[Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory

[Ted Moffett]

Seriously, Scott?  I think Debi was serious... Was she joking and I did not
get it?

Perhaps I misunderstood, or you were engaging in hyperbole for amusement...

You can't really mean to suggest that *everyone *who has a view on
anthropogenic global warming is merely "clinging tightly to their own blind
biases."

Or just the people you "hang with?"

Scott Dredge wrote:

"The motley crew that I out hang with just clings tightly to their own
blind biases  on this issue."
--------------------------------
There will always be some who take extreme unreasoned views on most any
important issue, on one side or another.  Thus Deb makes a good
point about some who "melt-down," who are denying the validity of the
thousands of peer reviewed scientific studies indicating significant
anthropogenic climate change is occurring, when confronted with this body
of science.

But as I recently told a local climate change activist, if you want to find
peer reviewed published scientific studies that question the consensus
scientific view on anthropogenic climate change, they can be found.  I have
made a deliberate effort to study the scientific theories that indicate
anthropogenic climate change is not a problem to the extent most competent
scientists indicate it is...

Below are a few that have generated considerable discussion in recent
years.  I'll not present the scientific refutations of these published
scientific papers, but refuted they were.

Note the first paper below is authored by the famous Richard Lindzen from
MIT, who former NASA climate scientist James Hansen described as "the dean
of anthropogenic climate change skeptics" in Hansen's book "Storms of My
Grandchildren:"

Published in "Geophysical Research Letters:" 26 August 2009
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL039628/abstract#publication-history>

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL039628/abstract

On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data
Richard S. Lindzen, Yong-Sang ChoiNote this comment from the Abstract:"...the
inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem
in climate prediction."
-------------------------------------------
Published in "Remote Sensing" July 2011:

http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603

*Roy W. Spencer* <http://www.mdpi.com/search?authors=Roy%20W.%20Spencer>* *
* <roy.spencer at nsstc.uah.edu>* and **William D. Braswell*
<http://www.mdpi.com/search?authors=William%20D.%20Braswell>

On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in
Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance†

Claiming a "misdiagnosis" indicates the "skeptical" analysis here...
-----------------------
Regarding your statement "The sad reality is that throughout history
science has been routinely trumped by politics and religion until it can be
proven beyond all doubt." demonstrates a misunderstanding, according to my
study of epistemology, theory of knowledge, and the scientific method, of
the nature of scientific inquiry.  Nothing can be "proven beyond all doubt"
technically speaking.  New data or theory can always alter a given
scientific consensus, though some scientists would argue this is
philosophical nit-picking on some very well established theories.

But consider the millions of people who insist that the theory or
evolution, insofar as it indicates homo sapiens evolved over millions of
years from other species, is not a "proven" scientific theory, despite the
overwhelming scientific evidence.  *Science is still "trumped" by religion
on this issue.*

