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vrooomie at 10:35 AM on 23 August 2012The Continuing Denial of the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Andy, somewhat tangential, but in line with your post at 12. And The Band Played On I *lived* through those dark years, lost more than a few friends to the inactions of He Who Shall Not Be Named (as documented by Shilts, that name rhymes with Kagan), and now, ever so depressingly (except now I *are* a scientist) I'm seeing he same denialist claptrap about an issue that may well have much further effect on the planets' population, as a whole. Make no mistake, I do not minimize the importance of HIV/AIDS in the entire pantheon of humanity's ills, but if we make the planet hostile to just everyday life, HIV/AIDS will pale in comparison. I find it a ~very~ difficult thing to remain in my scientists' 'face of calm,' when engaging in a debate with a spittle-spewing denialist, irrespective of what verifiable scientific fact or rationale s/he may be railing against. I have found SkS' articles, easily-linkable and -searchable, to be an invaluable boon to my psyche. -
vrooomie at 10:14 AM on 23 August 2012The Continuing Denial of the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Daniel@17: Taken over to the Dark Side = ostrichcated?...;) I think all forms must have the 'h'! -
Daniel Bailey at 09:33 AM on 23 August 2012The Continuing Denial of the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Of course, all that is left for debate is the precise definition, spelling and usage of ostrichcised/ostrichsized/ostricheyed. -
Bob Lacatena at 07:35 AM on 23 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
vrooomie, Reply about "ostrichism" posted here. -
Bob Lacatena at 07:35 AM on 23 August 2012The Continuing Denial of the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Response to vrooomie from here, about the term "climate ostrich": I like "ostrichism," but the term I actually used was "ostrichitis." Climate deniers suffer from ostrichitis. It causes them to exhibit ostrichism. They are, in fact, climate ostriches. There... the climate ostrich lexicon is complete! -
vrooomie at 07:17 AM on 23 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
"Perhaps MIT really isn't as good as it would have us believe." Mmmmphft! Mmmmphft! (snipped observation)--amned Beaver rings! >;-) Your point is well-taken; someone posited that shame was likely the only solution but, given the extreme amount of attention they've gotten, methinks the FF-funding smothers that in its volume. Shame seems to be a quaint old idea, these days. It's all a mystery to me how this topic *ever* became such a political football, but...see aforementioned FF funding. What they have to throw against their opponents makes what the tobacco industy used seem like a virtual greenback peashooter. -
funglestrumpet at 07:12 AM on 23 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Rob Painting @ 28 You are preaching to the converted. I just wonder how many times this site must expose respected climate scientists dishing out myths and falshoods before we get some political action. I have to assume that not all politicians are bought by election donations. Some must be acting on what information they have seen. If that was false, then they need to be made aware somehow or other of that fact. Perhaps the experience of this summer might help some of the brighter politicians look at climate change with an open mind instead of an open mouth. I don't think that there is a cat in hell's chance of Lindzen suing Dana. But wouldn't it be nice for MIT to enquire why he tolerates being describe in such manner. After all, that MIT tolerates a professor who can be desribed thus without reacting does reflect on MIT itself. Perhaps MIT really isn't as good as it would have us believe. -
vrooomie at 07:02 AM on 23 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
dana@27...a case of 'the [climate change fake skeptic] lady doth protest too much, methinks?" >;-P I, too, am galled at the temerity and hypocrisy seen on WUWT, RC, et al, ad nauseum. It'd be WAY funnier if so many people didn't buy their [self-snipped expletive] version of climate science. -
vrooomie at 06:32 AM on 23 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
FWIW: I drove to the top of Mt. Evans (14,265 ft, 4348 m)this past Monday, in my E Type, and it's the VERY first time I'd done that drive (many, many times, over the years, and saw *not a single bit* of snow, anywhere. That is highly unusual. There are numerous other signs in the state as to warming of the globes... The Global Warmings For fun, if I may be allowed, here is last year's drive. Mt. Evans snow patches 2011 -
vrooomie at 06:21 AM on 23 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
But, I NEVER heard them use the *delicious* term, 'ostrichism," Sph! H/T for that term! -
