The current problem with climate 'research' is that its not actually research. Having followed climate change for a few decades now, it has become clear that the vast majority of what are called research papers or scientific papers are actually just an exercise in computer modelling. Much of that of course is due to the hostile reception of any paper that does not agree with the 'accepted science'. It seems like any paper that takes actual physical measurements and uses actual historical records ends up disagreeing with the accepted science. In reality, any paper that bases its conclusion on a computer model output should automatically rejected as incomplete. A computer model is only step 2 of the scientific process, forming a hypothesis. That model output must be compared with the real world measurements, all discrepancies need to to be analyzed, and then the model can be rejected as impossible or accepted as possible. And not that its only accepted as possible, not accepted as gospel. Which is a very roundabout way of saying that removing all that research money is probably going to have very little impact, since most climate research today isnt actually research.
The discussion on Arctic ice reminds me of a post by Dr. Roy Spencer on how we have data on ice coverage that predates the satellite era that points to climate cycles not well associated with CO2 increases.
Dr. Pielke ..> Antarctic Ice Mass is not so settled. Zwally et al, also at NASA, have far different figures for total Antarctic Ice Mass, gains and loses, than other NASA groups. Their 2017 paper found the opposite of most claimed loses, finding gains, using the same GRACE databases, and then found the more of the same in 2021.
Massive ice loses in Antarctica is, of course, a huge climate crisis talking point, but has been controversial for years but no one mentions the contrary NASA findings from Zwally.
Thank you for writing this excellent explanation and analysis of the two research papers, and especially for getting it published in the NY Post where many can read it. It’s unfortunate the Post cut out an important part of your piece. I hesitate to quibble with anything you wrote because overall it’s excellent and I’m not sufficiently credentialed to argue the science, but there is an assumption that is often stated as if it’s a known. We do not know how local and global weather patterns would be different if there was no human influence. For that reason, the assumption that warming is primarily a result of human emission from burning of hydrocarbons is an untestable hypothesis. Because this hypothesis is so often stated as if it’s the absolute truth, it’s not properly questioned. Since warming comparable to the present is evident in the geologic record during the Holocene and even before any significant human influence, isn’t it possible that natural variation is an equally likely assumption at least as worthy of consideration?
Very good interview with John Hook in Phoenix. Recommended. Hook deserves a lot of credit for being well informed. I read about his distinguished career and then was surprised that he's only making $84,000 a year.
It’s interesting how unexpected climate related natural data gets treated, not only arctic or Antarctic ice levels, but glaciers in general and also coral reef bleaching, where a few years of change is assumed to be the new permanent decline, and then when a year or two reverses the trend the researchers start looking for brand new theories to reduce cognitive dissonance.
I doubt that cryospheric researchers are very surprised to variability manifesting in the systems they study even though they might play up the “surprise” to attract eyeballs to their work.
I am actually in favor of "gutting" climate research because the field seems quite stagnant especially the modeling side of things which constitutes probably half of the funding. It is similar to the field of CFD where we now have very powerful computers and the easy and/or well posed problems have been solved and we are left with the ill-posed problems that more accurately reflect reality. Progress has been stagnant for 20 years but yet billions continue to be invested in the field. And strangely people like Mark Drela and Q. Wang from MIT who have new theoretical ideas and a great track record don't get funding. I personally think revisiting simpler models is the way forward. Also we need risky theoretical research to improve our understanding. Neither of these things gets funded because the "code runners" get the funding to run over and over again their complex codes with high uncertainty. They then publish results carefully selected to look good while the other less convincing results end up in the desk drawer.
We should shift what climate funding that remains to new theoretical work (climate science theory is very oversimplified such as the moist adiabat) and on better data. Defund people like Michael Mann who is a prefect example of a corrupt person and scientist.
RP - "Today, six years after that 10-year window closed, catastrophic climate change has not occurred, even as the planet has indeed continued to warm due primarily to the combustion of fossil fuels."
Due primarily to the combustion of fossil fuels??? I'm somewhat skeptical. Demetris Koutsoyiannis and William Happner both have argued that time series analysis of atmospheric temperature and CO2 data show increasing temperature precedes increasing CO2 and that increasing CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels plays a minor role in overall CO2 increase. I'm sure you are aware of these claims and may well have written about them. I would be interested in your perspective.
Good luck with getting an answer to your question. Some of Roger Pielke Jr's subscribers and I have been asking him if he refutes the seminal paper by Van Wijngaarden and Will Happer, 'Radiative Transfer Paper for Five Greenhouse Gases Explained'.
