MIT Scientist Disputes Man-Made Global Warming In Sandia Labs Presentation - New Mexico Watchdog

Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT spoke at the invitation of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico to offer his criticisms of the the theory that human activity is causing the planet to warm at a dangerous rate.

Dr. Lindzen addressing U.S. House Committee, courtesy Watt’s Up With That science blog

Lindzen, the ninth speaker in Sandia’s Climate Change and National Security Speaker Series, is Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology in MIT’s department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and is the lead author of Chapter 7 (“Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks”) of the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Third Assessment Report. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

“[C]limate scientists have been “locked into a simple-minded identification of climate with greenhouse-gas level. … That climate should be the function of a single parameter (like CO2) has always seemed implausible. Yet an obsessive focus on such an obvious oversimplification has likely set back progress by decades,” Lindzen said, according to a press release from Sandia Labs.

Real-world observations do not support Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change models, he said: “We’ve already seen almost the equivalent of a doubling of CO2 (in radiative forcing) and that has produced very little warming.”  Responding to audience questions about rising temperatures, he said a 0.8 of a degree C change in temperature in 150 years is a small change. Questioned about five-, seven-, and 17-year averages that seem to show that Earth’s surface temperature is rising, he said temperatures are always fluctuating by tenths of a degree.

Sandia stated that Lindzen’s views run counter to “those of almost all major professional societies. For example, the American Physical Society statement of Nov. 18, 2007, read, “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.” But he doesn’t feel they are necessarily right. “Why did the American Physical Society take a position?” he asked his audience. “Why did they find it compelling? They never answered.”

To a sympathetic questioner who said, “You are like a voice crying in the wilderness. It must be hard to get published,” Lindzen said, adding that billions of dollars go into funding climate studies. “The reward for solving problems is that your funding gets cut. It’s not a good incentive structure.”

Asked whether  the prudent approach to possible climate change would be to prepare a gradated series of responses, much as insurance companies do when they insure cars or houses, Lindzen did not shift from his position that no actions are needed until more data is gathered.

When another Sandia employee pointed out the large number of models by researchers around the globe that suggest increases in world temperature, Lindzen said he doubted the models were independently derived but rather might produce common results because of their common origins.