WUWT reader Gary writes in with this:
Gavin Schmidt gave a lecture at my University yesterday and I thought you might like to see it. He starts at 21 minutes into the clip. The Metcalf Institute seeks to communicate science to the public.
It was a pedestrian talk for an educated public audience and used cherry-picked supporting data, but actually was fair about *some* of the weaknesses in the GCMs.
FWIW, Schmidt was rather charming and not at all like Micheal Mann with condescending slaps at critics or smugly misleading points like Naomi Oreskes, both of whom I’ve heard in person.
See it at http://www.metcalfinstitute.org/programs/lectures.htm (click the link “What are climate models good for?”)
(Note to readers: the link http://amms.oshean.org/content/uri/nbc-ci/metcalf060412/ brings up the video, which is rendered in Microsoft “Silverlight” which you have to download, but is a PITA. Any reader that can convert that to YouTube will have my thanks – Anthony)
ROFLMAO! The only thing he is competent at is censoring comments at RealClimate.org and spreading propaganda for Fenton Communications,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/07/truth-about-realclimateorg.html
Nothing is more hilarious than watching WUWT commentators defending Gavin and his antics.
Given that RC has a very different mandate to WUWT, I feel the Gavin comes across as the most reasonable of the team. He once mis-read one of my postings and came out with a stream of invective. He then realised he was wrong and apologised. Would that other members of the team were as open.
Ron, open to what? Censoring comments at will? Gavin admins the site, he is the one who designed it and he does the moderating. Did everyone here defending the indefensible censorship tactics at Real Climate just come into this debate yesterday? RC so notorious for it, websites have been set up just for this reason,
http://rcrejects.wordpress.com/
“He once mis-read one of my postings and came out with a stream of invective. He then realised he was wrong and apologised. ”
That must qualify as the benchmark for the expressionn : “Damned with faint praise”!
Steven Mosher:
“If you need surgery, do you wish your surgeon to be likeable, or competent?”
This is a false analogy. Would you pick a clearly insane surgeon who kills most of his patients? In medicine, as mad as it is, there is recourse and the drunks, addicts and incompetents are gradually weeded out. In climate science (which is an oxymoron), the wrong-headed manipulators are raised on a pedestal and worshiped by the doomsayers.
ok I must admit that I’m still too new to the blog climate wars to have any comprehensive views of anything, but reviewing these threads linked below definitely lowers my opinion of Gavin Schmidt considerably (I highly recommend these two threads to anyone, like me, still trying to get an overview of what has gone on with Mannian “science”):
Gavin embarrasses himself attacking Judith Curry
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/7/22/tamino-on-the-hockey-stick-illusion.html“>BH thread on Real Climate thread re: The Hockey Stick Illusion
I still think he seems like a welcome contrast to Michael Mann, in that one can at least attempt a rational discussion with him. However, he does not read/listen well and is simply pushing his own preconceived perspective. More propaganda than science, I’d say.
TerryS says:
June 5, 2012 at 11:13 am
Re: Chris B
At about 22:30 I think he says that climate models are almost never mentioned in the media.
A google search finds 1340 occurrences of the exact phrase “climate model” on the BBC web site.
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I wonder how many occurrences of “empirical evidence”a google search of the BBC web site would return?
Ken Coffman says:
June 6, 2012 at 6:02 am
Mosher didn’t write that. I did. I’m in the healthcare business and I’ve seen plenty that were long on personality and short on skill. I cannot imagine it’s not the same in the other professions.
Apparently some really do not understand the depth to the censorship that has gone on and continues to go on at RealClimate.org,
http://climateaudit.org/2005/10/02/389/
http://climateaudit.org/2005/10/29/is-gavin-schmidt-honest/
http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001180a_little_testy_at_re.html
http://yourvoicematters.org/cru/mail/1139521913.txt
“I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, …We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.
Think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal… We’ll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics don’t get to use the RC comments as a megaphone.”
– Michael E. Mann
Anybody who says Gavin is nice needs to go and read the RC posts on the Gergis et. al paper. Look at comments 36 and 37 to see what kind of a cheap unethical person that guy is. Mosher has no clue on how to judge people.