Dr Christopher Landsea (lovely name for an oceanographer)
is a hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science. He received his doctoral degree in atmospheric science from Colorado State University. A research meteorologist at the Atlantic Oceanic and Meteorological Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he was chair of the American Meteorological Society's committee on tropical meteorology and tropical cyclones and a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's Banner I. Miller Award for the "best contribution to the science of hurricane and tropical weather forecasting." He is a frequent contributor to leading journals, including Science, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,Journal of Climate, and Nature.
When the United Nations decided to study the relationship between hurricanes and global warming for the largest scientific endeavour in its history it called upon his expertise and he became a contributing author for the UN's second International Panel on Climate Change in 1995, writing the sections on observed changes in tropical cyclones around the world. Then the IPCC called on him as a contributing author once more, for its "Third Assessment Report" in 2001. He was invited to participate yet again as an author in the "Fourth Assessment Report." This report would specifically focus on Atlantic hurricanes, his specialty, and would be published by the IPCC in 2007.
Then something went wrong. Within days of the invitation, in October, 2004, he discovered that the IPCC's Kevin Trenberth (one of the CRU “Climategate” conspirators) -- the very person who had invited him -- was participating in a press conference. The title of the press conference perplexed Landsea - "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity." This was some kind of mistake because he not done any work that substantiated this claim. Nobody had.
Equally perplexing was the fact that none of the participants in that press conference were known for their hurricane expertise. In fact, none had performed any research at all on hurricane variability. Neither were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability, showed NO reliable upward trend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Not in the Atlantic basin. Not in any other basin.
To add to the utter incomprehensibility of the press conference, the IPCC itself, in both 1995 and 2001, had found no global warming signal in the hurricane record. And until Landsea’s new work would come out, in 2007, the IPCC would not have a new analysis on which to base a change of findings.
To stop the press conference, or at least stop any misunderstandings that might come out of it, Landsea contacted Dr. Trenberth prior to the media event. He prepared a synopsis for him that brought him up to date on the state of knowledge about hurricane formation. To his amazement, he simply dismissed Landsea’s concerns. The press conference proceeded.
And what a press conference it was! Hurricanes had been all over the news that summer. Global warming was the obvious culprit -- only a fool or an oil-industry lobbyist, the press made clear, could ignore the link between what seemed to be ever increasing hurricane activity and ever increasing global warming. The press conference didn't disappoint them. The climate change experts at hand all confirmed the news that the public had been primed to hear: Global warming was causing hurricanes. This judgement from the scientists made headlines around the world, just as it was intended to do. What better way to cast global warming as catastrophic than to make hurricanes its poster child?
Landsea was outraged at the mockery made of his scientific field. He wrote to top IPCC officials, imploring: "Where is the science, the refereed publications, that substantiate these pronouncements? What studies are being alluded to that have shown a connection between observed warming trends on the earth and long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity? As far as I know, there are none." But no one in the IPCC leadership showed the slightest concern for the science. The IPCC's overriding preoccupation, it soon sunk in, lay in capitalizing on the publicity opportunity that the hurricane season presented.
He then asked the IPCC leadership for assurances that his work for the IPCC's 2007 report would be true to science: "[Dr. Trenberth] seems to have already come to the conclusion that global warming has altered hurricane activity and has publicly stated so. This does NOT reflect the consensus within the hurricane research community. ... Thus I would like assurance that what will be included in the IPCC report will reflect the best available information and the consensus within the scientific community most expert on the specific topic."
It was not to be, The politicos driving the IPCC bandwagon and the small netwrok of politically motivate scientists ignored all findings which did not fit the catastrophism “scenario”.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/promet....sea_leaves.html
To be continued....
is a hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science. He received his doctoral degree in atmospheric science from Colorado State University. A research meteorologist at the Atlantic Oceanic and Meteorological Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he was chair of the American Meteorological Society's committee on tropical meteorology and tropical cyclones and a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's Banner I. Miller Award for the "best contribution to the science of hurricane and tropical weather forecasting." He is a frequent contributor to leading journals, including Science, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,Journal of Climate, and Nature.
When the United Nations decided to study the relationship between hurricanes and global warming for the largest scientific endeavour in its history it called upon his expertise and he became a contributing author for the UN's second International Panel on Climate Change in 1995, writing the sections on observed changes in tropical cyclones around the world. Then the IPCC called on him as a contributing author once more, for its "Third Assessment Report" in 2001. He was invited to participate yet again as an author in the "Fourth Assessment Report." This report would specifically focus on Atlantic hurricanes, his specialty, and would be published by the IPCC in 2007.
