The inquiries into the “climategate” e-mails and files may find that some of the researchers fell short of the standards of their calling, or that some of the science in question does not stand up as well as its authors would wish. To think that all action on climate change should cease pending such inquiries, though, is foolish, cynical or both.
The Economist, hardly the bastion of left liberal do-goodism calls out the foolish and the cynical (many of whom exist in this thread) who point to the 'Climategate' emails as anything more than trivial in the face of the veritable CANON of reputable climate science.
http://www.economist.com/sciencetech...most_commented
Further updates on the data:
Concentrations of greenhouse gas are at their highest levels ever recorded, Arctic sea ice is disappearing 40-per-cent faster than projected just two years ago, and the rate of sea level rise from warming oceans is 80-per-cent faster than predicted in 2001.
These findings appear to present an overwhelming rebuttal to recent claims by climate change skeptics that, based on allegedly stolen e-mails from researchers at England's University of East Anglia, some sort of global conspiracy is underway to fabricate evidence of climate change.
Weaver said the controversy has obscured the fact that two other independent sets of data -- both produced by researchers based in the United States -- show that, if anything, the British data is underestimating the severity of the situation.
"The denial movement don't care about facts," Weaver said. "All they want is to try and throw a bunch of stuff at the public jury hoping that something sticks and leaves an element of doubt. I think the average person recognizes this for what it is: an attempt by special interest groups to undermine the science in the lead-up to Copenhagen."
There was a period about 7,000 years ago, following the last major Ice Age, when glaciers almost disappeared, but Waite said the current rate of melting greatly exceeds the natural history of that event.
"What [glaciologists] will say is that it never has retreated at this rate. The rate of ice melting far exceeds what happened at the end of the [major] ice ages."
http://www.vancouversun.com/business...957/story.html
Quote:
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Originally Posted by TheU
it was global warming hysteria for a while in the 90's when we could see the earths temp was going up. global warming scientists back then predicted how much hotter it would get in the 2000's and how we were on a path to destruction.
then the warming stopped, with an extended cooling around the cooler.
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Could not be more wrong. The levels of ignorance is just strike. The 2000s were the hottest decade on record. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of statistics can derive this from all global climate data.
Here's a layman's explanation, hopefully it isn't too complicated:
Climate change is not weather change. The weather oscillates all the time; climate changes very slowly. Within that slow change are innumerable variations, but what counts is the underlying pattern. Today, for example, might be cooler than yesterday. So what? And 2008 was cooler on average than 2007. Why? Because a La Nina occurred in 2008, causing a temporary dip in average global temperature. (Despite La Nina, 2008 was the ninth-warmest year on record.)
The atmosphere is generally unfolding – that is, warming – much as a series of United Nations reports have suggested, each providing increasing levels of scientific assurance, although couched with the qualifications one would expect from projections.
Even Ottawa and Alberta, hardly paragons of climate-change policies, admit the science.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1391782/