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GLOBAL WARMING FOR THE TWO CULTURES - Richard Lindzen

It's excellent. I posted this link in another thread.

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[h=1]Richard Lindzen Lecture at GWPF: ‘Global Warming for the Two Cultures’[/h][FONT=&quot]by Dr. Richard Lindzen Over half a century ago, C.P. Snow (a novelist and English physical chemist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government) famously examined the implications of ‘two cultures’: A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who,…
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Lindzen on why the educated elites are so vulnerable to being fooled


So smart and yet so stupid

Global Warming for the Two Cultures
by Richard Lindzen
​
Prof Richard Lindzen, a giant of the skeptical debate delivered the 2018 Annual GWPF lecturethis week talking about two cultures of two different educated elites. Those at the higher intellectual level may be more prone to groupthink than ordinary folk…
The two different kinds of elites and a vast gap between them

Lindzen quotes C.J.Snow who was both a scientist and a writer and who lived in both elite worlds — the scientific and the arts.
C.J. Snow felt only 1 in 10 of the most highly educated in the western world had even a basic grip on physics:

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had. — CJ Snow
Lindzen fears little has changed and warns that the gulf in understanding between each elite culture is open to malicious exploitation. When science is used as a vote winning issue, non scientists have to pick sides and then belief and faith inevitably trump understanding.
The “trivially oversimplified false narratives” help reassure the non-scientists that they are not completely stupid. Even the smart-but-dumb folk love being told how smart they are. (Don’t we all?) So when a complicated debate is reduced to a binary “yes-no” situation, like renewables “clean”: fossils “dirty”, educated elites get drawn in…
Why the educated elites are vulnerable to being fooled

… ‘ordinary’ people (as opposed to our ‘educated’ elites) tend to see through the nonsense being presented. What is it about our elites that makes them so vulnerable, and what is it about many of our scientists that leads them to promote such foolishness? The answers cannot be very flattering to either. Let us consider the ‘vulnerable’ elites first.

  1. They have been educated in a system where success has been predicated on their ability to please their professors. In other words, they have been conditioned to rationalize anything.
  2. While they are vulnerable to false narratives, they are far less economically vulnerable than are ordinary people. They believe themselves wealthy enough to withstand the economic pain of the proposed policies, and they are clever enough to often benefit from them.
  3. The narrative is trivial enough for the elite to finally think that they ‘understand’ science.
  4. For many (especially on the right), the need to be regarded as intelligent causes them to fear that opposing anything claimed to be ‘scientific’ might lead to their being regarded as ignorant, and this fear overwhelms any ideological commitment to liberty that they might have. None of these factors apply to ‘ordinary’ people. This may well be the strongest argument for popular democracy and against the leadership of those ‘who know best.
To paraphrase Lindzen, educated elites are gullible suckers because they spent too much time at uni, and they are rich enough to afford to hold stupid ideas. They want to believe they understand science and the right level is “Bumper Sticker 101″. Smart people have smartish friends, and they are very afraid of looking stupid.

His lecture at the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
 
Steve Case said:
This lecture by Dr. Lindzen is almost 5,000 words long and a very good read:

GLOBAL WARMING FOR THE TWO CULTURES - Richard Lindzen
Click to expand...

The first third is indeed a good read, if a tad ironic. Lindzen's central premise seems to be that the science of our planet's climate is not all that simple, and non-scientists who imagine that they understand what's going on are probably deluding themselves more often than not. Yet for the most part it tends to be the self-described 'sceptics' who could learn a thing or two from that. Again and again we see folk like Longview, Lord of Planar, Tim the Plumber and so on putting forth their quaint sums and pet theories professing to 'prove' some point or other. (And in fairness, I not infrequently do my own sums and spreadsheets to show how dubious their results tend to be; but always emphasizing that I am an amateur dipping my little toesies in the shallows.) One of the most commonly-cited 'sources' used in this forum is a blog by a high school graduate and former TV weatherman, for crying out loud!

