Scientists Threatened For "Climate Denial"

Forrest Kyle writes "A former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg has received multiple death threats for questioning the extent to which human activities are driving global warming. '"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor. "I can tolerate being called a skeptic because all scientists should be skeptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal." Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology [...] recently claimed: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science."'"

Comments

Re:More denial crapola on slashdot

[HappySqurriel]

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2006/0 8/30/mits_inconvenient_scientist/

Indeed. I attended a week's worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider's directive. There is no science on the other side, Gore inveighed, more than once. Again, the same message: If you hear tales of doubt, ignore them. They are simply untrue.

I ask you: Are these convincing arguments? And directed at journalists, who are natural questioners and skeptics, of all people? What happens when you are told not to eat the apple, not to read that book, not to date that girl? Your interest is piqued, of course. What am I not supposed to know?

Here's the kind of information the "scientific consensus" types don't want you to read. MIT's Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology Richard Lindzen recently complained about the "shrill alarmism" of Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth." Lindzen acknowledges that global warming is real, and he acknowledges that increased carbon emissions might be causing the warming -- but they also might not.

"We do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change" is one of Lindzen's many heresies, along with such zingers as "the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940," "the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average," and `"Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why."

While vacationing in Canada, I spotted a newspaper story that I hadn't seen in the United States. For no apparent reason, the state of California, Environmental Defense, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have dragged Lindzen and about 15 other global- warming skeptics into a lawsuit over auto- emissions standards. California et al . have asked the auto companies to cough up any and all communications they have had with Lindzen and his colleagues, whose research has been cited in court documents.

"We know that General Motors has been paying for this fake science exactly as the tobacco companies did," says ED attorney Jim Marston. If Marston has a scintilla of evidence that Lindzen has been trafficking in fake science, he should present it to the MIT provost's office. Otherwise, he should shut up.

"This is the criminalization of opposition to global warming," says Lindzen, who adds he has never communicated with the auto companies involved in the lawsuit. Of course Lindzen isn't a fake scientist, he's an inconvenient scientist. No wonder you're not supposed to listen to him.

Inspite of what you may believe, there is a politicaly motivated movement to ensure that scientists that do not agree with the Global Warming Consensus are not heard ...

How about you ask some of these people about whether there is not political agenda:

Dr. Christopher Landsea:
Leading expert in the field of hurricanes and tropical storms.
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
- resigned as an author of the IPCC 2007 report, released earlier this month stating the IPCC was "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound."
- wrote a lengthy and detailed open letter to his scientific colleagues explaining why he was withdrawing from helping to author the report.
- "I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized." - "In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concer

Re:Believe it.

[geekoid]

Yes, and if if people on slashdot starting saying the earth was actually a giant cube, they owuld have the same results.

Before throwing your hat in with this guy, you might want to research his motivations.
Also, he is a geographer, not a climatologist. Has written zero papers on climatology, has no experience in climatology.

SUpposing he actually got death threats, it isn't suprising, because tere are stupid people in every 'group' an dit is a shame. it is wrong, and I hope they get the person who wrote them. That in know way is an arguement against or for global warming.

"Their science is sound, and after doing my due-diligence I agree with them. I will not be shouted down by eco-religious fanatics or ideological thugs, and neither will these scientists."
actually it is not, and also MOST scientists agree that humans have impacted the enviroment and are a major contributer to global climate change.

However, I offer some proof.
China does not want there to be global warming, they want to have the same things the Western worlds has. With all ther political might, the best influance they had on the paper was some minor down grade in the language. This speaks volumes. If there was any strong scientific support against global warming China would have brought it up.

You go ahead and bury your head in the sand; where you can make yourself believe the humans haven't impact their enviroment at all.

runaway global warming: debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I am concerned about the future of our planet and our species' place upon it, I am growing increasingly sceptical of the wild claims surrounding a looming global warming catastrophe.

