Problems in Climate Predictions
Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, former Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University and internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes.
…
Seventeen years ago, I wrote a column for Weather magazine, expressing my concerns about the lack of honesty, integrity and humility of many climate scientists. “I worry about the arrogance of scientists who claim they can help solve the climate problem, provided their research receives massive increases in funding”, reads one line from my text. … This was early 1990. It is 2007 now, and I want to ring the alarm bell again. There is a difference, though: then I was worried, now I am angry. I am angry about the Climate Doomsday hype that politicians and scientists engage in. I am angry at Al Gore, I am angry at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists for resetting its Doomsday clock, I am angry at Lord Martin Rees for using the full weight of the Royal Society in support of the Doomsday hype, I am angry at Paul Crutzen for his speculations about yet another technological fix, I am angry at the staff of IPCC for their preoccupation with carbon dioxide emissions, and I am angry at Jim Hansen for his efforts to sell a Greenland Ice Sheet Meltdown Catastrophe.
…
I am more than a little bit worried about IPCC’s preoccupation with CO2. The scientific rationale behind this choice is obvious. Sophisticated climate models have been running for twenty years now. It has become evident that these models cannot be made to agree on anything except a possible relation between greenhouse gases and a slight increase in globally averaged temperatures. The number of knobs that can be twiddled in the parameterization of the radiation budget is not all that large. Seemingly realistic results can be achieved without much intellectual effort. I agree with IPCC that there is a likely link between fossil fuel consumption and increased temperatures. But this is where the much proclaimed consensus ends. Just one example: the models do not include feedbacks between changing farming and forest harvesting practices and the atmospheric circulation. Partly for that reason, they cannot seem to agree on precipitation patterns.
…
I want to lobby for decency, modesty, honesty, integrity and balance in climate research. I hope and pray we lose our obsession with climate forecasting. Climate simulations are best seen as sensitivity experiments, not as tools for policy makers. I said it in 1990 and I am saying it now: the constraints imposed by the planetary ecosystem require continuous adjustment and permanent adaptation. Predictive skills are of secondary importance. We should stop our support for the preoccupation with greenhouse gases our politicians indulge in. Global energy policy is their business, not ours. We should not allow politicians to use fake doomsday projections as a cover-up for their real intentions.
There’s a lot more.
It’s worth pointing out that, in general, the peer-review process used by scientists helps preserve honesty, integrety, and balance in the sciences. (Although there have been a few, highly publicized exceptions, in my experience the system is over critical, rather than not critical enough.) My impression is that climate models are insanely complicated, just like the weather they seek to predict. It is certainly true that we don’t have the ability to predict with much precision what the climate will be in 10 or 100 years.
However, there is a ton of legitimate and verifiable data that only a fool would turn a blind eye toward. The most likely and reasonable culprits are greenhouse gases, and their emission is a problem we can address. I totally understand getting fired up by the inane misrepresentations of science that you find in the mass media today, but that is only more reason (for rational people) to become engaged.
Politics (and politicians aside), the irresponsible, immoral, indecent approach would be to sit back and do nothing.
If Global warming is the biggest threat to humanity then doing nothing would indeed be immoral.
But what if it is not? What if all the money some insist we should spend on lowering atmospheric C02 could be more effectively spent solving other problems?
In that case, addressing global warming at the expense of more pressing and solvable problems is worse than immoral, it’s a waste of finite resources. A dollar spent in an attempt to combat global warming is a dollar that cannot be spent on a malarial vaccine, developing clean water, educating a third world kid , or fighting malnutrition.
Which, to many anthropogenic global warming adherents, is fine (if understandably not dwelt upon at length) because the inevitable result of education, clean water, disease vaccines and proper nutrition is more people, living longer. Needless to say, that’s not a desirable outcome at all to the Malthusian mindsets inhabiting the political wing of the AGW camp.
To accuse folks concerned about global warming of desiring starvation or even shortened lifespans for the masses is right-wing propaganda at it’s best. It’s inherently contradictory. I’m surprised that you would promulgate such a line of crap, Bigwig, asusming you actually believe what you are saying!
If you have to choose between helping 1 person today and 10 people tomorrow, which would you do? As far as most effective use of funding goes, I don’t even think we have to make that choice b/c the cost of education, clean water, vaccines, and the lot of it is so small that it’s a national embarrassment that we do so little.
I’ll be interested to see what’s in this IPCC report coming out tomorrow, especially since it has to be approved by all 154 nations involved, which includes us and the Saudis. Perhaps they will suggest a program of population eradiaction to offset future increases in CO2 production.
To say that the global warming camp is inhabited by Malthusians is neither crap nor political in nature. It’s simple observation. The inherent premise of AGW theory is “too many people.” Google “overpopulation” and global warming” together if you don’t believe me.
Given the mindset that people are the problem, one should not be surprised that courses of action that might resort in more people receive short shrift.
But I can see where confusion might arise. I should have written the sentence above as “more people, living longer, and having more babies.” I don’t think anyone actively wants those alive now to die prematurely, I just think that many prefer they not breed.
I, like Julian Simon, think that people are the ultimate resource, so the prospect of more of them doesn’t bother me. I prefer to help one person today so that he can have ten grandchildren 50 years from now.
As to “As far as most effective use of funding goes, I don’t even think we have to make that choice b/c the cost of education, clean water, vaccines, and the lot of it is so small that it’s a national embarrassment that we do so little.”
I notice that you don’t actually calculate what you think the price for all of that would be. If you don’t do that, or cannot, then asserting that the amount we do give–also not given–is an “embarrassment” seems somewhat overwrought. Reminds me of Kerry’s assertions on the US and African AIDS, actually.
I do have some numbers when it comes to resources. I’ll post them.