with Peter Sinclair
The final version of the IPCC 6th Assessment Report WG1 is out! Now you can see a decent looking (and full page) version of my figure in Ch. 1 on performance of old climate models compared to observations in the years after they were published: https://t.co/leC7zDO2aj pic.twitter.com/OGG0Xfl1Te
— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) May 6, 2022
Above, Zeke Hausfather’s comparisons of historic climate models shows the rather amazing accuracy even going back to the 70s.
Below, because you can’t repeat this too often, my interviews with James Hansen, Michael Mann and others on the accuracy of Hansen’s climate models, delivered to the US Senate on my birthday in 1988.
"The sharpest climate denier debunker on YouTube."
- TreeHugger
"@PeterWSinclair is a national treasure." - Brad Johnson, Publisher Hill Heat
Climate Denial Crock of the Week
May 7, 2022 at 11:24 am
That’s a pretty wide range of graphs, that is plotted. if you look closer, over what is still a fairly small range. and it’s only one dependent variable – global temperature. I’m concerned that people will assume “climate models” predicting the future are going to be just as good, when we know they are ignoring the permafrost climate feedback, still. And that their prediction of Arctic sea ice was spectacularly wrong, and that this is a powerful feedback just kicking in during the past decade. The political interference in the IPCC publications still ensures “err on the side of least drama”, and therefore encourage more BAU as long as possible.
May 8, 2022 at 2:44 pm
For the deniers whining about the inaccuracy of climate models, I’ve found it useful to agree with them about the “inaccuracy” as an opportunity to point out that predictions from the models (e.g., Arctic ice melt) were too conservative.
May 7, 2022 at 6:03 pm
The CMIP6 models which were directed by the UN to be used in the IPCC AR6 did not include the permafrost thaw (!). Some CMIP6 models and some modelling exists which does, but not those chosen for use in the AR6. How interesting. Watch this excellent seminar by cryosphere scientist Gustaf Hugelius published just a few months ago. It’s alarming in how it shows the underestimation of the IPCC carbon budget claims. Nor was the PCF included in prior AR’s.
Peter, it’s one thing to show climate modelling in the past to help derail climate denialists empty claims. It’s quite another to look towards the future now that it’s clear we’re crossing tipping points we’d hoped would not happen for decades or centuries.
May 8, 2022 at 2:46 pm
Same old same old. I remember that early IPCC reports only calculated sea-level rise based on thermal expansion without any estimates of land-based ice melt. 😦
May 8, 2022 at 6:22 am
This week the PBS program Frontline, we saw the third part of a three on a series about corporate climate denial. There are interviews with politicians who acknowledge that they had been lied to by both fossil fuel lobbyists as well as fossil fuel executives. I was surprised to see one individual who had been running the Cato Institute (which was a creation by the Koch Brothers) say that he stepped down in 2014 when it was obvious that he had been lied to. But the big shock for me came in part 2 when one government scientist, who was one of the American delegates to the IPCC, was fired from his job (with a little added character assassination) after Exxon sent a letter to the Bush-Cheney administration asking for this man to be replaced. Now the letter was only visible on my 65-inch TV for one second but you can clearly read they wanted this guy replaced with either John Christy (U of Alabama) or Richard Lindzen (MIT)
May 9, 2022 at 12:14 am
neilreick…. my outrage glands are exhausted. Thanks. Yeah. Lindzen?!