Climate alarmists, I documented, were losing their fight for legislation, regulation, and public opinion. It’s clear that I was right on at least two counts: nobody thinks legislation to control greenhouse gases is on the horizon, and President Obama won’t even talk about climate change, preferring to hide the ball in talk about “clean energy,” instead.

The public is also turning away: a new Gallup poll, conducted in 111 countries, found that fewer Europeans and Americans consider climate change a serious threat than they did before. In the US, 53% of people feared climate change, down from 63% in ‘07/’08. In the UK, 57% feared climate change, down from 69% in ‘07/’08.

Signals are more mixed on the regulatory front, but Republican efforts to push EPA off the greenhouse-gas-control ball continue. And given our anemic economic recovery, the odds are looking better all the time. The Supreme Court, too, seems poised to reject the idea that states can use the courts to impose greenhouse gas controls on power producers.

Unfortunately, I was also right in another prediction: “the entire issue of climate change will go sub rosa, and be embedded in discussions of energy, sustainability, energy security, renewable energy, protecting biodiversity, or anything that lacks the words “climate change” in the title.”

This is exactly what’s happening under the banner of “clean energy” and “green energy.” But it is unclear how long the public will buy this subterfuge. In Europe, as I have written, the bloom is coming off the “green/clean energy” rose. In the U.S., however, the phrase still polls well with the public. But with the grassroots rebellion against industrial wind turbines growing, the worm may be turning here as well.

Here is my MasterResource post from one year ago. I invite comments on how well some of my predictions and trend analysis have held up. And are there other factors worth adding to the conversation?

———————

The Death Spiral for Climate Alarmism Continues

by Kenneth P. Green
June 2, 2010

“We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.”

- James Hansen, “The Threat to the Planet,” New York Review of Books, July 13, 2006.

“Desperation is setting in among climate alarmists who by their own math can see that the window is rapidly closing on ’saving the planet’.”

- Kenneth Green, ”A Death Spiral for Climate Alarmism, Redux?” MasterResource, September 30, 2009.

As I have written in a previous post, the trend toward abject panic over climate change seems to have reversed course. For all intents and purposes, climate alarmism – which I define as the reflexive tendency to assume worst-case scenarios generated by climate models are automatically true (and to enact public policy based on that belief) – is locked into a death spiral. The public policy implication is profound: substituting adaptation and wealth creating strategies for tears-in-the-ocean mitigation policies in the U.S. and abroad.

On the political front:

The IPCC’s reputation as a serious scientific institution continues to hemorrhage as a nearly endless string of errors and/or bad practices relating to the Fourth Assessment Report come to light.

As Newsweek put it recently,

Some of the IPCC’s most-quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures, newspaper articles, and corporate reports—including claims of plummeting crop yields in Africa and the rising costs of warming-related natural disasters, both of which have been refuted by academic studies.

Further, Newsweek opines, the case for policy-development based on climate alarmism is also off the rails,

There are excellent reasons to limit emissions and switch to cleaner fuels—including an estimated 750,000 annual pollution deaths in China, the potential to create jobs at home instead of enriching nasty regimes sitting on oil wells, the need to provide cheap sources of power to the world’s poorest regions, and the still-probable threat that global warming is underway. At the moment, however, certainty about how fast—and how much—global warming changes the earth’s climate does not appear to be one of those reasons.

Internationally, things are not much better for the alarmists. The negotiations in Copenhagen were a complete shambles, resulting only in a non-binding, let’s-meet-again memorandum that the various participating countries “recognized” having seen.

Greenpeace activist, and Independent Commentator Joss Garman characterized the “Copenhagen Accord” thus:

This “deal” is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they will come about. There is not even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below 2 C. Instead, leaders merely recognise the science behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it.

The only part of this deal that anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it’s now apparent that even this is largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so that poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.

In the EU, the vaunted European Trading System continues to come apart at the seams. According to James Kanter at the NYT:

Carbon traders, for example, have been arrested for tax fraud; evidence has emerged of lucrative projects that may do nothing to curb climate change; and steel and cement companies have booked huge profits selling surplus permits they received for free.

And the EU is backing away from previous plans to tighten its carbon reduction targets. According to Greenwire,

For months, Europe has mulled whether to increase to 30 percent its current commitment to reduce CO2 emissions 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. E.U. leaders in Brussels, including the bloc’s climate chief, Connie Hedegaard, have seemed to favor such a commitment, while influential member states like Germany and France have expressed skepticism of such a pledge without binding support from other major industrial powers like the United States.

A study, released today by the European Commission, expresses concern that Europe’s trading system for limiting emissions will remain less effective than planned without reductions in carbon allowances over the next decade. But addressing that problem may have to take a back seat for now, Hedegaard said.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., climate alarmism has sunk so low that Senator John Kerry risks choking himself to death as he ties his tongue into knots to pretend that his climate bill, the misleadingly named “American Power Act,” is not a climate bill. Depending on the date, Senator Kerry disingenuously characterizes as a job creation bill, or a bill to end dependency on foreign oil, or as a bill to rejuvenate the moribund US nuclear energy sector…or anything but what it is, which is a bill full of direct and indirect taxes on carbon: that is, on coal, natural gas, oil, and gasoline.

Pundits give the bill little chance of passage in this Congress, and if Democrats take anything like the whuppin’ they’re expected to get in November, I wouldn’t look for a reprise of the “American Power Act” any time soon. [Personal note to Senator Kerry: Dear Senator, will you please stop perpetuating the fiction that you can create jobs by forcing up the cost of power (and making it less reliable) in the United States. All you’re going to do with your fraudulently titled climate bill is kill jobs, reduce economic growth, export more of America’s industrial base to other countries, and perpetuate the misery of this lackluster economy. Even worse, you’ll hurt the people you claim as your primary constituency – the poor – more than the wealthy, as the poor spend more of their budget on energy than those with greater wealth.]

On the regulatory front,

EPA continues to face opposition to regulation of the greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. On June 10, a resolution authored by Senator Lisa Murkowski (and co-sponsored by 38 others including 3 Democrats) will be voted on. The resolution concludes that it is:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to the endangerment finding and the cause or contribute findings for greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act (published at 74 Fed. Reg. 66496 (December 15, 2009)), and such rule shall have no force or effect.

Finally, on the public opinion front,

Poll numbers continue to decline when it comes to people expressing serious concern about climate change, or willingness to pay anything to remedy it.

The New York Times points out that public belief levels are plummeting even in Jolly Old Britain, (and not-so-jolly old Germany) both of which have been, until recently, seething hotbeds of climate alarmism:

Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.

Our “paper of record,” also observes that

The lack of fervor about climate change is also true of the United States, where action on climate and emissions reduction is still very much a work in progress, and concern about global warming was never as strong as in Europe. A March Gallup poll found that 48 percent of Americans believed that the seriousness of global warming was “generally exaggerated,” up from 41 percent a year ago.

Conclusion

My colleague, Steve Hayward, thinks that future historians will peg 2008 as the year that climate alarmism jumped the shark. If so, it’s clear that in 2010, the Fonz is on the sharp declining phase of the jump, headed back down to the water. On every front, climate alarmists are losing, from international negotiations, to domestic legislation, to public opinion. Even the UK’s Royal Society is being forced to reconsider their position on climate change.

We can hope that climate alarmism will be replaced by a new era of climate realism, where the focus is on fostering resilience: building institutions, and helping other countries build institutions that would give them resilience in the face of any sort of climate change, manmade or natural, modest or major. Instead, however, my guess is this won’t happen. The alarmists are unable to give up the sense of panic they need to preserve to promote radical policies. And, to be fair, there is such polarization on the part of climate skeptics that even we climate moderates come in for some slapping around when we admit a vague possibility that humans could cause even modest harm via our influence on the climate. There is little appetite on either side for moderation or realism.

Instead, what I suspect will happen is that the entire issue of climate change will go sub rosa, and be embedded in discussions of energy, sustainability, energy security, renewable energy, protecting biodiversity, or anything that lacks the words “climate change” in the title.

