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

I Don't Buy It

[eldavojohn]

If he's trying to clear his name, he's doing a bad job of it.

I found an article by him in which I hoped to hear his logic and reasoning against global warming.

He claims it is just a natural cycle. That he's seen two of these in his career and he'll see one more before he dies. If his "death threat" was someone saying that he won't see temperature returning to normal before he dies, I don't think it was a death threat.

I can't find a formal report of his research but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If this is his argument, he leaves out a lot of things that need to be explained to me before I let it go. Like, why are polar bears suddenly on the endangered species list? What's happening to all the snow on the tops of mountains? Where are the ice glaciers (with ice that has been around for thousands if not millions of years) going? What is his retort to the CO2 levels being their highest ever--even after looking at ice core samples?

His article only mentions a professor from MIT but not what his criticisms are.

If their work is being derided, I want to know what their work is. I'm a skeptic also, if these people are being published in newspapers, you would think that they wouldn't waste their time on death threats and counter-counter-criticisms but would instead try to get the truths they have been finding in their research out to the public. If you're conducting good science that, in and of itself, will clear your name in the end.

The more I search for information on Timothy Ball, the more he seems like he's playing just as dirty as the people he's fighting. Check out his lawsuit for a journal publishing a letter. I feel we're not hearing the full story here.

When I'm at work and I enter situations in which someone is decrying someone else and vice versa, I just present everyone with facts. If I had done research and I received death threats, I would submit to major newspapers two things: my research published with permission to reprint it & the death threats in their original form. Nothing could boost my efforts to get the truth out there more. The fact that I see a PhD and scientist spending more time saying his life is in danger than presenting me with his findings tells me a lot about what his motives are.

He was published, I guess in Ecological Complexity which I do not have access to. If anyone has papers from his work, I would love to see it--otherwise I'm going to tune this soap opera out as emotional noise in what should be a stoic process.

Question everything. Question both sides. And if you have something that is true, present it. I'm not calling him a liar, I just can't call him anything right now because all I can find are stories about who called who what.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[ajs]

You don't have to buy anything, just walk up to a representative sample of people who think that global warming is anthropogenic and say, "actually I think it's probably just a natural cycle."

The shock, hostility and downright hatred you will come across will very quickly render claims of death threats highly believable. Is this guy a jerk? Maybe. Is his science on-par? I have no clue. But, there is no denying the fact that this has become such an emotionally charged issue that climatology is probably the hardest field to do real science in today. I really wish we could de-politicize the whole process, but I fear that we would have had to start slowing this train about a decade ago in order to accomplish that feat.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[AlanS2002]

"I really wish we could de-politicize the whole process"

If the process was de-politicized something would of probably been done about global worming 10 - 15 years ago, however due to lobbying from very wealthy interest groups it's only now that something is starting to be done about it.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[stratjakt]

TFA is more about the death threats he's recieved, and the general unwillingness to believe anything other than worst-case "day after tomorrow" type scenarios.

I don't think any true climatologists have such a dim view - but the media does, and Al Gore does, and a large community of activists do. And those activists have the same mindset of those who murder doctors at abortion clinics, or assault people wearing fur coats.

How are you going to have any sort of open discourse or intelligent discussion, or any sort of pursuit of the "truth" with such people involved?

Believing something other than "mainstream science" these days has some nasty consequences. Science has sort of replaced religion to a lot of people, and people vehemently defend Darwin like a religious fundy would defend the Bible.

I wonder if there are any true-life Galilleo's out there, muzzled and silent, who's name won't be known for centuries, when they're proven right?

Re:I Don't Buy It

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Which is why "global warming" is on it's way out and "global climate change" is on it's way in. But the inability to predict the changes has nothing to do with changes currently observed OR whether or not it was caused by mankind.

My thought is that we're facing backlash based on 30 years of bad predictions- with nobody noticing the logic of "hey, maybe we SHOULD reduce pollution for other reasons", or "maybe we should capitalize on all the extra CO2 in the atmosphere and provide us with some nice large lumber-grade bamboo forests for building materials in the mean time".

Re:I Don't Buy It

[sumdumass]

What if what "was done about it" was the wrong thing? And what iof nothing needs to be done about it?

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

[JonBuck]

Actually, it has become an emotional issue. We have people like James Lovelock and James Hansen saying we're doomed, Doomed, DOOMED! at the top of their lungs. When you drive people into a panic, they do not behave rationally. I've made some bad financial errors because I made an emotional purchase.

