damned clouds

On the cover of the latest Science News, this headline:

Clouds Complicate Climate Prediction

Gosh.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
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John Larkin
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Solution is simple, move to Mars. No clouds ( or at least water vapour ones ).

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Regards, 

Adrian Jansen           adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net 
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Adrian Jansen

Since the article is going to be about some better way of modelling clouds when making climate predictions, one can only assume that John Larkin's "go sh" comes from not knowing much about the context. But he reminds as of his ignorance of climate science at fairly regular intervals.

Usually by reposting some tired denialist propaganda as if it were an excit ing revelation, rather than re-cycled sucker-fodder.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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Bill Sloman

Well, they do screw up those "scientific" Global Warming models. THey should be banned so the government can raise taxes.

Reply to
krw

They don't screw them up. They are just one more complication that has to b e dealt with.

And climate modelling isn't scientific - of itself. The argument is that if you can construct a model that captures a significant part of the behaviou r that you are trying to understand, you've demonstrated a clearer understa nding of that behaviour, and to that extent modelling can be part of a scie ntific endeavour to understand whatever it is you are modelling.

Climate modelling to predict the effects of anthropogenic global warming is n't actually "scientific" but rather technological.

We need to know how bad things are likely to get in order to be able to mak e up our minds how much money we ought to spend on minimising CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. We use our scientific understanding of the processes involved to construct the models, and where we can test the models against observable reality we can use them to improve our scientific understanding of the detail of the process, but the actual modelling program isn't so muc h science as disaster planning.

You don't understand this, any more than John Larkin does, which makes you vulnerable to the denialist propaganda machine, which wants to spread as mu ch doubt as possible about the science so that the fossil-carbon extraction industry can keep on making money out of digging up fossil carbon and sell ing to to be burnt as fuel for as long as possible.

It's exactly the same scheme as the tobacco companies used to keep people s moking for a few years longer after science had established that smoking is bad for your health, and it's amusing to note that some of the same people and organisations who used to tell you that smoking wasn't actually bad fo r your health are now telling you that burning fossil carbon isn't necessar ily making the planet warmer.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

Yet they can't get it done and you still buy the bullshit.

Reply to
krw

o be dealt with.

If this wasn't krw, I'd ask what he meant by "they can't get it done", but since he doesn't have a clue about the subject and wouldn't dare advance hi s ideas if he did, it would be a waste of time to ask him for a response. F or the record, it isn't clear what the "it" might be that climate modellers weren't getting done. They do produce climate predictions so that can't be "it".

The don't produce climate predictions that krw and John Larkin agree with, but that's somewhere between insignificant and a minimum condition for cred ibility.

Krw is correct is stating that I don't buy the bullshit, but since most of the bullshit published on the subject is published by the denialist propaga nda machine, and propagated by the Murdoch press, the bullshit I'm not buyi ng is probably not what krw mistakenly thinks of as the bullshit in questio n.

There's a lot stuff that krw doesn't understand, and experiences as "dronin g drivel". Less brain-damaged readers might not have the same reaction.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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Bill Sloman

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Dan

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dcaster

The American Physical Society isn't the American Institute of Physics, whic h is the organisation that publishes "Physics Today" for the American Physi cal Society and nine other related organisations, where we've seen a lot of debunking of denialist arguments and propaganda.

My reading of the committee choices is that the American Physical Society i s preempting any possible claim of bias by appointing three prominent clima te change skeptics to a panel of six.

Richard Lindzen and Judith Curry are actually respectable scientists, if co ntrarian by nature. John Christy is a more dubious choice. His scientific q ualification are substantial, but his fundamentalist Christianity makes him unreasonably susceptible to explanations that put an omnipotent God in a g ood light. He was a little too slow to recognise that the satellite data th at he and Roy Spencer were responsible for processing and publishing was be ing biased in a direction that favoured the denialist position by an inadeq uate correction for the effects of orbital decay. Someone else had to demon strate the bias before he and Roy Spencer could be bothered to find and cor rect the fault.

The chance that that the review will do the denialist case any good is pret ty low - the denialist case is based on selective omission, and that won't get any support from Curry or Lindzen.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

......... and also it maybe the journos interpretation. Journos aren't known for accurately representing news stories.

Reply to
Belleman

uds when making climate predictions, one can only assume that John Larkin's "gosh" comes from not knowing much about the context. But he reminds as of his ignorance of climate science at fairly regular intervals.

xciting revelation, rather than re-cycled sucker-fodder.

Murdoch press journalists seem to go a little further, misrepresenting the science most of the time.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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Bill Sloman

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