You well know, as a reader of Slashdot, many (probably most) readers of a blog will never bother to check out links to original material.
Which probably works out in your favor, because (as with Stormcrow309) your rant looks marginally saner when some of the more insulting comments with little scientific content are removed. But from the very beginning I noted that your post was "huge" and "epic" right next to links to the original, and I publicized your claims of my dishonesty in the index in 7(k) as soon as you made it.
And I'm really confused about the notion that you were surprised to see my version, because all I did was copy my comments and post them, with your words quoted pretty much the same as they were quoted in the original conversation. I'm not obliged to act as your publisher. If you want to publish a more complete version of the conversation, feel free.
The additional fact that twice now you have decided to post my edited comments elsewhere, without bothering to inform me until afterward, causes me to question your goodwill, if not your integrity. Perhaps there is nothing legal preventing you from doing so, but asking for permission or at least informing me in advance would have demonstrated a willingness to deal with others in good faith. That is not just the ethical thing to do, but also how things are normally done in polite society.
Huh? I wrote this comment before the majority of our conversation:... Just FYI, I'll be linking to your comments and quoting them when I finally get around to writing a blog article about my experiences debating climate change with the general public. It's usually helpful to see opposing points of view, and so far your posts are among the most educated and polite of those taking your position.
How about this tidbit where the UK Met denies the FOIA request to access CRUTEM3 data and claims that "records were not kept" of where the data came from. Where is the convincing rebuttal for the years of runaround from the CRU, UK Met, and associated parties?
Please note that I asked for a peer-reviewed paper, which would contain some kind of physics-based argument. Conspiracy theories bore me; science is really much more interesting!
I see that they found no significant problems with the McIntyre and McKitrick papers either.
They weren't convened to critique the MM03/05 papers, so describing MM's misunderstandings of selection rules in principal component analysis would be outside the scope of the report. I've listed some peer-reviewed papers here (see item 7d in the index-- ~3 pages from the top) which cover those topics in more detail.
Well, there's a pile of articles [climateaudit.org] from Dr. McIntyre. Many of these criticize HadCRUT3 or its components. So yes, the data itself has been called into question repeatedly.
Look at his peer-reviewed papers and follow their citations in google scholar. If there's a peer-reviewed paper that shows significant flaws in the HadCRUT3 dataset which hasn't been convincingly rebutted, I'd like to know.
Good point. If the whole package is "turnkey" then the bug can be fixed, and the resulting graphs recomputed. If there's no change, the bug was scientifically irrelevant. If the graph changes, the bug may or may not have been scientifically important, depending on the specific conclusions drawn from the graph. Incidentally, this approach would not only require the research data (which the scientist may not be able to share) and a computer powerful enough to run the program before you die of old age.
The existence of a bug can be established by a code auditor without a science background. However, establishing that said bug affects the scientific results does require specialized knowledge in many instances.
Yes, but you want that uncertainty to come from limitations in the experimental data, not inadequate guard digits. What the article was describing was a situation where the accuracy of the results dropped from 6 significant figures to just 1. In some rare situations, this could be intentional (to obtain an order-of-magnitude estimate using shortcuts that sacrifice accuracy for speed), but it's more likely to be your garden-variety roundoff error that the programmer didn't even know was corrupting his results.
I'm finishing a program that inverts GRACE data to reveal fluctuations in gravity such as those caused by melting glaciers. This program will eventually be released as open source software under the GPLv3. It's largely built on open source libraries like the GNU Scientific Library, but snippets of proprietary code from JPL found their way into the program years ago, and I'm currently trying to untangle them. The program can't be made open source until I succeed because of an NDA that I had to sign in order to work at JPL.
It's impossible to say how long it will take to banish the proprietary code. While working on this project, my research is at a standstill. There's very little academic incentive to waste time on this idealistic goal when I could be increasing my publication count.
Annoyingly, the data itself doesn't belong to me. Again, I had to sign an NDA to receive it. So I can't release the data. This situation is common to scientists in many different fields.