I've ALWAYS wondered about this since economist Thomas Sowell pointed it out several years ago - "temperatures went up first!"
If we think that A causes B and that B causes C... but then B comes first and C doesn't change when A increases (even trends the other direction)... wouldn't we need to rethink our original theory?
Ice dynamics on the poles appears cyclical, which does not mesh well with CO2's ~exponential rise since mid-1900's. Very inconvenient for the alarmist crowd but they will just say "natural variability" until it comes back in line with their preferred models, and then it's back to being all due to CO2.
Some commenters seem to be taking the England et al paper as contradicting the overall expectation that Arctic sea ice will decline under warming conditions when it kind of does the exact opposite by showing that pauses in sea loss are to be expected amid the overall long term decline.
That’s an opinion, as valid as any. And as invalid as any.
If a slightly warming world means it’s -40 instead of -45 but we get more moisture in the air so more precip, well that just describes how the next glaciation starts as procession proceeds.
With regard to Roger's point about "climate research is not a scoreboard in a Manichean debate", there's an interesting article in the 25 April edition of Science entitled: "Partisan disparities in the use of science in policy". It shows how partisans of both parties selectively cite scientific sources to back their partisan policy preferences. I think the link below will allow you to download the article outside of the paywall.
"..we can’t always anticipate the results of research"? well I would hope so but unanticipated results seem to be the great fear of the "Climate Community" as they can lead to professional ostracism and career death, something to be at least ignored at all costs.
When NASA announced in 2019 after 5 years of puzzling over the very first global mapping of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, "a change in understanding", it met radio silence.
“For as long as we can remember, we’ve talked about Earth’s tropical rainforests as the ‘lungs’ of our planet,” but "We’re seeing that Earth’s tropical regions are a net source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere", there was no letup in "Save the Amazon, save the planet" from either activist fundraisers or most researchers.
Al Gore is more remembered for "The science is settled. The data is clear." than acknowledging Donald Rumsfelt's "known unknowns or unknown unknowns." His predictions of an Arctic free of summer ice by 2014 or the key meme of rapid polar bear extinction by drowning, a species observed to have swum 426 miles in 9 days nonstop with a population increase from 12,000 in the 1960's to over 30,000 today, were spectacularly wrong, but triggered an autistic Stockholm 15yr old to major worldwide inducer of fear in the young and policy warp in responsible adults.
Stephen (not Steven) Schneider's Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Plasma Physics perhaps influenced caution in his narrative of "The Coming Ice Age", a 1978 History Channel documentary from a period where NASA was exploring spreading coal dust on the ice caps to forestall a frozen planet. The new academic, standing in his bellbottoms wisely cautions at the end that the countermeasures may well be more damaging than the malady. https://youtu.be/RQRqr9_jw5I?si=LP9eqU0HW2imXCt_
Before dying (on yet another Climate Conference flight) he had reflected on the need "we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have." the now everyday pragmatism of a working Climate Scientist, "get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination". He ends with what seems a sincere reflection on the moral dilemma this presents, to committed individuals.
"Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Would that this always received an automatic answer.
Great article. The political/popmedia consenses that generated headlines regarding the imminent disappearance of Arctic sea ice controlled the public squar for decades. Few scientists (you, your father excepted) were bold enough to address the obvious hype.
The emergent dynamic nature of polar sea ice and ice caps has been obvious from historical records.
It is almost like a tentative Glasnost has begun in the big science world.
I liked the article, as usual with your work. I see more uncertainty in man made warming and the impact of CO2 (and other trace gases) than you do. But that’s the beauty of open discussion (which seldom happens in the climate change realm). A couple questions:
What level do you consider as “gutting” climate data and research?
Can we really accurately measure and model multiple variables in a chaotic climate system and put these into climate models and get any accuracy? The track record of climate models would seem to suggest no.
The current problem with climate 'research' is that its not actually research. Having followed climate change for a few decades now, it has become clear that the vast majority of what are called research papers or scientific papers are actually just an exercise in computer modelling. Much of that of course is due to the hostile reception of any paper that does not agree with the 'accepted science'. It seems like any paper that takes actual physical measurements and uses actual historical records ends up disagreeing with the accepted science. In reality, any paper that bases its conclusion on a computer model output should automatically rejected as incomplete. A computer model is only step 2 of the scientific process, forming a hypothesis. That model output must be compared with the real world measurements, all discrepancies need to to be analyzed, and then the model can be rejected as impossible or accepted as possible. And not that its only accepted as possible, not accepted as gospel. Which is a very roundabout way of saying that removing all that research money is probably going to have very little impact, since most climate research today isnt actually research.
