Guest essay by Eric Worrall
NASA has appealed to the Australian CSIRO not to fire lots of climate scientists, because they are doing “important work”, resolving significant uncertainties in climate modelling.
‘Dismay’: NASA scientist appeals to CSIRO not to cut global climate efforts
A top scientist from US space agency NASA has appealed to CSIRO to abandon plans to cut a key monitoring program that it says will undermine Australia and the world’s ability to monitor and predict climate change.
Brent Holben, the project scientist in charge of NASA’s Aerosol Robotic Network, urged CSIRO to reconsider any plans it had to cut or withdraw its contribution to the program, according to a letter obtained by Fairfax Media.
“I understand that CSIRO is undertaking a major restructuring that may lead to the closure of AeroSpan [CSIRO’s partner program],” Dr Holben wrote in the letter addressed to Alex Wonhas, a senior CSIRO executive, and dated May 1, 2016.
“The purpose of this letter is to express my dismay about this, on behalf of NASA and the global aerosol community,” he said.
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Understanding aerosols – the distribution and character of airborne particles and clouds – “represent the single greatest source of uncertainty in climate simulations”, Dr Holben said.
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The NASA letter said measurements of aerosols were “a fundamental component of climate predictions on both regional and global scales”.
In my opinion climate scientists can’t have it both ways.
If aerosols are an important but poorly understood component of the climate system, then climate modellers do not have the ability to forecast global climate – the science is not settled.
If poor understanding of aerosols does not have a significant impact on climate forecasts, then they are not that important.
Re: “In my opinion climate scientists can’t have it both ways.
“If aerosols are an important but poorly understood component of the climate system, then climate modellers do not have the ability to forecast global climate – the science is not settled.
“If poor understanding of aerosols does not have a significant impact on climate forecasts, then they are not that important.”
My opinion too.
Aerosols provide an important fudge factor for the nattering nabobs of climate change. It’s that mystery knob out back, that allows them to fiddle and tweak the models, after the fact, to make them fit reality. It would be most invonvenient for them not to have them.
Print more money like the rest of us. Stop that silly responsible budget thing.
Really? so engineers should stop building printing presses then?
Am I the only one bothered by the superposition of model and measured temperature anomolies, rather than actual temperatures, as a basis for validating the model against reality? Assume, for example, that the model consistently forecasts higher temperatures than those produced in the real world. It’s average temperature over the base period would be higher, and even assuming that the model mimics the same trend as the measured temperatures, the differences in baseline average would still lead to larger and larger discrepancies over time in absolute temperature, wouldn’t it?
Also, I noticed that the NASA graph only picked a 40 year base period from 1880-1919, the low point in the anomolies of both the modeled and measured sets. Wouldn’t that tend to exaggerate the appearance of the trends?
Stop polluting the planet with the wrong type of models ffs
Hmm it costs money to print money! maybe that’s the cause of man-made “climate”
After 10 years of being told they could not be certain about any of this, they finally admit uncertainty.
now if we could get the modelers to admit true uncertainty, that would be something.
WTF??????end of grade5
Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have had major effects on land, vegetation, streams, oceans, air and even outer space.
Space?
now if there was a claim they could be nabbed on surely this is a gem shining brightly?
Wit the claims there is no need to cherry pick one, if you think that is a gem, then the body of alarmist claims look like this.
http://img04.deviantart.net/1232/i/2010/133/3/3/treasure_pile_4_by_aquastock.jpg
Obviously there are more “Unknown Unknowns” then there are “Known Unknowns” !! IMHO
“The global aerosol community” ?
Somewhere buried deep in a vault in the Southwest exists a halogram tape with the names and location of its members operations.
A bunch of people who all guess and use obfuscating language to try conceal that they are guessing.
If a scientist cant explain something simply, they either are being dishonest or dont understand what they are talking about, it’s one or the other.