What Climate Consensus?
Peter C Glover
We see the headlines almost daily. “Global warming: passing the tipping
point” (The Independent, February 11, 2006), “Climate change a bigger
security threat than terrorism” (The Guardian, June 12, 2006) and “Sea rise
could be catastrophic” (BBC News, March 23, 2006). Anyone familiar with
the flow of media reports might easily conclude from all the media hype that
man-made global warming or climate change is established science-fact. Yet
nothing could be further from the truth. Which begs the question: why, in the
face of the highly speculative and selective nature of climate science, do
media reports assume there is a consensual view – and collude with it in
articulating a wholesale return of conjecture?
For those of us who have taken the trouble to study the issue and the
media coverage of it, the shrillness of the mainstream media’s approach
appears to owe more to scaremongering than to good investigative reporting
– on an issue that could waste billions if the climate dissenters are correct.
The fuss over global warming and climate-change revolves around one basic
fact: that the world has undergone a one-degree warming of the ambient
atmosphere over recent decades. And there is no doubt that a number of key
scientists subscribe to the basic premise that global warming is primarily due
to man’s activities and that, unless man cleans up his act, will continue on an
upward-linear warming trajectory for the next 100 years. These include Sir
David King, chief adviser to the UK Government, Dr James Hansen, director
of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science, and Dr Michael Mann,
director of the Earth System Science Centre. No one questions that the
media’s reporting of these scientists is perfectly valid. But there are many
other eminent scientists who we are rarely hearing from.
As Richard S Lindzen and Alfred P Sloan, professor of atmospheric
science at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, asked in
the The Wall Street Journal in April of this year: “How can a barely discernible,
one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late
19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather
catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future
catastrophes?”
Lindzen believes: “The answer has much to do with misunderstanding
the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a
triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are
hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus the political stakes for
policy makers provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to
increase the political stakes. After all, who puts the money into science –
whether for AIDS, or space, or climate – where there is nothing really
alarming?” And he detects “a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy.
Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds
disappear, their work derided, and themselves libelled as industry stooges,
scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain
credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their
basis… what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute
support for alarm nor establish man’s responsibility for the small amount of
warming that has occurred”. Lindzen has also drawn attention to what he
sees as “the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles
submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At
Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest”.
Questioning the wisdom
He is not alone in doubting the scientific veracity of global warming
claims. Dr Robert E Davis, associate professor of environmental sciences at
the University of Virginia, takes up the running: “In reality, we have a
tragically short record of good [climate] observations.” In an article entitled,
“Climate Cycle or Climate Psychic?” in TCS Daily, the online journal in which
experts examine a wide range of contemporary issues, on May 12, 2006,
Davis points to the variable and cyclical nature of climate change throughout
history and questions the perceived wisdom that man-made greenhouse
gases are proven to be the chief cause of climate change. “With the
phenomenal accuracy afforded by hindsight, we know that, sometime
around 1977-78, our planet underwent an abrupt shift from one climatic state
(generally cold) to another (warm)… Of course, this climatic shift was
retrospectively blamed on increasing greenhouse gases, because such
dramatic and abrupt shifts just couldn’t be natural. Presumably nature, left
to her own devices, does not cotton to wild mood swings. But is global
warming really to blame? Not likely, based on some new analyses by
University of California at Los Angeles geographers.” Davis goes on to set
out the recent analysis from the university for which I do not have space here,
but which can be seen via TCSDaily.com.
Davis alludes to new research confirming that warming and cooling are
naturally cyclical. Further that the findings are borne out by the global
cooling cycle experienced between 1940 and 1975. During this period – and
this is a major stumbling block for the future catastrophe theorists – the
ambient global temperature actually fell while carbon emissions kept rising.
Davis concludes: “The biggest problem with all of these somewhat cyclical
shifts is that no one knows for sure that a shift has actually taken place until
many years after the event, when its too late to be useful. So be wary of global warming psychics warning us of unprecedented climate shifts. In most cases, they are only unprecedented because of the short life span of most scientists. Remember one of the absolutely fundamental and too-often unstated tenets of science – there’s little point in studying anything that doesn’t vary during a scientist’s lifetime.”
