I’ve been made privy to an email exchange with the editor of Physics Today regarding a rebuttal letter to a badly botched article by Spencer Weart that ignored a good portion of climate history. So far, editor Marty Hanna seems to be ignoring his own policy on right of reply for properly formatted and sourced letters. So, I’ve been asked to run it here. – Anthony
Letter to Editor Submission:
Reply to “Climate Change Impacts: The growth of understanding”
In his September 15 article in Physics Today, “Climate Change Impacts: The growth of understanding,” Spencer Weart presented a decidedly one-sided and incomplete history of the intersection of climate science and climate policy.[1] Since he refers dismissively to a publication (actually, a series of books under the title Climate Change Reconsidered [2]) that we contributed to, we have asked for this opportunity to present an opposing view. We are grateful for this opportunity to share our perspective with Physics Today readers.
First, we largely agree with Weart on several aspects of his narrative. Before the mid-1980s, very few climate scientists believed man-made climate change was a problem. But Weart fails to report that this non-alarmist “consensus” on the causes and consequences of climate change included nearly all the leading climate scientists in the world, including Roger Revelle, whom Weart mentions specifically. This informed dissent by many leading scientists continues to this day.[3, 4]
Most of the reports purporting to show a “consensus” beginning in the 1980s came from and continue to come from committees funded by government agencies tasked with finding a new problem to address, or by liberal foundations that have little or no scientific expertise.[5] These committees, as Weart writes, produce reports making increasingly bold and confident assertions about future climate impacts, but they invariably include statements “admitting deep scientific uncertainty.” The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) are replete with examples of this pattern.
Weart interprets this pattern as part of a “cautious approach” typical of committees seeking consensus, which may be correct. However, in the climate debate this practice has been exploited by politicians (such as Al Gore [6]), environmental groups (such as the Environmental Defence Fund [7]), and rent-seeking corporations in the renewable energy industry. These groups routinely quote alarming claims and predictions without acknowledging the deep doubts and scientific uncertainties that belie them. As a result, the public is misled concerning the quality and solidity of scientific research underlying the forecasts.
Weart alludes to “a serious controversy during the discussions leading to the IPCC’s initial report of 1990” but fails to cite any authors or publications that voiced these concerns. [8] And controversy didn’t end with the 1990 report, but has dogged every IPCC assessment since then. [9, 10] The criticism hasn’t come solely from conservatives or others outside the climate science community: the InterAcademy Council (IAC), the group created by the world’s national science academies to provide advice to international bodies, produced a blistering criticism of the IPCC’s procedures for recruiting authors, conducting peer-review, and presenting its conclusions. [11]
All this brings us to Weart’s reference to an unnamed “Heartland Institute publication” that, Weart says, “declared that ‘more carbon dioxide in the air would lead to more luxuriant crop growth and greater crop yields’ while taking no account of the likely heat waves and droughts.’ No careful study or hard analysis backed up such statements.”
Criticism of one’s work is a healthy and necessary part of scientific research, but dismissing a four-volume series totalling more than 3,000 pages of summaries of peer-reviewed climate science, with contributions by more than 50 scientists, with a single sentence and then failing even to reference the original reports is prejudicial and unfair to both authors and readers. All four volumes of the Climate Change Reconsidered series are available online (for free) and individual volumes in the series have been cited nearly 100 times in peer-reviewed articles. [12]
There is indeed “a major problem in communicating climate realities to the public,” but it is not the one Weart describes in his conclusion. It is that, starting in the 1980s, “consensus by committee” replaced real science in the climate debate and interest groups exploited that transition to turn a genuine scientific puzzle into a social and political movement. The results have been tragic for science as well as for the billions of people who now suffer adverse effects from public policies adopted at the height of this scandal.
Authors:
Joseph L. Bast, Heartland Institute
Robert M. Carter, Emeritus Research Fellow, Institute of Public Affairs, Melbourne
Laurence I. Gould, Past Chair (2004) New England Section of the American Physical Society
Craig D. Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Fred S. Singer, University of Virginia (Emeritus), Fellow of APS
Willie Soon, Independent Scientist
# # #
- Spencer Weart, “Climate Change Impacts: The growth of understanding,” Physics Today, September 2015, pp. 46-52.
- Craig Idso et al., Climate Change Reconsidered: The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (Chicago, IL: The Heartland Institute, 2008);Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (Chicago, IL: The Heartland Institute, 2011);Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (Chicago, IL: The Heartland Institute, 2013); Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts (Chicago, IL: The Heartland Institute, 2014); also, the Chinese Academy of Science translated into Chinese and published an abridged edition of the first two volumes in 2013.
- Lawrence Solomon, The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so (Richard Vigilante Books, 2008).
- S. Fred Singer, Roger Revelle and Chauncey Starr, “What To Do about Greenhouse Warming: Look Before You Leap,” Cosmos: A Journal of Emerging Issues,Vol. 5, No. 2, Summer 1992.
- Kristina Moore, et al., The Chain of Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA (Washington, DC: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works 2014).
- Marlo Lewis,CEI Congressional Briefing Paper: Al Gore’s Science Fiction (Washington, DC: Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2007)
- James B. Taylor, “Top 10 Global Warming Lies,” Environment & Climate News, July 27, 2015.
- Science and Environmental Policy Project, The Greenhouse Debate Continued: An Analysis and Critique of the IPCC Climate Assessment (San Francisco, CA: ICS Press, 1992).
- Frederick Seitz, “A major deception on global warming,” The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1996.
- Books and articles critical of the IPCC’s reports are too numerous to site. One of the earliest was S. Fred Singer, Hot Talk Cold Science(Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute, 1999). Particularly damning accounts include Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, “Hockey Sticks, Principal Components and Spurious Significance,” Geophysical Research Letters32, L03710; Edward Wegman, David W. Scott, and Yasmin H. Said, Ad Hoc Committee Report to the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce and to the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations on the Hockey-stick Global Climate Reconstructions (Washington, DC: U.S. House of Representatives, 2006); Donna Laframboise, The Delinquent Teenager who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert (Toronto, Canada: Ivy Avenue Press, 2012).
