Newsweek Global Warming Article “Why So Gloomy?”: Point and Counterpoint
Upsala glacier in Patagonia: 1928 vs 2004.
A few people have emailed me a recent article from Newsweek on MSNBC.com about global warming. More specifically, it is an article highly skeptical about global warming from several perspectives. I was going to blog about the article, but before I did I took the liberty of sending it to an actual scientist to see if she could give me a few talking points. Well, she did far more than that, she supplied me with essentially a point for point counterargument to the entire article. Unfortunately, due to my morbid fear of violating copyrights, I cannot reprint the original article. If you aren’t already familiar with it, please read it here before going on the the critique:
Learning to live with global warming
“Why So Gloomy?”
Critique of “Why So Gloomy?”
Courtesy of Amber Kerr
PhD student, Energy and Resources
University of California, Berkeley
Two points jump out immediately:
(1) The PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE. No, we can’t predict everything about future climate. But that’s all the more reason not to mess with it! It is arrogant in the extreme to think that we could predict all the consequences of terraforming our planet – especially since many changes will likely be irreversible.
(2) EQUITY. Yes, it’s true that some people in some locations will benefit from global warming: mostly rich people in northern latitudes. There is almost universal agreement (and dismay) that poor people in tropical latitudes (all ~5 billion of them) stand to be significantly harmed by global warming. Even if wheat will grow better in Canada, and heating bills will be lower in Scandinavia, that’s not fair when people are starving in Niger.
Now, responses to some of his specific points:
* Weather is not climate. It’s completely fallacious to say “We can’t predict the weather next week, so how can we predict the climate 40 years from now?” That’s like saying “I can’t predict what they’re going to serve for lunch at the cafeteria on Friday, so how can I possibly predict that I’m going to get fat by next year if I overeat every single day?” The difference is short-term, chaotic dynamics, versus long-term trends caused by very well-understood causal relationships.
* What does it even mean to say “a temperature where everything is just right?” How would one even define such a temperature? The point is, ecosystems are adapted to the current temperature, because it has been mostly stable for 10,000 years. Current rates of change are alarming in light of the historical record.
* It’s true that there’s no *compelling* evidence for an increase in extreme weather *yet.* But theory predicts that extreme weather will increase as temperature increases. The worry is about the future, not the present.
This is one example of the general pattern of faulty reasoning throughout Lindszen’s article: he’s saying “Oh, we don’t see any problems yet, so why should we worry?” Another example is his point that sea level hasn’t yet risen much. Nope, but it will. The whole point of climate models is to predict things before they happen, so that we can act preventively!
* “inherently untrustworthy climate models… similar to those that cannot accurately forecast the weather a week from now”: This is absurd and Prof. Lindzen, as a meteorologist, knows it. It’s a straight-faced lie.
– First of all, no model is perfect. Models are useful tools but we should, and do, recognize their limitations. To call them “inherently untrustworthy” is just putting a negative, suspicious spin on it.
– Second of all, weather models are not climate models. They use some of the same principles, such as 3D grid cells and land/atmosphere interactions. But climate models use different equations and much different time scales; they are usually run on time-steps of one day. Obviously a weather model can’t be run on one-day time-steps! …I could go on, but you get the idea.
– Third of all, climate models have been validated by using them to predict historical climate events. That is to say, we’ve told them “Here’s the dust that erupted from Mt Pinatubo in 1991; predict what happens to the climate,” and the climate model says “OK” and spits out some numbers that do, in fact, match what really happened. That’s why we have confidence in their ability to predict the future.
* It’s true that the CO2 absorption window will saturate (that is to say, each additional unit of CO2 will have less effect than the previous one), but it’s NOT true that climate models ignore this. They certainly do include it – even simple ones do! I know; I worked with a very simple climate model last summer that explicitly included the saturation effect. Maybe early models didn’t include it, but I think Lindzen is attacking a 20-yr old straw man here. Despite the (modest) saturation effect, we still have plenty to worry about with CO2. Also, nearly 50% of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is due to non-CO2 greenhouse gases that absorb in windows that are NOT close to saturation.
