Making Sense and Making Enemies
Berkeley physicist Richard Muller is turning out to be one of the most interesting and controversial new players in the climate arena. It’s still early in the year, but it’s looking like he’ll be the Judith Curry of 2011.
Fresh off his recent congressional testimony (which turned out to be a deep disappointment to Marc Morano), he gives this wide-ranging interview with NPR’s Talk of the Town. Muller says enough stuff that is sure to make both Romm and Watts fume, and as you all know, that’s the sweet spot in this debate. (Like a smart politician, though, Muller also salutes Watts and the hard-working climate science community.)
To me, this is the money quote in the NPR interview, and one of the most obvious but least said things:
People want to pigeonhole everybody in this field just to simplify the argument.
And here’s an observation he makes that could easily be laid at the media’s doorstep:
But the public discussion tends to be not on the key science, but on the spectacular things that the exaggerators tend to say or the deniers deny, things like are the Himalayas going to melt? Or what’s happening with hurricanes? Are they increasing? These things are – the conclusions of the scientists on those things are actually quite mild and quite soft and equivocal.
All that’s left is for Muller to set up a blog and start throwing some elbows, but he’s hip to what that entails:
It’s a full-time job, if you’re going to do nothing other than just answer the blogs and answer the public criticism.
Welcome to the Thunderdome, Dr. Muller.
UPDATE: Some interesting, varied reax to Muller’s NPR interview. Michael Tobis calls it “carefully prepared, precisely calibrated spin.” Judith Curry is impressed and highlights her favorite excerpts. Roger Pielke Jr. calls Muller’s comments on Climategate “spot on.” William Connolley sees more proof that Muller is “rubbish.”
“Muller says enough stuff that is sure to make both Romm and Watts fume, and as you all know, that’s the sweet spot in this debate.”
*sigh*
I couldn’t see anything in there that would get Watts ‘fuming’. Anthony actually comes off very well in that interview.
Care to explain?
I find Proffesor Muller to be a fascinating character, recognised as brilliant at a young age he has been a member of the JASON group since before their global warming report in 1979 (although I don’t think he contributed). Gordon MacDonald did contribute and went on to collaborate with Muller.
Muller does have a track record in paleoclimatology, which is not brought up that often, I expect that this will change and that work will be attacked, particualrly the Ice Age conjecture.
I think he will prove a bit difficult to pigeon-hole, he is a big beast and well respected. I suspect that he fails into the picture as someone for whom a link between GHGs and climate is a no brainer for 30+ years, but that everything else is still up for grabs. I hope that he genuinely wants a piece of the action and will grab at it.
I am confident he will be attacked for all sorts of irrelevent reasons, I wish him a fair wind and good fortune.
I can see that his remarking that Anthony Watts is a hero for his weather station work is going to upset a shed load of folks. But it is that sort of credit where credit is due approach that many will find rather appealing.
Alex
Stu,
As best as I can understand it, Anthony Watts was alarmed that Muller was going to testify while the BEST project was still at a prelimary stage and wrote to the commitee trying to put his point of view prior to the testimony taking place. This lead to a short segment of the commitee meeting that I found difficult to follow and I might not be alone in that.
It was perhaps unfortunate that Watts jumped sharply from support of BEST to a rebuke of it over a perceived issue of protocol. I am sure that Watts as a contributor of data to BEST sought to protect his interests in the project and his data for other uses.
It may stand as an example if just how over-wound and hair-trigger climate topics have become. I suspect that many took Muller’s comments over Climategate and particularly the paleoclimate reconstructions as marking him out as being on their side and are alarmed that he takes no such stance.
Muller’s praise for Watts is justified and understandable, the Surface Station project is a classic piece of scientific fieldwork. Watts may have been hoping for evidence that would show that station siting issues have overestimated US land surface warming.
Now that cannot be shown until the BEST work is complete and hence Watts is alarmed by discussion of preliminary results that do not show this to be the case. Results that Muller highlighted as being not what BEST expected and that further analysis may lead to a changes in that area.
