CC: I compliment E.M. for making the effort to explain himself and open himself up to critique. That said, after reading his more detailed arguments, I don’t think I misunderstood at all. I rather suspect E.M. isn’t aware of the memes he’s passing along like a destructive virus.
He has offered me the opportunity to describe the many games Republicans play with themselves in order to avoid facing our planet’s geophysical realities, for this opportunity I am grateful.
This will need to become a series if I’m going to do E.M.’s list justice. For instance, the first paragraph offers me an opportunity to focus on the Republican PR machine’s unhinged dismissal of climate models and their accuracy.
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E.M. writes: I’m going to start this post by pointing out that you are taking the substance of my thoughts completely incorrectly. I put this on myself, as my thoughts were quickly written in a comment section and not articulated nearly as clearly as they could have been.
My original statement came out poorly, and the questions I posed were intended not to critique the science of AGW, but to point out the limitations that arise from scientific modeling, easily the hardest task any research team is faced with.
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CC: No doubt climate models are among the most difficult and exacting challenges climate scientists undertake.
But I wonder, Why not begin this topic with a review of all that climate models have been nailing with amazing precision? What is the point of laser focusing on model uncertainties that deal with fine details? Why do Republicans ignore the fundamental well understood facts?
Being obsessed with all you don't know, does not enable learning!
E.M., are you willing to consider all the things climate models have been getting correct?
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‘Climate models are unproven’–Actually, GCM’s have many confirmed successes under their belts
… In 1988, James Hansen of NASA GISS fame predicted [PDF] that temperature would climb over the next 12 years, with a possible brief episode of cooling in the event of a large volcanic eruption. He made this prediction in a landmark paper and before a Senate hearing, which marked the official “coming out” to the general public of anthropogenic global warming.
Twelve years later, he was proven remarkably correct, requiring adjustment only for the timing difference between the simulated future volcanic eruption and the actual eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
And let’s face it, every year of increasing global mean temperature is one more year of success for the climate models. The acceleration of the rise is also playing out as predicted, though to be fair, decades will need to pass before such confirmation is inarguable.
Putting global surface temperatures aside, there are some other significant model predictions made and confirmed:
• models predict that surface warming should be accompanied by cooling of the stratosphere, and this has indeed been observed;
• models have long predicted warming of the lower, mid, and upper troposphere, even while satellite readings seemed to disagree — but it turns out the satellite analysis was full of errors and on correction, this warming has been observed;
• models predict warming of ocean surface waters, as is now observed;
• models predict an energy imbalance between incoming sunlight and outgoing infrared radiation, which has been detected;
• models predict sharp and short-lived cooling of a few tenths of a degree in the event of large volcanic eruptions, and Mount Pinatubo confirmed this;
• and finally, to get back to where we started, models predict continuing and accelerating warming of the surface, and so far they are correct. …
