The Policy Lass

The latest story to start circulating is based on a new paper publised in the journal Science. I paid for a copy of it and have been reading it. I’m interested in following how the story gets translated by various media and blogs, so this post will be for that purpose.

First, the abstract of “Contributions of Stratospheric Water Vapor to Decadal Changes in the Rate of Global Warming“:

Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000-2009 by about 25% compared to that which would have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapor probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% compared to estimates neglecting this change. These findings show that stratospheric water vapor represents an important driver of decadal global surface climate change.

The first headline I read was from Climate Depot, which has a link to an article in the National Post:

SHOCK: UN IPCC Co-Chair Susan Soloman Backing Away? Water Vapor ‘research does allude to human emissions having a much smaller role in climate change that previously thought’.  Water vapor caused one-third of global warming in 1990s, study reveals. Continue reading →…

This post is your chance to convince me.  It is intended to let you post the most compelling evidence you have come across that supports your view of the global warming issue.

But please, provide me with links to compelling evidence — not something that is just opinion. In other words, no editorials unless the editorial presents compelling evidence, including links, etc.

Also, if you were in a class of mine (yes, I taught university for a few years) I’d expect you to present any contrary evidence and show why it failed to undermine the evidence you did support. So, if you are linking a paper that supports your position, please provide us with any responses in the literature if there have been any and why they didn’t convince you.

Please do a single comment for each piece of evidence. So, if it’s work on GCRs, one comment on that. Another if you find work on UHIs to be really convincing.

Have at it! I really am truly interested in the evidence so will consider all comments. I may reject them, but I will consider them and respond.

A mea culpa. I’ve heard repeated the statement that the IPCC is supposed to only use “peer-reviewed” literature in its reports so many times, I assumed it was true.

ETA: I’ll use this post to record the other mea culpas out there from media and bloggers who repeated the misinformation.

Here, thanks to Climateprogress, are the facts in relation to the claims on the denialosphere.

Here’s the quote on Science News:

The IPCC report was supposed to reflect only peer-reviewed science. Not the speculation of scientists, which the initial source of that 2035 figure (Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain) recently acknowledged it was. Nor should magazine articles or gray literature reports – like the World Wildlife Fund document that repeated the speculative 2035 figure – become the foundation for IPCC conclusions.Which is why IPCC specifically prohibits reliance on such documents. Continue reading →…

I’m not defending actual mistakes — I will do a separate post on the IPCC and floods issue later, once I’ve done a bit of sleuthing myself.  But there are lies and obfuscation circulating now that I would like to track, including about the Amazongate issue.

Porkies

Amazongate is gaining traction in the blogospew.  Now, there are 30,900 results for a google of “amazongate” so it has doubled since yesterday.  Many appear to be simple parroting of the Delingpole article and North article, with little if any further insight. Continue reading →…