Climate Debate

As an example of why I don't venture too far in commenting on the science in the climate change debate, I offer the following discussion. On Roger Pielke, Sr's site Climate Science is a weblog post by Kevin Trenberth. In the comments section - the comments, mind you, is the following:

Comment by Steve Sadlov — June 18, 2007 @ 1:17 pm

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The bottom line, for me, is:

“There is neither an El Niño sequence nor any Pacific Decadal Oscillation that replicates the recent past; yet these are critical modes of variability that affect Pacific rim countries and beyond. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, that may depend on the thermohaline circulation and thus ocean currents in the Atlantic, is not set up to match today’s state, but it is a critical component of the Atlantic hurricanes and it undoubtedly affects forecasts for the next decade from Brazil to Europe. Moreover, the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors. I postulate that regional climate change is impossible to deal with properly unless the models are initialized.”

I sort of understand this quote from the article sentence by sentence, but its significance is only partly apprehensible to me. But to Mr. Sadlov, this is the bottom line. I'm just over my head.

Pielke's site is one of the major reputable catastrophe-skeptic sites. For balance, Real Climate is a site by "working climate scientists" who endorse the more common views about AGW. I didn't follow much of that, either.

I will soon get around to kicking Bill McKibben on issues only marginally related to the climate debate.