Back to School

Much of what’s wrong with the online discussion of global warming is revealed by a recent reader comment on RealClimate.

Greg Goodman thinks that he’s taking climate scientists to school — he actually “lectures” the RealClimate readership about their supposed need to “dig a bit deeper” into the data on Arctic sea ice (both extent and area). He shows a graph based on some analysis which — unbeknownst to him — actually reveals that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He thinks he has established the presence of “cyclic variations” of which the climate science community is ignorant, and concludes that climate scientists are missing “important clues” about “internal fluctuations” which, of course, those inadequate computer models just can’t handle.

One would be hard pressed to find a more clear-cut example of hubris.

Climate scientists who study sea ice have been all over the data, every piece of it, but instead of making the mistakes Goodman makes they’ve been as careful and rigorous as their expertise and experience allow. They have certainly dug a whole helluva lot deeper than Greg Goodman has, or probably is capable of. It’s Goodman who needs to go back to school.

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