Bishop Hill notes: “Swedish website Uppsalainitiativet has managed to get a guest post from Lennart Bengtsson in which he examines the recent furore over his brief involvement with GWPF and explains his views on climate science.”
Well worth a read.
What is perhaps most worrying is the increased tendency of pseudo-science in climate research. This is revealed through the bias in publication records towards only reporting results that support one climate hypothesis, while refraining from publishing results that deviate. Even extremely cold weather, as this year’s winter in north Eastern USA and Canada, is regarded as a consequence of the greenhouse effect.
Were Karl Popper alive today we would certainly have met with fierce critique of this behavior. It is also demonstrated in journals’ reluctance to address issues contradicting simplified climate assessments, such as the long period during the last 17 years with insignificant or no warming over the oceans, and the increase in sea-ice cover around the Antarctic. My colleagues and I have been met with scant understanding when trying to point out that observations indicate lower climate sensitivity than model calculations indicate. Such behavior may not even be intentional but rather attributed to an effect that my colleague Hans von Storch calls a social construct.
Source: http://uppsalainitiativet.blogspot.se/2014/05/guest-post-by-lennart-bengtsson-my-view.html?m=1
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Simon says:
May 22, 2014 at 12:12 pm
cwon14 says:
May 22, 2014 at 9:31 am
“Knowingly or not, the use of the term “denier” in the climate war zone is anti-Semitic hate speech and should be labeled as such.”
Why is it then that Mr Monckton used it here not less than a week ago to denigrate the other side and it went unnoticed. I made the point then and I will make it now… either it is appropriate to use the term “denier” or it is not? You can’t have it both ways.
===============================================
Not certain who “us guys” are, but your likely answer is context. For instance you used the word in your comment. Monckton was likely making a simple point, that by pointing to every change
in weather, which has been happening for billions of years, as CO2 induced, the users of the
“denier” label, were themselves denying climate change. (a fair point)
I made a (long) comment on this, copied below. It is waiting for approval at that site. Since it was so long, it had to be posted in 2 parts, which are separated below with ++++++++++++++++++++
Thanks much Dr. Bengtsson,
I have been an operational meteorologist for 32 years, the last 2 decades, forecasting and observing global weather and how it effects crops and energy demand. I apply this in the commodities markets. I have studied climate for 15 years.
Of course the time frame is what separates weather and climate. All meteorologists depend on weather models. The equations that represent the physics of the atmosphere on weather modela are different in many ways than those used with climate models. However, I understand the physics of both types of models and why they both fail. Despite failing at times, weather models are extraordinarily useful. Their value is dependant on the meteorologist recognizing when they are failing………which happens on a regular basis. A meteorologist must be constantly dialing in updates to previous weather forecasts based on fresher/more recent data that becomes available on each run. Meteorologists have an appreciation for timely reconciliation of the initial state fed into models so it best represents the new reality of empirical data/observations, which gives the models “another chance” to provide better guidance than what was provided yesterday, or last week.
This is not the case with those that use global climate models. Even as global warming has stalled for well over a decade, instead of reconciliation with reality, a growing disparity has been allowed to take place. Models, with their upward temperature slope still effected by the global warming from the 1980’s/90’s are greatly diverging from observations since that time.
The reason global climate models are failing is that climate scientists and others refuse to make the adjustments in them that currently represent the theory of catastrophic anthropagenic global warming. To make them less sensitive would result in “more modest” vs catastrophic warming. This would completely change the message from “we need to act now” and “the science is settled” or “debate is over”.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Another big reason to not see, what I see as obvious, is the problem we humans have with subjectivity and bias.There is so much on the line…….political, ego, monetary and most importantly, human emotions related to cognitive bias.
Being baffled at why scientists, who are supposed to be objective, would be so subjective for years, has given me an opportunity to study this. Look at this list and note the numerous cognitive bias’s that you, me and all human beings have, including scientists.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
As a meteorologist, I can show you that strong to violent tornadoes in the US, peaked in the 1970’s(because of global cooling). http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/tornado/clim/EF3-EF5.png That tropical cyclone energy peaked in the 1990’s. http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/accumulated_cyclone_energy.asp?basin=gl Global warming is not causing extreme cold and snow as we were told…….after snow and extreme cold increased. The hottest and driest weather in the US was during the decade of the 1930’s, the Dust Bowl years. Super Storm Sandy was nothing unusual. The US drought of 2012, came after setting the record for the longest stretch in history, 24 years of NOT having a widespread drought. With the exception of heavy rain events, after 32 years of observing weather and also comparing it to historic weather maps/records that I have, I can say confidently that most extreme weather has NOT increased. I challenge somebody to show me how burning fossil fuels shows anything different.
Warming the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, as we did in the 80’s/90’s, decreased the meridional temperature gradient that provides energy for many of these extreme weather elements. However, if you didn’t already agree with me, it’s likely that your confirmation bias and framing as well as several other cognitive bias’s most of us have, will keep your brain from objectively embracing these facts.
Predicting the effects of elements on crop conditions and yields has provided me an opportunity to study the effects of CO2 on plants. To put it simply: One side is completely misrepresenting the tremendous benefits to our booming biosphere, vegetative health and world food production that increasing carbon dioxide has had on our world. http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/co2benefits/MonetaryBenefitsofRisingCO2onGlobalFoodProduction.pdf
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130708103521.htm
Why would this not be important to the discussion? The indisputable law of photosynthesis that we all learned in elementary school has not been repealed and replaced with a theory, which is failing to verify. Or has it?
