The driving fore behind GM’s Volt says: “I bought a house in the Keys. Its supposed to be under water – three years ago.”
From Energy Collective:
… Bill Maher set up a panel featuring Lutz on his latest show and kicked off the discussion by asking Lutz to comment on the fact he made this statement about global warming in 2004.
Lutz responded emphatically: “And my attitude has been reinforced since then”.
Bob’s a very knowledgeable guy. He explained: “Listen. Abnormal weather patterns around the world have been a fact of life”. Why when he was a kid in 1941 they had a hurricane in New York. Lutz doesn’t understand that what scientists say about abnormal weather is that the amount of it is increasing.
But Lutz doesn’t have to worry about details like that. What he knows is that the scientists don’t know what they are talking about.
Maher: “What about the fact that it is the overwhelming consensus of all the climate scientists?”
Lutz: “That’s not true”. Maher responded: “It is true”. Lutz came back: “No”…
Michael – you still have zero clue about what I think on climate change yet you keep pontificating about being “reasonable”. I find your arguments unreasonable in the extreme, because you’re like somebody democratically voting for a dictator. It’s a contradiction in terms. Please forgive this turkey if he’s not going to vote for Christmas.
Sorry Maurizio, I’ve been off doing actual work for the past few days. Since I have no idea whether you’re just a garden-variety crank or someone who actually has some basis for claiming a sound understanding of climate matters, and because I’m a busy person who doesn’t have time to do primary research on climatology, and because there are lots of people, even some who are skeptical of AGW, who have spent their entire professional lives in the pursuit of a more perfect understanding of the Earth’s climate, I think it’s reasonable to ask whether you yourself have any recognizable claim to expertise in the field, and if not (as I suspect is the case – nothing to be ashamed of, it’s one of the most complex systems we’ve ever tried to comprehend) then it’s not unreasonable to ask what experts you’ve submitted your analysis to for review. Otherwise you’re just a hobbyist at best, and at worst you’re a man with an agenda who has taken the time and energy to carefully take out of context some nuggets of climate information that would appear to support your preferred conclusion. I really don’t have time or the scientific expertise to do the scientific spadework needed to determine which is which. In the meantime, my judgment is the same any logical person would make, which is that the many hours of investigation I’ve conducted in information developed by climatologists with a range of views on the topic, including skeptics, have led me to conclude that there is no question that there is a credible threat. The magnitude of the consequences should even the more modest forecasts of AGW come to pass, and the costs required to avoid those consequences, produce a standard risk assessment analysis that says you’d need to demonstrate that there’s less than a 10% chance that the theory is correct. Based on what I know there’s simply no chance you can do that – even a confirmed skeptic like Richard Lindzen wouldn’t make that claim. So I ask you again – to what recognizable experts in the highly complex field of climatology have you submitted your analysis for review? It’s a simple enough question.
Michael – are you qualified to establish that only “credentialed climatologists” can provide meaningful opinions and feedback about climate-related statements? Or is that your non-professional judgement?
Still no information on what credentialed climatologists you’ve submitted your analysis to for critical review. I think that says it all. How’s that for a short comment?
Am not sure who is self-obsessed. Suffice it to say my comments are way shorter than yours, and I am not keen in pontificating.
You came here saying “I won’t listen to you guys” and “Don’t listen to me, listen to so-and-so”. As I said let’s follow your advice, even if logically we shouldn’t
Wow, I’ve really gotten under your skin haven’t I. It’s ok, most people aren’t well read enough in the topic to be familiar with the expert analyses on both sides of the question. You’re one of hundreds of millions carrying around ill-informed delusions that you know what you need to know to arrive at the conclusion you want to arrive at. And sadly one of the “facts” about which you’re misinformed is that you’re not part of a persecuted but thoughtful minority, you’re actually part of the majority – most people find the implications of AGW uncomfortable and cherry-pick their inputs to fit their preferred outcome. Judgment comes in many forms, my friend, yours is simply of the self-obsessed kind that rejects expertise when it fails to conform to the view of the world with which you’re most comfortable. (I note that, unsurprisingly, you did not answer my question about which climatologists have critiqued your work.) In my career as an entrepreneur and as a professional manager we tended to avoid people with that kind of judgment – too prone to driving the bus off the cliff rather than seeking advice when it was obviously needed – but I suppose there are precincts where it is useful. None of them of vital importance, of course, but I’m sure they exist.