His latest posting there highlights research findings that show that extreme weather events during last summer and the previous two winters can be fully explained by natural climate variability—and that “global warming” need not (and should not) be invoked.

This topic—whether or not weather extremes (or at least some portion of them) can be attributed to anthropogenic global warming (or, as Dr. Pielke Sr., prefers, anthropogenic climate change)—has been garnering a lot of attention as of late. It was a major reason for holding the House Subcommittee hearing last week, is a hot topic of discussion in the press, and is the subject of an in-progress major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

As such, I wanted to highlight some of the findings that Pat reported on. I encourage a visit to the full article “Overplaying the Human Contribution to Recent Weather Extremes” over at Cato@Liberty.

The Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010

A new paper by Randall Dole and colleagues from the Physical Sciences Division (PSD) of the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) examined the events leading up to and causing the big heat wave in Russia last summer (which was also part of an atmospheric pattern that was connected to the floods in Pakistan). Here is what they found:

“Our analysis points to a primarily natural cause for the Russian heat wave. This event appears to be mainly due to internal atmospheric dynamical processes that produced and maintained an intense and long-lived blocking event. Results from prior studies suggest that it is likely that the intensity of the heat wave was further increased by regional land surface feedbacks. The absence of long-term trends in regional mean temperatures and variability together with the [climate] model results indicate that it is very unlikely that warming attributable to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations contributed substantially to the magnitude of this heat wave.”

As Pat commented, “Can’t be much clearer than that.”

Recent Winter Severity

From Pat’s article:

Another soon-to-be released paper to appear in Geophysical Research Letters describes the results of using the seasonal weather prediction model from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to help untangle the causes of the unusual atmospheric circulation patterns that gave rise to the harsh winter of 2009-2010 on both sides of the Atlantic. A team of ECMWF scientists led by Thomas Jung went back and did experiments changing initial conditions that were fed into the ECMWF model and then assessed how well the model simulated the known weather patterns of the winter of 2009-2010. The different set of initial conditions was selected so as to test all the pet theories behind the origins of the harsh winter. Jung et al. describe their investigations this way: “Here, the origin and predictability of the unusual winter of 2009/10 are explored through numerical experimentation with the ECMWF Monthly forecasting system. More specifically, the role of anomalies in sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice, the tropical atmospheric circulation, the stratospheric polar vortex, solar insolation and near surface temperature (proxy for snow cover) are examined.”

In a nutshell, here is what Jung et al. found:

“The results of this study, therefore, increase the likelihood that both the development and persistence of negative NAO phase [an atmospheric circulation pattern that was largely behind the harsh winter conditions] resulted from internal atmospheric dynamical processes.”

Or, as Pat put it “Translation: Random variability.”

Pat also examined a third study by Roseanne D’Arrigo and colleagues who found an historical analog of the conditions responsible for the harsh winter of 2009-2010 way back in 1783-1784. The winter of 1783-1784 was a historically extreme one on both sides of the Atlantic and has long been associated with a large volcanic eruption that occurred in Iceland during the summer of 1783. Even Benjamin Franklin connected the winter conditions to the volcano. But D’Arrigo and colleagues now suggest a different mechanism. According to Pat:

But in their new study, Roseanne D’Arrigo and colleagues conclude that the harshness of that winter primarily was the result of anomalous atmospheric circulation patterns that closely resembled those observed during the winter of 2009-10, and that the previous summer’s volcanic eruption played a far less prominent role:

“Our results suggest that Franklin and others may have been mistaken in attributing winter conditions in 1783-4 mainly to Laki or another eruption, rather than unforced variability.

“Similarly, conditions during the 2009-10 winter likely resulted from natural [atmospheric] variability, not tied to greenhouse gas forcing… Evidence thus suggests that these winters were linked to the rare but natural occurrence of negative NAO and El Niño events.”

Bottom Line

The take home message of Pat’s post is worth repeating:

The point is that natural variability can and does produce extreme events on every time scale, from days (e.g., individual storms), weeks (e.g., the Russian heat wave), months (e.g., the winter of 2009-10), decades (e.g., the lack of global warming since 1998), centuries (e.g., the Little Ice Age), millennia (e.g., the cycle of major Ice Ages), and eons (e.g., snowball earth).

Folks would do well to keep this in mind next time global warming is being posited for the weather disaster du jour. Almost assuredly, it is all hype and little might.

Be sure to check out Pat’s full article which includes much more in depth coverage of these three soon-to-be-released scientific studies.

[Editor note: Tomorrow's post looks at Big Science-Big Environmental's new plan to push climate alarmism at the public. For a look at scientific momentum away from scary climate scenarios, see Chip Knappenberger, "What Does the Last Decade Tell Us About Global Warming? (Hint: the 'skeptics' have the momentum).]“

It was the year that climate-change alarmism (aka anthropogenic global-warming alarmism) died, a passing all the more noteworthy because it seemed so unlikely 12–15 months ago.

Few ideas in all of history had the salience and durability that warming alarmism used to have. Higher temperatures and accumulating carbon would bring planetary catastrophe–all our fault by using the dense energy known as oil, gas, and coal.

It became a religious issue, but this time one with science on its side. A consensus of scientists would team up with a consensus of busybodies to bring us an unending stream of penitential sacrifices. For politicians, sharing the pain would be an unprecedented vote-buying opportunity. And new taxes–well, politicians always need that (if they can get away with it!).

Irrational Hype

The oh-no-say-it-ain’t-so idea developed momentum, articulated by seemingly selfless scientists who surely understood it–but nevertheless met regularly for global conferences at pleasant venues. Just before every conference would come new research findings whose message was that more research was needed.

One Englishman’s website was devoted to an interminable list of consequences, none very good, thus far suspected. They ranged from reversal of the Gulf Stream to inflation in China to slower tree growth to faster tree growth, and, of course, a desperate shortage of truffles. (Honest?)

The climate policy coalition would set in motion a tsunami of gravy that would submerge the economic landscape as we knew it. Venturers and dinosaur corporations (remember Enron? BP?) promised new technologies and greener jobs, all requiring just a bit more money before becoming viable.

At the lower end were opportunities to wallow in collective guilt, from bogus statistics on polar bears to the likely sinking of Tuvalu. Some drippings from the gravy boat would surely rain down on us, as we imagined allowance and offset markets with staggering notional volumes and zillions of clever derivatives. There were a handful of naysayers who could be bought off, and a mass of bumpkin voters who could be cajoled into submission.

Reality Seeps In

The end began November 2009 with the East Anglia e-mails. “Hide the decline” may have been ambiguous, but the “Harry Read Me” file gave the program away. The available data had been hopelessly massaged, the original observations thrown away. The scientists turned out to be a cartel trying to control access to journals that might give their critics an outlet. Footnote checkers turned the once-authoritative United Nations climate-change reports into the equivalent of poorly cribbed term papers.

And then someone discovered the great die-off of the thermometers that removed observations from frigid weather stations to skew the data in favor of warmer ones.

Even the first markets that would show us the possibilities for climate-related emissions trading started acting weirdly. The European Trading System began to sink when people started looking into the production and verification of its data. Early last year came massive tax evasions on allowance sales, and later Denmark hit the big time as the home of a $7 billion ETS scam, a consequence of rules that did not require traders to prove who they were.

This little-known story climaxed with a too-late cleanup that reduced 1,256 traders to about 150. And, of course, the Chicago Climate Exchange had just gone out of business, as the expected death of climate policy zeroed out the prices of whatever it was they were trading.

Copenhagen failed, and Cancun was farcical. Far fewer reporters turned up in Mexico, as news budgets reflected climate’s declining importance. Two memorable things happened: At the end, Japan refused to sign on to renew the Kyoto agreement, and at opening, the official invocation was directed to the Mayan goddess of “reason, creativity and weaving.”

Ain’t life grand?

Thank You Internet

The end of climate science and the fall of climate politics could never have happened in a world of typewriters, faxes and three TV networks. Cheap telecom and the Internet brought it about, as any document that mattered became available with a Google inquiry and a mouse click. The East Anglia guys were still living in a world of paper journals. Nowadays all the peer reviews that matter come quickly by dozens to anyone who posts something worth (or not worth) reading. Lots of junk turns up, but that’s the freight for information that flows so cheaply and freely.

