Talk:Richard Lindzen/Archive 3

Tobacco
What on earth is this nonsense in which the pro-tobacco views of people other than Lindzen are presented? What has it to do with anything? Are we to include stuff about his views (or anyone else's) on shoe-manufacture or model railways? I'm going to remove the section unless someone can present a good argument otherwise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Masmit (talk • contribs) 15:16, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Criticism of IPCC
The text under this sub heading reads "He frequently speaks out against the IPCC position that significant global warming is caused by humans". But this is not the IPCC position at all. The IPCC position is only that significant global warming is most likely caused by humans, which is someting very different. It does not seem likely that Richard Lindzen who himself joined in writing the very report in question is misinformed on its content. Judging from the content of this article alone - I am not using any other sources - it seems to me that what Lindzen is doing is that he elaborating on the uncertainty. The IPCC report quantifies the uncertainty of anthropgenic climate change to less than 10 percent. The geist from Lindzens critique seems to be either that a) he considers the 10 percent uncertainty nullifies the rationality of using the report to prescribe policy or 2) he considers the 10 percent uncertainty to be an underestimation. This article is not clear this point, which may or may not steem from a fact that mr Lindzen himslef is not clear on this point. However, I am changing the wording of the "Criticism of IPCC" paragraph to something that aligns with the rest of the full article, namely "He frequently criticises the IPCC report" --gnirre (talk) 04:09, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * You're losing too much content - I'm reverting but adding "very likely" to the sentence.Brian A Schmidt (talk) 20:37, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Good idea! --gnirre (talk) 17:37, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Are Lindzen's views relevant?
I think Kim's rv was an improper use of Twinkle. Its rollback functions are intended "to assist users in common Wikipedia maintenance tasks and to help them deal with acts of vandalism." Removing the views of a scientist about the misuse of science is not a routine maintenance task. And inserting a Lindzen quote can by no means by considered an act of vandalism. He said it, didn't he? --Uncle Ed (talk) 21:13, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * First of all - try adressing the edit instead of the editor. If you think i'm misbehaving - use the channels available for such things - but i'll say this: There is no rules that say you can't use Twinkle for a regular revert. And on top here was no indication of vandalism what so ever, since the revert was neither marked as such, nor was it marked as minor. And i stated quite clearly what was wrong with the edit: POV.
 * Why was it POV? Because you cherry-picked a quote (that i assume you particularly like), and inserted it into the lead. Where it has nothing to do (as you well know), since the lead is a summary of the article. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:31, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Are these personal remarks meant as retaliation for a (mis)perceived slight? I have no criticism of you personally. I was merely pointing out that your revert seemed misleading, because it used a tool which I thought was intended mainly for vandalism (or routine housekeeping). You have not explained how it was either of these.
 * What personal remarks? That you should know better? You should. As for using Twinkle - please steer me to the place where it is said that Twinkle must not be used for regular reverts, and i'll correct it in the future. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:59, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Your use of the term "POV" is puzzling. Have the rules of Wikipedia changed since 2005? (That's when I was still considered an expert on NPOV policy, i.e., the calm and deliberate refusal to allow articles to favor any POV over any other as being "true" or "right" when there is a dispute.)
 * Is it? Lets see: First of all there is WP:LEAD - now what exactly is your edit a WP:SUMMARY of? Then of course there is WP:WEIGHT - how notable is that statement by Lindzen? Has other reliable sources picked it up. ie. Does it have a major relevance in the biography of Lindzen? ett. etc. It has nothing to do with "true","false","right" or "wrong". --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:59, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Lindzen's viewpoint, expressed in an April 12, 2006 editorial, is that global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence. In what way is it "cherry-picking" or "POV" for me to place that quote in a summary of the article. Are you saying that I've misrepresented his viewpoint? --Uncle Ed (talk) 21:41, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You cherry-picked the quote out of numerous quotes by Lindzen. Is this something that defines Lindzen? How do you figure its relevant in a summary? And what exactly is it a summary of? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:59, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it's significant enough to belong in the article, but not in the lead. Although it's only my opinion, I tend to think this statement, along with Lindzen's self-perception as a contrarian is important in explaining why he's been so resolutely wrong on AGW.JQ (talk) 22:40, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Views on health risks of smoking
