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I CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT…CLIMATE
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
RICHARD LINDZEN
Nick Minchin: Nick
Richard Lindzen: Richard
Anna Rose: Anna
THIS IS AN AUDIO TRANSCRIPT OF FILMED INTERVIEWS. MINOR EDITS HAVE
BEEN MADE FOR THE PURPOSE OF CLARITY.
Nick:
Well, Dick, I was very keen for Anna and for myself to meet you because of
your renown in the world of atmospheric science but particularly because of
your particular view on the state of the debate, on anthropogenic global
warming and a view that is seen as not quite with the what I call the orthodox
of the IPCC.
Richard: I'm not so sure.
Nick:
I'd be interested in your - summation of your views on this subject.
Richard: I think there has been a kind of polarisation in the public view, do you or don't
you believe in global warming. To believe in global warming means you are
for science. To question it means you are questioning science. None of this
makes any sense. The problem is once you polarise it the - you miss
something terribly important which is that it is true almost all people working
in this field, except that last century and a half have seen a fraction of a
degree warming.
Anna:
Three quarters of a degree?
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Richard: You know, say that again. Three quarters of a degree. Why do you say that?
Anna:
Well -
Richard: Do you think it's a precise number?
Anna:
My understanding is that that's what the temperature records show from the
NASA and NOAA?
Richard: How are they taken?
Anna:
Through weather stations. We met with Professor Muller who was tracking -
Richard: Yeah, yeah, is there an arrow bar, there always is.
Anna:
So you dispute the temperature record?
Richard: No, no, no, no, I'm saying one has to know what it means. In other words,
when somebody says three quarters of a degree, okay, you are thinking they
have a thermometer that reads that carefully. What they have are hundreds
of thermometers reading all over the place and they look at how they deviate
and it's a cloud of data scattered all over the place and they average that and
they get almost nothing and then they blow up that scale to three quarters of
a degree and then if you read the document it says plus or minus, which
means it could have been three quarters of a degree, it could have been 0.4,
it could have been 1.
The truth is you always underestimate the arrow bar, so it could have been
0.2, it would have been 1.2. It's not a precise number. The one thing you
know about it that you've just said, if you thought about it a moment, it's
small.
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Anna:
But it has already shown big impacts on the climate.
Richard: No, it's small. Let's start with that it's small. For instance, how much does the
temperature change between day and night in Sydney?
Anna:
But I think that that's kind of confusing the point because we're talking about
global average temperature.
Richard: No, no, we're talking about global -
Anna:
Not day-to-day weather?
Richard: How much does it change for the whole continental US during the same
period?
Anna:
But we're not talking about day-to-day weather we're talking about -
Richard: Why do you say that?
Anna:
- global average temperatures. Because it's much more warmer at the poles,
for example, whereas the tropics aren't experiencing that much warming but
the global average is about three quarters of a degree according to NASA:
Richard: But that is still small and it's still a very uncertain number, especially the last
30 years.
Anna:
So your position is that you don't accept -
Richard: You don't know what is a precise number, no-one knows it is a precise
number. Even if you went to the people at NASA and you pressed them on it.
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They would say of course that's not a precise number.
So let's start out, there's been a small change in the global mean
temperature, let's start with that.
It's not a global average of temperature, that gives you gibberish. What they
do is at each of these stations they take an average over 30 years and asked
for how much has it deviated from that average. They then average the
deviations for all the stations and, for instance, there's no ocean coverage
worth mentioning. So it's a poor sampling. But it's good enough to establish
the one thing I've said, that it's a certain order, it's the order less than a
degree or so.
The other thing there's agreement on is that carbon dioxide has increased.
And finally there is general agreement that increasing carbon dioxide should
produce some increase in temperature. Now, there's almost no-one who
disagrees on these things. The disagreement -
Nick:
Can I just ask in terms of you said there is agreement that carbon dioxide has
increased, is there agreement that that is all due to human activity?
Richard: Not at all. That's generally taken to be the case but there are lots of problems
with it including the fact that half the CO2 we've nominally put into the
atmosphere is not there.
Nick:
It's been absorbed.
Anna:
Hasn't it been absorbed by the oceans?
Richard: No, it's probably land biota. The ocean is much slower in uptake. So it's
probably what they call the biosphere. You know, you know Murray Salby in
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Australia has pointed out something and he's correct in one sense. I don't
know if he's right ultimately but there has been a study, part of this picture left
out by the people studying it and he's picked up on that. They assume that
only man's emissions would have a certain isotopic signature. He pointed out
there are plenty of natural processes that have the same signature. So it
would be impossible to pin it down.
Anna:
My understanding was that countries publish the amount of emissions that
they actually emit?
Richard: Absolutely, absolutely.
Anna:
And that there's more than enough to account for the CO2 increases?
Richard: Absolutely, absolutely but that doesn't show that it is what accounted for it.
Anna:
What else would you say?
Richard: Anything else that produces the same isotopic signature.
Anna:
For example?
Richard: Well, the ocean could, the biosphere can, there are many things that happen.
If the temperature changed that itself changes CO2. So, you know,
historically certainly over the long record we know that temperature change
happens first and then CO2. Question is in the last 100 years which is the
issue? And that's, I think, still relatively open. But let's get back to what
people agree on.
Anna:
Do you really think it's relatively open because -
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Richard: Oh yeah.
Anna:
Because most scientists say that -
Richard: Everything, everything in science is open. I would say on this one what is the reason it's open is because you've done very few studies. The only basis
for attributing - remember man is a small part of the carbon budget.
Anna:
Well, that's not - I mean that's correct but if you look at the - that talks about
the short-term carbon cycle, but the trend is clearly going upwards?
Richard: No, no, no, I'm saying even if you look at the sources and syncs of carbon at
any given time we're still a few per cent, a couple of per cent of it.
Anna:
But we've increased it 38%.