My main area of surprise and shock was learning that past concentrations of carbon dioxide were much higher than they are today, as revealed in the interview below:

RES: Professor Robert E. Sloan, Department of Geology, University of Minnesota
JC: Dr Joe Cain, interviewer

We are talking about carbon dioxide levels 6 to 10 times the present carbon dioxide level. When you have high amounts of carbon dioxide in an atmosphere up to a certain limit, which is considerably higher than it is now, the result is green plants grow very much better... And it is precisely at this time that the recovery from the first dinosaur extinction takes place. When the super plumes come and carbon dioxide increases, and the oxygen correspondingly increases as a result of photosynthesis... And yet the super plumes did not last forever and they started to die at the end of Cretaceous.... In any event, large dinosaurs really required to be living in an oxygen tent. An atmosphere in the neighborhood of 35 percent oxygen would be considerably more compatible with large dinosaurs than one in the neighborhood of 28. And so this suggested to me that this was perhaps a significant reason for the first dinosaur extinction, and probably one of the major factors in the second, the terminal dinosaur extinction, other than the birds. It also neatly tied together all of the really bizarre features about the Cretaceous... The Cretaceous is clearly a green house period as opposed to the present ice house that we have... Well, the rich carbon dioxide of course provides for a much greater biogenic diversity.

I have come to learn that these past carbon dioxide concentrations have been documented in peer-reviewed research journals:

We find that CO2 emissions resulting from super-plume tectonics could have produced atmospheric CO2 levels from 3.7 to 14.7 times the modern pre-industrial value of 285 ppm.

My interest in past CO2 concentrations began by reading a (somewhat) more partisan summary of this information:

When dinosaurs walked the earth (about 70 to 130 million years ago), there was from five to ten times more CO2 in the atmosphere than today. The resulting abundant plant life allowed the huge creatures to thrive. . . . Based on nearly 800 scientific observations around the world, a doubling of CO2 from present levels would improve plant productivity on average by 32 percent across species.

I have also seen a great rejection of the global warming panic in the scientific community (it is unlikely that "big oil" funds have "bribed" so many faculty members of such prestigous universities):

Sixty scientists call on Harper to revisit the science of global warming... If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.

And I have also seen a growing political backlash against scientifically-unfounded runaway global warming panic:

Politicians who build campaigns around "alarmist" global warming claims are themselves becoming quite alarmed because of growing skepticism, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said.

When I see interviews such as

Re:I Don't Buy It

[SirTalon42]

Your article was from 2005, through 2006 there was far more evidence showing Mars was warming (including reports from NASA and other groups saying exactly that).

Re:I Don't Buy It

[TopherC]

The public have a disturbing lack of understanding of the scientific process. Yes, climate change is a hot issue, and rightly so! It takes an extraordinary level of public awareness of global warming just to push against a government that is normally driven by corporate interest. In many other fields, the government has demonstrated incredibly poor management of scientific programs, and also a complete disregard of scientific rationale when it comes to policy-making.

Now that the stakes are so high, the public simply has to get involved. That presents a new difficulty for the scientists. The scientific process is that of constant questioning and evaluation. One has to be as objective as possible, exploring different sides of an argument, and so on. To attack a scientist for their professional opinion in their own field is to attack the scientific process. But the result of this process (which when you look at forefront research may seem chaotic and governed by sociology more than science) is firm conclusions that have withstood the storms of controversy.

Another aspect of science that needs to be understood are the various relationships between theory and experiment. With global warming, I think this translates into climate models and the search for evidence of warming. I'm not aware of *any* climate models that deny any correlation between greenhouse gases and global temperatures. And I even suspect that all reasonable climate models give (within an order of magnitude) the same level of warming. The leading-edge global climate research is concerned with one aspect or another of *evidence* for climate change that's already occurred.

