Richard Lindzen

Richard Siegmund Lindzen, Ph.D., (born February 8, 1940) is a Harvard trained atmospheric physicist and the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his research in dynamic meteorology, especially planetary waves. He has published over 200 books and scientific papers. He was the lead author of Chapter 7 (physical processes) of the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC on global warming (2001). He has been a critic of some anthropogenic global warming theories and the political pressures surrounding climate scientists.

Career

He has published papers on Hadley circulation, monsoon meteorology, planetary atmospheres, hydrodynamic instability, mid-latitude weather, global heat transport, the water cycle, and their roles in climate change, ice ages, seasonal atmospheric effects.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Science and Economic Advisory Council of the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy. He previously held positions at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, and was a contributor to Chapter 4 of the "IPCC Second Assessment", "Climate Change 1995". He is known for pioneering the study of ozone photochemistry, and advised several student theses on the subject.

Professor Lindzen is a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's Meisinger and Charney Awards, and American Geophysical Union's Macelwane Medal. He is a corresponding member of the NAS Committee on Human Rights, a member of the NRC Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, and a Fellow of the AAAS1. He was a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Ph.D., '64, S.M., '61, A.B., '60, Harvard University)

Criticism of IPCC

He frequently speaks out against the IPCC position that significant global warming is very likely caused by humans (see global warming) although he accepts that the warming has occurred, saying global mean temperature is about 0.6 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago.

His position with regard to the IPCC can be summed up with this quotation: "Picking holes in the IPCC is crucial. The notion that if you’re ignorant of something and somebody comes up with a wrong answer, and you have to accept that because you don’t have another wrong answer to offer is like faith healing, it’s like quackery in medicine – if somebody says you should take jelly beans for cancer and you say that’s stupid, and he says, well can you suggest something else and you say, no, does that mean you have to go with jelly beans?"

Lindzen was one of several scientists who appeared in The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary that aired in the UK in March, 2007 on Channel 4. The film was critical of the IPCC and many scientific opinions on climate change. The film has been criticized for misuse of data and out of date research, for using misleading arguments, and for misrepresenting the position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in April, 2006, in which he wrote: "In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions."

National Academy of Sciences Climate Change Science report

Lindzen's role in preparing the report

Lindzen served on an 11-member panel organized by the National Academy of Sciences. The panel's report, titled Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, has been widely cited.

The first paragraph of the summary states,

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability.

Lindzen's criticism of the report

In an article for the Wall Street Journal (June 11 2001), Lindzen stated that "there is no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them" and "I cannot stress this enough -- we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future. That is to say, contrary to media impressions, agreement with the three basic statements tells us almost nothing relevant to policy discussions."

Lindzen wrote that

As usual, far too much public attention was paid to the hastily prepared summary rather than to the body of the report. The summary began with a zinger -- that greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise, etc., before following with the necessary qualifications. For example, the full text noted that 20 years was too short a period for estimating long-term trends, but the summary forgot to mention this.

Here is the context in which the warning about long-term trends occurred:

Although warming at Earth's surface has been quite pronounced during the past few decades, satellite measurements beginning in 1979 indicate relatively little warming of air temperature in the troposphere. The committee concurs with the findings of a recent National Research Council report, which concluded that the observed difference between surface and tropospheric temperature trends during the past 20 years is probably real, as well as its cautionary statement to the effect that temperature trends based on such short periods of record, with arbitrary start and end points, are not necessarily indicative of the long-term behavior of the climate system.

IPCC Policymakers Summary criticism

Lindzen stated in May 2001 that the IPCC summary does not support the full document: see IPCC.

Lindzen worked on Chapter 7 of IPCC Working Group 1, which considers the physical processes that are active in real world climate. He has described the full IPCC report as an admirable description of research activities in climate science although he has criticised the Summary for policymakers. Lindzen further criticized the IPCC for alterations to the Policymakers Summary of its 2001 global warming report, saying:

The draft of the Policymakers Summary was significantly modified at Shanghai. The IPCC, in response to the fact that the Policymakers Summary was not prepared by participating scientists, claimed that the draft of the Summary was prepared by a (selected) subset of the 14 coordinating lead authors. However, the final version of the summary differed significantly from the draft. For example the draft concluded the following concerning attribution:

From the body of evidence since IPCC (1996), we conclude that there has been a discernible human influence on global climate. Studies are beginning to separate the contributions to observed climate change attributable to individual external influences, both anthropogenic and natural. This work suggests that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are a substantial contributor to the observed warming, especially over the past 30 years. However, the accuracy of these estimates continues to be limited by uncertainties in estimates of internal variability, natural and anthropogenic forcing, and the climate response to external forcing.

The version that emerged from Shanghai concludes instead:

In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

However, the NAS panel on which Lindzen served (see above) said:

"The committee finds that the full IPCC Working Group I (WGI) report is an admirable summary of research activities in climate science, and the full report is adequately summarized in the Technical Summary. The full WGI report and its Technical Summary are not specifically directed at policy. The Summary for Policymakers reflects less emphasis on communicating the basis for uncertainty and a stronger emphasis on areas of major concern associated with human-induced climate change. This change in emphasis appears to be the result of a summary process in which scientists work with policy makers on the document. Written responses from U.S. coordinating and lead scientific authors to the committee indicate, however, that (a) no changes were made without the consent of the convening lead authors (this group represents a fraction of the lead and contributing authors) and (b) most changes that did occur lacked significant impact."

