Climate friction: Climate problem papers meet their critics
This is one of those papers that climate denialists will undoubtably latch onto, misinterpret, and cherry pick the original without the inevitable corrections that seem to be coming due to the peer comments and criticism.
A… less happy ending
A second paper, published in a 2009 volume of JGR Atmospheres (DOI: 10.1029/2008JD011637), doesn’t end quite so happily. This paper focuses on the El Niño/Southern Oscillation which, along with volcanoes, is one of the major causes of short-term climate variability.
The paper’s authors include a couple of prominent figures who disagree with the majority of the scientific community, and they come to a startling conclusion: ENSO isn’t just responsible for short-term variability, but it’s driven 72 percent of the temperature trend of the last 50 years. Anthropogenic influences would thus be minimal.
(The authors later issued a minor correction for a couple of graphs that had been mislabeled.)