[Dean's World] Aziz P: Gored again

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Aziz P:
Gored again
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1149008624.shtml


   The Nazi reference attacks on Gore by "climate skeptics" just don't
   stop coming. Now, acclaimed skeptic Bill Gray, a cantankerous
   meteorologist who believes that global warming is a natural process
   and will reverse itself in twenty years, comes out with this gem:

     Somehow Hitler keeps popping into the discussion. Gore draws a
     parallel between fighting global warming and fighting the Nazis.
     Novelist Michael Crichton, in State of Fear , ends with an appendix
     comparing the theory of global warming to the theory of eugenics --
     the belief, prominently promoted by Nazis, that the gene pool of
     the human species was degenerating due to higher reproductive rates
     of "inferior" people. Both, he contends, are examples of junk
     science, supported by intellectual elites who will later
     conveniently forget they signed on to such craziness.

     And Gray has no governor on his rhetoric. At one point during our
     meeting in Colorado he blurts out, "Gore believed in global warming
     almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with
     the Jews."

   Is it possible for any skeptic of global warming to make their point
   as methodically and rationally as the realClimate folks do, without
   resorting to ad hominem smearing? Frankly I don't think so, else we
   would actually have seen some by now.

   A casual observer might well ask, if the skeptics have such sound
   rationale for rebutting the global warming message, why don't they
   actually rebut the message via peer review? Instead they attack the
   messengers - and apparently when it comes to Al Gore, no intermediate
   comparisons are warranted, let's just go straight for the Nazi
   comparison and save time.

   In case you're curious, Gray's basis for skepticism is that he
   believes that computer model simulations are bogus and that the
   intuition of meterologists "in the field" is superior:

     The skeptics scoff at climate models. They're just computer
     programs. They have to interpret innumerable feedback loops, all
     the convective forces, the evaporation, the winds, the ocean
     currents, the changing albedo (reflectivity) of Earth's surface, on
     and on and on. [...] The models can't even predict the weather in
     two weeks, much less 100 years, he says. "They sit in this ivory
     tower, playing around, and they don't tell us if this is going to
     be a hot summer coming up. Why not? Because the models are no damn
     good!" [...] Gray's crusade against global warming "hysteria" began
     in the early 1990s, when he saw enormous sums of federal research
     money going toward computer modeling rather than his kind of
     science, the old-fashioned stuff based on direct observation. Gray
     often cites the ascendancy of Gore to the vice presidency as the
     start of his own problems with federal funding. The National
     Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) stopped giving him
     research grants. So did NASA. All the money was going to computer
     models. The field was going off on this wild tangent.

     Numerical models can't predict the future, he says. They don't even
     pretend to predict the weather in the coming season -- "but they
     make predictions of 50 or 100 years from now and ask you to believe
     the Earth will get warmer."

     The modelers are equation pushers.

     "They haven't been down in the trenches, making forecasts and
     understanding stuff!"

   And then the skeptics switch 180 degrees and say that hey - "global
   warming isn't just not happenning, it's also a Good Thing if it
   happens". To wit:

     Plants like carbon dioxide. Trees devour it. This demonized
     molecule, CO2, isn't some kind of toxin or contaminant or pollutant
     -- it's fertilizer.

   They even have cut an ad - essentially, global warming: don't worry,
   be happy! The closer?

     "Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution. We call it life."

   I for one welcome our Ent overlords. Hoom.

   What I find particulary interesting in the WaPo piece however is that
   the skeptics actually keep each other at some arm's length. For
   example, Gray says of noted skeptic Michael Lindzen, a professor at
   MIT:

     "Lindzen, he's a hard guy to deal with," Gray says. "He doesn't
     think he can learn anything from me."

     Which is correct. Lindzen says of Gray: "His knowledge of theory is
     frustratingly poor, but he knows more about hurricanes than anyone
     in the world. I regard him in his own peculiar way as a national
     resource."

   The question comes to mind then, why aren't there anti-warming
   scientific conferences? Why not a collaboration? Does it really make
   sense for a scientists to say that there's nothing he/she can learn
   from another scientist in the same field? Perhaps because they aren't
   practicing science?

   And it's not like these guys are being frozen out of the peer review
   or being denied funding (as they often like to compain). Lindzen is a
   professor at MIT. Gray is fully funded by the CEI. Both have extensive
   media pulpits, books, websites, etc.

   The truth is that the skeptics, like with Intelligent Design, can't
   compete on the level field of peer review. And they know it. So on one
   hand they fabricate excuses of victimization, and on the other they
   retreat to that playing field where volume, not content, matters most:
   the field of public opinion.

   Which is why they hate Al Gore. And why in their minds, he really is a
   Nazi. And that outburst by Gray above reveals in one second the true
   nature of their crusade - and the rotten foundations of their work.