Comments (52)

• Francisco Torres

  
  The way politicians and some scientists have behaved these past years when it comes to global warming and research funding reeks of pure Lysenkoism. It is the direct result of government intervention on something that works better in total freedom - science and scientific activity.
  

  Published: April 13, 2006 1:33 PM

• M1EK

  Yes, Lysenkoism is a good word to use here. Libertarians, for instance, who cling desperately to contrarian science despite the vast consensus that AGW is real, are practicing it. The idea, perpetrated by Lindzen, that the mass of scientists against his view is somehow tantamount (or worse than) the fact that nearly all skeptics are funded by the oil and coal companies is frankly ludicrous.

  You folks are getting really sad.

  Published: April 13, 2006 1:39 PM

• Charles Hanes

  So, so typical. Why bother to dispute the correctness of a critique; simply attempt to discredit the source, by claiming bias.

  And why should the proponents of global warming theories be considered immune to bias due to their own funding, which is largely from government sources. There is a clear conflict of interest there -- only the "correct" answers keep the tax money coming. Any deviation from the party line causes the grant money to flow elsewhere. This is a point that is ignored when only private funding is considered tainted.

  I do not know where Prof. Lindzen's financial suport comes from, nor is that important. What is important is the following: Is Prof. Lindzen's article correct or not? Is his research true of false?

  That is what we need to know.
  

  Published: April 13, 2006 2:04 PM

• Graeme Bird

  " Lysenkoism is a good word to use here. Libertarians, for instance, who cling desperately to contrarian science despite the vast consensus that AGW is real, are practicing it."

  Global warming is good. Those that say otherwise are flying in the face of all known evidence.

  Published: April 13, 2006 5:55 PM

• averros

  For the record: Lysenkoism was state-supported.

  In fact, the core claim of Lysenko's theory was that learned and acquired traits can be inherited; applied to humans it meant that the socialist program of remaking selfish people into absolutely altruistic and communarian "builders of the bright communist future" wasn't a serious delusion, but was supported by the "science".

  The way for Lysenko to sustain his claims was to use his close ties to the powers-that-are to harass and imprison anyone who dared to criticize him - including all geneticists.

  What saved Russian geneticists was that their case was taken up by nuclear physicists (who were mostly beyond the reach of mere ideological police, being busy building atomic weapons) - one of the physicists (Ioffe if I remember it correctly) even dared to put down Lysenko publically, by asking him that if his theory was right how come that women are born virgins?

  Eventually the truth won (although the Moscow Institute for Molecular Biology is still safely tucked behind the fence of the Kurchatov Institute for Atomic Energy) - and, funnily enough, a highly diluted form of Lysenko's claims come to be accepted by biologists (the so-called Baldwin effect is that learned behaviours with time tend to become genetically hard-wired programs - which has rather simple explanation in that the need to learn diminishes fitness - for example, recognizing a predator instinctively saves the life the first time the predator shows up; not so when learning is needed to start avoiding this kind of predators).

  So, yes, the analogy to Lysenkoism in the state-sponsored climate science is apt. As long as scientific dissent is dealt with by punitive measures, rather than by building stronger case for a particular theory, the credibility of this theory is greatly diminished.

  If the proponents of a particular theory see fit to resort to such measures, they in effect say that their own case is too weak to stand on its own merits.

  Now, I don't know enough of climate science to have my own independent opinion on who's right and who's wrong, but the practice of "proving" a theory by squelching opponents by depriving them of their livelihoods does not, in my eyes, make any favour to that theory. Neither does the fact that the theory provides a convenient excuse for further expansion of the powers of the State.

  Published: April 13, 2006 7:57 PM

• Dennis Sperduto

  As an undergraduate geology major in the mid-to-late 1970s, I have my own personal recollections regarding climate change supposedly caused by the activity of human beings. In the 1970s, the consensus "scientific" opinion was that the earth was entering another ice age and that great national, if not supranational efforts were required to prevent this. Then, within a period of 10 to 15 years, the consensus had shifted to the global warming scenario. This quick 180-degree reversal occurred despite the fact that the earth is over 5 billion years old.

  I will only reiterate one of the several facts that refute the assertion that man is responsible for the small amount of warming that has occurred over the past 100 years. A large portion of North America was covered by glaciers as late as 10,000 years ago. The glaciers extended so far south as Long Island, New York and covered a good part of the American Midwest. The reader can easily surmise what the situation was in Canada. However, the earth warmed considerably and these glaciers melted/retreated with virtually no output of carbon gases from man’s burning of fossil fuels.

  The global warming assertion is nothing but junk science, driven by political motivations and the desire of many "scientist" to receive funding for their "research" activities.

  Published: April 13, 2006 8:02 PM

• M1EK

  Ah, yes, the global cooling canard. It pops up every year like the spring flowers.

  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94

  In general, rebutting the crap about the supposed scientific conspiracy which is somehow larger and more powerful than the oil/coal companies who basically PAY LINDZEN:

  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/lindzen-point-by-point/#more-291

  Published: April 13, 2006 8:47 PM

• Francisco Torres

  M1EK's brand of manicheism:
  In general, rebutting the crap about the supposed scientific conspiracy which is somehow larger and more powerful than the oil/coal companies who basically PAY LINDZEN

  First of all, the commentary you posted does not mention any oil companies that have put Lindzen on the dole. Second, I find it quite interesting you continue this "Govenment funded - good, privately funded - bad" reasoning. It is the same loopy reasoning you keep bringing at the Hit and Run at Reason.com

  Published: April 13, 2006 10:25 PM

• Lee

  "And why should the proponents of global warming theories be considered immune to bias due to their own funding, which is largely from government sources. There is a clear conflict of interest there -- only the "correct" answers keep the tax money coming. Any deviation from the party line causes the grant money to flow elsewhere. This is a point that is ignored when only private funding is considered tainted."

  Y'all may not have noticed, but this adminsitration, which hands out the money, is not exaclty a friend of the idea of anthropogenic global warming. In fact, they ahv eben restraining scientists who claim that GW is happening. So much for THAT claim.
  ---

  Lindzen isnt wrong because of his funding. Lindzen is wrong becaue he is wrong. His last effort in this area, the IRIS paper, was essentially rendered irrelevant within a year by either further data, or demonstrations of incorrect assumptins or analyses of existing data. And I find it ironic that a scientist who gets quoted over and over and over, as the 'balancing view' in articles on global warming, in spite of his diminishing and largely discredited scientific output (this is not an ad hominem; it is a description of his latter output on climate research), is whining aobut being denied access.

  There are detailed rebuttals of Lindzen's op/ed in other places; it takes a bit of wading through the attacks and ad hominems on both sides to get to the nut of the issue, but its doable. I'll leave finding and checking the rebuttals as an exercise to anyone (hello? anyone?) here honest enough to want to check the other side of the issue. I'll even recommend RealClimate (hi, Graeme...) as a source. While you're there you might check out their analyses of how the links between global warming and hurricanes are far from solid adn attributing hurricane change sto BW is premature or incorrect. Of course, they cant have done that;theyre too biased. But there it is.

  And with that, I'm out of here; this site is reminding me of why I realized Rand libertarianism was absurd, well before I attained the age of majority. The insularity that demands the science be wrong for ideological reasons, without even a cursory understanding of the science (hi again, Graeme; you understand what a forcing is yet?) is pretty depressing. Enjoy yourselves.

  Published: April 13, 2006 10:41 PM

• Lee

  I cant resist one final parting post, for those (I'm assuming you exist) honest enough to chekc this stuff out. Bye, now.

  Lindzen: point by point

  
  — group @ 4:46 pm

  Daniel Kirk-Davidoff (U. Maryland and one-time Lindzen co-author) provided a more detailed rebuttal of Lindzen's argument in the comments to our previous post. It deserves to be more widely seen, so here it is again.

  Here's an effort at a point by point rebuttal. I would say that the central flaw in the op-ed is a logical one: if you're trying to stifle dissent, then you want less funding for climate research, not more. If you're trying to stop global warming, then you want more money for carbon sequestration research, and you don't care how much is spent on climate research. On the other hand if you just love climate research as a really interesting intellectual persuit, that's when you've got an interest in shedding doubt on the reigning view that CO2-induced climate change is a serious policy program, requiring action. Twenty-five years ago, when global warming wasn't a big public worry, one might expect climate change researchers to hype the problem. In 2006, when public opinion mostly accepts that there's a problem, scientists who want research money should be emphasizing uncertainty.