Michael – please save your efforts. We all agree your judgement on any topic isn’t worth anything at all. Or so you believe yourself.
The fact that you don’t even know who Ron Prinn is says about all we need to know about the depth of your expertise and the impartiality of your research. (“Some guy”? Really? Wow. At least I know – and to some extent appreciate – Richard Lindzen’s work, even if I have issues with it; I also know Fred Singer’s and Patrick Michaels’ work, though they occupy a much lower rung on the ladder of respectability. Your credibility to address the subject impartially just slipped even further, though I suppose it’s not really fair to expect you to know all of the prominent non-denier climatologists just because I know the prominent deniers – after all, there are so few credentialed deniers one needs to know – you could fit them all in a phone booth.) So to whom, exactly, within the credentialed climatologist community have you submitted your analysis for critical review? Or have you submitted it to anyone at all? I think I can make a few guesses, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I listened quite intently, by the way. I just didn’t hear anything that rose to the level of a balanced scientific critique.
Michael – my “amateurish” attempts will forever not impress you. Especially because you know nothing about them, aren’t listening and defer instead to some guy or other as if he were the Pope.
As I said.an attitude like your makes it pointless to discuss with you. Perhaps this Ron will join us instead.
I place a great deal of credibility in scientists like Ron Prinn who’ve traveled a principled path from honest skepticism to honest support and who’ve resisted the temptation to substitute personal agendas and hyperbole for sober scientific judgment. I happen to think a lot of my non-professional judgment, but I recognize it for what it is – non-professional. My non-professional judgment is that the hours of discussion I’ve sat through with Ron Prinn and James McCarthy, and the extensive reading I’ve done of Richard Lindzen (one of the very few skeptics deserving of equal credence alongside people like Prinn and McCarthy), all approached with an open mind, have convinced me that there is a credible threat, and your amateurish attempts to concoct an alternative scientific fact base don’t much impress me. If you want to impress me, submit your arguments to Ron and let me know what he has to say about them. He’s an honest man and by all appearances a fine scientist, and if your arguments have any merits I’m sure he’ll say so. I’ve heard him discuss these points previously and they didn’t hold up very well. But I’m always willing to be convinced – by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about and doesn’t start the investigation with a preconceived point of view.
Michael – you don’t think much of your non-professional judgement. Fine. Neither will I. So I won’t be listening to you.
You also wouldn’t be swayed by any argument unless made by the people you believe in. Fine by me too. I respect freedom of religion. Anyway, I won’t be talking to you either.
You’re simply refusing any form of dialogue. Congratulations.
The major reason I’m wasting my time is that the narrative you’ve concocted based on cherry-picked facts, with a pseudo-scientific gloss that makes it sound almost as if you know as much as a real climatologist, is roundly debunked by real climatologists with no axe to grind (unlike you, apparently, who seem to have many axes in the grinder). Forget Jim Hanson – he’s rendered himself non-credible by allowing himself to be baited into hyperbole too many times by dedicated deniers such as yourselves. Try someone like Ron Prinn at MIT, who started out ten years ago a confirmed skeptic based on the number of open anomalies I mentioned in my original post, but has gradually, with the accumulation of additional data and improved analysis, satisfied himself that a strong scientific case has been made. Unlike you, I won’t presume to substitute my non-professional judgment for that of someone who’s dedicated his career to a pursuit of unbiased scientific knowledge, just as I wouldn’t substitute my judgment for that of an oncologist or a neurologist treating myself or someone close to me. That’s because I have no ideological or psychological agenda at play here – I am very comfortable with the idea that government’s role should be limited, but when it becomes clear we need collective action there is no virtue in searching for clever-sounding ways out of it. None of this will convince any of you, I’m sure, and while I could be convinced I’m wrong, it would be by a climatologist, and one who I’m convinced isn’t pursuing some non-scientific agenda. Sorry, but you folks don’t meet either criterion.
