Bishop Hill Lindzen on the academy heads
Apr 22, 2010 Climate: other Royal Society Richard Lindzen points out some of the problems with the recent letter to the FT by Ralph Ciccerone and Martin Rees:
Consider a letter of April 9 to the Financial Times by the presidents of the U.S. National Academy of Science and the Royal Society (Ralph Cicerone and Martin Rees, respectively). It acknowledges that climategate has contributed to a reduced concern among the public, as has unusually cold weather. But Messrs. Cicerone and Rees insist that nothing has happened to alter the rather extreme statement that climate is changing and it is due to human action. They then throw in a very peculiar statement (referring to warming), almost in passing: “Uncertainties in the future rate of this rise, stemming largely from the ‘feedback’ effects on water vapour and clouds, are topics of current research.”
Who would guess, from this statement, that the feedback effects are the crucial question? Without these positive feedbacks assumed by computer modelers, there would be no significant problem, and the various catastrophes that depend on numerous factors would no longer be related to anthropogenic global warming.
Reader Comments (48)
Richard Lindzen always seems to get to the kernel of things.
And what of the claim of "settled science"?
Feedback factors of 10 - 40 seem to be required as soon as the basic incorrect postulate of
global warming dQ = 4 dT, is eliminated. See http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/2010/04/where-are-climate-scientists.html
Not even ardent warmists can come up with feedback factors of size 10 - 40.
The role of negative feedback is crucial to this whole debate, however, it is a factor almost totally absent from the mainstream media and the public have no conception of its significance. The current volcano uber reaction is a supreme example of how things can quickly come back to normal and stem from totally natural events where there is no anthropogenic impact. .
In any computer model of a physical system, it is essential to understand the important underlying physical phenomena BEFORE you start to write the computer code. If you don't understand the shape of the curve of the physical phenomena, you are forced to make assumptions about them in the code, and if the system is inherently non-linear, these assumptions lead to calculations that are essentially meaningless.
The irony of this, on earth day, is that the Green community fought the nuclear industry over this issue 40 years ago. As a result of the anti-nuke intervention, government around the world and the nuclear industry spent literally billions on experiments performed at different scales, in different countries, with a wide variety of geometries, to understand the physics of cooling of water reactors. And they came away from this with a very good understanding of those phenomena. There is quite a good "consensus" among practicing nuclear engineers that the analytical methods used to evaluate nuclear power plants are appropriate to the task.
Environmentalists seem to have carried away from this experience the realization that it is possible to cherry-pick data, mis-use established analytical methods, make up analytical methods, spin results, and just plain lie, in order to carry the day in the public debate.
It is a sad situation.
It's obvious inn't
If negative feedbacks didn't dominate then every 'insult' to the climate would have resulted in runaway climate change.
The odd comet, meteorite, or solar fluctuation haven't had any real effect
The record is that asides from the very long term transition from ice-age to other, there is no evidence whatsoever that the climate system responds much - if at all - to whatever is flung at it.
Just finished your book Bish. The so called science establishment has a lot to answer for. All those scientists who have allowed this travesty and not spoken up for the integrity of science are not without blame. All public funded science should be able to be replicated by any concerned person. If you are not prepared to do this do not enter public funded science, go to the private sector then see what you have to do to be successful.
A big thank you to you and Supermac.
"It's obvious inn't"
To everyone except the warmists! Anyone with a grasp of geological time will realise that the climate has remained pretty stable through thick and thin, and that there must be some powerful feedback mechanisms keeping it that way.
That's probably why geologists are among the most vocal critics of AGW...
rxc:
As one of the nuclear engineers/physicists involved in the experiments and codes, I can say that it is the experience from that work that leaves me very unhappy with climate models. The real reason that the experiments were done was that, with the development of larger reactors, it was necessary to get a better understanding of the thermal-hydraulics at different scales to ensure that cooling water would get to the core in following certain hypothetical accidents. Prior to all these experiments, very conservative assumptions were made. The more experiments that were carried out, the greater the understanding of the physics and the better the magnitude of the uncertainties could be defined. The computer models used to analyse possible accident scenarios were developed using the results of certain experiments and validated (in blind tests) against other experiments.