  In the opening paragraph, Lindzen states that others have claimed that there are connections between recent rare weather events and global warming, and asks where they would possibly get such an idea. It's not clear where his astonishment comes from though. Heat waves and increased lake effect snows seem like very reasonable expectations for a warmer world. Of course, attribution of any individual such event to presently observed global temperature change can only be fractional, but it's completely reasonable to say that events like the heat wave of 2003 will be more likely when the mean annual temperature of Europe is a few degrees warmer- this assumes only that the scatter of summer time temperature under global warming won't be much smaller than it is now.

  In his second paragraph, Lindzen makes the uncontroversial claim that society sometimes funds science to address phenomena that seem to offer a threat of harm. Using the passive voice, he asserts a feedback cycle between scientific funding and scientific alarm. This seems really odd: the publlc demand made by scientists who are most alarmed by global warming is precisely not that more money go into reasearch, but rather that money go into research to increase fuel efficiency to develope carbon-emission-free fuel sources. In fact Lindzen himself in his final paragraph seems to be calling for increased funding to address the question of climate sensitivity!

  The third paragraph about drying up of funding for dissenting science has been addressed by others. I agree that I just don't see it. The particular anecdotes I have heard about political influence on the federal grant making process go in the other direction, where people are told that they should pubish findings supporting large climate sensitvity, at least until after some election.

  The fourth paragraph is another weird one. He starts by promissing an opportunity to grasp the "complex underlying scientific issues", but never really discusses anything complex- I take this as an effort to flatter the WSJ readers on their grasp of these erudite points, bolstering their confidence when they take on the tree-huggers at the water cooler. His rhetorical tactic here is to severely shrink the list of agreed-upon truths to those that we've known since 1980, while neglecting the fact that human responsibility for the 20th century warming of global temperature is quite well-established, and that various causes for alarm (for example, substantially reduced water availability in places that depend on snow-pack for their dry-season water) are also very well established. Then he moves the discussion to "outlandish" claims that contradict the "models". This is the first use of the word "models" in the article, and gets no explanation, which is a little odd for a discussion in a newspaper. He doesn't explain what the outlandish claims are, so we're left to wait for the next paragraph.

  Here we discover that the outlandish claims involve something about more "excitation" of extratropical storms. I'm not sure where he's getting this- when I go to, for instance, Ross Gelbspan's website, the only references to storms I see is to tropical storms, and to more intense rainfall generally. Both are well supported by empirical studies. The increase in rainfall intensity (shift in distribution of rain from more light events to fewer heavy events) as a consequence of global warming is a robust feature of GCMs.

  Okay, that's all I've got time for. It'd be nice if Lindzen gave his reader some way of checking the claims he makes about persecution- was Tennekes dismissed because he questioned the scientific underpinnings of global warming, or just after? In what context did Bert Bolin "tar" Aksel Winn-Nielsen? I think Alfonso Sutera's recent work on baroclinic neutralization is really interesting... is there some missing strand of his research that Lindzen thinks ought to be taken up again? It's hard to guess.

  About the IRIS paper- I really can't see what he's complaining about. The paper was published, depite some rather "outlandish claims." For instance, in the IRIS paper, Lindzen argues that tropical surface temperature and polar surface temperature should be assumed to vary in exactly the same way as CO2 concentrations increase. This is based on the idea that baroclinic neutralization maintains a particular critical temperature gradient, an idea that had a brief period of fashionability in 1978. In any case, there's certainly been a lively debate about the paper, and if it's widely viewed as "discredited", then that's the judgement of the climate dynamics community. If we're a bunch of dummies, history will judge us harshly, but we can only do our best.

  I see a lot of science in our community that's being driven by curiosity. At the recent European Geophysical Union conference, there were posters on banner clouds on the Zugspitze, the role of cubic ice crystals in high cirrus formation, and the role of global cooling in the fall of the Neanderthals. Some of this research is being driven by claims that it will address climate change. So maybe this helps to solve the riddle of what Lindzen is really concerned about. People who are really concerned about climate change don't agitate for more funding for our field- they agitate for funding for fuel efficiency research and carbon sequestration. It's the people who like curiosity-driven research in climate dynamics who have the real incentive to argue that there's a lot of uncertainty, because uncertainty allows people with strong intellectual curiosity to make the case that there's at least some tangential benefit of their work to the climate sensitivity problem.

  Published: April 13, 2006 10:50 PM

• Graeme Bird

  "And with that, I'm out of here; this site is reminding me of why I realized Rand libertarianism was absurd, well before I attained the age of majority. The insularity that demands the science be wrong for ideological reasons, without even a cursory understanding of the science (hi again, Graeme; you understand what a forcing is yet?) is pretty depressing. Enjoy yourselves."

  I don't even care what tendentious language you lunatics are using right now. I assume you mean an implied apriori equilibrium temperature if you could theoretically fix radiation from the sun and the make-up of the atmosphere.

  If so you applied this concept incorrectly. The word 'forcing' appears to be an attempt to fit the conclusion into the premises. You haven't brought any evidence fot the many ridiculous and dishonest claims you have made (dishonest in their implied certitude). You're a self-evident idiot. You are no scientist. You are just a science worker. Never forget that.

  Now if you come up with some evidence for a change instead of your usual stupidity then email me. That too much to ask?

  Published: April 13, 2006 11:12 PM

• Graeme Bird

  "People who are really concerned about climate change don't agitate for more funding for our field- they agitate for funding for fuel efficiency research and carbon sequestration."

  Right. So you were in fact lying before. "Our Field" hey?

  Published: April 13, 2006 11:15 PM

• Lee

  oops; missed the cite/link:

  http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/lindzen-point-by-point/

  Sigh. do you have a rhetorical point other than 'You're a liar?" I didnt write that; I simply missed the link when I posted it, realized it, and came back to post it, and here you are, hurling accusations again. Here is the cite. I'm gone.
  

  Published: April 13, 2006 11:19 PM

• Graeme Bird

  M1EK

  You want to come up with some evidence for your contentions? Or are you just going to make it up as you go along like Lee.

  Over at your site realclimate they ruthlessly suppress dissent. They screen every last post. Not just for me but for everyone.

  These are not scientists.

  Published: April 13, 2006 11:23 PM

• tokyo-tom

  Prof. Reisman, thanks again for drawing attention to the serious issue of climate change, understanding of which is compounded by difficulties all around, not the least of which are (i) free rider effects that discourage resolution, (ii) the abilities of interested large corporations to influence governmental action (public choice) and (iii) psychological tendencies to acknowledge information that is consistent with one's views while filtering out or discounting disconsonant information (coupled with tribe-like behavior).

  In addition to the links provided by Lee above, I would encourage readers to look at Real Climates other links concerning Lindzen and the Wall Street Journal: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/open-thread-on-lindzen-op-ed-in-wsj/.

  The rapid and unprecedented melting that is occuring in the Arctic and Greenland is undeniable, if anyone cares to look at what is happening in the real world.

  Regards,

  TokyoTom

  Published: April 14, 2006 4:48 AM

• Graeme Bird

  "The rapid and unprecedented melting that is occuring in the Arctic and Greenland is undeniable, if anyone cares to look at what is happening in the real world."

  Yes Yes Tom. Sure Sure. And its a good thing too wouldn't you say?

  But what do you mean by UNPRECEDENTED. If its unprecedented that's good becase following precedent means the same cycle of disaster.

  
  Or do you have some new evidence to the contrary and must now apologize for holidng out on us all this time.

  The real climate propagandists and the Wiki propagandists have some overlap it seems.

  Published: April 14, 2006 6:45 AM

• Dennis Sperduto

  Regarding the Greenland warming, which yes has occurred over the last 100 or so years, the Vikings named the land Greenland around 1,000 years ago when they discovered it because the land was green and warm enough to farm significant areas. Greenland was not almost fully covered by ice at this time, and farming artifacts have been found in Greenland from this and earlier time periods. Yet somehow, Greenland cooled off considerably from its relative warmth of 1,000 years ago.