Then something went wrong. Within days of the invitation, in October, 2004, he discovered that the IPCC's Kevin Trenberth (one of the CRU “Climategate” conspirators) -- the very person who had invited him -- was participating in a press conference. The title of the press conference perplexed Landsea - "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity." This was some kind of mistake because he not done any work that substantiated this claim. Nobody had.
Equally perplexing was the fact that none of the participants in that press conference were known for their hurricane expertise. In fact, none had performed any research at all on hurricane variability. Neither were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability, showed NO reliable upward trend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Not in the Atlantic basin. Not in any other basin.
To add to the utter incomprehensibility of the press conference, the IPCC itself, in both 1995 and 2001, had found no global warming signal in the hurricane record. And until Landsea’s new work would come out, in 2007, the IPCC would not have a new analysis on which to base a change of findings.
To stop the press conference, or at least stop any misunderstandings that might come out of it, Landsea contacted Dr. Trenberth prior to the media event. He prepared a synopsis for him that brought him up to date on the state of knowledge about hurricane formation. To his amazement, he simply dismissed Landsea’s concerns. The press conference proceeded.
And what a press conference it was! Hurricanes had been all over the news that summer. Global warming was the obvious culprit -- only a fool or an oil-industry lobbyist, the press made clear, could ignore the link between what seemed to be ever increasing hurricane activity and ever increasing global warming. The press conference didn't disappoint them. The climate change experts at hand all confirmed the news that the public had been primed to hear: Global warming was causing hurricanes. This judgement from the scientists made headlines around the world, just as it was intended to do. What better way to cast global warming as catastrophic than to make hurricanes its poster child?
Landsea was outraged at the mockery made of his scientific field. He wrote to top IPCC officials, imploring: "Where is the science, the refereed publications, that substantiate these pronouncements? What studies are being alluded to that have shown a connection between observed warming trends on the earth and long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity? As far as I know, there are none." But no one in the IPCC leadership showed the slightest concern for the science. The IPCC's overriding preoccupation, it soon sunk in, lay in capitalizing on the publicity opportunity that the hurricane season presented.
He then asked the IPCC leadership for assurances that his work for the IPCC's 2007 report would be true to science: "[Dr. Trenberth] seems to have already come to the conclusion that global warming has altered hurricane activity and has publicly stated so. This does NOT reflect the consensus within the hurricane research community. ... Thus I would like assurance that what will be included in the IPCC report will reflect the best available information and the consensus within the scientific community most expert on the specific topic."
It was not to be, The politicos driving the IPCC bandwagon and the small netwrok of politically motivate scientists ignored all findings which did not fit the catastrophism “scenario”.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/promet....sea_leaves.html
To be continued....
23 Jan 2010
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/....el-winning.html
More Dodgy Citations in the Nobel-Winning IPCC Report
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/....el-winning.html
More Dodgy Citations in the Nobel-Winning IPCC Report
......
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-tangled-web-we-weave.html
There is another important story in involving the Muir-Wood et al. 2006 paper that was misrepresented by the IPCC as showing a linkage between increasing temperatures and rising damages from extreme weather events.
The Stern Review Report of the UK government also relied on that paper as the sole basis for its projections of increasing damage from extreme events. In fact as much as 40% of the Stern Reivew projections for the global costs of unmitigated climate change derive from its misuse of the Muir-Wood et al. paper.
I documented this in a peer reviewed paper published in 2007, which you can see here in PDF http://miha.ef.uni-lj.si/_dokumenti3plus2/190025/3clanek2.pdf.
In that paper I wrote:
Furthermore, the Stern Review uses the Muir-Wood et al. (2006) as the sole basis for projecting future global losses from extreme events (see Table 5.2, p. 138). This means that the Stern Review’s conclusions on the costs of future extreme events under conditions of climate change are based almost entirely on projections of future hurricane losses, which Stern projects somewhat mysteriously will increase to 1.3% of global GDP or higher. Its reliance on estimate of tropical cyclones losses is both direct and indirect. Its summary Table 5.2 on p. 138 indicates that increasing losses from hurricanes are one or two orders of magnitude larger than other losses that it has examined. . . inexplicably, the Stern Review concludes that US tropical cyclone losses will increase from 0.6% of GDP today to 1.3% of GDP under 2[degrees] of warming (Table 5.2). Yet, on page 130 the Stern Review cites Nordhaus (2007) to suggest that 2–3[degrees] of warming could double tropical cyclone losses from 0.06% of GDP (2005 losses) to 0.13% (future losses). There is no justification provided for increasing the Nordhaus (2007) values by a factor of 10. This apparent error (simply a typo?) is consistent with the Stern Review’s overstatement of future economic losses from extreme weather events more generally.
