By Anthony Watts
Well, now there will never be any question about whether Scripps is political or not. They even made up a graphic to go with the story here. When a prominent scientific organization allows a member to resort to name calling on an issue in an official communications on their website, it cheapens the whole organization.
This appears to be a response to John Coleman’s hour long video special. It was dated the same day as the video release, Jan 14th. Of course, when you read his website at richardsomerville.com you may come to understand that he may not be speaking for everyone there at Scripps. Here’s his page at Scripps. Perhaps the UCSD President might benefit from some communications about the use of his institute to label people with differing views on science.
A Response to Climate Change Denialism
Richard Somerville, a distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, issued the following statement in response to a recent request to address claims recently made by climate change denialists:
1. The essential findings of mainstream climate change science are firm. This is solid settled science. The world is warming. There are many kinds of evidence: air temperatures, ocean temperatures, melting ice, rising sea levels, and much more. Human activities are the main cause. The warming is not natural. It is not due to the sun, for example. We know this because we can measure the effect of man-made carbon dioxide and it is much stronger than that of the sun, which we also measure.
2. The greenhouse effect is well understood. It is as real as gravity. The foundations of the science are more than 150 years old. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat. We know carbon dioxide is increasing because we measure it. We know the increase is due to human activities like burning fossil fuels because we can analyze the chemical evidence for that.
3. Our climate predictions are coming true. Many observed climate changes, like rising sea level, are occurring at the high end of the predicted changes. Some changes, like melting sea ice, are happening faster than the anticipated worst case. Unless mankind takes strong steps to halt and reverse the rapid global increase of fossil fuel use and the other activities that cause climate change, and does so in a very few years, severe climate change is inevitable. Urgent action is needed if global warming is to be limited to moderate levels.
4. The standard skeptical arguments have been refuted many times over. The refutations are on many web sites and in many books. For example, natural climate change like ice ages is irrelevant to the current warming. We know why ice ages come and go. That is due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, changes that take thousands of years. The warming that is occurring now, over just a few decades, cannot possibly be caused by such slow-acting processes. But it can be caused by man-made changes in the greenhouse effect.
5. Science has its own high standards. It does not work by unqualified people making claims on television or the Internet. It works by scientists doing research and publishing it in carefully reviewed research journals. Other scientists examine the research and repeat it and extend it. Valid results are confirmed, and wrong ones are exposed and abandoned. Science is self-correcting. People who are not experts, who are not trained and experienced in this field, who do not do research and publish it following standard scientific practice, are not doing science. When they claim that they are the real experts, they are just plain wrong.
6. The leading scientific organizations of the world, like national academies of science and professional scientific societies, have carefully examined the results of climate science and endorsed these results. It is silly to imagine that thousands of climate scientists worldwide are engaged in a massive conspiracy to fool everybody. The first thing that the world needs to do if it is going to confront the challenge of climate change wisely is to learn about what science has discovered and accept it. Read more and see comments here.
Icecap Note: Scripps is a once great institution in the days of Jerome Namias but like many other organizations and the professional societies, Scripps has let the big AGW grant money pervert their science. Somerville has played a key role in Scripps decline.
And another IPCC Lead Author and co-chair also embarrassed her organization, again. Susan Solomon was quoted in the once great magazine Nature “Even with ongoing questions about the proxy data, the IPCC’s key statement - that most of the warming since the mid-twentieth century is “very likely” to be due to human-caused increases in greenhouse-gas concentration - remains solid because it rests on multiple lines of evidence from different teams examining many aspects of the climate system”. Solomon was a former co-chair of the IPCC team that produced the 2007 physical science report and serves as a climate researcher with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. She also played a key role with another debacle, the CFCs and the Antarctic Ozone hole. Recall that in the late 1970s, the US banned CFCs and in the Montreal Protocol in 1987, the world agreed to follow suit because of laboratory evidence of its role in ozone destruction. The ozone hole almost twenty years later, in 2006 set a new record for size. A story in Nature in 2007, showed how the consensus on the ozone hole was collapsing. It seems the experimenters never bothered to do the lab tests at the pressures where the ozone was being destroyed. When they did so, they found the rate of photolysis that destroyed ozone was an order of magnitude lower than the previously accepted rate.