Dr Robert Balling, director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona
University, deals specifically with one of the key problems – the variability
and critical effect of clouds that makes accurate prediction just about
impossible, leaving researchers “scratching [their] heads over climate
change” (TCS Daily, April 5, 2006). Balling quotes Dr James Herbert,
responsible for getting the whole global warming ball rolling in the 1980s, as
admitting: “The forces that drive long-term climate change are not known
with an accuracy sufficient to define climate changes.”
Dr Roy Spencer, principal research scientist at Huntsville, University of
Alabama, observes of media coverage: “An intense global warming
propaganda campaign by the media is currently under way” (“Global
warming hysteria has arrived”, TCS Daily, April 4, 2006). He asserts that
“government heavily funds a marching army of climate scientists whose
funding depends upon man-made global warming remaining a threat. That is
not to suggest that there is a conspiracy going on. It is merely to point out
that climate scientists aren’t always unbiased keepers of the truth. The arena
of global warming overflows with more strongly held opinions than it does
unbiased or scientific truths”. (“Global warming, science or policy?”, TCS
Daily, January 13, 2006). Spencer concludes: “Scientists who don’t believe in
predictions of climate catastrophe need to rise above their fears of losing
funding and speak out. Otherwise, this growing storm of global warming
could do some real damage.”
As a recent House of Lords report noted, the mainstream media do have a
history of, and predilection towards, reporting alarmist stories. On March
14, 2005 a BBC news bulletin announced that violent crime was “spiralling”.
Not according to the police and British Crime Survey figures, however. In
fact, as the police and the survey pointed out, crime had declined steadily
since 1998. In January 2003 the BBC, warning of a potential smallpox
epidemic, broadcast: “Smallpox kills about 30 per cent of those infected.”
The result? Lots of vaccine sold; no epidemic. Numerous other similar media
scare stories could be cited. Prospective media epidemics related to killer flu
viruses, killer bees, SARs and MMR jabs, mad cow disease, the return of TB
and of course bird flu. None of which materialised. Whenever a research
scientist warns of a potential “global catastrophe” (and presumably receives
a grant to combat the threat) it seems that quite a few reporters, editors,
broadcasters and publications are only too willing to oblige with appropriate
headlines.
Pandora’s Box of scare stories
On March 1, 2006 the BBC announced: “Bird flu could kill your cat” – on
the basis of a single cat turning up its paws in Germany. The very same day
the BBC ran the headline: “Cancer chemicals found in drinks cans.” The Food
Standards Agency quickly put this scare story into perspective, pointing
out: “The levels found are of no concern.” Even so, the public climate had
received yet another media-induced dose of fear. But nothing seems to appeal quite as much as the Pandora’s Box of scare stories that climate change affords. Perhaps because their obvious “irrefutability” – we’ll all be dead by the time they do or do not happen – lends dramatic appeal.
We’ve all probably heard or read that the Gulf Stream may be in danger of
“expiring”. But most of us will not have heard the report debunked by,
among others, Professor Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute. In a
letter to Nature, Wunsch wrote: “The occurrence of a climate state without
the Gulf Stream any time soon – within tens of millions of years – has a
probability of little more than zero. The only way to produce an ocean
circulation without a gulf stream is either to turn off the wind system, or to
stop the Earth’s rotation, or both.” In short the original reports posited an
entirely phoney climate scenario.
We have been told that the Greenland ice-cap, the whole of Antarctica
and various glaciers are melting away, threatening catastrophic rising sea
levels. The only problem with this scenario is that, as many other
climatologists report, such assertions are wholly selective. While the ice is
receding in some places, it is reported as advancing in others. And we were
recently warned that polar bears were in danger of “facing extinction”. This
report was however immediately rubbished by Dr Mitch Taylor, a polar bear
biologist from the Eskimo nation Nunavut, an area four times as big as
France. He wrote in the Toronto Star: “They are not going extinct, or even
appear to be affected at present. This complexity is why so many people find
the truth less entertaining than a good story. It is silly to predict the demise of
polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria.”
