By Suzanne Bohan, Contra Costa Times
A few years ago, Ben Santer, a climate scientist with Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, answered a 10 p.m. doorbell ring at his home. After opening the door, he found a dead rat on his doorstep and a man in yellow Hummer speeding away while “shouting curses at me.”
Santer shared this story last week before a congressional committee examining the increasing harassment of climate scientists, and the state of climate science.
After the online posting in November of 1,073 stolen e-mails from climate scientists, including some from Santer, the threats took a more ominous turn,” Santer told members of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, chaired by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. Skeptics of climate change have dubbed the e-mail incident “Climategate.”
“The nature of these e-mail threats has been of more concern,” Santer said. “I’ve worried about the security and safety of my family.”
In the already-heated debate over the cause of and “” to a diminishing extent “” the existence of global warming, the stolen e-mails ratcheted up the rhetoric. And while skeptics of human-induced climate change have tried to use the e-mails to discredit established climate science and to derail policies such as the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions or cap-and-trade initiatives, climate scientists are fighting back.
They penned a consensus letter earlier this month, testified before congressional committees to explain why they’re certain human activity is dangerously warming the world, and they’re openly airing what they call the growing harassment of climate change researchers. In the written version of his testimony, Santer mentioned concerns “about my own physical safety when I give public lectures.”
Santer is accompanied by bodyguards at some conferences, Stephen Schneider, a prominent climate scientist with Stanford University, said earlier this month. Santer and the lab declined to discuss details about security for Santer, saying it would be inappropriate to do so. Schneider, who testified at the congressional hearing, told the committee he"s a veteran at fielding abusive e-mails. A typical one, he said, accuses him of being a “Communist dupe for the United Nations,” and states that “you’re a traitor and should be hung.
The threats escalated after the publication of the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia in England. On blogs, talk shows and other forums, people heatedly discussed the content of certain e-mails, and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., has requested a criminal investigation of 17 climate scientists, including Santer and Schneider, whose correspondences were among the stolen e-mails. Inhofe believes human-induced global warming is a hoax and that there is no scientific consensus on the matter.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., also wrote the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which produces reports widely regarded as the most authoritative assessments on climate change, requesting that the 17 scientists be banned from contributing to the panel’s next report.
Those hacked e-mails revealed some climate scientists involved in a pattern of stonewalling, discussing ways to conceal data that didn’t agree with their findings, and deriding skeptics of global warming. In one e-mail, Santer wrote that when he next encountered a certain climate skeptic at a scientific meeting, “I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.
In an interview with Associated Press about the e-mail, Santer said, “I’m not surprised that things are said in the heat of the moment between professional colleagues. These things are taken out of context.
Two independent investigations by British academic panels, however, found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct in the e-mails” contents, nor did an Associated Press analysis of all the e-mails.
The hacked e-mail incident was followed by the discovery of several embarrassing errors in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. In light of the errors, this month a review of the IPCC report began in Amsterdam, conducted by a 12-person panel selected by the Inter-Academy Council. The council is independent of the United Nations, which publishes the IPCC report.
Schneider and other climate scientists note that only a handful of errors were found, and that the report’s conclusion is solid that human activity is very likely the reason for the rise in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century.
While four scientists at the Washington D.C. hearing detailed why most climate scientists fear the ecological and economic consequences of a buildup of greenhouse gases, a fifth scientist offered a counterpoint.
William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton University, expressed far less concern about the heat-trapping threat of carbon dioxide from human activity and said scientists on the other side of the debate also face intimidation.
“Indeed, we read testimony by Dr. James Hanson (of NASA) in the Congressional Record that climate skeptics are guilty of “high crimes against humanity and nature,-” Happer said. “There are many similarly intimidating statements made by establishment climate scientists and by like-thinking policymakers “” you are either with us or you are a traitor.”
Happer called for the creation of a “B-team” of scientists given steady funding to investigate other possibilities besides human-caused warming for the Earth"s changing climate. He said the approach is intended to establish a group of scientists to play a “devil’s advocate” role.
The Department of Defense, the CIA “and many others routinely establish robust team B"s; that is, groups of experts who work full time, sometimes for several years, to challenge the establishment position,” Happer said. “This has given us much better weapons systems and intelligence.”
Happer said he believes increased carbon dioxide levels may only cause an inconsequential rise in temperatures and that plant life will flourish with more atmospheric carbon dioxide. He concurred when one congressman asked if he was in a “minority position” among scientists in asserting that climate change doesn’t pose a serious threat. “Oh yes, I certainly agree,” Happer said. “And in many cases in the history of science the minority has been right.”
But Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, detailed the science that reinforces most climate scientists views. Cicerone at the hearing described a 1 degree Fahrenheit rise since 1979 documented by NASA and other agencies. Declassified U.S. Navy data and satellite data show Arctic ice sheet thickness has declined 50 percent in 50 years, he said, and sea levels are now rising 3.2 millimeters per year. He said the average ocean surface temperature “has increased significantly since 1980,” which scientists say lead to more extreme weather events.
“The year 2009 was the warmest on record for the entire world south of the equator,” he added. It was in response to the attacks on conclusions embraced by the majority of climate scientists and the escalating threats that Schneider and others decided to cast aside their usual scientific reserve and publicly speak out.
On May 7, Science published a letter signed by 255 National Academy of Sciences members “” including 32 from Northern California “” decrying the political assaults on climate scientists.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo applauded the climate scientists” emerging outspoken position. “I support our scientists one hundred percent for speaking louder and clearer to the American public about the seriousness of this issue,” Speier said. “If sea level rise continues unchecked, it will put major parts of the Bay Area underwater.” Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that with trillions of dollars at stake by shifting to a lower-carbon economy, especially within industries reliant on fossil fuels, there are “lots of sharp elbows” in the debate.
The institute is regarded as a conservative Washington D.C. think tank, although Ornstein defies the stereotype. But he noted that even among his colleagues skeptical about some climate science data, “they"re not going to deny there"s climate change going on.” And they"re “getting brickbats” from those “who basically think it"s all a hoax.”
He also supports climate scientists stepping into a more public role in explaining their science. “You’ve got to find a way to make powerful a point, that there really is a common set of facts, and those who don"t support that common set of facts are truly outside any kind of mainstream,” Ornstein said.
Read more here.
Greenhouse gases aren’t warming Earth
Reply by Dr Fred Singer
The report of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NRC-NAS) claims that the climate is warming and the cause is human. The first claim of this federally funded $6 million exercise is meaningless and trivial; the second claim is almost surely wrong ("Tax dollars perpetuate global-warming fiction,” Comment & Analysis, Wednesday).
The report’s recommendation is for the United States to put a price on carbon to staunch emissions of carbon dioxide, which is pointless, counterproductive and very costly.
The climate certainly has warmed considerably in the past 10,000 years (when the last Ice Age ended), but much less since 1850 (the end of the Little Ice Age). No one disputes these facts. But the climate has not warmed during the past decade, in spite of the steady rise in human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. According to Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, there has been no warming trend since 1995.
The 2007 report of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) furnished no credible evidence for anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The NRC-NAS panel did not add any new relevant information - nor did it have the expertise to do so.
The IPCC panel was made up of many qualified atmospheric scientists who are active in research. The NAS panel was politically chosen and listed among its “climate science experts” a sociology professor and a professor of “sustainable development,” whatever that means. That certainly doesn’t inspire much confidence in the NAS conclusions.
“This is our most comprehensive report ever on climate change,” said Ralph Cicerone, president of the NAS, at a briefing to discuss the effort. It “analyzes the reality of climate change and how should the nation respond. ... It emphasizes why the United States should act now.”
Looking back, this may well have been a low point for the NAS, one that inevitably will discredit all other NAS activities. But it will provide a useful lesson to other scientific organizations that have uncritically jumped on the AGW bandwagon.
By The Washington Times, Tuesday, May 25, 2010
$6 million study is used to lobby for cap-and-tax
With public faith in the global-warming myth on the wane, leftist zealots are desperate to spin a new tale - and they’re spending your tax money to do it. Three years ago, Congress appropriated $5,856,600 for the National Academy of Sciences to complete a climate-change study. This bureaucratic attempt to cook the books, which was completed last week, may be too late to save this dying religion.
The academy now offers the taxpayer-funded research for download in three separate sections for $44 each. The first volume presents the case that human activities are warming the planet and that this “poses significant risks.” A second report urges that a cap-and-trade taxing system be implemented to reduce so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The final section of the study explores strategies on adapting to the “reality” of climate change, meaning purported “extreme weather events like heavy precipitation and heat waves.”
None of the big-government recommendations are worth the 1,089 pages of presumably recycled paper on which they are to be printed if planetary warming is actually a phenomenon beyond human control, so the first volume is of primary interest. “Advancing the Science of Climate Change” asserts that the Earth’s temperature has risen over the past 100 years and that human activities have resulted in sharp increases in carbon dioxide. The coincidence of these facts on their own, of course, proves nothing. The Earth has been as warm or warmer in past periods, such as the medieval and Roman warm periods, long before the internal combustion engine and coal plants were around to take the heat for a particularly sweltering summer day.
