#7/7 environmentalism and environmentalists - Dissecting Lindzen's intrinsic obtuseness

This is where it all started nearly three weeks ago.  Now, with a few adjustments, it's the final chapter of my review of an interview by Alex Epstein with Professor Richard Lindzen on his "Power Hour" program.  I took the time and trouble to transcribe much of it in order to focus on Lindzen's bizarre version of reality and to juxtapose it against history and the known science.  

In this final installment we consider professor Lindzen's intrinsic obtuseness regarding environmentalism and environmentalists.

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)

part six (Iris Effect, clouds and vapor)

Power Hour: Questioning Climate Science with Dr. Richard Lindzen October 22, 2012 | Alex Epstein

Richard Lindzen joins Alex Epstein to talk about perspectives on climate change:

• Questions about climate
• “Balance” in nature
• The goals of environmentalists

1:45  Alex:  Whenever I read one of his (RL) papers I get almost emotional just by the level of clarity and diligence and utter lack of any kind of appeal to authority.

3:05  Lindzen: What bothers me about this issue is the intrinsic obtuseness of the questions. ...

____________________________________________________

59:35 Lindzen: ... you're touching on something interesting, which is environmentalism, whatever it's nastiness and ugliness, it is largely an urban phenomena.  And I think it really, really depends on people having no sense of what nature is at all.

~ ~ ~
What an astoundingly hostile and ignorant thing to say.  

"Environmentalism" is a term defining an attitude towards recognizing the biological webs that sustain our planet's life support system - also known as our biosphere.

It's not a people, nor a party - but Lindzen won't allow himself to recognize that.  All he sees is enemies. 

Listen to Lindzen going straight for the jugular:
 "environmentalism = nastiness and ugliness"
Earlier it was likened to Eugenics, I'll admit, it's impossible for me to fathom the malicious mind that can conceive such an absurd connection.  

There's nothing rational about it, it's political theater and hate mongering for votes and profit, nothing more. 

Consider for a moment what "Environmentalism" actually is:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/189205/environmentalism

"environmentalism, political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities; through the adoption of forms of political, economic, and social organization that are thought to be necessary for, or at least conducive to, the benign treatment of the environment by humans; and through a reassessment of humanity’s relationship with nature. 
In various ways, environmentalism claims that living things other than humans, and the natural environment as a whole, are deserving of consideration in reasoning about the morality of political, economic, and social policies."

Why is that seen as such a threat???
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

57:00 Lindzen: It depends on attracting people for whom nature itself is almost a meaningless concept, and they'll believe anything.

#6 clouds, vapor, Iris Effect - Dissecting Dr Lindzen's intrinsic obtuseness

This is the sixth part of my review of an interview by Alex Epstein with Professor Richard Lindzen on his "Power Hour" program.  I've taken the time and trouble to transcribe much of it in order to focus on Lindzen's bizarre version of reality and to juxtapose it against history and the known science.  

In this installment we consider professor Lindzen's intrinsic obtuseness regarding his pet theory, clouds and "the iris effect" vs. what the science is discovering.

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)

Power Hour: Questioning Climate Science with Dr. Richard Lindzen October 22, 2012 | Alex Epstein

Richard Lindzen joins Alex Epstein to talk about perspectives on climate change:

• Questions about climate
• “Balance” in nature
• The goals of environmentalists

1:45  Alex:  Whenever I read one of his (RL) papers I get almost emotional just by the level of clarity and diligence and utter lack of any kind of appeal to authority.

3:05  Lindzen: What bothers me about this issue is the intrinsic obtuseness of the questions. ...

________________________________________________

44:40  Lindzen: Remember the temperature at the equator has been pretty much the same as within a couple degrees for billions of years.  How much more stable do you want it?

~ ~ ~ 

That's not true.  Besides his train of logic is misleading.  

Equatorial heat being relatively stable is the product of evaporation and circulation patterns carrying the heat, (that's always streaming straight down on equatorial waters), out and away from the tropics and dissipating it onto the rest of the globe - it isn't any indication of some preordained global stability.  

~ ~ ~ 

TROPIC OCEANS HELP SCIENTISTS IN CLIMATE STUDY
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RECORD  March 4, 1994  Vol. 19 No. 19

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol19/vol19_iss19/record1919.21

Tropical ocean waters - long thought to have remained unaffected by Earth's past climate changes - may have cooled by 5C (9F) during the last ice age, scientists at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory reported recently.

