Gerald North Andrew Dessler
Guest essay by Robert Bradley Jr.
“I did worry that my comment on my not being willing to sign on to Kyoto right now got into the [Houston] Chronicle and in our local paper. I do not like being too public on policy matters. It ain’t my thing.”
– Gerald North (email communication, October 2, 1998)
“In his article Sunday, Rob Bradley reminds us of the errors made about dire climate predictions proffered by some climate science outliers…. Virtually all of these dire predictions were never made or endorsed by the mainstream climate community of researchers in the field.”
– Gerald North, “Fringe Predictions,” Letter to the Editor, Houston Chronicle, April 1, 2008.
“So what is the argument about? The answer is policy…. [W]e both support balanced action to address the clear and present danger of climate change.”
– Andrew Dessler and Gerald North, “Climate Change is Real and Denial is Not About the Science,” San Antonio Express News, October 6, 2013.
If Texas A&M scientists calculated that an asteroid was heading our way, we would likely head for the hills with a lot of pills. But when Texas A&M climatologists warn of dangerous man-induced global warming and call for government action (think new taxes and regulation), many of us roll our eyes and watch our wallets.
We live in a postmodern world where emotion and desire substitute for reason and scholarship. With climate alarmism in deep trouble on a variety of data fronts, from temperature increase to sea-level rise to hurricane frequency and intensity, elder Texas A&M climate scientist Gerald North joined climate scientist/campaigner Andrew Dessler to write (sign on to?) a disingenuous opinion-page editorial for the San Antonio Express, “Climate change is real and denial is not about the science.”
The Dessler/North wolf cries of recent years have been made in the face of growing contradictory evidence. While alarmism may have once gotten attention, the two are are now like the Enron carnival barkers of 2000/2001, proclaiming surety and shouting ‘you just don’t get it’ at the skeptics. Andy Dessler and Jerry North are, indeed, the smartest guys in the climate room.
Emotional Scientists, Bad Science
The tight-knit climate scientist-activist community was exposed by the Climategate emails to be to be working from a Malthusian, alarmist script. Instead of going from science to real-world implications, the cabal was caught going from an agenda to ‘science.’ Remember “hide the decline”? Remember the chatter about keeping their critics out of the peer-reviewed journals? Even physically attacking a critic at a forthcoming climate conference?
Climategate’s mendacity and trash talk have made many thousands of non-climate scientists skeptical and disappointed in academic and government climatologists who are, indeed, giving physical science a bad name. Critics might say that a few dozen scientist/activists are turning a hard science into a soft one.
Take Gerald North, who I hired as Enron’s climate consultant in 1997. I pressed him on the what and why of climate alarmism. He explained that the climate community was a very close group with personal relationships valued greatly. Some top scientists were husband/wife teams. Others were close friends. The buddy system went far and deep.
North did not need to tell me that most of the same considered modern society as ‘unsustainably’ intruding on ‘optimal’ nature. And that this community was dependent on government grants for research dealing with problems–so climate change needed to be a problem.
But it was Dr. North who privately said a lot of things to me that he did not want repeated in public. And in a number of emails, indeed, he questioned the great climate alarm. I made these emails public when North inexplicably went political several years ago at the urging of his activist colleague Andrew Dessler. I value truth over political power, and the Internet gives truth a powerful voice against professional misconduct.
North Goes Strange
Funny thing: Global temperatures have not increased since North was back at Enron, frankly telling me about the excesses of his profession. He was cautious, even skeptical, about high climate sensitivity estimates—and climate models in general (see the Appendix below for some of his quotes).
Now, he and Dessler write an editorial that assumes (rather than debates) a coming climate crisis–and jumps to political ad hominem to explain why the public does not agree on either the ‘problem’ or the ‘solution’.
So a question to Dr. North: what has changed in the last 15 years to make you more, rather than less, concerned about a catastrophic warming?
