[author’s note: this article was originally submitted as a “letter to the editor” to the Bellingham Herald, a newspaper that published an attack on Dr. Don Easterbrook. The Herald refused to publish my rebuttal. The executive editor, July Shirley (julie.shirley@bellinghamherald.com) explained “We only print letters from residents of Whatcom County. We are not publishing your letter.”]
Letter to the Editor by Dr. David Deming
I write in rebuttal to the March 31 letter by WWU geology faculty criticizing Dr. Don Easterbrook. I have a Ph.D in geophysics and have published research papers on climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. In 2006 I testified before the US Senate on global warming. Additionally, I am the author of a three-volume history of science.
I have never met Don Easterbrook. I write not so much to defend him as to expose the ignorance exhibited in the letter authored by WWU geology faculty. Their attack on Dr. Easterbrook is the most egregious example of pedantic buffoonery since the Pigeon League conspired against Galileo in the seventeenth century. Skepticism is essential to science. But the goal of the geology faculty at WWU seems to be to suppress critical inquiry and insist on dogmatic adherence to ideology.
The WWU faculty never defined the term “global warming” but described it as “very real,” as if it were possible for something to be more real than real. They claimed that the evidence in support of this “very real” global warming was “overwhelming.” Yet they could not find space in their letter to cite a single specific fact that supports their thesis.
There is significant evidence that would tend to falsify global warming. The mean global air temperature has not risen for the last fifteen years. At the end of March the global extent of sea ice was above the long-term average and higher than it was in March of 1980. Last December, snow cover in the northern hemisphere was at the highest level since record keeping began in 1966. The UK just experienced the coldest March of the last fifty years. There has been no increase in droughts or wildfires. Worldwide hurricane and cyclone activity is near a forty-year low.
One might think that the foregoing facts would raise doubts in scientists interested in pursuing objective truth. But global warming is not so much a scientific theory subject to empirical falsification as it is a political ideology that must be fiercely defended in defiance of every fact to the contrary. In the past few years we have been told that not only hot weather but cold weather is caused by global warming. The blizzards that struck the east coast of the US in 2010 were attributed to global warming. Every weather event–hot, cold, wet or dry–is said to be caused by global warming. The theory that explains everything explains nothing.
Among the gems in the endless litany of nonsense we are subjected to are claims that global warming causes earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. Last year we were warned that global warming would turn us all into hobbits, the mythical creatures from J. R. R. Tolkien’s novels. I am not aware of any member of the WWU geology faculty criticizing these ridiculous claims. Their vehemence seems to be reserved for honest skeptics like Dr. Easterbrook who advance science by asking hard questions.
At the heart of the WWU geology faculty criticisms was the claim that peer review creates objective and reliable knowledge. Nonsense. Peer review produces opinions. Scientists, like other people, have political beliefs, ideological orientations, and personal views that strain their scientific objectivity. One of the most disgusting things to emerge from the 2009 Climategate emails was the revelation of an attempt to subvert the peer-review process by suppressing the publication of work that was scientifically sound but contrary to the reviewer’s personal views.
The infamous phrase “hide the decline” refers to an instance where a global warming alarmist omitted data that contradicted his personal belief that the world was warming. This sort of bias is not limited but pervasive. Neither is science a foolproof method for producing absolute truth. Scientific knowledge is always tentative and subject to revision. The entire history of science is littered with discarded theories once thought to be incontrovertible truths.
The WWU geology faculty letter asserted that technological advances arise from application of the scientific method. They claimed that airplanes were invented by scientists. But the Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics–not scientists. The modern age of personal computing began in a suburban California garage in 1976. The most significant technological advance in human history was the Industrial Revolution in Britain that occurred from 1760 through 1830. When Adam Smith toured factories and inquired as to who had invented the new machinery, the answer was always the same: the common workman. Antibiotics were not discovered through the rigorous application of scientific methodology but serendipitously when Fleming noticed in 1928 that mold suppressed bacterial growth.
Dr. Easterbrook’s contributions have furthered the advance of scientific knowledge and the progress of the human race. It matters not if a multitude of professors oppose him. As Galileo explained, it is “certain that the number of those who reason well in difficult matters is much smaller than the number of those who reason badly….reasoning is like running and not like carrying, and one Arab steed will outrun a hundred jackasses.”
David Deming
Professor of Arts & Sciences
University of Oklahoma
email: ddeming [at] ou.edu
==============================================================
A list of Dr. Easterbrook’s credentials are listed here:
http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/dje_cv.html
I like the creative license here
“We concur with the vast consensus of the science community that recent global warming is very real, human greenhouse-gas emissions are the primary cause
IPCC AR4 definition of Climate Change is
“Climate change in IPCC usage refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g. using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. It refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. ”
and “It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years”
It’s a bit of a leap of faith from “likely” to “primary” and now Climate Change is automatically linked with AGW not the IPCC AR4 definition Why can’t these “scientists” stick to the facts or be brought to book? Shoddy and very sad to see this happening, it really is.
