A climate Team B?

Recently a ‘Team B’, to analyze climate science was proposed by William Happer of the Marshall Institute, it was largely ignored, probably because Happer isn’t taken seriously by anyone, but it gained some prominence when it was endorsed by Judith Curry, she does command some respect even if of late she has shown off her naivete. Team B is presumably is a reference to  the ‘Team B’ that provided analysis of the Soviet threat independent of the CIA and which got everything mostly wrong.

The ‘Team B’ approach is interesting because initially it makes logical sense. As the beginning of the NIPCC states “Before facing major surgery, wouldn’t you want a second opinion?”. The answer is of course yes, one would want a second opinion. In regards to climate change, one wouldn’t want to embark on difficult GHG reduction polices without a second opinion.

But we already have a second opinion, and a third, and a fourth… In fact we have thousands of independent opinions, as climate scientists from all over the world have overwhelmingly agreed that our GHG emissions have cased the climate to warm.

And if that wasn’t enough the recently released report from the US National Academy of Sciences should more than qualify as a Team B. And if one wants more:

Oh, we also have a “Team C”, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Hmm. Here’s a “Team D”, the American Geophysical Union, and look, a “Team E”, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences.

Actually, there are alot of “Teams” that have assesed the science and or the IPCC’s conclusions, and they all agree that the world is warming, the cause is anthropogenic and it represents a danger to human well being. Some more examples:

(How about that, I ran out of letters!)

And that list is not exhaustive.

In short we have plenty of teams looking at the science, and they all point to the same conclusion.

But at least in Happer’s case (not so much with Curry, I think) the reason behind a Team B is not because there is something lacking in Team A (actually that should be Teams A), but because the conclusions of Teams A are not what Happer wants.

To bring back the medical example used at the beginning of this post, Happer is asking for the patient to ignore the second, third, fourth… thousandth opinion of medical experts and continue to seek different opinions until he finds one to his liking.

That is a recipe for disaster both for the patient and for the planet.

Leave a Reply

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