Don't get me wrong, there certainly are some AGW advocates who grossly overestimate their own understanding too. But in general - both here on this forum and in society at large - the most common and most important point stressed by proponents of action on climate change is that we should listen to the experts! By contrast, it is those who imagine themselves competent enough to be 'sceptics' who are found regularly invoking conspiracy theories to explain away the temperature records, the paleoclimate reconstructions and the fact that almost all experts are in agreement with the IPCC reports summarizing the contemporary science.



Then we get to the second and final thirds of the speech. Well... let's just say that Lindzen is highly qualified in the field of climate science, but not so much in history, economics or politics. Having spent the first third of his speech pointing out the difficulties which can arise when folk highly educated in the humanities imagine themselves competent in the sciences, perhaps he as a scientist should have stuck to his own area of competence :lol:

Of course competence isn't always the same thing as accuracy or honesty, either. This little tidbit at the end particularly caught my eye, because it was so obviously questionable:
Cherry picking is always an issue. Thus, there has been a recent claim that Greenland ice discharge has increased, and that warming will make it worse.2 Omitted from the report is the finding by both NOAA and the Danish Meteorological Institute that the ice mass of Greenland has actually been increasing.3 In fact both these observations can be true, and, indeed, ice build-up pushes peripheral ice into the sea.
Misrepresentation, exaggeration, cherry picking, or outright lying pretty much covers all the so-called evidence.​

It's good that a reference is provided here. His cited source says that - "since 2002, it's been losing an estimated 269 billion tons of ice each year. This year, however, may be an exception" - and goes on explain that it may have gained a meagre 44 billion tons in 2017.

From this Lindzen, declares that the ice mass "has actually been increasing."

Now of course, a politician would try to weasel his way out of such a blatant lie by saying that since he'd alluded to a "recent claim" it was okay to declare that Greenland's ice mass has been increasing if it had recently increased, however trivially. But this was at the end of a speech castigating other climate scientists for supposedly failing to tell the whole story, and in a paragraph explicitly condemning the practice of cherry-picking and misrepresentation.


So yes, that first third of the speech in which Lindzen provides non-controversial information from his field of expertise is well worth the read - and particularly so for folk who've deluded themselves into thinking they're qualified enough to be 'sceptical' of the conclusions reached by an overwhelming majority of experts.

But when we note that Lindzen is perfectly willing to stoop to the level of brazen misinformation even regarding a point of climate science, it becomes pretty obvious that the two-thirds of quasi-political ranting probably isn't worth anyone's time.
 
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Jack Hays said:
Lindzen on why the educated elites are so vulnerable to being fooled
Click to expand...


It's not quite so explicit in Lindzen's actual speech - or rather, it's eased into so that by the time you get that far it's not so obvious - but putting it in a headline like that really brings home the fact that there is a strong element of class warfare rhetoric underlying this idea: He's created a narrative in which supposed unscrupulous scientists have exploited the vanity of these 'educated elites' and - as you've quoted - presents a contrast in which 'ordinary' people "see through the nonsense being presented."

Lindzen is engaging in exactly the kind of propaganda approach that he attributes to the villains of his tale in other words, appealing to the vanity of and encouraging his target audience to be proud of the political views they've adopted. He accuses these nasty 'elites' of being rich enough to not care about the "economic pain" supposedly in view, or even to profit from it (2); seeking to arouse the anger of his 'ordinary people,' the victims, to make them just as motivated to oppose any action. His political narrative - wildly inaccurate and far outside his field of expertise though it may be - encourages his hearers to believe that they "understand" the plot, this massive conspiracy, just as he accuses the 'elites' of imagining that they understand the science (3). And just as he accuses his villainous 'elites' of falling prey to a herd mentality, of not wanting to appear ignorant (4), he encourages precisely that attitude in his audience; that if they support action on climate change, they have let "fear overwhelm any ideological commitment to liberty."