None of this is possible with climate models and the uncertainties with for example, the feedback models, implies that virtually any outcome from the models is possible and we have no idea what the future climate will be. The climate models are essentially useless.
We do not know if water vapour is a cause or an effect of climate change.
We do not know if clouds are a cause or an effect of climate change.
There is an arguement that if the planet's atmosphere acts like a saturated gas then large changes in water vapour will have little effect on temperatures.
There is also the matter that a small % change in clouds would account for all the warming on this planet since the end of the Little Ice Age.
Hey Andrew,
good news for Bangladesh :
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g-8geW6xzl7Ik-UWrFBtq66ybN4A
New data shows that Bangladesh's landmass is increasing, contradicting forecasts that the South Asian nation will be under the waves by the end of the century, experts say.
Scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) have studied 32 years of satellite images and say Bangladesh's landmass has increased by 20 square kilometres (eight square miles) annually.
....
http://www.mysinchew.com/node/38057
It would appear we have another 'gate' on our hands. This time Bangladesh.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jxWAlO7hpr2AXkrZMWswKyK39gOA
It appears that country is no longer threatened by rising seas, it may actually grow in size due to sedimentation.
Looks like the IPCC has blundered again.
Claes
Loved your papers the other day. Particularly
Temperature Sensitivity of a Basic Climate Model.
Sometimes, actually most of the time, it is best to simplify and look at the basics as you did.
The quest for the truth continues: "Climate Scientist Sues Canada's National Post"
http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/04/22/26627.htm
@ Trefor...I agree in that negative feedback is JUST as important as positive feedback. Otherwise, how do you get an accurate picture of what is truly going on?
Want to read the Lindzen article but don't want to sign up to WSJ?
It can be found in the middle of this 22/4 page:
http://junkscience.com/
Did you know that The Royal Society claim that they are not directly subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) arguing they are not defined as being so under the FOIA ? As a result The Royal Society have no policy with regard Freedom of Information.
It transpires that the Royal Society receive over £45 millions annually from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) as a Parliamentary Grant-in-Aid (PGA).
Recently concerning the controversy of Freedom of Information requests regarding UEA and Queen's University Phil Willis, chairman of the Science and Technology Select Committee, said that, " scientists now needed to work on the presumption that if research is publicly funded, the data ought to be made publicly available."
So since The Royal Society is publicly funded the presumption that information must be made publicly available must also apply to the society.
For comparison The Royal Society of Edinburgh, which also receives a Parliamentary Grant-in-Aid from the Scottish government, complies with the FOIA (Scotland) Act 2002, and has put a policy in place to deal with FOIA requests.
http://www.rse.org.uk/freedom_of_information.htm
So why does the Royal Society in London behave differently and why do they think they can behave differently?
Philip Bratby: Prior to all these experiments, very conservative assumptions were made.
I have been re-reading "Windscale 1957 - Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident" by Lorna Arnold. Those guys responible for driving the Windscale plutonium producing reactors knew they were sitting on an inadequately instrumented, inadequately modelled volcano. Periodically, they had to overheat the two reactors, annealing them to release Wigner energy trapped in its graphite.
They were walking a tightrope between getting the reactors hot enough to release the Wigner energy (which itself contributed to the heating) and not getting it so hot as to set the graphite on fire. It's the latter that took place on Thursday 10 October 1957. It was the ninth anneal of the reactor.
If, after 100 million years, a system subject to random disturbances has not gone into thermal runaway, you can be pretty sure that positive feeback does not dominate its thermal behaviour.
A residents' group I am involved with tried to get some information from COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) who had surveyed local councils for a Scottish Government consultation about Houses in Multiple Occupation. We were told COSLA is not subject to FOI, so we couldn't know how many councils they had asked, which ones, apart from the two COSLA had named in their response, or what they said. This seems to indicate that the source of the funding may not be relevant. It is rather whether the institution was originally exempted from the Act.