There is a strong tendency at lesser known universities to demonstrate they are current on the political and science philosophies espoused at the major, well known institutions. It may be grant money, but liberalism has a very strong ‘conform or be ridiculed’ element to it. Intolerant and childish.
Ugh … my daughter attends WWU, partly because I knew Dr. Easterbrook was there and I thought .. maybe … they were independent thinkers. I thought, surely a school that has someone like Dr. Easterbrook would be a good school to learn independent thinking and logic. I now see that I was a fool to have such thoughts.
Jim Brock says:
April 8, 2013 at 8:30 am
DodgyGeezer: Well, Cayley’s airplane crashed into the Potomac…twice.
Jim, Sir George Cayley never flew his gliders anywhere in North America. Nor anywhere near the Potomac. Samuel Langley tested out some of Cayley’s designs, but that is not the same thing. Those were Langley’s interpretations of Cayley’s (and presumably some of Lilienthal’s) research.
Oddly enough, Langley was, according to his biography; heavily reliant upon the works of his assistants.
Sir George Cayley bio link: http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/to%20reality/Sir%20George%20Cayley.htm
Samuel Langley bio link: http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/to%20reality/Samuel%20Langley.htm
Puget Sound is an indelible blue region in an indelible blue state with progressively worse government over time. If you ain’t green you don’t mean a thing. It’s not just a slogan, here.
The natural aspect of Washington state is spectacular but the politics are strictly third world. It will take a return of the Cordilleran ice sheet to reverse it.
This is not the first time that members of the geological profession have proven themselves idiots standing athwart the progress of the science. And it won’t be the last. But Easterbrook’s name and reputation will survive the small-minded efforts of the “jackasses”.
Really great job, Dr. Deming. Onre of the very best rebuttals to global warming alarmism and to AGW bully tactics I’ve ever read.
@hum – Also send the letter to the EPA, the alarmist toady/Judge-Jury-and-Executioner-in Chief, Penn State, UAE. Make sure Gina McCarthy gets a copy. Make sure Gail Collins (NYT) gets a copy.
As for the Bellingham Herald – hypocrisy and cowardice live!
I’ve never seen such an insular bunch of self-aggrandizing know-it-alls.
How dare these 12 PhDs from WWU comment on anything (especially climate) that extends beyond their county’s boundaries!
Do they limit their geologic studies and professorial lectures to the geology within their county? I would certainly hope not!
What many professors of Whatcom County fail to realize is there’s a great big world of ideas outside of their little island of ignorance and hate.
Consequently, the correcting response is: “We are publishing your letter.”
Having my Masters in Aero and Astro from the University of Washington — that’s not science, that’s engineering! Yes, the Wright’s were brilliant and systematic, defining the content of entire sub-curricula (propulsion, control, aerodynamic, structures…) of Aeronautical Engineering in their pursuit, not of truth, but of a working device. Engineering my friends. Engineering!
Glenn Dixon says:
April 8, 2013 at 8:24 am
@Dodgy Geezer: >Um. Aeroplanes WERE invented by scientists.
To add to what Dodgy Geezer said, although the Wright brothers are popularly perceived as lucky tinkerers, they actually were very much the scientists.
There is a host of self-centred and greedy ulterior motives different people have for supporting the AGW paradigm.
1- For researchers, once a paradigm becomes popular and dominant, it is career limiting to oppose it.
2- If the climate is presented as something about which governments can make policies, then government money will flow for research. If climate is something that we cannot affect, funding is not going to be as forthcoming.
3- Plus of course it gives researchers a good feeling to imagine that they’re working to ‘save the world’ instead of, say, developing a new scent for feminine hygiene products.
4- Environmentalists see carbon emission control as a means to reduce real pollutants like NOx, SO2, Hg, etc. as a side effect.
5- Luddites see carbon strangulation as a way of dismantling the industrial economies to force everyone to a much reduced subsistence.
6- ‘Personal isolationists’ try to use AGW as a way to eliminate big utility companies, with power generated at home from wind, solar, or even car batteries, and even sold to the local grid at retail (or higher) rates.
7- EU trade isolationists see carbon regulation as a way of increasing the energy cost, and thus decreasing the competitiveness, of North American economies _vis a vis_ EU ones.
8- Opportunities to use carbon emissions as pretexts to block or heavily tariff imports abound, thus degrading international trade even further.
9- Local trade isolationists like the idea of overseas products becoming more expensive, and if they can’t do that by punitive tariffs and quotas, they hope to do so by artificially driving up shipping costs.
10- Various people see Kyoto-type agreements as a way of transferring wealth from developed economies to lesser ones, as the one-time Canadian Liberal Party cabinet minister Stewart once claimed.
