Climategate: Here Comes Courage! (Is climate catastrophism losing its 'politically correct' grip?)
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6795858.html [Frank]
January 3, 2010, 22:00:34 | Robert Bradley Jr.
The times are changing in the wake of Climategate. And more is to come as
the polluted science
embedded in the email exchanges gets reviewed by talented amateurs and pros
alike on the
blogosphere (see Climate Audit, Roger Pielke Jr., and WattsUpWithThat, in
particular).
Given time, the rethink will go mainstream. Scientists are truth seekers at
heart, but an
entrenched mainstream of climate scientists-so many of them friends and
political allies-will need
to be nudged out of their denialism.
Old voices are challenging their 'mainstream' colleagues, and new voices are
coming forth. I have
seen this clearly here in Houston (examples below), and I expect it is
happening elsewhere.
Consider what Andy Revkin, the recently retired climate-change science
writer at the New York
Times, told the public editor at the Times regarding Climategate: "Our
coverage, looked at in toto,
has never bought the catastrophe conclusion and always aimed to examine the
potential for both
overstatement and understatement."
Sounds like the Times will report both sides of the issue now, rather than
just trumpet alarmism as
it was prone to do in the past (remember William K. Stevens?). Joe Romm at
Climate Progress (Center
for American Progress) is furious at this development, but just maybe
over-the-top Joe has himself
to blame for getting Revkin and the like to want to report on both sides
more than ever before. And
Romm himself is now considered damaged goods by the Left, thanks to the
four-part expose by the
Breakthrough Institute.
Climategate, in short, is making quite a difference. But much more courage
is needed.
Dr. Michelle Foss (University of Texas at Austin)
Consider Michelle Michot Foss, an internationally respected energy economist
with the University of
Texas at Austin who is past president of both the United States Energy
Association and the
International Associations for Energy Economics. Her December 8th letter to
the New York Times
read:
To the Editor:
Your editorial concludes, "It is also important not to let one set of
purloined e-mail messages
undermine the science and the clear case for action, in Washington and in
Copenhagen."
Hold on a minute. It was precisely because "one set" of opinions has been
driving climate
politics that the whistleblowers, not hackers, published the evidence. And
it is precisely because
of the type of coverage that The New York Times and other mainstream news
organizations are giving
the whistleblowing incident that the integrity of both the scientific and
journalistic communities
is being threatened.
Honest questions have been raised and honest attempts have been made to
shed light on
questionable claims about climate science for decades. We need to push for
greater disclosure, more
scrutiny, better research and a halt in the action before we jump into
policy and regulatory
schemes that we will deeply regret.
Dr. Foss has kept her views somewhat under wraps given her university
position, but Climategate was
enough for her to go public in the above very public way. And she has
received a number of emails
of support-and some emails by her alarmist friends to the effect: 'gosh
Michelle, I agree with you
on Climategate, but I thought you were one of us..'
To such critics, her answer can be: Climategate proves that alarmism is
exaggerated, and most
modest warming scenarios win the debate for adaptation over mitigation.
Robert Murphy has made this
point in a post very widely read among economists and entitled "Apologist
Responses to Climategate
Misconstrue Real Issues."
I think that if some on the UT-Austin faculty were to try to silence her
powerful voice, they would
have a (climate) McCarthyism issue on their hands post Climategate. What a
difference compared to
several months ago!
Dr. Neil Frank
Also consider the case of Dr. Neil Frank, a former director of the National
Hurricane Center in
Miami and a weather forecaster at KHOU-Channel 11 in Houston. He previously
did not want to enter
the climate fray for fear of being marginalized by the mainstream-including
the hometown Houston
Chronicle, whose editorial board is a bastion of alarmism, except for their
science writer Eric
Berger (skeptical of Gore-type alarmism) and business columnist Loren Steffy
(anti cap-and-trade).
Dr. Frank just published an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, Climategate: You
Should be Steamed,
where he explains why the silent majority in his profession have been
mistreated by the academic
mainstream/IPCC crowd. (His op-ed is reprinted as an appendix below.)
Dr. Peter Hartley (Rice University): Courage Following Berger's Courage
It is a sad state of affairs-a Climategate-like situation-when a tenured,
chair professor has to
sneak his skeptical views about climate alarmism into the public debate. But
this is the situation
for Peter Hartley at Rice University, and specifically at the James A. Baker
Institute where Dr.
Neal Lane, a former Clinton Administration official and confidant of Obama
science advisor John
Holdren (who has been featured at climate events at Baker without balance on
the other side) has
shut down debate on the physical science of climate change.
