By Craig James, AMS Fellow in the NYT DotEarth blog
I am a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and have just recently retired after a 40 year career as a television meteorologist. For the last two years of my career, I wrote a blog from the skeptics point of view in regards to AGW.
I came to this position largely through the writings of Dr. Richard Lindzen from MIT, Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. from Colorado State, Dr. Roy Spencer from UAH and yes, Joe D’Aleo. I believe Dr. Hansen would label these people as “court jesters” as he does anyone who criticizes his work, although doesn’t science progress through critical evaluation of another’s work by such excellent scientists as those mentioned?
I agree with Joe D’Aleo that it is indeed a sad day for the AMS when the society awards a man whose work has been shown to contain errors (such as proclaiming this past October the warmest October of record when September data was used). I believe Dr. Hansen’s political ideology has taken over his science and renders him no longer qualified to be the keeper of the global temperature data.
I have found it interesting that in my experience, many (if not a majority) of meteorologists involved in day to day operational forecasting question the catastrophic scenarios put forth by people like Dr. Hansen, whose educational background by the way is in physics and astronomy, not meteorology or climatology. Perhaps because the operational people live and die by the forecasts they make there has been a great distrust of computer models develop over the years. We need models that work and shun the climate models that we know don’t incorporate many of the driving forces behind the weather and ultimately climate, such as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecal Oscillation. Those climate models have certainly missed the cooling of this decade and Dr. Hansen’s forecast of a super El Nino for the 2006-07 winter turned out to be as wrong as if I had made of forecast of snow and it turned out to be sunny. But yet he never seems to be held accountable, unlike those of us who live and die daily by those wretched models.
Craig Woods, Grand Rapids See comment here.
Icecap Note: I assure you Craig represents a large percentage of real meteorologosts and climatologists within or no longer members of the AMS. Hansen has become a charicature of himself and has done more harm to the science and through that the world’s people than any other single individual allegedly in the field with the possible exception of Michael Mann. Actually there are others, whose names could fill this page who deserve dishonorable mention but that is a story for another day. Look for a story coming today addressing Gavin Schmidt’s (Hansen’s GISS pitbull) on Real Climate (should be renamed Reinventing Climate) disappointment that the Tuesday Lou Dobbs show dared to feature skeptics and specifically on his criticisms of my comments on global temperature assessments which I will show why I stand fully by. See also Jennifer Marohasy’s blog on the Hansen award here.
By Raymond Brusca, Daily Princetonian
Physics professor William Happer GS ‘64 has some tough words for scientists who believe that carbon dioxide is causing global warming. “This is George Orwell. This is the ‘Germans are the master race. The Jews are the scum of the earth.’ It’s that kind of propaganda,”
Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, said in an interview. “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon dioxide. To say that that’s a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be science has turned into a cult.” Happer served as director of the Office of Energy Research in the U.S. Department of Energy under President George H.W. Bush and was subsequently fired by Vice President Al Gore, reportedly for his refusal to support Gore’s views on climate change. He asked last month to be added to a list of global warming dissenters in a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee report. The list includes more than 650 experts who challenge the belief that human activity is contributing to global warming.
Though Happer has promulgated his skepticism in the past, he requested to be named a skeptic in light of the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, whose administration has, as Happer notes, “stated that carbon dioxide is a pollutant” and that humans are “poisoning the atmosphere.” Happer maintains that he doubts there is any strong anthropogenic influence on global temperature. “All the evidence I see is that the current warming of the climate is just like past warmings. In fact, it’s not as much as past warmings yet, and it probably has little to do with carbon dioxide, just like past warmings had little to do with carbon dioxide,” Happer explained.
Happer is chair of the board of directors at the George C. Marshall Institute, a nonprofit conservative think tank known for its attempts to highlight uncertainties about causes of global warming. The institute was founded by former National Academy of Sciences president and prominent physicist Frederick Seitz GS ’34, who publicly expressed his skepticism of the claim that global warming is caused by human activity. Seitz passed away in March 2008.
In 2007, the Institute reported $726,087 in annual operating expenses, $205,156 of which was spent on climate change issues, constituting the largest portion of its program expenses, according to its I-990 tax exemption form. In a statement sent to the Senate as part of his request, Happer explained his reasoning for challenging the climate change movement, citing his research and scientific knowledge.
“I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect, for example, absorption and emission of visible and infrared radiation, and fluid flow,” he said in the statement. “Based on my experience, I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken.”
Geosciences professor Michael Oppenheimer, the lead author of the fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - whose members, along with Gore, received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize - said in an interview that Happer’s claims are “simply not true.” Oppenheimer, director of the Wilson School’s Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy, stressed that the preponderance of evidence and majority of expert opinion points to a strong anthropogenic influence on rising global temperatures, noting that he advises Happer to read the IPCC’s report and publish a scientific
report detailing his objections to its findings.
The University is home to a number of renowned climate change scientists. Ecology and evolutionary biology professor Stephen Pacala and mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Robert Socolow, who are co-chairs of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI) and the Princeton Environmental Institute, developed a set of 15 “stabilization wedges.” These are existing technologies that would, by the year 2054, each prevent 1 billion tons of carbon emissions. They argue that the implementation of seven of these wedges would be needed to reach a target level of carbon in the atmosphere. Neither Pacala nor Socolow could be reached for comment. Happer said that he is alarmed by the funding that climate change scientists, such as Pacala and Socolow, receive from the private sector. Read more here
By Karen Remo Listana, Business 24-7
The global carbon market is currently growing rapidly. Trading volume in the first half of 2008 at $59 billion (Dh217bn) reached the levels for all of 2007 at $63bn. This growth is predominantly attributable to the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EUETS) and to increasing interest in global Kyoto credits from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI).
In the region, however, there is not a single project on carbon trading, said a senior official of EcoVentures. According to Armen Vartanian, Director at EcoVentures, the Middle East and North African (Mena), the region has a potential to generate $5bn a year from the carbon trading market.
But unlocking the potential, however, would take time. “There are too many factors involved, and regulation is one. It depends entirely on the carbon market. We, as market participants, rely entirely on the market,” he told Emirates Business. “As long-term participants we are taking a bet that some sort of regulation will happen,” Vartanian said. “There is a lot of interest. DMCC [Dubai Multi Commodities Centre] and Doha Bank, for example have made public announcement of consideration to go into the carbon market.”
Dubai has in 2007 launched a bid to become a centre for trading greenhouse gas emissions permits, diving into a fast-growing market and the potential to turn the region’s sizeable carbon footprint into cash. Read story here.