And just where do you get your expertise to tell us in this op-ed that there is a cost-effective solution for the United States and the world from governmental caps or taxes on CO2? Why aren’t you sticking to the physical science rather than jumping to other disciplines (economics, political science, public policy) far removed from your area of expertise?
In fact, climate economists such as Robert Mendelsohn of Yale might just tell you that the social cost of carbon dioxide, the green greenhouse gas, is positive, not negative, given the lower climate sensitivity that even the politicized, alarmist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now accepts in its forecast range.
Spencer Weighs In
Fellow climate scientist Roy Spencer called the two out on their false analogies and postmodern view of: Assume a problem, imagine a governmental solution … Assume market failure, but not government failure in solving it….
Spencer complains:
… Dessler and North [hide] the fact that global temperatures stopped rising 15 years ago, in contradiction to most, if not all, IPCC climate model forecasts.
They could have said, “The lack of warming is good news for humanity! Maybe global warming isn’t a serious problem after all!” Or even, “We have more time to solve the problem!” But, no.
Instead, they do exactly what they accuse Republicans of doing…letting their views of the proper role of government (and their desire for more climate research funding) determine what they believe (or profess to believe) about the science.
Spencer concludes:
So, stick to the ivory tower, guys. Better to let the people who work to support you wonder about your cluelessness, rather than open your mouths and remove all doubt.
This is a hard rebuke, but Dessler/North picked the fight … again. (And Dr. North, how many times do I need to resurrect the level-headed, less emotional North of old to counter the new, politicized you? Don’t we both have better things to do?)
Let’s hope that good science can continue to drive out bad despite the effort of some climate-turned-political scientists to keep the great false climate alarm going for more research grants and more and bigger Government.
Appendix: North on Climate Models
“We do not know much about modeling climate. It is as though we are modeling a human being. Models are in position at last to tell us the creature has two arms and two legs, but we are being asked to cure cancer.”
– Gerald North (November 12, 1999)
“[Model results] could also be sociological: getting the socially acceptable answer.”
– Gerald North (June 20, 1998)
“There is a good reason for a lack of consensus on the science. It is simply too early. The problem is difficult, and there are pitifully few ways to test climate models.”
– Gerald North (July 13, 1998)
“One has to fill in what goes on between 5 km and the surface. The standard way is through atmospheric models. I cannot make a better excuse.”
– Gerald North October 2, 1998)
“The ocean lag effect can always be used to explain the ‘underwarming’…. The different models couple to the oceans differently. There is quite a bit of slack here (undetermined fudge factors). If a model is too sensitive, one can just couple in a little more ocean to make it agree with the record. This is why models with different sensitivities all seem to mock the record about equally well. (Modelers would be insulted by my explanation, but I think it is correct.)”
– Gerald North (August 17, 1998)
and on Climate Politics
“I did worry that my comment on my not being willing to sign on to Kyoto right now got into the [Houston] Chronicle and in our local paper. I do not like being too public on policy matters. It ain’t my thing.”
– Gerald North (October 2, 1998)
– See more at: http://www.masterresource.org/2013/10/political-science-north-dressler/#sthash.XSOtpSJW.dpuf
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” Critics might say that a few dozen scientist/activists are turning a hard science into a soft one.”
I’d be more inclined to say they are turning a soft science into a softer one.
Gary Pearse says:
October 11, 2013 at 10:32 am [ … ]
Excellent synopsis. That is exactly what has happened. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left re-grouped and made long-term plans [the KGB never went away, it just became the FSB]. They gradually gained control of institutions, professional societies, education, etc. They promoted and gave grants, and otherwise rewarded those like North and Dressler who parroted their narrative. Those who didn’t were denied the grants, the promotions — and worse: some were actually fired for arguing against the “AGW” narrative.
Everyone could see what was happening. But how to fight it? About the only way is to wait until retirement, then tell the truth. Only the bravest, or those with enough credibility that they do not have to worry about employment, speak out before retirement. But that certainly is not enough to counter the message that if you speak your mind, you won’t get your next pay raise or promotion.
