Dyson: Climate models are rubbish

GaryC · August 17, 2007

There are plenty of scientist that are saying the same things. You just ignore/discount them because they don't fit into your GW hysteria.

Edited August 17, 2007 by GaryC

GaryC · August 17, 2007

Here, lets see if you can understand this list.

Believe global warming is not occurring

* Timothy F. Ball, former Professor of Geography, University of Winnipeg: "(The world's climate) warmed from 1680 up to 1940, but since 1940 it's been cooling down. The evidence for warming is because of distorted records. The satellite data, for example, shows cooling." (November 2004) [5] "The temperature hasn't gone up. ... But the mood of the world has changed: It has heated up to this belief in global warming." (August 2006) [6] "Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. ... By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling." (Feb. 5, 2007) [7]

[edit] Believe accuracy of IPCC climate projections is inadequate

Scientists in this section conclude that it is not possible to project global climate accurately enough to justify the ranges projected for temperature and sea-level rise over the next century. They do not conclude specifically that the current IPCC projections are either too high or too low, but that the projections are likely to be inaccurate due to inadequacies of current global climate modeling.

* Roger A. Pielke, Senior Research Scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) wrote: “Humans are significantly altering the global climate, but in a variety of diverse ways beyond the radiative effect of carbon dioxide. The IPCC assessments have been too conservative in recognizing the importance of these human climate forcings as they alter regional and global climate. These assessments have also not communicated the inability of the models to accurately forecast the spread of possibilities of future climate. The forecasts, therefore, do not provide any skill in quantifying the impact of different mitigation strategies on the actual climate response that would occur.” [8]

* Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute: "The blind adherence to the harebrained idea that climate models can generate 'realistic' simulations of climate is the principal reason why I remain a climate skeptic. From my background in turbulence I look forward with grim anticipation to the day that climate models will run with a horizontal resolution of less than a kilometer. The horrible predictability problems of turbulent flows then will descend on climate science with a vengeance." [9]

* Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists : "models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view". [10]

[edit] Believe global warming is primarily caused by natural processes

Scientists in this section conclude that the observed warming is more likely attributable to natural causes than to human activities.

* Khabibullo Abdusamatov, mathematician and astronomer at Pulkovskaya Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the supervisor of the Astrometria project of the Russian section of the International Space Station: "Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy - almost throughout the last century - growth in its intensity...Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated...Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away." (Russian News & Information Agency, Jan. 15, 2007 [11]) (See also [12], [13], [14])

* Sallie Baliunas, astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: "[T]he recent warming trend in the surface temperature record cannot be caused by the increase of human-made greenhouse gases in the air." (Capitalism Magazine, August 22, 2002)[15] Baliunas and Soon wrote that "there is no reliable evidence for increased severity or frequency of storms, droughts, or floods that can be related to the air’s increased greenhouse gas content." (Marshall Institute, March 25, 2003) [16]

* David Bellamy, environmental campaigner, broadcaster and former botanist: "Global warming is a largely natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed."[17] Bellamy later admitted that he had cited faulty data and announced on 29 May 2005 that he had "decided to draw back from the debate on global warming", [18] but in 2006 he joined a climate skeptic organization [19] and in 2007 published a paper arguing that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 "will amount to less than 1°C of global warming [and] such a scenario is unlikely to arise given our limited reserves of fossil fuels—certainly not before the end of this century." [20]

* Reid Bryson, emeritus professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison: "It’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air." [21].

* Robert M. Carter, geologist, researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia: "The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown." (Telegraph, April 9, 2006 [22])

* George V. Chilingar, Professor of Civil and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California: "The authors identify and describe the following global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate: (1) solar radiation ..., (2) outgassing as a major supplier of gases to the World Ocean and the atmosphere, and, possibly, (3) microbial activities ... . The writers provide quantitative estimates of the scope and extent of their corresponding effects on the Earth’s climate [and] show that the human-induced climatic changes are negligible." (Environmental Geology, vol. 50 no. 6, August 2006 [23])

* Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: "That portion of the scientific community that attributes climate warming to CO2 relies on the hypothesis that increasing CO2, which is in fact a minor greenhouse gas, triggers a much larger water vapour response to warm the atmosphere. This mechanism has never been tested scientifically beyond the mathematical models that predict extensive warming, and are confounded by the complexity of cloud formation - which has a cooling effect. ... We know that [the sun] was responsible for climate change in the past, and so is clearly going to play the lead role in present and future climate change. And interestingly... solar activity has recently begun a downward cycle." (The Hill Times, March 22, 2004 [24])

* Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University: "global warming since 1900 could well have happened without any effect of CO2. If the cycles continue as in the past, the current warm cycle should end soon and global temperatures should cool slightly until about 2035" [25]

* William M. Gray, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University: "This small warming is likely a result of the natural alterations in global ocean currents which are driven by ocean salinity variations. Ocean circulation variations are as yet little understood. Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes. We are not that influential."[26]) "I am of the opinion that [global warming] is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people." [27]) "So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing—all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more."[28])

* George Kukla, retired Professor of Climatology at Columbia University and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in an interview: "What I think is this: Man is responsible for a PART of global warming. MOST of it is still natural." (Gelf Magazine, April 24, 2007) [29]

* David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware: "About half of the warming during the 20th century occurred prior to the 1940s, and natural variability accounts for all or nearly all of the warming." (May 15, 2006 [30])

* Marcel Leroux, former Professor of Climatology, Université Jean Moulin: "The possible causes, then, of climate change are: well-established orbital parameters on the palaeoclimatic scale, ... solar activity, ...; volcanism ...; and far at the rear, the greenhouse effect, and in particular that caused by water vapor, the extent of its influence being unknown. These factors are working together all the time, and it seems difficult to unravel the relative importance of their respective influences upon climatic evolution. Equally, it is tendentious to highlight the anthropic factor, which is, clearly, the least credible among all those previously mentioned." (M. Leroux, Global Warming - Myth or Reality?, 2005, p. 120 [31])

* Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: global warming "is the biggest scientific hoax being perpetrated on humanity. There is no global warming due to human anthropogenic activities. The atmosphere hasn’t changed much in 280 million years, and there have always been cycles of warming and cooling. The Cretaceous period was the warmest on earth. You could have grown tomatoes at the North Pole"[32]

* Tim Patterson [33], paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada: "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?" [34][35]

* Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology, The University of Adelaide: "We only have to have one volcano burping and we have changed the whole planetary climate... It looks as if carbon dioxide actually follows climate change rather than drives it". [[36]]

* Frederick Seitz, retired, former solid-state physicist, former president of the National Academy of Sciences: "So we see that the scientific facts indicate that all the temperature changes observed in the last 100 years were largely natural changes and were not caused by carbon dioxide produced in human activities." (Environment News, 2001 [37])

* Nir Shaviv, astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: "[T]he truth is probably somewhere in between [the common view and that of skeptics], with natural causes probably being more important over the past century, whereas anthropogenic causes will probably be more dominant over the next century. ... [A]bout 2/3's (give or take a third or so) of the warming [over the past century] should be attributed to increased solar activity and the remaining to anthropogenic causes." His opinion is based on some proxies of solar activity over the past few centuries. [38]

* Fred Singer, Professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia: "The greenhouse effect is real. However, the effect is minute, insignificant, and very difficult to detect." (Christian Science Monitor, April 22, 2005) [39] "The Earth currently is experiencing a warming trend, but there is scientific evidence that human activities have little to do with it.", NCPA Study No. 279, Sep. 2005 [40]. “It’s not automatically true that warming is bad, I happen to believe that warming is good, and so do many economists.” (CBC's Denial machine @ 19:23 - Google Video Link)

* Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: "[T]here's increasingly strong evidence that previous research conclusions, including those of the United Nations and the United States government concerning 20th century warming, may have been biased by underestimation of natural climate variations. The bottom line is that if these variations are indeed proven true, then, yes, natural climate fluctuations could be a dominant factor in the recent warming. In other words, natural factors could be more important than previously assumed." (Harvard University Gazette, 24 April 2003 [41])

* Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London: "...the myth is starting to implode. ... Serious new research at The Max Planck Institute has indicated that the sun is a far more significant factor..." (Global Warming as Myth [42])

* Henrik Svensmark, Danish National Space Center: "Our team ... has discovered that the relatively few cosmic rays that reach sea-level play a big part in the everyday weather. They help to make low-level clouds, which largely regulate the Earth’s surface temperature. During the 20th Century the influx of cosmic rays decreased and the resulting reduction of cloudiness allowed the world to warm up. ... most of the warming during the 20th Century can be explained by a reduction in low cloud cover." [43]

