@ Messenger

It was apparently release on the 28th of Feb 2011, so it must have been delayed.

Bugs in the models...? Damn those sneaky testers if so!

Surely the BBC are just recycling old news again- Fate of the World came out last year, didn't it, if not earlier?

@ lapogus

Was just about to post this and noticed you beat me to it. Being in the industry, if GCMs can be used to make a game like this, I am even more worried about their validity than before (if that were possible).

It's just a game, and even the most complex of games are much simpler than you think. I wonder which GCMs were used for this?

Sir John will present the findings of the Government's Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures Report and discuss how to feed a future population of 9 billion people healthily and sustainably in the face of climate change.

The future of food and farming
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/1540/the_future_of_food_and_farming

Apparently serious climate scientists were involved in the making of this game - so we can use the term playstation modellers without any irony!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12615599

"Computer strategy game Fate of the World gives gamers the chance to save a virtual world from climate catastrophe.

Using real climatic models, it gives gamers and environmentalists the chance to test policy ideas on a global scale. Its developers intend the game to be fun and to help increase awareness of the complex nature of fighting global warming.

Players get to set policy initiatives over a 200-year period and watch as the outcomes of their decisions are played out.

The game's developers have used official data collected by international bodies such as the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from the US (NOAA) and the United Nations.

Economists and non-governmental organisation including Oxfam and Friends of the Earth also contributed..."

MO on the Beeb this morning asking us to measure contrails and wind speed for them.
Apparently to measure wind speed you have to blow bubbles and time them over a known distance. Contrails creating clouds also cause warming, it is all explained at their new Opal website.

Wow

The Carbon Brief guys are good.. Bishop hill is slacking ;)

Finding this out at the Carbon Brief

Climategate to Cancun The Real Global Warming Disaster Continues...
by Christopher Booker
by Richard North

;)

http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=158570&SubjectId=1023&Subject2Id=1456

http://www.carbonbrief.org/profiles/richard-north

WOW! again I say WOW

The Guardian on the Berkeley Earth project:

'Then there is the fiasco of 2009 that saw roughly 1,000 emails from a server at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) find their way on to the internet. The fuss over the messages, inevitably dubbed Climategate, gave Muller's nascent project added impetus. Climate sceptics had already attacked James Hansen, head of the Nasa group, for making political statements on climate change while maintaining his role as an objective scientist. The Climategate emails fuelled their protests. "With CRU's credibility undergoing a severe test, it was all the more important to have a new team jump in, do the analysis fresh and address all of the legitimate issues raised by sceptics," says Muller.'

This is where the Berkeley group faces its toughest task by far and it will be judged on how well it deals with it. There are errors running through global warming data that arise from the simple fact that the global network of temperature stations was never designed or maintained to monitor climate change. The network grew in a piecemeal fashion, starting with temperature stations installed here and there, usually to record local weather.

'Among the trickiest errors to deal with are so-called systematic biases, which skew temperature measurements in fiendishly complex ways. Stations get moved around, replaced with newer models, or swapped for instruments that record in celsius instead of fahrenheit. The times measurements are taken varies, from say 6am to 9pm. The accuracy of individual stations drift over time and even changes in the surroundings, such as growing trees, can shield a station more from wind and sun one year to the next. Each of these interferes with a station's temperature measurements, perhaps making it read too cold, or too hot. And these errors combine and build up.'

'He will find out soon enough if his hopes to forge a true consensus on climate change are misplaced. It might not be a good sign that one prominent climate sceptic contacted by the Guardian, Canadian economist Ross McKitrick, had never heard of the project. Another, Stephen McIntyre, whom Muller has defended on some issues, hasn't followed the project either, but said "anything that [Muller] does will be well done". Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia was unclear on the details of the Berkeley project and didn't comment.'

Full story at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/27/can-these-scientists-end-climate-change-war

Judith Curry and the Berkely Project get 'The Carbon Brief' treatement, along with an inevitable link with the Koch brothers.

In the headline:
http://www.carbonbrief.org/website

"The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project is a good idea in principle but closer inspection reveals both its funders and research team are wanting in credibility"

BUT sentence this is NOT repeated in the article...(clever stuff, tweet the headline, but not in the article)
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2011/03/the-best-idea-reconsidered

The Carbon Brief make this statement:

"Given the team's ambition and the reams of data they will be working with, it's surprising that not one qualified climate scientist has been employed to oversee the analysis closely."

"Judith Curry is the only climatologist named as taking part in the study and she has stated that her role in far from central. She said on her blog: "I'm not exactly sure what my originally intended role in this was…. As they have begun analyzing the data, I have completely refrained from commenting on the process or preliminary results".

Judith Curry is a controversial figure, known best for testifying to US congress as a Republican witness on climate science. Curry holds the view that doubt and natural variability make it hard to anticipate whether C02 is responsible for climate change, an opinion also shared by the oil industry."

Well paid PR media professionals at AGW consensus work, spot the linking for an Oil /smear / innuendo

".... an opinion also shared by the oil industry"

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/18/the-carbon-brief-the-european-rapid-response-team/

johnny ball on the politics show bbc1 @ 12am re global warming
should be worth catching