David Suzuki vs. Michael Crichton (finally! Global warming charlatan gets msm whacked!)

David Suzuki vs. Michael Crichton

Barbara Kay, National Post
Published: Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Last Thursday, environmentalist guru David Suzuki stormed out of a Toronto AM640 radio interview with host John Oakley because Oakley dared to suggest that global warming might not be the "totally settled issue" Suzuki insisted it was.

Oakley only reported a fact: Many accredited scientists -- some full professors from top universities, including Nobel prize winners and a former president of the National Academy of Sciences -- would argue that "global warning is at best unproven and at worst pure fantasy," according to novelist and independent scientific researcher Michael Crichton, author of the best-selling 2004 environmental techno-thriller, State of Fear.

Crichton, one of the first to expand on the theme of environmentalism-as-religion, would doubtless see Suzuki's gesture as a result of confusion of his role as environmental advocate with that of chief of Morals Police. Suzuki's very public censure of Oakley for his perceived blasphemy is disquieting because it smacks of the totalitarian impulse to silence and humiliate the dissenter --or even, as in this case, the dissenter's messenger.

Suzuki keeps high-profile company in his tendency to suppress environmental infidels. Al Gore called skeptics "global warming deniers," evoking (if only unintentionally) invidious and fallacious comparison with Holocaust denial. Rejecting the historical record of what has actually happened in the past is one thing ; expressing skepticism about events that are predicted to happen in the future on the basis of computer simulations is quite another. But once you get into the realm of reigning ideologies, such rational distinctions fall by the wayside. The object is to shame the one who questions the received wisdom.

Suzuki would have better served his cause if he had addressed skeptics' actual concerns. Such as:

- Why was climatologist James Hansen -- the father of global warming--off by 200% in his prediction that temperatures would increase by 0.35 degrees Celsius by 2008 (the actual increase has been .11 degrees); and why did he (and colleagues) say in 2001 that "the longterm prediction of future climate states is not possible"?

- Of the world's 160,000 glaciers, some are shrinking. But many --in Iceland, for example --have "surged" in the last few years, while most of Antarctica is getting colder; if warming is "global," why?

- Why haven't sea levels risen to the extent predicted? Why have the waters off the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean not only experienced no rise over several centuries, but an actual fall in the last 20 years?

- Where is the predicted "extreme weather?" There has been no global increase, and in many cases a decrease, of extreme weather patterns.

- From 1940-70, carbon dioxide levels went way up, but temperatures went down so abruptly that a new Ice Age was the prevailing fear; wherefore this disparity?

- The Sahara Desert is shrinking--purportedly due to the greening effects caused by man-made global warming; but isn't the greening of the desert a good thing? I know to ask these questions only because I've read State of Fear. And as the environmental hysteria burgeons, I continue to press the book on everyone I know. Forget the silly (but riveting) plot, which is to the embedded environmental science in the novel as blini to caviar. You cannot read State of Fear with an open mind and continue to believe global warming is a "totally settled issue."

Nor should readers be put off by Crichton's status as a "mere" novelist. Crichton's scientific research on environmental issues is so impressive he was invited to address the U.S. Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works. Even Crichton's most frenzied critics (the Los Angeles Times called State of Fear "the first neocon novel") did not repudiate his peer reviewed, impeccably sourced data.

Amongst the hundreds of books, journal articles and scientific reports in his bibliography, (no mention of Suzuki, strangely), Crichton lists every publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its formation. He has read them all, and in the end humbly "guesses" -- the most one can do -- that we are experiencing mild warming, possibly more beneficial than harmful.

The remorseless pressure on Canadians to sign up for environmental orthodoxies that they are not cognitively equipped to judge is demoralizing and divisive. Tantrums by self anointed prophets do not help the situation. Whatever the eventual outcome on the global warming front, we could all use a little non-partisanship, maturity and attitudinal cooling on the behavioural front.