The discussion on Arctic ice reminds me of a post by Dr. Roy Spencer on how we have data on ice coverage that predates the satellite era that points to climate cycles not well associated with CO2 increases.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/AO-DJF-cumulative-since-1900.png
Dr. Pielke ..> Antarctic Ice Mass is not so settled. Zwally et al, also at NASA, have far different figures for total Antarctic Ice Mass, gains and loses, than other NASA groups. Their 2017 paper found the opposite of most claimed loses, finding gains, using the same GRACE databases, and then found the more of the same in 2021.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/mass-gains-of-the-antarctic-ice-sheet-exceed-losses/983F196E23C3A6E7908E5FB32EB42268
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/mass-balance-of-the-antarctic-ice-sheet-19922016-reconciling-results-from-grace-gravimetry-with-icesat-ers12-and-envisat-altimetry/0A29BAA84961428700886DCCE201912F#article
Massive ice loses in Antarctica is, of course, a huge climate crisis talking point, but has been controversial for years but no one mentions the contrary NASA findings from Zwally.
Can we see a graph of the total ice mass through that period? I bet it’s hard to even see these supposed changes.
Thank you for writing this excellent explanation and analysis of the two research papers, and especially for getting it published in the NY Post where many can read it. It’s unfortunate the Post cut out an important part of your piece. I hesitate to quibble with anything you wrote because overall it’s excellent and I’m not sufficiently credentialed to argue the science, but there is an assumption that is often stated as if it’s a known. We do not know how local and global weather patterns would be different if there was no human influence. For that reason, the assumption that warming is primarily a result of human emission from burning of hydrocarbons is an untestable hypothesis. Because this hypothesis is so often stated as if it’s the absolute truth, it’s not properly questioned. Since warming comparable to the present is evident in the geologic record during the Holocene and even before any significant human influence, isn’t it possible that natural variation is an equally likely assumption at least as worthy of consideration?
Very good interview with John Hook in Phoenix. Recommended. Hook deserves a lot of credit for being well informed. I read about his distinguished career and then was surprised that he's only making $84,000 a year.
It’s interesting how unexpected climate related natural data gets treated, not only arctic or Antarctic ice levels, but glaciers in general and also coral reef bleaching, where a few years of change is assumed to be the new permanent decline, and then when a year or two reverses the trend the researchers start looking for brand new theories to reduce cognitive dissonance.
I doubt that cryospheric researchers are very surprised to variability manifesting in the systems they study even though they might play up the “surprise” to attract eyeballs to their work.
I am actually in favor of "gutting" climate research because the field seems quite stagnant especially the modeling side of things which constitutes probably half of the funding. It is similar to the field of CFD where we now have very powerful computers and the easy and/or well posed problems have been solved and we are left with the ill-posed problems that more accurately reflect reality. Progress has been stagnant for 20 years but yet billions continue to be invested in the field. And strangely people like Mark Drela and Q. Wang from MIT who have new theoretical ideas and a great track record don't get funding. I personally think revisiting simpler models is the way forward. Also we need risky theoretical research to improve our understanding. Neither of these things gets funded because the "code runners" get the funding to run over and over again their complex codes with high uncertainty. They then publish results carefully selected to look good while the other less convincing results end up in the desk drawer.
We should shift what climate funding that remains to new theoretical work (climate science theory is very oversimplified such as the moist adiabat) and on better data. Defund people like Michael Mann who is a prefect example of a corrupt person and scientist.
RP - "Today, six years after that 10-year window closed, catastrophic climate change has not occurred, even as the planet has indeed continued to warm due primarily to the combustion of fossil fuels."
Due primarily to the combustion of fossil fuels??? I'm somewhat skeptical. Demetris Koutsoyiannis and William Happner both have argued that time series analysis of atmospheric temperature and CO2 data show increasing temperature precedes increasing CO2 and that increasing CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels plays a minor role in overall CO2 increase. I'm sure you are aware of these claims and may well have written about them. I would be interested in your perspective.
Good luck with getting an answer to your question. Some of Roger Pielke Jr's subscribers and I have been asking him if he refutes the seminal paper by Van Wijngaarden and Will Happer, 'Radiative Transfer Paper for Five Greenhouse Gases Explained'.