What level of evidence do we require before we change our behavior and set new policies? Does any climate scientist feel that we can continue increasing the levels of CO2 without any serious consequences? I don't think so. Do I think that if I bite a cyanide capsule then I will die? Well, I haven't tried it so I guess I don't know for certain. But there is a well-established theory which strongly suggests cyanide will be fatal to me. I don't know how fast it would kill me, but it would most likely take much less than a day. Do I have enough information on this to decide on a policy of, say, not leaving such capsules lying around the house for my kids to discover? Of course I do! Now, this isn't a perfect analogy since there are many people, some of whom have performed this "experiment" already. But there's only one planet Earth. But even so, even the most simplistic models of the Earth's climate force us to conclude that we're hurtling toward catastrophic climate change.

Re:He's not alone

[LionMage]

Kind of interesting that "The Great Global Warming Swindle" gets mentioned a lot in the comments on this article. So I might as well mention the RealClimate debunking of this documentary (mentioned briefly in another comment thread).

Re:Science Should Always Be Up For Debate

[Ambitwistor]

Assumption 1: Solar radiation has remained constant OR warming cannot be completely explained
by changes in solar radiation Warming cannot be completely explained by changes in solar radiation. Solar variations contribute, but not by much. See Figure SPM-2 of the 2007 IPCC FAR SPM report, as well as the 2006 review article by Foukal et al. in Nature.

Assumption 2: Atmospheric water content has remained constant or warming cannot be completely explained by changes in atmospheric water content. Warming cannot be completely explained by changes in atmospheric water content. In fact, atmospheric water content is largely determined by temperature: if there is warming, more water will evaporate and enhance the amount of warming (the climate sensitivity), but it doesn't cause a warming trend in the first place because of how quickly it equilibrates (in climatology jargon, water vapor is not a "forcing", it is a "feedback"). (See here.)

Assumption 3: Ditto for methane Warming cannot be completely explained by changes in atmospheric methane. Methane contributes, but not as much as CO2. Furthermore, much of the increase in methane from pre-industrial times is also due to human activity, particularly pollution, animal husbandry, and land use changes.

Assumption 4: Bulk of increased CO2 level cannot be accounted for by natural CO2 releases Easily demonstrated, as the CO2 generated by fossil fuel burning has a unique isotopic signature: we know directly that most of the increased CO2 is from fossil fuels. See here.

Once the assumptions are dealt with, we must also show that why temperature increases on other planets and temperature changes during the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are irrelevant. Other planets: see e.g. this post.

LIA and MWP: the reasons for the climate change in those periods are different from the conditions today. The LIA is attributed mostly to greater volcanic activity and less solar activity than today. The MWP is at least partially attributable to an increase in solar activity. The increase in solar activity in modern times, however, is not large enough to account for the recent warming (see above).

So yes, CO2 aborbs IR. But no, the case is not closed. The case is far closer to closed than you apparently believe.

Note, in particular, that the timing, rate, and magnitude of the global warming agrees well with corresponding changes in CO2, and that all climate models fail dramatically at reproducing the global warming if you leave out anthropogenic forcings — far more so than if you leave out other forcings instead, particularly when it comes to the climate over the last 40 years. Human activity has become the dominant effect upon global mean temperatures.

How many of those are climatologists?

[benhocking]

I'm not being sanctimonious, but I'm not going to waste my time watching some infomercial. Have you watched "An Inconvenient Truth" yet or are you too sanctimonious?

I already know that Steve McIntyre and Dr. Ross McKitrick are not climatologists. Are any of them?

Prof. Tim Patterson: Geologist
Prof. Edward J Wegman: Statistician
Prof. Bob Carter: Marine Geophysicist
Dr. Willie Soon: Astrophysicist
Dr. Madhya Khandekar: ???
Prof. Wibjorn Karlen: Paleoclimatologist
Dr. Henrik Svensmark: Physicist
Dr. Dick Morgan: Law Professor?
Dr. Fred Goldberg: Physicist
Hans H.J. Labohm: Economist
Steve McIntyre: Mineralogist
Dr. Ross McKitrick: Economist
Dr. Chris Landsea: Meteorologist

OK. So I've had to do a lot of work to get one name. Prof. Karlen is a climatologist. So, what was his contribution? If I do a Scirus search, I don't find much, but perhaps I'm not searching on the right terms. He wrote a paper in 1973 on Holocene climatic variations and another in 2000 on high-altitude fresh waters.

