Climate Change Book Reviews - Index

Lawrence Solomon, The Deniers: the world-renowned scientists who stoop up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud (and those who are too fearful to do so), (Richard Vigilante Books, 2008), 239 pages

There is a public policy debate of the degree to which global warming is a problem, and what to do about it. The consensus view is that global warming is a serious problem requiring serious but unresolved action. Against the consensus view is an opposing view of the so-called "deniers" and "skeptics". As members of a confused public, we should read both sides, and make our own decisions regarding relevance. With this in mind, one reads books such as "The Deniers". As a presentation of the "denier" case, this book is at best not convincing, and at worst misleading.

Let's start with the title. The full title and the highlighted title convey totally different meanings. The highlighted title suggests the "deniers" are the "scientists against global warming". Most of the "deniers" in the book agree that there is a global warming problem, so the highlighted title is misleading.

The full title suggests the "deniers" are world renowned scientists who stood up against "global warming hysteria", "global warming political persecution", and "global warming fraud". The full title raises a number of question:

1. Just what exactly is "global warming hysteria"? The dictionary definition of hysteria is "a condition due to a psychological disturbance characterized by excessive excitability and anxiety. Who is not against "hysteria". However, one cannot characterize a scientific publication, supported by the peer-review process, to be "hysteria". The science of global warming is not hysterical. A book on media hysteria related to global warming might be worth writing, but this book purportedly sets out to examine the science, and specifically whether the science is settled.
2. If the book is about "deniers" who stoop up against "political persecution", there is no evidence of "political persecution" in the conventional sense of persecution by governments. Some "deniers" complained they did not get the funding they sought because they were going against the mainstream, but it difficult to determine whether their failure to get funding was merely bad science.
3. If the book is about "deniers" standing up against " global warming fraud", the book provides no evidence of fraud

In writing a book about the "deniers", one presumes that Solomon set out to find the individuals who had the strongest arguments to make against the theory of global warming. If there were a strong case to be made, there would be a number of "deniers" that were:

1. Climate scientists - persons with expertise in the area;
2. Persons denying that global warming is happening or if it is, that the warming is not significant.
3. Current in their denial. There is little point picking out deniers whose denials do not take into account current findings.
4. Correct in their denial, or at least not yet proved wrong. A climate scientist who makes a proposal that is eventually tested and found lacking may be an interesting personal story, but does not deny the science.

Solomon found no one that unambiguously met the criteria. See for your self through the summaries below.

The Hockey Stick

Dr Edward Wegman is a well-regarded (e.g. past president of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences) statistician hired by a partisan Congressional committee to review the statistical debate arising over Michael Mann's hockey stick graph, which appeared in the third report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and was used by Al Gore in his presentations and his movie "An Inconvenient Truth". The graph showed rapidly rising temperatures in the later part of the 20th century in the Northern hemisphere and that temperatures were higher in this period than at any point in the preceding 1,000 years. Wegman criticized Mann's use of statistics, arguing that the data was decentered and decentering the data produced the hockey stick result. I presume Wegman has a point on the statistical issue. However, the National Academy of Sciences, a more authoritative body than Edward Wegman, also reviewed the issue and concluded that Mann's analysis stood up reasonably well for the period since 1600. Before that, data uncertainties prevailed. Other studies using different data and methodologies, have found results similar to Mann's.

The Polar Regions

Duncan Wingham is an Antarctica specialist, looking at the issue whether the Antarctic ice cap is growing, shrinking or staying the same size. His conclusion in 2006 was that it was growing. In 2007, he concluded it was shrinking. Claims of massive sea level rise require that Antarctic ice sheet to melt.

Syun-Ichi Akasofu is a respected Arctic researcher. Akasofu made three points:

1. He argues that there has been a linear warming process since 1800. Under the human induced greenhouse gas theories, the warming should have occurred primarily later, when the human emissions expanded greatly. He concludes that the warming is a result of natural processes, and not greenhouse gases. The IPCC conclused in its fourth report that it was 90 percent certain that global warming was induced by humans. The remaining 10 percent presumably accommodates the concerns of Akasofu.
2. Akasofu also notes that while there is much attention on Arctic warming now, the Arctic also warmed dramatically then fell between 1920 and 1970. He argues that the greenhouse gas theory does not explain the rise and fall of temperatures between 1920 and 1970. However, temperatures outside the Arctic tended to be lower between 1940 and 1970, when temperatures started to rise again. Climate science suggests that this was due to aerosols that accompanied the rapid rise in emissions from 1940 onward.
3. Akasofu found that climate models, as applied to the Arctic, did not explain what has actually happened, indicating a problem in the models. This suggests a need to review the models in terms of the Arctic.