This is really good news. It means that we will probably never see another mass hysteria that achieves the dimensions of global warming and carbon abatement policy – unless of course it’s real.

Rational Markets

Which brings us back to markets, whose real function is to move information and make us all nicer in the process. In The Rational Optimist (Harper Collins, 2010), British science writer Matt Ridley describes some of the many recent experiments that put a new gloss on self-interest.

One was replicated in 15 small communities scattered around the world. The researchers give each subject the equivalent of an average day’s pay and allow him to keep or share it with a pre-identified individual. Subjects in huntergatherer societies shared an average of 25 percent, while those in more cosmopolitan communities shared 50 percent. The most significant determinant of the fraction shared was the volume of market activity, measured by the percentage of food purchased rather than self-supplied or shared.

The takeaway? Markets where we transact with strangers make us more rather than less moral, whether they are for goods or ideas. Exchange brings specialization, whether in thought or trade, and we seem to implicitly recognize the value of sharing them despite our self-interest.

Ridley says it’s like sex, which itself evolved not just because it’s fun, but because it mixes genes that promote diversity of attributes and long-term survival as generalist consumers and specialist producers. There is a marketplace for ideas, now on steroids thanks to telecom and the Internet. And, in Ridley’s words, when ideas meet they have sex and produce newer and more remarkable ideas. And now we can disseminate or access almost any extant idea in a matter of seconds.

References 

The list of research findings on the effects of global warming is at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

Harry Read Me is available in lots of places, including http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/HARRY_READ_ME.txt

The Denmark story, remarkably underreported here, is at http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Hedegaard-Danish-scam.doc

For a synopsis of The Rational Optimist, see Michael Shermer’s “When Ideas Have Sex” in the June 2010 Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=when-ideas-have-sex

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.

How much confidence would you place in expert assessments such as the IPCC reports, when the experts themselves disregard some science in favor of others (namely the science that they themselves have been involved in), despite any good reasons to do so?

Not much would be my answer.

A prime example of experts disregarding scientific knowledge is found in the PNAS survey conducted by Kirsten Zickfeld and colleagues.

Zickfeld et al. interviewed 14 experts about what they thought the climate future holds in store under various scenarios of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. The experts’ responses to the scenario in which atmospheric CO2 levels reach about 1000 parts per million (ppm) by the year 2200 is the one which got the most attention—predictably so, why pay any attention to outcomes which aren’t dramatic.

In fact, as evidence that the experts were themselves prone to the dramatic, Dr. Myles Allen (one of the experts interviewed), was quoted in the UK’s The Independent, that “We are certainly capable of committing ourselves to an emissions trajectory that make 1,000 ppm in 2200 almost inevitable if we make the wrong decisions over the next 20 years.”

This seems a little short-sighted and moralistic, but hey, these guys are experts.

And 13 out of 14 stated that there was a greater than 50% likihood that some sort of climate tipping point would occur by 2200 under the 1000ppm CO2 scenario while 9 of them put the probability as over 80%.

Undoubtedly, a leading factor in these beliefs comes down to the experts’ opinions as to what is the true value of the earth’s climate sensitivity. It turns out, that this has been a hard value to pin down—largely because uncertainties abound in both our understanding of the observed climate as well as how it got that way.

Zickfeld et al. report that the experts consider the leading cause of uncertainty about the behavior of the climate system to lie with cloud processes. Others causes consistently listed near the top were feedbacks involving ice and snow, water vapor feedback, and large-scale ocean circulation.

It is interesting to note that Zickfeld found that the experts had little confidence that scientific research would reduce the impacts of these uncertainties by half even if research budgets were increased by 3 times current levels.

Considering all that we don’t know, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can only state that the “likely” range (a confidence of between 66 and 90%) of the true value of the climate sensitivity lies between 2°C and 4.5°C, which, as Zickfeld explains, means that the IPCC thinks that there is just a 5% to 17% chance that the climate sensitivity is greater than 4.5°C.

But what to the experts think about the range of climate sensitivity? Figure 1 shows their expert opinion.

Figure 1. Range of values which are thought to contain the true value of the earth’s climate sensitivity, as given by 14 experts. The tick marks on the whiskers bound the 90% range, the boxes bound the 50% range and the small, thick horizonal mark reprents the median value of the distribution. The values in parentheses under the number of each reviewer is the probability that the climate sensitivity is greater than 4.5°C. (the grayed out boxes associated with some experts are how those experts responded to the question in a similar survey more than 10 years ago).

Now, before I go much further, let me discuss briefly who Zickfeld’s experts are. Probably a good half of them have been directly involved in research projects which have determined that very high climate sensitivity values were a distinct possibility, and exactly none of them were involved in research projects (such as those being carried out by Richard Lindzen or Roy Spencer) which suggest that the climate sensitivity is at (or below) the low end of the IPCC range.

So, the following results will hardly be surprising.

Zickfeld et al. report:

The IPCC report assesses that the “equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely to lie in the range 2– 4.5°C, with a most likely value of about 3°C.” IPCC defines likely as a 0.66–0.90 probability, which in Chapter 19, Working Group II (WGII) is interpreted as a 0.05–0.17 probability that climate sensitivity is >4.5°C. Examining the elicited distributions obtained from our experts, we find that 10 of the 14 experts placed >0.17 of their probability above 4.5 °C. [emphasis added]

So 10 of the 14 experts think the chance of a high sensitivity value is greater than that laid out in the IPCC. As a note, the other 4 experts listed the probability at 7%, 10%, 12% and 15%.

Even more enlightening is that 9 of the 14 experts consider a climate sensitivity of greater than 6°C as having a not insignificant 5% chance of being the true value.

What is so incredible about these numbers is that there is solidly argued scientific research (appearing in the peer-reviewed literature) that constrains the climate sensitivity range to a much greater degree than these experts do.

Most notable is a string of papers published by James Annan, a climate researcher at the Research Institute for Global Change of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and his colleagues. James argues that his research pretty strongly suggests that the upper end of the range of potential climate sensitivity is much more constrained than the experts realize (or admit to).

In his most recent paper on the subject, James concludes:

Based on some conservative assumptions regarding the value of independent estimates, we conclude that climate sensitivity is very unlikely (<5% probability) to exceed 4.5°C. We cannot assign a significant probability to climate sensitivity exceeding 6°C without making what appear to be wholly unrealistic exaggerations about the uncertainties involved. This represents a significant lowering of the previously-estimated bound.

Apparently, most of Zickfeld’s experts weren’t above “making wholly unrealistic exaggerations about the uncertainties involved” as 9 of them included a probability of 5% or more that the true climate sensitivity was above 6°C (and not a one had a probability as low as 5% for the climate sensitivity being above 4.5°C).

Clearly, the experts did not think too highly of James’ analysis.

All of this has left James shaking his head (from his review of the Zickfeld article):

So even though as far as I can tell everyone accepts that the fundamental points we make in our two papers are valid, they still stick to these old discredited results with long tails to high values. – in fact the answers are more alarmist than 15 years ago. Makes us wonder why we bother…

Read more of why James is disheartened at his blog post “Oh noes we’re all going die…by 2200.”

All of this shines interesting light on the latest entry over at the blog RealClimate—a prayer of sorts, that Gavin Schmidt picked up at a recent climate meeting which he offers for discussion:

Grant us…
The ability to reduce the uncertainties we can;
The willingness to work with the uncertainties we cannot;
And the scientific knowledge to know the difference.

The way I see it, there is real work being done to reduce the uncertainties on the estimate of the climate sensitivity, but the experts would rather not recognize these results and instead, they prefer to treat climate sensitivity as a type of uncertainty that can’t be known, because this allows them to better entertain the high end leading to future catastrophe and tipping points.

Which gets to the bottom of the bigger issue—that is, what is wrong with Assessment reports such as those from the IPCC.