 The research, reported in the Feb. 4 issue of "Science," indicates 
 that tropical regions play a pivotal and previously underestimated 
 role in regulating Earth's climate.

~ ~ ~

OLDEST ICE CORE FROM THE TROPICS RECOVERED, NEW ICE AGE EVIDENCE, 12/3/98

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/sajama.htm

Lonnie Thompson, professor of geological sciences and research scientist with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, said that the new cores are the best evidence yet that the tropics were much cooler during the last glacial stage.

~ ~ ~

On top of that, in Lindzen's zeal to oversimplify he never mentions complicating factors that will have major impacts, such as:

Rising Temperature Difference Between Hemispheres Could Dramatically Shift Rainfall Patterns in Tropics  |  Science Daily

Apr. 2, 2013 — One often ignored consequence of global climate change is that the Northern Hemisphere is becoming warmer than the Southern Hemisphere, which could significantly alter tropical precipitation ... full story

________________________________________________

45:50  Alex: Alright, it's amazingly stable, but I mean there are many physical properties of things that are stable too,  but they don't have a goal per se.  Like a living being, if it's not evolved to self regulate in that way. 

Lindzen:  No, I mean presumably if they haven't exist the planet wouldn't have survived, so it's a matter of selection.

~ ~ ~

This is a bit obtuse, is the professor really attributing Earth's "survival" to Darwinian selection?  Hmmm, nothing is off limits for his game of confusion, is it?  I wonder how Mars and Venus managed to survive?

#5 Spurious feedback - Dissecting Dr Lindzen's intrinsic obtuseness -

This is the fifth part of my review of an interview by Alex Epstein with Professor Richard Lindzen on his "Power Hour" program.  I've taken the time and trouble to transcribe much of it in order to focus on Lindzen's bizarre version of reality and to juxtapose it against history and the known science.  

In this installment we consider professor Lindzen's obtuse misrepresentation of climate feedback mechanisms.

{ link to part one (the "real" questions), part two (the conspiracy), part three (the government driving AGW), part four (Nature in Balance?) }

Power Hour: Questioning Climate Science with Dr. Richard Lindzen October 22, 2012 | Alex Epstein

Richard Lindzen joins Alex Epstein to talk about perspectives on climate change:

• Questions about climate
• “Balance” in nature
• The goals of environmentalists

1:45  Alex:  Whenever I read one of his (RL) papers I get almost emotional just by the level of clarity and diligence and utter lack of any kind of appeal to authority.

3:05  Lindzen: What bothers me about this issue is the intrinsic obtuseness of the questions. ...

________________________________________________

44:30  Lindzen:  In the models used for projecting alarm,the system is riddled with positive feedbacks, were whatever man does is amplified.  

~ ~ ~
Never any attempt to teach anything, it's just a flood of negative opining that we are supposed to accept because the dear professor says so.

And always with the doubt-mongering: "models used for projecting alarm"  Lindzen never acknowledges that the ever improving models are reflecting our real world phenomena plenty accurate and it's the situation, not the models, that is alarming!
- - -
Professor Lindzen wants us to ignore that it's down to Earth observations and not "climate models" that make us sure:

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Climate change: How do we know?

Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

Sea level rise

Global temperature rise

Warming oceans

Shrinking ice sheets

Declining Arctic sea ice

Glacial retreat

Extreme events

Ocean acidification

Decreased snow cover

They neglected to mention the "Declining Antarctic glaciers"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2pYHMx5bN8

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=83672

________________________________________________

Lindzen:  For example, if you just double CO2 and had no feedbacks, and no stabilizing elements, you'd get about a degree of warming. That frankly no one really worries about. 

~ ~ ~
Obtuse like a fox. 

#2 The Conspiracy - Dissecting Dr Lindzen's intrinsic obtuseness

#2  "government created monopoly" and further conspiracy ideation

{slight editing 3/13/15 noon}

 This is the second part (link to first one) of my review of an interview by Alex Epstein with Professor Richard Lindzen.  I've taken the time and trouble to transcribe much of it in order to focus on Lindzen's bizarre version of reality and to juxtapose it against history and the known science.  

In this installment we consider the possibility that 'alarmists' aren't all in on a grand conspiracy to take away your freedoms and that they are alarmed for good reasons.