  As statistics tells us, the time that is chosen as the initial frame of reference has significant influence on the conclusion. In this vein, if one chooses the geologic period in which dinosaurs lived (roughly 250 million years ago) when the earth was considerably warmer and moister then at present as the initial reference period, the earth has undergone substantial cooling over time.

  Published: April 14, 2006 7:01 AM

• Dennis Sperduto

  P.S.

  For those who do not believe the geologic fact that significant portions of North America were covered by glaciers as late as 10,000 years ago, with the ice extending as far south as Long Island, New York and covering a good part of the American Midwest, I believe that there is not much room for rational discourse with these individuals.

  Published: April 14, 2006 7:12 AM

• SK Peterson

  One dirty little secret used in the calculations of "anthropogenic" emissions of carbon into the atmosphere is that almost half of it is from fires, almost all of which have lightning as a trigger. Some fires do have anthropogenic causes - flicking a lit cigarette out the car while driving by a senesced field - but the reality is that the causal factor of the human element is irrelevant. These places would have burned anyway due to entirely natural forces. Humans only affect the timing and maybe the specific locations (through suppression and other means like prescribed burning) but they don't have the prevasive affect on the environment claimed by the GW partisans. Also, I've seen the cutting edge standard models - their extraordinarily simplistic, not even basic attempts to deal with simultaneity or endogeneity. When I've asked the guys working on this stuff why they don't consider these things , I get the deer in the headlights look. And when you catch them in an unguarded moment they confess - GW is a great source of research money as long as the underlying assumptions of the research are that GW is really happening and whatever else DON'T QUESTION THE MODELS.

  Published: April 14, 2006 11:25 AM

• Lee

  This is simply flat-out wrong:

  "Regarding the Greenland warming, which yes has occurred over the last 100 or so years, the Vikings named the land Greenland around 1,000 years ago when they discovered it because the land was green and warm enough to farm significant areas. Greenland was not almost fully covered by ice at this time, and farming artifacts have been found in Greenland from this and earlier time periods. Yet somehow, Greenland cooled off considerably from its relative warmth of 1,000 years ago"

  Farming was restricted to a handful of southeastern coastal areas, only two of which were of any significance, in fiords where there was just sufficient ocean warming to create arable lands. It was never suffiently productive to support european-style ag on a large scale; cattle for example had to be kept indoors and hand-fed for 5-7 months of the year, and even sheep and goats which are better at foraging through heavy snow needed to be kept this way for months of the year. The short growing seasons meant sumer was a sprint to produce sufficient hay and feed to keep the stock through the winter, even a small increase in the normal frequent summer fog with the accompanying reduced yield, or extended winters (even a few weeks longer than normal) caused all but the most wealthy farms to end up exhausting their stored food and animal feed, and resorting to either slaughtering their farm stock or watchign it starve to death, requiring restocking from the few large and prosperous farms on the VERY few relatively prosperous sites within the two larger communities. This in turn led to almost all lands becoming under the control of a handful of the fortunately-situated farms.

  One of the major limits to productivity for nearly all ag sites on the small coastal margin of Greenland was cold winds blowing off the continuoyus ice sheets in the interior. Ice covered all but parts of the coastal margin, with glacial fronts extending to within a few miles of those farming communities even at teh warmest period. Those ice sheets are a mile thick or more; that did NOT happen in the last 1,000 years. It took only a small downturn in temps to push those farms below the sustainability limit.

  By best current science (look it up yourself, Graeme, or see below and wait for it), it is warmer now (meaning mid-20th-century, before the last 30 years of accelerating warming trend made ti even warmer) than it was then.

  You are looking at some dynamics along the margin of the warmest southwestern part of the island, and claiming that this is representative of the entire island,and this is just simply untrue.

  BTW, I'm going to have some hotel time over the nest couple weeks, and if I can I will use some of the time to compile a set of links and explanatory commentary on CO2 accumulation, oceanic acidification, warming, timing of glaciations, ice core data and solar/CO2 interactions, climate models and their verifications, and so on, and post them here. This is a big subject, I'm not a climatologist so I dont have the links right to hand, and it gets tiresome to be challenged by people who have the facts they cite flat-out wrong, who apparently refuse to do the research to find the current state of the field on their own, and who when I post a piece as an entry point to the literature, pretend that the one piece I post is the only thing on the subject, and then hurl accusations of dishonesty at me when I *do* expect that people take a bit of time to educate themselves on topics they are warmly fulminating about. I'm not your research librarian; I'm a participant in what I would like to believe is a conversation.

  Published: April 14, 2006 12:06 PM

• Dennis Sperduto

  I never claimed that most of Greenland was farmable or that farming was as efficient as in the more temperate parts of Europe. I did claim that 1000 years ago the climate was such that it was possible to farm at least small parts of Greenland. (Admittedly, my use of the word "significant" possibly was overstating exactly how much farming did occur.) But the fact remains that parts of the earth did cool off from roughly 1000 years ago and over the past 100 or so years have warmed slightly. The point is that natural, i.e. non-man-made, forces apparently are at work to cause notable changes in climate, and the geologic record contains evidence of dramatic climate changes long before man came into existence.

  The appeal to the "experts" and journal articles will likely prove little. This discussion began with a post of an article by Professor Reisman that is critical of the objectivity and integrity of academic "research" regarding this issue.

  The scientific mainstream's wholehearted acceptance of anthropogenic factors as being the major cause of the slight warming that has occurred over the last 100 years, is reminiscent of academia's conclusion that the socialists had won the so-called socialist calculation debate, including that the existence of the Soviet Union had proved Mises wrong. While this is another issue, it illustrates the lack of objectivity and integrity among many social scientists.

  Finally, I’ll go back to my original posting: are we to take seriously the supposed scientific claims of individuals that changed their conclusion literally by 180 degrees in a span of roughly 15 years, when the earth and its climate have been in existence for over 5 billion years?
  

  Published: April 14, 2006 2:30 PM

• Lee

  You said, and I quote:

  "Greenland was not almost fully covered by ice at this time"

  This is a strong claim, and is simply wrong, Greenland WAS mostly, almost entirely, all except for a percent or two along the margins, covered by ice at that time, as it has been for a very, very long time. Which is why we can drill ice cores there going back hundreds of thousands of years in time.

  Several other errors here:

  1. The existence of natural (and before someone hammers me, I'm simply using "natural" in the normal shorthand fashion to mean "not anthropogenic." This isnt ideal, but it is usual practice) variation (which is acknowledged by and investigated by every climate researcher out there) is NOT evidence that current warming is not anthropogenic. In fact, partitioning this is a current hot area (so to speak) of research. Present estimates are that the last century's warming is about -30% to 50% "natural" (with negative numbers meaning cooling),and that anthropogenic contributions are between 50% and 130% (with greater than 100% meaning overcoming a negative component of natural cooling), with the most probable estimates near the midpoint of each range.
  Thsi value is important; knowing it allows climatologists to arrive at a much more precise estimate o fthe 'temperature sensitivity to carbon doubling" or, how mcuh warming will occur if we double atmospheric carbon Whic in turn allows them to extimate tehexpected temp increase in the next century. Even a cursory look at the literatee shows that NO ONE in the field, even LIndzen disputes taht warmign will occur, and taht much o fit will be anthropogenic; teh warmign debates (as distinct from the effects debates) now are over the value of the sensitivity, and about 1.5C as a lower limit is a number that is no longer in dispute.

  2. Climatologists have a pretty good picture of the normal, quite substantial climate changes, going back at least 650,00 years, from the ice core data. It varies between a normal low a few degrees below where we are now during glacial periods, and temps within a degree or so of where we are now during interglacials. BTW, there is also a very tight correlation between temps and CO2, with the time-phase of the tightly-correlated peaks varying from slightly positive to slightly negative in various places, which is strong evidence of a positive feedback effect between temps and CO2. I'll cover this in the promised lit review in a couple weeks, if I can possible manage to put that together.