Simply put, they reflect the opinion of experts rather than a comprehensive, or even unbiased, review of the scientific literature. The assumption that expert assessments draw upon the best scientific knowledge is a false one—what experts do drawn upon are their own ideas, some borne by their own work, and even if subsequent work seriously calls their own work into question, they stick to their old ideas. This is on display here, and also throughout the Climategate emails.

References:

Annan, J. D., and J. C. Hargreaves, 2006. Using multiple observationally-based constraints to estimate climate sensitivity. Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L06704.

Zickfeld, K., et al., 2010. Expert judgments about transient climate response to alternative future trajectories of radiative forcing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.0908906107.

[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.

This is why, coming out of our decade-long experience, I was so disappointed that you rented your good name to [Andrew] Dessler’s attack on the State of Texas regarding its petition against EPA’s endangerment finding.

What happened to the Gerald North of old?

“I did worry that my comment on my not being willing to sign on to Kyoto right now got into the [Houston] Chronicle and in our local paper. I do not like being too public on policy matters. It ain’t my thing.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), October 2, 1998

And your rejection of knee-jerk alarmism:

“As you know I am a subscriber [to man-made warming], but hardly in the Al Gore category. Nor do I have any preconceived ideas about what should be done about GW if anything. I have been busy fending off reporters trying to connect the unusual [El Nino-driven] summer [heat spike] to GW. I even sent an e-mail to Gore.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Richard Lindzen with cc Rob Bradley (Enron), August 11, 1998

Which also included an open mind toward low-sensitivity warming and the quite possible net positive externalities of GHG emissions, particularly CO2.

“[Robert] Mendelsohn’s position is rather similar to yours…. He believes the impacts are not negative at all for the US and most of the developed countries. Most impact studies seem to be showing this. It leads us to think that a little warming is not so bad. Glad I have kept my mouth shut on this issue of which I know so little.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), November 12, 1999

And given your views, why did you not jump on Climategate in the way that Judith Curry did?  You went public (Washington Post, etc.) that Climategate was no big deal and then said you had not read the emails! Have you read Climategate: The Crutape Letters? Why would you not read it with great interest? Where there are plumes of smoke, there is fire. 

Some years back, I challenged you on the obvious scientific errors of Al Gore’s book/movie, An Inconvenient Truth–including his show-stopper ice age graph on CO2 levels vs. temperature, the very one you had me take out of Enron’s stock presentation:

“I do not remember, but I think Gore has used the famous ice age graph correlating CO2 and climate change. I think I had you take it out of your [Enron] presentation if you recall. [Pat] Michaels is right about its irrelevance, but it is really not new to the research community as I stated.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), May 5, 1999

But you simply claimed that you had not and did not want to watch the movie (the ‘I-know-nothing’ Sgt. Schultz defense that Enron execs used). Yes, you finally reviewed the book beyond its political moment and in a rather apologetic way. But what if you had greeted the book and movie with some tough, sober scientific assessment? You could have really done some good for maintaining scientific standards in the heat of political battle.

And then your tepid Climategate response.

AND then the Chronicle op-ed, which I criticized as scientific ‘spin’.

So much for trying to find the middle of the debate, a middle that your own views champion.

So now let me respond to your email reply in its entirety:

1. Comfort against Climate Alarmism

 “I really enjoyed the ‘fact’ that I saved you from being a ‘climate alarmist’.”

In fact, your middle-of-the-road stance has been quite comforting to me. I have greater confidence that climate alarmism is very exaggerated. Your warming range is outside of the official IPCC range on the low side–the world should know that, even though you have kept this unadvertised. And you alerted me to some bad scientific actors that were pushing the alarm–more comfort amid all of the uncertainty.

Third, your recognition of the exaggerated climate mini-alarms (super storms, disruption of thermohaline circulation, etc.) in personal emails and in a letter-to-the-editor in the Houston Chronicle has been comforting too. The 1998 temperature spike and, more recently, the very bad Gulf Coast hurricanes–why wouldn’t I think the something bad from the human influence might be probable?

And so the balance of scientific evidence is against anthropogenic global warming being the mother of all negative externalities. You helped me realize this (wish Enron could have toned down the climate alarmism … I certainly failed on that one). 

Here is some of what you told me:

“[A review of the models] (together with my own toy model prejudice) has led me to think that sensitivity [of climate to greenhouse gas forcing] is collectively ‘coming down.’”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), February 1, 1998

“My own conclusion is that we can see the [enhanced greenhouse and aerosol] signals (G and V) but they might we weaker than we originally thought.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), May 7, 1999

“As I have argued for years, we simply do not know the answer. There is a wide margin of error in many of the ingredients that go into the models. For example, we do not know some of the radiative properties of the aerosols to a factor of 5. No matter how good your climate model is, you cannot compensate for that uncertainty. The range of uncertainty is broad enough to accommodate [Pat] Michaels (well, maybe North) and Mahlman.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), September 17, 1999

“I am buying the Lindzen story as far as the importance of upper level water vapor…. I am beginning to sense a sea change.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), November 12, 1999

“[Richard] Kerr’s article delved a bit beneath the surface to find who some of the silent skeptics (really noncommittals) are. I suspect there are many more.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), September 17, 1999

“As usual we may have been caught believing our models before we should.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), June 17, 1998

“I think Dick [Lindzen] and I agree on the role of lag in the oceans and the freedom modelers have in using the oceans to help in the fit to the record.”

- Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), August 18, 1998

And on extreme events, your message to me back to Enron is unchanged–more comfort.

“In his article Sunday, Rob Bradley reminds us of the errors made about dire climate predictions proffered by some climate science outliers. These have been given undue coverage by politicians and the media (the same can be said about the nay-saying fringe).  Virtually all of these dire predictions were never made or endorsed by the mainstream climate community of researchers in the field.

- Gerald North, “Fringe Predictions,” Letter to the Editor, Houston Chronicle, April 1, 2008.

Square this with (Dessler’s) recent op-ed co-signed by you that said in part:

“Rising sea levels threaten our coasts; increasing weather variability, including heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall events and even winter storms, affect our infrastructure, energy and even our health.”

Settled science … really? Human driven and bad. All bad? Nothing benign or good? Will the real Jerry North please stand up?

2. Andy Dessler

“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.”

First of all, I am all for Dr. Dessler the scientist refuting or correcting any climate “skeptic” or anyone else on science. But I would expect that he (like you) would call out bad science by the Al Gores of the world and the ‘dire climate predictions’ that you mention above. Has he? No, he teams up with the infamous Joe Romm for science presentations for the media and offers no criticism of the alarmists–and Romm’s serial exaggerations. I can’t help but think that Dessler’s political views drive his science rather than the other way around.

At our lunch, I found it a bit ‘outrageous’ that Dessler said:

1) humankind could be living underground in the future because of the human influence on climate and

2) fossil fuel usage was akin to human slavery.

You remained silent when he made both statements. But how can you not say that this guy is getting over the top, particularly given your own sensitivity estimates and the fact that GHG forcing on climate is logarithmic, not linear, and the enhanced greenhouse signal is more about minimum (nighttime) temperatures going up rather than maximum (daytime) temps rising?

As far as you and him doing me a favor, I used my holiday to drive from Houston to College Station and back with a very top student from a very top high school where I volunteer teach each January. Dessler only came for lunch and declined a post-lunch visit. I bought lunch for everyone out of my own pocket. I paid you well at Enron for consulting–and arranged to pay you $2,500 for speaking at two Houston events a couple of weeks after our lunch. Dessler did you a favor by coming to lunch–and he did me a favor through his favor to you. Fair enough?

The lunch was very valuable for all of us to understand Dr. Dessler’s mindset. I was not impressed. He seems to be to be mad at the world and locked-in to a dangerously invasive, open-ended agenda of government planning in the name of ‘stabilizing climate’.

Is Andrew Dessler even capable of agreeing with your views and not the IPCC’s? Can he even admit that the possibility that the human influence on climate has strong positive effects–and maybe even net positive effects? As a scientist, can he not reasonably make a case that the balance of evidence is working against climate alarmism?