JoeT at 06:03 AM on 23 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Excellent article Dana -- thanks very much. If I can make a suggestion, it would be extremely helpful if someone would write up a basic tutorial on the physics of drought. In struggling to understand basic climate science, I find that when I read some of the papers, the basic physics is somewhat obscured by the complexity of the models. I found within this site, some very helpful discussion in the comments on Hadley cells and the intertropical convergence zone, but it's not pulled together into a coherent picture for me yet. So for example, I read the very recent Dai (August, 2012) paper and the regions where the models most disagreed with the observational data was in the US and the Sahel -- the observation being that in the recent past the US was wetter than expected and the Sahel dryer. When Dai projects ahead the model then predicts it to be dryer in the US and wetter in the Sahel. What's the physics here? In the quote above from the Revkin article, Dai says it's been colder in the Pacific since 1999 and he expects it to last 20-30 years. But I thought we were entering an El Nino phase where the eastern Pacific should be warmer? And why is the Sahel expected to have more moisture? Is it that the ITCZ is expected to move North from it's present location with increased warming or for some other reason? As I said, a basic tutorial would be immensely helpful for people like me. Thanks. -
dana1981 at 06:00 AM on 23 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
Steve L @8 - that was me who called Linzen the most consistently wrong climate scientist (reposted by Romm). Michaels definitely gives him a run for his money, though as DB notes @9, it's a bit of a stretch to call him a climate scientist these days, since as far as I'm aware he doesn't do serious research anymore. I think it's fair to say that people treat Lindzen as more credible, given that unlike Michaels, Lindzen doesn't work for a fossil fuel-funded think tank. Regardless, both have been quite consistently wrong on climate issues. I'd say Lindzen is more wrong, whereas Michaels' wrongness is primarily due to misrepresenting others' work. -
Rob Painting at 05:58 AM on 23 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Funglestrumpet - Lindzen repeated the CO2 and plant food myth. Mate, even school children know better than that. -
dana1981 at 05:56 AM on 23 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Coincidentally, if you want to see real defamation of climate scientists' characters, stop by WUWT or any climate denialist blog on any day of the week. It really gets funny after they've spent years insulting climate scientists and the entire scientific field, if you even have the temerity to say a word against one of their 'skeptic' heroes, they go ballistic. I once got a nasty email from Anthony Watts for calling Bob Carter a 'fake climate expert'. After the insults he's hurled at Hansen and Mann and any number of climate scientists, that just cracked me up. -
dana1981 at 05:52 AM on 23 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Uncle Pete @22 - I think most climate scientists are extremely worried about AGW. However, they also don't see it as their job to be advocates, and they think that if they become advocates, it will harm their credibility as scientists. funglestrumpet @25 - we didn't say anything about Lindzen's character. We said he is quite possibly the most consistently wrong climate scientist on climate issues, which is factually true, as we documented if you click the associated link. If you say something wrong and I point out you have said something wrong (as just happened), I am not defaming your character in any way. You're just wrong. -
funglestrumpet at 05:28 AM on 23 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
So, we have a widely read website dedicated the science of climate change describing Professor Richard Lindzen, a highly regarded climate scientist at MIT, as: "... quite possibly the most consistently wrong climate scientist on climate issues on the planet." I wonder if I am the only one who will see Professor Lindzen as incompetent, or possibly even as a fraud, if he does not sue for defamation of character and be very interested in the outcome if he does. I would have thought that MIT would want to know why if he fails to sue and also be very interested in the outcome of any proceedings if he does. -
Composer99 at 04:50 AM on 23 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
MarkR: I am referring to comparisons such as:IPCC 1990: "models show a significant equilibrium increase in global average surface temperature due to a doubling of CO2 which ranges from 1.9 to 5.2°C...Most results lie between 3.5 and 4 C...[including other evidence] a value of 2.5°C is considered to be the best guess in the light of current knowledge." Patrick Michaels, 1992: "The mid-1980s’ General Circulation Models (GCMs) for climate change stated, in aggregate, that the planet would warm up some 4.2 C due to doubling of the natural CO2 greenhouse effect"
or:IPCC, 1990: "The areas of warming are generally greater at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere than at low latitudes" Patrick Michaels 1992: "They further predicted that the warming would be greater and sooner in the Northern Hemisphere...The Northern Hemisphere shows none; the Southern Hemisphere...shows more"
or:IPCC, 1990: "The Greenland ice sheet contributes positively to sea level rise, but...the uncertainties are very large" IPCC 1990: "...future increases in temperature and consequently, sea level are unavoidable" Patrick Michaels, 1992: It is also pretty hard to melt the Greenland Ice Cap in winter, so much of the concern[s] about sea level rise vanish." [Emphasis mine.] [I have concatenated the two relevant IPCC quotes for which the same Michaels quote is used.]
