Climate Depot Round Up of NASA”s New Lead Global Warming Scientist
NASA’s new lead global warming scientist, Gavin Schmidt, has history of belittling skeptical scientists, suppressing debate, condoning making climate data “impenetrable” and many of his scientific claims and his website RealClimate.org, have been harshly criticized by scientists from around the world.
Schmidt replaces NASA’s James Hansen as Director of its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Hansen retired in early 2013. See: NASA’s Lead Global Warming Scientist: Humans responsible for ’80 to 120% of the warming’ – Joe Romm gushes: ‘Meet Dr. Gavin Schmidt, NASA’s Replacement For James Hansen’ – Schmidt ‘was GISS deputy director, has a doctorate in applied mathematics, is ‘an expert in climate modeling.’
Hansen made a career out of smearing skeptics and getting arrested to draw attention to his opposition to the Keystone Pipeline. (For more on Hansen, see here, here, and here.:
Climate Depot has been following Gavin Schmidt’s career for years and presents the below round up of his climate change foibles.
Gavin Schmidt’s history:
Update 2016: NASA’s Lead ‘Global Warming’ scientist goes political: Calls for a carbon tax – NASA’s ‘global warming’ scientist in charge of keeping temperature records admits his bias: ‘We have to have a price on carbon because right now it’s still free to put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So if you put a price on carbon that is commensurate with the damage that carbon-dioxide emissions cause, then people will be smarter.’
NASA’s Gavin Schmidt promotes hiding data!? I would simply put the whole CRU database (in an as-impenetrable-as-possible form’ – Warmist AGU gave a $25,000 award to Gavin Schmidt being the ‘best climate communicator in the world’
Physicist Dr. Motl rips Schmidt: ‘So if you want to be the best climate science communicator in the world, you have to release the data in an as-impenetrable-as-possible form. ;-)’
Israeli Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv has also been critical. “The aim of [Schmidt’s] RealClimate.org is not to engage a sincere scientific debate. Their aim is to post a reply full of a straw man so their supporters can claim that your point ‘has been refuted by real scientists at RealClimate.org,’” Shaviv’s website reported. Shaviv, who calls the website “Wishfulclimate.org,” noted that the “writers (at RealClimaet.org) try again and again to concoct what appears to be deep critiques against skeptic arguments, but end up doing a very shallow job. All in the name of saving the world. How gallant of them.”
Schmidt on Climategate:
Schmidt on Debate:
Fast Forward to 2013: Gavin Schmidt takes his own advice and makes fool of himself: Flashback 2013: Don’t miss this ‘completely absurd ballet’ as award-winning climate communicator Gavin Schmidt is afraid to discuss global warming on-camera with Roy Spencer
Via Daily Caller: In 2013, Fox Business host John Stossel asked about a dozen climate scientists to debate skeptic Dr. Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist who now teaches at the University of Alabama. — Stossel also asked the environmental group the Union of Concerned Scientists if they would debate Spencer on TV. Stossel said UCS replied that debating Spencer “would be doing the public a disservice because it would give [his] extreme ideas credibility.” NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies climate scientist Gavin Schmidt did go on that episode but only after Spencer was no longer on the set.
Schmidt’s flexible science claims:
Flashback 2010: Gavin Schmidt during continental U.S. cooler times: ‘Keep in mind that that the contiguous United States represents just 1.5 percent of Earth’s surface’
Flashback: 2009: NASA’s James Hansen: ‘Of course, the contiguous 48 states cover only 1.5 percent of the world area, so the U.S. temperature does not affect the global temperature much’
Schmidt on skeptics:
Schmidt on Climate Depot and other skeptics: NASA’s Gavin Schmidt helps produce & promote a piece that claims Rupert Murdoch, Anthony Watts, & Marc Morano did ‘the most damage overall during the year with Bad Science’
NASA & RealClimate.org’s Most Reverend Gavin Schmidt’s faith-based ‘science’: Admits his claims ‘depend upon hunches, speculation and beliefs’ – Rev. Schmidt: ”If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes. If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet’
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Many of Schmidt’s colleagues critique his science:
Climatologist slaps down Gavin Schmidt for his ‘lack of knowledge of boundary layer physics’ – Climatologist ‘further documents that RealClimate.org does not present balanced viewpoints on research papers, but uses misinformation to seek to discredit them’
Climate Depot Exclusive: Real Climate Exposed! A Comprehensive Report on the ‘Real’ RealClimate.org
The global warming promoting website RealClimate.org, is under fire yet again from a prominent scientist for presenting incorrect climate information. Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. publicly rebuked the website in a June 30, 2009 article for “erroneously communicating the reality of the how the climate system is actually behaving.” Pielke, the former Colorado State Climatologist and currently a senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, countered Real Climate’s claim that warming was “progressing faster than expected” with the latest data on sea level rise, ocean heat content and Arctic ice.