A few months ago 60 scientists wrote an open letter to new Canadian
Prime Minister Stephen Harper. They called on him to “re-visit the science
on global warming and review the policies inherited from his left-wing
predecessor”. Referring to Kyoto as “pointless” – now proven to be a correct
analysis based on the failure of almost every signatory nation to meets its
ludicrously ambitious targets – the letter questioned both the climate
science and the public billions about to be “wasted” on it. The letter received
no coverage at all in the UK however until co-signatory Emeritus Professor
Phillip Stott pursued the media “omission” with national broadcasters and
editors, largely, as he notes on his website, without success. Can we imagine a letter from 60 pro climate-change scientists being ignored?
In July, Professor Lindzen again took up his pen in The Wall Street Journal,
this time to respond to the further media hype created by former presidential
candidate Al Gore’s “disaster” movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore’s film
claims that we are headed for “a planetary emergency” made up of melting
ice-sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes, and
invasions of tropical disease. Lindzen however reminded WSJreaders of the
scientific fact that the Arctic was actually “warm or warmer in 1940”, before
the last cyclical cooling period, after which a warming cycle took over again.
He also noted that the latest scientific research suggests that, on average, the
Greenland ice cap is actually growing, that mosquitoes, necessary for
“tropical invasion”, “don’t require tropical warmth”, and that we have not
been able to “attribute any particular hurricane to global warming”.
Most significantly, he approaches the whole issue with a humility rare in
today’s scientific research community, referring to “the primitive state of
weather and climate science”. The effect of this, he suggests, is that “science
just does not know” as “the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always
changing”. Lindzen sums up the climate case thus: “Most of the climate
community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have
increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over the past century, having risen significantly from about 1919 to 1940, decreased between 1940 and the early 1970s, increased again until the 90s, and remained essentially flat since 1998.” As “we do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change, this task… [of prediction]… is currently impossible”, he points out.
Infamous summary
“Nevertheless there has been a persistent effort to suggest otherwise,
and with surprising impact.” He also reminds us how the known climate
science was “accurately presented” in the 1996 text of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change’s report, in which scientists had made it clear they
could not say with any certainty what role man played in climate change. By
the time the panel’s administrators re-drafted the now infamous “summary
for policy makers”, however, it read: “The balance of evidence suggests a
discernible human influence on global climate.” As Lindzen says: “This
sufficed as the smoking gun for Kyoto.”
What we, as journalists, personally believe about the science of
climatology and its associated predictions for global cataclysm is hardly the
point. What clearly is the point, however, is that we ought not to be
propagating media myths based on a “consensus” science view on global
warming and climate change. Dissident climate scientists are not the only
ones who cannot get the dissident science view into the mainstream. I have
had the same difficulty convincing some editors and producers of the need to
question the basic assumptions and wild predictions for the climate in 100
years time – surprising, really, when you consider the irony that
climatologists (or meteorologists, as we otherwise know them) can’t predict
what the “climate” will be in two weeks’ time with any degree of accuracy.
Peter C Glover is a freelance journalist and writer on media and cultural issues with a leading British current affairs blog (according to Technorati rankings) at www.wiresfromthebunker.com.
‘Although there is a very broad consensus that global warming is happening and is a problem, there are a very few people in the other camp, and they tend to be very vocal.” Dr. Heike Langenberg, Physical Science Editor, Nature Magazine
‘Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science,’ Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief, Science.
Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at UC San Diego, reviewed over nine hundred scientific papers on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 (a sample 10 percent of the papers published on the topic), and was unable to find one that explicitly disagreed with the consensus view that humans are contributing to the phenomenon. Her work was published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Lindzen is an interesting intellectual maverick
Comment by Adrian Monck — 1 September, 2006 @ 4.45pm
For more information on the letter to Premier Harper from 60 scientists:
University of Alberta professor Gordon Swaters was one of the few Canadians who signed. But he quickly came to regret his decision.
Swaters, a mathematics professor who specializes in theory of ocean dynamics, is not a climate skeptic. Global warming is happening, he says. “I thought it was a letter that called for more money for climate research and to investigate the need for adaptation measures for Canada,” said Swaters.
