I’m curious to hear what you find good or not so good about a particular survey and why. If you have contributed to the discussion on the previous thread, perhaps you want to condense your main arguments in one comment so that we can start a more structured discussion. If succesful, I’ll follow up with a post including the various contributions. Call it crowdsourced blogging if you wish.

A noteworthy survey that has not been discussed much is the one by Brown, Pielke Sr and Annan that I wrote about before:

A recent survey of scientists having authored a recent journal article on climate change found that the majority concurred with the IPCC position. A sizeable minority was of the opinion that the IPCC reports overstate the importance of and/or certainty regarding CO2 compared to other forcings (both natural and anthropogenic!). Only very few respondents were of the “skeptical” opinion that warming is predominantly natural. Nobody denied that the globe is warming. A large minority found the IPCC too cautious, understating the human influence on climate and/or the seriousness of the problem. Note that the authors do not claim that their survey is representative; less then 10% of the 1800 scientists contacted replied. Moreover, the positions that respondents had to choose between were sometimes a little ambiguous.

Others that have been discussed a lot include those by Bray and von Storch and the recent one by Doran and Kendal-Zimmerman.

Another year of blogging gone by. According to wordpress this blog was viewed 140,000 times in 2011, which is a bit less than in 2010.  I’ve averaged a bit less than one post a week (I read much more than I write, and I’m probably too perfectionist in my writing to be a prolific blogger).

A rather peculiar stat is about the search terms that people used to find my blog: Number one by far is Harry Potter (I wrote a sarcastic post once about the Harry Potter Theory of Climate, making the point that climate doesn’t change very much without being forced to (conservation of energy and all that). Other popular search terms such as dinosaurus and Sinterklaas don’t have much to do with climate either. Guess I should ramp up on my SEO, or alternatively capitulate to the thought that most people search the internet for entertainment rather than for information.

“NIPCC” remains the most popular climate related search term (unless you count “bart climate” as well), which is good, because it means that people searching for it will find my rebuttal to the rather misleading 2009 report (which has not been discussed much by other mainstreamers afaik).

These are the posts that got the most views in 2011 (though most of my posts are viewable from the root, so these posts were not necessarily the most read) :

• 1 Revkin on Steig, O’Donnell, peer review and solid scientific basics 541 comments February 2011
• 2 Harry Potter theory of Boating 36 comments April 2011
• 3 How science does and does not work (and how skeptics mostly fall in the latter category) 451 comments June 2011
• 4 Biodiversity, extinction and climate change 437 comments February 2011
• 5 Spencer and Braswell fundamentally flawed, journal editor resigns 226 comments September 2011

What else happened in 2011 with this blog? I received the Woody Guthrie award for a thinking blogger and I split my blog in two: This one for English posts and discussions, and Klimaatverandering for the Dutch speakers.

Looking back, I wrote relatively fewer original articles and did more copy and pasting from others. That sounds rather negative, but in some cases I’m actually rather pleased with the result, e.g. when I retell a discussion between some heavyweights in the climate scene that took place deep in comment threads elsewhere. To myself at least this serves the purpose of putting such a discussion in a context and preserving it in a more readable (i.e. without the off-topic ranting from the fanclubs) and more searchable format. I hope that for others it’s informative as well. Examples include the back and forth between Gavin Schmidt and Roger Pielke Sr about ocean heat content, between Richard Tol and Judith Curry about publicizing nonsense, and between Jeff Id and Chris Colose about the merits of bringing up Venus as a greenhouse example.

The last two examples have the added benefit of highlighting an interesting discussion that took place on blogs that most readers of my blog would not otherwise have read. In that same vein I reproduced a very interesting post and discussion from Bishop Hill about areas we agree on, from climate scientist Eric Wolff.