_____________________________________________________

Power Hour: Questioning Climate Science with Dr. Richard Lindzen October 22, 2012 | Alex Epstein

Richard Lindzen joins Alex Epstein to talk about perspectives on climate change:

• Questions about climate
• “Balance” in nature
• The goals of environmentalists

1:45  Alex:  Whenever I read one of his (R.L.) papers I get almost emotional just by the level of clarity and diligence and utter lack of any kind of appeal to authority. ...

3:05  Lindzen: What bothers me about this issue is the intrinsic obtuseness of the questions. ...

________________________________

5:00  Alex:  ... how science has become much more institutionalized, as you describe it reminded me of a government created monopoly.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Government created monopoly on climate science?  And he seriously believes it.  Can't leave the conspiracy ideation alone.  

… Here are the six characteristics associated with conspiracist ideation:(https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/wonkery-conspiracy-ideation-and-science/) 

• The folks behind any conspiracy are always nefarious. There aren’t any conspiracies for good purposes, only bad purposes.

• The person claiming there is a conspiracy typically considers herself, at least tacitly, to be the brave antagonist of the nefarious intentions of the conspiracy; that is, the victim is also a potential hero.

• The conspiracy theorist refuses to believe anything that does not fit into the conspiracy theory. Thus, nothing is at it seems, and all evidence points to hidden agendas or some other meaning that only the conspiracy theorist understands.

• Nothing happens by accident. Small random events are woven into a conspiracy narrative and reinterpreted as indisputable evidence for the theory.

• The underlying lack of trust and exaggerated suspicion contribute to a cognitive pattern whereby specific hypotheses may be abandoned when they become unsustainable, but those corrections do not impinge on the overall abstraction that ‘something must be wrong’ and the ‘official’ account must be based on deception. Princess Diana was murdered and Princess Diana faked her own death.

• Contrary evidence is often interpreted as evidence for a conspiracy. This ideation relies on the notion that, the stronger the evidence against a conspiracy, the more the conspirators must want people to believe their version of events (“self-sealing reasoning”).

Also see: http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2013/02/26/what-happens-when-you-study-conspiracy-theories-the-conspiracy-theorists-make-up-conspiracy-theories-about-you/

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

What Alex ignores is that these developments (see the end of this post for a list of major Environmental Acts of the twentieth century) were driven by accumulating knowledge at the insistence of an informed electorate.  

It was demanded by "We The People" with US Reps. grudgingly bowing to the people's will.  Aren't we a democracy?

Timeline: The Modern Environmental Movement

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/earthdays/

- - -

As for Alex's loathed 'climate science' bureaucracy, come on, get real. it's no different than what's happened within every other human endeavor over this past half century - that's the price of unrestrained population growth and breakneck progress.  

#1-Dissecting Dr Lindzen's intrinsic obtuseness - The Question

#1  "The Real Questions" according to Dr. Lindzen

My previous review was of the last two and half minutes of an interview by Alex Epstein with Dr. Lindzen.  Now that I've been introduced to the whole thing and had a chance to listen to it, it seems like all of it deserves some scrutiny.  So I've taken the time and trouble to transcribe much of it.

My intention is to review Lindzen's words and juxtapose his version of science with the real thing.  I'm going to break this up into smaller sections.  This one covering "the real questions" according to Richard Lindzen. 

________________________________

Power Hour: Questioning Climate Science with Dr. Richard Lindzen October 22, 2012 | Alex Epstein
Richard Lindzen joins Alex Epstein to talk about perspectives on climate change:

• Questions about climate
• “Balance” in nature
• The goals of environmentalists

1:45  Alex:  Whenever I read one of his papers I get almost emotional just by the level of clarity and diligence and utter lack of any kind of appeal to authority.
I remember he was on this show last time, despite all his credentials the number one thing he encouraged was for people to do the research, look into things themselves. ... and I really consider that a very good indication for the quality of scientist and the quality of person someone is. ...  
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
3:05  Lindzen: What bothers me about this issue is the intrinsic obtuseness of the questions.  For instance in these public consensus statements and so on, it's always is there agreement that CO2 plays a roll, or climate changes and so on.  These are things which in fact everyone agrees on.
Those are not the questions in dispute.
And yet it's presented as though if there's agreement that climate has changed, ahh, we should do something about it.