Claude Allegre is a physicist, with expertise on the evolution of Earth using isotopic evidence. He initially supported the global warming hypothesis, then changed his mind and wrote an article questioning the hypothesis, based on evidence that Antarctica was gaining ice and the glacier on Kilimanjaro was retreating from natural causes. His popular article is not supported by a review of evidence by peers with expertise in the area. Nor does he have particular expertise in climate science. Furthermore, the latest observations indicate Antarctica is losing ice.

Cliff Ollier is a geologist, geomorphologist, and soil scientist. He questions claims in an article in National Geographic about the rapid melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. He observes that glacier models envision an ice sheet sliding down an inclined plane on a base lubricated by meltwater, which increases because of warming. He notes that ice sheets melt do not melt from the surface down, but only at the edges. They also occupy deep basins, and cannot slide down inclines. Ice core data indicates that ice sheets have accumulated without melting even when temperatures are warmer than now. The rate of flow of ice sheets is determined not by the present climate, but the by accumulation of ice during the past. He is responding to a media article, not to climate scientists, so it is unclear what he is denying.

The Carbon Cycle

Tom Segalstad has a background in geology. He argues that the oceans have an almost limitless capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, and that carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere stays there only about five to ten years. He refers to a number of studies over the period 1957 to 1983, and his own work and another study in 1992. His work is based on the carbon 13 and carbon 12 mass balance. He suggests that either the measurement approaches are flawed, or that there is some natural cause that explains the recent increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. XXXXX

Cloud Formation

Richard LindzenRichard Lindzen is a climatologist. He has argued that a warming ocean will lead to increased water vapour in the tropics over the oceans. Water vapour will lead to increased cloud formation, which will reflect sunlight back into space. This will act as a negative feedback mechanism, thereby reducing the sensitivity of the atmosphere to increased carbon dioxide. The scientific issues related to this are not settled. Some studies are supportive, and some not. A 2009 study carried out by University of Miami researcher Amy Clement found that when the ocean surface is warm, the low level clouds dissipate. Low level clouds are typically composed of water droplets and tend to include darker clouds that block solar radiation, and therefore have a cooling effect. Clement's research questions Lindzen's hypothesis.

Ice Core Data

Zbigniew Jaworowski's background includes radiation and the environment. He is not a climate scientist. He contends that ice core information is irrelevant, because the ice cores composition changes over time through the effects of liquids and pressures. For the ice cores to be valid, they should never become liquid. The science community rejects this theory because separate drill holes from Vostok for the two recent glacial and interglacial transition periods produce the same results, even though the last transition period was in the brittle zone.

Climate Modeling

Hendrik Tennekes is scientist with background in aerospace engineering and meteorology. He maintains that modeling is extremely complex. The modelers do not understand all the issues built into the models (clouds, storms, rain patterns). As a result, the models do not produce reasonable simulations of climate. Therefore, we should not be using the predictions of models as the basis for action. It is worth noting that models are used in a variety of circumstances where not everything is known (e.g. economic forecasting). They are intended as "best guesses". Climate models tend to include a range of outcomes with probabilities attached to each. This in turn reflects the uncertainty within them. Even the IPCC not rely fully on models. It allowed for the possibility that warming may have arisen from natural causes. In addition, the IPCC does not rely exclusively on modeling. For example, it does look at historical developments.

Freeman Dyson is a physicist and mathematician, not a climate scientist. He believes the climate models do a good job at describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and oceans, and a poor job in describing clouds, dust, chemistry, biology of fields, farms and forests. In areas of uncertainty, fudge factors are included that fit with existing observed data. The fudge factors are not based on a physical understanding of the processes involved. Dyson may be right, but he may also be wrong. The fudge factors could be right, in which case the models could be right. One of his concerns is clouds. Climate models divide the planet into relatively large blocks - blocks that are much bigger than clouds. Models need to get "cloud averaging" right, and it may be possible to get this "cloud averaging", without understanding the processes that make and dissolve clouds. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does not rely exclusively on modeling. For example, it does look at historical developments.

Antonino Zichichi has an impressive scientific background, although not in climate science. He is concerned about the complexity of the world, the inability of the models to capture all the complexity, and the proliferation of fudge-factors.

David Bromwich is an Antarctic climate researcher. He found that the climate models as applied to Antarctica were wrong, probably because of the issue of cloud formation in Antarctica. Clouds form differently under extreme Antarctic conditions.

