Friday
Jun212013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Von Storch on the pause
Jun 21, 2013 Climate: Models Climate: Surface Climate: other Climate: von Storch Hans von Storch, interviewed in Spiegel, is well worth a read this morning:
Unfortunately, some scientists behave like preachers, delivering sermons to people. What this approach ignores is the fact that there are many threats in our world that must be weighed against one another. If I'm driving my car and find myself speeding toward an obstacle, I can't simple yank the wheel to the side without first checking to see if I'll instead be driving straight into a crowd of people. Climate researchers cannot and should not take this process of weighing different factors out of the hands of politics and society.
Reader Comments (58)
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-lilley/global-warming-religion_b_3463878.html?utm_hp_ref=uk
Jun 21, 2013 at 2:32 PM | Richard Tol
After reading your simplified comment, people might think that you are not serious. My reaction is much harsher. You made giving models the benefit of the doubt contingent upon a political judgement packaged falsely as a cost benefit analysis. I am appalled. I will never again take you seriously.
In the first GISS modelling paper 1981_Hansen_etal.pdf , they assumed incorrect physics:
This is that CO2 blocks OLR in the 7-14 micron range and the GHE = lapse rate temperature difference between surface temperature and the partial operational emissivity and spectral temperature-weighted virtual emission temperature.
The real GHE is ~ a third of the claimed 33 K. This has been for 32 years systemic scientific fraud.
"Unfortunately, some scientists behave like preachers..." Really!? Understatement of the year.
The way the lead climate 'scientists' have become detached from science, and in turn become advocates, can be summed up in the way they call their own work 'the cause '
An idea which has no basis in science but finds a happy home in religion or politics.
At some point they all eventually end up admitting that it is their "instinct" that somehow trumps what the data are telling them. The fact that their jobs depend on the scary story is of course neither here nor there. Also this notion of overwhelming "evidence" is much claimed but never actually demonstrated. They show evidence of warming and some spurious correlations and a lot of bare opinion but never actual evidence of manmade warming. Tricksy! The actual evidence tells us there is no troposheric warming, no stratospheric cooling, no ocean warming down to to 700m, therefore the hypothesis is already disproven.
Any dubious claims about deep ocean warming were not in the models because it is entirely unphysical and it doesn't take a genius to notice that there is insufficient data even to make such a claim. Notwithstanding the end result that is that if this putative heat is actually going into this enormous heat sink then it is never coming out again. However the missing heat is imaginary. There is no warming masked by cooling, there is only a lack of warming and that is sufficient to tell us that none of the "consensus" scientists actually know enough about the climate to be able to advise us of anything. It has come to the point where it is a far more reliable metric to believe exactly the opposite of the forecasters claims.
I focus on another thing he said. "Our models certainly include a great number of highly subjective assumptions. Natural science is also a social process, and one far more influenced by the spirit of the times than non-scientists can imagine. You can expect many more surprises."
Here is another way to look at this question.
Any enterprise tends to operate in one of two cultures. In the first approach, they are data-oriented, and they dig carefully into the data before making their decisions. The very first question in any meeting when an idea is floated is always the same, "What does the data say about that?" They are obsessive about checking it, each and every time. Disagreements are settled largely by data. In the second approach, they are not obsessive about data, and instead they use other methods for making decisions. The primary alternative is the gut feel of the senior people. These senior people may have been away from the front lines for decades, but they believe they still know exactly how everything works there. The gut-feel way is faster, of course, and less expensive. It needs fewer skilled researchers and less data. Pretty pictures can sway decisions whether they actually make complete sense or not. A strong will can bend their understanding of reality in his direction. Disagreements are settled largely by dominance.
From this viewpoint, what von Storch is saying is that climate science at the working level uses a large dose of the second method, gut feel, rather than obsessive checking of the data. It is that mixed kind of culture.
Well, that might be OK for a design outfit or for Congress, but is that really how a hard, natural science ought to operate? Especially when the public presumes they are talking to a data-oriented culture? I didn't think so.
Allowing for some possible errors in translation, like Richard Betts, I also thought it well worth a read.
If true, I'll give von Storch partial credit for saying in a SPIEGEL interview 10 years ago, "We need to allay people's fear of climate change." While he seems to be approaching that from the angle of “it's too late to change it, so tell the truth”, I still take the line that it would be a lot easier if exaggerations and untruths weren't told in the first place. Unfortunately, it is still going on. Wholesale.
I also expect to see others, who jumped in with both feet, attempting to claim they also said something more moderate in the small-print. Should we be pleased?