AverageJoe90
AverageJoe90's JournalClimate change models predict remarkably accurate results
Source: The Guardian
Forecasts of global temperature rises over the past 15 years have proved remarkably accurate, new analysis of scientists’ modelling of climate change shows.
The debate around the accuracy of climate modelling and forecasting has been especially intense recently, due to suggestions that forecasts have exaggerated the warming observed so far – and therefore also the level warming that can be expected in the future. But the new research casts serious doubts on these claims, and should give a boost to confidence in scientific predictions of climate change.
The paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Geoscience, explores the performance of a climate forecast based on data up to 1996 by comparing it with the actual temperatures observed since. The results show that scientists accurately predicted the warming experienced in the past decade, relative to the decade to 1996, to within a few hundredths of a degree.
The forecast, published in 1999 by Myles Allen and colleagues at Oxford University, was one of the first to combine complex computer simulations of the climate system with adjustments based on historical observations to produce both a most likely global mean warming and a range of uncertainty. It predicted that the decade ending in December 2012 would be a quarter of degree warmer than the decade ending in August 1996 – and this proved almost precisely correct.
Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/27/climate-change-models-predict-remarkably-accurate-results/
Once again, the IPCC has proven to be largely correct in their findings & projections, as usual. Unfortunately, though, there's likely plenty of climate contrarians crying foul, as usual. And it's not just the deniers, either, by the way. We have doomer contrarians right here on this very website who keep promoting their own types of unsubstantiatable claims, which sometimes has as much twisting, misinterpreting, lack of understanding, willful ignorance, laziness, and/or even outright bullshitting put into it as their opposite numbers from people such as Monckton, Christy, et al., an example of which can be seen here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112739583
(Edit: Thanks for all the recs, ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately, it seems that a certain few of our resident contrarians have dedicated their time to spamming this thread. They just can't stand being wrong.)
Riding The Rubicon: The Doomer's Curse.
I've been finding a lot of good stuff on the 'Net lately, and this piece is no exception. Though originally about the BP disaster, it's a piece that can apply to doomsday proponents, wannabe prophets/Cassandras, particularly Climate Change and Peak Oil doomers(but also in general).....and coming from a guy who admits his own tendency to lean in that direction.
Here's the link: http://ridingtherubicon.blogspot.com/2010/06/doomers-curse.html
Probably one of the best pieces I've read in a long time on this subject.
Edit: I apologize for removing the excerpt, but Skinner informed that I'd breached the Forum's copyright rules, because it was too long. I assure you that this was NOT intentional and I have since removed the whole thing, which hopefully, rectified the mistake.
Great Yale Climate Forum post from 2011: Is Climate Fatigue setting in?
Happened across this article at the Y.C.M.F. and thought I'd share it. I realize it's kinda old, but there's some important points to be made.
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2011/10/is-climate-fatigue-setting-in/
Responding in The Washington Post, Brad Plumer writes that, “it’s a complex, multi-layered story.” But the two biggest factors, he suggests, are the recession and the Senate’s institutional procedures, which prevented a simple majority vote in 2010 on cap-and-trade legislation.
Joe Romm, however, sees “collapsing media coverage” of climate change as a major reason for the erosion in public concern. A larger media failing was also the central argument that former Vice President Al Gore made in his Rolling Stone essay earlier this year. But a number of leading social scientists who study the media and climate change intersection don’t agree with this take. For example, in a recent interview, Stanford’s Jon Krosnick said,
“According to our national surveys, large majorities of Americans have believed that climate change is real and human-caused, will have undesirable consequences, and merits substantial government action to address it. These majorities rose a little in the years preceding 2007 and fell a bit in the years after, but the majorities remain large … I’d say the news media have paid plenty of attention to the climate science, but truth be told, that science is now an ‘old story,’ one the media have told many, many times before. It’s understandable, therefore, that every new climate study is not at the top of the front page of every newspaper in the country.”
Krosnicks’s observation that climate science has become an “old story” is worth noting: The doom element to many stories likely contributes to public fatigue with climate change.....
Sadly, I would have to go farther and say that doom-and-gloom type stuff might just be one of the biggest causes, if not the primary cause, of climate fatigue.....and in fact, I'm far from the only one out there who thinks it's bloody obvious. The sad truth is, we've had a complete and total messaging failure over the past 10 years; who wants to wake up to global warming, when most of what they hear is doomsday predictions and Chicken Little type fearmongering(yes, Guy McPherson, I'm looking at you)? Pretty much nobody, unfortunately.
I blame the mass media heads for most of our problems; the truth is, it isn't just the denier spin they're putting out there; every once in a while, they'll slip in a "doomsday" article, too, to try to disengenously fool us into thinking that they DO care about ACC issues.....when they really don't.
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