Category — Climate exaggeration

Last week, an advance copy of a paper to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) was released which reported that a collection of “experts” suggests that climate tipping points (codename for something bad but we don’t know exactly what) would be knocked over by 2200 if we stay on our current greenhouse gas emissions pathway (for about the next 200 years). Underlying these views is the experts’ opinions as to what the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity—the rise in global temperatures resulting from a doubling of the earth carbon dioxide concentration—likely is.

But do the experts opinions actually reflect the scientific knowledge on these subjects?

The answer is no.

In fact, the experts’ opinions tended towards the extreme, despite recent science which should have reeled them in. Which is a lesson in and of itself. [Read more →]

[Editor note: This is Part V of a series of posts on the political activism of climate scientists at Texas A&M.]

“I really enjoyed the ‘fact’ that I saved you from being a ‘climate alarmist’. Frankly, your descriptions of my colleague Andrew Dessler are outrageous. You seem to forget that he spent several hours tutoring you and your student from [Kinkaid] on climate change during a university holiday. As I said to Steve McIntyre after spending hours trying to help him, then being mocked in his blog, ‘No good deed goes unpunished’. I am afraid to say anything more to you via email.”

- Gerald North to Rob Bradley, April 17, 2010 (cc Eric Berger, William Dawson, Andrew Dessler)

Dear Jerry:

I asked for substantive feedback from you to my post(s) and instead got a sarcastic, emotional response. You are clearly annoyed, but open debate about contentious public public policy issues should not be compromised by personal relationships or ‘favors’. And there is nothing wrong about a ‘challenge culture’ and mid-course corrections, either. We are talking about climate science, after all.

I am going to elaborate as best I can and bring in some more of your own quotations for the record.

[North as My Enron Consultant]

Jerry: you are a very interesting and important figure in the climate-change debate–and one whose views future historians of science should note.

Back in 1998, I picked you out of many candidates as a corporate consultant because you seemed to be more open to finding the middle than many of your colleagues. Thinking that Enron was progressive on the climate issue (and they unfortunately were–Ken Lay saw many rent-seeking opportunities with CO2 pricing), you said yes.

“In talking over consulting with ENRON with many friends, I decided to do it, only because of the open-minded position ENRON seems to be taking. I decided that I might even have an influence on what course ENRON eventually takes. I am not concerned with one ideological position or another—just the truth. If ENRON makes use of the truth to make a profit, good show. If ENRON wants to twist the truth to the detriment of everyone else, I will drop out—tarnished but wiser.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), March 25, 1998

I think you provide an excellent ‘case study’ to understand:

1) how the climate alarm got out of control, and

2) how/why a good many in your profession got off scientific track (as evidenced by Climategate and the growing recognition of problems with the IPCC reports).

My Major Point: You Have ‘Gone Political’ and ‘Gone Left’ Post-Climategate Despite Your Skepticism About Climate Alarmism–and Climategate Itself

I have a treasure trove of emails from you that are fair and insightful, in retrospect. (And you have stated that you write your emails as if they would be made public–nothing to fear from your own views.) Some of them are very critical of scientists–skeptics and alarmists. Your criticisms of the skeptics are public (I can provide citations); your more ‘private’ views against alarmism should be made public too. [Read more →]

[The other parts of this series on the activism of Texas A&M climatologists are here: Part I, Part II, Part IV, and Part V]

Scientists find themselves fighting science when it comes to the highly unsettled physical basis of climate change. An example of this is the March 7th Houston Chronicle op-ed by two Texas A&M climate scientists (and four colleagues from other universities), “On Global Warming, the Science is Solid.”

I took general exception to their piece in Part I in this series, titled “Andrew Dessler and Gerald North on Climategate, Climate Alarmism, and the State of Texas’s Challenge to the U.S. EPA’s Endangerment Finding.” Chip Knappenberger yesterday took issue with their claim that the Texas Petition was flawed because it “contains very little science.”

This post critically reconsiders the op-ed, which argued, in effect, that the science behind climate alarmism is settled and that Climategate is a distraction from the core issues. Just the opposite may well be true.

Some Background

Evidently, Dr. Dessler wrote this op-ed and got sign-on from other Texas scientists to make it a ‘consensus’ statement. Here is how the Houston Chronicle attributed it:

This article was submitted by Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences, Texas A&M University; Katharine Hayhoe, research associate professor of atmospheric sciences, Texas Tech University; Charles Jackson, research scientist, Institute for Geophysics, The University of Texas at Austin; Gerald North, distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences, Texas A&M University; André Droxler, professor of earth science and director of the Center for the Study of Environment and Society, Rice University; and Rong Fu, professor, Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin. 

I refer to the piece as Dessler/North because the activist-oriented Dr. Dessler is the leader, and the most distinguished climate scientist of the six named authors is Dr. North.

Criticism of Dessler/North (et al.) Piece

A critique follows with the exact language of the (entire) op-ed in quotation and black and my comments in blue for ease of reading. [Read more →]

[Editor note: Hat tip to Michael Fumento at globalwarming.org for his recommendation of Number Watch's listing below. This site advertises itself as a depot for "all about the scares, scams, junk, panics, and flummery cooked up by the media, politicians, bureaucrats, so-called scientists and others who try to confuse you with wrong numbers."]

Of course U.S. EPA is correct in their finding that the human influence on climate (aka anthropogenic global warming) poses a threat to human welfare. And no wonder why Obama science advisor John Holdren has not disowned his prediction that as many as one billion people could perish by 2020 from climate change.

We surrender. We apologize. We bucked the science as long as we could and just have nowhere to hide. And Dr. Romm over at Climate Progress is right. I personally am a denier, an anti-science disinformer, and (as he said in a personal email) a sociopath.

The evidence is in this complete list of things caused by global warming (reproduced verbatim from the linked website):

————————————————————————————————-

Acne, agricultural land increase, Afghan poppies destroyed, poppies more potent, Africa devastated, Africa in conflict, African aid threatened, African summer frost, aggressive weeds, Air France crash, air pressure changes,  airport malaria, Agulhas current, Al Qaeda and Taliban Being Helped, allergy season longer, alligators in the Thames, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end,  amphibians breeding earlier (or not),  anaphylactic reactions to bee stings,  ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, animals shrink, Antarctic grass flourishes, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Antarctic sea life at risk,   anxiety treatment, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic ice free, Arctic ice melt faster, Arctic lakes disappear,  Arctic tundra lost, Arctic warming (not), asthma, Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty,   atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased,  Baghdad snow,Bahrain under water,  bananas grow, barbarisation, beer and bread prices to soar, beer better,  beer worse, beetle infestation, [Read more →]