3. Being ‘Mocked’ in a Blog

“As I said to Steve McIntyre after spending hours trying to help him, then being mocked in his blog, ‘No good deed goes unpunished’.”

Not fair to me, whatever the story is with McIntyre.

My post did not mock you–it exposed you by using your own quotations in a very public debate given your sign-on of the Chronicle op-ed. You mock yourself by leading a double life as a closet ‘skeptic’ of climate alarmism. Indeed, before the recent Houston debates, you emailed me on not associating you with climate alarmism–just climate concern.

Rob and Dick [Lindzen],

Could we change it from “alarm” to “concern”? I won’t be claiming alarm.

Jerry North, January 4, 2010

Climate concern? A ‘concernist’ and not an ‘alarmist’? Well, lots of us are concerned about all sorts of things that may or may not turn out to be real problems. On the public policy front, I am concerned about energy unaffordability, energy unreliability, energy poverty, carbon trade wars, cap-and-trade profiteering, bogus offsets, and an intrusive carbon bureaucracy. That is why I challenge Dessler and Joe Romm and the like on ‘settled’ alarmist physical science.

And have you not stated that climate change might be positive and not negative under some realistic scenarios? This gets us back to Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn + North = CO2 as a positive externality and certainly not a ruinously negative one.

My MasterResource blog documented how you have gone Far Left by joining alarmist Dessler in your criticism of the State of Texas petition against EPA.

This is probably the most sensitive sentence in my post: Yet Dr. North dare not advertise his dissent or what he believes is climate realism versus model-contrived climate and the resulting alarmism. But you have clear quotable views on climate sensitivity, climate model fudging, and extreme events. What else can you or I say other than I ‘outed’ you (sorry–but I had to…)? The ball is in your court for a rebuttal if I have misrepresented your views.

Responding to the Real Issues

Can you directly respond to the key issues for the record?  Climate alarmism and its adjunct, government activism, is a huge public policy issue. You and your Texas A&M colleagues are paid by the taxpayer and are knee deep in taxpayer-funded climate studies. You went public with Dessler in a very public way against the State of Texas despite your own caution against getting political. I think you owe a lot of us, and even the State of Texas, a forthright airing of your ‘private’ views.

Specifically,

1) Will you forthrightly explain your own ‘best guess’ sensitivity estimate and what it really means for the debate–and how your estimate is different from the IPCC and certainly Andy Dessler?

2) In light of #1, should the Texas A&M ‘litmus’ test of climate sensitivity

“If we do nothing to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, future warming will likely be at least two degrees Celsius over the next century.” (emphasis added)

be changed or even dropped? And is such ‘political correctness’ what you really want to subject your department too? (You might have to overrule Dessler on this….)

3) Will you respond to my analogy of Climategate and the bad behaviors at Enron, a company you got to know well?

[And speaking of Enron analogies, something crossed my mind when I tried to understand your going Left with Dessler post-Climategate. Remember how Ken Lay co-opted Enron's board of directors by giving them use of the company planes and other perks? Conflict of interest.  Andy Dessler largely put together the conference in your honor last June.

Just might this have clouded your judgment in a very public policy matter regarding the op-ed? Do you have the capability with your very close friendship with Andy to tell him "you have gone too far" or "that is not correct" or at least "be careful on that"? Just asking ... and this might be worth thinking about. Friendships and loyalty in place of a tough-love, challenge culture can lead to organizational failure as my forthcoming book, Enron and Ken Lay: An American Tragedy, will explain.]

4) I responded paragraph-by-paragraph and even line-by-line to your Chronicle op-ed critical of the State of Texas re the EPA endangerment finding.

I put a lot of time into it. Your response? [Andy, your response?]

Correct Me On Any Particulars

“I’m afraid to say anything more to you via email.”

Let me have it–but on the substance only. You are a great, nice guy, and I ain’t so bad myself. (Let’s go to an Astros game after this is over….) I do not enjoy what I am doing here–or the conflicts I have found myself in with Rice’s Baker Institute at Rice (the Neal Lane problem–we had to go around him/Baker to have your climate debate with Lindzen at Rice) or other conflicts that I find myself in (including at my high school that has had a huge political correctness problem that is now being addressed).

I did not enjoy fighting Enron on windpower and their other (BTW, all money losing) ‘green’ initiatives–I put my job at risk and was penalized financially for my views expressed inside and outside of the company (http://www.politicalcapitalism.org/enron/).  If I was a ‘whistleblower’ at Enron, or if I am a ‘whistleblower’ on you, this email is a plea to deal with the issues and come clean. The time for hiding should be over. It’s a new ball game post Climategate.

A Final Question (and sorry for having to ask it)

Are you an honest man in a partially dishonest profession?

Are too many of your colleagues so imbued with an anti-industrial mentality, a back-to-nature mindset, and government dependence that alarms must be sounded and wagons circled when there is bad behavior, even cheating (Climategate)? Your scathing remarks about Tom Wigley of NCAR, for example (http://masterresource.org/?p=735, and other quotations I have not made public), a relatively clean Climategater, reveal that a number of scientists just don’t have the temperament to be scholars and disinterested seekers of truth in the political fire.

Here is hoping that you step back, reevaluate things, and get back to your once noble work of finding the middle ground of the debate between ultra-skepticism and Dessler-style alarmism. Judith Curry could use some company–and maybe other ‘closet skeptics’ (or just ‘closet non-alarmists’) will have the courage to come forward. It’s the best thing you could do for your profession and for your place in history. And now is the time.

- Rob

Appendix: Final Exchange With Gerald North

My 12-year relationship with Dr. North may now be at an end. “Politics’ killed it–but not only from my side but from his. North’s decision to go political by signing onto Andrew Dessler’s op-ed was the major blow, but his muted, peculiar reaction to Climategate spoke volumes about how he is protecting his friends and even his wayward profession rather than as a senior fellow of his trade, dressing down some of his colleagues.

Enron went bankrupt when the market lost faith in the company; climate science can chug along quite well on government grant money even if the public has lost faith in this profession.

Here is the way the two of us left it for the historical record.

I have made the decision to post our controversy so you and Andy will every reason to explain yourselves in this very public, contentious public policy debate. http://www.masterresource.org/2010/04/gerald-north-the-non-alarmist-alarmist/*

And remember:

1) both of you are public servants of the State of Texas as full time paid employees of a state university, and

2) you are on record as challenging the State of Texas on the state’s petition against EPA’s endangerment finding. I believe this post (and the other related ones at MasterResource) are relevant in this regard.

I am afraid you are ’in denial’ under the perverse incentive (grant $$$), group think (‘tribalism’ as Judith Curry would put it), and mind set (Malthusianism) of most of your profession.

I thought that if you would take a month or two to step back and really think about what you believe, there was a chance you would ‘own up’ to your private beliefs and how they diverge from the IPCC–just like how your beliefs have diverged from the mini-alarms that big names in your profession have championed (your Chronicle letter-to-the-editor was quite important and even courageous, in retrospect). Judging from the last emails from you to me, I was wrong.

I was also naive to think you would take a closer look at Climategate a la Judith Curry. “These are all her opinions and she has a right to hold and exhibit them” is a cop out when you as a ‘middle of the roader’ really have an obligation to speak truth to power. She has courage and you do not. She and all of us deserve better from you. This cop-out is what you have told me about James Hansen as a duck (I can pull out those emails if you would like). Is Al Gore or John Holdren excused in this way too? Can anyone hold any belief as if there was not a ‘balance of evidence’ in the whole climate debate?

Shoot back. If I am wrong, I am wrong. But I think there needs to be a lot of explaining on what the heck you believe on models, sensitivity, fudge factors, and the rest of it given your (private) history.

The ball is in your court. And there is also time to come clean with your beliefs and not hide behind the IPCC, Dr. Dessler, or anyone else. You are your own man and not like a young scientist who cannot professionally or financially afford to buck the establishment on the quite unsettled science of climate change and politically-forced scientific ’consensus’.