“If Canadians are being asked to make adjustments to our economy, our elected representatives should hold open hearings and not make decisions behind closed doors.” That’s a fair point.
But by signing, Swaters soon realized he was lending credibility to the anti-climate change forces and now “I wish I’d never done it,” he says.
“It’s highly likely the principle motive of many people associated with Friends of Science is they do not want to acknowledge global warming is happening,” he says.
“That’s just simply wrong.”
Swaters, shortly after, added his name to a second public letter to government, this one from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an offshoot of the World Meteorological Society.
That letter, which attributes most global warming to human activities, “is more in line with what I think,” says Swaters.
Comment by Adrian Monck — 1 September, 2006 @ 4.49pm
As might be expected comments on your blog from the climate alarmists follow the usual pattern: Ignore the science, rely on the alleged consensus,and denigration of individuals who do not subscribe to it plus citation of outright hokum such as the Oreskes study and Al Gore(look into responses to these latter)
Comment by John Leeson — 2 September, 2006 @ 12.16am
Sadly, John Leeson is right. Mr Monck relies on the usual methodology of all who do not like to be questioned: name-calling and enitirely skating over the powerful intellectual arguments levelled against their case.
When 60 eminent scientists have to write an open letter directly to a PM - because they cannot be heard voicing alternative views by parts of the science research community with a stake in receiving massive grants to confront the latest global ’science’ threat (none of which actually materialise)- even then the media doesn’t report it. Even if Monck surely the case is already made out?
But even if we allow for a ’science consensus’ for a moment - did not the same ‘consesnus’ in the 1970s (and some of the exact same scientists) advise we were heading for a new ice age? Flightly these climatologist ‘experts’, are they not?
Can we not just be humble enough to admit that, at least on climate science, our understanding of a very complex issue is at present simply beyond us? Mr Monck, apparently, thinks not.
Comment by Peter C Glover — 2 September, 2006 @ 7.38am
Consensus is not a property of Science. Consensus is characteristic of DOGMA. And dogma it is the assertion, unsupported by hard evidence, that Man and Man alone is the cause of the recent global warming of the last 100 years.
Science is characterized by, and needs, DISSENT. Beware of any claim of “consensus” on any issue, for real consensus is not indicative of a real science in evolution, but of a DOGMA disguised perhaps as Science or Truth Revealed.
Comment by Jaime Raúl Molina — 3 September, 2006 @ 1.26am
With all due respect, Donald Kennedy’s statement that “Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science” is simply irrelevant.
In Galileo’s time the “consensus” was that the Earth was the center of the solar system and to believe otherwise was essentially heretical. Climate science is in its infancy, much as astronomy was centuries ago.
Comment by Walter Thain — 3 September, 2006 @ 6.14am
There are so few climate change sceptics with scientific credentials that they can be named individually. The number of scientists that agree that humans are convincingly the cause of global warming fill whole scientific academies. Sceptics are of course a healthy part of science and their arguments are important to the growth of ideas.
An enormous amount of scientific research has established that during the Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history, the climate has varied and changed on a wide range of time scales, due to natural causes and without human activities impacting.
The Earth’s climate is dynamic and climate change is normal and continuous. In addition to knowledge of natural change, the science on the enhanced greenhouse effect is now theoretically and empirically well-established.
Almost all scientific opinion on climate change, reported by UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and endorsed by national science academies of G8 nations as well as national science academies of Brazil, China and India, concludes that global warming is attributable to human activities.
The jury is not out, climate change and the substantial threat it poses to the whole planet is real. The debate needs to focus on what we can do - and there are many things that can be done with existing technologies with little cost that can start to address the issue of enhanced greenhouse effect. In those circumstances, why would we not act?
Comment by Ray Wills — 3 September, 2006 @ 8.29am
Comment to Walter Thain : Walter, please refer to Einstein’s theory of Relativity. Do you really know what is the center of the solar system? I guess your scientific knowledge is a bit dated.
