Andrew Dessler’s testimony on what we know about climate change

Given that I’ve had a couple of posts about Judith Curry’s testimony to the EPW, I thought it might be good to also have something discussing Andrew Dessler’s testimony. However, I’m feeling lazy (well busy) and Bart’s post covers most of what I would have said, so – I hope Bart doesn’t mind – I thought I would simply reblog this, rather than writing something of my own.

My view on climate change

In his recent testimony, Andrew Dessler reviewed what he thinks “are the most important conclusions the climate scientific community has reached in over two centuries of work”. I think that’s a very good choice to focus on, as the basics of what we know is most important, “at least as to the thrust and direction of policy” (Herman Daly). This focus served as a good antidote to the other witness, Judith Curry, who emphasizes (and often exaggerates) uncertainty to the point of conflating it with ignorance.

Dessler mentioned the following “important points that we know with high confidence”:

1.  The climate is warming.

Let’s take this opportunity to show the updated figure by Cowtan and Way, extending their infilling method to the entire instrumental period (pause? which pause?):

2. Most of the recent warming is extremely likely due to emissions of carbon dioxide and…

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