Posted on 04/02/2002 3:32:39 PM PST by liberallarry
fter a year of urging from energy industry lobbyists, the Bush administration is seeking the ouster of an American scientist who for nearly six years has directed an international panel of hundreds of experts assessing global warming, several government officials have said.
The specialist, Dr. Robert T. Watson, chief scientist of the World Bank, is highly regarded as an atmospheric chemist by many climate experts. He has held the unpaid position of chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since the fall of 1996. Now his term is expiring and the State Department has chosen not to renominate him to head the panel, which is run under the auspices of the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization.
Dr. Watson is an outspoken advocate of the idea that human actions — mainly burning oil and coal — are contributing to global warming and must be changed to avert environmental upheavals.
Last night, a State Department official said the administration was leaning toward endorsing a scientist from India, which along with other developing countries has been eager for a stronger role in the climate assessments.
But many influential climate experts say they have written to the department supporting Dr. Watson.
One of those letters was sent last month by Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone, an atmospheric scientist who is chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, and chairman of a National Academy of Sciences panel that assessed the international panel's climate analyses last year at the behest of the White House.
In an e-mail message sent to the State Department, Dr. Cicerone urged the administration not to withdraw its support for Dr. Watson and, if it did, at least to replace him with another atmospheric scientist.
Otherwise, "such a change would greatly reduce the emphasis on science in I.P.C.C.," he said, referring to the climate panel. He also said it would be "very, very difficult to find anyone better than Watson."
But energy industry lobbyists and some Republican elected officials (NOT SCIENTISTS)have criticized Dr. Watson as biased and focused on building a scientific argument to justify cutting the use of coal and oil. In a letter to the White House a year ago, for example, Dr. Arthur G. Randol III, senior environmental adviser for ExxonMobil, said Dr. Watson used leaks of drafts of his panel's climate reports to further his "personal agenda."
"Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S.?" read the letter. A copy was given to The New York Times by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private environmental group. Dr. Randol did not respond yesterday to requests for comment. But White House officials said his letter had no bearing on decisions about the panel.
The only other significant candidate nominated for panel chairman is Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, an Indian engineer and economist who is now one of five vice chairmen. He is highly regarded, but many scientists said his lack of grounding in atmospheric science made him an unsuitable choice.
Nevertheless several lobbyists for energy companies and auto manufacturers are scheduled to meet with senior State Department officials this afternoon, when they are expected to press the administration to endorse Dr. Pachauri.
One of the lobbyists said that in a two-man race, it was necessary for industry to make a choice — and that the choice should not be Dr. Watson.
The panel's assessments of climate change underpinned negotiations leading to two climate treaties, the latest of them the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for cuts in emissions of heat-trapping gases. President Bush rejected it a year ago.
The panel's findings have been criticized as overly dire by energy industry officials and a few scientists. But many other experts have endorsed them, including the panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences.
Campaigners at private environmental groups yesterday attacked the efforts to replace Dr. Watson.
Some climate panel scientists said that other countries were planning to push for Dr. Watson to remain, and that it might be possible to craft a compromise in which the two scientists served as co-chairmen.
In an interview, Dr. Watson said the most important thing was to keep the panel from becoming divided into factions. "We've always worked well by consensus," he said. "I would hope it does not come down to a divisive vote."
Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, and now James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies all generally agree that greenhouse gas warming will be somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 C this century. Hansen's estimates have been edging down, primarily based on energy/emissions projection changes.
2 deg. C (the middle of the estimate range) would be annoying but not catastrophic. I'll be posting an article summarizing a just-published paper in Nature that shows ecosystem changes are being noted due to the warming of the last 30 years, most notably due to earlier onset of spring.
That's funny, I read that the environmentalists were invited but refused to attend. I suppose that we should rely on the opinions of Hollywood stars in the crafting of our energy policy rather than anyone that is actually in the energy industry?
I don't think Hollywood stars should have been consulted, but groups that are familiar with alternative sources and useful energy conservation measures should have been.
In his Congressional testimony last year (www.senate.gov/~epw/lin_0502.htm), Lindzen said that there was widespread agreement that a doubling of CO2 concentration would result in about a 2 degree F temperature increase. That's 1.1 degrees C.
He also said that such warming "is likely to be concentrated in winters and at night"..."on the whole a beneficial pattern". He states that the points people agree on are consistent with minimal impacts of increased CO2.
Lindzen notes the disconnect between the IPPC Summary written by representatives from governments and the rest of the IPPC report written by scientists. Would you trust information summarized by governments of the world when they can benefit by taking positions that cripple your economy but have little effect on theirs? If so, you are naive.
