Is the global warming debate all hot air?

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Here are a few recently published stories about my boss. Hopefully this will spark a little debate about natural cycles vs. anthropogenic forcings.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/science/earth/23clim.html

 

A scientist who has long disagreed with the dominant view that global warming stems mainly from human activity has resigned from a panel that is completing a report for the Bush administration on temperature trends in the atmosphere.

 

The scientist, Roger A. Pielke Sr., a climatologist at Colorado State University, said most of the other scientists working on the report were too deeply wedded to particular views and were discounting minority opinions on the quality of climate records and possible causes of warming.

 

"When you appoint people to a committee who are experts in an area but evaluating their own work," he said in an interview, "it's very difficult for them to think outside the box of their research."

 

Administration officials said the resignation would not affect the quality or credibility of the report, a draft of which is being finished in the next few weeks.

 

The report, the first product of President Bush's 10-year climate change research program, is likely to be closely scrutinized by climate scientists and environmental and industry groups for any sign of bias or distortion.

 

Its main focus is to explore why thermometers at the earth's surface, especially in the tropics, have measured more warming than has been detected by satellites and weather balloons in the troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere up to where jetliners cruise.

 

Dr. Pielke contends that changes in landscapes like the spread of agriculture and cities could explain many of the surface climate trends, while most climate experts now see a clear link to accumulating emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.

 

James R. Mahoney, an assistant secretary of commerce and the director of the federal climate research program, said the scientists involved in generating the report were "representative of the broad views" on the questions.

 

Mr. Mahoney noted that drafts of the climate report would be reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences and were subject to public comment.

 

"I'm disappointed that Dr. Pielke has chosen to resign over this," Mr. Mahoney said.

 

Dr. Pielke said he decided to resign after three papers on the troposphere trends were published online on Aug. 11 by the journal Science. The papers said errors in satellite and balloon studies in the tropics explained why earlier analyses failed to find warming in the troposphere.

 

Several authors of those papers, who are also authors of the coming government report, said at the time that the new findings would be discussed in the report.

 

Dr. Pielke said those statements were an effort to influence the shape of the final report.

 

Several authors of those papers denied this, saying the process of creating the reports is intended to be public, while the contents remain confidential for now.

 

John R. Christy, another author of the coming report who like Dr. Pielke doubts that human-caused warming poses a serious threat, said that while disagreements were normal, the effort to generate the report was improving understanding.

 

"This process is the worst way to generate scientific information," said Dr. Christy, who teaches at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. "Except for all the others."

 

http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050825/NEWS01/508250319/1002

 

The globe isn't the only thing warming.

 

A Colorado State University professor who quit a Bush admission science advisory team researching the causes of global warming said his reasons for leaving the committee were "mischaracterized" in an article published Tuesday in the New York Times.

 

Roger Pielke Sr., a respected atmospheric science professor and also Colorado's state climatologist, on Wednesday issued a retort to a Times article in the form of an open letter to reporter Andrew Revkin.

 

"The reference to my perspective and to the reasons I resigned from the committee are mischaracterized and erroneous in the New York Times article," Pielke said in an online posting on a departmental Web log, or blog, called Climate Science.

 

The New York Times could not be reached for comment Wednesday by the Coloradoan.

 

Pielke was on Bush's Climate Change Science Program committee to examine trends of recent surface and troposphere (a layer of Earth's atmosphere) temperatures. He left the committee in a disagreement about views presented in a chapter for which he was the lead author.

 

Pielke took exception to the Times' characterization that, as a scientist, he has "long disagreed with the dominant view that global warming stems mainly from human activity," as written in the lead paragraph of the article.

 

"I was very disappointed that the New York Times so badly mischaracterized my perspective, but fortunately we now have blogs so that errors can be corrected, and I've posted my response there," Pielke said in an e-mail statement sent from Tucson, Ariz., where he is attending a conference, after speaking with the Coloradoan by telephone.

 

"The fact is that science is complicated and sometimes doesn't easily fit into views that are black or white," Pielke's statement said.

 

In his blog post, hosted through the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science, Pielke said: "The committee was supposed to investigate spatial as well as temporal trends of recent surface and troposoheric temperatures, which, in the last version (of the report) that I saw, it failed to do."

 

Pielke, in his post, also disputed a line in the Times article that said he "contends that changes in landscapes like the spread of agriculture and cities could explain many of the surface climate trends, while most experts now see a clear link to accumulating emissions of heat-trapping gasses like carbon monoxide."

 

Pielke responded to that sentence in his posting by saying: "This is a completely bogus statement of my conclusions on climate."

 

He cited, through a hypertext link, an article he wrote explaining his position.

 

"Landscape change is only one of a number of climate forcings. I can only assume that this statement is written out of an intentional attempt to mischaracterize my work or simply a failure to comprehend my various peer-reviewed papers on this subject," Pielke said.

 

Pielke made mention to an "inappropriate shadow version of the chapter that I was convening lead author on that (Revkin) was aware of ..."

 

In the end, Pielke said readers of the Climate Science blog will be provided a correction to the Times article.

 

"I am simply aghast at the major errors and mischaracterizations in this article," he wrote.

 

"I welcome (Revkin's) response."

 

Dr. Pielke Sr's blog: http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/