Comment by Jim Macdonald — 3 September, 2006 @ 10.27am
The scientific consensus about the reality of climate change is merely a reflection of the well established fact that every scientific organization on the planet has reviewed the science and issued statements in support of the reality of global warming. (Except the association of Petroleum Geologists, who still have doubts.) The vast majority of climate scientists agree that the evidence in support of the theory of global warming is clear and compelling. Lindzen is virtually alone in his denial among working climate scientists. A “consensus” need not be unanimous to be real. That there are a handful of professional global warming doubters with some scientific credentials does not in any way invalidate the reality of the consensus that global warming is real, it is happening now, and it will continue to increase so long as levels of greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere. Denial of this reality is an irresponsible misrepresentation of the facts.
Comment by Michael Seward — 3 September, 2006 @ 2.37pm
There are a few constants in science. One of these is that our current understanding of the universe is invariably proven to be incorrect. Just as people were once convinced that the earth was flat and that everything could be described in terms of Newtonian physics, I assume that in 50 to 100 years scientists of the day will be laughing at our primitive attempts at understanding global climate and our attempt at “intelligent” policy maker. Scientists should stop at the science and let policy makers make policy.
Comment by David Persing — 3 September, 2006 @ 5.33pm
It is obvious that those who support the scaremongers views missed your comments regarding the threat of losing their grants. It is a form of blackmail; if your research does not support our views no more money!
Comment by Allan C. Johnson — 3 September, 2006 @ 8.29pm
Richard Lindzen hasn’t had any trouble getting grants. The problem is that his work has failed to hold up to scrutiny. He admits that his water vapor theory was wrong: “in 2001, Lindzen published a paper speculating that as the Earth warmed, water vapor would decrease in the upper atmosphere, allowing heat to escape back into space more efficiently, and thereby reducing overall temperature. The paper met with vigorous criticism. Eventually, he disavowed the idea. “That was an old view,” Lindzen said about his five-year-old hypothesis.”
Dr Robert Balling hasn’t published a peer-reviewed paper since 1986. He is a lobbyist for the industry-financed so-called “Friends of Science”.
Look at the sources Peter Glover cites. Right wing mouthpieces like editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, and TCS Daily. If you get your science from right wing media, your bound to get politically motivated spin, not honest science.
Comment by Michael Seward — 3 September, 2006 @ 11.31pm
Michael Seward makes out entirely my case by refusing to engage with the argument (true debate) preferring ad hominem attacks as a substitute for REAL public debate.
Thank you Michael (genuinely) - I had doped someone would provide a key example of how anti-intellectualism goes about its business.
Comment by Peter C Glover — 4 September, 2006 @ 11.08am
The crucial point is being missed. Yes, there is consensus on the warming of the globe (by about 0.6degC over the last 100 years). Even Lindzen acknowledges this. Where consensus does not exist is in the interpretation of this scientific fact. Is it alarming? What is causing it? Is mankind to blame? The essence of the matter is not whether global warming is happening but the extent to which we should be scared enough to spend billions on so-called amelioration measures which could be better spent elsewhere. On all these secondary points there is no consensus.
Comment by John Dyson — 4 September, 2006 @ 11.55am
Thanks for your reply, Peter. Have you seen this profile of Lindzen?
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/08/the_contrarian.php?page=1
He admits that his water vapor theory was wrong: “in 2001, Lindzen published a paper speculating that as the Earth warmed, water vapor would decrease in the upper atmosphere, allowing heat to escape back into space more efficiently, and thereby reducing overall temperature. The paper met with vigorous criticism. Eventually, he disavowed the idea. “That was an old view,” Lindzen said about his five-year-old hypothesis.”
Further more, while he denies there is a consensus, he actually agrees with the consensus! “His most recent Wall Street Journal editorial, for example, includes admissions that the Earth has warmed over the last century, that humans are influencing the climate, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that its levels continue to rise.” That’s a pretty good definition of the consensus.
Lindzens’ star as a scientist has faded, but he has made a name for himself thanks to the right wing think tanks, the corporate lobbyists, and industry funded politicians. The science is leaving him behind, but he is still held in high esteem by some who are casting about for any reason to deny the reality of global warming.
