Someone just e-mailed me the latest example of a seemingly intelligent (albeit conservative) person who has joined the ranks of those successfully duped and confused by the deniers and the status quo media. Our latest victim’s impressive bio:
Dr. Stephen Leeb is the editor of The Complete Investor newsletter. The Complete Investor newsletter has earned awards for Editorial Excellence for 2004 and 2005 by the Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Association [sic -- Leeb hasn't quite figured out the internets, either]. Dr. Leeb is the author of six books on investments and financial trends. His newest book is Game Over: How to Prosper In A Shattered Economy.
He even seems to know something about energy, “His best-selling book The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself – and Profit – from the Coming Energy Crisis accurately predicted the surge in oil prices.” Who didn’t, though (other than Michael Lynch, who predicted back in 1996 “real oil prices FLAT for the next two decades)?
But based on the following nonsense he recently wrote and circulated, investors may ask themselves whether he bothers to do the most basic kind of research needed to justify following his advice:
COLD WINTERS FOR THE DOLLAR SPELL GOOD TIMES FOR ENERGY
… A declining dollar will also be positive for oil. But there is something else in the wings that could dramatically accelerate an already sure uptrend in energy prices. We are talking about global warming or the lack thereof.
Global warming has become a well entrenched ideology among scientists. Increasingly, however, the consensus view states that the next 10 to 20 years could actually be a cooler period within a long-term warming trend. We could see colder winters and lower average worldwide temperatures during this time. But according to the scientific community, a generation of colder temperatures is not reason to turn up the thermostats.
Sad, really. In fact, the “consensus view,” a term I don’t much like — let’s say, rather, “the scientific understanding as reflected in the peer-reviewed literature” — is that the next 10 to 20 years will be the hottest on record collectively (see “Exclusive interview with Dr. Mojib Latif, the man who confused the NY Times and New Scientist, the man who moved George Will and math-challenged Morano to extreme disinformation“).
There is no certainly no imaginary consensus predicting “colder winters and lower average worldwide temperatures” over the next one to two decades.
We have always had trouble with zealots whether they be Scientologists or ivory tower ideologues. And global warming is no exception. A few experiences and recent articles make me especially skeptical.
Yes, the entire scientific community, including hundreds of climate scientists, all of the major scientific publications, all of the world’s national academies of sciences, and the major scientific associations, are all the equivalent Scientologists or idealogues who never even bother to go outside and study, say, virtually all of the world’s glaciers, which are melting far faster than predicted, Dr. Stephen Leeb.
In the summer of 2008 I attended a conference hosted by Accenture in Rio. Sitting next to me for a good part of this event was the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This man was a Naval Admiral and a Harvard Ph.D. in applied math. He struck me as a soft-spoken, level-headed, plain-speaking man – certainly not someone inclined towards hyperbole. In addition, as his assistant informed me, he was very thick-skinned.
Turns out he had testified before a Congressional committee on the subject of global warming. His frank answer to the Chairman was that there was not enough evidence to conclude global warming is taking place. The Admiral took a lot of verbal disrespect for expressing such an unpopular view, but his expertise in weather patterns cannot be denied. Nor could the lack of expertise by the Senator who lambasted him.
In light of the data suggesting we may experience a cooler period, I find myself more respectful of the Admiral’s view.
This would be Admiral Lautenbacher, a Bush administration stooge appointee, with no climate science credentials, who muzzled actual US climate scientists from speaking out, a climate denier of whom Sen. McCain said in 2005 (back when he was still a maverick),
“You know, you are really one of the more astonishing witnesses in the 19 years I’ve been a member of this commitee Admiral. Because clearly you are in violation of the law…. And I again want to express my deep disappointment at your complete lack of concern about future generations of Americans that are affected by climate change which overwhelming scientific evidence… Let me just, because I’m sure you probably didn’t read it….. The National Academy of Sciences, along with National Academies of 10 other nations issued a joint statement on the global response to climate chage: The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions. And all we are asking from you is a report, and we can’t even get that.”
But I digress.
Leeb continues confusingly:
I was also struck by a recent article in the August 2009 issue of Science in which scientists found it nearly impossible to incorporate the effect of the sun into climate models. Variability and system feedbacks seem to have a bigger influence on temperatures than the sun’s radiation, even though we clearly get most of our heat from the sun.
Well, being unable to determine the sun’s role in a climate model is a bit like excluding the role of rainfall from agriculture.
