Climate scientists - respect, but don't be afraid of policy

There has been some discussion in the Twittersphere about how or whether climate scientists should wade in on climate policy. I'm guessing that this is of most concern to early to mid-career scientists and/or academics who have not had much, if any, exposure to policy development. Some scientists at a senior level do get involved in providing policy input and advice, either through advancement (e.g. job promotion in a government agency) or by being co-opted onto one or more government advisory committees (e.g. senior academics).

Thought I'd add my two bobs worth since I've had some experience in the policy area.

The tweet that started the thread was from climate scientist Kate Marvel (and another here).

Asking climate scientists about climate policy is like asking a plumber to build a house. You definitely need them involved, but you’re probably going to need more expertise than that

— Kate Marvel (@DrKateMarvel) November 7, 2019

David Burton @wattsupwiththat denies what's really warming the world

If you've been around climate stuff these last few days you may well have come across a neat climate graphic at Bloomberg. Eric Roston and Blacki Migliozzi, with help from Kate Marvel and Gavin Schmidt, have charts of global surface temperatures and more. What their charts show are the various contributions to global surface temperature changes since 1880, modeled and observed. There are a number of different charts illustrating the observed annual mean global surface temperature against modeled, as affected by:

1. Natural factors:

• orbital changes only
• solar variation
• volcanic eruptions
• all three natural factors together.

2. Human activity:

• land use changes
• ozone changes
• aerosols
• greenhouse gas accumulation
• all human activity together.

3. Natural factors and human activity combined.

The graphic is worth bookmarking for showing to (normal) people to illustrate how human activity has led to the large rise in global surface temperatures since 1880. There's not much point showing it to deniers, the sort of people who relish articles like the one by David Burton at WUWT the other day (archived here).

You might remember David. He's the chap who spent 547.5 days and nights fretting about Doran & Zimmerman (2009) before coming up with a number-fudging brainwave (It was not a brainwave, it was nothing but Dave's bad arithmetic.)