The linked page (and the whole site) is totally worth reading, but it is probably too long, so here are some quotes. On climate sensitivity calculation: > Wall

The linked page (and the whole site) is totally worth reading, but it is probably too long, so here are some quotes. On climate sensitivity calculation: > Wallace Broecker, who would later play a major role in climate change studies, recalled that it was the 1967 paper "that convinced me that this was a thing to worry about". Another scientist called it "arguably the greatest climate science paper of all time", for it "essentially settled the debate on whether carbon dioxide causes global warming". Experts in a 2015 poll agreed, naming it as the "most influential" of all climate change papers. So Nobel committee was right to cite it. On the other hand, the author's "don't take it too seriously" comment should be taken seriously. 2 degrees value is spot on, but knowing what we know now, it couldn't be the right value for the right reason. The most important is that 1967 model had no ocean. (Manabe went on to make the first successful attack with ocean in 1969.) Another is lack of data. The following quote is pretty funny: > Until satellite measurements became available later in the 1980s, most models used data from the 1950s that only gave averages by zones of latitude, and only for the Northern Hemisphere. Modelers mirrored the set to represent clouds in the Southern Hemisphere, with the seasons reversed -- although of course the distribution of land, sea, and ice is very different in the two halves of the planet. I mean, mirroring? It is obviously wrong, but what can you do? Other than waiting for satellites and noting the result shouldn't be taken too seriously, that is. Now we have adequate data and model, it is proper to acknowledge great effort went into these pioneering works. The last quote on amount of computation used (for 1969 paper). It was truly AlphaGo-scale computaiton of its time! It is interesting to note AlphaGo Zero trained for comparable time of 40 days. > Their costly Univac 1108, a supercomputer by the standards of the time... Manabe and Bryan were confident enough of their model to undertake a heroic computer run, some 1100 hours long (more than 12 full days of computer time devoted to the atmosphere and 33 to the ocean).