simply use a fudge factor to represent the clouds.”
Dyson said his skepticism about those computer models was borne out by recent reports of a study by Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading in Great Britain that showed global temperatures were flat between 2000 and 2010 — even though we humans poured record amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere during that decade.
That was vindication for a man who was termed “a civil heretic” in a New York Times Magazine article on his contrarian views. Dyson embraces that label, with its implication that what he opposes is a religious movement. So does his fellow Princeton physicist and fellow skeptic, William Happer.
“There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” said Happer. “Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous.”
To show how uncivil this crowd can get, Happer e-mailed me an article about an Australian professor who proposes — quite seriously — the death penalty for heretics such as Dyson. As did Galileo, they can get a reprieve if they recant.
I hope that guy never gets to hear Dyson’s most heretical assertion: Atmospheric CO2 may actually be improving the environment.
“It’s certainly true that carbon dioxide is good for vegetation,” Dyson said. “About 15 percent of agricultural yields are due to CO2 we put in the atmosphere. From that point of view, it’s a real plus to burn coal and oil.”
In fact, there’s more solid evidence for the beneficial effects of CO2 than the negative effects, he said. So why does the public hear only one side of this debate? Because the media do an awful job of reporting it.
“They’re absolutely lousy,” he said of American journalists. “That’s true also in Europe. I don’t know why they’ve been brainwashed.”
I know why: They’re lazy. Instead of digging into the details, most journalists are content to repeat that mantra about “consensus” among climate scientists.
The problem, said Dyson, is that the consensus is based on those computer models. Computers are great for analyzing what happened in the past, he said, but not so good at figuring out what will happen in the future. But a lot of scientists have built their careers on them. Hence the hatred for dissenters.
Jim Clarke: The ‘media’ has no conscious.
Not much conscience, either.
: > )
Have not seen an effective refutation of Marcott et al–it is what it is. Mean global annual air temperature today is about to eclipse the air temperature variation maxima of the Holocene. But the Earth today should be cooling–for most of the Holocene we see that long term trend. But today we find that the mean global air temperature does is about to surpass the upper confidence level of the Holocene air temperature record–hard to explain this in terms of the usual Holocene actors, e.g., orbital, solar, volcanism, and so on. It could be human caused CO2 forcing.
Everything is a model. Your senses intercept radiation or pressure or chemical and the brain interprets those signals to recreate a model of what you sensed. Some models are better than others. More and more accurate data and better processing improve the accuracy of models. But even some of the CO2 forcing model simulations from the 1970s show a general upward trend in mean air temperature globally–something we see today in the air temperature record. Newer climate models are not showing cooling, rather they show warming from CO2 forcing.
Philip Mulholland quoted from the Economist and nicely channeled Churchill:
As a rule of thumb, global temperatures rise by about 1.5°C for each trillion tonnes of carbon put into the atmosphere.
Now that quote, for me, neatly demonstrates the difference between rule of thumb; The use of an approximate measure, a perfectly acceptable practice among experienced artisans, artists and cooks. And thumbsuck; The use of a measure approximately, so beloved by
politicians, economists and crooks.
Lord Shiva and shiver me timbers, how many times do they have to be told: It’s the doubling, stupid!
Freeman Dyson shells the nut, climate science is not yet a Science, it is long on theory and short on experimental support, it is presently Professional Opinion, and Obiter Dicta, and
to dispute the opinion is to be a Heretic, I am happy to be so known. I am not happy to be
labelled a denier, I try hard and honestly to contradict neither fact nor logic.
Anthony on American journalists: “I know why: They’re lazy. Instead of digging into the details, most journalists are content to repeat that mantra about “consensus” among climate scientists.”
Far, far too generous, Anthony. The industry is edited by far-leftists who would be perfectly at home, and willing workers, in Castro, Chavez, or Kirchner’s America, and they’ve mainly trained and promoted journalists of the same ilk, many of whom would be willing participants in a 1984-style re-writing of history to omit any inconvenient facts so as to facilitate the “disappearing” of all dissenters. Witness the lack of a journalistic response to the call for prominent skeptics to be, in effect, “disappeared.” Imagine the reaction of those same journalists if a prominent skeptic called for Al Gore to be…, well, you get the idea.
REPLY: Actually those aren’t my words, but that of the writer of the excerpted article, read carefully – Anthony
atarsinc says:
April 5, 2013 at 10:32 pm
John Parsons AKA atarsinc
Several observations:
1) “Climate Science” would have a better reputation if “The Team” would publish honest papers rather than intentionally obfuscate to support their agenda.
