
MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial - hga
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22public+domain+is+still+uncertain%2C+but+the+emails%2C+whose%22+site%3Awsj.com
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DrSprout
While it's true that there's no consensus on the source of the warming, it is
true that the planet is warming.

That's something that tends to get lost in the shuffle, and it's really scary
what percentage of the American public believes that the fundamental point is
false. It also seems to me that Lindzen is exaggerating the degree of dispute
over the future climate trends. I do agree that there's not a lot of evidence
we can prevent the climate from warming considerably over the next 50 years or
so, but there is a general consensus that the climate will warm considerably
over the next 50 years.

It also seems there's a general consensus this is a problem, even if it's
purely natural. Lindzen is doing his fellow researchers a disservice by
confusing the politics and science of the issue.

~~~
hga
Hmmm, that's not my impression. The data reevaluation that resulted in 1934
being declared the hottest year in the 20th century, the "hide the decline"
games, the fierce debate over the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and
its extent (I think the alarmists now admit its existence, but debate its
scope, e.g. there's a lack of data in the Southern Hemisphere and the oceans),
they all suggest to me that the science here is _not_ settled.

The only way you're going to convince "skeptics" like myself (I only deny that
the science is settled) will be to retrieve the original data sets the CRU
lost and then do the science again in a totally open manner. Share the data,
publish the code and methods, etc.

~~~
DrSprout
>The data reevaluation that resulted in 1934 being declared the hottest year
in the 20th century

This whole argument is getting extraordinarily tired, but 1934 could well be
the hottest year on record in the 20th century without invalidating the claim
that the climate has warmed on average by several degrees since then. Outlying
data points are in every single data set.

>the "hide the decline" games

As I recall there was a single game, in a single email.

>the fierce debate over the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and its
extent

Europe? As I understand that's where the data is from. But even so, even if
the temperatures have precedents, that doesn't disprove the warming trend - it
just casts some doubt on the alarmism. And that's what I'm trying to get at.
Warming is happening. It will continue.

~~~
hga
The point here is not which year was the hottest but the incorrect research
that said a recent one was. An additional point would be the big deal the
alarmists made when the first results came out and their silence on the
correction.

Your recollection is incorrect, "hide the decline" is found throughout the
source code in the CRU archive leak (quoted like that in comments and directly
expressed in the code). There's also the green line in that IPCC graph that
just ends in the middle of a thicket of intersecting lines. If it had been
continued, it would have ... declined. It's a pretty big deal since it throws
into doubt the entire tree ring approach (not to mention the explicit or
implicit fraud).

Agreed on the "casts some doubt on the alarmism", although I'd say more than
"some", since they went to some effort to disappear it in the first place.

Hmmm, maybe I should ask, "Warming tend over what period?"

Since the last Ice Age, obviously. Since the Little Ice Age, certainly. Beyond
that? The time series of data really matters in this debate, for if recent
increases do not correlate with anthropogenic CO2 increases (e.g. if it got
warm in the 20th century before that was big, and now is getting cooler) then
it calls the whole alarmism crusade into doubt (at best).

~~~
cgranade
Did you actually read what "hide the decline" meant? Go learn about proxies
and you'll see that what they mean is that there is a false decline in proxy
temperatures that must be corrected for, likely due to increased CO₂
concentrations changing how tree rings are formed. There's no deception here--
they were up front and honest about this problem, and referred to data
analysis techniques to correct for a false decline.

~~~
hga
These "data analysis techniques to correct for a false decline" at best
consisted of substituting thermometer readings for tree ring proxies. I
wouldn't call that a "data analysis technique".

They also "improved" the curve for the 1930s as ESR learned from the code and
data (<http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1447>): " _This, people, is blatant data-
cooking, with no pretense otherwise. It flattens a period of warm temperatures
in the 1930s — see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a
positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the
century._ "

Also note how this meshes nicely with the paper that started this thread that
did not until it was corrected show that 1934 was the hottest year in the 20th
century.

------
dgabriel
<http://logicalscience.com/skeptics/Lindzen.htm>

~~~
pavs
Important part:

