Climate science from climate scientists...
Somewhat breaking news. A court filing (from 9/4) from DOE has noted that the Climate Working Group has been disbanded (as of 9/3). This was done to make the EDF/UCS lawsuit moot, but it also means that DOE is withdrawing the report, no-one will respond appropriately to the comments submitted, and (possibly) it becomes irrelevant for the EPA reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding.
What a farce.
Update: Via Andy Revkin, the EDF/UCS’s blistering response to the DOE filing. Pass the popcorn.
As we’ve mentioned, Andrew Dessler and Robert Kopp have been coordinating a scientific peer review of the DOW ‘CWG’ Critique of Climate Science. It is now out.
[Read more…] about Climate Scientists response to DOE reportGuest commentary by Kerry Emanuel
Executive Summary
Chapter 6 of the draft DOE report examines whether global warming exacerbates extreme weather. It rightly notes that because events such as hurricanes are rare, detecting their response to climate change in short and imperfect historical records is extremely difficult—if not impossible. Yet the authors devote most of the remainder of the chapter to attempting just that. By omitting to frame such efforts in the context of theory and models, they commit three fundamental errors: 1) searching for trends where none were predicted, 2) neglecting important variables for which trends were predicted and 3) overlooking—or failing to acknowledge—that some predicted trends are of a magnitude that is not a priori detectable in existing noisy and short data sets. The draft report also overlooks recent literature on climate change effects on weather extremes, and quotes selectively and misleadingly from the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For these reasons, I find much of Chapter 6 to be of questionable utility. There are at least three climate change-induced trends in hurricane-related hazards that were predicted theoretically, simulated by models, and confirmed by observations:
There is no robust scientific finding that hurricane frequency is increasing or expected to increase. Thus, much of Chapter 6 of the DOE report is devoted to refuting a hypothesis unsupported by scientific consensus. The short section on tornadoes does not include other more destructive aspects of severe convective storms, such as hail and damaging straight-line winds, and as with the section on hurricanes, omits inferences from theory and models.
[This commentary is also available as a pdf file]
[Read more…] about Critique of Chapter 6 “Extreme Weather” in the DOE reviewThis month’s open thread. As usual try to remain substantive and avoid insults and personal attacks on other commenters. Any sock-puppetry or abusive comments will just be deleted on sight. Also, please don’t outsource your comments to ChatGPT – cut-and-pastes of long-winded LLM output are tedious and add precisely nothing to the conversation. There are real things happening in climate – please focus on them.
The first somewhat comprehensive reviews of the DOE critical review are now coming online.
[Read more…] about Critiques of the ‘Critical Review’This month’s open thread. Please try and stay focused on substance rather than personalities. There are many real issues that are particularly salient this month, and so maybe we can collectively try not to have the comments descend into tedium.
In the EPA EF reconsideration document there is a section on p62 where they attempt to make the argument that the CO2 endangerment finding would also apply to direct water vapor emissions to the atmosphere, which is (according to them) obviously absurd. But both claims are bogus.
[Read more…] about Are direct water vapor emissions endangering anyone?The EPA, along with the “Climate Working Group” (CWG) of usual suspects (plus Judith Curry and Ross McKitrick) at DOE, have just put out a document for public comment their attempt to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding for greenhouse gas emissions.
[Read more…] about The Endangerment of the Endangerment Finding?For some reason, it has become hard to locate the various National Climate Assessments (NCAs) that have been produced by the USGCRP over the decades (and it’s pretty hard to find the USGRCP as well…). However, the reports are still accessible if you know where to look. So for future reference, here are all the links (and we’ve downloaded the pdfs locally so that they will always be available here).
NCA1 (2000)
NCA2 (2009)
NCA3 (2014)
NCA4 (2017)
NCA5 (2023)
NCA6
There is no ongoing NCA6 process, even though it is mandated by Congress to be completed over the next few years. We’ll let you know if that changes.
Some intriguing new measurements of salinity in the oceans around Antarctica have set off reams of sensationalist speculations. Maybe some context is helpful…
[Read more…] about Ocean circulation going South?