A key number in climate science is the amount of warming we can expect from a doubling of CO2 concentrations, also known as “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity” (ECS). In 2007, the IPCC AR4 report estimated 2°- 4.5°C of warming. In the most recent report, it estimates a range of 1.5°- 4.5°C, due to the fact that it accommodated some very low-ECS outliers. Those outliers are the result of focusing on temperatures during the faux pause, a misleading approach discussed in a great Scientific American piece by Dr. Michael Mann.
Now a new paper by J. Ray Bates claims ECS to only be 1°C, a very low estimate to say the least. He had been trying to get this published for a couple years, with the paper beginning its “embarrassing” life as a comment in response to Andrew Dessler’s 2013 paper in the Journal of Climate. Dessler tested the denier myth that models overestimate warming, and, spoiler alert, “no evidence that [climate models] are radically over- or underestimating the climate system’s feedbacks.”
[Continued after the jump!]
Dessler reviewed the original Bates response to his 2013 paper, and pointed out so many flaws that the Journal of Climate decided it wasn’t worthy of publication. For readers of the Denier Roundup, it’s probably enough to say that Bates relied on a debunked paper by Richard Lindzen, which as Wiki recounts was rejected by PNAS and eventually published in an obscure Korean journal. Two years after Bates started the paper, an improved but still “sad” version of the comment has been published in an obscure new AGU journal that isn’t focused on climate. Publishing in obscure and off-topic journals is, of course, a classic technique for deniers to get their sloppy second-rate papers published.
We reached out to Dessler for a response on the response to his study, and he told us:
“This version of the paper has been improved — Bates does not, for example, just assume that extratropical feedbacks are zero. Nevertheless, the paper is still largely based on Lindzen's work, which is not a good proxy for quality. Overall, the paper is based on dozens of assumptions, each one is probably 80% correct, but combining them leads to a result that is completely ridiculous. This paper will get zero traction in the scientific community and will have no impact on the community's estimates of ECS.”
Sounds like the only thing lower than the impact Bates thinks CO2 will have on temperatures is the impact his paper will have on the scientific community.
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