Lindzen: point by point
Daniel Kirk-Davidoff (U. Maryland and one-time Lindzen co-author) provided a more detailed rebuttal of Lindzen's argument in the comments to our previous post. It deserves to be more widely seen, so here it is again.
Here's an effort at a point by point rebuttal. I would say that the central flaw in the op-ed is a logical one: if you're trying to stifle dissent, then you want less funding for climate research, not more. If you're trying to stop global warming, then you want more money for carbon sequestration research, and you don't care how much is spent on climate research. On the other hand if you just love climate research as a really interesting intellectual pursuit, that's when you've got an interest in shedding doubt on the reigning view that CO2-induced climate change is a serious policy program, requiring action. Twenty-five years ago, when global warming wasn't a big public worry, one might expect climate change researchers to hype the problem. In 2006, when public opinion mostly accepts that there's a problem, scientists who want research money should be emphasizing uncertainty.
In the opening paragraph, Lindzen states that others have claimed that there are connections between recent rare weather events and global warming, and asks where they would possibly get such an idea. It's not clear where his astonishment comes from though. Heat waves and increased lake effect snows seem like very reasonable expectations for a warmer world. Of course, attribution of any individual such event to presently observed global temperature change can only be fractional, but it's completely reasonable to say that events like the heat wave of 2003 will be more likely when the mean annual temperature of Europe is a few degrees warmer- this assumes only that the scatter of summer time temperature under global warming won't be much smaller than it is now.In his second paragraph, Lindzen makes the uncontroversial claim that society sometimes funds science to address phenomena that seem to offer a threat of harm. Using the passive voice, he asserts a feedback cycle between scientific funding and scientific alarm. This seems really odd: the publlc demand made by scientists who are most alarmed by global warming is precisely not that more money go into reasearch, but rather that money go into research to increase fuel efficiency to develope carbon-emission-free fuel sources. In fact Lindzen himself in his final paragraph seems to be calling for increased funding to address the question of climate sensitivity!
The third paragraph about drying up of funding for dissenting science has been addressed by others. I agree that I just don't see it. The particular anecdotes I have heard about political influence on the federal grant making process go in the other direction, where people are told that they should not pubish findings supporting large climate sensitvity, at least until after some election.
The fourth paragraph is another weird one. He starts by promissing an opportunity to grasp the "complex underlying scientific issues", but never really discusses anything complex- I take this as an effort to flatter the WSJ readers on their grasp of these erudite points, bolstering their confidence when they take on the tree-huggers at the water cooler. His rhetorical tactic here is to severely shrink the list of agreed-upon truths to those that we've known since 1980, while neglecting the fact that human responsibility for the 20th century warming of global temperature is quite well-established, and that various causes for alarm (for example, substantially reduced water availability in places that depend on snow-pack for their dry-season water) are also very well established. Then he moves the discussion to "outlandish" claims that contradict the "models". This is the first use of the word "models" in the article, and gets no explanation, which is a little odd for a discussion in a newspaper. He doesn't explain what the outlandish claims are, so we're left to wait for the next paragraph.
Here we discover that the outlandish claims involve something about more "excitation" of extratropical storms. I'm not sure where he's getting this- when I go to, for instance, Ross Gelbspan's website, the only references to storms I see is to tropical storms, and to more intense rainfall generally. Both are well supported by empirical studies. The increase in rainfall intensity (shift in distribution of rain from more light events to fewer heavy events) as a consequence of global warming is a robust feature of GCMs.
Okay, that's all I've got time for. It'd be nice if Lindzen gave his reader some way of checking the claims he makes about persecution- was Tennekes dismissed because he questioned the scientific underpinnings of global warming, or just after? In what context did Bert Bolin "tar" Aksel Winn-Nielsen? I think Alfonso Sutera's recent work on baroclinic neutralization is really interesting… is there some missing strand of his research that Lindzen thinks ought to be taken up again? It's hard to guess.
About the IRIS paper- I really can't see what he's complaining about. The paper was published, depite some rather "outlandish claims." For instance, in the IRIS paper, Lindzen argues that tropical surface temperature and polar surface temperature should be assumed to vary in exactly the same way as CO2 concentrations increase. This is based on the idea that baroclinic neutralization maintains a particular critical temperature gradient, an idea that had a brief period of fashionability in 1978. In any case, there's certainly been a lively debate about the paper, and if it's widely viewed as "discredited", then that's the judgement of the climate dynamics community. If we're a bunch of dummies, history will judge us harshly, but we can only do our best.
I see a lot of science in our community that's being driven by curiosity. At the recent European Geophysical Union conference, there were posters on banner clouds on the Zugspitze, the role of cubic ice crystals in high cirrus formation, and the role of global cooling in the fall of the Neanderthals. Some of this research is being driven by claims that it will address climate change. So maybe this helps to solve the riddle of what Lindzen is really concerned about. People who are really concerned about climate change don't agitate for more funding for our field- they agitate for funding for fuel efficiency research and carbon sequestration. It's the people who like curiosity-driven research in climate dynamics who have the real incentive to argue that there's a lot of uncertainty, because uncertainty allows people with strong intellectual curiosity to make the case that there's at least some tangential benefit of their work to the climate sensitivity problem.
13 April 2006 at 5:11 PM
Thanks very much for this and also for the other Lindzen posting and discussion. Here’s a question version of something that several people have brought up recently about both Lindzen/WSJ and Will-Novak/WashPost, and please forgive me if it’s already been answered and I somehow missed it: Has Profesor Kirk-Davidoff, or any RC scientist, or any other expert queried the op-ed-page editor at the WSJ about submitting some version of this, or of something like it, as an op-ed-length response? (With a query, if they stonewall you or turn you down, at least you haven’t wasted your time crafting something carefully for an audience that won’t ever see it.)
13 April 2006 at 5:22 PM
“The particular anecdotes I have heard about political influence on the federal grant making process go in the other direction, where people are told that they should pubish findings supporting large climate sensitvity, at least until after some election.”
Is there perhaps a missing “not” in this sentence? Otherwise it tends to reinforce Lindzen’s point!
[Response: There was indeed a ‘not’ missing. The post has been edited to reflect that. Thanks. -gavin]
13 April 2006 at 5:51 PM
Almost any of us could think of dozens of examples to add to Daniel’s affirmation that ‘curiosity driven” climate science is alive and well. Think of all the work on the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth, the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis on the Early Earth and its role in the transition from a methane-dominated to a CO2-dominated greenhouse, Martian paleoclimate, the climate of Venus and Titan, the nature of the glacial-interglacial cycles, and so many more. In fact, it was Congress, not the scientific community, that foisted on NSF the requirement that all grant proposals and reviews contain a statement of relevance (euphemistically referred to as “Broader Impacts.”). I myself am rather curious about just exactly what will happen to clouds in a high-CO2 world, since this would help resolve some of the mysteries of the Cretaceous climate. In this instance, though, I confess I would be happy to not have my curiosity satisfied.
13 April 2006 at 6:19 PM
I appreciate the effort at wielding the ‘whack-a-mole’ hammer, but I wonder whether this gives undue attention to a same ol’ same ol’ argument.
Can’t we just say ’same ol’ same ol’? I don’t know, just asking.
Best,
D
13 April 2006 at 7:29 PM
Ray and Gavin, et.al.,
You are showing too much sufferance and giving far too much space to avowed bozos who offer nothing to your (our) page. Even if it does require diligence and a bit more time, would you please open a BOZO BIN for the blatant, time-wasting, know-nothings who care nothing about the most critical issue confronting our children. RealClimate announces in the ABOUT:
The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.
It is time to honor your objectives for this page and give the nihilists a page of their own to spread their foolish rants among themselves. PLEASE! Don’t sensor them; just direct them to the BOZO BIN.
John McCormick
13 April 2006 at 7:50 PM
What Corneliussen said. Get it into the fray. I read snowball earth, but in the end wasn’t convinced. Anybody have any updates on this hypothesis?
[Response: A lot of people aren’t convinced. I mentioned it only because there’s really not much reason to study Snowball Earth except for sheer intellectual curiosity’s sake. To be sure, sometimes things people study for curiosity’s sake turn out to have important spinoffs, but that’s another matter. As for your question on the hypothesis, there’s a lot of new stuff going on regarding Snowball Earth, but this thread isn’t the right place to discuss it. I don’t know of a review article since Hoffman and Schrag, but Paul Hoffman is writing a whole book on the subject, which will ultimately be the best place to turn. I suggest we not go further into Snowball Earth here, curiosity notwithstanding. –raypierre]
13 April 2006 at 8:06 PM
Why not go a step further and only E-Mail each other? This way you will only have one sided point of view never have to defend a stance and all of US Science Challenge Bozos would never have to read or hear from the GW science again.
Is that what you want?
This is my First Post on this site. I have been a reader for a long time and I have learned a lot.
Some stance I agree some I do not but I welcome all points of view even if it does not fit what I believe in.
I am approching the 60 Year of age and have seen these type of opinions before.Heard the same comments,words during the Cooling World days.
Do not bite the hand that feeds you.
[Response: I’m sure John was referring to comments that lack any reasonable scientific basis, or had no scientific interest, or deal with things that have been extensively rebutted already. Scientifically valid criticisms of any aspect of climate theory are always welcome, of course — the object is just to keep the noise level down to where the really important issues have some prominence. Regarding amply rebutted issues, see this post to be educated regarding the “Cooling World” myth. –raypierre]
13 April 2006 at 8:26 PM
I may misunderstand the Bozo Bin comment, but it seems to me that at some level it contains an important, and puzzling, and recurrent, contradiction.