* Regarding the slight cooling trend in the 1950’s – 1970’s: It’s true that we don’t fully understand this, but we know more than Lindzen lets on. It’s thought to be related to the surge in particulates during that time due to widespread industrialization (and, I think, also intensive agriculture).
These particulates reflected incoming light. It wasn’t until the following decades that the greenhouse gas signal started to overwhelm the particulate signal. Yes, there’s still debate over the exact balance of causes, but it in no way invalidates the fundamental relationships described by climate models.* Climate modellers tried to “expunge the Medieval Warm Period from the observational record”? I’ve never heard this before. For a long time, the Medieval Warm Period has been openly and widely discussed as an interesting climatic event that we need to better understand. Maybe one, or several, climate modellers ignored it because it was inconvenient, or ascribed it to observational error. Certainly not all climate modellers.
Again, this is just not true!And finally, regarding his conclusion:
* Yes, certain actions that are undertaken in the name of global warming (like wide-scale ethanol production) could have a net harmful effect.
* And yes, certain sectors in certain locations, e.g. agriculture in the northern countries, could benefit from global warming, at least temporarily.
Both of these things are patently obvious. No problem is universally bad for everyone everywhere. And it’s inevitable that some entities (such as the ethanol lobby) will jump on a bandwagon just to serve their own interests.
Does this mean that global warming isn’t a problem? Does it mean that acting against it would do more harm than good? No!
Again, these are my main responses to the errors that Lindzen repeatedly makes:
– It’s not true that our climate models are “untrustworthy.” They’re not perfect, but they’re pretty good, and have been validated against historical data.
– To the extent that climate models aren’t perfect, that just underscores the need to be cautious, rather than reckless, about changing our climate!
– Even if we haven’t seen drastic effects yet, that doesn’t mean we needn’t worry about the future. The whole point of models is to predict disasters before they happen.
– Yes, there will be some benefits from global warming, but at unacceptable cost to the people who can least afford it: the world’s poor.
A final thought: Lindzen didn’t mention any of the effects on ecosystems; he focuses purely on human costs and benefits. For example, at the current rate of ocean warming, and barring extremely rapid evolution, all coral reefs in the world will be dead before 2100. Does Lindzen care about that?
That’s more than I was planning on writing, and I am honoured to be able to pass it on. Amber also had this to say, which I have moved to here so that her arguments could be presented without preamble:
Thanks for forwarding me this infuriating article. I have a busy day today so can’t reply at too much length, but didn’t want to keep you waiting.
This article is written by Dick Lindzen, who has for decades been a prominent climate skeptic. Most climate scientists are simply fed up with replying to his arguments by now. But, I need the practise, so I will give you my response.
In other words, Dick Lindzen is not exactly a respected voice in the field. I was going to write a blog pointing out the straw man arguments, false analogies, does-not-follow arguments, and other logical fallacies in his article, but I believe Amber Kerr has done a fine job pointing out the factual and scientific absurdity of Lindzen’s claims.
As always, I invite comments.
(The above image is copied from Greenpeace in accordance with their guidelines for public use. Is is not being used for profit and is being used for educational purposes. Amber Kerr’s writings are used with her permission.)
Doug's Darkworld 
Great rebuttal. I was thinking about something like that myself. Now I can link to your post.
It is true, Lindzen never gets tired of repeating the same canards again and again. Search for ‘Lindzen’ on realclimate.org.
fermiparadox
April 9, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Like Al Gore said in An Inconvenient Truth, it’s mostly political.
wilsonc
April 9, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Excellent post. Newsweek has a history of getting climate science horribly wrong; they’re the ones who ran the ridiculous “ice age coming” article in the 70s that denialists get so much mileage from. Thanks for applying genuine critical thinking rather than accepting at face value the blather that comes from Newsweek.
tamino
April 10, 2007 at 7:02 am
Doug,
Here is what you really need to be posting about.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/04/09/bill_ties_climate_to_national_security/
Conspiracy theories coming alive.
-Jack
(Will be back on the subject of the post :)
bereans
April 10, 2007 at 7:41 am
A Phd candidate v.s. a MIT professor and Sloan Fellow?