Letter to his town mayor, 2003

In September 2003 Lindzen wrote an open letter to the mayor of Newton, Massachusetts (Lindzen's home), his views on global warming and the Kyoto Accord. He says "... [T]he impact of CO₂ on the Earth's heat budget is nonlinear. What this means is that although CO₂ has only increased about 30% over its pre-industrial level, the impact on the heat budget of the Earth due to the increases in CO₂ and other man influenced greenhouse substances has already reached about 75% of what one expects from a doubling of CO₂, and that the temperature rise seen so far is much less (by a factor of 2-3) than models predict (assuming that all of the very irregular change in temperature over the past 120 years or so—about 1 degree F—is due to added greenhouse gases—a very implausible assumption).".

Of the Kyoto Accord, he claims there is no "controversy over the fact that the Kyoto Protocol, itself, will do almost nothing to stabilize CO₂. Capping CO₂ emissions per unit of electricity generated will have a negligible impact on CO₂ levels"

James Annan wager

The November 10 2004 online version of Reason magazine reported that Lindzen is "willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now." James Annan, a scientist involved in climate prediction, contacted Lindzen to arrange a bet. Annan and Lindzen exchanged proposals for bets, but were unable to agree. Annan offered to pay if temperatures declined, but said that Lindzen would only take 50 to 1 odds on global temperatures in 20 years being lower than they are now.

Lindzen replied to Annan "The quote [at Reason Online] was out of context. I think the odds are about 50-50. I said that if anyone were willing to give warming much higher odds than that, I would be tempted to take the bet."

Lindzen offered Annan an alternative bet. If the temperature change were less than 0.2 °C (0.36 °F), he would win. If the temperature change were between 0.2 °C and 0.4 °C the bet would be off. And if the temperature change were 0.4 °C or greater, Annan would win. He would take 2 to 1 odds.

Criticism of Lindzen

Ross Gelbspan wrote a 1995 article in Harper's Magazine which was very critical of Lindzen and other global warming skeptics. In the article, Gelbspan claimed that Lindzen charged "oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; [and] his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC."

In Aug 2006, according to Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, Lindzen said that he had accepted $10,000 in expenses and expert witness fees, from "fossil-fuel types" in the 1990s and had not received any money from these since.

According to a PBS Frontline report, "Dr. Lindzen is a member of the Advisory Council of the Annapolis Center for Science Based Public Policy, which has received large amounts of funding from ExxonMobil and smaller amounts from Daimler Chrysler, according to a review [of] Exxon's own financial documents and 990s from Daimler Chrysler's Foundation. Lindzen has also been a contributor to the Cato Institute, which has taken $90,000 from Exxon since 1998, according to the website Exxonsecrets.org and a review Exxon financial documents. He is also a contributor for the George C. Marshall Institute."

Views on health risks of smoking

Lindzen has claimed that the risks of smoking, including passive smoking, are overstated. In 2001, Newsweek journalist Fred Guterl reported, after an interview with Lindzen

He'll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. He speaks in full, impeccably logical paragraphs, and he punctuates his measured cadences with thoughtful drags on a cigarette.

A 1991 article in Consumers' Research entitled "Passive Smoking: How Great a Hazard?" is also sometimes used to characterize Richard Lindzen as a tobacco spokesperson or expert. That article says, "Richard Lindzen, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has emphasized that problems will arise where we will need to depend on scientific judgement, and by ruining our credibility now we leave society with a resource of some importance diminished. The implementation of public policies must be based on good science, to the degree that it is available, and not on emotion or on political needs. Those who develop such policies must not stray from sound scientific investigations, based only on accepted scientific methodologies." The article concludes with the statement, "Such has not always been the case with environmental tobacco smoke." However, Lindzen is not being directly quoted in the article, and the pro-tobacco views in that case are those of the article's authors, not necessarily Lindzen.

See also

• Iris hypothesis
• Scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

External links

• Richard Lindzen's Home page at MIT
• A List of Publications
• Profile at Physics Today
• Wall Street Journal editorial (June 11, 2001)
• Testimony of Richard S. Lindzen Before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works 2001
• Testimony of Richard S. Lindzen before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee
• http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Lindzen/canadian_reactions_to_sir_david_king.html
• Climate of Fear: Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence - Wall Street Journal op-ed (April 12, 2006)
• [1] A video interview (and a transcript [2]) of Lindzen on Fox News about global warming, presenting the view that people like Al Gore are overstating the case.
• Wall Street Journal op-ed (July 2, 2006)
• Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus at Cato's Regulation site.
• June 26th 2006 article in the Wall Street Journal
• "Intelligence Squared U.S. – Global warming is not a crisis – Transcript" (PDF). NPR. 2007-03-22. Retrieved 2007-04-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)