I don’t often get controversial here, but I had to post this one.

‘More Art Than Science‘
So a couple of weeks ago we were in New Orleans, on the precise anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall two years ago. And the weather wasn’t bad. What happened? Isn’t it hurricane season? And weren’t hurricanes supposed to get even worse courtesy of “global warming”? It didn’t quite work out that way, as Bloomberg reports:

Hurricane researchers, who forecast seven more storms this season, have flubbed the past two annual estimates because of unusual El Nino and La Nina weather phenomena in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The predictions reflect variables that make this kind of weather forecasting “more art than science,” said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Two of the nine Atlantic hurricanes predicted already have occurred for the season that ends Nov 30. Last year, five storms emerged after nine were anticipated.

Remember that: Weather forecasting is “more art than science.” Except of course when the forecasters want to dismantle our entire industrial economy. Then it’s settled science that no one may even question.

The last paragraph states my entire problem with the Human Caused Global Warming Crowd. They throw away science for a passionate belief in what they want to be true.

After reading this deeply biased article in Scientific American, I was compelled to write a letter to the editors.

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Fiddling While the Planet Burns — [ SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTS ] — Will the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers accept a challenge to learn the truth about the science of global climate change?

Editors,

Mr. Jeffrey Sachs does himself a great disservice in his column inviting the Wall Street Journal editors to have a broad and open discussion on concept of human caused global warming. His tendentious presentation shows him to be in the same “echo chamber” to which the editors of the Wall Street Journal refer.

He completely missed the point that the criticism of the “hockey stick” was done on strictly methodological grounds. Mr. Mann’s statistical methodology was criticized by leading statisticians. That deep statistical analysis is core to Mr. Mann’s hypothesis. This is hardly, as Mr. Sachs says, “flimsy and misleading.” Others have found that they can produce Mr. Mann’s “hockey stick” by feeding his data selection algorithm random data. Hardly good science.

The tone of the article reflects how this has become a religious debate. Mr. Sachs feels compelled to respond to emotion and with meaningless comments such as “global scientific consensus has nearly reached 100%.” When has consensus been an indicator of truth? The Wall Street Journal editorial page has “railed against” climate change findings because they are not treated critically and any competing viewpoint is drowned out in a roar from the true believers.

Nonetheless, Mr. Sachs suggestion is an excellent one. A respected and skeptical organization such as the Wall Street Journal should sponsor an open debate on the causes of global warming. It would certainly add more the debate.

Sincerely,

Mr. Sachs is employed as the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. No doubt the center of the echo chamber.

I get totally fried by the “believe us or die” approach from the human-caused global warming crowd. Having de-funded all opposing research during the Clinton administration (thanks Al), they relentless push a scientifically weak agenda for political gain. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. Make the point on scientific evidence. Omit the hyperbole and the angry presentation. Leave out the “right-wing” comments. Or references to the “dwindling ‘climate skeptic’ community.” Yes, they put scare quotes on “climate skeptic.”

What a moron. And it degrades what is generally a good magazine on science.

There have been a flurry of “let’s get serious” articles on global warming. It is good to see that someone is giving some press to the fact that we just don’t know. The interesting thread is that two of these articles mention the ice age scare of the 1970’s.
First is George Will at RealClearPolitics.

Eighty-five percent of Americans say warming is probably happening, and 62 percent say it threatens them personally. The National Academy of Sciences says the rise in the Earth’s surface temperature has been about one degree Fahrenheit in the past century. Did 85 percent of Americans notice? Of course not. They got their anxiety from journalism calculated to produce it. Never mind that one degree might be the margin of error when measuring the planet’s temperature. To take a person’s temperature, you put a thermometer in an orifice or under an arm. Taking the temperature of our churning planet, with its tectonic plates sliding around over a molten core, involves limited precision.

Second, we have Charles Moore at the Daily Telegraph who makes an excellent connection between those that would impose greater state control in the name of climate control.

Once upon a time, pollution was something the Left almost approved of. New dams and factories and mines gave more power to the organised working class, and had to be rushed forward to replace the feudal societies which socialism overthrew. Worker control of the means of production was good; therefore production itself was good, and pollution was ignored on the you-can’t-make-an-omelette-without-breaking-eggs principle.
…
To those who like the idea that the state can control everything, it must have been a constant source of irritation that the weather could not be subject to five-year plans and government targets. If you accept climate change theories, it can be, indeed it must be. Without global governmental action, the doctrine teaches, we shall all perish.

Third, there is Mathew Parris at the Times of London, who speaks of the religous faith of the global warming crowd. I don’t agree with his tone, but he does make a point.

The prophets of climate change are their inheritors, reclothing new belief in the metaphor of the old, reconnecting it to those ancient drives. The Archbishop of Canterbury has sensed as much. Dr Rowan Williams told politicians this week that they would face “a heavy responsibility before God” if they failed to act to control climate change. He described the lifestyle of those who contribute most to global warming as “profoundly immoral”. Asked how God would judge our age if we fail to act, Dr Williams said: “If you look at the language of the Bible on this, you very often come across situations where people are judged for not responding to warnings.”

