Judith Curry questions recent popular & peer-reviewed Global Warming Report

[AE 87]

http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/05/2-new-papers-on-the-pause/

Included in this blog post are a critique of Scientific American claiming that the pause is explained and Mann et al study.

As has been noted in previous posts, this GT prof has been critiqued (and applauded) from both sides of the debate/discussion. I post this for the sake of those who suspect all support of the "consensus" is good science and all critiques are not.

 

[jwsavhGT]

All I can say is I'm glad I'm an accountant, not a scientist. Debits & credits make sense to me, not scientific jargon.

 

[AE 87]

All I can say is I'm glad I'm an accountant, not a scientist. Debits & credits make sense to me, not scientific jargon.

Yeah, unfortunately, it seems that much of the popular reporting on science banks on people not understanding it. In the last 15 years industry has probably cranked more CO2 into the atmosphere than in any period in history yet global temperatures have remained largely unchanged. CO2 simply isn't forcing climate change to the extent claimed by popular science reporting or the "consensus" science.

 

[cyptomcat]

The new Science article by Steinman, Mann and Miller is not exactly a report in the sense that a committee came together and produced some sort of consensus document (as in IPCC reports). This is just a new paper by Steinman et al.

The media articles are for sure horrible, unfortunately that's far too common. Especially about this new paper being novel or suddenly explaining everything...

Curry herself introduced the basis of this 'new' explanation in 2013. Her work with Wyatt brought the idea of Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) to prominence.

In layman's terms, what it boils down to is that a lot of the climate models treat some of the temperature variation as noise (sometimes up, sometimes down, unpredictably varying in short terms.) Wyatt and Curry suggested that it's an oscillation that is more predictable than previously thought.

It seems like Mann published a new perspective on this; but, according to Curry, Mann used some wrong assumptions in their study.

An important feature of all this is that both Curry's and Mann's climate works say that global warming is expected to speed up sooner or later (compared to last decade or so.) We just have to wait a few decades to find out.

 

[cyptomcat]

I also like this summary from Dr. Judith Curry a lot. I think there is some consensus she agrees with:

What do climate scientists agree on? Scientists agree that

• Surface temperatures have increased since 1880
• Humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
• Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have a warming effect on the planet

However there is considerable disagreement about the most consequential issues:

• Whether the warming since 1950 has been dominated by human causes
• How much the planet will warm in the 21st century
• Whether warming is ‘dangerous’
• And whether we can actually do anything to prevent climate change

Why do scientists disagree? There are a number of reasons:

• Insufficient observational evidence
• Disagreement about the value of different types of evidence
• Disagreement about the appropriate logical framework for linking and assessing the evidence
• Assessments of areas of ambiguity & ignorance
• And finally, the politicization of the science can torque the science in politically desired directions.

http://judithcurry.com/2015/02/24/naruc-panel-discussion-on-climate-change/