by Judith Curry
Climate researchers have an obligation not to environmental policy but to the truth.
This quote comes from an article in Spiegel Online entitled Warming Plateau? Climatologists Face Inconvenient Truth. Good article. The entire context for this quote:
Germany’s highest-ranking climate researcher, physicist Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, in Hamburg, is fighting back against this refusal to face facts. Marotzke, who is also president of the German Climate Consortium and Germany’s top scientific representative in Stockholm, promises, “We will address this subject head-on.” The IPCC, he says, must engage in discussion about the standstill in temperature rise.
Marotzke calls the claim that a temperature plateau isn’t significant until it has lasted for over 30 years unscientific. “Thirty years is an arbitrarily selected number,” he says. “Some climate phenomena occur on a shorter timescale, some on a longer one.” Climate researchers, Marotzke adds, have an obligation not to environmental policy but to the truth. “That obligates us to clearly state the uncertainties in our predictions as well,” he says.
I don’t care what anyone else says this week, this statement by Marotzke should be hung around the neck of everyone in Stockholm this week for the IPCC meeting.
Bravo, Jochem Marotzke.