Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.
You published “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” (op-ed, Jan. 27) on climate change by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields, most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert. This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall that a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science.
Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter. And computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean. Such periods are a relatively common climate phenomenon, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works, and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming.
Thus, climate experts also know what one of us, Kevin Trenberth, actually meant by the out-of-context, misrepresented quote used in the op-ed. Mr. Trenberth was lamenting the inadequacy of observing systems to fully monitor warming trends in the deep ocean and other aspects of the short-term variations that always occur, together with the long-term human-induced warming trend.
The National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. (set up by President Abraham Lincoln to advise on scientific issues), as well as major national academies of science around the world and every other authoritative body of scientists active in climate research have stated that the science is clear: The world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible. Impacts are already apparent and will increase. Reducing future impacts will require significant reductions in emissions of heat-trapping gases.
Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused. It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses. In addition, there is very clear evidence that investing in the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.
Kevin Trenberth, Sc.D.
Distinguished Senior Scientist
Climate Analysis Section National Center for Atmospheric Research
La Jolla, Calif.
Kevin Trenberth, Sc.D, Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Richard Somerville, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Katharine Hayhoe, Ph.D., Director, Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University
Rasmus Benestad, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, The Norwegian Meteorological Institute
Gerald Meehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences; Director, Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy, Princeton University
Peter Gleick, Ph.D., co-founder and president, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security
Michael C. MacCracken, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, Climate Institute, Washington
Michael Mann, Ph.D., Director, Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University
Steven Running, Ph.D., Professor, Director, Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, University of Montana
Robert Corell, Ph.D., Chair, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; Principal, Global Environment Technology Foundation
Dennis Ojima, Ph.D., Professor, Senior Research Scientist, and Head of the Dept. of Interior’s Climate Science Center at Colorado State University
Josh Willis, Ph.D., Climate Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Matthew England, Ph.D., Professor, Joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia
Ken Caldeira, Ph.D., Atmospheric Scientist, Dept. of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution
Warren Washington, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Terry L. Root, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
David Karoly, Ph.D., ARC Federation Fellow and Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia
Jeffrey Kiehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Donald Wuebbles, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois
Camille Parmesan, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, University of Texas; Professor of Global Change Biology, Marine Institute, University of Plymouth, UK
Simon Donner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada
Barrett N. Rock, Ph.D., Professor, Complex Systems Research Center and Department of Natural Resources, University of New Hampshire
David Griggs, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Australia
Roger N. Jones, Ph.D., Professor, Professorial Research Fellow, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Australia
William L. Chameides, Ph.D., Dean and Professor, School of the Environment, Duke University
Gary Yohe, Ph.D., Professor, Economics and Environmental Studies, Wesleyan University, CT
Robert Watson, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Chair of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Steven Sherwood, Ph.D., Director, Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Chris Rapley, Ph.D., Professor of Climate Science, University College London, UK
Joan Kleypas, Ph.D., Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
James J. McCarthy, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University
Stefan Rahmstorf, Ph.D., Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University, Germany
Julia Cole, Ph.D., Professor, Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
William H. Schlesinger, Ph.D., President, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Jonathan Overpeck, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
Eric Rignot, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine
Wolfgang Cramer, Professor of Global Ecology, Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France
The most ridiculous bit is the antiscientific mention of the 97% figure..plus of course appealing to authority with the likes of Gleick as signatories.
And even if the doctor analogy were appropriate…who would go to doctors whose expertise is doubted by the nurses around them?
Analogously why believe in Trenberth & co. when a majority of meteorologists don’t?
Unless anybody believes weather people are all on the pay of Big Oil…
Oddly enough, last week at the AMS annual meeting, among 3500 meteorologists, I don’t think I encountered a single one who didn’t broadly agree with the consensus. http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html
yeah, that’s like, so weird.
Multiple examples and links to evidence on scientific opinion on climate change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
Quote from abstract of (Anderegg, et al, 2010):
>> “Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate
researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i)
97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the
field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and
scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are
substantially below that of the convinced researchers.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html
Quote from Oreskes in Science:
>> “The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position. ”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full
The 97% reflects not one poll of published climate scientists, but several.
By contrast, your contention that a majority of meteorologists do not agree with the conclusions of climate scientists is fantasy. Where is your evidence for that? A phone-in poll for Fox News?
All the world’s Meteorological bodies, including the US’s, have issued statements supporting the views expressed in this piece.
But why let the facts get in the way?
Maurizio thinks TV weathermen are meteorologists.
I know next step…the definition of meteorologist will be changed so that only consensus-followers will fit in.
I saw a stat somewhere (I’m still looking for it) stating that more than half of all meteorologists in the USA did not have any post secondary education whatsoever. Now maybe it’s just me, but I would have thought that a BSc would be a prerequisite. That said, there is still a big difference between “weather” (the domain of meteorologists) and “climate” (the domain of scientists) and only a science education would provide most people with the education to elucidate the difference.
Neil, I think you’ll find that it’s more than half of =TV weather reporters= who lack any scientific qualifications.
Maybe not all working meteorologists have outstanding qualifications but I’d suggest very few, if any, have no relevant qualifications at all.
Stephen Wilde (a favourite of the climate change denial movement) likes to remind everyone that he is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society but does not like it to be known that he joined at a time that anyone even William “I wandered lonely as a cloud” Wordsworth would have been accepted. For the record, Wilde is a fully-qualified and practicing solicitor.
