In an effort to ensure effective fulfillment of the Biden Administration’s climate science objectives for NASA, the agency has established a new position of senior climate advisor and selected Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, to serve in the role in an acting capacity until a permanent appointment is made.
“This position will provide NASA leadership critical insights and recommendations for the agency’s full spectrum of science, technology, and infrastructure programs related to climate,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “This will enable the agency to more effectively align our efforts to help meet the administration’s goals for addressing climate change.”
Climate adaptation and mitigation efforts cannot succeed without robust climate observations and research. With more than two dozen satellites and instruments observing key climate indicators, NASA is the premier agency in observing and understanding changes to the Earth. Furthermore, NASA enjoys broad public support and trust, lending credibility to its climate observations.
“The complexities of climate processes still are not fully understood, and climate adaptation and mitigation efforts cannot succeed without robust climate observations, data, and research” said acting NASA Chief of Staff Bhavya Lal. “The appointment of Gavin Schmidt will help ensure that the Biden Administration has the crucial data to implement and track its plan toward the path to achieve net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050, and a healthier, safer, more prosperous planet for our children.”
As a representative of the agency’s strategic science objectives and accomplishments, the senior climate advisor will advocate for NASA climate investments in the context of broader government agendas and work closely with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget.
Specifically, the senior climate advisor will work to:
- Promote and engage in climate-related investments in the Science Mission Directorate’s Earth Science Division.
- Promote aeronautics and other technology initiatives focused on reducing carbon dioxide emissions and broad climate impacts.
- Demonstrate and communicate the societal impacts and breadth of NASA investments related to climate.
- Foster communication and coordination within and outside the science community at NASA.
- Actively engage in amplifying the agency’s climate-related research and technological development.
Schmidt has been GISS director since 2014. His main research interest is the use of climate modeling to understand past, present, and future climate change, and he has authored or co-authored more than 150 research papers in peer-reviewed literature. He is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was the inaugural winner of the AGU Climate Communication Prize in 2011. He also was awarded NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal in 2017. He has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Oxford University and a doctorate in applied mathematics from University College London.
For more information about NASA, its missions, and agency programs, visit:
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Apparently you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to do well at NASA.
I would have given the job to Mikey M and then we could have had a Mann-ed mission to Mars – one way and no radio link!
Well they gave the job to Mike’s clone, so it’s all good. I notice that they promote Gavin’s big credential as climate modeler. He doesn’t get his head out of the models and look at the real world.
Mouse?
Michael Mann
They are carefully selecting people to tell them what they already believe. What a great way to avoid learning anything.
And the not so subtle irony of it is that Gavin Schmidt is not a scientist and knows nothing of science.
Apart from being employed as a scientist by NASA (which seems like a pretty good qualification), Schmidt’s Google Scholar profile lists 20 pages of publications and he has 21654 listed citations. Is not a scientist someone who does science and publishes their results?
Does science?
Of all of those publications, has any one of them noted study data that didn’t match the pre-determined objective?
He does science hard.
You just proved that you also, know NOTHING about science.
So, in your opinion, which of the two things do scientists not do?
a. Science.
b. Publish.
There’s no such thing as “doing” science. Anyone can utilize the scientific method, and it doesn’t require a specialized degree. However, utilizing it correctly means constantly testing and questioning your own results and seeking out criticism of your work to improve upon it. Gavin Schmidt has never shown any interest in being honestly critiqued, so no, he is not a scientist by the classical definition.
Being published or cited is not a requirement to be a scientist. Only to be an academic.
“There’s no such thing as “doing” science. Anyone can utilize the scientific method, and it doesn’t require a specialized degree. However, utilizing it correctly means constantly testing and questioning your own results and seeking out criticism of your work to improve upon it.”
I call all of this “doing science.” It saves 34 words.
“Gavin Schmidt has never shown any interest in being honestly critiqued, so no, he is not a scientist by the classical definition.”
Is that not exactly what the scientific literature is for? Schmidt publishes all of his work and opens it up for critical examination.
Ok them . Hows he doing in Retraction watch ?
https://retractionwatch.com/retraction-watch-database-user-guide/
Thats right he doesnt *do* retraction, all issues are ‘immaterial’
Sorry, just to be clear, are you saying the fact that Schmidt doesn’t have to frequently retract his research papers is a bad thing?
And HAS BEEN FOUND WANTING at every juncture.
