I like to stay mildly attuned to the ongoing climate change debate (if we can still call it that). I don't plan, however, on going to see Gore's movie.
It looks like the House Committee on Energy and Commerce will release this week the report by statisticians on the Michael Mann et. al. "hockey stick" study. This is the statistical work that shows our current time to be the warmest period in over 1,000 years -- even though the Medieval Warm Period was previously thought to be a warmer period.
From the early releases, the report looks pretty devastating, even going so far as to question the quality of the peer review process for the papers. Interesting stuff. No doubt it is going to get cast as a Republican slam against good science.
I did look at the resume of the lead statistician, and he looks pretty good.
The full report should be interesting reading.
I still find the work of Richard Lindzen to be especially illuminating on climate change. He accepts some basic findings and predictions, but always brings the argument back to a key point: without positive feedbacks built in, climate models predict relatively minor warming.
No comments:
Post a Comment