On the one hand it says that climate change is “the most critical issue confronting our children.” On the other hand, it advocates a strictly conservative interpretation of RealClimate’s sensible resolve not to stray from science into political or economic implications.
But it seems to me that if an issue is the most critical one facing our children, it’s by definition political, even if it’s scientific at the same time. This issue is technopolitical, as illustrated vividly by the recent op-ed columns of George Will, Robert Novak, and Richard Lindzen — high-visibility op-eds that, in my view, RC would have been remiss to ignore, and about which it’s healthy for RC to host discussion.
We’ve debated versions of this point often in RC’s blogspace, and no doubt we will again. My own view remains that RC construes its sensible resolve just a bit too strictly, rather than too liberally. If you want to win a debate, you have to participate in it — even if doing so gets way uncomfortably political. In fact:
What Mark A. York said. Get into the fray.
[Response: Indeed, it is a hard line to draw. Those familiar with the unruly ruckus known as sci.environment know what we’re trying to avoid. Feedback on how well we’re doing at drawing the line is certainly welcome. –raypierre]
13 April 2006 at 9:04 PM
Re welcome feedback — Up to the last four threads RealScience stayed mostly with the science and the issues thereof. I found all of that, including some rather policy oriented discussions, entirely appropriate. Indeed, I fear that a through explaination of actual error in op-eds is also, unfortunately, necessary and appropriate.
What has not be appropriate, imho, has been calls for action in the comments — even such calls as writing letters to editors. We are all sufficiently mature here, I hope, to recognize when such actions are needed and within the scope of our expertise. So no reminder of the obvious ought to be required.
Further, I hope that in the future our excellent and kind moderators will take the time to keep the comments rather more oriented to the science, including the misstatement thereof, and doing more to avoid the politics or action oriented commentary. I gather there are other sites appropriate for that?
In any case, I want to thank the moderators for being willing to undertake such a difficult task as keeping RealClimate going, and largely going most smoothly.
[Response: The last few posts, commenting on the Will column, the Novak column and Lindzen’s WSJ op-ed inevitably impinged on politics, but the main reason for commenting on them in RC is that all three pieces propagated junk science. Commenting on science coverage in the media will always be part of our mission. The Bush post didn’t have this as an excuse, and reasonable minds could certainly conclude that one was a mistake. Certainly, things like the Venus post that Rasmus and I did are much more fun to write and to moderate, but ironically (as you can see) they attract a lot fewer comments, and perhaps less readership. I conclude that people are quite interested in having commentary on things like Lindzen’s piece –raypierrre]
13 April 2006 at 9:57 PM
Although the stated mission (and proper purpose) of RealClimate is to disseminate scientific information about AGW, the actual *goal* seems to be to persuade the public and policymakers to take action on the issue.
With that in mind, I think it’s perfectly valid to discuss the latest salvo from contrarians, and proper refutation. We achieve our goal by persuading people, and arming ourselves with this information helps achieve the goal.
So, although I don’t want RealClimate to lose its focus on the science, I think it’s perfectly valid to address the issue of persuasion, and provide readers with tools to help.
13 April 2006 at 11:51 PM
“that all three pieces propagated junk science”
Yes Ray and the tragedy is readers don’t know one from the other. We need you and your collegues to tell them the difference. As it is, up-is-down will remain the norm and Jim Hansen et al will be yelling into the wind while Michaels and Lindzen rule the day. That’s seems a shame to me.
14 April 2006 at 12:26 AM
Climate experts, tell me what you think:
From a policy perspective, writing about extratropical storms decreasing in intensity in a warmer climate is a red-herring because they don’t do much damage. Tropical cyclones are responsible for the vast majority of loss of property and life and the level of scientific uncertainty regarding genesis and intensity of TCs is greater than extratropical, baroclinic storms.
Have there been any scenarios studied - paleo or future - in which the intensity of extratropical storms increases to the point of causing significant damage?
14 April 2006 at 12:36 AM
Emphasis mine. Hansen (Science, 5/3/2006) seems quite capable here of both adding to certainty of the problem and asking for more research. Perhaps you should tell him those are views are inconsistent. And of course it wasn’t 25 years ago that Hansen received $250,000. Seems like a pretty good reward for being credited as the first to raise the alarm. Or we could just look at the budget for climate related research. Do you think its going up or down? The premise that raising the importance of the problem reduces the need for study is silly. Drop it and stick with good reasons.
14 April 2006 at 4:10 AM
“So, although I don’t want RealClimate to lose its focus on the science, I think it’s perfectly valid to address the issue of persuasion, and provide readers with tools to help.”
RC keeps losing its focus on science.
Rather it tries to make any opponent of the theory that AGW will lead to catastrophe look stupid.
[Response: Only if their arguments make them deserve to look stupid. To be more precise, we only make stupid arguments look stupid. It’s mostly irrelevant whether or not the person making the argument is or isn’t stupid. –raypierre]
14 April 2006 at 5:42 AM
Seems to me that regardless of the distortion in the truth on climate change the popular perception is that there is a issue with climate but the people that matter (the US really along with India and China) are just not seeing the issue as being serious enough as yet to be worth putting their economies at risk as they see it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4888946.stm
Seems like the UK is trying to scare everyone into action but there are no en masse replacement technologies for fossil fuels as yet and even if there was, where is the will to change over.
Science giveth and science taketh away
14 April 2006 at 5:53 AM
The rebuttal of erroneous claims is most welcome by the likes of ME, I only have a healthy interest in climatology and no qualification in the subject so without the rebuttals it is very easy for me to be led down the garden path, this site is a first choice for factual information and debates that hone the inteligence, please keep up with factual rebuttals as in #1 even if it (bends) your policy on not getting political.
14 April 2006 at 6:43 AM
Re: 11
I would disagree that extratropical storms don’t cause significant damage. Lothar and Martin, the extratropical storms that hit Europe in December 1999, killed 140 people and were estimated to cause US$13 billion in direct damage and a similar amount in indirect damage. According to this article, the losses in the 1990 storms were greater. The 1999 storms would easily make the top 10 in US hurricane damage see this list of wealth-adjusted damage. I can’t find good numbers, but I’d guess that cold-season extratropical cyclones probably cause >US$2B in damage a year and, with the exception of the years with Camille, Agnes, and Katrina, have killed more people almost every year in the last 40 years.
14 April 2006 at 8:06 AM
It took me a moment to understand the line David was using to criticise the central point of Lindzen’s article.
David says the Lindzen is applying suspicious logic in the piece because those who are concerned with AGW would want to see their own budgets cut at the expense of say the engineering departments that can figure ways of reducing AGW gases with better techonolgy.
Is this a joke or is it a (fantastic) misunderstanding of human motivation. 30 years ago climate science was a section of a section of a department relegated somewhere between the toilet area and the showers, whereas now some of the players are getting near to celebrity status.
David wants us to believe that climate guys understand that money is a finite resource and therefore dutifully want to cut their budgets to “help” out the engineers.
Would David have any tangible proof of this? Even evidence of one department turfing the money to the engineers would satisfy my curirosity.
[Response: The point is that if climate researchers were really in this for the money, they would all be saying how uncertain everything was and pressing the ‘we must do more research’. The current situation is completely opposite - climate scientists in the main agree on the basics of the problem and state that the remaining uncertainty is not enough to prevent remedial actions. It is those who would rather do nothing that insist that more research is needed and fund us accordingly. - gavin]
14 April 2006 at 10:14 AM
I understand the desire to steer clear of politics and the vitriol it can sometimes inspire but I’d just like to join snavecire in saying how valuable these clarifications of mass media pieces are to those of us who are not climate specialists, but *merely* interested in and concerned about climate change. Please do continue to include them, even if it blurs the lines of your mission a bit. RC’s expertise and voice are very much needed. I am sure there are other non-specialist readers who join me in thanking you for taking the time to engage the wider public.
14 April 2006 at 11:59 AM
Re 13, 18
And of course it wasn’t 25 years ago that Hansen received $250,000. Seems like a pretty good reward for being credited as the first to raise the alarm.
I’m sure that award was at the top of Hansen’s mind during his ‘88 congressional testimony. Oh, wait, it didn’t exist then. It’s ridiculous to think that an occasional large payout can intellectually distort a field - discount that $250k by 20 years of effort and any single researcher’s expectation of receiving it and you wind up with an amount that most consultants wouldn’t get out of bed for.
Or we could just look at the budget for climate related research. Do you think its going up or down?
As I pointed out here it’s going up very slowly - less than GDP and much less than other areas of science (e.g. NIH). Earth & environmental science salaries have gone up less recently compared to other disciplines like physical science or mathematics & computing. One could as well argue that the intellectual ferment around climate is attracting more researchers than the budget can sustain.
The premise that raising the importance of the problem reduces the need for study is silly.
I agree in principle that hyping the problem potentially attracts funding, it’s just that it’s an incredibly weak link that has to be placed in the context of other motivations. Funding is essentially a commons so individual researchers have little incentive to grow it; there are other more direct ways to career success (like being right about a controversial problem). No one who’s primarily motivated by money would go into climate science anyway.
14 April 2006 at 12:36 PM
Re: “No one who’s primarily motivated by money would go into climate science anyway.”
I’m reminded of the episode of the Simpsons where a chimp researcher (loosely based on Jane Goodalle) is secretly forcing the chimps to work in a diamond mine. At one point, Homer lies on the bed throwing diamonds over himself, saying, “Look at me! I’m a scientist!”
Those of us who do it for a living know very well how funny this is. If you want to get rich, find another occupation.
14 April 2006 at 12:39 PM
Here, I suspect, is a clear window to the workings of the contrarian’s mind (from Lindzen’s article):
“Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.”
