94. Chuck Wilson, Golden, Colo., December 7th, 2009, 2:50 p.m.
Chris y (44):
Actually all of those points are addressed in the open and accessible scientific literature. The whole point of "Climategate" is to give those with limited attention span the idea that climate science is broken and somehow does not work like other disciplines of science which have totally transformed human understanding and life over the last 2.5 centuries.
This is not a novel hypothesis. Dr. Lindzen suggested it in wsj commentaries in 2001 when he lost the arguments at the IPCC TAR in 2001 and at the National Academy of Sciences in the report on the IPCC Summaries in 2001. His wsj commentaries explained how he could sign reports (IPCC TAR 2001 and the NAS Report on the IPCC Summaries) that were wrong and that he disagreed with. Prior to that, Dr. Lindzen suggested it relative to ozone depletion. His analysis opposed regulation of CFC production, regarded the Montreal Protocol steps as hysteria reported that every one in graduate school knew that really smart people did not go into atmosphere science.
It is worth noting that the Montreal Protocol has been ratified by 200 countries and is responsible for arresting the decrease in global ozone abundance that triggered the initial concern. Of course there are people in America who testified in Congress against the science that justified the CFC Bans (Singer, Baliunas) and who argued that protecting the ozone layer would cost trillions of dollars (George C. Marshal Institute, Seitz). The costs of protecting ozone to date has been less than fifty billion and were 50 times less that estimated by the deniers.
I think is safe to say that whatever their scientific credentials, Drs. Singer, Sietz, Baliunas and Lindzen were wrong about ozone depletion. And they were wrong about the scientific process that led to understanding ozone depletion. Their error was to substitute their own reasoning for that which won in the robust scientific discussion in the peer reviewed scientific literature.
This error is being repeated in the response to "Climate Gate" (by many of the same people) and in Chris's post. The literature is a thriving cauldron of contention whose extent is huge compared to Climategate. However, the positions that you are advancing by implication have mostly been abandoned there. Your arguments have lost, not because the fix is in by scoundrels at CRU, but because they are wrong and the data show that they are wrong.
A debate is not needed. A literature review will suffice.
Regards,
Chuck Wilson
Golden Colorado
Shshka (88), wmar(86)
This is not a novel hypothesis. Dr. Lindzen suggested it in wsj commentaries in 2001 when he lost the arguments at the IPCC TAR in 2001 and at the National Academy of Sciences in the report on the IPCC Summaries in 2001. His wsj commentaries explained how he could sign reports (IPCC TAR 2001 and the NAS Report on the IPCC Summaries) that were wrong and that he disagreed with. Prior to that, Dr. Lindzen suggested it relative to ozone depletion. His analysis opposed regulation of CFC production, regarded the Montreal Protocol steps as hysteria reported that every one in graduate school knew that really smart people did not go into atmosphere science.
It is worth noting that the Montreal Protocol has been ratified by 200 countries and is responsible for arresting the decrease in global ozone abundance that triggered the initial concern. Of course there are people in America who testified in Congress against the science that justified the CFC Bans (Singer, Baliunas) and who argued that protecting the ozone layer would cost trillions of dollars (George C. Marshal Institute, Seitz). The costs of protecting ozone to date has been less than fifty billion and were 50 times less that estimated by the deniers.
I think is safe to say that whatever their scientific credentials, Drs. Singer, Sietz, Baliunas and Lindzen were wrong about ozone depletion. And they were wrong about the scientific process that led to understanding ozone depletion. Their error was to substitute their own reasoning for that which won in the robust scientific discussion in the peer reviewed scientific literature.
This error is being repeated in the response to "Climate Gate" (by many of the same people) and in Chris's post. The literature is a thriving cauldron of contention whose extent is huge compared to Climategate. However, the positions that you are advancing by implication have mostly been abandoned there. Your arguments have lost, not because the fix is in by scoundrels at CRU, but because they are wrong and the data show that they are wrong.
A debate is not needed. A literature review will suffice.
Regards,
Chuck Wilson
Golden Colorado
Sashka (88) WMAR (86) Gene G
Oh good, a response to respond to.
