Richard Lindzen
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| The basics |
| Lies, talking points, manufactroversies |
| The deniers |
Richard Lindzen was an atmospheric physicist at MIT until May 2013;[1] as expected, he is now a "Distinguished Senior Fellow" at the Cato Institute.[2]
Lindzen has had a long career in climatology and worked on the IPCC report. However, he became infamously embarrassing for MIT over the last decade as a member of the Bjørn Lomborg "It's not that bad!" school of global warming. Though Lindzen fully accepts AGW, he claims that predictions made by other climatologists' models are "alarmist" and that temperatures will increase by less than one degree Celsius.
Contents |
[edit] Argument from authority, personified
Lindzen is probably the one most responsible for the denialist talking point about models not taking clouds into account. The Lindzen-Choi paper is the most often cited, but it's been trashed by other scientists for poor methodology and overstating its conclusions.[3][4] Naturally, Lindzen's skepticism has attracted funding from oil interests and he's worked on projects underwritten by Exxon and OPEC.[5] He is trotted out by deniers as "proof" that "real scientists disagree" about global warming and that there is no scientific consensus, even though he does accept the theory (just not most of the predictions made by the IPCC). His op-eds in popular media have increasingly fallen back on refuted denier talking points as well. This makes him a massive enabler.
He has also appeared at the Heartland Institute's conferences as the keynote speaker. This makes him a really massive enabler.[6]
Lindzen's talent seems to be making repeatedly failed predictions as well as failing to get much of his material published in peer-reviewed journals in his more "skeptical" days.
Some other stuff he's been wrong about:
- Claiming that the link between smoking and lung cancer is "weak."[7]
- Satellite measurements showing no warming.[8]
- Decrease in water vapor would allow carbon dioxide to escape from the atmosphere. (He has since accepted this as refuted and calls it an "old view.")[9]
- Solar and volcanic forcings were severely downplayed to fudge data.[10]
- Misrepresenting the link between warming and hurricanes.[11]
[edit] See also
- The Great Global Warming Swindle, in which he appears
- Judith Curry
- Wall Street Journal, for which he regularly writes
[edit] External links
- Lindzen's faculty page
- "Lindzen Illusions" #1-7, Skeptical Science
- Logical Science profile of Lindzen
- Lindzen vs. Bill Nye
- Real Climate: Climate Reporting in Physics World, Adventures on the East Side, Lindzen in Newsweek
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Faculty News: Dick Lindzen Retires, MIT
- ↑ MIT Professor, Prominent Climate Scientist Richard Lindzen Joins Cato
- ↑ Lindzen and Choi Unraveled, Real Climate
- ↑ Climate Sensitivity, Skeptical Science
- ↑ Lindzen fact sheet on ExxonSecrets
- ↑ His Heartland Page
- ↑ The Truth About Global Warming, Newsweek
- ↑ Et tu, LT?, Real Climate
- ↑ The Contrarian, Seed Magazine
- ↑ Lindzen's HoL Testimony, Real Climate
- ↑ Lindzen keeps it complicated, DeSmogBlog