Because the politicians sign the front of the checks nobody should expect any change in behavior by the scientists until we have politicians that won’t sign check for crap science. For that to happen we need to change the way we’ve been voting. That requires better education, and unfortunately the same politicians sign those checks, too. This needs to be a grass roots effort. That should be obvious.
STILL NO BENGTSSON ARTICLES WHATSOEVER ON major MSM, including BBC, tho BBC kindly placed a link to Readfearn’s latest diatribe on the results page of a search for Bengtsson articles, which only showed up a single result, a 2009 piece called “Cyclones not getting worse but could be heading to Britain, says study”:
23 May: Guardian: Graham Readfearn: The GWPF bemoans state of climate debate – while promoting antagonism
Nigel Lawson’s climate change sceptic group complains of ‘intolerance’ in climate science, but what of its own record?
Professor Lennart Bengtsson, a 79-year-old meteorologist from the University of Reading, had resigned from the foundation’s academic advisory council only a couple of weeks after joining.
According to Bengtsson, once news got out that he had joined the GWPF, colleagues and peers in the academic community put him under “enormous pressure” and one refused to co-author a science paper with him…
(ATTACKS Lennart Bengtsson, Vaclav Klaus, Cardinal George Pell, Prime Minister John Howard, Professor Nir Shaviv, the Cato Institute’s emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen and Professor William Happer, Professor Ian Plimer, Dr Robert Carter, Heartland Institute, Professor Richard Tol, Bjorn Lomborg)
But all this talk of McCarthyism and communists reminds me of a passage in the book Merchants of Doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.
The book explores the roots of science denial, tracing many of its earliest actors – some of which are still active –to a group driven by a fear of communism and a fanatical devotion to free markets.
“Evidently accepting that their ends justified their means, they embraced the tactics of their enemy, the very things they hated Soviet Communism for: its lies, its deceit, its denial of the very realities it had created.”
COMMENTS: Bluecloud: A brilliant analysis of the denial industry. (AND THE COMMENTS GO DOWNHILL ALL THE WAY)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2014/may/23/climate-mccarthyism-confected-outrage-checking-record-global-warming-policy-foundation
even if Der Spiegel gives more space than i would like to critics of Bengtsson in this extremely lengthy but reasonablly balanced piece, one must ask how is it New York Times (or Revkin at Dot Earth), Washington Post, or BBC/ABC Australia have not done a single report on the Bengtsson affair? it is truly extraordinary & further proof the MSM has lost almost all credibility:
23 May: Der Spiegel: A Heated Debate: Are Climate Scientists Being Forced to Toe the Line?
By Axel Bojanowski
After joining a controversial lobby group critical of climate change, meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson claims he was shunned by colleagues, leading him to quit. Some scientists complain pressure to conform to consensus opinion has become a serious hindrance in the field.
News that Lennart Bengtsson, the respected former director of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, had joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), sent shockwaves through the climate research community…
Gavin Schmidt a climatologist and climate modeler at NASA described the “alleged connection to McCarthy” as “ridiculous.” “As someone who has actually been threatened with criminal sanctions by a United States Senator only because of published science, I don’t quite see why Bengtsson’s total freedom to associate with anyone he wants — and let me be clear, he has this freedom — has in any way been compromised,” he said…
Bengtsson said in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE that he wanted to open up the climate change debate by joining GWPF. He said that in view of large gaps in knowledge, the pressure to reach a consensus in climate research “does not make sense”.
Nevertheless, by joining the political lobby group, Bengtsson opened himself up to criticism that he had taken a position inappropriate for a scientist of his stature…
University of Washington climatologist Eric Steig says the activities of the GWPF are more reminiscent of McCarthyism than Bengtsson’s case…
But even a recognized skeptical climate researcher Roger Pielke Jr., an environmental scientist at the University of Colorado, says the group uses science to cloak its political agenda. Pielke emphasizes, however, that as a lobbying group GWPF “has every right to advance whatever arguments it wants. It often focuses on stealth advocacy — hiding its politics in science — a strategy common across the climate issue, found on all ‘sides,’ and is pretty common across many issues.”
Von Storch agrees that other political camps, such as environmental groups, also use “stealth advocates” to influence scientific debate. Pielke elaborates, “In a democracy people will organize around all sorts of shared interests, as they should, and many will share values that I don’t. So what? Bengtsson’s justifications for associating with GWPF are perfectly legitimate. That he was pressured by his peers with social and other sanctions reflects the deeply politicized nature of this issue.” …
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-scientists-mixed-over-controversy-surrounding-respected-researcher-a-971033.html
‘Shut up,’ he explained.
As a result of chaos theory, weather and climate cannot be predicted, and how future climate will turn out will not be known until future is upon us. It would not help even if we knew the exact amount of greenhouse gases. Add to this the uncertainty about the future of the world. This should be clear to anyone, simply by moving back in time and contemplating what has unfolded from that viewpoint. As Daniel Boorstin put it: “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge”. What is perhaps most worrying is the increased tendency of pseudo-science in climate research. This is revealed through the bias in publication records towards only reporting results that support one climate hypothesis, while refraining from publishing results that deviate. –Lennart Bengtsson, UppsalaInitiativet, 21 May 2014
http://uppsalainitiativet.blogspot.se/2014/05/guest-post-by-lennart-bengtsson-my-view.html