For your information: In my class and in my work, I never say that "science is settled." I work in an area in which the issues that impact climate are far from settled. Given the numbers and sentiments being bandied about here, you would be shocked to read that money is tight, very tight. But it is. However, enough about me....
We have some strawmen being set up and having the stuffing knocked out of them. So I will go back to some basics.
I have studied radiation heat transfer and find it to be quite difficult when involving a participating medium. But I am fully confident that competent practitioners of that art have shown conclusively that adding CO2 to the atmosphere results in significant down-welling long wavelength radiation hitting the surface. No one on this blog, or in their right minds, believes that the First Law of Thermodynamics is at risk in these discussions. It is safe ground from which to start.
Oh good, a response to respond to.
For your information: In my class and in my work, I never say that "science is settled." I work in an area in which the issues that impact climate are far from settled. Given the numbers and sentiments being bandied about here, you would be shocked to read that money is tight, very tight. But it is. However, enough about me....
We have some strawmen being set up and having the stuffing knocked out of them. So I will go back to some basics.
I have studied radiation heat transfer and find it to be quite difficult when involving a participating medium. But I am fully confident that competent practitioners of that art have shown conclusively that adding CO2 to the atmosphere results in significant down-welling long wavelength radiation hitting the surface. No one on this blog, or in their right minds, believes that the First Law of Thermodynamics is at risk in these discussions. It is safe ground from which to start.
Once you agree that addition of CO2 makes large amounts of energy available to the climate system, then we must understand what the climate system does with the energy. (Note that Dr. Lindzen used to complain that the outgoing long-wave radiation was not consistent with the warming -- apparently that has been fixed.) So, IPCC 2007 says, with 90% confidence, that the excess energy has resulted in warmer temperatures and melting ice, permafrost, sea level rise etc., etc. But anyone looking at the Japanese global average temperature data (lets move half a world away from CRU for the moment) notes several temperature downturns in the time since 1950. Some of those downturns are understood, some are not. The ones that are not understood are labeled "internal variability".
Over our inability to explain every downturn (and in particular the present hiatus), Trenberth did some handwringing in email and in publication (and maybe in story and song as well). IPCC and Trenberth have been perfectly open about not understanding "internal variability" well enough to predict the rather short ups and downs. The claim is that the long-term, upward trend is well-enough understood to permit us to predict that it will resume, and that additional emissions of CO2 will exacerbate it. The reason to act now on CO2 is that it is long-lived. So any additions we make to the system will be dealt with by our posterity. Some modeling gives some idea of how big that problem will be. I think that the models are probably pretty good for small enough perturbations because they did pretty well with the last 60 years..
Here the political discussion starts.
If we follow Reagan's example when he acted to protect the ozone layer, we will decide that we will not require future generations to pay costs that we refuse to pay. That is called intergenerational justice. Based on that principle and the estimates of future costs of climate change, it is prudent to take modest steps to reduce CO2 emissions not. Friedman's column in the NYT today will provide you with links to a study quantifying those costs. Read it. It ain't so bad.
That is politics: society must decide what to do about a clear and present danger. "Climate Gate" is also politics. Excuse me if I quote myself:
Here the political discussion starts.
If we follow Reagan's example when he acted to protect the ozone layer, we will decide that we will not require future generations to pay costs that we refuse to pay. That is called intergenerational justice. Based on that principle and the estimates of future costs of climate change, it is prudent to take modest steps to reduce CO2 emissions not. Friedman's column in the NYT today will provide you with links to a study quantifying those costs. Read it. It ain't so bad.
That is politics: society must decide what to do about a clear and present danger. "Climate Gate" is also politics. Excuse me if I quote myself:
"The whole point of "Climategate" is to give those with limited attention span the idea that climate science is broken and somehow does not work like other disciplines of science which have totally transformed human understanding and life over the last 2.5 centuries." To see that climate science is a vital, tumultuous cauldron of ideas, you need only look at the journals dealing with the subject. Or come to the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Fransisco the week after next and see thousands of earth scientists elbowing for room at the lunch counter. Listen to the contention and follow the arguments. A lot of these folks are in the atmospheric section and have opinions on climate change. There are many questions being addressed and debated. For example IPCC gives a rather wide range of warming for a doubling of CO2 ("climate sensitivity") from 2 °C to 4.5 °C. Can science give a more constrained estimate? (Trenberth's wail seems to say not now, anyway.) But most say that the chance that temperatures will return to a cooler point are 10% or less. They say that the impacts of emissions are long lasting and likely to be moderate to severe. Not many of the attendees will have had their email stolen recently, so most won't be explaining the context for what they wrote 10 years ago. I predict that the vast majority will not agree that their science has been compromised by whatever comes out of the purloined emails.