Bkay@videotron.ca

As indication of both AM640's John Oakley's continuing willingness to heap scorn of the enviro extremists & that he's one of the funniest, most quick witted guys in Canadian broadcasting, Oakley's been having a field day this morning with the fawning reception local commies gave Al Gore last night at a University of Toronto speaking engagement:

Samples - to his off mic engineer:
"So, who opened for Gore last night? Carrot Top?"
"Apparently Gore had to leave in a hurry when he noticed one of the Bell Canada beavers (well known amusing corporate mascots up here) gnawing on his leg."

my Gore review?
"very dry, somewhat nutty"

The Toronto left's seemingly oblivious hypocrisy is an unending source of absolutely stupefying amazement:
The lemming-like morons treating Gore like a touring rock star - as they also do with other Stateside reds like Bill Clinton & Michael Moore - never miss any opportunity to bash President Bush & link him to Prime Minister Harper in the most virulently anti-American manner imaginable.

That said, it's not as if leftists south of the border conduct themselves any differently or despise the U.S. any less.

"Because to do so would potentially mislead the public into thinking that is all there is to worry about. " '

In replying so blithely I inadvertently supported your implication that the direct warming results of doubled CO2 have not been publically "released". That is certainly not true. This aspect of anthropogenic climate change has been underemphasized, because it is only one aspect of how increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations would affect climate. It is only a foundational datum to the investigation.

"I doubt that any modelers would tell you that the models are a conclusion. .. And the output has error bars, even if they are not well-publicized." ... Yet the IPCC summary reports and the alarmists' rhetoric treat them as such. Never mind the nonsensical extrapolation of CO2 output in order to even get to 'doubling CO2' that requires bizarre trends that will never come to pass.

It isn't really fruitful for me to discuss interpretations. I haven't read the full IPCC summary; I would expect that it refers to model outputs as such, and defers full discussion of their advantages and disadvantages to the full WG1 report. If this is indeed a "Summary for Policymakers", the policymakers get the output/results/conclusions, not the details of calculation.

The skeptics I linked to are proving that even the error bars in the estimates are insufficient.

"Proving" is a stretch. The skeptics are trying to overemphasize the importance of uncertainties. A classic tactic in most oppositional presentations, harkening back to the tactics of tobacco-industry-paid scientists trying to cast doubt on the link between smoking and cancer.

What about the fact that CO2 absorbs at certain frequencies and at some concentration will be fully absorbing the radiation at those frequencies and more CO2 ppm wont increase radiative forcing?

That's not a fact, it's a canard indicative of lack of understanding of how GHG warming works.

Busy Week for Water Vapor (primarily the paragraph commencing "To see why..."

Chapter 4: Greenhouse Gases (PDF - read the section entitled "Band Saturation")

and the warming range for 2100 is *still* 1.5 to 4.5 C (+/- about 0.5 C) If it only warmed 1.5 C by 2100, then the warming rate for the entire 21st Century would be less than the currently observed warming since about 1980. That'd be great." ... Not only would it be great - IT IS ALSO AS LIKELY IF NOT MORE LIKELY THAN ANY SCENARIO POSTULATED BY THE ALARMISTS!

On what do you base that opinion? Why is 1.5 C warming more likely than the midrange, 2.5-3.5 C?

but the summary reports DONT BOTHER TO POINT OUT WHAT 1.5C WOULD MEAN. Moderate improvement in climate for most folks, with most of the increases at high latitudes in winter, ouch, Siberia warms a bit in January, that's gotta hurt (/sarc). Clearly, if IPCC and the global warming alarmists were to ADMIT that as a 'just-as-likely' scenario, a lot of the air would come out of their hype.

Yet it appears that the current warming trend is contributing to a substantial loss of perennial Arctic sea ice. This reduces albedo -- a positive feedback. Loss of sea ice allows the ocean to directly absorb more heat as solar insolation -- another positive feedback. Thawing permafrost releases methane -- another positive feedback. Moderate warming keeps all those positive feedbacks going (and I'm sure the IPCC didn't overlook them).

Global warming alarmism is treating worst-case hypotheticals like certain truths, ignoring the reality of the many caveats that exist, and denigrating the legitimate dissent rather than treating it properly as scientific skepticism.

I won't dispute that global warming activists highlight worst-case scenarios; I would dispute that they treat them as "certain truths". I would say that the climate scientists are fully aware of the caveats. I would also say that climate scientists don't denigrate legitimate dissent, but they are darned tired of combating the oft-repeated canards that the skeptics keep recycling.

Make 80% of new power plant construction nuclear power plants. It will cost no more than coal to operate and will be safe, environmentally sound and GHG emissions-free.