2) Mann’s hockey stick was a complete fabrication (meaning it was a lie based on an algorithm that produces a hockey stick curve regardless of the input data–hey, why put any data in at all, huh?)
3) You take the untenable position that even if falsified, Marcott will add to our knowledge? Oh, I forgot–you CAGW people push your agenda regardless of the truth or the quality of your information.
I’d be embarassed to display the lack of integrity you’ve posted, Mr. Parsons. Let the public beware of such devious, nefarious thinking.
You don’t really believe Science would publish any rebuke of Marcott et all, do you? No–it wouldn’t align with “The Team’s” agenda, would it? Have you already forgotten the vacuous FAQ Marcott et all just released? That’s (Junk) Climate Science, Mr. Parsons.
We do? (Where can I find this?)
.
I am a sceptic–I am skeptical of the data, the process, the model, the interpretation for just about all I apprehend. Of late, of necessity, I am skeptical of human motivation–here both sides. My sense is that ‘deniers’ don’t want to be duped. Sadly the ad hom attacks switch off rational thought mostly and we revert to reptilian modes of action. Ad hom attacks are a fallacy–I just sweep them and the racoons off the back porch. Save your attacks on me. Engage in rational discourse.
Now Hansen et al have shown using empirical evidence vis-a-vis model simulation results that mean summer time air temperatures recently have increased such that greater areas of the land are warmer than would expected due to chance alone. I have not seen Dyson refute Marcott or Hansen. Dyson is a theorist–still it would be great to have him examine the empirical results of Marcott and or Hansen.
Wrong, and then you begin to veer in a different direction …
Have you heard of the human mind, are you aware of human senses? Are you able to differentiate between the two?
Where might ‘models’ be operative in the human ‘cognitive’ system: in the mind or in the senses?
Might the “senses” be inputs to the mind where interpretation of the ‘experience’ of the senses take place?
.Yes or no, then explain.
.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. (Off to a ‘mahvellous’ start I must say!)
(Synopsis: Troll. Disingenuous. Probably 12 years old, as in: “On the internet no one knows you’re a dog”)
Parenthetical information for reference only.
.
Dan in California says:
April 5, 2013 at 5:28 pm
“A common alarmist refrain is “That’s what happened on Venus!” I admit I don’t have a good concise answer to that.”
I just told you the response. There is no mechanism for global warming on earth to become self-sustaining. I am not an elementary educator. You have to do some research on your own to fill in the details.
Einstein showed by way of general relativity that the present and the future are coeval–I suspect many readers here today would deny such results. If Einstein’s work is true, the 2nd law of thermodynamics stands to be refuted due to the implicit notion of the commonly accepted idea that time flows from now to a future state (t0 to t1) in it’s mathematical expression and conceptualization.
[Reply: There are other terms beside ‘deniers’ that you can use. Read the site Policy. — mod.]
“They’re absolutely lousy,” he said of American journalists. “That’s true also in Europe. I don’t know why they’ve been brainwashed.”
I know why: They’re lazy. Instead of digging into the details, most journalists are content to repeat that mantra about “consensus” among climate scientists.”
I have to disagree. Most journalists are lefties – socialists – they went to journalism to change the world and tell others how to behave, in short to be priests, indoctrinate, proselytize, not to tell news or real subjects. To change the world one needs to be a narcissist which is one of main characteristics of the lefties.
This is what explains it:
“There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” said Happer. “Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous.”
Meanwhile Mike MacCracken continues his shameless promotion of the IPCC on the yahoo group of fringe skeptics. The Director of the Climate Institute has of course little to offer, only a sugarcoated praise for the most wonderful enterprise that is called IPCC report. Obvioulsy this guy has never read Donna LaFramboise’s book… Take a look at the condescendence:
“Regarding your comments, the IPCC chapters the authors write typically go through 3-4 reviews—to say they are not peer-reviewed is just not the case, they are likely the most peer-reviewed articles of any kind.
As to the authors of chapters, the convening lead authors are chosen by the national member teams of each Working Group, so a selection process with a lot of consideration. Then they choose lead authors for particular sections. And then there are requests for input and based on participation and value of the contributions they choose contributing authors. In one of the assessments, I was invited to be a contributing author after writing an initial set of review comments suggesting so much reorganization and change that they invited me to be a contributing author—it is the value of the contribution.