Read this piece by Dr. Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research:

The language of catastrophe is not the language of science. It will not be visible in next year's global assessment from the world authority of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

To state that climate change will be "catastrophic" hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.

Is any amount of climate change catastrophic? Catastrophic for whom, for where, and by when? What index is being used to measure the catastrophe?

The language of fear and terror operates as an ever-weakening vehicle for effective communication or inducement for behavioural change.

The language of politicians can be as strong as that of campaigners
This has been seen in other areas of public health risk. Empirical work in relation to climate change communication and public perception shows that it operates here too.

Framing climate change as an issue which evokes fear and personal stress becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. By "sexing it up" we exacerbate, through psychological amplifiers, the very risks we are trying to ward off.

The careless (or conspiratorial?) translation of concern about Saddam Hussein's putative military threat into the case for WMD has had major geopolitical repercussions.

We need to make sure the agents and agencies in our society which would seek to amplify climate change risks do not lead us down a similar counter-productive pathway.

Don't panic.

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:I Don't Buy It

[misleb]

What if what "was done about it" was the wrong thing? And what iof nothing needs to be done about it?

Depends on what was done about it, but I can't help thinking "better safe than sorry." When our greatgrandchildren look back on this time 100 years from now, I'd rather them laugh at our paranoia (or whatever you might call incorrect and alarmist views on climate change) than lament our complacency.

That said, I don't think it is worth any kind of violent revolution or some such. That woudl certainly be something to lament.

-matthew

Re:I Don't Buy It

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Global warming worries is so 1990's.

We won't have get to the point where it will really matter, Peak Oil will come and we won't HAVE anything to burn to create greenhouse gases.

Not that it would matter, when billions starve and get shot, bombed and nuked in the energy wars.

(perhaps I'm just kidding, perhaps not).

Re:I Don't Buy It

[ajs]

Now that the stakes are so high [...] Are they? What stakes?

I mean that quite seriously. If we're to reduce the rhetoric and move forward, we have to stop relying on fear and TALK rationally and plainly.

The UN predicts several centimeters of raised sea-level over the coming century. That's what you're concerned about? What? The fact that fertile growing regions might shift north by a few hundred miles? The fact that a few new shipping lanes might be opened up? The fact that Tundra wildlife might explode? What, exactly are the stakes? I'm not sure warming is a good thing, but I'm also not convinced that it's the cataclysmic event that we're being told by some.

WHAT are these stakes? Al Gore's alarmist fears of Florida disappearing under the waves? Honestly, I like Al Gore. I voted for Al Gore because I watched his career in the 80s and 90s and was hugely thankful for the work that he did (and later took undeserved heat for) in building the Internet in the 80s. But, on this I think he's done an issue that he clearly cares about a disservice.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[inviolet]

PS: Balancing green house gasses would do little harm to the US economy. We might go from spending ~3% of are GDP on fossil fuel to ~6% on renewable energy but over the long term it's a minor change

I know you pulled those figures out of your hat, but let's consider. If the cost of energy increases by 25%, that means the cost of everything increases by 10-25% (depending on what fraction of a widget is labor versus what fraction is materials). Everything.

Ultimately, the switch to non-petroleum energy will reduce the effective GDP by that 10-25% figure (or maybe even more), probably via inflation.

Our GDP is about 13 trillion dollars a year. So we're talking *massive* amounts of resources. Perhaps it makes you feel virtuous to declare that you perceive the need for others to expend such resources... but to me it seems a shakey bet to wager so much wealth on the chance that a) global warming is manmade, b) global warming is reversible by a change in our behavior, and c) we are better off with a cooler planet. Any of those three is, right now, a crapshoot; for example, a warmer planet will enliven a great deal of otherwise useless tundra.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[vonhammer]

Don't put your faith in Peak Oil solving our CO2 problem. The US is the MidEast of the world's Coal reserves, with about 1/4 of the entire reserves in our country. Also, before we resort to burning coal for fuel, we have natural gas to run through. It won't reach Peak Gas (sounds ominous :-) ) until after Peak Oil. There's lots of carbon to throw into the atmosphere. We have to find a way to sequester this CO2.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[Lars T.]