I can quickly think of dozens of examples of negative feedback in natural "systems":
* Animals breed until there isn't enough food then breeding slows down
* Falling objects reach a terminal velocity
* Heat escapes faster as a room get hotter
Can anyone come up with any positive feedbacks in nature ? Any at all ?
I read a couple of eye-opening things in Lindzen's article. This, for example:
1) "the observations are consistent with models only if emissions include arbitrary amounts of reflecting aerosols particles ... which are used to cancel much of the warming predicted by the models."
Is this the case?
CSMonitor is generally pro-CAGW, even in this article, but it's a scathing indictment of the offsets scam nonetheless:
(six pages)20 April: Christian Science Monitor: Buying carbon offsets may ease eco-guilt but not global warming
Voluntary carbon offsets are a 'Wild West' market ripe for fraud, exaggeration, and poorly run projects that probably do little to ease global warming
An investigation by The Christian Science Monitor and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting has found that individuals and businesses who are feeding a $700 million global market in offsets are often buying vague promises instead of the reductions in greenhouse gases they expect.
They are buying into projects that are never completed, or paying for ones that would have been done anyhow, the investigation found. Their purchases are feeding middlemen and promoters seeking profits from green schemes that range from selling protection for existing trees to the promise of planting new ones that never thrive. In some cases, the offsets have consequences that their purchasers never foresaw, such as erecting windmills that force poor people off their farms...
Mr. Skar, of Greenpeace, says the industry is rife with financial speculators in flannel shirts: “Carbon cowboys. People from the most bizarre backgrounds. People who have no prior interest in the environment.”..
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/0420/Buying-carbon-offsets-may-ease-eco-guilt-but-not-global-warming/(page)/3
oh dear:
22 April: Guardian:Michael White: Leaders' TV debate: Nick Clegg: Score 9/10
Best moment: When he accused Dave of working with "nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/22/tv-leaders-debate-nick-clegg
22 April: BusinessWeek: Brown Attacks Clegg on Trident, Slams Cameron on EU (Update2)
Clegg described the Conservatives’ allies as “a bunch of nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes.”..
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-22/cameron-clegg-brown-clash-on-europe-in-tv-election-debate.html
22 April: Financial Times: Matthew Engel: Surreal spot from well-worn comedy trio
Mr Clegg – predictably enough in a foreign affairs debate – called the Tories’ new allies in the European parliament “nutters, homophobes, anti-Semites and climate change deniers”. ..
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f4fceed4-4e5c-11df-b48d-00144feab49a.html
who to vote for, Brits?
On Bangladesh: It's a classic prograding deltaic system with sedimentation outpacing creation of accommodation space. There is no danger of it disappearing under the waves until the Himalayas crumble into the sea.
Jack - two examples of natural positive feedback come to mind
1. One lemming heads into the Arctic ocean followed by two followed by four, then eight, then sixteen etc. until the supply of lemmings is exhausted.
2. Maggie Thatcher says Global Warming, followed by Al Gore and whatshisname Pachauri. followed by Mann Jones Hansen and Briffa, followed by Nature New Scientist(add 6 more here), followed by Greenpeace WWF Oxfam (add your choice of 13 more here), and so forth until the supply of left wingers, idealists, nihilists, power grabbers, moneygrabbers, political opportunists, scientific poseurs, and gravy train pilers on is exhausted.*
*Note: some of this time sequence may be inverted but lets not allow that get in the way of a good story.
"Can anyone come up with any positive feedbacks in nature"--Jack
Forest fires. The initial blaze creates an updraft, drawing in air and (given a low enough humidity) inducing a fire storm which continues until the fuel runs out or the weather changes. This also works for entire cities. That's all I've come up with, but there may be others.