At the bottom this I feel that Watts thought he could trust Muller to behave in ways that were not born out by events. I thnk that Muller actually behaved in a proper manner given the circumstatnce of being called on to testify when BEST is still a work in progress.
Alex
I don’t think trust has been broken. I think that’s more of a manufactured thing coming from some parts of the media. The last I read was that Watts and Muller were carrying on a professional relationship in regards to the BEST project. I sense no animosity there. I agree that Muller did what he could when testifying and if anyone’s to blame it’s probably the Republicans who apparently bought Muller in prematurely.
I still don’t get why Keith thinks there’s anything in that interview which would cause ‘fuming’. Again, I would say this is a manufactured thing.
“that’s the sweet spot in this debate.”
Debate? Maybe. Sweet spot of truth? Decidedly No.
Here’s to another brilliant success of moving the Overton window in action. Make scientific nonsense up as if there is no tomorrow on the Watts side. Have the IPCC giving a conservative assessment of the state of the art science. Have one scientist with a the name of a prestigeous instituiton attatched to him proclaim “In this one point the IPCC seems to be OK, but look at all the other mess that we need to look into again.” and presto – here’s the middle ground, this must be the truth. Is it really so difficult to see through?
Keith, you know that both sides accuse the other of lying. You will never ever know, who is doing the lying, unless you are willing to learn the science yourself. If you can’t tell the experts from the jesters yourself on the merit of their arguments on the science, comparing them to each other won’t help you a single bit. It’s as futile as trying to tell the speed of a car from its color.
Muller makes some good points about the “subject” of Climate but I fear he’s also falling into the trap of fighting bulls in the arena of public opinion. The last comment about blogging is one every “Pro fro Dover” should take to heart and give some reflection to.
Stu:
This is part of what Anthony Watts had to say:
“There seems a bit of a rush here, as BEST hasn’t completed all of their promised data techniques that would be able to remove the different kinds of data biases we’ve noted. That was the promise, that is why I signed on (to share my data and collaborate with them). Yet somehow, much of that has been thrown out the window, and they are presenting some results today without the full set of techniques applied. Based on my current understanding, they don’t even have some of them fully working and debugged yet. Knowing that, today’s hearing presenting preliminary results seems rather topsy turvy. But, post normal science political theater is like that.”
and
“They’ve had a couple of weeks with the surfacestations data, and now without fully completing the main theme of data cleaning, are releasing early conclusions based on that data, without providing the ability to replicate. I’ve seen some graphical output, but that’s it. What I really want to see is a paper and methods. Our upcoming paper was shared with BEST in confidence.”
I think it is clear that an issue of trust was involved, A percieved broken promise in the first and an issue of confidence in the second part.
I think that Watts was disturbed to know that Muller was going to present preliminary results given that he understood that his own work wouldn’t be preempted in such a way.
Now that was all prior to the testimony itself, and Watts did try to get his point of view in first by writing to the commitee. That step does smack of a lack of confidence as to what Muller was about to say.
Obviously there was a bit of a breakdown in the lines of communications if Watts expected to be apprised of such a development.
But you seem to be correct in that the storm that emerged after the hearing was largely not of Watts making.
Alex
I don’t get this middle ground or sweet spot either. Is this what the media thinks or is it your opinion, Keith? I’d think the sweet spot would be where most of the scientists are, like the IPCC consensus, like a bell curve, not some arbitrary made up ground that only one scientist per year sits on to make veiled political statements about science.
Thanks Alex-
The promise statement can be read in a couple of ways I guess. In terms of a final result, the promise has not yet been broken. As you say in your original post, I think Anthony was getting jumpy about using preliminary data in testimony. Yet Muller clarified that the data was preliminary. Sceptics felt ripped off and the AGW side felt vindicated. If you focus on the ‘preliminary’ though then I don’t think you should be feeling much at all. There is a way to go yet with BEST.
I agree with you that in the second statement, there seems to be an issue of confidence being breached. Personally I find this a little hard to break down and clarify- as there is the other issue of transparency to deal with. From what I read at the time, Anthony’s position on this was different to Steven Mosher’s. Anthony did feel that confidence had been breached. I don’t have any hard position on that really. It had the feeling of ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ about it.