PS: Balancing green house gasses would do little harm to the US economy. We might go from spending ~3% of are GDP on fossil fuel to ~6% on renewable energy but over the long term it's a minor change

I know you pulled those figures out of your hat, but let's consider. If the cost of energy increases by 25%, that means the cost of everything increases by 10-25% (depending on what fraction of a widget is labor versus what fraction is materials). Everything.

Yeah, if the price of energy rose by 25%, absolutely nobody would start thinking about using less energy for a change.

Re:I Don't Buy It

[ajs]

"The UN predicts several centimeters of raised sea-level over the coming century. That's what you're concerned about?"

Yep, there is where most people live. That means, it's where most people have everything they own. They may be able to escape, our economy, not.

This is exactly what I fear in this sort of discussion... Do yourself a favor, go get a topographical map, and measure on it, from both the high and low tide marks, which are usually on the order of a METER apart, a "few centimeters" (that is, a small number, more than 3... say 10). Now, how much land on that topographical map is within your measurement.... go. Try it out. Oh, you'll find that most such maps are measured off in >1 meter increments....

Yes, that's right. A rise in sea levels of 10cm would be very close to noise in the tidal fluctuation. It does mean that storm surges that didn't used to affect your beachfront-house might. It does mean that storm drains in some cities might be in trouble during storms. That's the extent of the concern. But just watch the news and they'll sing you any sort of dire prediction you like!

Places like New Orleans and Amsterdam are in more trouble, though. Such places actually exist BELOW the water line, and constantly run the risk of flooding. They WILL be flooded someday, and a 10cm rise in oceans certainly puts them in greater immediate risk, so there's your imminent danger model. Just be clear that you're talking about specific problems, not "most people."

"The fact that fertile growing regions might shift north by a few hundred miles?"

Give me a single piece of evidence that says that increasing the temperature (but not solar power) increases the fertility of land (I can give you several examples of the contrary). Permanently frozen lands excluded.

,

There are plenty of areas in the northern parts of North America, Asia and parts of Europe that aren't suitable for growing most crops because of the mean temperature, not the fertility of the land. When the temperatures go up, those areas WILL be suitable for growing (are now for heartier crops).

I'm horribly ignorant of the fertility of the colder regions of South America, so I can't tell you anything about that.

There is also the huge climate change, that will probably obsolet a lot of our housing investiment and take a lot of people lifes, the increase on wet of places that already have problems with it (that will probably be the most affected), and possible problems with the atmosphere (more tornadoes) and sea currents. Not to talk about the disruption that is already happenning at sea life.

I don't think it is a good idea to gamble on that.

Let's be specific. What lives will be taken, and how. Exactly. Cite examples. I'm not buying it.

This really begs the question...

[Seoulstriker]

This really begs the question: are the climate scientists who dissent really tools for corporations or are the climate scientists who advocate (consent to global warming caused by man) really tools for government/special interest groups?

Well they can always get funding

[AlanS2002]

from oil companies to speak at conferences full of other climate change deniers.

nail -- meet hammer!

[mikesimaska]

from the original article... " the theory of man-made global warming had become a "religion", forcing alternative explanations to be ignored. "

Science Should Always Be Up For Debate

[MarkPNeyer]

Saying "we will not debate this" accomplishes nothing. All science is up for debate. If the science is solid, it will withstand all criticisms, no matter how ludicrous.

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.

He's not alone

[slashkitty]

The Great Global Warming Swindle

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792 811497638&hl=en

It covers both the politicization of the issue, and many scientific facts ignored by global warming films.

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:He's not alone

[srmalloy]

You have to admire some of the handwaves that the RealClimate article resorts to in order to preserve the global-warming doctrine. "Temperature leads CO2 by 800 years in the ice cores. Not quite as true as they said, but basically correct; however they misinterpret it. The way they said this you would have thought that T and CO2 are anti-correlated; but if you overlay the full 400/800 kyr of ice core record, you can't even see the lag because its so small." It's either true or it's not. The RealClimate site admits that the "Great Global Warming Swindle" statement is correct, but that when you look at the 800,000 year range of the ice cores, this lag is insignificant. Excuse me, but if you make the claim "X causes Y; just look at these graphs, where you see X and Y moving in similar patterns", then ignoring the fact that X happens after Y makes your entire claim invalid.