  But my point is that we are ALREADY running at global temps about as high (perhaps at least as high, now; its close) as any during the time that we or almost all other animals on this planet evolved. For at least 650,000 years, through at least 6 glacial-interglacial periods. Pointing at the past variation in a range BELOW what warmign is expected to cause, is NOT evidence that where we are going nopw is comparable to that past natural variation. Not anymore than the fact that my car regulary varies between 0 and 75 mph, is eviddnce tahtits okey to mash the accelerator when I'm already going 80. Adn even taht argumetn is irrelevant; teh relevant argbuemtn is, if we knwo taht huamn actisn are causing a change rightnow, that will cause certaing consequence right now, waht are we going to do abou t it right now, REGARDLESS of whether similar changes might have ocured some tens of thousands of years ago when we could NOT do anything about it.

  Reisman points to Lindzen's op/ed piece, which calls the accuracy of the science into question becuse he claims bias. Ive already posted a piece taht addresses much of that. But Lindzens underlying claim is that the sciece is WRONG because it is biased, and responses in this thread have cited alleged reasons the science is wrong. I am posting to correct false claims of fact - SK Peterson's is a doozy; anthropogenic origin of the entirety of increased CO2 in the last century is a slamdunk case for reasons I will cover in my review links- and the fact is that the accuracy of the science is an inherent part of this discussion.

  You r third paragraph is simply an unsupported bald assertion that this science is bogus, "supported" by an irrelevant mention of some other folks in another field at another time who were were wrong in some ways that may or may not correspond to the ways you say they were wrong. The fact that you yourself point out the irrelevance of your evidence does not excuse your baldly unsupported attack.

  And finally, the suggestion (which was overinflated in the popular press at the time) that we might be on the verge of an ice age, was posited as a hypothesis, supported vigorously by a very few climatologists, questioned almost immediately, with the uncertainties pointed out, by most of the field, and discredited within a couple years. This is how science works; pointing out that the process of science worked well in quite rapid fashion 15 years ago, is NOT evidence that they are getting it wrong now.

  Published: April 14, 2006 3:36 PM

• Graeme Bird

  You're blowing smoke Lee. He worded it right from the start. When the colony set up Greenland was a plausible place for those Vikings to set up. Then it grew colder and the colony died.

  "And finally, the suggestion (which was overinflated in the popular press at the time) that we might be on the verge of an ice age, was posited as a hypothesis, supported vigorously by a very few climatologists, questioned almost immediately, with the uncertainties pointed out, by most of the field, and discredited within a couple years."

  No that's all wrong. There is overlap between the propagandists at Wiki and at realclimate. They just make it up as they go along. In Wiki they've gone so far as to use the terms "ice age" and "glaciation" interchangeably. So as to obscure the fact that we are in an ice age now.

  Published: April 14, 2006 4:17 PM

• jeffrey

  Can we please not experience another tit for tat exchange here? The patience of readers is being taxed. Please write each other privately. If you do write publicly, please pretend to be as polite as possible. thanks.

  Published: April 14, 2006 4:19 PM

• Lee

  jeffrey,

  Are you asking me not to publicly respond to unfounded public accusations by an apparent member of this community that I'm lying?

  If Reiser is going to recommend an opinion piece calling into question the integrity and accuracy of a major and currently important field of science, then there MUST be room for response, and it seems that there are enough thoughful people here that you can't be saying this kind of response isn't welcome. I've made my offer to try to scrape together time to assemble links to the evidence over the next couple weeks, on the assumption that there ARE people here open to examining the studies themselves openly and critically. I'm also enjoying at least some of the vigorous conversations here; I like having my assumptions challenged by those who carry a different assumptions and values set than I do, and vice versa; it makes me think and examine those assumptions. If the community here finds this disruptive, so be it; ask and I'll go.

  I have no interest in a private conversation with Graeme; why would I pursue such a conversation with someone who responds in the way he has? But I'm not keen on the idea of putting effort into an attempt at a thoughtful post, and then letting Graeme swing away with unrebutted slanderous accusations about my integrity. Especially when he does stuff like here (and this is far from the first time even in the few days I've posted here on this topic), where I say Greenland was warm enough to be sustainable and then it got a bit colder and they weren't sustainable, and he then accuses me of "blowing smoke" and misrepresenting the fact that it was warm enough for them to settle and then it got cold and they died.

  This is why I asked the other day if Graeme was considered representative of this site. He seems to be a regular. If he is not taken seriously by this community and the community is willing to say so, then I wont worry about any weight his posts might carry, and I'm happy to ignore them. In fact, I will work from this moment to ignore his presense except for posts that attack me, regardless. But if it appears that his opinion does carry weight here, then I will not let his scurrilous public accusations go without a public rebuttal.

  Published: April 14, 2006 5:20 PM

• Graeme Bird

  "If Reiser is going to recommend an opinion piece calling into question the integrity and accuracy of a major and currently important field of science"

  They don't have any integrity or accuracy. And its not the field itself you are talking about. Its the global warming lunatics. Having too warm an earth is a bit like being too rich. There is no merit to their ideas whatsoever. Take it to emails or take it away. I'll be sure to let everyone know if you actually come up with some evidence. You know. Evidence. Real evidence?

  Published: April 14, 2006 6:39 PM

• R.P. McCosker

  During the Middle Ages, Viking explorers came upon a beautiful green land inhabited by only a few indigenes. They settled and began farming there, with great success. Appropriately, they named their new land "Greenland".

  A few centuries later, the weather turned bitterly cold, and stayed that way, protracted winter after winter. Farming and hunting became impossible, and those Vikings packed up what they could and returned to their ancestral homelands in northern Europe.

  Meanwhile, Greenland has stayed cold, now almost entirely covered with glaciers and permafrost, ever since. The name Greenland is a great historical anachronism.

  When the vast masses of glacier and permafrost in Greenland have largely melted, when Greenland grows green again, then I'll quake in fear of global warming. I'll fear the return to the devastating heat that made life so terrible for medieval Europeans, ancient Romans, and classical Greeks. Oh, how I do wish for the great powers of government to spare us the terrible fate of those times. Only then will civilization be saved.

  Lee says that Lindzen's arguments about funding can't be true because Bush is president, and he's an enemy of the environment or something. Actually, Bush has always been a fencesitter around global warming and other causes of the environmentalist Left. However that may be, the system of science funding in the U.S. isn't controlled top-down from whoever's president, but by a huge bureaucracy and by committees of peer-selected scientific research administrators and bigshot scientists. The self-selected scientific Establishment generally runs the show. Scientific research funding and publication is no more influenced by the presence of a neoconservative-oriented moderate-Republican president than are universities and public schools stopped from being propaganda organs for liberal-Left ideology because of such a president.

  A final point: Much is made of the fact that average global temperatures have risen by approximately one degree over the last hundred years or so. What these disingenuous alarmists avoid mentioning is that most of that rise occurred more than half a century ago. Yet if the simplistic CO2 thesis was accurate, the greater increase would've occurred more recently with its greater CO2 increases (mainly from Third World countries that stoutly refuse to become Tokyo Treaty signatories anyway). Global warming alarmists also carefully avoid letting the public in on the fact that global temperatures are *always* changing over time, as they have been for billions of years. We are always heading either toward or away from an ice age. The alarm demogogues in the scientific community and the MSM have done a good job at laying misleading, one-sided information on the public.

  Published: April 15, 2006 3:08 PM

• BillG (not Gates)

  RP wrote:

  "During the Middle Ages, Viking explorers came upon a beautiful green land inhabited by only a few indigenes. They settled and began farming there, with great success. Appropriately, they named their new land "Greenland".

  A few centuries later, the weather turned bitterly cold, and stayed that way, protracted winter after winter. Farming and hunting became impossible, and those Vikings packed up what they could and returned to their ancestral homelands in northern Europe."

