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Climate Report of the Week
Jun. 22nd, 2006 01:28 pmThe National Academy of Sciences released a report today on temperature reconstructions of the last 2000 years.
Highlights: The last 25 years of temperature are 95% likely to have been the warmest such period in the past 400 years, 70% likely to have been the warmest in the past 1000, and plausibly likely to have been the warmest in the last 2000. (Note: the data isn't good enough to do good statistics, so these likelihoods are basically the best guesses of the committee, but also note that the NAS tends traditionally to be fairly conservative about their statements)
In related news, I was asked by a friend to give a climate change presentation at her church group. Unfortunately, someone else at the group decided that there needed to be "two sides" to the argument (I will point out that I consider myself to be very centrist scientifically on the issue), and so invited Dr. Soon from Harvard to speak. Soon is an astrophysicist and well known skeptic whose publications in the climate change area have been ravaged in the literature. He has 2 contentions that have been highly criticized: one is a claim that the "20th century is probably not the warmest ... of the past millenium" (note the contrast with the NAS conclusion), and the other is that nearly all of the past century's variability can be explained by solar variation as long as you assume that a watt/m^2 of UV light has much more impact than a watt/m^2 of any other wavelength, even though there really aren't good theoretical reasons to believe that, among other statistical issues with this work.
Key phrases used about Soon's work: "straw man" arguments, "ill-conceived, largely subjective approaches", "several [claims] so at variance with the accepted science that they deserve special attention", and in one instance 5 editors resigned in protest at one journal when a flawed paper of his was published despite critical peer review.
In any case, on the advice of a senior scientist in my group, I decided that I would not give a talk at the same time as Dr. Soon, so instead it looks like I'll give my talk one day and he'll give his talk the next. Mmm, climate politics.
Edit: Changed "Prof" to "Dr." to accurately reflect Soon's status.
Highlights: The last 25 years of temperature are 95% likely to have been the warmest such period in the past 400 years, 70% likely to have been the warmest in the past 1000, and plausibly likely to have been the warmest in the last 2000. (Note: the data isn't good enough to do good statistics, so these likelihoods are basically the best guesses of the committee, but also note that the NAS tends traditionally to be fairly conservative about their statements)
In related news, I was asked by a friend to give a climate change presentation at her church group. Unfortunately, someone else at the group decided that there needed to be "two sides" to the argument (I will point out that I consider myself to be very centrist scientifically on the issue), and so invited Dr. Soon from Harvard to speak. Soon is an astrophysicist and well known skeptic whose publications in the climate change area have been ravaged in the literature. He has 2 contentions that have been highly criticized: one is a claim that the "20th century is probably not the warmest ... of the past millenium" (note the contrast with the NAS conclusion), and the other is that nearly all of the past century's variability can be explained by solar variation as long as you assume that a watt/m^2 of UV light has much more impact than a watt/m^2 of any other wavelength, even though there really aren't good theoretical reasons to believe that, among other statistical issues with this work.
Key phrases used about Soon's work: "straw man" arguments, "ill-conceived, largely subjective approaches", "several [claims] so at variance with the accepted science that they deserve special attention", and in one instance 5 editors resigned in protest at one journal when a flawed paper of his was published despite critical peer review.
In any case, on the advice of a senior scientist in my group, I decided that I would not give a talk at the same time as Dr. Soon, so instead it looks like I'll give my talk one day and he'll give his talk the next. Mmm, climate politics.
Edit: Changed "Prof" to "Dr." to accurately reflect Soon's status.