It was a devious, long term plan, and highly effective. If it were not for the internet, a carbon tax would be a done deal by now, and the UN would be much stronger.
The end game is clear: an EU-like, nameless, faceless, unelected committee that dictates to the proles, who will have to pay the freight. It is not a new idea. Plato laid it all out a couple thousand years ago: a military controlled by the aristocracy, and all financed by the peons working the land.
Anyone who thinks they will be one of the aristocracy is dreaming. Your chances are far less than one in a hundred. And at the bottom of the aristocracy, you will be owned by those at the top — who will throw you a few extra crumbs for being their lickspittle. But get out of line, and you’re back down in the proletariat. If you’re lucky. Because once they get control, they will never give it up.
Word up, folks. That is the plan. Fight it any way you can.
OT but a calamitous cyclone is about to wreak absolute devastation in NE India.
“A&M climate scientist Gerald North joined climate scientist/campaigner Andrew Dressler to write a disingenuous opinion-page editorial for the San Antonio Express”
“disingenuous” means “not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does”
It has synonyms like ” dishonest” & “untruthful”
How do we know that? Do we have some information that they are being “dishonest”.
Could we use the word “disingenuous” for this post, for example? I wonder.
The doctrine of atheism does not equate humans to animals.
Pippen Kool:
At October 11, 2013 at 11:19 am you ask
If by “this post” you mean your post which I am replying, the clear answer is YES.
Richard
Olah has been on the methanol jag since about 2006 and his book, The Methanol Economy. The WSJ piece is an echo. There were reasons for ethanol rather than methanol to replace MBTE as a blended oxygenate to reduce automobile air pollution. The 10% blend wall came later. And the net corn use is only about 16% not the 41% the press reports,, since the post fermentation ‘distillers grain’ is used as animal feed? We do so on my dairy farm. Turning CO2 back into methanol is of course possible given sufficient electricity. But it makes more energy sense to just use the electricity directly in most cases, for example in PHEVs. And there are better (higher overall energy efficiency, higher volumetric energy density) ways to make synfuels or biofuels as those become needed for transportation and agriculture. And if the electricity needed to convert CO2 plus water back to methanol comes from nuclear ( or wind) then there is no concentrated source of CO2 to convert. The WSJ op ed presents a small, biased piece of the overall systemic picture. About the only part that might someday make sense is the coal to liquids via methanol,process developed by Exxon and BP, not by Olah. A possibility when crude is over 150/bbl, more likely over 200/bbl. An alternative to the more conventional Fischer-Tropf process used by Sasol.
Pippen Kool,
Read my comment above yours, and you will understand. Dressler and North are not stupid. They know there is no real world, testable evidence supporting AGW. They know that although CO2 has been steadily rising, global temperatures have stagnated for almost two decades.
They are dishonest and untruthful; they have chosen to be disingenuous because it pays. Like plenty of others, they sold their souls for money and prestige.
@dbstealey – In Pippin’s defense, he may think Dressler and North are just stupid.
Rud Istvan says:
October 11, 2013 at 11:32 am
Rud,
So why don’t we open up the mandates on fuel to include methanol, as well as the other fuel types, and let the market determine what works best?
Jack
more soylent green!
October 11, 2013 at 9:18 am
says:
‘For the record, Barack Obama never signed the Kyoto Protocol Treaty. These guys should be foaming at the mouth over that.’
The Kyoto treaty would have had zero chance of passage in the Senate and since the Senate would have had to ratify it the treaty was always DOA. The Byrd/Hagel Sense of the Senate resolution (if my memory serves me) was introduced in 1997 and was voted on 97 to 0 – just about as unanimous a vote as you can get. That resolution essentially stated that there was no way the Senate should approve a Kyoto style binding treaty. That was the reason the Clinton administration, after sending Gore to Kyoto to negotiate it, never presented the treaty to the Senate.