Comment by Michael Seward — 4 September, 2006 @ 2.38pm
As an earth scientist who has been actively involved in a critical look at Climate Science, I never cease to be amazed at the arguments (or what they think to be arguments) of those that are blind to evidence other than that which fits their preconceived ideas. None are so blind as those who do not want to see. They fit in so nicely with the general attitude found in governments, where a political decision is taken first and Science is cherry-picked to find evidence to support it. They consider everyone who questions the generally held idea (”consensus”) to be a member of the flat earth society, in pay of “big oil”, or worse. What has become of scientific inquiry, the scientific method, the challenges and proofs? “When it is Science, there is no Consensus. When there is Consensus, it is not Science”.
The positions are put into Black and White and the sceptics are treated as individuals who necessarily are thought to believe that climate change is not taking place at all, that carbon dioxide has no influence at all and that the economics are more important than the survival of the planet.
MIT’s Richard Lindzen has said nothing new. It only appeared new to people who did not really want to read what he had said before.
Many of the meteorologists and atmospheric physicists seem to resent that earth science and astrophysics should have anything of value to contribute, as they do not want to be troubled by the lessons of earth history to the extent that they interfere with their computer models. Sorry gentlemen, computer simulations “prove” nothing. Not even with “back-casting”.
The Naomi Oreskes survey is another good example: many papers in astrophysics, oceanography, paleontology, glaciology, statistics and half a dozen other sub-disciplines are published peer-reviewed articles that Naomi and her limited keyword computer search must have missed. Science and Nature are not the only peer-reviewed mags in the world and their editors have been accused of being biased. Should one assume that none of the sixty scientists who wrote the famous letter to the Canadian Prime Minister had ever published their research in peer-reviewed periodicals?
Many of these articles may not “attack Global Warming” but their conclusions are obviously incompatible with the IPCC version of Anthropogenic Global Warming. In fact, Dr. Benny Peiser has compiled such a list that disproves Oreskes. It would behove those who dismiss the sceptics as being somewhere near the lunatic fringe to examine the arguments in true scientific fashion and to stop treating AGW as a dogmatic religion.
Meanwhile the IPCC is continuing its downward reduction of expected temperature rise (AR4 draft) - which is now getting close to the satellite figures - and, reportedly, it seems to be disavowing the scary scenarios; the oceans are cooling (Plant 2004, 2005), the planet’s albedo is changing, affecting the temperature expectations downward and the temperature correlations with the variation in solar activity is becoming obvious.
Are those that are accusing the sceptics of being funded by Big Oil just a bit too dependent on their government research grants?
Comment by Albert Jacobs — 5 September, 2006 @ 4.10am
It should be noted that Albert Jacobs represents the so-called “Friends of Science”, a lobbying and PR firm dedicated to swaying public opinion against the scientific conclusion that greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming. While their actual contribution to the scientific debate is scant, their advocacy through web sites, letters to the editor, and political lobbying is prodigious. The arguments they present are simply political rhetoric disguised as science. The real scientific debate is taking place in the scientific literature, not by PR firms, lobbyists, and political consultants like FOS. Now that we know how a University of Calgary political scientist helped launder oil money for the climate-change denying FOS, we should be very skeptical of their integrity in this debate.
Comment by Michael Seward — 5 September, 2006 @ 1.44pm
For the record: Friends of Science is a not-for-profit Society, registered under the Alberta Societies Act. Its Board consists large of retired science professionals. None are “PR” types. It is not a lobby group, let alone a “PR firm”, but an educational advocacy group which brings peer-reviewed science to the public, which the IPCC wishes to ignore. Its stance is not political, though it happens to disagree with the politicians who see Kyoto as a panacea for the world’s sins. Funding of its large educational projects through a University Trust Fund is fully within the laws of Canada and the phrase “laundering oil money” is misplaced and copied from a well-known mudraking blog. The progress of science is not furthered by ad hominem attacks. Shame on Michael Seward.
Comment by Albert Jacobs — 6 September, 2006 @ 5.15am
Albert Jacobs is abusing science to wage a political battle.
Check out Jacob’s website. The first goal of FOS is a strictly political agenda: to “re-evaluate the Kyoto Protocol”. FOS runs radio ads attacking the Kyoto Protocol. They made sure that all members of the Federal Parliament received copies of their misleading DVD. “The society has also briefed scores of politicians and civil servants in person” according to the Daily Oil Bulletin. This is a predetermined political agenda pretending to be science. It’s pseudoscientific PR designed to influence the policy debate, plain and simple.
