Monday, March 23, 2015

Dear Professor Dick Lindzen

Sharing an email I sent to the professor this evening:

 Professor Dick Lindzen, 

 Going through your 2012 interview with Alex Epstein at his Power Hour* and examining your various tricks and obfuscations, I'm amazed that real people of power have allowed you your long destructive career as a merchant of science fiction.

What I find difficult to grasp is when did it become OK to treat scientifically factual evidence with malicious contempt; and worse - with license to contort and misrepresent?  And when did it become OK to reject constructive honest learning in favor of clinging to faith based dogmas and short-sighted self-interest?

It seems like you've been on a way too long post retirement career dedicated to dumbing down our leaders and the public about the critically important topic of humanity's impact on our life supporting biosphere.  You must be feeling smug - you and your pals sure have succeeded.  

 What do you care that the young ones get to deal with the mess that ignoring our Grand Geophysical Experiment for decades has created.

Though, guess I do understand why our leaders and society succumbed to your siren song - admitting the obvious would have required us to figure out how to be happy with a little less.  We couldn't do that, now could we?

Shame on you.
With deep sorrow,

Citizenschallenge
________________________________________________

* Dissecting Dr Lindzen's intrinsic obtuseness

 part one - the "real" questions
part two - the conspiracy
part three - the government driving AGW
part four - nature in balance? 
part five -  spurious feedback mechanisms

 ________________________________________________

PS - This is what science looks like:
{followed by 176 myths addressed by SkepticalScience.com} 


Climate Change 2013: Working Group 1 - 
The Physical Science Basis


Technical Summary for Policy Makers

Chapter 1:    Introduction
               Executive Summary
  • Rationale and key concepts of the WG1 contribution
  • Treatment of uncertainty
  • Climate change projections since FAR 
              Frequently Asked Questions

Chapter 2:    Observations: Atmosphere and Surface
               Executive Summary
  • Changes in surface temperature and soil temperature
  • Changes in temperature, humidity and clouds
  • Changes in atmospheric composition
  • Changes in radiation fields and energy budget
  • Changes in hydrology, runoff, precipitation and drought
  • Changes in atmospheric circulation, including wind
  • Spatial and temporal patterns of climate variability
  • Changes in extreme events, including tropical and extratropical storms
               Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 3:    Observations: Ocean
               Executive Summary
  • Changes in ocean temperature and heat content
  • Ocean salinity change and freshwater fluxes
  • Sea level change, ocean waves and storm surges
  • Ocean biogeochemical changes, including ocean acidification
  • Changes in ocean surface processes
  • Changes in ocean circulation
  • Spatial and temporal patterns of ocean variability
               Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 4:    Observations: Cryosphere
               Executive Summary
  • Changes in ice sheets, including mass balance
  • Changes in ice shelves
  • Changes in glaciers and ice caps
  • Sea ice variability and trends
  • Snow and ice cover variability and trends
  • Changes in frozen ground
  • Dynamics of ice sheets, ice shelves, ice caps, glaciers and sea ice
               Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 5:    Information from Paleoclimate Archives
               Executive Summary
  • Characteristics of early instrumental, documentary and natural climate archives
  • Reconstruction of radiative forcing and climate response
  • Reconstruction of regional variability and extremes
  • Abrupt climate changes and their regional expression
  • Sea level and ice sheets: patterns, amplitudes and rates of change
  • Paleoclimate perspective on irreversibility in the climate system
  • Paleodata-model intercomparisons 
               Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 6:    Carbon and Other Biogeochemical Cycles
               Executive Summary
  • Past changes in CO2, CH4, N2O and biogeochemical cycles
  • Recent trends in global and regional sources, sinks and inventories, including land use change
  • Processes and understanding of changes, including ocean acidification
  • Interactions between the carbon and other biogeochemical cycles, including the nitrogen cycle
  • Projections of changes in carbon and other biogeochemical cycles
  • Greenhouse gas stabilisation
  • Carbon cycle – climate feedbacks and irreversibility
  • Geoengineering involving the carbon cycle
               Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 7:    Clouds and Aerosols
               Executive Summary
  • Observations of clouds and their representation in models
  • Coupling of clouds, water vapour, precipitation and the large-scale circulation
  • Cloud and water vapour feedbacks and their effects on climate sensitivity
  • Observations of aerosols and their representation in models
  • Aerosol types including black carbon: chemistry, sources, sinks and distribution
  • Direct and indirect aerosol forcing and effects, including contrails and cosmic rays
  • Aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions
  • Geoengineering involving clouds and aerosols 
               Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 8:    Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing
               Executive Summary
  • Natural radiative forcing changes: solar and volcanic
  • Anthropogenic radiative forcing, including effects from land surface changes
  • Effects of atmospheric chemistry and composition
  • Spatial and temporal expression of radiative forcing
  • Greenhouse gas and other metrics, including Global Warming Potential (GWP) and
  • Global Temperature Change Potential (GTP)
              Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 9:    Evaluation of Climate Models
               Executive Summary
  • The hierarchy of climate models: from global to regional
  • Downscaling methods
  • Assessing model performance, including quantitative measures and their use
  • New model components and couplings
  • Representation of processes and feedbacks in climate models
  • Simulation of recent and longer term records
  • Simulation of regional patterns, variability and extremes
               Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 10:   Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional
               Executive Summary
  • Evaluation of methodologies
  • Atmospheric and surface changes
  • Changes in ocean properties
  • Cryosphere changes
  • Extreme events
  • Pre-instrumental perspective
  • Implications of attribution for projections
               Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 11:   Near-term Climate Change: Projections and Predictability
               Executive Summary
  • Predictability of interannual to decadal climate variations and change
  • Projections for the next few decades
  • Regional climate change, variability and extremes
  • Atmospheric composition and air quality
  • Possible effects of geoengineering
  • Quantification of the range of climate change projections
               Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 12:   Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility
               Executive Summary
  • Scenario description
  • Projections for the 21st century
  • Projections beyond the 21st century
  • Regional climate change, variability and extremes
  • Forcing, response and climate sensitivity
  • Climate change commitment and inertia
  • Potential for abrupt change and irreversibility in the climate system
  • Quantification of the range of climate change projections
               Frequently Asked Questions