00000000000
So the IPCC tells us the Himalayan glaciers will disppear in 25 years and Stern multiplies weather losses by 10.
How do these errors happen?
Easy, when you have already accepted as fact the matter to be demonstrated AND that it will "catastrophic".
I think it’s called “begging the question”.
There is another important story in involving the Muir-Wood et al. 2006 paper that was misrepresented by the IPCC as showing a linkage between increasing temperatures and rising damages from extreme weather events.
The Stern Review Report of the UK government also relied on that paper as the sole basis for its projections of increasing damage from extreme events. In fact as much as 40% of the Stern Reivew projections for the global costs of unmitigated climate change derive from its misuse of the Muir-Wood et al. paper.
I documented this in a peer reviewed paper published in 2007, which you can see here in PDF http://miha.ef.uni-lj.si/_dokumenti3plus2/190025/3clanek2.pdf.
In that paper I wrote:
Furthermore, the Stern Review uses the Muir-Wood et al. (2006) as the sole basis for projecting future global losses from extreme events (see Table 5.2, p. 138). This means that the Stern Review’s conclusions on the costs of future extreme events under conditions of climate change are based almost entirely on projections of future hurricane losses, which Stern projects somewhat mysteriously will increase to 1.3% of global GDP or higher. Its reliance on estimate of tropical cyclones losses is both direct and indirect. Its summary Table 5.2 on p. 138 indicates that increasing losses from hurricanes are one or two orders of magnitude larger than other losses that it has examined. . . inexplicably, the Stern Review concludes that US tropical cyclone losses will increase from 0.6% of GDP today to 1.3% of GDP under 2[degrees] of warming (Table 5.2). Yet, on page 130 the Stern Review cites Nordhaus (2007) to suggest that 2–3[degrees] of warming could double tropical cyclone losses from 0.06% of GDP (2005 losses) to 0.13% (future losses). There is no justification provided for increasing the Nordhaus (2007) values by a factor of 10. This apparent error (simply a typo?) is consistent with the Stern Review’s overstatement of future economic losses from extreme weather events more generally.
00000000000
So the IPCC tells us the Himalayan glaciers will disppear in 25 years and Stern multiplies weather losses by 10.
How do these errors happen?
Easy, when you have already accepted as fact the matter to be demonstrated AND that it will "catastrophic".
I think it’s called “begging the question”.
......
A reviewer of IPCC WGII, Laurens Bouwer, had this to say when the report (on weather damage) was released:
As reviewer for WG2 I have repeatedly (3 times) asked to put a clear statement in the Summary for Policy-Makers that is in line with the general literature, and underlying WG2 chapters.
In my view, WG2 has not succeeded in adequately quoting and discussing all relevant recent papers that have come out on this topic...
Initial drafts of the SPM had relatively nuanced statements such as: “Global economic losses from weather-related disasters have risen substantially since the 1970s. During the same period, global temperatures have risen and the magnitude of some extremes, such as the intensity of tropical cyclones, has increased. However, because of increases in exposed values …, the contribution of these weather-related trends to increased losses is at present not known.”
For unknown reasons, this statement was dropped from the final SPM. Now the SPM has no statement on the attribution of disaster losses, and we do not know what is the ‘consensus’ here.
As reviewer for WG2 I have repeatedly (3 times) asked to put a clear statement in the Summary for Policy-Makers that is in line with the general literature, and underlying WG2 chapters.
In my view, WG2 has not succeeded in adequately quoting and discussing all relevant recent papers that have come out on this topic...
Initial drafts of the SPM had relatively nuanced statements such as: “Global economic losses from weather-related disasters have risen substantially since the 1970s. During the same period, global temperatures have risen and the magnitude of some extremes, such as the intensity of tropical cyclones, has increased. However, because of increases in exposed values …, the contribution of these weather-related trends to increased losses is at present not known.”
For unknown reasons, this statement was dropped from the final SPM. Now the SPM has no statement on the attribution of disaster losses, and we do not know what is the ‘consensus’ here.
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