In his article titled “Real Climate’s Misinformation”, Pielke also chastised readers of Real Climate for blindly accepting the incorrect climate claims promoted on the site.
“Media and policymakers who blindly accept these claims are either naive or are deliberately slanting the science to promote their particular advocacy position,” Pielke Sr. wrote.
Realclimate.org, a website which much of the mainstream media has relied on for climate science developments, has come under increasing criticism and scrutiny from scientists. Real Climate’s lead blogger and NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt was harshly criticized for some of his scientific claims in January 2009. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a prominent scientist from the Netherlands, wrote a scathing denunciation of Schmidt in which he said he was “appalled” by Schmidt’s “lack of knowledge” and added, “Back to graduate school, Gavin!” [Note: In an interview in the Dutch paper De Telegraaf, Tennekes says he was ousted from his position at the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute due to his skepticism over climate change. After publishing a column critical of climate model accuracy, Tennekes says he was told “within two years, you’ll be out on the street”.]
The latest scientific woes by RealClimate.org were rebutted point by point by Pielke on June 20, 2009.
Real Climate claimed:
“Our regular readers will hardly be surprised by the key findings from physical climate science, most of which we have already discussed here. Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago – such as rising sea levels, the increase of heat stored in the ocean and the shrinking Arctic sea ice.”
Pielke responded:
“First, what is ‘physical climate science’? How is this different from ‘climate science’. In the past, this terminology has been used when authors ignore the biological components of the climate system,” Pielke wrote.
Climate Depot Exclusive Report: A Long History of Accuracy Woes and Activism for RealClimate.org
Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a prominent scientist from the Netherlands, wrote a scathing denunciation of Schmidt in which he said he was “appalled” by Schmidt’s “lack of knowledge” and added, “Back to graduate school, Gavin!”
“Roger Pielke, Sr. has graciously invited me to add my perspective to his discussion with Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate. If this were not such a serious matter, I would have been amused by Gavin’s lack of knowledge of the differences between weather models and climate models. As it stands, I am appalled. Back to graduate school, Gavin!” Tennekes wrote on January 29, 2009. Tennekes, is an scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands’ Royal National Meteorological Institute, and an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes. Tennekes is also featured in U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims “Gavin Schmidt is not the only meteorologist with an inadequate grasp of the role of the oceans in the climate system. In my weblog of June 24, 2008, I addressed the limited perception that at least one other climate modeler appears to have,” Tennekes wrote. “From my perspective it is not a little bit alarming that the current generation of climate models cannot simulate such fundamental phenomena as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I will not trust any climate model until and unless it can accurately represent the PDO and other slow features of the world ocean circulation. Even then, I would remain skeptical about the potential predictive skill of such a model many tens of years into the future,” Tennekes added.
Atmospheric Physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh, also critiqued RealClimate.org on June 24, 2008. Peden wrote, “’Real Climate’ is a staged and contracted production, which wasn’t created by ‘scientists,’ it was actually created by Environmental Media Services, a company which specializes in spreading environmental junk science on behalf of numerous clients who stand to financially benefit from scare tactics through environmental fear mongering.”
Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo also launched a sharply worded critique of RealClimate.org in January 2009 titled “Response to Gavin Schmidt – Global Data Base Issues Are Real.” “To Gavin [Schmidt] and the other alarmists, it appears, a piece that is fair and balanced can make no mention of any other opinion except that carbon dioxide is causing global warming and action is needed now and will deliver gain and no pain, something the one sided media coverage has gotten them used to over the years,” D’Aleo wrote on January 13, 2009. D’Aleo served as the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and served as chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting.
Israeli Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv has also been critical. “The aim of RealClimate.org is not to engage a sincere scientific debate. Their aim is to post a reply full of a straw man so their supporters can claim that your point ‘has been refuted by real scientists at RealClimate.org,’” Shaviv’s website reported. Shaviv, who calls the website “Wishfulclimate.org,” noted that the “writers (at RealClimaet.org) try again and again to concoct what appears to be deep critiques against skeptic arguments, but end up doing a very shallow job. All in the name of saving the world. How gallant of them.”