11- Some also envision carbon strangulation as a pretext for involving governments deeply into the economy, via direct and indirect subsidies for energy alternatives that can claim to be ‘green’. Naturally, those who are involved and invested in such industries have their own greed factor.
12- Believers in Big Government also love the idea of sending governments even more of our money under any pretext, and use carbon taxes as a way to transfer even more money to people in lower income levels.
13- Some politicians see taking ‘the west’ off oil as a means of removing the dependence the US in particular has on politically uncertain sources.
14- Other politicans see ‘cap & trade’ or other quota management as a way to direct corruption to their buddies and relatives.
15- Nuclear energy proponents see carbon strangulation as a way to promote nuclear power.
16- Some people imagine that energy cost reductions will magically pay for, and even squeeze profit from, expensive carbon control technologies whose payback times are actually measured (when they aren’t just dead costs) in decades.
17- Opportunistic “businessmen” see the panic of the masses as an opportunity to solicit donations to so-called “non-profit” organizations or to operate carbon credit companies in order to enrich themselves financially.
18- Financial trading corporations like Goldman Sachs see carbon trading as an opportunity to generate a new financial bubble out of an inexistant commodity (carbon credits) with which to justify huge profits and staggering executive bonuses.
19- In politics it is generally held far more important to be consistent than it is to be right. Lies and errors about warming are thus propagated further, instead of being squelched, in order to bolster the political optics.
20- Some people propose deliberately crushing economic growth to be an improvement over what they think will happen if we let growth proceed naturally.
21- And there are some who are actually sincere, who desperately want to believe that they can by sacrificing (or by forcing the rest of us to sacrifice) contribute to saving the world. But just because you make a sacrifice to superstition doesn’t mean that your AGW deity is going to come through for you.
22- The UN sees carbon credits as an opportunity to create a tax base for itself and a steady income.
Dr. David Deming – thank you very much for writing this. I am concerned about our state wasting even more money on this boondoggle. A silver lining to this recession is perhaps the blow back on money wasting garbage like Inslee seems hell bent to do might be swifter than in better times. I am a Washington State resident. Unfortunately, I do not reside in Whatcom County & do not happen to know anybody who does. For what it is worth, I am a former lifelong Democrat & did not vote for Mr. Inslee,
Thanks,
Scott Henderson
Is it normal for this site to give webspace to evolution deniers?
Psalmon says:
April 8, 2013 at 7:46 am
Sad all these WWU doctorates of this and that masquerading as scientists when they really are just political activists now reverting to schoolyard bullying, trying to silence everyone, scrambling to save their crumbling religion. What a waste of talent.
*
What talent?
Brilliant article, Dr. Deming. Also, I am glad to learn about your books in the history of science.
That quote is a loose and poor paraphrase of the original by Michael Crichton. I prefer the original: “A theory that can mean anything means nothing.”
Folks,
The truth is that Don Easterbrook has often deviated from the facts or has made unsupported claims. Let’s be specific here. In several of his talks, he has shown the future temperature variations and based them on cutting and pasting from past PDO variations (http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~cliff/pdoeaster.tiff). This makes no sense. The PDO is not very periodic and may not even be a true cyclic phenomenon. His exaggerates the impact of solar cycle variability and explicitly shows major cooling during this century (http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~cliff/easterbrookcooling.tiff). I could many other SPECIFIC examples of Dr. Easterbrook saying things inconsistent with the facts. This group of all groups should be sensitive to this….you do the field a service by noting the exaggerations of those hyping global warming but you really need to police those on “your” side that make unsupported claims. And as long as I am writing this, when are we going to get past the lack of warming of the last decade?….this really proves nothing about long-term global warming. Natural variability can easily create periods of no warming during times like this when human forcing is relatively weak. The end of the century will be different. And finally I will agree with many of you that the Western Washington faculty note lacked needed details.
…cliff mass, university of washington, atmospheric sciences.
Aanthanur says:
April 8, 2013 at 8:41 am
“LOL Galileo, you guys seem to forget that Galileo had evidence and a working theory, the AGW deniers have neither.”
There it is again, that strangest of fallacies. One does not need a substitute theory before criticizing an existing theory. In fact, it was Kepler not Galileo who created the theory of planetary motion that would replace Ptolemy’s epicycles. To the extent that he addressed the followers of Ptolemy and Aristotle, Galileo created experiments that refuted their theories. He also did some fine analytic work revealing that their argument that the earth does not move is a circular argument.
One fact can overturn a theory. And there is no need for a substitute theory to be in place. If there had been no evidence of light bending as it passed the sun, Einstein would have been the first to say that his theory was mistaken.