or:IPCC 1990: "All three [satellite, weather balloon & thermometer] datasets show a small positive trend over the period 1979-1988...These trends are not significantly different over this short period" Patrick Michaels, 1992: "Since 1979, we have had orbiting platforms that can measure the temperature of the lower atmosphere with an accuracy of +0.01 C, and they have found no warming" [Emphasis mine.]
Michaels may or may not have been expressing scientifically-minded skepticism in 1992, but it seems clear to me that he was nevertheless incorrectly characterizing such accumulated evidence as was available at the time. -
Bob Lacatena at 04:22 AM on 23 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
Alas, I cannot take credit for "ostrich." Dr. Richard Alley and Peter Sinclair have been using the term for a while, and recently Neal King proposed that it be used as a replacement for "denier," since they loathe the term so much -- something I intend to do much of the time, but not all of the time. So please, feel free... call a climate ostrich a "climate ostrich" and make it clear to everyone what they are doing and how they are behaving. -
vrooomie at 03:45 AM on 23 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
Sphaerica@29: in any other thread, your response may well have been adjudicated as too ad hom-my, but, in regards to a recent thread, about how and when it's apropos to fight denialism directly and with forthright honesty, I'd say your series of responses to Dale hit ~juuuust~ the right tenor. It's a tenor with which I agree, and have been using for quite some time now. We scientists have been classically risk averse, as regards stomping on untruths, blatant cherry-picks, and outright mischaracterization of the extant data and research. *No more.* It's with this spirit we all must fight, for if anything has been made more clear than we are running out of time for this kind of "ostrichism" (a term you said earlier, and which I'm going to *steal*!), I'm not sure what has. A friend of mine who works at JPL, who is *very* into this field (thermodynamics, heat balance, et al), rightly pointed out once that science is a kind of blood sport: We tend not to go ad hom, but ad argumentum? Katy, bar the door! Larry has the chops... http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1997ESASP.400..489B Development of a microminiature sorption cooler Well-played, and thanks for the posts. Dale, for your part, if you are actually interested in being an honest skeptic, rather than the fake one you seem to appear to be, please do join in, with rational facts and analysis, and support your assertions. Otherwise, there is no time for this kind of "watch my hands, nothing here to see." -
Bob Lacatena at 03:23 AM on 23 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
Dale (or anyone else): Try going to google and typing:ozone ground temperature
and see what you find. And in the future, ignore kitchen-pseudo-science, like someone who goes to find ozone trends and then mangles that somehow into proof that global warming isn't a problem. -
Bob Lacatena at 03:07 AM on 23 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
Dale, you are purposely not listening and spewing nonsense. The trend is a reflection of greatly reduced pollutants, which overwhelms any GW signal. Any GW signal will probably require temperatures greater than the warming we've seen so far, but that does not make the problem non-existent. The "it hasn't happened yet" denier safeguard is useless. See the skyscraper parable given to you previously. Don't use annoying debate tactics like "I am glad you agree." It's childish. The only thing I agree with is that improvements in pollution are overwhelming any GW effects, and that any such effects will be more pronounced in the future. Chemistry: The creation of ozone increases with increased temperature, so GW will produce more ozone. Secondly, everything in chemistry is competing rates of reaction. When the reaction to produce ozone accelerates (for instance due to increased heat due to GW), then you wind up with a more of that product, meaning a greater concentration of ozone. Thirdly, yes, of course, pollutants affect things. We've discussed this. Ho hum. Fourth, if natural ozone is in balance (always) then why do so many weather and environmental services report on daily ozone levels with warning ratings like "hazardous levels" and public health warnings such as this one. Why is this a big health issue? This ("Natural ozone is in balance as it creates and destroys evenly") is the most ridiculous claim you've tried to make. Temperature does have a lot to do with ozone creation, and you are printing flat out, easily fact-checked lies. NASA: Ozone and climate change What is ozone? Ozone and climate at the surface Tropospheric ultraviolet radiation: Assessment of existing data and effect on ozone formation (Gery et al, 1987) [Note that I earlier stated that the reaction for formation of ozone was endothermic. This was in error. However, increased temperatures do increase photochemical reaction rates and so do affect ozone creation.] So much for your claims of "just being curious." The climate ostrich sticks his head in the sand to get away from the heat. -