None of Gavin’s work constitutes science. Falsifiable theory and experimental test appears nowhere in his work.
All his work is with parameterized climate models, which are no different than engineering models. Unable to predict observables beyond their tuning bounds.
Doesn’t matter what YOU call it, weak-one..
That is totally irrelevant.
Very few “climate scientists” do actual science.
Its all untested hypothesis and conjecture leading to untenable, unvalidated computer model games, and a whole heap of basically fraudulent data manipulation.
Lots of junk publishing though thanks to pal-review..
Data MANIPULATION and ADJUSTMENT is NOT SCIENCE.
It is ANTI-SCIENCE.
You obviously don’t understand what science is.
You can do both and still not be doing science.
Gavin has a PhD in Mathematics from University College London. Then worked on the variability of the ocean circulation and climate, using general circulation models (GCMs) just as the term “climate scientist” was being invented in the early 1990’s. He has also worked on ways to reconcile paleo-data with models. He is a mathematician who climbed on the climate gravy train of government funding to get a job.
He is a computer modeler of GCMs’ which are a hypothesis (not a theory) created by others of how climate works. He takes other peoples science and creates computer models.
The important thing about GCMs’ is that none of them have been shown to be capable of predicting climate. None. Those modelers producing them continue to produce unending variations of their computer models to fit with what actually occurs.
In summary GCMs’ are at best a hypothesis on climate not a theory. So far they are of no use.
You are affecting a pejorative tone in this comment, but underneath the vitriol what you seem to be saying is that Schmidt has an academic background in applied mathematics and has spent his professional career working on climate models. Is that correct? And he publishes the results of his work on climate models in peer reviewed scientific journals (judging by his prolific publication history), would you also agree?
What else could he be if not a scientist?
Not always on Climate Models
Schmidt, G.A., 2020: <b>Unknowability in climate science: Chaos, structure, and society</b>. Soc. Res., 87, no. 1, 133-149.
Hes now complaining that theres a big rise in people ‘doing climate science’
NO, he has a background in DATA MANIPULATION…(which is NEVER “science”)
…. as opposed to data analysis. (which can be science)
Pity you are LOW in understanding of science, as to be totally oblivious to the difference.
I didn’t realize University College offered postgraduate degrees in data manipulation!
Yes, we know Gavin doesn’t do normal mathematics
He seeks out way to manipulate the data to his cause.
Climate models are not scientific constructs.
Pat, I’ve followed the discussion of your paper for a while now, and am still unconvinced of its veracity (but also not ready to simply dismiss it since I frankly don’t understand it all that well). However, it is abundantly clear that the actual observed differences between model projections and observed surface temperature trends are orders of magnitude lower than your range of uncertainty estimates. This heavily implies that your uncertainty estimates are deficient in some regard (I would posit that it is almost certainly because your uncertainty estimates allow for outcomes that are physically impossible – i.e. would violate the laws of physics – and thus not possible for the models to produce).
You speak of Gavin just being a mathematician with no understanding of physical error, but as far as I can tell your own error analysis is merely a mathematical construct (that may or may not be conceptually sound) without a physical basis.
Not to worry. His paper actually validates the peer review “magic of the marketplace” process. Better to let head scratchers in, and then see how often they are relevantly cited. His, not at all.
I read quit a few of these, on many subjects. Can’t recall a paper so ignored in superterrainea…
Yet another scientifically invalid personal opinion, bob. You’ve yet to provide otherwise.
My paper presently has 142,913 views including 7799 downloads. That’s your ignored.
That it’s ignored by people invested in the AGW crock is no surprise at all. It’s to their shame.
You’re treating uncertainties as though they were model excursions in temperature projection , W-r. They’re not. They do not say anything about possible temperatures.
They express the knowledge content of the projection. They are an ignorance width.
The very wide confidence intervals mean that the projections are well into the total ignorance regime and are pretty much physically meaningless.
If you’ve been following the discussion, you should have already encountered that difference of meaning.
“They express the knowledge content of the projection. They are an ignorance width.”
I agree with this to an extent, which is why the width of your uncertainty envelope doesn’t sit well. Your uncertainty envelope encompasses a range of outcomes that are actually impossible for the models to produce (things that violate the laws of physics) – so the ignorance width you’ve calculated encompasses things we aren’t ignorant about. That means there is something missing from your estimate of our ignorance.