What about the science? FOS also claims to champion the “dissemination of relevant, balanced and objective technical information on this subject.”Then why is the FOS website a virtual catalogue of standard skeptic arguments, arguments that have been rejected by every scientific institution on the planet?
Mr. Jacobs claims “no reliable correlation has been established between carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and planetary temperatures.”Mr. Jacobs is dismissing 180 years of scientific discovery. Fourier discovered that gases in the atmosphere increase the surface temperature of the Earth in 1824. Arrhenius discovered that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect in 1896. Keeling’s careful measurements from the 1950’s have quantified the unprecedented increase in human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Arrhenius expected CO2 doubling to take about 3000 years; it is now generally expected to take about a century. Jacobs’s quirky ideas deny the history of science, a history you won’t find mentioned in his “educational” materials.
If they want a balanced debate with all views fairly represented, why do they only have the most extreme, fringe, global warming skeptics, with a long history of denying and distorting the science, on their petitions and their website?
The FOS website says: “We have no obligation to any commercial outfit (let alone oil companies)”. You can read about the complex web of connections between oil companies, think tanks, PR firms, and the “scientists” who represent FOS here: www.charlesmontgomery.ca/mrcool.html. Decide for yourself who should be ashamed.
Comment by Michael Seward — 7 September, 2006 @ 4.11am
The point I tried to make at the beginning is that there is a consensus, right or wrong. There’s nothing wrong with dissent, but it is just that - dissent from the consensus!
When we come to policy formulation we usually turn to the consensus to provide the basis for action. By all means question that, and subject it to scrutiny, but using terms like ‘climate alarmist’ - when nothing I wrote was in the slightest bit alarming, doesn’t encourage me. I wouldn’t describe Richard Lindzen as a skepto-fascist! But as Michael Seward pointed out in the climate change consensus he is a maverick. Let’s hope he’s right, but let’s base policy on consensus until he can convince more of his scientific peers that his position - and on theirs - is the one we should trust.
Comment by Adrian Monck — 7 September, 2006 @ 1.35pm
Adrian Monck is right. Base policy decisons on the best available science,from legitimate sources of scientific investigation. Don’t formulate policy based on wacky arguments from politically motivated advocates, quoting fringe scientists whose opinions on editorial pages and psuedoscientific websites are unsupported by the balance of the evidence. But the science stands apart from the policy debate. And the science is clear and compelling, although some who dislike the policy implications of the science prefer to deny the evidence that science offers. Hence Peter Glover and Albert Jacobs.
Comment by Michael Seward — 8 September, 2006 @ 11.49pm
Now a French climate scientist outs the climate change myth too - and in some detail (at £115 a book). Michael’s ‘consensus’ is disappearing as fast as his own theories.
As Michael (from previous experience) subscribes to the view that those who take a different view about the THEORY of man-made climate change are all part of a great right-wing conspiracy (note his slur on the scientists at Friends of Science and Al Jacobs above) he won’t appreciate Leroux’s 500 page+ book or the fact that it is here highlighted at a conservative website. But those who can discern a genuine science argument might.
For the review (by one of the IPCC’s own reviewers) go to http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=091106F
For the record also, note Leroux’s assertion about how climatologists can’t even tell you what the weather will do in a few days time yet are so certain a few years hence. Uncannily smiliar to my own conclusion (written when I was unaware of Professor Leroux’s book)in the above article.
Comment by Peter C Glover — 11 September, 2006 @ 10.57am
I am shocked by the ad hominem attacks here by Seward and others. But I suppose that when one has no verifiable facts to support his position, ad hominem is all that is left. In a recent forum Mr Seward referrede to himself as a ”maverick.” How true.
By attacking the distinguished Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Dr Lindzen], rather than refuting his facts, Seward reveals himself as a pseudo-scientist. There is no climate scientist more credible than Dr Lindzen. In addition, over seventeen thousand [17,000+] scientists have already signed Dr Fredrick Seitz’ letter stating, in effect, that human-induced global warming is entirely unproven.