From: Gerald North [mailto:grnorth38@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Gerald North
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 11:16 AM

Until recently, our relationship has been pedagogical. You asked me questions over the years and I tried to answer them as best I could. I have enjoyed that because it caused me to learn as I taught. 

We are no longer in that mode. You are using me to advance a political agenda. I have asked you not to post these private communications, but you persist. 

This has come to an end. I am sorry, but it must be.

From: Robert Bradley [mailto:rbradley@iertx.org]
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 11:35 AM
To: ‘Gerald North’
Cc: ‘Andrew Dessler’

Climate science is ‘nonpolitical’? What world do you live in?

Would you like me to pull out the emails with your political statements in them? Was your Chronicle op-ed with Dessler nonpolitical?

Yes, I knew this could be the end. But this is a small price to pay to try to get toward the truth as you experts state it.

And if you would ‘come clean’ with a full response, you might actually thank me for all this on down the road. I have emails from you thanking me for my ‘public policy’ push on the science–want me to pull those out too?

You have stated that you do not write emails that you do not want to be public. What are you hiding other than what you have said in the past?

Is the ‘private’ Jerry North just an extension of Climategate–emails that reveal what is really going on behind the curtain? What if we could see all of the emails of the climate alarmists and the closet non-alarmists? Wow!

What do you really believe, Jerry, to inform the policy debate? Sounds like you will just ignore this and hope it goes away….. That is a pretty bad way to deal with it–and I gave you a golden opportunity to come clean in a much better manner than what is now the case. You are a student of the philosophy and history of science. I have to believe you care about how a philosopher or historian of science will view your legacy.

Why not explain yourself? It is not the end of the world to own up to 2C, for gosh sakes….. And the problems of models….. And the obvious lessons of Climategate…. This is not ultra-skepticism but good middle-of-the-road stuff.

[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.

————————————————–

“In recent months, e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in the United Kingdom and errors in one of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s reports have caused a flurry of questions about the validity of climate change science.”

Comment: Why not use the term that everyone knows–Climategate (one can always use quotation marks to qualify it)? And if you know the emails were stolen, can you solve the mystery for the rest of us? If this presumption is no more than informed speculation, what does this say about your scientific belief system? You are speaking as professional scientists, after all, and not public relations specialists.

“These issues have led several states, including Texas, to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide (also known as greenhouse gases) are a threat to human health.

However, Texas’ challenge to the EPA’s endangerment finding on carbon dioxide contains very little science.”

A straw man argument? As Chip Knappenberger explained yesterday, the Texas Petition was not supposed to present science, it was filed to ask the EPA to revisit the science based upon recent revelation that many aspects of the process which produced the current state of science were flawed.

“Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott admitted that the state did not consult any climate scientists, including the many here in the state, before putting together the challenge to the EPA.”

The climate science world does not revolve around College Station, Texas, any more than it does/did Norwich, England (the home of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia of Climategate infamy). There is no reason to believe that the best of the best (much less politically impartial) climate scientists reside here in Texas. Non-Texas scientists regularly challenge Texas scientists, as the Richard Lindzen-Gerald North debate here in Houston in January attests.

There are other issues lurking below the surface–is a ”skeptic” or just “non-alarmist” hirable in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences or the Department of Oceanography at Texas A&M? Is there groupthink going on? Must junior faculty members at your and other Texas universities remain quiet? Does your statement advance open thinking and a ‘challenge culture’ at our universities? Why is there no such statement at, say, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Harvard University? Is climate science politicized where there are such statements?

 “Instead, the footnotes in the document reveal that the state relied mainly on British newspaper articles to make its case.”

Again, the case being made is about challenges to the state of existing climate science. It doesn’t matter where those challenges are presented, but rather their merit. Along with the investigative and summary reporting from some British newspapers (and other sources), the Texas Petition also includes much direct evidence of scientific misconduct found directly within the Climategate emails themselves.

“Contrary to what one might read in newspapers, the science of climate change is strong.”

“Strong”? Compared to what? Can science be “strong” but not settled? Is it being claimed that the science is settled too?

The error bars around past and future temperature projections are large, even huge. The whole range is in dispute. (Dr. North’s warming estimate has a range that lies outside of the IPCC range, for example.) Aerosols? Oceanic thermal lag? Cloud feedbacks? Stratospheric water vapor? And last but not least, given the slowdown of warming in the last decade or more–what about natural variability?  These crucial areas are in open dispute with profound implications for sensitivity estimates of greenhouse gas forcing.

Are today’s climate models “strong”? The IPCC report stated in its last assessment:

“The set of available models may share fundamental inadequacies, the effects of which cannot be quantified.”  - IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 805.

That does not sound like “strong science” to me. (Whether or not it is “best science” is another question.) 

“Our own work and the immense body of independent research conducted around the world leaves no doubt regarding the following key points:

• •?The global climate is changing.”

A 1.5-degree Fahrenheit increase in global temperature over the past century has been documented by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Numerous lines of physical evidence around the world, from melting ice sheets and rising sea levels to shifting seasons and earlier onset of spring, provide overwhelming independent confirmation of rising temperatures. Measurements indicate that the first decade of the 2000s was the warmest on record, followed by the 1990s and the 1980s. And despite the cold and snowy winter we’ve experienced here in Texas, satellite measurements show that, worldwide, January 2010 was one of the hottest months in that record.”

Recovery from a Little Ice Age since the mid-19th century? El Nino influencing current temperature trends? What is being hidden in a rush to equate climate change to humans? Natural variability is very important too.

This general recitation of facts about the earth’s climate behavior ignores the details that matter to human health and welfare–exactly what is being considered by the EPA. And it is in such details that Climategate and the IPCC error (as laid out in the Texas Petition) have the most potential to misdirect our scientific knowledge (for example, the melting of Himalayan glaciers).

Whether or not this past winter was warm globally is small consolation to many Americans who dealt with harsh winter weather. Certainly, a bad winter in the South doesn’t disprove anthropogenic global warming. But what it does disprove is the notion that weather/climate events that most impact us are eminently knowable and preordained by “global warming.” Regional impacts of climate change, after all, are a health-and-welfare issue. And regional predictions from climate models are unreliable.

“• •?Human activities produce heat-trapping gases.

Any time we burn a carbon-containing fuel such as coal or natural gas or oil, it releases carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon dioxide can be measured coming out of the tailpipe of our cars or the smokestacks of our factories. Other heat-trapping gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, are also produced by agriculture and waste disposal. The effect of these gases on heat energy in the atmosphere is well understood, including factors such as the amplification of the warming by increases in humidity.”

Again, what is really important is in the missing detail.

Yes, human greenhouse gases lead to a general warming pressure on the earth’s climate. But there are many processes in between a higher GHG atmospheric concentration and higher temperatures. And it is within the complex interaction of these processes (many of which are not fully understood, or perhaps even recognized), that the ultimate climate response is determined. And the science is far from settled in precisely this crucial area.

” •?•?Heat-trapping gases are very likely responsible for most of the warming observed over the past half century.”

“There is no question that natural causes, such as changes in energy from the sun, natural cycles and volcanoes, continue to affect temperature today. Human activity has also increased the amounts of tiny, light-scattering particles within the atmosphere. But despite years of intensive observations of the Earth system, no one has been able to propose a credible alternative mechanism that can explain the present-day warming without heat-trapping gases produced by human activities.”

As Chip Knappenberger has argued in-depth at MasterResource, the use of the term “very likely” to describe a human role in ”most of the warming over the past half century” is unjustified—rendered so by recent scientific findings. Dessler/North/EPA/IPCC are behind-the-times on this claim. Again, the details matter.

“• •?The higher the levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, the higher the risk of potentially dangerous consequences for humans and our environment.”

Is this a ‘maybe’ or ‘possibility’ statement? Could increasing concentrations also improve benefits, even with extreme scenarios such as man-made warming preventing a new ice age (as may already have occurred, according to the suggestion by environmentalist James Lovelock)?

“A recent federal report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, commissioned in 2008 by the George W. Bush administration, presents a clear picture of how climate change is expected to affect our society, our economy and our natural resources. Rising sea levels threaten our coasts; increasing weather variability, including heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall events and even winter storms, affect our infrastructure, energy and even our health.”

