"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

More More Than All

The confusion about IPCC's attribution statement that I discussed at some length recently in an article called "More Than All" continues.

A fine example is here, in Sorry Bernie, Science Doesn't #FeeltheBern in the apparently misnamed RealClearScience blog:
Additionally, it should be noted that while human activity is largely responsible for climate change, the IPCC AR5, which is seen as the global consensus on climate change, is more measured in its conclusion. It writes (PDF, page 5): "More than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) from 1951 to 2010 is very likely due to the observed anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." (By "very likely," the IPCC means 90+% confident.) More than half is certainly a lot, but it also implies that a substantial proportion of climate change is due to other factors.
But see, no it doesn't. The best estimate of the anthropogenic component is over 100%.

3 comments:

Tom said...

You are probably familiar with skeptic commenter kim. If what you write above proves to be true, you are giving her ammunition for her main argument--that our blessed CO2 emissions are all that have kept us out of a repeat performance of the Little Ice Age, or maybe a Big one.

Michael Tobis said...

That's not skepticism or even "skepticism", it's a whole different form of confusion.

One should not care too much what people who are confused find supportive of their confusion. I've learned that anything you say, no matter how sensible and measured, can and will be used against you. There are enough flavors of confusion around that people will find a way to misconstrue "good morning".

Tom said...

Yes, I learned that lesson too. Here.