What’s so hard to understand.
The world is warming, Man’s increasing C02 is the cause, we need to take action and hiding the decline was wrong.
AGW is true and Hide the decline was wrong.
One scientific fact;one fact about graphsmanship.
Isn’t it interesting that these two truths which are not logically tied to each other cannot be uttered in the same sentence without causing an uproar.
I like Muller.
@ Alex Harvey (3)
Freeman Dyson is a much bigger beast. Yet pigeon-holing is the preferred mode of operation of small minds. So there.
In an update at the end of the post, I’ve added links to varied responses to Muller’s NPR interview.
@ mosher
Nuances are hard to understand. The world was warming but it isn’t for the last 12 years. Man’s increasing CO2 is a likely cause to some extent. We don’t know to what extent. We’d like to make a probabilistic statement but we really can’t. IPCC does it but they are lying and people like Judy Curry are calling their bluff. Hiding the decline was wrong but it didn’t make any difference in the big picture.
There is only one hard scientific fact: CO2 makes the world warmer. Everything else, including most of numbers around it, is very soft. That’s why climate science is only half-science.
what grypo said
and
While it’s amusing to see deniers do a 180 on Muller (as amusing as their attempts are to justify it),
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/jerk/#more-3656
I have little more than mild interest in some hyped-up attention-seeking effort funded in part by Koch, hasn’t had results published in academic journal, and has to date not presented anything truly insightful. As WC says, Muller is indeed rubbish, seemingly easily influenced/mislead by amateur contrarians, and making things up on the fly.
http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/28/koch-richard-muller-gore-cicerone-polar-bears-friedman/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Muller-Misinformation-1-confusing-Mikes-trick-with-hide-the-decline.html
But Keith likes him because he’s a balance between mainstream science and flat-Earthism or something.
11# now who is being simplistic..
Man’s CO2 may be causing some warming since the 1950’s, there may be a number of other natural processes at work causing warming as well? Can anybody say for sure?
Positive feedbacks in various computer models, are just assumptions, with no observed evidence for a positive feedback..
Tipping points, 6 C, metres of sea level rise, etc,etc are just environmental guilt, and a modern version of doom and gloom end of the world ideas, that have been repeated in various guises throughout human history..
I’m not going too trust ‘climate scientists’ objectivity until they take a step back from – ‘we are saving the planet’, etc
How many people in the last 20 years have gone into climate science thinking we are saving the planet, and see everything throught those blinkers.. Is it a AGW induced hurricane, or just weather, etc…
Some even think weather/climate is part of God’s curse….
http://www.e-n.org.uk/p-1129-Climate-change-and-the-Christian.htm
Dr Tim Mitchell:
“However, we feel in awe of its destructive potential, seen in such things as hurricanes and floods, which are part of the curse inflicted upon the earth following the Fall[/b] (Genesis 3.17). ”
Dr Tim Mitchell:
“Although I have yet to see any evidence that climate change is a sign of Christ’s imminent return, human pollution is clearly another of the birth pangs of creation, as it eagerly awaits being delivered from the bondage of corruption (Romans. 19-22).
Tim Mitchell works at the Climactic Research Unit, UEA, Norwich, and is a member of South Park Evangelical Church.”
Dr Tim Mitchell. … co author Phil Jones and Mike Hulme, and the missing Tim from the Harry_read_me.txt file..
Harry was trying to fix Tim’s code (Temperature datasets at CRU)
Dr Tim Mitchell is a Phil Jones and Mike Hulme peer reviewed co author at the Climatic Research Unit, UEA and then Tyndal Centre
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/papers/index.html
He was also respeonsible for administering a number of temperature datasets (CRU/Tyndall)
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/data/index-table.ht…
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/data/index.html
(ie notice Cru 1.2, Cru2.0)
Harry was trying to get Cru 3.0 into shape, and he couldn’t even reproduce their own previous results (look up Harry_Read_me.txt)
Ignore the religious elements, there is a belief that AGW amongst many – (including Houghton) is real and unequivocal, how open to a null hypothesis are these guys (ie AGW may be small, swamped by natural)
Positive feedbacks in various computer models, are just assumptions, with no observed evidence for a positive feedback..
