There is no scientific consensus on global warming - Essex op ed in 8/28/02 Post
Steve Schulin
is a Professor in Department of Applied Mathematics at University of
Western Ontario
http://www.nationalpost.com/financialpost/story.html?id={7E35F846-59DD-4C8F-80EF-0DAC10C95218}
National Post, August 28, 2002
Scientific confusion
Canada's entire climate change agenda is based on the scientific
consensus on global warming. The only problem is that there is no
consensus
by Christopher Essex
Imagine you woke up one morning to find that scientific consensus on
climate change had vanished. Since the government bases its entire
climate change agenda on a chorus of consensus, where would that leave
its hearings on the Kyoto accord? What would we do with the gigantic
international policy apparatus behind Kyoto? Would you even want to
hear the news?
Many would not, so it gives me no pleasure to say what I must.
I have been involved with the fundamentals of the science for more
than 25 years. I have never seen anything but a wide range of opinions
about climate change among the scientific community that I know. You
can find scientists on all sides of the issue, although you will
rarely see that reflected in the press. Activists write there instead,
drumming an authoritarian message about science, distasteful to all
thinking people.
I have seen it many times. Some indignant and impassioned writer
declares ignorance about the science behind global warming, then
continues to write an article, or even a book, about it anyway. The
author usually tells us who is not an expert. Charges of duped
scientists with views tainted by ulterior motives are made.
Invocations of signs, omens and portents stand in for discussion of
basic science. Unanimous agreement among the "true" experts is always
proclaimed.
But agreement about what? If you claim not to know the science, how
could you know? If you don't know the science, how do you know who is
a "true" expert to do the agreeing?
The federal government responds by choosing who the experts are and
defining for us what consensus means. Their discussion paper on Kyoto
stands on no other basis. Academic scientists aren't invited to their
hearings. Based on a consensus that there is a consensus among
scientists, everyone has jumped right on past the science without a
second thought.
They jumped right past me. A parliamentary committee was to have heard
scientific testimony and my name was on a list of invitees to give it.
But it won't happen now. I had hoped to avoid the authoritarian circus
that has descended upon a once proud science, by speaking in that more
somber venue.
The cornerstone of the consensus mantra is a United Nations report on
climate change (Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis). All other
similar reports ultimately have been influenced by the impression the
UN report left. But I doubt that most of the 600 or so authors and 400
referees of the scientific report would agree with the impression that
the public seems to have of it.
They certainly weren't asked to endorse the conclusions of the small
interpretation documents slapped onto the front of it. Moreover, there
was no specific proposition that the scientists collectively
addressed, let alone endorsed. They only wrote about their many
respective individual specialties, like authors in a huge collection
of short stories. Where is the "consensus" in that?
But those government-sponsored "slap-ons" have functioned, in the eyes
of the rest of the world, as a proposition endorsed by all of the
scientists. They didn't endorse it. But one might get the impression
they that they did.
Political magicians conjured it into a broad scientific "consensus." A
consensus on what? By whom? You must break the enchantment to be able
to ask. Many in the press or in politics have certainly been under a
compulsion not to ask.
A small group hand-picked by governments wrote those interpretation
documents for the UN. I could hand-pick a panel of respected
scientists that would interpret the complex and ambiguous scientific
report with very different conclusions. Our scientific understanding
on this topic just isn't as hard-edged as people have been told. The
scientists have done their best to make it otherwise, but the problem
is just too fiendishly difficult.
Scientists themselves have many misconceptions. For example, 100 Nobel
Laureates endorsed a statement in support of the Kyoto accords. The
government also cites the statement to justify skipping the science to
do whatever they want. What political opponent would dare contradict
Nobel Laureates?
Real scientists would not give contradicting them a second thought, if
the Nobel Laureates had made a scientific mistake. Every Nobel
scientist who signed understands that. It's the culture of science.
Perhaps the many others who signed, like Desmond Tutu or Mikhail
Gorbachev, might not understand.
As it happens, the Nobel Laureates did make a most telling mistake on
the science in their statement's only reference to global warming!
They asserted that the equatorial regions would be affected most. But
the standard view they were endorsing says the poles would be affected
most -- oops! Even Nobel Laureates are human.
It was telling because they clearly didn't do their homework. Perhaps
they were hoping that the alleged scientific consensus would see them
through. They were relying on authority, just like everyone else,
rather than thinking for themselves. Theirs was a moral gesture, not a
scientific one.
As one Nobel Laureate who did sign told me over dinner, Nobel
Laureates can be treated as "movie stars" at times. Pressure is on
them to lend their names to causes that they may not be fully
acquainted with. Their statement also condemned poverty and aimed to
keep us safe from nuclear destruction, too. I would probably sign
myself, despite the error, especially if presented with so many
impressive people who already had signed.
If you are a scientist who wants to sign something, as a scientist,
there are choices on all sides of this issue to choose from. There
have been at least five major petitions or statements, not including
the Nobel Laureates' statement. One of them, called The Heidelberg
Appeal, is favoured by those against. But one of the 100 Nobel
Laureates signed it too!
The establishment is definitely against the anti-Kyoto petitions. So
you may not be aware that any scientists have signed such things.
There have also been cheap and vicious attempts to discredit the
signatories of those petitions. We are dealing with a very nasty
political game.