Sometimes I draft a post based on a discussion that ensued at my own blog (e.g. on walking the talk and on biodiversity and climate change), usually spontaneously and in an off-topic fashion. Since it’s dreadful to find an off-topic discussion back after a while, and since most discussions derail, I find it useful to condense the interesting parts in a separate post. In fact, I wish I had time to do that more often, because there are still many interesting discussions buried in off-topic comment threads (e.g. on Arrhenius or on consensus). Another possibility would of course be if people stayed on topic and requested a thread on a topic of their liking. Perhaps an idea for a newyears’ resolution…

Some other posts I like:

“Different approaches to the climate problem“, with some archetypical ways to view climate change and proposed solutions, that in many cases reveal a lot about underlying motives and agenda’s.

A policy relevant post is about conditions needed to get political action: strong evidence, realistic solutions, political pull, and sense of urgency. This post and the previous example are both influenced by a colleague of mine with decades of environmental policy experience.

Science communication: Who is responsible for its failing? (also an attempt the synthesize discussions on this ongoing theme from various blogs)

Using aerosol forcing as a wildcard to claim low sensitivity: Some (NIPCC) claim high aerosol forcing and thus low sensitivity, others (Lindzen, Crok) claim low aerosol forcing and thus low sensitivity. They can’t both be right and probably neither are.  Both arguments use the existing uncertainty to argue for an implausible end of the probability spectrum. This post got reproduced at SkS.

And these twin posts on sea level rise:

Sea level versus temperature

Past, current and future sea level rise

Both with some adapted graphs, context and many links.

Click here to see the wordpress end of year report.

For 2012 I expect lighter blogging, both for personal and for professional reasons.

The difference is mainly in the timescale: CO2 lasts a lot longer in the atmosphere than most of the other warming agents (e.g. black carbon, ozone, methane). This means that the temperature will decrease faster when the emission of shortlived compounds is decreased, as compared to that of a longlived compound such as CO2.

The other side of the coin is that for long term warming, the cumulative emissions of CO2 are dominant, even if in the short term changes in its emission are relatively ineffectual. Other important aspects in this discussion are health effects from air pollution (e.g. soot and ozone) and political practicability (gridlock in global climate negotiations).

So the question is: Are you more concerned about the short term or the long term effects of climate change? Which is a similar question that is often implicitly present in climate debates: Weighing the right of this generation to economic wellbeing (through cheap fossil energy) with the right of future generations to a pleasant planet to live on (through us not using too much cheap fossil energy). Strangely enough, that central and deeply ethical question is usually embodied in the discount rate (as used in economics when comparing investments with the expected rate of return).

My conclusion:

It’s clear that for long term climate stabilization, cumulative CO2 reductions are paramount, and that for the short term, reducing other forcings can offer faster results and offer other benefits as well. So the answer to the question “what should we focus on” is “all of the above”. I would applaud more attention to the non-CO2 forcings in the International policy arena. However, let’s not forget that there’s a hefty price and/or climate tag to pay in the end for delaying CO2 emission reductions.

You can read the whole thing over at P3.

Try to be somewhat courteous to people you disagree with. No namecalling.

Its wrong, but with @JudithCurry lending her authority it becomes disinformation

Judith defended herself in a post where she tries to shift the blame to the mainstream scientists:

 Here is a quiz for you.  How many of these disinformation tactics [a list containing a mix of logical fallacies and avoidance tactics] are used by:

• JC (moi)
• Public spokespersons for the IPCC
• Joe Romm
• Marc Morano

If that’s not a dog-whistle I don’t know what is. 

Keith has a nice rundown of the discussion, and the ensuing thread over there contains many good comments. He’s got a knack for hosting interesting discussions.

Richard has since laid out his argument as to what’s wrong with the papers in a guest post over at CE.  Basically they’re methodologically flawed:

Using “detrended” fluctuation analysis to study “trends” was a dead giveaway that something is not quite right with these papers.

Tol goes on to write: 

7. There is a substantial body of climate research that is credible — even if it reaches opposite conclusions — but there are also papers (left, right, and center) that are just flawed.
8. If flawed papers reach a certain prominence, they should be debunked. Prominent but flawed research does damage as it misinforms people about climate change. Publicly criticizing such research hardens the existing polarization.
9. If flawed papers linger in obscurity, they should be ignored. The papers are wrong but do no damage. Lifting a flawed paper out of obscurity only to debunk it, is no good to anybody.