Richard: Yeah, that's true, it's still a couple of per cent. Do you ever think about that?
Anna:
Of course we have a natural carbon cycle but we went -
Richard: I mean, you know, 1,000 times zero is still small.
Anna:
So I guess Nick and I went to Mauna Loa and we saw -
Richard: Oh yeah.
Anna:
- that it's gone up 38%.
Richard: There's no question it's increasing.
Nick:
Yeah, he's saying we agree that CO2 is increasing.
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Richard: Nobody is arguing that it's increasing.
Nick:
We're trying to establish what we agree on.
Richard: But the only way one was able to attribute it to man by the isotope analysis
that distinguished carbon dioxide produced by industry from carbon dioxide
was that was part of photosynthesis, was part of plant decay, part of the all
the other things going on and what Murray did was pick up on the fact that
other things had the same isotopic signature.
Anna:
Well we were told by an Australian climate scientist that even without the
isotopic signature there was no other credible theory that could explain
what's going on?
Richard: Well, you know, how should I put it, he can say that but I think Murray has put
forward something that should be studied. It's as simple as that. Dogmatism
has no role in this. Anyway, let's stick with what I've just said as to what there
is agreement on. The point is when you speak of scientists all agreeing, this
is what they agree on and that includes the people that are sceptical.
You often hear, you know, when our president of the National Academy says
"It's just old information that carbon dioxide's a greenhouse gas. That's been
known for 150 years." Nobody's questioning that. Neither is anyone
questioning that if you simply increase, doubled carbon dioxide you would
only get about a degree of warming.
Anna:
But we've already increased it only 38% and we've had almost a degree.
Richard: Excuse me, we have increased greenhouse warming according to the IPCC
by almost the same amount you would get from a doubling of CO2.
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Anna:
You're talking about CO2 equivalent?
Richard: Yeah, exactly. And we have seen three quarters of a degree, you would
maintain, right?
Anna:
So you don't believe it will warm much more?
Richard: No, that isn't the statement. You get the same warming for each doubling. So
saying, you know, if you just had CO2 what you're seeing now is a bit less
than you would expect if all the warming we've seen is due to CO2, you know
that isn't true. So the question is why are we believing models that say we
should have already seen much more than we've seen already?
Now the way the models hide it is by saying well there's aerosols, that
cancels some of it that's why we haven't seen it. And then you look at each
model. Each model uses a different value for aerosols. You ask the aerosol
people and they say we don't know what the value is. So it's become a fudge
factor. We're now in this position where there is a knob that you can make
any model agree with any data.
Anna:
But the information that scientists are telling us about climate sensitivity
doesn't just come from model, it comes from ancient climate history and -
Richard: How do you figure that? We can't do it from ancient climate history.
Anna:
Well if you look at the cycle of ice ages throughout history -
Richard: Absolutely, you don't need -
Anna:
- it can't be explained if we don't have around a 3-degree climate sensitivity.
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Richard: That's nonsense. There have been several articles in literature, and if I go
back to Milankovitch even more, that show that you have no trouble
accounting for it with the orbital variations.
Anna:
My understanding is that the paleoclimate community thinks it's quite bizarre
that you're advocating a 1-degree climate sensitivity when they understand
the glacial cycles and can learn that there's 3-degree sensitivity.
Richard: The paleoclimate people have usually never worked with theory of climate.
The papers by Jerry Robe, by Peter Huybers and Milankovitch are theory. Do
you know how many watts per metre square are involved in the change from
180 to 280 parts per million? Do you know how many? Do you have any
idea?
Anna:
Have you going to tell us?
Richard: Okay, I'll tell you. Out of the budget of a couple hundred of watts per metre
squared, that represents about 1.5. Now -
Nick:
Sorry going from 280 to 380?
Richard: Yeah - no, from 180 to 280 which is between the ice age and the
interglacials. So you have a water cell. Now that first of all is negligible. The
second thing about it is the orbital variations, Milankovitch was quite correct.
The important thing is what happens in summer in the Artic, because that
determines whether ice grows or melts, that involves 60 watts per metre
squared, this is a small bump. The whole system can adjust to that with no
sweat at all.
So it's pure ignorance to say paleo demands it. Hanson has said this for
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years, it doesn't make any sense and I don't think it's even widely accepted.
The paleo community has grabbed on to it, says oh, now we're relevant but I
mean I don't think it matters more than that.
Anna:
Speaking of the Arctic, I am wondering -
Richard: But now let's go to something else.
I mean, you know, this was the point we made before, in order to have alarm
it isn't a matter that you avoid it with a negative feedback, it is that you need a
huge positive feedback. In other words, if you just let CO2 do its thing it does
very little. If you have negative feedbacks, which we would maintain you do
have, you get even less.
To get what the people who are worried, you need to have a strong, positive
feedback, so strong that if you regarded the Earth as a system no engineer
would ever build it this way. They would say you were just ready to go off into
the wild blue yonder and the Earth has lasted 4.5 billion years. There are
plenty of ways it could have gone over the top, it hasn't.
Anna:
So you believe that because the Earth must have something to protect it from
climate change.
Richard: We know the things it does. I mean every IPCC report points out clouds are
an unknown. Clouds are the only reason these models have a large
feedback, positive feedback. Water vapour gives it a factor of 2 but water
vapour only acts where you don't have clouds.
Anna:
So you mean that for every degree of warming with water vapour there's
another two degrees?
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Richard: No, that's baloney.
Nick:
That's the theory of positive feedback.
Richard: That's purely hypothetical. It says if relative humidity stays fixed and the
clouds don't do anything and the water vapour covers everything you will get
that.
Nick:
Just to pre-empt Anna in a way, we saw Naomi Oreskes -
Richard: There's plenty of evidence for negative feedback. There are first of all by now
there are three independent studies that confirm that when temperature
increases cirrus outflow in the tropics contracts and that is - leads to a
negative feedback.