Where is the context? A few hundred million in the late 80’s to 1.7 billion — 5x? Not very much over 20 years. How much have hurricane damages increased over the same period? How much has spending increased on traditional fossil fuels (or on oil security)? I would also choose to compare funding trends to genetics to make a point, but maybe funding to astronomy would be a better comparison.
[Response: One of the truly ludicrous things about Lindzen’s WSJ piece is that he would think that the WSJ readership would be the least bit impressed by a number like $1.7billion per year, regardless of the growth rate. That’s just over two weeks of ExxonMobil’s 2005 profit. It’s about the amount Americans spend on dog food in a month. The run-up in climate science funding is rather modest compared to other areas of science funding, and a more reasonable interpretation of the funding picture isn’t that climate scientists are trying to act alarmed in order to run up their funding, but rather that they (we) are trying to run up funding because they actually are alarmed and feel that the subject needs to be understood better. –raypierre]
14 April 2006 at 12:58 PM
Another consideration about grants and financial motivations is how does getting a big grant effect a researcher’s life? If someone makes a proposal for a major study, do they get a “cut”, like a used car salesman (I somehow doubt that!), or does it just mean their salary is secure for the next year or two or whatever? Now I don’t know the specifics, but for Lindzen’s imsinuations to hold water I would need to see a correlation between grant levels and researcher compensation levels. eg. Does Jim Hansen’s salary go up with the levels of grant money he attracts? Otherwise, we are left with the weaker incentive of mere job security rather than getting rich.
[Response: For those of us with tenured or tenure track positions at US universities, the only effect of grant funding on salary is that we can pay ourselves up to three (more commonly two) months of summer salary at our usual rate. That effect saturates out pretty quickly, and is hardly a “get rich” incentive. Academics in Canada and at Caltech don’t even have that incentive. Federal employees (e.g. NOAA or the DOE labs) see even less effect of grant funding on personal income, and since it’s almost impossible to fire a US Civil Servant, job security isn’t even much of an incentive. In France, CNRS (the appointment of choice) chercheur salaries are fixed by age and (to a lesser extent) scientific distinction, so grant funding doesn’t buy you a fancy apartment and lunches at Archestrate there either. The main group whose personal economic well-beeing is affected by grant funding are the soft-money researchers, and for those it’s mostly a matter of survival and paying the mortgage, not getting rich. I haven’t noticed that soft-money researchers are particularly in the forefront of raising concerns about climate change, as you might expect if financial incentives were primary. For almost all of us, the only incentive to run up research funding is that it pays for things that we think are important to do. –raypierre]
14 April 2006 at 1:40 PM
Just heard on the tube:
“Americans will spend 1.9 billion dollars on candy this Easter weekend…”
Just seemed worth passing on!
14 April 2006 at 3:12 PM
Re: #21 — yes, that was a good episode. I can’t remember who said it first about becoming a priest to meet chicks, but Nancy McIntyre references it here:
“However, scientists are also fueled by passion about what they do (for there are few incentives to do science other than intellectual satisfaction - going into science for fame and fortune is like becoming a priest to meet women), but it is assumed that this passion is always under tight rein. And science, like everything else humans do, is burdened by preconceptions about how things ought to be.”
We can’t stop at the choice of a profession, of course, because some priests (or doctors or architects or construction workers…) may be tempted by circumstances to act in ways incongruent with what motivated them toward their specific career. I am certain that there are many scientists whose conclusions and public statements are influenced by the possibility of getting more money (I have seen it). But I am equally certain that they are far outnumbered by scientists motivated by a drive to understand whatever it is that they study. Science has a good track record of replacing inferior conclusions based on the former with more robust and general conclusions based on the latter.
14 April 2006 at 3:31 PM
Hectoring “get into the fray” seems to suppose two things: 1) that each and every venue must “get into the fray” the same way and 2) that the site contributors have no other means than this site to “get into the fray”.
The ultimate enemy is ignorance and keeping this site accurate and timely and pared down on poltical rhetoric provides a useful tool against ignorance. As for 2, the site maintainers have their own say on how their time is spent.
14 April 2006 at 4:42 PM
Hansen’s probably a GS-15 senior scientist. That’s the top of the scale below administrative. I’m a perpetual GS-5 seasonal technician, although I advanced once to a professional series 0482 biological sciences fishery biologist, albeit at the same grade, only to fall back the next time around for a different agency, BLM from Forest Service. For permanant staff a layoff or firing is rare so Hansen has little incentive to drum up “make work.” Moreover it’s public service which isn’t meant for self-enrichment. I made a quip in my first book “Against a Strong Current” a memoir with science in it, that an interest in science can be dangerous to your economic health. I was working for Idaho Fish & Game for $4.66 an hour at the time.
As for fray issues, in media the fray is the op-ed pages. Scientists who want to participate can and should in my view do so lest the best ideas get the widest audience. Professors like Ray Pierre H frequently do on any number of subjects where they have expertise. When only the charlatans show up it skews the view for the public. That’s not a good thing. That’s all I’m saying.
14 April 2006 at 4:46 PM
I don’t remember if you folks have done a post on the language and typology of “catastrophes” and “abrupt change,” but it might be a good idea, if you can find the time.
I was at first puzzled by Mr. Lindzen’s rhetoric that “alarmists” are “trumpeting catastrophes that couldn’t happen even if the models were right.” As I read further, from the context, he appears to be referring to a specific question about extreme weather — yet his rhetoric seems to be aimed at implying a broader conclusion about the intellectual clarity, and motives, of the scientists he calls “alarmists.”
Similarly, comment #14, above, invites a request for clarification, because it leaves open the question of what sort of catastrophe is being argued about.
So I think “catastrophe” needs to be better defined. People use it to mean everything from “temporally accelerated” (e.g., the hockey stick) to “unexpected, or not quite predictable” (e.g. ocean current redirection) to “tragic and immoral” (e.g. wild species extinction.)
It looks to me like there are at least three different meanings of “catastrophe” in this debate, when categorized by predictability: (1) extreme events, such as violent storms, ice-sheet collapse or flooding, which might be given probabilities by models, (2) events which seem possible and even likely, but which may be impossible to meaningfully quantify, such as the acceleration by climate change of wild species extinctions in fragmented natural landscapes, and (3) possible sudden breakpoints that we don’t know about or can’t know about, i.e., a precautionary tale, inferred from the general behavior of other complex systems.
I would like to know if any writers have dealt with this at length.
Be all that as it may, the confusion, or conflation, of the meanings of “catastrophe” has been used rhetorically in this recent spate of pop editorials and opinion columns. They switch quickly among uncertainties of vastly different kinds, to cast doubt upon the understanding of this science, and upon the recommendations which might be drawn from it.
So I hope a climatologist will stand outside his/her science for a moment, and give a clear outline and overview of the main types of catastrophe and uncertainty. Then, perhaps, we can move over to those economists who are alarmists about the costs of climate mitigation, and ask exactly what sort of catastrophes they are projecting in their own subject.
[Response: Interested readers may want to look at Richard Posner’s book “Catastrophe.” A lot there should be taken with a grain of salt, but it’s very interesting to see a died-in-the-wool conservative arguing (correctly) that the extreme cases rather than the mean should be given weight in making policy. See also the special “Catastrophe” issue of the Chicago Journal of International Law. You can see my own article, on “A catastrophe in slow motion” on my publication page here. The full issue should be available shortly here . –raypierre]
14 April 2006 at 4:55 PM
I will say that rebutting myths from both sides is important. As a concerned layperson I had been taken in by some of the panic side of the arguement, the “we are all doomed doomed” viewpoint. And there are still people taken in by the “skeptic” side as well; I know of one very bright economist who is an example of that. So rebutting (and hopefully) refuting misinformation (including various types of character assasination) remains an important role for this site in my opinion.
14 April 2006 at 5:40 PM
I would like to weigh in regarding recent commentaries on this site on op-ed pieces. I think they are EXTREMELY important. I know a lot about the scientific merits of Peak Oil, but next to nothing (at this stage) about the scientific merits of climate change. Consequently, I am, for example, in no position to see the intellectual (and moral?) bankruptcy of an argument by someone like George Will about the Global Cooling Scare unless I come to a site like this. I am all for requisite restraint with regard to political rhetoric also, but for someone with next-to-no knowledge of the topic like me, your critiques of the “Junk Science” found by mainstream pundits is probably the most valuable function your site provides. So please, keep it up.
14 April 2006 at 5:51 PM
In fact, I have a special request regarding a piece I personally would like to see debunked. FIRST THINGS is right now the leading review in the United States among intellectually serious and conservative Roman Catholics. (This is a not-insignificant subculture in our society, by the way - and all the more so in view of the worldwide power of the Catholic papacy to influence opinion on all kinds of issues.) If someone has the time, could you please do a review and critique of, and/or run a thread about, the following piece by Thomas Derr, entitled “Strange Science,” which appeared in the November 2004 issue of FIRST THINGS? Here is the link: http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0411/opinion/derr.htm
And maybe you could also send a letter to the magazine about it, as the Editor in Chief, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, ran a comment about this matter just two days ago. For him, George Will constitutes a serious authority on the topic of global warming - and this from arguably the single most influential Catholic intellectual in the United States right now! See http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=229
14 April 2006 at 7:02 PM
Rain rain rain
I liked the article on tropical storms. They seem to be vapor pumps, lifting water vapor, releasing heat into mechanic and radiative? forms, then releasing the water.
We have record rains, I think, or close to it in California, and rivers are swolling to flood levels in Europe.