If increasing CO2 levels cause increased global temperatures, then the historical record would show that the CO2 levels increased before the temperature rise. But the temperature rises actually occurred prior to the CO2 rise; making the claim that an effect is due to a cause that happened after the effect makes you look like an idiot. If the CO2 level changes mimic the temperature changes from 800 years earlier -- but not the current temperature changes -- over the measurement period, then it doesn't matter that the lag is 0.1% of the measurement range, then the CO2 level changes are not a cause of the temperature changes.

Re:Meanwhile in the real world

[CmdrGravy]

I'm afraid you're talking nonsense, people may be forced to migrate because of the effects of a global climate change but not because of scientists disagreeing with the popular scientific consenus.

Scientists like this guy aren't denying that we are undergoing a climate change but they do disagree about the underlying cause of the change which is something they are perfectly entitled to do.

Having watched the documentary mentioned in the article I have some sympathy with the viewpoint that this whole issue has been hijacked by a number of pressure groups and political associations which is leading to an overly emotional and hysterical treatment of the entire issue.

Personally I am in two minds on the subject, I see a lot of people saying the case is comprehensively proven who want to decide what action we should now take and also a lot of people saying that the case isn't yet proven and there are a number of scientific arguments which still need to be overcome.

What I would like is for the hysteria and the political posturing to stop and instead promote a more balanced approach to considering the scientific arguments.

Even if global warming is largely due to human activities I don't believe and I have not seen any evidence to support the view that the effects are going to be anywhere near as catastrophic as is made out in various news reports and in the media, e.g. huge tidal waves towering over the Thames Barrier and destroying the City of London seem to me to be based more on a need for sensastional television than anything else.

Re:Meanwhile in the real world

[ArcherB]

Ignore the hurricanes, tsunamis flooding Bangladesh, and the loss of island nations worldwide, if you must. But don't call your "belief" science.

You just shot down your own argument.
Hurricanes: Wasn't this last hurricane season supposed to be the worst in history due to global warming. How did that work out?
Tsunamis: Are you saying that earthquakes are caused by global warming? Please! Stop blaming everything on GW. It just makes you look (more) stupid.
Loss of nation states: Name one nation that is now underwater.

Problem is not the dissent...

[AtlanticCarbon]

... it's that the dissent is being irresponsibly over-exaggerated and manipulated by certain parties (namely the Bush administration). It's somewhat similar to holocaust or evolution denials. It's not a problem, perhaps even healthy, that there is dissent. However, if decision-makers start cherry-picking oddball positions to further their policy (like the Bush administration on the environment or evolution and Iran on the holocaust) then you have a problem. The problem is with the decision-makers, not the various individuals expressing their thoughts.

Re:Flat Earth Society

[UbuntuDupe]

At what point do you stop funding the scientists investigating that the Earth is flat?

When they stop making testable, correct, non-trivial predictions?

Do Not Forget the REAL Debate Among the Scientists

[moore.dustin]

Almost all of the skeptics or deniers only deny or are skeptical about the _cause_ of global warming, not the fact that the planet is indeed warming.

Like many others areas of the world/media, /. likes to attack these same people for not seeing things their way. It is commonplace here to attack and mod down people who present other or counter evidence, no matter how valid it may be. The media has successfully nullified the scientific process when it comes to global warming. The media and political interests are causing global warming to be such a polarizing issue that any one person, or entity looking to present evidence counter to the what the media/politicians feed us, is going to think twice. The implications of publishing an article/paper counter to what many believe to be true are far reaching and could end your career.

All I hope for is that the scientific process can be saved from the media in the future when issues like this come up. By that I mean issues that demand action based on conclusive scientific evidence of a problem. We could all certainly be wrong about global warming and if you do not at least concede that, then you too, are contributing to the fall of one of, if not the most important advancement of our modern society, the scientific process. (Sanitation puts up a good fight for #1 :) )

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

Educate us

[benhocking]

Find one by an actual climatologist and not by an author who has also warned us about the "summer of the shark". The truth is that during this global cooling scare manufactured by Time and Newsweek, real scientists were already doing research on global warming.

It is the height of meglomania to suggest that human beings have a greater impact on the planet than that big-ass hot thing that comes over the horizon every morning.

Humans tend to think that the span of our lifetimes are significant, when in the scope of Universe, our lifespans, and indeed human life on this planet are nothing but a blip, a footnote, a grain of sand on the beach.

It's the height of ignorance to believe otherwise. If you don't trust environmentalists, perhaps you'll believe what Lindzen himself has said:

At some level, [that there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system] has never been widely contested.

