Global warming - what to think ???

[BeltwayBandit]

http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

 

Nir Shaviv's take on global warming. Another 'denier' profiled by Solomon. Note, Solomon was using the term 'denier' in a sarcastic sense in his articles.

[cabrerad]

Sorry if this open letter has already been posted. Interesting, though.

 

 

Nope, that's new (pretty sure anyways). Some of the assertions in the text are contrary to a lot of research studies out there such as "Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models" and "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary" and "Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise."

I gave it a read and looked down the list of scientists. The only ones I recognized were Fred Singer ( he is also critical of the relationship between CFC's and ozone, UV light and skin cancer and tobacco and lung cancer, one heck of a 'denier' this guy) and Richard Lindzen (a legitimate researcher in the field) who have been discussed previously here. Here is my initial opinion, there are enough potential problems with aspects of the Kyoto Protocol to discuss without having to resort to commentary that can't be supported.

[guppychao]

Not a problem. I'll give Von Storch a read soon.. but it's soccer tonight...gotta love those 10:40 pm indoor games...

 

 

So did you win?

[cabrerad]

So did you win?

 

 

No....because you kept leaving the goal open in your quest for glory!

[Guest Larry-T]

http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

 

Nir Shaviv's take on global warming. Another 'denier' profiled by Solomon. Note, Solomon was using the term 'denier' in a sarcastic sense in his articles.

 

The paper is quite interesting, if rather fragmentary in its structure. The main point I saw concerning his viewpoint came in the opening section, where he says:

 

"According to the common perception, the temperature over the 20th century has been warming, and it is mostly anthropogenic in origin, with greenhouse gases (GHGs) being the dominant driver. Others, usually called "skeptics", challenge this view and instead claim that the temperature variations are all part of natural variability. As I try to demonstrate below, the truth is probably somewhere in between, with natural causes probably being more important over the past century, whereas anthropogenic causes will probably be more dominant over the next century. "

 

So even he agrees that human activity has caused 1/3 of the effects and will account for a higher percentage as we move forward.

 

It's a good argument for controlling greenhouse gas emmisions in order to minimize the increasing effect of these activities.

 

One of the biggest questions now has to do with the question of a "tipping point." If we have a catastrophic breakdown of the ice sheets on either Greenland or Antarctica, we'll be faced with a global crisis which will be a major factor in our lives and those of several generations to come.

[cabrerad]

I would be curious what method was used to determine the 'statistical significance' of the excluded datasets.

 

MBH 98 actually describes this in detail. The determination of which PCA components to retain in the analysis in MBH was accomplished through applying the Preisendorfer N-rule (Preisendorfer et al. 1981). Basically, each PC from the MBH data set is compared to PC's drawn from multiple randomly generated data sets (that contain the same properties as the actual data set). This is called a Monte Carlo simulation (due to the random nature of the data). If the PC's for the real data set explain more of the variation than 99% of the coreesponding randomly generated PC's, they are retained. MBH obtained 2 PC

Edited February 19, 2007 by cabrerad

[cabrerad]

In doing some other digging I re-discovered this excellent opinion piece by von Storch and Stehr. For those that don't know von Storch is a climate scientist and is familiar with the actual state of the science. Definately worth a read.

 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiege...,342376,00.html

How Global Warming Research is Creating a Climate of Fear

By Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr

"Silencing dissent and uncertainty for the benefit of a politically worthy cause reduces credibility, because the public is more well-informed than generally assumed. In the long term, the supposedly useful dramatizations achieve exactly the opposite of what they are intended to achieve. If this happens, both science and society will have missed an opportunity. "

 

I think it relevant to point out that von Storch and Stehr acknowledge the following:

 

most researchers do believe that a shift in global climate caused by human activity is already occurring, and that it will accelerate in the future and become even more apparent.

 

Do some media outlets and groups play up the effects of global warming, well probably. But there are clearly also other groups and media outlets on the other end of the spectrum. But that's another discussion and back to the science. Let's continue with Von Storch and his science:

 

 

 

 

von Storch also found MBH to be flawwed, from the article above:

"In an article we published in the professional journal "Science" in October 2004, we were able to demonstrate that the underlying methodology that led to this hockey stick curve is flawed."