Finally, there is the editorial in the Washington Times that links explicitly to the ice age scare of days gone by.

“There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically,” begins the April 28, 1975, Newsweek article reprinted today on the opposite page. But this wasn’t a prediction of global warming. A new Ice Age worried Newsweek and its reporter, Peter Gwynne.

Future scenarios of widespread devastation, famine and starvation loomed because the Earth was getting cooler. “[T]he present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average,” Mr. Gwynne wrote. The scientific community was abuzz with fear. Melting the ice caps or diverting Arctic rivers to warm the globe were proposed.

Very interesting to see all of this commentary coming within a few days. Let’s listen and then get on to the science.

Update: The Washington Times has the orignal article on the pending ice age from Newsweek in 1975.

Hat tip to the Corner.

Yesterday I flew from Los Angeles to Tokyo (and boy are my arms tired ;-)). Los Angeles to Tokyo is one of those flights to the west that are not conducive to sleep so I had the chance to catch up on my magazine reading. Among other things, I read the February issue of Discover Magazine. I was very disappointed as it contained, as it usually does, several references to the clear connection between global warming and human activity. I apologize for not having any links, but it is a members only site. I get in later I’ll quote some here. In many ways Discover is a good magazine, but its acceptance and promulgation of the global warming dogma of human activity really ticks me off.

I try to be a scientific sceptic about most topics, waiting to see the scientific method work its way to a conclusion. This is why I have so much trouble with coverage of, and in some cases scientist quoted opinion about, global warming. It was refreshing to see a thoughtful piece by Holman Jenkins on this topic in the Wall Street Journal (sorry, subscription required). I’ll quote liberally so you get the point.

He starts off by stating what I have seen as the clear problem with coverage of global warming:

As used by the media, “global warming” refers to the theory not only that the earth is warming, but doing so because of human industrial activity.

This is a great place to start. The “common wisdom” wraps in two huge scientific conclusions as being answered. First, it says that the Earth is waming. This seems to be the case, but the current methods of temperature measurement are relatively new so the comparability of historical measurements is a difficult problem. Are we warming? Our numbers seem to show this, but in the 1970’s we were facing an imminent ice age. We need more data and more research.

Second, is human activity causing the warming. The most cited statistic is the rise in atmospheric CO2. Jenkins suggests that we might take this on faith.

Well, he could begin by evaluating the claim that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from 0.028% to 0.036% without necessarily taking the measurements himself. This finding is so straightforward, it’s reasonable to assume it would have been widely debunked if unreliable.

But the jump to having this cause serious global warming is a big one. Jenkins says it better than I could.

Next, the claim that this should lead to higher temperatures because of the heat-absorbing qualities of the CO2 molecule. A reasonable person might be tempted to take this finding on faith too, for a different reason: because even ardent believers in global warming accept that this fact alone wouldn’t justify belief in manmade global warming.

That’s because all things are not equal: The climate is a vast, complex and poorly understood system. Scientists must resort to elaborate computer models to address a multiplicity of variables and feedbacks before they can plausibly suggest (choice of verb is deliberate here) that the net effect of increased carbon dioxide is the observed increase in temperature.

This is the jump that is taken by faith by the media and much of the political left. It FITS with an attitude that the ills of the world, perceived or real, are our fault (or at least Western Civilization’s fault). But it is not science. In one issue of Discover magazine from late last year, they interviewed a climate researcher who retired because he could not get funding for research that did not toe the line that people were causing catastrphic global warming. Al Gore adminstered the grant program. The same issue included an article that says that few politictions question the link between human activity and global warming. (This deserves a post all its own.)

This jump is anti-science. We need to learn more. Again, Jenkins says it very well:

Next, the claim that this should lead to higher temperatures because of the heat-absorbing qualities of the CO2 molecule. A reasonable person might be tempted to take this finding on faith too, for a different reason: because even ardent believers in global warming accept that this fact alone wouldn’t justify belief in manmade global warming.

That’s because all things are not equal: The climate is a vast, complex and poorly understood system. Scientists must resort to elaborate computer models to address a multiplicity of variables and feedbacks before they can plausibly suggest (choice of verb is deliberate here) that the net effect of increased carbon dioxide is the observed increase in temperature.

We need to open to the possibility that human activity is changing the climate. Actually, I would say that there is no doubt that human activity is changing the climate, but we don’t know how. We need to keep an open mind and get more data.

And we need to resist making global warming a political topic in the face of uncertain science. Because when politics or preconception affect science, we get bad science.

I’ve got this far giving Jenkins the nod for saying it well. I’ll close that way as well.

A final thought that probably won’t please the environmentalists: Whatever the truth of climate change turns out to be, today’s vast investment in climate research will likely lead someday to technologies that really will allow us to alter local and global weather.