The Real Climate Debate--Check It Out

While the media is in full alarm mode over what are only preliminary scientific findings in climate science, the fundamental debate is going on at full throttle at websites that still allow uncensored basic science debate on this controversial topic. If you are open-minded and not afraid of being called bad names by true believers, check out the debate on THE BASIC ISSUE in climate change at the premier web discussion site on climate:

I’ve been seeking an engineering-quality exposition of how 2.5 deg C is derived from doubled CO2 for some time. I posted up Gerry North’s suggestion here , which was an interesting article but hardly a solution to the question. I’ve noted that Ramanathan and the Charney Report in the 1970s discuss the topic, but these are hardly up-to-date or engineering quality. Schwartz has a recent journal article deriving a different number and, again, this is hardly a definitive treatment. At AGU, I asked Schwartz after his presentation for a reference setting out the contrary point of view, but he did not give a reference. I’ve emailed Gavin Schmidt asking for a reference and got no answer.

James Annan, a thoughtful climate scientist (see link to his blog in left frame), recently sent me an email trying to answer my long-standing inquiry. While it was nice of him to offer these thoughts, an email hardly counts as a reference in the literature. Since James did not include a relevant reference, I presume that he feels that that the matter is not set out in existing literature. Secondly, a two-page email is hardly an “engineering quality” derivation of the result. By “engineering quality”, I mean the sort of study that one would use to construct a mining plant, oil refinery or auto factory - smaller enterprises than Kyoto.

Part of the reason that my inquiry seems to fall on deaf ears is that climate scientists seem to be so used to the format of little Nature and Science articles that they seem not to understand what an engineering-quality exposition would even look like.

Climate Audit

If you are curious at all about climate, following the discussion at the link above will be something of an education for you. You absolutely will not find a discussion this good on the foundation-level issues of climate anywhere else.

Remember that Steve McIntyre (Climate Audit) has forced the IPCC, NASA, and several climate researchers to backpedal on many of their claims which did not stand up to scrutiny. Hence the name of his blog, Climate Audit.

If you think you can understand these questions by following the media, the IPCC, Al Gore's movies, or even realclimate.org, think again. Those sources and organisations have made basic assumptions and decided to move on. But it is those basic assumptions--largely unexamined--that lie at the crux of this issue. It is those basic unexamined assumptions that have created the "premature consensus" that the true believers in the climate orthodoxy tend to harp on endlessly, like parrots.

But suit yourself. Another good discussion of the issue of "climate feedbacks" is here.