A strong, alarming warning from scientific luminaries: We have to decide...

This is an alert for denier watchers. Get ready for the possibility of another "whopping mad (crazy)" onslaught from the climate conspiracy theorists. Peter U. Clark and a team of leading scientists have published a paper in Nature Climate Change, this time looking ahead 10,000 years to changes in climate and sea level. The team is laden with some of the heaviest of heavyweights from the world of climate science:

Peter U. Clark, Jeremy D. Shakun, Shaun A. Marcott, Alan C. Mix, Michael Eby, Scott Kulp, Anders Levermann, Glenn A. Milne, Patrik L. Pfister, Benjamin D. Santer, Daniel P. Schrag, Susan Solomon, Thomas F. Stocker, Benjamin H. Strauss, Andrew J. Weaver, Ricarda Winkelmann, David Archer, Edouard Bard, Aaron Goldner, Kurt Lambeck, Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Gian-Kasper Plattner.

Denier weirdness: how an old block of wood changed climate physics forever, not!

There's an article that's been doing the rounds of denier blogs over the past few days. It finally was picked up by Anthony Watts and copied and pasted onto his blog, WUWT. It's a two part copy and paste - of something science denier Larry Bell wrote and something that climate crank Pierre Gosselin wrote. (Archived here.)

The article is about what could be Germany's version of Denier Don Easterbrook, or not as the case may be. The article is about Christian Schlüchter, an emeritus professor with the Institut für Geologie at Universität Bern. According to the article at WUWT, the good professor is a climate science denier. I'm not so sure about that.

A find that was heralded by scientists

The article starts with this odd sentence:

Dr. Christian Schlüchter’s discovery of 4,000-year-old chunks of wood at the leading edge of a Swiss glacier was clearly not cheered by many members of the global warming doom-and-gloom science orthodoxy.

Now the reason I say the sentence is odd is not simply because scientists usually are delighted with new discoveries. There were two more reasons. Firstly, when I did a search to see if I could find a paper on the subject, I found that it was cited no less than 123 times according to Google Scholar. That doesn't signify the paper being "not cheered". Quite the reverse. Particularly since it was published in The Holocene, not the highest profile journal, though a very respectable publication.

Christian Schlüchter collaborates with Thomas F. Stocker - Co-Chair of IPCC WG1

The second reason I found the sentence odd was that the paper by Christian Schlüchter was coauthored by Ulrich E. Joerin and Thomas F. Stocker. I'm not familiar with the work of Ulrich Joerin but most readers will be familiar with Thomas Stocker. He was co-chair of Working Group 1 of the IPCC. A "warmist" if ever there was one. That would be particularly galling to Pierre Gosselin, whose blog article was copied and pasted at WUWT below Larry Bell's. If he knew about it. Pierre has written rants about Thomas Stocker in the past.

Gavin Schmidt on Advocacy and Judith Curry's "missing element"

I don't know how many people saw Gavin Schmidt give the Stephen Schneider Lecture at the AGU Falll Meeting this year.  It's worth watching - more than once.  Here it is:

What should a climate scientist advocate for? The Intersection of Expertise and Values in a Politicized World

Stephen Schneider Lecture by Dr Gavin  Schmidt, NASA at AGU Fall Meeting, December 2013

Stephen Schneider was a science communicator who understood intimately the roles of expertise and values in raising public awareness and in discussing both problems and solutions to issues of public concern. With a new generation of climate scientists stepping up to the microphone, what are the lessons to be learned from his experiences? I will discuss the ethical issues associated with being both a scientist and a human being, the importance of honesty - to oneself and to ones audience - and how this can be effective. I will also discuss how scientists can find a role for themselves in advocating what they feel strongly about and how to avoid some common pitfalls and problems. Above all, I will present a picture of how one can try to be both a public voice and a good scientist, and how these roles, in the end, reinforce one another.

What climate science disinformers advocate

Judith Curry, a climate scientist who mostly seems to advocate for global warming, has written an article about Gavin Schmidt's lecture. Despite or perhaps because of her own personal experience as an advocate, Judith writes (archived here):

I have long stated that scientists advocating for public policy can lead to distrust of scientists and their scientific findings.

Gavin Schmidt argued that scientists should be clear about their personal values when discussion climate science and the implications and when advocating courses of action. Gavin Schmidt also stated that it is irresponsible to misrepresent or hide values.

I haven't seen Judith clearly expressing her values when she advocates doing nothing to limit emissions.  One can only speculate.

In her blog article, Judith makes a statement and poses some questions, which are suggestive of her policy position and her values.  But she does not explicitly state either her policy position or her values in detail as relevant to this subject.  I'll leave it to readers to see if they can figure them out.

Judith's general approach on her blog and in various testimonies (eg to US government hearings) is to avoid or misrepresent science.  She has even gone so far as to recommend that scientists stop reporting climate science to governments by saying that "the IPCC should be put down".  She pretends that much more is "unknown" and "uncertain" than it really is.  She has argued that rather than reduce emissions we should improve weather forecasting, as if that's an either/or decision.

The rest of this article is about Judith's implied advocacy in the light of Gavin Schmidt's lecture.  It's rather long so if you are on the home page, click here to continue reading.