 

I finally read the paper, and two technical comments that resulted from its publication (both in Science). In a nutshell, von Storch et al. set out to test the robustness of the MBH 98 model. They created a simulation based on MBH that introduced artificial white noise at select points into the generated temperature histories (to simulate non-climactic events). They then tested whether the introduction of this noise added more variability to the MBH model. They conclude that their addition of this white noise to the record results in a model with more variability than that presented by MBH. The inference is that the MBH model underestimates the variation in centennial and multi-decadal variations.

 

Here is a link to the von Storch article.

 

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publi...rchEtAl2004.pdf

 

 

This publication was followed by the following technical comment in Science

 

Comment by Wahl et al. (Summary of which is excerpted here):

 

Wahl ER; Ritson DM; Ammann CM

Environmental Studies and Geology Division, Science Center, Alfred University, Alfred, NY 14802, USA. wahle@alfred.edu

von Storch et al. (Reports, 22 October 2004, p. 679) criticized the ability of the "hockey stick" climate field reconstruction method to yield realistic estimates of past variation in Northern Hemisphere temperature. However, their conclusion was based on incorrect implementation of the reconstruction procedure. Calibration was performed using detrended data, thus artificially removing a large fraction of the physical response to radiative forcing.

 

So basically, von Storch et al. did not construct the MBH model correctly. Not only does this application not actually simulate the MBH model (which is the whole point of the paper), it is not even a proper one for climate field reconstructions because it inherently introduces error.

 

In a response in Science, von Storch et al. briefly admitted to the above, but now argue that the implementation of the reconstruction procedure does not affect their conclusions when they introduce red noise (basically noise where the value of one year is correlated to the noise from an adjacent year).

Response by von Storch et al.

 

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/sci;312/5773/529c.pdf

 

Now von Storch is comparing apples to oranges in going from introducing white noise to introducing red. This is pretty misleading. You can

Edited February 19, 2007 by cabrerad

[BeltwayBandit]

I find it curious that the primary papers presented to "verify" the MBH98 papers are more papers by the same authors of the original paper.

 

Just out of curiosity what does it take for a paper to be 'discredited'?

 

On the one hand we have the chairman of the NAS panel for applied statistics, agreeing with McIntyire and McKitricks assertions. Even the NAS panel agreed that MBH greatly overstated the 'robustness' of their reconstruction. On the other hand, we have the original authors defending their work.

 

NAS panel:

The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative

assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our

confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice

Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original

conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that

[cabrerad]

I find it curious that the primary papers presented to "verify" the MBH98 papers are more papers by the same authors of the original paper.

 

First, I imagine you would agree that Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes should have the right to defend their own work. As I have mentioned previously, these other papers should be judged based on the strnegth of the research not discounted simply because of who wrote them. I could have simply discounted McIntyre's paper because I thought it was "curious" that he is a mining executive, but I didn't. I took the time to address his conclusions and critiques of the MNBH98 paper.

 

Second, it is not true that all the papers validating MBH 98 have Mann, Bradley, Hughes or any combination of the three as authors.

 

Here's an example by Wahl and Ammann that specifically addresses MBH98

 

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millenn...nge_inPress.pdf

 

Similarly, the Technical Commentry on von Storch et al. was not authored by Mann, Bradley or Hughes.

 

 

Just out of curiosity what does it take for a paper to be 'discredited'?

 

As far as I am aware it is a relative term and as such (in this case) needs to be taken within the context of the evidence it is associated with.

 

On the one hand we have the chairman of the NAS panel for applied statistics, agreeing with McIntyire and McKitricks assertions. Even the NAS panel agreed that MBH greatly overstated the 'robustness' of their reconstruction. On the other hand, we have the original authors defending their work.

 

You are overreaching here and taking a whole suite of statments made by the panel and saying they all agree with McIntyre and McKitricks assertions. Here is exactly what the panel said in their summary which I hyperlinked to in post 72 (I suggest paying particular attention to point 3):

 

Let me summarize five key conclusions we reached after reviewing the evidence:

 

"1. The instrumentally measured warming of about 0.6

Edited February 20, 2007 by cabrerad

[BeltwayBandit]

(I suggest paying particular attention to point 3):

 

3. It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies.

 

Yes, it is interesting.. 4 centuries.. that is 400 years, yet MBH claimed to be a 'robust' reconstruction of 1000 years. Thus, the NAS panel lopped off 600 years or more than half of their reconstruction yet this somehow supports them? I fail to see the logic. MBH claimed a high level of confidence for their entire reconstruction, the NAS panel categorically disagreed by throwing out that claim for over 60% of their results. I fail to see how having over half of your paper dismissed as somehow being validated. That is the type of tortured logic that pervades the AGW camp.

