New AMS statement on Climate Change

I noticed one rather interesting thing about the AMS statement. They go out of their way to explain that meteorolgy is incapable of making accurate predictions more than two weeks out. Then they explain that climate science is based on completely different drivers than is weather.
Which begs the question:
If the AMS, by their own admission, have expertise that has nothing to do with climate science, how can they possibly assert that their opinions on climate science have merit?

Alec Rawls says:
August 27, 2012 at 11:19 am
The AMS statement completely ignores the fact that there even IS an alternative possible explanation for recent warming: the high levels of solar activity that persisted over most of the 20th century.
Solar activity was equally high during the 18th and 19th centuries.
http://www.leif.org/research/Reconciliation%20of%20Group%20&%20International%20SSNs.pdf

As I posted on Climate Etc. Shades of Tom Lehrer’s,The Vatican Rag
“First you get down on your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries,
Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect, genuflect”

Key points in their paragraphs on models:
“Climate models simulate the important aspects of climate and climate change based on fundamental physical laws of motion, thermodynamics, and radiative transfer. These models report on how climate would change in response to several specific “scenarios” for future greenhouse gas emission possibilities.”
They follow Trenberth in using “radiation only” models. They realize that models are no more than scenarios. See third paragraph below for further explanation of this point. They are quite aware that their work is “a priori” and without a physical science to support it.
“A valuable demonstration of the validity of current climate models is that when they include all known natural and human-induced factors that influence the global atmosphere on a large scale, the models reproduce many important aspects of observed changes of the 20th-century climate, including (1) global, continental, and subcontinental mean and extreme temperatures, (2) Arctic sea ice extent, (3) the latitudinal distribution of precipitation, and (4) extreme precipitation frequency.”
They overlook the fact that models do not include all known natural and human-induced factors that influence the global atmosphere. That makes their statement a trivially true conditional. In other words, it has no content at all.
“Model limitations include inadequate representations of some important processes and details. For example, a typical climate model does not yet treat fully the complex dynamical, radiative, and microphysical processes involved in the evolution of a cloud or the spatially variable nature of soil moisture, or the atmospheric interactions with the biosphere. Nevertheless, in spite of these limitations, climate models have demonstrated skill in reproducing past climates, and they agree on the broad direction of future climate.”
They admit that their models are substantially incomplete. Any one of these factors could explain most temperature increase in the last 150 years. Yet they do not point out that this fact makes their earlier statement trivially true. And, as we all know, successful hindcast does not imply successful forecast or provide any evidence for it whatsoever. Successful hindcast shows only that models can be tuned to a known set of numbers.
In summary, after trumpeting the fact that they have embraced AGW totally, they reveal that their one tool for projecting future climate is the same old broken down Model T that they have yet to get up and running.

So how much “greenhouse effect” can we now attribute to water vapor increase?

Why was the initial point picked in the 1950s? Because there was a cold period? This looks like a bad initial-value selection. Data goes back much farther. The skew due to UHI pollution also needs to be removed from the global data since it skews an already bad ides (that there is a global average temperature that has any meaning.)

But this declaration is consistent with the ignore factual reality and hard science in order to use modelling and systems theory that pretends the Earth and climate are closed systems where human actions necessarily have physical or biological effects. I wrote http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/hobbling-minds-and-misrepresenting-reality-mounting-a-political-coup-from-within/ recently after I discovered that systems theory was becoming one of the dominant pushes in schools and classrooms all over the world. Literally teaching students to pretend that the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth was good science. And about to become the dominant theory in the US.
If the students mindset and perceptions of the world are being shaped by bogus and discredited political theories, you do get the result of a false sense of reality actually altering future events. Just like the schemers described in that USCGRP 2012-2021 report I wrote about that said the future primary tool for climate science would be education and the behavioral and social sciences.
This really is Lysenkoism all over again. Remember his natural science may not contradict political ideology caused massive starvation in the USSR? Haven’t we learned anything? This is just another way of getting to Paul Ehrlich’s New Mindedness. Just ignore reality until ed alters future realities is not going to end well. And it’s atrociously expensive of tax dollars to boot.
We need a non-corrupted NAS. I don’t think all the federal science agencies reporting to John Holdren is the least bit helpful to us. Probably thrilling to Ehrlich of course.

Statements that purport to represent the views of a professional society’s members should be made illegal unless approved in a proper democratic vote by a 2/3 majority of their members.
One would expect that the membership of a professional society would have sufficient intellect to understand the issues and not need an (often unelected) quorum to speak on their members behalf.
Presumably they are afraid of the outcome of such a vote, they risk getting a surprise along the lines experienced by the authors of the infamous “97% of scientists” survey.

davidmhoffer says:
August 27, 2012 at 11:11 am
“Wow. More intense storms…. except the data says otherwise. More water vapour… except the data says otherwise. Acclerating sea level rise…. except the data says otherwise.
I lost track of how many statements they made as being true that are the exact opposite of what the data shows.”
Yep, Kool Aid time for the AMS. However, as you point out, their claims undermine their position. Their claims about models do the same, as I explain above.

The same old nonsense

Here is as close as I can get to what AGW theory says should be happening. The less than 500 parts is supposed to create a lot more water vapor because the 500 parts warms the atmosphere just a bit more. That bit more allows the atmosphere to hold more evaporated water from the oceans (which would mean the oceans would be cooling yes?) and land surfaces. It is water vapor that is the major source of greenhouse warming, not CO2. Given the idea that the uptick in water vapor combined with the uptick in CO2 SHOULD be warming the planet by an X amount and the current warming does not nearly approach the X amount, Trenbreth thinks the warming may be hiding deep in the oceans where we can’t see it.

Isn’t Meteor ology the study of ^falling stars^?

KR says:
August 27, 2012 at 11:00 am
Your usual crap KR.