@Maurizio
Not ‘changed’ but ‘restored’ after some idiots changed the definition of meteorologist to ‘person who thinks he or she knows a lot about the weather’.
For example, Joe Bastardi is a meteorologist because he thinks he knows a lot about weather. He doesn’t actually hold a degree in meteorology (to my and Wikipedia”s knowledge). I’m also a meteorologist, although not as famous as Bastardi. I’m also a cardiologist, although the establishment doesn’t accept me. But I’ll do heart surgery at half the price!
So, if you’ll allow us, the sane and reasonable people, to restore that hijacked definition…
General comment: I have a feeling the letter had to be short, so it seems a bit cut-and-pasty. Bravo to the climate science community for having gotten balls over the past few years. Some individuals certainly deserve a lot of credit for taking the lead.
So it’s all down to definitions..how strange…anybody willing to have a go at what “drastic” means?
I’m gettting tired of your pedantic obfuscation, Maurizio; and I can’t be bothered to go back and find where the word “drastic” is used.
However, I can guess… Try this (it sounds fairly serious to me): The International Energy Agency has warned that failure to move away from fossil fuels by 2020 will quadruple the cost of doing so because the adverse effects (including insurance and re-insurance) will be much greater.
If that is not good enough for you… Does it mean nothing to you that William Nordhaus – who used to famously criticise all the more “alarmist” estimates of mitigation costs – now says these 16 people (including Lindzen) are misguided?
To go back to the original post (after that amusing diversion into who legitimately speaks for meteorologists), Kevin Trenberth said, ” It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses” (emphasis mine).
However, I think our problem is that all political leaders are disregarding the weight of evidence… and blindly swallowing the fossil fuel lobby (FFL) propaganda machine that tells them it is OK to continue with their project to burn all the Earth’s fossil fuels.
Our politicians are insane and the FFL are lying. We have known this for at least 4 years. For example:
New (2008) Greenpeace report exposes carbon capture and storage as a dangerous distraction.
No Martin, Dear Kev is mistaken…the only discussion has to be around PANIC and DRASTIC. To be aware of the risks doesn’t necessarily mean one has to switch to panic or implement “drastic” measures.
For example the risk of terrorism is high but the panic, drastic solution of putting every adult in jail is surely unacceptable, even if it would reduce that risk to nil.
So unless those two words get addressed, we will run around in circles and waste time preaching to the converted, comfortably sure they won’t be asked to do a thing.
It is the facts that are alarming, not the messaging.
Most people will no tread this letter, cause it is somewhere hidden on the website. The main letter from the 16 is accessible from almost every WSJ page (is featured because it has so many hits).
I’m sorry for being so dim but, what “letter” are you talking about? Do you mean the item posted here and signed by Trenberth and many others? If so, why not just refer to it as “this post on this blog”?
In this early response, I really was being a bit dim (or was I just distracted by the stupidity of others?). However, I eventually realised that what Peter Sinclair provided for us all here was a re-post of the online rebuttal to a printed article in the WSJ… It was truly a Eureka moment! 🙂
Prokaryotes – assuming you’re not advocating panic, what drastic measures would you like to see implemented and how will you justify the costs?
Carbon tax on everything Co2/CH4/Insert_Greenhouse_Gas_Here then City centers only accessible for electric or hybrid (running on electric). Get rid of the billions in subsidies and tax loopholes for the corrupt oil industry.
Since sweden introduced the carbon tax in 1990 they have become today one of the most competitive economies of the world. The carbon tax should go 100% back to the taxpayer.
Sweden’s carbon-tax solution to climate change puts it top of the green list
Buses and lorries running on dead cows and a train station using commuters’ body warmth to heat an office block are two innovative solutions to lowering carbon emissions that have put Sweden top of an environmental league table. Gwladys Fouché reports http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/29/climatechange.carbonemissions
Stop the double talk and get your act together! If you don’t you will lose (as everybody else)
Maurizio, please read The Latest Denialist Plea for Climate Change Inaction on Skeptical Science (especially Figure 3) or (again – please) shut up.
I’d like to see drastically less trolling.
Oddly Maurizio, the only person mentioning panic or drastic measures are yourself and Op Ed you’re defending. An Op Ed which claims one shouldn’t panic or do anything drastic – but fails to mention any panicky or drastic examples. Maurizio, meet Mr Strawman. Mr Strawmam, meet Maurozio. Though I suspect you won’t get along.
But it does spout nonsense from start to finish. CO2 is colourless it tells us – as though colour determines the greenhouse effect (clue: it doesn’t).
IPCC forecasts are ‘inflated’ it proclaims. But forgets to mention that the IPCC forecasts it refers to are for a higher future emissions scenario than occurred in reality. This is comparing apples and oranges. The same models run with actual emissions are bang on the money. Punch line – the collapse of the Soviet Union followed by increases in gas and nuclear in the EU gave us a head start on mitigation.
The 16 tell us that Nordhaus says mitigation will be the more expensive option. But Nordhaus only achieves this by deciding that future generations are worth less than the current one – a misuse of the economic principle of discounting. Placing the same value on future generations reverses Nordhaus’ results.
So you’d have us make policy based on cherry picking. Onwhat colour CO2 is. On misreading the outcomes of projections and by deciding that your children and grand children are worth less than you are.
Sounds to me like you’re advocating bad policy making for the wrong reasons. Ironically something likely to lead to expensive, drastic panic policy making rather than a measured switch to low carbon technologies at a pace industry can adapt to.