Lindzen on Global Warming, once again

[Thales 0]

This is a talk Lindzen gave at CEI in late October. This is the fullest and most complete refutation of global warming I've seen, since it hits at the heart of the matter so directly. Lindzen is simply the best critic of AGW, because he's a top flight atmospheric scientist who is strongly grounded in the facts, and is far too smart to be taken by charlatans of any stripe.

The talk is about an hour long, but considering how dangerous the issue is to our freedoms it is time well spent.

I'll give the rest as a spoiler, since I'm guessing some of you would rather hear Lindzen speak in his own words, because he says some great things.

The graph he presents in part 2, at about 8 minutes in, with the pink fuzzy area around the temperature trend graph is something I'd never heard before. What it says is that the statistical error in temperature measurements is such that there is no discernible temperature trend since 1987.

His hardest hitting point, which has been publicized the last few months, is about the total radiation leaving the earth. This proves beyond a doubt that the GW models are all wrong, because they present a picture that is opposite to what the real world data shows. All of the assumptions about some big positive feedback are completely false.

Lindzen also makes a note that he doesn't call himself a "global warming skeptic", because the term "skeptic" gives those promoting AGW too much credit. They have no scientific foundation for the AGW position. Lindzen instead prefers to call himself an AGW "denier"!! How great is that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM8rSSuJ_wQ...feature=related

This talk should be given the widest possible distribution!

The link above is broken. You can find the talk here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmGiiNQ0yHQ...feature=related

[mweiss 0]

Just a reality check here.. isn't Prof. Lindzen the one who asserted that cigarette smoking did not cause lung cancer? If he was wrong about smoking, what makes him anymore credible about climate change? (Just playing devil's advocate here.)

[Bob Kolker 0]

Just a reality check here.. isn't Prof. Lindzen the one who asserted that cigarette smoking did not cause lung cancer? If he was wrong about smoking, what makes him anymore credible about climate change? (Just playing devil's advocate here.)

Getting A wrong does not necessarily imply you got B wrong. If A and B are independent issues, then a mistake in A does not imply a mistake in B. Errors can be independent.

Lindzen has been peer reviewed and his science is sound. It has passed muster. In addition to peer review he has been honored by some of his colleges for the quality of his work. He as won awards.

As to the smoking issue, until specific carcinogens were found in tobacco smoke (and they were) the connection between smoking and lung cancer (and other obstructive lung diseases) was statistical. It took a long time to demonstrate the ways in which the chemicals in tobacco and other parts of the cigarette did the damage. Given what we know of the physiological effects of the several hundred nasty ingredients in cigarettes, few reasonable people will doubt the health dangers of smoking cigarettes.

Lindzen's position on global warming has been to point out the connection between human activity and global warming has not been absolutely established and that other factors may be at work. He has also taken dead aim on the way the entire issue has been politicized. Politics and science do not mix well. He has been attacked not because his results are wrong, but because he is in opposition to The Establishment. He has questioned the quality of the data and the methodology used by people connected with the IPCC. This does not endear him to people who have a horse in that race.

Global warming has occurred. That is a fact. The world has warmed up since the (so-called) Little Ice Age. That ended in the middle of the 19th century, after a five hundred year cooling down period. The world has gotten back to what it was during the medieval warm period.

Bob Kolker

[RayK 0]

Lindzen has been peer reviewed and his science is sound. It has passed muster. In addition to peer review he has been honored by some of his colleges for the quality of his work. He as won awards.

I thought you have stated that you like the "rouges" in fields that take a stance outside the norm? Well, if that is so, then who cares if one is "peer reviewed" as long as their science is sound. And I would add, that the "rogues" are usually not honored by their colleagues as that would be an indirect agreement of the rogue's stance. I am not stating that scientist should not be "peer reviewed." But I am saying that "passing muster" is not the primary reason of what leads me to agree or disagree.

[Thales 0]

Just a reality check here.. isn't Prof. Lindzen the one who asserted that cigarette smoking did not cause lung cancer? If he was wrong about smoking, what makes him anymore credible about climate change? (Just playing devil's advocate here.)