And the convening and lead authors are the ones in charge of the chapter—which is much like a review paper. The nations and reviewers can offer comments during the review process but not demand changes—the national members of the IPCC accept the chapter, meaning that it has properly gone through the required processes, which means several reviews overseen by an independent review editor (or editors) that are separately appointed.
You other inferences are similarly inappropriate. The authors are not paid for this, and in many cases the authors are giving up time and opportunities to write papers and do the research that can earn grants—at least in the US, one does not get a grant for being an author nor a promotion in a university.
Mike MacCracken”
Sainthood is near for these authors… LOL
Q: What can a climatologist bring to the table when Happer and Dyson talk climatology?
A: Coffee.
[lifted from another thread 🙂 ]
Often, we find that a system about to undergo a catastrophic change in state (from an unstable to more stable state) exhibits certain characteristics that can be statistically assayed looking at changes in variance or autocorrelation. Often there is a “critical slowing down” (meaning that it takes a longer amount for time for the system to return to stasis) in the data that sounds a tocsin of impending change–periodic air temperature measurements are one such data set that can be analyzed in such a manner.
I wonder what Dyson would think about the experiments that showed that crop yields dropped when exposed to 700 ppm co2 ambient air and elevated levels of ground level ozone (levels typically found in and near cities as well as at and near petroleum wells?
Konrad says:
April 5, 2013 at 11:04 pm
———————————————————–
Please share your results. I do not have the expertise to evaluate your experiments completely. However I have long been curious about the cooling affects of CO2 and the capacity, or lack thereof, of LWIR to warm the oceans. I also think you may need to determine what portion of the energy in various parts of the atmosphere is from conduction with the earths surface. I think it is clear that any GHG element recieving conducted energy would accerate cooling, (IE, reduce the residence time of said energy in earth’s atmosphere.)
tadchem says:
April 5, 2013 at 12:10 pm
“Our bodies incorporate C-14 from our food directly into our DNA, and when C-14 atoms in our DNA undergo radioactive decay, there is a 100% chance (!) of genetic damage, which contributes to mutations and cancer.”
The change of a C14 to a N surely creates a breakage in one of the strands of the DNA. But, as most of the times the two strands stick together, such a breakage can usually be repaired by using the redundant information from the second strand.
An event like that should happen about once a second somewhere in the body of an adult. Obviously the vast majority of these events cause no harm.
geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 7:24 am
“Newer climate models are not showing cooling, rather they show warming from CO2 forcing.”
Well, why would they give up. They earned fortunes with it and will try to continue with what worked for them in the past. The media has been under tight control in the past and will continue to play along. What event could disrupt this? A cooling? Oh please. It is easily explained away as local; Hansen or his successor fiddles a little with the temperature history to recreate the illusion of warming and off you go. Der Spiegel and NYT and BBC will give it the saintly touch of mainstream investigative journalistic truthfinding, and so it will be promoted to the shivering masses.
The only event that can disrupt this well organized machine is the Keynesian endpoint; the reflationary inflection point, the running out of Other People’s Money. As we see in Japan it is coming… and as we see in Cyprus, they will not go silently into the night but when their system is falling apart they will take what they can take, where they find it, no matter to whom it belonged.
CO2AGW is part of an all-devouring beast, the state.
Dyson has forgotten more science than Mann has ever learned.
When Dyson passes, the average IQ on Earth will drop notably…
geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 8:01 am
“Now Hansen et al have shown using empirical evidence vis-a-vis model simulation results that mean summer time air temperatures recently have increased such that greater areas of the land are warmer than would expected due to chance alone. I have not seen Dyson refute Marcott or Hansen. ”
I don’t know what Hansen paper you are referring to, but usually Hansen and Schmidt compare some satellite measurement with a model. So that proves exactly nothing; they find that something is different from their model, so what, whatever conclusion they draw can easily be replaced by the much simpler assumption that the model is junk.
Here’s a model for the global temperature anomaly in the absence of enhanced CO2.
def temperatur(t):
return 0.0
It returns the global temperature anomaly for time t.
Now let us assume that that model correctly describes the world in the absence of enhanced CO2 levels. Oh noes! Satellite measurements show something different! That must be the CO2, what else could it be?
Can I get my funding now? Or better, let’s look, which fallacy is it that you describe? The argumentum ad…
…ignorantiam – we cannot think of any other reason, so it must be CO2.
geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 8:00 am
“I am a sceptic–I am skeptical of the data, the process, the model, the interpretation for just about all I apprehend. ”
You should be very skeptical of attempts at simulating a chaotic system into the year 2100. It helps to read up on the definition of “Chaos” in the wikipedia.