Curry takes especially issue with the last statement:

Yours isn’t a statement about science, but about playing politics with science, and reinforces the gatekeeping mentality in climate science that was embarassingly revealed by the CRU emails. (…)

Of course scientists don’t want the public to be misinformed about the science! So If I’m concerned about public understanding of science, I’m automatically “playing politics with science”? Then I sure hope every scientist is.

Judith rightly says that “Of course there are flawed papers that get published.” But why shining the spotlight on them? What’s gained by doing so?

It’s true that these discussions don’t occur about science without policy relevance. Research on the mating behavior of fruit flies won’t result in argument whether a flawed paper should be promoted in the public sphere or not.

The differences are that 1) such research is not present in the public sphere, because the public isn’t interested, and 2) even though flawed papers exist in any field, the more its conclusions clash with ideologies, the more attempts will be made to reach opposite conclusions and thus the more deeply flawed/biased papers will be published. It’s not a coincidence that there’s no fruitflies-version of EIKE or Heartland. 

Curry:

Most people don’t come to climate etc. to reinforce their prejudices (there are far too many echo chambers where this is much more satisfyingly accomplished). They come here to learn something by considering the various arguments.

The general tone of comments at CE makes me strongly doubt this last statement.

Tol:

@Anteros
I would agree with you [no harm done by highlighting flawed studies] if climate blogs were exclusively read by well-intentioned, well-informed, and intelligent people.

Richard further shows his mastery in the tweet-universe with one-liners such as

I argue for self-censorship. It is what separates adults from children.

Over at CaS, Roger Pielke Jr makes the point that wrong or bad articles can be a useful teaching tool. And indeed they can. But as Stoat rightly says,

within a managed class structure with someone guiding the discussion, it is fine to discuss flawed texts, for the reason given: it encourages critical thinking. That wasn’t what Curry was doing.

Tol:

Curry took two papers that almost nobody had read, and put them in the limelight.
The papers say 2+2=5.
There are a lot of people who would like to believe that. It is not true.
So now there is yet another dogfight about whether the answer is 3, 4, or 5. We can do without that.
There are plenty of real issues to argue over.

Jonathan Gilligan, consistently thoughtful, writes:

Pielke has said that he views blogs as more like the kind of discussions people conduct over beers at the neighborhood bar, and from that perspective Richard’s criticism makes no more sense than telling the crowd at the pub to leave sports commentary to the experts. 

Tol makes some valid points here, but Pielke is more persuasive. People will read these blogs or not as they choose, and when a blog repeatedly calls attention to crap, its credibility and its audience will adjust to reflect this. Climate Etc. is not The Wall Street Journal, so the greater danger in Curry’s gushing over crap is to Curry’s reputation, not to the public understanding of science.

I have also compared blogs to bar-discussions (quoting Bob Grumbine), but that comparison is about the presence (or lack) of quality control. As Tol rightly says, 

With academics blogging and tweeting, and journalists, and prime ministers, and institutes, departments, agencies and companies, I don’t think there is a one-rule-fits-all.

At CE, thousands of people are listening. Judith’s opinion and her writings make their way to the general public and politicians via mainstream media and Senate hearings as well. By the scale of those who are engaged in the conversation, that is orders of magnitude different from a discussion in a bar. That also means that the risk is twofold: Both to Curry’s reputation (her problem) and to the public understanding of science (everyone’s problem, even though Curry tries to belittle that).

Whereas Tol argued based on methodological flaws, Fred Moolten explains why the papers’ conclusions are unsupportable on physical grounds and I made a similar argument:

Conservation of energy precludes the climate to wonder off too far in any direction without being “forced” to by changing boundary conditions. Unless of course the energy is merely being redistributed within the system. Which it isn’t, since all other compartments of the climate system are gaining energy.

The paper’s conclusion that the observed warming is “predominantly a natural 100-year fluctuation” is at odds with conservation of energy.

All very reminiscent of the random walk saga and the Harry Potter theory of climate.