Incidentally, Harry's README file is typical of my experiences with scientific software. Fragile, unportable, uncommented spaghetti code is common because scientists aren't professional programmers. Of course, this doesn't invalidate the results of that code because it's tested primarily through independent verification, not unit tests. Scientists describe their algorithms in peer-reviewed papers, which are then re-implemented (often from scratch) by other scientists. Open source code practices would certainly improve science, but he's wrong to imply that a single bug could have a significant impact on our understanding of the greenhouse effect.
To be blunt about it, it appeared to me that you cherry-picked specific parts of my posts and presented them out of the context of our actual exchange, in such a manner to make your side of the conversation appear to be more reasonable, and mine to be less.
Yes, and 2 minutes later I replied: I omitted the rest of your remarks to focus on the science, and as an act of mercy to my (undoubtedly overwhelmed) readers. Everyone wanting to read the rest of what you wrote can follow the numerous links leading to the original Slashdot conversation.
Most of the nonscientists I've spoken with display a very low ratio of "interesting physics-related comments" to "whiny conspiracy theories/insults". As a result, their comments are abridged to focus on the few interesting comments. For example, compare my abridged version of Stormcrow309's rant to the Slashdot original. Notice how he actually seems more reasonable in my version; that's because my goal is to strip away the nonsense and focus on the science. Again, links to the originals are always available.
Understand that in light of this, for whatever this statement may be worth here, you do not have my permission to post my comments elsewhere. If I find that you are doing so, I shall cease to exchange any words with you at all, and I shall post my reasons for that clearly not only on Slashdot, but also, if possible, on the offending site.
Well, as you can tell I've already posted this conversation. Goodbye.
Oops. Forgot to type two words, with very confusing results. Change ""this paper says that stratospheric temperatures are rising, not falling as predicted by GCMs, so the cause of this stratospheric temperature rise can only be that GCMs are fundamentally flawed."" to ""this paper says that stratospheric temperatures are rising, not falling as predicted by GCMs, so the cause of this stratospheric temperature rise can only be something that implies GCMs are fundamentally flawed.""
Upon re-reading the press release [uah.edu], I didn't see a factor of 2.6 anywhere. They do mention a 26 year data span, but here's the most relevant quote I can find: "As a general rule, the climate models predict that the tropical troposphere should be warming 1.3 times faster than whatever the surface is doing. And it is only in the tropics that the surface and the troposphere don't seem to follow what the models forecast."
Okay, I see that 1.3/0.5=2.6, which is what you meant. Sorry. I'm going to drop this paragraph from the version I'll post to Dumb Scientist, because it was unusually stupid of me and adds nothing of any value to the conversation. Again, sorry for the confusion.
Actually, change "multiple factors" to "multiple factors (table 1 on page 5)" and "with no corresponding increase in ozone, no increase in stratospheric methane or water vapor, and no increased solar output" to "with no increase in stratospheric ozone, methane or water vapor, no increased solar output, no volcanic eruptions, and no decrease in well-mixed greenhouse gases"
Not only is your link to an article about the "debate" NOT about the recent debate, which was still occurring mere months ago...
You didn't cite any papers, so I had to guess what you were talking about. If you could show me some papers regarding this other debate that happened mere months ago, maybe this would be a more productive conversation.
the article actually supports the assertion I was making, and is nowhere near a "solution" to the problem to which I was referring.... the article specifically mentions that "The newest satellite dataset correction doesn't reconcile differences between climate trends in the lower layer of the atmosphere..." which was one of the obvious problems with the models to which I referred.... it states that the tropospheric warming observed would need to be 2.6 times greater than what was observed in order to support what the climate models predicted.... You just linked to an article that clearly and unequivocally stated it was fundamentally flawed as recently as 2005... off in a major way by a factor of 260%. That's not a "tweak", that's a fundamental flaw.
Upon re-reading the press release, I didn't see a factor of 2.6 anywhere. They do mention a 26 year data span, but here's the most relevant quote I can find: "As a general rule, the climate models predict that the tropical troposphere should be warming 1.3 times faster than whatever the surface is doing. And it is only in the tropics that the surface and the troposphere don't seem to follow what the models forecast."
I only linked that press release in an attempt to see if this debate is what you were talking about. Since it's apparently not, I should really just wait for you to link the journal papers that are central to this other debate.