* Jan Veizer, environmental geochemist, Professor Emeritus from University of Ottawa: "At this stage, two scenarios of potential human impact on climate appear feasible: (1) the standard IPCC model ..., and (2) the alternative model that argues for celestial phenomena as the principal climate driver. ... Models and empirical observations are both indispensable tools of science, yet when discrepancies arise, observations should carry greater weight than theory. If so, the multitude of empirical observations favours celestial phenomena as the most important driver of terrestrial climate on most time scales, but time will be the final judge." (In J. Veizer, "Celestial climate driver: a perspective from four billion years of the carbon cycle", Geoscience Canada, March, 2005. [44], [45])

[edit] Believe cause of global warming is unknown

Scientists in this section conclude it is too early to ascribe any principal cause to the observed rising temperatures, man-made or natural.

* Syun-Ichi Akasofu, retired professor of geophysics and Director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks: "[T]he method of study adopted by the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is fundamentally flawed, resulting in a baseless conclusion: Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. Contrary to this statement ..., there is so far no definitive evidence that 'most' of the present warming is due to the greenhouse effect. ... [The IPCC] should have recognized that the range of observed natural changes should not be ignored, and thus their conclusion should be very tentative. The term 'most' in their conclusion is baseless." [46]

* Claude Allègre, geochemist, Institute of Geophysics (Paris): "The increase in the CO2 content of the atmosphere is an observed fact and mankind is most certainly responsible. In the long term, this increase will without doubt become harmful, but its exact role in the climate is less clear. Various parameters appear more important than CO2. Consider the water cycle and formation of various types of clouds, and the complex effects of industrial or agricultural dust. Or fluctuations of the intensity of the solar radiation on annual and century scale, which seem better correlated with heating effects than the variations of CO2 content." (Translation from the original French version in L'Express, May 10, 2006 [47])

* Robert C. Balling, Jr., director of the Office of Climatology and a professor of geography at Arizona State University: "t is very likely that the recent upward trend [in global surface temperature] is very real and that the upward signal is greater than any noise introduced from uncertainties in the record. However, the general error is most likely to be in the warming direction, with a maximum possible (though unlikely) value of 0.3 °C. ... At this moment in time we know only that: (1) Global surface temperatures have risen in recent decades. (2) Mid-tropospheric temperatures have warmed little over the same period. (3) This difference is not consistent with predictions from numerical climate models." (George C. Marshall Institute, Policy Outlook, September 2003[48])

* John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC reports (answering to "If global temperatures are increasing, to what extent is the increase attributable to greenhouse gas emissions from human activity as opposed to natural variability or other causes?"): "No one knows. Estimates today are given by climate model simulations made against a backdrop of uncertain natural variability, assumptions about how greenhouse gases affect the climate, and model shortcomings in general. The evidence from our work (and others) is that the way the observed temperatures are changing in many important aspects is not consistent with model simulations." [49]

* William R. Cotton, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at University of Colorado said in a presentation, "It is an open question if human produced changes in climate are large enough to be detected from the noise of the natural variability of the climate system." [50]

* Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor, School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland: "There is evidence of global warming. ... But warming does not confirm that carbon dioxide is causing it. Climate is always warming or cooling. There are natural variability theories of warming. To support the argument that carbon dioxide is causing it, the evidence would have to distinguish between human-caused and natural warming. This has not been done." (The New Zealand Herald, May 9, 2006 [51])

* David Deming, geology professor at the University of Oklahoma: "The amount of climatic warming that has taken place in the past 150 years is poorly constrained, and its cause--human or natural--is unknown. There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty. If the climate does warm, it is likely to be beneficial to humanity rather than harmful. In my opinion, it would be foolish to establish national energy policy on the basis of misinformation and irrational hysteria." (Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, December 6, 2006 [52])

* Richard Lindzen, Alfred Sloane Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences: "We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 °C higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds). But--and I cannot stress this enough--we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to CO2 or to forecast what the climate will be in the future." [53] "[T]here has been no question whatsoever that CO2 is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas — albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in CO2 should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed." (San Francisco Examiner, July 12, 2006 [54] and in Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2006, Page A14)

