[Grad-postdoc-assn] ASP Seminar TODAY

David Schneider dschneid at ucar.edu
Wed Feb 18 14:03:33 MST 2009


I have a few thoughts on Pielke’s work. He routinely accuses
scientists of playing politics, as he's done in recent posts on his blog
Prometheus (http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/), with respect
to my PhD advisor Eric Steig and some of his colleagues who write on
RealClimate. Pielke is spreading accusations
with his "infallibility syndrome" nonsense. He may have some interesting
things to say, but he does not seem to know what he’s
talking about when it comes to Antarctic temperature trends and model
simulations (see
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/climate-science-infallibility-syndrome-4915). 



He’s wrong and unfair about Steig’s motivation being politics or
"expedient intellectual gymnastics."

  Antarctic temperature trends and their causes are complex and can be
confusing at first glance. Bottom line is that the new reconstruction
does not
contradict cooling in certain seasons from dynamical causes (e.g. spinup
of the polar vortex via stratospheric ozone depletion), nor the fact
that Antarctica is surrounded by huge oceans and warms a lot less than
the Arctic with double CO2 (that’s what the Spencer Weart Real Climate
post is about). Steig has gone out of his way to try and explain that
recent warming of West Antarctica does not contradict these basic facts; he
was not waging a political battle or trying to say
he’s infallible. I would say he’s not infallible because the climate
trends are complex, the data are sparse, and these issues
are difficult to explain to a scientific crowd, let alone a general
audience. OMG, how could there be both warming and cooling trends on the
same 14,000,000 km^2 continent at different times of the year and over
different timescales!?.

-Dave

Ethan Gutmann wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Don't forget that the ASP seminar this month will be a change from the  
> usual.  It will be this afternoon at 4PM in the Mesa lab main seminar  
> room.
> 
> Roger Pielke Jr will be presenting "Some Uncomfortable Knowledge About  
> Climate Change"
> 
> Roger is an excellent speaker who usually presents ideas about climate  
> change (and what we should and shouldn't do about it) that you  
> probably haven't thought about before. As if that weren't enough, this  
> seminar will be the test case for afternoon seminars.
> 
> There will be beer and soda in the Damon room after the talk, so come  
> and let us know what you think about this seminar format!
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> ASP Seminar Committee (Chuck Bardeen, Ethan Gutmann, Xiaoli Luan,
> Saewung Kim and Knut Waagan)
> 
> 
> Abstract:
> Roger Pielke, Jr will discuss some of his recent
> research on climate mitigation and adaptation
> policy, as well as the role of scientists in policy
> and politics.  He'll discuss a number of issues that
> raise uncomfortable questions about the state of
> climate science and policy for discussion with the
> ASP Fellows. 
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