Now with the IPCC models and projections failing, the Climategate leaked emails showing how scientists seriously manipulated the data and controlled the peer review control and now Glaciergate, the IPCC process and findings have been shown to be a politically driven non-scientific charade and the “very likely” label put on the IPCC finding of man made global warming and the connection of CFCs to ozone has been shown to be equally unwarranted.
By E.M.Smith, Musings from the Chiefio
I’ve completed USHCN vs USHCN version 2 blink comparison charts for Wisconsin. As with the Illinois charts, the majority of stations had their raw data adjusted to show more warming by lowering the temperatures in the first half of the 20th century.
That brings the raw data more in line with the GISS homogenized versions. I haven’t blinked the original GISS with the new homogenized charts yet, but I’d bet a nickle they’ll show even more warming.
Wisconsin original USHCN raw / revised raw data - SEE BLINK CHARTS here.
Illinois original raw / revised raw - SEE BLINK CHARTS here.
Example Lincoln, IL below blink here.
Revised raw data. Oxymoron?
I’ll still do my comparison study (as confirmation of his findings, if nothing else. Independent confirmation is always a good thing) but just with a bit less urgency. The charts in his link have a caption that implies this is the GIStemp STEP0 output (which merges GHCN with USHCN or USHCN.v2) so would be the “blended” data for those stations in both. Luckily, with only 136 USA stations remaining in GHCN, the odds of any one of these being that station or two in that state become quite small. For all practical purposes, you can treat these graphs as a fairly clean USHCN vs USHCN.v2 comparison, even if they are not completely pristine comparisons of the data sets directly.
At least now we know that the decision by NASA / GISS to “put back in the USA thermometers” was not exactly a benevolent act. Until just a while ago, GIStemp ran on USHCN (which had a data cut off in May of 2007. This left only GHCN to cover the last 3 years and had such effects as leaving only 4 thermometers in California mostly on the beach and near L.A.) Well, OK, they put the USA back in, but it sure looks like they had to re-cook the data first.
So now instead of only 1176 thermometers surviving into 2009 in GIStemp, all from GHCN, we will have them plus a couple of thousand in the USA, but with those USA thermometers having been “adjusted” to show sufficient warming.
I need to re-run some of the thermometer count reports, but with USHCN.v2 data in the system, and see what it does to the USA numbers. So now it looks like we’ll have more than 4 thermometers in California, but though they won’t be “on the beach”, they will be near a sun lamp.
BTW, I’d heard a press release discussed where NOAA / NCDC says that a new revision of GHCN is due out near February that uses the same “enhanced” “corrections” applied in USHCN.v2. So watch out for a New Improved, and much Warmer Global Temperature History coming to a computer model near you!
Call me old fashioned, but I really liked it better when my history did not keep changing and past temperatures did not require frequent re-writing. See post and comments here.
See also his excellent dig deeper look into the Central Park story we posed here a while back.
Editorial by Marc Morano, Climate Depot
As the man-made global warming fear movement collapses and the climate establishment lay in a Climategate ridden tatters, many are asking what next? (For latest on climate movement’s demise go here)
As man-made global warming fears enter the ashbin of history, what will environmentalists, UN activists and politicians do to fill the void of a failed eco-scare?
Well, wonder no more....
Some forward thinking green activists and even the UN climate Chief have already taken up the task of test-marketing the next eco-scares to replace man-made global warming.
One of the most prominent eco-scares now being quietly promoted behind man-made climate fears is the allegedly “growing” nitrous oxide (a.k.a. “laughing gas") threat to the planet. See: Time for next eco-scare already?! ‘Earth’s growing nitrogen threat’: ‘It helps feed a hungry world, but it’s worse than CO2’The Christian Science Monitor - January 12, 2010 - Excerpt: Nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide - considered the leading cause of climate change - and the third most threatening greenhouse gas overall.
As man-made climate fears subside and the scientific, economic, cultural and political case evaporates for climate change “action,” expect more and more green activists to take up the mantle for “laughing gas” as a possible replacement eco-scare.
See also: Laughing Gas Knocks Out CO2 - By Doug Hoffman - Oct. 30, 2009 - Excerpt: “In the face of ever mounting evidence that CO2 is incapable of causing the level of global devastation prophesied by climate change catastrophists a new villain is being sought. The leading candidate is nitrous oxide (N2O), better known as laughing gas. A report in Science claims that N2O emissions are currently the single most important cause of ozone depletion and are expected to remain so throughout the 21st century. The IPCC rates N2O as 310 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 on a 100 year time scale. Is this a greenhouse gas bait and switch, or are the global warming alarmists trying to up the ante.”