Sigh…
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/papers-on-water-vapor-feedback-observations/
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
16
PLease define a deniar
for once and for all lets get a accurate definition of the word…
Now I’m a catastrophic man made global warming sceptic, who thinks many economic policies are daft (ie windfarm massive subsidies, for a technology that will never deliver – ie replace base load)
and I’ll happily change my mind when I see some evidence. I do not care, either way. As I know China, India and Africa will be burning coal (making lots of CO2) for decades to come.
Some just say the word means, those that think climate never changes.. I have never met one of those, nor a flat earther.
17
sigh.. did you read them
estimated, may, etc computer models, etc,etc
#18, meet #19
Make a bogus statement like
Positive feedbacks in various computer models, are just assumptions, with no observed evidence for a positive feedback
then brush away the evidence presented, sticking absurdly to the original statement. Denialism at work.
Hardly brushed away…. just an observation of abstract vs content..
ie High degrees of confidence not supported by the underlying SCIENCE…
What would falsify AGW for you.. 15 years of global temps plateauing, 20 years, anything? (13 years at the moment)
Dr Muller or anyone entering the climate change controversy should expect this type of reception in the blogosphere.
BW.
The evidence for positive feedbacks is not simply “the models”
there are 3 ways I know of to estimate a sensitivity number.
1. Paleo
2. Observational data
3. Models.
That also happens to be their relative importance in most climate scientists minds, so you’ll have to more than make ill informed critiques of models. they are the weakest link and you don’t even understand them well enough to make a cogent case against them.
As for harry. please, harry is utterly unimportant. you dont like CRUtemp
pick another, mine, zeke’s jeffids, nick stokes, It’s getting warmer.
Paleo. Seriously. What paleo do you find most compelling.
(Followup question)
Models. Seriously. What models do you find compelling?
Tree rings > actual measurements? The SNR on tree rings is so bad that it is close to useless to wring out a climate signal at all, much less work out the sensitivities of the forcings. Go look at the individual (not PC’s, or averaged values) tree ring tracings, and see if they improve your confidence in the priority here.
Here is the order of relative importance for how the accuracy of estimated forcing sensitivities should be judged:
1. Prediction results
2. Prediction results
3. Prediction results
There is no free pass. A billion dollars of physics models is worth absolutely ZERO if they cannot predict with more skill than a non-physics based, or simple mathematics models.
You cannot just sweep under the rug the fact that none of the large CO2 forcing models predicted the recent decade+ of temperature plateau, and the general poor performance of the models. It is blatantly obvious that the models over prediction of temperature changes would heavily suggest their sensitivities are too large.
Try to get a climate scientist to say that out loud.
20.
Sigh
I read one of those papers, (Soden, Jackson, Ramaswamy et al).
They do seem to have good evidence that water vapour content is rising in line with the constant relative humidity assumption, including in the upper troposhere, where it is inportant. However:-
1) Temperature over this period (1982-2004), increased at only about half the IPCC midpoint rate of 3C by 2100. Since 2004, temperature has stalled completely, (as everyone knows).
2) Temperatures in the upper trop increased at only about the same rate as the lower trop. Because of amplification, upper trop temperatures are supposed to be rising at about twice the speed of the lower trop.
3)They comment (pg 841) that by 2100 the model predicts a rise in water vapour of 20% in the lower trop and 100% in the upper trop. Eyeballing Figure 1 suggests humidity is also rising at only about half the modelled speed, (and probably not at all since 2004).
4) They use clear sky conditions only for the whole study, (pg 842). This may be necessary to get any clean data, but everyone knows that cloud behaviour is pretty important.
Any comments?
23 Harry show how they HANDLE data sloppy, incompetant, amateurish.. third rate scientist in a lab in the back end of East Anglia, not exactly Oxford or Cambridge – third raters that got luck with funding in the late 80’s. Do I have to quote Phil Jones word in an interview about not being good keepiing track of recors.. Try that in industry and you would be out of the door, AND in most serious academic establishments.
so yes it does matter especially if you are quoting it is the warmest annual temperature to the SECOND decimal place…
I do understand the models, it is not the place to discuss technically at C a S.