I always thought Bush exhibited profound political stupidity in unilaterally killing the Kyoto treaty the way he did. I believe it was Richard Lindzen who stated that he believed the Europeans deliberately held out for provisions in the treaty that were so punitive for the US that the US would never ratify it. That would then absolve them of the treaty’s requirements while deflecting blame from their green constituents over to the US. When Bush killed Kyoto that so fired up the green element in Europe that they outright demanded their politicians forge ahead with it after their politicians had escaped it for years. Bush should’ve seen this coming. He either should’ve let Kyoto languish as Clinton had. Or, if he genuinely wanted it dead, he should’ve sent it to the Senate where, on a bipartisan vote, its demise was all but assured. And that demise would have greater gravity to it.
Now, we’re saddled with essentially the same onerous, industry, and economy destroying legislation. Except it’s being done by government agencies (that means you, EPA) through executive fiat. That’s why environmentalists are not complaining about Obama. He gave them the same thing anyway, Senate be damned.
Not quite right. When fossil-fuel carbon dioxide is converted into a liquid fuel, it displaces an equivalent BTU value of fossil fuel liquid fuel (gasoline, diesel) so there is a net reduction in fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emission. And, Jack was talking about methanol (one carbon atom) and not ethanol (two carbon atoms, typically produced from fermentation of corn).
There is a burgeoning movement afoot to capture and convert carbon dioxide into fuel or other chemicals through a variety of processes. DOE’s ARPA-E discusses some of them here: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=arpa-e-projects/converting-co2-fuel-and-chemicals
Algae biofuel production has promise for conversion of carbon dioxide into renewable fuel, but no one can make the process work yet. When someone figures out how to do this, there will be a “carbon dioxide rush” of companies seeking to buy up supply from coal & natural gas utilities. So much for geological carbon capture & storage (the preferred EPA method of carbon dioxide management, pumping CO2 deep underground)!
“We live in a postmodern world where emotion and desire substitute for reason and scholarship. ” — OP
Hate to nit picks, but what you’re describing is the premodern world. Where prophets and magicians about at every turn, and the suspicion of wrong thoughts get you a round on a dunking stool or a hot date with the auto da fe.
Otherwise known as: The exact reason for the focus on empiricism. The very thing that got ‘Natural Philosophy’ tossed out in favor of ‘Science.’
Jack Simmons says:
October 11, 2013 at 10:37 am
“In effect, you have cut the total amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by our coal plant in half, because the CO2 is recycled.”
I was going to reply “but, it still gets released”, but then I realized you have a point. What you haven’t released is the CO2 from the gasoline you would otherwise be burning. So, in true Emily Litella fashion… Never mind.
CRS, DrPH says:
October 11, 2013 at 11:52 am
This popped up while I was posting the above. Yes, you are right.
Rud Istvan says:
October 11, 2013 at 11:32 am
It is always best not to rely on a single source. I’ll let others duke this out. The proof for me will come when I am filling my tank with methanol, or at least methanol-added gasoline.
“Algae biofuel production has promise for conversion of carbon dioxide into renewable fuel, but no one can make the process work yet. “
Have to say, I am skeptical of this, though. Algae farming is just an indirect means of capturing solar power. I doubt it is even as efficient as regular solar cells.
“So why don’t we open up the mandates on fuel to include methanol, as well as the other fuel types, and let the market determine what works best?”
because WE don’t do mandates and mandates are anti market, duh.
do you even know you’re speaking totalitarian?
It’s “Dessler” Not “Dressler”. Sorry, that part was driving me crazy reading the whole thing.
[Fixed, thanks. — mod.]
@ur momisugly Pippen Kool says:
October 11, 2013 at 11:19 am
“Disingenuous” is exactly the correct word for the Dessler/North article, since their article fails to address the failed predictions they and those they support have made, and since their paper relies on false claims of increased weather events tied to CO2. They seem to hope that by yelling “fire” more loudly, they can get people to ignore the lack of fire, much less smoke.