Chapter 13:   Sea Level Change
               Executive Summary
  • Synthesis of past sea level change and its components
  • Models for sea level change
  • Projections of globally averaged sea level rise
  • Projections of the regional distribution of sea level change
  • Extreme sea level events
  • Potential ice sheet instability and its implications
  • Multi-century projections
               Frequently Asked Questions


Chapter 14:   Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change
               Executive Summary
  • Patterns of variability: observations, understanding and projections
  • Monsoon systems: observations, understanding and projections
  • Extremes: observations, understanding and projections
  • Interconnections among phenomena
               Frequently Asked Questions

________________________________________________

Here's how your various faux skeptical arguments stand up to the open air of serious science:


Global Warming & Climate Change Myths
Here is a summary of global warming and climate change myths, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. Click the response for a more detailed response. You can also view them sorted by taxonomy, by popularity, in a print-friendly version, with short URLs or with fixed numbers you can use for permanent references.
Climate Myth
vs
What the Science Says
1
"Climate's changed before"

2
"It's the sun"

3
"It's not bad"

4
"There is no consensus"

5
"It's cooling"

6
"Models are unreliable"

7
"Temp record is unreliable"

8
"Animals and plants can adapt"

9
"It hasn't warmed since 1998"

10
"Antarctica is gaining ice"

11
"Ice age predicted in the 70s"

12
"CO2 lags temperature"

13
"Climate sensitivity is low"

14
"We're heading into an ice age"

15
"Ocean acidification isn't serious"

16
"Hockey stick is broken"

17
"Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy"

18
"Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming"

19
"Al Gore got it wrong"

20
"Glaciers are growing"

21
"It's cosmic rays"

22
"1934 - hottest year on record"

23
"It's freaking cold!"

24
"Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming"

25
"Sea level rise is exaggerated"

26
"It's Urban Heat Island effect"

27
"Medieval Warm Period was warmer"

28
"Mars is warming"

29
"Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle"

30
"Increasing CO2 has little to no effect"

31
"Oceans are cooling"

32
"It's a 1500 year cycle"

33
"Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions"

34
"IPCC is alarmist"

35
"Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas"

36
"Polar bear numbers are increasing"

37
"CO2 limits will harm the economy"

38
"It's not happening"

39
"Greenland was green"

40
"Greenland is gaining ice"

41
"CO2 is not a pollutant"

42
"CO2 is plant food"

43
"Other planets are warming"

44
"Arctic sea ice has recovered"

45
"There's no empirical evidence"

46
"There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature"

47
"We're coming out of the Little Ice Age"

48
"It cooled mid-century"

49
"CO2 was higher in the past"

50
"Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????"

