[Phys-L] Re: NAS President Testifies Before Congress on Global Warming

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

Richard Hake writes:

> According to the "What's New" newsletter of 29 Jul 2005 from the
> National Academies:
>
> "At two recent Senate hearings, National Academy of Sciences
> President Ralph J. Cicerone discussed the current state of scientific
> understanding on climate change based largely on findings of recent
> studies by the National Academies."
>
> For Cicerone's testimony before the:
>
> (a) Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of July 21 see
> <http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimony/
> Climate_Change_Science_and_Economics.asp>.

& deletia

I read Cicerone's testimony, and I have been interested in the
science and politics of climate change for some years. In my opinion
Cicerone responsibly presents the situation by frequently
intercalating caveats emphasizing the uncertainty of climate
scientists regarding many issues of importance to a government policy
maker. George W. Bush characterized this situation as being too
uncertain to act upon, and did not choose to join the now defunct
Kyoto Treaty. He deserves to be recognized as having made a correct
decision in this matter. I only wish my own government (Canada) had
acted as wisely.

The testimony does seem to lean both ways, however, and that bothers
me - a lot! Cicerone seems to support the catastrophists in his
admonitory tone at several points in the testimony. It seems to me
that he is trying to equivocate without misrepresenting the facts.
There are several points at which I might pick, but consider just
one, dealing with the fact of "global warming".

(In order to follow what I write below you should consult the graph
in the testimony.) In his written testimony Cicerone presents a
standard graph entitled "Global Temperature" on its face, but more
correctly described as "Global annual-mean surface air temperature
change" in the caption following the graph, with proper attribution.
While the graph speaks for itself, he then describes it:

   "The observed warming has not proceeded at a uniform rate. Virtually
   all the 20th century warming in global surface air temperature
   occurred between the early 1900s and the 1940s and since the 1970s,
   with a slight cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during the interim
   decades. The troposphere warmed much more during the 1970s than
   during the two subsequent decades, whereas Earth’s surface warmed
   more during the past two decades than during the 1970s. The causes
   of these irregularities and the disparities in the timing are not
   completely understood."

(I will note here that it would have been sufficient to state that no
climate model has yet been able to explain these data satisfactorily
unless all that is needed to do so is to predict the sign of the
slope of a linear regression fit to these data. "Not completely
understood" is a pale characterization of the situation, in my view.)

Cicerone's oral testimony corresponding to this part is subtly
different. He appends to what is very like the above a comment:

   " ... , but the warming trend in global-average surface temperature
   observations during the past 30 years is undoubtedly real and is
   substantially greater than the average rate of warming during the
   twentieth century."

He is making the trivial observation that if one makes a linear fit
to nonlinear data, some regions within the data must have slopes
greater than the average. He wishes to plant the idea that something
dramatic and, perhaps, unprecedented is happening just now. He fails
to note that the period from 1910 through 1940 had almost as steep a
rise over the same length time interval. Perhaps the Senators on the
Committee don't look at graphs with great understanding.

It is the case that the United States government spends more money on
scientific research on climate than any other government. Kyoto is
dead, not because Bush didn't sign on, but because it was ill-
conceived from the beginning. The USA is taking the correct course.
If there are negative effects of climate change to be mitigated then
more research can inform the mitigation process; Kyoto was never
going to contribute to mitigation.

Leigh
_______________________________________________
Phys-L mailing list
Phys-L@electron.physics.buffalo.edu
https://www.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l