[rjf72]

This is not a well supported position. There are numerous well established scientists who have expressed concern and criticism on the current 'consensus' in regards to climate change. These include for instances Richard Lindzen [1], a member of the National Academies of Science, an MIT atmospheric physicist, and also a lead author on one of the scientific sections of IPCC climate report. Appeals to authority are foolish, but I think his credentialing is relevant to this discussion.

Beyond that, one major issue is that the extreme politicization of this issues makes it difficult for people to speak freely. Anybody who speaks their mind on this topic, when such view doesn't abide the 'proper' view is labeled, attacked, and ostracized when and if possible. So you end up primarily with radicals, fools, and a handful of people with extremely thick skin willing to speak. A similar treatment was given to those who, for instance, suggested that leaded fuel might indeed be harmful - the official government and 'consensus' position for decades was that it was safe or posed negligible risk.

I am not, in this posting, thus taking any side. But I do think if you ever want to achieve progress on any topic, people being able to speak freely is critical to progress. Only weak or poorly supported ideas need fear 'contrarian' views. And even in the rare case where those weak or poorly supported ideas happen to be the truth, they invariably become stronger over time (due to the accumulation of validated falsifiable evidence) while, vice versa, alternative views become weaker.

But perhaps more importantly, I think the desire to squash contrarian views has a paradoxical effect. The idea is of course to try to prevent the spread of these ideas, yet in reality there never works - even less so now that we've entered the era of the internet. See: China + Winnie the Pooh for an amusing example. But far more critically, I think efforts to avoid discussion are often seen as an inability to compellingly respond. Once ideas reach a critical mass, they will spread unless compellingly challenged. Refusing to challenge these ideas in a fair and impartial way only strengthens them.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen

[graeme]

Lindzen doesn't dispute that CO2 warms the atmosphere! The vast majority of "skeptics" seem to think it's all a fraud, and that CO2 does nothing.

There is zero support for that position.

If you would like to debate the merits of Lindzen's views, feel free to do so: he thinks there will be less warming than existing models predict. He doesn't deny warming!

Meanwhile he retired in 2013, and as far as I can tell has produced no active research in this field since 2011. And his 2011 paper was widely panned including by reviewers he selected. He had to correct numerous errors in the paper. According to wikipedia, he eventually argued that at least 75% of predicted warming was happening.

So, a 25% margin off a catastrophic level of warming. And that's the very best name you can produce. And this info is all in the link you sent. And that's apart from the question of whether he was right in his argument in 2011, which is a factual answer we can measure with temperature sensors. (IIRC, warming has progressed faster than expected instead)

Contrary to your point, there is tremendous economic incentive to prove that fossil fuels are safe, cause us no trouble, and can continue to be used. Anyone who decisively proved that would be a hero, as fossil fuels are very useful indeed. The absence of such a person suggests that this view is mistaken.

[rjf72]

You're fighting against strawmen, which is understandable when everybody is afraid to talk unless it's to repeat the 'right' thoughts. It's quite obvious that greenhouse gases can increase temperatures. A basic understanding of how high frequency energy is converted into low frequency energy as is absorbed/emitted by the Earth and how the greenhouse gases react to both forms of energy is sufficient to prove this.

Lindzen's main issue is that the models are completely broken. As one example of this there is the 'Holocene temperature conundrum.' If you run our models on all data we have from around 10k to 6k years ago they all show there should have been significant warming. Instead we know there was significant cooling. And the reason for this remains completely unknown. In effect we are trying to forecast many decades into the future using models that break, even on their training data! This is a major problem.

And your perception of warming increasing faster than expected is once again being driven by the media. Our warming has lagged far behind models. For instance the first major climate report was the IPCC's report in 1990. That's nice because it forecast out to 30 years, which is just about now! They predicted a global warming of 0.3C per decade with an uncertainty of 0.2C to 0.5C on the 'business as usual' forecast, which is what we have followed. In reality, we haven't come anywhere near that. You can find various global temperature data, but here [1] are NASA's data. In particular (going decade by decade):

- 1990 = starting point

- 2000 = -0.04 'increase'

- 2010 = 0.3 increase

- 2019 = 0.1 increase

The IPCC was expecting an increase of 0.9 by 2020, with a minimum increase of 0.6. We've increased a bit less than 0.4 degrees. We're not even falling within the bottom end of their rather generous interval. That's, again, a major problem.

You're also misunderstanding that 75% comment. What Wiki (and he) was saying is that the temperature response is nonlinear. He is arguing that there will be a fraction of the expected heating due to a nonlinear response. In particular CO2 concentration levels have increased by about 30% and are at 75% of his expected temperature increase for a doubling of CO2. Does this mean his predictions are wrong, or does it mean the heating will slow? And similarly, we are only 15% of the expected heating for IPCC predictions, which are going in the opposite direction. Are the IPCC wrong, or will the rate of heating accelerate? This is an extremely critical distinction because if it turns out that increasing levels do not result in accelerating heating, then there's basically no problem whatsoever. Note both sides agree we'll continue to see 'the hottest year on [modern] record' for the foreseeable future. This might be what drove you to believe we were seeing more heating than expected.

All this said, I somewhat tend to agree that this is a dumb experiment to be running. I'd much rather roll back emissions, but I think the current science surrounding the arguments for such is running in an increasing number of problems as we start to be able to falisify or validate predictions. They're mostly turning up false (or at the very bottom of ranges), yet the media continues running sensationalized fearmongering nonethless. I think this is irresponsible, at best.

[1] - https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

[kaybe]

> Contrary to the IPCC's assessment, Lindzen said that climate models are inadequate.

> According to an April 30, 2012 New York Times article,[67] "Dr. Lindzen accepts the elementary tenets of climate science. He agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, calling people who dispute that point "nutty." He agrees that the level of it is rising because of human activity and that this should warm the climate." He also believes that decreasing tropical cirrus clouds in a warmer world will allow more longwave radiation to escape the atmosphere, counteracting the warming.[67] Lindzen first published this "iris" theory in 2001,[9] and offered more support in a 2009 paper.[51]

Hm.. So he has a diverging view on the consequences of warming on the tropical cirrus cloud coverage, and thinks the models are not good enough to reproduce the real climate. That's disagreement about the projections, not the basics, with most of the community, and that's ok, we can research more and figure out the truth. The problem is, we don't have that time (unless he's right).

Only reality will really tell. Let's hope he's right (not that probable), but act as if he wasn't, and see what else we can learn about the system to improve our understanding.