Anna:
But how can we extrapolate the whole world from just the tropics?
Richard: Because the tropics has most of the radiation. It's half the globe and it is
where almost all the feedbacks in the models occur as well.
Anna:
But also we see that the most amount of warming in terms of temperature
happens at the poles so why would you just look at the tropics to make global
observation?
Richard: You know, that's an interesting question, it's said it is true of past climate.
Almost all past climate involved a change in the equator to pole temperature
difference, okay, and that has many factors involved. I've just been studying,
there's a paper by Lee and Held and Suarez and so on a few years ago, they
made the point that the polar amplification is not that noticeable in the
models.
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They are saying it because they know it was true of past climate change. It is
also not that, you know, if you look at this global mean temperature you're
talking about you will find it's heavily due to changes in the tropics which
makes it very anomalous.
Anna:
So you're saying that warming isn't increasing faster in the Arctic and
Antarctica?
Richard: I hear it claimed and it's certainly true of past climate, it hasn't been true of
the last 40 years.
Anna:
But if the study that you looked at was in the last 40 years -
Richard: No, I'm saying that the last 40 years have been very odd in terms of the
record and we're very suspicious of the period since '79 in the temperature
record. There are a lot of inconsistencies with it but you're getting to the issue
of what is the basis for thinking there's a negative feedback. And some of that
is subtle so, for instance, a measure of sensitivity is actually how much does
evaporation change the temperature.
We know in the models it changes about 1 to 3% for a doubling of CO2 or
per degree rather, excuse me, back track, it changes about 1 to 3% per
degree. The observation suggests it changes 6% per degree. That turns out
to be evidence that the sensitivity is about half of what it is in the least
sensitive model. When you look at the outgoing radiation, if the feedbacks
are positive you should see less outgoing radiation when the temperature
increases than you would get with no feedback, instead you see more. That's
a sign of a negative feedback.
Nick:
That's empirical, is it?
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Richard: Yeah, that's empirical. The evidence for positive feedback is hypothetical. It
isn't a matter of basic physics. You will hear people say well, you know, of
course a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour. It's only true if it's
what's called saturated. It's like saying that glass no matter how much water I
pour into it will always have more water than a smaller glass no matter how
much water I pour into that glass. It makes no sense.
Nick:
So what you're saying is what I might call alarmism is premised on a
hypothesis that there is positive feedback that has not been empirically
established?
Richard: It's something that the models currently display.
Nick:
When you say display you mean that's a built in assumption in just
constructing the model?
Richard: I won't go that far.
Nick:
Right.
Richard: The models do not properly, I mean, you know, for instance, it's hard to test
models for water vapour because it's very poorly measured. If you try and
test the models for clouds they all do miserably. I would maintain it's
impossible to do water vapour well if you do clouds badly. They're intimately
coupled. So everything involved in the feedback in the models is not working.
So at this stage that is the basis for the alarm.
Richard: How shall I put it? When people retire in North America they usually move to
places that are different temperature by about 10, 15 degrees with where
they move from. Clearly at the human level we adapt to that with alacrity. You
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would be surprised how few people here retire to Alaska or the north-west
territory. Some do.
Anna:
But do you really think that if the IPCC is correct and the scientific consensus
is correct that we can adapt to that level of climate change?
Richard: Yeah, yeah. I wish you would be careful with the use of IPCC. You know, I
have not been terribly critical of the IPCC and the reason is not only did I
participate in it and not only am I convinced it's biased, but on the whole in its
thousand pages it covers itself pretty well, at least on the working group one.
Working group two and three forget about.
Working group one is the science and it tends to give you at least a feeling
that there's a problem, not, I mean, in terms of alarm but with the science.
Then you reduce it to about 15, 20 pages, summary for policy makers. You
know, the truth is that isn't even terrible though it's clearly cherry picking and
then finally you come to the press release and each time it has something,
you know, this is unprecedented for 1,000 years or it is now highly probable
that most of the warming over the last 50 years is due to man.
These are all innocent statements. But that becomes the IPCC consensus
and then the environmental movement or the politicians or whoever
translates that into "and this is terrible and we must do something about it".
So you take the innocent statement attributed - well, which the IPCC makes,
then you put a gloss on it that this requires action and so on and so forth, it's
the end of the world and then you attribute that statement to the IPCC.
Anna:
Scientists have been very clear though that -
Richard: Tell me.
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Anna:
That they are advocating a need for action because this problem is urgent?
Richard: That isn't the role of scientists. Once they start advocating that they're in a
different realm. They're entitled to be as citizen, that isn't about science.
Anna:
But if you have, for example, NASA's mission as to protect our home planet,
doesn't part of that mission include advocating on the science when it's telling
us clear warnings?
Richard: You know, how shall I put it, you had at least one director of NASA who was
fired for saying he didn't see this evidence. You had a former director of
research Joanne Simpson who retired a few years ago, she's now dead, said
"Now that I'm retired I can admit that I don't think this is correct."
Anna:
Didn't she also go on to say but I think we should act anyway?
Richard: That's political.
Anna:
But you can't just cherry pick her quotes and say that -
Richard: No, no, think about what it means when somebody says I don't think warming
is a big problem but I think we should act anyway.
Anna:
She's saying that the risk is so great that it would be irresponsible not to act.
Richard: No, she never said that, I know her personally, at least until she died.
Anna:
But for you to say that she said now that I'm no longer employed by -
Richard: She did say that at a meeting.
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Anna:
And then she went on to say and we should act.
Richard: That she didn't say there. John Theon, who was Hanson's boss, have you
interviewed him? He also said we have no basis for this. So, you know, you
can quote scientists as much as you want, science, as I've often said, is not a
source of authority. It's a source - it's a methodology for inquiry.