Some thoughts on Bangladesh and Sea-level rise:
I have noticed some comments on the GEGIS observations of the extension of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta and would like to offer a few thoughts:
My perspective on inundation in Bangladesh comes from trying to do something about predicting the year-to-year flooding in Bangladesh. In fact, when we first approached this problem a decade ago sea-level rise was very much on my mind. 1998 was a time of very large sea-level rise in the northern Bay of Bengal, where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra empty into the ocean. For reasons we understand, associated with a natural mode of climate variability referred to as the Indian Ocean Dipole, the sea-level in the north of the Bay was 30cm higher than average during the summer of 1998 following a much lower level the year before. The high sea level coincided with the worst flooding in a century. Our initial thoughts were that this anomalous sea level rise retarded the release of water from the delta into the Bay with the back-up causing the flooding. This was a reasonable hypothesis as the slope of the delta is about 1m/50km. It was probably a contributing factor but it turned out that there were other factors as well.
So I have read the statements from my friends at CEGIS in Bangladesh with some interest. But before assuming that the probability of danger for Bangladesh with climate change has been minimized by their observations, I would like to offer a few thoughts:
(i) Extending the delta out to sea does not mean that the elevation of the overall delta itself is being raised. It would take a lot longer for the mean height of the delta to be raised substantially for the IPCC projected sea-level rise to become irrelevant. That is, the 1m/50lm elevation gain has been laid down over a very long time and extending the delta a few km is not going to change the slope. Thus, the relevant question is whether a slow build up of the height of the delta is faster than the rise in sea-level if that were to occur.
(ii) Sea-level rise has an insidious effect. Not only does it affect the flow immediately at the mouth of the river, it impacts the flow upstream. With respect to the 1998 flooding, Tom Hopson (from NCAR) and I calculated that the 30 cm rise in sea-level in 1998 retards flow 250 km upstream.
I did a literature survey about sediment in the northern Bay of Bengal. I came across one paper (happy to pass it on but it is in my office) that compares the Amazon sediment build-up and that for the G&B. The continental shelf is much gentler in the Atlantic than the Bay of Bengal suggesting that delta build-up is more difficult in the latter.
I think I look at climate change from a probabilistic perspective. One should do that especially when one is dealing with societies with few options and perhaps lean to the side of caution. I am sure that the CEGIS calculations have merit but I do not think that it nullifies the threat of sea-level rise. If the IPCC projected sea-level rise were to occur then Bangladesh would still have significant problems.
If anyone is interested in our Bangladesh work, I believe that there is a podcast somewhere on the web of a talk I gave at the Royal Society last month.
Peter Webster, would you therefore hold with Prof. Hazra, that the loss of New Moore Island this year is a direct result of sea level rise, or do you feel that in delta regions, islands come and islands go, regardless of changes in sea level?
It amazes me that the discussion in favour or against climate models is always centred on temperature.
Have you wondered why there are hardly ever a mention of other variables?
Could it be because there are more than 60% errors in the estimation of global precipitation?
Or up to 400% bias in the regional simulation of water vapour?
So, we are told that
“Uncertainties in the future rate of this rise, stemming largely from the ‘feedback’ effects on water vapour and clouds, are topics of current research.”
But we never hear that modelled values are way off by more than 400% It looks to me quite a bit of an uncertainty. In any other branch of science nobody would dare to make a political recommendation based on that "certitude". In climate science we are reassured that since all models have the same bias (a "robust bias" is the chosen terminology, believe it or not), the future predictions must be true)
Peter Webster
Caught your comment this morning. Interesting to read and it popped a thought in my mind. Would you agree that at the present time sea level is probably not at the maximum high stand possible (which would be the case with no polar/glacial ice)? You are describing a prograding delta which, based on the comment on the post that triggered this, appears to be accreting. We know there is sea level rise (whether we attribute this to AGW or simple rebound from low stand during the last ice age). Am I right in thinking that we do not currently see anywhere the deposition we would expect from a fast (relative) sea level rise giving rise to a predominantly transgressive sequence? The big deltas seem to be normal prograding (accreting) systems with large accommodation space and lots of sediment coming in (Amazon, Mississippi...).
The reason for pointing this out is that in ancient depositional systems we know there have been major flooding events creating transgressive depositional sequences and that these are the consequence of a (geologically) rapid (relative) rise in sea level. With catastrophic climate change and sea level rise "accelerating" wouldn't we be expecting to see this in the modern depositional systems? Do we have any idea as to the actual rate (in say mm/year) of relative sea rise that would be required for transgression of a large delta sequence to occur?