Thanks Dr. Deming and thanks Anthony for publishing this. Letters like this and the varied comments are why I and many others check WUWT several times a day. There are so many articles which inform and also at times provide a good chuckle. I too am an engineer of the old school, Kansas State, 1961, ME/Aero. While slide rules were not nearly as fast as computers you did have to think about how to obtain the answer and what it meant.
15- Nuclear energy proponents see carbon strangulation as a way to promote nuclear power.
This is a critical issue. The “cost for carbon” is essential for the nuke guys to justify getting “work in process” funding from regulated utility customers. It’s a complex issue, that needs a simple illustration.
Glenn Dixon says:
April 8, 2013 at 8:24 am
@Dodgy Geezer: >Um. Aeroplanes WERE invented by scientists.
To add to what Dodgy Geezer said, although the Wright brothers are popularly perceived as lucky tinkerers, they actually were very much the scientists. They studied all the available data on flight (including Cayley’s) and, when early experiments failed, they designed a very elegant and sensitive wind tunnel for scientific experimentation. It was through their wind tunnel experiments they learned that the existing lift vs. drag data (including Cayley’s) were wrong.
Jim Brock says:
April 8, 2013 at 8:30 am
DodgyGeezer: Well, Cayley’s airplane crashed into the Potomac…twice. And the Wright brothers used a scientific approach in their efforts.
————————————————————————————————
Whoa! Guys you really need to straighten out your history.
George Cayley (1773 –1857) in England well before the Wright brothers conducted experiments on lift and drag in 1799. His design included a wing, a tailplane and vertical fin and rudder and published articles in the Nicholsons Journal describing his experiments with gliders and shown curved aerofoils produced lift. But he had no means of propulsion.
Samuel Langley (1834-1906) in America and Secretary of the Smithsonian was the one who built his ‘Aerodrome’ and crashed into the Potomac River twice (not Cayley!). He was dismissive of the Wrights early efforts; after all they were just bike mechanics.
Otto Lilienthal a German was the first man in world to actually take flight in a Hang Glider in 1895. He and his brother in 1871 conducted experiments on lift and drag and produced a book on the subject ‘Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation’. However the Wrights show and thought ( incorrectly as it turns out because the Wrights misapplied the data and later found the data to agree with theirs) that some of their figures were in error (coefficients of lift)( i.e Nothing to do with Cayley !) .
Reference: “The Wright Brothers and Birth of Aviation” Lester W. Garber. Crowood Press ISBN 1 821226 730 4. All the relevant equations and history is in this book.
As a geologist I was surprised that 12 fellow geo’s would write letter like that. It makes me wonder what kind of science is taught at universities these days. Perhaps I’m too old school.
“We only print letters from residents of Whatcom County. We are not publishing your letter.”
A classic instance of the misplaced ‘only’. They only print letters
as distinct from doing what with them?
I shouldn’t single out this newspaper however: 99% of contributors
to the estimable WUWT suffer from the same malaise.
I do live in Bellingham and have met Doctor Esterbrook. About 10 years ago I saw an article in the Bellingham Herald regarding global warming and how he did not believe there was warming caused by CO2. I did not know Don but was curious and found his web site and started reading his papers. At one point I decided to write him an email. I heard back from him right away. He sent me additional info from other scientists all over the world. I kept in contact with him and when there was new papers he would send them to me. I decided I would like to meet this guy and contacted him and we set it up. I went over to WWU and he spent probably an hour with me explaining why he thought the way he did. I wonder if anyone from the school or the paper have ever ask to set and talk with. Don, thank you for your work and taking time to meet with me. I still follow your web site and have become a WUWT junkie.
I plan on canceling my subscription to the Herald.
(Agreeing with EthicallyCivil, above, April 8, 2013 at 10:26 am)
No, the Wright Brothers were not mere bicycle mechanics. Nor were they mere scientists in the sense that the Bellingham Backbiters mean it. The Wrights were, indeed, much, much better than scientists. The were engineers, the foremost aeronautical engineers of their day.
Cliff Mass says:
April 8, 2013 at 11:08 am
“The truth is that Don Easterbrook has often deviated from the facts or has made unsupported claims. Let’s be specific here.”
Ever heard of collegiality? The letter signed by the twelve amounts to a public mob action. The letter served no imaginable purpose in the academic community.
“And as long as I am writing this, when are we going to get past the lack of warming of the last decade?….this really proves nothing about long-term global warming. Natural variability can easily create periods of no warming during times like this when human forcing is relatively weak.”
We skeptics managed to get the Alarmists to accept the existence of natural variability and the fact that it could override the effects of increased manmade CO2 concentrations. The first of those feats alone amounts to a sea change in the debate. The second feat defeats Alarmism because now everyone agrees that the steep slopes are the result of natural variability that is supplemented by a fraction of warming caused by manmade CO2.
In addition, climate models have been falsified. And they cannot be saved by appeal to the effects of natural variability because they do not model natural variability and did not predict the hiatus caused by it.