Week in Science
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December 31, 2016
Putting such ugliness aside, some experts doubt that the science will improve even if the Trump administration asks new research questions and funding spreads to myriad proposals.
Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who has long questioned climate change orthodoxy, is skeptical that a sunnier outlook is upon us.
“I actually doubt that. Even if some of the roughly $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars currently spent on climate research across 13 different federal agencies now shifts to scientists less invested in the calamitous narrative, groupthink has so corrupted the field that funding should be sharply curtailed rather than redirected.”
“They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up.”
“Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations.”“The field is cluttered with entrenched figures who must toe the established line,” Lindzen said, pointing to a recent congressional report that found the Obama administration got a top Department of Energy scientist fired and generally intimidated the staff to conform with its politicized position on climate change.
“Remember this was a tiny field, a backwater, and then suddenly you increased the funding to billions and everyone got into it.”
“Even in 1990 no one at MIT called themselves a ‘climate scientist,’ and then all of a sudden everyone was. They only entered it because of the bucks; they realized it was a gravy train. You have to get it back to the people who only care about the science.”
The_observer said:
December 31, 2016
Putting such ugliness aside, some experts doubt that the science will improve even if the Trump administration asks new research questions and funding spreads to myriad proposals.Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who has long questioned climate change orthodoxy, is skeptical that a sunnier outlook is upon us.
“I actually doubt that. Even if some of the roughly $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars currently spent on climate research across 13 different federal agencies now shifts to scientists less invested in the calamitous narrative, groupthink has so corrupted the field that funding should be sharply curtailed rather than redirected.”
“They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up.”
“Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations.”“The field is cluttered with entrenched figures who must toe the established line,” Lindzen said, pointing to a recent congressional report that found the Obama administration got a top Department of Energy scientist fired and generally intimidated the staff to conform with its politicized position on climate change.
“Remember this was a tiny field, a backwater, and then suddenly you increased the funding to billions and everyone got into it.”
“Even in 1990 no one at MIT called themselves a ‘climate scientist,’ and then all of a sudden everyone was. They only entered it because of the bucks; they realized it was a gravy train. You have to get it back to the people who only care about the science.”
ruby said:
The_observer said:
December 31, 2016
Putting such ugliness aside, some experts doubt that the science will improve even if the Trump administration asks new research questions and funding spreads to myriad proposals.Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who has long questioned climate change orthodoxy, is skeptical that a sunnier outlook is upon us.
“I actually doubt that. Even if some of the roughly $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars currently spent on climate research across 13 different federal agencies now shifts to scientists less invested in the calamitous narrative, groupthink has so corrupted the field that funding should be sharply curtailed rather than redirected.”
“They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up.”
“Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations.”“The field is cluttered with entrenched figures who must toe the established line,” Lindzen said, pointing to a recent congressional report that found the Obama administration got a top Department of Energy scientist fired and generally intimidated the staff to conform with its politicized position on climate change.
“Remember this was a tiny field, a backwater, and then suddenly you increased the funding to billions and everyone got into it.”
“Even in 1990 no one at MIT called themselves a ‘climate scientist,’ and then all of a sudden everyone was. They only entered it because of the bucks; they realized it was a gravy train. You have to get it back to the people who only care about the science.”
The Guardian reported in June 2016 that Lindzen has been a beneficiary of Peabody Energy, a coal company that has funded multiple groups contesting the climate consensus.
Which is what I meant by biased.
Biased information is not usually scientific or reliable, its usually misinformation to distract people from real information.
Out of this world: From stunning auroras to distant galaxies, the best space images of 2016 revealed
ruby said:
The_observer said:
December 31, 2016
Putting such ugliness aside, some experts doubt that the science will improve even if the Trump administration asks new research questions and funding spreads to myriad proposals.Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who has long questioned climate change orthodoxy, is skeptical that a sunnier outlook is upon us.
“I actually doubt that. Even if some of the roughly $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars currently spent on climate research across 13 different federal agencies now shifts to scientists less invested in the calamitous narrative, groupthink has so corrupted the field that funding should be sharply curtailed rather than redirected.”
“They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up.”
“Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations.”“The field is cluttered with entrenched figures who must toe the established line,” Lindzen said, pointing to a recent congressional report that found the Obama administration got a top Department of Energy scientist fired and generally intimidated the staff to conform with its politicized position on climate change.
“Remember this was a tiny field, a backwater, and then suddenly you increased the funding to billions and everyone got into it.”
“Even in 1990 no one at MIT called themselves a ‘climate scientist,’ and then all of a sudden everyone was. They only entered it because of the bucks; they realized it was a gravy train. You have to get it back to the people who only care about the science.”