The world IS warming, to what degree is arguable because of issues with the methodology, UHI (good turning into a bad station, etc) Hopefull the BEST project should give some confidence to this..
BUT of course this will not show any of the causes, just what is happening with temperature.
The causes can be multipiple and interacting with many positive and negative mechanisms at work.. To even think that climate science knows all of these, let alone put accurate figures on them is far beyond what the science knows. Just Clouds for example
As yet, there is NO identifiable human signature in the data… We would have heard of it!
which suggests that AGW is small and the effect is potentially swamped by the natural mechanisms at work.
re 23
Mosher writes
===================
The evidence for positive feedbacks is not simply “the models”there are 3 ways I know of to estimate a sensitivity number.1. Paleo
==============
Is this so despite all of the problems withthe paleo results? This tis quite disquieting to me.
BW.
CRU get data from GHCN, 98% of there data.
If harry screwed it up, then you have a problem explaining
1. Why Zeke, Me, Nick Stokes, JeffID, all get the same result.
2. Why NCDC and GISS get the same result.
3. why BEST choosing 2% get the same result.
4. why eric steig got the same result (on RC) using a different SOURCE, UCAR.
If harry shows anything it shows this: either a very confused programmer
or some less than perfect methods. Either way, the answer stands. A difference that makes no difference, makes no difference.
kdk33.
On paleo folks read what I wrote. most climate scientists take the paleo work to be the best evidence of sensivity. See hansen. ( not Mann)
Personally, I take the observational work to be the best evidence.
Mosh,
To be fair, the UCAR data Steig used (I’ve played with it as well) has pretty extensive overlap with GHCN, so its not really a different source. Ron’s work with GSOD would be a better example.
As far as paleo measures of sensitivity, they are based more on the broad response of the earth’s climate to external forcings (e.g. insolation changes) during glacial periods and whatnot than hockeysticks. Here is a good figure from Knutti outlining the various sources of sensitivity estimates: http://www.realclimate.org/wp-content/uploads/colose-part1-fig3.png
The best paleo is the ice cores, not tree rings. I once asked Id on his blog what he thought of ice core paleo. He said he hadn’t looked into them. (This was a long time ago)
Is there a plausible explanation for Ice Ages without positive feedback? Especially how they end (i.e. how warming after glaciation is much faster than cooling going into glaciation)
@ Mosher
It does happen that people screw up independently but similarly. I just saw an example last month at work. Not to say that all you guys are wrong, just a footnote. And BTW (again) it is not getting warmer since 1998.
Re paleo I cannot read your stuff (depending on the time of the day I don’t have time or access) but I hope what I learned in grad school will serve me well for a while. Paleo data don’t have sufficient time resolution and calibration accuracy to be relevant for the current discussion. If most climate scientists take the paleo work to be the best evidence of sensivity it speaks volumes to me. With all our paleo-prowess we still don’t know how the current glacial cycle began. Strange that paleo folks don’t find it problematic.
@ Dean
Ice cores may have their own problems, e.g. gas diffusion.
I don’t know about alternative explanation but Younger Dryas was very fast. Probably faster than warming before or after.
Sashka says: “Younger Dryas was very fast. Probably faster than warming before or after.”
Thanks, that helps make it clearer. I now see that what you’re saying is that the paleo record supports high climate sensitivity.
You are welcome to use the glasses of any color your like. As long as you don’t put words in my mouth I don’t care.
To Steve Mosher:
What is the currently accepted range for climate sensitivity?
re 37
How quickly is the uncertainty range in climate sensitivity being lessened?
@ Tom (38)
It doesn’t. The uncertainty today remains about what it was 25 years ago.
Your previous question is ill-posed. It depends on who is talking.
re 39
So comments about climatologists using various methods to determine climate sensitivity should contain a caveat.
This caveat would tend to put into some question the value of climate science findings fror policy makers. Roger Peilke Junior makes a similar point about the utility of climate science in determining policy.
