Sunday, February 04, 2007

FUN WITH NUMBERS

Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt poked fun at Tim Lambert for predicting the latest IPCC report would confirm a sea level rise "similar" to its earlier prediction of 88 cm, when the report predicts a rise of 59 cm instead. Unable to admit that he's wrong, Lambert is trying to worm his way out of the situation he's gotten himself into by including additional water not otherwise accounted for:
Models used to date do not include uncertainties in climate-carbon cycle feedback nor do they include the full effects of changes in ice sheet flow, because a basis in published literature is lacking. The projections include a contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica at the rates observed for 1993-2003, but these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future. For example, if this contribution were to grow linearly with global average temperature change, the upper ranges of sea level rise for SRES scenarios shown in Table SPM-2 would increase by 0.1 m to 0.2 m. Larger values cannot be excluded, but understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood or provide a best estimate or an upper bound for sea level rise.
In other words, it's uncertain if these factors will contribute anything to sea level rise but the best estimate is a contribution of 10 to 20 cm. Lambert then grabs the upper bound (20 cm) and adds it to the report's 59 cm to come up with 79 cm, which is, according to him, similar to 88 cm. Notwithstanding the fact that 79 isn't really similar to 88, he really should have added in the range of 10 to 20 cm, resulting in a sea level rise range of between 69 and 79 cm. A range of 69 to 79 cm is not similar to 88 cm.

Lambert's an embarrassment to science.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lambert is an embarrassment? What does that make Blair and Bolt?

5:12 AM  

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