Are people so whacked that they wont even listen to experts in the field and just dismiss them as laymen?
The global warming BS is nothing more than hysteria whipped up by Al Bore.. and the Enron type business who want to ‘trade’ in this ‘carbon market’.
And you are all eating it up !! Follow the money people and you will find the truth.
ET
April 10, 2007 at 8:08 am
Thanks Jack, I will. The politicization of the global warming issue by both the left and the right is one of the most infuriating aspects of it. And sadly, one of the most counterproductive. Politics may be the death of us all in the long run, it’s sure killing a lot of folks in the short run as political posturing has replaced real dialogue on virtually all fronts.
—Doug
unitedcats
April 10, 2007 at 8:10 am
ET: Argument from authority is a false argument, Lindzen’s lies, misrepresentations, and false arguments are not somehow magically erased because he is at MIT. —Doug
unitedcats
April 10, 2007 at 8:15 am
Hey Doug,
I agree with your statement. I guess when I see a true-blue climate scientist, who is a poltical “atheist”, who doesn’t care at all one way or the other, who is self-funded, and whose livelihood won’t be determined by his conclusions, I may buy the man-made global warming argument completely. Till then, its politics, religion and ideology as usual, and I don’t trust any of them! :)
Btw, I will drop by some of my other friends blogs and get ’em over here. Most of them disagree with my position, but it will make for a lovely discussion.
-Jack
bereans
April 10, 2007 at 9:13 am
Jack, you said:
This not, I repeat not just a theory. It is simple, basic physics. In a nutshell: The sun radiates mostly in the visible spectrum, for which CO2 is transparent. The same amount of energy has to be reradiated back to space by the earth. Ideally, the sun and the earth emit a black body spectrum. Because the temperature is lower, the earth does this mostly in the infrared spectrum. But for IR, CO2 is not transparent, so it absorbs the radiation coming from below. It also reradiates it, but in all directions, and half of this back to the surface. This mechanism is well known, and has been for a long time.
The best proof that it works (but by far the only one) is that the average temperature on the earth is not -18 degrees Celsius, but 15C. This can only be explained by the greenhouse effect caused mainly by water vapor and carbon dioxide. The problem is that we are adding to that. Not even Lindzen disputes that greenhouse gases have an effect, he just disagrees on the amount and believes that other effects will cancel it out.
The lag in CO2 levels after the temperature in the ice cores disprove that theory in no way. You may want to see my post about Milankovitch cycles. reasic also has a few posts about that.
fermiparadox
April 10, 2007 at 10:52 am
Very simple: we can still try to prevent the worst from happening.
fermiparadox
April 10, 2007 at 11:21 am
Yes, I deleted a comment above because it was longer than the original post. (I did however make a copy which I will post in another post and/or email to the original poster.) Please keep your comments to a paragraph or two, it’s only common courtesy. If you feel the need to respond at length, use your own blog or ask me and I will more than likely be happy to post your missive a new post. :)
Thanks —Doug
unitedcats
April 10, 2007 at 5:03 pm
That’s alright. Can you please mail me Jack’s comment? I would like to respond to it on my blog, point by point (when I can find the time).
fermiparadox
April 10, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Jack’s comment will be reposted in it’s own post ASAP, then you may do with it as you may. :) It’s just been a long day and I’m in a surly mood. Sigh.
—Doug
unitedcats
April 10, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I see you didn’t automatically get a pingback from my site — I’m not sure how pingbacks work.
Anyway, I think this is an excellent post. Thanks to Amber for providing an incisive critique of the Newsweek article. I’ve linked to you at the end of my current post.
Stephen
April 11, 2007 at 6:22 am
News Flash.. dateline Earth.
Global warming IS the marriage of politics and ‘belief’ in ‘science’.
Sounds like the religious right now has a “beleiving left”..
Crazy times. And the global warming types refuse to see THEIR hypocracy. They sure sound like “end-timers” .
Yet they see THEIR view of the end of the world as ‘the truth’… and the rest of us are, well, heathens! LOL !
Experts from Major Universities mean nothing and are summarily discounted as ‘propogandists’.. enough to make Himler proud and Barnum smile.