Perhaps you might like to check a few of your “facts”:
The claim of catastrophic global warming is based on computer modeled outcomes and models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) use λ values based on Hansen’s 0.75 ± 0.25 °C/W/m2, with a preference for the upper limit of 1 °C.
How do we know these are nonsense values to use with ΔF? Kiehl and Trenberth tell us so in Earth’s Annual Global Mean Energy Budget giving a net average surface-absorbed radiation of 492W/m2, equating to a surface temperature of 492 kelvins (~219 °C), right? I think not.
Feel free to check our math in items like “How do they get such a lot of warming from a little gas?“; “Why is JunkScience.com so opposed to CCS?“; “Are we really sure the world is too warm?“; “Checking their homework” – Lord knows we’ve looked at this from plenty of angles, like trying to fathom “The curious incident of the added heat at the surface“, help people calculate earth’s expected temperature, figure out what Watt is what, examine natural events for clues and try to find the real inconvenient truth. You never know, your review may find errors qualified reviewers have not.
Here’s the major reason you are indeed likely wasting your time:
Sorry, all of the above is in serious dispute. We expect all the observed variation and recognize it as normal for the Holocene (heck, even Saharan wetlands with endemic populations of hippos and crocodiles are within the Holocene norms). Your “mountain of evidence” doesn’t even amount to a hill o’ beans.
Is increasing abundance of an essential trace gas driving catastrophic change – apparently not since observed change lies within expected norms without said increase and we lack all evidence of catastrophic change.
Do we need or is it advantageous to abandon enormous supplies of hydrocarbon fuels and the associated established infrastructure to avoid offending capricious weather gods? The only answer is “No, don’t be so damned stupid!”
Come up with some evidence, then you might get a sympathetic hearing.
Just to give you an example…when you write “all of the critical parameters (ocean temperatures, ocean pH levels, average polar temperatures, polar ice minimums, etc. etc.) are all well outside of the ranges one would expect“, I would be far more convinced about such a statement were some of those parameters “outside of the ranges” in ways beneficial to humanity and wildlife. Instead, it’s almost a parody that any change is described for example as helping bad bugs and killing good bugs.
It’s your turn now…what would change your mind?
Michael – what I’m not sure about is what you’re trying to communicate and with whom. You’ve already commented elsewhere to the tone that we’re some kind of monsters. Why do you think monsters would be listening to your arguments?
Speaking of which what kind of evidence would make you consider, say, “climate change” as one of many possible issues to manage rather than THE issue for our future? Same question I’d have about what would convince you that the threat of catastrophe linked to AGW be vanishingly small.
I’m not sure it’s worth my time here, but I’ll take the bait for the moment. The essence of a scientific theory that, in addition to suggesting an explanation for observed phenomena it gives rise to anomalies that remain to be explained. Therefore one can always find reasons to question the validity of a theory, particularly if one is highly motivated to do so, and I’ve encountered few people as invested in the enterprise of attacking the theory of anthropogenic climate disruption as are you and your readers. (Really, you’d do yourself and your readers a favor if you’d read Karl Popper’s “Conjectures and Refutations: the growth of scientific knowledge” – your discussion of the scientific process and how we as laymen should relate to it would be oh so much better informed than it is at the moment.) What is kind of pathetic is your willingness to fall back on the “it’s been warmer in the history of life on earth” argument, which isn’t even a refutation of the prevailing science (no one seriously disputes that point), while ignoring the mountain of undisputed evidence that all of the critical parameters (ocean temperatures, ocean pH levels, average polar temperatures, polar ice minimums, etc. etc.) are all well outside of the ranges one would expect in the absence of anthropogenic GHG releases over the past 200 years and well outside the ranges of what earth has experienced during human civilization’s time on earth. Is that irrefutable proof of anthropogenic climate disruption? No. Is it a credible threat? Of course it is. Will life survive on earth? Of course it will. But we have no idea what life will be like because we (civilized human populations) have never encountered the conditions likely to emerge; we’ve embarked on an uncontrolled experiment using the only ecosystem available to us as a lab rat, and contrary to claims by those heavily invested in the current fossil-based energy system it would cost relatively little and require no fundamental sacrifices in quality of life to move to an energy system that does not rely on fossil fuels. We simply need to stop this silly fight over how high the mountain of evidence actually is, agree that there’s a mountain of sufficient height to be concerned, and embark in a different direction, one that is not based on releasing in a few hundred years carbon that the earth has sequestered over a period of hundreds of millions of years. I’ve spent over 30 years in senior positions in the “conventional” energy industry, and I can tell you it’s really not that complicated – people like you simply insist on making it so.