But just in case you're interested, this particular debate began with a 2004 paper by Douglass, Pearson and Singer. As usual, the first step in evaluating any scientific debate is to follow the citations in (for example) google scholar. Notice that a more recent paper (PDF) says: "Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets, and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability, and application of an inappropriate statistical consistency test. "
There are useful lessons to be drawn from this debate. For instance, they suggest (along with other lines of evidence) that GCMs can't yet fully account for ENSO and other inter-annual oscillations, need improved moist convection and cloud parameterizations, etc. I caution people not to make regional climate predictions for precisely this reason: the GCMs aren't yet sophisticated enough. Global averages, however, are considerably more reliable and robust for the same reason that opinion polls with larger sample sizes have smaller error bars.
I understand your statement that "they settled on more robust model evaluation techniques", but if so then they did so remarkably quickly, since this debate was still going on mere months ago, until troposphere warming data was updated to show observations that it was in fact warming as it should have been according to the models.
Oh, also, to add to that list: dataset lengths are shorter for stratosphere measurements than surface measurements. Also, change "stratospheric warming can be due to many different causes" to "stratospheric warming can be due to many different causes, as Liu and Weng note in their paper's discussion: From long-term ozone measurements at Arosa Switzerland Zanis et al. (2006) found a negative trend in stratospheric ozone before 1996 and a positive trend in lower stratospheric ozone between 1996 and 2004. Miller et al. (2006) have utilized a statistical model (Reinsel et al. 2002) to study the ozone trend by using the ozone data from 12 ozonesonde stations in the midlatitude of the Northern Hemisphere. They also found a negative trend before 1996 and a positive trend since 1996 in the lower stratospheric ozone."
Actually, change "comparing small temperature trends in the stratosphere" to "comparing temperature trends in the stratosphere, where the effects of CO2 are smaller relative to other known forcings, the instrumental uncertainties are larger than surface measurements, and the small densities imply similarly small changes in heat content".
It was not my intent to argue the whole point of whether anthropogenic CO2 warming is occurring. My point was that contrary to what someone else stated above (and what a great many others have claimed), not "all" the evidence points that way. Nor do "all" the papers support the idea, and nor do "all" scientists accept the theory.
Indeed, the claim that "all" scientists agree that CO2 is causing warming is an exaggeration. "An overwhelming majority" is more accurate, according to all the surveys I've seen and my own anecdotal observations at AGU conferences. But, of course, evidence is far more persuasive and interesting than counting heads. Some evidence (like the paper you found) suggests that GCMs might need to be improved in some areas or have their uncertainty estimates revised at certain altitudes. But I've never seen credible evidence that our understanding of climate physics is fundamentally flawed, which is what so many people in the general public seem to think.
I do not have citations of all the relevant papers at hand, but for background about my statement: recently a major argument over greenhouse warming was occurring because tropospheric warming that would have to be taking place in order for the most commonly accepted greenhouse warming models to be even halfway predictive was not being observed. Later observation and analysis (to my own surprise) did indeed indicate such warming, but according to my best understanding it could only be reconciled with the greenhouse models if it were accompanied by a certain amount of cooling in the lower stratosphere. Which did seem to be happening.
This debate did happen, but you're implying it was pivotal for "for the most commonly accepted greenhouse warming models to be even halfway predictive". That's not true; as I just outlined, scientists have settled on more robust model evaluation techniques.
Of course they do not directly state that their findings contradict the warming models... that is a conclusion that does not have a proper place within the paper. Nevertheless, given the surrounding circumstances, I am free to make such an inference and I assert that it is reasonable given the circumstances. But I do not intend to try to prove it here.
You're certainly free to make that inference. But I don't think it's reasonable because you haven't addressed the fact that stratospheric warming can be due to many different causes. Also, other GCM validation techniques seem considerably more reliable than comparing small temperature trends in the stratosphere. Why should I believe that your measure is more robust (i.e. has more statistical "power" and has fewer type 1 and type 2 errors) than those I just listed?
I think there are at least two "rounds" of peer review. The first round: "is this research published in a reputable and appropriate journal, considering the topic?" If the answer is no, scientists generally won't waste their time on it, because there's already too many legitimately peer-reviewed papers for us to read.
