Global warming controversy generates heat
Scientists challenge prof
Samara Kalk Derby - 6/30/2007 8:26 am
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/199677

Since it was reported this month by The Capital Times, Professor
Emeritus Reid Bryson's anti-establishment position against man-made

global warming has provoked floods of interest, great indignation and
-- particularly among his fellow University of Wisconsin scientists --
no shortage of exasperation.

The story of Bryson's denial that industrially produced carbon dioxide
is linked to climate change caught the attention of national outlets
like the Drudge Report and drew more than 30,000 readers in the first
90 minutes after it was posted on this paper's Web site.

More than 100 have posted their reactions to it on The Capital Times
online forum, dozens of others have written letters to the editor and
almost two weeks later the story remains among the most viewed.

Statements by the global warming skeptic also stirred up controversy
in scientific departments across the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Many who work with the 87-year-old Bryson say they have the utmost
respect for him, but fault his opinions for not being substantiated by
fact.

"There is a huge mountain of evidence and scientific theory and
publications, all out there in the public arena, and Reid comes along
and has some other idea, but he provides no evidence. You just have to
take his word for it," said Jonathan Foley, a climatologist at
UW-Madison who directs the Center for Sustainability and the Global
Environment.

"If he could come up with any evidence for his hypothesis, anything
that would back up what he is saying, and he could publish it, he
would win the Nobel Prize," Foley said. "Everyone would be thrilled if
he were right. Global warming is a major, major global crisis and it
would be fantastic if Reid were correct. But sadly he is not."

'Fabulously unorthodox': Foley has a strong personal link to Bryson
and says he has always looked up to him. He was the student of one of
Bryson's students, making Bryson his "academic grandfather." He
stepped into Bryson's old position and was the first person on campus
to hold the Reid Bryson chair.

Thousands of scientists all over the world support the idea of global
warming and hold up their data to public scrutiny, he said, adding
that they have been putting out evidence -- not just computer models,
but real-world observations.

"There is nothing hidden, nothing obscured. This has been going on for
decades," he said.

Bryson has every right to hold his views on climate change, Foley
said. "Unfortunately, in the scientific world we demand evidence, just
like you would in a courtroom. And I think he came to court
empty-handed in this case."

Jonathan Martin, chairman of the atmospheric and oceanic sciences
department at UW-Madison, also acknowledges a deep affection for
Bryson, calling him an icon.

Martin said he doesn't want to get into a public fight over the issue,
adding that Bryson is entitled to his "fabulously unorthodox opinion."

"He tends to not back up his opinions with any facts, with any
argument," Martin said. "He'll just rather flippantly tell you. There
really isn't much of an argument there, it's an assertion. Let's just
be careful to not give assertions the same weight as considered
scientific opinion, the kind that have gone through peer review. It's
not really the same thing."

Dan Vimont, assistant professor in the department of atmospheric and
oceanic sciences and Center for Climatic Research, said he stands
behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change findings.

"Our science has progressed quite a ways and I think it is pretty
clear at this point that what the IPCC said is actually true: That
humans are changing the climate," Vimont said. "We have introduced a
good deal of carbon dioxide to the climate and we know that. And
things will very likely continue to warm. I would object to the idea
that this is a bunch of hooey."

Bryson's stand: After the Capital Times story was published, Bryson,
known as the father of scientific climatology, said he got dozens of
e-mails, some of them calling him a tool of the extreme right wing.

"They don't even know what that means," he said in a follow-up
interview this week. "What far right? I don't even know anybody on the
far right. And if I did, I would avoid them."

Bryson said politics gets in the way of looking at climate change.

He is not political, he said. He doesn't consider himself a Republican
or a conservative. When asked who he voted for in the last
presidential election, he said, "the wrong one."

Does that mean he voted for George Bush? "Of course not," he said.
"I'm not that dumb."

Bryson acknowledges that he is up against an outspoken scientific
community on the issue of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming.

Some may call him "a global warming skeptic." But he is not skeptical
that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the
cause of it. There is no question the Earth has been warming. It is
coming out of a "Little Ice Age," he said.

"However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and
carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300
years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years.
It's been warming up for a long time," Bryson said in the story
published June 18.

Bryson was the founding chairman of the department of meteorology at
UW-Madison and of the Institute for Environmental Studies, now known
as the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. He retired
in 1985, but has gone into the office almost every day since to create
climate models. He does it without pay from the university.

For the last 20 years of his career Bryson's research was funded by a
benefactor, who wished to remain anonymous, and who is now dead, he
said.

"I don't get very much money from the endowment she left the
university in my name," Bryson said.

He receives $8,000 to $10,000 now from the endowment, enough to
support a graduate student to help him and computer costs. "It isn't a
lot," said Bryson, who can be found in his university office every
morning and often works from home in the afternoons and evenings.

He is not paid by any oil company or any energy company, he said
emphatically.

After 25 years of work, Bryson has a how-to book coming out this week
called "Paleoclimate." It details how to model climate on a computer.
The book comes with a CD that people can put into their computers and
learn how to model past climate without having a doctorate in
meteorology or climatology, Bryson said.

He is giving a workshop in Hot Springs, South Dakota, in September on
how to do climate modeling and the session is full. He has led about
10 of these sessions already, in Sweden, Germany, Canada, Colorado and
California.

Since The Capital Times article ran, he has been asked to give
lectures, including a speech to a group from NASA, whose director
recently drew criticism himself for saying he doubted global warming
is "a problem we must wrestle with."

At the same time, nine UW-Madison professors -- including Martin --
wrote a June 21 letter in The Capital Times, wishing to make it
"absolutely clear" that Bryson's opinions on global warming were not
shared by other scientists at the University of Wisconsin's Center for
Climatic Research and Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

"The scientific evidence for human causation of global warming is now
very strong, and gets stronger every year. Evidence includes
well-documented rises in carbon dioxide concentrations and global mean
temperatures, and repeated validations of the global climate models
used to predict future climate changes," they wrote.

Two of the professors later expressed concern for their students in
the wake of a comment Bryson made about beginning graduate students
passing themselves off as experts on global warming when reporters
call the meteorology building seeking the opinion of a scientist. "And
that goes in the paper as scientists say ...'" Bryson said.

If the grad students are upset by his comment, Bryson asserted, they
should come and talk to him and show him that they know the equivalent
of a researcher with 20 or 30 years of experience. "I'm right there.
My door's open. If they are upset, well, tough," he said.

"I didn't say they didn't know anything. But lumping a first-year grad
student in with a 30-year experienced professor is sort of apples and
pears. Someday they'll be there, but they aren't yet."

What's consensus: In the matter of going against so many of his
scientific peers on global warming, Bryson said that throughout
history there are clear cases where the consensus was wrong.

"The consensus was against Copernicus, Darwin and Galileo at the time.
But were they wrong or was the consensus wrong? Now I am not
necessarily a Galileo or a Copernicus, but the point is, the consensus
does not mean that the science is right," he said.

Bryson said he moved the critical e-mails that The Capital Times story
generated directly into his trash basket.

He estimated that 95 percent of the people who wrote him agreed with
him.

A woman sent him an e-mail Sunday saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank
you for being so brave. I wish I had said it but I didn't have the
guts."


--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.

Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS

Celibacy in healthy human beings is a form of
insanity. -- Captain Compassion

"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.

Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net