There is an interesting conjunction of items concerning climate change. It has been reported that Professor Tim Lenton of UEA has produced a study suggesting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate change 'tipping points' may be too optimistic ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/16/climatechange.greenland ). He estimate that the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet (that would lead to a 7M increase in sea level) could occur in 300 rather than the 1000 years predicted by the IPCC. He suggests that our current models of climate change are "too sluggish". This is an important message but getting people to recognise its relevance to them is not helped by errors in claims made by some seemingly dependable sources. Canadian blogger (respect!) Stephen McIntyre got some NASA officials to admit that their claims were misleading ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/16/1 ). McIntyre showed that 1934, rather than the claimed 1998, was historically the hottest year in the USA since records were kept. He also showed that 10 of the warmest years on record in the USA occurred before 1939 and only one was in the present century. This may not change the points that the NASA officials wanted to make about global warming but it does give opponents a 'stick to beat them with'.
No comments:
Post a Comment