- Joseph L. Bast, “IPCC Admits Its Past Reports Were Junk,” American Thinker, July 16, 2012, http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/07/ipcc_admits_its_past_reports_were_junk.html.
- See www.climatechangereconsidered.orgfor all volumes in the Climate Change Reconsidered series in PDF and a list of academic citations.
My guess is this too will be stonewalled. The Warmist Cult repeatedly ignores any discussion that is contrary to their narrative. It is their modus operandi to keep everyone in the dark. The almost total control of MSM in support of AGW continues to ensure the masses will not have access to anything but their narrative as well.
Nothing accidental about this wither or the use of the word consensus. Back in the 1960s then sociology prof Amitai Etzioni created a scenario, with NSF financial support. on how education and those who “control a society’s symbol systems (sounds like the media to me) could guide a society towards collectivism and economic and political transformation through a manufactured “authentic consensus.” Within five years the World Order Models Project was launched with Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundation funding.
The CAGW hype by committee whatever the facts fits with what is laid out first by Etzioni, then the 1972 UN Conference in Oslo of the Human Environment, and then the WOMP publications. This is no theory because open declarations exist and it’s not really a conspiracy because it is out in the open. It does, however, consistently mirror Etzioni’s plans to implement a Third Way vision of societal guidance.
It’s on my radar because K-12 education was considered to be the key so that the control could be invisible and contextuating, instead of overt and prescriptive. Think of it as the same reason the MSM is not mentioning Hillary’s email the night of Benghazi that it was a terrorist attack. Mustn’t let facts interfere with the politically useful narrative.
Thanks, Robin. It sounds like fascism to me.
Compulsory taxpayer funded education (more properly indoctrination) is #10 in Marx’s 10 Pillars of Communism. Control education, control the populace.
Fascism is just liberalism with a healthy does of nationalism and even more racism.
Good one Mark (Old Soviet joke; “Communism is just a long road to capitalism.”)
Steve, public education is necessary for any popular form of government. You will always have the poor, and without access to public education, they will never be able to afford to teach their children beyond the extreme basics (after a a few generations maybe to read and add, but nothing more than day to day life). These people cannot vote or meaningfully participate in politics, so they become non-citizens, an appalling effect.
Don’t forget, it was the Massachussets puritans who first established universal public education. Not exactly a communist lot there.
You’re going off the deep end. Come back before you hit a cliff.
benofhouston, I recommend that you read the fascinating book, The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World’s Poorest People are Educating Themselves by James Tooley, and then reconsider your position. You might also look into John Taylor Gatto’s Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling.
Spencer Weart has his own book; not about climate change, which we all know happens, no matter what we do; but about global warming.
I believe it is called “The Dsicovery of Global Warming.” And we all know there have been periods of global warming, and global cooling, with the last warming interval being in the late last century. In the 21st century, there has been no global warming.
Physics Today, published a review of Weart’s book, by someone, who I believe has since passed on. There were some things in that review, which I thought needed a response, and I wrote a letter to Physics Today, in which I pointed out that when floating sea ice melts, the sea level will go down; not up.
The reason is that the latent heat required to melt the floating se ice, must come from the surrounding ocean water, rather than from the air, because the vast majority of that ice is under the surface, as is most of the surface area.
Since the ocean waters are salty, the density of the water increases constantly all the way down to the freezing point, so the volume (of the surrounding ocean water) diminishes, and the level must go down; not up.
Weart pooh poohed that in a response to my letter published by PT, and they would not give me the opportunity to reply to that.
My letter had contradicted nothing about any global warming information, in Weart’s book, it was a comment on the review of that book, which I thought was not balanced.
As a paying member of the American Institute of Physics (through the Optical Society of America), I thought that Physics Today would show less bias.
I agree with the criticism of Weart’s latest PT article by the authors of The NIPCC.
G
Bravo! They are now in the standard practice of breaking all rules, confident that any appeal will be met by more people breaking rules to side with them. For this reason, I say that, when the climate hoax eventually fails and people put governments in power that restore probity, these hoaxsters should be pursued to the full extent of the law and all the wealth lost to the world by their lying actions should be recovered from them. Those who have advocated violence (e.g. states putting people to death for “climate contrarianism”) should themselves be charged with violent crimes.
I second this idea… and third and fourth. It’s okay, I have enough karma points.
“…pursued to the full extent of the law …”
On this site and others, I have seen this sentiment more than a few times. Nothing such as this is going to happen. Once y’all understand that it won’t, then you can move on. Travel to the beat of a different drum.
I do think the people you want to have something done to are stupid and scum but neither are punishable offences. Think of a real law that might have been broken, in the sense of Al Capone and tax evasion.
Read this: The Preposterous Green Institute and the IPCC at:
Donna Laframboise
John F. Hultquist commented : “…“…pursued to the full extent of the law …” On this site and others, I have seen this sentiment more than a few times. Nothing such as this is going to happen.
+1 There are too many people, media oultlets, organizations (NGO and governmental) and too much money invested in AGW. Only another LIA could change the current trajectory of the AGW narrative. Even if that occurs the powers that promoted it will continue in the shadows as before. There will be no Nuremberg trials for the Warmist Cult.
Ron House, I am with you 100%. This crime is too big to be swept under the carpet.
John F.H., being dumb has never been an excuse to break the law. People have died under the existing policies which, at the very least, is manslaughter.
I used to think these promoters of CAGW were dumb, that they didn’t know, but over the years it’s become ever more clear that they know exactly what they are doing. They key players are haters of humanity and would show us no mercy. Letting them off to go their merry way and think up new plots against humanity is no solution. Shrugging off the deaths and the poverty and the hardships is no solution.
Whether it comes to trials and sentencing is something else again, I agree. It might not happen, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do our best to make it a reality.
It will be swept under the carpet. We won’t see Hansen, Mann, Gore or anybody else put into the stocks, so us peasants can pelt them with rotting fruit & veg, dead dogs & shit.
Too many sources of Government revenue are involved, too many Government jobs (All those positions that have the phrase “Climate Change” in their titles)
Adam, that’s not the point I’m making. I agree it’s highly unlikely that these animals will come to justice. My point is that we shouldn’t give up based on that assumption.