Ahah. I did another Scirus search and found this article. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be anything there. I really wish I knew what he had written as every other article I can find only deals with the holocene. Although the title is suggestive, it wouldn't be the first time that what one would infer from a title did not agree with the conclusions.

Yes, let us take a "long view"!

[Shadowlore]

You honestly think that pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere has no effect?

I'll assume you mean trillions or billions of tons. honestly pomping ten tons into the atmo of this planet has no effect on the planetary scale, no. Sure it does, do you honestly think it has one and only one effect, and that nothing else changes?

We know for a fact that increased CO2 means highly increased plant growth. Plant growth ranges from a 50% increase to a 100% increase with a 600ppm CO2 concentration on the low end - and for some like pine trees 170% or more increase in biomass at only 400ppm CO2. Plants store CO2 (as we all do). More plant life means more animal life. All of which pulls CO2 from the atmosphere. Further, there are additional effects that are tropospheric that are happening that counteract CO2's "effect" on temperature.

The question is what the *net* effect, if any, there is. If I piss in the ocean while swimming my local temperature will increase slightly for a short period of time, as will the salinity of my locale. But that doesn't mean the entire ocean suffers, or that my change is permanent or even long-term.

To give you an idea of the scale we are talking about, in 2000 the average estimated (yes, estimated, we don't know for fact) annual human carbon (CO2) output was 5.5Gt (giga-ton). The It is estimated that the atmosphere contains 750 Gt of carbon (CO2). All told the ocean is estimated at about 40,000Gt. Annually (according to bio-records) the ocean and atmosphere exchange about 240 Gt of carbon. Annually the surface vegetation (i.e. plant life) swaps some 60 Gt of carbon. That is an annual exchange of about 300Gt of carbon. If the exchange rates vary by as little as 1% the annual variance could be 3Gt/year. If a non-anthropogenic change in the natural carbon exchange rate occurred where the atmosphere picked up 2% more than usual, how would we know? We wouldn't. And that would be more than the estimated human contribution of about 3 Gt per year net.

So let us just explore a few thoughts here. If CO2 levels doubled, plant life could increase by 50% to 100% (assuming we let it) How much of the roughly 60Gt vegetation locked carbon would have to increase to soak up the difference? Just think about it.

It may suprise you to know but the likelihood is that the Earth's atmosphere is not so fragile as to be severely impacted by a 1% change. The anthropogenic GW proponents claim it is but provide no experimental or historical evidence of it. They also want to limit discussion of temperatures and levels of CO2 to only the last 100 years, and claim everything is based off of it. This is persisted despite knowing that in the longer history of the Earth that CO2 level increases have lagged warming by some 800 years. - www.realclimate.org even talks about this. If we take their comments about an 800 year lag (over a 5000 year warming period), and assume (they do not say otherwise last I knew and the site has DB issues atm) that this can be applied to more than one warming period, then we should be able to extrapolate backward by looking at when the warming began and when the CO2 increase began. If we go back to the start of the CO2 rise, and then backtrack 800 years what will we or do we find in the temperature record as we know it?

Sea levels are noticably rising,
And falling. Over the last century it has been shown that the global average (global sea level isn't level) has been a decrease, with an annual variation of about 8 inches. Eight inches.

Furthermore, the long term average for seal level on this planet is much higher than it is now. Much higher. Yet the end of the last ice age some 18,000 years ago had sea level nearly 400 feet lower than today, and it has been rising ever since. Some 120,000 years ago it was several meters higher than it is today. All of this is before man was keeping track of this kind of stuff, and ages before we deserved even so much as a thought about our carbon footprint as a species.

"Sea level is higher now