MarkR at 02:50 AM on 23 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
#6 Composer99 I think we can pretty confidently say that nowadays. Michaels deletes inconvenient data from graphs and refuses to acknowledge inconvenient science like the extensive evidence for cooling aerosols, or choosing Hansen's forcing scenarios based on a trick of semantics rather than actual evidence. Knowing that nowadays he's either ignorant or willingly distorting evidence shouldn't affect our judgment of past claims. In 1992 there was a lot less evidence for major human caused global warming and any of his comments were reasonable. Many climate models were running hotter than most modern evidence suggests they should have been. The hemispheres showed pretty similar warming by then (likely because aerosol loading was higher in the north), etc. This post isn't meant as a criticism of being skeptical in the past before we had much of our current evidence. Being skeptical is always the right way to aproach things. But you'd think that new evidence that contradicts a hypothesis would cause you to change your hypothesis. Michaels seems more willing to dismiss inconvenient evidence, than dismiss a convenient hypothesis. -
John Hartz at 02:34 AM on 23 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
The US-based organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) has this to say about the connection between global warming and ground-level ozone. “Hotter temperatures will speed the formation of ground-level ozone, the main component of smog.” This statement is contained a summary of how global warming impacts air pollution posted on the PSR website. To access this summary, click here. I do believe that the staff of PSR is more knowledgable about this matter than is Dale. -
Daniel Bailey at 02:31 AM on 23 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
Steve, I think you stretch the definition of climate scientist beyond the structural integrity of the universe by including Michaels. Climate propagandist, yes. Climate scientist, no. -
Steve L at 02:20 AM on 23 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
Joe Romm seems to think that Richard Lindzen is the most consistently wrong climate scientist around. Perhaps it's Pat Michaels? I think a contest, with campaign-style pageantry, could really be interesting and maybe even get some publicity. -
shoyemore at 01:45 AM on 23 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
Harry Potter may not have been real in 1990, but one of the series of Potter books (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) is an unexpectedly vivid desciption of the authoritarian takeover of a liberal institution. This is the replacement of Dumbledore as Headmaster by the domineering Dolores Umbridge. One of Umbridge's key "innovations" is the denial of Voldemord's return, and the replacement of the "scientific" subject Defence From The Dark Arts by turgid mumbo-jumbo. This comment may be off-topic, but I hope you see where it is going .... When Voldemord does take over the Ministry of Magic, Umbridge becomes one of his leading collaborators. There is a message in the Harry Potter books about free thought and free enquiry, so that it is great to see them so popular. -
Dale at 00:44 AM on 23 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
Sphaerica You brought up inversions increasing not me. I am curious why you refuse to look at the data I linked. It is max hourly count, not monthly average. We have already agreed this has nothing to do with GW and I am glad you agree. That was the basis of my original post in this thread, that ozone is a non issue in terms of GW. You speak of the chemistry. Firstly, ozone relies on solar intensity, not heat. So GW will not cause more ozone. Secondly natural ozone is created and destroyed just as quickly as the oxygen atom is very fluid in its movements. Thirdly, UV and O2 are the prime building blocks, but pollutants can substitute to create the required O atom. Natural ozone is in balance as it creates and destroys evenly. Human pollutants have increased the number of building blocks, but as I said, if you only have the building blocks to create X ozone, you cannot get X+Y ozone from changing anything except the amount of pollution. Heat has nothing to do with ozone creation, so GW has nothing to do with ozone creation. Thus, ozone is a pollution issue, not a GW issue as this article implies. -