Responses are criticizing the wrong thing

[ElScorcho]

I'm not a climatologist, but I am a scientist, and some of these responses (and indeed, responses all over the place) are scaring me. Global warming is not the issue. There's a very clear trend of increasing global temperatures, you can check meteorological websites and see it. There's also a very clear trend of an increase in the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, even just since they started recording it, to say nothing of what it might have been 100 or 200 years ago.

The argument is whether the global warming that we see in hard data is caused by humans. There's a correlation between rising CO2 and rising temperature, but as any Pastafarian can tell you, correlation does not equal causation. That's what people should be arguing about. We KNOW temperatures are increasing, what we don't know (and it's one of those things that might be impossible to prove, as so many things are in science) is whether these increases are caused by us. If they are, then we might possiblly be able to reverse them given reductions in CO2 output and carbon sequestering. If they aren't, then rising CO2 probably isn't helping and should still be reversed, and we might also look into other solutions for it.

The Earth has cycled between hot and cold for its entire existence, and we don't know why. It might be life, it might be the planet's internal processes, it might be the Maunder Minimum.

Anyone denying that the planet is heating is living with their head up their butt. Anyone denying that the heating is caused by humans is simply skeptical, and has good reason to be. Anyone convinced that the warming of the planet is caused by humans is too credulous and should always remember that science is falsifiable and therefore can never be certain.

Re:Earth IS warming, the WHY is almost unimportant

[Alioth]

Actually, we've not "ruined Eden".

What most people fundamentally miss, is concern at the current _extremely rapid_ climate change (it's not questioned that the climate is always changing for various reasons) is not concern about "saving the planet" by saving ourselves. Concern about whether humans are causing rapid climate change (which there are now mountains of evidence in favour of) is _self interest_. The Sun has another five or six billion years of main sequence, and if we act like bacteria in a petri dish - living in an unsustainable manner until either the environment no longer favours our species, or that the resources are used up - in that period of time, the Earth will shrug it off. 100 million years is nothing to the Earth.

We are the first species who can actually predict the course of our actions, and actually stop the disaster from happening in the first place. Concern about this very rapid climate change is all about preserving our technological society. We only have one shot at at - the easy to get at resources are all now gone, so if this society collapses, there cannot be another industrial revolution (at least, not for 100 million years or so).

So the choice is: live sustainably and save ourselves, or don't live sustainably, and doom civilization. The Earth doesn't care either way, the Earth will just shrug us off in what is the short term for the planet - if we doom ourselves, in a couple of hundred million years you'll have to dig for fossils to even tell that humans even existed.

It's clear that we both need to adapt _AND_ we need to find a way to live sustainably. Even if it turns out to be entirely false that human emissions are the main factor in the rapidly changing climate (which is unlikely), resource exhaustion is still a future problem that must be tackled. Living sustainably will solve both problems, and it doesn't mean we all go back to an Edwardian lifestyle either if we engage our brains (and sadly, as a species, we act no more intelligently than bacteria on a petri dish). I think ultimately, if our society survives it'll be luck rather than good planning (luck - as in resources become increasingly scarce at a slow enough rate that the market can force the move to alternatives, at a speed which won't cause economic collapse).

Re:They do agree its anthropogenic

[Nutria]

Really? You really believe that? On what basis do you make such a radical claim?

Grant money.

His sources of funding...

[Serveert]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tim_Bal l

Dr. Timothy Ball is Chairman and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP). [1] Two of the three directors of the NRSP - Timothy Egan and Julio Lagos - are executives with the PR and lobbying company, the High Park Group (HPG). [2] Both HPG and Egan and Lagos work for energy industry clients and companies on energy policy. [3]

Ball is a Canadian climate change skeptic and was previously a "scientific advisor" to the oil industry-backed organization, Friends of Science. [4] Ball is a member of the Board of Research Advisors of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Canadian free-market think tank which is predominantly funded by foundations and corporations. [5]


The links to PR companies is what bothers me. PR companies have studied and refined group psychology for decades, centuries even if you look at how it evolved from greek study of rhetoric, and it has even gotten us into wars like the 1st gulf war ( http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html ). They make Hitler's propaganda team look ineffecient in comparison. Stalin would be envious of them. Having observed PR campaigns for decades, this is a very high level and well funded campaign. I see their tactic - attacking global warming advocates as emotional and vindictive. Basically taking the science out of global warming and turning themselves into victims, because everyone likes a victim. I wish I wasn't so skeptical and negative but having seen PR companies in action, this has all the hallmarks of a PR campaign. The best PR goes unnoticed, it's not obvious to those uniniatied in PR tactics, but it is most definitely happening.

