Is Gavin Schmidt frit?*

*That's "frightened", if you didn't know.

There's another interesting global warming punch-up developing at the website of Roger Pielke Snr, who is an eminent climatologist and something of a thorn in the side of the alarmist community.

Roger's blog yesterday featured a guest post from Hendrik Tennekes, a former head of the Dutch Met Office, which criticised climate modellers and in particular RealClimate's Gavin Schmidt, for not fully understanding the role of oceans in climate change. Oceans, he said, were crudely parameterised in most climate models, despite the fact that their heat content was vastly greater than that of the atmosphere. He also suggested that Gavin might like to get back to graduate school.

Gavin, it seems, was not amused and has been firing off emails to Pielke, complaining about the way Tennekes has treated him. Pielke's retort was to invite Schmidt to post a reply explaining why Tennekes was wrong and also to get involved with formulating a joint position statement, in which they would set out where they stand on the various questions in climate modelling. This is an admirable proposal, which will allow the differences to be pinned down and experiments can be designed to answer the question of who is right on each of them.

The six million dollar question is: does Gavin have the gumption to take part? My prediction: no. The alarmist community has much to lose, and very little to gain from getting involved. They will respond with abuse.

Comments

[Steve2]

Thanks for the heads up on this, Tennekes seems to have some quite searching points about the lack of knowledge about ocean systems, reminds me of the stuff Carl Wunsch was saying in the dreaded 'Swindle' doc.

It is funny that whenever people have compared the climate and weather model results, the climate scientists disdainfully say they are not the same thing , I agree, I think most people will acknowledge weather predictions are generally useful up to 10 days. I think ironically the climate modellers probably have had too much credit from the weather models rubbing off on them for quite a while.

It is people like Tennekes and other meteorologist who call them out on this, and ask them to stand on their own feet requiring them to prove their special claims, This seems to get them uncomfortable. Hence the climate modelling brigade resorting to huffing about disrespect rather than proving their claims.

[DW]

Based on the way Gavin berates and insults anyone who disagrees with him, I don't think he really has the right to complain.