On his blog, RPSr writes:

If heat is being sequested in the deeper ocean, it must transfer through the upper ocean. In the real world, this has not been seen that I am aware of. In the models, this heat clearly must be transferred (upwards and downwards) through this layer. The Argo network is spatially dense enough that this should have been seen.

Gavin responds to this statement at RC:

Obviously heat going below 700 m must have passed through the upper ocean. However, the notion that Argo could see this is odd. Argo measures temperature, not flux. The net flux into a layer is calculated by looking at the change in temperature. It cannot tell you how much came in at the top and left at the bottom, only how much remained.

Both arguments make intuitive sense. Whether indeed temperature measurements should have seen a transfer of heat depends on the precision and on the (spatial and temporal) density of the Argo network. Besides that, it also depends on the mode of heat transfer (episodic or continuous). Or perhaps better put: the extent to which the influx and outflux of heat balance each other.

Gavin does not agree with Roger’s last statement (that it should have been see), but argues instead that the signal would not likely be observable amidst the variability (response to 140): 

I have no confidence that the observations will be sufficient to distinguish the anomalous heat flux from the climatological mean with sufficient precision to be helpful.

Roger concedes that the observation network’s precision is an important precondition for heat transfer to have been observed, when he writes in response to my little summary over there: (Roger)

(…) we should still see a slight elevation in the temperature anomalies IF the Argo data precision is good enough. I do not know the precision of the temperature data measurements, and hope someone else can answer that.

And in 193 Roger writes:

First, I stated that the Argo data density was fine enough to see the movement of the heat downward, but am now unclear on this, and look forward to an Argo specialist to give us an overview of capability in this regards.

There is however a second if-statement to make, about the mode of transfer. In response to 2, Gavin wrote:

Most heat transport into the deep ocean will occur in the down-welling branches of the overturning circulation, centered in theNorth Atlanticand the Southern Oceans. Diffusive fluxes in the rest of the ocean will be much smaller.

Roger (140) says more or less the same, but arrives at a conclusion that is not shared by Gavin:

if this transfer occurs in globs associated with mesoscale and larger ocean circulation features (as suggested in the ECMWF data), we should clearly see this movement of heat.

About the mode of heat transfer Gavin writes in response to 155:

Heat transfer will be mainly continuous, not episodic.

I.e. the heat transfer is strongest in specific locations (agreed on by both), but continuous in time (which prompted a question from Roger “how do you know?”).

In a continuous case, for a while the same amount of heat may enter the top 700 m from above, as leaves it from below. As a result, no warming signal in this layer will be observed, whereas heat is being transferred through it. In an episodic case, it would in principle be observable (though still dependent on the precision and signal to noise ratio of the measurements).

In contrast to what I wrote in my little summary at RC (175), the disagreement is not so much on whether the heat transfer is concentrated in space (both seem to agree that it is), but rather on whether the heat transfer is continuous or episodic in time (Gavin thinks it’s the former; Roger doesn’t say) and on whether the data precision is sufficient (Gavin thinks it isn’t; Roger doesn’t say).

Figure 9b from Hansen et al., ACPD 2011, “Earth’s Energy Balance and Implications”. Note that this Fig gives the heat uptake, which is the slope of a figure of heat content (in Joules): A positive heat uptake means that the heat content is increasing.

Figure caption: Six year trends of ocean heat uptake estimated by Levitus et al. (2009) and Lyman et al. (2010) for upper 700 m of the ocean, and estimates based on Argo float data for the upper 2000 m for 2003–2008 and 2005–2010.

I’ll probably update this post as the discussion progresses. Over at SkS, there have also been informative discussions between Roger and the regulars over there.

New peer reviewed paper: clouds have large negative-feedback cooling effect on Earth’s radiation budget

Note that Anthony has since changed the title to leave out the word “feedback”, which was the source of his confusion. It starts out as follows:

Oh dear, now we have three peer reviewed papers (Lindzen and Choi, Spencer and Braswell, and now Richard P. Allan) based on observations that show a net negative feedback for clouds, and a strong one at that. (…) The key paragraph from the new paper:

…the cloud radiative cooling effect through reflection of short wave radiation is found to dominate over the long wave heating effect, resulting in a net cooling of the climate system of −21 Wm−2.