Whenever somebody has said in the realm of policy "science demands", you
know mischief is going on. I mean Hitler took the Jews and said "Science
demands that we get rid of them." Essentially when America stopped
immigration from - free immigration in the 1920s the statement was science
demanded it. Soviet Union used that phrase all the time. It was even the
business of why did Marx refer to communism as scientific socialism.
Problem is science has a certain credibility if it is earned and it's something
that the political system has always wanted to co-opt. And one has to be very
cautious when one uses the phrase science demands this, scientists demand
this. It's always unkosher.
Anna:
But are you arguing that thousands of scientists in every country of the world
has been co-opted?
Richard: Excuse me, I was part of the thousands of scientists, I watched as people
spoke of the IPCC having thousands of scientists in a field that didn't have
thousands of scientists all walk marching in lock step. This is a crazy. You
know from reading the document that it isn't a consensus document. There's
no vote that we all agree the world is coming to an end and we must do
something.
Anna:
But would you - I'm sure you're not disputing there are thousands of scientists
around the world who say that climate change is happening and is caused by
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human?
Richard: There may be, there are thousands who say the opposite.
Anna:
But there are 1 to 2,000 peer-reviewed papers a year that say -
Richard: But in the field of climate science there aren't thousands of scientists.
Anna:
My understanding from Professor David Karoly is that there is one to -
Richard: Who?
Anna:
Professor David Karoly.
Richard: Yeah.
Anna:
He's an Australian atmospheric climate change.
Richard: I know David.
Anna:
He's saying there's 1 to 2,000 peer-reviewed papers a year that are saying
climate change is happening, it's caused by humans and looking at different
aspects of it.
Richard: Oh, come on. Find them. Naomi tried to do this and people looked up the
papers and found out the bulk of them never even mentioned it. That's a
bogus statement. David should be ashamed of himself.
Anna:
I'll put that to him.
Richard: Yeah, please do.
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Anna:
But my understanding is that your theory that you brought up about the iris
effect in clouds -
Richard: Well the iris effect is one what I described as the direct measurement of the
radiation. The iris affect has been confirmed the business of being
discredited is has become standard operating procedure in this field. You
write a paper, the editor gets fired for publishing it, then there are peer - what
there's normally in science is you have people writing to the journals saying
we disagree this. The author then has an opportunity to respond.
Anna:
I thought the editor was fired for publishing it because it was proven to be
incorrect?
Richard: No, oh no, that's another paper from elsewhere. That happens too. No.
Anna:
But I mean I know that there's a lot of detail here that we won't be able to get
into but my general understanding with your theory about the iris affect is that
it was a valid point to raise 30 years ago but and theoretically it's very
interesting, however the observational evidence shows that we actually have
-
Richard: And that's not true.
Anna:
- had warming.
Richard: No, no, that has nothing to do with it. You're confusing apples and pears and
pineapples. This was a theory about how clouds behaved, thin clouds subject
to temperature.
Anna:
My understanding was the theory - I might be explaining it wrong.
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Richard: No, no, no, there were immediately tonnes, you know, three or four papers
written criticising it. That means in this field it is listed as discredited on the,
you know, the environmental websites. You get an opportunity if you're lucky
to respond in this field. That isn't normal. Normally you always get a chance
to respond and these criticisms really were easy to respond to.
I mean one of them was constantly quoted, it's from Dennis Hartman, and he
said well, this effect that was observed could have been due to the intrusion
of mid latitude systems. Fine, you can test for that. You can look at it and
does the affect go away as you restrict yourself closer and closer to the
equator? No, it got stronger. Dismiss that one.
Have another criticism that says look, when you look at clouds detrain from
cumulus. It's a continuous detrainment in reality but they say at some level
you can no longer see it. Now, what happens when you start losing the
visible it's still very big in the infra-red. They say but if you don't see it you
shouldn't include it. We know from other measurements that it's a continuous
trail of detrainment. So, you know, the business of discrediting is a peculiar
technique to the field of climate.
Anna:
But if you were arguing that clouds would prevent the planet from warming
and we've actually experienced three quarter of a degree of warming -
Richard: No, no, no, you're using language in a horrible way. No-one is saying prevent
warming, restrict warming.
Anna:
We've already had three quarters of a degree of warming.
Richard: Yeah, and we should have seen three according to the models. Something is
restricting it. The modellers are arguing it was aerosols but nobody is arguing
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that it has to be - that it isn't something.
Anna:
But we've only increases CO2 by 38%.
Richard: And we've increased methane and we've increased N2O and we've
increased freons so the net effect is roughly doubling CO2.
Nick:
It's the equivalent, is it, of doubling?
Richard: Yeah.
Nick:
Nick so we should have at least had one degree?
Richard: Oh, one degree if there were no negative feedbacks.
Nick:
Yeah, with neutral feedback.
Richard: And if there were - they're arguing well, you know, it's not that, it's that we
had aerosols and they cancelled it. That's a fudge factor as far as I can tell.
And indeed the people in the aerosol community, Schwartz, Rohde and so on
who are on all sides of the issue, wrote a paper or a year or two ago pointing
out that the uncertainty in this has to be much greater because uncertainty in
the aerosols is bigger but on top of that -
Anna:
So the aerosols could be masking the warming, it could actually be greater
than what's been measured?
Richard: It could be and they could also be subtracting less than you've estimated so
that the warming is much less.
Anna:
So however from -
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Richard: The aerosols, in other words, are a thing that tell you, you cannot tell the
sensitivity from looking at the temperature record.
Anna:
I understand that you can tell the temperature sensitivity from looking at the
ice age record?
Richard: No, you can't. You really can't. If we can't tell what the composition of the
atmosphere is today there isn't a ghost of a chance we can tell it to that level
for the ice ages and the fact that the Milankovitch hypothesis works perfectly
well without CO2 we're in a situation politically which is kind of awkward.