“Both the basic physics of the greenhouse effect and more detailed calculations dictate that increases in atmospheric GHGs should lead to warming of Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere,” the National Academy report goes on to assert. That is to say, the theory that mankind’s increased carbon-dioxide output is responsible for warming is true because the theory’s calculations say so. “Detailed simulations” of climate provide verification in the eyes of these left-leaning scientists. The same climate models that can’t predict tomorrow’s weather accurately are supposed to forecast decades into the future.
That this logic is entirely circular is not lost on the public, only a third of whom believe mankind’s collective exhalations are about to destroy the planet. A recent Rasmussen survey found that a majority (59 percent) think it’s more likely that scientists are falsifying research data to support their own personal theories about global warming.
The overall message of climate alarmists is “Trust us,” but the Climategate e-mails exposed these hacks’ lack of credibility, as they are willing to manipulate and suppress data to try to prove their point. Science should not be abused to push a political agenda - and here the National Academy is doing the work of Democrats by taking tax dollars to pimp for higher taxes on gasoline, electricity and other essential elements of modern life. In return, these ideological leftists are rewarded with even more of your money to conduct additional “research.”
It’s time to pull the plug on public funding for these science-fiction writers.
Amen. The NAS was established by Abraham Lincoln but under recent appointees and President Ralph Cicerone it has become a joke...an advocacy group for government policy not the trusted impartial agency for science issues parallelling the CBO with respect to the budget.
See this excellent post here.
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Regarding climate change, Kerry should heed science
By William Yeatman, Energy policy analyst, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) argued his climate bill, the American Power Act, is a national security imperative, because climate change will inject “a new major source of chaos, tension and human insecurity into an already volatile world.” ("Climate change: The new national security challenge” May 20) As evidence, he reeled off a doomsday list of looming climate crises, including, “more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity, and staggering human displacement.” On every count, the senator is wrong.
Regarding the potential for climate change-induced drought, Sen. Kerry got his facts backwards. He wrote that, “Scientists now warn the Himalayan glaciers, which provide fresh water to a billion people in India and Pakistan, will face severe impacts from climate change,” but a recent study published in the Annals of Glaciology suggests the Karakoram glaciers - those in the western Himalayas that feed into the Indus River shared by India and Pakistan - are growing. And the apparent cause is climate change.
Unfortunately for Senator Kerry, only days before he wrote in The Hill that climate change will lead to “worse pandemics,” a major study was published in Nature, the most prestigious scientific journal, asserting the exact opposite. According to the latest science, pesticides and sleeping nets will be the primary determinant governing the spread of malaria, not rising temperatures.
Senator Kerry claimed rising temperatures will cause “more famine,” but he failed to elaborate. Not long ago, the Senator could have cited the Nobel prize-winning 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which warned that global warming would halve North African food production by 2020. Recently, however, the British newspaper The Times discovered that this “fact” was based on dubious sourcing and misleading language.
At no point did Senator Kerry acknowledge the national security threats of climate change policies. After all, the bedrock of the U.S. military is the
American economy. Is the U.S. national interest truly served by shackling the American economy with carbon controls while China builds a coal fired power plants every week to stoke its red-hot economy? See post here.
Review by Bill DiPuccio
Could the global warming hypothesis meet the rigorous evidentiary standards of a legal trial? The answer, according to Jason Scott Johnston, is clearly negative.
Johnston is the Robert G. Fuller, Jr. Professor of Law, and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His 79 page essay, Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination, published by the Institute of Law and Economics, examines a broad range of evidence both for and against the conclusions drawn by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
After a comprehensive examination of the peer-reviewed literature, the author concludes that there is a tendentious use of evidence by the IPCC, revealing “a systematic tendency of the climate establishment to engage in a variety of stylized rhetorical techniques that seem to oversell what is actually known about climate change while concealing fundamental uncertainties and open questions regarding many of the key processes involved in climate change” (1).
Johnston is not attempting to arrive at a scientific conclusion regarding the global warming hypothesis. Rather, he is cross examining the “established climate story” by asking “very tough questions, questions that force the expert to clarify the basis for his or her opinion, to explain her interpretation of the literature, and to account for any apparently conflicting literature that is not discussed in the expert report” (6).
This approach raises some fundamental questions about the role of non-specialists in critiquing science. Scientists would like to believe that their disagreements can be settled by evidence alone. However, the reality is that science possesses an underlying grammar which includes the rigorous use of opposing evidence, critical thinking, mathematics, logic, and internal consistency. Most of these elements are shared by other fields, including - and especially- the legal profession.
