Ignorant Scolds In High Places Spout Drivel

How Can One Who Thinks Like This Head Columbia University’s Earth Institute?

[Update below]

A friend just passed along a Huffington Post piece with this cryptic headline:

• Competent Leaders Need to Understand the Science of Sustainability

Being a strong skeptic of all “sustainability” claims, I was particularly interested in the juxtaposition of the words “sustainability” and “science”, so I read it closely – the entire slogan rich and far too lengthy post.

And never mind that, however much rhetoric and slogans you dress it up in, that the concept of “sustainability” has no scientific basis or operational definition.

But let’s not let style or policy differences divert from the real substantive issue at hand.

This is not about sustainability. It is about scientific understanding.

The post was written by Steven Cohen, Executive Director of the Earth institute at Columbia University.

Remarkably, in a blog post about the need for “leaders” to be “competent” and understand science, written by the head of an Ivy League climate science institution, the author reveals a shocking ignorance of the science of climate change!

How is it possible for a person in such a prestigious institution with such huge responsibilities to reveal such ignorance of the basic cause of global warming?

Not since then EPA Administrator Christie Whitman – in the New York Times – confused ozone depletion with global warming, do I recall such a high profile and revealing fundamental error. And it was not a gaffe – it was an error.

In his HuffPo blog post, Cohen used an analogy that completely misunderstands and misrepresents the cause of climate change.

Cohen revealed a typical Junior High School level misunderstanding – one in fact I too actually shared more than 40 years ago in junior high school – and was hugely embarrassed by when gently corrected by the science teacher.

Specifically, in this paragraph, which I reproduce in full to avoid any possible criticism that I took him out of context, Cohen confuses “waste heat” with the mechanism of global warming (emphasis mine):

It is important to develop consensus around facts and reality. A person shot dead on the street is not in suspended animation. A glass of water may look like vodka, but it doesn’t pack the same punch. The environmental impact of the settlements, machines, food and water of seven billion people is far greater than the impacts of a planet of three billion people. Earth’s human population was three billion in the 1960s and is over seven billion today. If you don’t think our use of energy causes heat, stand next to an idling truck during a mid-August heat wave. Feel the heat? Where do you think all the waste heat from our power plants, homes and cars ends up? We can argue about what to do about homicides, alcoholism, or climate change, but our view of reality must be based on the same facts. And in a high-tech, globally interconnected economy our survival depends on scientific fact being researched, debated, accepted, understood and acted on.

The heat Cohen refers to  from an idling truck, power plants, homes, and cars is commonly referred to as “waste heat” (there are several other scientific terms for it, but lets keep it simple here).

By using the “waste heat” analogy, Cohen essentially tells his readers that global warming is caused by heat coming off things like truck motors.

That is a profoundly false analogy and it completely misunderstands the mechanism and cause of global warming.

I’ll let a scientist explain why:

Wherever it comes from, waste heat is not usually taken into account in global climate calculations for the simple reason that it is utterly trivial in comparison to the heat trapped by the carbon dioxide that is released when you burn fossil fuels to supply energy.

Got that, Mr. Cohen?

I hope you don’t spew such drivel to your students.

[End note: I stole that phrase from Ted Lowi, Government Professor at Cornell. In his grading of a final essay exam, I can still feel the sting of Lowi’s criticism of my work as “spewing drivel and parroting lectures”. Ivy League academics! Ouch!

[Update: Via email, I brought the error to Columbia and Mr. Cohen’s attention and suggested that he should correct, or at least clarify it.

For the record, here is Columbia’s response:

Thanks Bill.

Steve Cohen is undoubtedly not suggesting that the cause of current global warming is waste heat. It is of course human-produced greenhouse gases. But I have passed it on in case he wants to clarify.

Kevin