The attentive reader will immediately spot the problem here. Watts is confusing two issues:

- the net radiative effect of clouds on climate (i.e. in comparison with having no clouds at all)

- the net feedback of clouds in response to a change in climate

The paper addresses the first, whereas Anthony interpreted it as if it addresses the second.

These are two distinctly different issues. The latter (clouds as feedback) is about how cloud cover and properties might change in response to a warming or cooling of the climate: Will the net cloud radiative effect (i.e. the former) become more or less negative.

The net radiative effect of clouds on Earth’ climate has long been known to be negative (i.e. cooling). See e.g this quote from the paper:

The overall global net cloud radiative effect is one of cooling as documented previously (Ramanathan et al., 1989).

That can be verified in any textbook on the subject and most introductions of papers on this topic. Or in my introductory post on aerosols, clouds and climate.

I pointed this error out in the thread, as did more than a few others after me (including Roy Spencer). Only after the author of the paper, Richard Allan, came in to say that this post mis-interpreted the paper, did Anthony change the title and added an update. The mistaken interpretations are still in the body of the text though.

Richard Allan wrote to me in email (reproduced with permission):

I was surprised that this paper was linked to cloud feedback since, as you mention, it attempts to quantify the well known influence of cloud on Earth’s radiation budget (at the top of the atmosphere, at the surface and within the atmosphere and also during day and night) and does not attempt to diagnose cloud feedback.

Watts goes on to say (bold in original):

The cooling effect is found to be -21 Watts per meter squared, more than 17 times the posited warming effect from a doubling of CO2 concentrations which is calculated to be ~ 1.2 Watts per meter squared.

He’s comparing apples and oranges. The 21 W/m2 is the top of the atmosphere (TOA) cloud forcing in reference to having no clouds at all (see table 1 in the paper); the 1.2 W/m2 is the surface forcing due to a doubling in CO2 concentrations. The TOA forcing of a doubling in CO2 is closer to 4 W/m2. But that’s not the “zero” point. The total greenhouse effect (due to water vapor, clouds, CO2 and other GHG) is about 150 W/m2.                                                                                                                   

In other words, this paper falls squarely within the mainstream; it further quantifies a (previously known) net cooling effect of clouds on the Earth’ climate; it does not quantify how clouds may change in response to warmer climate (cloud feedback), though it does provide a carrot stick in saying that these types of analyses are important “in assessing cloud climate feedbacks which contribute substantially to uncertainty in climate prediction.”. That may very well be, but it hasn’t been done in this paper (as confirmed by its author). 

Judging by the comments, many at WUWT took this, in combination with the whopping -21 W/m2, to mean that they discovered a gigantic negative feedback. Nope.

Tallbloke (from Lisbon fame) still insists that

if [cloud forcing] becomes slightly less negative, it’s still very negative, and overwhelms the effect of changes in co2.

… being very confused. Comments vary over a very wide range though. Many are confused (e.g. stating that as specific humidity goes up in a warmer world, so should cloud cover, whereas cloud formation depends on relative humidity rather than on specific humidity), there’s lots of laughing-at-the-scientists going on, but there are also sensible comments that either offer insight or good questions.

Mosher makes the following observation:

it is also fascinating because of what we dont see. usually you will see a whole crew of commeters pounce on the word “model”. This time they didnt.

They didnt because they thought the paper supported spencer. But it was on an entirely different topic. That misunderstanding kinda silenced the usual “models are bad” crew.

[peer review is] supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims. (…) the paper by Spencer and Braswell that was recently published in Remote Sensing is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published.

Peter Gleick has a good rundown of the story.

Wagner points out that minority views are and should be welcomed in the scientific literature. But he adds that that does not mean that long refuted arguments should be able to keep being published:

The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature, a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers. In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal.

What Stoat reads this to mean is that

Yes, novel and interesting challenges to the established view should be published – perhaps even get given a slightly easier ride, if they are novel. But No: just saying the same old thing again isn’t any good.

