Richard Lindzen,

Ik volg Richard Lindzen nu al meer dan 15 jaar. En van het begin af aan was ik diep onder de indruk van zijn diepzinnige – van wat ik zou willen noemen – meta–analyses van de stand van de klimatologie en de klimaatdiscussie. Deze gaven niet alleen blijk van zijn beheersing van de technische details van zijn vakgebied – bijvoorbeeld het (vruchteloze) gekibbel over tienden van graden meer of minder opwarming – maar getuigden ook van zijn bredere eruditie, die bij de fervente aanhangers van de AGW–hypothese (AGW = ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’) helaas nog al eens ontbreekt.

Voor zijn ‘klassiekers’ verwijs ik onder meer naar: Climate science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?

Richard Lindzen was in het verleden actief betrokken bij het werk van het VN-klimaatpanel (IPCC), totdat hij zich daarvan in wanhoop distantieerde. Hij heeft reeds zo’n twee decennia lang stelling genomen tegen de stelselmatige desinformatie, die er over klimaatverandering wordt verspreid en de druk die wordt uitgeoefend op klimatologen, die er andere opvattingen op na houden, om hun mond te houden. Bijvoorbeeld hier.

Ik citeer:

So how is it that we don’t have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It’s my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton’s concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann’s work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested – a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community’s defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences – as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union – formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton’s singling out of a scientist’s work smacked of intimidation.

All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti–alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti–alarmist scientists – a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.

Sadly, this is only the tip of a non–melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.

Tja, zo gaan die dingen in klimatologenland.

Op dezelfde dag dat het IPCC met zijn nieuwste – en tot dusver meest alarmerende – rapport uitkwam hield Richard Lindzen een voordracht voor de ‘Global Warming Policy Foundation’ (GWPF) in London. Zoals viel te verwachten, was zijn conclusie weer geruststellend en geheel tegengesteld aan de door het VN-klimaatpanel aangekondigde Apocalyps.

An implausible conjecture backed by false evidence and repeated incessantly has become politically correct ‘knowledge,’ and is used to promote the overturn of industrial civilization. What we will be leaving our grandchildren is not a planet damaged by industrial progress, but a record of unfathomable silliness as well as a landscape degraded by rusting wind farms and decaying solar panel arrays. False claims about 97% agreement will not spare us, but the willingness of scientists to keep mum is likely to much reduce trust in and support for science. Perhaps this won’t be such a bad thing after all – certainly as concerns ‘official’ science.

There is at least one positive aspect to the present situation. None of the proposed policies will have much impact on greenhouse gases. Thus we will continue to benefit from the one thing that can be clearly attributed to elevated carbon dioxide: namely, its effective role as a plant fertilizer, and reducer of the drought vulnerability of plants. Meanwhile, the IPCC is claiming that we need to prevent another 0.5◦C of warming, although the 1◦C that has occurred so far has been accompanied by the greatest increase in human welfare in history.

As we used to say in my childhood home of the Bronx: ‘Go figure’.

De lezing is hier te vinden.

En hier op video.

https://youtu.be/X2q9BT2LIUA

Aan de de rapportage van Alison Bevege voor de ‘Daily Mail Australia’ ontleen ik nog de volgende passage:

A climate scientist said Australia’s coral reefs are not in danger in the wake of a UN report on climate change that he says is helping to overturn industrial civilisation.

  • Warming of any significance ceased about 20 years ago.

  • Renewables a ‘bubble’.

  • Man-made global warming ‘does not appear to be a serious problem’.

  • Landscape will be degraded by rusting wind farms, decaying solar panel arrays.

  • Australia’s Barrier Reef ‘not in any danger’ and recovers from bleaching events.

Zie verder hier.

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