Dr Lindzen states that there is ample evidence that the Earth’s temperature as recorded at the equator has remained constant to within +/- one degree centigrade for billions of years. That established fact alone destroys the catastrophic global warming argument, when one thinks it through:
The Earth’s equatorial temperature is the steady state temperature of the planet. As one approaches the poles, however, local temperature differentials increase from summer to winter, between the continental land masses and the ocean, and from day to night.
That temperature differential is a direct result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics; heat moves around the planet in large packets. [Note that last summer was warmer than average in large parts of the U.S. — but southern Africa saw its first series of blizzards and freezing temperatures in almost three decades. But the Earth’s overall temperature has remained constant to within one degree C.
Also unexplained by Seward is the fact that atmospheric CO2 has historically risen following past warming — not preceding it. Any credible explanation must conclude that CO2 is a consequence of warming, not a cause.
The purveyors of globaloney deliberately select particular locations, and specific base years, only where those current temperatures and base years support their desired conclusions. That tactic is unscientific and completely dishonest, and they know it. That is why they run from any serious debate on the subject, and instead personally attack reputable scientists who disagree.
Comment by David Stealey — 5 December, 2006 @ 10.03pm
David Stealey notes that:
“By attacking the distinguished Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Dr Lindzen], rather than refuting his facts, Seward reveals himself as a pseudo-scientist.”
Actually, according to his web site, Michael Seward is a custom furniture maker in Pennsylvania. In the “About Me” portion of his website he notes that he has been a woodworker for many years, but has no word about any scientific training. He IS published — in ‘Fine Wood Working”, “This Old House”, “The Custom Furniture Sourcebook”, and etc.
In short, Michael is not even a “pseudo-scientist”; he is just a non-scientist. Probably the reason he doesn’t try to refute the arguments here is that he can’t read the literature, so gets his arguments from alarmist websites.
I have degrees in physics, mathematics, electrical and optical engineering. I’m a working engineer who has build a number of flight instruments to measure cloud properties for scientists at NCAR (in Boulder, Colorado) and elsewhere. I can read the scientific literature (and have contributed a few of my own) and have been following the “debate” for a number of years.
The state of the “Climate Consensus” as can be determined from the literature is:
1) There is a consensus that the Earth has been warming since about 1850. (This is a kind of “well duh!” consensus, since we aren’t still in the Little Ice Age, are we?)
2) Everything else, nearly, is up for grabs as far as the science is concerned, although my personal thoughts are that the evidence of Solar effects is by far the most convincing.
Solar effects have long been demeaned, as there wasn’t a good theory to explain them (The Sun’s output in the visible and IR didn’t vary enough and other coupling mechanisms were very speculative.) Solar variation is being taken more seriously now that experiments have identified a possible
coupling mechanism between the Sun’s activity level and total cloudness on Earth (via the cosmic ray flux).
It’s funny that the many of the same people who are willing to make giant leaps of faith based on the relatively weak correllation between CO2 and temperature (even ignoring or hand-waving away the apparent fact that temperature changes often lead CO2 changes) are also blind to the strong correllation between Solar activity and global temperature. Almost makes you think they have some kind of agenda…
Undersea vulcanism remains the “elephant in the room” that everybody hopes they can just ignore. Maybe someday we’ll develop the instrumentation to survey this — until then everyone will studiously ignore it. (If you meet an atmospheric scientist at a party, and want to see their hair catch on fire, ask him or her about the possibility of “El Nino” being partially driven by vulcanism.)
One other thing should be added to the “consensus”:
3) According to the Global Circulation Models (You can download NCAR’s GCM from their website and be the first on your block to model the climate!) even implementing enough ‘Kyotos’ to send the global economy into a decades-long depression would STILL not have an effect on global
temperatures that could be discerned from the measurement uncertainty.
As these facts become better known, alarmists become more, well, “alarming”. This may be why Global Warming Alarmists have now started talking about “tipping points” — a descent into pure fundamentalist religion, since there are no data (historical or geological), theories, or even models that
support this notion.
Comment by Bob Cormack — 7 December, 2006 @ 3.17am