Have we accounted for all the energy conversion going on in storms? Are we sure we have not left something out of the heat flow that could allow a severely stormy epoch to keep global warming down? (Excepting more photosynthesis)
14 April 2006 at 11:43 PM
RE# 30 Even worse is Steven Milloy featured prominently here calls himself the “Junk Man.” He’s FOX News junk science judo columnist so to the deniers all good peer reviewed science is junk. For the untrained this is really through the looking glass stuff. This what we’re up against and this is who Crichton and Will listen too. It’s mindnumbing to think of it. It has to be exposed as the BS it is.
14 April 2006 at 11:51 PM
A reason why many people may believe that Global Warming is just a theory is that they think that past climate conditions are conjecture.
Nature has been leaving clear records of past climate conditions, you just have to find them. In spite of apparent confusion in the press, the credibility of Climate Scientists is rock solid.
The following link deals with an example of the work upon which Climate Science is based. In this case, it deals with natures record of rainfall patterns in the Sydney Water catchment area:
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/news/2005/10/drysdaleclimate.html
15 April 2006 at 5:57 AM
I have an interesting fact to share…”Methane is an important greenhouse gas and its atmospheric concentration has almost tripled since pre-industrial times1, 2. It plays a central role in atmospheric oxidation chemistry and affects stratospheric ozone and water vapour levels. Most of the methane from natural sources in Earth’s atmosphere is thought to originate from biological processes in anoxic environments2″.
Any feedback is welcome.
15 April 2006 at 11:06 AM
RE #32 Matt, welcome question.
I too wonder about the massive new heat engine being rapidly opened in the Arctic. From a 90 percent reflective to a nearly 80 percent absorptive surface will come huge new moisture into an atmosphere about which we have little understanding.
Are Arctic storms becoming more frequent and intense since 1990 when Arctic ice meltback began to accelerate? We know freshwater input to the Arctic has incresed significantly in the past 30 years. And, is the diminished new ice a function of warmer air masses crossing open water in the early winter months? Where will we see impacts of a massive new 32 degree water mass being felt? More snowpack in the East Arctic? Hopefully the IPY will give us answers.
I am most concerned about wide scale weather pattern changes in West Central Canada and the Northern Plains states and find virtually no new investigation expect for the news reports of record breaking high temperatures in some of the coldest regions of the world..Winnipeg and that region.
John McCormick
15 April 2006 at 11:40 AM
Today’s Wall Street Journal carries a brief, discouraging letter headlined “Perpetual Alarmism.” In it, David W. Lincoln of Edmonton, Alberta, says he thinks “it’s time for the privileges accorded to the alarmist crowd to be revoked. They have shown that they are not interested in an evenhanded debate on global warming and what contributes to it.” He goes on: “The people who peddle the alarmism that began in the 1970s have done a wonderful job of undermining the credibility of themselves and of those who disagree with them — all to the detriment of everyone everywhere.”
So I sure wish an RC scientist would answer the question in comment 1 above, though I also hope that the reason there’s been no answer is that something that shouldn’t yet be discussed publicly is actually happening. It’d be a shame to see this round of the WSJ debate end with a letter attacking everyone who thinks as the RealClimate scientists do — a letter globally condemning them by alleging an omni-harmful alarmism, a letter that grants a license to the powerful and influential readership of the WSJ to keep holding their hands over their ears.
Maybe the cynics are right; maybe the WSJ is not just biased, but outright dishonest. In that case it’d never print the evenhanded debating that this letter writer says, utterly wrongly, that RC scientists can’t or won’t produce.
But I still wish someone qualified to try would try.
15 April 2006 at 11:45 AM
Re: #31
I read the article you reference. I’ll address just a few points. Let’s start with this:
>The past century, we are told, has been the hottest on record, with temperatures steadily rising during the last decades. Since human population and industrial activity have risen at the same time, it stands to reason that human activity is, one way or another, the cause of this observed warming. Anything wrong with this reasoning?
Of course this reasoning is faulty. And IF this were the basis for the global warming hypothesis, I’d be fighting against it! What’s *really* wrong is to imply that this is our reasoning. But, this is a common tactic of contrarians: paint a ridiculous — and very false — picture of our ideas, then ridicule it.
>… there are still ways of discovering the temperatures of past centuries, … tree rings … Core samples from drilling in ice fields … historical reconstruction … coral growth, isotope data from sea floor sediment, and insects, all of which point to a very warm climate in medieval times.
No. In early medieval times, temperatures were not as warm as they are *today*. Tree rings, ice cores, sediment cores, corals … ALL POINT TO A WARMER 20TH CENTURY THAN ANY TIME IN THE PAST 2,000 YEARS, and a MUCH warmer past few decades.
>Abundant testimony tells us that the European climate then cooled dramatically from the thirteenth century until the eighteenth, when it began its slow rewarming.
Another trick of contrarians: refer to past cooling as “dramatic” (even though it was slow and slight) and modern warming as “slow” (even though it’s *much* faster than at any time in at least 2000 years). Take another look at the “hockey stick” graph. Does that look like “cooled dramatically” followed by “slow rewarming?” Or does it look like “cooled slowly and slightly” followed by “dramatic warming?”
>… the nineteenth-century rewarming trend which began with a much smaller human population and before the industrial revolution.
The warming trend doesn’t start in the 19th century, it begins early in the 20th century, by which time we were well into the industrial revolution.
Most of the article is an attempt to explain *why* climate scientists are being so “alarmist.” His suggestions:
1. … bad news is good newsâ??for the news media.
2. … the IPCC is a UN body and reflects UN politics, which are consistently favorable to developing countries
3. … intellectual pride…
4. … a somewhat murky antipathy to modern technological civilization
It amazes me that he (and so many others) are eager to accuse AGW advocates of “intellectual pride,” “antipathy to modern technological civilization,” and other crimes against truth, but gives the impression that contrarians (like Lindzen) are only doing it because of the purest concern for the good of mankind. Let’s see… one side raises alarms because of their pride, but the other side is totally immune to any ulterior motive, in spite of billions of dollars from big oil companies and conservative think tanks?
Do you really believe that NASA scientists (or scientists in general, for that matter) have an “antipathy to modern technological civilization?”
One more thing: the skeptics have hardly been “drowned out.” They’re writing op-ed pieces for the Wall Street Journal.
[Response:The WSJ probably has a wider readership than most scientific journals, at least on a short time horizon. The readers of WSJ are also more gullible. -rasmus]
15 April 2006 at 12:52 PM
I’m almost through State of Fear and past a lot of the assertions that numerous studies show no increase in extreme weather, hurricnae strikes have decreased since 1900;Kilamanjaro has been melting since the 1800s long before GW and is caused by deforestation and a drying of the air; only 79 glaciers out of thousands are melting thus they all aren’t melting; sea levels have risen only 4 to 8 inches per 100 years and computer models can’t prove anything since predictions haven’t happened yet and so on. His reams of temperature charts from GISS I assume are presented to show it hasn’t warmed at all at the selected locations I guess?
I’ll have to go back over your posts on this but he cites Lomborg repeatedly that the world is getting better while people yell decline. In my work evaluating streams, fisheries and forests I find little improvement, only decline and a concerted effort to rehabilitate the ecosystem, that is running far behind the decline that came at the hand of industry; timber, mining etc. I find this naysaying cavelier and disconcerting to say the least.
15 April 2006 at 2:11 PM
Perhaps analysis of the HIV-AIDS controversy, and the history of the skeptical stance regarding the central role of the viral infection would be useful to this discussion. I am far from being fully informed about the science of HIV-AIDS. Were the skeptics ever convinced that they were, in fact, mistaken, or did the media eventually just conclude that this viewpoint was no longer worthy of coverage? Did anyone ever apologize for sowing confusion that slowed prevention efforts, as in South Africa? Inspection of a few web sites, such as http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/controversy.htm, suggests that the mix of credentials of those involved was comparable to those playing a similar role in the global warming arena. There are other interesting analogies. For example, on that web page we see that a mathematics professor at Yale University (from whose excellent textbook I learned abstract algebra) was critical of some statistical analyses of the link between the virus and the disease and, as a result, was publicly critical of the scientific establishment and the media for spreading misinformation about the nature of AIDS. In retrospect, it seems amazing that a mathematician, however prominent, would consider himself qualified to judge the consensus of the biomedical community on such an important issue with such assurance. He may have had a useful point to make about a particular statistical analysis, but what damage did he do with his misinformed critique of the big picture? What amazing arrogance! And yet how familiar.
I don’t think that there is anything distinctive about the issues we face with regard to fringe opinions concerning global warming. You can’t prove that you are smarter than everyone else by being part of a consensus, but you can hope for this outcome by being a contrarian.
15 April 2006 at 2:24 PM
Re 30 and 31,
Michael, you might find this site useful. It is targetted specifically at the very common by trivially incorrect misconceptions and attacks on global warming science. It makes many references to this site for more detail and authoritative information but tries to be stand alone for interested but non-technical readers.
As for your “Strange Science” article, here are a few of the specific rebuttals you would want:
Para 1 -
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/kyoto-is-ineffective.html
Para 2 -
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/there-is-no-consensus.html
Para 4 -
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/01/one-hundred-years-is-not-enough.html
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/03/greenland-used-to-be-green.html
Para 5 -
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/medieval-warm-period-was-just-as-warm.html
Para 6 -
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/03/what-about-mid-century-cooling.html
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/they-predicted-cooling-in-1970s.html
Para 7 -
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/03/geological-history-does-not-support.html
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/there-is-no-proof-that-co2-is-causing.html
Para 8 -
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/04/its-sun-stupid.html
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/01/climate-is-always-changing.html
Para 9 -
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/whats-wrong-with-warm-weather.html
Para 13 -
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/kyoto-is-ineffective.html
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/why-should-us-join-kyoto.html
Para 16 -
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/01/climate-is-always-changing.html
Wow that article would clean up on Tim Lambert’s GW Skeptic Bingo!
http://timlambert.org/2005/04/gwsbingo/
15 April 2006 at 5:14 PM
#37: “Maybe the cynics are right; maybe the WSJ is not just biased, but outright dishonest. In that case it’d never print the evenhanded debating that this letter writer says, utterly wrongly, that RC scientists can’t or won’t produce.”