  BillG responds:

  this is a common misperception disproved thoroughly by Jared Diamond's recent research and book called "Collapse"

  the Vikings imported their cultural institutions to Greenland which eventually devastated the local environment even while the waters teemed with protien while the Inuit survived...

  http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/?050103crbo_books

  excerpt:
  Diamond’s argument stands in sharp contrast to the conventional explanations for a society’s collapse. Usually, we look for some kind of cataclysmic event. The aboriginal civilization of the Americas was decimated by the sudden arrival of smallpox. European Jewry was destroyed by Nazism. Similarly, the disappearance of the Norse settlements is usually blamed on the Little Ice Age, which descended on Greenland in the early fourteen-hundreds, ending several centuries of relative warmth. (One archeologist refers to this as the “It got too cold, and they died� argument.) What all these explanations have in common is the idea that civilizations are destroyed by forces outside their control, by acts of God.

  But look, Diamond says, at Easter Island. Once, it was home to a thriving culture that produced the enormous stone statues that continue to inspire awe. It was home to dozens of species of trees, which created and protected an ecosystem fertile enough to support as many as thirty thousand people. Today, it’s a barren and largely empty outcropping of volcanic rock. What happened? Did a rare plant virus wipe out the island’s forest cover? Not at all. The Easter Islanders chopped their trees down, one by one, until they were all gone. “I have often asked myself, ‘What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?’ � Diamond writes, and that, of course, is what is so troubling about the conclusions of “Collapse.� Those trees were felled by rational actors—who must have suspected that the destruction of this resource would result in the destruction of their civilization. The lesson of “Collapse� is that societies, as often as not, aren’t murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death.

  This doesn’t mean that acts of God don’t play a role. It did get colder in Greenland in the early fourteen-hundreds. But it didn’t get so cold that the island became uninhabitable. The Inuit survived long after the Norse died out, and the Norse had all kinds of advantages, including a more diverse food supply, iron tools, and ready access to Europe. The problem was that the Norse simply couldn’t adapt to the country’s changing environmental conditions. Diamond writes, for instance, of the fact that nobody can find fish remains in Norse archeological sites. One scientist sifted through tons of debris from the Vatnahverfi farm and found only three fish bones; another researcher analyzed thirty-five thousand bones from the garbage of another Norse farm and found two fish bones. How can this be? Greenland is a fisherman’s dream:

  Published: April 15, 2006 4:04 PM

• C Warren

  Your excerpt specifically says that "It did get colder in Greenland in the early fourteen-hundreds" and that "The problem was that the Norse simply couldn’t adapt to the country’s changing environmental conditions."

  Isn't that another way of saying “It got too cold, and they died�?

  Sure, it was POSSIBLE for them to have survived if they did this or that, but that is completely irrelevant to the point, which is that they did not and their community died because of the colder climate. Maybe they prefered a life of abundance in a warmer climate?

  If the global warming advocates cannot accept something as obvious as this, can I really count on them being honest when it comes to highly contestable things such as computer models?

  Published: April 15, 2006 4:36 PM

• BillG (not Gates)

  C Warren wrote:

  "Isn't that another way of saying “It got too cold, and they died�?"

  BillG responds:

  no they died because they defended their cultural institutions in the face of overwhelming evidence that it was their cultural habits that were killing them...

  that is why I have been telling my green friends that we need to be making a culturally based argument rather than a technically based one.

  when you allow the use of our common asset (the sky) as a sink beyond the sustainable yield (Locke's proviso) those privately enclosing the sky create a monetary obligation on those they are excluding that violates the exluded's superior absolute right to their wages and thus self-ownership.

  Published: April 15, 2006 5:14 PM

• R.P. McCosker

  Jared Diamond is another of these science professors with a leftist agenda who're the topic of the Lindzen article. (Though Diamond predictably endorses the global warming scare, that's not his research specialty.)

  The Vikings didn't exploit the fish in Greenland because the Eskimos (or "Inuits," as modern p.c.ers would have us call them) already were doing so better than the Vikings knew how. What the Vikings brought to Greenland that wasn't already there was farming. When it got too protractedly cold and icy, the Vikings left. What Eskimos were able to survive these conditions resumed their ancestral practices of Arctic-style fishing.

  The article slyly confuses what happened on Easter Island with what happened in Greenland, to the service of Diamond's and *The New Yorker*'s environmentalist-Left agendas. Easter Island society collapsed because of lack of property rights: All the trees fell to the tragedy of the commons. Viking Greenland fell because a little ice age made traditional agriculture untenable. Greenland concurrently became *less* of "a fisherman's dream" than it had before that ice age, and the best suited to take advantage of what fishing was left were the Eskimos there, not the Vikings.

  Published: April 15, 2006 5:14 PM

• BillG (not Gates)

  sorry forget to point out...

  the changing environmental conditions that you cited in the article was NOT the climate but rather the way the Norse changed the environment (losss of topsoil) via their cultural practices (raising livestock, sod houses, etc).

  Published: April 15, 2006 5:17 PM

• BillG (not Gates)

  RP wrote:

  "Easter Island society collapsed because of lack of property rights: All the trees fell to the tragedy of the commons."

  BillG responds:

  there is no "tragedy of the commons" only tragedy of the UNMANAGED commons and Locke's proviso is spot on...

  enclosure of the commons is only just so long as "enough and as good are left in common for all others".

  Published: April 15, 2006 5:20 PM

• Lee

  Oh, my good lord!!!!

  --"Meanwhile, Greenland has stayed cold, now almost entirely covered with glaciers and permafrost, ever since. The name Greenland is a great historical anachronism."--

  Now? NOW?? Greenland has been for hundreds of thousands of years, almsto entirely covered with glaciers and permafrost. The Viking settled two tiny areas on the southeastern margin, which were the entiety fo the part habitable by european-style civilization, and taht only with constant winter losses. AS soon as it gotA LITTLE cooler, those loses becaem to great to be sustainable. This history has been well explicated; there is no excuse to be miststating it like this.

  Their settlements were close enough to the ice margin that cold subsidence winds off the ice sheets, and berg ice in teh fiords limiting navigation, were a major limit on habitable land. I detailed much of this above. Your claim that NOW (implying not when the vikings were there) it is largely ice covered is simply false. Given that Graeme already tried this, I refuted it and he backed off, and you simply restate it without addressing any of that, its hard to believe their is ANY attempt at intellectual honety or curiousity on your part here.

  
  --Lee says that Lindzen's arguments about funding can't be true because Bush is president, and he's an enemy of the environment or something. --

  Actually, I was inverting the ludicrous statements about fundign bias into an equally ludicrous rejoinder. I didnt expect thatt to be taken any more seriosuly than I took the original statement. You guys find it awfully easy to brand thousands of people doing this research as liars, and to do so without bothering to understand even the basics of that field of research. This is simply a dodge that allows yo to use ad-hominems avoid actually having to learn and understand ths science (which stand's and falls on its own; I dont find this 'fnding-bias' charge any more persuasive when people on my side use it), and I find it revolting and inellectually crude and dishonest on your parts, personally.

  --A final point: Much is made of the fact that average global temperatures have risen by approximately one degree over the last hundred years or so. What these disingenuous alarmists avoid mentioning is that most of that rise occurred more than half a century ago.--

  Oh really?

  http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/Resources/Fact_Sheets/Key_Stage_4/Climate_Change/09.html
  And the graph therein, as one of many. That claim is simply false.

  
  --Yet if the simplistic CO2 thesis was accurate, the greater increase would've occurred more recently with its greater CO2 increases.--

  False premise, false conclusion.

  --(mainly from Third World countries that stoutly refuse to become Tokyo Treaty signatories anyway).--

  Also wrong.
  Per capita carbon emissions by nation:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
  And total per nation, not per capita:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

  
  --Global warming alarmists also carefully avoid letting the public in on the fact that global temperatures are *always* changing over time, as they have been for billions of years.--
  
  That would be why there is so much excitement and study of the ice core data, with EXPLICIT reference to understanding the changes over time. That would be why one of the acknowledged most important current questions in the field is to refine the understanding of the partitioning between natural and anthropogenic change AS I POINTED OUT ABOVE. Clear indicatin tha tno one in the field acknowledges natural cahnge. Right. Your statemtn here is either hopelessly naive (in which case you should educate yourself before before making these kind of near-slanderous claims) or dishonest, about which no more need be said.