I personally only want to see peer reviewed data, nothing else matters. The PR companies want to take this to the people rather than to the journals.

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:They do agree its anthropogenic

[benhocking]

Not true. They are in almost complete agreement that it is primarily anthropogenic in nature

No, they're not.

Can you name one climatologist who disagrees with that statement? If they're not in almost complete agreement, that should be an easy request. Just name one, and provide an article they've written which backs up your assertion.

No, it's not, in fact most of it is correlative which is why you get terminology like relying on global "fingerprints," as in it's just an assumption based two things that look like they could be affecting each other but haven't been proven to with any direct evidence.

Back in the 60's - when the correlational evidence was being masked by particulates - the evidence was already mounting. The underlying science is really quite simple. Because of the sheer number of feedback (positive and negative) systems it is really hard to determine the magnitude of the effect, but the existence is not in doubt, and nor is the fact that it is the dominant factor in our current climate change.

Re:Oversensitive much?

[Chacham]

You know, things like claiming that the word "denier" is a holocaust reference.

He never said such a thing. The exact quote from the article is:

I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust.

All the connotations of. The word denier (when refering to those who deny) is uncommon, as is usually used as a strong term.

Anyway, the word itself, to many, does indeed carry sucha reference. Just now i googled denier, and the second line (first entry, first sub-entry) was a Holocaust reference in Wikipedia.

IMNSHO, a denier, when referring to one who denies, is nearly always predicated with what is being denied. On its own, however, it would refer to a famous topic that has famous incidents of deniers. One such case, and to many nearly the only case, would be the Holocaust.

Re:Oversensitive much?

[DeadChobi]

Color me skeptical, but I don't think you're entirely accurate. I've been skeptical in global warming posts on Slashdot before, and there's usually at least one guy who suggests that I'm in denial and that it's people like me who are going to destroy the planet. I'm interested in the truth, and I'm not above listening to someone who suggests that this is part of a natural cycle. Think of our mean temperature like the angle of a pendulum. As we add more CO2 to the air it acts to drive the pendulum of temperature. That is not what is in question. What is in question is the extent of the driving.

That is where I'm skeptical, but I usually get accused of ignoring the whole issue. Thankfully I haven't been referred to in the same light as a holocaust denier.

Global warming is an extremely emotionally charged issue for a lot of people because of the impact it will have on our future if we do nothing and it turns out the driving from the CO2 results in us cooking the civilization off the face of the planet.

Re:More denial crapola on slashdot

[theodicey]

Landsea is the only one of your sources under 65. I think he's a credible scientist, but he only works on hurricanes and isn't skeptical about the overall phenomenon of global warming. Even if he's 100% right, the other impacts of global warming (sea level rise, drought, famine) are worse.

The fact that you're bringing out Seitz, who was completely senile by the time the oil companies were putting his name on press releases, discredits you completely.

Lindzen thinks that the earth's climate is warming with 98% certainty. He would only take a 50-1 bet against it.

Tim Ball has never worked on climate change, has no quantitative ability, and is basically obsolete. He sues his critics for telling the truth about him.

Is that the best you can do? Your denialist sources suck.

Some Dissenting Scientists from IPCC's Own Report

[Shuh]

It seems that any particular "science" does not exist for the politically-driven masses until someone makes a movie about it a la Al Gore. So with no further ado, I present the really inconvenient, inconvenient truth:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792 811497638&q=The+Great+Global+Warming+Swindle

The movie was produced by the BBC4 and is titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It shows an honest, reasoned response to the Global Warming Scare on a point-by-point basis from scientists and at least one journalist. The scientists all have credentials out the whazoo and are recognized leaders and contributors in their respective fields. A few of them have their names on the IPCC report (the report the Warmingistas always cite) and one has even sued to have his name taken off the document.

Particularly chilling (no pun intended) is the part that shows how the IPCC policy-wonks have redacted the IPCC report to remove comments from the scientists that explicitly state there is no proveable link between man-made CO2 and global warming.

