Sep 10 2008
The History of Climate Sensitivity
In the Times Online, historian of science Naomi Oreskes and Jonathan Renouf recount how a group of “elite special forces of the scientific world”, who called themselves Jason, produced a report about global warming. It was 1979.
Four years later, a group commissioned by the Reagan administration and [added: this has been disputed] headed by William Nierenberg published their own report. Oreskes and Renouf claim that the message was to “calm down, everybody”. Global warming wouldn’t be a problem; that “the synopsis emphasised the positive effects of climate change over the negative”.
William M. Connolley joined in by saying that “[Nierenberg's] synthesis may have been entirely fair.” The DeSmoggers are up to their usual “desmogging” calling the Nierenberg report the “birth of climate change denial”.
So I propose a pop quiz. I’ve included quotations from 4 sources spanning 30 years about the climate sensitivity of the Earth. One of them is from our “elite special forces”, another is from the “birth[place] of climate change denial”, and the other two are from the first (1990) and most recent (2007) reports by the IPCC. Your mission is to match the source with the quote.
1.) Jason (1979)
2.) Changing Climate (1983)
3.) IPCC (1990)
4.) IPCC (2007)
A:
[Climate Sensitivity] is likely to be in the range 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C.
B:
Results of most numerical model experiments suggest that a doubling of CO2, if maintained indefinitely, would cause a global surface air warming of between 1.5C and 4.5C. The climate record of the past hundred years and our estimates of CO2 changes over that period suggest that values in the lower half of this range are more probable.
C:
…[m]odels that estimate the change in mean surface temperature for a doubling of CO2 concentration lead to an increase of 2-3C.
D:
The range of results from model studies is 1.9 to 5.2C. Most results are close to 4.0C but recent studies using a more detailed but not necessarily more accurate representation of cloud processes give results in the lower half of this range. Hence the model results do not justify altering the previously accepted range of 1.5 to 4.5C.
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10 Responses to “The History of Climate Sensitivity”
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B is from “Changing Climate”
More importantly “Changing Climate” was a publication of the National Academy of Sciences Climate Research Board. The report was specifically requested by an act of congress during Jimmy Carter’s administration and the members of the CRB, including the chairman were appointed by the NAS prior to Reagan being elected.
The Reagan link is an Oreskes fabrication although the eventual report was published during his administration.
The introduction clearly states that the executive summary and the synthesis were the consensus view of all the members of the CRB which were;
William A. Nierenberg (Chairman) SIO, Peter G. Brewer Woods Hole/NSF, Lester Machta NOAA, William D. Nordhaus Yale, Roger R. Revelle UCSD, Thomas C. Schelling Harvard, Joseph Smagorinsky Princeton, Paul E. Waggoner, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, George M. Woodwell Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole
The idea that Dr. Nierenberg could or would have hijacked these conclusions is ludicrous and in no way supported by any evidence.
I should also point out that Dr. Nierenberg was a co-author of the JASON report that is mentioned in the Oreskes article.
I think the more important question is the compare/contrast between the discussion of likely impacts in the two earlier reports.
[Reply: I disagree. The important question is whether the NAS report accurately represented the peer-reviewed literature regarding the impacts of increased CO2.]
The NAS report was peer reviewed.
Steve Bloom,
You are concerned about the conclusions of the report, and I can assure you that when you see them you will wonder what Oreskes was talking about. I am working at getting them posted.
I would also ask you to be concerned about Oreskes’ complete fabrication about the Reagan link to the report, and about its nature.
I’d like to sort out whether it was Reagan or congress-during-Carter that commissioned it. NN says cdc; you (following Oreskes?) say Reagan. If O says R and is wrong, that dents her credibility.
[Reply: I said Reagan based entirely on the popular press item by Oreskes. At the time, I had no reason to doubt that.]
Atmoz, obviously denying a temp increase would have been worse, but as you know one now-common denialist argument is to accept the temp increase but say that the effects of it won’t be much of a problem. If it’s indeed the case that what N did was spin the otherwise-valid other chapters to minimize the problem, something more subtle than just denying the temp increase is what we should expect to see.
Thanks, Nicolas. I’ll look forward to seeing that material.
I have posted a scanned version of the executive summary at a web site I just created called http://www.nicolasnierenberg.com. I apologize in advance for the amateur site and the fact that the scan is so large.
doesn’t this web site has other languages support??
[Reply: I'm sorry, I only speak English. You're free to translate any of the articles that you want.]
Oreskes is starting to sound like a partisan.