So, for instance, Jerry Rowe writes a paper, he shows that if you make a
simple correction to the old theory it works perfectly for the ice ages. He then
has to put in a disclaimer saying although he doesn't mention CO2 the theory
doesn't rule it out. It's a sad state.
Anna:
You sound very, very certain, I want to - I guess -
Richard: You sound certain.
Anna:
Well I guess what I'm wondering is in the past -
Richard: What do you think I'm certain about?
Anna:
Well, I think that it sounds like you're certain that climate change isn't
anything to worry about and I believe that in 2004 you said that you'd be
willing to make a bet that in 20 years from then, in 2024 you would bet that
the planet would be cooler?
Richard: No, no, the bet was - it was funny sort of situation and I think it's been
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misrepresented.
Anna:
But believe -
Richard: The question are what odds would you want and I was saying if people are
so sure about warming I figure I should profit from it by getting good odds.
Anna:
Well so perhaps - I'd be willing to make a bet with you right now.
Richard: Oh, sure. What odds do you want to give me if you're sure that it's a
dangerous thing?
Anna:
See, I understood that when a scientist approached you, you would only
accept the odds of 50 to 1 so if the world cooled you would -
Richard: No, no, it was less than but the point was -
Anna:
- get $10,000 if it warmed you'd only have to give 200.
Richard: I figure it has to be worth it, it has to be worth it but, you know, it's a funny
issue and it was based on other things than science.
Anna:
But if you believe definitely that you're right and you're essentially asking the
world to take a big gamble.
Richard: Then I have to at least decide how much money I'm willing to risk. One is
always - as I told you, I'm not going to be inconsistent on dogmatism.
Anna:
So let's put even odds on it.
Richard: Even odds I think the © Smith & Nasht. I Can Change Your Mind About…Climate. Richard Lindzen
22
Anna:
I'll put down $5,000, I'd offer more but I've just entered into a mortgage but
I'm serious.
Richard: For 20 years, well you have a problem with lifetime.
Anna:
So you said in 20 - I'll be 41 in 2024 so you made that statement in 2004.
Richard: Okay. So let's see. I figure it's 50/50 odds that it will be warmer or cooler.
Anna:
Okay. So $5,000.
Richard: What's the point?
Anna:
Well, I guess I'm just wondering you're asking the planet to make this huge
gamble.
Richard: What's the huge gamble? Do you understand to make the huge gamble a
gamble you have to assume the system has been built horribly badly. You
have to assume a positive feedback that is large, even a small positive
feedback would not be of catastrophic significance and it is open to
significant question even with a sizeable warming of 3 degrees, what's the
insuperable problem? Why are we speaking of it in terms of the end of the
world, of the planet? This is bizarre.
Anna:
I think it's bizarre that you had this theory which was a valid point to raise but
we have experienced warming and most of your colleagues say that you're
wrong.
Richard: Nobody - nothing about the theory says you don't have warming.
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Anna:
Look, I understand that there's a role for outliers in science but -
Richard: We have been going up and down that amount between 1919 and 1940 and
it goes down 0.3 degrees. Then it's allegedly gone up about 0.5. This is
natural. The fact that it goes up and down says there's something as big as
us at least.
Anna:
The vast majority of your peers say that you're wrong.
Richard: No, they don't. They say we go along with this.
Anna:
I mean there have been many papers that have said that your work has
serious errors.
Richard: Yeah, and we've answered them.
Anna:
I don't know if that's true.
Richard: It is true, you can look it up in the literature.
Anna:
I've been reading lot and I'm not a scientist so the way that I approach this is
about well who do we trust and when we have the vast majority of scientists
saying that -
Richard: You're perfectly entitled to do that but all I'm saying is you're basing it on
something that is profoundly hypothetical and fudged.
Anna:
I don't believe that climate change is hypothetical. We're already seeing the
impacts now.
Richard: No-one is saying climate change is hypothetical, that's natural. Climate has
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always changed. If we're going to take everything that's natural and decide
it's an omen, we've gone back to the middle ages.
Anna:
One of the things that I think Nick and I have to look at when we're weighing
up who to trust on this debate is people's past positions and I know you were
someone who was giving testimony for the tobacco industry.
Richard: I never did that. That is pure slander.
Anna:
Really?
Richard: Yes.
Anna:
So you weren't -
Richard: Absolutely pure slander.
Anna:
So you didn't, you didn't allege that there was -
Richard: I have never testified, why would I?
Anna:
Well testimony might be the wrong word, I apologise. Did you dispute that
there was not a link between smoking and health problems?
Richard: I have argued as most people who have looked at it that the case for
second-hand tobacco is not very good. That was true of the World Health
Organization also said that.
Anna:
Do you standby that claim?
Richard: That second-hand smoke is a poor situation? Sure, I'm not worried about
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that. With first-hand smoke it's a more interesting issue. There's clearly an
issue and, you know, one looks at the statistics and it was done by meta
analysis. That's usually the case when you don't have great studies and you
have to combine them.
The case for lung cancer is very good but it also ignores the fact that there
are differences in people's susceptibilities which the Japanese studies have
pointed to. I'm simply saying anything in science requires you look at it. You
know, I have always found it profoundly offensive that to question something
indicates you're doing something wrong. It pays to look at the studies. Have
you read the studies?
Anna:
I'm not saying that you've done anything wrong but I do think that -
Richard: No, no, no but I have never testified. I know Jim Hanson said I did.
Anna:
I was reading his books so I'm very sorry that I got that wrong.
Richard: No, no, he said that and that's clear slander.
Anna:
But what I mean is it seems to me that the evidence for passive smoking
leading to health problems is quite clear so if you're questioning that why
should I trust you on climate science?
Richard: Why should I trust you that you've read it? The World Health Organization
found the evidence dubious on passive smoke.
Anna:
But in 2011 it seems that the evidence now is quite clear that passive
smoking is bad for you?
Richard: No, it isn't. Second hand smoke is an issue, passive smoke is an issue that is
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very different from primary smoking.