Holding up climate science knowledge as some sort of magic talisman may be of use in finding a position in a climate science faculty but it does not seem to be of use for people who must make decisions about AGW measures. I hope that this has been learned with the events of the last few years. We collectively have to make decisions and it appears that climate science is not going to provide any certainty to help us in making those decisions. Nevertheless, these decisions have to be made.
A lot of people (myself included) are not convinced that any decisions are necessary at this time. Given the unyielding uncertainty and high costs of mitigation (of something that possibly doesn’t even require mitigation) I prefer adaptation.
@Barry Woods
> Try that in industry and you would be out of the door
I work in industry, and have done for a decade, with everything from tiny private businesses to some of the largest multinationals. I don’t know *any* programmer that doesn’t have some scratch files kicking around with stuff that varies from mind-numbing stupidity to moments of pure genius, to exploratory dead-ends, to handy reusable snippets, to whatever the hell they feel like putting in them.
You want the file to be important. It’s not. It’s a scratch file. The fact that it is a scratch file makes any discussion of the merits of its contents or the professionalism of the author *utterly meaningless*.
re42.
Exactly. When I read the harry mail my first reaction was GOLD MINE. then when you actually try to trace it to anything that matters, you realize fools gold. Plus we already knew the prgramming practices inside CRU sucked. we knew their security sucked. Then I considered my scratch files and concluded, we dont know anything worthwhile from that mail.
The point being harry is a DISTRACTION from the real issue.
zeke, yes Ron work is better than erics.
thanks for the Knutti source.
re 43
SM writes
=====================
The point being harry is a DISTRACTION from the real issue.
===============
I suppose that one could say that about climate science in general when it comes to the AGW issue.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomgray/5611190756/
I see evidence of current climate mitigation technology such as the one at the URL above. I see that this technology dominates not just our economy but the natural environment as well. I wonder with what justification is this technology being installed given its dominating influence.
Is current technology adequate to address the issue of AGW? Do we have the technology needed to address it? What is the trade offs between the technologies needed to address mitigation and adaptation? These are questions that I find much more important than the latest method of averaging thermometer readings together. Climate science, in itself, has very little to offer to such questions.
Sashka,
Freeman Dyson is in a league with very few others, I would include Walter Munk as another big beast, and in his case very much the Earth Scientist.
One could try to put them in pigeonholes, but best not expect them to stay put.
If you are saying that people just make some three box judgment hot, cold, or lukewarm, and then move on without further listening to what they have to say, that is profoundly sad.
What pigeonhole is Dyson in?
I recall he has expressed all of the following in one interview/speech:
Radiative Physics classifies CO2 is a GHG,
Causing Earth to warm but not globally (still technically true perhaps),
We do not know what our preferred level of CO2 is,
Better things to do before tackling CO2 as a GHG,
CO2 leads to stratospheric cooling in a big way,
Stratospheric cooling will cause an Artic Ozone Hole,
Ozone Holes are a big problem requiring action,
Climate models are hampered by weak parameterisations,
E.G. because we still cannot predict cloud behaviour,
So as they stand the models are not very helpful,
etc. I don’t think there is such a pigeonhole.
I haven’t read or heard anything from Dyson or Munk recently but I do hope they are still enjoying themselves. Both brilliant, funny and I think mischevious. Munk used to be very much a wait and monitor man who I think is becoming more convinced of an urgency. Dyson was preaching radical thinking on all things from Climate to Genetic Engineering last I heard.
I do wish there were more of their calibre; class acts the pair of them.
Alex
From the Update:
William Connolley sees more proof that Muller is “rubbish.”
From the piece:
“Which Mullah do I mean? I mean Richard Muller (who has one of the worst-looking websites in the known universe, beaten only in my personal experience by TimeCube and (of course) Lubos).”
This makes me sad. I have no idea who William Connolley is, and know not if this is typical of his writing. Why the reference to a Mullah, and an opinon on what I suspect must be this site: http://muller.lbl.gov/ which I was already familiar with. Why the side swipe at “TimeCube and (of course) Lubos)” what and whoever they are? Yes I could click and google but I was hoping to read about Muller. It serves me right for going to the Connolley site at all I suppose.
