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2011-07-05 22:48:28 | Another IPCC error? this time in WG1 over climate sensitivity | |
grypo gryposaurus@gmail... 173.69.56.151 |
It looks like another statistical hand waving activity over the McIntyrists inability understand the priors in used in climate science. But since I'm not a math guy, perhaps we can get an explanation from someone else before this goes viral. Another IPCC ERROR!!!!!! CLimate sensitivity over estimated!!!!!
Here's the article by Nic Lewis, at Judith's, of O'Donnell / Steig fame
Here's the relevant section in the IPCC
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2011-07-06 02:10:05 | ||
dana1981 Dana Nuccitelli dana1981@yahoo... 64.129.227.4 |
The way I read it, the IPCC just used a different statistical approach than Forster and Gregory, and slightly changed their probability distribution as a result. But in the paper, Forster and Gregory found climate sensitivity within the IPCC range, though slightly lower than most studies. Looks to me like another mountain out of a molehill, but my statistics aren't that strong either. | |
2011-07-06 02:15:33 | ||
nealjking nealjking@gmail... 84.151.50.14 |
I can't imagine how anything too revolutionary can come out of someone reading a paper first published 5 years ago. | |
2011-07-06 02:35:01 | ||
grypo gryposaurus@gmail... 173.69.56.151 |
I can say that the set up for that post - IPCC error - or anything of the sort is total bullshit. Whether or not the use of priors is sufficient is a judgement call, well described in the report and appendices. Otherwise I have no idea what Lewis is basing his conclusions on. This was discussed in the review comments in the IPCC, which I pointed out on the Curry thread, and has now made to an update on McIntyre's thread. Perhaps Lewis' own "priors" on climate science policy decisions is a likely culprit. | |
2011-07-09 21:30:10 | ||
Riccardo riccardoreitano@tiscali... 93.147.82.158 |
In case someone missed it, Forster reply @ Curry's site. | |
2011-07-10 02:51:37 | ||
dana1981 Dana Nuccitelli dana1981@yahoo... 69.230.99.60 |
I just emailed Forster to see if he'd be intersted in doing a guest post on the subject. | |
2011-07-10 03:30:03 | ||
Albatross Julian Brimelow stomatalaperture@gmail... 199.126.232.206 |
Dr. James Annan has also weighed in on this, and he agrees that there was no error per se and nothing nefarious going on. lewis is also behind the times.... Scientists do not always agree (lots of egos, lots of nit picking), so the fact that they did not all agree is nothing unusual, especially when it is not clear or obvious which approach is best at the time. Also, science advances and they will very likely deal with the issue differently next time round as some progress has been made. This is yet another storm in a tea cup, fabricated and perpetuated by people who do not understand how science operates. They are really scraping the bottom of the barrel here....i mean at the nano-scale-- the fact that the results are still robust is not of interest to the "skeptics", all they are concerned with is undermining the credibility of the IPCC by faricating controversy, fabricating doubt and escalating uncertainty. Some comments by Dr. Annan (from his blog). "From my point of view, the problem is not particularly in the treatment of the Forster and Gregory result - the authors had already in that paper pointed to the choice of prior as an important factor in the specific results they generated. More, the error was in the IPCC's endorsement and rigid adherence to the use of uniform prior, despite the existence of very straightforward arguments that this approach is simply not tenable:
and "Steve, yes it looks to me that Lewis is basically rediscovering something that was well known, and widely accepted as appropriate, at least according to the majority view at the time. I'm not sure they would do the same thing now."
and
"I think that the scientists working in this area were dead wrong to promote a uniform prior so monomaniacally; I think the IPCC authors emphasised and reinforced this likewise; however given that context, the specific reinterpretation of FG's result was not IMO particularly contentious, especially as FG had themselves alluded to this in the paper (and G was a co-author on the Frame et al paper on which this uniform prior obsession was explicitly codified).
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2011-07-10 12:10:42 | ||
Rob Honeycutt robhon@mac... 125.86.211.18 |
It never ceases to amaze me the number of comments that Curry gets on any of her posts. It gets so bad over there that I rarely post there and when I do I post under a pseudonym (Buzz Fledderjohn... from a Tom Waits song of the same name). |