Sunday, December 12, 2010

Climategate - the science is not settled...

The blubberman (well, he calls himself "Whaleoil" so...), and a great range of other right whingers (by my count the first 60 at least of the sites picked up by Google on the topic if you put 'NASA Bounoua "Forrest Hill"' as the search) have picked up on a recent paper from NASA. You can find the NASA summary of the article here.

In the Blubberman's case, he has lighted his confirmation bias on an article from The Register. So, nothing original there, I guess.

But not only is the Blubberman selective in what he has clipped from The Register article, The Register itself has been equally selective in its extract from the NASA synopsis of the Bounoua and Hill paper.

As a direct instance, the following paras have been omitted completely, with the last para quoted below pointing out the limitations of the research to date.

The cooling effect would be -0.3 degrees Celsius (C) (-0.5 Fahrenheit (F)) globally and -0.6 degrees C (-1.1 F) over land, compared to simulations where the feedback was not included, said Lahouari Bounoua, of Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Bounoua is lead author on a paper detailing the results that will be published Dec. 7 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Without the negative feedback included, the model found a warming of 1.94 degrees C globally when carbon dioxide was doubled.

Bounoua stressed that while the model's results showed a negative feedback, it is not a strong enough response to alter the global warming trend that is expected. In fact, the present work is an example of how, over time, scientists will create more sophisticated models that will chip away at the uncertainty range of climate change and allow more accurate projections of future climate


So, Blubberman, your usual half truths and truthiness huh!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm...
I have just had a look at Whale Oil's blog. I have to say that this guy certainly cleaves to the political faction favored by ol' Attila.

What gets me is his diatribe against ad hominem attacks, then uses a welter of scatalogical language to run down anyone who seems to support Socialism.

Just shows that even such a self-styled RW stirrer like Cameron isn't immune to the vileness of hypocrisy.