Hey everyone, dont forget to walk to work! :)
ET
April 11, 2007 at 6:46 am
[…] I thank all those who brought Dr Lindzen’s Newsweek article to my attention. I urge everyone to take Dr Lindzen’s credentials as a scientist very seriously, he is a […]
Newsweek's Dr Lindzen, global warming skeptic? « Doug’s Darkworld
April 14, 2007 at 1:40 pm
[…] to Doug’s Darkworld, Lindzen is less than accurate in his description of models: – First of all, no model is perfect. Models are useful tools but we […]
Lindzen: Why So Gloomy? « Reasic
April 17, 2007 at 6:47 am
[…] seen so far is at Doug’s Darkworld who asked a friend who gave a long answer, taking it apart point by point. Another one is at reasic. And of course another one at the absolutely essential resource, […]
Lindzen in Newsweek « Fermi Paradox
April 17, 2007 at 11:41 pm
I’m a PhD scientist that has been practicing science for 30 years in academia and in industry. I don’t dispute the tools of science but I dispute the conclusions, especially when money and politics are involved. Scientists have a difficult time coming up with predictive models of very simple systems when all the input variables can be controlled and tested. Historical climate data is “observational”. One measures CO2 levels in ice and compares to isotopic ratios (which relate to temperature) and expect to derive highly predictive models about the climate. First, correlation is NEVER causation. Did temperature come first then CO2 or vice versa, or is there a third variable the effects both temperature and CO2 that we don’t even know about? Even proving causation is difficult (one reason it takes 5 years to get a PhD). Once you have causation for one variable, you can’t simply apply it to a model that should contain thousands of unknown variables and expect fantastic results because you are extrapolating outside the phase space of known relationships (that’s why you can’t predict with certainty if it’s going to rain in the next 6 hours). But a scientist who wants to dispute this will say “it’s a chaotic system, but we can understand long term trends”. Chaotic is another term for “thousands of variables and relationships that we don’t understand” and “long term trends” is another way to say “one or two variables we can understand”. This almost guarantees every predictive model will fail when it’s based on observational data. When you can’t conduct controlled experiments and positively identify all the factors involved, the model is just a guess. The final thing to consider is that things don’t just keep on growing out of control. There are feedback mechanisms for every effect. The world is a giant ballast that can compensate for a little extra CO2. Change may occur, but it will all settle down by itself. Ask yourself where is all the CO2 coming from? From fossil fuels. And where did that come from? Ancient plants and animals that are buried in the ground. Where did they get all the carbon to fill those ancient graves? From CO2. Where did all that CO2 come from way back then? Some scientists estimate CO2 levels millions of years ago hundreds of times higher than today. And that was a period of lush vegetation and giant creatures. But now if we return to those high levels of CO2 somehow we are all doomed? Maybe we’ll just be a big warm planet again and not have to shovel snow or buy furnaces to keep warm.
Science is Hard
April 19, 2007 at 9:50 am
Have you ever realized that the warming trend is directly proportional to the use of computers? Further, what drives the use of computers? The Internet! And who invented the internet? Al Gore. Therefore the only inescapable conclusion is that GW is Al Gore’s FAULT!!! This whole carbon thing is a ruse to avoid prosecution as a the number 1 climate criminal in history!! Don’t buy it!!! Extradite him to the Hague today!!
They just don't get it
April 20, 2007 at 6:44 am
[…] those following this exchange, here we continue the point by point debate between Amber and Jack regarding Dr Lindzen’s global warming skepticism article in […]
Global Warming and Dr Lindzen, the debate continues... « Doug’s Darkworld
April 22, 2007 at 10:44 am
First, there are many models that are extremely accurate. Practically every model (otherwise known as an equation) in classical physics is an accurate model, unless they are stretched to the realm of Quantum Mechanics or Special Relativity and then they break down. Models such as relationships of energy and velocity, or gravitational attraction, are so accurate that you can launch spacecraft and use those speeds and gravitational attraction to maneuver spacecraft all over the solar system with high accuracy. But those models only work within a defined range. The motions and attractions of subatomic particles require a completely different set of models (Quantum Mechanics) and speeds approaching that of light require special relativity.