The cynics are right in regard to the WSJ’s editorial page. They have a near-perfect track record in regard to any environmental or conservation issue that has an impact on industry. It’s all based on “junk science”, in their view.
For example, here’s a synopsis of a fairly recent WSJ op-ed on the old-growth logging issue in the Pacific Northwest:
“The Executive Director of the Evergreen Foundation, James Peterson, argues in a Wall Street Journal opinion article that the decline of the spotted owl in the U.S. Pacific Northwest is not due to logging in old-growth forests. Peterson, who has been given a string of awards by various logging industry groups, referred to an unspecified “privately funded” study which “infers an inverse relationship between harvesting and owls.” This, he argues, justifies “a long-term thinning program,” an oblique reference to the Bush administration’s Orwellian-sounding Healthy Forests Initiative, a program to log national forests. The Evergreen Foundation says it works to “restore public confidence in forestry.” The foundation’s website states that funders include logging and logging equipment companies, including Boise Cascade, Potlatch, Westvaco, Mead, Caterpillar and Timberjack. The foundation’s logging industry funding, however, wasn’t mentioned in Peterson’s Wall Street Journal article.”
You can write letters to the editor until your keyboard falls to pieces, and they won’t publish you. In their eyes, this single, unspecified piece of industry-funded research debunks three decades of research, research that (by whole-organism biology standards) was highly-funded throughout the 1990s.
Pick an issue, any environmental or conservation issue of consequence, and we can find you a WSJ editorial or op-ed based on lies.
15 April 2006 at 5:47 PM
The mathematician referred to in comment #40, Serge Lang, was a first rate mathematician, and he had a history of controversial forays outside mathematics. But he was very much an exception. Generally, mathematicians are reluctant to criticize people outside their area of expertise, and I can think of few prominent mathematicians other than Lang who had a habit of doing that. There is a tendency for very smart people to think they can master a difficult subject, perhaps by cutting through to essentials, in a short period of time, and since some mathematicans are indeed very smart, there may be a slight tendency in the field foolishly to rush in. But most of us know better.
15 April 2006 at 7:03 PM
Re: #39
Unbelievable but hardly unexpected:
Crichton received the American Association of Petroleum Geologists 2006 Journalism award. AAPG Communications director Larry Nation told the New York Times “It is fiction, but it has the absolute ring of truth.”
15 April 2006 at 8:20 PM
Somehwere above or elsewhere I mentioned the comment I wrote to Opinionjournal on the Lindzen piece. Editor James Taranto, who I know albeit vaguely, didn’t print it in favor of the six or seven adoring believers who always say “yeah it’s those crazy liberals again” or somesuch. It’s been my experience that on big issues like environment where their dogmatic disbelief is the strongest, they won’t publish my counter commentary because I have more than average knowledge and experience as a government biologist. They don’t want that getting in the way of their storyline. If no scientist sends in a refutation in an op-ed they will will win the media battle and lies will become the public belief. Goodness knows they’ve got a big enough head start on that body of misinformation as it is. This is just one more nail.
15 April 2006 at 9:47 PM
re 44.
A coworker of mine in 2005, while reading Crichton’s State of Fear at the office, said she was learning a lot from the book.
At the same time, my supervisor at the National Weather Service (NWS) said I must not research climate change while at the office because climate change was not part of the mission at NWS North Central River Forecast Center (NCRFC).
In this recent article in the Grand Forks Herald , my supervisor (until I left in 2005) said:
“Our mission is to protect life and property,”
I have a few other problems with what the NCRFC Hydrologist in Charge said in the article, below.
Apr. 08, 2006
Predicting river crests involves some guesswork
Associated Press
FARGO - There is a lot of technology used to estimate river crests, but the ultimate prediction also involves a little guesswork.
Fifteen forecasters and two computer models formulate predictions for the Red River Valley from the National Weather Service North Central River Forecast Center in Chanhassen, Minn.
The agency bases its predictions on stream gauges from the U.S. Geological Survey that transmit river level data to satellites, said hydrologist Dan Luna.
The data is forwarded to computer models at the forecast center. Luna said the computers often provide different information about when rivers will crest. That leaves the final prediction up to forecasters.
“It’s very similar to people,” Luna said of the computer results. “We all have our own opinions, strengths and limitations.”
Because of the Red River Valley’s flat terrain, the south-to-north direction of the Red River and ice jams, the river is a challenging area to forecast, Luna said.
Oddities also can occur, such as the river cresting in Grand Forks before it did farther south in Halstad, Minn., this spring. That was due mainly to local runoff, Luna said.
The forecast center begins tracking flood information in October by studying soil moisture, snow, the amount of moisture within the snow and frost. The center also has hundreds of people who call in with weather information from across the region, Luna said.
Signs of potential Red River Valley flooding first became evident last fall when rain left the soil moist right before freezing, he said. A November ice storm then created a sheet of ice that prevented runoff from being absorbed into the soil.
The valley received average snowfall, but the amount of moisture in the snow was well above normal, Luna said. Rain, fog, frost and a fast snowmelt across the region this spring also contributed to the flooding, he said.
Crest forecasts are purposely predicted on the high side so cities are prepared, Luna said.
“Our mission is to protect life and property,” he said.
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/local/14296862.htm
15 April 2006 at 10:13 PM
#45: “If no scientist sends in a refutation in an op-ed they will will win the media battle and lies will become the public belief.”
Well, they’re unlikely to print such a piece.
Remember, when Christy and Spencer first announced their analysis of the MSU data, the WSJ crowed that “this is a wooden stake through the heart of the AGW hypothesis”. The WSJ led the huzzays and hurrahs for the heroes responsible for proving that global warming was a myth.
Now that Christy and Spencer have been proven to be wrong, and the models vindicated, one might expect an honorable editorial staff to note that fact. Even a teensy little thing saying “well, maybe we were premature”.
But, no, anyone who gets their climate science from the WSJ editorial pages (and I suspect many influential business leaders do) will still be under the impression that the MSU data proves that global warming’s a myth …
[Response: Speaking of oldies but nasties the WSJ has never retracted, how about their 1997 front page piece, “Science has Spoken –Global Warming is a Myth.” It featured the incorrect Spencer and Christie analysis, a comparison with a GCM simulation done with steady 1% CO2 increase and no aerosol forcint (meant as a sensitivity study, not a forecast!) , and the bogus Fries-Christenson correlation between solar activity and climate. The article and the graphic is reproduced here, courtesy of Steve Milloy’s outfit, which still seems to be disseminating it as if it were the gospel truth –raypierre ]
15 April 2006 at 11:11 PM
There are several comments here about how climate scientists have to write op ed pieces for various papers/magazines. Guys you are still playing the wrong game and you will ALWAYS lose if you continue to ignore reality.
Lindzen does not approach the WSJ and offer to write an op ed piece. Some flack from the Cato Institute is calling up editors full time offering to have “the distinguished Prof. Lindzen from MIT” provide an op ed. They make deals, I’ll send you two op eds, one from our famous columnists and another from this guy Pat Michaels if you agree to publish both, and so on.
Take a look, for example at http://www.exxonsecrets.org/ and you will get an idea of the kind of links you need to get real estate on the op ed page of major papers as a regular thing. AND it is just as important to get placement on secondary papers, where different eyeballs are looking. To do that you need a permanent staff working full time to place your stuff, you need copy editors who understand how to leave an impression while not quite saying anything that cannot be implausibly defended.
Why do you think that second raters such as Tim Patterson, Pat Michaels, et al get such prominent placement. They have well funded, large staffs working on their behalf at AEI, SEPP, Cato, CEI, etc.
What that means is that if the Real Climate folks want to compete they are either going to establish a tax free foundation, find funding and hire a staff, or they are going to have to accept help from sympathetic organizations such as the Sierra Club who have at least some of the staff, contacts and experience needed.
I realize that this is 180 degrees from what the Real Climate folk want to do, and 180 degrees from what people like Roger Pielke recommend, but it is the only way that they can succeed in countering the propaganda offensive from the radical right.
And, let me close with one simple thought. If I am right (even partially), what does that say about the motivations of those who keep telling you to stay pure?
15 April 2006 at 11:44 PM
I don’t think offering up a reasoned peer-reviewed opinion has anything to do with purity. The op-eds are paid gigs. $375 at the NY Times for anyone but it’s an editorial decision wherever it is. Naturally the conservative papers will cater to their thinktank contributors like Pete du Pont et al. Send one to the Times. They’ll publish it, I assure you.
16 April 2006 at 12:21 AM
Re #37
Steven,
I was wondering; what meaning and implications are ofthe comment by Lincoln: “it’s time for the privileges accorded to the alarmist crowd to be revoked”. By the comments in this and related threads it seems that the WSJ does not publish anything contrary to their dogma and world view anyway. I may be wrong I have never read it. I was going to send a letter to them, just to see what happened, however, a subscription is required and I am loath to give any of my money to them.
16 April 2006 at 1:26 AM
#36: “Are Arctic storms becoming more frequent and intense since 1990 when Arctic ice meltback began to accelerate?”
The answer is yes, despite less steeper baroclinic differences. The reasons are much more complex than I previously thought. But warmer air intrusions “attacking” cold air formations play a major role.