I have never heard this, where do you get it from? Lindzen is a climate scientist, one of the foremost experts, not a medical scientist. Anyway, Lindzen's reputation as a climate scientist is through the roof. I have read him for a long enough period of time to know he is solid as a rock.

[Bob Kolker 0]

Lindzen has been peer reviewed and his science is sound. It has passed muster. In addition to peer review he has been honored by some of his colleges for the quality of his work. He as won awards.

I thought you have stated that you like the "rouges" in fields that take a stance outside the norm? Well, if that is so, then who cares if one is "peer reviewed" as long as their science is sound. And I would add, that the "rogues" are usually not honored by their colleagues as that would be an indirect agreement of the rogue's stance. I am not stating that scientist should not be "peer reviewed." But I am saying that "passing muster" is not the primary reason of what leads me to agree or disagree.

Peer review means work checked for accuracy by qualified parties. It is one of the protocols and conventions of science. It is the best guarantee against observer bias.

The way to avoid mistakes is to have them spotted by people who can do it. Working carefully is not the ultimate guarantee against error. The subtle error in scientific work is observer bias. That means overlooking or tending to overlook instances that contradict or refute one's hypotheses.

Also one of the major major protocols is having one's experimental results duplicated or corroberating by an independent observer. Experimental results are generally not accepted until duplicated which is a form of checking for error.

Even Einstein could barely wait for a qualified team to verify his prediction for light bending around the sun. He finally got the good news from Eddington's team in 1919. That corroberation of his General Theory of Relativity is what made him a scientific super-star. When a second team corroberated the prediction (with even better precision than Eddinton's team) with another eclipse, Einstein had it made.

Please keep in mind that the smartest and most creative people in the world are capable of error. That is why error checking (and elimination) is so important.

It just occurred to me that if the designer of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge had someone bring up the issue of resonance and wind lift, "Galloping Gertie" would have been built differently it would probably still be standing.

Bob Kolker

[Bob Kolker 0]

Just an additional word here. It is important to understand that science is a collaborative enterprise. Yes, there are rivalries, competitions and even some profound disagreements between and among scientific workers. But the progress of science is built on the multiplication effect of using the work of others to bootstrap and expand one's own work. Also the collaboration in checking and error elimination is what keeps science "honest" in the long run. There is a built in symbiotic effect in the what scientists operate and use each other's works and ideas.

Bob Kolker

[Bob Kolker 0]

Correction. That last sentence should read "in the way scientists..."

Bob Kolker

[mweiss 0]

I was watching a Lindzen speech on YouTube and found a dissenting comment that took me to some links that revealed his involvement with the tobacco companies. Motive seemed to be established for covering up the connection between cancer and tobacco. I would have to spend hours retracing those steps to find the links again. Perhaps their still in my YT viewing history. I'll see if I can look it up when I have more time.

Bob, good argument, and I know that being wrong about one topic does not imply error on another, however, it is a data point that suggests the possibility that he might be working for the oil companies or some other corporate entity that would be harmed by any Cap n Trade legislation.

Lindzen makes good arguments about the politics of AGW, and logically, they make sense and I personally agree with them. The sum of what I understand about earth science causes me to draw the implicit conclusion that man is an insignificant factor in climate change.

Also, I would ask what peers reviewed his work? These days, with the internet and availability of information, one needs to make sure the research is irrefutable.

[RayK 0]

Bob,

A person can do all the things you mention themselves if their allegiance is to existence not any preconcieved idea or theory, for example Charles Darwin.

[Thales 0]

The peer review process has been severely compromised wrt the issue of GW. Remember, we have out right fraud in that process. Many scientists have long complained about this, but now we have absolute proof, thanks to Climategate.

[Bob Kolker 0]

The peer review process has been severely compromised wrt the issue of GW. Remember, we have out right fraud in that process. Many scientists have long complained about this, but now we have absolute proof, thanks to Climategate.

The IPCC has gone out of its way to make a proper independent peer review possible. It is not enough for some peers to review the results. The check has to be made by independent parties who do not have a dog in the hunt or a horse in the race.

Bob Kolker

[rtg24 0]

The peer review process has been severely compromised wrt the issue of GW. Remember, we have out right fraud in that process. Many scientists have long complained about this, but now we have absolute proof, thanks to Climategate.