It would be like coming up with an uncertainty estimate for a model of projectile motion of a baseball tossed from a window, and the calculated uncertainty envelope allowing for the baseball to wind up inside the earth’s core. The ground provides a pretty solid boundary of uncertainty. You might insist, “the math allows for it!” But I would say there is more to the story than your math.
Uncertainty widths wider than the physical bounds means that the projection has no informational content, W-r.
You’re still treating the uncertainty as though it reflected a projection range of possible air temperatures. It does not.
Uncertainty says nothing about where the projection ends up.
Nor would it say anything about the physical trajectory of your thrown baseball.
It would say something about the extent of your knowledge about a baseball’s trajectory, given considerable ignorance about the initial conditions: little knowledge of the force, little knowledge of the azimuthal or radial angles of throw, little knowledge of windspeed, etc. Each of those parameters have a wide range of equally likely values.
You don’t know force or angle. What is the range of positional ignorance in a throw projected out to 50 yards?
Note that you never know where the ball actually goes. And your uncertainty calculation starts prior to the throw.
The uncertainty encompasses the range of values that the true quantity might assume given the estimate of the quantity and its uncertainty. Your calculated uncertainty allows for the true quantity to take on values that would violate the laws of physics. Ergo your uncertainty estimate is nonphysical and incomplete. There is no uncertainty whatsoever that the true temperature will be a value consistent with the laws of physics.
I guess another way to say this is that, as a layperson who can’t really evaluate your mathematics effectively, I have to conclude that you must be wrong about how uncertain we are about LWCF. Our uncertainty about LWCF isn’t so great that the forcing can violate the laws of physics. That is why I am unconvinced by your paper.
W-r, you wrote, “The uncertainty encompasses the range of values that the true quantity might assume given the estimate of the quantity and its uncertainty.”
No, it does not.
You wrote, “Your calculated uncertainty allows for the true quantity to take on values that would violate the laws of physics.”
No, it does not.
You wrote, “Ergo your uncertainty estimate is nonphysical and incomplete.”
Not it is not. In both your senses.
Uncertainty is a statistic. It is not a physical magnitude, nor a magnitude of physical error.
Well, I do agree that the uncertainty is incomplete in the sense that it is a lower limit of uncertainty, only. A complete estimate of uncertainty in projected air temperatures would be easily 10x larger.
Section 10.2 of the SI of my paper has a long discussion of uncertainty. Please.
From the JCGM:
“uncertainty (of measurement)
parameter, associated with the result of a measurement, that characterizes the dispersion of the values that could reasonably be attributed to the measurand.”
This is exactly consistent with my description above. I actually agree with much of what I read in 10.2 of your paper, but none of it addresses my central concern. If I have an object of length x and a 1 foot ruler of length ~2x, you will have a hard time convincing me that your calculated measurement uncertainty of >1000 feet is valid. The uncertainty is constrained by my knowledge of the fact that the object is not longer than the ruler.
Model projections are not measurements, first.
Second, if your 1 foot ruler is no better than ±1/8th inch, and you make 10 measurements to determine the length a board, the uncertainty in your final combined measurement is ±0.4″.
Growth of uncertainty in result occurs when calibration error is propagated through a lengthy calculation or series of measurements. We can’t avoid it.
See eqns. S10.1 and S10.2 in the SI, also from the JCGM.
Uncertainty and its growth have been discussed and explained endlessly here at WUWT.
My paper shows a lower limit calibration error for climate models, in simulation of cloud cover. That calibration error puts an uncertainty in simulated atmospheric thermal energy flux, which is the determinant of air temperature.
That uncertainty in simulated atmospheric thermal energy flux conditions the very first step of a projection.
It is present in every single subsequent step. Each step is incorrect in result, and then incorrectly projected.
How can stepwise uncertainty not grow across a sequential series of calculations?
By the way, W-r, regarding your, …
“I have to conclude that you must be wrong about how uncertain we are about LWCF.”
… my paper cites three published evaluations of LWCF error due to incorrect cloud simulation. There’s no doubt that its annual average is about ±4 W/m^2.
I’ve also updated the work to CMIP6 models, which show no effective improvement. In that post, I cited a published estimate of the annual average CMIP6 LWCF error.
CMIP6 LWCF error is again so large as to render meaningless every bloody air temperature projection recently published, and likely to be published over the next 5 years (at least).
By the way, W-r, the physical basis of my uncertainty analysis is that it propagates the physically real calibration error of climate models as they simulate physical cloud cover.