Prof Webster's Royal Society talk is available here:
http://royalsociety.org/2010-Handling-uncertainty-in-science/
@Patagon,
Regarding water vapour and precipitation inaccuracies, what makes you think that it is any different for temperature?
Much debate in the field of 'climate science' is conducted under terms and definitions set by the cheerleaders of the field, and it is always necessary to examine very carefully what is being said and claimed, and whether it bears any relationship to reality.
The models have no predictive power whatsoever, nor is any claimed.
They do 'projections' of 'scenarios', which many would call sensitivity adjustment runs.
If you choose to call them projections, and believe them, and make policy with them, no one is going to correct you are they?
Chucles,
I am not saying that they got temperature right, I am saying that it is the only variable in the show. Failing to tell all the truth is not far away from lying.
In my opinion all the emphasis on temperature and the neglect (intentionally or not) of other variables is because it is very difficult for a model to replicate reality when the model's best virtue is over-parameterization. There are good statistical tools to adjust your model results to one measured variable fiddling with the parameters, but it is almost impossible to get a good fit for all variables following that technique.
The key to this discussion over the debate on the projected inudation of Bangladesh, a key climate-change poster-child, is the admission by Atiq Rahman (a Lead Author of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) Chapter-19 on “Assessing Key Vulnerabilities and the Risk from Climate Change”.) that the IPCC had not taken into account the role that sediment plays in shaping Bangladesh's coast and estuaries
When you look at the list of the IPCC authors and reviewers who were tasked to identifiy potential key vulnerabilities you have to ask how important is the omission of 1 billion tonnes of sediment in assessing impacts.
Chapter 19 AR4:
Coordinating Lead Authors: Stephen H. Schneider (USA), Serguei Semenov (Russia), Anand Patwardhan (India)
Lead Authors: Ian Burton (Canada), Chris H.D. Magadza (Zimbabwe), Michael Oppenheimer (USA), A. Barrie Pittock (Australia),
Atiq Rahman (Bangladesh), Joel B. Smith (USA), Avelino Suarez (Cuba), Farhana Yamin (UK)
Contributing Authors: Jan Corfee-Morlot (France), Adam Finkel (USA), Hans-Martin Füssel (Germany), Klaus Keller (Germany), Dena MacMynowski (USA), Michael D. Mastrandrea (USA), Alexander Todorov (Bulgaria)
Review Editors: Raman Sukumar (India), Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (Belgium), John Zillman (Australia)
Did no one query the basic science and the base assumptions?
This is important becasue the IPCC's own review into its own processes and procedures chaired by Robert Dijkgraaf will not look at the basic science. Any information system is only as good as the facts/data you feed into it - GIGO.
As things stand the IPCC projections of the inudation of Bangladesh due to rising seas is garbage and will continue to be garbage if no one checks the quality and robustness of the data being fed into the IPCC process.
SimonH,
I think the islands at the head of the Bay of Bengal are rather transient and more subject to rapid processes (tropical cyclones) than due a possible slow creep of sea-level rise. Hurricane Sidr passed through that region in 2007 with 3-4 m storm surges. So there are a lot of processes that alter the landscape including the erosion effects of flooding from further upstream and deposition of sediment mentioned before.
Off to my office now and I will find the paper I promised. Also, I will comment later on Mac and ThinkingScientist.
Peter
Re Bangladesh and most large modern deltas, sediment supply (positive influence) v burial compaction rate (negative influence) may possibly be the more dominant factors on the local sea level change, with global changes merely in the background. Newly deposited substrate in deltas is often geologically unstable (Mississippi Gulf Coast, Nigeria) so slumping (i.e.listric growth faulting) may further complicate the picture, as can, if highly populated, water extraction.
The IPCC should use far more geological reference data before it pronounces on coastal changes anywhere.
Jack Hughes
Autocatalytic chemical reactions. Tin pest and Napoleon's buttons is a fun example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pest
Patagon
If the water vapour is out by 400% then so is the latent heat of evaporation that goes with it. Would you care to comment on the implications?