The relationship of climate temperature to CO2 level is a poor model. So far the climatic record over 40,000 years shows a relationship (a correlation, not causation) between CO2 level and a proxy temperature. But the absolute range of CO2 levels and temperatures is limited. We don’t have data in the record where CO2 levels are hundreds of times higher than now. So, let’s assume that the CO2 level is predictive of temperature. Now we go ahead and triple the CO2 level, well beyond the range of our data set, plug into our model (or equation) and ask the question “what is the temperature”? This is an extrapolation outside our known data set and very tricky to get the right answer. This is why models such as the Ideal Gas Law are not very good, they work for a narrow range of pressure, temperature, volume, but when those inputs are too high, the model is not predictive.
So current climate models use CO2 level, particulates in the air, and solar irradiance to predict everything? Three main factors and you check this model against the historical record and it works out. Do you think that’s enough? What about multivariate analysis? The main problem I have with scientists (I am one by the way) is they think in univariate terms. Experiments boil down to changing one factor at a time and measure output. Add three of these one-factor experiments together and you have a climate model. In fact, multivariate interactions between the terms become very important in the “real world”. These interactions become the feed-back or feed-forward terms that are very important if you are ever going to get a good model for the “real world”. For example, what if CO2 levels increase the temperature which increases the humidity which increases rainfall which increases the amount of CO2 “washed” out of the atmosphere which decreases the amount of CO2? Or biomass increases which increases the rate at which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere? When I see “experts” including these higher order terms in their models, I’ll start to believe them a tiny bit more, but by only a few percent in extrapolations.
Multivariate Analysis
April 23, 2007 at 9:35 am
Re: Science is Hard
Somehow I doubt your credentials are relevant to your assertions about the potential harm from increased atmospheric CO2.
Please state your qualification discipline and all your sources of funding, so that relevance and any potential conflict of interest can be assessed.
For someone who claims to be so smart, and certainly much smarter than I. You seem to have made many errors and assumptions.
You talk of high CO2 levels and ‘a period of lush vegetation and giant creatures’. Yet you seem to overlook that depending upon the period to which you refer, all those species were well adapted to the then prevailing conditions. But it’s a fair bet that they are now in-fact long extinct. It is accepted that climate change in the past has precipitated mass extinctions [Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic] but humans do not have an automatic right of exemption from extinction. The ongoing climatological experiment being carried out by mankind , will [according to the overwhelming majority of climatologists] if allowed to continue, increase global temperatures by an extent that is likely to stimulate releases of stored methane, which will further accelerate GW. This will undoubtedly further exacerbate the current sequence of documented extinctions and there is a significant probability that if changes are sufficiently rapid and severe this may extend to include all the great apes, including members of the genus Homo. In such a greatly warmed world of which you write, there is unlikely to be a ‘we’ to observe and record what transpires, let alone think wistfully about the bad old days where there was snow and needing fires to keep warm. So while life is extraordinarily robust and very unlikely to be completely eradicated from the earth by such a small amount of warming, it is very likely those very same 3 degrees of anthropogenic climate change [described as ‘dangerous’] could well cause widespread extinctions and any organisms that ultimately survive to experience the new climate are unlikely to include any extant species known to science.
Climate Criminal
May 11, 2007 at 5:57 am
ET unintentionally speaks the truth
quote
Follow the money people and you will find the truth.
end quote
ET tried very hard, but inadvertently let the truth slip out. I bet that ET is actually an ‘ET’, that’s probably why he isn’t concerned about Earth’s global warming, he probably comes from the planet Zog. Personally, I think he should return there.
When one digs for who funds who, then it becomes increasingly clear that many, but not all climate change contrarians receive funding from fossil fuel companies either directly or via so called independent organizations, which are funded by fossil fuel companies. For the most part, contrarians are not climatologists.
There is too much to list here, I refer you to the Union of Concerned Scientists to find out more about the following contrarians:
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf
Sallie Baliunas
Robert C. Balling, Jr.
