In the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall a character in a movie queue is sounding off about Marshall MacLuhan when the subject himself appears and says: “Excuse me, I’m Marshall MacLuhan. You know nothing of my work.” Woody Allen then turns to the audience and asks, “don’t you wish life were like that?”.
Well thanks to the net, life is like that nowadays. Over at A Tangled Web, Jammie Wearing Fool and elsewhere, the global warming denialists are busy misrepresenting a news article in the Toronto Star about a study from the canadian physicist William van Wijngaarden. “Physicist questions climate change finding“, goes the Star headline, and the denialists make hay:
Canadian scientists, that is, real scientists, eh, have hosed one of the linchpins of al-Gore’s ‘global warming’ junk science.
..enthuses RadicalRon over at ATW and JWF.
In the posts and comment threads it’s evident that the denialists think that the study has refuted a major tenet of MMGW (man-made global warming). Just one problem. The author of the study doesn’t think so. From quotes in the article this is fairly clear but just be sure I wrote to Mr van Wijngaarden, and with his permission here is his reply:
Dear Frank
Thank you for your email. My presentation at the recent American Meteorological
Service as well as all other presentations have never questioned the scientific
consensus on man-made global warming. Indeed, I as well as probably thousands
of others have looked at the temperature data and find a significant warming is
going on in certain regions. For example, in the Canadian western Arctic and
the prairies there has been a warming of about 5 C during the last 50 years in
winter. This is unprecedented and should be very troubling to everyone. The
response of governments to date has been very weak. i.e. We should be banning
SUV vehicles, increasing fuel mileage standards to 50 miles per gallon within a
decade, investing in mass transit systems etc. etc.The anthropogenic effect on climate change described above has resulted from
over a century of fossil fuel burning by millions of smokestacks and cars.
This is fundamentally different than saying that shutting off a few thousand
jet engines for a few hours results in temperature change over a continental
region of a similar magnitude.My study looked at the change in daily temperature range (DTR) i.e. maximum day
minus minimum night temperature, during 2001 in Canada. This was compared to
the average value of DTR found for the previous about 25 years. As expected
the DTR in 2001 fluctuates about the average value. The period around Sept. 11
does not reveal any startling change as was reported previously for the
continental U.S. Indeed, when one looked at stations closest to the U.S.
border one also did not see any startling change in DTR.The obvious question to ask is what effect the reduced number of stations in
Canada has compared to the earlier U.S. study. If one plots a map showing the
DTR in 2001 relative to the average DTR for the 25 years, one finds that
neighbouring stations have consistent results. i.e. If one station has a
somewhat smaller DTR, so do its neighbours. This pattern changes from day to
day as would be consistent with the natural progression of High and Low
pressure systems across the continent. Hence, having many more stations, would
not change the results of our study.I wish to make clear that although I haven’t met the authors of the original
study, I’m sure they are reputable scientists. It would be interesting to have
another look at the original data and look not just at the period immediately
surrounding Sept. 11, 2001 but for all the days in 2001. It would be really be
interesting to see a plot for the continental U.S. showing DTR for each day in
2001 compared to the average value for the preceding 25 years.It would also be useful to do a calculation estimating how much of the sun’s
radiation is reflected by contrails and what would be the expected change in
DTR. I suspect that this result would be much smaller than the reported change
in the DTR of the earlier study.I hope this has been helpful.
Best Regards,
William van Wijngaarden
There you go “RadicalRon” and all the rest. Canadian scientists, that is, real scientists, eh, agree with the scientific consensus – like most scientists (the clue is in the name ‘consensus’). That means that like pretty much everyone else they accept that man made global warming is due to over a century of burning fossil fuels.
Technorati Tags: global warming, science, ipcc, contrails, wijngaarden, denialists, woody allen, annie hall, globalwarming
It is impressive that someone who supports the AGW view is willing to point out where evidence that supports that view is flawed. It enhances his credibility as a scientist.
Of course being a credible scientist does not make you a credible economist or lend anything to your political opinions.
“We should be banning SUV vehicles, increasing fuel mileage standards to 50 miles per gallon within a decade, investing in mass transit systems etc. etc.”
That is the kind of thinking that provokes so much resistance in the whole debate. It is essentially 70’s style socialism with an environmental face and will be rejected by any sensible electorate.
Suppose you did in fact implement the measures proposed and suppose they worked. One would assume that worldwide demand for oil would fall. So what happens next? The price of oil plummets.
Oil the becomes viable for use in so many more ways. It will still be used and carbon will still be released but we will all be going to work on state run (in other words badly run) transport systems.
Demanding that we invest in mass-transit systems is ludicrous when in many European states it is actually illegal or very difficult to set up and run a bus service.
The reason for this is to protect state-monopolies and the Green parties all go along with it. The hypocrisy is breath-taking and the dishonesty is palpable. They are simply leftists proposing leftist solutions. Why should anyone listen to them? Why don’t they accept that the market can deliver what they claim to want without compulsion, centralisation and communism.
Of course the reaction of conservatives is possibly inadequate too. We see the socialist proposals and attack the science of AGW rather than the socialists. We should come up with our own plan based on incentive and choice with price mechanisms rater than diktat as the way forward.
Henry,
“It is impressive that someone who supports the AGW view is willing to point out where evidence that supports that view is flawed.”
It’s a mischaracterisation of this study to act like it somehow undermines AGW.
“Suppose you did in fact implement the measures proposed and suppose they worked. One would assume that worldwide demand for oil would fall. So what happens next? The price of oil plummets.
Oil the becomes viable for use in so many more ways.”
Or less wasteful uses become cheaper. Indeed I think if the free market made the price of oil go down you’d say it was a good thing.
I’m not saying the measures proposed are good or that there wouldn’t be unintended consequences but I don’t buy that argument.
“Of course the reaction of conservatives is possibly inadequate too.”
To put it mildly.
“We see the socialist proposals and attack the science of AGW rather than the socialists. We should come up with our own plan based on incentive and choice with price mechanisms rater than diktat as the way forward.”
But it seems you can’t. And you object to the solutions that do use markets (carbon trading etc). What price mechanism will ever consider an externality?
henry, you state a case up to a point and with clear ommision. i can see the argument for politics and ideology pervading the issue. but lets be balanced about it. north american refusal to increase fuel mileage of cars can also be seen as an ideological decision as its almost soley based on reasons of pure profit. innefficient engines burn fuel at a collosal rate and i doubt the oil companies and the car manufacturers have any reason to change that status quo. a status quo that was decided (conspired) many decades ago, as a means to enhance profit.
we can argue about mass transit and SUVs, but lets not pretend that the ideology factor is uni-directional.
global warming and global peak oil production look set to be epoch defining problems for us all and i personally think there will have to a large shift in ideological thinking on both sides of the divide. almost all the major oil production regions (eg Iran, Venezuela, North Sea) in the world bar saudi arabia have already peaked. many speculate Saudi Arabia has too. then weve got the prospecting on canadas tar sands and alaskas shale, two source “you dont go near” unless there are no other sources out there. add all this to the fact the more of the worlds population is now consuming oil and its derivitives (china, india especially) and you have an amazing convergance of two major issues. both inextricably linked i might add.
on a personal note i have faith in the endeavours of man. i have no faith in the endeavours of politicians, governments and a system of big business that is invested in the status quo.
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