No you are just still clueless about the mathematics behind it
And always will be… by choice..
I understand the mathematics pretty well. Not quite well enough to say I’m comfortable dismissing the paper offhand, but certainly well enough to give me serious doubts about it.
It takes more than understanding the math, W-r.
It takes understanding the meaning of uncertainty, and knowing the difference between uncertainty and error.
I have yet to encounter a climate scientist who understands the first thing about propagating error, or about calibration, or about the meaning of systematic error — especially recurrent error — or even about the difference between accuracy and precision.
Parsing accuracy and precision seems to be especially difficult for them. Something grasped by first year physics and chemistry students is consistently out of reach for PhD climate modelers.
And I’ve encountered well more than 2 dozen of them. These people are not scientists.
Climate models are NOT SCIENCE
They are just glorified computer games.
NO SCIENCE INVOLVED !
The fact that you even think there is, tell everyone just how little you understand about actual science
Just a modeller, no science
A mathematician? Look up ‘scientific method’ to see what the difference is.
Summarising, modelling is in! Observations are out!
I disagree.
GCMs are not (scientific) hypotheses.
To be a hypothesis requires an outline for a reproducable experiment. GCMs offer no such test.
OOOH! Big numbers so he must be trustworthy
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915-most-scientific-papers-are-probably-wrong/
https://slate.com/technology/2015/04/fake-peer-review-scientific-journals-publish-fraudulent-plagiarized-or-nonsense-papers.html
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 – Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
And, if he is so knowledgeable, why does he hide from questions which elicited this article:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/19/nasas-dr-gavin-schmidt-goes-into-hiding-from-seven-very-inconvenient-questions/
The paper is referring to medical research, but on some level it is certainly true that much published research turns out to be wrong – that’s literally how science advances. One wonders what the probability of Loannidis’ paper being wrong is, and what implications that has for his hypothesis/the space time continuum.
I don’t pretend to know what goes on in other people’s heads or what their personal circumstances might be. I don’t think whether Schmidt answers a blogger’s questions on command determines whether or not he’s a scientist.
And “climate science” is WAY BELOW medicine as a scientific endeavour.
Off the charts LOW, in fact
So much of what passes pal-review in Cli-Sci , is just atrocious agenda-driven GARBAGE.
I’d love to learn your method for quantifying the ranking of scientific endeavors. Seeing the chart that climate science doesn’t even make it onto would be a real treat as well.
There’s no science in any of AGW consensus climatology, W-r.
Negligence, Non-science and Consensus Climatology
The whole field lives on false precision.
Except proxy paleo temperature reconstructions, which qualify as full-blown pseudo-science.
Cli-Sci seeks no validation against reality.
It in fact DENIES such validation.
That what makes it a total NON-SCIENCE.
If it was about proper scientific procedure, Cli-Sci would have died years ago.
Gavin’s Ph.D. is in Applied Mathematics. He has no training in any field of science. He knows nothing of calibration or physical error analysis.
His climate modeling papers are no more than subjectivist narratives decorated with mathematics. All of them assume what should be proved, grant his assumptions the weight of data, and are invariably confirmatory.
Not one of his publications includes any evaluation of the physical reliability of his model expectation values.
You may think that’s science, but it’s not.
When someone’s”work” is only fit as twisted and corrupted PROPAGANDA
It is NOT SCIENCE.
His qualifications are in math from the years at Oxford when that meant zero courses in the natural sciences, let alone specialist upper level courses in atmospheric physics.
Whatever they do, don’t set up an interview with Schmidt and Roy Spencer on the same stage.
Gavin will disappear up his own primary waste orifice !
That strange interview on the John Stossel show where Gavin Schmidt turned up with Roy Spencer but would not be on the set at the same time as Roy Spencer was absolutely hilarious.
Schmidt’s reasons were just not believable and it showed in his quavering voice. He knew he would be destroyed if he had to share the stage with a sceptic.
Roy Spencer was cool; John Stossel was merciless. Great tv.
Translation: NASA will be corrupted, er a conformed, to the official, and false, narratives that support the biden global reset.
It is a good thing they have farmed out actual space launches, since they probably don’t have or want the technical expertise to do that anymore.
They can now model space flights (poorly).