I agree. And I also agree with strong R&D for alternative fuels. We need efficient production of ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks.

Because if the warming is "global" then it should be... well GLOBAL. If some glaciers are growing then those areas aren't warming, if those areas aren't warming then we do not have global warming.

I don't want to parse the exact meaning of well-known catchphrases. Is someone not an "interior decorator" if they help pick out patio furniture in addition to choosing the decor of the living room?

Problem is the global warming people are making predictions 10, 20, 50, 100 years out (oh and lets not forget that so far every single global warming prediction whose time period has passed has proven to be wrong). Meanwhile the best case scenario we've got for predicting a substantial repeating climate change is 6 months,

Different kinds of models are used. Weather models are based on fluid dynamics. Coupled ocean-atmosphere models are high resolution GCMs. Long-term climate models are lower spatial resolution GCMs with different data inputs and boundary conditions than ocean-atmosphere models. They do different things!

And the problem with pinning everything on CO2 is that the long term (Paleozoic) core data doesn't support CO2 having any relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and the global temperature. There was a big dip in global temperatures during the Ordovician era while CO2 levels were much much higher than the are now, then another big dip during the Carboniferous while CO2 levels were closer to todays

I credit you with discovering, as many dilettantes in the climate change debate do, the Ordovician glaciation. Do you happen to know where Gondwanaland was when it occurred? You do the Google and find out. (Dr. Crowley can help.)

It is true that Milankovitch cycles don't explain all of the glacial/interglacial periodicity. But they are strongly correlated with most of it. Correlation is not causation, but it's going to take a lot of work to displace Milankovitch as the main factor.

Wow that's a sad little excuse. Look if you're going to claim the world is getting hotter you have to deal with the fact that significant chunks of the world are NOT getting hotter. This isn't about parsing phrases this is about facts. You say global warming is a fact, but with parts of the globe not only not warming but cooling then it is clearly not.

Predictions are predictions. If you want me to believe in your long term predictions you have to show compitence in short and mid term predictions. If you can't predict an El Nino at least 5 years out I'm not going to believe what you say about the weather in 50 years.

When you're dealing with CO2 levels as high as existed then the land mass configuration shouldn't matter. The alarmist crowd is all saying that doubling the CO2 will result in a 1 degree warming, well CO2 levels during the Ordovician were 100 times higher than today, if there's any verasity to the CO2 warming predictions that should more than over power any differences caused by the distribution of land.

Strong correlation isn't good enough. If you're going to say the Milankovitch cycles show we can't possibly be heading to another ice age then you have to deal with the fact that those cycles have some glaring problems explaining the historical record. Because those cycles have been wrong before they could just as easily be wrong now. I agree it will take a lot of work to displace Milankovitch, which is my exact point, our best explanation right now doesn't actually work as an explanation and therefore isn't actually useful as a predictor, which shows that we really don't have the data necessary right now to be making claims about how people are effecting the climate. We don't really understand the natural cycle of the planet, we don't really know where we are in the cycle, and if we don't know those we can't know if we're in an aberation from the cycle or how that possible aberation has been created.

This Tim Lambert btrw is boosting the dubious junk-science report (by Les Roberts and others) on Iraq that claimed 650,000 deaths fromthe conflict .... which got this find retort:

"Les Roberts is NOT a reliable source.

1.

The Lancet is NOT Europe's most prestigious medical journal, in English we have the BMJ and in French etc there are similar that a yankee like Les would refuse to read both on principle and because he cannot (any more than he can speak Arabic).
2.

Cluster analyis is NOT "the standard approach used by the UN to estimate mortality". Roberts has shown repeatedly both that he has never heard of the WHO and as here that he is unaware that WHO is a UN agency which produced life tables for Iraq before the invasion that did NOT involve cluster analysis. The WHO data reduce his "excess deaths" by at least 50% (even before adjusting for his inflated CIA population data)
3.

Roberts chose to use fictitious estimates of the population pre the invasion by the CIA and UNDP rather than those of the WHO. If he had ever been a serious academic it would have been incumbent on him to at least give reasons why the WHO's mortality rate for Iraq pre-invasion (9.26 in 2001 as against his thumbsuck 5.5) was invalid.
4.