Then the second round of peer review begins: other scientists independently reproduce (or disprove) their results.
I have located an even more recent paper, written by a scientist working for NOAA (a reputable scientific body), using NASA's own data, that shows that the lower stratosphere is not in fact cooling as the greenhouse models call for. Rather, it is warming. Which in turn means the greenhouse warming models are fundamentally flawed...
Interesting paper. Of course, it doesn't say (or even imply) that "greenhouse warming models are fundamentally flawed." The stratosphere cools as CO2 increases because the "emitting layer" moves higher into the troposphere, so it emits less long wave radiation because temperature decreases with altitude in the troposphere. Because that radiation normally warms the stratosphere, the stratosphere cools. But other factors can warm the stratosphere, like anthropogenic methane and water vapor. Also, increased ozone warms the stratosphere, which is why the paper you cited actually suggests that "the reversing trend may relate to a possible recovery of stratospheric ozone concentration."
In reality, global circulation models (GCMs) are validated in a more robust fashion than examining a single variable in a single paper. After running an initial condition ensemble to average away the weather, and a multi-model ensemble to average away non-systematic errors, GCM output is compared to paleoclimate reconstructions and instrumental records (though the mean climate can't be independently verified because of model "tuning"). The GCM response to forcing events such as volcanic eruptions can be compared to reality. The CO2 sensitivity implied by the GCM can be compared to independent estimates from the last deglaciation. Chapter 8 here is a good source for background information concerning climate models and their evaluation.
I could go on about this for hours, pointing out reams of data and studies that do not support the idea of man-caused global warming... but I have already made my point: the plain FACT is, nowhere near "all" our evidence points to man-caused global warming. There is a great deal of counter-evidence, and much of the evidence on the "pro" side is now under suspicion because of some questionable practices used.
Maybe you understand the physics behind these arguments better than I do, but the overwhelming majority of the evidence I've seen says that abrupt climate change is happening because of anthropogenic greenhouse gases like CO2. Considering that this conclusion has been subjected to extensive independent verification, I also don't see any reason to be concerned about any questionable practices that have been floating around the tabloids. The few stories that weren't complete nonsense simply showed that scientists are human-- that countering the never-ending deluge of misinformation from nonscientists is stressful enough that they need to vent to each other privately via email.
I can sympathize. If every one of these climate skeptics put as much energy into getting a graduate physics education as they do into reading crackpot blogs and hurling insults at me online, maybe I'd have more time to work on my actual research...
Actually, mechanical failure has been the biggest problem with wind turbines.
Well, that and the fact that wind is unreliable. So we either have to build many more turbines that are actually needed for the base load, come up with cheap/efficient storage for massive amounts of energy, or develop an extremely sophisticated (HVDC or even superconducting) power grid that can divert excess wind power in the northeast on Monday to the south where winds aren't blowing strongly that day.
These problems shouldn't stop us from developing clean wind power. But they do make replacing base load generation with wind turbines more expensive than most environmentalists seem to think. That's why I strongly support nuclear power- it's clean, safe, and economically competitive once all the negative externalities of other energy sources are accounted for.
Huh? Dr. Weiler is the director of Goddard, and I spent some time trying to find his peer-reviewed papers, but didn't see any of the nonsense that you're attributing to him.
But that's not surprising, since the urban legend that "scientists predicted an ice age in the 1970s" is false, and only true of sensationalist articles in non-peer-reviewed publications like Newsweek. Most genuinely peer-reviewed scientific journal articles were predicting global warming even in the 1970s. There was a genuine effect called global dimming due to aerosols increasing the albedo of the Earth, but regulation reduced aerosol emissions, and their short lifetime in the atmosphere did the rest.
In 2002, an open process involving scientists and employees modified NASA's mission statement to include the phrase "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers... as only NASA can."
But then in 2006 the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" was dropped over the objections of many scientists. Considering that climate scientists have long used NASA satellite data to monitor abrupt climate change (including myself), I think it's time to re-emphasize this vital role that NASA can perform.