*Given the bias of some people, it does not matter how well "proven" a
scientific theory may be... it will still be denied!*
---------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 9:04 PM, Scott Dredge <scooterd408 at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> Seriously Debi?  The motley crew that I out hang with just clings tightly
> to their own blind biases on this issue.  They just reject any report and /
> or attack the source that doesn't align with their own unalterable belief.
> The sad reality is that throughout history science has been routinely
> trumped by politics and religion until it can be proven beyond all doubt.
> And personally, I'm OK with that to some extent because the effect is that
> it forces very comprehensive and far reaching studies to unearth all the
> facts and impeach all of the fiction.
>
> This short video is a good parallel of what happens whenever the topic of
> climate change comes up with either my 'global warming is a myth' friends
> or with my 'we are going to die because of global warming' friends:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvSjiq1pLVY
>
>
> ------------------------------
> From: debismith at moscow.com
> To: starbliss at gmail.com; vision2020 at moscow.com
> Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 19:32:23 -0700
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early
> Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory
>
>
> Thanks, Ted. this is good info, and assists me when i talk to folks with
> little science background and a denier agenda---you are always on top of
> it!  I have watched climate denier folks melt-down when confronted with
> facts that refute their disbelief---even they can only suspend disbelief
> until their arms hurt a bunch....and most of them don't have the muscle
> mass....
> debi R-S
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com>
> *To:* Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, April 17, 2015 6:44 PM
> *Subject:* [Vision2020] Realclimate.org 4-13-15: Ruddiman's Early
> Anthropogenic Climate Impact Theory
>
>  I was surprised to just today read on Realclimate.org a piece dated 13
> April 2015, by climate scientist William Ruddiman, discussing how the
> scientific community has received his controversial theory regarding early
> (before major fossil fuel powered industrial civilization) human climate
> impacts.
>
> His Realclimate.org piece argues, and I quote, against the alleged
> "censure from a nearly monolithic community intent on imposing a mainstream
> view" that is sometimes claimed to exist by those critical of the science
> demonstrating major human impacts on climate change.
>
> I was particularly interested in this Realclimate.org piece because I
> referenced his theory in a 2007 op-ed in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News,
> which now has a Google News webpage of an actual scan of the actual op-ed
> page in the Moscow-Pullman DN.  How or why this scan happened I do not
> know, but it can be read at the webpage below:
>
>
> https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2026&dat=20070223&id=x14zAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MvAFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3113,2791746&hl=en
>
> ---------------------------------
> Ruddiman's Realclimate.org article mentioned above is pasted in below, and
> comments generated by his article are also available at the website below:
>
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/a-scientific-debate/
>
> A Scientific Debate Filed under: Climate Science — mike @ 13 April 2015
>
> Bill Ruddiman, University of Virginia
>
> Recently I’ve read claims that some scientists are opposed to AGW but
> won’t speak out because they fear censure from a nearly monolithic
> community intent on imposing a mainstream view. Yet my last 10 years of
> personal experience refute this claim. This story began late in 2003 when I
> introduced a new idea (the ‘early anthropogenic hypothesis’) that went
> completely against a prevailing climatic paradigm of the time. I claimed
> that detectable human influences on Earth’s surface and its climate began
> thousands of years ago because of agriculture. Here I describe how this
> radically different idea was received by the mainstream scientific
> community.
>
> Was my initial attempt to present this new idea suppressed? No. I
> submitted a paper to Climatic Change, then edited by Steve Schneider, a
> well-known climate scientist and AGW spokesman. From what I could tell,
> Steve was agnostic about my idea but published it because he found it an
> interesting challenge to the conventional wisdom. I also gave the Emiliani
> lecture at the 2003 December American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference to
> some 800 people. I feel certain that very few of those scientists came to
> my talk believing what my abstract claimed. They attended because they were
> interested in a really new idea from someone with a decent career
> reputation. The talk was covered by many prominent media sources, including
> the New York Times and The Economist. This experience told me that
> provocative new ideas draw interest because they are provocative and new,
> provided that they pass the key ‘sniff test’ by presenting evidence in
> support of their claims.
>
> Did this radical new idea have difficulty receiving research funding? No.
> Proposals submitted to the highly competitive National Science Foundation
> (NSF) with John Kutzbach and Steve Vavrus have been fully funded since 2004
> by 3-year grants. Even though the hypothesis of early anthropogenic effects
> on climate has been controversial (and still is for some), we crafted
> proposals that were carefully written, tightly reasoned, and focused on
> testing the new idea. As a result, we succeeded against negative funding
> odds of 4-1 or 5-1. One program manager told me he planned to put our grant
> on a short list of ‘transformational’ proposals/grants that NSF had
> requested. That didn’t mean he accepted our hypothesis. It meant that he
> felt that our hypothesis had the potential to transform that particular
> field of paleoclimatic research, if proven correct.
>
> Were we able to get papers published? Yes. As any scientist will tell you,
> this process is rarely easy. Even reviewers who basically support what you
> have to say will rarely hand out ‘easy-pass’ reviews. They add their own
> perspective, and they often point out useful improvements. A few reviews of
> the 30-some papers we have published during the last 11 years have come
> back with extremely negative reviews, seemingly from scientists who seem
> deeply opposed to anything that even hints at large early anthropogenic
> effects. While these uber-critical reviews are discouraging, I have learned
> to put them aside for a few days, give my spirits time to rebound, and then
> address the criticisms that are fair (that is, evidence-based), explain to
> the journal editor why other criticisms are unfair, and submit a revised
> (and inevitably improved) paper. Eventually, our views have always gotten
> published, although sometimes only after considerable effort.
>
> The decade-long argument over large early anthropogenic effects continues,
> although recent syntheses of archeological and paleoecological data have
> been increasingly supportive. In any case, I continue to trust the
> scientific process to sort this debate out. I suggest that my experience is
> a good index of the way the system actually operates when new and
> controversial ideas emerge. I see no evidence that the system is muffling
> good new ideas.
> ---------------------------------------
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>
>
>
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