“The complexities of climate processes are still not fully understood…”. Wait a minute, Biden/Kerry/NASA et al are willing to damage our economy severely and there is still not understanding of “climate processes”? Gavin is a
mathmetician from start to finish, so he’s going to utilize data filtered through models to find the most useful answer. Useful to whom?
…and yet, in the next breath, they tell us “the Science is settled”.
The grants forever need fine tuning.
So now, instead of boosting muslim points, NASA will be boosting climate change. I thought the “S” in NASA stood for space.
From NASA’s own page:
The driving force, of course, was the launch of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957,
followed by its even weightier successors. In the midst of the Cold
War, a country that aspired to global preeminence could not let that
challenge pass. Although the United States already had its own
satellite plans in place as part of the International Geophysical Year,
the Russian events spurred the Space Age, and in particular gave urgency
to the founding of an American national space agency.
https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/whyweexplore/Why_We_29.html
Apparently not so anymore. The original purpose put in the background and the much more important scaremongering of unpleasant weather put in foreground so “Sleepy” Joseph Biden and his handlers can score points by the green faced mob.
My question is: Don’t the Greens have enough agencies already, to take care of the (political) climate?
The grantees forever need fine tuning.
More models
Just when NASA seemed to be getting back to doing real science…
First thing I saw/thought was:
“But how, that job’s already been filled”
From, bless her, Auntie Beeb. (Cudda bin The Grauniad, no difference)
Quote:
“Boris Johnson ‘risks humiliation’ over coal mine”
From the mouth of, some may have guessed, this guy.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55923731
I got to thinking, what if the UK took on, apart from the usual tsunami of Plastic Tat and Insta-Rot Steel, some of the ‘thinking‘ and ‘diplomacy‘ of The Chinese.
Metinks we know what sort of, well justified, response he’d have received
Short and sweet:- F*** O**
Some on Boris, have some backbone.
pleeeeeeeeeeeeze. for once, or has The Princess completely sucked you dry?
Well! If isn’t the old Mr. “I’ll find a way to keep him out the journals” guy! I’m stunned….
Oops, I think I got the wrong guy. Maybe it was PJ.
Your guy turned up thermostats, I think. I try to keep up, but it’s all so silly….
BoJo will do nothing against the Green agenda until after COP26 at the very earliest – he can’t afford to. After that circus is over for another year we’ll just have to see what happens.
“The complexities of climate processes still are not fully understood, and climate adaptation and mitigation efforts cannot succeed without robust climate observations, data, and research” So we should not be taking any actions to affect climate until we really know what we are doing. We do not know what the optimum global climate is let alone how to achieve it. Actions taken without appropriate knowledge may turn out to be counterproductive.
It appears that the science isn’t really settled, but the goal remains the same.
Damn Skippy! And the great appointments just keep on rolling out of D.C. It would be very satisfying to wipe that smug expression off Schmidt’s face….
… OMG, you are right … that is indeed his face.
Well, it could have been Michael Mann.
Is there a climate loon morphology?
The size, shape, structure and features of the heads of examples like Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt seem to bear that out.
By their beards….
I see 5 out of 6 who wish they could have competed against girls in high school sports.
Hey!! I resemble that remark!
Peter Gleick is missing from the lineup.
That’s not the only lineup Gleick should have been in.
Even by the climate industry’s Mannly standards, Gleick is remarkably crooked:
https://www.sealevel.info/Peter_Gleick_DeSmogBlog_and_the_Fakegate_Scandal-Burton.html
Dr. Peter Gleick’s “Fakegate” crimes were especially notable because Gleick was Chairman of the AGU’s Scientific Ethics Task Force — i.e., the climate industry’s top ethicist — when he committed fraud, identity theft, forgery & defamation to smear Heartland Institute’s climate skeptics & advance @AGUSciPolicy.
Gleick got away with his felonies because the Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois stonewalled and refused to prosecute until the statute of limitations had run out.
“Chairman of the AGU’s Scientific Ethics Task Force” I found that bitterly ironic, too, Dave.
Jennie Scott had just just hired Gleick to be one of the NCSE‘s climate advisors (along with Jim Hanson). She hot potatoed him immediately.
It definitely helps an alarmist loon to look like Lenin.
And I thought the position of “Groom Of The Stool” was done away with years ago.
NASA must have it’s outreach to radical, murderous religious fanatics.
“Foster communication and coordination within and outside the science community at NASA.”
Translation to English: “prepare the official party line and let all know within NASA that their careers depend on how well they tow it”
Nice translation, but it’s “toe the line”.