51
"It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low"

52
"Satellites show no warming in the troposphere"

53
"It's aerosols"

54
"It's El Niño"

55
"2009-2010 winter saw record cold spells"

56
"It's a natural cycle"

57
"Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice loss is due to land use"

58
"There's no tropospheric hot spot"

59
"It's not us"

60
"It's Pacific Decadal Oscillation"

61
"Scientists can't even predict weather"

62
"IPCC were wrong about Himalayan glaciers"

63
"Greenhouse effect has been falsified"

64
"2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory"

65
"CO2 limits will hurt the poor"

66
"The science isn't settled"

67
"Clouds provide negative feedback"

68
"Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated"

69
"It's the ocean"

70
"IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests"

71
"Corals are resilient to bleaching"

72
"Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans"

73
"CO2 effect is saturated"

74
"Greenland ice sheet won't collapse"

75
"CO2 is just a trace gas"

76
"It's methane"

77
"CO2 has a short residence time"

78
"CO2 measurements are suspect"

79
"Humidity is falling"

80
"500 scientists refute the consensus"

81
"Neptune is warming"

82
"Springs aren't advancing"

83
"Jupiter is warming"

84
"It's land use"

85
"Scientists tried to 'hide the decline' in global temperature"

86
"CO2 is not increasing"

87
"Record snowfall disproves global warming"

88
"They changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'"

89
"Solar Cycle Length proves its the sun"

90
"CO2 is coming from the ocean"

91
"IPCC overestimate temperature rise"

92
"Pluto is warming"

93
"CO2 is not the only driver of climate"

94
"Peer review process was corrupted"

95
"Arctic was warmer in 1940"

96
"Renewable energy is too expensive"

97
"Southern sea ice is increasing"

98
"Sea level rise is decelerating"

99
"CO2 limits will make little difference"

100
"It's microsite influences"

101
"Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity"

102
"Phil Jones says no global warming since 1995"

103
"Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate"

104
"Dropped stations introduce warming bias"

105
"It's too hard"

106
"It's not urgent"

107
"It's albedo"

108
"Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960"

109
"It's soot"

110
"Roy Spencer finds negative feedback"

111
"Hansen's 1988 prediction was wrong"

112
"It's global brightening"

113
"Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected"

114
"Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea ice gain"

115
"It's a climate regime shift"

116
"Solar cycles cause global warming"

117
"Less than half of published scientists endorse global warming"

118
"Over 31,000 scientists signed the OISM Petition Project"

119
"Ice isn't melting"

120
"IPCC ‘disappeared’ the Medieval Warm Period"

121
"Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted"

122
"It's ozone"

123
"Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored"

124
"Climate 'Skeptics' are like Galileo"

125
"The IPCC consensus is phoney"

126
"Sea level is not rising"

127
"A drop in volcanic activity caused warming"

128
"Tuvalu sea level isn't rising"

129
"Naomi Oreskes' study on consensus was flawed"

130
"Renewables can't provide baseload power"

131
"Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming"

132
"Ice Sheet losses are overestimated"

133
"CRU tampered with temperature data"

134
"Melting ice isn't warming the Arctic"

135
"Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup"

136
"Satellite error inflated Great Lakes temperatures"

137
"Soares finds lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature"

138
"We're heading into cooling"

139
"Murry Salby finds CO2 rise is natural"

140
"CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration"

141
"The sun is getting hotter"

142
"It's waste heat"

143
"Water vapor in the stratosphere stopped global warming"

144
"It warmed just as fast in 1860-1880 and 1910-1940"

145
"An exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature"

146
"Record high snow cover was set in winter 2008/2009"

147
"Mauna Loa is a volcano"

148
"Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect"

149
"Antarctica is too cold to lose ice"

150
"Positive feedback means runaway warming"

151
"Skeptics were kept out of the IPCC?"

152
"Water levels correlate with sunspots"

153
"CO2 was higher in the late Ordovician"

154
"It's internal variability"

155
"CO2 increase is natural, not human-caused"

156
"It's CFCs"

157
"Scientists retracted claim that sea levels are rising"

158
"Warming causes CO2 rise"

159
"Coral atolls grow as sea levels rise"

160
"Renewable energy investment kills jobs"

161
"Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass"

162
"DMI show cooling Arctic"

163
"CO2 limits won't cool the planet"

164
"Royal Society embraces skepticism"

165
"It's only a few degrees"

166
"97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven"

167
"It's satellite microwave transmissions"

168
"CO2 only causes 35% of global warming"

169
"Sea level fell in 2010"

170
"Arctic sea ice extent was lower in the past"

171
"We didn't have global warming during the Industrial Revolution"

172
"Ljungqvist broke the hockey stick"

173
"Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater"

174
"Removing all CO2 would make little difference"

175
"Postma disproved the greenhouse effect"

176
"Heatwaves have happened before"

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