Update: He apparently means, “Amplifying the Pacific Climate System Response to a Small 11-Year Solar Cycle Forcing” (subs. req’d), an explanatory study that has little bearing on climate change, as its final sentence makes clear: “This response also cannot be used to explain recent global warming because the 11-year solar cycle has not shown a measurable trend over the past 30 years.”
Our point is that we cannot assume the global warming theory is complete and proven. All we know is that we are likely to experience some colder winters in the years ahead, and they will in turn affect the demand for energy.
Colder weather will certainly up the demand for natural gas, oil, and coal, which will in turn drive up the prices of these commodities.
Energy prices are correcting at the moment, as they usually do between the driving season and the heating season. However, if we have a cold winter, we can expect gas and oil prices will be bid up substantially within the next 2-3 months. If people start to realize that cooler winters are a long-term scenario, energy prices may receive a long-term bid as well.
Note how Leeb leaped from what he thinks (incorrectly) the consensus says “could” happen, to knowing that the likely net impact of future climate change will be colder weather that drives up the demand for fossil fuels.
For the record, something Leeb apparently never checks, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s, Short-Term Energy and Winter Fuels Outlook, says:
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) most recent projection of heating degree-days, the Lower-48 States are forecast to be 1 percent warmer this winter compared with last winter and 1 percent milder than the 30-year average (1971-2000).
Yes, that’s right, Leeb believes the former head of NOAA, an anti-scientific denier, but doesn’t actually bother checking NOAA’s near-term forecast. And people pay money for his investment advice!
Once again, this bodes well for Brazil, a country which is a net energy exporter. It will impact other developing countries which will be consuming commodities hand over fist. And it will affect the U.S., where year-over-year energy prices show a positive gain despite the recent correction. By the start of next year, energy prices could easily be up 100% y-o-y. In the past, such a high rate of change has always signaled trouble for the stock market and the economy. If it happens this time, in the context of high unemployment, the impact could be worse.
Clearly, you should own energy stocks such as Schlumberger (SLB), the leading oil service company, Transocean (RIG), the leading deepwater driller, and others in our portfolio. The entire energy patch could see extraordinary gains in the years ahead – the result of a long-term trend that could force Al Gore to return his Nobel Prize.
Okay, Leeb is obviously your mainstream rightwinger — the Gore reference by itself makes for an almost ironclad diagnosis of anti-science syndrome (ASS).
I don’t generally give out investment advice, but in this case I will make a slight exception. If you believe in disinformation and not science, if you think we are headed into a long-term cooling trend, then Dr. Stephen Leeb is obviously the guy to place all your money with.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Read tea leaves.
As the former President of the American Association of Physics Teachers (which is apt) population and peak oil expert Al Bartlett says, “For every PhD (IPCC, NOAA, NCAR and University scientists), there is an equal and opposite PhD (Dr. Leeb and Admiral Lautenbracher, whose climate change expertise rivals that of Captain Crunch).
Conversely, read the highly-respected investor Jeremy Grantham in his July, 2009 GMO Quarterly Letter, especially his article, “Initial Report: Running Out of Resources.” While more about resource depletion than climate change, he still does an excellent job and his sources are Al Bartlett, Garrett Hardin (Author of “The Tragedy of the Commons”) and Chris Martensen.
Pulling your money from Leeb to Grantham would make a statement that you like to get your advice from those who base their investment opinions on the most sound and current science and have at least a nodding acquaintance with reality.
Those who get resource depletion tend to get climate change, and vice versa. Those who are serial deniers deny both.
They’re really two sides of the same coin of overshoot. Another dream project of mine is a profile of Bartlett, Hardin, Paul Ehrlich and William Catton, titled “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
Joe the Science article may be “Amplifying the Pacific Climate System Response to a Small 11-Year Solar Cycle Forcing” date August 28th.
What’s ironic is that energy prices likely will rise, but because of peak oil and not some nonexistent cooling.
@Brenne: Well, I’m not sure I get it. Climate change means we have too much fossil fuel. Resource depletion means we have too little.
Climate change is incredibly important. Resource depletion is an intuitive myth, but irrelevant.
#6 John H says: “Climate change means we have too much fossil fuel.”
That looks incorrect to me. Climate change means we use too much fossil fuel, which is a rather different issue. I’m not sure your contrast/analogy then follows.