Self-delusion is not a crime but that is what most CAGW believers are suffering from. Unless you can do away with intellectual laziness, confirmation bias and ego, there will always be alarmists. Crime implies an understanding of right and wrong not present here.
Hi Dave, I’m not suggesting going after the true believers – it’s the scammers at the top of the pile, the key players, those who very deliberately work their lies with the intention to destroy society, not save the planet. In other words, the criminals, not the duped.
Good luck with that, South American countries are nowhere near as helpful to the Northern Hemisphere as they used to be in the late 1940’s.
Galileao must be turning in his grave, they’re baaack. On this day 12th April in 1633, chief inquisitor Father Vincenzo Maculano da Firenzuola, appointed by Pope Urban VIII,begins the inquisition of physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei. Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun, which was deemed heretical by the Catholic Church. Standard practice demanded that the accused be imprisoned and secluded during the trial. Make that the GREEN CHURCH
The “green church” is the “Church of the Omnipotent Greenhouse in Carbon”.
Believe or be chastised.
The Church of Carbontology
It was deemed bad science because Galileo could not prove it. It was also heretical. Galileo also disobeyed the papal order to stop publishing until he had proof. He went beyond disobeying and ridiculed those who did not agree with him, especially the pope. All in all, Galileo was not treated badly even though he was a rather nasty character himself.
Not especially the Pope, it was a Cardinal who was the object of his barbed comments. Pushed too far at a party one night, the Cardinal responded by instigating the charges. The Pope was more ‘ecumenical’.
“It was deemed bad science because Galileo could not prove it”
oddly enough the Church could not “prove” their thesis either. Of course they invoked their power of Argumentum ad baculum to maintain their position.
“Of course they invoked their power of Argumentum ad baculum to maintain their position.” Were they being ecumenical with the truth?
imoira, you write “All in all, Galileo was not treated badly even though he was a rather nasty character himself”. Very unfair, check the historic facts:
In June 1633, under formal threat of torture, Galileo was examined by the Inquisition. The next day he is sentenced to prison at the pleasure of the Inquisition.
In June 1633 Galileo was condemned by Pope Urban VIII to imprisonment for the rest of his life, then forced to recant. From December 1633 his house in Arcetri, Florence, served as his prison.
He died on January 8th, 1642.
See “The Galileo Project”, at http://galileo.rice.edu/
Andres Valencia
I’ve visited Galileo’s villa above Florence, now a conference center.
Nice views, very large; if that’s my prison, sign me up!
A suite at the Waldorf would still be hell if you were confined.
Better sign up for a lesson in common sense.
American Physical Society members comments on the web version of Weart’s screed have been quite critical. I liked two of the comments in particular:
“It is ironic that the author is a historian and yet so woefully ignorant of historical climates. Citing the California and recent Texas drouths and “superstorm Sandy” as evidence of climate change without mentioning even more extreme events within recent centuries shows a regrettable lack of perspective. Accepting the model projections of future global mean temperatures without justifying their assumed feedback processes just doesn’t pass muster as serious science. Surely physicists can find spokesmen with a better grasp of what is known and what is not.”
and
“Scientific consensus” is nothing more than an appeal to (presumed) authority. As such, scientific consensus seeks to substitute authority for evidence. If the observational evidence was at the 5 sigma level after being able unambiguously separate out any human contribution to the variations in climate (a non trivial task), then the evidence would speak for itself and there would not need for this ongoing debate. The claim that man-made CO2 production is causing AGW is relatively new, especially the part that claims that such a phenomena is almost entirely negative. As an aside, an entire industry has arisen claiming every type of negative effect imaginable due to purported AGW: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm all caused by a claimed global temperature rise of about 0.0085C per year. It is most probable that much of this is spurious correlation at best. The track record of the so-called scientific consensus of the day with regards to new phenomena is not particularly good. Perhaps no better than than the claims of psychics.”
As a physicist, I’ve never gotten that much out of Physics Today. Neither did Richard Feynman. He said “I never read your magazine. I don’t know why it is published, please take me off your mailing list”. That was 1966. It was no better in the 90s when I picked it up every now and then.
https://books.google.com/books?id=zDwx8nViavoC&pg=PA227&lpg=PA227&dq=physics+today+feynman&source=bl&ots=O0SRPi2UV2&sig=64agHvvdyOc3Jr3CQgV_XsU8Mls&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDsQ6AEwB2oVChMIvcPrzqreyAIVSDUmCh1zygLb#v=onepage&q=physics%20today%20feynman&f=false
a Physic is another term for an enema.
Oddly, that was more or less the reason I stopped subscribing in the early 1990s.
Weart is a historian and so his article is really an article on history and not science. In that light I think he miss-read a very important event in the history of climatechangism and that was its transformation from a scientific curiosity (Revelle) to an activist movement of fear mongering (Hansen) That change coincides with the Montreal Protocol. The successful movement against HFC based on Rowland-Molina and the fear of skin cancer epidemics and the dangerous effects of UV-B on all life-forms emboldened radical environmentalism to go for a bigger prize in which CO2 would serve as a proxy for all human activity in the modern era. This point in history was the turning point for climate change activism.
And yet, the Montreal Protocol itself is flawed because the data now show that (1) ozone depletion was not global but highly localized over the South Pole, and (2) the premature recovery of ozone over the South Pole 20 years ahead of the Rowland-Molina timetable indicates that it is a natural cycle. We neither depleted it with HFC emissions nor saved it by banning HFC emissions. The Montreal Protocol was just a benign innovation except for the huge costs it imposed on the refrigeration industry and the lucrative bureaucracy it helped to create at the United Nations.
Here are the ozone data showing the locality of its depletion and the early recovery.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2612810
Chaam Jamal commented: “.. The successful movement against HFC ….. This point in history was the turning point for climate change activism.”
How about DDT…the precursor to HFC ban that a couple of years ago was “OK’d” for use by the WHO after studies proved it more beneficial than harmful.