Umm. What exactly is the relevance of this information aside from an obvious attempt to somehow discredit Lindzen? The machine512 04:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There's a common pattern of global warming skeptics having also denied or played down the risks of smoking, for example Steven Milloy, Fred Singer, Frederick Seitz, Alexis de Tocqueville Institute and so on. Obviously, as you say, this tends to discredit their views in general, suggesting either poor judgement or conflicts of interest. The general point is more relevant to global warming controversy, so I'll add it there. JQ 06:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * As to your claim that their position on smoking "tends to discredit their views in general", that's a clearly POV statement. A person can take the wrong side of a thousand arguments and still be right about the 1001st.  Your argument is a variation on "guilt by association". --Lee Vonce 13:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * POV only applies to articles, not to talk pages William M. Connolley 13:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * As wmc says, the article just states the facts and lets readers draw their own conclusion. In that respect Lindzen's credibility is important. He is often quoted as an authority, and in this respect the fact that he is wrong about related issues reduces the extent to which he can be relied on. JQ 19:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm aware that POV only applies to articles, but the fact that JQ feels that one thing discredits another is an opinion. The question of Lindzen's authority on climate matters is a separate issue and not related to his opinions of other things on which he may well not be an expert.  The fact is that he is known for his expertise on climate science.  Trying to muddy the water here with questions about his lay opinions about smoking doesn't serve anyone.  There is certainly no need to include some reporter's opinion as to whether Lindzen does or does not relish a certain role.  --Lee Vonce 21:29, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Lindzen is clearly presented as an expert by Philip Morris. Whether he's properly qualified is another matter. Many of the issues regarding inference, the appropriateness of relying on consensus views and so on are the same in both cases and most of the leading experts and thinktanks on both sides take the same view in each case, as noted above, so it could be argued that his is an expert view. JQ 21:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Is he? I didn't see that part.  You even seem to be admitting that there's no direct claim of his expertise here by saying that "it could be argued that his is an expert view".  An encyclopedia isn't a good place to argue things, but rather to report statements of fact.   I also don't see any actual quotes by him.  There are descriptions of statements attributed to him but no direct quotes.  I think it would be better to limit the entries here to actual quotes.  What do you think?  --Lee Vonce 15:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that he isn't properly qualified here, just as the great majority of scientists quoted as global warming sceptics aren't properly qualified. However, Philip Morris wants to quote Lindzen as an expert on smoking and Exxon wants to quote, say, Bob Carter, as an expert on climate. There just isn't a deep bench when it comes to denying obvious facts. If you want to go to "list of scientists opposing global warming consensus" and argue for the deletion of all the non-experts, I'll back you up. As regards a restriction to direct quotes, I don't agree. These are verifiable sources, so unless you have reason to think Lindzen has been misrepresented, their summaries of his views should stay.JQ 22:06, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you seriously trying to argue that a third party's opinion of Lindzen's views on an issue are relevant here? And you haven't shown where PM cited Lindzen as an "expert on smoking".  As far as I can tell, they're doing basically the same thing that they did back in the days when they used to dress actors up in a doctor's coat and make TV commercials for cigarettes.  They're evidently hoping that Lindzen will lend credibility because he is a respected scientist while also hoping that people will not realize that his expertise is on global climate rather than cigarette smoking.  As far as the issue of the "global warming consensus" goes, I don't care very much either way.  Bob Carter's opinions carry just as much weight as IPCC industry hacks who support the consensus.  An opinion is an opinion.  Consensus doesn't interest me as much as, say, actual evidence to support a claim.  Anyone who has to fall back on the old appeal to the consensus is just admitting that they haven't got any facts to support them.  But then, that's just my opinion.  --Lee Vonce 13:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The article's quotation of the alleged Philip Morris article is factually incorrect. It incorrectly tries to claim that Richard Lindzen is a Philip Morris spokesman. I will attempt to correct it. I find that it is incorrect for the following reasons:
 * 1) The Wikipedia article states: "In 1991, a publication by the Philip Morris corporation entitled "Passive Smoking:How Great a Hazard?" concluded with the statement...".  That is false.  The article in question, http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2046323437-3484.html?pattern=&ocr_position=&rotation=0&zoom=750&start_page=1&end_page=48, is actually an article in Consumers' Research magazine.
 * 2) Richard Lindzen is never directly quoted in the article.  The article is neither written by him nor is he an expert on tobacco smoking for Philip Morris or anyone else.  It simply quotes Richard Lindzen as a critic of the misuse of science in forming public policy.

