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from the climate-change-simply-happens dept.
Papas Fritas writes "Patrick Michaels writes in Forbes that atmospheric physicist Garth Paltridge has laid out several well-known uncertainties in climate forecasting including our inability to properly simulate clouds that are anything like what we see in the real world, the embarrassing lack of average surface warming now in its 17th year, and the fumbling (and contradictory) attempts to explain it away. According to Paltridge, an emeritus professor at the University of Tasmania and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, virtually all scientists directly involved in climate prediction are aware of the enormous uncertainties associated with their product. How then is it that those of them involved in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can put their hands on their hearts and maintain there is a 95 per cent probability that human emissions of carbon dioxide have caused most of the global warming that has occurred over the last several decades? In short, there is more than enough uncertainty about the forecasting of climate to allow normal human beings to be at least reasonably hopeful that global warming might not be nearly as bad as is currently touted.
Climate scientists, and indeed scientists in general, are not so lucky. They have a lot to lose if time should prove them wrong. "In the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem-or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem-in its effort to promote the cause," writes Paltridge. "It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society's respect for scientific endeavor.""
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:28AM
WHO'S telling you that? Give some sources.
I'm sick and tired of hearing that parroted. If someone is saying "the science is settled", they are not scientist! The only time I've EVER heard that line used is by people who refuse to look at any evidence contrary to their own views.
The only people making "lame excuses" are the ones constantly trying to pigeon hole science as having 100% faith it can never be wrong. That's not science, it's religion. Science is the art of being wrong and learning from it to improve our understanding of the universe so we can be more right next time.
I'm not arguing for or against climate change. Climate especially isn't black and white, but there was never a prediction sea level was going to rise "several feet" years ago. Find a source I dare you, because it's most likely the media, non-scientists, misinterpreting the science and blowing things out of proportion. If you can't tell the difference you failed at science and don't belong here, please find some where else to be ignorant.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by harmless on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:10AM
There you go:
Estuarine Beaches [google.de]
This is a book from 1994. To Quote:
"There is now a general consensus that global sea levels will rise at an increased rate from those in the recent past (Barth and Titus 1984; Tooley and Shennan 1987; National Research Council 1987; Oerlemans 1989; Meier 1990). Estimates of sea level rise range as high as 1.17m by the year 2050, considering only changes in greenhouse gases (Hoffman 1984), but the actual rise is likely to be considerable less than that extreme. [...]"
(Score: 3, Informative) by pe1rxq on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:46AM