Looks like Andy Revkin has been duped again into providing denier Steve McIntyre with a forum for spewing his delusions:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/climate-auditor-challenged-to-do-climate-science/
And an unfortunately worded Revkin post on sea ice: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/spread-of-thicker-arctic-ice-seen-last-summer/
It’s good that Revkin makes clear that if there is a recovery in sea ice, it’s only a short term hiatus from the trend, but you certainly don’t get that impression from the first few paragraphs.
John H -
I strongly agree that climate change is incredibly important.
I’m sorry but I don’t understand “Resource depletion is an intuitive myth, but irrelevant.”
It’s classic American binary thinking that couldn’t allow for the possibility of both being a problem.
Peak oil is a reality, just like climate change. At a talk in Colorado two years ago, Bush’s Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman said that we’ll be replacing conventional oil with tar sands, oil shale and coal-to-liquids. I asked him, “Mr. Secretary, what will that do to our children’s and grandchildren’s climate?”
Each of these is much dirtier than conventional oil, creating more CO2 and thus climate change. If globally or locally people can’t access fossil fuels as they’re used to, then they’ll probably cut down trees, creating more CO2 and fewer trees mean less of a carbon sink to absorb CO2.
Al Bartlett’s thesis is that consistent growth of population or oil consumption or any other material thing on earth will prove to be unsustainable. Resource depletion is a reality and in the case of oil the July, 2008 spike to $147 a barrel – even the speculation was accelerated by the demand exceeding supply in the production chain – played a significant role in the current global financial downturn.
John, read Richard Heinberg’s September Museletter, take Chris Martenson’s free Crash Course on-line, read Bill McKibben, Al Bartlett, William Catton, James Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer – and then I’d really like to hear what you think after you do.
Everything is intertwined infinitely more than we know. Every thinker I respect (I collaborate will all those I mention) is helping us see these connections and address them.
Today’s EIA outlook has a much different picture for the upcoming winter.
Richard[9]:
I agree completely.
This false dichotomy–either peak oil is a Big Problem or climate chaos is a Big Problem, but not both–really drives me nuts. One aspect that I find particularly infuriating is how often very dedicated and highly educated environmentalists parrot the line that “peak oil is a good thing because it will limit our CO2 emissions”. I try to explain to them, using examples like the ones you cite, why peak oil is even worse than it would be otherwise thanks to climate chaos, and remarkably few of them get it.
“A few experiences and recent articles make me especially skeptical.”
A conversation with a political hack and a few dubious articles has generated some “newfound skeptism”. He doesn’t sound like he’s practicing good skeptism.
Well said, Lou!
While Leeb doesn’t get ecosystem services, he does seem to get resource depletion. I haven’t read the book of his you refer to Joe (Game over: How to…), but the summary on Amazon.com and on the cover seems to point to some basically good, though partially unethical, investment advice over the next while: invest in oil, alternative energy, gold, military and resource-rich countries. Given what we know of the global socio-economic consequences of the ongoing and ever-worsening ecosystem deterioration, this does seem like basically good investment advice in broad strokes (again, minus the ethical dimension). Does this mean the overly ideological can arrive at some of the correct conclusions despite their blind spots?
After Enron, AIG, Madoff and the entire mortgage debacle – we are seeing a furious search for the guilty perpetrators.
In a future of horrible climate consequences, it would be surprising not to see some serious finger pointing. It seems prudent that any person in a position today who can influence finance, policy or commerce would be very careful about evaluating and properly conveying the facts.
Isn’t that obvious?
John H [6] is exactly right. We have way too much oil in all its conventional and unconventional forms. We are not going to run out of gas before we drive off the climate cliff. We have to leave massive amounts of the stuff in the ground unused or fry our life support systems.
Sure the EROI is declining…but it is still an amazing deal even at astronomical prices. Since a barrel contains the energy of a person working for 18 months, paying $500/barrel is like paying a person 30 cents an hour to do hard labour. Cheap.
And sure we won’t be pouring it into SUVs and vacation flights to far flung leisurelands. But it IS going to get extracted and burned unless we get our act together and create quantities of more attractive, survivable alternatives in time.
What do you expect from the Wall Street clowns? There’s a word starting with W and rhyming on Banker. ’nuff said.
I want to thank everyone for their comments. I have a few points in rebuttal. First I hope Joe Romm is better at elucidating complex climate models than in characterizing individuals. As it happens I am a registered Democrat. The only Republican I have ever voted for was a the liberal Bill Green, a congressman who served my district very well for many years. I guess I am saying that ad hominem attacks and stereotyping really do not make your case, but rather mark you as the kind of zealot science should decry.
