Friday, March 2, 2007

One angry climate scientist

Hendrik Tennekes is a former Professor of Aeronatical Engineering and a retired Director of Research for the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. In other words he’s an eminently qualified climate scientist. Prof. Tennekes was featured recently in Lawrence Solomon’s "The Deniers" series in the National Post as one of many scientists who have ‘run afoul’ of climate change orthodoxy.

Prof. Tennekes published this article last January expressing his deep concern about the lack of "modesty, integrity and balance" in climate science. This sampler gives the flavour:

[my bold]
Seventeen years ago, I wrote ..."I worry about the arrogance of scientists who claim they can help solve the climate problem, provided their research receives massive increases in funding."

[...]

...then I was worried, now I am angry. I am angry about the Climate Doomsday hype that politicians and scientists engage in. I am angry at Al Gore, I am angry at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists for resetting its Doomsday clock, I am angry at Lord Martin Rees for using the full weight of the Royal Society in support of the Doomsday hype, .....I am angry at the staff of IPCC for their preoccupation with carbon dioxide emissions, and I am angry at Jim Hansen for his efforts to sell a Greenland Ice Sheet Meltdown Catastrophe.

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I agree with IPCC that there is a likely link between fossil fuel consumption and increased temperatures. But this is where the much proclaimed consensus ends.

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...my good friend Denny (Dennis W.) Thomson at Penn State.....is deeply concerned about the veracity of "physics-challenged" climate models.

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... there is not a beginning of consensus on a theory of the Arctic Oscillation.[...]

...there is not even a rudimentary theory of the Polar Vortex, much less an established relation between rising greenhouse gas concentrations...

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...it is entirely consistent with the IPCC tradition to weasel around such issues.

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In the absence of a robust stochastic-dynamic theory of the general circulation, one cannot even check climate simulations against fundamental insights.

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At times it seems that no one in this business has learned about Karl Popper’s falsifiability demand. This is why I cringe at WCRP documents ...

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I want to lobby for decency, modesty, honesty, integrity and balance in climate research.

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We should stop our support for the preoccupation with greenhouse gases our politicians indulge in.

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We should not allow politicians to use fake doomsday projections...


It’s a long article and, since it’s written for his fellow climatologists, sometimes a mite esoteric. But it’s well worth reading because it’s very revealing of why no one should blindly accept oft repeated claims of ‘consensus’ and ‘the science is settled’. Again, here’s the whole thing.

2 comments:

  1. This is great - you coulda fed off this by way of content for a week.
    Howd you find it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Brian. My interest in Hendrik Tennekes was keyed by Lawrence Solomon's series in the National Post. Google did the rest.

    ReplyDelete