 

You are overreaching here and taking a whole suite of statments made by the panel and saying they all agree with McIntyre and McKitricks assertions.

 

I was referring to Wegman. I also went back and reread your posts. You made a reather quick blanket dimissal of his arguments with little or no analysis whatsoever.

 

I thought this comment from Wegman was also interesting:

Technically speaking, the MBH98 algorithm is not principal components.

Principal components are obtained theoretically through an eigenanalysis of the

covariance matrix (which uses the centered data). Now there is an equivalent and

numerically preferred method of obtaining the principal components by finding the socalled

singular-value decomposition (SVD) of the original data matrix. The PC1 is the

first of the right singular vectors in the SVD. However, this is only the case if the data

matrix columns have been centered. Since the MBH98 algorithm does not center the data

matrix, the SVD is actually returning a different vector than PC1. One may investigate

this vector but it is incorrect to identify it as the principal component.

 

From Appendix A

In Mann et al. (1998), the study period is partitioned into a reconstruction period 1400-

1995 and a training period 1902-1980 in which all the proxy variables are available. The

data matrix is centered using the training data rather than the overall means. Because the

training period has higher temperatures, this biases the overall data lower for the period

1400-1995, thus inflating the variance. In this case the right singular vectors, Z , are no

longer the eigenvectors.

 

 

One side note, its a shame that I can't post the grapich from page 46 which shows how interrelated all of the 'independent' proxy studies are. For example the Bristlecone pine series, which the NAS panel strongly cautioned against using and Graybill and Idso (the creators of the series) also recommend against using because of CO2 fertilization, appears in 8 of the 12 reconstructions(its also worth noting that this controversial series happens to be part of Mann's PC1 proxy and as argued by MM this series is largely responsible for the hockey stick shape of the reconstruction). Two other series Polar Urals and Tornetrask appear in all 12 reconstructions. It is very interesting that supposedly 'independant' studies are all really just different combinations of the same proxy data.

[jason the filter freak]

*Edit, statement retracted*

Edited February 20, 2007 by jason the filter freak

[cabrerad]

Yes, it is interesting.. 4 centuries.. that is 400 years, yet MBH claimed to be a 'robust' reconstruction of 1000 years. Thus, the NAS panel lopped off 600 years or more than half of their reconstruction yet this somehow supports them? I fail to see the logic.

 

 

The NAS panel did not lop off 600 years, they said there was less confidence in that period. Your paraphrasing is not accurate.

 

 

MBH claimed a high level of confidence for their entire reconstruction, the NAS panel categorically disagreed by throwing out that claim for over 60% of their results.

 

Again, paraphrasing not accurate here. Phrases such as "categorically disagreed" do not mesh with what the NAS reported. If you disagree with me, by all means provide supporting information.

 

I fail to see how having over half of your paper dismissed as somehow being validated.

 

Again, you are asking questions I have already addressed. The important assertion here as I previously quoted in my last post on the summary of the NAS statement. It also directly contradicts your "categorically disagreed" statement:

 

Also, this paragraph preceeded the one you quoted. Any particular reason you left it out?

 

 

QUOTE

The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.

 

I'll ask again, any reason you left this paragraph, that immediatel preceeded the one you quoted, out of your quote?

 

 

That is the type of tortured logic that pervades the AGW camp.

 

You are making aspersions here. Please note I have refrained from doing so myself. I have listed a lot of papers, scientific explanations, and interpretations, the vast majority of which you have not addressed. Your commentary here is veering from the objective discusion of the science involved and is provided with no citations, documents, or papers to back up your claims here. You did say you wanted to stick the science.

Edited February 20, 2007 by cabrerad

[Gatortailale]

wow - what did I start - 88 posts so far to this thread

 

OKAY - comic relief

 

http://www.mndaily.com/article.php?id=70823 Former Vice President Al Gore could pay a visit to the University in the near future to receive an honorary degree for his work in climatology.

 

from article - select quote:

... The bipartisan work he did after he ran for office, she said, including his documentary, is deserving of the award.

 

funny that in the article they call his work bipartisan. Ha, he was/is out to stick it to bush admin. period.

[BeltwayBandit]

The NAS panel did not lop off 600 years, they said there was less confidence in that period. Your paraphrasing is not accurate.

