American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting Dec 11-15 San Francisco

The Fall meetings of the AGU are taking place now in SF. "AGU is a worldwide scientific community that advances, through unselfish cooperation in research, the understanding of Earth and space for the benefit of humanity." The AGU is concerned with physical phenomena taking place on earth, in the oceans, in the atmosphere, in space, and on the planets. For the current meetings, the hot topic is the interaction of earth-ocean-atmosphere-"space" which causes climate variability.

One of the presenters at this year's conference, Steve McIntyre, offers an interesting look at the proceedings:

One comment which should be re-assuring to many readers. There are many younger scientists starting to push their way into positions where they are evaluating the climate of the last 1000 years and I feel quite confident that a reasonable view on the matter will emerge within whatever material is available. Andy Bunn and Andrea Lloyd have a NSF contract to to do a big update of tree ring sites. Rob Wilson is trying to resolve the divergence problem on new sites, without using the same sites. Julie Richey is doing high-resolution analysis of new cores and has no patience for endlessly re-using the same data. Alicia Newton’s high resolution core in the Western Equatorial Pacific is an excellent contribution. Who knows what the results will actually be?

....I get quite a different personal reaction from the young scientists. Both Bunn and Wilson were very friendly and interested in what I was planning to do. In reverse, I was glad to see that both of them are progressing in their field. Bunn has moved on from a post-doc position to a tenure-track position. Rob seems to have established himself at the University of Edinburgh. In a way, despite my age, my perspective on the field is more like that of a young grad student or post-doc – everything is still fresh (except maybe principal components which I’m bored with). When you do one thing too long, you get stale.

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Source.

McIntyre is something of an outsider to most of the AGU ranks, and it is impressive that the AGU would invite him to speak at the meetings. Many sciences become inbred and cut off from reality, due to their inability and unwillingness to listen to criticism from intelligent and knowledgeable outsiders. If the rest of the scientific organisations that bear on climatology can understand the importance of outside methodologic audits, as the AGU apparently does, it may be possible that the shaky underpinnings of climatologic predictions can be shored up by some actual science. One can only cross one's fingers.

Journalists and politicians have been at the forefront of promotion for the "alarmist" interpretation of climate science. A few less ethical climatologists have jumped aboard the gravy train--since foundations and government funding have been generous to the alarmist faction. That has created a false sense of "consensus" on climate issues among the less informed public and journalists. This will change. When it changes, many bloggers who have fallen for the alarmists' methodological mistakes and lack of honesty, will be caught by surprise. It would be better for these bloggers and individuals to pay closer attention to the cogent criticisms of the alarmists, and the political and journalistic "hangers-on" who are trying to cash in on the current trend.