More Real Scientists Rebuke Real Climate:
‘Scientist adjusts data — presto, Antarctic cooling disappears’ – December 21, 2008
Excerpt: The analysis concluded, “Looks like [study author] Steig ‘got rid of’ Antarctic cooling the same way [Michael] Mann got rid of medieval warming. Why not just look at the station data instead of ‘adjusting’ it (graph above)? It shows a 50-year cooling trend,” the analysis concluded.
Pielke Jr.: ‘Gavin Schmidt admits to stealing a scientific idea from his arch-nemesis, Steve McIntyre’ – February 4, 2009 – Excerpt: This is not a hypothetical example, but a caricature of real goings on with our friends over at Real Climate … Due to an inadvertent release of information, NASA’s Gavin Schmidt (a “real scientist” of the Real Climate blog) admits to stealing a scientific idea from his arch-nemesis, Steve McIntyre (not a “real scientist” of the Climate Audit blog) and then representing it as his own idea, and getting credit for it. In his explanation why this is OK, Gavin explains that he did some work on his own after getting the idea from Steve’s blog, and so it was OK to take full credit for the idea. […] Gavin’s outing is remarkable because it shows him not only stealing an idea, but stealing from someone who he and his colleagues routinely criticize as being wrong, corrupt, and a fraud. Does anyone wonder why skepticism flourishes? When evaluations of expertise hinge on trust, stealing someone’s ideas and taking credit for them does not help.
Gavin Schmidt’s Antics Prompts Laughter From Scientist ‘“How am I supposed to get any work done when I am laughing so hard?” – Feb. 2009 – Excerpt: Reaction By Climate researcher Dr. Craig Loehle, formerly of the department of Energy Laboratories and currently with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvements, who has published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers.
‘Is Gavin Schmidt The Best Thing Ever Happened To AGW Skeptics?’
Gavin’s “Mystery Man” Revealed – by Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre on February 4th, 2009 –Gavin Schmidt demands Pielke Jr. Pull Critical Blog
Real Climate’s Schmidt ‘anti-science exposed’ ‘Using an image of Lake Powell to indicate anything about climate change is perverse’ – June 4, 2009 – Excerpt: As with so many other products generated by the AGW industry, Schmidt’s book Climate Change: Picturing the Science is part of an ongoing effort to frighten the credulous. Its messages include: weather will kill you; our moment on Earth is unique; and climate did not used to change. Had you wanted to fulfill the responsibilities of an objective and hard-hitting journalist, you might have asked Schmidt about the image of Lake Powell on his book’s cover. […] Were you aware, may I ask, of the controversial nature of the damming of the Colorado River that led to Lake Powell? Environmentalists were and are appalled by this particular dam. It has changed an important piece of the American natural landscape. […] Group-think has affected many societies negatively, and it has not disappeared during our own time. The fact that neither Mr. Schmidt’s editor, nor his publisher, nor you, nor the photographer, nor Mr. Schmidt himself would stop to reflect on the oddity of this cover is enough to give one pause.
Schmidt issues ‘Correction and apology’ for incorrectly claiming permafrost melt was cause of collapse – June 2, 2009 – Excerpt: the cause of the collapse was the 1964 Earthquake rather than permafrost melt. We take complete responsibility for the mix-up in captioning and the erroneous attribution and we’d like to fully apologize.
Real Climate touted Steig et al ‘Antarctica is warming’ study ‘falsified’ – May 29, 2009
Excerpt: After reading this latest statistical analysis, I think it is fair to conclude that the paper’s premise has been falsified. […] It is my view that all Steig and Michael Mann have done with their application of RegEm to the station data is to smear the temperature around much like an artist would smear red and white paint on a pallete board to get a new color “pink” and then paint the entire continent with it. It is a lot like “spin art” you see at the county fair.
The Truth about RealClimate.org – July 6, 2009 – Excerpt: Essentially the site exists to promote global warming alarm-ism and attack anyone who does not agree with their declaration of doomsday (proven of course by their own computer climate models) and the need for government intervention against the life supporting, atmospheric trace gas, carbon dioxide. Standard operating procedure is to post “rebuttals” to everything they disagree with and then declare victory, making sure to censor comments challenging their position. It doesn’t matter if they actual rebutted any of the science or facts just so long as they provide the existence of a criticism. This gives their fanboys “ammunition” to further promote alarmist propaganda across the Internet (and of course declare victory). Their resident propagandist William Connolley’s job is to edit dissent and smear skeptical scientists on Wikipedia. In the world of global warming alarmist “science” pretending you win is apparently all that matters because in real debates they lose. The truth is that RealClimate.org is an environmentalist shill site directly connected to an eco-activist group, Environmental Media Services and Al Gore but they don’t want you to know that.