[Response: This is interesting. I wasn’t aware of this result and would like to learn more. Any paper out on it yet? –raypierrre]
16 April 2006 at 1:32 AM
Re #48
Eli,
I feel that the Real Climate folks are doing an excellent job. I have used information on this site to directly enlighten about fifty people. The things you mention need to be picked up by someone (or organization) that already has expertise and resources in that area. Let people do the job that they are best at.
Sure, I understand that a very dirty war is being waged, even though the salvos are words, I will not call it a game, as the stakes are too high to call it that.
I agree with you, that the naysayers need to be challenged using techniques that you mention, however Real Climate should stay as is.
16 April 2006 at 5:00 AM
The posting of Lindzen’s article appears to be a case of putting him in the stocks and sitting back to watch the wet sponges fly. This is what happened, with most posters assuming Lindzen to be misguided. This is a newspaper “opinion” - an experienced and respected climate scientist saying “this is what I believe” - so criticising him for not providing substance is not really relevant. The “point-by-point” rebuttal is a combination of differing opinions (which is fine, but that’s what it is - a different opinion) and the politician’s tactic of mis-interpreting points made. For example, Lindzen does not question that a link between global warming and extreme weather has been made. It is predicted for decades into the future in the event of significant temperature rises. What he questions is how recent extreme weather (which has always happened and always will) can be so confidently blamed on global warming (which the media and politicised scientists regularly do). With regard to funding, only those involved in the process can really know. With regard to the scientific consensus, Lindzen is accused of oversimplifying this. However, the media regular report or imply - incorrectly - that there is consensus on the more extreme claims. The recent “Time” article (13 April 2006), after giving a list of recent extreme events (Cyclone Larry, forest fires in Indonesia, Hurricane Katrina, etc) presented as being caused by climate change, then states “the serious debate has quietly ended”. Criticising Lindzen for not explaining “models” is an irrelevant editorial one, given that anyone who has been following the debate will have some understanding of what they are. The scientific debate continues. It is a reality that politicians and policy makers often need to make key decisions where uncertainty remains. However, scientists (like the UK’s David King) have a duty to be honest to their “clients” and the public about the uncertainty.
16 April 2006 at 5:15 AM
Re the response (by Raypierre, I think?) posted within 28, thanks for mention of Posner on ‘Catastrophe’ and I’d welcome pointers to more discussion of that wherever it’s happening — can’t find your own articles, links OK?
[Response: The “catastrophe” issue with my article and Posner’s is not yet online, but I imagine it will be shortly. The print issue just came out. To read my various articles, go here and look for whatever interests you. I haven’t gotten around to posting some of the more recent writings yet, but the catastrophe article is there. On the subject of catastrophe, if you can read French, I very highly recommend the marvelous booklet by Jean-Pierre Dupuy, petite metaphysique des tsunamis . –raypierre]
16 April 2006 at 6:10 AM
I observe two aspects of the media ‘balace’ issue that have yet to be addressed here -
First - why would anyone assume that a media organ, such as WSJ, will give an honest account of the major threat to its very major advertizers (Big Oil & Big Auto) that provide an essential portion of its revenues, beside having unparalleled influence over other sectors’ advertizers ?
Surely if they were going to give an honest account before it becomes utterly discreditable in their readers’ eyes to do otherwise, they would have done so by now ?
Second, as one aspect of the Oil-based status quo’s strategy of “Distraction in total depth”,
the longer the public debate can be focussed on the reality of AGW, the longer the urgency of coherent global action can be ignored.
Yet this is merely the next hedge - in stating, however tersely, just how urgent / genocidal is the problem, we are distracted from discussing just what, precisely, are the solutions.
RC does noble work on propagating sound science in the face of the billions that Big oil could throw at multifacted disinformation if it felt the need,
but, to be effective (i.e. to practice Applied Climate Science) we plainly need to establish a global focus on the discussion & evaluation of the solutions.
As I’ve been unable to find any such public forum website, despite diligent searching, I wonder whether RC might be willing, in common with other reputable sites, to host discussion of its formation ?
For what it’s worth, as far as I’ve seen the ultimate “hedge of distraction” lies in the heavily propagated delusion
that a clear international consensus across all major states is required before a vanguard of nations can begin formally to discuss the requisite framework of the requisite Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons.
If others here concur with the need to help establish such a website, then I would propose that getting beyond that final hedge of “Awaiting Consensus” should become one focus within it.
regards,
Lewis
[Response: I doubt that the problems with the WSJ science reporting are driven by advertising revenue. Other business publications, like The Economist also get a lot of energy industry advertisements, as to general publications like Time , but do not have the same ideological filter on interpreting scientific results. For that matter, many of the WSJ advertisers are not in industries directly affected by energy prices, and some are in industries that are sensitive to climate change. The biggest advertisers are investment banks, which rake in money no matter what happens to everybody else. On top of all that, WSJ is probable less reliant on advertising revenue vis a vis subscriptions than most other newspapers. Newspapers have an institutional culture, and WSJ clearly has an extreme ideology that says something like “Corporations can do no Wrong”. This goes way beyond merely being pro-business. Perhaps the ideological bent is reinforced by what the editors perceive as their subscriber base, and perhaps it represents a perception of what the editors think will make them and the group they associate with richer; I can only speculate. The distressing thing to me is that, while one could hardly fault a paper for letting ideology affect editorial discussions on policy matters, the WSJ takes the ideological filter to an extreme and applies it to science as well — both on the editorial page, and in the coverage of science in the news reporting sections of the paper. Whatever the motivation, the fact that the editors clearly do not understand the way science works, and how to evaluate scientific arguments, is the real scandal here. I wouldn’t want people to assume that being “pro business” or “pro capitalism” necessarily means being like the WSJ. In fact, the way the WSJ reinforces the impression of an unbridgeable gulf between the business community and the community favoring environmental protection is one of the more damaging faults of the paper. Please do note that the problem is most extreme on the editorial page. Some (not all) of the science reporting that appears elsewhere in the paper is quite forthright. Recently, there was a very honest article about Alberta tar sands, which was forthright about the environmental damage that tar sand recover causes. True,there was almost a gleeful streak about how damaging this industry is, but nobody reading the article would be misinformed about the environmental problems. Several years earlier, WSJ had a very insightful front-page article debunking claims that the new oil-drilling technology was so clean you could drill in ANWR without any significant impact. –raypierre]
16 April 2006 at 8:45 AM
re 53.
RICHARD LINDZEN wrote … Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. … what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man’s responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. …
Climate of Fear - Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
PHEaston wrote … scientists (like the UK’s David King) have a duty to be honest to their “clients” and the public about the uncertainty (comment 53. in RC).
Scientists (like Richard Lindzen) have a duty NOT to imply to the pubic that: 1) there is no support for the human human population being responsible for most or all of the warming in recent decades, and 2) NOT to imply that there is only a small amount of warming recently. These are much more than mere distractions. Actually, due to the severe consequences of contributing to people’s attitudes to continue business as usual with respect to GHG emissions, this is much more than just a duty NOT to imply and mislead, this like a 11th Commandment which thou shalt NOT break.
16 April 2006 at 9:51 AM
It is a weak argument to say the climate reseachers would never fan the flames of alarmism.
[Response: You are being unfair to researchers. There’s a difference between being “alarmist” and being genuinely alarmed about a problem, and arguing for more research funding as a result. I’m not alarmist — I’m just plain alarmed. –raypierre]
What do you think medical doctors do when they want more money for research or treating certain disease. Breast cancer and AIDS get huge funding for research and treatment, far more than more serious problems like lung cancer and heart disease, in proportion to the number of victims of these diseases.
[Response: I certainly wouldn’t argue that the distribution of funding for biomedical research in the US is optimal, but what are your ideas for doing it better? Do you trust Congress to make these decisions for you without input from victims? Do you think that if you shut off input from doctors and victims that the input from other lobbyists would lead to a more equitable distribution of funding? I think the answer isn’t quieter victims, it’s smarter congresspeople. Whatever you think about the equity of medical research funding, you can hardly deny that breast cancer and AIDS are serious problems. It’s hard to see any big waste of money there. ]
Hysteria over breast cancer and HIV, followed by political action, has been a financial bonanza for certain segments of the health care industry. Just follow the money.
[Response: If you follow the money, it certainly won’t lead you to climate research.]
A case in point is the U. Maine. It recently changed the name of its Quaternary Institute to the Climate Change Insititute. I wonder why?
[Response: Maybe because it’s more descriptive of what they actually do these days. Maybe because they want to make it easier for students to recognize what they do. Lots of good reasons. ]
Go see for yourself.
http://www.climatechange.umaine.edu/
The Climate Change Institute (formerly the Institute for Quaternary and Climate Studies) is an interdisciplinary research unit organized to conduct research and graduate education focused on variability of the earths climate, ecosystems, and other environmental systems and on the interaction between humans and the natural world.
That last phrase, italics added, I sure they are hoping will add millions of dollars in research funds over the years.
[Response: I can’t speak for the University of Maine, and I doubt that you can either. Besides, there’s nothing wrong in a University hoping to raise funds for work in an area they think is important. Gee, that was pretty underhanded of the University of Chicago to play on peoples’ knee-jerk concern for childrens’ health by opening a Childrens’ Hospital. Must have just been a ploy to get their hands on more of the donors’ money. –raypierre ]
Of interest, U. Maine researchers recently let Greenpeace use them to put out an alarming press release on the melting of Greenland’s glaciers, with all the usual hype. They actually used a Greenpeace ship to help conduct their research, and came back with the very results Greenpeace wants to hear.