Slashdot Mirror
Which probably works out in your favor, because (as with Stormcrow309) your rant looks marginally saner when some of the more insulting comments with little scientific content are removed. But from the very beginning I noted that your post was "huge" and "epic" right next to links to the original, and I publicized your claims of my dishonesty in the index in 7(k) as soon as you made it.
And I'm really confused about the notion that you were surprised to see my version, because all I did was copy my comments and post them, with your words quoted pretty much the same as they were quoted in the original conversation. I'm not obliged to act as your publisher. If you want to publish a more complete version of the conversation, feel free.
Huh? I wrote this comment before the majority of our conversation: ... Just FYI, I'll be linking to your comments and quoting them when I finally get around to writing a blog article about my experiences debating climate change with the general public. It's usually helpful to see opposing points of view, and so far your posts are among the most educated and polite of those taking your position.
You even responded to it and didn't object.
Please note that I asked for a peer-reviewed paper, which would contain some kind of physics-based argument. Conspiracy theories bore me; science is really much more interesting!
They weren't convened to critique the MM03/05 papers, so describing MM's misunderstandings of selection rules in principal component analysis would be outside the scope of the report. I've listed some peer-reviewed papers here (see item 7d in the index-- ~3 pages from the top) which cover those topics in more detail.
The NAS report found no significant problems with Mann's 1998 reconstruction, and it's been confirmed repeatedly by independent teams.
Look at his peer-reviewed papers and follow their citations in google scholar. If there's a peer-reviewed paper that shows significant flaws in the HadCRUT3 dataset which hasn't been convincingly rebutted, I'd like to know.
Good point. If the whole package is "turnkey" then the bug can be fixed, and the resulting graphs recomputed. If there's no change, the bug was scientifically irrelevant. If the graph changes, the bug may or may not have been scientifically important, depending on the specific conclusions drawn from the graph. Incidentally, this approach would not only require the research data (which the scientist may not be able to share) and a computer powerful enough to run the program before you die of old age.
The existence of a bug can be established by a code auditor without a science background. However, establishing that said bug affects the scientific results does require specialized knowledge in many instances.
Yes, but you want that uncertainty to come from limitations in the experimental data, not inadequate guard digits. What the article was describing was a situation where the accuracy of the results dropped from 6 significant figures to just 1. In some rare situations, this could be intentional (to obtain an order-of-magnitude estimate using shortcuts that sacrifice accuracy for speed), but it's more likely to be your garden-variety roundoff error that the programmer didn't even know was corrupting his results.
Yes, sounds like someone didn't read What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic.
I'm finishing a program that inverts GRACE data to reveal fluctuations in gravity such as those caused by melting glaciers. This program will eventually be released as open source software under the GPLv3. It's largely built on open source libraries like the GNU Scientific Library, but snippets of proprietary code from JPL found their way into the program years ago, and I'm currently trying to untangle them. The program can't be made open source until I succeed because of an NDA that I had to sign in order to work at JPL.
It's impossible to say how long it will take to banish the proprietary code. While working on this project, my research is at a standstill. There's very little academic incentive to waste time on this idealistic goal when I could be increasing my publication count.
Annoyingly, the data itself doesn't belong to me. Again, I had to sign an NDA to receive it. So I can't release the data. This situation is common to scientists in many different fields.
Incidentally, Harry's README file is typical of my experiences with scientific software. Fragile, unportable, uncommented spaghetti code is common because scientists aren't professional programmers. Of course, this doesn't invalidate the results of that code because it's tested primarily through independent verification, not unit tests. Scientists describe their algorithms in peer-reviewed papers, which are then re-implemented (often from scratch) by other scientists. Open source code practices would certainly improve science, but he's wrong to imply that a single bug could have a significant impact on our understanding of the greenhouse effect.
Yes, and 2 minutes later I replied: I omitted the rest of your remarks to focus on the science, and as an act of mercy to my (undoubtedly overwhelmed) readers. Everyone wanting to read the rest of what you wrote can follow the numerous links leading to the original Slashdot conversation.
Most of the nonscientists I've spoken with display a very low ratio of "interesting physics-related comments" to "whiny conspiracy theories/insults". As a result, their comments are abridged to focus on the few interesting comments. For example, compare my abridged version of Stormcrow309's rant to the Slashdot original. Notice how he actually seems more reasonable in my version; that's because my goal is to strip away the nonsense and focus on the science. Again, links to the originals are always available.