Solar Output

Eigil Friis-Christensen is a space scientist. He discovered a relationship between global temperature and the length of the sunspot cycle (not the number of sunspots). A paper in 1991 used data through 1985 and found a strong correlation between solar activity and temperature. However, after this period, the correlation broke down as temperatures continued to rise while solar activity declined. A paper in 1996 with Henrik Svensmark (see below) suggested that the effect of the solar activity on cosmic rays reaching the earth may affect total cloud formation, which in turn could affect the earth's albedo. Eventually, the relationship between solar activity and total cloud formation broke down as well. This led to further work suggesting a relationship between solar activity and low level cloud formation.

Sami Solanki is a researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany. In 2004, he and a team of scientists reconstructed solar activity since the last Ice Age about 11,400 years ago and mapped this activity against temperature reconstructions. He believes the sun is in a changed state, and is brighter now than it was a few hundred years ago and the brightening started relatively recently in the last 100 to 150 years, and the sun has been strongest in the last sixty years. He does not deny the greenhouse effect, but maintains other forces are at work to explain recent warming. If his theory about increased solar activity is correct, then the policy conclusion would be enhanced reduction of greenhouse gases.

Habibullo Abdussamatov is a physicist and mathematician, with working experience in the Russian space program. He observes that both Earth and Mars are experiencing parallel global warming, pointing at a common cause, namely solar irradiance. He studies indicate that there is a short cycle of about eleven years related to sunspots, and a longer cycle of 200 years. His hypothesis is that the longer term cycle affects Earth's climate. He is in charge of a project based in the international space station that will survey the sun. Results will arrive in 2016. Abdussamatov also argues that climate changes lag the changes in solar irradiance There are two effects of the lag. Temperature increases follow the solar irradiance by 15 to 20 years, because most of the energy ends up in the oceans and it takes 15 to 20 years for the heat to come out of the oceans. In addition, increases in ocean temperature release carbon dioxide. He states that solar irradiance has begun to decline, that the peak decline will occur around 2041, and that the temperature effects on Earth will occur 15 to 20 years later. To substantiate his argument that solar irradiance has begun to decline, he cites a report ("Recent Cooling of the Upper Ocean") by Lyman, Willis and Johnson that the upper ocean levels had cooled from 2003 to 2005. However, errors were found in the report by Lyman et al, and when corrections were made, it was concluded that the oceans had warmed after all (See New Scientist, "Seas are warming after all", April 28, 2007).

Rhodes Fairbridge is an early expert on climate change. Fairbridge's hypothesis is that sunspot activity is affected by the solar system's centre of gravity. This centre of gravity is determined primarily by the relative positions of the sun and the planets. Depending on the position of the planets, the centre of gravity of the solar system can be as much as one diameter of the sun from the centre of gravity of the sun. He found that when the sun's orbit is smooth and near circular, solar activity is high and the earth heats up. When it is chaotic, solar activity is low and the earth cools. By his hypothesis, the next cool period began in 1996, and its effects should be felt by 2010. Scientists are continually monitoring solar output. They are aware that the earth is gaining heat while the sun is cooling.

Cosmic Rays

Nir Shaviv is a an astrophysicist. Shaviv accepts that CO2 can cause warming, but believes that other factors have not been suitably addressed and how the interaction of warming and cooling effects. He examined cosmic ray activity (measured by damage to meteorites) and found a relationship between cosmic ray activity, the passage through the spiral arms in the galaxy and ice ages. His hypothesis is that the increased cosmic ray activity that occurs when the earth passes through the spiral arms of the galaxy increases cloud cover to a degree sufficiently large to cause ice ages. He may be right, but these long-term effects do not explain the current warming. He also hypothesizes that changes in the magnetic field of the sun could also affect the amount of cosmic rays reaching earth.

Henrik Svensmark is a physicist with work experience in the Danish National Space Centre. He hypothesized in 2000 that cosmic rays striking earth could affect low cloud formation. In 2006, he participated in a laboratory experiment called SKY that mimicked the key aspects of the chemistry of the lower atmosphere, with ultraviolet rays mimicking the actions of the sun, with cosmic rays occurring naturally through the ceiling of the laboratory. They found that there were a lot of floating droplets of microscopic particles of sulfuric acid and water - the building blocks of clouds. Apparently, the cosmic rays had released electrons, which catalyzed the reactions.

Jasper Kirby is an experimental particle physicist at the CERN, Switzerland. In 1998, he hypothesized that cosmic rays could affect cloud formation and proposed an experiment to test the hypothesis. The CLOUD experiment (Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets) was approved in 2006 and is now underway at CERN. Until the results are in, the experiment is another interesting scientific hypothesis under test.

