Nic Lewis

December 19, 2012 in uncategorized
Tags: ipcc leaked draft, Steig et al

Nic Lewis- who? IPCC expert reviewer no less.

Nic Lewis. A semiretired successful financier from Bath, England, with a strong mathematics and physics background, Mr. Lewis has made significant contributions to the subject of climate change

Nic Lewis’ academic background is mathematics, with a minor in physics, at Cambridge University (UK). His career has been outside academia. Two or three years ago, he returned to his original scientific and mathematical interests and, being interested in the controversy surrounding AGW, started to learn about climate science.   He is co-author of the paper that rebutted Steig et al.  Antarctic temperature reconstruction (Ryan O’Donnell, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre and Jeff Condon, 2011, Improved methods for PCA-based reconstructions: case study using the Steig et al. (2009) Antarctic temperature reconstruction, Journal of Climate – print version at J.Climate or preprint here).

Quotes are from a Matt Ridley article in the Wall St Journal and his own bio in Judith Curries blog   – So Nic Lewis has a math degree from Cambridge and after a career in finance he retired to take up climate change scepticism. Nic Lewis is not in complete climate change denial- from a comment from Judith Curries blog

1. I fully accept that, as a result of basic radiative transfer physics, CO2 warms the planet, However, my present view is that the observational evidence for climate sensitivity being 2–4 times its base level, as a result of net feedbacks, is fairly weak. I also think that the politicized and dogmatic nature of the AGW debate has led to bias in the scientific process and to some extent compromised its integrity. I would particularly like to see, as a matter of routine, climate research papers make easily available all data and methods information in the detail required to replicate studies. I also think that the peer review and publication process is biased against papers that challenge mainstream views, and should be reformed.

Nic Lewis’ main contribution to the ‘debate’ is his co-authorship with Ryan O’Donnell [computer science] Steve McIntyre and Jeff Condon paper criticising Eric Steig’ study in Nature 2009 his rebuttal is found here .

Nic Lewis main contention is that CO2 physics is correct and will result in 1.5c temperature increase with a doubling in CO2 [so any deniers using the CO2 is not a GHG should best avoid his arguments] but Climate Science evidence that positive feedback will amplify GHG to cause higher temperatures is wrong.

Nic Lewis’ other criticisms include Forrest 2006 paper on Antarctic and the leaked IPCC draft report to be published in 2013

Mr. Lewis tells me [Matt Ridley]that the latest observational estimates of the effect of aerosols (such as sulfurous particles from coal smoke) find that they have much less cooling effect than thought when the last IPCC report was written. The rate at which the ocean is absorbing greenhouse-gas-induced warming is also now known to be fairly modest. In other words, the two excuses used to explain away the slow, mild warming we have actually experienced—culminating in a standstill in which global temperatures are no higher than they were 16 years ago—no longer work.

However because being an expert reviewer forbids citing the draft document publicly Nic Lewis is unable to quote any paper included in the report and why it is wrong.

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