The last statement, the conclusion of the article, is the conclusion of the article's authors, not of Richard Lindzen. For a similar treatment of another quotation by a different person, see the same article but earlier on the page, where it says, "Sir Bradford Hill of Oxford University cautioned years ago that it is important to remember that all science is subject to being reinterpreted or- to being changed and modified by advancing knowledge. As newer technologies are applied to the assessment of environmental tobacco smoke, clearer understandings will evolve." The first statement, "it is important to remember that all science is subject to being reinterpreted", is a general statement about the nature of science made by Sir Bradford Hill years ago. The second statement, "As newer technologies are applied to the assessment of environmental tobacco smoke, clearer understandings will evolve" is the argument of the pro-tobacco authors of the article.

Now compare their treatment of the Richard Lindzen statements. "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 avail- able, 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. Such has not always been the case with environmental tobacco smoke." Everything up to the last statement is a general paraphrase of a public figure, Richard Lindzen, about the public treatment of scientific issues in general. Its past nature is clearly stated "Richard Lindzen...has emphasized...". The last statement is the conclusion of the pro-tobacco authors of the article, not of Richard Lindzen, whom they are not even quoting directly and who is probably unaware of his being cited in some tobacco article. LaggedOnUser 01:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There's been a request for the text of the Newsweek interview, which I'm posting here for research purposes, as it's hard to get to JQ 20:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

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Return to Headlines | FramesNo Frames Select All Headlines 1 - 1 of 1 1. 	The Truth About Global Warming; The forecasts of doom are mostly guesswork, Richard Lindzen argues--and he has Bush's ear. Newsweek International, 23 July 2001, 2962 words, (English) For the past five years, Richard Lindzen and his wife have summered in Paris, always staying with family or borrowing an empty apartment from a friend. This year, however, Lindzen decided to splurge. His wife found a modest but airy flat on ... More Like This

Article 1

SE 	Science and Technology HD 	The Truth About Global Warming; The forecasts of doom are mostly guesswork, Richard Lindzen argues--and he has Bush's ear. BY 	By Fred Guterl WC 	2962 words PD 	23 July 2001 SN 	Newsweek International SC 	NEWI NGC 	Newsweek - Print and Online GC 	CTGNWK ED 	Atlantic Edition PG 	44 LA 	English CY 	Copyright (C) 2001 Newsweek Inc. All Rights Reserved.

LP

For the past five years, Richard Lindzen and his wife have summered in Paris, always staying with family or borrowing an empty apartment from a friend. This year, however, Lindzen decided to splurge. His wife found a modest but airy flat on a noisy street near the Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise. The neighborhood is not the most fashionable, but it has other qualities. When outraged citizens declared their independence from France after the war with Prussia in 1871 and the government sent in the Army to quell the rabble-rousers, the last of them held out in Belleville, a few blocks east of Lindzen's flat. This same district of Paris, he points out, also includes the Bastille. "I think it's safe to say that this area has had more than its share of defiance," he says.

TD

Lindzen doesn't seem capable of rabble-rousing. Sitting on his sofa in black-stockinged feet, he looks like a shorter, nerdier Orson Welles. He became a meteorologist back in the 1960s, when it was a backwater among the sciences. Little did he know how fashionable a weatherman could become. These days the highest levels of government consult meteorologists and other "climatologists" on one of the most urgent issues of the day, global warming. If you believe that science is a polite, orderly march to the truth, you will be surprised at how sharp the disagreements are, and at the magnitude of Dick Lindzen's defiance.