John Christy
Hugh Ellsaesser
Sherwood B. Idso
David R. Legates
Patrick J. Michaels
Fredrick Seitz
S. Fred Singer
Willie Soon
But not forgetting Richard Lindzen – More details are provided here because ET made so much of him.
– At the end of Dr. Lindzen’s recent Newsweek article was the following statement:
Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.
Sounds impeccable, doesn’t it!
– But note the present tense of the last sentence. Dr. Lindzen carefully avoids any mention of PAST funding received from fossil fuel energy companies. This is misleading and some might conclude deliberately so. Others might say like the rest of his article.
quote
‘Dr Lindzen makes, as he told me, $2,500 a day consulting with fossil fuel interests, and that includes his consulting with OPEC, his consulting with the Australian coal industry, his consulting with the US coal industry and so forth’.
end quote
[http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2005/s1318067.htm]
ET is a big oil Spokesperson
May 11, 2007 at 11:38 pm
I have a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry and have worked in various industries, none pertaining to the oil industry. I receive no funding what-so-ever from any agency or private industry linked to the use of fossil fuels. In fact, I believe people need to stop using so much gasoline. I’m happy the gas prices are rising. People need to live more simply, don’t drive around so much. I myself car-pool every day to work. I burn wood to heat my house in the winter. My electric bill is $35.00 per month. I drive an efficient car. But I have read all the scientific articles pertaining to the climate myth. I have attended scientific conferences and discussed the data. I simply don’t think that you can blame humans for the “warming trend” which is now being called “global climate change” so as not to pin anyone into a corner of “warming”. See, scientists can’t even agree if it’s a warming trend or not. The data is lacking. Everyone engages in the logical fallacy of “slippery slope” argument in which a few scant bits of information are extrapolated to disastrous consequences. We burn oil, CO2 goes up, temperature goes up, ice caps melt, seas rise, crops die, hurricanes hit, tornadoes take care of that which the hurricanes missed, droughts occur, people become extinct. Come one, give me one huge break here. How about this model? CO2 goes up, temperatures rise, ice caps melt, there’s more rain, there are more crops, starving people in the sahara desert now live in a tropical rain forest, no one starves to death anymore. People don’t need to buy clothes anymore. Humans and the rest of the great apes are mammals. Mammals like warm warmth. They need it for survival. Come to think of it, that’s why we burn oil in the winter, otherwise we’d day from the cold. What’s wrong with more warm weather? No scientist on the planet has the data to tell me that disaster is coming because we produce CO2. It’s one giant guess. Even if you assemble a whole bunch of them together and pack them in the same room, all they are doing is guessing. They guessed about the Swine Flu, bird flu, the ice age in 1972, nuclear war, african bees, I could go on and on. And guess what???? They were all dead wrong. Since they are allowed to guess, so am I. Here’s my guess: we’ll all be fine. The planet will be fine. No one is going extinct (yet) until the sun goes super nova and we get burned up. And there’s nothing we can do about it. No amount of Al Gore’s movie mayhem will save us from that fate. And that day is coming, scientists do know that, because they’ve observed the effect with other stars in the universe.
Climate Criminal response
May 24, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I would like to see the funding sources of the scientists who claim that humans cause global warming. Oil money is not the ONLY evil money, now, is it. (^__^)
Also, consider this: suppose your life depended on the truth, and you knew that a big lie was being told. Your livelihood happens to be oil. Wouldn’t you do what you could to get the truth out?
Now suppose you were a research fellow who got funded by sources who were believers in human-caused global warming. Wouldn’t you do what it took to keep your source of funding comming in?
The practice of discrediting people because of their association with oil is lame. Anybody who complains that skeptics of human-caused global warming are oil money mongers need to ask themselves: (1) Do I still drive a car ?, (2) Do I still use electricity to power the computer on which I type [electricity production causes huge CO2] ?, (3) Can I live without either a car or a computer powered by fossil fuel?
Then you need to read some of the research on glaciers in peer reviewed glacier science journals. The trends of advancing and retreating glaciers are not even correlated well with CO2!
Stick to the data, folks. Forget the name calling and credential challenging hoopla.
Robert
Robert Kernodle
January 26, 2010 at 2:01 pm