This Report is hardly the bastion of scientific credibility that Dessler/North make it out to be. Knappenberger described a draft of this report as “a fantasy piece on how [the authors] wished the state of climate science to be, rather than how it actually is.”

 

The final product was little better—emphasizing the potential negatives over the positives, and presenting, in general, an overly pessimistic view of the potential impacts of potential climate change on the U.S.—when there is plenty to be optimistic about. 

“The reality of these key points is not just our opinion. The national academies of science of 32 nations, and every major scientific organization in the United States whose members include climate experts, have issued statements endorsing these points. The entire faculty of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M as well as the Climate System Science group at the University of Texas have issued their own statements [here and here) endorsing these views. In fact, to the best of our knowledge, there are no climate scientists in Texas who disagree with the mainstream view of climate science.”

This is the argument from authority. Consensus is not science, and if there was clear science and a ‘consensus,’ Climategate would be unknown to history.

There have been previous “consensus” views across the sciences that have been proven wrong, from central planning as a social ideal to the false alarms of the Malthusian/neo-Malthusian scares (the “population bomb,” mineral resource exhaustion, etc.).

There was a consensus that Enron was a great company too (I fell for that one …), which brings up the parallels between Enron and Climategate for students of fads and fallacies–and internal groupthink.

The global cooling scare was not a consensus, but don’t tell that to such ferocious climate alarmists (now warmists) Stephen Schneider and Obama science advisor John Holdren. Humility is in order to those who want to say the science speaks with one voice for climate policy.

“We are all aware of the news reports describing the stolen e-mails from climate scientists and the errors in the IPCC reports. While aspects of climate change impacts have been overstated, none of the errors or allegations of misbehavior undermine the science behind any of the statements made above.”

Talking about Climategate? Why not use the term–even in quotation marks to indicate that it is a catch term, in your opinion?

“Errors”–what and how severe? In fact, what the “stolen” emails reveal is a hurried, panicked push to spin the science toward alarm. And if the authors have not read the emails (as North has admitted), are you sure there is not fire where there is smoke?

“In particular, they do not alter the conclusions that humans have taken over from nature as the dominant influence on our climate.”

Is nature optimal and the human influence bad, much less catastrophic? What value system is being snuck into the physical science debate? Many, myself included, fear that the natural scientists sounding the climate alarm have an unwavering, almost religious, notion that the natural world is fragile, and the human influence, whatever and whenever, is bad and worse. But the history of failed mini-climate alarms, as stated by Dr. North on other occasions, gives pause for such a gloomy view of the world. 

  And the Sins of Omission …

These scientists could have trumpeted the positives of the human influence on climate (and in particular CO2 as the “green” greenhouse gas); the benign distribution of the enhanced greenhouse effect (toward nights and the coldest regions’ winters); and the less-than-linear (logarithmic) effect of greenhouse forcing on temperature. But that is the detail–detail that goes missing when a case for alarm is condensed into a 750-word op-ed. A qualitative finding of a human influence on climate, after all, does not translate into a quantitative case for climate alarm. The human influence can be benign, and it can be positive. This is where the work of climate economists such as Robert Mendelsohn of Yale University becomes very important.

Conclusion

As is true of many polarized debates, the truth is somewhere in the middle. That middle has been explored by none other than Gerald North, the subject of Part IV in this series. His long held personal views suggest that the alarm of his colleague Dr. Dessler is exaggerated. But will the real Dr. North please stand up?