Anna:
Then why in Australia is it illegal to smoke in restaurants and cafe?
Nick:
Because politicians want to be seen to be doing something, ridiculous.
Richard: Yeah. I mean the notion that because politicians responded it makes the
science true happens to have a certain element of truth in it, that is to say
when science differs with politics, politics is the piper.
Anna:
So you would support having restaurants and cafes and -
Nick:
What's this got to do with climate change?
Anna:
Well I think it has a lot because it comes down to who you trust on the issue
of science.
Richard: It's, you know -
Nick:
There is a debate about passive smoking and its impacts on health, we know
that, we know there's a debate about that. Who's suggesting that debate is
over? And I really don't see the relevance to a debate about, you know, the
extent to which we should be concerned about CO2 emissions.
Anna:
I thought that actually the science was quite clear that passive smoking
harms people.
Richard: Well, you've certainly have been led to believe that by all these bans but I
think if you looked at it a bit further you would discover that it's really a
remarkably weak case. You know, there are cases - I think as a matter of
courtesy there are people who finds smoking offensive. I don't think one
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should just smoke any place. I think people with asthma might react badly.
We want you to be considerate of that but the overall issue of passive smoke
is weak, is really statistically weak. The EPA did 13 studies not one of them
came out with a statistically significant relation.
Nick:
Can I just break off that and just ask you, Dick, as a scientist of long standing,
why it is that apparently so many otherwise, you know, high-standing
scientists do say that there is a huge problem in the world we must do
something about it, I'd be interested from your perspective.
Richard: How should I put it? I'd like to - if you get to the level of people who are
saying we must do something about it, you actually are thinning the numbers
quite a lot and a lot of these people are not in atmospheric science. So
forever, Lord May in the UK, Ralph Cicerone, Lord Reece, none of them have
contributed anything to climate science. They're coming at it from a policy
view and I don't quite know why they've become so enthusiastic about a field
they know nothing about. When you have professional societies like social
science -
Anna:
Cicerone is, as I understand, was or is the head of the National Academy of
Science?
Richard: He is, he is.
Anna:
And you're saying he knows nothing about climate science?
Richard: Yeah, absolutely. I mean we were at a testimony, you can read it, I mean he
didn't understand the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, he got all sorts of things
screwed up. His field was stratospheric chemistry. It's a very different field
from climate physics. You have then other things like the American Physical
Society wrote a statement that the science is incontrovertible. When they
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were pressed they fell back to the science I was describing as what people
agree on.
They had a rebellion of 250 members who said we shouldn't say things like
that we have no basis for it. Our society doesn't deal with this field. So you
have to ask yourself why people in fields well removed from climate science
are making endorsements.
Nick:
That's what intrigued me, why are they?
Richard: Yeah, and they're running into popular opposition within their professional
societies.
Anna:
So speaking of a field that is different from climate science, I was reading an
article that Naomi Oreskes wrote comparing you to the great physicists
Harold Jeffreys who was a brilliant scientist but denied that the theory of plate
tectonics and he went to his grave denying it even though the empirical
evidence was overwhelming, what do you think of that comparison?
Richard: He also had certain things in meteorology where he was incorrect and other
things. He was an interesting figure.
Anna:
So Naomi's article was essentially saying that perhaps you have brought up
very good points in the field of climate science.
Richard: Who's Naomi to judge this?
Anna:
This is just one article but I'm sure there are -
Richard: I mean she's written some stuff that is so peculiar, including the claim that
she took a sample of thousands of articles and none of them questioned
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global warming.
Nick:
This is her 2004 study?
Richard: Yeah. I mean this is so weird. When people finally looked at it they said hey,
most of these don't mention it. And then she said well they don't deny it.
That's what she bet.
Anna:
Well the person who tried to debunk her claim actually had to try to retract
that.
Richard: Pfizer?
Anna:
Yeah, he's apologised and said that he was wrong and that he couldn't find
any peer-reviewed science.
Richard: Would you like to say that for him?
Anna:
I've got - I've seen his statement.
Richard: No, no, no, I would love to hear that. I don't know, I mean for all I know you're
right.
Anna:
Okay.
Richard: I know he's denied that in the last two weeks, so I would be curious as to
where this came from.
Anna:
Well I read a statement from him saying that actually -
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Richard: Wait, wait, I mean this is great, this is great because he's denied it and if you
have that statement I would love to see it.
Anna:
Okay, I'll email it to you.
Richard: Yeah, no, no, no.
Anna:
If you put can put me in touch with him too to clarify it does seem to be very
confusing.
Richard: Yeah, absolutely.
Anna:
But my understanding was that actually some Australians were the ones who
went through the articles that he claimed -
Richard: Oh, no, there were other people, there were people in Germany went through
it. I went through them. This is a bogus article, there was no question about
it.
Anna:
So you're claiming that there were peer-reviewed articles within the period
she looked at on global climate change?
Richard: You know, most of them weren't dealing with it and most of what they agreed
to had nothing to do with alarm. In other words -
Anna:
So how many challenge that consensus?
Richard: You know, this is the business of how you define things, most of my papers
would have met her criterion for not challenging.
Nick:
Find out what's the criteria.
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Richard: This is what we call bait and switch.
Anna:
Well, we might have to agree to disagree on that one but overall -
Richard: But with Pfizer I really would appreciate that, I really would.
Anna:
Okay.
Richard: Because it would be interesting to hear, I know the guy, I know he's never
done that and so the question is where did this come from?
Anna:
Well we can - I'll send it to you and introduce me to him.
Richard: Yeah, yeah.
Anna:
But what I mean what do you say to that overall claim that you did raise some
really important and valid theories but that they've been proven to be wrong
and now's the time to graciously concede?
Richard: Because I don't agree. I happen to have looked at the criticisms, we've done
the tests, they're wrong.
Anna:
Everyone else is wrong and you're right?