There are many factual and logical errors in the final two-thirds of his speech of course, but this is perhaps the most interesting and important, and certainly the most ironic: His fictitious political narrative tells us almost exactly the propaganda tools which he himself is using! If Lindzen really does believe in this 'elites' vs. 'ordinary people' distinction, it's clear that he must have something close to contempt for the latter, to so shamelessly tell them the very tactics he's trying to pull on them.
 
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Mithrae said:
Don't get me wrong, there certainly are some AGW advocates who grossly overestimate their own understanding too. But in general - both here on this forum and in society at large - the most common and most important point stressed by proponents of action on climate change is that we should listen to the experts! By contrast, it is those who imagine themselves competent enough to be 'sceptics' who are found regularly invoking conspiracy theories to explain away the temperature records, the paleoclimate reconstructions and the fact that almost all experts are in agreement with the IPCC reports summarizing the contemporary science.
Click to expand...

"Science is the Belief in the Ignorance of Experts" — Richard Feynman.​

It was generous of Dr. Feynman to allude to the wrongness of the experts as merely an artifact of ignorance.

Mithrae said:
It's good that a reference is provided here. His cited source says that - "since 2002, it's [Greenland] been losing an estimated 269 billion tons of ice each year. This year, however, may be an exception" - and goes on explain that it may have gained a meagre 44 billion tons in 2017.

From this Lindzen, declares that the ice mass "has actually been increasing."
Click to expand...

Just don't try to tell me that Greenland's negative ice mass balance is caused by melting
from "Climate Change” One of those references says:

"When surface snow melts, the water spreads into deeper layers of snow and
refreezes as an ice layer."​
As I've posted before the temperature in Greenland and Antarctica is well below freezing
nearly everywhere nearly all of the time. Snow that falls in those places, compacts into
ice and eventually calves as icebergs into the sea decades or centuries later. In other words
the change in ice balance doesn't have anything to do with temperature. As you quoted
from Dr. Lindzen's lecture, "...ice build-up pushes peripheral ice into the sea."

But that isn't what we get from the so-called popular press.


I have disagreement with Dr. Lindzen's lecture too, at the end he says:

"...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..."​
It’s more than fertilizer, it is an essential component of photosynthesis. Fertilizer is usually
thought of as required in small amounts. CO2 however, is part of the general equation:

CO2 + H2O + Sunshine = Simple Sugar.​

CO2 is an absolutely necessary constituent of the atmosphere. Life on Earth is carbon based
where every carbon atom in the biosphere was once CO2 in the atmosphere. The importance
of its presence cannot be stressed enough.
 
Lindzen reminds me of a 19th century doctor who decides to start selling elixir. I agree that he gives a nice summary about climate and the variables. As soon as he gets into his political discourse, he criticizes AGW theories:

The climate, a complexmultifactor system, can be summarized in just one variable, the globally averaged temperature change, and is primarily controlled by the 1-2% perturbation in the energy budget due to a single variable – carbon dioxide - among many variables of comparable importance.

What he neglects to mention is that CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) are the only new kids on the block. He wants to blame anything else for the warming earth. However, the other factors, have always been factors.

He goes on to bad-mouth Climatologists, as unqualified scientists. He doesn't even acknowlege exceptions!!! He criticizes the National Academy of Science and the IPCC.

And then he closes by saying this: 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’.

In other words, "if I'm wrong, no big deal". Well guess what - you are wrong. You are nothing but fodder for the blind deniers of this world.
 
Media_Truth said:
Lindzen reminds me of a 19th century doctor who decides to start selling elixir. I agree that he gives a nice summary about climate and the variables. As soon as he gets into his political discourse, he criticizes AGW theories:

The climate, a complexmultifactor system, can be summarized in just one variable, the globally averaged temperature change, and is primarily controlled by the 1-2% perturbation in the energy budget due to a single variable – carbon dioxide - among many variables of comparable importance.