Ice Ages

George Kukla is a research scientist at Columbia University and the Czechoslovakian Academy of Science. He was instrumental in the scientific understanding of ice ages, which are now believed to be caused by Milankovitch cycles, which are the product of earth's orbit, tilt and wobble. He predicted in the 1970s that Earth would cool. The prediction got headlines at the time, in part because global temperature data indicated cooling. His hypothesis is that the principal driver of weather patterns and global climates is the temperature difference between high and low latitudes. The higher the difference, the more water and air move toward the poles, and remain there as snow and ice. Global warming causes this ice and snow to melt. When it does, it moves the cold air and water away from the poles, causing these areas to cool. As such, warming always precedes cooling. Kukla's hypothesis is in line with current thinking about the causes of past ice ages. When all other factors are equal, these causes put Earth in an interglacial warm period, which should end in a cooling period leading to an ice age. These causes work over long time periods, and do not adequately explain current climate developments.

Hurricanes

William Gray is a hurricane researcher. His models for predicting hurricanes was based on 50 years of research and have a 95 percent accuracy rate. He dismisses climate related computer models as meaningless, the product of computer models that track a few factors and ignore many of the rest. Regarding the supposed effects of global warming on hurricanes, he notes that although Atlantic surface water temperatures have risen during the 1990s and early 2000s, the number of hurricane land falls and major hurricanes has either stayed the same or fallen. This acknowledges global warming (higher surface temperatures) and disputes the specific impacts related to hurricanes.

Denying the Impacts of Global Warming

Paul Reiter is a tropical medicine specialist. He is responding to IPCC claims that about specific health risks that might accompany global warming. Whatever the IPCC said about health risks, Reiter is not denying global warming. Rather, he is addressing one of the effects of global warming.

Not Denying Anything

Roger Revelle was among the early climate scientists. In 1991, he co-authored a paper "What To Do About Greenhouse Warming: Look Before You Leap". The paper argued against acting aggressively to curb greenhouse gases before fully understanding what was involved. He died three months after the article appeared. It is undoubtedly wrong to consider Revelle a denier of global warming. He simply expressed a cautious approach, based on the scientific information available in 1991. This was a time when the IPCC was not making strong statements about the need to address global warming. Solomon probably thought it would be a clever move to insert one of the early founders on the theory of climate change in his book of deniers, but Revelle is clearly not a relevant, current "denier".

Denial Without Science

Reid Bryson is a meteorologist and climate science. He passed away in 2008. On climate science, he has been arguing since 1976 that global warming alarmists pick the evidence to focus on the warming influences of human behaviour and do not take sufficient account of cooling influences. What we have a well-known climate scientist expressing a personal opinion, without making his point scientifically.

David Bellamy is a botanist, professor of geography, and one of the UK's best known environmentalists. He published a paper "Climate Stability: An Inconvenient Proof" in a refereed civil engineering journal in 2007. He argues that a doubling of CO2 would increase global temperatures by one degree Celsius. In short, climate is not sensitive to increases in CO2. I suspect if there were an increase in CO2 without a host of other feedbacks, Bellamy would be right. The problem is, there are other feedbacks. Climate science is telling us that most end up being positive. One wonders about the credibility of his science when someone without expertise in climate science writes about climate science in a civil engineering journal.

Denying the Economics of Global Warming

Richard Tol is an environmental economist, not a climate scientist. He was a critic of Stern's economic analysis of the costs and benefits of dealing with global warming.

Denying Political Processes to Deal with Climate Science

Christopher Landsea is an expert in tropical storms. He maintains that it is scientifically in doubt whether global warming will lead to increased number or intensity of tropical storms. He does not dispute the greenhouse effect or that global warming is occurring. Landsea took exception to the fact that a lead scientist for the IPCC's fourth report took part in a conference suggesting that one of the consequences of global warming would be increasing destruction from tropical storms.

Vincent Gray is a climate scientist and a critic of the IPCC process. Among other things, he raises concerns about the secretiveness of IPCC data. This seems strange, since the IPCC reviews the research of others, and does not undertaken fundamental research on its own. His criticism is about the IPCC process, not about the science. He is a coal chemist, according to Wikipedia.

Robert Carter is an earth scientist, not a climate scientist. His complaints are not about climate science per se, but about the processes related to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In essence, he is saying science is not about consensus, but about hypotheses that can be proven or disproved. He is, of course, technically right, but practically wrong. When most aspects of the science are settled and some are not and there is perhaps a political need to do something, then relying a consensus view makes as much sense as relying on extreme views on other side of the consensus.

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