Is George Bush supressing important climate reaserch from NASA?

Question

"So Miskolczi re-derived the solution, this time using the proper boundary conditions for an atmosphere that is not infinite. His result included a new term, which acts as a negative feedback to counter the positive forcing. At low levels, the new term means a small difference ... but as greenhouse gases rise, the negative feedback predominates, forcing values back down.

NASA refused to release the results."

http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basic+Greenhouse+Equations+Totally+Wrong/article10973.htm

This is not a question about whether or not he is correct, but rather the accusations that George Bush is suppressing important reasearch coming out of NASA

Answer 1

Just like Hansen. Of course he has given hundreds of interviews, etc so Bush must not be doing a good job.

Answer 2

It's Hansen, not Hanson.  

NASA has a long-standing policy of not allowing spurious work out the door.  If Miskolczi's work was valid, it would be published in a mainstream journal, just as Lindzen's paper was.  Peer-review is good at picking out things that are outright wrong.  

The devil in the details, I suspect, because I am not going to dig the Hungarian paper out of the literature, is that he (Miskolczi) models the atmosphere as a series of horizontally finite slabs.  Atmospheric radiative transfer codes already model the atmosphere as vertically finite slabs, but they are infinite in lateral extent (ref 1).  He must be doing something quite arbitrary (and wrong) in assigning the lateral boundaries of his slabs that generate an additional term.  It probably (and I am really guessing here) has to do with matching boundary conditions across slabs, so that heating in one slab flows to another, so that as a slab heats it shoves heat laterally instead of vertically.  This would generate the negative feedback that would increase as the radiative forcing.  Of course the real atmosphere can't do that since even if it were correct to model it as a series of finite lateral slabs (which it isn't), the adjacent slab is also heating and heat can't flow between two things that are at the same temperature.  

Sometimes, papers can't get published because they are wrong.

Answer 3

All smoke and mirrors.

Global warming is a political shield - plus it takes the heat off te real issues.

If people knew what was going on it would be mass panic, fall of government and military rule. Not good for anything.

Answer 4

Not that I have much time for Mr Bush, I'm counting the days to the next President. But there are some small problems with the story you link to

(a) I find it hard to understand how the Miklós Zágoni theory would work for both Earth & Mars as they totally different climates, in fact him mentioning Mars, to me, suggests a link to the GW denier movement, if fact this is becoming almost standard theories from obscure Russian/Hungarian scientists nobody ever heard of.

(b) As if to prove my point in the very next paragraph the story (casually) mentions the "International Climate Change Conference" which was paid for by the "heartland institoot" who had to pay scientists to attend and could still only get 19 to show up.

(c) More likely NASA refused to release the results because they are scientists who recognize BS when they see it!

Answer 5

Yes he is.

Answer 6

JS, let me understand. You state that the report misrepresents what Schwartz says, namely that "the Earth's response to CO2 was overstated". Yet here is a direct quote from the link you posted:

"In his study, he explains that the Earth could be only about one-third as sensitive to a doubling of carbon dioxide as predicted by the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Mr. Schwartz estimated a rise in the Earth's global mean surface temperature of 1.1 degrees Celsius versus the IPCC's estimate of 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius for a doubling of carbon dioxide."

If the Earth is only 1/3 as sensitive as current models show, how can you claim that doesn't mean the values are grossly overstated? He does say we need to take action but that we have breathing room in which to do so. Your point seems to be contradicted by your own link. Is it not possible that we are both overestimating the overall impact of a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and that there is an overall upper limit to the impact of CO2?

Answer 7

NASA people have claimed this multiple times before, which eventually the administration admitted.  I doubt the administration stopped. Maybe after Deutsch got caught they had to resort to more desperate measures and have been continueing for years.

Answer 8

Of course George Bush is not suppressing NASA.  NASA as most government agencies is infested with leftists that would like nothing better than to push their own polical agenda. The CIA and State are other good examples.

Answer 9

Yes, for years Bush had a former oil industry lobbyist softening NASA's reports of the data confirming the current warming, so the public would not be fully and accurately informed on the topic:

"...up until a few months ago a former oil industry lobbyist, Phil Cooney, chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was one of the president's top environmental advisers, editing scientific reports to make global warming seem less threatening."

"From now on, we don't have scientists write reports and just take them," said Rick Piltz of the group Climate Science Watch. "We pass them through a White House filter before they're ever published. I mean, that's scandalous."

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/GlobalWarming/...

Hansen has a theory that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message.

"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen.

Restrictions like an e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. "… there is a new review process … ," the e-mail read. "The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases," it continued.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/1...

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The article contains you referenced contains some serious misrepresentations:

"The conclusions are supported by research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research last year from Steven Schwartz of Brookhaven National Labs, who gave statistical evidence that the Earth's response to carbon dioxide was grossly overstated."

