Henk Tennekesis angry about the climate doomsday hype that politicians and scientists engage in
Seventeen years ago, I wrote a column expressing my concerns about the lack of honesty, integrity and humility of many climate scientists. "I worry about the arrogance of scientists who claim they can help to solve the climate problem, provided their research receives massive increases in funding," reads one line from my text.
Now, and I want to ring the alarm bell again. There is a difference, though: then I was worried, now I am angry. I am angry about the climate doomsday hype that politicians and scientists engage in. I am angry at Al Gore, I am angry at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists for resetting its Doomsday clock, I am angry at Lord Martin Rees for using the full weight of the Royal Society in support of the doomsday hype, and I am angry at the staff of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for their preoccupation with carbon dioxide emissions. I can go on much longer, but I will keep my anger in check.
I am quite annoyed about the IPCC's preoccupation with CO2. The scientific rationale behind this choice is obvious. Sophisticated climate models have been running for 20 years now. It has become evident that these models cannot be made to agree on anything except a possible relationship between greenhouse gases and a slight increase in globally-averaged temperatures.
The number of knobs that can be twiddled in the parameterisation of the radiation budget is not all that large. Seemingly realistic results can be achieved without much intellectual effort. I agree with the IPCC that there is a likely link between fossil fuel consumption and increased temperatures. But this is where the much proclaimed consensus ends.
Just one example: the models do not include feedback between changing farming and forest harvesting practices and the atmospheric circulation. Partly for that reason, they cannot seem to agree on precipitation patterns. Precipitation is far more relevant to the world's ecosystems, including food production, than a slight increase in temperature.
Why is it so difficult to make precipitation forecasts 50 years into the future? Most precipitation in the middle latitudes is associated with low-pressure systems, which move along storm tracks carved out by the jet stream. There is no theory describing why rising greenhouse gas concentrations might cause systematic changes in the jet stream and in precipitation patterns. We do not know, and for the time being cannot know, anything about changing patterns of clouds, storms and rain. We know nothing about possible changes in the storm track, so we cannot say anything about precipitation. It is bad enough that computer simulations cannot be checked against observations until after the fact. In the absence of a robust theory, one cannot even check climate simulations against fundamental insights.
This problem will not be resolved soon. Climate researchers instead opt for more computer power. They lobby for Petaflop Computing, which would be obtained if they could get the funds for 100 computers of the generation following the next. Quite a dream, because it would require a facility about the size of the largest nuclear research facilities in Europe.
In my years as director of research at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, I became rather suspicious of the supercomputer crowd, if only because they did not care about other work needed in climate change research.
I want to lobby for decency, modesty, honesty, integrity and balance in climate research. I hope we lose our obsession with climate forecasting. Climate simulations are best seen as sensitivity experiments, not as tools for policymakers. I said it in 1990 and I am saying it now: the constraints imposed by the planetary ecosystem require continuous adjustment and permanent adaptation.
Predictive skills are of secondary importance. We should stop our support for the preoccupation with greenhouse gases our politicians indulge in. Global energy policy is their business, not ours. We should not allow politicians to use fake doomsday projections as a cover-up for their real intentions. If IPCC does not come to its senses, I'll be happy to let it stew in its own juices. There is plenty of other work to do.
Hendrik (Henk) Tennekes was director of research at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute from 1977 to 1990 and, until 1995, was director of strategy development there. His contrary views on global warming saw his early retirement at age 58. In 1964 Tennekes obtained his DSci degree from Delft Technological University. In 1982 he was inducted into the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His 1986 lecture No Forecast is Complete without a Forecast of Forecast Skill inspired the development of the now universal method of ensemble forecasting. With John L Lumley (Cornell University) he wrote the textbook A First Course in Turbulence (MIT Press, 1972), now in its 22nd printing. In 1996 MIT Press published his popular-science book The Simple Science of Flight.