  --We are always heading either toward or away from an ice age. The alarm demogogues in the scientific community and the MSM have done a good job at laying misleading, one-sided information on the public.--

  What you avoid here is the fact that we have already moved into CO2 concentratin regimes not seen for at least 650,000 years, and likely not since the carboniferous (and we are already seeing carbonic acidification of the oceans as a result), and that we are likely heading into temp regimes similarly not seen for at least 650,000 years. And that both of these (co2 already, temps likely very soon) are outside the ranges that were present during the evolution of nearly all species now on the palnet, including us.

  And Kyoto has NOTHING to do with this. You guys keep returning to the policy dispute to try to discredit the researchon what is happening, and it simply is not relevant.

  I'm willing to entertain discussion on the possible/probable costs of warming, but what I see is a mungling-together of 'teh science is bad' "it isnt happening' ' it wont matter' 'it's happening but change is natural/good' (without reference to the limits of previously observed change) with these various distinct points brought to bear interchangeably whenever it is convenient to move away from one of the topics.
  

  Published: April 15, 2006 5:59 PM

• Lee

  Why thise very commonresort to ad hominem dismissls of ides based on teir soruce that I see used over and over here? The work, and especially the factual part of it, stands or falls on its on. Dismissing it becasue it came from Diamond, is simply refusing to address it. I thought yo ugys wer devoted to honesty here?

  "Jared Diamond is another of these science professors with a leftist agenda who're the topic of the Lindzen article. (Though Diamond predictably endorses the global warming scare, that's not his research specialty.)"
  

  Published: April 15, 2006 6:03 PM

• Lee

  Bill, ti was both:

  "sorry forget to point out...

  the changing environmental conditions that you cited in the article was NOT the climate but rather the way the Norse changed the environment (losss of topsoil) via their cultural practices (raising livestock, sod houses, etc).

  Posted by: BillG (not Gates) at April 15, 2006 05:17 PM"

  The climate did cool, and ultimately this was the cause of the collapse of the viking habitation. They suffered from both unsustainable climate for their ag economy, and from loss of trading across a less-passable north atlantic, as well as a shift in the european economy that rendered their trade goods less valuable and therefore traders less willing to take the greater risks to trade with them.

  But overgrazing-triggered erosion reduced the resource base quite noticeably before that, making the place yet more marginal even before that point. They didnt have a lot of arable land to give up; most of the place was ice and permafrost.

  Published: April 15, 2006 6:08 PM

• R.P. McCosker

  Oh, my good Lord indeed, Lee. Yes, the Vikings really named the place Greenland. Because it was green. Very green. And so more than a few came to farm there. A lot. And for centuries.

  It's not green, or farmed, now, because of, well, global cooling. Something the dominent science elite and its MSM handmaidens prefer the victims of public school science "education" out there not know about or be able to figure out.

  But fortunately the ancient name remains as a gentle reminder of the Big Lie program by the global warming deceivers.

  As with your link supposedly showing that most of the increase happened in the last half century. It does exactly the opposite.

  That reminds me of an attorney I had dealings with many years ago. He'd lard his filings for the judge with all kinds of citations that were supposed to support his points. Turns out they mostly undermined those same points. But he knew that there are many judges -- lazy, overworked, whatever -- who would take his citations on faith, and assume that no attorney standing before them would so brazenly misrepresent things.

  How audacious that the little ice age -- well recorded throughout Europe -- should in desperation be represented as a case of overgrazing. Hitler and Goebbels would be proud that their communication techniques have found so cozy a home in the modern scientific establishment.

  Published: April 16, 2006 3:10 AM

• TokyoTom

  R.P., you are exactly right on your analysis of where Diamond fails to understand what went wrong on Easter Island. Diamond apparently has no economics background, so he fails to comprehend that the real problem underlying environmental destruction and overuse of "common" resources is lack of appropriate property rights, and hence lack of approriate markets and pricing mechanisms. Where no one owns a resource, it will be over-exploited, since no one has incentives to avoid overuse or to protect the resource. E.g., whalers agree to whaling restrictions after the whale populations have been extinguished or are dropping off drastically, and environmental regulations are adopted when the air and water are seriously polluted.

  Obviously there are people here who don`t agree to the facts as to the status of climate change (I`m persuaded of the seriousness of the problem), but the nature of the problem is no different than other environmental problems where resources are over-exploited due to ineffective property rights.

  Regards,

  TT

  Published: April 16, 2006 6:55 AM

• BillG (not Gates)

  TT wrote:

  "the nature of the problem is no different than other environmental problems where resources are over-exploited due to ineffective property rights."

  BillG responds:

  this is a fundamental misunderstanding of property rights and thus of root causes.

  the basis of property rights is LABOR as the natural extension of the right of self-ownership.

  the pollution problem is nothing more than the fact that our pricing mechanism can not incorporate negative externalities at the point of sale.

  negative externalities are a defacto tax on the wages of all those being excluded by the privatization of the sky as a sink beyond the sustainable yield...this IS the property rights violation.

  the reason why can be laid directly at the foot of the neo-classical/marginalist utility economics school (of which Austrian is a derivative) by purposely conflating the natural commons for private capital.

  the way to rectify the situation within a classical liberal framework is to limit the use of the common asset up to the sustainable yield (Locke's proviso) by selling annual permits (titles) to pollute only up to that limit therefore eliminating negative externalities.

  the money collected (called economic rent) for the permits are then distributed directly and in equal amounts to the owners of the commons which had been in the past the exact amount of tax they had been subjected to (negative externalities) in violation of their property rights to their labor.

  Published: April 16, 2006 7:17 AM

• Graeme Bird

  "It got too cold, and they died�?"
  That's precisely what happened. It got too cold and the inuit out-competed them. If it had stayed warm they would have done ok. But a cold earth brings devastating stresses.

  A bit more on the Malinkovitch cycles. There are three of them.

  1. The one where the shape of the earths orbit goes from almost circular to eliptical and back again every 100 000 years or so.

  2. The obliquity of the eliptic. This is where the tilt of the earths axis nods up and down on a 41 000 year cycle.

  3. The procession of the equinoxes. A bit like a wobble in a spinning top. Due to the bulge in the equator. Thats a 21,000 year cycle (elsewhere I've seen 26,000 years)

  In any case they are all turning bad on us.

  Now its been known that they may next time not lead to as severe an effect as last time. But I know not where the campaign against lush Northern Russian forests gets its confidence from. When you go to their links they are usually only talking about one cycle not all three. Or they are explaining it all away through wordplay without making their assumptions clear so that they may be checked.

  It ought to be a powerfully simple subject. But you see everywhere this obscurantism. This internet assertions tsunami. So I cannot sort it out except to say that they won't come up with the evidence and express it clearly.

  But then you go and listen to the other side and they are all very clear with their explanations. The contrast between the two sides is stunning. One side snide and hard to fathom. The other side very clear.

  Just as an example here is a link from the non-hysterical side. The ones who don't want your money.

  
  http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

  Read it and see the difference.

  As a digression there is this statement:

  "Periods of Earth warming and cooling occur in cycles. This is well understood, as is the fact that small-scale cycles of about 40 years exist within larger-scale cycles of 400 years, which in turn exist inside still larger scale cycles of 20,000 years, and so on."

  This is why a glaciation could very easily be upon us. Since a cyclic downturn combined with unfavourable Malinkovitch conditions would be all that was needed to kick things off. All it would take (absent of high levels of CO2) is a few freezing Southern Winters and Cool Northern Summers in a row.

  Now if this 40 year cycle business is true and we have been warming since the 1970's its very easy to see how things could turn bad for us.

  So just be very thankful for Capitalism and the consequent CO2 output since it might be that this is the very influence which is right as we speak funnelling extra warmth into the mid-Troposphere of the Antarctic.

  For goodness sakes lets get that insurance policy going, deregulate, and build a string of new Coal-fired power stations.

  This is the prudent thing to do.

  Published: April 16, 2006 8:42 AM

• TokyoTom

  There is a fair degree of confusion at this forum, as a number believe there is no role for government in solving any environmental problem. Consequently, rather than discussing the problem itself and what should or should not be done, many prefer simply to deny the problem, and question the integrity or motivations of those who see one.