As a technical person, I have always suspected the "consensus" results "proving" man-made Global Warming have been primarily a political scam. For one thing, science rarely (if ever) deals in absolutes, and complex models always deal in probabilities rather than yes/no answers. Further, as an undergraduate engineer, I spent plenty of time in college science labs doing experiments to acquaint myself with the scientific method. Working in simple straight-forward conditions:

1. Indoor lab,
2. Properly calibrated equipment,
3. One simple, universally-accepted equation,
4. One single variable,

we (me and all the other undergraduates) never got an exact match between the equations and the real world. There was always a fudge-factor. This experience has taught me that anyone who thinks scientists can model the entire world and get every equation and every theoretical assumption correct (down to a degree Celcius with no fudge-factor) is either ignorant or just a shill. They have the kind of faith that would put any religious bigot to shame.

Re:Oversensitive much?

[angst_ridden_hipster]

OK, I'll bite.

They deny the truth.

Scientists don't tend to use words like "truth" for theories that are not readily shown by experimental evidence. And sometimes even when they can be.

For example, general relativity can be experimentally demonstrated in a range of contexts. Most scientists believe that the theory is accurate, but there are still a lot who wouldn't use the word "true," simply because it may not be true on all scales, or it may turn out that GR is a good description of one area of a larger theory (e.g., Newtonian mechanics aren't strictly "true" -- but they're a damn fine approximation in most contexts). You still see some interesting discussion on this stuff in the dark matter debate, although the GR/dark matter side is increasingly looking like it's going to win out on this one.

Your divisive and dismissive language ("pseudo-skeptics") doesn't actually get us anywhere. Setting yourself up as judge over which skepticism is warranted and which is not a scientific approach -- this is the model of a Religion, where there is acceptable dogma and unacceptable dogma. Show me the errors in their logic or explain why their experiments are inaccurate, don't call them names.

Disclaimer: I am a scientist by training, even if I don't work as one now. I am an environmentalist. I'm a skeptic. I've seen evidence that supports the theory that there is global warming. I haven't seen compelling evidence in either direction on the anthropogenic question. Having done computer modeling of physical systems, I don't have deep trust of computer models of chaotic systems.

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.

I really don't buy it

[mrcparker]

You can not reverse a non-linear chaotic system. Whenever you hear someone say otherwise you can not win the argument because you are arguing with emotion.

Re:I really don't buy it

[wealthychef]

That is not true. Just because something is non-linear and chaotic does not necessarily mean that you cannot restore it to state A once it's moved from state A to state B.

Re:You're ignoring costs to them of "doing somethi

[NMerriam]

How about them cursing you for having trashed the economy

i find this notion fascinating -- I can't think of any other situation in which funneling research and development into more efficient and automated technology has resulted in anything other than economic progress. The entire western world is built on replacing the cheap, easy and obvious method of doing things with expensive but vastly more scalable and efficient technology.

Outlawing child labor didn't result in an energy or manufacturing crisis, it resulted in a more educated society while causing all the industries that relied on child labor to invest in better tools that wound up being MORE effective and profitable.

All that environmental concerns accomplish is to change the economic incentives so that the market has the motivation to cover the startup costs of technologies we know will be more productive in the long run anyways. Building more efficient and cleaner power plants and vehicles is a great idea that we know will benefit all aspects of the economy and society. So why not make it profitable for the market to move to that stage sooner rather than later?

Yes, well

[paranode]

I think people are too materialistic so we should raise the prices on 50"+ big screen TVs and fancy cars. An extra tax would be good too. That way people would start thinking about being more like me for a change! That'll show 'em good.

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

Every reason TO change, no reason not to.

[cephal0p0d]

We need to shift off of fossil fuels anyway for strategic, economic, environmental, and geopolitical reasons: - De-funding terrorist petrostates - Neutering the Big Oil lobby - Removing the possibility of OPEC style embargo politics - Creation of a native energy industry increases GDP and keeps the money in-country - Expanding biofuel use eliminates the need to subsidize farms and farmers - Co2 from biofuel was in the air months prior, so no net CO2 gain. - Clean Coal tech such as emissions scrubbing and carbon sequestering has gotten to the point where it is viable as a greenish energy source, and the US has coal coming out its.. seams. - Nuclear has gotten a lot safer. Slowing/eliminating human inputs to climate change is just the cherry on the un-fossil sundae.