The Guardian reported in June 2016 that Lindzen has been a beneficiary of Peabody Energy, a coal company that has funded multiple groups contesting the climate consensus.
honestly, is this the best shit you can come up with? character assination by environmental extremists.
its always the same flimsy baseless accusations that any & every climate scientist who is sceptical, >>>to any degree<<< is paid by some fossil fuel company when the reality is, the money is in the alarmist side.
Oh, of course, only alarmist governments are allowed to fund research.
always play the man cause you carn’t rationally argue.
Lindzen DID, and could have made much more money from the billions of $ the US government throws at climate research, year in year out, especially as a leading climate scientist.
thats where the funds come from to lubricate the climate gravey train.
Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940) is an American atmospheric physicist known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides, and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and books. From 1983 until his retirement in 2013, he was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a lead author of Chapter 7, “Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report on climate change. He has criticized the scientific consensus about climate change and what he has called “climate alarmism.”
Career
Lindzen has published papers on Hadley circulation, monsoon meteorology, planetary atmospheres, hydrodynamic instability, mid-latitude weather, global heat transport, the water cycle, ice ages and seasonal atmospheric effects. His main contribution to the academic literature on anthropogenic climate change is his proposal of the iris hypothesis in 2001, with co-authors Ming-Dah Chou and Arthur Y. Hou. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Science, Health, and Economic Advisory Council at the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy. He joined MIT in 1983, prior to which he held positions at the University of Washington (1964–65), Institute for Theoretical Meteorology, University of Oslo (1965–67), National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) (1966–67), University of Chicago (1968–72) and Harvard University (1972–83). He also briefly held a position of Visiting Lecturer at UCLA in 1967. As of January 2010, his publications list included 230 papers and articles published between 1965 and 2008, with five in process for 2009. He is the author of a standard textbook on atmospheric dynamics, and co-authored the monograph Atmospheric Tides with Sydney Chapman.
He was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT from 1983, until his retirement which was reported in the Spring 2013 newsletter of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). On December 27, 2013 the Cato Institute announced that he is a Distinguished Senior Fellow in their Center for the Study of Science.
Early work (1964–1972)
Lindzen’s early work was concerned with ozone photochemistry, the aerodynamics of the middle atmosphere, the theory of atmospheric tides, and planetary waves. His work in these areas led him to a number of fundamental scientific discoveries, including the discovery of negative equivalent depths in classical tidal theory, explanations for both the quasi-biennial oscillation of the Earth’s stratosphere and the four-day period of the superrotation of the Venus atmosphere above the cloud top.
Ozone photochemistry
His PhD thesis of 1964 concerned the interactions of ozone photochemistry, radiative transfer and the dynamics of the middle atmosphere. This formed the basis of his seminal Radiative and Photochemical Processes in Mesospheric Dynamics that was published in four parts in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences between 1965 and 1966. The first of these, Part I: Models for Radiative and Photochemical Processes, was co-authored with his Harvard colleague and former PhD thesis advisor, Richard M. Goody, who is well known for his 1964 textbook Atmospheric Radiation. The Lindzen and Goody (1965) study has been widely cited as foundational in the exact modeling of middle atmosphere ozone photochemistry. This work was extended in 1973 to include the effects of nitrogen and hydrogen reactions with his former PhD student, Donna Blake, in Effect of photochemical models on calculated equilibria and cooling rates in the stratosphere.
Lindzen’s work on ozone photochemistry has been important in studies that look at the effects that anthropogenic ozone depletion will have on climate.
Atmospheric tides
Since the time of Laplace (1799), scientists had been puzzled as to why pressure variations measured at the Earth’s surface associated with the semi-diurnal solar tide dominate those of the diurnal tide in amplitude, when intuitively one would expect the diurnal (daily) passage of the sun to dominate. Lord Kelvin (1882) had proposed the so-called “resonance” theory, wherein the semi-diurnal tide would be “selected” over the diurnal oscillation if the atmosphere was somehow able to oscillate freely at a period of very close to 12 hours, in the same way that overtones are selected on a vibrating string. By the second half of the twentieth century, however, observations had failed to confirm this hypothesis, and an alternative hypothesis was proposed that something must instead suppress the diurnal tide. In 1961, Manfred Siebert suggested that absorption of solar insolation by tropospheric water vapour might account for the reduction of the diurnal tide. However, he failed to include a role for stratospheric ozone. This was rectified in 1963 by the Australian physicist Stuart Thomas Butler and his student K.A. Small who showed that stratospheric ozone absorbs an even greater part of the solar insolation.