At the time DDT was banned in the US by the first EPA administrator, William Ruckelshaus. He over-ruled the judge, Edmund Sweeney, tasked with evaluating the evidence that DDT was harmful and banned DDT in the US with extremely weak evidence that it caused any harm. The eventual banning of DDT for malaria control has resulted in well over 45million deaths and over 6billion people infected with malaria. Even now, the limited use of DDT to simply spray mosquito netting used for sleeping tents is being fought by environmental groups even though it has proved very helpful in reducing malaria infections.
“Chaam Jamal
October 24, 2015 at 7:29 pm
data now show that (1) ozone depletion was not global but highly localized over the South Pole”
And not only was it localised to the south pole, it was caused by the release of CFC’s and HFC’s in the northern hemisphere if my memory serves. It was pure bunkum then as it is now.
Dow Chemical benefited handsomely with the ban on Freon from what I have read.
Righ now the ozone hole is bigger than ever.
The patent on freon was about to expire. Now the world is using a new chemical who’s patent, also owned by DOW has many decades left on it.
It was the Freon-12 patent that expired. Patents don’t last for “many decades”.
The life of a Patent used to be 17 years. It might be now 20 years since the USA changed to the international patent system (first to file) from its old (first to invent) system.
Now you just have to beat the other guy (who may be the inventor) to the patent office. Also I believe you have to pay fees regularly to keep your patent in force.
Copyright holders get much better protection; something like the life of the “artist” plus 50 years, and you don’t have to do much but declare your work top be copyrighted.
The ban on “Freon” type propellants, is what led to the crappy foam deposited on the Space shuttle hydrogen tank, which allowed a large chuck to break off, and damage the shuttle so it blew up on re-entry.
g
The important point here is–the truth will not come out until after the laws & regulations are in place. And once in place they will remain forever. It isn’t just HFC, consider all the “nutritional” regulations that have turned out to be based on garbage science. The CO2 laws and regs will be written, the economy will shrink, and new “social” problems will be created to off set the economic disaster. Resistance is futile; the situation is hopeless.
It was a CFC ban, HFCs are what replaced the CFCs.
I agree, but I think the architects of the IPCC, Maurice Strong and others, were the origins of the present day climate establishment, and there aim was, and still is, to destroy capitalism and western developed economies, by crippling the energy supply (fossil fuels) by shutting them down as drastically as possible, or by getting them to transfer billions of dollars to developing nations, for so-called ” mitigation of climate damage” to the developing nations. The environmental movement was happy to join in, because they have an anti-human philospophy and believe human activity and industry is destroying Nature. Here’s hoping cooler heads prevail at the Paris climate talks in December.
Cooler heads? In Paris? In December? Now that’s punny!
Strong was into sustainability first. Now sustainability and climate change have joined forces and become a much more potent force.
The problem with the ozone “holes” is they’re over the poles, where the ozone is always thinner due to both the lesser amount of solar energy (to create ozone) and the magnetic field guiding charged particles from the Sun to smack into the upper atmosphere.
So these “holes” are over the poles, where nobody lives, except for a few freezing scientists in Antarctica. Solar influx, of all wavelengths of the EM spectrum emitted by the Sun, is less at the surface in the polar regions due to the longer distance of atmosphere the radiation must pass through. The atmosphere in the higher latitudes is like the glacis of a battle tank. It’s tilted back at a steep angle so that a projectile attempting to pierce it has a thicker amount of armor to penetrate, so thinner armor can be used than if it was vertical.
When you won’t print Rivelle and Singer on CO2 and global warming you’re a sorry tool.
The political bias of the American Physical Society to the Climate Change Debate has been an embarrassment to physicists, and I have been tempted to resign my (40 year) membership as a result The committee members who judge position statements and the editors who judge responses such as the one above are not representing the membership, and should be stripped of their positions in APS, and perhaps of their credentials as scientists as well.
Can you try to get on one of the committees? If APS changes its position, even a little, people might start to listen
I am very busy with real work (none of it to do with climate). My experience has been that people who volunteer for these committees are academics with time on their hands. I am also far too blunt to get along with political/committee types.
Well, why don’t you resign. You can join the newly formed Geoethics group, Prague, 17 Oct. This year. More information to be released soon.
There seems to be a fairly large number of physicists disenchanted with the APS. have you guys ever thought of getting together and starting a something like the Real Physics in Science Society??
Perhaps “Scientific Physics” since APS seems determined to head in the direction of politics, rather than science.
What’s spectacular is the shamelessness of the deceivers pushing ( for a good fee) the climate fear scenarios. The Mexican hurricane was not the most powerful ever. Perhaps the most using current techniques but certainly not the most powerful ever
Check, for instance, Camille of 1969. But it’s not simply the shamelessness of the fear mongers. It is the cowardice and ignorance with which they flee honestly discussing, much less defending, their claims.
Yes, that was the hope of the Warmistas and widely spread by the pres – biggest hurricane EVAH. But, I thought to myself, it’s only a category 5.
And it fizzled! Ha!. Suddenly no more stories of the biggest hurricane ever. It never existed in print or reality.
It wasn’t even the most powerful ever recorded in the Pacific, it was merely the most powerful ever recorded in that section of the Pacific.
PS: Recorded only goes back a few decades.
Typhoon Tip. 1979. Gained size up to about 3,000 miles diameter, then rapidly diminished before making landfall. All of Asia went *whew*! Peak winds were 190 MPH. The smallest hurricane force cyclonic storm on record was Cyclone Tracy that destroyed or damaged 70% of the buildings in Darwin, Australia in 1974. Peak winds of 150 MPH. The smallest cyclonic storm on record was Marco in 2002, it did not reach hurricane force with top wind speed of only 65 MPH. Much was made of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season but the 1979 Pacific typhoon season was rather busy, with 23 total storms. 13 of them typhoons and 4 super typhoons. The highest number of storms in the west Pacific (north of the equator and west of the date line) was all the way back in 1964.
Global Warming, falling down on the storm causing job in the Pacific since 1964.
Mark, not even at the same location The 1959 storm track was almost identical hit the same Sierra Madre mountains, and had ground recorded wind speeds of 160 miles per hour that ripped palm trees to the ground 40 miles inland. There are no records of the storms maximum strength, but it killed about 1400 people and did far greater damage to the land vegetation.