The Oregon Petition (against), with over 17,000 names, has been
singled out in Scientific American magazine for attack. The magazine
suggested that most of the names did not belong to "true" experts and
insinuated that some names might belong to no one at all. However, I
personally know credible scientists who did sign that petition.
One fashionable claim in the pro-Kyoto activist community is that
"Ginger Spice" is a name on that petition. It isn't. But there is an
unshakable belief that critics of the warming picture aren't "true"
experts, or are part of a plot.
Moreover, prominent people and institutions brazenly make outrageous
charges that there is a plot. The U.S. Interior Secretary, Bruce
Babbit, said in 1997 that "the oil and the coal companies ... have
joined in a conspiracy to hire pseudo-scientists to deny the facts ...
suborning scientists onto their payrolls and attempting to mislead
..." An editorial in the famous science journal Nature charged that
"industrial lobby groups ... championed specious scientific findings"
creating "a bogus scientific debate." Even our Environment Minister
dismisses scientific critics as "contrarians," and ignores sincere
offers to be briefed on serious problems with the science.
Personal attacks are also made against specific scientists. Some are
spectacularly public. The editor of Scientific American has been a
perpetrator. Others are insidious moves behind the scenes. Allegations
have been made that people have been ejected from meetings or have
lost their research funding for "wrong" views on global warming. It
can go the other way too: One scientist (pro-Kyoto) complained to me
of being taunted as a "chicken-little-scientist."
There will be many nasty stories for the scientists to tell on all
sides of the issue when history takes an objective look back on this
period. This is not news to scientists. They have always been first to
take the heat when people get carried away about scientific issues.
And many have gotten carried away!
It would be all so much simpler if the silly jingles and proverbs
which populate the press and elementary school curricula to explain
global warming were actually true. But greenhouses don't work by the
greenhouse effect, and carbon dioxide isn't the most physically
important "greenhouse" gas! These are just science junk food.
I was recently invited to speak at a scientific meeting on the
limitations of models. There, a senior scientist, who participated in
writing the UN "consensus" report, told me (privately) that we do not
understand climate now, and we would never solve the scientific
problem of climate! So much for a consensus among the UN scientists.
His is a defensible position. The climate problem is unsolved for very
deep reasons. It is as hard a scientific problem as humans have ever
faced. People tried to solve it in the late sixties by brute
technological force: more observations on bigger computers. Instead of
the science cracking the problem, the problem cracked the science!
They discovered chaos and formal unpredictability.
The discovery caused a scientific revolution that has been ringing
through physics and mathematics journals to this day. It even snuck
into the UN scientific report. Section 14.2.2 says, in the appropriate
jargon, that we haven't a clue about climate, just as that scientist
said!
© Copyright 2002 National Post
Ian St. John
"Steve Schulin" <nucl...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:fff3fd40.02082...@posting.google.com...
> Although the article doesn't mention it, the author, Dr. Chris Essex,
> is a Professor in Department of Applied Mathematics at University of
> Western Ontario
> Imagine you woke up one morning to find that scientific consensus on
> climate change had vanished.
Yup. Imagine that the evil aliens land and turn our atmosphere into hydrogen
and ammonia?
Imagine if Mickey Mouse is real?
Imagine if...
Alastair McDonald
"David Ball" <wra...@mb.sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:3d6cf2f8...@news.mts.net...
> On 28 Aug 2002 08:38:50 -0700, nucl...@comcast.net (Steve Schulin)
> wrote:
>
> >
> >I have seen it many times. Some indignant and impassioned writer
> >declares ignorance about the science behind global warming, then
> >continues to write an article, or even a book, about it anyway. The
> >author usually tells us who is not an expert.
>
> mind was Lomborg. Too funny...
The first thing that comes to my mind is the author of the article
that Steve quoted.
Cheers, Alastair.
patrenius
doing nothing: if you were in europe this sommer you would not look for
consensus. Cost of this sommer is in the region of 100-200 billion $. And
this is only the end of foreplay. The real show will start soon and in few
years there will be no economy more. Humans will work only to repair roads,
railways, bridges, houses hospitals, bury deads and recondition fields
polluted by the foods carring any kind of pollutants. Learn the basis of
chemistry and climatology: each micro-grain of particulate acts as a
condensation nucleus for cloud and rain. The number of particles has grown
from the natural 1000/liter to human-done 100,000 million/liter or billions?
I forgot the figure for the shock I got. (German scientists reported). The
resuls is that lower athmosphere acts like sponge and keep humidity from
circulating. Results: months of dry. We had from past october to april-may
almost no rain. When the sponge is full then we have period like this with
floods, horcan, distruction and so on. Asia is covered by a thick cloud of
particulate. Europa and america are just a little behind. Where do you think
goes the smoke from the huge american wood fires? Do you thin it will go to
another planet ? It will sum to particulate coming from tyres (estimates 50
millions ton/year), from oil burning ( automotive, factories heating etc)
and even fron cigarets. Look : we are 6 billions. Assuming 50% smokes, say
only 5 cigarets/ day. It makes 15 billions cigarets/ day equal 5475
billions a year. Of course there is no scientific consensus on what I wrote,
therfore we do'nt need to worry about it. Pls explain this to the undred
thousands who lost their house, car and belongins over night.
Greeting patrenius
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