von Storch in the blogosphere : Stoat

ScienceBlogs Book Club: Inside the Outbreaks

Profile

My family and me. More...

Make sure you're familiar with the Comment Policy

Confused by my constant use of abbreviations? Then you need the Glossary

Search

Other Information

Co-moderator of globalchange mailing list

Subscribe to globalchange

Email:

Browse at groups.google.com

I've been using Google Reader recently, following the lamented death of Planet Fleck, and I suppose I have to admit its better. Here are some "shared items" if, for some reason, you want to read what I read.

« Hurricanes update | Main | Whats your Mann number? »

von Storch in the blogosphere

Category: climate opinion
Posted on: February 27, 2006 9:43 PM, by William M. Connolley

RP has his take on the hurricane statement I mentioned last post up. I agree with most of it but not the bit about attribution; see here and don't forget the comments.

But what I wanted to note was that Hans von Storch has added some comments to RP's post, which is interesting. I'm not in the habit of stalking him, but I haven't seen him in the blogosphere before (this doesn't count; his page on the CR controversy is worth a read). I think I caught that John Houghton at it too a while ago.

TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/1568

Comments

But of course RP's background point is the most interesting: who the hell cares if you can end up attributing an anthro signal in hurricanes? In terms of their destruction, the demographic trends will far outweigh the AGW trends no matter how you look at the data and future predictions. So why do we continue to quibble at the edges of the hurricanes-AGW attribution link, except in the normal locale (the atm sci debating pool)? Society is only so worried about hurricanes because of how much destruction they do, and the future upward trends of their destruction will clearly be linked most significantly to population/building trends. So while the natural/anthro attribution debate is certainly interesting scientifically, it's a side show to the bigger problem.

[RPs point is a good one, but the answer is very clearly that lots of people care: just look at all the words. You can argue that people shouldn't (from the impacts POV), but thats a different point. I would say that people care because there is still an aura of artifical uncertainty about attribution of temperature trends; this leads people to seek other evidence (and Im not saying thats a good thing). If all the skeptics threw their hands up in the air and said "oh all right we admit it: the current T trends probably *are* anthro" then there would be less interest in hurricane trends. Maybe]

Posted by: kevin | February 27, 2006 10:38 PM

I think v. Storch has put comments on both the RP blogs in the past, certainly he posted at Promethius (and you commented) but the most important point was that he explicitly endorsed your statement of the consensus that exists.

Posted by: Eli Rabett | February 28, 2006 1:59 AM

Well, Kevin, one reason you want attribution is to see if you can get rid of the reason why we're making things worse. That is: what are we doing to screw things up (if we are)? Can we done fix whut's broke?

Jus' sayin'.

Best,

Posted by: Dano | February 28, 2006 6:16 PM

countrywide home loans Probaly you should read this. countrywide home loans Hope this helps. See you next life. Buy countrywide home loans now

Posted by: countrywide home loans | March 31, 2006 7:19 PM

You guys are the 53528 best, thanks so much for the help.

Posted by: Caty Tota | June 8, 2006 9:57 PM