Patricia may have been the most severe hurricane in the western hemisphere since modern records began, but the “Great Miami hurricane of 1926” was certainly a close second. I remember my father telling me of his experiences in the ’26 hurricane some 30 years later.
The weather bureau records show a minimum central pressure in Miami of 27.54 inches of mercury. If I did the conversion right, this is 933 millibars. The landfall central pressure for Patricia was apparently 920 millibars.
The maximum wind speed of the 1926 hurricane was estimated to be between 140 and 150 mph by the weather bureau. It was estimated because the anemometer the weather bureau was using on Miami Beach blew away after recording 128 mph. The maximum wind speed on land fall for Patricia was apparently 165 mph.
The diameter for the area of hurricane force winds for Patricia was small around 50 miles, while the 1926 hurricane was apparently much larger in diameter.
See:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mfl/?n=miami_hurricane
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_Miami_hurricane
. . .I wonder how much money they have invested in ” Green Energy ” ??
It’s not just money invested, it’s also careers.
If the global warming scare were to fade away, so would most of their careers.
they would have to look for honest work.
We’ve long been watching the society’s descent into the abyss – since at least the courage of Hal Lewis. Yet little has changed – because expressions of dissatisfaction have fallen on deaf ears.
The time for complaining has passed.
If APS membership truly wants to salvage its integrity, it has an effective option: Withdraw en masse and form a new APS – one that faithfully represents the priniples of physics and its membership. The cadre of current leadership would then be left to represent what it deserves: a chamber of echoes (along with their financial support).
While that’s an option, the best approach would be to get those people currently in charge out. Here’s the reason why : simply starting a new organization will expose you to all of the problems of the former, and then some. the same people who took over will use the same techniques to acquire power as before. It takes dedicated individuals with time and resources to correct this imbalance. The reward of having the thanks of the membership is extremely gratifying. Because everybody knows, few know what to do. It is difficult.
Political infighting amongst those who share the same views will also take its toll. In some quarters squabbling is taking place, as CAGW is looking a whole lot less certain than in the heady days after the 1997/98 run up in temperatures, about who gets credit for this or that. I may not be held high, or at all, carried on the shoulders of the villagers, but if any body can drive a wooden stake through these vampires, they deserve our thanks and admiration. (or drag them out into the sunlight)
You’ll probably get more of a reaction if you stopped day-time TV, Oprah, Dr. Phil and sports…sort of like a nouveau revolution n’est pas?
Why would you care? If people are distorting information for political purposes, which is what communist do, well… anyway binge watching is addicting and much more entertaining than the dry stuff smelly books, they give me a headache, of climate research. And then there is just the downright fun of being called various names and being associated with large petro/coal companies… how I wish… send me some cash please, or just plain crazy, have a problem with papal authority, after he would know, Or Something. No greater honor than to walk in a room than to have your peers stand and applaud as you walk in. je suis amie par le peu savent, et deteste par ceux qui ne la font pas
The sad truth is that only a small minority of physicists have taken the trouble to independently inform themselves of the errors of CAGW. Most assume that the mainstream views of climate alarmists are correct and assume that it would be both difficult and a waste of time to do their own assessments. The APS leadership ought to be much better informed before offering any opinions about climate, but it likely does reflect the views of the majority of APS members.
Given that CAGW is at bottom a political/ideological issue and not a scientific one, the only way to change the leadership of an organization like the APS is for committed skeptics to lead a revolution from within. Sound out the membership and see who is willing to participate.
/Mr Lynn
What does “liberal foundations” mean?
It means to you whatever you wish it to mean. To me, it is any organization that exists on the left side of the political spectrum (socialism, ordered society, ants and bees kind of thing, elite telling proles what to do and what to think and so on) that calls itself a “foundation”.
As grouping into foundations for social action is almost by definition a groupthink/socialist/elite-proletariat symbiotic thing, it is nearly a redundancy to write “liberal foundations”. Fortunately a few non-leftwing foundations exist who appear to have considerable influence (at least among liberal foundations).
Maybe what is needed is a foundation of data integrity that calls out shoddy data and methods.
I would imagine the thought of something like that would make a few in the green movements sweat a bit.
It should but it wouldn’t. They know the game and they wouldn’t break a sweat beating it. It’s not about data integrity. It’s raw politics.
In American English, “liberal” means “illiberal”. Examples of top “liberal foundations” are the Ford Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation or the Heinz Endowments.You will also notice that many of these leftist organizations of today were originally created by non-leftists.
Just because they were rich, doesn’t mean they weren’t liberals. Most of the social elite were big backers of fascism prior to the war. They also backed eugenics.
The idea that they could use govt to reform and perfect society has always been fascinating to the powerful.
I agree, Mark. I’m familiar with the history of American Progressivism and the role of many industrialists. I should have written:
“… that many of these leftist organizations of today were originally created by the wealth of non-leftists.”
The very non-progressive preamble of the will of Henry J. Heinz:
“I desire to set forth, at the very beginning of this Will, as the most important item in it, a confession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior.”
Foundations were created in the U.S. to avoid inheritance taxes. You can leave your money to a foundation or have the government take most of it. Now you can setup a foundation and pretty much do as you please with the funds.
And environmental and such groups have learned how to get foundation money. Maybe by getting people onto foundation boards or as CEOs?
they should publish your response, Anthony.
I don’t see the CAGW-funding foundations as “left”; same goes for the so-called “greens”, CAGW NGOs and the MSM that almost universally pushes the CAGW scam. what I do know is they are all playing a part in condemning the average punter in the developed and developing world to an unnecessarily exensive energy future, on the basis of bad science.
here are the ***winners.
click on “Read more” to get the listing below. note the US$3,000 it costs to purchase the 108-page report:
July 2015: Research and Markets: Clean Technology Market in Developing Countries 2015-2019
Clean technologies include utilization of renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal, as well as low-carbon fuels; water management and recycling technologies; waste management techniques; and environmentally friendly buildings and transportation. The concept of clean technology is attracting the attention of governments, private investors, and businesses in both developed and developing countries worldwide…
The report also includes a discussion on the key vendors operating in this market.