Quite predictably, Roy “Conspiracy” Spencer is complaining about the IPCC gatekeepers trying to silence dissenting geniuses like him.

Update: Dan Satterfield observes that

They ["skeptical" papers such as Spencer's] are not published to further the science, but as a piece of meat to those who find the science very incompatible with their world view.

Dutch translation of this post on my NL klimaatblog.

Update 2: Robert Grumbine reminds us of how Spencer sees his own role:

“I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.”

In the comments, Bob Brand makes several astute observations on the course of events and on Wagner’s apology to Trenberth (and the role of cultural differences therein). Re the apology, I see Wagner’s resignation as an apology to the scientific community and don’t find personal apologies to Trenberth necessary, though BB provides some rationale for this.

William Connolley provides some insights:

people are using short-cuts to try to evaluate who is correct. This is inevitable; if we restricted discussion to those who understood the issues, there would be far less debate.

(…) the obvious explanation for Wagner’s explanation, the one he actually gave: personal morality. He doesn’t want to be associated with this paper, and has used the only means available to free himself.

I would sum up Wagner’s reasons for resigning as follows:

• the lack of considering (previously published) contradictory evidence.
• the (in Wagner’s words) problematic issues w.r.t. “fundamental methodological errors or false claims.”
• Spencer’s exaggerations and over-interpretations of his results (which made Wagner feel that he had been taken for a ride).

Energy poverty in the developing world is a problem, along with food shortages and loss of arable land due to soil erosion and other factors, lack of clean water supplies, the prevalance of diseases such as malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS, the debt burden etc. And, of course, climate change, which both raises entirely new threats and exacerbates some of the problems mentioned above.

(…)

It is naïve to suggest that they can just go full steam ahead now and worry about the problem later once they have better developed economies. It always bears repeating that humanity doesn’t get to dictate the timescales for taking action to avert dangerous climate change – the planet does.

But of course, what they are going to do is only part of the problem; if we really care about the fate of people in developing countries we also have to ask what we are going to do about it. Unless we take action to reduce our own emissions we can hardly expect them to follow suit and in any case any action they do take will be futile, and if they are going to develop along low emission lines they are going to need our assistance in both practical and material terms. And of course it is our past (and present) actions which have brought humanity to the position it is now in so even if not everyone accepts the moral/ethical responsibility of those who are well off to assist those who are less fortunate, there is still the responsibility to deal with the consequences of our own actions. I see a lot of skeptics expressing concern for the effects that climate mitigation policies will have on developing countries but they reject the notion that the developed world should do anything to help bear the costs itself.

In a comment over at CaS he said it in a bit more sarcastic way:

Hmm, I can never remember whether AGW is a huge plot to enrich developing countries by redistributing the wealth of us in the West, or a huge plot to impoverish developing countries by denying them access to affordable electricity.

The ethical issues that are behind this were summed up by Steve Easterbrook:

To many people, living comfortable middle class lives inNorth America, climate change is some vague distant threat that will mainly affect the poor in other parts of the world. So it’s easy to dismiss, no matter how agitated the scientists get. If you follow this line of thinking, it quickly becomes clear why responses to climate change divide cleanly along political lines:

• If you care a lot about fairness and equity, climate change is an urgent, massive problem, because millions (maybe even billions) of poor people will suffer, die, or become refugees as the climate changes.
• On the other hand, if you’re comfortable with a world in which there are massive inequalities, where some people live rich lavish lifestyles while others starve to death, then climate change is a minor distraction. After all, famines in undeveloped countries are really nothing new, and we in the west are rich enough to adapt (Or are we?).

The dominant political ideology in the west (certainly in the English-speaking countries) is that such inequality is not just acceptable, but necessary. So it’s hardly surprising that right wing politicians dismiss climate change as irrelevant. No amount of science education will change the mind of people who believe, fundamentally, that they have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than themselves. As long as they believe that they are wealthy enough that climate change won’t affect them, that is.