It is precisely because the Lancet's non-existent peer reviewers had never heard of the WHO and its life tables for Iraq that the Lancet is NOT anything more than an activist rather than scientific journal.
5.

If indeed there are Roberts' 140,000 violent deaths in Iraq every year (and despite their best efforts the Sunni and Shia have yet to get close), that means c.380 a day. Why have the world's media, including al-Jazeera (aka ABC, BBC, SBS, etc) NEVER reported a death toll of 380 on ANY single day? (Hint: the Sunni/Shia much prefer the big bombs in market places and mosques that are noticed even by al Jazeera/CNN than drive by shootings that rarely get reported and therefore lack marketing utility).
6.

Roberts' study ignores the daily exodus of 1,000 a day (365,000 p.a. or more than double his excess deaths) from Iraq (source: al Jazeera/BBC, 15 Feb 2007) which reduces the inflated figure for the population that he uses to gross up from his out of date and dubious clusters."

If Tim lambert is promoting junk science in another area, why treat him as a credible in this area?

Look if you're going to claim the world is getting hotter you have to deal with the fact that significant chunks of the world are NOT getting hotter. This isn't about parsing phrases this is about facts. You say global warming is a fact, but with parts of the globe not only not warming but cooling then it is clearly not.

This is ridiculous. Climate and weather are variable. You're asking for a simple linear trend everywhere. Might happen on Billiard Ball Earth, but not this sphere. I'm done with this line.

If you can't predict an El Nino at least 5 years out I'm not going to believe what you say about the weather in 50 years.

Your opinions are your own, correct or not.

When you're dealing with CO2 levels as high as existed then the land mass configuration shouldn't matter.

See, this is where a lack of willingness to try and understand the complexities of the Earth's climate is amply demonstrated. The fact is, it does matter where the land masses are, and a host of other factors are involved. Did you happen to know that there was a major shift in global climate when the Central American isthmus closed? Do you know why? (That's just an example.) Climate is a matter of heat and energy flow in a complex system, and significant shifts will alter the system, sometime in ways that are counter-intuitive. Try to gain some understanding instead of arguing with me.

Strong correlation isn't good enough. If you're going to say the Milankovitch cycles show we can't possibly be heading to another ice age then you have to deal with the fact that those cycles have some glaring problems explaining the historical record.

If you don't have online access to Science magazine, go to a library and get this article:

A. Berger and M. Loutre, Science, 297 (5585), August 23, 2002, "An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead?". Read it and we can discuss it. I am not going to type in all of the text from my copy just to enlighten you.

No it's not ridiculous. If you're going to claim that something is effecting the entire planet then it needs to effect the entire planet. I'm not asking for a simple linear trend, I'm asking for an actual GLOBAL trend. It doesn't have to be linear, temperature doesn't need to go up in all regions by the same amount, and there can be aberant years, but all regions need to generally trend upwards. All regions are not trending upward, therefore this "global" phenomenon isn't.

It's not an opinion it's a reality. Nowhere in the normal world will people believe the long term predictions of people that can't make correct short and mid term predictions. In any section of the world not related to the religious belief of global warming you prove your long term predictions should be listened to by being right in the short and mid. There's no reason why global warming predictors shouldn't be held to the exact same criteria as any other predictors.

Nice editing, way to ignore the simple math. Obviously land mass location has some effect on the climate, not disputing that at all. But if the way alarminst say CO2 effects climate is correct then the 100 fold increase in CO2 for that period should easily over power and difference caused by land distribution. We're not talking CO2 levels 3 or 4 times current, that could understandably be over powered by how the land mass effects global temperature. We're talking 100 times the CO2, according the the alarmists under current land conditions that should result in a 100 degree increase, that's far too big to be over powered by the land mass distribution.

Another pathietic dodge. Face the facts, you just admitted the Milankovitch cycle doesn't fully explain the ice age / interglacial periods and that we'd need a lot more data to replace it. My original statement was that we don't know enough about this change to truly know where we are in the cycle and how things work. Your admission that Milankovitch doesn't fully explain things is in agreement with my statement. Don't backtrack now telling me to go read something else, something else which I'm sure will again prove you're wrong, because so far all the real data says you're wrong.