When climate scientists got on board the global-warming movement in the late 1980s, Lindzen remained steadfastly on the fringe. Back then he took issue with the notion that the earth is headed for catastrophe, and nothing has happened in a decade of climate research to convince him otherwise. With the Kyoto plan to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions effectively dead and environmentalists up in arms, Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has become the most well-respected voice of dissent. Colleagues praise his scientific work and do not assign political motives. And yet his scientific views have led him, a Democrat, into the lonely position of defending George W. Bush's Kyoto stance. "Bush is guilty of nothing more than being honest," he says. "There's no current Western leader who's as well informed on the issue as Bush, as strange as that may seem. European politicians are just using Kyoto for cheap virtue." Lindzen was one of a handful of authors of a recent study requested by the White House. After Bush's Kyoto about-face, Lindzen was summoned to Pennsylvania Avenue. Even if you accept the doomsday forecasts, he told Bush, Kyoto would hardly touch the rise in temperatures. "Kyoto would be to do nothing at great expense," he says.

Lindzen is not a complete skeptic. He acknowledges that the earth is getting warmer, and that human activity might have something to do with it. Over the past century, cars and factories have released carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the air, trapping the sun's energy and warming the atmosphere. The key question is, how warm will it get? Lindzen doesn't think scientists have a very good handle at all on how the earth's atmosphere will respond to increased levels of carbon dioxide. He doesn't think much of the half-dozen or so gigantic computer programs, or models, that simulate what the earth's climate will be like 100 years from now--and form the basis of all the predictions of doom. Whereas most models predict a warming of 3 or 4 degrees centigrade in the next 100 years, Lindzen's calculations show less than 1 degree, a figure that makes Kyoto seem downright hysterical. Most climate scientists, it's fair to say, disagree. They stick by their models, despite the flaws. "It's easy for Lindzen to criticize," says one. "But he's a theorist, not a modeler. He points out errors, but he's not the one who necessarily has to correct them." Annoying as he may be, his defiance serves as a reminder that climate scientists, despite their newfound relevance to policy and public renown, are still grappling with huge gaps in their knowledge.

Lindzen may raise his colleagues' hackles by criticizing their science, but when it comes to politics, he strikes a chord. Last week the Independent, the British newspaper, summarized the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations-sponsored group: "Global warming is happening now, caused by human actions, and threatens the Earth with disaster, the world's leading atmospheric scientists insisted yesterday." This is news to Lindzen, who literally is one of those scientists. He was coauthor of the IPCC report, but did not participate in writing the widely cited "summary for policymakers." "The 'consensus of scientists' is a very weird thing," he says. "The summary is written by 14 of the hundreds of scientists that contributed. Is that a consensus? I don't think so." Many scientists agree that the IPCC, in its zeal to build the case for doing something about global warming, plays fast and loose with the science, glossing over uncertainty and pushing its conclusions too far.

Lindzen clearly relishes the role of naysayer. 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. His parents arrived in the United States from Germany in 1938, two years before his birth. His father, a bootmaker, worked in a shoe factory in Massachusetts but eventually moved his family to the Bronx in New York City to live in a Jewish community. Lindzen won a scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and tranferred to Harvard a year later. An interest in ham radio piqued his curiosity about how the atmosphere affects radio waves, and this led him to meteorology.

Lindzen's contrarian attitude about global warming first stirred in 1988. In the heat of an atypically hot summer in the United States, Sen. Al Gore held hearings in which prominent scientists raised fears of rapid warming. The IPCC was formed to assess the need for action. "I wrote a piece for the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society saying that perhaps we should go easy on this because the case wasn't strong," Lindzen recalls. "I got people telling me that perhaps, as a Democrat, I shouldn't say that." In 1989 he spoke to an Earth Day gathering at Tufts University. "I was put down immediately," he says. "Scientists can have doubts, but environmentalists can't."

In the early 1990s Lindzen was asked to contribute to the IPCC's 1995 report. At the time, he held (and still does) that untangling human influences from the natural variation of the global climate is next to impossible. When the report's summary came out, he was dismayed to read its conclusion: "The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate." "That struck me as bizarre," he says. "Because without saying how much the effect was, the statement had no meaning. If it was discernible and very small, for instance, it would be no problem." Environmentalist Bill McKibbon referred to this phrase in an article in The Atlantic in May 1998: "The panel's 2,000 scientists, from every corner of the globe, summed up their findings in this dry but historic bit of understatement." In an angry letter, Lindzen wrote that the full report "takes great pains to point out that the statement has no implications for the magnitude of the effect, is dependent on the [dubious] assumption that natural variability obtained from [computer] models is the same as that in nature, and, even with these caveats, is largely a subjective matter."

