http://scienceprogress.org/2009/12/climate-science/ Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:59:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://scienceprogress.org/2009/12/climate-science/comment-page-1/#comment-6574 Theodore Brown Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:41:53 +0000 http://www.scienceprogress.org/?p=4974#comment-6574 I don't disagree with the broad thrust of what Andrew Pratt has to say, but he indulges in some of the same rhetorical excesses that he deplores in those who deny human influences on climate change. We who in various ways represent the scientific community should avoid claims that are not supported by the evidence. Before the past few years we were accustomed to talking about weather patterns and climate characteristics as the result of cyclical large scale changes in global circulations, variations in oceanic current flows, and other similar effects. Now we are tempted to point to every dry season, heavy storm, and melting glacier as though they were clear evidence of anthropogenically driven global warming. But in the past few years the level of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere has not increased all that much; not enough to bring on exceptional new weather behavior. Some of what we take to be evidences of global warming may have more than one causal origin. We need to be more modest in what we can claim to know. As I pointed out in a recent blog, we have trouble operationally defining something we can call the global surface temperature for any period up to recent decades, and we certainly can't claim to know it with a precision matching the increments in it that we ascribe to human activities. Yes, there is ample evidence that the planet is growing warmer, and yes we should be doing all we can to mitigate human effects on the climate. But let's not allow science politics to trump a sober, authoritative climate science. I don’t disagree with the broad thrust of what Andrew Pratt has to say, but he indulges in some of the same rhetorical excesses that he deplores in those who deny human influences on climate change. We who in various ways represent the scientific community should avoid claims that are not supported by the evidence. Before the past few years we were accustomed to talking about weather patterns and climate characteristics as the result of cyclical large scale changes in global circulations, variations in oceanic current flows, and other similar effects. Now we are tempted to point to every dry season, heavy storm, and melting glacier as though they were clear evidence of anthropogenically driven global warming. But in the past few years the level of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere has not increased all that much; not enough to bring on exceptional new weather behavior. Some of what we take to be evidences of global warming may have more than one causal origin. We need to be more modest in what we can claim to know. As I pointed out in a recent blog, we have trouble operationally defining something we can call the global surface temperature for any period up to recent decades, and we certainly can’t claim to know it with a precision matching the increments in it that we ascribe to human activities. Yes, there is ample evidence that the planet is growing warmer, and yes we should be doing all we can to mitigate human effects on the climate. But let’s not allow science politics to trump a sober, authoritative climate science.

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