Well, as you can tell I've already posted this conversation. Goodbye.
If all these corrections are annoying (again, sorry...), a version with all corrections applied is here.
Oops. Forgot to type two words, with very confusing results. Change ""this paper says that stratospheric temperatures are rising, not falling as predicted by GCMs, so the cause of this stratospheric temperature rise can only be that GCMs are fundamentally flawed."" to ""this paper says that stratospheric temperatures are rising, not falling as predicted by GCMs, so the cause of this stratospheric temperature rise can only be something that implies GCMs are fundamentally flawed.""
Okay, I see that 1.3/0.5=2.6, which is what you meant. Sorry. I'm going to drop this paragraph from the version I'll post to Dumb Scientist, because it was unusually stupid of me and adds nothing of any value to the conversation. Again, sorry for the confusion.
Actually, change "multiple factors" to "multiple factors (table 1 on page 5)" and "with no corresponding increase in ozone, no increase in stratospheric methane or water vapor, and no increased solar output" to "with no increase in stratospheric ozone, methane or water vapor, no increased solar output, no volcanic eruptions, and no decrease in well-mixed greenhouse gases"
You didn't cite any papers, so I had to guess what you were talking about. If you could show me some papers regarding this other debate that happened mere months ago, maybe this would be a more productive conversation.
Upon re-reading the press release, I didn't see a factor of 2.6 anywhere. They do mention a 26 year data span, but here's the most relevant quote I can find: "As a general rule, the climate models predict that the tropical troposphere should be warming 1.3 times faster than whatever the surface is doing. And it is only in the tropics that the surface and the troposphere don't seem to follow what the models forecast."
I only linked that press release in an attempt to see if this debate is what you were talking about. Since it's apparently not, I should really just wait for you to link the journal papers that are central to this other debate.
But just in case you're interested, this particular debate began with a 2004 paper by Douglass, Pearson and Singer. As usual, the first step in evaluating any scientific debate is to follow the citations in (for example) google scholar. Notice that a more recent paper (PDF) says: "Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets, and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability, and application of an inappropriate statistical consistency test. "
There are useful lessons to be drawn from this debate. For instance, they suggest (along with other lines of evidence) that GCMs can't yet fully account for ENSO and other inter-annual oscillations, need improved moist convection and cloud parameterizations, etc. I caution people not to make regional climate predictions for precisely this reason: the GCMs aren't yet sophisticated enough. Global averages, however, are considerably more reliable and robust for the same reason that opinion polls with larger sample sizes have smaller error bars.
If you really did under
Oh, also, to add to that list: dataset lengths are shorter for stratosphere measurements than surface measurements. Also, change "stratospheric warming can be due to many different causes" to "stratospheric warming can be due to many different causes, as Liu and Weng note in their paper's discussion: From long-term ozone measurements at Arosa Switzerland Zanis et al. (2006) found a negative trend in stratospheric ozone before 1996 and a positive trend in lower stratospheric ozone between 1996 and 2004. Miller et al. (2006) have utilized a statistical model (Reinsel et al. 2002) to study the ozone trend by using the ozone data from 12 ozonesonde stations in the midlatitude of the Northern Hemisphere. They also found a negative trend before 1996 and a positive trend since 1996 in the lower stratospheric ozone."
Actually, change "comparing small temperature trends in the stratosphere" to "comparing temperature trends in the stratosphere, where the effects of CO2 are smaller relative to other known forcings, the instrumental uncertainties are larger than surface measurements, and the small densities imply similarly small changes in heat content".
Indeed, the claim that "all" scientists agree that CO2 is causing warming is an exaggeration. "An overwhelming majority" is more accurate, according to all the surveys I've seen and my own anecdotal observations at AGU conferences. But, of course, evidence is far more persuasive and interesting than counting heads. Some evidence (like the paper you found) suggests that GCMs might need to be improved in some areas or have their uncertainty estimates revised at certain altitudes. But I've never seen credible evidence that our understanding of climate physics is fundamentally flawed, which is what so many people in the general public seem to think.