[Response: Hamilton and one grad student got a lift to Greenland on a Greenpeace ice cutter. Other’s have gotten lifts on goverrnment vessels and aircraft, or even on Gary Comer’s yacht. They and other U. Maine researchers get a great deal more funding from peer-reviewed grants, which provide strong vetting of the science. They publish the results in peer-reviewed journals, and the results regarding what has been going on along the Greenland coast have been verified by independent researchers. It’s hard to make the case that this is a Greenpeace “work for hire.” Greenpeace does sometimes oversimplify scientific results in its press releases, and gets some things plain wrong — though by no means as often as they are accused of doing. If you provide me with the URL for the press release, I can give you my read on it. I couldn’t find it on Google News. ]
Now tell me, how is this any different from a researcher taking money from Exxon, and then telling Exxon, and the world, what Exxon wants to hear? Or taking money from Big Tobacco and announcing that the link between smoking and ill health is not well defined.
[Response: Published primarily in peer-reviewed journals, extensively cross-checked by other scientists, primarily funded by peer-reviewed research grants, etc. etc. Guess which research program I’m referring to here. Another clue: How much money does Greenpeace have? How much money does ExxonMobil have? How much money does Phillip Morris have? ]
I haven’t read any criticism of the U. Maine for this sort of rank opportunism and for letting themselves be co-opted by Greenpeace.
[Response: “Opportunism?” The dictionary definition of an opportunist is “a person who places expediency above principle,” or “taking immediate advantage, often unethically, of any circumstance of possible benefit.” There’s a difference between “opportunism” and “benefiting from opportunity.” U. Maine could be construed as “opportunist” only in the weaker form of the second definition, in the sense of taking immediate advantage, though not necessarily unethicallly. “Rank” and “Co-Opted?” definitely not.]
I have only noticed these activities at the U. of Maine because a relative was a grad student there, otherwise I would never have taken any notice. I wonder how much similar opportunistic activity is ocurring around the country at other research institutions?
[Response: Your definition of “opportunistic” is so broad that it would take in virtual any scientific research a University or other research organization seeks funding for. ]
Grant money is the lifeblood of scientific research, afterall.
It is surprisingly easy to be a skeptic.
[Response: Yes, it is much easier to be a GW skeptic than to think for yourself and try to understand the scientific arguments. See Gavin’s article on How to be a real sceptic –raypierre]
16 April 2006 at 9:58 AM
RE: # 31
When you read that “the judgments of alarmists” is that global warming is “settled science”, you can be sure that you are about to hear the voice of multinational corporate polluters speaking through their impressive array of public relations firms and political allies. The only people saying that “alarmists” claim that the “science is settled” are right wing think tanks, like Cato, SEPP, and Friends of Science, and industry funded politicians like Inhofe. And now the Catholic Church.
Suppose that the science is not settled (whatever that means), how does it follow that “It is probable that the case for anthropogenic warming will not hold up” If you don’t know enough to claim that global warming is real, then how can you know enough to claim that AWG won’t hold up?
Uncertainty, by definition, can go either way. Uncertainty doesn’t mean there is nothing to worry about. There is a lively debate in the scientific community about whether increasing hurricane intensity is a result of natural cycles or global warming. If you were deciding whether or not to rebuild your flooded home in New Orleans, would the “unsettled” link between GW and hurricanes is give you peace of mind? Some of the science of GW is not settled, but this should be no comfort to those who prefer to be complacent about the future.
Most climate scientists, and every credible scientific institution, after decades of research, have voiced confidence in the conclusion that human causes largely responsible for global warming. Clear and present effects have been well documented, and future dangers are based on an enormous body of scientific investigation. To dismiss this by denigration as “alarmist” is simply rhetorical polemic, and not an honest description of the science.
16 April 2006 at 9:59 AM
re 56. under RC’s Lindzen: point by point:
The eleventh commandment: Do not mislead your neighbor about the cause of severe recent global warming by human activity nor distract from your neighbor effort to save Earth for inhabitants of today and tomorrow.
Text of the commandments commonly accepted (by Christian and Jewish
authorities), parts of text removed follow, from at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments#Text_of_the_commandments
[Response: Summary of the ten commandments edited out –raypierre]
16 April 2006 at 10:11 AM
Response to Ray at #55
Gamblers go to the race track to bet on animals - dogs or horses -running on dirt tracks. These speculators carry newspapers that chronicle the animals recent past and offer some advice on their future. With this set of tools, generally reasonable people hand their money over a hopefully honest syndicate with the intention to collect their winning if the gamble pays off.
Compare that scene to Wall Street and it is not a stretch to find some parallels. So, why would the WALL STREET tout sheet give a lot of editorial ink to to an honest appraisal of the earth’s changing climate. Some of its most important customers are betting huge sums on what they know best…the performance the companies in their portfolio and price-earnings ratios, etc.
There is not time to crack the WSJ editorial page but we can appeal to the Boards of Directors of some very influential and vital corporations in the food and grain industry…as have enlightened voices made appeals to the insurance industry. Their message is getting play and internal discussions about flood insurance and other aspects of the underwriting industry are beginning to reflect the concern RealClimate and its serious readers have been aware for about 20 years.
Lindzen is not the issue, really. He is the image of our frustration. Think past him to the interests that read the WSJ for the sake of knowing the future and direct our knowledge and concern to them.
Politicians have a two, four or six year lifespan unless they have declared themselves dictators for life.
Corporate leaders hope to retire with a fortune and they likely never think or hear about how a changing world climate is going to either make them richer or bankrupt.
Capitalist survival strategies are not the realm of RealClimate but whatever it takes to open minds is worth the effort.
Name some industries that have or soon will have a dog in the climate change fight and try to find new voices there to drown out the skeptics.
John McCormick
16 April 2006 at 11:12 AM
Thanks for the continued commentary about the WSJ opinion pages’ and editors’ performance, and for the conjecturing about their motivations, and for the conjecturing about whether or not the WSJ would print a Lindzen-rebutting op-ed — not letter, but op-ed — from a scientist of high stature.
One of my own conjectures is to disagree with the claim that only organizations with high-powered PR hacks can place op-eds. I’m just not convinced, not yet anyway, that the WSJ would spurn a well-crafted op-ed from, say, James Hansen himself. The WSJ does love to publish big names.
And more importantly, I have no evidence that anyone has gone past theory and actually run the experiment. When a theory can actually be tested, don’t scientists usually insist on going after the empirical data?
It seems to me that Raypierre was right to say: “Whatever the motivation, the fact that the editors clearly do not understand the way science works, and how to evaluate scientific arguments, is the real scandal here.” But I do think it’s important to try to assess motivation, if possible, simply because understanding a problem is a step in solving it — even if, as some predict, the only possible solution to the WSJ problem will turn out to be ignoring the WSJ, and its audience, as being hopeless.
As I say, I’m just not yet ready to buy that prediction, or the belief expressed by some that the WSJ’s editors are just plain liars. I think it’s not that easy. And I have an analogy question about it: In the nineteenth century, powerful journalists claimed that God had ordained a system in which some people owned other people. Were those journalists lying? Or did they actually believe that nonsense?
I think it’s pretty clear that many of them fervently, ardently believed it. True, one of the flaws in the analogy might be that that wasn’t about science, but it’s also true that a junk-science tradition already existed for justifying odious racial beliefs.
In following the WSJ’s op-ed choices fairly closely, I track what James Taranto says about climate science in the WSJ’s “Best of the Web.” Taranto, apparently operating out of a depth of ignorance of the principle of sample size in statistics, frequently joshes about a global warming speech that Vice President Gore once delivered on an outlier of a really, really cold day. Taranto appears genuinely to believe that this is a hilarious irony, and that it tends to discredit the scientific climate consensus. Now, if he and his colleagues are just scheming liars — as opposed to being grossly biased like those nineteenth century journalists — it seems to me that it’s pretty interesting that Taranto carries the lying deviousness to this level of pitiful attempted humor.
Here’s why I think it all matters. I just flat disagree with the verb when someone says that he “suspects” that many influential business leaders get their climate science from the WSJ editorial pages. Suspect? It seems to me that the country, especially its business enterprises, is run by people who follow one more news medium than President Bush does — and that one single outlet is the Wall Street Journal.
So I repeat what I said in comment 1, but re-phrased this way: if RealClimate, which is intrinsically based on a faith in democratic discourse, is worth doing at all, the Lindzen-rebuttal op-ed experiment is well worth conducting, whether or not directly by RC scientists.
[Response: I agree in principle, but plead lack of time and low probability of payoff. (I believe some of the rest of us are nonetheless having a go at the NY Times). Something to realize is that with any newspaper, the chance that any given op-ed will be accepted is very low, yet it takes a great deal of time to craft an op-ed that is well-written enough within the word count constraints that it even stands a chance. Thus, even viewed as a scientific experiment, a rejection of a single –or even a few — op eds by the WSJ would tell you very little. I’ve had a lot of op-eds rejected by the NYT, but their editorial policy re climate change coverage is basically fine. Another thing to realize is that newspapers essentially never use op ed space for op eds directly rebutting other op eds. I don’t know why this is, but what journalism professionals have told me seems to be borne out by my own reading of op-ed pages. It’s true that it would be very informative to get together a group to submit, say, a dozen sound-science climate change op-eds to the WSJ over the coming month, and see what happens. I’m not sure the experiment has ever been tried. It’s just that it would be a whole lot of work to do, and most of us feel (rightly or wrongly) that the chances of being surprised by the WSJ are rather small. I do agree that finding some way to establish a dialog with the WSJ readership is critical. Trying to do that through the WSJ editorial pages may not be a particularly effective way to proceed. As for myself, I probably connected with much more of the WSJ readership when I gave a talk at the Winnetka Garden Club than I would through any number of op-eds I might submit to the WSJ. –raypierre]
16 April 2006 at 11:40 AM
Re: #61
I wasn’t at first convinced. But you’ve persuaded me that yes, the experiment is worth trying. I would also point out that if the WSJ declines to print the rebuttal op-ed, very little is lost, but if the WSJ *does* publish it, quite a lot would be gained.
