Introductions

Greetings!  My name is Marcus, and I'm a climate researcher with a PhD in Technology, Management, and Policy in the Engineering System Division of MIT and a Master's in Chemistry from Caltech.  I do not, however, in any way represent MIT, or my current fellowship sponsor, or the organization with which I have been placed for my fellowship.  Because I am still fairly young in my chosen career, I am not including my full name in this blog, though it would be easy enough to find given the above data.

This blog is meant as a place for me to place various musings on climate change, to complement various other blogs out there (RealClimate and Open Mind by Tamino are two obvious ones).  I have three goals which I'd like to use this blog for:

Goal #1)  Write up rebuttals to skeptic arguments, or link to rebuttals elsewhere.  One of the arguments I was going to address was Roy Spencer's surprisingly naive argument that a major portion of the CO2 increase over the last 50 years was natural.  However,  Tamino has already addressed this.  I will note, however, that skeptics like Spencer and Stephen Schwartz might want to consider a new test when coming up with theories outside the "consensus":  applying their test to a simple, understood system.  For example, take a climate or carbon cycle model.  Then apply their fancy statistical analysis that they claim proves that CO2 increase is natural, or that climate sensitivity must be small because the time constant of the system is short.  If that statistical method does not work well for the simple model system (and in both cases I believe that it would not) then they should reconsider trying to use it on the real, much more complex system of the Earth.

I still plan on writing up a rebuttal of the more egregious statements recorded in Marc Morano's list of 650 climate scientist skeptics.  

My criteria for choosing skeptics to rebut will include:  scientific prominence (Roy Spencer is one of the major scientists involved with the UAH climate satellite dataset, which is why his confusion about basics of the carbon cycle is surprising, and perhaps telling), political prominence (Marc Morano's list is on the Senate Minority EPW website, which is especially galling), personal interest, and the clarity with which I think I can compose a rebuttal.  

Goal #2)  Codify my thinking about climate policy by writing about it.  Carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade, long term stabilization goals, international negotations, etc. etc.  

Goal #3)  Make some predictions about near-term future climate, so that five years from now when I claim "this is well within my expectations" I have some proof.  Not only for outsiders, but also for myself - in my experience humans are very good at rewriting their mental history to place themselves in a good light.  eg, what will we see in terms of global mean temperatures?  Ocean temperature data sets?  Mid-tropospheric tropical datasets?  Arctic summer ice retreat?  etc.

Goal #4)  Post other interesting climate tidbits as I come across them.  

In any case, I won't make this blog public for a little while, but eventually I would like my better posts to be references that will be suitable for linking from the RealClimate wiki. 

-Marcus, 1/25/09