Climate of Fear: Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into
silence
by Prof. Richard Lindzen
Global Research -
Opinion Journal, Wall Street Journal – 2006-04-12
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There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity
was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the
heat wave in
The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science
of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle
of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by
those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes
for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed
more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money
into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is
nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be
counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few
hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be
seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean
coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.
But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy.
Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds
disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry
stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate
change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that
supposedly is their basis.
To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate
science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the
complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is
agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told
that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature
has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in
the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2
should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what
the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support
for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of
warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish
claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science
they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting
model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting
catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as
justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.
If the models are correct, global warming reduces the
temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have
less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model
runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for
increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John
Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat
providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the
ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on
temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims
for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity,
not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.
So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up
about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been
cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year,
Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist
Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a
taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest
decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's
concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's
work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did
so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult
because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details
for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was,
nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy
of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the
American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's
singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.
All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the
scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional
hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including
myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor
did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president,
tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist
scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And
they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed
with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.
Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In
And then there are the peculiar standards in place in
scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions
about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are
commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even
when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some
colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under
varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris
Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased
temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient
to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of
papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the
original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and
others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in
our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay
permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as
"discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to
actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of
the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our
knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead
urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether
it would actually happen.
Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears,
is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists
today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle
of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.
Richard Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan
Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the
sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
© Copyright Richard Lindzen, Opinion Journal,
Wall Street Journal, 2006
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