Wednesday, November 30, 2011

ClimateGate email: Modeler told "You are in fact out of line to assume that these [scenarios] are in some sense realistic"?

1999 ClimateGate email

I want to make one thing really clear. We ARE NOT supposed to be working with the assumption that these scenarios are realistic. They are scenarios-internally consistent (or so we thought) what-if storylines. You are in fact out of line to assume that these are in some sense realistic-this is in direct contradiction to the guidance on scenarios provided by the synthesis team....Dave [Schimel, UCAR]

...I thought the numbers that come out of our exercises (from the impact side of things) were supposed to serve as some basis to be used in the process of decision making at the national and regional level. Am i out of line here? There are dozens of people right now, out there, including our group at giss, who are gathering data, fine-tuning models, making connections among physical and socio-economic variables, etc., at a very low "effort spent/retribution received", and then we are going to run things at 1000 ppm in 2100?
...Either solution we opt for, we have to make clear to whomever will receive our results that the climate forcing scenario is on the "high" side of things.[francesco]

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