Nevertheless, the predictions of classical tidal theory still did not agree with observations. It was Lindzen, in his 1966 paper, On the theory of the diurnal tide, who showed that the solution set of Hough functions given by Bernard Haurwitz to Laplace’s tidal equation was incomplete: modes with negative equivalent depths had been omitted. Lindzen went on to calculate the thermal response of the diurnal tide to ozone and water vapor absorption in detail and showed that when his theoretical developments were included, the surface pressure oscillation was predicted with approximately the magnitude and phase observed, as were most of the features of the diurnal wind oscillations in the mesosphere. In 1967, along with his NCAR colleague, Douglas D. McKenzie, Lindzen extended the theory to include a term for Newtonian cooling due to emission of infrared radiation by carbon dioxide in the stratosphere along with ozone photochemical processes, and then in 1968 he showed that the theory also predicted that the semi-diurnal oscillation would be insensitive to variations in the temperature profile, which is why it is observed so much more strongly and regularly at the surface.
While holding the position of Research Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO Lindzen was noticed and befriended by Professor Sydney Chapman, who had contributed to the theory of atmospheric tides in a number of papers from the 1920s through to the 1940s. This led to their joint publication in 1969 of a 186-page monograph (republished in 1970 as a book) Atmospheric Tides.
Quasi-biennial oscillation
Although it wasn’t realized at the time, the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) was observed during the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, when the ash from the volcano was transported around the globe from east to west by stratospheric winds in about two weeks. These winds became known as the “Krakatoa easterlies”. It was observed again in 1908, by the German meteorologist Arthur Berson, who saw that winds blow from the west at 15 km (9.32 mi) altitude in tropical Africa from his balloon experiments. These became known as the “Berson westerlies”. However, it was not until the early 1960s that the ~ 26-month cycle of the QBO was first described, independently by Richard J. Reed in 1960 and Veryhard and Ebdon in 1961.
Lindzen recalls his discovery of the mechanism underlying the QBO in the semi-autobiographical review article, On the development of the theory of the QBO. His interest in the phenomenon began in 1961 when his PhD advisor, Richard M. Goody, speculated that the 26-month relaxation time for stratospheric ozone at 25 km (15.53 mi) in the tropics might somehow be related to the 26-month period of the QBO, and suggested investigation of this idea as a thesis topic. In fact, Lindzen’s, Radiative and photochemical processes in mesospheric dynamics, Part II: Vertical propagation of long period disturbances at the equator, documented the failure of this attempt to explain the QBO.
Lindzen’s work on atmospheric tides led him to the study of planetary waves and the general circulation of atmospheres. By 1967, he had contributed a number of papers on the theory of waves in the middle atmosphere. In Planetary waves on beta planes, he developed a beta plane approximation for simplifying the equations of classical tidal theory, whilst at the same time developing planetary wave relations. He noticed from his equations that eastward-traveling waves (known as Rossby waves since their discovery in 1939 by Carl-Gustav Rossby) and westward-traveling waves (which Lindzen himself helped in establishing as “atmospheric Kelvin waves”) with periods less than five days were “vertically trapped.” At the same time, an important paper by Booker and Bretherton appeared, which Lindzen read with great interest. Booker and Bretherton showed that vertically propagating gravity waves were completely absorbed at a critical level.
In his 1968 paper with James R. Holton, A theory of the quasi-biennial oscillation, Lindzen presented his theory of the QBO after testing it in a two-dimensional (2-D) numerical model that had been developed by Holton and John M. Wallace. They showed that the QBO could be driven by vertically propagating gravity waves with phase speeds in both westward and eastward directions and that the oscillation arose through a mechanism involving a two-way feedback between the waves and the mean flow. It was a bold conjecture, given that there was very little observational evidence available to either confirm or confute the hypothesis. In particular, there was still no observational evidence of the westward-traveling “Kelvin” waves; Lindzen postulated their existence theoretically.
In the years following the publication of Lindzen and Holton (1968), more observational evidence became available, and Lindzen’s fundamental insight into the mechanism driving the QBO was confirmed. However, the theory of interaction via critical level absorption was found to be incomplete and was modified to include the importance of attenuation due to radiative cooling. The revised theory was published in the Holton and Lindzen (1972) paper, An updated theory for the quasibiennial cycle of the tropical stratosphere.
Superrotation of Venus
Since the 1960s a puzzling phenomenon has been observed in the atmosphere of Venus whereat the atmosphere above the cloud base is seen to travel around the planet about 50 times faster than the rotation of the planet surface, or in only four to five Earth-days. In 1974 a theory was proposed by Stephen B. Fels and Lindzen to explain this so-called “superrotation” which held that the rotation is driven by the thermal atmospheric tide. An alternative theory was proposed by Peter J. Gierasch in the following year which held instead that the meridional (Hadley) circulation may transport the momentum by eddy-mixing. The actual cause of this phenomenon continues to be debated in the literature, with General Circulation Model experiments suggesting that both the Fels/Lindzen and Gierasch mechanisms are involved.