If this be playing to the gallery, I would not know, and my life is still too long for me to care that much, or to learn to play a gallery role.
FWIW I think Muller is helpful, I am familiar with his PffP lecture series and a lecture or two on his views in the paleoclimate field. I cannot see that I would ever see him as rubbish, but that is not to say that I am not critical of some of what he has to say.
I should like to think that this is not typical of Connelley but I feel disinclined to find out. I found this particular piece to be corrosive, and ill-mannered. I cannot say it is wrong in any meaningful way for I find only opinion.
@ Alex
people just make some three box judgment hot, cold, or lukewarm, and then move on without further listening to what they have to say, that is profoundly sad
Yes, that’s what I am saying. Morover, not too many have mental capacity to grasp the concept of lukewarm. Make it just hot or cold. I spent way too much time on DotEarth observing well-meaning people who would go ballistic every time they hear names of people like Dyson, Lomborg, Curry or Pielke. Anything that is not one-dimensional just drops out of the picture.
Thanks for telling me about Munk. Scientifically he is like my grandfather. I picked up and developed one of his ideas. But I didn’t know anything about him as a person.
William Connolley is a very minor member of the Real Climate team. For some reason Keith doesn’t like us to talk about other blogs here so I can’t tell you much more than there is no love lost between them and just about anybody how is not a flaming alarmist.
Sashka – I don’t see how the rate of warming of the Younger Dryas, whatever it was, disproves positive feedback. If it was that fast, it may strengthen it.
My points was that there are phenomena that we have a record of that are unexplainable without it. But the pieces really do fall together fairly well with it, and many forms of positive feedback are currently observable and measurable.
While hypotheses for minimal, zero, or negative feedback in the current situation cannot be strictly disproven, they rely on a highly improbable combination of processes that we cannot show are happening now, while for positive feedback, it fits with what we see, can measure, and have records of.
So it seems like a classic case of grasping at straws to avoid the evidence that is shouting at you.
I didn’t say (and didn’t mean) that Younger Dryas (you really should look it up if you are blogging on climate) disproves positive feedback. It was a comment on your factually incorrect comment
warming after glaciation is much faster than cooling going into glaciation
The reality is a lot more complex than faster vs. slower or positive vs. negative.
I don’t think we have sufficient observations to put strong constraints on feedback. I agree that it is not likely to be seriously negative but everything else is possible for all I know.
I suspect that you are confusing positive feedback that was working after LGM with one supposedly at work now. The former makes a strong theory. The latter is not (yet).
in 37
Steve Mosher is asked
===================
To Steve Mosher: What is the currently accepted range for climate sensitivity?
=============================
Answer
=================
Crickets
=================
Sashka:
If you would like some more information about Walter Munk he was interviewed for an oral history project by Dr. Finn Aaserud and the transcription is here:
http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4790.html
Aaserud seems to have interviewed many other early JASONites besides Dyson and Munk, in the climate change sphere this also includes Gordon MacDonald (lead author for the 1979 CO2 warming report who also collaborated with later generation JASONite Muller).
My impression is that Munk, like Dyson is rather modest in that way that only people with a lot to be modest about can be.
I have had a brief interaction with Munk a while back. He wrote paper (1960ish) on the the oceanic temperature profile that tied eddy diffusion with upwelling rates that interested me. Discovering that he still held a position at Scripps I wrote to him concerning my interst in solving the upwelling diffusion equation to tie heat uptake below a constant depth horizon with the horizon temperature series, and he sent me a detailed reply. If I had better understood his stature I would never have written to him.
I now know that Munk was taken on by Sverdrup at Scrpps where he worked and pulbished a large volume of papers and never really left.
I must take it that you have a background is in Oceanography. Of that there were more such people in the climate change world.
Like my difficulty with grasping the breadth of pigeon holing, I think I simple don’t get it at so many levels on the climate internut.
Here is a link to Munk presenting: “Perspectives on Ocean Science: Global Sea Level: An Enigma” around 2004 so aged around 81 and still on good form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lks2hh6LGsE
Alex