I know it’s ‘toe’, but when I see someone use ‘tow’ I just envision an unending line of useful idiots pulling an unending 3″ rope as far as the eye can see.
‘Tow’ is easily the active useful idiot and ‘Toe’ is the passive useful idiot. I support the morph in the idiot idiom.
“I support the morph in the idiot idiom”
I assemble that remark.
“Actively engage in amplifying the agency’s climate-related research and technological development.”
Translation to English: “Actively engage in exagerating the agency’s climate-related research and technological development.”
It begs the question, how many people do NASA need, to make unnecessary adjustments to good basic data?
Haven’t they got enough of those type of helpers already?
you need at least a hundred to get a 97% consensus.
I guess the ocean cold cycles will have to speak for themselves.
“NASA enjoys broad public support and trust, lending credibility to its climate observations.”
Using the past effort and sacrifices of astronauts, engineers, and scientists to provide cover for unethical data manipulation and other shenanigans is a sure way to squander that trust.
My thoughts exactly.
We probably should distinguish between NASA and NASA Climate. We don’t want the BS (Bad Science) formulated at NASA Climate to bleed over and contaminate the reputation of the NASA we know and love.
I’m surprised they dropped Muslim outreach.
The Muslims wanted to leave at least 15 times the number of people needed for a proper slave society. 1.4 billion would be quite excessive when you only need 100 million or less to appropriately serve the master class.
Muslim outreach consisted of sending a bunch of muslim kids to Space Camp.
and the budget item for muslim outreach was?
I don’t know, but I am curious.
I think the figure I heard was $500,000.00.
As Col. Kurtz would say, he’s a good errand boy.
sent by communists, to collect your taxes
This idea that NASA, by virtue of its satellites and “instruments” is able to “observe” the climate is laughably idiotic.
According to Danish scientist Svensmark, NASA should, indeed, be able to observe the climate. Of course, they would first have to know what needs observing, and how.
He should have appointed Bill Nye, the Science Guy!
With those qualifications and departmental resources, he’ll be the first to spot global cooling as it arrives.
With the likelihood of cooling over the next year for sure and probably beyond, Gavin is going to have to explain why we are not warming. The new pause could easily expand back to early 2013 if we have a 2 year La Nina. That would be close to a full decade at the end of 2022 when the midterms could change the balance of power.
Of course, he’d probably be hiding somewhere by then and all we would see is propaganda and lies. Still, it will be nice to know he is squirming.
Actually, Gavin Schmidt has just been bestowed with more governmental power to hide the current “pause”.
Coming soon to a theater near you.
It will also be interesting to see how things go with the new solar cycle.
But COOLING with become the new “warming”…. after Schmidt’s adjustments.
In the early days of RealClimate, there were real discussions possible between modellers and real life observers. A.o. about the role of human aerosols in cooling the earth. That role is important as that was (and still is) used by the modellers as an offset to explain the small cooling 1946-1975 while CO2 was already increasing. Depending of the offset, CO2 has a small to large influence on temperature…
See: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/an-aerosol-tour-de-forcing/ with my comment at #6.
After a few years under Gavin Schmidt’s rein of terror, about half of my comments disappeared in cyberspace, without any explanation, even when always “on topic”…
Since then RealClimate is just another echo chamber for everyone with the same opinion…
“That role is important as that was (and still is) used by the modellers as an offset to explain the small cooling 1946-1975 while CO2 was already increasing.”
It wasn’t really a small cooling, it was actually a cooling of over 2.0C degrees.
Here is the US surface temperature chart (Hansen 1999). This chart represents the *real* surface temperature profile of the Earth. All unmodified, regional surface temperature charts from around the world resemble the U.S. chart which shows it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today.
As you can see from the chart, the temperature reduction from the 1930’s to 1980 was 2.5C
The link below compares the Hansen 1999 chart to the bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick global temperature chart.
The Hockey Stick chart creators purposely and artificially cooled the 1930’s into insignificance as a means of promoting their Human-caused Climate Change narrative, which says it has been getting hotter and hotter, for decade after decade and we are now at the hottest temperatures in human history. The unmodified, regional surface temperature charts put the lie to this claim.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
Any chart you see that does not show the Early Twentieth Century to be just as warm as today is a distortion of reality and is a bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick chart. You will see a lot of them while studying this subject. Don’t believe any of them.