Climate scientist speaks truth

[biffvernon]

Sir Brian Hoskins, Director of Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College, speaking in Lincoln today said that the Global Climate Models are conservative, do not take thresholds into account, are likely to be wrong in a way that underestimates climate change and that we will be 'very lucky' if things turn out as well as the models forecast.

[nexus]

Sad, but unsurprising.

It hasn't helped that the general level of knowledge and understanding about science and the scientific method in this country is very low and scientists are naturally cautious in what they say.

Did he hazard an educated guess as to likely scenarios and if so was there any specific predictions for the UK?

[biffvernon]

Did he hazard an educated guess as to likely scenarios and if so was there any specific predictions for the UK?

No. He had a lot of graphs based on the Global Climate Models that showed just how unpredictable things were generally and particularly so for the British Isles, before saying that we couldn't rely on the models and we would be lucky if things turned out that well.

Jonathan Grant, lead author of the PriceWaterhouseCooper report Too late for 2 degrees, shared the platform, explaining why it was too late for 2 degrees.

[emordnilap]

Hopes for 'safe' temperature increase within 2C fade as Hawaii station documents second-greatest emissions increase

...more here...

[raspberry-blower]

Sad, but unsurprising.

It hasn't helped that the general level of knowledge and understanding about science and the scientific method in this country is very low and scientists are naturally cautious in what they say.

Did he hazard an educated guess as to likely scenarios and if so was there any specific predictions for the UK?

See the Chomsky article that I posted: http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/vie ... 045#233045

Omitted from the contrived debate is a much larger group of skeptics: highly regarded climate scientists who see the IPCC’s regular reports as much too conservative. And these scientists have repeatedly been proven correct, unfortunately.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

As a director of the Institute for Climate Change I should imagine all his work only ever comes to one conclusion.

Would that he were the director of the Institute for Climate Study.....

[biffvernon]

[nexus]

Sad, but unsurprising.

It hasn't helped that the general level of knowledge and understanding about science and the scientific method in this country is very low and scientists are naturally cautious in what they say.

Did he hazard an educated guess as to likely scenarios and if so was there any specific predictions for the UK?

See the Chomsky article that I posted: http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/vie ... 045#233045

Omitted from the contrived debate is a much larger group of skeptics: highly regarded climate scientists who see the IPCC’s regular reports as much too conservative. And these scientists have repeatedly been proven correct, unfortunately.

Thanks for that, raspberry I had missed that post and intersting link.

[kenneal - lagger]

As a director of the Institute for Climate Change I should imagine all his work only ever comes to one conclusion.

Would that he were the director of the Institute for Climate Study.....

.....there would be absolutely no difference in his conclusions. Unless of cause unless the government of the time altered his reports as the, I think, Bush administration did to some of Hanson's early reports.

Wake up JSD! Lawson and co are only economists and they have no inkling of the scientific process. What they think they know about economics bears no relation to reality as they take no account of the weight that fossil fuel has on production. According to classical economic thinking economic output is the product of capital and labour, an equation that was derived in the times of horse power. Modern economic output is the product of the amount of cheap fossil fuel thrown at it which is why most manufacturing has been sent to the far east from whence it can be transported back here. The marginal cost saving in wages is now being overridden by the higher costs of energy and transport so production will be moving home (if we can get the materials).

Economic models are not validated in the way that scientific models are. The climate models, for instance, are fed old data and run up to the present, backcast, to see if they produce the known correct result before they are used to forecast the future. Only if they backcast correctly are they then used. This does not happen with financial models.

Economists don't submit their papers and theories for peer review before publishing as scientists do so there is no checking before discussion. I would recommend that you read Energy and the Wealth of Nations by Charles AS Hall and Kent A Klitgaard which looks into how economists treat the use of energy. It does a very effective demolition job on current economic thinking, as I've described above, which is based on theories first developed when landowners controlled the economy as they controlled the source of all power, the land from whence came all energy in the form of solar energy in human and horse food.

When you realise that the anti warmists base all their thinking on a load of clap trap you might give a bit more weight to the overwhelming scientific view on climate change.

The above review of the book quoted above says

With some aggressive editing, this book could have been more compelling than it is – which is a pity, because it is potentially one of the most important economic treatises of recent times.

Tony Brooke-Taylor [eh reviewer] is the general insurance risk director at Aviva and a member of the Actuarial Profession’s resource and environment member interest group

I have found the whole thing compelling so far (about 60% of the way through) because I had not studied economics before. I had avoided a subject whose proponents believed in unlimited growth in a limited environment.

[RenewableCandy]

The hazards guru has a new book out. Potential of shifting glaciers/water to trigger earthquakes and volcanos. As if fecking snow in March isn't enough already.

[biffvernon]

Sir Brian Hoskins' lecture, which I reported on earlier in this thread, is now available at http://vimeo.com/62253564 Well worth a gander.

and something he started at IC, the Earth League, is here: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandevent ... 13-11-1-13