Dr. Steven Schwartz is the chief scientist of the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Science Program.  His expert opinion on global warming is as follows:

http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/news/NorthShoreSu...

"I'm very concerned about the world my grandchildren will live in," said Mr. Schwartz, who is currently studying climate change. "There could be an increase of four to eight degrees in the next century, and that's huge. The last time there was a five-degree Celsius decrease was the last ice age. An increase of eight degrees Fahrenheit would bring change unprecedented in the last half-million years."

Scientists aren't sure exactly what such a change in temperature could bring, but one of the "big possible consequences" is an increase in sea level, Mr. Schwartz said.

"It's not out of the question that the ice sheet on Greenland could melt, and the consequence of that is the sea level would rise," he said. "The shoreline on Long Island would move inland by two to three miles."

Mr. Schwartz, a senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, is one of about 50 scientists studying climate change at the lab. Most recently, Mr. Schwartz published a study in June that has resulted in sensationalist headlines across the country.

A report on Fox News introduced the study by saying, "Skeptics are increasingly certain the [global warming] scare is vastly overblown," and other news sources said Mr. Schwartz's study debunked the notion that global warming is a force with which humanity needs to contend.

This, he said, was not what he was trying to prove at all. Global warming is a very real reality, he said, and his study spells that out -- though in a different manner than those carried out by other scientists and organizations.

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http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/news/NationalPost...

Stephen Schwartz knows as much about the effects of aerosols on climate change as anyone in the world, and he's worried. He believes climate change is so massive an economic issue that we face costs "in the trillions if not quadrillions of dollars."

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So if Miskolczi were making a valid point, why would your source have to misrepresent Dr. Schwartz as a skeptic?  

What's are the details behind why Miskolczi fails to consider Venus?  Does Venus inconveniently disprove his theory?

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Jazzfan -

Please don't put words in my mouth then try to disprove what I didn't say.  To clarify Dr. Schwartz's position, here is an excerpt from his paper:

"It should be emphasized that one should not take any comfort with the fact that the aerosols may be negating much of the greenhouse gas forcing--in fact just the opposite. Because the atmospheric residence time of tropospheric aerosols is short (about a week) compared to the decades-to-centuries lifetimes of the greenhouse gases, then to whatever extent greenhouse gas forcing is being offset by aerosol forcing, it is last week's aerosols that are offsetting forcing by decades worth of greenhouse gases. Because the greenhouse gases are long-lived in the atmosphere, their atmospheric loadings tend to approximate the integral of emissions. Because the aerosols are short-lived, their loading tend to be proportional to the emissions themselves. There is only one function that is proportional to its own integral, the exponential function. So only if society is to make a commitment to continued exponential growth of emissions can such an offset be maintained indefinitely. And of course exponential growth cannot be maintained forever. So if the cooling influence of aerosols is in fact offsetting much of the warming influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, then when society is unable to maintain this exponential growth, the climate could be in for a real and long-lasting shock."

The article referenced above claims that Dr. Schwartz's paper support's Miskolczi's conclusion, namely that "as greenhouse gases rise, the negative feedback predominates, forcing values back down."

Clearly Dr. Schwartz believes no such thing.  He's simply pointing out a possible short term effect of aerosols, while very clearly stating why that is not cause for relief.  Of course the propaganda pros have completely overlooked that detail in their positioning of his work.  Is any part of his comment "there could be an increase of four to eight degrees in the next century" not clear?  Dr. Schwartz's expert opinion opposes Miskolczi's.  He's baffled that his work is being twisted as if it supported opposing views.

"He thinks a Herculean effort and great sacrifice is required to get the world down to zero net increase in carbon dioxide concentrations, an effort he compares to that which the Allies undertook in their all-out war against n**i Germany and Japan.  Recall World War II, where everyone was making a sacrifice: gas rationing, tire rationing, no new car production, food rationing," he explains. "I don't think the people of the world are ready or prepared to make such a level of personal sacrifice. Perhaps when the consequences of climate change become more apparent that will change. But by that time, there will be irreversible changes in climate."

http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/news/NationalPost...

Does that clarify his view, as one of the global experts on the topic?

The denialist blogs can take a sound bite or two out of context or completely misrepresent a scientist's position on the subject if they like, but those tactics only demonstrate the desperation of the people trying to mislead the public on this topic.

eric c -

Clearly Dr. Hansen's issue was with the White House, specifically a a former oil industry lobbyist.  

Miskolczi never mentions the White House at all.  Why do you introduce that new, unsupported implication that was never in Miskolczi's original complaint?

Answer 10

Sorry, but who cares about george bush these days???

he has messed up enough. Bleh!