HUBERT LAMB,
1913 to 1997
Hubert Lamb
devoted his career
to the use of
historic and/or
climate proxy data,
to develop a picture
of climate change
over recent centuries.
The record provided us
with much evidence
of profound changes,
completely contradicting
the infamous, bogus
Mann Hockey Stick Chart
that Sl Gore still loves !
Lamb claimed a
good understanding
of pre-20th century
climate changes
was required before one
could identify the role
humans played
in climate change.
Lamb’s approach
was resisted
by many scientists
in the earth science
community, in the
1960s and 1970s.
At the time, geophysics
was emphasized,
over geology.
And in meteorology, computer
modeling, and statistical studies,
were emphasized over traditional
multidisciplinary approaches
used by Lamb.
Lamb tried to sidestep
this movement by leaving
the Meteorological Office
and going to the University
of East Anglia.
There, he became
the founding director
of the Climatic
Research Unit
( he retired as CRU director in 1978 ).
At the time, in climatology,
emphasis was shifting
to man made
climate change,
caused by industrial
CO2 emissions.
Natural climate variability,
in progress for 4.5 billion years,
was what Lamb emphasized.
Many other scientists arbitrarily
decided natural climate change
was just unimportrant "noise".
The interest in controlling
man made climate change
provided funding for the CRU.
Unfortunately, the money
steered attention away
from natural causes
of climate change.
Lamb openly expressed
his skepticism,
on the new emphasis,
on man made
climate change,
and computer models.
When Lamb died in 1997,
the then director of CRU,
Trevor Davies,
described Lamb as
‘the greatest
climatologist
of his time’.
In Lamb's obituary,
Davies tells how
Lamb experienced
‘the satisfaction
of convincing
the remaining
doubters
of the reality
of climate
variation
on time-scales
of decades
and centuries".
Lamb was not
the first scientist
to introduce
the idea of a
constantly
changing
climate.
Lamb was a skeptic,
with a guarded attitude
to the importance of
greenhouse warming.
We should expect
a guarded attitude,
towards attributing
climate change
to a new cause.
Lamb was an
outspoken critic
of the way politics
was transforming
climate science.
Previous work towards
the development of climate
forecasting, was swept aside
for computer models of the
imagined risk of a global
warming catastrophe.
The old orthodoxy was
of an unchanging climate –
random variability
about a norm.
Lamb traced past climatic
trends through historical
and archaeological evidence,
while others rushed to develop
computer models, based on
unproven physics theories.
The global warming scare,
based on unverified computer
models, got almost all the
media attention and
government funding.
CLIMATE
SCIENCE
HISTORY:
The International
Meteorological
Organization’s 1935
recommendation was that
the first three decades
of the 20th century
should be considered a
‘climatic normal period’.
This "standard" lasted
into the early 1960s.
Lamb recalled how solar forcing
suddenly went out of fashion
in the 1930s, after forecasts
based on the sunspot cycle
by senior British meteorologists,
turned out to be very wrong.
By the late 1960s,
Lamb was convinced
that historical documents
would continue to provide
vital climate details
unavailable elsewhere.
Sources were
agricultural records,
shipping records and
anecdotal descriptions
of most extreme
climate events.
During the 1960s,
the main concern
was with industrial
pollution.
There was ambivalence
to whether greenhouse
warming would be
a good thing, with the
promise of longer
growing seasons, and
fewer harsh winters.
Concern about
greenhouse gas
emissions
dominated later,
in the 1970s.
Lamb’s discussion
on CO2 started with
the old argument,
that current levels
of water vapor
and carbon dioxide
already block
most of the radiation,
so any additional
CO2 would have
little effect.
Lamb’s final,
and strongest
objection
was the pause
in warming during
the post-World War II
economic boom,
despite rapidly
rising atmospheric
CO2 levels.
Until global
warming started,
roughly in 1975,
it was difficult
to demonize
man made CO2.
The man made CO2 emphasis
started in 1970, when a group
of 70 invited US scientists
participated in a month-long
live-in workshop, to produce
a Study of Critical Environmental
Problems (SCEP), under the
leadership of an energy
strategist at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology,
Carroll Wilson.
But they provided
little solid data,
or strong conclusions,
to support climate alarm
over man made CO2.
Professor of
environmental
sciences at
Lancaster University,
Gordon Manley,
had been developing
the world’s longest
instrument-based
monthly mean
temperature series,
the now famous
Central England
Temperature Record.
Lamb’s millennium charts
for central England
are also famous.
It was very difficult
to attract the money
needed for
establishing the past
climate record.
The "glamour" of the
much more expensive work,
of the computer modellng
laboratories, got attention
and funding in the 1970s.
Then there were new
sedimentary and
ice core data
giving more
accurate timing
of the various
glaciations.
The cycles of the ice ages
fitted cyclic changes
in the earth’s rotation known
as the Milanković cycles.
Meaning a return
to ice-age conditions,
on a geological scale,
was expected
to be the next
major climate change
-- one climate change
that really mattered !
Some scientists claimed
man made aerosols --
air pollution that blocked
sunlight -- would
accelerate cooling,
perhaps significantly,
in our lifetimes !
But then global warming
started in the mid-1970s.
In the absence of
empirical evidence,
global circulation models
were used to investigate
the 'CO2 is evil' theory.
In the hot, dry
summer of 1988,
Great Britain's
Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher
decided to embrace
global warming alarm,
and the UN's IPCC
was born.
Lamb remained concerned,
in the last years of his life,
that alarming global warming
forecasts were arbitrarily
established as a "fact"
The old dogma of an
unchanging climate
before the mid-20th century,
a false belief that
Lamb fought with data,
resurfaced as the new
doctrine of anthropogenic
( man made )
climate change.
Lamb was not the first
scientist to challenge
the old orthodoxy
of climate stability, with
natural climate change
claimed to be
meaningless "noise",
although he may have
been the last.
Lamb did help establish
the idea of a naturally
changing climate.
In 2006, the CRU building
was renamed in Lamb's honor,
and he was in the ‘top 100
world-changing discoveries,
innovations and research
projects to come out of
the UK universities’ for the
innovation of establishing
‘climate change as a
serious research subject'.