" Lindzen recieved $2500 a day from oil and coal interests for his
services.1,2, 3 His article "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged
Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.1 Lindzen has lectured at
numerous Cooler Heads Coalition meetings. The Cooler Heads Coalition is funded
by CEI which is in turn funded by Exxon Mobil. He has also given talks for the
George C. Marshall Institute which is also funded by Exxon Mobil. His
connections to the oil, coal, and even tobacco industry are apparently rather
extensive. Here is one listof many that is worth exploring. Richard Lindzen
claims he is currently not recieving any handouts from oil companies."

~~~
anamax
If you're going to argue that he's been bought, you get to explain why AGW
supporters aren't bought as well. After all, the connection between their
conclusions and their funding is even stronger.

Of course, the truth is that money isn't the most corrupting influence by a
large margin - true belief is. You can often spot true believers by their
insistence that money is the only reason why their position isn't universally
accepted.

~~~
dgabriel
All science is bought by special interests to a certain extent. Frankly, I
think the connections to the oil industry, et al., are not as important as the
veracity (or lack thereof) of his claims.

~~~
g2boojum
"All science is bought by special interests to a certain extent." Any evidence
for that statement? My academic research was mostly funded by the US NSF,
which doesn't really strike me as a "special interest". The NSF doesn't
particularly care what the results are, just that the questions are worth
answering and that the approach is reasonable.

~~~
hga
I'm not asking you to do this work, but to prove your point you'd need to list
some research that the NSF has funded that "denies" global warming (assuming
they fund the reverse).

~~~
cgranade
That's false equivalency. The NSF doesn't fund research to show that the earth
is flat, because it isn't. Just because the well-tested AGW hypothesis exists
doesn't mean that AGW denialism is on equal footing.

~~~
anamax
The "earth is round" folks don't hide data. They show their work.

Note that the NSF does fund things that seriously test special relativity.

Do you really think that the temp measurements are as sound? You remember the
temp measurements. The US ones come from stations in parking lots, and they're
the good ones. A huge fraction of the foreign ones have been moved. We don't
know how that was adjusted for. (The dog ate their homework.)

Which reminds me, we have data showing that CO2 levels on earth have been
several times higher than the projected disaster case. Care to guess what the
"unbearable" temps were?

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mnemonicsloth
Header from the author's wikipedia profile:

"Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940, Webster, Massachusetts) is
an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in
the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone
photochemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books.[1]
He was a lead author of Chapter 7, 'Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,'
of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change. He is a well known
skeptic of global warming[2] and critic of what he states are political
pressures on climate scientists to conform to climate alarmism."

Famous scientist and well-known critic of AGW? This is the first I've heard of
him...

~~~
hga
Hmmm ... he's been well known in this field for both of the above since the
late '80s, when a friend of mine interviewed him.

At the time he effectively said he had been rather naive in the publication of
his research (as I recall it was a study going back 200+ years on ship
temperature reports, rather important data since the majority of the world is
covered by the seas). He had thought that the scientific community was
interested in the truth....

His problem was of course that the '80s were the period where the climate
alarmists switched from global cooling/new Ice Age to global warming. As I
recall his funding sources went poof, fortunately he'd already gotten tenure.

Anyway, if you're interested in this topic yet haven't heard of him or, say,
"atmospheric physicist" Fred Singer
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer>; e.g. he "designed the first
instruments used in satellites to measure cosmic radiation and ozone" (all
quotes from Wikipedia)), you might want to expand your sources of information.

~~~
euroclydon
What motivates these global alarmists? And how do they get money by being so
shrill? Is your average citizen just dying to be worried over the next
catastrophe and willing to throw money at whomever can scare them the most?

~~~
hga
I don't know, but this specific phenomena goes back to 200 AD (sic), and then
you can go back to, oh, the Book of Revelations and so on. There seems to be a
strong drive in at least some people towards this sort of thing.

Politicians gain power by not "letting a serious crisis go to waste"
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yeA_kHHLow>); how real a crisis is
irrelevant. Funding naturally follows for those talking up the crisis.

~~~
billswift
It isn't just the politicians either, where do you think the major
environmental organizations get their money? Since the major cleanup during
the 1970s, they have invented "crisis" after "crisis" to keep the money coming
in. The "ozone hole" and "acid rain" crises were as overblown, running toward
outright fraudulent, as the AGW crap.

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hga
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nhooey
Scientific Opinion on Climate Change
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change)

Looks like almost everyone's in agreement, there.

