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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 55401 to 55450:

  1. Lindzen, 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.
  2. Lindzen, 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.
  3. funglestrumpet at 05:28 AM on 23 August 2012
    Lindzen, 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.
  4. Patrick 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.
  5. Global 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.
  6. Global 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."
  7. Global 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.
  8. Global 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.
  9. Patrick 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.
  10. Global 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.
  11. Patrick 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.
  12. Patrick 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.
  13. Patrick 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.
  14. Global 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.
  15. Patrick 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.
  16. Global 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.
  17. New 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.
  18. Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 19:43 PM on 22 August 2012
    Patrick 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.)
  19. Klaus Flemløse at 19:37 PM on 22 August 2012
    Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
    Thanks to MarkR for this summary.
  20. Patrick 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.
  21. Lindzen, 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.
  22. Patrick 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.
  23. Patrick 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.
  24. Lindzen, 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.
  25. Lindzen, 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)?
  26. Lindzen, 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
  27. Lindzen, 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.
  28. Lindzen, 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.
  29. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #33
    And as such it superbly highlights the cognitive bias and deep-seated denial of deniers.
  30. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #33
    We do have cactus in Wisconsin. Other than that the cartoon is just plain silly.
  31. Global 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)
  32. Global 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".
  33. Lindzen, 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 ...
  34. Lindzen, 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.
  35. Global 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.
  36. Lindzen, 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.
  37. Lindzen, 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"
  38. North Carolina Lawmakers Turning a Blind Eye to Sea Level Reality?
    A big part of what's going on in North Carolina is the ongoing battle between locals and the US federal government over who pays when the inevitable losses due to rising sea levels occur. It isn't so much that lawmakers think they can control the sea. New development in areas near the sea that everyone knows will be wiped out one day by sea level rise is encouraged by quirks in existing federal law. If you can get away with building it, you can benefit. There's the Stafford Act. When the predictable new peak storm surge wipes you out, a disaster declaration by the President is all it takes to turn your area into a massive redevelopment project. You can get the benefits of the economic activity and the enjoyment of the coastal property, and when the storm surge comes, someone else will pay. The Act allows the US federal government to pay for rebuilding no matter what, supposedly to put things back the way they were, even though in the face of an accelerating rising sea level common sense would dictate taking that rising sea level into account. "Victims" can be owners of newly constructed rental coastal property wiped out by a storm surge caused by rising sea level everyone knows is coming, and putting things back the way they were can include rebuilding the home and even the beach in front of it, by trucking in sand. And there is the federal Flood Insurance program. It was supposed to be an attempt to discourage people from developing in high risk flood prone areas, but in practice in high risk areas exposed to rising sea level it encourages further development that would otherwise not occur because mortgage money was unavailable. (No federally regulated financial institution can write a mortgage unless flood insurance exists). NFIP flood insurance is the only flood insurance that is available in most flood prone areas in the US. Private insurance views flood insurance as basically impossible to write. Hence the attempted action by the North Carolina lawmakers that looked to outsiders as if they were attempting to legislate how fast the sea will rise. The state has a big say in determining what properties can be insured, because although the national authority FEMA retains the final say, it is the state and locals who draw up the flood insurance maps. This N.C. sea level law was directed at people who draw up the flood insurance rate maps. They were being directed to falsify what the real risk was, as seen by a North Carolina panel, because North Carolina doesn't think it will be required to pay when the flood comes. Once the map has been falsified, development can proceed. If the flood insurance rate map says there is "x" risk, that's what the risk is. FEMA will sell you a flood insurance policy and the bank will grant you a mortgage. At that point it does not matter what scientists have discovered. Its an old issue that will become more important as the years go by. Eg: from the 1985 Pilkey et.al. A National Strategy for Beach Preservation "Sea level is rising and the American shoreline is retreating. We face economic and environmental realities that leave us two choices: (1) plan a strategic retreat now, or (2) undertake a vastly expensive program of armoring the coastline and, as required, retreating through a series of unpredictable disasters." If you add global warming driving accelerated sea level rise to what Pilkey et.al. saw in 1985, you get what FEMA Director Craig Fugate said earlier this year in a speech: "We cannot afford to continue to respond to disasters and deal with the consequences under the current model.... Risk that is not mitigated, that is not considered in return on investment calculations, will often set up false economies. We will reach a point where we can no longer subsidize this."
  39. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Getting back to Lindzen and Crew, if a scientist trades on reputation to mislead the public and persists in doing so in places where critical public policy decisions are being made, with an eye to mutating public policy to fit a fictitious worldview, is the public owed some explanation and guidance by the malefactor's peers? Accepting that members of the lay public are ill-equipped to discriminate between one collection of letter salad and another and that it's particularly difficult to pick an expert when paper qualifications are identical, is there a way for professional societies and the like to provide some guidance? Leading up to this little screed I wrote for Planet3. If a professional society offers specific guidance to members concerning ethical behavior and then acts on that guidance by casting judgment on particular individuals, does it have an obligation to also treat such cases as Lindzen's?
  40. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 04:56 AM on 22 August 2012
    Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Apologies I posted that link without reading it properly the paper doesn't conclude that N is a limiting factor in plankton growth. "A similarly rigorous demonstration of N limitation has not been achieved for marine waters. Therefore, we conclude that the extent and severity of N limitation in the marine environment remain an open question." However 2 papers relating to iron deficiencies in Antarctic and Pacific subarctic.
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] An additional, related paper is here:

    Global phytoplankton decline over the past century (PDF here; author letter response here).

  41. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 04:40 AM on 22 August 2012
    Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Broomy, There are nutients deficiencies in the oceans that limit the growth of plankton.
  42. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Broomy, see Climate change and marine plankton for a thumbnail intro and leads to tons of good literature.
  43. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    re: #9 The idea that there are built-in climate regulators is an attractive one, but exactly when are they supposed to kick-in? CO2 has been increasing steadily (and I believe exponentially), but neither Lindzen's Iris Effect of cloud formation nor a carbon-absorbing plankton bloom have ever materialized. These effects haven't developed in the past -- witness the advance and retreat of glaciers. Why they should pick now (or the near future) to work their magic would need to be explained.
  44. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    I've looked through the site and don't find anything that addresses my question. I accept that the earth is heating up, but has anyone studied the impact of this heating on a feedback loop in which the earth stores more CO2 than prior to warming? For example, if the oceans heat up it seems that it would provide an environment more conducive to plankton growth. I read once many years ago that the CO2 stored in plankton dwarfs that stored in land-based plants. Is it possible that global warming will stimulate plankton growth so that the oceans store considerably more CO2 than it did prior to the warming? Or, does warming inhibit plankton growth and actually reduce the storage capacity of the oceans, and thereby reinforce the earth's warming?
  45. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Lindzen trades on his history and associations. He's been throwing gravel in the mental gears of the population for a couple of decades now, never changing his story even as research increasingly proves him wrong. When a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and MIT Alfred P. Sloan Professor tells you that temperature records in the US show no sign of concern, why wouldn't you believe him? There comes a point where shame is the only effective means of dealing with a miscreant. In this case, appropriate shaming can only come from a unique group, Lindzen's own peers in the scientific community. Unfortunately that community is too squeamish about social propriety and (let's face it) scared of Lindzen's silverback status to deliver the message the public needs to hear.
  46. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    I swear, it's as if Nature and History were washing their hands of us.
    As I've just noted on a ThinkProgress thread (still in moderation as I type):
    With such species-wide, recalcitrant stupidity evolution may very well decide to give humanity a collective Darwin Award. And we can't say that we didn't know that we were nominated.
  47. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    I made my (grim) joke, but I wanted to add that the idea that since CO2 is plant food that it's therefore always beneficial is ludicrous. After all, we can't do without water, but we drown in an excess. And it doesn't need to be a huge excess, either.
  48. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    re: 1 Sprengel's Law Ominously, it's also known as Liebig's Law. I swear, it's as if Nature and History were washing their hands of us.
  49. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Bernard @1 - I hadn't heard specifically of Sprengel's Law, thanks. michael @2 - thanks. Composer @3 - valid point, the specific impacts are a question of science, and whether those impacts are 'good' or 'bad' is a somewhat subjective question. I think most people would agree that increasing droughts are a 'bad' consequence though!
  50. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Actually, I disagree with Lindzen et al's assertion that:
    Whether increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is bad or good is a question of science.
    Science can tell us the impacts of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. We decide whether these are good or bad based on what we value. Since the impacts include ocean acidification, sea level rise, and the decline of food production, all of which imply degradation of human well-being or even destruction of human life, I would say they are bad - indeed, very much so.

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