* Roy Spencer, principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville: "We need to find out how much of the warming we are seeing could be due to mankind, because I still maintain we have no idea how much you can attribute to mankind." (George C. Marshall Institute Washington Roundtable on Science and Public Policy, April 17, 2006 [55])

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scien...rming_consensus

one...two...tree · August 17, 2007

Gary, my approach has always been to let the academia of climate scientists study, discuss, challenge, and come to a consensus about Global Warming. As I recall, it was you who latched onto to what you have perceived as valid science while discounting other science as junk. But please continue, these threads are amusing in their futility.

mawilson · August 17, 2007

Most scientists, like most people, are sheep who blindly follow the herd. Any radically

novel ideas or approaches or anything that runs contrary to the commonly accepted

theories are often met with hostility, skepticism and ridicule.

When Boltzmann, a maverick 19th century physicist, proposed a new definition of

entropy, his ideas were met with such hostility that the physicist hanged himself in

1906 -- just a few years before his ideas were vindicated.

History is full of examples of great scientists whose radical ideas led to huge controversy

during their lifetimes - only to be proved right later.

Edited August 17, 2007 by mawilson

Trumplestiltskin · August 17, 2007

The problem is that no single scientific professional body (save one) has denied global warming. From what I've seen - most of the objections come from individual scientists.

mawilson · August 17, 2007

js25b_sheep_wideweb__470x266,0.jpg

I'm sorry - did you say "deny" global warming?

No-one denies global warming - it's measurably real.

The question is whether or not it's man-made, not whether it's real.

one...two...tree · August 17, 2007

Here's the difference. These are climate scientists from around the world who have a consensus on the theory of Global Warming.

There may be discussion and debate within that theory, but the theory remains valid.

Trumplestiltskin · August 17, 2007

I think its been pointed out several times that 'concensus' does not mean 'unanimous'.

one...two...tree · August 17, 2007

:yes:

GaryC · August 17, 2007

There used to be a consensus that the earth was flat. There used to be a consensus that everything orbited the earth. There used to be a consensus that the earth was 4000 years old. Don't you think that the consensus that you cite could also be wrong? BTW there is no consensus. I just showed you that. Please stop ignoring it.

Edited August 17, 2007 by GaryC

Hilarious Clinton · August 17, 2007

How dare individual scientists object. It's called independent thought. Get the memo? :unsure:

Trumplestiltskin · August 17, 2007

Gary - there is "concensus". Between international scientific bodies (professional organisations that represent the world's scientists).

As to whether or not you believe in the consensus view is really the point.

Trumplestiltskin · August 17, 2007

As I said - 'consensus' is not 'unanimity'. Lets be clear on our terminology at least.

one...two...tree · August 17, 2007

What the average Joe believes (the world is flat) vs. what a community of scientists believe are light years apart. Gary, you can't compare scientific discovery of 500 years ago to contemporary times. A Scientific theory is as reliable as it gets, but it doesn't mean that some new data or facts come to surface that might show otherwise. If that is the case, the theory is challenged and is modified if necessary.

A theory is more like a scientific law than a hypothesis. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. One scientist cannot create a theory; he can only create a hypothesis.

In general, both a scientific theory and a scientific law are accepted to be true by the scientific community as a whole. Both are used to make predictions of events. Both are used to advance technology.

In fact, some laws, such as the law of gravity, can also be theories when taken more generally. The law of gravity is expressed as a single mathematical expression and is presumed to be true all over the universe and all through time. Without such an assumption, we can do no science based on gravity's effects. But from the law, we derived Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in which gravity plays a crucial role. The basic law is intact, but the theory expands it to include various and complex situations involving space and time.

The biggest difference between a law and a theory is that a theory is much more complex and dynamic. A law governs a single action, whereas a theory explains an entire group of related phenomena.

http://wilstar.com/theories.htm

mawilson · August 17, 2007

Steven,

You are extremely naïve if you believe that modern scientific theories cannot be wrong.

A scientific theory is just a statement that explains observable and recorded aspects of the

world using the best level of understanding that ties all the facts together. Scientists develop

theories based on the data they have, but their theories can and often are proven wrong by

further discoveries. A theory - any theory - stands until proven wrong; it is never proven correct.

Edited August 17, 2007 by mawilson

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