Composer99 at 00:03 AM on 23 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
Michaels seems to have a habit of incorrectly representing the science, stretching back to the 90's, given his characterization of what "they" (the IPCC, climate models, mainstream climate science) said when compared to the actual relevant text from the IPCC reporting. -
Bob Lacatena at 22:45 PM on 22 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
Dale, First, your chemistry is out of whack. The only building block one needs to create ozone is O2. Pollutants accelerate the production of ozone, but are not necessary. So your statement that "it doesn't matter how much higher the temp is" is completely false. In either a polluted or a pollution free environment higher temperatures coupled with UV radiation will produce more ozone. But for now, in a pollution-intense environment, reducing pollutants is having a notable effect. Your statement on thermal inversion impacts is confusing. Inversions are a local phenomenon, caused by many local factors. What does global warming have to do with more inversions? Inversions will simply help to create an environment where global warming can cause more days of dangerously high ozone levels. I already addressed your statement about trends. Monthly and annual averages are useless because if you double the "dangerous ozone level days" from 2 to 4, your average may still drop because ozone levels other days drop. All the trends now show is that anti-pollution action is helping. It says nothing whatsoever about global warming. At the same time, once again... there are many effects that you will not statistically recognize after 0.6˚C to 0.8˚C of warming, effects that will be very pronounced with 2˚C to 4˚C of warming. You are like the man who jumped from the top of the skyscraper, and was heard to say every time he passed an open window: "so far, so good." Lastly, you previously said:I ask because I'm curious (I'm in Australia, so UV and ozone are of concern for me), not to say "ah ha".
Yet you are insistent on the tired old meme that "it hasn't happened yet, so it won't happen." You should look at this recent post about how Patrick Michaels did the same thing back in 1990. You've been given explanations as to why your logic is flawed, and yet you cling to the hope that this is a non-issue, and you close your eyes to the problem. Sorry, Dale. From what I can see, you're a climate ostrich. -
Ari Jokimäki at 20:03 PM on 22 August 2012New research from last week 33/2012
There was a mistake in the "after that" part. I originally wrote the title so that it implied that sea level rise continues at least 200 years after 2100, but as this study period is 2000-2200, the abstract meant that SLR continues at least next 200 years, i.e. at least 100 years after 2100. I have corrected the title for this paper. -
Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 19:43 PM on 22 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
This is excellent and shows that not much has changed in regard to misrepresentation of the science of the day. (In the early 90s I was chomping at the bit to get onto the Internet, but all that was publicly available in Australia in those days were private services. I started off with Compuserve. Universities and research institutes were linked early on, but otherwise people had to go through AOL or Compuserve or similar. I recall Gopher, BBS's, and some good people on Compuserve itself who were very willing to share expertise.) -
Klaus Flemløse at 19:37 PM on 22 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
Thanks to MarkR for this summary. -
anchr at 18:41 PM on 22 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
The list of examples are rather a minor issue, but since the topic came up .... In 1990, the Internet certainly existed (I was a user back then), but knowledge of it was not that widespread. According to the author herself, she started writing on the first Harry Potter book in 1990 starting with the Potter character from the start, although the book was not published until 1997. As for Michael Phelps, he was born in 1985. So as examples of did-exist-but-were-not-generally-known, these examples are technically correct .... though I don't think this particular passage in the text will go down in history as a great example of convincing and striking rhetoric. -