16 April 2006 at 11:42 AM
Re: #61
One more note: although I agree there’s little *probability* of a payoff, the payoff is so much greater than the loss that the *expectation value* is rather high. As for not having enough time …
16 April 2006 at 12:19 PM
“the WSJ takes the ideological filter to an extreme and applies it to science as well — both on the editorial page, and in the coverage of science in the news reporting sections of the paper.”
I find frequesntly the reporting side exposes the editorial page as the misinformed ideologues they are, but I have no idea how often. I applaud Ray’s an RC’s efforts and hope they do so. It’s true that wouldn’t tell us anything we don’t know about subject selectivity at the papers. My op-ed’s are rejected all the time. I once got beat out by Michael Dombeck Chief of the Forest Service who had just been let go by Bush who essentially said the same things I did on the Clinton Roadless Rule. That’s the kind of literary luck I have, but it’s clear I was beaten out by the ultimate big gun. That’s how it works. The important thing was it was said in the public space. The letters to the editor have to concern a specific op-ed.
I’ll include it here as an example of an opinion piece:
[Response: The Dombeck piece is indeed a well-crafted op-ed, and I hope people will take the time to read it either through the Times archives or through a link that Mr. York can provide. I’ve edited it out of this comment because the subject matter itself was off-topic and I didn’t want our discussion to get derailed into a discussion of forest policy,important though that is –raypierre]
16 April 2006 at 12:20 PM
“Something to realize is that with any newspaper, the chance that any given op-ed will be accepted is very low, yet it takes a great deal of time to craft an op-ed that is well-written enough within the word count constraints that it even stands a chance.”
For a climate science professional living in an area with a reasonably large daily, it shouldn’t be hard to get an op-ed in. I have several friends who’ve written op-eds for my local daily (The Oregonian).
Not as important or as high-profile as the WSJ or Times, by any means, but still, exposing a few tens of thousands of readers to the real science of global warming is worthwhile.
And certainly I’m not suggesting it’s not worth trying to get a piece into the WSJ. I’m just saying I know where I’ll lay my bet if a pool’s started on whether or not they’ll publish such a piece
A sound piece there would be read by many important people.
But raypierre’s right, op-eds are usually not published if they simply provide rebuttal to a previous op-ed. Better would be to jump on a significant announcement and use that as a platform to build an article on. For instance the last round of corrections to Christy and Spencer’s MSU analysis would’ve provided such an opportunity.
16 April 2006 at 12:42 PM
What about an op-ed in Time to counter their outrageously alarmist article of 3rd April 2006. This starts with “Polar ice caps are melting faster than ever; more and more land is being devasted by drought; rising waters are drowning low-lying communities. By any measure, Earth is at the tipping point. The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame.” This is very much a taste of what follows. As serious scientists, you should be concerned that this will ultimately damage your case by ‘crying wolf’. Unless these statements are true - and no serious scientist would claim this, however convinced he/she is by the truth of Man’s influence on climate change - there will come a time when the public will become jaded and cynical.
[Response: I can quibble with some of the details in the Time article. For example, the statement that polar ice caps are melting “faster than ever” ought to have some qualification with regard to time frame; how you would work in precision of that sort while keeping to standard punchy journalistic writing style, I’m not sure. The main thing is that the Time article gives a correct overall impression of the nature of the problem, even if it is wrong in some of the details. I can’t say the same for Lindzen’s piece. Will and Novak have already had their shot at countering the Time article, and rather than raising legitimate points where clarification could have been useful, they squandered their chance on baseless character assassination and rehashing of already debunked arguments. –raypierre]
[Response: Having reflected a bit more on the interesting issue you raise, I’d like to clarify my response. I agree that Time’s science reporting is often rather sloppy. After all, it was Time that brought us the botched 1970 “global cooling” story that has caused so many headaches. In fact, compared to, say, The Economist, there are a lot of pretty shallow and unsatisfactory aspects of Time’s reporting all ’round. All I’m saying is that, given that I see Time’s article as a move in the right direction for their journalism, compared to the even more flawed “false balance” approach, it’s not exactly at the top of my to-do list of crusades. If there were any useful role that Will or Novak or Lindzen could have played in this, it would have been to point out the precise areas where Time went overboard. Chris Shea’s piece in the Boston Globe made a lot of sense in this direction, and deserves wider play. It will be important to keep the pendulum from swinging too far the other way, and implying that there is more certainty than there really is. This will become increasingly important as the discussion moves beyond the amount of warming, and begins to focus instead on the severity of the impacts. Here, we are unlikely to have much certainty in time to take the kind of action that would be required to avoid a dangerous degree of climate change. If it is implied that we can deliver certainty, and if it is demanded that we do deliver certainty, then all hope of taking any action is lost. Policy decisions are always made in the face of uncertainty, and climate change is no different. The role of science will be to discover new bad consequences that need to be considered, and to try to see which of the possible bad consequences can be ruled out in the light of new research. What remains is in the realm of possibility, and must be factored into policy decisions even if the probabilities are uncertain. I’d say that if there is a problem, it is not that scientists have to be alarming in order to get funding. Rather, it’s that politicians never seem to take action unless somebody gets hysterical. I just don’t know what to do about that. –raypierre ]
16 April 2006 at 12:52 PM
OK guys — I’ve taken the bait. I’ve just submitted a brief Letter to the Editor of the WSJ, raising a few issues with Lindzen’s op-ed. Please help me watch out to see if it appears. I’m not a regular reader.
I’ll keep an eye out for a newsworthy hook that would justify an op-ed submission. This may take a little time away from the time I spend responding to RC comments (very addictive, that!)
16 April 2006 at 1:20 PM
About #51, Raypierre, there are no papers yet on this issue that I know of, but there are statellite pictures and surface weather maps, which often show strong winds in the 40 to 70 knot range, sometimes with huirricane speeds, without any significant pressure differences. Suggest the following websites:
http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/data/analysis/jac18_100.gif
Surface map which may show very strong winds without steep baroclines…
But in particular look for Infrared signature of a blizzard associated with the strong winds, sometimes occuring without steep baroclinic differences, they can be identified as small 60 nautical miles radius or so, pockets of white, apparently very high turbulent air, definitely turbulent on surface, characterized by very high in altitude blowing snow, appearing brilliant white, away fom apparent storm zones, very misleading often appearing as high cirrus, Must compare surface map link above with
http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/data/satellite/hrpt_dfo_ir_100.jpg
to see them… Last one seen was April 7 vicinity Resolute Bay, to the south and southwest,, at the edge of a very large but none significant low centered 400 miles awayto the North, part of one of its cloud bands had 3 distinct turbulent zones.
16 April 2006 at 1:44 PM
Wayne, do you know anyone who’s published storm frequency/intensity papers based on comparing imagery? Is there a method for using these data?
16 April 2006 at 2:30 PM
I put the op-ed here: http://www.msnusers.com/u8bnch5hllr9ai6o25o60lka27/Documents/Clips%2FDombeckop%2Ded.pdf
It’s not available at the NYT for some reason. I had it on a Lexis-Nexis search.
16 April 2006 at 2:35 PM
That’s great Ray. I don’t get the paper but the opinionjournal is delivered to my inbox. It’s op-eds exclusively.
16 April 2006 at 2:39 PM
#36: “Are Arctic storms becoming more frequent and intense since 1990 when Arctic ice meltback began to accelerate?”
The answer is yes, despite less steeper baroclinic differences. The reasons are much more complex than I previously thought. But warmer air intrusions “attacking” cold air formations play a major role.
Thank you Wayne for that reply.
It would seem the U.S. Coast Guard stations monitoring fishing fleets and providing at sea rescue in the West Arctic would be a good place to ask if recent storm activities have increased.
I have a copy of the Arctic Environmental Atlas issued in 1999 by the Office of Naval Research and will contact some of the authors and contributors to make inquiries.
John McCormick
16 April 2006 at 4:46 PM
Ray, as you move into the public area, be prepared for a vicious pushback. From a comment that I made about a year ago elsewhere IMHO the point is that for too long the soapbox in the public arena has been the property of those pushing denial. The Lott�s Seitz�, Singers, Michaels and the rest of the gang of six have worked assiduously to get their screeds onto op ed pages of many newpapers where they are read by millions of people while folk who write science have their stuff read by maybe a hundred in some refereed journal or maybe a thousand on some blog such as this.
They (the gang of six, or maybe twelve) are aided by public relations shops such as AEI who have people talking to editors of editorial pages every day. What Real Climate needs is some funding for its own public relations firm to compete, and the realization of what the game is.
When anyone threatens to compete for real estate on op ed pages and talk shows there is a huge push back, not just from the few denialists but from the entire public affairs apparatus that is pushing them. That is why you need cover.
16 April 2006 at 7:07 PM
#69. Hank, no publications, not even research on some of these anomalies…. there are some general archives presented in various forms, but there are some weather and sea ice features out there, rarely discussed if not known at all. We can present them, but understanding their mechanisms is far from being achieved, there are clues, such as warm and cold air disparities. The greatest mystery yet, is why 100 cm high tides can rip open the Arctic ocean ice pack shore line for hundreds of miles during new moon and full moon periods.
The