 

MBH claimed a robust reconstruction for the entire period. The NAS disagreed. Call it what you want. Either way 60% of the paper's claimed reconstruction skill was discredited by that one statement. That is a pretty serious blow, regardless of how you wish to try and sugar coat it.

 

I'll ask again, any reason you left this paragraph, that immediatel preceeded the one you quoted, out of your quote?

For the sake of readablilty and brevity. Next time I'll quote the whole blasted 100+ pages of the report if it would make you happy.

 

You still haven't addressed Wegman's criticisms. On the one hand we have the Chair of the NAS panel for Applied Statistics saying that the method employed in the MBH reconstruction has serious flaws, on the other hand we have the authors of the paper continuing to try and defend their work. Sorry, but the independent review by a statistician regarding the statistical methods employed still seems the more powerful argument.

 

Your commentary here is veering from the objective discusion of the science involved and is provided with no citations, documents, or papers to back up your claims here. You did say you wanted to stick the science.

 

My apologies, but I do have a life. While arguing about global warming is fun, it doesn't pay the bills. There are numerous problems inherant in the multiproxy studies outlined by both the NAS panel report and the Wegman report. The fact that most of the studies use some combination of the same proxies is one of them (a fact that you keep ignoring for some odd reason).

[cabrerad]

I was referring to Wegman. I also went back and reread your posts. You made a reather quick blanket dimissal of his arguments with little or no analysis whatsoever.

 

Wegan's main point was that MBH98 used a non center weighted PCA. What you call a quick blanket dismissal is an analysis of PCA, explanation of centering conventions, and why MBH98 used the one they did. For everyone's benefit, here are the relevant excerpts from my posts

 

First, post 52 ( I left out the explanation of PCA the immediatelt preceeds this statement for clarity)

 

"You could also look at an interger or interval of a priori interest to your research to see if there is deviation from that value.

This is what MBH did in setting the mean over the 20th century to zero (to catch deviations from this period). Here is where MM had a bone to pick. They argued that the entire period should be set with mean O, not just the 20th century. In the MM analysis, the "hockey stick " component came up as PC1 in the MBH analysis and PC 4 in the MM analysis. MM decided that to exclude PC4 (and 3 and 5) and called them artifacts. This was a mistake. Subsequent analysis using MM's methodology has found all three excluded components to be statistically significant, so they should not have thrown them out. In addition, the MM analysis does not fit the entire data set when only the first two PC's are considered. When PC's 3, 4, and 5 are included it matches both the analysis of MBH and the data set. The only way the MM analysis fits the data set is to remove two of the tree ring data sets. You cannot omit data sets from an analysis without darn good reason to do so (statistical outliers are an example). This is an important check on the fit of the data and MM fall short here also. "

 

 

If you are familiar with Wegman's testimony, you know that this was also a criticism leveled by Wegman"

 

 

further down post 52

 

"Now on to Wegman:

 

I finally got a hold of what his critique of the MBH analysis was. It also focused on the PCA analysis, specifically on centering of the PCA analysis. He was basically asked if the MM criticism had statistical merit. He stated that it did. That's not really much of a revelation, no one actually contests that centering affects PCA analysis. Here is a key point: As I described above, the method of centering the data did not affect the shape or statistical significance of the hockey stick in explaining the data. The only thing it did was switch around the principal compontents (all of which were statistically significant anyways). So centering had no affect on the end result. Moreover, the centering chosen by MBH had relevence to what they wanted to test. Wegman's criticism therefore seems to indicate a lack of understanding of the hypothesis being tested. Wegman made the point that there should be more talk between statisticians and climate scientists due to these questions and yes there probably should be. The key is working together, because a statistican alone is blind to what may be an important variable or a priori assumption in a given field."

 

So that's my first comment that addresses Wegman

 

Second, Post 66:

 

"Please refer back to post 52 where I address their critique of the statistical methods and explain what PCA is and why the MM accusation falls short. In addition to my own explanation, I also provide a peer reviewed publication that addresses the criticism. "

 

 

(referring to your statement about flawed science by MBH)

 

"As this statement is only backed up by one paper (addressed by the literature and which I expounded upon) and a very narrow interpretation of Wegman's comments, I counter there is not sufficient evidence for any such claim."

