Sunday, August 26, 2007

Lindzen deceives, dog bites man (see update)

A Richard Lindzen quote from Global Warming Is Not a Crisis debate:

"...outside the tropics, the theory of such storms and variability says the variability should decrease in a warmer world .... and we'll be less prone to crisis in a warmer world."

From page 9 of the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers, under the impact category "Heavy precipitation events. Frequency (or proportion of total rainfall from heavy falls) increases over most areas," the IPCC says this impact is "very likely" to occur.

I've only just started listening to the debate, and I'm told that the denialists switched a number of audience members to their side by the end. I assume the audience went in assuming the statements of "fact" by the skeptics to have some relationship to truth. If Lindzen and the other idiot threw in more deceptions than the scientists were ready to catch them on, then denialists had a structural advantage.

UPDATE: see comments. Glen R. points out that because "most areas" includes the tropics while Lindzen carefully excludes them, both statements could be true. I find this approach by Lindzen to be deceptive though. I've changed the title from "Lindzen lies" to "Lindzen deceives."

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