At issue here Michael is the credibility of the “threat”.
Notwithstanding the absurdity of so-called global mean temperatures established to thousandths of a degree at times when less than 10% of the globes land surface had even the most rudimentary thermometric sampling we have the issue of perspective. You see “anomaly tracks” presented showing highly magnified changes in earth’s global mean temperature with no regard to perspective – how large is the change (if real)?
You present a graph of those “anomalies” and a range of 1.5-2 degrees and they look impressive but on a range of earth’s mean temperature throughout the year, however, and they are not so. You do of course know that earth always approaches the much-feared pre-industrial mean (estimated) plus 2 °C every July, don’t you? And that it falls 2 °C below that estimate every January? A mean ± 0.5 °C doesn’t look near so impressive superimposed over earth’s annual normal range of ± 2 °C.
The fact is the much-hyped “anomalies are simple noise when earth’s real temperature of 288 kelvins is used and the history of life on earth range is used, say from 275-300 K.
There simply is no evidence of truly anomalous temperature trends, driven by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels or otherwise. When giants trod the earth it was perhaps 15 °C warmer and life has survived ice ages too.
The only new thing here is human preoccupation with minute changes in a contrived statistical artifact of the globally averaged temperature we named the global mean.
You folks all seem a lot more certain that there’s no such thing as AGW than the scientists are that there is. Maybe you need a little bit of perspective. Evidence that AGW is real is overwhelming, but it’s not conclusive. That said, evidence that smoking causes cancer is overwhelming, but it’s not conclusive either. 90% of physicists at a recent conference said they don’t believe the current quantum model is accurate, yet whole industries are built on technology that was developed based on the current understanding of quantum mechanics. The only thing that is crystal clear from your noxious exchange is that you don’t actually understand the nature of scientific knowledge or the scientific process – everyone who’s read Karl Popper raise your hands. Your guffawing about AGW is irresponsible at best – monstrous would be a better description. The other thing missing here is even a basic understanding of the theory of risk management. Such willful intransigence in the face of a credible threat of the magnitude represented by AGW would, in any other context (like, for instance, a credible threat that Iran has a nuclear weapon and a delivery system capable of reaching New York) justly be considered a gross betrayal of our country and our children’s future.
–Good, William, Imo, the warmists are agenda-driven, not worrying about convection, but NOT “worrying about it”, should Surely skew the accuracy of their “‘fantastic’-modeling”. So it looks like Romney is going to be our alternate to another 4 with Nobama. Romney’s picked-up some moronic Globalists that may get him back into Cap & Trade(TAX). You might not “do” politics, but how might you derail those “experts”, before they do real damage, assuming Romney can over-come the Spanish “Tally-Whacking” firm that may give Nobama another 4. I saw a very impressive Shoah-denier film, but the film did NOT mention that the Nazis would leave ONE crematorium standing, to use it until the Ruskies came, but in almost every camp, they dynamited several OTHER killing complexes, as if they KNEW a denier film would someday be made, and they’d want to suggest Typhus as a cause, rather than Zyklon-B. Nuclear war may come with our fall Iran-bombing, where the FEMA-camps may crank-up, HERE in the hands of Russian/Red Chinese troops. The deal THIS time, is sealed railcars where those they want to liquidate will be gassed in the cars on the way to the camps, as they’re all sealed. I guess gas would not be needed, if they were just going to suffocate the car occupants, via their being sealed. How…do we avoid another trip towards the chimneys? Should we ready dismantling of various componetry of this hideous new sys?
