Wall Street Journal attempts to escalate the climate wars
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0205
[Original post appears below revisions.]
Revised 02/06/12:
American Physical Society president responds to Wall Street Journal climate op-ed
The 6 February Wall Street Journal carries a letter from Robert L. Byer, president of the American Physical Society. He calls the WSJ‘s 27 January op-ed “No need to panic about global warming” (discussed below) “inaccurate in its characterization” of APS’s Climate Change Statement . Curiously, the WSJ online includes no link to that statement.
Byer calls the statement “unequivocal,” reports that it “notes that ‘global warming is occurring’,” and adds that it “states that ‘while there are factors driving the natural variability of climate (e.g., volcanoes, solar variability, oceanic oscillations), no known natural mechanisms have been proposed that explain all of the observed warming in the past century.’ ”
He continues: “The statement does not declare, as the authors of the op-ed suggest, that the human contribution to climate change is incontrovertible.” The word incontrovertible has occasioned past public discussion of APS’s climate statement.
Byer’s letter also defends the openness, thoroughness, rigor, and integrity of APS’s handling of the climate-change issue.
Revised 01/31/12: In a 1 February letter to the editor , 38 climate scientists launched a counterattack against the Wall Street Journal‘s 27 January attempt to escalate the climate wars. The letter writers charge that the authors of the WSJ’s climate op-ed mostly lacked expertise, like ‘dentists practicing cardiology,’ and assert that it ‘would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses.’
The letter writers recognize that a few of the op-ed’s authors actually have climate expertise—and then compare them to ‘a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS’ and to the few scientists who ‘continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science.’ They declare that in fact ‘the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade.’ They charge that the op-ed authors distorted the views of one of the letter’s authors, Kevin Trenberth.
The letter writers invoke the authority of ‘major national academies of science around the world and every other authoritative body of scientists active in climate research.’ They assert, ‘The world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible. Impacts are already apparent and will increase. Reducing future impacts will require significant reductions in emissions of heat-trapping gases.’ They report, ‘Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused.’ And they conclude by predicting that ‘investing in the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth.’
The WSJ lists all 38 responders:
Kevin Trenberth, Sc.D, Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Richard Somerville, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Katharine Hayhoe, Ph.D., Director, Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University
Rasmus Benestad, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, The Norwegian Meteorological Institute
Gerald Meehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences; Director, Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy, Princeton University
Peter Gleick, Ph.D., co-founder and president, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security
Michael C. MacCracken, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, Climate Institute, Washington
Michael Mann, Ph.D., Director, Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University
Steven Running, Ph.D., Professor, Director, Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, University of Montana
Robert Corell, Ph.D., Chair, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; Principal, Global Environment Technology Foundation
Dennis Ojima, Ph.D., Professor, Senior Research Scientist, and Head of the Dept. of Interior’s Climate Science Center at Colorado State University
Josh Willis, Ph.D., Climate Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Matthew England, Ph.D., Professor, Joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia
Ken Caldeira, Ph.D., Atmospheric Scientist, Dept. of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution
Warren Washington, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Terry L. Root, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
David Karoly, Ph.D., ARC Federation Fellow and Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia
Jeffrey Kiehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Donald Wuebbles, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois
Camille Parmesan, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, University of Texas; Professor of Global Change Biology, Marine Institute, University of Plymouth, UK
Simon Donner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada
Barrett N. Rock, Ph.D., Professor, Complex Systems Research Center and Department of Natural Resources, University of New Hampshire
David Griggs, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Australia
Roger N. Jones, Ph.D., Professor, Professorial Research Fellow, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Australia
William L. Chameides, Ph.D., Dean and Professor, School of the Environment, Duke University
Gary Yohe, Ph.D., Professor, Economics and Environmental Studies, Wesleyan University, CT
Robert Watson, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Chair of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Steven Sherwood, Ph.D., Director, Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Chris Rapley, Ph.D., Professor of Climate Science, University College London, UK
Joan Kleypas, Ph.D., Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
James J. McCarthy, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University
Stefan Rahmstorf, Ph.D., Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University, Germany
Julia Cole, Ph.D., Professor, Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
William H. Schlesinger, Ph.D., President, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Jonathan Overpeck, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
Eric Rignot, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine
Wolfgang Cramer, Professor of Global Ecology, Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France
Original post 01/30/12: The 27 January Wall Street Journal dedicates the top half of an opinion page to a commentary challenging the American Physical Society and arguing that there is ‘no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.’
Here’s the opening paragraph:
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about ‘global warming.’ Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.
The commentary cites the ‘Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, [who] publicly resigned from the American Physical Society.’ The authors see Giaever as exemplifying a growing number of ‘heretics’ on the question of human-caused climate disruption. They assert a ‘lack of global warming for well over 10 years now.’ They see problems with computer models amounting to an ‘embarrassment’ that is causing ‘those promoting alarm’ to shift ‘their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.’
The authors level serious charges. They assert that the scientific establishment’s treatment of ‘publicly dissenting scientists’ calls to mind ‘the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union.’ They summarize their historical analogy: ‘Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.’
The commentary also alleges that the dictum ‘Follow the money’ partly explains why APS refuses ‘the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word ‘incontrovertible’ from its description of [this] scientific issue':
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
Citing Yale economist William Nordhaus, whose name has appeared before in the climate wars, the authors argue against political action on climate change. They add the prediction that ‘it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.’
They close with a reference to presidential politics: ‘Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of ‘incontrovertible’ evidence.’
The WSJ appends a long note highlighting the 16 authors and their widely varying backgrounds:
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University [sic]; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.