  I see a problem and admit its difficulty, but see greater perils in denial and nonaction. Theoretically at least, discussions of environmental problems can be discussed separately from the problem itself.

  Alot of "enviros" certainly do not understand the economic underpinnings of these problems, but this lack of understanding doesn`t mean, of course, that there is no problem. Enviros are bashed, but much bigger problems are actually caused by deliberate misuse of national resources by large corporates.

  Published: April 16, 2006 9:47 AM

• Graeme Bird

  Fella its you Lee and that crowd who are the only ones in denial here. Bring some evidence. Your crowd are constantly saying things that are just plain foolish.

  Here is an example from realclimate:

  "Global warming tends to increase intensity of storms, though frequency is arguable (some evidence but not overwhelming). So rainstorms will be more intense - more flooding. On the other hand dry areas will get drier as temperature increases - more floods more droughts - less agriculural production"

  This is a bit like saying that "the potato grows on the higher branches and takes its sustenance from the colder frosts alone"

  In that its all ridiculous. A negation of what we know about past climatic conditions, contrary to commonsense and just plain wrong.

  Its just a constant procession of unreason on your side of the debate.

  Evidence Tom. Give us some evidence. And that doesn't mean endless quoting of people who agree with you.

  Published: April 16, 2006 10:20 AM

• Francisco Torres

  the basis of property rights is LABOR as the natural extension of the right of self-ownership.
  

  ...from which, I could conclude, that my landscaper "owns" my lawn.

  Published: April 16, 2006 12:07 PM

• Lee

  Oh, my good Lord indeed, Lee. Yes, the Vikings really named the place Greenland. Because it was green. Very green. And so more than a few came to farm there. A lot. And for centuries.

  L- Yes, indeed. Subarctic pasture and grazeable boreal scrub forest are green. Sure 'nuff. No question about that. Often quite a lush colored green. And the fact that they are green proves that Greenland was a warm and lush place. Not.

  Read the history; you clearly have not done so. Those green pasture lands and grazeable forests were locked away under a cover of snow for a majority of the year, wnter failure and wummer re-establishemnt of the smaller farms was a commonplace, and these facts were a major factor driving the economic base of that colony. Not to mention that there is dispute over even the meaning of the name, which you conveniently ignore:

  "Some have argued that the coasts in question were literally green at the time due to the medieval climate optimum, in as much as the Viking settlers practised some form of an agrarian economy. Others have suspected that the name was in part a promotional effort to lure people into settling there by making it sound more attractive. The condition of Greenland in the 10th century may have been more hospitable than today."
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland

  --
  It's not green, or farmed, now, because of, well, global cooling. Something the dominent science elite and its MSM handmaidens prefer the victims of public school science "education" out there not know about or be able to figure out.
  --

  L - 56,000 people live there now. It is warmer now than at the time of the Viking colony. There is agriculture there now, mostly grazing and pasture-based, but it is limited because much of the grazing land is gone, due to erosion,a dn becaeu of the short summer season. Just like when the viking colonized. The short growing season, slow growth in far-northern cold and foggy climate, and long snow covered winters limit regrowth, and the underlying soils are loose, so overgrazing leading to catastrophic erosion is very easy to do and very hard to recover from. Because of this, grazing policy is a major doemstic policy concern on greenland (and even more so on Iceland, which is and was more favorable than Greenland (so much for the name issue) even then, and has the sme overgrazing-vulnerable conditions.

  Greenland was colonized about AD 1000, and the last remaining settlement became unsustainable and failed at about AD 1430. This coincided with the cooling of that period, which was (as I have said repeatedly; insinuating otherswise is simply dishonest) probably the cause of the decline and failure. At its peak it had 3,000 - 5,000 people, on somewhere between 400 and perhaps 500 farms, a strong majority of them clustered at two sites, and all clinging to the southern coastal margin. Whether that is large or not I'll leave to you; it WS the maximum sustainable population of the entirety of this supposedly lush and inviting island of Greenland, given their economy and culture. The Inuit may have done a bit better, but only by embracing a different economic base.

  And, natural variation in temperatures is one of THE major areas of research in this field. Discussions of this topic are all over the place. Even the RC site that y'all dismiss without addressing (other than pointing out an ideological difference) has spent a lot of time on precisely this topic. The statement that "the dominent science elite" dotn want anyoen to know aobu this is simply slanderously absurd.

  --
  But fortunately the ancient name remains as a gentle reminder of the Big Lie program by the global warming deceivers.
  --

  L- you guys are awfully fond of calling anyone who disagrees "liars." It doesnt do your own credibility any good.

  --
  As with your link supposedly showing that most of the increase happened in the last half century. It does exactly the opposite.
  --

  L- What I see is a graph showing some ups and downs through about 1930. It is not until 1930 that temperature sdepart from that previous range of variation. Starting in 1930, we depart from that previosu range of variation, and warm about .2C through about 1940, where we flatten out for 40 years and then climb another 0.4 or so in the last 40 years.

  Only if you cherry pick the starting point as the last bottom point of that earlier cycling to the first high point of the flattening of the mid century, do you get the claoim you made. In other words, you have do deny that there is any non-anthropogenic component to any of that warming )or to temp change in general), AND attribure the warming through the previosuly-apparent "natural" ragne of variation entirely to anthropogenic carbon, to make the claim you make.

  Only if you make the naive claim (which climatologists are careful not to make; why arent you?) that ONLY anthropogenic CO2 matters, do you expect a smooth log curve. And only if you ignore natural variation do you get to pick the lowest possible poit to start your analysis of 20th century warming.

  
  How audacious that the little ice age -- well recorded throughout Europe -- should in desperation be represented as a case of overgrazing. Hitler and Goebbels would be proud that their communication techniques have found so cozy a home in the modern scientific establishment.

  L - Oh my: the first citation of Hitler. Can I onvoke Godwin's Law now? Did you perhaps miss the place where I said that cooling was the ultimate cause of the loss of sustainability of the Greenland colony? Or did you just ignore it because it interfered with your attempt to cite Hitler?
  

  Published: April 16, 2006 12:16 PM

• Francisco Torres

  And Kyoto has NOTHING to do with this. You guys keep returning to the policy dispute to try to discredit the researchon what is happening, and it simply is not relevant.

  Lee, you're missing the point. The issue is not if Global Warming is real, because it may be VERY real. The issue is whether it has to do sorely with CO2 accumulation and if that CO2 comes sorely from human activity, and from that, if this constitutes a PROBLEM that needs solution. The real skepticism is not regarding the science - there is simply disagreement - but regarding the doomsday scenarios some politicians and environmentalists have shamelessly forwarded. Assuming it could be so, the POINT is that the coercive, statist proposals would NOT solve anything but make it even worse. If CO2 emissions were the problem, then why is it that MOST environmentalists worth their salt have made a pronouncement in favor of more nuclear instalations, for example? (They peddle solar panels and wind turbines, extremely inefficient compared to steam turbine/natural gas/nuclear technology.) Why is it that governments want to shift the burden of the solutions upon people, even though governments are polluters of the highest order?

  The problem, then, is not the science but the doomsday scenarios and the policies derived from them. It is IMPOSSIBLE to know how the climate will be like 10 years, 30 years or 50 years from know because the climate is an extremely complex system, with many parts interacting at almost the same time. Pinpointing a certain future scenario is pure conceit, and trying to impose policies based on that conceit is criminal.

  Published: April 16, 2006 12:30 PM

• Francisco Torres

  Sorry, I meant to say: Most environmentalist worth their salt have NOT made a pronouncement in favor of nuclear installations...

  Published: April 16, 2006 12:32 PM

• Lee

  Francisco,

  And yet, people are disputing the basic science, and muddling that dispute with the policy dispute.

  One critical point, though. People here keep harping on this "solely' the cause, and then acting as if demonstrating ANY natural source of variation proves their point.

  We KNOW there is natural variation. We have a 650,000+ year record showing that variation and the limits within which that natural variation cycles, and strong theoretical reasons to believe those really ARE the natural limits.

  As an aside, BTW: the recent older ice cores were used for a blind verificatin of how the GCMs ahndle carbon-temp interactions, by asking whether they could predict carbon given temps for newly-revealed data from glacial periods that display diferent dynamics from the more recent ones. They did so, quite well. That is a different point, but worth pointing out on a site that seems to dispute the relevance and accuracy of those models.

