MIT Profs Duke It Out Over Global Warming: Good Guy Wins

A few days ago, MIT prof and hurricane specialist Kerry Emanuel went out of his way to call the rascally shenanigans of the IPCC "alleged," as though IPCC officials have not already admitted to falsely threatening the world with imminent melting of the Himalayan glaciers and destruction of the rain forests due to rising temperatures, hiding the decline of global temperatures for more than a decade, and labeling the growth of Antarctic ice as "insignificant." 

More important, Emanuel claimed, are the "compelling strands of scientific evidence that have led almost all climate scientists to conclude that mankind is altering climate in potentially dangerous ways." 

Quick reality check:

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"It is easy," said Emanuel,

"to be critical of the models that are used to make such predictions - and we are - but they represent our best efforts to objectively predict climate; everything else is mere opinion and speculation. That they are uncertain cuts both ways; things might not turn out as badly as the models now suggest, but with equal probability, they could turn out worse.

Emanuel is right that it "is easy to be critical of the models used to make such predictions." Far too easy. Garbage in, garbage out, as almost everybody knows, and it is no longer a secret that much of the data and computer coding that comprise the models were garbage. Where most of us non-"climate scientists" come from, putting "garbage in" does not represent "our best efforts." If this were not the case, there would be no such thing as ClimateGate. 

The real head-scratcher for me in Emanuel's statement is why we should accept a total (and totally painful) "remaking" of the world economy on the likelihood that the future might turn out either better or worse than a handful of self-proclaimed experts predict. If rapid global warming is a reality, and Siberia and Northern Canada blossom into breadbaskets for the world and Irish farmers start growing wine grapes, will that be "better" or "worse" for humankind?

Moreover, "everything else" not covered by the IPCC's model is not "mere opinion and speculation" as Emanuel claimed. IPCC officials already have admitted that a number of the tall tales they spun and then presented to world policymakers as "settled science" were, in fact, regurgetations of unproven opinions of global warming advocates (not scientists) based on speculation and hearsay, not data.

"We might begin," Emanuel concluded, "by mustering the courage to confront the problem of climate change in an honest and open way."

"Open and honest." That would be a welcome change indeed.

Perhaps that's why I was mighty glad to read this response to Emanuel by another MIT prof, atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen (via Watts Up With That):

KERRY EMANUEL’S Feb. 15 op-ed “Climate changes are proven fact’’ is more advocacy than assessment. Vague terms such as “consistent with,’’ “probably,’’ and “potentially’’ hardly change this. Certainly climate change is real; it occurs all the time. To claim that the little we’ve seen is larger than any change we “have been able to discern’’ for a thousand years is disingenuous. Panels of the National Academy of Sciences and Congress have concluded that the methods used to claim this cannot be used for more than 400 years, if at all. Even the head of the deservedly maligned Climatic Research Unit acknowledges that the medieval period may well have been warmer than the present.

The claim that everything other than models represents “mere opinion and speculation’’ is also peculiar. Despite their faults, models show that projections of significant warming depend critically on clouds and water vapor, and the physics of these processes can be observationally tested (the normal scientific approach); at this point, the models seem to be failing.

Finally, given a generation of environmental propaganda, a presidential science adviser (John Holdren) who has promoted alarm since the 1970s, and a government that proposes funding levels for climate research about 20 times the levels in 1991, courage seems hardly the appropriate description - at least for scientists supporting such alarm.

There exist paltry computer models that can be manipulated by a handful of fallible human beings, and there exist natural systems whose powers are beyond human comprehension, but, as Lindzen pointed out, which do exhibit processes that can be "observationally tested" to challenge predictions based on computer model results.

For example, in contradiction to years and decades of global warming projections based on what Emanuel called "compelling strands of evidence," snowfall in the Northern Hemisphere has been extending farther and farther south ever since the start of the decline in temperature that the IPCC and others worked so hard to hide. Almost everyone in the Northern Hemisphere has observed this phenomena, often with snow shovel in hand. Here's the graph:

That's what I call a "compelling strand of evidence."
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