Friday, January 20, 2017

Steve Goddard, leading AGW denier, caught backing model over observations

On the sad day when a climate change denier is to be inaugurated into the Presidency of the United States, I find this on my Twitter feed:

(Click on the picture if you cannot read it)

"Greenland is blowing away all records for ice growth, as climate alarmists continue their desperate lies" Says Goddard

Which is odd, because the news feed about the Greenland Ice sheet is full of stuff from NOAA, showing the decline in the Greenland ice mass:

http://yubanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/INFOGRAPHIC-greenland-decline-12.12.16-climate.gov-700x502-inset.png Fig3.4

So how come the discrepancy between Goddard's tweet, which was re-tweeted more than once by his followers,  and the data from NOAA?

Goddard's source is a page on the official Danish Meteorological Institute, titled

Current Surface Mass Budget of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Here you can follow the daily surface mass balance on the Greenland Ice Sheet. The snow and ice model from one of DMI’s climate models is driven every six hours with snowfall, sunlight and other parameters from a research weather model for Greenland, Hirlam-Newsnow.

Emphasis added.

So Goddard (who is one of the big, major AGW deniers of the blogosphere) is quoting a model, not observations.

This is significant, because the "sceptics" dismiss climate models out of hand (except when they agree with their beliefs), yet here is Goddard throwing up a model against the observations. 

Models are useful, because they roll out our understanding of reality. If they deviate from observations, they need to be changed with more, or more accurate, inputs to bring them closer to reality.

Goddard today is busy acclaiming his hero, Donald Trump. Let's hope that Trump checks his facts better than his fan. But don't hold your breath.


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