Real Climate ‘has clearly aligned itself squarely with one political position on climate change’ – January 14, 2005 – Excerpt: The site’s focus has been exclusively on attacking those who invoke science as the basis for their opposition to action on climate change, folks such as George Will, Senator James Inhofe, Michael Crichton, McIntyre and McKitrick, Fox News, and Myron Ebell. Whether intended or not, the site has clearly aligned itself squarely with one political position on climate change.
Real Climate’s Schmidt attempts to ‘explain why skeptics are simplistic’ – June 1, 2009
History of Real Cilmate’s activism and funding – Newsbusters.org – June 28, 2008
UN IPCC Scientist Richard Courtney Rips Real Climate Touted Antarctic Study – January 29, 2009
Excerpt: I am not surprised at Steig’s behaviour that attempts to deflect attention from his paper and its content. I have written a letter to Nature complaining that Steig’s paper contains a flaw so severe that Steig’s paper should not have been published, and I suspect that others have written complaints to Nature concerning other errors in that paper, too.
End flashback report
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Admission: NASA’s Gavin Schmidt acknowledges apples-oranges fakery in Marcott ‘new’ hokey stick – Via Junk Science: Insufficient data used as an excuse (again) for fakery. Gavin Schmidt acknowledges in a comment to RealClimate’s Marcott defense of teh the new hokey stick that there wasn’t enough paleo data to reconstruct 20th century temps — so Marcott grafted on the instrument record, instead of simply reporting the decline up to the 20th century. Makes you wonder: if had Marcott continued the paleo reconstruction through the 20th century, would the decline would still be occurring? If so, such a decline would obviously discredit the rest of the reconstruction.
Warmist Gavin Schmidt on the ropes over heat wave explanation – ‘If CO2 is really such an all-powerful warming factor, and if the science is so settled, why does warmist Gavin Schmidt have so much trouble explaining why the southeastern US hasn’t warmed since the 1930s?: ‘Whether this is due to some oddity in the weather patterns, air pollution effects, irrigation or something else is unclear’
Climatologist Dr. Pielke Sr. rips RealClimate.org’s claims: ‘It is straightforward to shed doubt on Gavin Schmidt’s (and the IPCC) claim’ – ‘If the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentration were so dominate we would expect the global average [annual] lower troposphere temperature to more-or less monotonically continue to rise in the last decade or so. This clearly has not occurred, as illustrated, for example, in the figure below for the lower troposphere’
More Revkin woes: NYT’s Revkin cheered $25,000 award to NASA and RealClimate.org’s Gavin Schmidt for ‘communication’ – Physicist Dr. Motl rips NYT’s Revkin: ‘When Andrew Revkin enthusiastically endorsed this outrageous choice of [Schmidt] 5 weeks ago, I was stunned…The Climategate 2011 e-mails show that I shouldn’t have been surprised at all…Revkin offers his services and considers what’s the best way to produce propaganda that would harm skeptics such as Christy and Singer’
UN IPCC’s Kevin Trenberth wants ‘a few million dollars’ to study agw and extreme weather — RealClimate.org s Gavin Schmidt’s thinking ‘has evolved’ on weather extremes – Gavin Schmidt’s reluctance has started to fade. ‘My thinking has evolved. Thanks to advances in statistical tools, climate models and computer power, ‘attribution of extremes is hard — but it is not impossible’
Warmist Gavin Schmidt wants it both ways: Local heat waves are climate; cold snaps are just weather
RealClimate.org’s Chief Propagandist Gavin Schmidt in 1999: Greenhouse Effect Makes Winters Warm – Analysis: ‘Now alarmists claim that cold winters are caused by the greenhouse effect. The mark of a truly dishonest religion’
Watch Now: CNN Hosts Global Warming Debate: John Christy vs. Gavin Schmidt
Update: Excuse number 10 for the global warming ‘pause’ — ‘Coincidence!’, according to NASA scientists: ‘Coincidence, conspired to dampen warming trends’ – Excuse number 10 for global warming ‘pause’ or ‘standstill’ – NASA’s Gavin Schmidt & colleagues finds ‘that a combination of factors, by coincidence, conspired to dampen warming trends in the real world after about 1992’ – Latest excuse for global temperature standstill mocked by skeptics: ‘Apparently, if you go back and rework all the forcings, taking into account new data estimates (add half a bottle of post-hoc figures) and ‘reanalyses’ of old data (add a tablespoon of computer simulation) you can bridge the gap and explain away the pause.’
