Unauthorized annotated Fyfe coauthors letter to US Rep. Lamar Smith

The Fyfe et al 2016 clarifying letter to US Representative Lamar Smith is well written.  There's nothing to complain about and I don't.  Still at 1000 word there's only so much it can say, and I'm going to use this opportunity to make my point using the words of other scientists.  Remember my beef is about communication, not the science.

I’ve borrowed from about a dozen climate studies, along with some other info and let their quotes speak for themselves.  I apologize for some of the hard feeling.  I do not apologize pushing for better recognition of our* failures to communicate, how else can we learn, how else can we improve?  (slight edit, I realized Josh Willis' quote belongs at the start of this reading, not at the end.)

Best Wishes.  

For the background to this, link here

* Climate science communicators big and little.

“One way to think about it is that global warming continued, but the oceans just juggled a bit of heat around and made the surface seem cooler for a while” 
Joshua Willis Ph.D. - JPL

Source for the text:

http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2017/letter-to-lamar-smith/

Letter to Lamar Smith

March 28, 2017    communication   Ed Hawkins  Climate Lab Book

The Committee on Science, Space & Technology of the US House of Representatives conducts regular evidence hearings on various science topics. On Wednesday 29th March, there is a hearing on “Climate science: assumptions, policy implications, and the scientific method”. The following letter, summarising the scientific findings of Fyfe et al. (2016) and Karl et al. (2015), has been submitted as evidence to this hearing.

The broader context is that the Committee Chairman, Mr. Lamar Smith, has previously discussed the findings of Fyfe et al. (of which I was a co-author), claiming: “A new peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Nature, confirms the halt in global warming”. 

This statement is incorrect, and motivated the clarification on what Fyfe et al. actually says.

Dear Mr. Smith,

We are coauthors of the Fyfe et al. paper published in 2016 in Nature Climate Change [1]. You recently referenced this paper at a Subcommittee hearing on March 16, 2016 [2]. We are writing to clarify what the Fyfe et al. paper actually finds and claims. We also want to ensure that the conclusions of the Fyfe et al. paper are not misconstrued as a criticism of Thomas Karl, of the Karl et al. paper published in Science in 2015 [3], or of the valuable research that Dr. Karl and his team have performed over many years.

Dr. Ed Hawkins not making any sense - 2000s warming slowdown?

In working on my review of Bates' article, I stumbled on another example of a presumably well meaning scientists doing more to fuel confusion and denial and distrust than to inform and learn.  That would be Ed Hawkins with his 2/24/2016 dissenting blog post "Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown."  I started writing him a comment, but it got too big to post over there, I have given him a shorter one and a link. 

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Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown

Ed Hawkins | February 24, 2016   

It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming ‘slowdown’ or ‘hiatus’, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented in a new commentary in Nature Climate Change by Fyfe et al. contradicts these claims.

The new Fyfe et al. paper is mainly in response to Karl et al. and Lewandowsky et al., who made the following statements in their abstracts:

“These results do not support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature” – Karl et al., 2015, Science

“there is no evidence that identifies the recent period as unique or particularly unusual” – Lewandowsky et al., 2016, BAMS

Firstly, climate scientists agree that global warming has not ‘stopped’ – global surface temperatures and ocean heat content have continued to increase, sea levels are still rising, and the planet is retaining ~0.5 days of the sun’s incoming energy per year. …