Comments from Weblog of Roger Pielke Sr. and others as compiled by Climate Depot

The global warming promoting website RealClimate.org, is under fire yet again from a prominent scientist for presenting incorrect climate information. Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. publicly rebuked the website in a June 30, 2009 article for “erroneously communicating the reality of the how the climate system is actually behaving.” Pielke, the former Colorado State Climatologist and currently a senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, countered Real Climate with the latest data on sea level rise, ocean heat content and Arctic ice.

In his article titled “Real Climate’s Misinformation”, Pielke also chastised readers of Real Climate for blindly accepting the incorrect climate claims promoted on the site. “Media and policymakers who blindly accept these claims are either naive or are deliberately slanting the science to promote their particular advocacy position,” Pielke Sr. wrote.

The latest scientific woes by RealClimate.org were rebutted point by point by Pielke. Real Climate wrote: “Our regular readers will hardly be surprised by the key findings from physical climate science, most of which we have already discussed here. Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago - such as rising sea levels, the increase of heat stored in the ocean and the shrinking Arctic sea ice.”

Pielke responded: “First, what is ‘physical climate science’? How is this different from ‘climate science’. In the past, this terminology has been used when authors ignore the biological components of the climate system,” Pielke wrote. Pielke continued: “More importantly, however, the author of the weblog makes the statement that the following climate metrics ‘are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago’”:

1. Real Climate Claim: “rising sea levels” Pielke’s Response: “NOT TRUE; e.g. see the University of Colorado at Boulder Sea Level Change analysis. Sea level has actually flattened since 2006.”

2. Real Climate Claim: “the increase of heat stored in the ocean” Pielke’s “Response: NOT TRUE; see Update On A Comparison Of Upper Ocean Heat Content Changes With The GISS Model Predictions. There has been no statistically significant warming of the upper ocean since 2003.”

3. Real Climate Claim: “shrinking Arctic sea ice”: Pielke’s Response: “NOT TRUE; see the Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Anomaly from the University of Illinois Cyrosphere Today website. Since 2008, the anomalies have actually decreased.”

Pielke Concluded: “These climate metrics might again start following the predictions of the models. However, until and unless they do, the authors of the Copenhagen Congress Synthesis Report and the author of the Real Climate weblog are erroneously communicating the reality of the how the climate system is actually behaving. Media and policymakers who blindly accept these claims are either naive or are deliberately slanting the science to promote their particular advocacy position.”

Realclimate.org is a website which much of the mainstream media has relied on for climate science developments, has come under increasing criticism and scrutiny from scientists. Real Climate’s lead blogger and NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt was recently harshly criticized for some of his scientific claims earlier this year.  Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a prominent scientist from the Netherlands, wrote a scathing denunciation of Schmidt in which he said he was “appalled” by Schmidt’s “lack of knowledge”. If this were not such a serious matter, I would have been amused by Gavin’s lack of knowledge of the differences between weather models and climate models. As it stands, I am appalled. Back to graduate school, Gavin! Tennekes wrote on January 29, 2009. Tennekes, is an scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands’ Royal National Meteorological Institute, and an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes.

He added Gavin Schmidt is not the only meteorologist with an inadequate grasp of the role of the oceans in the climate system. In my weblog of June 24, 2008, I addressed the limited perception that at least one other climate modeler appears to have,” Tennekes wrote. From my perspective it is not a little bit alarming that the current generation of climate models cannot simulate such fundamental phenomena as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I will not trust any climate model until and unless it can accurately represent the PDO and other slow features of the world ocean circulation. Even then, I would remain skeptical about the potential predictive skill of such a model many tens of years into the future,” Tennekes added.

Atmospheric Physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh, also critiqued RealClimate.org on June 24, 2008. Peden wrote, “‘Real Climate’ is a staged and contracted production, which wasn’t created by ‘scientists,’ it was actually created by Environmental Media Services, a company which specializes in spreading environmental junk science on behalf of numerous clients who stand to financially benefit from scare tactics through environmental fear mongering.” Read much more history of this misinformation site detailed here.

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See also in this post about realclimate’s Stefan Rahmstorf’s opportunistic smoothing (15 years) of temperature observations for IPCC use (misuse) in UN meetings in Copenhagen in Climate Audit (it masks the recent 8 year cooling) with links to post by Lucia and David Stockwell here. Steve refers to this fiddling with the data without disclosing changes to methods used “what the “Community” calls “GARP” - Generally Accepted Realclimate Procedure.”