The problem is not the peer review process but the peers; that is, in fields where funding is in majority from government or political sources. In fields such as biotechnology, this is less the case.

The solution is not to bypass or ignore it, but to forbid universities and other institutes of higher education from accepting government money.

Harvard, Stanford and their ilk have demonstrated time and time again that fully private education works. Cambridge University used to be the top in the world; it is now sitting at a paltry fourth place behind three US institutions, because of this (and in part because the quality of its students has dropped due to government-imposed restrictions on international students and meritocratic admissions - e.g. via quotas of state school students even if they do not surpass the private schooling students - and due to the low quality of British state schooling and curriculum - make more pass every year! - prompting some of the most famous private schools to switch to the International Baccalaureate system).

Note that I do not withhold Ivy League places as brilliant examples of private education, as they receive much money both from the government - in the form of research loans for such things as global warming "research" - and from politically inclined donors - such as the Kennedy School at Harvard, whose task is to form the next generation of Obamas.

[RayK 0]

The peer review process has been severely compromised wrt the issue of GW. Remember, we have out right fraud in that process. Many scientists have long complained about this, but now we have absolute proof, thanks to Climategate.

The IPCC has gone out of its way to make a proper independent peer review possible. It is not enough for some peers to review the results. The check has to be made by independent parties who do not have a dog in the hunt or a horse in the race.

Bob Kolker

You miss the biggest point. Independently minded people are going to think of new ideas that their so called "peers" sometimes do not or will not grasp. If I was going to wait for my so called "peers" or colleagues to come up to where I am at I would still be like most, wasting my time riding a bike thinking I am doing anything beneficial to my body. I do not need "peer" support nor do I care what most others think and I have not got the time to wait for their backing. What one primarily needs is not "peer review" but instead total honesty and integrity in the search for answers and the truth.

[Bob Kolker 0]

The peer review process has been severely compromised wrt the issue of GW. Remember, we have out right fraud in that process. Many scientists have long complained about this, but now we have absolute proof, thanks to Climategate.

The IPCC has gone out of its way to make a proper independent peer review possible. It is not enough for some peers to review the results. The check has to be made by independent parties who do not have a dog in the hunt or a horse in the race.

Bob Kolker

ch /possible/impossible/

Darn it Betsy, can't you spare a fifteen minute edit window?

Bob Kolker

[Bob Kolker 0]

You miss the biggest point. Independently minded people are going to think of new ideas that their so called "peers" sometimes do not or will not grasp. If I was going to wait for my so called "peers" or colleagues to come up to where I am at I would still be like most, wasting my time riding a bike thinking I am doing anything beneficial to my body. I do not need "peer" support nor do I care what most others think and I have not got the time to wait for their backing. What one primarily needs is not "peer review" but instead total honesty and integrity in the search for answers and the truth.

Total honest comes in the form in independent review. If the reviewer does not have a stake in the correctness of the theory, he is more likely to spot an error.

I think you are missing a point. Here it is. No matter how smart or creative a person is, he can make a mistake. In addition to which there is always the matter of observer bias. The purposes of independent view are:

1. error detection

2. spotting observer bias. It takes an independent reviewer to bring to the attention of the proposer several cases which he had not considered. This exposes an error of omission which anyone can make, regardless of how smart or creative he is.

3. A design flaw in an experiment which can be introduced by making an implicit assumption. The Geometer Euclid, for example, made several implicit assumptions which were not exposed for nearly two thousand years.

Another example: Albert Einstein in his initial prediction of the light bending around the sun was off by a factor of two. Later he discovered that he had not thought to regard the gravitational field as a gravitating body itself. Now he caught the error, but someone like Eddington or Hilbert could have also caught this error. While they did not think up the theory of gravitation as spacetime curvature, they understood it well enough to have caught the error. Eddington understood the theory so well he was able to provide experimental evidence of its correctness.

You are incorrect to assume that independent reviewers could not spot a mistake, even if they could not have thought up the original theory in the first place. Bottom line: Checking is necessary regardless of how smart the proposer of the theory or hypothesis is.

The purpose of the review is not to prove the theory is right, but to show it is wrong, if there is a mistake.