This statement contains the crux of Lindzen's beef with the global-warming establishment. What is the relationship between nature, on the one hand, and the gigantic computer models that churn out climate predictions for 100 years hence? "In the scientific methodology," he says, "simulation is the weakest link. To say you've simulated something is to say very little." To appreciate why requires a brief foray into the world of climate science.

When it comes to meteorology, data can be very iffy. The United Nations specifies that thermometer readings in harsh polar climates, for instance, should be taken in a shelter that is freshly painted, of a specified height, ventilated in a certain way and so forth. When the Soviet Union fell and Siberian data collectors stopped being paid, did they continue to maintain the shelters? In the oceans, sometimes data collectors take the temperature of water drawn in a bucket over the side of a ship. Other times they put their thermometers in the water that enters the ship's engine intakes. Such inconsistent practices may have something to do with why observations show a warming at the North Pole but not at the South, while some areas even seem to be cooling. The overall warming trend of 0.6 degrees centigrade in the past 100 years is just discernible above these messy readings. "The observations are not great, but there's a consistency in the trend," Lindzen says.

Back in the 1980s, climate models were very crude simulations of the greenhouse effect. The main test of a climate model is to start sometime in the past and "predict" the present, with all the temperature swings and ice ages and so forth in between. When scientists tried this out on their early models, they got silly results, such as severe ice ages occurring in the 20th century. To avoid this kind of "drift," scientists applied a sort of fudge factor to ensure a sensible outcome. This doesn't do much good when it comes to predicting the future, which may be why 1988 predictions of rapid warming by 2000 never panned out. The average temperature hasn't climbed at all.

In recent years climate scientists have added a great deal of complexity to their models in the hope of capturing the essential behavior of the earth's climate. They have tried to account for clouds, water vapor, ocean currents, dust particles in the air (aerosols), sea ice and variations in ground cover. They have coupled the oceans to the atmosphere so that changes in one affect the other, and vice versa. Only recently have the better models, such as that of the Hadley Centre in Britain, abandoned the practice of fudging.

The change adds to the models' credibility, but does it mean they are reliable in predicting the future? It doesn't, Lindzen argues. For one thing, added complexity does not ensure that the models reflect what nature is doing. Take the case of aerosols--dust and other particles in the atmosphere. Scientists realized only a few years ago that aerosols reflect light and may exert a cooling influence; their effects are poorly understood. Putting them in climate models is essentially the same thing as adding a fudge factor. "There are no records of aerosol production before the 1960s," Lindzen says. "So you have complete freedom to adjust the amount of aerosols to make the models replicate the temperature record."

Aerosols are small potatoes when you consider the effects of clouds and water vapor. Water vapor is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide--a change of a few percentage points in the atmosphere's humidity could wipe out, or amplify, the effects of a rise in carbon dioxide. Even a doubling of carbon dioxide from preindustrial levels (which is expected to happen in 100 years if no effort is made to reduce carbon emissions) would probably, by itself, increase temperature only about 1 degree centigrade by the end of the century--warmer, to be sure, but probably short of doomsday. True catastrophe would require a helping hand from water vapor. That's exactly what most models depict.

But here's the rub: water vapor is not well understood. Models, for instance, assume that a warmer atmosphere would hold more water vapor, but it wouldn't necessarily, says Lindzen. Another wild card is the role of clouds in regulating humidity. Cumulus clouds draw moist air from the surface and carry it skyward. Some of the moisture falls back to the ground as rain, and what's left over is taken high up in the atmosphere, where it freezes into cirrus clouds. These clouds drift hundreds of miles raining ice particles into the lower atmosphere; these evaporate and raise humidity. But how much? Lindzen asserts that as the atmosphere warms, cumulus clouds will produce rain more efficiently, thereby leaving less for humidity-causing cirrus clouds. The result would be drier air. Rather than amplifying the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide, this would counteract it.