***Key vendors
– Novozymes
– Siemens Water Technologies
– Suez Environment
– Suzlon Energy
– Syntec Biofuels
– Toyota Motors
– Trina Solar
– Vestas Wind Energy Systems
– Yingli Green Energy Holdings
***Other prominent vendors
– AESE
– Alstom
– Dupont
– Enercon
– First Solar
– Gamesa Corp Technologica
– GE Energy
– LanzaTech NZ
– Panasonic
– Rumpke Consolidated Companies
– Solazyme
– SunPower
– Veolia Environnment
– Waste Management
Market driver
– Global warming and climatic changes
– For a full, detailed list, view our report (Single User PDF, 108 pages, USD3,000)
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/h4zrsd/clean_technology
What a scam !!!
I thought Dupont held the patent on freon.
I think it was expiring.
GDF Suez has put 22 of it fossil fuel power stations in North America up for sale as they want to focus on renewable power and power services as their new focus.
Low Carbon Fuels- gales of laughter. There are NO low carbon fuels available for wide use for the very good reason that hydrocarbons are the most energy dense fuels, besides being relatively safe and relatively easy to handle. The only sort-of available fuel that produces less CO2 is liquid methane, and to some degree liquid propane. Very difficult to handle and much less safe and make very destructive bombs- see the CBU series of propane-based weapons. They are probably the most powerful non-nuclear bombs. Terrorists in the mideast have also used these fuel air explosives as car bombs and IED’s.
The problem was that academics started to believe their own PR – that they were somehow omniscient and could understand any issue just by modelling it using a computer.
That approach was wrong … and slowly and surely Gaia is showing that far from understanding the climate, they know almost nothing about how the climate actually works.
Well done Anthony for publishing this letter, and to the authors first for the writing of it, and second for their decision to make it public. I daresay Mr Hanna is aware of the pressure that editors can get if they step out of line on the efforts to scare people about their carbon dioxide, but his action in suppressing this reasonable, rational, and highly appropriate letter is a now a very visible blot on his copybook, and on the reputation of Physics Today. That much should be clear to fair-minded observers, whichever ‘side’ of the ‘debate’ they happen to be on.
My comment above appeared about 7am pdt.
[Reply: “Anthony” is one of the words that puts a comment into ,oderation until a mod can read and approve it. Some of us are asleep at 2:30 am. Sorry for the delay. ~mod.]
@Jeff
..
The political bias of the American Physical Society to the Climate Change Debate has been an embarrassment to physicists, and I have been tempted to resign my (40 year) membership as a result …
While you remain in the APS you are effectively supporting it….
I agree. I would have left out the word effectively.
Unfortunately the IOP do not even bother to ask their members about what should be its position! They have never canvassed people about the validity of CAGW. It is pretty appaling.
..I’ve been made privy to an email exchange with the editor of Physics Today regarding a rebuttal letter…
Of much greater interest would be some information about the email exchange. What did the editor say? How is he breaching his own guidelines?
APS is so deep in the tank for CAGW that you can kiss that letter goodbye. It’s pretty frustrating to read the climate nonsense that shows up on a fairly regular basis in Physics Today. It’s only a matter of time until they have a cover article by those noted researchers Al Gore and Bill Nye the Carbon Footprint Guy.
“Heartland Institute publication” that, Weart says, “declared that ‘more carbon dioxide in the air would lead to more luxuriant crop growth and greater crop yields’ while taking no account of the likely heat waves and droughts.’
The first assertion (CO2) is observable fact. The “drought and heatwaves” are highly speculative theories with little evidence.
It is a sad state of science when fact is dismissed while wild speculation is considered fact
The wild speculation and claims about increased drought, hurricanes and tornadoes have proven to be false. And their models have been so wrong for so long, someone will probably start recalling old thermometers and forcing everyone to use new ones that are “calibrated” to the models.
My faith in this science is so low now that I actually distrust the claims that Hurricane Patricia was a category 5. They hype was certainly category 5, but the hurricane itself? Meh.
Speak of the Devil… In this CNN report, they cite “some scientists” who argue that the hurricane scale needs to be extended out to categories 6 and 7.
This reminds me of a previous WUWT article that showed how alarmists altered the color pallets on weather maps to make much of the US appear to be burning during the summer. Cool colors were squeezed out in favor of warm ones.
This is all pure propaganda.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/24/opinions/sobel-forecasting-category-7-hurricane/index.html
Coloring the weather maps:
http://www.john-daly.com/USGCRP/USGCRP_Animate.gif
Source:
http://www.john-daly.com/USGCRP/index.htm
With media overrun by climate change fear mongers like Eric Holthaus who recently wrote an article in Slate with this click-bait headline, “It’s Undeniable: Climate Change Made Hurricane Patricia Worse”, it is an uphill battle. The only thing clearly undeniable is that Eric is a climate brimstone and fire evangelist looking to comfort the converted and recruit the naive and fearful.
Actual journalism is on life support so biased speculation rolls down the hill of ignorance effortlessly, it is literally an uphill battle for facts, common sense and reason.
Category 5 winds are 155 MPH and over. The reason for stopping at category 5 is because winds over 155 mph are irrelevant. 155 MPH winds cause the same damage as 200 mph winds. At that point we are measuring for sport and not for meaning.
We might as well be measuring how much worse to drive a car off a 1,500 meter cliff instead of a 1,000 meter cliff.
People sometimes ask how on earth people could have allowed and even voted for the Nazi party;’s rise to power in the 1930s
I think we can now see exactly how it happened. It was in too many peoples interest, and too many people simply didn’t want to stand up and be counted Stygian a movement that had acquired serious momentum, and had such unpleasant consequences if you opposed it.
Turning the other cheek of tolerance to bullies is all very well, but in the end, you have to stop.
JF mentions Hal Lewis’ admirable resignation from the APS because of their ridiculous posturing about CAGW.
Most of us here would have already read Hal’s outstanding resignation letter, but for any new visitors to WUWT, here it is:
Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).
Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:
1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate
2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.
3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.
4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.
6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?
I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)
the only bit of that i do not understand is why anyone would want to remain friends with people who put money above principles ?
Test comment. My apologies, but many of comments seem to disappear, or take many hours before they appear. I guess they are being sent to Spam, and after that it all depends on whether a moderator has the time or patience to work through than bin in case anything deserves to be retrieved. Submitted 5:44 am PDT.
The above appeared c. 7am pdt
“Climate Change Impacts: The growth of understanding”
Even the title is a lie. Should be called ” Climate Change Lysenkoism: The Growth of the Climatist Industry”.
It’s sad to see so many scientists and scientific journals abandon the rules of the Scientific Method in favor of political agendas, grant grubbing, intimidation, political correctness, corruption and political consensus.
Once the CAGW scam is officially tossed on the trash heap of failed ideas, the blowback against Leftists’ corruption of science will hopefully be addressed.
Unfortunately, the longer the disconfirmed CAGW legacy continues, the more entrenced the corruption becomes, and the more difficult it will become to restore science’s integrity.
“perhaps of their credentials as scientists as well.”
Bwhahahahahahahahhahahhaaa. Thanks. I needed a good laugh after a long night at work. There is no such animal as a climate scientist.
The true temperature control of Earth :
https://youtu.be/_3jXCo3BVuA
Guessing about the future. It’s a growth industry.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
–
If you read Physics Today, you should read this. Heck, you should just read this.
The Physics Today Board is thoroughly corrupt, as anyone can see. But the way to change things is to do it from within. Resignation is a one-time event, and truthfully, they are glad that people like Hal Lewis are out fo their hair.
Hold their feet to the fire! Attend meetings, make noise. Talk to other members. Especially, write letters to newspapers and under online articles.
That’s how the current gang got in there. Replace them!
The polar vortex attacks in the Rockies.
http://pl.tinypic.com/view.php?pic=30iutyp&s=8#.Vi0D4vkvfIU
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-124.58,58.27,455
Recommended book: “To the Last Breath”, by Francis Slakey.
http://www.amazon.com/To-Last-Breath-Memoir-Extremes/dp/1501233963
Slake tells a good story. It’s the man’s equivalent to Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Flawed human finds redemption as the result of outside adventures. Hers took a summer, his took a decade and lots of travel through the world’s problem areas.
Flawed here means extreme jerk, not even in the same category as Mann. Redemption means that he now teaches students how to be activists. He is the APS Assoc Director Public Affairs. He is a prof at Georgetown University “specializing in energy and security policy”.
“To the Last Breath” is not about Global Warming, that only gets one brief mention, but it is a good insight.
Skeptics tend to think that the idea “CO2 is the climate control knob” is overstated. But look at it from the other side — if you want to reduce the temperature of the climate, CO2 is the ONLY control knob. So that’s why they are so obsessed with CO2!
The Sun,clouds and Cosmic Rays are the control knobs, we just don’t control them !!!
In 2015, solar activity was high.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=24&startmonth=09&startyear=2012&starttime=00%3A00&endday=24&endmonth=10&endyear=2015&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on
You got the point. I left out a few words. CO2 is the only climate control knob we have. And even that one is very hard to use and probably ineffective.
Hey Ren below, are you reading that chart upside down ????? Sure looks like a drop to me !!!
Read inversely to the solar wind.
To the pessimists above — nothing can be done; too corrupt; too many of them; infiltrated every nook and cranny of our society; lawlessness everywhere, no hope — (markl, Adam Gallon and others): Did anyone, I ask, anyone, foresee the implosion of the Soviet Union??? As a historian, and one who has always been watching for counter-indications to the accepted wisdom — whether from “opponents” or from “myself” (my world perspective), I was gobsmacked. And I think everyone else was too, including the U.S. CIA, the FBI, the military, etc. The Soviet Union was an immovable, inevitable force in the world (different from the traditional Russian Empire). Its corruption, which included siphoning every bit of productivity from all of its satellites for elite uses, left it rotting from within. No one could see the rot.
Today, thanks to WUWT, and a large number of other blogs, (our new Fourth Estate – investigative reporting/journalism) for helping a large, international readership understand who the leaders and enablers and sources of today’s ROT are. Feet to the fire. Keep hope alive. They WILL misstep because they are rotten in/on every measure!
I met a retired CIA guy at a social meal, and asked him if he or his colleagues had seen the fall coming of the Soviet Union. His only answer was a slow shake of his head.
As I recall, there were at least there books published that predicted, or at least warned f , the imminent fall of the Soviet Union. This was discussed in a review of the books in some newspaper I specifically recall reading, maybe the New York Times. I cannot recall the author’s names, but at least one was a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor that had been assigned to the Moscow beat. In any event, the tone of the review was that the writers seemed to be knowledgeable, but their opinions should be dismissed as obviously unrealistic. And in fact they were. But, from the standpoint of this article, it should be noted that, like the scientists that should have uncovered the global warming delusion/hoax, the CIA and other intelligence folks that should have foreseen the fall the the USSR had no doubt a powerful incentive not to see it, as the “Soviet threat” was a terrific source of funding for their agencies and no doubt very beneficial to their personal careers.
Do I understand you correctly that the proper defense is to “don’t worry be happy” and some where down the road the Warmist Cult will collapse from within and we will be proven right…..using the old Soviet Union as the example? I was merely commenting on the outcome of the letter. This forum will be the only presentation of it and it will go nowhere. I appreciate and agree with it but the reality is it’s only a warm fuzzy for people that read it that are skeptics. We need to challenge the notion that it’s not OK to deny skeptic voice in AGW. It’s being rammed down everyone’s throat and no one has been able to start the debate that never happened. Free Speech anyone?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was extremely biased from the very beginning. This should be evident from the: Report of the second session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 28June1989. https://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session02/second-session-report.pdf
These are just a few of many very revealing quotes in the document:
“In welcoming the delegates to the UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) Headquarters … The Executive Director of UNEP, hailed the fruitful alliance between WMO (World Meteorological Organization) and UNEP. The firm commitment of prof. Obasi, the Secretary-General of WMO, coupled with the determination of UNEP leadership, has resulted in a partnership which is helping to unify the scientific and policy-making communities of the world to lay the foundation for effective, realistic and equitable action on climate change.”
