Hi Jeff, I don't want to get into the whole climate change Denier issue directly but I will add my observations in advising governmental clients on the use of the various types of climate models (Global, Regional, various types of statistically down-scaled) for their landscape level planning efforts. I also have heard an earful from friends at various California state agencies regarding their opinions.
What the agencies want is clear direction on how to plan for climate change. Other than the obvious general tactics such as larger preserves are generally better and connectivity is generally better there is little that the models can do to provide the level of information that the agencies expect. For on the ground planning the resolution of the Global models is too coarse (60-100 km pixels) and they don't really do precipitation so you just have a temperature increase. The Global models also don't take into effect important features such as mountain ranges. The Regional models are also fairly coarse resolution (15 km pixels) but do incorporate surface features. One problem with regional models are that they are too coarse for looking at local effects which the agencies want but they do pick up regional patterns. Another problem of usage is that the output of the regional models is not intelligently utilized. Generally, the data are almost always reported as the average temp or precipitation per day over a 3 month calendar period which is not biologically relevant. Even if you were to do the intelligent thing and lump the data by local seasons you still have to know enough about how the climate actually works in the region to interpret the data. Sure, most models predict more variable climate but exactly what does that mean for a wolverine in the middle Rockies for example? PRISM data are now being commonly used to model climate data at 800 m resolution but projecting it out to 50 years not to mention 100 gives you false precision even if the data are accurate and there are a some known issues with the data. Finally, you have to have baseline data to compare the model data to and that data is also modeled. So how does this relate to the public's perception of climate change? The subject of climate change is a very complex thing with lots of almost unintelligible (to me at least, and my training is in plant physiology and ecophysiology) moving parts. There is a huge amount of data coming in from field research concerning the aparent responses of organisms and ecosystems, there are a huge number of inconsistent climate models that are being misused without any semblance of protest by the scientists that created them that I have been able to detect, and finally, there is a huge cottage industry of climate change adaptation in which regulated entities are connected with sources of funding by middlemen. If I get confused and overloaded by all of this what can reasonably be expected of a lay public? Ultimately this should not be framed as believers and deniers as science is not a belief system - yes there is a huge field of the philosophy of science which shows that this is not exactly the case but that is another huge and complex subject. Given my personal confusion and information overload, I resort to what I hope are accurate basics. We are doing things to the planet that are altering its heat balance rapidly and irreversibly for 500 years or so at the minimum. We appear to be observing a number of phenomena ranging from organisms to climate that support the altered climate hypothesis. The problem is that I have to "believe" in the competence and credibility of the scientists and their interpretation of the data and that is where I feel uneasy. Given what I perceive in my role as a non-academic and non-research scientist who tries to understand and use the data, there is a significant lack of open peer evaluation of the data and that gives me pause as does the the scientist who won't speak up when his data and conclusions are over-interpreted by users. By focusing on the "Deniers" you may be winning a battle but losing the war. Best, John Gerlach ________________________________ From: "Corbin, Jeffrey D." <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, July 1, 2012 5:01:00 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Confronting climate deniers on college campuses - EOS Forum Hello Ecolog - In March, one of the leading anti-minds of the Climate Deniers movement, Christopher Monckton, visited Union College. EOS, AGU's Newspaper, just published a Forum article describing our experience and that at our neighbor RPI. Subscription is required - http://www.agu.org/pubs/eos/ - but I've pasted the first two paragraphs below. Anyone interested can email me directly and I'll forward the pdf. -Jeff Corbin Union College "In spite of the fact that 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field accept the basic tenets of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) findings (Anderegg et al. 2010), there is a consistent undercurrent of climate skepticism among the general public (Leiserowitz et al., 2011). To some extent, this skepticism is fueled by high profile speakers who offer "the real view" of climate science. Our campuses recently hosted two such speakers: Dr. Ivan Giaever at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Christopher Monckton (also known as Lord Monckton) at Union College. (Mr. Monckton's presentation can be seen at http://union.campusreform.org/group/blog/live-webinar-lord-monckton-at-union-college.) While the intention of such speakers is often to muddy the waters with respect to climate science (McCright and Dunlap, 2010), the effect at our campuses was to galvanize our students and colleagues to highlight the widely accepted facts of climate change and the nature of expert scientific consensus on this topic. This communication was achieved using social media and follow-up events that raised the profile of climate change discussions. These events proved to be so successful that we offer our experiences so that others can capitalize on similar visits by climate skeptics by converting them into "teachable moments."" *************************** Jeffrey D. Corbin Department of Biological Sciences Union College Schenectady, NY 12308 (518) 388-6097 ***************************