Dr. Hartley has been beaten down at Baker for years, and he is full of
stories about how other Rice
University professors have concerns about climate models (and the "hockey
stick" work of
Climategater Michael Mann) but have stayed quiet because so much government
funding is at stake. I
have been present at a meeting of the Houston Chronicle editorial board
where Dr. Hartley lamented
the situation at the Baker Institute on climate-change science. The editors
may not have taken
note, but Chronicle science writer Eric Berger did. And it was Berger who
mustered up a bit of
courage to write a telling blog on feeling duped by Al Gore and climate
alarmism. And as a comment
on Berger's blog, Hartley came out of the closet to note:
Eric,
First, thank you for maintaining an open mind on this subject. It is
unfortunate one has to say
that, but certain groups have worked to make it very hard to do so, or at
least to admit to it in
public.
Second, as a science writer for a major newspaper I think you should
ponder the policy
implications if natural climate change is more significant than was thought
and can dominate the
effects of CO2. It ought to make adaptation strategies more attractive since
they can protect
against climate shocks whatever the source while limiting the build-up of
CO2 world-wide (assuming
it can be done any time soon) can at best protect against just one source of
climate change. This
case is further strengthened [if], as is almost surely the case, additional
CO2 in the atmosphere
has direct benefits for plants and thus for agriculture, ecosystem
productivity, greening of the
deserts and much else besides. Good adaptation strategies would allow those
benefits to be retained
while controlling the costs of climate effects.
Fortunately, a thaw is in the air, as a climate discussion/debate has been
planned for the evening
of Wednesday January 27th at Rice University (but not at the Baker
Institute!) between skeptic
Richard Lindzen of MIT and Jerry North of Texas A&M. Stay tuned.
Mini-Climategates?
The emergence of new voices is an important development brought on by
Climategate. But other voices
are still intimidated into silence. There have been mini-climategates at a
lot of places, including
top universities (email releases anyone?).
It is time for science and ideology to come clean in what could and should
be a new era of
transparency for physical science and associated public policy. Climate
alarmism and the whole
neo-Malthusian worldview toward population, resources, etc. needs a full
pro/con hearing.
May the best science and public policy win!
Surfer
>
>http://www.masterresource.org/2010/01/climategate-here-comes-courage-is-climate-catastrophism-no-longer-so-politically-correct/
>http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6795858.html [Frank]
>
"......Neil Frank, who holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University in
meteorology, was director of the National Hurricane Center (1974�87)
and chief meteorologist at KHOU (Channel 11) until his retirement in
2008....."
And according to Neil Frank,
"........Over the last decade Earth's temperature has not warmed, yet
every model (there are many) predicted a significant increase in
global temperatures for that time period. If the climate models cannot
get it right for the past 10 years, why should we trust them for the
next century? ......."
But this seems a misleading statement.
In order to be useful, the climate models don't need show short term
natural temperature fluctuations such as occur over a period of ten
years. ( We are used to coping with natural fluctuations ! )
What is more important are long term trends that could push the
natural fluctuations upward.
The following graph of the lower troposphere temperature anomaly shows
what I mean:
http://climatesci.org/wp-content/uploads/0709tlt_bar.jpg
The temperature fluctuations now lie almost entirely ABOVE the zero
axis, whereas several decades ago they were evenly balanced above and
below the axis.
It seems safe to assert then that a long term warming trend is
present, even if not visible in the last decade.
His claim that "Over the last decade Earth's temperature has not
warmed...." also does not take the following two phenomena into
account:
During the last decade global sea level has continued to rise:
http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/
Sea level rise is associated with the thermal expansion of sea water
due to climate warming and widespread melting of land ice.
The average rate of sea level rise has increased as follows:
1870 - 1990 1.7 mm/year
1990 - 2009 3.3 mm/year
During the last decade Arctic sea ice extent has continued to
decrease:
(See graph at right)
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
Larger image here
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/n_plot_hires.pn
Both of these phenomena imply that warming has occurred during the
last decade, even if not overtly visible in the last decade of
temperature data.
Last Post
>
> During the last decade global sea level has continued to rise:http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/
>
> Sea level rise is associated with the thermal expansion of sea water
> due to climate warming and widespread melting of land ice.
• Surfer is all wet copying fascist propaganda
> The average rate of sea level rise has increased as follows:
>
> 1870 - 1990 1.7 mm/year
> 1990 - 2009 3.3 mm/year
>
• Both numbers are false.
BTW 3.3 mm for 19 years = less than 2.5 inches
hardly significant
If you want real facts read:—
Message-ID: <bc421438-9c9a-420a-8151-
dd28d4...@h10g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>
• The AGW alarmist pack presume to be able
control a climate on a planet, spun off from
the Sun and still in the solar system and in
the Sun's control.
So I ask them and you 3 questions:
1- Can you make the wind to blow?
2- Can you make the rain to fall?
3- Can you stop a hurricane?
• If the answer to these are no then get the hell
out of town before the lynch mob comes.
— —
| In real science the burden of proof is always
| on the proposer, never on the sceptics. So far
| neither IPCC nor anyone else has provided one
| iota of valid data for global warming nor have
| they provided data that climate change is being
| effected by commerce and industry, and not by
| natural phenomena