What he neglects to mention is that CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) are the only new kids on the block. He wants to blame anything else for the warming earth. However, the other factors, have always been factors.

He goes on to bad-mouth Climatologists, as unqualified scientists. He doesn't even acknowlege exceptions!!! He criticizes the National Academy of Science and the IPCC.

And then he closes by saying this: 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’.

In other words, "if I'm wrong, no big deal". Well guess what - you are wrong. You are nothing but fodder for the blind deniers of this world.
Click to expand...

Lindzen has been climate research for much longer than most of the others dabbling in the field.
Consider that he is one of the authors on the 1975 National academy of Science paper on climate change.
 
longview said:
Lindzen has been climate research for much longer than most of the others dabbling in the field. Consider that he is one of the authors on the 1975 National academy of Science paper on climate change.
Click to expand...
Duration does not a scientist make. I'm glad I read this. It made me realize just how political the deniers are in their beliefs. It has nothing to do with science.
 
Media_Truth said:
Duration does not a scientist make. I'm glad I read this. It made me realize just how political the deniers are in their beliefs. It has nothing to do with science.
Click to expand...
Duration, no but accreditation and publications do, Lindzen has been active in the climate sciences for many decades.
Harvard, MIT, the IPCC, ect.
 
longview said:
Lindzen has been climate research for much longer than most of the others dabbling in the field.
Consider that he is one of the authors on the 1975 National academy of Science paper on climate change.
Click to expand...

Which only adds to the proven dishonesty of what he's trying to foist on "ordinary people" in his speech. That paper explicitly notes anthropogenic GHG forcing and even that the positive forcing from CO2 was probably greater than the negative from aerosols. The National Academy of Sciences: Yet in his speech Lindzen claims that few climatologists took anthropogenic CO2 forcing seriously until the '80s, even claiming that climatologists were "sceptical" of it at the time of Hansen's 1988 Senate testimony.

When we see him making these dishonest claims again and again, his otherwise impressive credentials and expertise really start to mean pretty much nothing at all.
 
Mithrae said:
Which only adds to the proven dishonesty of what he's trying to foist on "ordinary people" in his speech. That paper explicitly notes anthropogenic GHG forcing and even that the positive forcing from CO2 was probably greater than the negative from aerosols. The National Academy of Sciences: Yet in his speech Lindzen claims that few climatologists took anthropogenic CO2 forcing seriously until the '80s, even claiming that climatologists were "sceptical" of it at the time of Hansen's 1988 Senate testimony.

When we see him making these dishonest claims again and again, his otherwise impressive credentials and expertise really start to mean pretty much nothing at all.
Click to expand...

What’s the matter, the alarmist cannot take a legitimate expert in the field questioning the dogma?



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Steve Case said:
This lecture by Dr. Lindzen is almost 5,000 words long and a very good read:

GLOBAL WARMING FOR THE TWO CULTURES - Richard Lindzen
Click to expand...

Thank-you for the link. I don't have time now, but I'm leaving it on my left side monitor for later.

I did skip to the conclusion:

Conclusion

So there you have it. 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’.
​
 
longview said:
What’s the matter, the alarmist cannot take a legitimate expert in the field questioning the dogma?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I wouldn't hardly use the words "legitimate expert". "Political hack" is more appropo. Anybody who says this at the end of his speech is definitely a political hack.

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’.

In other words, "if I'm wrong, no big deal".
 
Media_Truth said:
I wouldn't hardly use the words "legitimate expert". "Political hack" is more appropo. Anybody who says this at the end of his speech is definitely a political hack.

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’.

In other words, "if I'm wrong, no big deal".
Click to expand...
If you read the IPCC new report you know they are saying that the warming so far is .87 C, and while the IPCC
implies that 100% of that is from Human activity, the earlier reports and many other studies place the human contribution lower.
The IPCC statement also disregards that fact that .2 C of warming occurred before 1950, which is acknowledged as when the CO2 levels started to climb quickly .
 
longview said:
If you read the IPCC new report you know they are saying that the warming so far is .87 C, and while the IPCC
implies that 100% of that is from Human activity, the earlier reports and many other studies place the human contribution lower.
The IPCC statement also disregards that fact that .2 C of warming occurred before 1950, which is acknowledged as when the CO2 levels started to climb quickly .
Click to expand...