[JR: Your gratuitous Al Gore comment undercuts your claim here.]
Your attack on Admiral Lautenbacher is particularly distasteful.
[JR: Was McCain's attack on him distasteful? Are the facts distasteful?]
Your trying to separate expertise in applied math from climate modeling seems silly. Yes I am skeptical of global warming but not a denier. But I am a denier of scientific conclusions based on any climate model that does not include the sun. Here is a quote from the IPCC 4th Assessment Report in 2007 – “Despite considerable effort since the TAR, uncertainties remain in the representation of solar radiation ….” It is ludicrous to make climate projections if we don’t know the role the sun plays in the system.
[JR: Some remaining "Uncertainties" does not equate to "don't know the role the sun plays." This is a classic denier talking point: Certainty is never possibly, therefore we can never act.]
The recent brief article in Science is more or less along the same lines. Nor do you have to be a skeptic to believe the next generation will be cooler as Professor Latif’s recent analysis shows.
[JR: Wow! You didn't even both to read my links, or do any research, else you'd know that second sentence is simply false.]
Over the past two years I have been lucky to work closely with perhaps the world’s top applied mathematician. One takeaway is that complex systems, financial, climate or otherwise are far more complicated than any of the above comments suggest. If any of you want to have an honest debate on energy, resources, or climate read my latest book – I will even send it to anyone who asks – and we will hopefully discuss issues in a way that will make us both proud.
As a footnote I would not describe myself in political terms but rather as a truth seeker, who more often than not gets it right. In the early 80′s I wrote of a coming bull market. In 1999 I warned of a tech bubble and warned that our technologies were not up to dealing with the next decade’s problems which would be food and energy. If you can present intelligent arguments to counter my skepticism I will be very appreciative. Many thanks, Stephen Leeb
[JR: Been there, done that, didn't take.]
I am forever reading about people who think we’re having, or are about to have, significant cooling for decades and kicking myself because I don’t know how to contact them and bet on it. So imagine my delight as I reach the end of the comments and find Mr Leeb himself here! (I’m not much for titles, but I’ll gladly call you Dr Leeb if we can arrange a bet.)
I think 2010-2019 will very likely be warmer than 2000-2009, continuing in the same direction through 2020-2029 and 2030-2039. You seem to think the opposite. Are you sincere?
How about taking those 4 decades and putting $1000 on comparisons of adjacent decades, $10,000 on comparisons of pairs 20 years apart, and $100,000 on the most widely separated pair (2000-2009 vs 2030-2039).
I have more suggestions about the particulars, but I’ll mostly leave them out until I get some initial interest. We can arrange the bet to be fair (I don’t collect unless the warming is enough to matter, and you don’t collect unless there is cooling, or way less warming than scientists predict.) Maybe scale the payoff to the change in temperature. Perhaps denominate the payoff in S&P 500 share prices, to account for passage of time.
I get a middle-class paycheck, so $100K is more than my yearly earnings. I don’t want to pry, but I’m guessing your income and wealth is a healthy multiple of mine. This is about as much as I could risk without talking to my wife. You can’t say I’m a coward. How about you?
(Bet terms open to more or less anybody, by the way.)
The comment on Al Gore was meant as levity – sorry if you took it the wrong way. Yes McCain’s comments were distasteful especially given his own ignorance about the subject. Are you joking when you try to underplay what “remaining uncertainties” means. If you do know the role the sun plays in the modeling – don’t keep it to yourself. Are you questioning Latif’s conclusions. By the way he is a very well known climatologist whose views were echoed in an article that appeared earlier this year in Nature. If your arguments are the best global warmers can do heaven help us if it is indeed a real phenomenon.
[JR: Seriously, you know more about McCain on issues of climate science? I doubt you have talked to one 10th the number of climate scientists he has, let alone visited the polar regions with experts to see the impacts first hand.
The joke is that you are quoting the IPCC report when you don't even believe its conclusions. You cherry-picked an utterly irrelevant comment in order to dismiss the entire report.
I know that a dozen studies in the past decade have shown that the sun does not play a significant role in recent warming. Since you supposedly are interested in the truth, then I suggest you start here and actually read the literature.