"What about the fact that CO2 absorbs at certain frequencies and at some concentration will be fully absorbing the radiation at those frequencies and more CO2 ppm wont increase radiative forcing?

That's not a fact, it's a canard indicative of lack of understanding of how GHG warming works."

Busy Week for Water Vapor (primarily the paragraph commencing "To see why..." "

Huh? Your link (PDF one) confirms that statement about band saturation and states that CO2 concentration increases impact based on log of increase of CO2. So you call something a 'canard' and then link to a cite that confirms the underlying premise!

"I haven't read the full IPCC summary;"

Well, that's the rub ... I and other global warming 'skeptics' may have different views on the science, but the real complaint from the dissenters has *not* been the science but the abuse of said science for an illegitimate political agenda. As such, it is EXACTLY what is left out of this political presentations that is the cause of concern.

There is something further disturbing. You cite a new paper that confirms, it seems, the magnitude of water vapor feedback. bravo. and yet:
"This is probably the most direct evidence to date that there is nothing terribly wrong about the way general circulation models handle water vapor feedback. This is quite remarkable, given the potential role of small scale cloud processes in moistening the atmosphere. To be sure, the analysis only deals with clear sky regions, but the moisture in these regions originates in the cloudy convective regions, and so it provides a fair test. In any event, within the cloudy regions themselves, the clouds rather than water vapor have the dominant effect on the radiation budget."

My concern is not with their conclusions, which may well be right. My concern is with the political dunderheads like Al Gore who have insisted - WRONGLY - that the science is settled. This paper is only one of the first to even show that the data correspond to the model, now, in 2005 ... and yet for more than a decade we've been told the lie that 'the science is settled'. And not futher that my original point about cloud cover not being fully understood IS ACKNOWLEDGED IN THE ARTICLE YOU CITE. This is not a 'skeptic' saying it, this is from the 'pro-GW' climate-change-boosting scientists. They *know* the models are just models, and hey may 'believe' in them, but faith is not fact.

"On what do you base that opinion? Why is 1.5 C warming more likely than the midrange, 2.5-3.5 C?"

A) The IPCC estimates of actual CO2 production are IMHO absurd, an issue separate from the GHG science issues
B) If you overlay proper view of CO2 production with moderate scenarios you would get a mean estimate in the 1.5-2.0 range.

There is clearly a desire to boost fearmongering scenarios in order to force a drastic global-government solution that is unwarranted and dangerous. I already stated a simple no-extra-cost solution to global warming - simply build nuclear power plants for 80% of our baseline power generation, and in 30 years we could cut our CO2 generation in half. If we cut CO2 generation by 1/2, CO2 increases would be under 1 ppm. and we would not even get to 500ppm.

END OF CRISIS.

Why does Al Gore present unlikely worst-case scenarios as the only possible outcome ....hmmmm????

The error bars in the models are as real as the models themselves and you should be thanking the skeptics for keeping the science on this matter honest, and not denigrating them.

"Yet it appears that the current warming trend is contributing to a substantial loss of perennial Arctic sea ice. " I heard the total mass was unchanged when considering both poles together.

"I would also say that climate scientists don't denigrate legitimate dissent, but they are darned tired of combating the oft-repeated canards that the skeptics keep recycling."

You call them canards when they are not.
"I would say that the climate scientists are fully aware of the caveats. "
... BUT THE PUBLIC IS NOT MADE AWARE OF THEM. THEY ARE MISLEAD BY THE DUMBED-DOWN VERSION THAT PRESENTS WORST_CASE HYSTERIA AS THE ONLY POSSIBLE OUTCOME. That is bad spin to the point of Junk Science.

PS. If we are to get back to real science on this, we will have to understand the impact of clouds ... as stated on climate audit.org as a comment:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1135#more-1135

"The water vapor amplifying effect does make a lot of sense. It is most certainly a real effect. But one must remember that this is really under clear sky or “fixed cloud cover” conditions. The problem, of course, is that the Earth is never under full “clear sky” or even “fixed cloud cover” conditions. And clouds change everything: they change the albedo, they carry heat all over the place, horizontally and vertically. They come and go in a fashion that we don’t yet understand. When they started making accurate measurements of the Earth’s radiative budget, they found that it varied much more than what the models predicted. That’s because a small change in cloud cover has a similar effect as doubling CO2, if not more."

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