It is no disgrace for a scientist to change his opinion when con-vinced by the ultimate arbiter, the experimental evidence. You have known my position on the Greenhouse up to now: bad science of the doomsday variety, and unsuited as a call for nuclear power, which stands in no need of such shaky arguments. Yes, there is such a thing as the greenhouse effect (though not in a greenhouse), I said, and yes, both the CO
2 concentration and the temperature have been rising over the last 100 years; but it is quite uncertain to what extent, if any, this rise in temperature is greenhouse-related, for the historic evidence shows no correlation.What I am abandoning now is my conviction that there has even been any clear temperature increase. My previous opinion was based on my uncritical acceptance of charts like the one below (I am, after all, no climatologist). It shows the change in global temperature since 1880, and by and large, an increasing trend on which random fluctuations are superimposed.
But how reliable are these data? Not very, says Prof. Richard Lindzen of MlT's Dept. of Earth Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. To quote only some of the problems with the record, the temperature of all of the Atlantic is represented by measurements of only four island sites; and temperatures were mostly measured in cities, which are inherently warmer. (When weather stations were moved from the inner cities to airports, this was corrected in retrospect, but the corrections were of the same order as the al-leged effect: the entire vertical range of the figure is about 2øF.) 1880 was not only the year when record keeping procedures were internationally standardized, but also when there was an anomalous minimum. If the time before 1880 were taken into account, says Lindzen the warming would more likely amount to "0.1 degree plus or minus 0.3 degrees." The record of the 48 con-tiguous states shows no evidence of warming over the past century, and the ocean surface temperature does not show any change in temperature from the 19th century to the present. "We really don't have any basis for saying [the rise in temperature] is half a degree plus or minus 0.2. That is false use of science. What we have is data that says maybe it occurs, but it's within the noise [ = random fluc-tuations]."
Then he points out other weaknesses, most of which have been mentioned here before. Lindzen's lecture is reported in MIT Tech Talk, 9/27/89, and though it is long, I will try to get it in Fort Freedom's Science Tower.
Here is a scientist, at M.I.T. of all places, who has come out of his ivory shell to take a stand. "The greenhouse warming has become a 'happening'
¾some would say a circus." He takes issue with editorials that simultaneously state that we don't know whether warming will occur, but that we should nonetheless undertake "virtuous things" like an altered energy policy, refores-tation, etc. And he takes issue with Princeton physicist Dyson who at the time of "Nuclear winter" called it bad science, but good politics. "It seems to me," says Lindzen, "that if science does not have integrity, it isn't much use to people."[More: W.T. Brookes, "Has Planet Earth really been warming?" Human Events, 9/30/89; contains chart of US temperature 1895-1985. Scientific Perspec-rives on the Greenhouse Problem, is a brief, informative and very readable essay by three eminent scientists (Seitz, Jastrow, Nierenberg), $5 from the George C. Marshall Institute, 11 Du Pont Circle/#506, Washington, DC 20036.
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Vol. 17, No. 3
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 17, No. 3 Date: December 01, 2004 03:12 PM (For actual publication date see newsletter.) Title: Bipartisan deceit
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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