tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28837843.post3690369635372562155..comments2024-03-19T07:10:27.303-07:00Comments on Quark Soup by David Appell: Is This Climate Science’s Thermidorian Reaction?David Appellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03318269033139447591noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28837843.post-36714347340936683472011-11-28T10:52:11.516-08:002011-11-28T10:52:11.516-08:00Just for the record, Joe Romm posted on the new se...Just for the record, Joe Romm <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/11/27/376197/media-flawed-study-climate-sensitivity/" rel="nofollow">posted</a> on the new sensitivity paper late Sunday afternoon (of a holiday weekend). Will that dissuade David from dumping on him similarly next time? Probably not. Journalists have a hard time abandoning cherished narratives.Steve Bloomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12943109973917998380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28837843.post-12910248910540280642011-11-28T00:42:25.775-08:002011-11-28T00:42:25.775-08:00Try this:
"Our ghost detectors detected a gh...Try this:<br /><br />"Our ghost detectors detected a ghost where we didn't expect one."<br /><br />There ya go.Steve Bloomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12943109973917998380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28837843.post-80548602233544059612011-11-28T00:37:26.500-08:002011-11-28T00:37:26.500-08:00Read this, David. Solving this particular mystery...Read <a href="http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=2762#comments" rel="nofollow">this</a>, David. Solving this particular mystery is a big, big deal for the science. The prior popular mechanism involved magma melting carbon deposits, but as noted it had an isotope match problem and couldn't explain the repeat hyperthermals (getting weaker each time). But now, hmm, big area of permafrost melting fast... does that sound familiar? It should. And we have a much bigger supply of vulnerable clathrates than could have existed during the Paleocene. As I noted above, the PETM is an imperfect analog to our present situation, but note not in a good way. <br /><br />Oh yeah, and notice how over deep time climate sensitivity is on a sliding scale that goes quite high. *Another* model failure.Steve Bloomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12943109973917998380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28837843.post-54599206491552580512011-11-28T00:25:59.016-08:002011-11-28T00:25:59.016-08:00Yes, it's a modeling failure, no doubt about i...<i>Yes, it's a modeling failure, no doubt about it, but that the droughts are driven by AGW and have recently become a persistent feature of East African climate is clear.</i><br /><br />Lol. The above kinda sums it all up. <br /><br />"Our ghost detectors don't work for crap but don't you worry coz I know dem ghosts is surely out there." <br /><br />Gotta have faith.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28837843.post-67123315066419198792011-11-27T20:58:44.341-08:002011-11-27T20:58:44.341-08:00And David, you're still missing the point of S...And David, you're still missing the point of Shukla's comment. Also, what does it have to do with the greedy landowners discussion that preceded it? Nothing that I can see.<br /><br />The modelers and the IPCC have been crystal-clear about the shortcomings of regional projections. Hopefully the situation will improve, but for now we're faced with the problem that many regional impacts are going to be a surprise. (They're going to happen. The observed circulation changes guarantee it.) You seem to want to conflate that with them somehow not being a consequence of AGW. Wrong.<br /><br />A great example of this is the current East African drought. Joe Romm has the details <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/19/348335/usgs-expert-explains-how-global-warming-likely-contributes-to-east-africas-brutal-drought/" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Yes, it's a modeling failure, no doubt about it, but that the droughts are driven by AGW and have recently become a persistent feature of East African climate is clear. Until the models can start doing regional projections well, expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing.<br /><br />Of course it's a very, very strong argument for mitigation now, but oddly nobody besides Africans seems to care very much. You and nearly the entire journalism profession? Not that I can see.