Shining A Different Light On Global Warming
February 11, 2010
A steady drip of errors in the top report on global warming — and the erosion they are causing in public confidence of the science behind it — have some scientists calling for drastic changes in how future United Nations climate reports are done.
A push for reform being published in Thursday’s issue of the prestigious scientific journal Nature comes on top of a growing clamor for the resignation of the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The work of the climate change panel, or IPCC, is often portrayed as one massive tome. But it really is four separate reports on different aspects of global warming, written months apart by distinct groups of scientists.
No errors have surfaced in the first and most well-known of the reports, which said the physics of a warming atmosphere and rising seas is man-made and incontrovertible. So far, four mistakes have been discovered in the second report, which attempts to translate what global warming might mean to daily lives around the world.
“A lot of stuff in there was just not very good,” said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and a lead author of the first report. “A chronic problem is that on the whole area of impacts, getting into the realm of social science, it is a softer science. The facts are not as good.”
It’s been a dismal winter for climate scientists after the high point of winning the 2007 Nobel, along with former Vice President Al Gore, for championing efforts to curb global warming and documenting its effects.
–In November, stolen private e-mails from a British university climate center embarrassed a number of scientists for their efforts to stonewall climate skeptics. The researchers were found to have violated Britain’s Freedom of Information laws.
–In December, the much anticipated climate summit of world leaders in Copenhagen failed to produce a meaningful mandatory agreement to curb greenhouse gases.
–Climate legislation in the United States, considered key to any significant progress in slowing global warming, is stalled.
UN Climate Report: Errors Were Made
January 22, 2010
I’m sitting here, staggered by the size of my heating bill, wondering when this global warming thing is going to kick in.
Five glaring errors were discovered in one paragraph of the world’s most authoritative report on global warming, forcing the Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists who wrote it to apologize and promise to be more careful.
The errors are in a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-affiliated body. All the mistakes appear in a subsection that suggests glaciers in the Himalayas could melt away by the year 2035 — hundreds of years earlier than the data actually indicates. The year 2350 apparently was transposed as 2035.
The climate panel and even the scientist who publicized the errors said they are not significant in comparison to the entire report, nor were they intentional. And they do not negate the fact that worldwide, glaciers are melting faster than ever.
But the mistakes open the door for more attacks from climate change skeptics.
“The credibility of the IPCC depends on the thoroughness with which its procedures are adhered to,” Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, told The Associated Press in an e-mail. “The procedures have been violated in this case. That must not be allowed to happen again because the credibility of climate change policy can only be based on credible science.”
The incident follows a furor late last year over the release of stolen e-mails in which climate scientists talked about suppressing data and freezing out skeptics of global warming. And on top of that, an intense cold spell has some people questioning whether global warming exists.
Al Gore Is Tired Of Waiting, Takes Matters Into His Own Hands
November 6, 2009
It seems that the entire focus of President Obama and Congress is on passing a health care reform bill.
Sure, the “cap and trade” measure is still on the table, but it isn’t getting nearly the attention.
This lack of focus on climate change, while the earth is in the balance, is particulary troubling to global warming guru Al Gore.
Mr. Gore fears that the end is coming soon, and rather than see the family name die out, decided to take measures into his own hands.
Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.
“I tried to warn them, but the Elders of this planet would not listen,” said Gore, who in 2000 was nearly banished to a featureless realm of nonexistence for promoting his unpopular message. “They called me foolish and laughed at my predictions. Yet even now, the Midwest is flooded, the ice caps are melting, and the cities are rocked with tremors, just as I foretold. Fools! Why didn’t they heed me before it was too late?”
Al Gore—or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al—placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity’s hubristic folly.
“There is nothing left now but to ensure that my infant son does not meet the same fate as the rest of my doomed race,” Gore said. “I will send him to a new planet, where he will, I hope, be raised by simple but kindly country folk and grow up to be a hero and protector to his adopted home.”
As the rocket soared through the Gore estate’s retractable solar-paneled roof—installed three years ago to save energy and provide emergency rocket-launch capability in the event that Gore’s campaign to save Earth was unsuccessful—the onetime presidential candidate and his wife, Tipper, stood arm-in-arm, nobly facing their end while gazing up in stoic dignity at the receding rocket, the ecosystem already beginning to collapse around them.
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