E
Eric C
Guest
...community are driven by ....? ... an agenda, and not science?
In the 1990s, predictions of a greenhouse-warmed Antarctic abounded. As time passed, though, problems surfaced. Research paper after paper indicated that, other than the tiny Antarctica peninsula, the continent was in fact cooling—and had been doing so for many decades.
The climate science community quickly spun a number of possible explanations, including ozone holes, ocean currents, and terrain that cut off Antarctica from the world’s warming. As the certainty in the cooling trend grew, so did their statements, until they eventually began stating that they had predicted a cooling trend all along. As the folks at RealClimate put it, “Doesn’t this contradict [global warming]? Not at all, because a cold Antarctica is just what calculations predict and have predicted for the past quarter century.” Cooling was thus cast as proof of global warming, not refutation.
Speaking at a news conference today, Steig (the main author of the current Antarctic warming paper) said, “We now see warming is taking place [in] accord with what models predict as a response to greenhouse gases.”
Why else would they do such a major flip flop on their positions?
Ken: here is a link by a paper by Shindell saying cooling is consistent with models.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Shindell_Schmidt.pdf
Here is a link from the NY Times were Shindell says "It’s extremely difficult to think of any physical way that you could have increasing greenhouse gases not lead to warming at the Antarctic continent.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/science/earth/22climate.html?_r=2&hp
In the 1990s, predictions of a greenhouse-warmed Antarctic abounded. As time passed, though, problems surfaced. Research paper after paper indicated that, other than the tiny Antarctica peninsula, the continent was in fact cooling—and had been doing so for many decades.
The climate science community quickly spun a number of possible explanations, including ozone holes, ocean currents, and terrain that cut off Antarctica from the world’s warming. As the certainty in the cooling trend grew, so did their statements, until they eventually began stating that they had predicted a cooling trend all along. As the folks at RealClimate put it, “Doesn’t this contradict [global warming]? Not at all, because a cold Antarctica is just what calculations predict and have predicted for the past quarter century.” Cooling was thus cast as proof of global warming, not refutation.
Speaking at a news conference today, Steig (the main author of the current Antarctic warming paper) said, “We now see warming is taking place [in] accord with what models predict as a response to greenhouse gases.”
Why else would they do such a major flip flop on their positions?
Ken: here is a link by a paper by Shindell saying cooling is consistent with models.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Shindell_Schmidt.pdf
Here is a link from the NY Times were Shindell says "It’s extremely difficult to think of any physical way that you could have increasing greenhouse gases not lead to warming at the Antarctic continent.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/science/earth/22climate.html?_r=2&hp