Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Many scientists have got the relationship between rising greenhouse gases and warming temperatures flat wrong, says Alaska’s Syun-Ichi Akasofu in an Wall Street Journal essay.
And is there legitimate consensus that human-generated emissions are the cause of the current bout of climate change?
Definitely not, Akasofu says.
“Definitive scientific proof that the present warming is mostly caused by the greenhouse effect … is simply an assumption that has morphed into a fact,” Akasofu wrote in an essay that appeared a few weeks ago. (It was based on an article from Far Eastern Economic Review, “Storm in a Teacup Over Climate Change.”)
As a reply, the climate change blog published by Nature took on Akasofu’s assertions one by one in Some climate change fallacies.
Akasofu, a pioneer in aurora research, seems to be “confused,” the blog argued.
“Akasofu immediately starts out on the wrong foot by claiming there are two sides, those of believers and non-believers,” wrote climate scientist Kevin Trenberth. “But it is not a matter of belief, it is a matter of scientific facts!”
Akasofu, a retired University of Alaska Fairbanks administrator who is one of the state’s most distinguished scientists, has increasingly thrust himself into the climate change discussion as a skeptic.
Source: National Climate Data Center
This time, he was responding partly to the debate at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney over how different countries could reduce CO2 emissions — and he challenged the notion that the causes behind the present planetary bake-off have been identified.
“There’s a lot less to that ’scientific consensus’ than meets the eye,” wrote Akasofu, former head of the Geophysical Insitute and the retired founding director of the International Arctic Research Center.
Akasofu made his reputation four decades ago by questioning the assumptions about the aurora. In general, he’s now suggesting that the present warming may be natural recovery from the last cold period and not caused by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.
In the Wall Street Journal essay, Akasofu wrote:
There is no doubt that global warming is in progress. But much of it can be attributed to the rebounding effect from the Little Ice Age. Recovering from a cool period is, of course, warming — but it is nothing to panic about. Ice core data from the Greenland ice sheet show many periodic warming and cooling periods during the last 10,000 years. The present warming phase is far from the warmest.
He concluded:
The integrity of climatology as a respectable science has to be rehabilitated by bringing it back from its present confused state and separating it entirely from politics. Only then can real progress be made in predicting future climate patterns. At the same time, environmental advocacy groups should return to their original goal of protecting the environment from those things over which humanity truly does have control.
Trenberth tackled Akasofu’s assertions in a post containing links to outside sources. He concludes with strong criticism of both Akasofu and the Wall Street Journal.
Climate models are not perfect, but they are useful tools for quantifying the effects of various climate processes and drivers of climate change.
Akasofu decries the confused state of climatology, but it is he who is really confused, and his article only serves to confuse the general public.
It is sad that a once distinguished newspaper published such misleading half-truths without verifying them.