Monday
Sep232013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Climate's great dilemma
Sep 23, 2013 Climate: Models Climate: Surface Climate: sensitivity I have an article up at the Spectator's Coffee House blog on that awful dilemma for the IPCC:
It will not be an easy task. However the IPCC chooses to deal with the problem the repercussions are unpleasant. They might try to explain away the warming hiatus in some way: the in-vogue explanation is that the heat that should have been in the atmosphere has escaped, undetected, to the deep oceans. Evidence to support this idea is, however, scant at best, and going down this route is going to involve the IPCC admitting that there is much about the climate system that is not yet understood. This will be a hard act to carry off while simultaneously claiming that they are certain that mankind caused most of the recent warming.
Reader Comments (53)
We just need to be more daring with our use of concepts, like mathematicians were when presented with the problem of finding the roots of negative numbers. They discovered complex numbers then hypercomplex numbers. These things may be thought to have existed eternally and were discovered rather than invented.
This problem can be navigated with the conceptual extension of imaginary, err, complex heat.
Without putting too fine a point on it, but this
"This point was backed by Professor Myles Allen at Oxford University. "We have examined the forecasts made by climate scientists over the past three decades and they have been absolutely spot on in terms of predicting subsequent levels of global warming," he said. "Our climate models are robust and working well."
"One recent study found a way to assess sea ice cover in the Arctic over the past 1,600 years. At no point in that time were levels found to be as low as they are today. The current drop is probably the handiwork of human beings."
Is a severely deceptive statement, if the quote is full and in context.
Nicely put, your Grace.
You have done yeoman's work in this fight to keep humanity from shooting itself in its collective foot. I am proud to report that I have purchased and distributed several copies of "The Hockey Stick Illusion" to the open-minded.
I can't tell you how pleasantly surprised I was this morning to see that even Richard Harris of the U.S. National Public Radio (as fervent an AGW evangelical as the BBC) admit that there are "uncertainties" and include remarks from Roger Pielke, Jr. in announcing the forthcoming AR5. It's a bit of a miracle.