Even if scientists understood climate perfectly, the models would still contain another type of error inherent in the way computers do the calculations. In an ideal world, models would account for everything, down to each molecule of water. In practice, compromises are made. The Hadley Centre's model, for instance, dices the atmosphere into 250-kilometer squares, and then crunches equations that describe scientists' best approximation of the atmosphere's aggregate behavior. Making the squares smaller would reduce error, but it's expensive: shrink the squares to 125km, and the calculation balloons 16-fold. Even so, much of what goes on at the scale of clouds is lost.

Modelers concede both types of uncertainty but insist that their predictions are still valid. "There are many things we're uncertain about in climate modeling," says David Griggs, director of climate research at Hadley. "But there are a lot of things we can say with confidence. Our estimates take all of these uncertainties into account." The IPCC report agrees: "Confidence in the ability of models to project future climate has increased." Nonsense, says Lindzen. "The argument that the models are continu-ally improving is a kind of motherhood statement that international reports al-ways make. But there's no evidence of that."

Another way of estimating how much the climate will warm is a matter of dispute. By looking at events that disrupt climate and measuring the amount of time it takes for temperatures to change in response, scientists can calculate how sensitive the global climate might be to a change in carbon dioxide. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, for instance, it spewed ash into the atmosphere, which reflected sunlight and caused a discernible cooling across the globe. Lindzen studied volcanic eruptions and found that cooling tends to kick in pretty quickly, which suggests that the climate is relatively insensitive to disruptions. From this he concludes that a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels would lead to a warming of less than 1 degree centigrade.

Case closed? Hardly. James Hansen, a climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, has studied the end of the most recent ice age, when temperatures rose to the level they've more or less maintained for the last 10,000 years. (The data come from ice-core samples taken in Antarctica and Greenland, an approximate record of past climate change.) He found a sensitivity consistent with a warming of 3 or 4 degrees centigrade, which jibes with current models. "Dick's idea that climate sensitivity is low is simply wrong," says Hansen. "The history of the earth proves him wrong."

In the face of such disagreement, it is difficult--for scientists and nonscientists alike--to decide who is right. Should Lindzen be discounted as some lunatic on the fringe? Or is it foolish to wish too hard for a consensus? Perhaps what's needed is a dispassionate look at the research. This is a big part of what Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber does. As director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Studies in Germany, where he oversees the work of oceanographers, meteorologists, mathematicians and biologists, he is a practiced synthesizer of disparate scientific specialties.

Schellnhuber acknowledges the difficulty of interpreting the IPCC's temperature-increase predictions for the end of the century, which range from 1.4 degrees centigrade to 5.8 degrees. "There is a certain arbitrariness," he says. "Two Japanese models, one showing a 9-degree warming and the other showing zero warming, were thrown out because they were felt to be too far outside the range. So you take all these models and average them out, and you get a 3- or 4-degree warming. What does it mean?" He shrugs. "If one model is operating on wrong principles, all of them are off."

In light of the uncertainty, Schellnhuber takes a very European view of climate policy. He favors cutting emissions, a la Kyoto, just in case the pessimistic majority is correct. He believes in consensus. "Science really comes down in the end to the scientists," he says. "You have to make your best judgment." What does he make of Lindzen? "People like him are very useful in finding the weak links in our thinking," says Schellnhuber. It may take many years to sort out just where those weak links are. But it's worth being reminded that the answers will come in their own time, no matter how badly the world wants them now.

ART Photo: HOT ZONE: (from left) Potsdam Institute's Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, deforestation in Bangladesh, glacier ice in Chile, dry earth in Thailand, winter woods in the United States Graphic: (Diagram) How the Greenhouse Effect Might End With A Whimper (Graphic omitted)

