Saturday, March 07, 2009
Predictions Based on Variable Trends
Much of Warmie hysteria centers around global sea rise. The island nation of Tuvalu is doomed to sink Atlantis like below the Pacific. The Greenland glaciers are melting faster than young and middle aged researchers have ever seen them melt. Ditto the Antarctic Peninsula glaciers and ice fields and ice shelves (see photo). The coastlines are doomed to flooding. Run for the hills!
Well, maybe not.
We're in an interglacial. The seas always rise during an interglacial at first at a very fast rate and then at a slower rate, but even the flat part of the curve is up until the tipping point is reached and the new Ice Age (#25?) begins. And perhaps, two Warmie scientists warn, the recent rapid melt in Greenland is not so permanent, at least not on the largest glacier there, which they studied, and, perhaps more importantly to their ilk, made computer models of. Was there ever a more humble, or timid warning about hysteria than this:
Word, as the youngsters used to say.
Well, maybe not.
We're in an interglacial. The seas always rise during an interglacial at first at a very fast rate and then at a slower rate, but even the flat part of the curve is up until the tipping point is reached and the new Ice Age (#25?) begins. And perhaps, two Warmie scientists warn, the recent rapid melt in Greenland is not so permanent, at least not on the largest glacier there, which they studied, and, perhaps more importantly to their ilk, made computer models of. Was there ever a more humble, or timid warning about hysteria than this:
The scientists also suggested that as the data on increased melting covers relatively few years it might be ill-advised to project a trend on the basis of something that may turn out to be a short-term phenomenon.
Word, as the youngsters used to say.
Labels: Global Warming: Disputed Metrics
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 9:29 AM 
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Thought you might be interested in this story. money quote:
I guess the story doesn’t amount to much. Perhaps it is significant only in that it shows how naïve we were to imagine that climate scientists might welcome the challenge to examine properly and in detail even the smell of a possibility that global warming might not be as bad as it is made out to be. Silly us.
I guess the story doesn’t amount to much. Perhaps it is significant only in that it shows how naïve we were to imagine that climate scientists might welcome the challenge to examine properly and in detail even the smell of a possibility that global warming might not be as bad as it is made out to be. Silly us.
Thanks, Mark. I read Steve McIntyre about once a week and remember this story, before Garth Paltridge (if that really is his name) added his stuff. Because, after 280 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, we are on a very, very flat part of a logarithmic curve regarding global heating, it is very important to know if the certain but little bit of warming from doubled CO2 will lead to a positive or negative feedback in the main greenhouse gas, water vapor. That neither satellites nor weather balloons can be relied on to tell us what's happening is a particularly big bummer. Thanks again.
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