New study blaming warming on disrupted Atlantic flow has scientists “grumpy”
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
More generally, though, climate science makes me queasy. I'm more than happy to accept the dominant theories and sort of understand that there's a lot of people who understand enough of the related science to have an informed opinion, but I feel like it would take at least a Ph.D. and a postdoc before I could really get to that point. There are just so many complex systems in play.
> The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific and intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations, set up at the request of member governments, dedicated to the task of providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change and its political and economic impacts. It was first established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).... The IPCC produces reports that support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is the main international treaty on climate change. IPCC reports cover "the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation." The IPCC does not carry out its own original research, nor does it do the work of monitoring climate or related phenomena itself. The IPCC bases its assessment on the published literature, which includes peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sources. Thousands of scientists and other experts contribute (on a voluntary basis, without payment from the IPCC) to writing and reviewing reports, which are then reviewed by governments. IPCC reports contain a "Summary for Policymakers", which is subject to line-by-line approval by delegates from all participating governments. Typically this involves the governments of more than 120 countries.
Or maybe more a response to the press's general tendency to report new studies as significant before there's consensus or even a chance for others in the field to fully evaluate the claims.
> Most of Chen and Tung's evidence for this comes from laying Atlantic circulation data next to global temperature data and noting that it looks like temperatures rose more quickly during periods when circulation slowed.
The article says that scientists say that the Atlantic change would not be the cause of warming, but Aerosols, Pacific ocean changes, and volcanic eruptions.
The scientists are not disagreeing about the direction of the temperature, but the cause. In this case, the new study is claiming humans are not the cause, but the new study shows no evidence to contradict the existing models. Thus scientists are "grumpy" that the study is shoddy.
Climate scientists have a consolidated tradition of being made grumpy by any scientific paper downplaying human responsibility for global warming. I can understand their concerns about shoddy science preventing us from acting quickly to contrast climate change; at the same time there is a clear pattern of much tighter scrutiny for results pointing in one direction rather than the other; and while this might be in the best interest of humanity, I don't think it is in the best interest of science.