The hurricane expert
who stood up to UN junk science
The Deniers -- Part III
Financial Post
Friday, February 02, 2007
December 8, 2006
You're a respected scientist, one of the best in your field. So
respected, in fact, that when the United Nations decided to study the
relationship between hurricanes and global warming for the largest scientific endeavour in its history -- its International Panel on
Climate Change -- it called upon you and your expertise.
You are Christopher Landsea of the Atlantic
Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory. You were a contributing author
for the UN's second International Panel on Climate Change in 1995, writing the
sections on observed changes in tropical cyclones around the world. Then the
IPCC called on you as a contributing author once more, for its "Third
Assessment Report" in 2001. And you were invited to participate yet again,
when the IPCC called on you to be an author in the "Fourth Assessment Report."
This report would specifically focus on Atlantic hurricanes, your specialty,
and be published by the IPCC in 2007.
Then something went horribly wrong. Within days of this last invitation, in
October, 2004, you discovered that the IPCC's Kevin Trenberth
-- the very person who had invited you -- was participating in a press
conference. The title of the press conference perplexed you: "Experts to
warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense
hurricane activity." This was some kind of mistake, you were certain. You
had not done any work that substantiated this claim. Nobody had.
As perplexing, none of the participants in that press conference were known for
their hurricane expertise. In fact, to your knowledge, none had performed any
research at all on hurricane variability, the subject of the press conference.
Neither were they reporting on any new work in the
field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability,
you knew, showed no reliable upward trend in the frequency or intensity of
hurricanes. Not in the Atlantic basin. Not in any other basin.
To add to the utter incomprehensibility of the press conference, the IPCC
itself, in both 1995 and 2001, had found no global warming signal in the
hurricane record. And until your new work would come out, in 2007, the IPCC
would not have a new analysis on which to base a change of findings.
To stop the press conference, or at least stop any misunderstandings that might
come out of it, you contacted Dr. Trenberth prior to
the media event. You prepared a synopsis for him that brought him up to date on
the state of knowledge about hurricane formation. To your amazement, he simply
dismissed your concerns. The press conference proceeded.
And what a press conference it was! Hurricanes had been all over the news that
summer. Global warming was the obvious culprit -- only a fool or an
oil-industry lobbyist, the press made clear, could ignore the link between what
seemed to be ever increasing hurricane activity and ever increasing global
warming. The press conference didn't disappoint them. The climate change
experts at hand all confirmed the news that the public had been primed to hear:
Global warming was causing hurricanes. This judgement
from the scientists made headlines around the world, just as it was intended to
do. What better way to cast global warming as catastrophic
than to make hurricanes its poster child?
You wanted to right this outrageous wrong, this mockery that was made of your
scientific field. You wrote top IPCC officials, imploring: "Where is the
science, the refereed publications, that substantiate
these pronouncements? What studies are being alluded
to that have shown a connection between observed warming trends on the earth
and long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity? As far as I know, there are
none." But no one in the IPCC leadership showed the slightest concern for
the science. The IPCC's overriding preoccupation, it soon sunk in, lay in
capitalizing on the publicity opportunity that the hurricane season presented.
You then asked the IPCC leadership for assurances that your work for the IPCC's
2007 report would be true to science: "[Dr. Trenberth]
seems to have already come to the conclusion that global warming has altered
hurricane activity and has publicly stated so. This does not reflect the
consensus within the hurricane research community. ... Thus I would like
assurance that what will be included in the IPCC report will reflect the best
available information and the consensus within the scientific community most
expert on the specific topic."
The assurance didn't come. What did come was the realization that the IPCC was
corrupting science. This you could not be a party to. You then resigned, in an
open letter to the scientific community laying out your reasons.
Next year, the IPCC will come out with its "Fourth Assessment
Report," and for the first time in a decade, you will not be writing its
section on hurricanes. That task will be left to the successor that Dr. Trenberth chose. As part of his responsibility, he will
need to explain why -- despite all expectations -- the 2006 hurricane year was
so unexpectedly light, and at the historical average for the past 150 years.
- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer
Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.
Next: The polar denier
THE CV OF A DENIER:
Christopher Landsea received his doctoral degree in
atmospheric science from