Bob Kolker

[B. Royce 0]

The peer review process has been severely compromised wrt the issue of GW. Remember, we have out right fraud in that process. Many scientists have long complained about this, but now we have absolute proof, thanks to Climategate.

The IPCC has gone out of its way to make a proper independent peer review possible. It is not enough for some peers to review the results. The check has to be made by independent parties who do not have a dog in the hunt or a horse in the race.

Bob Kolker

ch /possible/impossible/

Darn it Betsy, can't you spare a fifteen minute edit window?

Bob Kolker

You just did edit, and we all get it---got it even without it.

[RayK 0]

Bob,

No, I am not missing the point and other people can make mistakes also especially if they are some so called "expert." I find the thing the "experts" are expert in is something from the past not in the development of new ideas which I find usually limits their thinking.

Total honesty comes in the form of using reality/existence as one's guide which is what I stated earlier. I do not need a "peer" to let me know I made a mistake, reality will let me know if I make a mistake. If I do not get from point A to point B in the way that my ideas prescribe I should, then I have made a mistake which should lead me to check my premise. I do not need you nor anyone else to tell me so, my allegiance to reality and my own honesty should be more than enough. I have been doing just what I explained for as long as I can remember and have not needed any other person to review my ideas (not that it cannot be helpful in certain situations) to give them validity. Maybe you need to be "peer reviewed" but I do not need someone else to give my ideas validity.

Again, what you have explained is something the honest and integral researcher can do all on their own if their allegiance is to existence.

[Bob Kolker 0]

Again, what you have explained is something the honest and integral researcher can do all on their own if their allegiance is to existence.

I think we may have been talking past each other. I have assumed (and perhaps I should have so so explicitly) that those who review, vet and test the work of others are honest agents. They are motivated by finding the truth of the matters under investigation.

People in the sciences are overwhelmingly truth and fact oriented. The world is their workbench. The motivation of scientists is (or ought to be) to find out how the world really is and how the world really works.

There are the occasional flim-flam artists and frauds in the field but, fortunately, they are in the vast minority. What is really problematic is the subtle influence of the grant. Most people in science who receive their incomes from grantors (either private or governmental) are bound to be influenced to the extent of not provoking hostility from the folks who give them the money and resources to operate. This may be in the form of spin on the results or in suppressing results that are totally opposed to the folks paying the bills. That is why when a scientist gets money from a company or from a government agency he is less likely to pursue lines of research that oppose the interests of his benefactors. Hence a chemist or a biologist working for a tobacco company (for example) is not going to passionately pursue the health risks of smoking, at least not to the fullest extent possible.

That is why science should be funded by neutral sources who do not have a vested interest in the outcome other than that it should be truthful and correct.

Bob Kolker

[RayK 0]

Bob,

I agree with your last post.

[Thales 0]

The peer review process has been severely compromised wrt the issue of GW. Remember, we have out right fraud in that process. Many scientists have long complained about this, but now we have absolute proof, thanks to Climategate.

The problem is not the peer review process but the peers; that is, in fields where funding is in majority from government or political sources. In fields such as biotechnology, this is less the case.

Yes, this is what I meant. I didn't mean the peer review process as such, but the peer review process in this case, due to corruption within. We simply can't trust it here, because it's being used as a tool for advocacy, not science.

[B. Royce 0]

Again, what you have explained is something the honest and integral researcher can do all on their own if their allegiance is to existence.

I think we may have been talking past each other. I have assumed (and perhaps I should have so so explicitly) that those who review, vet and test the work of others are honest agents. They are motivated by finding the truth of the matters under investigation.

People in the sciences are overwhelmingly truth and fact oriented. The world is their workbench. The motivation of scientists is (or ought to be) to find out how the world really is and how the world really works.

There are the occasional flim-flam artists and frauds in the field but, fortunately, they are in the vast minority. What is really problematic is the subtle influence of the grant. Most people in science who receive their incomes from grantors (either private or governmental) are bound to be influenced to the extent of not provoking hostility from the folks who give them the money and resources to operate. This may be in the form of spin on the results or in suppressing results that are totally opposed to the folks paying the bills. That is why when a scientist gets money from a company or from a government agency he is less likely to pursue lines of research that oppose the interests of his benefactors. Hence a chemist or a biologist working for a tobacco company (for example) is not going to passionately pursue the health risks of smoking, at least not to the fullest extent possible.