<br /><br />Or maybe it's that you're waiting until after somebody gets back to you about those missing Joules. That'll make the East Africans feel all better.Steve Bloomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12943109973917998380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28837843.post-62277250932422941702011-11-27T17:53:47.084-08:002011-11-27T17:53:47.084-08:00For the context of Shukla's message, please se...For the context of Shukla's message, please see <a href="http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2011/11/sorting-through-stolen-uae-emails.html?showComment=1322107503238#c4722701702479450600" rel="nofollow">my comment on the previous article</a>. It is important for climate scientists to help adaptation, which has unfortunately not given due weight in the IPCC+UNFCCC processes.Kooiti Masudahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15709237727441869109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28837843.post-13082650669248111602011-11-27T17:26:07.223-08:002011-11-27T17:26:07.223-08:00David, trust your eyes. There is a huge amount of ...David, trust your eyes. There is a huge amount of uncertainty in climate science, the uncertainty has been glossed over and covered up by knobbling peer-review and the IPCC reporting activity, there have been recorded climate events for the past 2000 years or more - a historical record, so claims of 'unprecedented' warming/cooling/storms/floods/fires are invariably not unprecedented at all, and the main scientists pushing the CO2-is-the-main-cause-of-warming argument have all been revealed to be unprofessional circle-the-wagons folks hand in hand with WWF and Greenpeace et al. <br /><br />If you've got a choice between conspiracy and human failing, bet on human failing every time. <br /><br />Climate science is not much better than accupuncture and raiki - it's certainly not as professional and rigorous as medicine and engineering. It's an infant science (about 40 years, right?) and it's main practitioners are crappy (Hansen Mann, Jones, Karoly, the late Schneider). <br /><br />Trust your eyes. <br /><br />WBAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28837843.post-60427823871779412162011-11-27T15:16:09.170-08:002011-11-27T15:16:09.170-08:00And Nathan Urban's walk-back at p3.0
But anyw...And Nathan Urban's walk-back at p3.0<br /><br />But anyway, this is just another case of first-paper syndrome, compounded by a bad press release and the widely-quoted lead author's lack of understanding that what scientists mean by "climate sensitivity" isn't how that term is understood by the public from news articles (not that the science journalists involved weren't complicit in this confusion). My discussion of these points is down in the comments at p3.0. <br /><br />Notice that I even had a sort-of original thought that a scientist agreed with! :)<br /><br />Further on, even though I almost always feel like I'm talking to a wall when I address David here (unless the subject is cat care), when it comes to this subject I try to bear in mind Jim Hansen's dictum about the hierarchy of evidence for the problem: First paleoclimate (referring mainly to the deep-time stuff), then the modern record of observations, and only then the models.<br /><br />Even as we acquire a pretty good idea of CO2 level vs. equilibrium climate state through deep time to the present, it seems to be unavoidable that the timing of the coming changes will always be uncertain since our situation is unprecedented (we're injecting carbon into the atmosphere even faster that at the start of the PETM) and because the paleo record contains no useful analog other than the Plio-Pleistocene deglaciations, which aren't all that useful since they had a non-GHG self-limiting trigger (orbital oscillations). If and when the models start giving us really definite answers, the only way to know for sure if they're right will be to wait to see what happens. That seems unappealing from the POV of our collective descendants.<br /><br />I have to close for now, but in parting how's this for an analogy:<br /><br />We're playing Russian roulette and arguing about how likely it is that the next chamber contains a bullet. Well, as it turns out there's an irreducible uncertainty, so pull the trigger, right? That logic leads inevitably to the chamber that isn't empty.<br /><br />(BTW, re Romm, he hardly ever takes time off, has a small child, this happened at the start of a major holiday and articles of this sort he has to write himself rather than farm them out to a guest author, so give him a break, OK?)<br /><br />(Also too, re the DEFRA email, like it or not the relationship between the IPCC and UNFCCC processes was baked into the cake for all to see ~20 years back. In that context, a government asking it's scientists for a clear message doesn't seem out of line, especially when that government, as in this instance, had decided to try to take on a leadership role. Not that that worked out well.)Steve Bloomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12943109973917998380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28837843.post-24002517007414184522011-11-26T22:35:32.724-08:002011-11-26T22:35:32.724-08:00David, you may want to read James Annan's view...David, you may want to read James Annan's views on the Science paper:<br />http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-on-schmittner.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com