…
“The Executive director stated that the impacts of climate change and global warming would have serious consequences for humanity. In Egypt alone, global warming could flood much of the Nile Delta and Drown 70 centuries of civilization in less than one, and could inundate one fifth of the nations arable land.”
…
“It would be desirable for the Panel´s report to be ready by august 1990 for presentation to the Second World Climate Conference and to the United Nations General Assembly. It should be born in mind that both the governing council of UNEP and the executive Council of WMO expected the first report of IPCC to form the basis for international negotiations on a global convention on climate change. The report can also play a valuable guiding role for the large number of conferences, meetings and symposia on climate change being held all over the world. For all of these reasons, the report should be completed in good time.”
…
“The issuance of the report would only be the beginning of a far more arduous task. To tackle the problem of climate warming effectively, radical changes would be necessary in international relations, trade, technology transfer, and bilateral and multilateral strategies. The panel´s continued work would be the only guarantee of the concerted response to the global threat of climate change”
…
“In his opening remarks , Prof. Bolin said that the primary objective of IPCC, in making its first assessment, is to produce a document which could provide guidelines for the formulation of global policy and which would enable the nations of the world to contribute to this task”
…
“IPCC´s first report will contain the 20-page summaries for policy-makers to be produced by the working groups and an overall integrated summary of these placed in perspective. Professor Bolin suggested that the integrated summary be written by a drafting group consisting of the officers of IPCC and the chairmen of the Working Groups. He asked that this plan of his be enforced by the panel.”
…
“The panel invited interested UN organizations, regional or global intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and private institutions that wish to to contribute in the matter, to collaborate with appropriate analyses. …. The panel invited the contribution from these organizations in order that its own work may be improved.”
Imagine the pressure to conform with the prejudice of the leaders.
United Nations Environmental Program and World Meteorological Organization created Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC is by no means an independent scientific body. This should also be evident from the Principles Governing the Works by IPCC:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf
IPCC need to be abolished – it is not an independent scientific body – IPCC is a biased beast.
Here’s my comment pending on Physics Today :
My mantra wrt this horrendously destructive nonscience is : SHOW US YOUR EQUATIONS .
The AGW anti-carbon-based-life zealots never have because they can’t . They can’t even point you to the simple equation for the equilibrium temperature of a uniformly colored ball irradiated with an arbitrary spectrum . Hint : it’s T such that
dot[ sourceSpectrum ; objSpectrum ] = dot[ objSpectrum ; Planck[ T ] ]
Don’t believe me , show us your experiment .
The Divergence Theorem demands that the interior of the ball hve the same mean temperature ( energy density ) as that calculated for its surface unless it has internal sources or sinks of heat .
Just these 2 quantitative considerations Show James Hansen’s claim that Venus’s extreme surface temperature , 2.25 times that of a gray ( flat spectrum ) ball in orbit next to it is due to some spectral , “greenhouse effect” is quantitatively impossible .
So what asymmetric centripetal force can explain why the bottoms of atmospheres are warmer than the value computed from their spectrum as seen from the outside ?
It’s GRAVITY .
This obvious answer appears to have been generally recognized before this impossible spectral hypothesis captured the political mind . A blogger who goes by the name HockeySchtick has run the rather easy to derive equations and find they agree with NASA’s 737K value for Venus’s surface temperature within 2% . In considering these calculations Alan Guth’s observation that gravity calculates as a negative energy simplifies understanding that is is the total energy , thermal and gravitational , which must satisfy the demands of the Divergence Theorem .
The reason you will never see a quantitative , experimentally testable , equation for the asserted spectral 33K “greenhouse” effect is that if it were true , we could construct a perpetual heat engine by constructing an adiabatic tube ( make it horizontal to be orthogonal to gravity ) with a cap of some spectrum at one end , and a stack of filters of some spectra to their specification between it and a heat source of some spectrum . Actually , the stack of filters could be collapsed to one . Were some filter able to “trap” heat on the side away from the source , we could tap that energy in excess of the input and could get rid of all those aesthetically and environmentally destructive wind mills and hectares covered with uneconomic solar collectors .
It’s time to end the unique retardation of politicized branch of applied physics and insist that those making claims show us their quantitative physical equations .
Bob Armstrong — http://CoSy.com —
Poor Spencer Weart!!! One can only ask – what was his state of mind when he wrote that article in Physics Today? How could his article have overlooked so much important research? Was he really trying to be objective or was he just trying to frame an article to support an agenda? How could Spencer Weart have demonstrated so much incompetence in writing his article?
I guess ‘Physics’ aint what it used to be!
On October 5, 2009, President Obama issued an executive order, FEDERAL LEADERSHIP IN ENVIRONMENTAL, ENERGY, AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE, that showed his policies toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the rest of his term in office. The executive order is 15 pages, divided into 20 sections that provide strict guidance for all agencies in the executive branch and their interactions with outside organizations. The federal government controls more money than any other organization. Physics Today is following the money. They won’t do anything to jeopardize that position.
James H. Rust, professor of nuclear engineering
Where is the commentary in the comments in the link? I will place a link there.
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/article/68/9/10.1063/PT.3.2914
oh the anti science cult is pissed that science doesn’t take them serious.
Question for the wind physics people, what would the highest *possible* wind speed be on Mars? I did some searching for data and some math, which came up with a Martian wind speed of 666 MPH to equal the low end of the Earthly hurricane force scale at 74 MPH. That’s significantly faster than the speed of sound in the Martian atmosphere. (In other words, The Martian blew the science big time on the wind force.) Is that wind velocity, or higher, possible on Mars?
A comment from the link:
“The history that Spencer Weart lays out is a history of committees and politics, not a history of science…”
Game. Set. Match.
The comments at PhysicsToday for his article are very heartening. They are based in truth, science, transparency and reason.
The two comments defending the author are very telling, short and void of science and almost pure ad hominem.