Posts by danleywolfe 2 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2010
The problem of ascribing CO2 as the "primary" cause of global warming as the climate advocacy / IPCC claim is having a reasonable bit of evidence either showing cause and effect or explaining away all other causes including solar cycles. It hasn't been done and the IPCC is still working with hypothesis and hypothetical models that do not provide adequate treatment of a) feedbacks and b) solar related causes.
East Anglia's scientific enquiry asked themselves only if the Objective Science done by CRU was OK. The major problem is the subjective "opinion science" committed by the IPCC esp. the lead scientists including Schneider, Jones et al. The recent "Open Letter" by IPCC on the internet defends the FAR and large body of objective climate research IPCC has done. IPCC would be delighted to have this become a debate on the myriad bits of scientific work/data that is covered in the IPCC 4th assessment.
The issue is the "opinion science" esp. based on models that are akin to economic policy models taken out 100 years "out of sample" (... not supportable and basically meaningless). IPCC FAR states that the knowledge of such things as water vapor, clouds, particulates and natural solar cycles is inadequate; however, they are very important.
IPCC Open Letter says: "none of the handful of misstatements (out of hundreds and hundreds of unchallenged statements)remotely undermines the conclusion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that "most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."
If the models are based on the past 50 years and inadequately represent these non manmade forcings, this last bit must be untrue and intentionally misleading. AGHGs are important forcings - however they are a fraction of the total forcings that contribute to warming. IPCC claims the long term models (outputs by 20 modeling groups over 24 SRES storyline scenarios) predict a range of warming by 2010 of 1.5 deg C to 6 deg C, mean 3 deg C. These models are heavily calibrated on GHG emissions - for the purpose of furthering the policy agenda. IPCC (Stephen Schneider) has talked about running the projections out 200 years to increase the "awareness" (i.e., alarm) of the public, mainstream media and politicians on the urgent need for policy action, how about 500 years – the models are conditioned to produce rising temperature out in time.
The IPCC further characterizes the results as 90% likely, 95% highly likely to dress up the model long term projection as quantified science, "it's real, it's done science"; these are subjective (again "opinion science") likelihoods assigned (perhaps a Delphi polling) by the lead authors who are predisposed to push policy. This is not quantified deductive science, but forced by opinions. Schneider claims that opinion science is perfectly justified but not if you are trying to dress it up as objective science to further ones beliefs... it is not science at all.
This would fall under Norman Davies "rules of propaganda" (in Europe: a History, Oxford Press, London, 1995). This is more serious than misinterpreting ice berg retreat, tree rings or sea level rise. Much of the critical urgency is due to the long term projection that has been hyped, rehyped and triple hyped to the public, mainstream media and politicians to push IPCC agenda. My background includes research in thermodyamics, heterogeneous catalysis, statistics (and more), and I have done large scale systems modeling. The focus on opinion science is the most egregious offense -- not the detailed bits of tree ring and tit mouse counting. This needs to be acknowledged and dealt with rather than covered up. East Anglia simply took a pass on a real investigation instead giving a pat on the back to Jones et al. when the real sins weren't even tabled.
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