Dreadnought,
And so it is the radiative forcing of that water vapour in the Atmosphere, to get the right temperature starting with those wrong premises is only a proof that the model does not work. I haven't checked the codes, that would be a full time task that I cannot afford now (and I doubt there would ever be independent funds to do so). I guess that you need to either over-calibrate or the temperature output is insensitive to water vapour, which again invalidates the model.
In January, _Climatic Change_ published a study (a 'letter') entitled 'Sea level rise and tigers: predicted impacts to Bangladesh’s Sundarbans mangroves'. It was lead-authored by Colby Loucks of the WWF. In the WWF's press release, Loucks said: 'If we don’t take steps to address the impacts of climate change on the Sundarbans, the only way its tigers will survive this century is with scuba gear.'
The study itself acknowledged that there was 'some evidence to suggest that the Bangladesh coast, including the Sundarbans, is currently growing in land mass through sediment accretion' but its model totally ignored sedimentation. What's more, its model used a 1991 elevation map of the delta for its 2000 baseline and updated it merely by adding 4mm/yr of sea-level rise. This underestimated the delta's land-surface by perhaps 200 or 300 km2.
So the study started with a too-small land area and thereafter ignored one of the main processes that influence the shape and area of the delta. Despite this, its authors declared that by about 2070 sea-level rise will drown almost the whole of the Sundarbans and that '[i]f actions to both limit green house [sic] gas emissions and increase resilience of the Sundarbans are not initiated soon, the tigers of the Sundarbans may join the Arctic’s polar bears (Ursus maritimus) as early victims of climate change-induced habitat loss.'
I've been waiting for an alarmist blog to cite this study so I could pile in and have some fun but, alas, even alarmists appear to have realized that it's worthless. It got a few mentions in the press when it first came out but there's been no mention since. Ho hum. This'll have to do.
Vinny Burgoo
Your point is well made. I think we all understand the frustration of identifying an alarmist study that clearly is not borne out by facts, and is noticeably falsified by events (or lack of) over a subsequent decade.
I am hoping that Peter Webster may be able to propose some relative sea level rise magnitudes that would be required to give transgessive flooding of modern deltas.
Peter Webster
You write "The high sea level coincided with the worst flooding in a century"
What was the even worse flooding recorded a century ago caused by?
Maybe my logic is skewed by the IPCC implies that recent flooding is a consequence of AGW.
How does this stand up if flooding in pre-industrial times could be just as bad?
The Bangladesh story like the Himalaya Glacier story goes to the heart of the issue here. Specialists can debate the relative effects of sedimentation and sea level rise on the land surface of Bangladesh in the future. What cannot be explained is why natural land accretion was left out of a study of one of the world's largest delta regions. Worse yet this obvious ommission does not seem to have raised concerns at the IPCC. All of this confirms the larger narative of science being driven head-long off a cliff by ideology.
Peter Webster:
He went to his office and never came back. Should someone send out a search party?
Ah, yes, 'probabilistic', 'societies with few options', and 'err on the side of caution'. A fine apologia, Peter. But, have not the probabilities now changed since the opening of the science, has not our society now more options than those so recently proposed about carbon fuels, and shouldn't we be a little more cautious about sweeping policy changes built on insufficient science?
================================
Peter Webster
According to S. J. Holgate, a recognised world authority in geophysical research at the UK-based Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Liverpool, in his paper published in 2007, the following results represent the most comprehensive measurements of decadal sea-level change rates during the 20th century.
Between 1904 and 1953 global sea levels rose by 2.03 mm per year, whereas from 1954 to 2003 they rose by only 1.45 mm per year, giving an annual mean rate of 1.74 mm per year over the 100 years to 2003, or seven inches per century. Importantly, there was no increase in the rate of change over the whole century. Global Warming - Hmm.
Patagon
Could it be that the reason the models are so poor at getting rainfall right is that they've neglected the solar effect on specific humidity at the tropopause? (Not to mention the solar effect on everything else.)
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/shumidity-ssn96.png