Polling all scientists - Josh 327

Roddy Cambell says:

The decent mass of scientific society, in a quiet but significant majority, getting on with it in a civilised and peaceful fashion in the library/laboratory/Antarctica/satellites/rain forest/literature, no shouting please, debating what works and what is right.  The righteous Union of Concerned Climate Hawks with their megaphones, degrowth manifestos, 100-denier underwear, dinner inspections, LSE platforms and disinvestment petitions.  Who wouldn't be a bit shy?

Many thanks to Roddy for the idea of Shy Scientists being like Shy Tories - they won't offer their thoughts when there are so many vocal alarmists ready to shout them down. 

The background to the cartoon is the Lew paper which Richard Betts critiques here and which is being discussed over at Lew's blog here.

Cartoons by Josh

PS If you feel like donating then please do. I am trying to set aside time to put some of the cartoons into a book. Any support would be greatly appreciated!

Unprecedented boing - Josh 305

Talking of Climate Models, there is another great Climate Audit post titled "Unprecedented" Model Discrepancy where Richard Betts, once again, provides cartoon inspiration in the comments.

It’s a bit like watching a ball bouncing down a rocky hillside. You can predict some aspects of it behaviour but not others. You can predict it will generally go downhill, and if you see a big rock in it’s path you can be reasonably confident that it will hit it and bounce off, but you can’t predict the size and direction of all the little bounces in between.

Cartoons by Josh

Snail's pace - Josh 298

As Richard Betts notes here "I see the '2 degree limit' as rather like a speed limit on a road". And which is also quite an apt metaphor for the pause in global temperatures - slower than a not very extinct snail.

Click image for larger version

Cartoons by Josh

Carbon confusion - Josh 292

I had a request from Richard Betts to do a cartoon on this paper in Nature about soil CO2 emissions. The abstract says soil emits "60 petagrams of carbon per year to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide”.

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Inspirational Betts - Josh 289

Another Richard Betts cartoon - he's been so helpful this week...

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Poker Betts - Josh 288

Richard Betts quotes Dr Wallace Broecker, "The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks."

As has been observed, it looks like it is not a very big stick and/or the climate is in good humour.

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More on GCMs and public policy

Richard Betts posted some further thoughts on GCMs and public policy in the previous post on this subject. Since the thread is now heading for 300 comments I thought I'd post his ideas up here and respond in turn.

Richard first set out his understanding of my position.

I'd initially thought that you were claiming that the very need for any kind of climate policy was based on GCMs. Clearly it isn't, for the reasons I stated, but it seems this isn't your point here anyway. You seem to be moving a step further and talking about the importance of GCMs to the details of climate policy (eg. a carbon tax). Here I do partially agree with you - GCMs do of course play a role in the details, as they help with understanding the climate system, but they are by no means the only source of information. Moreover, I don't think the examples you give would be substantially affected if we didn't have GCMs.

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BBC range free - Josh 282

Another BBC meeting, same old story.

Cartoons by Josh

Diary date: Exetertwitterers edition

On 8 May, the University of Exeter is holding a Twitter-based Q&A session with some of its climate gurus:

Do you have a burning question about climate science?

We’ll be letting our researchers take over the @UofE_Research Twitter account on Thursday 8 May between 11.30 – 12.30. Professors Neil Adger, Mat Collins, Peter Cox, Richard Betts, and Dr Saffron O'Neill will be on hand to answer your questions on the latest developments in climate science. Each of our participants has contributed to the recently published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report.

Details here.

Catching up - Josh 262

Recently, particularly since the 'Communicating the pause' blog post and discussion, it seems that Climate Science is trying to play catch up with sceptics. The latest Climate Sensitivity discussions have had a similar tone. Whatever the excuses for tardiness I think this is an entirely welcome development.

Cartoons by Josh

Futurist - Josh 137

Reading this thread may be required.