 

Again, this addresses Wegman as well

 

 

"To counter the MM claim that using non-centered PCA is bad math, you can reference Principal Component Analysis by Ian Jolliffe.

 

 

Principal Component Analysis, I.T. Jolliffe"

 

And yet again, this applies to Wegman. Here I cite a widely used textbook on PCA.

 

 

Post 81:

 

 

"Wegman was only asked a very narrow question. Basically he was asked if the MM critique had statistical merit. He agreed it did. Yes, centering conventions affect the ordering of PC's, no one actually disputes that. As I have oultined previously, however, MBH had a specific reason for using their non centered PCA (that is, to specifically compare the past 100 years to the current late 20th century trend). It would have been a mistake if they just used a non centered aproach with no a priori reason, but they did have one. "

 

 

I counter that it is not accurate to say I made a quick blanket dismissal. I actually took the time to explain PCA and what the controvery was about. Where is your evidence supporting Wegman's conclusion? Citations? Analysis? Again, I am going to try to steer this conversation back to a discussion of the evidence. If you have a problem with center weighted vs non center weighted PCA, for example, let's discuss it.

[cabrerad]

MBH claimed a robust reconstruction for the entire period. The NAS disagreed. Call it what you want. Either way 60% of the paper's claimed reconstruction skill was discredited by that one statement. That is a pretty serious blow, regardless of how you wish to try and sugar coat it.

 

Yes, the NAS found some flaws the study, that is the progression of science. They did, however, back up the main point of the study, which is why I quoted the summary findings not once, but twice.

 

For the sake of readablilty and brevity. Next time I'll quote the whole blasted 100+ pages of the report if it would make you happy.

 

Well the statement is the leading paragraph from wich you drew your quote and pretty important in that it contradicts what you are trying to say about the NAS conclusions. I submit this statement yet again as the findings of the NAS and that your quotation needs to be taken within this context for objectivity.

 

 

You still haven't addressed Wegman's criticisms. On the one hand we have the Chair of the NAS panel for Applied Statistics saying that the method employed in the MBH reconstruction has serious flaws, on the other hand we have the authors of the paper continuing to try and defend their work. Sorry, but the independent review by a statistician regarding the statistical methods employed still seems the more powerful argument.

 

I am adressing the science here and explaining "the flaws". If you want to keep calling the study flawed and not actually look into it, fine. But then you are not discussing the science, nor have you attempted to adress my commentary on the issue other than saying it is dismissive.

 

 

 

My apologies, but I do have a life. While arguing about global warming is fun, it doesn't pay the bills. There are numerous problems inherant in the multiproxy studies outlined by both the NAS panel report and the Wegman report. The fact that most of the studies use some combination of the same proxies is one of them (a fact that you keep ignoring for some odd reason).

 

 

Well, that's funny, I have a life too..something we have in common. Actually I suggested actually reading the studies (several of which I have) becasue a lot them use much better proxies (the 98 proxies are almost 10 years old) and better models. That's a far cry from ignoring things. In fact, what you call ignoring is my refusal to just assume all those studies are automatically flawed.

Edited February 20, 2007 by cabrerad

[BeltwayBandit]

Wegman explained why the decentered data adversely affected Mann's reconstruction.

 

In Mann et al. (1998), the study period is partitioned into a reconstruction period 1400-

1995 and a training period 1902-1980 in which all the proxy variables are available. The

data matrix is centered using the training data rather than the overall means. Because the

training period has higher temperatures, this biases the overall data lower for the period

1400-1995, thus inflating the variance. In this case the right singular vectors, Z , are no

longer the eigenvectors.

 

 

As far as I can see it here's the facts: the authors had to submit a correigendum to correct errors in the original paper pointed out by McIntyre and McKitrick, the robustness of the reconstruction was called into question by the NAS panel that reviewed the work (removing the claim of 'robust' from 60% of the reconstruction), and the Chair of the NAS panel for Applied Statistics has agreeed with MM that there are serious statistical flaws that call into question the reconstruction.

 

Thats three major strikes against this particular paper.

 

You still haven't commented on the fact that all of the multiproxy reconstructions use essentially the same proxy series'.

[cabrerad]

wow - what did I start - 88 posts so far to this thread

 

OKAY - comic relief

from article - select quote:

 

 

funny that in the article they call his work bipartisan. Ha, he was/is out to stick it to bush admin. period.

 

 

Yeah, that is a bit of a stretch.

