Subject: Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting
scientists into silence
Climate of Fear
Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
BY RICHARD LINDZEN
Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity
was
another sign of human-induced climate change. 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. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree
increase
in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century
possibly
gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And
how
can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?
The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate,
plus
a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism.
Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a
vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy
makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to
increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into
science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing
really alarming? 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.
But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who
dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their
work
derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or
worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when
they
fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.
To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and
the
climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex
underlying
scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The
public,
press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have
widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a
degree
since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have
increased
by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future
warming. These claims are true. However, 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. In
fact,
those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually
demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It
isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know
must
be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't
happen
even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to
prevent global warming.
If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature
differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less
difference
in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not
more.
And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn
some
support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim
by
Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change
(IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat
providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that
the
ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on
temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air.
Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more
humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global
warming.
So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this
junk
science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely
by
money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton
issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his
co-authors
seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the
1990s
were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last
millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had
singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to
take
action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and
tested--a
task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to
release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of
Mr.
Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the
National
Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and
the
American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep.
Barton's
singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.
All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific
community
when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In
1992, he
ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting
scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his
climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr.
Gore,
as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to
discredit
anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly
inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by
Ross
Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as
stooges
of the fossil-fuel industry.
Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk
Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch
Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of
global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World
Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the
IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism.
Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza
disappeared
from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for
raising questions.
And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific
journals
for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted
climate
wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without
review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are
published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA,
attempted
to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered
what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds
contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative
climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing
CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the
journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However,
in
this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared,
claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and
longer.
The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as
"discredited."
Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate
really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate
Plan
urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate
sensitivity,
the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the
impacts
of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.
Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential
to
maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand
up
against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate
scientists, advocates and policymakers.
M. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.
--
regards, Peter Bjørn Perlsø
http://haxor.dk
http://liberterran.org
http://haxor.dk/fanaticism/