This debate did happen, but you're implying it was pivotal for "for the most commonly accepted greenhouse warming models to be even halfway predictive". That's not true; as I just outlined, scientists have settled on more robust model evaluation techniques.
You're certainly free to make that inference. But I don't think it's reasonable because you haven't addressed the fact that stratospheric warming can be due to many different causes. Also, other GCM validation techniques seem considerably more reliable than comparing small temperature trends in the stratosphere. Why should I believe that your measure is more robust (i.e. has more statistical "power" and has fewer type 1 and type 2 errors) than those I just listed?
I think there are at least two "rounds" of peer review. The first round: "is this research published in a reputable and appropriate journal, considering the topic?" If the answer is no, scientists generally won't waste their time on it, because there's already too many legitimately peer-reviewed papers for us to read.
Then the second round of peer review begins: other scientists independently reproduce (or disprove) their results.
Interesting paper. Of course, it doesn't say (or even imply) that "greenhouse warming models are fundamentally flawed." The stratosphere cools as CO2 increases because the "emitting layer" moves higher into the troposphere, so it emits less long wave radiation because temperature decreases with altitude in the troposphere. Because that radiation normally warms the stratosphere, the stratosphere cools. But other factors can warm the stratosphere, like anthropogenic methane and water vapor. Also, increased ozone warms the stratosphere, which is why the paper you cited actually suggests that "the reversing trend may relate to a possible recovery of stratospheric ozone concentration."
In reality, global circulation models (GCMs) are validated in a more robust fashion than examining a single variable in a single paper. After running an initial condition ensemble to average away the weather, and a multi-model ensemble to average away non-systematic errors, GCM output is compared to paleoclimate reconstructions and instrumental records (though the mean climate can't be independently verified because of model "tuning"). The GCM response to forcing events such as volcanic eruptions can be compared to reality. The CO2 sensitivity implied by the GCM can be compared to independent estimates from the last deglaciation. Chapter 8 here is a good source for background information concerning climate models and their evaluation.
Maybe you understand the physics behind these arguments better than I do, but the overwhelming majority of the evidence I've seen says that abrupt climate change is happening because of anthropogenic greenhouse gases like CO2. Considering that this conclusion has been subjected to extensive independent verification, I also don't see any reason to be concerned about any questionable practices that have been floating around the tabloids. The few stories that weren't complete nonsense simply showed that scientists are human-- that countering the never-ending deluge of misinformation from nonscientists is stressful enough that they need to vent to each other privately via email.
I can sympathize. If every one of these climate skeptics put as much energy into getting a graduate physics education as they do into reading crackpot blogs and hurling insults at me online, maybe I'd have more time to work on my actual research...
Well, that and the fact that wind is unreliable. So we either have to build many more turbines that are actually needed for the base load, come up with cheap/efficient storage for massive amounts of energy, or develop an extremely sophisticated (HVDC or even superconducting) power grid that can divert excess wind power in the northeast on Monday to the south where winds aren't blowing strongly that day.
These problems shouldn't stop us from developing clean wind power. But they do make replacing base load generation with wind turbines more expensive than most environmentalists seem to think. That's why I strongly support nuclear power- it's clean, safe, and economically competitive once all the negative externalities of other energy sources are accounted for.
Huh? Dr. Weiler is the director of Goddard, and I spent some time trying to find his peer-reviewed papers, but didn't see any of the nonsense that you're attributing to him.
But that's not surprising, since the urban legend that "scientists predicted an ice age in the 1970s" is false, and only true of sensationalist articles in non-peer-reviewed publications like Newsweek. Most genuinely peer-reviewed scientific journal articles were predicting global warming even in the 1970s. There was a genuine effect called global dimming due to aerosols increasing the albedo of the Earth, but regulation reduced aerosol emissions, and their short lifetime in the atmosphere did the rest.
In 2002, an open process involving scientists and employees modified NASA's mission statement to include the phrase "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can."
But then in 2006 the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" was dropped over the objections of many scientists. Considering that climate scientists have long used NASA satellite data to monitor abrupt climate change (including myself), I think it's time to re-emphasize this vital role that NASA can perform.