Although this thread is about Lindzen, I will attempt to address.

The degree of human contribution to warming depends on the time frame. If a large time frame is used, then the only factor that is a variable is greenhouse gases, not including water vapor. If a small time-frame is used, then there could be other factors. For example, cooling, and subsequent warming, can occur for a few years. respectively, after a volcano. The IPCC uses a 30 year time-frame to elimate these relatively short-term variables, and it is established, per their documents, that greenhouse gases cause "the majority" of the warming.

This is probably why you are confused. Are there other variables you want them to use in a 30-year time frame?
 
Media_Truth said:
Although this thread is about Lindzen, I will attempt to address.

The degree of human contribution to warming depends on the time frame. If a large time frame is used, then the only factor that is a variable is greenhouse gases, not including water vapor. If a small time-frame is used, then there could be other factors. For example, cooling, and subsequent warming, can occur for a few years. respectively, after a volcano. The IPCC uses a 30 year time-frame to elimate these relatively short-term variables, and it is established, per their documents, that greenhouse gases cause "the majority" of the warming.

This is probably why you are confused. Are there other variables you want them to use in a 30-year time frame?
Click to expand...

The issue is that if we use the criteria from the IPCC's new report the total warming is roughly .87 C.
Included in that .87 C however is the .2 C of pre 1950 warming, as well as roughly another .1 C for increases in TSI since the 1800's,
which means that only .57 C could possibly be human contribution, yet the IPCC now implies 100% of 1.00 C.
 
Media_Truth said:
Duration does not a scientist make. I'm glad I read this. It made me realize just how political the deniers are in their beliefs. It has nothing to do with science.
Click to expand...

So science is only respectable when it can be used to support the right propaganda?

Got it!
 
Media_Truth said:
I wouldn't hardly use the words "legitimate expert". "Political hack" is more appropo. Anybody who says this at the end of his speech is definitely a political hack.

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’.

In other words, "if I'm wrong, no big deal".
Click to expand...

People seem to thrive in warmer climates.

The rise of civilization occurred in a climate about a degree warmer than today.

Why does rational thought inspire dogmatic elites to stamp it out amid irrational shrieking and hate filled name calling?
 
Media_Truth said:
Although this thread is about Lindzen, I will attempt to address.

The degree of human contribution to warming depends on the time frame. If a large time frame is used, then the only factor that is a variable is greenhouse gases, not including water vapor. If a small time-frame is used, then there could be other factors. For example, cooling, and subsequent warming, can occur for a few years. respectively, after a volcano. The IPCC uses a 30 year time-frame to elimate these relatively short-term variables, and it is established, per their documents, that greenhouse gases cause "the majority" of the warming.

This is probably why you are confused. Are there other variables you want them to use in a 30-year time frame?
Click to expand...

The planet is just a tad older than 30 years.

climate4you welcome

<snip>
The last four glacial periods and interglacial periods are shown in the diagram below (Fig.2), covering the last 420,000 years in Earth's climatic history.


VostokTemp0-420000%20BP.gif

Fig.2. Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years based on the Vostok ice core from the Antarctica (Petit et al. 2001). The record spans over four glacial periods and five interglacials, including the present. The horizontal line indicates the modern temperature. The red square to the right indicates the time interval shown in greater detail in the following figure.
<snip>
 
Mithrae said:
It's not quite so explicit in Lindzen's actual speech - or rather, it's eased into so that by the time you get that far it's not so obvious - but putting it in a headline like that really brings home the fact that there is a strong element of class warfare rhetoric underlying this idea: He's created a narrative in which supposed unscrupulous scientists have exploited the vanity of these 'educated elites' and - as you've quoted - presents a contrast in which 'ordinary' people "see through the nonsense being presented."

