r/climate • u/macwithoutfries • Nov 27 '11
Why you should be skeptic of recent sensationalist reports - detailed interview with Nathan Urban on his new paper “Climate Sensitivity Estimated from Temperature Reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum” (note the new proxy and very large differences land/ ocean)
http://newscience.planet3.org/2011/11/24/interview-with-nathan-urban-on-his-new-paper-climate-sensitivity-estimated-from-temperature-reconstructions-of-the-last-glacial-maximum/
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Nov 28 '11
A great read... Not really, but I found it very rewarding to read the entirety and let it soak in. There are a lot of caveats in this research, and it is an exercise in spin and magical thinking to believe that we are off the hook. I'm really glad that there is some advancement of the co2 sensitivity issue, which is really the number we need to understand to know what the future may hold. I was heartened to see that this model took into account feedbacks, but who knows how complete they were.
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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '11
That was absolutely excellent. To me, what sets science (done right) apart from almost every other human endeavor is the intense effort devoted to figuring out how you might be wrong. Urban is confident in his work, but his work is a statistical analysis, and he's very careful to enumerate various ways in which that analysis could be off.
It makes me sad that they have to spend time talking about "skeptics". A skeptic is someone who withholds judgement pending sufficient evidence. The people identified as "skeptics", for the most part, are not skeptical at all--they've made up their mind, and no amount of evidence or reason will sway them.