Richard: Nobody - you know you're continuing to do things. There are no more than a
handful of people who have looked at this stuff and so to say thousands of
people disagree it doesn't mean anything.
Anna:
You think there's only five people who really have expertise in this area?
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Nick:
No, no, looked at his -
Richard: That have done the studies that are essential for this.
Nick:
In term of the feedback mechanism?
Richard: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, in other words, if somebody tells me you have
mid latitude excursions that are causing something and I say okay, I'll test for
it, and if the tests for it doesn't show that why should I say I'm sorry, you said
something that's it for me.
Nick:
I'm out of here.
Richard: I test it.
Anna:
But you're talking about the tropics, aren't you?
Richard: Having somebody if they say something is wrong and they disagree you
check.
Anna:
No, I understand that.
Richard: You don't have to say I give up.
Anna:
Say CO2 has increased 38% or 40%?
Richard: Yeah, it has.
Anna:
But that's not 100%?
Richard: No, no, but I'm saying during the same time methane has gone up.
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Nick:
Yeah, there's been an equivalent.
Anna:
I understand CO2 equivalent.
Richard: Look at the IPCC fourth assessment there's that table and it has all the
greenhouse contributions.
Anna:
My question is what if you're wrong?
Richard: Yeah, that's a common question and, you know, it doesn't bother me much
for a very simple reason. Almost every political response does nothing,
whether I'm wrong or right. The only thing it does is reduce the robustness of
society to deal with change which will occur whether it's due to man or not.
Anna:
See I get it will harm the economy and that's why you -
Richard: No, well anything that, we'll give you an example. You had an earthquake in
Haiti how many dead? It's over 100,000. You had a much worse earthquake
in Chile far fewer dead. You had the tsunami in Japan it was pretty bad,
3,000, 4,000 dead. So here you have a modest thing in one place, 100,000,
what's the difference? The difference is, are these societies robust? What
makes them robust? Wealth. So any time you cut prosperity and wealth you
increase vulnerability of a society. That is important because you do have
earthquakes, you do have tsunamis, you do have these things. They always
occur.
Anna:
But why would acting on climate change reduce our wealth when we know
that investment in clean technology creates new jobs, new industries?
Richard: We know, we know?
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Anna:
Yes they are.
Richard: Anna that, is a red herring for this. The fact of the matter is if Australia, for
instance, cuts its emissions back to what they were in 1830 what will it do?
Anna:
Well Nick Stern has said to tackle climate change it would cost about 1% of
global GDP.
Richard: He can say what he wishes.
Anna:
Now he said it's gone up to 2 because we've waited so long to act but the
world spends 3% or more on insurance so surely it's prudent to spend a bit of
money to protect the future of the whole planet?
Richard: No, no, no only if your action - you know, the insurance argument is a bit silly,
isn't it? I mean, you know, for instance, let's say somebody sells me
insurance, say I will sell you an insurance policy for this house, I will charge
you $1 million and I will cover you for 10. You say "Huh, what's that about?"
Anna:
Well the economics though tells us that it's going to be much cheaper to act
on climate change now than to wait until it's too late?
Richard: Only if the action leads to a profound reduction in emissions. It isn't, you
know, stabilising at 1990 won't do anything. So if you're worried about climate
you should at least judge a policy according to what it would do according to
the theories you believe and if the policy costs anything and does nothing it's
not very cost effective.
Anna:
Well I would certainly argue for policy that is effective and I am kind of baffled
by the fact that every time we have a conversation about the science we end
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up talking about the economics.
Richard: Well he asked us to.
Anna:
I know, it's just a common theme.
Nick:
You raised it by saying what if you're wrong and what's that going to mean
and you introduced this subject.
Richard: Yeah and that is automatically an economic question.
Nick:
It must be an economic question.
Anna:
Well I think it's a question about human survival.
Richard: Well that's fine, I hope you go down on record on that.
Nick:
That's why you raised Haiti.
Richard: Because it's - that makes very little sense.
Nick:
Well I've raised this before, one takes out insurance based on risk
assessment. You've got to do a very hard-headed assessment of risk, the
degree to which risk is likely and the extent to which you're prepared to
sacrifice current resources to ensure against a foreseeable risk and the
extent to which you think that risk will occur and your assessment of the
damages that will be caused by that risk at whatever, you know, likelihood
occurring. That's why I don't insure my house against a meteorite landing on
it because I don't think it's going to happen.
Anna:
But the IPCC said that there's a 90% chance -
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Richard: No, they didn't. Why do you keep misquoting the IPCC? The IPCC said that it
was very likely that most of the warming over the last 50 years was due to
man. That's consistent with there being no problem whatever.
Anna:
The IPCC doesn't say there's no problem whatever?
Richard: No, I just said the statement you just quoted had no alarming implication.
Anna:
What do you think the odds are of climate change being real and serious and
cause by humans?
Richard: In other words, if you say that man has caused 51% of the half degree of the
last 50 years or the 0.4 degrees, you're saying that climate sensitivity is pretty
low and there's nothing to worry about. And yet you take a statement like that
and think of it as supporting your view of a cataclysmic end to the world.
There's something really peculiar about that.
Nick:
And you have to do a really hard-headed cost benefit analysis of the half a
degree of warming or 1 degree of warming because it can't possibly or
logically be all bad. I mean in everything in life there are pluses and minuses,
there is a good and bad, you know, there is positives and negatives so how
do I know even half a degree -
Anna:
So what's the good about climate change?
Nick:
It's not climate change, it's warming we're talking about. Climate will also
change, whatever we do it's always going to change. It's the question of it's to
the extent that we are contributing to some warming is this good or bad and
there's going to have to be logically some good from some warming,
inevitably.
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Anna:
Why?
Richard: Well the middle ages, strange as it say seem to you, were a period of great
prosperity and warmth. When it turned cold that was the beginning of plagues
and famines and so on. In general, as I said, people do not retire to Alaska.
