#19 - Richard Lindzen on climate science from the inside

Richard Lindzen, Ph.D. is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.

He has made major contributions to the development of the current theory for the Hadley Circulation, which dominates the atmospheric transport of heat and momentum from the tropics to higher latitudes, and has advanced the understanding of the role of small scale gravity waves in producing the reversal of global temperature gradients at the mesopause, and provided accepted explanations for atmospheric tides and the quasi-biennial oscillation of the tropical stratosphere.

Lindzen is a recipient of the AMS's Meisinger, and Charney Awards, the AGU's Macelwane Medal, and the Leo Huss Walin Prize. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. He is a corresponding member of the NAS Committee on Human Rights, and has been a member of the NRC Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate and the Council of the AMS.

He has also been a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
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Notes for climate skeptics:
ClimateGate emails:

[christopherdavies]

How reassuring to listen to Richard Lindzen explaining the whole climate question. He and William Happer are true premier scientists who tell the story as it is. There are no comparable scientists on the other side who can back up the hypothesis that carbon dioxide is the control knob of the climate. Unfortunately, the subject has become absolutely political and common sense has disappeared. Our whole civilisation is being threatened by a deluded determination to change the way we live. The madness of crowds comes to mind. It is easy to persuade large numbers of people that the end is nigh. People regain their reason in only small numbers in order to recover from this mass hysteria. We are lucky to have scholars like Professor Lindzen to show us the way back.
Thank you for showing this video.

[jeffreyluciana]

Great interview. Dr. Lindzen is a "climate" BIGGIE

[edpiv]

He has been leading the charge for decades. We need about 1000 more of him. Great interview.

[PMConnolly]

Richard is always a delight to listen to. Excellent episode. Thank you both.

[albertvanlingen]

These interviews are incredible! Thank you ✅

[ducthman]

The Big Lie

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

[caveman]

Thank you for wonderful presentation.
It has been said that little knowledge is dangerous and the question is how much is not little?😁❤️
Not enough views on your great podcast🤔

[rogerwilcojr]

Thank God for China and India keeping CO2 at life sustaining levels.

[eftwoa]

I take it that this very learned man will not be appearing on the BBC any time soon.

[petergrimshaw]

Very good-natured bombshell views.
I was going to post in a climate hysteria group I am in, but to be honest not sure there much point?
What is better is support groups like this validating sanity.

What a thoroughly excellent collection of scientific views you are assembling.

[johnweir]

Very accessible and interesting, Thanks.

[AnswermanAnswerman]

When someone can speak in such a humble tone and still make you feel just a school boy, you know you should be listening!

Tom you have seen the charts of co2, around 18000 years ago we came near a failed experiment as co2 fell to levels near plant extinction! Of course this would temporary as the oceans hold co2 and the earth produces it but still any lower and there would be no land animals maybe.

[KIIDKYAAS]

I was taken back a bit at the end when Richard replied to his open invite with a "we'll see", Strikes me funny!

[markasp]

Excellent. Get some new questions. Get Richard Lindzen back. Maybe: agree some pre-arranged questions? I want to ask Dr Lindzen about:
- Tom Shula's interview
- the Pirani gauge,
- the Stefan-Boltzmann Law,
- conditions under which S-B applies,
- exactly what experiments did Stefan and Boltzmann do to derive their law?
- those energy balance diagrams,
- radiative forcing (in light of what Tom Shula told us),
- GHGE (in light of what Tom Shula told us).

[CharlesWestinghIII]

Excellent comment: “They are not asking, ‘can I understand it?’” Without a deep understanding of fluid mechanics, physics and maths many if not most of the finer points will get lost and what remains is just political nonsense.

One does not have to agree with Lindzen on everything he says but he really lays out some important issues with the current trends in science in an excellent way.

[stinson]

Nigel Lawson wrote a small book called a cool look at global warming!

[pfschuyler]

Look how some YouTube intern places the "context window" above.

[JohnWilliams-iwoq]

Richard Lindzen actually made me stop and think, if the CO2 has to be reduced then to what level? The climate alarmists would have us remove this gas from the atmosphere but nobody has told us what the target figure is. We are aiming at what? I used to shoot rabbits and quickly learned that if you point a rifle and shoot with no aim point then you will hit nothing because that is what you aimed at. Where is this CO2 optimum that we should be aiming at?

[Bebopin-]

Interesting to compare a video of Dr Lindzen around 2010 where he sounded a bit sceptic but much less critical of the AGW movement. Maybe he had still academic pressures and potential unfunny consequences back then.

[AIJohnsen]

Its not about the science. Its not about the climate. Its about the money.