Bernard J. at 18:26 PM on 22 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
I've always said that Homo sapiens is a misnomer and that Homo intellectus is more appropriate, but given the commentary here I would suggest that Homo apoptosis is most apt. -
rugbyguy59 at 16:59 PM on 22 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
Harry Potter is a character in a series of real world books and movies.....,but perhaps the example could be more concrete. Nice summary. You guys do great work. Thanks. -
urostor at 16:27 PM on 22 August 2012Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
Harry Potter is a fairy tale, I don't think that claiming his "existence" is a good example. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:12 PM on 22 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Uncle Pete: Homo industrialis. I like to think of us as Homo bolidus, a species imitating a extremely large impacting body moving along a planet-wrecking trajectory. We're supposed to be smarter than a bag of rocks but so far our collective intelligence seems confined to areas mostly removed from competently planning our future. Hence we're anticipating and superseding the arrival of the next giant bolide with our own act. -
Uncle Pete at 14:38 PM on 22 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
I agree with Bernhard J @7 . Homo industrialis collectively deserve a Darwin Award. And I must thank Dana for continuously strapping on the armor of logic and rationality and getting into the breach once more. Am I wrong in thinking that climate scientists in general are rather blase about AGW (Hansen being the exception)? -
sailrick at 14:20 PM on 22 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Lindzen "CO2 levels are below the optimum levels for most plants......" Funny how there seemed to be enough CO2 during the entire Holocene, at lower atmospheric concentration than now. And long before the Holocene -
dana1981 at 13:42 PM on 22 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Well Lindzen thinks uncertainty applies to everyone but him. He always plays up the aerosol forcing uncertainty, for example, and yet in his own calculations treats it as though the forcing is zero with zero uncertainty. We can't know how the climate is going to change in the future, but we know for sure it's not going to change very much! Frustrating indeed. -
JohnMashey at 13:32 PM on 22 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
re: 15, on Steve Schneider People may recall that Steve spent a lot of effort trying to include uncertainty in IPCC and explain it as well as possible to differing audiences, including random groups of people on Stanford lawns for open talks. We were talking one time and he said that Lindzen was so frustrating, not so much because his views were so far off from the data, but more because he just wouldn't admit to any uncertainty about them, and hadn't budged for decades. -
Daniel Bailey at 10:11 AM on 22 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #33
And as such it superbly highlights the cognitive bias and deep-seated denial of deniers. -
Steve Case at 10:06 AM on 22 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #33
We do have cactus in Wisconsin. Other than that the cartoon is just plain silly. -
Dale at 09:16 AM on 22 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
Sphaerica At the bottom of the page I linked to above is the data for individual stations. LA is one of the CA ones. For those who don't want to download and look, the trend is decreasing. I would have thought considering the temperature increase over the last few decades that we'd already be seeing thermal inversion impacts. Yet observations around the world do not show this occurring. Temps have increased between 0.6-0.8C (depending which graph you look at) since 1970. How much does it need to rise before any of the predictions start occurring? Like you say, it's to do with reducing pollants that has caused the reduction. It's nothing to do with GW. I'm glad we agree on that. If you've only got the building blocks to create ten ozone molecules, it doesn't matter how much higher the temp is, or how much more sun hits the air, you're only going to get ten ozone molecules. BTW, here's another link showing how the number of "bad ozone days" is reducing in LA. (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amartinez/californias_lungs_need_a_passi.html) -
Bob Lacatena at 08:50 AM on 22 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
For anyone wishing to research this further (there is a lot of health information available on ozone), search specifically for "ground-level ozone". -