Anyone who is competent in these areas may weigh-in on their proper, or improper, use without a full understanding of the scientific facts. When I first read the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment (2007) I had very little background in climate science, though I had worked in operational meteorology. Yet, it became fast apparent to me that the supporting evidence for the IPCC’s projections did not warrant the high level (90%-95%) of confidence expressed by its authors. Indeed, it was the authors themselves who raised fundamental doubts about our scientific understanding of radiative forcing agents and climate change, both past and present. As Johnston concludes, these projections are not reliable enough to make public policy decisions.
After pouring over years of mainstream literature, Johnston discovered numerous scientific uncertainties “which are rarely if ever even mentioned in the climate change law and policy literature” (8-9):
* “There seem to be significant problems with the measurement of global surface temperatures over both the relatively short run - late 20th century - and longer run - past millennium - problems that systematically tend to cause an overestimation of late 20th century temperature increases relative to the past;
* Continuing scientific dispute exists over whether observations are confirming or disconfirming key short-run predictions of climate models - such as an increase in tropospheric water vapor and an increase in tropical tropospheric surface temperatures relative to tropical surface temperatures;
* Climate model projections of increases of global average surface temperature (due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2) above about 1 degree centigrade arise only because of positive feedback effects presumed by climate models;
* Yet there is evidence that both particular feedbacks—such as that from clouds - and feedbacks in total may be negative, not positive;
* Confidence in climate models based on their ability to causally relate 20th century temperature trends to trends in CO2 may well be misplaced, because such models do not agree on the sensitivity of global climate to increases in CO2 and are able to explain 20th century temperature trends only by making arbitrary and widely varying assumptions about the net cooling impact of atmospheric aerosols;
* Similar reason for questioning climate models is provided by continuing scientific dispute over whether late 20th century warming may have been simply a natural climate cycle, or have been caused by solar variation, versus being caused by anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2;
* The scientific ability to predict what are perhaps the most widely publicized adverse impacts of global warming - sea level rise and species loss - is much less than generally perceived, and in the case of species loss, predictions are based on a methodology that a large number of biologists have severely criticized as invalid and as almost certain to lead to an overestimate of species loss due to global warming;
* Finally, many of the ongoing disputes in climate science boil down to disputes over the relative validity and reliability of different observational datasets, suggesting that the very new field of climate science does not yet have standardized observational datasets that would allow for definitive testing of theories and models against observations.”
Johnston cross examines and juxtaposes conclusions from numerous scientists to reveal “a rhetoric of persuasion, of advocacy that prevails throughout establishment climate science"(9). Complexities and uncertainties that might shake the confidence of policymakers are often concealed. For example, there is no mention of water vapor feedbacks in the IPCC AR4 “Climate Science” documents intended to influence the public and the media - the Policymaker Summary and Technical Summary (24).
By oversimplifying the climate story, it appears that the IPCC’s projections are just straightforward physics: The 2 C to 6 C projected rise in global average temperature is the direct, linear result of increasing CO2. But in reality, the IPCC claims that CO2, acting alone, will result in only a 1.2 C rise in temperature. The rest depends on whether the climate amplifies (positive feedback) or diminishes (negative feedback) CO2 forcing.
As Johnston demonstrates from the scientific literature, the complex and chaotic processes underlying these mechanisms, especially as they relate to cloud formation and precipitation, constitute anything but straightforward physics. The issue of feedbacks and climate sensitivity is probably the greatest question facing climate science. But policymakers are left blissfully ignorant of these controversies.
Johnston concludes by calling for a change in climate science practices and funding. Since one of the major sources of disagreement between scientists lies in the use of different datasets, he recommends that “public funding for climate science should be concentrated on the development of better, standardized observational datasets that achieve close to universal acceptance as valid and reliable.” On the other hand, the continued development of “fine-grained climate models,” in the absence reliable data, only perpetuates “faith-based climate policy” (77-79).
Johnston’s essay echoes the experience of many reputable scientists whose work has been marginalized or rejected by IPCC gatekeepers. As we learned from the ‘Climategate’ emails, there was indeed a concerted effort behind the scenes to insure that only one side of the story was heard. If the climate science community is serious about transparency, then they need to abandon their “tidy story” and provide a bone fide forum for opposing views. These views should be incorporated as an alternative report in both IPCC and governmental publications, including the summaries for policymakers. With so much hanging in the balance, decision makers need to hear both sides of the debate.
Special thanks to Roger Pielke Sr. for finding Johnston’s article. See PDF.
Bill DiPuccio served as a weather forecaster and lab instructor for the U.S. Navy, and a Meteorological/Radiosonde Technician for the National Weather Service. More recently, he was the head of the science department for Orthodox Christian Schools of Northeast Ohio.