Still can’t picture former Vice President Al Gore touting the “laughing gas” crisis as the “moral” challenge of our time in a Oscar-winning documentary? Not to worry, there are many more eco-scares currently being test-marketed.
Gore’s own producer of “An Inconvenient Truth”—Hollywood eco-activist Laurie David—is already test-marketing another eco-scare with potential promise.
“One Word: Plastics.” Yes, just 43 years after the 1967 film “The Graduate”, “plastics” just may be the future!
See: AGW RIP? Is It Time for Next Eco-Scare Already? Gore’s producer Laure David touts plastic crisis: ‘Plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming’ - July 31, 2009
“The rapid rise in global plastic production is leading to a rise in plastic pollution and its devastating effects on our oceans and our lives.,” Laurie David wrote on July 31, 2009. Selected Excerpts From David’s blog post: “This insidious invasion of the biosphere by our plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming. Our bodies have evolved to handle carbon dioxide, the nemesis of global warming, indeed, we exhale it with every breath. Plastic, though present in the biosphere from the nano scale on up, is too stable a molecule for any organism to fully assimilate or biodegrade. So we have a situation in which a vector for a suite of devastating chemicals, chemicals implicated in many modern diseases, is now invading the ocean, our bodies and indeed, the entire biosphere. The prognosis for improvement in this situation is grim.”
Still not convinced of either “laughing gas” or “plastics” as the next dominant eco-scare? Don’t worry, we are just getting started.
Just how widespread is the test marketing of a new eco-scare to replace the flailing global warming movement?
It now has the attention of the beleaguered head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri. In a remarkable posting on his personal blog, Pachauri openly admitted that man-made global warming was not even the biggest eco-issue! See: Et tu? Head of UN IPCC Pachauri Now throwing global warming under the bus?! There is a ‘larger problem’ than climate fears?! Pachauri wrote on November 23, 2009: “The question is whether the additional time that the world would now have to arrive at an agreement at the next Conference of the Parties in Mexico will give us time and space to look at the larger problem of unsustainable development, of which climate change is at best a symptom. Human society cannot continue to ignore the vital dependence that exists between human welfare and the health of our natural resources.”
The UK Green Party and a UN advisor are already concocting yet another potential new eco-scare that may be an easy transition from failed global warming fears. See: UK Green Party: ‘There exists a more serious crisis than the ‘CO2 crisis’: the oxygen levels are dropping and the human activity has decreased them by 1/3 or ½ - By Peter Tatchell of the UK Green party - UK Guardian - August 13, 2008
Excerpt: “In the view of Professor Ervin Laszlo, the drop in atmospheric oxygen has potentially serious consequences. A UN advisor who has been a professor of philosophy and systems sciences, Laszlo writes: Evidence from prehistoric times indicates that the oxygen content of pristine nature was above the 21% of total volume that it is today. It has decreased in recent times due mainly to the burning of coal in the middle of the last century. Currently the oxygen content of the Earth’s atmosphere dips to 19% over impacted areas, and it is down to 12 to 17% over the major cities. At these levels it is difficult for people to get sufficient oxygen to maintain bodily health: it takes a proper intake of oxygen to keep body cells and organs, and the entire immune system, functioning at full efficiency. At the levels we have reached today cancers and other degenerative diseases are likely to develop. And at 6 to 7% life can no longer be sustained.”
Wow. Imagine scaring school children with suffocation due to our modern way of life! Documentaries, text books and Hollywood could really instill fear in the kids and adults with scary predictions of Mom and Dad choking to death due to a lack of oxygen created by evil modern society. Mom and Dad turning blue and suffering fatal convulsions sure beats the emotional imagery of a Polar Bear drowning or a building be flooded to due to rising seas. Keep your eye on this one, it just may get some traction.
Ok. Let’s assume now that one of the above or yet another not ready for prime time eco-fear catches on, how would the environmental activists go about selling this eco-scare to the public?
For an answer, let’s review a few of the MANY failed eco-alarms here.