Middle period (1972–1990)
From 1972 to 1982 Lindzen was a professor of dynamic meteorology at Harvard University. From February to June 1975 he was a visiting professor of dynamic meteorology at MIT, and during part of 1979 Lindzen was a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, before switching affiliations to MIT as the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology in 1983.
During this time, Lindzen published some research on gravity waves, as well as Hadley circulations. He is named as one of 16 Scientific Members of the team authoring the National Academy of Sciences 1975 publication Understanding Climate Change: A Program for Action.
I’m not so sure that Peabody funds a huge amount scientific research, it looks to me more like funding scientific opinion.
Peabody has been an important actor in organized climate change denial. Until 2015, Peabody has been claiming that global warming isn’t a threat and emitting carbon dioxide is beneficial instead of being dangerous. The company also funded at least two dozens of climate change denial organizations and front groups such as the George C. Marshall Institute, the Institute for Energy Research, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change as well as scientists being famous for their contrarian opinions, among them Willie Soon, Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer.
From the Wikipedia page on Peabody Energy.
They also noted that Peabody filed for bankruptcy in April 2016, and their shares surged 50% when Trump was elected. Interesting.
ruby said:
I’m not so sure that Peabody funds a huge amount scientific research, it looks to me more like funding scientific opinion.Peabody has been an important actor in organized climate change denial. Until 2015, Peabody has been claiming that global warming isn’t a threat and emitting carbon dioxide is beneficial instead of being dangerous. The company also funded at least two dozens of climate change denial organizations and front groups such as the George C. Marshall Institute, the Institute for Energy Research, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change as well as scientists being famous for their contrarian opinions, among them Willie Soon, Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer.
From the Wikipedia page on Peabody Energy.
They also noted that Peabody filed for bankruptcy in April 2016, and their shares surged 50% when Trump was elected. Interesting.
Yawn
Roy W. Spencer received his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001, he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He has provided congressional testimony several times on the subject of global warming.
Dr. Spencer’s research has been entirely supported by U.S. government agencies: NASA, NOAA, and DOE. He has never been asked by any oil company to perform any kind of service. Not even Exxon-Mobil.
ruby said:
_ Until 2015, Peabody has been claiming that global warming isn’t a threat and emitting carbon dioxide is beneficial instead of being dangerous.
see, here’s your problem ruby. anyone with the above opinion, genuine opinion, you believe is evil, and can only come to those conclusions by being bribed.
thats just evidence of your bias & intolerance.
CO2 is a necessary gas for life, presently at a historically low when considered in geological time scales.
It is a weak greenhouse gas, having little direct effect on global temps. That is why a bogus theory of strong positive feedback is required (positive water vapour feedback) to make it look scary.
The world is now greener, & global crops are being harvested at records levels, because of this increase in plant fertiliser.
You also subscribe to the belief that we are currently in some sort of Goldie Locks climate, where any change, warmer or cooler means everything will be worse, when in fact, there is no logic behind that opinion.
The_observer said:
Dr. Spencer has never been asked by any oil company to perform any kind of service. Not even Exxon-Mobil.
And I note that you only say OIL company.
The_observer said:
ruby said:_ Until 2015, Peabody has been claiming that global warming isn’t a threat and emitting carbon dioxide is beneficial instead of being dangerous.
You also subscribe to the belief that we are currently in some sort of Goldie Locks climate, where any change, warmer or cooler means everything will be worse, when in fact, there is no logic behind that opinion.
Yes ruby, you are so naïve. I suppose you think that living things evolve to fit their environment, or some such nonsense.
Obs, this thread is “Week” in Science. Double e.
The_observer said:
ruby said:_ Until 2015, Peabody has been claiming that global warming isn’t a threat and emitting carbon dioxide is beneficial instead of being dangerous.
see, here’s your problem ruby. anyone with the above opinion, genuine opinion, you believe is evil, and can only come to those conclusions by being bribed.
thats just evidence of your bias & intolerance.
CO2 is a necessary gas for life, presently at a historically low when considered in geological time scales.
It is a weak greenhouse gas, having little direct effect on global temps. That is why a bogus theory of strong positive feedback is required (positive water vapour feedback) to make it look scary.
The world is now greener, & global crops are being harvested at records levels, because of this increase in plant fertiliser.
You also subscribe to the belief that we are currently in some sort of Goldie Locks climate, where any change, warmer or cooler means everything will be worse, when in fact, there is no logic behind that opinion.
It was quite warm in the age of the dinosaur, which suited them. However most species from that period are now extinct and testimony to the fact that they could not adapt to the changing environment. Likewise a dramatic change to a hotter climate will spell the end to many of today’s lifeforms. CO2 is used by plants, however it is also a greenhouse gas. You might get greener lawns if you can supply the water, but you are also going to get a number of largely insurmountable problems too. Take your pick!