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Schmidt made his admission during a June 29, 2009 interview about the shortcomings of climate models. Schmidt noted that some climate models “suggest very strongly” that the American Southwest will dry in a warming world. But Schmidt also noted that “other models suggest the exact opposite.”
“With these two models, you have two estimates — one says it’s going to get wetter and one says it’s going to get drier. What do you do? Is there anything that you can say at all? That is a really difficult question,” Schmidt conceded.
“The problem with climate prediction and projections going out to 2030 and 2050 is that we don’t anticipate that they can be tested in the way you can test a weather forecast. It takes about 20 years to evaluate because there is so much unforced variability in the system which we can’t predict — the chaotic component of the climate system — which is not predictable beyond two weeks, even theoretically. That is something that we can’t really get a handle on,” Schmidt lamented. [Note: Schmidt has been under fire for his website’s recent scientific woes at RealClimate.org. See: Climate Depot Report: Real Climate Exposed! A Comprehensive Report on the ‘Real’ RealClimate.org – June 30, 2009 ]
Climate models made by unlicensed ‘software engineers’
The credibility of these computer model predictions — used by governments to determine global warming policy based on future climate risks — have been under increasingly intense scrutiny for years.
In June 2007, Dr. Jim Renwick, a top UN IPCC scientist, admitted that climate models do not account for half the variability in nature and thus are not reliable. “Half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable, so we don’t expect to do terrifically well,” Renwick conceded. (LINK)
Another high-profile UN IPCC lead author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, echoed Renwick’s sentiments in 2007 about climate models by referring to them as “story lines.”
“In fact there are no predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been. The IPCC instead proffers ‘what if’ projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios,” Trenberth wrote in journal Nature’s blog on June 4, 2007.
Trenberth also admitted that the climate models have major shortcomings because “they do not consider many things like the recovery of the ozone layer, for instance, or observed trends in forcing agents. There is no estimate, even probabilistically, as to the likelihood of any emissions scenario and no best guess.” (LINK)
IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr Vincent Gray, of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990, author of more than 100 scientific publications and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of “Climate Change 2001,” declared “The claims of the IPCC are dangerous unscientific nonsense” in an April 10, 2007 article.(LINK) & (LINK)
“All [UN IPCC does] is make ‘projections’ and ‘estimates’. No climate model has ever been properly tested, which is what ‘validation’ means, and their ‘projections’ are nothing more than the opinions of ‘experts’ with a conflict of interest, because they are paid to produce the models. There is no actual scientific evidence for all these ‘projections’ and ‘estimates,’” Gray noted.
In addition, atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands’ Royal National Meteorological Institute, recently compared scientists who promote computer models predicting future climate doom to unlicensed “software engineers.”
“I am of the opinion that most scientists engaged in the design, development, and tuning of climate models are in fact software engineers. They are unlicensed, hence unqualified to sell their products to society,” Tennekes wrote on February 28, 2007. (LINK)
Climate Models Likened to Sony ‘PlayStation’ Video Games & ‘Tinker Toys’
On a New Zealand radio interview in 2007, the late Atmospheric Scientist Augie Auer ridiculed climate model predictions: “Most of these climate predictions or models, they are about a half a step ahead of PlayStation 3 . They’re really not justified in what they are saying. Many of the assumptions going into [the models] are simply not right.” (LINK)
Atmospheric physicist James Peden ridiculed climate models in October 2008, calling them “computerised tinker toys with which one can construct any outcome he chooses.” (LINK)
In addition, top forecasting experts now say the models violate the basic principles of forecasting.
2) Forecast Pioneers: Climate modelers violated 49 principles of forecasting – June 16, 2009
In addition, Prominent Physicist Freeman Dyson has referred to climate models as “rubbish.”
Dyson is a Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London.
“The fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated,” writes Dyson in his 2007 book “Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe.” (See: Dyson: Climate models are rubbish – August 14, 2007)
Dyson is blunt in his criticism of climate models, mocking “the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models.”
“I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry, and the biology of fields and farms and forests,” Dyson wrote.