Regards,
Chuck
Regards,
Chuck
102.
Some nits to pick:
(1) RE: IPCC. Governments go over every line of the summaries for policymakers -- Not every line of the working group reports nor of the technical summaries. Don't you find it odd that 113 governments agreed to the wording that you are objecting to? Are they all in on some large conspiracy? Isn't it odd that none of the authors objected to the failings that you are pointing out? Remember 75% of the authors of WG1 in 2007 were not involved in WG1 of 2001. It is a political trick to dismiss IPCC by sneers. The reports instantly become text books in graduate courses. The level of consensus achieved among the very diverse (any member government can nominate anyone they please) group of authors is amazing. Read the list and see if you want to insult the entire group with your sneers.
(2) I pointed out earlier that Trenberth was talking about failing to explain internal variability, not the over all upward trend. The doubt about the trend is in the 10% range. The consensus can be wrong. 10% is not nothing. But in actual fact, policy is often enacted on a probability. (Oops -- Since no one has perfect knowledge of anything, is is always enacted on probabilities.)
(3) Your replication comment raises a subtle point often missed in this discussion. In the routine conduct of science (which has changed the world before our very eyes -- they say that 30% of our economy is based on quantum mechanics -- can you say "band gap"?) authors report their methods and their results in the literature. Replicators obtain their own raw data and either follow the reported methods or their own. Those of us who do science with the public's money often post our results on public access web sites. But our raw data? Not very likely. I do not post the hundreds of bits of data that go into determining each of the million + results that I have turned over to my federal sponsors. I write papers describing my methods. There are other investigators who make related measurements. We publish them together to show similarities and differences. But the raw data would just clog the websites. So when you claim that it is a principle that everyone publish their raw data, make sure you know what you are asking for.
NASA GISS has posted lots of data for its curves of average global temperatures. They have published papers describing adjustments and methods. You should go there and look around before claiming that they have not met your requirements. I think that they have published way more than you imagine.
(4) I try to make sure students can relate to albedo, absorption and emission of thermal radiation and feedbacks and forcings and.......THE FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. There is inadequate bandwidth to cover everything "of interest".
I really wish I was doing research in WMAR's WORLD. $79 Billion is pretty big chunk of change. Lets put it into context of a few facts. According to the AAAS, the US spent $140 Billion on Research and Development in 2008. Over $80 billion was on defense R and D and under $40 Billion was on non-defense R & D. The US Climate Change Science Program has averaged less than $2 billion per year for the last 13 years (in constant 2007 dollars). This money is spread over 8 agencies plus 'all other'. So in WMAR'S WORLD there would have been at least 3 times the money in the US during those same years than was available on Real Earth in the Real Economy. So according to all the posters where who imagine that we are following the money, I would ask why are we all not all doing defense work? There is 40 times more money there than there is in climate.
Regards,
Chuck
I really wish I was doing research in WMAR's WORLD. $79 Billion is pretty big chunk of change. Lets put it into context of a few facts. According to the AAAS, the US spent $140 Billion on Research and Development in 2008. Over $80 billion was on defense R and D and under $40 Billion was on non-defense R & D. The US Climate Change Science Program has averaged less than $2 billion per year for the last 13 years (in constant 2007 dollars). This money is spread over 8 agencies plus 'all other'. So in WMAR'S WORLD there would have been at least 3 times the money in the US during those same years than was available on Real Earth in the Real Economy. So according to all the posters where who imagine that we are following the money, I would ask why are we all not all doing defense work? There is 40 times more money there than there is in climate.
Regards,
Chuck
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