You have no clue what Latif's conclusions are. Have you interviewed him within the last week? I have. Have you bothered to even read his Nature piece from last year? I included the link, but you ignored it. Try reading this.
The more you write, the more you demonstrate how little interest you have in the truth. The mere fact you use the phrase "global warmers" makes clear that you are anti-scientific. It is science that tells us humans are the principal cause of recent warming and that our contribution is going to dominate in the future as warming accelerates. To reject that conclusion is to reject science itself.]
Re: Peak oil, resource depletion, and climate change.
I just don’t care about resource (by which I mean fossil fuels) depletion.
What a confusing message to policymakers: “Climate change is overwhelmingly important problem and we need to switch to non-carbon fuels. And by the way, we’re also worried about running of those carbon fuels.”
To Ric Merritt: I won’t bet because I hope you are right. I am in favor of any event that can serve as a catalyst to a more sustainable future. Even if I completely bought your arguments on global warming I would still argue that resource depletion is much more likely to focus public opinion than a still somewhat distant prospect of a warmer earth, which according to some such as Freeman Dyson, might not be such a bad thing anyway. As I discus at length in my latest book I do believe resource depletion is a major threat to our children and an extremely complex problem to solve. I pray that it is not already not too late to solve. Though I am agnostic on global warming I will be ecstatic if putative evidence of the phenomenon sets us on the right path.
Darn. There goes my retirement top-off. First they throw around all kinds of statements and insinuations about future temperatures, then they demonstrate to my complete satisfaction that they don’t really believe themselves. Stephen, it has nothing whatsoever to do with our hopes! I dearly hope that you are right about temperature, and that I’m a jackass to trust all the scientists who will be outed as jackasses if you are right. And we probably have some areas of agreement about resources. But I called you out on statements about future temperatures, and you slunk off into the bushes in another direction.
Offer still open, with details TBD as per above, to all the other “it’s not warming, it’s cooling” believers out there.
Hey Joe get real, you are making a fool of yourself. On McCain: Aren’t there people who have talked to hundreds of musicians and gone to hundreds of concerts and yet can’t play piano. Do I really have to spell out the analogy. How can anyone take you seriously when you refuse to analytically deal with the sun in a climate model. Incidentally any scientist including you Joe should be willing to look at contrary views to see what they may be missing – thus my comments on the IPCC report. To refer to their comment on the sun as irrelevant is a parody on your thinking and models. As for Latif’s article, if you are referring to the Letter he co-authored in Nature in May 2008, I have read it and referred to it earlier in one of my publications. If you are so sure of your views why don’t you publish a peer reviewed response. I guess the real joke is that we are not that far apart as my response to Ric Merritt might indicate. I believe your cause would be better served by focusing on resource depletion.
[JR: Wow, and I thought you didn't like ad hominem attacks. And that has got to be the dumbest analogy I've ever seen in my life -- anyone who tries can potentially understand the science after talking to leading experts and reading the literature. But you can't learn to play the piano just by listening (well, maybe 1 in a million can).
You have ignored the entire scientific literature I directed you to that makes clear the solar forcing is not a major contributor to recent warming.
You have misread Latif, like many in the media. Again, I interviewed him personally last week, so I can safely say that you have utterly misstated both what that paper concluded and what he actually believes. As Latif will happily tell anyone who asks, “my only forecast is to 2015.” If you don't know that, you don't know much.]
Dr. Leeb: There is complexity, particularly when it comes to regional details. But the case for cumulative human influence and potential feedback acceleration, with consideration for inertial lag, has only strengthened. That includes (but isn’t limited to) research on whether solar forcing fits the trend. Even a look at the stratospheric (vs. tropospheric) temperature and solar data gives some idea. Certainly there are enough indicators that we’re gambling with the future of holocene climate. A decade or two of “cooling” would not change that, even if it WERE pending. Actually, it would worsen if people saw it as an excuse to accumulate yet more CO2, which would then COMBINE with natural fluctuation in things like ocean-atmosphere heat exchange.
But what I want to know is how you came to the conclusion that cooling is a “consensus view”. Even if Latif’s findings have been well peer-reviewed at this point, he never predicted that the anthropogenic forcing would abate or be offset by North Atlantic cooling over “the next 10 to 20 years”. Please take a moment to actually read Joe’s links, so that you can understand what was being said.
Actually, Dr. Leeb, you could even post a link to a Latif paper where he actually says what you claim about global-scale “cooling” (relative to a standard 30-year base period?), and ISN’T talking about a 10-year centered mean ending in 2015.