  Also BTW, stating baldly with no support that: "It is IMPOSSIBLE to know how the climate will be like 10 years, 30 years or 50 years from know because the climate is an extremely complex system, with many parts interacting at almost the same time." is simply denying a priori, without support, that science can address complex systems. ADn yet, this is precisley waht science does; we keep cutting at it adn getting it bettere and better,a nd on this qusion, the climatologists have a reasonably good answer, with clearly stated error bars.

  The scientific question is, where are underlying and anthropogenic causes going to push our climate. The answer seems to be (and this is getting pretty solid) to levels outside that previous range for temp, and that we are already WAY ouside taht previous range for CO2,a dn theat hte deviatin from previous range can only be happenign with anthropogenic input.

  Teh policy implications of this is entirely separate from teh science, and yet, people seem to be disputing the science based on policy issues; thus the tendency to interject Kyoto into discussis of the science, adn to discredit RC for policy reasons Note, BTW, that RC makes the underlyign publicatinos accessible, too. I go there most often for the acess to the literature.

  But as I said befrore, even THAT isnt all taht relevant.

  Teh truly relevant question is, are we looking at changes that will be damaging to our current society and economy, and if so, given that we now possible CAN do something about it, what are we goign to do about it.

  In spite off what you say, the fact of warmign to levels outside taht range is pretty solid now; the remaining argumetns on that score are about how much anthropogenic warming, not whether it is happening. That is one point, and people are disputing this.

  Second, we are closing in on reasonable assessments of at least some of the probable consequences. One that Ive now raised I think three times with no response is carbonic acidificatin of the oceans subsequenct to CO2 dissolving in the oceans. We ARE changing the pH of the oceans to levels outside those in which every species there evolved, and there are good reaasons to beleive this will not be a good thing. Carbonic shells dissolving off animals, in some areas, is far from unlikely. This is just ONE of a range of possible to probable effects off this massive unprecedented (in any reasonable bilogoical time scale) shift in the chemistry and climate dynamics of our planet.

  I suspect that a mix of responses including nukes are in our future, and this is a reasonable dilog and discussion to have. Even the point here, that for ideological reasons NO response is the appropriate thing, is a reasonable part of that policy discussion. I think its absurdly foolish; that doesnt make me or yo right or wrong. But it is a DIFFERENT discussion from the validity of the science, and what I see is a broadscale concerted attack on the science, from which people retreat into , "oh , its really the policy we care about," or some other diferent issue. AND attacks on the science from people displayig basic ignorance and unwillingness to learn about the basics of the science. That is frustrating (impossible, really; there simply is no logical stability there) to respond to.

  Published: April 16, 2006 12:59 PM

• Graeme Bird

  Godwins law is a rort. Don't bother citing it. The point made against you was a very valid one.

  Lee. Global warming is good. And even if it wasn't it would be necessary insurance since the natural tendency is towards glaciation. If you can't even get the obvious stuff right you ought to try a new line of work.

  Published: April 16, 2006 4:49 PM

• Lee

  Graeme, do you actualy have something to say?

  I made two detailed posts, each with detailed responses to "points agaisnt me,' one of them even making the same frickin' point as a new top article in the blog, and the best you have is a snide response to the throwaway line responding to his throwaway line? Your last attack on me was claiming that I lied when I denied that cooling caused the vikings on Greenland to fail, in response to a post in which I said that cooling caused the vikings on Greenland to fail. Why on earth does anyone pay attention to you?

  BTW, have you bothered yet to look at the literature on carbonic ocean acidification? Or to actaully consider the utility (much yet do) a present-value analysis of the possible costs or benefits of possible glaciation at some possible time in the distant future, vs costs and benefits of possible warmign in the near future and other effects of major chemical change of our atmosphere and oceans?

  I can say, "warming is bad; we can deal with risk of glaciation" and as you point out, it has precisely us much weight as yor claim that "glaciatin is bad, we can deal with the risks of warming." Except that you deny ANY risks, and pretnd its all umitigated good with no potential down side at all.

  And you do this without even bothering to understand the field you;re criticising, ahving admitted to not knwoing the basics of the equilibrium process in play.

  Lisa Casanova's very good top post points out the tendency to mix science and policy questions. That is the same point I just made, probably less well, and it pervades your attempts at contributions in this topic. Take some time to think this through, separate the two issues, and then try again. And if you are going to bother to respond to me, try to have something to say when you do, please?

  
  

  Published: April 16, 2006 5:29 PM

• tokyo-tom

  Dennis:

  Links to detailed explanations concerning the 70's fears of cooling (and other concerns about the existing science) can be found at this "climate bingo" page: http://timlambert.org/2005/04/gwsbingo/. To summarize, it was clear that climate forcing could be caused both by CO2 (warming) and sulfates (cooling) from air pollution; as it was not clear that we would actually enact laws and regulations relating to air pollution [draconian measures that lead us to serfdom, ruined the economy, etc.!], some scientists predicted, that IF sulfate levels QUADRUPLED, it may force an ice age. That of course did not occur, as the Western democracies took measures that sharply reduced sulfates.

  It is thought that the cooling in the 70's was partially attributable to sulfates and soot from industrialized nations, as well as to particulates thrown into the air by atmospheric nuclear testing.

  It is now clear that the CO2 forcing has swamped any cooling effect and is rapidly leading to signficant changes, such as arctic warming: http://atoc.colorado.edu/~dcn/reprints/Overpeck_etal_EOS2005.pdf. There are a number of positive feedbacks in the warming that has been triggered so far, such as a release of methane (evcen more potent as a GHG than CO2) as tundras thaw, and greater absorptin of heat as ice cover is removed from the Arctic ocean.

  Regards,

  TT
  

  Published: April 16, 2006 9:22 PM

• tokyo-tom

  BillG:

  I completely agree that the "tragedy of the commons" is not per se from having a commons, but from having an "UNMANAGED commons" as you put it. One can find many examples of adequately managed commons - largely customary rights - but many examples of poorly- or non-managed commons, for which different solutions may be needed (such as privatization of government lands, or laws or treaties providing for management of global fisheries).

  It's clear that solution lie in finding the right property rights scheme. Accordingly, I agree with much of this (but don't need to agree to the labor basis of value):

  "the pollution problem is nothing more than the fact that our pricing mechanism can not incorporate negative externalities at the point of sale.

  negative externalities are a defacto tax on the wages of all those being excluded by the privatization of the sky as a sink beyond the sustainable yield...this IS the property rights violation.

  the reason why can be laid directly at the foot of the neo-classical/marginalist utility economics school (of which Austrian is a derivative) by purposely conflating the natural commons for private capital.

  the way to rectify the situation within a classical liberal framework is to limit the use of the common asset up to the sustainable yield (Locke's proviso) by selling annual permits (titles) to pollute only up to that limit therefore eliminating negative externalities.

  the money collected (called economic rent) for the permits are then distributed directly and in equal amounts to the owners of the commons which had been in the past the exact amount of tax they had been subjected to (negative externalities) in violation of their property rights to their labor."

  Unfortunately, there is no effective global market in greenhouse gas emissions, much less in the atmosphere as a whole, so there is no means by which private transactions can regulate GHG emissions to avoid climactic changes (just like the world's oceans are being grossly overharvested in a largely unfettered race). Only a global scheme can effective deal with the issue, as partial programs such as Kyoto suffer from free-rider effects, as they exclude the developing world and the US/Australia.

  However, it is clear that there are sufficient other negative externalities associated with fossil fuel consumption that a national carbon tax would make sense purely domestically in the US (the revenues of which could be used to replace income taxes or to fund social insurances).

  Published: April 16, 2006 9:47 PM

• BillG (not Gates)

  TT wrote:

  "I agree with much of this (but don't need to agree to the labor basis of value):
  "

  BillG responds:

  not labor theory of value but rather labor theory of ownership...the foundation of property rights (and the freedom that flows from those rights) is the property that each person has in himself and, by extension, in the fruits his labor.

  
  

  Published: April 16, 2006 9:56 PM