Sunday, December 23, 2007

Pielke Sr. vs Revkin

Here.

Quote from Pielke Sr:
...the lack of warming in recent years by several measures (upper ocean heat content, lower tropospheric temperatures), and the at best muted positive feedback from the water vapor feedback, indicates that we know quite a bit less on global warming than you indicate.

I agree the warming could resume (due to the diversity of positive climate forcings of which CO2 is up to 30% in a global average) but the lack of recent agreement between the models and the observations raises questions on whether negative feedbacks and negative climate forcings could actually result in cooling, at least for a period of time. After all the IPCC SPM admits that they left off climate forcings with a low level of scientific understanding.

3 comments:

Mike M. said...

Great blog, Tom. I'm the "Mike M." in the comments at Revkin's site. Commenter #170 has challenged me to a bet on temps for 2008/09. Seems to me I'd be betting on a rather steep decline to meet his conditions. I believe temps will fall, just not that fast. I'm no scientist. Am I reading that right? Thanks for your time.

Tom said...

Hi Mike,

I wouldn't make any bet based on GISS data since it's contaminated by things like nearby auto radiators, swimming pools, AC exhaust fans, grills, etc. It's also very easy to fudge this data.

I think any bet should be based on satellite data. Note that according to RSS MSU satellite data, November 2007 was a whopping 0.915 °C colder than April 1998. (supporting link here).

Tom

Mike M. said...

Thanks, Tom. Lubos is a very funny guy sometimes. He'd be a good one to split a 12 of Pilsner Urquell with.