To all, I am sorry if I stirred things up or upset anyone. That was not my intention. To Joe Romm, you are right I am sorry for attscking you personally. As my reply to Ric Merritt implies I am agnostic on global warming. Agnostic because I do not believe you can have a theory about the future climate without taking into account the sun. There have been times in the past when the earth was a lot warmer than today because of the earth’s position relative to the sun. I am sure you all know that. But what is really silly here is that I absolutely believe in developing sustainable energy sources. Over the past decade I have written four books on this topic. I believe without sustainable energy my and your children will have very dim prospects on this planet. Maybe we can agree on that.
The problem with money merchants is they tend to loose feedback with reality ( – until the bubble bursts, and sometimes not even then). I’m sorry to see Stephen serve an excellent example of this…
The piano thing is actually a great metaphor about appreciating real scientists: I can tell Gould from Gulda and appreciate a master playing a good instrument – but myself is playing more like a circus dog.
It is telling and a chapter in a book that not one of you in all your huffing and puffing have yet to say how the sun fits. Yours is a religion not a science. That’s fine but just face up to it. Incidentally if you don’t like the metaphor about piano (which does work) try this one. Talk to experts on representation theory – a branch of higher mathematics – and after you spend as much time as you like come back with a precis. Give me a break about McCain’s learning by osmosis.
[JR: You sir, have just made a bald-faced lie, as all my readers can see. I have directed you to the scientific literature multiple times -- and even given you a link -- that shows a dozen studies in the last several years make clear that the sun does not play a significant role in recent warming. Again, it is here. It is you, a sun worshipper in spite of all the available evidence to the contrary, who practices a religion in the face of overwhelming science.
And talking to dozens of top scientists, putting on multiple hearings, and actually visiting the places with the most extreme climate impacts with leading experts is not "osmosis" -- whereas your laughable story of sitting next to a non-climate expert and well-known denier and being persuaded by him (because he doesn't have a thick skin!) -- is osmosis. ]
Representation theory: Translating stuff about abstract symmetry groups into matrix groups.
It is often possible to illuminate abstract math to the willing lay person. I know non-scientists grasping quantum mechanics without any idea of Hilbert space. With a more Earth-bound science like climatology it is even easier.
So you read a course description which I doubt includes the word “stuff.” Now give me a mathematical example of an operator that translates the stuff. To conclude this, my last post. I want to thank you all. First the names with which you attacked me though misapplied were kind of tame, i.e., conservative. But then you showed your true colors – “money merchant.” Incidentally my mother’s maiden name is Walsh. And still no real mention of the sun. Or put it this way more name calling than sun analysis. Solar forcing – a term I am sure McCain is very familiar with – and sunspots just don’t cut it. Where are the axioms about the sun which must underlie your science. They have been replaced by name calling. You have given me a lot of great information. In my penultimate post I said a chapter in a book – it is probably a lot more than that. Again, many, many thanks.
[JR: Incredible. Multiple studies on the relative unimportance of the "Solar forcing" recently "just don't cut it." This may be your last post -- but it won't be mine.]
Ummm, not that I want to have the last word here.
The knackpunkt is: Solar stuff was important for pre-anthropocene climate variations. Today it is peanuts compared to GHG forcing. This is old and well-established science.
Mr. Leeb, sir, although I’m of the opinion that your remarks on climate change are very much uninformed and thus misinforming, I agree with you that a large part of the solution for both resource depletion and climate change lies in developing alternative energy sources. In that sense, yes, we are all on the same side here. However, if you would delve further into the climate change debate you would find out that a lot of the vociferous “skepticism” is sponsored by parties who can’t wait to deplete all resources and make huge amounts of profit in the process. The “skeptic” side of the debate is also heavily fueled by libertarian free market think tanks. What do you think the ideology of free market libertarianism will do for resource depletion? I’m all for a free market (even though it is impossible to establish) but somehow I don’t think it has mechanisms built into it that deal with the long term consequences of current behavior.
In this light we are not on the same side. If you would be genuinely worried about resource depletion you would be very cautious and do a lot more research before making the remarks you are making about climate change. Because right now you are actually serving the psychological and economic factors that are causing an increasing depletion of crucial resources (and global climate change, as far as I and many others here are concerned). And I’m not sure it is what you want.
