date: Tue Jul  8 13:07:45 2003
from: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Fwd: RE: Response to terrible climate op ed?
to: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk

     X-Sender: mem6u@multiproxy.evsc.virginia.edu
     X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1.1
     Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 18:31:22 -0400
     To: Raymond Bradley <rbradley@geo.umass.edu>,
             Keith Briffa <k.briffa@uea.ac.uk>,
             Philip D Jones <P.Jones@uea.ac.uk>,
             Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@cgd.ucar.edu>,
             Tom Wigley <wigley@ucar.edu>,
             Michael Oppenheimer <omichael@princeton.edu>,
             Tom Crowley <tcrowley@duke.edu>
     From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@virginia.edu>
     Subject: Fwd: RE: Response to terrible climate op ed?
     interesting timing, eh?
     mike

     Subject: RE: Response to terrible climate op ed?
     Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 12:13:35 -0400
     X-MS-Has-Attach:
     X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
     Thread-Topic: Response to terrible climate op ed?
     Thread-Index: AcNEokfXBMkDiyQaTMWtTC1t/YT0zAAAGP3g
     From: "Profeta, Tim (Lieberman)" <Tim_Profeta@lieberman.senate.gov>
     To: Aaron Rappaport <arappaport@ucsusa.org>,
        "DesChamps, Floyd (Commerce)" <Floyd_DesChamps@commerce.senate.gov>,
        Annie_Petsonk@environmentaldefense.org,
        Elizabeth_Thompson@environmentaldefense.org,
        Melissa_Carey/EnvironmentalDefense@environmentaldefense.org,
        "Wicke, Heather (McCain)" <Heather_Wicke@mccain.senate.gov>,
        dlashof@nrdc.org, Symons@nwf.org, omichael@princeton.edu,
        Alden Meyer <ameyer@ucsusa.org>, Peter Frumhoff <pfrumhoff@ucsusa.org>,
        mann@virginia.edu
     MMDF-Warning:  Parse error in original version of preceding line at mail.virginia.edu
     X-OriginalArrivalTime: 07 Jul 2003 16:13:36.0507 (UTC) FILETIME=[B85E14B0:01C344A2]
     X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by multiproxy.evsc.Virginia.EDU id
     h67GDow06623
     I think we need to get a scientists' oped out, very soon.
     -----Original Message-----
     From: Aaron Rappaport [[1]mailto:arappaport@ucsusa.org]
     Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 12:11 PM
     To: DesChamps, Floyd (Commerce); Annie_Petsonk@environmentaldefense.org;
     Elizabeth_Thompson@environmentaldefense.org;
     Melissa_Carey/EnvironmentalDefense@environmentaldefense.org; Profeta,
     Tim (Lieberman); Wicke, Heather (McCain); dlashof@nrdc.org;
     Symons@nwf.org; omichael@princeton.edu; Alden Meyer; Peter Frumhoff;
     mann@virginia.edu
     Subject: Response to terrible climate op ed?
     Are any scientists planning to rebut the terrible Schlesinger op ed that appeared in
     this morning's Washington Post?  Coordinating on this would avoid duplication of
     effort.   Our thinking is that a scientists' rebuttal would be more pursuasive than one
     from enviros or politicians.
     Schlesinger's op-ed appears to be a recycling for popular consumption of the recent
     Soon-Baliunas papers that questioned the existence of anthropogenic climate change.  To
     rebut, one apparently has to call Fred Hyatt at the Washington Post to arrange to
     publish a "Taking Exception" column.
     Thanks, Aaron
     Copyright 2003 The Washington Post
     [2]http://www.washingtonpost.com
     The Washington Post
     July 07, 2003, Monday, Final Edition
     SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A17
     LENGTH: 1057 words
     HEADLINE: Climate Change: The Science Isn't Settled
     BYLINE: James Schlesinger
     BODY:
     Despite the certainty many seem to feel about the causes, effects and extent of climate
     change, we are in fact making only slow progress in our understanding of the underlying
     science. My old professor at Harvard, the great economist Joseph Schumpeter, used to
     insist that a principal tool of economic science was history -- which served to temper
     the enthusiasms of the here and now. This must be even more so in climatological
     science. In recent years the inclination has been to attribute the warming we have
     lately experienced to a single dominant cause -- the increase in greenhouse gases. Yet
     climate has always been changing -- and sometimes the swings have been rapid.
     At the time the U.S. Department of Energy was created in 1977, there was widespread
     concern about the cooling trend that had been observed for the previous quarter-century.
     After 1940 the temperature, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, had dropped about
     one-half degree Fahrenheit -- and more in the higher latitudes. In 1974 the National
     Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, stated: "During
     the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more
     sharply over the last decade." Two years earlier, the board had observed: "Judging from
     the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should
     be drawing to an end . . . leading into the next glacial age." And in 1975 the National
     Academy of Sciences stated: "The climates of the earth have always been changing, and
     they will doubtless continue to do so in the future. How large these future changes will
     be, and where and how rapidly they will occur, we do not know."
     These statements -- just a quarter-century old -- should provide us with a dose of
     humility as we look into the more distant future. A touch of that humility might help
     temper the current raging controversies over global warming. What has concerned me in
