Saturday, October 17, 2015

Somebunny Is Annoyed

Stoat draws Eli's attention to ACPD's review of the Hansen et al. paper

Although the timing is, not clear, the handling editor has decided to not publish the Hansen et al. paper about whose handling Eli wrote a few days ago.  On October 13, somebunny dumped a bunch of Authors Comments into the interactive review.

UPDATE:  FWIW, those comments WERE NOT THERE at 5 PM US EST on 15.10.

On reading, they appear to be more the kind of thing written as notes to structure their own thought (as in WTF is referee 3, that idiot, thinking about, than what is submitted to an editor.  This is especially true of  the response to the collaborative review of et al, which the editor said he though highly of.  
Timing issues – see below
Eemian cannot be compared to the future. Did we do that? We used the Eemian to learn things about how the climate system operates; we did not say the future would look like the Eemian.  
Extreme events are much more likely to occur after 2100 – therefore we recommend to avoid terminology such as “dangerous”. Hmm, yes, I guess that we should not be concerned about anything that happens 85 years from now – the dickens with those characters. The Dutch can migrate to Switzerland, after all.  
Explanation of mid-Eemian sea level minimum is not sound? You admit that a late Eemian sea level rise due to rapid ice melt from Antarctica is plausible. Would not the sea level have been less right before the sudden rise due to Antarctic water? Late Eemian maximum was probably at a time ~118-119 ky BP based on U-series dating, e.g., see the several sentences below from our paper. However, why are you concerned about whether there was a sea level minimum before the late Eemian sea level rise? That is seeming to lose sight of the forest for the trees. The relevant point is that there was a late Eemian sea level rise of at least a few meters.
There is a lot of repetition of comments relevant to one comment in answer to another and several other weirdnesses.  In other words, Eli thinks, well Eli is a careful cautious bunny.

There is an interesting comment on sea level rise in response to Michel de Rougemont and several others.  As to what Eli believes is Hansen's POV there is a response to John Nissen (and indirectly Peter Thorne)
As for geoengineering to adjust the albedo of the Arctic, that is an attack on a climate feedback. The task now is to address the climate forcing. When you find yourself in a hole, the first rule is “stop digging”.

13 comments:

William M. Connolley said...

> Eli is a careful bunny

Excluding proof reading :-): "This is especially true of the response to the collaborative review of et al," - not only have you missed the period, you've missed the name.

EliRabett said...


Eli is willing to modify word choice. Proofreading is for code monkeys

William M. Connolley said...

We have compilers for that. The big problem is that most things don't have compilers. Or Lint.

Brian said...

What Hansen says about forcing and the Arctic makes perfect sense. In addition, though, we might want to address the feedback. The smallscale geoengineering of Ice911 seems reasonable to me.

I wouldn't rule out a sulfate shield in the highest Arctic, although a global proposal strikes me as a bad idea under almost any circumstance. Even one limited to the Arctic seems like a dangerous/last resort option.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Since Beaver watchers observe that mud figures mightily in the construcion of their dams and dikes, the Swiss can put their pikes back on the walls - they are unlikely to see Netherlanders swimming upstream .

Given how fast the Alps are wearing down, and France and Germany are losing ground to the Rhine, IMHO the Dutch will continue to pile up what washes down on them, at rates considerably exceeding Eli's worst fears for the rest of this century and then some.

Anonymous said...

VV's uncharacteristically terse comment @ Stoat re: Hansen's replies was telling:

"Never seen anything like it."

Possibility of shenanigans aside, the open-review process was a brilliant choice by the authors, as the publication of this paper is but a formality. It has already received (relatively) massive attention from the MSM, and it seems to have made a (qualified) positive impression on the scientific community as a justification for, and possible portent of, our worst fears.

Everett F Sargent said...

Well someone's appears to be sort of pissed and I'm not talking about Eli.

I follow RR rather closely, when I read Eli's previous post, I clicked on the link, and all of those 13 OCT 15 replies were there. So maybe an hour or two later (didn't notice what the Review Status box said at that time though).

But I didn't see replies to either Archer or Thorne (but most specifically a reply to Thorne), so I held off on any commenting, assuming those replies would be coming shortly, still TBD I guess.

This is worth a read though ...
Predictions Implicit in “Ice Melt” Paper and Global Implications
http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2015/09/21/predictions-implicit-in-ice-melt-paper-and-global-implications/#_ftnref1

I've already left my droppings over at Stoat's.

Everett F Sargent said...

Actually, I hit the Hansen discussion at ~10PM on 13 OCT 2015 CDT, opened C7971 attachment at 10:03PM CDT (browser history). And that's when I went looking for 21 SEP 2015 Hansen article.

One reply on the 6th, 3 replies on the 9th, 6 replies on the 12th and 28 replies on the 13th, nothing since the 13th.

EliRabett said...

Everett, assuming that Eli has not gone emeritus already, that is scheduled for next year, the dump then took place between 5 and 11 PM EST. Given that, at 5 PM EST, the editor was asking for a rewrite in view of the submissions, and then something happened. Curious.

Everett F Sargent said...

Eli,

OK, I missed one, C8101 posted on the 15th ...
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/C8101/2015/acpd-15-C8101-2015.pdf

Acrobat has the PDF as Created:/Modified: '10/15/2015 7:28:03 PM'

I'm sort of thinking the authors will finish their replies to the reviewers comments (open discussion section) and then the editor ... I don't know.

BTW, your original post is dated MONDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2015 5:56 PM (you may have checked the open discussion section later than your post though).

Regardless of what one thinks about the paper, it should be published in some form somewhere.

cRR Kampen said...

I just read that... We'll have to monitor RR closely as of next year ;)

Peter Thorne said...

You need another update ... the paper has risen again (at least as far as being still under consideration).

Marlowe Johnson said...

and here is Hansen's latest response: http://editor.copernicus.org/index.php/acpd-15-C8227-2015.pdf?_mdl=msover_md&_jrl=10&_lcm=oc108lcm109w&_acm=get_comm_file&_ms=30888&c=95756&salt=1143550117730054195