Doubts and qualifications expressed by the scientists didn't make it to the Summary. He notes that the media rarely reflects what is actually in the Summary and express results in terms of upper limits. Lindzen notes that there is evidence that even the bottom of the IPPC temerature increase ranges are overestimates..
Yes, but according to the global warming crowd, that's because the sun can't shine through all the clouds of smog. I swear, I've read it! Go figure.
We have been down this path before. IMO alternate sources of energy will be utilized when they are economically viable, either through advances in technology or prohibitive prices of petroleum products.I believe this is called the law of supply and demand.
I am currently reading a book called Northwest Exposures
I would like to get your comments on this work and the authors opinion that we are currently in a warming trend in geologic time following the ice ages of as few as 15,000 years ago.
While my leisure time is limited (3 toddlers!) and my reading list is correspondingly backlogged, tell me more (author, availability, etc.) and I'll see what I can do.
Publisher is Mountain Press Publishing Company from Missoula, Montana
You do realize that scientists are not necessarily "impartial", right?
Scientists, like all other people, may in fact have these things called "political opinions" which color their worldview and consequently their scientific output. Scientists come from the world of academics, and as such could conceivably be more tilted toward a left-wing/socialist agenda (which all "climate treaties" favor) than the general public.
There is also the fact that scientists rely largely on tax money for their funding. You are correct point out the "direct financial interest" which businessmen (legitimately!) have in these political debates, but for some reason you neglect or pretend not to notice that scientists also have a "direct financial interest" in the outcome of these debates.
A scientist who sticks to the conventional political wisdom and says Global Warming Is Real And Requires Massive Government Powers might just get a big new grant to pay for his lab and graduate students and such (from people in that Government eager to justify their grab for such Powers, of course). Meanwhile a scientist who says I'm Not So Sure It's Absolutely Necessary For You To Have So Much Power, Mr. Politician just might get the cold shoulder from.... Mr. Politician.
Gee, you think?
My father helped a lot, he was a chemical engineer and his work took him to a lot of mines. And though Wisconsin isn't Idaho/Washington in terms of geological interest, there's a lot of glacial period features. My real interest got piqued when I went the wrong way in my grad school career at Berkeley (you can't get a Ph.D. in chemistry if you're not very good at math). But while I was slumming in IT to realign my career in a paycheck-oriented direction, I took a few courses in geochemistry, especially geochemical cycling, and got really interested. In case anyone wonders why I am environmentally-minded, there you go. I was originally interested in climate change that took place over thousands and millions of years, and the natural "extension" is to be interested, and at times concerned, about what might currently be happening.
Well, with regard to Advanced Physical Chemistry, for me it was a foreign language that I never learned to speak very well.
Why did you stop the sentence there? Let's continue with the rest of the sentence and the whole paragraph, and see if you can rebut ALL(or ANY) of what the petitioners claim, not just the first five words of it.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
IF you had bothered to read the rest of the information on the linked site, specifically this you would have wisely cowered away instead of posting the BS that you did.
How many billions of bucks have been wasted on this "sky is falling" BS!
For every "Chief Scientist of the World Bank", (AKA Chicken Little), I can find ten others with equal or better credentials who offer solid refutation.
The world and its climate changes for cripes sake. Get over it.
What do you think of the correlations between the length of the solar cycle and climate, such as that presented in the journal Science by Friis-Christensen and Larsen (Science 254, 698-700, 1991)? When this article was published I thought it effectively ended the greenhouse gas argument. But you can't kill Dracula that easily (or scientists feeding at the funding trough).
A plot from the 1991 article made it to this Stanford site: http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html
Others have extended this plot farther back in time, and the agreement with the reconstructed temperature record is fairly good. At the ends of some upswing cycles the observed temperature sometimes exceeds that predicted by the correlation for a few years before rejoining the correlation line. I think we may be in such a period now.
Solar variations can predict the ups and downs of the global temperature record, like the cooling observed in the 50s and 60s. A steadily increasing CO2 would just drive the temperature higher.
I don't think the paleo record(or the current record) bears that statement out, because most of the CO2 in fossil fuels was deposited during the Cretaceous period, and the temp then was only slightly higher than it is now. More CO2 means more plant and animal growth as they thrive in higher levels.
Now if you were to alter the water vapor(H20) somehow, that would cause a more direct effect on temperature. CO2, and all others are a minor GHG compared to water vapor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.