Bishop Hill Climate cuttings 24
Sep 21, 2008 Climate Welcome to episode 24 of Climate Cuttings, my roundup of developments on the global warming front.
First up is Nobel Laureate, Al Gore, who has changed his mind on whether adaptation should play a part in our reaction to climate change. He has now decided that those who advocate it are not dangerous lunatics after all, but are in fact, erm, right. Meanwhile, the Australian Garnaut Report into climate change also concludes that adaptation is the best policy.
The science is settled, right? Except that we don't know much about the effect of clouds on climate, of course. Oh yes, and we also don't understand the effect of snow (ie how much heat it reflects back into space) either, it seems.
Two sceptical scientists, David Douglass and John Christy, have a new paper out which looks at how much recent warming is caused by CO2. Their conclusions are that it's not very much. Meanwhile, Lean and Rind have published a statistical study, where they dig for correlations between forcings and temperature, and they find that the solar contribution to global warming is small. They did this using what they call "a robust multivariate analysis". I don't know about you, but when someone has to put the word "professional" in their job title (like "nursing professional") it's usually a sure sign that they are anything but. One can't help feeling that the use of "robust" in this context might actually be a contraindicator in the same way.
Meanwhile, NASA have announced a press conference for next week, in which they will discuss the state of the sun. As we've learned from Lean and Rind above, the sun has little impact on climate, so presumably NASA are going to talk about the lack of sunspots as a matter of interest rather than because of any effect it may have on us.
There is a whole new climate auditor on the block. Jeff Id has done some jaw-dropping work on Mann's new "Save the Hockey Stick" paper. It seems that Dr Mann has been cherry picking his data.
The BBC's Climate Wars covered the "sceptic fightback". This may have been the most dishonest piece of television ever broadcast in the UK.
Reader Comments (3)
I'm downloading it now - it's on past my bedtime up here in Scotland.