Keith Seitter on Climate Change
Keith is a friend of mine who is also both a Certified Consulting Meteorologist and Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society. He has written a wonderful essay about the state of climate science.
I have enormous faith in the scientific process, and feel that the discussions generated through challenges such as that provide in the Curry and Webster paper will lead to increased understanding. Because of the policy decisions the world faces given the potential for truly disruptive climate change, climate science is playing out in a very public and politicized arena, and that makes it harder for the scientific process to move forward in a natural way. We can and should be merciless in our condemnation of unscientific noise that seeks to obscure real scientific results, but we must also embrace legitimate science that seeks to increase our understanding even as it complicates the emerging picture of how the climate system works. We all must continue to work toward insuring that we are operating with the very highest levels of openness and honesty in the presentation of our science.
When it comes to the Gore/IPCC "consensus" Keith would likely count himself among the "convinced" where I would be among the "unconvinced" as he defines the terms. I like Keith's terminology and recommend, in its entirety, his essay.
I have enormous faith in the scientific process, and feel that the discussions generated through challenges such as that provide in the Curry and Webster paper will lead to increased understanding. Because of the policy decisions the world faces given the potential for truly disruptive climate change, climate science is playing out in a very public and politicized arena, and that makes it harder for the scientific process to move forward in a natural way. We can and should be merciless in our condemnation of unscientific noise that seeks to obscure real scientific results, but we must also embrace legitimate science that seeks to increase our understanding even as it complicates the emerging picture of how the climate system works. We all must continue to work toward insuring that we are operating with the very highest levels of openness and honesty in the presentation of our science.
When it comes to the Gore/IPCC "consensus" Keith would likely count himself among the "convinced" where I would be among the "unconvinced" as he defines the terms. I like Keith's terminology and recommend, in its entirety, his essay.
Any chance you'll give equal time to this one from today's Wall Street Journal?
ReplyDeletehttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577193270727472662.html
Anonymous, just saw your comment. I'm happy to leave it up for anyone who wishes to wishes to read it, but it is a factually inaccurate article.
ReplyDeleteFACT: Global temperatures peaked in 1998 and have been going down slowly since (see graph at: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2012/01/important-story-about-lack-of-global.html ). I'll also have a post on a related topic on the blog tomorrow morning.
The writer of the WSJ letter you link to, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, is the person who wrote a public article for a local Boulder publication pronouncing global warming "incontrovertible" while -- the same week -- privately writing (Climategate email) that it was a "travesty" that climate science could not account for the "lack of warming."
His exact words: "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t."
If you don't believe me, just Google: Tenberth+missing heat+travesty+climategate and you can see the email in its entirety reproduced in several websites and in others trying to make excuses for Trenberth's honesty.
Normally, I would not bring a personality into this but the history of saying one thing in public and a completely different thing when thought to be writing in private is pertinent to interpreting the "Journal" letter since it is the same person.