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JQ, I added a citetag on Fred Guterls quote because NewsWeek required a subscription and I thought that a 'freely available' one would be simpler, (btw, thank you for posting interview). I thought there'd be some mention of his [RL] views on smoking in that article, but as far as I can see there isn't, unless I've missed it of course. For a quote like that, particulary in light of the opening sentence of the paragraph, I think all quotes about RL should include a source. --Dean1970 12:48, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Googled using 'fred guterl' 'richard lindzen' and 'cigarette' as keywords. First hit is the wikientry. Thereafter, mainly blog forums. --Dean1970 20:33, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I've been googling 'Fred Guterl' to see if he has a personal blog (being a journalist,) so as its primary author the quote can be referenced from there. Could not find one. I'm only curious as to where the quote originated, i.e., from an article or paper, etc. I'm adding back the tag for now. --Dean1970 20:52, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This is wrong. If you applied this rule, you wouldn't be able to cite books. There is no requirement that sources be freely available on the Internet. If you want to check the quote, and don't want to pay, you can visit a library, just as you would for a book.JQ 20:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, hmm, if Guterl 'reported' it after the interview, to whom? Plus, does that edition of NewsWeek (if available in a library) mention the quote? Where exactly does it appear? If quoting from a book, simple, give the name of the book! --Dean1970 21:02, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I thought I didn't need "to pay" now that you copy-pasted the relevant article above? I've read it, 'cigarette' isn't even mentioned! --Dean1970 21:07, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
 * An online copy can be found here. Just search the text "The forecasts of doom are mostly guesswork" - its the complete text. And the quote is quite accurate. (Note: i'm not going to argue about the text, nor if its relevant or not on this page - all i'm doing is asserting that the quote is accurate). --Kim D. Petersen 21:34, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Apologies, I accidentally copied from the International edition which omitted this para. I've now pasted in the full text.JQ 22:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Kim. I had hoped that this section would be backed up with more Reliable Sources. Bio of a living person and all.--Dean1970 23:42, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


 * In what sense is Newsweek not a Reliable Source? Anyone with access to a library (preferably in the US, I guess) can check it. If you are concerned about accuracy, I suggest you do so. If you're not willing to take the effort, you'll just have to trust the Factiva version I posted.JQ 03:36, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't claim NewsWeek was unreliable. I read the sentence..., "Guterl 'reported' after an interview blah blah", so I checked the source...it turned out to be a source that required subscription and 3 bucks. Then I made an error (which I apologised to you for) for adding a cntag and not asking on the talk page if there was a 'free' RS (I'm not getting into the 'it doesn't have to be free' requirements,) just asking if there was an alternative source. So, you kindly pasted the interview (above). I read that, no mention of ciggies, and that is when I re-added a tag, your rational switched to the veracity of quoting from books but I decided (to coin a phrase) to give you a run for your money on the Interview you pasted,(because after checking wikipolicy on RS, the burden of proof lies with the editor, not me,) because I thought 'what would a library reveal that the article pasted in its entirety on the talk page doesn't', that is when Kim took the effort to search online (or maybe he already knew of its existence, no matter either way) and supplied a link that was free.

I'm sorry for getting wires crossed in all this. I made the error of not asking on the talk page, if I did perhaps Kim would have produced the link earlier and avoided any unpleasantry you feel you've read on my part by questioning edits you're involved in.

Also, the text that wraps up the section along the lines of...."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" reads kinda like a disclaimer. --Dean1970 09:06, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

The only direct quote of Lindzen throughout this discussion is to the effect that he thinks that there has been some bad science done in order to promote the claims regarding the harm caused by passive smoking. I think the vast majority of statisticians would agree with him - even those who think that passive smoking does cause significant harm. The reason I looked at this page was to see if the people who control the passive smoking page have an interest in nailing "climate change deniers". Boy, did I hit the jackpot. Otis66 (talk) 16:53, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

"A 1991 article in Consumers' Research entitled "Passive Smoking: How Great a Hazard?" to characterize Richard Lindzen as a tobacco spokesperson or expert." "However, Lindzen is not being directly quoted in the article, , not necessarily Lindzen." If you really feel it necessary to portray Lindzen as some sort of tobacco-pushing monster, why these weasel qualifications? Masmit (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 01:44, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

--I haven't read all of the above, but there is no justification for including Lindzen's views on smoking in this article... its only relevance is to people who want to argue -- who want to argue obviously in a false and dishonest manner -- that Lindzen was paid by Big Tobacco to say things. Alex Harvey (talk) 13:11, 11 March 2009 (UTC)