[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, bet for $10,000, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billion homeless,billions face risk, billions of deaths, bird distributions change, bird loss accelerating, bird strikes, bird visitors drop, birds confused, birds decline (Wales), birds driven north, birds face longer migrations, birds return early, birds shrink, bittern boom ends, blackbirds stop singing, blackbirds threatened, Black Hawk down,  blood contaminated, blue mussels return, bluetongue, brain eating amoebae, brains shrink,bridge collapse (Minneapolis), Britain one big city, Britain Siberian, British monsoon,  brothels struggle, brown Ireland, bubonic plague, budget increases, Buddhist temple threatened,  building collapse,building season extension, bushfires,  butterflies move north, carbon crimes, camel deaths,  cancer deaths in England, cannibalism,  caterpillar biomass shift, cave paintings threatened,  childhood insomnia,Cholera, circumcision in decline, cirrus disappearance, civil unrest, cloud increase,  coast beauty spots lost, cockroach migration, cod go south, coffee threatened, coffee berry borer, coffee berry disease,cold climate creatures survive, cold spells (Australia), cold wave (India), cold weather (world), computer models, conferences, conflict, conflict with Russia,  consumers foot the bill, coral bleaching, coral fish suffer, coral reefs dying, coral reefs grow, coral reefs shrink , coral reefs twilight, cost of trillions, cougar attacks, crabgrass menace, cradle of civilisation threatened, creatures move uphill, crime increase,crocodile sex, crops devastated, crumbling roads, buildings and sewage systems, curriculum change,  cyclones (Australia),   danger to kid’s health, Darfur, Dartford Warbler plague,  deadly virus outbreaks,death rate increase (US), deaths to reach 6 million, Dengue hemorrhagic fever, depression, desert advance,  desert retreat,  destruction of the environment,  dig sites threatened,  disasters, diseases move north, dog disease, Dolomites collapse, dozen deadly diseases – or not, drought,   ducks and geese decline, dust bowl in the corn belt,  earlier pollen season,  Earth axis tilt, Earth biodiversity crisis, Earth dying, Earth even hotter, Earth light dimming, Earth lopsided, Earth melting, Earth morbid fever, Earth on fast track, Earth past point of no return, Earth slowing down,  Earth spins faster, Earth to explode,earth upside down,  earthquakes, earthquakes redux, El Niño intensification, end of the world as we know it, erosion, emerging infections, encephalitis, English villages lost, equality threatened, Europe simultaneously baking and freezing,  eutrophication, evolution accelerating, expansion of university climate groups, (human, civilisation, logic, Inuit, smallest butterfly, cod, pikas, polar bears,  possums,  walrus,   toads,  plants, salmon, trout,  wild flowers, woodlice,  a million species, half of all animal and plant species, mountain species,  not polar bears, barrier reef, leaches, salamanders, tropical insects) experts muzzled, extreme changes to California, fading fall foliage, fainting,  famine, farmers benefit, farmers go under, farm output boost,  fashion disaster, fever, figurehead sacked, fir cone bonanza,fires fanned in Nepal, fish bigger, fish catches drop, fish downsize,   fish deaf, fish get lost, fish head north, fish shrinking,  fish stocks at risk, fish stocks decline, five million illnesses, flesh eating disease, flies on Everest,  flood patterns change, floods, floods of beaches and cities, flood of migrants, flood preparation for crisis, flora dispersed, Florida economic decline, flowers in peril, food poisoning, food prices rise,food prices soar, food security threat (SA), football team migration,   forest decline, forest expansion, frog with extra heads, frostbite, frost damage increased,   fungi fruitful, fungi invasion, games change,Garden of Eden wilts, geese decline in Hampshire, genetic diversity decline, gene pools slashed, geysers imperiled, giant icebergs (Australia), giant oysters invade, giant pythons invade, giant squid migrate,gingerbread houses collapse, glacial earthquakes, glacial retreat, glacier grows (California), glaciers on Snowden, glacier wrapped, global cooling,  glowing clouds,  golf course to drown, golf Masters wrecked, grain output drop (China), grandstanding, grasslands wetter, gravity shift,  Great Barrier Reef 95% dead, Great Lakes drop,  great tits cope, greening of the North,  Grey whales lose weight, Gulf Stream failure, habitat loss, haggis threatened, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome,    harvest increase, harvest shrinkage, hay fever epidemic, health affected, health of children harmed, health risks, heart disease,heart attacks and strokes (Australia), heat waves, hibernation affected,  hibernation ends too soon, hibernation ends too late,  homeless 50 million, hornets, human development faces unprecedented reversal,human fertility reduced, human health risk, human race oblivion, hurricanes,  hurricane reduction, hurricanes fewer, hurricanes not,  hydropower problems, hyperthermia deaths, ice age, ice sheet growth, ice sheet shrinkage, icebergs,  illness and death, inclement weather, India drowning, infrastructure failure (Canada),  industry threatened, infectious diseases,  inflation in China, insect explosion, insect invasion,insurance premium rises, Inuit displacement, Inuit poisoned, Inuit suing, invasion of alien worms, invasion of cats,  invasion of crabgrass, invasion of herons, invasion of jellyfish, invasion of king crabs, invasion of midges, island disappears, islands sinking, Italy robbed of pasta, itchier poison ivy, jellyfish explosion, jets fall from sky,  Kew Gardens taxed, kidney stones, killer cornflakes, killing us, kitten boom, koalas under threat, krill decline, lake and stream productivity decline, lake empties, lake shrinking and growing, landslides, landslides of ice at 140 mph, large trees decline, lawsuits increase, lawsuit successful, lawyers’ income increased (surprise surprise!),  lawyers want more, legionnaires’ surge,  lives saved, Loch Ness monster dead, locust plagues suppressed, lush growth in rain forests,   Malaria, mammoth dung melt, mango harvest fails, Maple production advanced, Maple syrup shortage, marine diseases, marine food chain decimated, Meaching (end of the world), Meat eating to stop, Mediterranean rises,megacryometeors, Melanoma, Melanoma decline, methane emissions from plants, methane burps, methane runaway, melting permafrost, Middle Kingdom convulses, migration,  migratory birds huge losses,microbes to decompose soil carbon more rapidly, minorities hit, monkeys at risk,  monkeys on the move, Mont Blanc grows, monuments imperiled, moose dying, more bad air days,   more research needed, mortality increased, mountain (Everest) shrinking,  mountaineers fears, mountains break up, mountains green and flowering,   mountains taller, mortality lower, Myanmar cyclone, narwhals at risk,National Parks damaged, National security implications, native wildlife overwhelmed, natural disasters  quadruple, new islands, next ice age, NFL threatened, Nile delta damaged, noctilucent clouds, no effect in India, Northwest Passage opened, nuclear plants bloom, oaks dying,  oaks move north,  ocean acidification, ocean acidification faster, ocean dead spots, ocean dead zones unleashed, ocean deserts expand, ocean waves speed up,  Olympic Games to end, opera house to be destroyed, outdoor hockey threatened,   ozone repair slowed, ozone rise,  penguin chicks frozen, penguin chicks smaller, personal carbon rationing, pest outbreaks, pests increase, phenology shifts,  pines decline, plankton blooms,   plants lose protein, plants march north, plants move uphill, polar bears aggressive, polar bears deaf, polar bears drowning,   polar tours scrapped, popcorn rise, porpoise astray, profits collapse, psychiatric illness,   puffin decline, pushes poor women into prostitution, rabid bats,  radars taken out, railroad tracks deformed, rainfall increase, rape wave, refugees,  reindeer endangered, release of ancient frozen viruses, resorts disappear, rice threatened, rice yields crash, rift on Capitol Hill, rioting and nuclear war, river flow impacted, rivers raised, roads wear out, robins rampant,   rocky peaks crack apart, roof of the world a desert, rooftop bars, Ross river disease,  ruins ruined, Russia under pressure, salinity reduction,salinity increase,  Salmonella, salmon stronger, satellites accelerate, school closures, sea level rise, sea level rise faster, seals mating more, seismic activity, sewer bills rise, severe thunderstorms, sex change,sexual promiscuity, shark attacks, sharks booming, sharks moving north, sheep shrink, shop closures, short-nosed dogs endangered,  shrinking ponds, shrinking sheep, shrinking shrine, Sidney Opera House wiped out, ski resorts threatened, slow death, smaller brains, smog, snowfall decrease, snowfall increase, snowfall heavy, snow thicker, soaring food prices, societal collapse, soil change, songbirds change eating habits, sour grapes, space problem, spectacular orchids, spiders getting bigger, spiders invade Scotland,  squid larger, squid population explosion, squid tamed, squirrels reproduce earlier,  stingray invasion, storms wetter,  street crime to increase, subsidence, suicide, swordfish in the Baltic, Tabasco tragedy, taxes, tectonic plate movement,   terrorists (India), threat to peace, ticks move northward (Sweden), tides rise, tigers eat people, tomatoes rot, tornado outbreak, tourism increase, toxic seaweed,  trade barriers, trade winds weakened, traffic jams,  transportation threatened, tree foliage increase (UK),   tree growth slowed, trees in trouble, trees less colourful,  trees more colourful, trees lush, tropics expansion, tropopause raised, truffle shortage, truffles down,  turtles crash, turtle feminised, turtles lay earlier, UFO sightings, UK coastal impact, UK Katrina,  Vampire moths, Venice flooded, violin decline, volcanic eruptions,  walrus pups orphaned,  walrus stampede,  wars over water, wars sparked, wars threaten billions, wasps, water bills double, water scarcity (20% of increase), waves bigger, weather out of its mind, weather patterns awry, Western aid cancelled out,  West Nile fever, whale beachings,whales lose weight, whales move north,  wheat yields crushed in Australia,  wildfires, wind shift, wind reduced, winds stronger, winds weaker,  wine – Australian baked, wine – harm to Australian industry,wine industry damage (California), wine industry disaster (US), wine – more English, wine -  England too hot, wine -German boon, wine – no more French ,  wine passé (Napa), wine – Scotland best,  wine stronger, winters in Britain colder, winter in Britain dead, witchcraft executions, wolves eat more moose, wolves eat less, workers laid off, World at war, World War 4, World bankruptcy, World in crisis,World in flames, Yellow fever.

and all from 0.006 deg C per year!

Advice of any omissions (with sources) or broken links is welcome at warmlist@numberwatch.co.uk

Note: All links were live at time of posting. Inevitably some will disappear, particularly from Yahoo News.

Thanks to correspondents for additional entries; especially, as always, Our Man in Puerto Rico. Also, thanks to “Scraperguy” for the script to form the following:

The dead link collection

Africa hit hardest, Alaska reshaped, allergies increase, anxiety,  Arctic tundra to burn,  atmospheric defiance, bananas destroyed, beer shortage, blizzards, boredom, business opportunities, business risks, British gardens change, cardiac arrest,  cataracts,  challenges and opportunities,  cloud stripping,  cold spells, cremation to end, damages equivalent to $200 billion, dermatitis,  desert life threatened, diarrhoea,disappearance of coastal cities, drowning people, early marriages, early spring, Earth spinning out of control, Earth wobbling, extinctions (bats, ladybirds,  pandas, pigmy possums, koalas, turtles, orang-utan,  elephants, tigers, gorillas, whales, frogs, penguins,) fish catches rise, flames stoked, footpath erosion, frosts, glacial growth, global dimming, god melts, Gore omnipresence, harmful algae, hazardous waste sites breached, high court debates, HIV epidemic, human health improvement, ice shelf collapse, lightning related insurance claims, little response in the atmosphere, Lyme disease, jet stream drifts north,malnutrition, marine dead zone, Maple production advanced,  mental illness (Alberta), migration difficult (birds), mountains melting, mudslides, oceans noisier, oblivion, oyster diseases, ozone loss, Pacific dead zone, plankton destabilised, plankton loss, plant viruses,  polar bears cannibalistic, polar bears starve,  psychosocial disturbances,  rainfall reduction, reindeer larger,  riches, rivers dry up, rockfalls,  shrimp sex problems, skin cancer, snowfall reduction, squid aggressive giants, stick insects, stormwater drains stressed, teenage drinking, terrorism, tree beetle attacks, trees could return to Antarctic, tree growth increased, tsunamis, tundra plant life boost, uprooted – 6 million, walrus displaced, war, war between US and Canada, water stress, water supply unreliability, weeds,  whales wiped out, white Christmas dream ends.

Suggestions for replacement links are welcome.

Total (dead and alive) 690

Last updated 15 February 2010