Climate Cuttings 25

The very eminent and very sceptical climatologist Richard Lindzen wonders, in a new paper, if modern climatology is set up to answer scientific questions. He discusses the long slow slide of the science away from answering discrete problems to a not-so-brave new world of endless simulation projects, which are unfalsifiable, but keep a lot of politicised bureaucrats employed.

Craig Loehle's first paleoclimatological paper was published by Energy & Environment, the journal the warmists love to hate. He has now moved on to a rather more prominent journal and has a study of the mathematics of tree ring reconstructions in the current edition of Climatic Change. His results rather undermine the whole case for this approach to finding the temperatures of the past by showing that one of its key assumptions - that the relationship between temperature and ring widths is linear - is not actually true.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan is probably one of the most eminent climatologists alive, so much attention will have been fixed on his recent paper discussing the big picture of AGW. In it, he discusses the impact of CO2 emissions on the climate and what it might mean for the global temperature. Roger Pielke Snr wonders why he is discussing global temperature at all, given that they had previously agreed that this is a flawed measure and that the ocean heat content is much more reliable.

Jeff Id produced another jaw-dropping demonstration of how Mann-method climate reconstruction produces hockey sticks and produces a false cooling of the medieval period. This is turning into a must-read blog.

The Met Office has never seen its inability to make any sort of accurate seasonal forecast as a problem when it comes to making sage announcements about how things will pan out in the future. Again undeterred by the failure of their forecast for the summer, they have recently brought out the results of their tea leaf gazing for the winter. This time it's going to be a pretty mild one, they say, although we should apparently be ready for cold snaps. Cold snaps in winter, eh? You don't say! Better lay in some firewood and buy some cold weather gear, people!

And lastly, it snowed in South Africa, a phenomenon that was attributed, without even a hint of irony, to "climate change" (a.k.a. global warming).

Photo credits: Fortune teller, Riptheskull.