~ ~ ~ 

This is superficial silliness.  The issue has nothing to do with "climate has changed" - the consensus statements are about our manmade emissions of greenhouse gases significantly altering our atmosphere.  
- - -

Why we need to talk about the scientific consensus on climate change

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/nov/20/why-we-need-to-talk-about-scientific-consensus-on-climate-change

- - -

The agreements acknowledge the obvious: If we warm up our Earth's global heat and moisture distribution engine it will create more intense weather and disrupt natural systems that have been tens of thousands of years in the making.  This will lead to increasing problems for humanity and everything else.

As our climate changes, the risk of injury, illness, and death from the resulting heat waves, wildfires, intense storms, and floods rises. 

http://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming-effects/health.html 

Scientists and economists are beginning to grapple with the serious economic and environmental consequences if we fail to reduce global carbon emissions quickly and deeply. The most expensive thing we can do is nothing. 

http://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming-effects/economy.html

_________________________________

Lindzen: The real questions are, you know change is normal, it always occurs, is there anything unusual, 

Lindzen's slander as weapon for scientific persuasion.

{updated with some information regarding the interviewer and his for profit "think tank" 3/8/15}

Now I get to one of the architects and a Godfather of 'slander as a weapon for scientific persuasion' and profit, Dr. Richard Lindzen.  

I submit this text-book example of why he deserves that honorific.  I found it in one of Dr. Dessler's video shorts, though the original is from an interview at the Center for Industrial Progress' "Power Hour."  This is only 2:20 minutes long, but it says plenty.

Lindzen talks about environmentalists (there is no visual)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtIL3sEG4bM

dessler2

____________________________________________________

0:00 Lindzen: ... you're touching on something interesting, which is environmentalism, whatever it's nastiness and ugliness, it is largely an urban phenomena.  And I think it really, really depends on people having no sense of what nature is at all.

~ ~ ~

What an astoundingly hostile and ignorant thing to say. 

"Environmentalism" is a term defining an attitude towards recognizing the biological webs that sustain our planet's life support system - also known as our biosphere.

It's not a people, nor a party - but Lindzen won't allow himself to recognize that.  All he sees is enemies. 

Listen to Lindzen going straight for the jugular:

 "environmentalism = nastiness and ugliness"  

There's nothing rational about it, it's political theater and hate mongering for votes and profit, nothing more. 

Consider for a moment what "Environmentalism" actually is:

Bart, it's about dissecting tactics

There's a very cool website by Bart Verheggen an atmospheric scientist, called "My view on climate change" - it's what I'd classify as a "big boys and girls" blog in that the issues are dealt with in an educated civil manner.  The science gets front and center stage over there.  It's fun to look in on and sometimes toss in my two cents.  It's also fun because he's got an "Open Thread" which is just what it implies.  He has humored me and allowed various musings over there.  Recently there was an interesting exchange that I won't rehash, because my comment is plenty self-explanatory - this version has been enhanced with hindsight and editing. 

Bart Verheggen Says: March 6, 2015 at 17:59
Citizen and cjw, You’ve both said what you wanted to say it seems, let’s leave it at that. The current conversation is no longer constructive.

citizenschallenge Says: 

March 6, 2015 at 19:40

Bart, yes, sort of, kind of… but you see, there is a lesson in it though.

I appreciate that I’m a bit irritating to some of you more serious educated folks. Still, my little thing is to really get inside the structure of the rhetorical manipulation going on – study it at close range, learn to understand it, watch it in action and hopefully from time to time be able to write about it and explain it along with highlighting it’s intellectual bankruptcy.

This little exchange with cjw was another interesting example. Please consider her opener:

March 3, 2015 at 20:37 @citizenschallenge cjw: “I skimmed the article and initially failed to get the gist of it. The text is poorly structured and the writing style unappealing. Not to mention the irrelevant comparison between an historic event and multidisciplinary science.”

~ ~ ~

Then go through cjw’s subsequent torrent of words. Nowhere do we get back to this: “irrelevant comparison between an historic event and multidisciplinary science” – or examples of my poor writing style. I have not acted defensive and welcomed, hell I practically begged for critique – but all I get is superior folks telling me it's too irrelevant to consider.

How climate science denialists employ the "Serengeti Strategy"

Here's an informative post worth passing along, it's a good description of one of my pal Mr. Steele's main strategies, right up there with misrepresenting what scientists have actually written and said.  I tip my hat to SkepticalScience.com for making me aware of this article

Posted on 9 January 2015 by Guest Author Deirbre Fulton

Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist 
by Deirdre Fulton 
was originally posted on Common Dreams on Jan 6, 2015.