Lindzen is engaging in exactly the kind of propaganda approach that he attributes to the villains of his tale in other words, appealing to the vanity of and encouraging his target audience to be proud of the political views they've adopted. He accuses these nasty 'elites' of being rich enough to not care about the "economic pain" supposedly in view, or even to profit from it (2); seeking to arouse the anger of his 'ordinary people,' the victims, to make them just as motivated to oppose any action. His political narrative - wildly inaccurate and far outside his field of expertise though it may be - encourages his hearers to believe that they "understand" the plot, this massive conspiracy, just as he accuses the 'elites' of imagining that they understand the science (3). And just as he accuses his villainous 'elites' of falling prey to a herd mentality, of not wanting to appear ignorant (4), he encourages precisely that attitude in his audience; that if they support action on climate change, they have let "fear overwhelm any ideological commitment to liberty."

There are many factual and logical errors in the final two-thirds of his speech of course, but this is perhaps the most interesting and important, and certainly the most ironic: His fictitious political narrative tells us almost exactly the propaganda tools which he himself is using! If Lindzen really does believe in this 'elites' vs. 'ordinary people' distinction, it's clear that he must have something close to contempt for the latter, to so shamelessly tell them the very tactics he's trying to pull on them.
Click to expand...

Or perhaps he simply exposed an uncomfortable truth.
 
code1211 said:
People seem to thrive in warmer climates.

The rise of civilization occurred in a climate about a degree warmer than today.

Why does rational thought inspire dogmatic elites to stamp it out amid irrational shrieking and hate filled name calling?
Click to expand...

You can ignore the thousands and thousands of Climatologists that state that 1.5 or 2 deg C will have severe impacts around the world, if you want to. I will vehemently disagree, and accept the view of the entire scientific world. That wasn't the point I was making.

Lindzen's argument is totally disjunct. It basically goes like this.

1. Warming isn't happening because of greenhouse gases.
2. If warming is happening, it's no big deal.

This is a similar argument that may have been posed in the 1960s. (BTW, Lindzen was a tobacco denier also).
1. It's not proven that cigarettes cause cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
2. If cigarettes do cause cancer, it's no big deal.
 
code1211 said:
The planet is just a tad older than 30 years.

climate4you welcome

<snip>
The last four glacial periods and interglacial periods are shown in the diagram below (Fig.2), covering the last 420,000 years in Earth's climatic history.


VostokTemp0-420000%20BP.gif

Fig.2. Reconstructed global temperature over the past 420,000 years based on the Vostok ice core from the Antarctica (Petit et al. 2001). The record spans over four glacial periods and five interglacials, including the present. The horizontal line indicates the modern temperature. The red square to the right indicates the time interval shown in greater detail in the following figure.
<snip>
Click to expand...

How did the climate change from over 100,000 years ago, affect life on earth? Which measuring technique did they use for the data from 100,000 years ago?
 
Jack Hays said:
Or perhaps he simply exposed an uncomfortable truth.
Click to expand...

Did he expose an uncomfortable truth, when he spoke up for the tobacco industry years ago?

Now with added irony Lindzen argues that we should be equally sceptical about both climate change and the link between smoking and cancer, but his argument can just as easily be turned around. If you accept Lindzen’s ‘impeccably logical’ view that the two arguments are comparable, you reach the conclusion that the link between human activity and climate change is now so well-established that it makes about as much sense to doubt it as to doubt the relationship between smoking and lung cancer, that is, no sense at all.

A notable fact about the professional climate sceptics is that many of them (Singer, Seitz, Milloy and so on), are also paid advocates for the tobacco industry, there’s no* evidence to suggest that Lindzen is acting from mercenary motives. It appears that he’s just an irresponsible contrarian as a matter of temperament.

Credibility up in smoke ? Crooked Timber
 
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