AAAS Annual Meeting - "No Change Whatsoever" In Warming Concensus - 2000 - 2010 Still Warmest Ever

[hatrack]

Despite some politicians and TV personalities claiming that climate change is dead, a panel of influential US and European scientists held a press conference at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to set the record straight on the state of the science and the recent media frenzy against climate change.

"There has been no change in the scientific community, no change whatsoever" in the consensus that globally temperatures are rising, said Gerald North, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. Recent data has shown that the decade from 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record.

The scientific theory of climate change has been battered in the media lately by a scandal involving leaked emails from prominent climate change scientists, the discovery of errors in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, and, most recently, unusually large snow storms on the US's east coast. Yet, scientists say that none of these 'scandals' diminish the science of climate change.

"The reporting on this has been truly abominable," said ocean scientist James McCarthy of Harvard in regards to the snow storms on the east coast. While media outlets, some politicians, and well-known figures—such as business-mogul and TV personality Donald Trump—have stated that the record snowfalls have proven climate change wrong, the science behind climate change has in fact predicted larger precipitation events due to a warmer atmosphere, and therefore increased evaporation. The heightened backlash against climate science began when emails were hacked from the East Anglican University server last fall. While the scientists admit the emails were embarrassing, they have explained time and again that sentences in the emails were in fact taken out of context. For example, the media jumped on the use of the word 'trick' in one of the emails, but the word trick in scientific parlance simply means a shortcut or clever way to fixing a problem.

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0222-hance_conviction.html

[FBaggins]

1. "While the scientists admit the emails were embarrassing"

They weren't embarrassing because they proved AGW wrong... they were embarrassing because they demonstrated that some people we relied on acted in unethical (perhaps illegal) ways. The facts didn't damage the case for AGW so much as their actions damaged the credibility of scientists... which opened the can of worms up for endless inquiry and speculation.

but the word trick in scientific parlance simply means a shortcut or clever way to fixing a problem.

Yes... but in this case it also refers to a "shortcut" that calls some of their facts in to question. They weren't "hiding" the fact that temperatures were falling (they weren't when the statement was made), but they were hiding the fact that one of their proxies for global temperatures may not, in fact, be a good proxy.

"A lot of what we need to do is translate basic information into terms the public can understand."

That's not the solution to the problem... that is the problem.

[kestrel91316]

2. Why on earth is making science more understandable to non-scientists "the problem"??????

Every time I deal with a client in my practice, one of my main jobs is translating everything I need to tell them into lay speech rather than veterinary medical terminology. Do you mean to say that this is inherently BAD??????

O.M.G.
:wow:

ETA: ^^^ is inadequate
Here's what I REALLY mean to say: :wtf: :wtf: :wtf: :wtf: :wtf:

[FBaggins]

3. Because they really suck at it.

Do you mean to say that this is inherently BAD??????

Not at all. Unless your idea of "translating" means that you say "your dog will be dead in three weeks if you don't cut the fat out of his diet" when what you really mean is that excess fat in his diet is bad for him and leads to a 5% higher rate of death over a five year period.

You see... their idea (to date) of "translating" AGW science is to come up with some worst-case scenarios and then call them "predictions" for what will happen... and then to put unreasonably short timeframes on those predictions.

So when the predications don't come true, it looks like their science was bad... when really it was their ability to "translate."

[kestrel91316]

4. Well, surely YOU can do a far better job than they are doing.

So why are you on DU instead of working as a climatologist who focuses on the science-public interface???

[FBaggins]

5. They are whining that their opposition is doing the same thing...

...that they began. Somehow I can't criticize that unless I join them?

What kind of sense did you imagine that made?

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. Of course, 99% of the 'predictions' have failed in being too conservative.

We've seen, repeatedly, that everything is melting faster, warming faster, increasing faster then the most dire predictions.

What 'prediction' made by scientists has NOT come true as of yet?

[FBaggins]

8. Really???

You haven't seen any in the press in recent days that they have had to back away from?

Your turn. I'll wait for 99 then give you one more. :)

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. You haven't given me the 'one' yet - unless, of course, you are referring

to this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/screwups-in-climate-scien_b_472018.html

A couple minor errors dug out of 3000 published pages across 4 IPCC reports, latched onto by deniers who don't understand what they really say.

You know, that's the way science works - somebody does research, publishes that research, others review that research and find flaws in it, and the results are modified to fit the facts.

And the fact is, in the end, none of these errors resulted in ANY scientist changing his mind on the overall trends of global climate change. Not. One.

[Viking12]

11. Yep, that's his game.

He'll refer to the citation snafu about Himalayas, glaciers, and 2035 then pretend that it was THE.BIGGEST.THREAT.EVER even though it never made into the summaries and, as far as I can tell, was never news until the mistake was brought to light.

[FBaggins]

13. Oh please.

never made into the summaries and, as far as I can tell, was never news

That's simply wrong. It was the other way around. The melting glaciers in the Himalayas was bounced around long before it became part of the IPCC report. I have no idea how big a deal they made of it IN the report, but the point is that the claim existed as an attempt to influence public policy by overstating the impact... to urge people to act now.

I'm NOT saying AGW is wrong, NOR am I saying that we should not be acting now... I'm saying they don't do a good job of selling it. And as I said (but was ignored), the more relevant error is when their predictions inform politicians even more outlandish statements and then the scientists don't correct them.

[FBaggins]

12. If this article is authoritative enough for you that's fine.

you left out "the revelations of errors and poor scholarship in the latest assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "

The headline "error" that they're talking about was one that was put in there not for scientific purposes, but to add a "scare" factor that influences public opinion. That's a mistake.

none of these errors resulted in ANY scientist changing his mind on the overall trends of global climate change. Not. One.

Of course not. But that isn't the point. I'm not saying that they're wrong, I'm saying that they do a poor job of translating the science into layman's terms.

[Viking12]

7. Which 'predictions' would those be?

Frankly, I can't think of an instance where it was a scientist that came up with "a worst case scenario" with an unreasonably short timeframe. I can, however, think of many such strawmen created by denier types.

[FBaggins]

9. Well I happen to accept AGW as likely true,

but if you can't think of a single instance in recent news items... I have to assume a reading problem.

Or does the IPCC report not count as scientists?

Just as importantly, when scientists convince politicians to act... then those politicians make boneheaded predictions... and the scientists don't publicly correct them, how is that very different?