They clarify how CO2 has become saturated at certain wavelengths and therefore has little effect on warming of Earth. [https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Infrared-Forcing-by-Greenhouse-Gases-2019-Revised-3-7-2022.pdf].
I've ALWAYS wondered about this since economist Thomas Sowell pointed it out several years ago - "temperatures went up first!"
If we think that A causes B and that B causes C... but then B comes first and C doesn't change when A increases (even trends the other direction)... wouldn't we need to rethink our original theory?
Roger, another nice, timely post.
Ice dynamics on the poles appears cyclical, which does not mesh well with CO2's ~exponential rise since mid-1900's. Very inconvenient for the alarmist crowd but they will just say "natural variability" until it comes back in line with their preferred models, and then it's back to being all due to CO2.
Typo: "...ends with may call for..." [my]
Some commenters seem to be taking the England et al paper as contradicting the overall expectation that Arctic sea ice will decline under warming conditions when it kind of does the exact opposite by showing that pauses in sea loss are to be expected amid the overall long term decline.
That’s an opinion, as valid as any. And as invalid as any.
If a slightly warming world means it’s -40 instead of -45 but we get more moisture in the air so more precip, well that just describes how the next glaciation starts as procession proceeds.
Happening right now I think.
That is also an opinion.
How are new data like the ice results incorporated into climate models and hence into estimates of the value of reducing CO2 emissions?
How should they be?
With regard to Roger's point about "climate research is not a scoreboard in a Manichean debate", there's an interesting article in the 25 April edition of Science entitled: "Partisan disparities in the use of science in policy". It shows how partisans of both parties selectively cite scientific sources to back their partisan policy preferences. I think the link below will allow you to download the article outside of the paywall.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://osf.io/aep9v/download&ved=2ahUKEwi_hIP-t5KNAxXIHjQIHQ-_JS0QFnoECBwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1iK1u8mcOpS2ij2IFfpMTM
"..we can’t always anticipate the results of research"? well I would hope so but unanticipated results seem to be the great fear of the "Climate Community" as they can lead to professional ostracism and career death, something to be at least ignored at all costs.
When NASA announced in 2019 after 5 years of puzzling over the very first global mapping of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, "a change in understanding", it met radio silence.
“For as long as we can remember, we’ve talked about Earth’s tropical rainforests as the ‘lungs’ of our planet,” but "We’re seeing that Earth’s tropical regions are a net source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere", there was no letup in "Save the Amazon, save the planet" from either activist fundraisers or most researchers.
Al Gore is more remembered for "The science is settled. The data is clear." than acknowledging Donald Rumsfelt's "known unknowns or unknown unknowns." His predictions of an Arctic free of summer ice by 2014 or the key meme of rapid polar bear extinction by drowning, a species observed to have swum 426 miles in 9 days nonstop with a population increase from 12,000 in the 1960's to over 30,000 today, were spectacularly wrong, but triggered an autistic Stockholm 15yr old to major worldwide inducer of fear in the young and policy warp in responsible adults.
Stephen (not Steven) Schneider's Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Plasma Physics perhaps influenced caution in his narrative of "The Coming Ice Age", a 1978 History Channel documentary from a period where NASA was exploring spreading coal dust on the ice caps to forestall a frozen planet. The new academic, standing in his bellbottoms wisely cautions at the end that the countermeasures may well be more damaging than the malady. https://youtu.be/RQRqr9_jw5I?si=LP9eqU0HW2imXCt_
Before dying (on yet another Climate Conference flight) he had reflected on the need "we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have." the now everyday pragmatism of a working Climate Scientist, "get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination". He ends with what seems a sincere reflection on the moral dilemma this presents, to committed individuals.
"Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Would that this always received an automatic answer.
Great article. The political/popmedia consenses that generated headlines regarding the imminent disappearance of Arctic sea ice controlled the public squar for decades. Few scientists (you, your father excepted) were bold enough to address the obvious hype.
The emergent dynamic nature of polar sea ice and ice caps has been obvious from historical records.
It is almost like a tentative Glasnost has begun in the big science world.
I liked the article, as usual with your work. I see more uncertainty in man made warming and the impact of CO2 (and other trace gases) than you do. But that’s the beauty of open discussion (which seldom happens in the climate change realm). A couple questions:
What level do you consider as “gutting” climate data and research?
Can we really accurately measure and model multiple variables in a chaotic climate system and put these into climate models and get any accuracy? The track record of climate models would seem to suggest no.