And they do this because their careers, prestige, and funding depend on fear of climate catastrophe.
gnomish says:
October 11, 2013 at 12:14 pm
gnomish,
But we are doing mandates at this very moment. It’s why we can’t fill up with methanol.
But you do have a point, there should be no fuel mandates period.
I was making the suggestion in the light of our current regulatory environment, which includes mandates. If we have to have mandates, add methanol as an option. If we don’t have to have mandates, then there will be no mandates. Consumers will be free to buy what they want and producers will be free to provide what the consumers want.
Duh.
Jack,
If man’s CO2 release to the atmosphere is indeed a problem, then conversion of CO2 into methanol may make sense, but so far the data says it is NOT a problem and may actually be net beneficial at this point. This overall CO2 to methanol process from start to finish is nothing more than the conversion of geothermal energy (the energy source you identified) into a transportable form (methanol) with a net reduction of total release of CO2 to the environment due to CO2 recycling.
So unless CO2 is really bad, this process is a “non-starter” from a financial perspective. The only result would be an overall increase in the cost of energy to the consumer. As Rud already pointed out, crude would have to go to over $150/bbl before it starts making sense. Thus I guess you are for promoting $5 a gallon gasoline.
Would be much better for the consumer at the moment, to convert the geothermal into electricity and burn oil for transportation until such time CO2 is definitively shown to be a problem that must be dealt with, or oil exceeds !$50 per barrel.
@ur momisugly Gary Pearse says: October 11, 2013 at 10:32 am and dbstealey says:October 11, 2013 at 11:06 am . . .
I call BulllSh**t on your assessment of socialism ruining education, that’s pure bunk !! America has morphed into a “Capitalist Democracy”, your capitalist extremism has brought you your problems. It’s pretty rich for Americans to blame wacky climate science in their country on Socialism.
@Sun Spot – you have it backwards. No one is blaming climate science on socialism. Socialism is USING climate science to advance their goals.
Dessler/North article contains 100% argument from authority and ZERO evidence. No wonder these guys are losing. They brag about the consensus at their university yet given how 15 years temperatures are falsifying their alarmism, this seems like a strange brag!! To me this screams “not only do I have my head in the sand but my whole university does as well!”
I can’t wait for arrogant scientists to be soon replaced with curious scientists. Perhaps not in my lifetime.
Sun Spot: ” It’s pretty rich for Americans to blame wacky climate science in their country on Socialism.”
There are a number of ways to disagree with those posts. One of which is not to state that only a daft bastard would claim there are similarities between government patronage and Socialism.
Since this thread has already gone off track, I’ll pile on, since that Wall Street Journal article raised more questions for me than it answered. when I read it at breakfast this morning.
Two major problems of ethanol, I’m told, are that its energy density is inferior to gasoline’s and that it’s hard on engines because, if I remember correctly, it’s more water soluble. The article didn’t say why the same wouldn’t be true of methanol. Does anyone know?
Jack Simmons says: “Right now, a coal burning plant releases its CO2 directly into the atmosphere. With the Olah process, that same CO2 is captured and converted into methanol. The methanol is then consumed by vehicles and released into CO2. In effect, you have cut the total amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by our coal plant in half, because the CO2 is recycled.
Isn’t that wonderful?
No. (1) The CO2 to CH3OH step requires both energy and capital investment in extreme amounts. (2) The fact that the CO2 has been recycled is irrelevant. The carbon still ends up in the atmosphere. (3) Methanol has less than half the energy density of gasoline, so more methanol would be required than the gasoline it would (supposedly) replace, in volumetric terms. (4) Methanol has some severe drawbacks as an internal combustion fuel. (5) Your analysis, such as it is, assumes that equivalent amounts of coal and gasoline are currently used. Is that a valid assumption?
The Olah process is nonsense.