[cabrerad]

Wegman explained why the decentered data adversely affected Mann's reconstruction.

 

And I explained, ad nauseum, that it doesn't because Wegman fails to take into account the hypothesis being tested (this is the applied part of statistics) or the errors made by MM (mainly because he was never asked to).

 

 

As far as I can see it here's the facts: the authors had to submit a correigendum to correct errors in the original paper pointed out by McIntyre and McKitrick, the robustness of the reconstruction was called into question by the NAS panel that reviewed the work (removing the claim of 'robust' from 60% of the reconstruction), and the Chair of the NAS panel for Applied Statistics has agreeed with MM that there are serious statistical flaws that call into question the reconstruction.

 

Here's another another perspective

 

http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_don...ess/7_27_06.cfm

 

Some pertinent excerpts:

 

Turning our attention to the methodological issues this hearing seeks to investigate, in my opinion, the Wegman report failed to accomplish its primary objective, which was

Edited February 20, 2007 by cabrerad

[BeltwayBandit]

Did you notice the table S1 buried at the end of Wahl and Amann that shows the MBH reconstruction fails the Pearson R2 verification.

 

Why is this important?

(From McIntyre's testimony to Congress)There is a formal relationship between the RE statistic and the verification r2 discussed in Wilks 1995, relying on Murphy, 1988 (called

[Gatortailale]

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/st...05-fc28f14da388

 

Allegre's second thoughts

The Deniers -- The National Post's series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science

LAWRENCE SOLOMON, Financial Post

Published: Friday, March 02, 2007

Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.

 

"By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Dr. Allegre, a renowned geochemist, wrote 20 years ago in Cles pour la geologie.." Fifteen years ago, Dr. Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming's "potential risks are very great" and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe's fragility in order to stave off "spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse."

 

 

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when concern about global warming was in its infancy, little was known about the mechanics of how it could occur, or the consequences that could befall us. Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

 

 

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."

 

Dr. Allegre's skepticism is noteworthy in several respects. For one, he is an exalted member of France's political establishment, a friend of former Socialist president Lionel Jospin, and, from 1997 to 2000, his minister of education, research and technology, charged with improving the quality of government research through closer co-operation with France's educational institutions. For another, Dr. Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution. His break with scientific dogma over global warming came at a personal cost: Colleagues in both the governmental and environmental spheres were aghast that he could publicly question the science behind climate change.

 

But Dr. Allegre had allegiances to more than his socialist and environmental colleagues. He is, above all, a scientist of the first order, the architect of isotope geodynamics, which showed that the atmosphere was primarily formed early in the history of the Earth, and the geochemical modeller of the early solar system. Because of his path-breaking cosmochemical research, NASA asked Dr. Allegre to participate in the Apollo lunar program, where he helped determine the age of the Moon. Matching his scientific accomplishments in the cosmos are his accomplishments at home: Dr. Allegre is perhaps best known for his research on the structural and geochemical evolution of the Earth's crust and the creation of its mountains, explaining both the title of his article in l' Express and his revulsion at the nihilistic nature of the climate research debate.

 

 

Calling the arguments of those who see catastrophe in climate change "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers," Dr. Allegre especially despairs at "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters." The world would be better off, Dr. Allegre believes, if these "denouncers" became less political and more practical, by proposing practical solutions to head off the dangers they see, such as developing technologies to sequester C02. His dream, he says, is to see "ecology become the engine of economic development and not an artificial obstacle that creates fear."

 

Lawrence Solomon@nextcity.com

 

- - -

 

- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.

 

CV OF A DENIER:

 

Claude Allegre received a Ph D in physics in 1962 from the University of Paris. He became the director of the geochemistry and cosmochemistry program at the French National Scientific Research Centre in 1967 and in 1971, he was appointed director of the University of Paris's Department of Earth Sciences. In 1976, he became director of the Paris Institut de Physique du Globe. He is an author of more than 100 scientific articles, many of them seminal studies on the evolution of the Earth using isotopic evidence, and 11 books. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Science.

[Guest Larry-T]

"His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice..."

 

Oops..... That was obviously written before the major ice losses of the past two years.

[BeltwayBandit]

 

Oops..... That was obviously written before the major ice losses of the past two years.

 

I guess it depends on where you look. The eastern ice sheet is gaining and the much smaller western ice sheet is losing, most of it in two large events. Either way you slice it, two years of data isn't a 'trend,' its noise.