dhogaza at 08:34 AM on 22 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Peter Wirfs: "These harmful blooms have been shutting down our fisheries from time to time, which directly impacts peoples livelihoods. Apparently they don't have proof of causation, only theories. But climate change is one of the leading theories." They're nothing new. The question here is whether or not climate change is responsible for what appears to be an increase in the frequency of these toxic algae blooms. It's similar to our state of knowledge regarding extreme weather events. The article you cite discusses other anthropogenic influences that might be responsible, and my guess is that the true answer is likely to be a mix (anthropogenic increases in nutrients due to ag runoff is real, transportation of phytoplankton via ship ballast is real, climate change is real ...), BTW if you're Allen's brother he and I knew each other as teen computer geeks ... -
scaddenp at 07:39 AM on 22 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Broomy, not to mention that the paleoclimatic records would suggest that more CO2 goes into the atmosphere is the actual feedback when the temperature warms. Oceans can hold less; more released from tundra, asian swamps etc. -
Bob Lacatena at 06:46 AM on 22 August 2012Global Warming - A Health Warning
Dale, Following your links and looking at the graphs... they are 100% inapplicable. We are not saying that net ozone production will increase. Ozone levels are a rate-of-reaction thing between the competing pathways to create and destroy ozone. It's constantly going on, and usually in fair balance. Your average for an entire state for an entire month is going to be meaningless, as is (for this purpose) any trend. The trends you see probably have more to do with increasing air quality (i.e. removing pollutants that contribute to/catalyze ozone production) than anything else. For global warming, I believe we are talking about the sort of scenario I pointed out in California, for example, a case where an unusual heat wave hits with clear skies and a local inversion -- this causes ozone levels to rise to dangerous levels (for people) for a few days in a very local area (say Los Angeles, for example). I think you can see how this will not show up in the statistics you demonstrated. What you'd really want is a tally, by city, for number of days of ozone above a certain threshold, to see if that's increasing over time. Even then, it wouldn't apply to all cities. Ozone may never be a problem in Minneapolis. That doesn't mean it won't be a problem anywhere, though. -
Pete Wirfs at 06:46 AM on 22 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
Regarding Oceanic trends, I've been very interested in this ongoing story off our Pacific coast line. I live within an hours drive of some of the effected areas of our coast; http://www.oceanandair.coas.oregonstate.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=content.display&pageID=174 These harmful blooms have been shutting down our fisheries from time to time, which directly impacts peoples livelihoods. Apparently they don't have proof of causation, only theories. But climate change is one of the leading theories. -
David Lewis at 06:22 AM on 22 August 2012Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
I found Richard Kerr's "Greenhouse Skeptic Out in Cold" article published in Science 246.4934 (1989) useful to understand Lindzen: Then, as now, some say: "no other US skeptic has such scientific stature". Kerr got Lindzen to admit how unscientific his critique is: "what Lindzen has now is not so much a complete model as an idea about how control of atmospheric temperature works. Indeed, he describes it himself as an idea of a theological or philosophical nature" Kerr quoted Schnieder in 1989 on Lindzen's ideas: "I know of no observational evidence supporting it". His latest 2012 paper was rejected by PNAS editors as you discussed in your analysis because it was low quality and its conclusions were not justified. Nothing has changed. In his book "Storms of My Grandchildren" Hansen shares a story about when he shared a cab with Lindzen: "I considered asking Lindzen if he still believed there was no connection between smoking and lung cancer. He had been a witness for tobacco companies decades earlier, questioning the reliability of statistical connections between smoking and health problems". Hansen says didn't ask that question during that cab ride, but he says he did ask Lindzen later, at a conference both were attending: "He began rattling off all the problems with the data relating smoking to health problems, which was closely analogous with his views of climate data"
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