Update:

Apart from the separation in space between those who caused (the bulk of) the problem  and those who suffer (the bulk) from it, there is also a separation in time: Future generations will suffer the most from this problem of our making. On both counts one could say that the problem is that it’s not our problem. 

I don’t think that there is something intrinsic to right wing politics to discount problems that your own actions cause to others (I sure hope there isn’t). There are plenty of examples of politically right oriented people making a big stand for e.g. environmental issues (e.g. Winsemius and Nijpels in the Netherlands; Schwarzenegger in the US). It is however disconcerting that the current manifestation of this important political stream does show signs of such discounting/ignoring especially as it relates to human induced climate change.

It’s been a while since I received the Woody Guthrie award from the hands of Nick Stokes. Time to pass it on…

The ‘Woody Guthrie award for a thinking blogger’ goes to John Nielsen-Gammon. A professional climatologist, he also writes a very readable and insightful blog entitled Climate Abyss.

He writes about different topics, often on scientific issues (e.g. extreme weather) and occasionally also on the science-policy interface or science as a process. He is scrupulous about distinguishing these different aspects though: The physics is what it is, irrespective of his or other people’s political viewpoints (about which he hardly ever writes, if at all). 

I admire his writing for its scientific honesty, the clarity of expositions and the insights that they provide. From his forays over to CE and CA he has also shown himself to be a skilled e-debater: He understands climate change and knows how to discuss both the big picture and quite a string of detailed issues. One other thing I’d like to mention is that he seems to be a good bridge builder: Probably because he studiously refrains from appearing political, doesn’t eschew working together with contrarians (e.g. he co-authored a paper withWatts), and is respectful in his communications, he seems to be respected by (at least the less fanatical of the) contrarians. He does so without giving up on his scientific integrity however (he will still call a spade a spade), so it doesn’t (afaik) go at the cost of being respected by fellow scientists and mainstream science-minded bloggers. Kudos to John!

Read this interview to get a feel for his scientific persona. He also has a wikipedia page. See Willard for a collection of memorable ‘John N-G’ quotes.

Some highlights from his blog:

A recent post outlined his response to a newspaper editorial, dealing with attribution of extreme weather:

In my own state,Texas, we just experienced our warmest month ever, by a margin of 0.4 C.  It is not useful to ask whether that record is proof of global warming.  There are multiple causes working together to produce every extreme weather event.  But there’s no denying that the first decade of the 21st century was warmer than any decade of the 20th century, or that this warmth was part of a multi-decade trend that shows zero evidence of reversing itself.  Once we accept that fact, it’s fair to say that the Texas record is a few tenths of a degree warmer than it would have been in the absence of a global trend, and that it may not have been a record-breaker at all if the temperatures everywhere hadn’t been so warm to start with.  This is not proof of global warming, as unnamed headline-writers may have claimed; it’s a consequence of it.

In the aftermath of the Steig – O’Donnell kerfuffle, I cited some of John’s posts:

John Nielsen-Gammon has some useful things to say about peer review here (on revealing the identity of reviewer), here (retelling the story and why it makes sense to have had Steig as a reviewer; quoting Steig; interesting discussion), and here (explaining the dynamics of peer review and making the interesting suggestion of mentoring  relative outsiders navigate peer review).

He did some real investigative reporting into the IPCC Himalayan glacier error.

In this sarcastic post he replies to some dude who brings up a string of old ‘n tired memes, centred on a supposed “lack of correlation”. John answers with wit and style:

Ironically, while polyester triggered global warming, it may also provide a way forward. If every man, woman, and child in the United States would buy one pair of polyester pants every five minutes and promptly bury them in their backyard, we would sequester more carbon than we presently emit into the atmosphere. In the immortal words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “You have nothing to fear but your pants!”

About the award: Nick helpfully laid out the history of the Woody Guthrie award when he got it a while ago: ArchieArchive brought it into the world and it’s had an interesting life since then, at some point being passed on to scientifically minded climate bloggers such as Greenfyre, Dan Satterfield, SkepticalScience, Science of Doom, Nick Stokes @Moyhu, myself, and now John N-G.