     recent years is that belief in the greenhouse effect, persuasive as it is, has been
     transmuted into the dominant forcing mechanism affecting climate change -- more or less
     to the exclusion of other forcing mechanisms. The CO2/climate-change relationship has
     hardened into orthodoxy -- always a worrisome sign -- an orthodoxy that searches out
     heretics and seeks to punish them.
     We are in command of certain essential facts. First, since the start of the 20th
     century, the mean temperature at the earth's surface has risen about 1 degree
     Fahrenheit. Second, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing for more than
     150 years. Third, CO2 is a greenhouse gas -- and increases in it, other things being
     equal, are likely to lead to further warming. Beyond these few facts, science remains
     unable either to attribute past climate changes to changes in CO2 or to forecast with
     any degree of precision how climate will change in the future.
     Of the rise in temperature during the 20th century, the bulk occurred from 1900 to 1940.
     It was followed by the aforementioned cooling trend from 1940 to around 1975. Yet the
     concentration of greenhouse gases was measurably higher in that later period than in the
     former. That drop in temperature came after what was described in the National
     Geographic as "six decades of abnormal warmth."
     In recent years much attention has been paid in the press to longer growing seasons and
     shrinking glaciers. Yet in the earlier period up to 1975, the annual growing season in
     England had shrunk by some nine or 10 days, summer frosts in the upper Midwest
     occasionally damaged crops, the glaciers in Switzerland had begun to advance again, and
     sea ice had returned to Iceland's coasts after more than 40 years of its near absence.
     When we look back over the past millennium, the questions that arise are even more
     perplexing. The so-called Climatic Optimum of the early Middle Ages, when the earth
     temperatures were 1 to 2 degrees warmer than today and the Vikings established their
     flourishing colonies in Greenland, was succeeded by the Little Ice Age, lasting down to
     the early 19th century. Neither can be explained by concentrations of greenhouse gases.
     Moreover, through much of the earth's history, increases in CO2 have followed global
     warming, rather than the other way around.
     We cannot tell how much of the recent warming trend can be attributed to the greenhouse
     effect and how much to other factors. In climate change, we have only a limited grasp of
     the overall forces at work. Uncertainties have continued to abound -- and must be
     reduced. Any approach to policy formation under conditions of such uncertainty should be
     taken only on an exploratory and sequential basis. A premature commitment to a fixed
     policy can only proceed with fear and trembling.
     In the Third Assessment by the International Panel on Climate Change, recent climate
     change is attributed primarily to human causes, with the usual caveats regarding
     uncertainties. The record of the past 150 years is scanned, and three forcing mechanisms
     are highlighted: anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gases, volcanoes and the
     11-year sunspot cycle. Other phenomena are represented poorly, if at all, and generally
     are ignored in these models. Because only the past 150 years are captured, the vast
     swings of the previous thousand years are not analyzed. The upshot is that any natural
     variations, other than volcanic eruptions, are overshadowed by anthropogenic greenhouse
     gases.
     Most significant: The possibility of long-term cycles in solar activity is neglected
     because there is a scarcity of direct measurement. Nonetheless, solar irradiance and its
     variation seem highly likely to be a principal cause of long-term climatic change. Their
     role in longer-term weather cycles needs to be better understood.
     There is an idea among the public that "the science is settled." Aside from the limited
     facts I cited earlier, that remains far from the truth. Today we have far better
     instruments, better measurements and better time series than we have ever had. Still, we
     are in danger of prematurely embracing certitudes and losing open-mindedness. We need to
     be more modest.
     The writer, who has served as secretary of energy, made these comments at a symposium on
     the 25th anniversary of the Energy Department's C02/climate change program.
     LOAD-DATE: July 07, 2003
     ******************************
     Eric Young
     Assistant Press Secretary
     Union of Concerned Scientists
     1707 H Street, NW, Suite 600
     Washington, DC  20006-3962
     202-223-6133, ext. 124
     202-223-6162 - Fax
     eyoung@ucsusa.org
     Aaron Rappaport, Ph.D
     Washington Representative for Global Warming
     Union of Concerned Scientists
     202/ 223 - 6133 x132

     ______________________________________________________________
                         Professor Michael E. Mann
                Department of Environmental Sciences, Clark Hall
                           University of Virginia
                          Charlottesville, VA 22903
     _______________________________________________________________________
     e-mail: mann@virginia.edu   Phone: (434) 924-7770   FAX: (434) 982-2137
              [3]http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/mann.shtml

   --
   Professor Keith Briffa,
   Climatic Research Unit
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K.

   Phone: +44-1603-593909
   Fax: +44-1603-507784
   [4]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa[5]/