You know that when Godwin’s Law is used that any argument is blown out of proportion/ the argument is lost. I read the article as well and this person is disgusting to compare climate change scepticism with Holocaust denial.
It was named the car of the year in the USA by Motor Trend. Since it only remained in production for about 1 year I guess it could be considered car of the year.
It’s even worse than that. I think it’s somewhere around this site or over at Watts Up With That or somewhere, but the gist of it is that they sent out thousands of questionaires and only a couple hundred came back. Of that I believe there were just 70 they cherry picked as ‘climate scientists’ and of those some 90% or so agreed that there was global warming (true at the time) and that they believed humans were contributing to it. Another phoney, cherry picked dataset. *shock* – not.
In the mean time over 1000 scientists have come out against CAGW (http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/) and some 30,000 have signed a petition/broadside against it. Some bloody ‘consensus’.
You can’t argue with Maher because you can’t argue with an idiot. Notice also that the bet offered couldn’t be settled for 50 years.
Not at all sure from your description what paper you refer to but convection is particularly important in modeling the atmosphere. One of the difficulties with enhanced greenhouse theory is autoconvection (the threshold temperature which will cause cooler, more-dense air to displace and loft heated, less-dense air packets) and adiabatic lapse (at lower pressure air occupies a greater volume and cools). Even though cooler air radiates less intensely than warmer (remember that old white hot, yellow hot, red hot thing – that’s reducing emission intensity as an object cools), this cooling means air does not only radiate in electromagnetic frequencies absorbable by greenhouse gases but gradually down the spectrum, at some points losing energy directly to space. GHGs, which absorb selectively will always be bypassed at some point.
He should have made a bet with that unfunny comedian, the foul mouthed, cloacal cavity Bill Maher, about the unwarming Oceans to be settled by the results of the decade old ARGOS buoys.
Then he would and should have demanded the Maher idiot write him check to a food kitchen right then and there. He should have made it quite clear Bill Maher is a total idiot and phony, and doesn’t know what he is talking about.
How ’bout the Yuropeans? They just named the Volt/Ampera the Yuropean
Car of Duh Year!
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/03/05/chevrolet-volt-named-2012-european-car-year/?test=latestnews
More awards for Mr. Lutz!
Lutz is right on, Tyson is an astrophysicist, not a climate scientist.
I don’t personally know Lutz. I’ve only read about him.
From what I know of Lutz he’s a good man. He was instrumental in the creation of the Dodge Viper. He has his faults. He’s pretty arrogant not unlike the late John Delorean. I can’t blame Lutz for the abortion that is the Chevy Volt. The car was conceived and ultimately built as bait for Democrats to give GM tons of money. Mission accomplished.
I read a paper a few years ago and can’t find it now. It had to do with CO2 and re-radiation. The author claimed that CO2 re-radiating heat models didn’t take into account for convection, a natural atmospheric process. Some of the energy of the molecule is used up in this process.
Has anyone come across this paper?
Note that the original link on the green energy site makes an explicit comparison between not believing in catastrophic AGW and the Nazi’s Jewish Holocaust.
Another sign that the debate is over.
The problem is that the governments are now spending billions of dollars on green energy infrastructure – solar and wind – that will never be of any value ever, but will allow them to create short time jobs til the next election
The secret to “the overwhelming consensus of all the climate scientists” is the way that the phrase “climate scientists” is defined. As established in 1988 by the IPCC for their first (1990) report, anybody who agrees with the premises and has attended a full year of college qualifies as a “climate scientist.”
I think that Bill Maher is the crock. Are his eyes still brown, or have they returned to their natural blue?
Appreciated and linked at Blogspot: http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2012/03/does-man-behind-volt-doubt-global.html. Please tell us more about Mr. Lutz and the distinctive features of the Volt.
Let’s be clear: THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC PAPER WRITTEN BY ANYBODY DEMONSTRATING “ABNORMAL WEATHER” HAS BEEN ON THE INCREASE.
Therefore, ‘scientists’ claiming otherwise are, literally, ‘deniers’.