Anna:
Yeah, but you're confusing with long-term climate change?
Richard: No, I'm talking about the -
Nick:
No, he's saying if the average temperature is 0.5 degree warmer, you know,
in other words today it's not going to be 20 degrees it's going to be 20.5
degrees.
Anna:
But the consensus -
Nick:
That's what we're saying.
Anna:
The consensus is for every 1 degree of warming you get 3 degrees -
Richard: You keep on reminding us about consensus, we'd like to know how you think.
Anna:
Well I'm not a scientist so I have to trust -
Richard: No, no, you're a person responding to science and so it's important to know
how you're thinking about it because you're saying you can envisage the end
of the world from this.
Anna:
What I'm doing is listening to the warnings that I'm hearing from scientists -
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Richard: No, no, no, you have to tell me how do they envisage the end of the world
from a degree?
Anna:
I don't believe that we'll only have a degree of warming because I think that
your theory about -
Nick:
Yeah, saying it's going to be 4, 5 degrees.
Richard: And how do you envisage from it from 4 degrees?
Anna:
4 degrees of warming my understanding would be catastrophic.
Richard: Tell me how?
Anna:
Well, for example, Nicholas Stern has said that the economic impact alone of
climate change if we don't check it now is going to be the same as two world
wars and the Great Depression combined.
Richard: I know he's said that.
Anna:
You disagree?
Richard: And he also ran into huge disagreement in world economics, a journal, so,
you know.
Anna:
But if you're talking about the discount rate then let's talk about future
generations.
Richard: No, no, the discount rate was only one of his problems and that was a pretty
serious one but only one.
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The absence of a hot spot in the data simply shows the data is wrong.
Nick:
Right.
Richard: Because, you know, there's something called the moist adiabatic in the
tropics which says if you have a change in temperature it has to be larger
aloft. If you don't have it it's saying there's something wrong with your data,
either the surface data's wrong or the upper level data is wrong and with the
upper level there are reasons to suppose it's not wrong.
The reason is something - mentions something technical, it's something
called a Rossby Radius. It is the distance over which the motions smooth out
temperature and other things. In the tropics that is very large, it's thousands
of kilometres but it is not true near the surface, near the surface you have
what's called a turbulent boundary layer. So there you have a lot of local
variability in the tropics, not as much as the mid latitudes but a lot more than
you do let's say 10 kilometres up. So even though you only have maybe a
couple of dozen balloons in the tropics they're good enough to establish the
temperature 10 kilometres because it's flat. But the absence of stations near
the surface mean you have huge sampling problems so if there's going to be
an error it's going to be in the surface.
Anna:
This is what I was trying to say when we did meet with Joe Nova and David
Evans that you had disagreed with them on the hot spot.
Richard: Well what I'm saying is that I disagree that the hot spot is a sign of water
vapour feedback or anything like that. It's far more basic than that. It's saying
any temperature change, no matter what caused it, has to have a hot spot
and the absence of a hot spot means your data is wrong.
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Anna:
We should tell him. I tried to say that.
Nick:
You're in touch with Joe, aren't you, though?
Richard: Who?
Nick:
Joe Nova, do you keep in touch with Joe Nova?
Richard: No, not much.
Nick:
Okay. Alright, we should depart.
Anna:
Thank you.
Nick:
You've been wonderful.
Richard: Have fun, have a good trip, nice meeting you.
Nick:
Thank you, Dick, it's been a great pleasure.
Richard: Good luck.
Nick:
Thanks very much.
Richard: I think it's interesting but it misses an important point. You know, people look
at the temperature record as pointing to, you know, if you say well I don't
think it's due to man and say well what could it be due to as though there was
something odd about it. And so a lot of people immediately said well maybe
it's the sun and the point is, and quite a few people have been making this
point, there's no need for anything. This kind of change is fully in the realm of
what happens because the system varies by itself.
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Nick:
Internal error rate.
Richard: You know when heat is taken by the ocean to deeper levels or brought up, it's
taken away from the surface, the surface is no longer in equilibrium with
space, it fluctuates. This level of fluctuation is not abnormal.
Anna:
But temperatures are at their highest since records began?
Richard: Yeah, but that's a short period.
Anna:
400 years?
Richard: No, no, that's not now long records have been kept.
Nick:
No, about 150.
Richard: Records only existed since about 1870.
Nick:
Yeah, it's only about 150.
Richard: You have a few thermometers that exist in the 18th century. This
thermometer wasn't even invented 400 years ago. I mean you're doing you're using proxies.
Anna:
We looked at Professor Muller's data that seemed to go back.
Nick:
Yeah, but his is proxy.
Richard: That's proxy data, that's proxy data, that's not a thermometer.
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Nick:
No, it's only 150 years of actual measure.
Richard: That's looking at a tree ring and saying growth of tree rings is temperature,
it's also moisture, it's also dryness, it's also rain, it's also this. That is not a
measurement.
Anna:
So you don't think that we're at the warmest?
Richard: If you go back 400 years you're in the little ice age so nobody would be argue
that it is probably warmer than it was in the little ice age.
Anna:
Since humans began industrialising though we are at the highest
temperatures.
Richard: Yeah, but that happens also to be when we emerge from the little ice age. I
mean look at some of the documents in the 18th century in Switzerland of
villages being overrun by glaciers, they're far more panicked than they are
when the glaciers retreat.
Anna:
So you look at the temperature going up and you look at the CO2 going up
and you really think it's all natural?
Richard: Oh yeah, because the temperature is going like this. It means in each interval
there's something bigger than the CO2. You're talking about a fraction of a
degree. I mean you're talking about three quarters of a degree when it went
down a half degree, up a half a degree, up a quarter degree, down three
quarters, you know, so you take the net and you say that's a trend and boy
am I finding that convincing.
END OF INTERVIEW
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