That is why science should be funded by neutral sources who do not have a vested interest in the outcome other than that it should be truthful and correct.

Bob Kolker

I disagree with the last statement, for the simple reason that "a vested interest" is a selfish one, and I expect a donor to the sciences to have a selfish interest in donating. It is all right if he is hoping for result A just as long as he is selfishly honest enough to accept result B if that should be the case. A selfishly honest man will not be provoked into hostility by a ruthless dedication to the truth.

[Mac 0]

I disagree with the last statement, for the simple reason that "a vested interest" is a selfish one, and I expect a donor to the sciences to have a selfish interest in donating. It is all right if he is hoping for result A just as long as he is selfishly honest enough to accept result B if that should be the case. A selfishly honest man will not be provoked into hostility by a ruthless dedication to the truth.

What would be an unselfishly honest person?

A little off topic I suppose, but perhaps a place to bring up some thoughts on selfishness and honesty.

In speaking to a person who is not an Objectivist "selfish" is hard to use. In fact you can't use the term "selfishness" yet. Because its meaning can't be

understood today. When people know what selfishness means, you won't have to use the term at all. Or you'll use it as short for rational self interest and people will know that's what you mean. For example, speaking loosely, you could say individualism instead of selfishness. Much more palatable to most people. But that's just the trouble - most people are tone deaf. Motherhood and apple pie. Of course everyone is in favor of individualism just as everyone is in favor of self-sacrifice. So if you advocate individualism and everybody appears to agree with you it's because they HAVEN'T understood a word you've said. The word selfishness, on the contrary, does force the issue. All you mean is you have a right to your own life, you intend to assert that right and pursue your values. And that's exactly what the individualists who believe in self-sacrifice oppose.

It's simply a lot easier in intellectual thinking. For example, why be intellectually honest? Well, pretty obviously, there's only one fundamental reason: there's simply no hope, otherwise, to reach any firm or valid conclusions about anything.

And what about morality? Again, why be honest? Because that's the only way you can achieve values: there's no simply no hope of achieving an actual value that one hasn't earned. To achieve the unearned is a contradiction in terms. To seek the unearned is to seek a contradiction.

[Bob Kolker 0]

Bob,

A person can do all the things you mention themselves if their allegiance is to existence not any preconcieved idea or theory, for example Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin was not the only scientist working on the problem of species formation. Lamarck and others also had theories of how species arose. In fact, Darwin himself, invoked the theory of use and disuse in his famous -Origin of Species-. In addition, Darwin was not the only one who came upon variation and natural selection. Alfered Wallace formulated a nearly identical theory. In fact it was Wallace's presentation that finally moved Darwin to publish his -Origin of Species-. Darwin did not want to be "scooped" by Wallace in 1858 and they agreed to a joint presentation of their common theory in 1859. Without Wallace, Darwin, most likely, would have delayed publication until his death and we would have had -Origin of Species- much later on.

Darwin's approach was not nailed down until his hypothesis of variation and natural selection was bonded with rigorous biochemistry and genetics. It was the confluence of genetic science with natural selection that finally eliminated the other theories of species formation.

This required the work of hundreds of top scientists. Very few scientific theories are the work of a single man (or woman). Even Newton said that if he saw further than others it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. Without Galileo, Kepler and Descartes there would have been no -Principia Mathematica- by Newton. It was an antagonist of Newton, Robert Hooke who suggested to Newton that the motion of the planets was not merely the balance between centrifugal force and gravity, rather it was the vector resultant of centripital acceleration and the tangential inertia of a massive body. Newton never claimed to be the "lone genius".

Bob Kolker

[RayK 0]

Bob, do you really think that I am so lacking in knowledge that I do not know the items you mentioned? And Charles Darwin did do his research on his own as every thinking person has to do no matter how many state otherwise. What I was trying to point out, and what it seems you missed, is that no one needs anyone else to confirm their knowledge and if you think so then you fail to understand the virtue of independence. In other words, I do not need you nor anyone else to agree with my thoughts on exercise and diet for me to accept them, all I need is for them to be varified by reality.