With regards to the sun: You might want to go Anthony Watts’ blog which is a bastion for skeptics/deniers. There’s a solar physicist there called Leif Svalgaard who’s highly respected by all. Although he’s skeptical of the whole climate change movement, he points out time and again that according to current scientific knowledge the sun has a very minor influence on the Earth’s climate. Perhaps this might convince you of the erroneousness of your claims with regards to solar influence.
To Neven, While I said no more general posts, I do want to thank you for your comments. For the record I am wholly opposed to libertarians. On the Internet you can find me in a perhaps too passionate debate with Peter Schiff. Actually there were two or three. I will check the website you mentioned. And again while I may not agree with you I do appreciate your point of view and do promise you that I have an open mind.
Dr. Leeb, no one denies that climate change, regional or otherwise, has occurred in the past. What HASN’T occurred is rapid global-scale climate and ocean change during the long, biodiverse, and highly populated holocene interglacial. But even if you insist on clinging to the sun with all your might, you could at least issue a correction in your newsletter. Acknowledge that there was a widespread misinterpretation of Dr. Latif’s study as a decadal global cooling forecast. And that betting on something more than a few years of relatively flat global temperature and maybe some coolish North Atlantic regional temperatures (if that), is a huge bet indeed. In general, the annual to decadal “internal” variability (that cancels out in the longer-term averages) has been difficult to pin down.
Dr. Leeb, thank you for responding on my comment. I think I more or less understand everyone’s position here and hope to reduce the hostility a bit.
Your responses to Joe Romm’s piece already gave me the impression that you are acting in good faith. I’m not surprised that you have written what you did as it is so easy to be misled. Now, your investment advice could very well be spot on for the coming years, because it’s not certain at all that the US (and/or the rest of the world) will experience mild winters. It is very unlikely however that the rising temperature trend will fail to pick at a certain point. This makes the rationale behind your advice unwarranted in my view.
The tone of the remarks in your investment advice has led Joe Romm to write his critique. He’s especially critical because obviously you are a person who is smart enough to understand the cause and consequences of resource depletion and thus should also be able to understand the cause and consequences of anthropogenic global warming. Please try and put yourself in Joe Romm’s position, especially if you’re new to the debate. When you believe that climate change is a serious issue and an enormous challenge – like Joe Romm does – you get tired after a while of patiently debunking people who assert all kinds of falsities and misinformation (some do it on purpose, most don’t). It costs a lot of time and is mostly futile. Sooner or later any person will give up and switch to a shoot-now-ask-questions-later-tactic. This is what Joe Romm does. It’s the understandable role he plays in the climate change debate, even though it isn’t always fair or advantageous (as it can put people off when they haven’t yet thoroughly researched the climate change issue).
In a way it is unfortunate that you get this treatment, because clearly it is not your intention to misinform. What then usually happens is that people feel insulted and get entrenched in one side of an issue they perhaps haven’t researched properly. The danger is that because of this they will probably continue to unwittingly spread untruths or exaggerations regarding a certain matter. You yourself for instance have a certain influence, but if climate change is a reality this influence has certain ethical implications.
Imagine someone who knows a lot about air pollution claiming all of a sudden that the belief that resource depletion is a big problem for the future is just “a well entrenched ideology among scientists” but that “increasingly the consensus view states” that the market will solve all of that. How would you respond to that? Well, it’s more or less what has happened here. I sincerely hope Romm’s critique doesn’t impede you in keeping your mind open and reconsider the implications of your investment advice, because they might have an effect on people beyond the investment side of the issue. Climate change and resource depletion are on the same side of the coin, along with many other global problems.
This is not about you recanting and saying “You are right, please forgive me”, but I hope you will be more careful in the near future when phrasing your investment advice based on weather or climate.
One last thing with regards to the Mojib Latif controversy, I’d like to point you to this short clip on Youtube. It has just been made and is very enlightening.
If you find it interesting and have the time I hope you will also watch more of the clips Peter Sinclair has produced so far, especially the recent 1998 Revisited clip. It contains clips from the recent “skeptic” climate conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a free market libertarian think tank. This conference was attended by virtually all the big players from the “skeptic” side of the debate. If you are allergic to free market libertarianism, it’s things like this that should have your alarm bells ringing before you start reproducing “skeptic” talking points. It is one of the things that make me very, very suspicious of everything skeptics/deniers say, and some more research usually proves this suspicion to be well justified.