Michael Mann writes that the strategy 'is similar to what happens when a group of lions on the Serengeti seek out a vulnerable individual zebra at the edge of a herd.'

"The 'Serengeti strategy' is often employed wherever there is a strong and widespread consensus among the world’s scientists about the underlying cold, hard facts of a field, whether the subject be evolution, ozone depletion, the environmental impacts of DDT, the health effects of smoking, or human-caused climate change," Mann writes. (Photo: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists/Brocken Inaglory)

Like lions targeting lone zebras in the Serengeti grasslands, industry-backed climate change deniers prefer to target individual scientists rather than take on an entire scientific field at once, climatologist Michael Mann writes in a paper published this month in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

In "The Serengeti Strategy: How Special Interests Try to Intimidate Scientists, and How Best to Fight Back," Mann describes a concerted effort on the part of fossil fuel interests who find themselves facing overwhelming scientific consensus about the threat of human-caused climate change—and, by implication, the necessity to reduce global carbon emissions.

"By singling out a sole scientist, it is possible for the forces of 'anti-science' to bring many more resources to bear on one individual, exerting enormous pressure from multiple directions at once, making defense difficult," writes Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. "It is similar to what happens when a group of lions on the Serengeti seek out a vulnerable individual zebra at the edge of a herd."

considering the angry mind of your typical right-winger

An incident occurred this afternoon that I find so quintessentially representative of what I see to be one of the main problems with your typical rightwing/Republican/Libertarian/TeaParty/Christian types (and yea, OK, extreme left wingers fall into this category also) that I've decided to record the incident.  

Nasif S. Nahle - a look at Science in a Vacuum

{edited 7/16/14 evening}

Back on October 23, 2012, {Before creating WUWTW to funnel my "virtual dialogue with climate science denialist" types into}, I wrote a post about Nasif Nahle over at citizenschallenge.blogspot.com a biologist by training and experience.  The man's interests extend beyond biology to a whole spectrum of our planet's processes.  He's a guy I can identify with, you know that spirit of curiosity encompassing all of this creation we inhabit.

But Nahle has taken his passion a step further and we have our differences.  He occasionally comments, though always saying pretty much the same thing.  His most recent comment,

7/13/14 - It's not my own reality. Science has to do with experimentation. If you're a scientist, you could REPEAT my experiments and then report your results. As long as you don't do it, you'll be lying. (At Nasif S. Nahle... Google "Scholar"... and atmospheric CO2 cooling )

has inspired me to bring his conversation over here.  Like myself, Nahle has lots of conviction and we've invested a good deal of our lives soaking up all the information we can, devoting time to "specialize" here and there as we fancied.  Like myself among a certain crowd we've attained a degree "authority."  Even within our-own-eyes we feel we have attained an above average level of understanding and deserve some of the trust a few have in us. 

Now, here's where the difference comes in,
and it has to do with that all important "ego thing"
The big question: How full of our selves are we?

Myself, I believe in my understanding.  I do so because my decades long skeptical pursuit of information is a process, a life's adventure.  I am open to new information and validating that info is the game.  I have had my ego bruised and battered, publicly and privately by having my presumed understanding shown to be way out of date, or way off the mark.  But that's part of the fun - like getting bruised while cavorting on canyon lands slickrock, it's part of the game of life and learning, otherwise we wouldn't be out there in the first place.  

I appreciate that my understanding is provisional, always vulnerable to newer or better information.  Thing is, when proven wrong while the bruises heal whole new realms of understanding and appreciation have opened up to us.  I love it!  To me that's what life and growing and being witness to this incredible creation we were born into is all about. 

I also understand that folks who have spent years and live's focused on studying specific issues know way the heck more than I do.  Experts are experts for a very good reason!  And though at times I might think I know plenty and them mistaken - I'd never imagine that my fragmentary knowledge could trump their professional understanding.  Only fools could ever presume to achieve expert status with the ease of a bit of dedicated part-time study. 

And only a fool can't accept that the higher math of science is a "For Members Only" affair - if you don't comprehend it, you don't comprehend it and should butt out.  Making sweeping and earth-shattering claims with fragmentary understanding belongs to the realm delusion.

Yet, here we have a jack of all trades claiming to contradict decades worth of the generally accepted physics of atmospheric Carbon dioxide and Republican/Libertarians are eating it up.