UN climate report riddled with errors on glaciers
"Cogley, who wrote a letter about the problems to Science magazine that was published online Wednesday, cited these mistakes:
• The paragraph starts, "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world." Cogley and Michael Zemp of the World Glacier Monitoring System said Himalayan glaciers are melting at about the same rate as other glaciers.
• It says that if the Earth continues to warm, the "likelihood of them disappearing by the 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high." Nowhere in peer-reviewed science literature is 2035 mentioned. However, there is a study from Russia that says glaciers could come close to disappearing by 2350. Probably the numbers in the date were transposed, Cogley said.
• The paragraph says: "Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometers by the year 2035." Cogley said there are only 33,000 square kilometers of glaciers in the Himalayas.
• The entire paragraph is attributed to the World Wildlife Fund, when only one sentence came from the WWF, Cogley said. And further, the IPCC likes to brag that it is based on peer-reviewed science, not advocacy group reports. Cogley said the WWF cited the popular science press as its source.
• A table says that between 1845 and 1965, the Pindari Glacier shrank by 2,840 meters. Then comes a math mistake: It says that's a rate of 135.2 meters a year, when it really is only 23.5 meters a year. "
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
Last Decade Warmest Ever: NASA
WASHINGTON - The past decade was the warmest ever on Earth, a new analysis of global surface temperatures released by NASA showed Thursday.
A bushfire burns out of control in the Kiewa Valley in Victoria state, Australia. The past decade was the warmest ever on Earth, a new analysis of global surface temperatures released by NASA showed Thursday. (AFP/File/Torsten Blackwood) The US space agency also found that 2009 was the second-warmest year on record since modern temperature measurements began in 1880. Last year was only a small fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest yet, putting 2009 in a virtual tie with the other hottest years, which have all occurred since 1998.
According to James Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, global temperatures change due to variations in ocean heating and cooling.
"When we average temperature over five or 10 years to minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated," Hansen said in a statement.
A strong La Nina effect that cooled the tropical Pacific Ocean made 2008 the coolest year of the decade, according to the New York-based institute.
In analyzing the data, NASA scientists found a clear warming trend, although a leveling off took place in the 1940s and 1970s.
The records showed that temperatures trended upward by about 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 Celsius) per decade over the past 30 years. Average global temperatures have increased a total of about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 Celsius) since 1880.
"That's the important number to keep in mind," said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist with the institute.
"The difference between the second and sixth warmest years is trivial because the known uncertainty in the temperature measurement is larger than some of the differences between the warmest years."
Last year's near-record temperatures took place despite an unseasonably cool December in much of North America and a warmer-than-normal Arctic, with frigid air from the Arctic rushing into the region while warmer mid-latitude air shifted northward, the institute said.
The analysis was based on weather data from over a thousand meteorological stations worldwide, satellite observations of sea surface temperatures and Antarctic research station measurements.
But the newly released figures were unlikely to quell a heated climate debate.
The so-called "climategate" controversy that exploded last fall on the eve of UN-sponsored climate talks unleashed a furor over whether the planet was heating and, if so, at what pace.
Hundreds of emails intercepted from scientists at Britain's University of East Anglia, a top center for climate research, have been seized upon by skeptics as evidence that experts twisted data in order to dramatize global warming.
World powers agreed at the Copenhagen climate summit last month to seek to prevent average global temperatures from rising beyond 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (two Celsius) above pre-industrial levels in order to halt the most devastating effects of global warming.
"There's a contradiction between the results shown here and popular perceptions about climate trends," Hansen said. "In the last decade, global warming has not stopped."
Look at this:
". The past decade was the warmest ever on Earth, ...also found that 2009 was the second-warmest year on record since modern temperature measurements began in 1880. "
What it really says is that the past decade is the warmest since 1880. Big Deal. Not "warmest" ever.
It is a big deal, glaciers are melting and water levels will rise if we don't stop, whole cities will go under water and there will be chaos and death everywhere for the poor countries, like Haiti, have you no compassion for the poor?
That it is the "warmest" of 12 decades is not a big deal. It was probably warmer in Britain 1000 years ago when the grew wine there.
That is why you have to address resources to solving problems, not wasting them by trying to cut C02 emissions, which will not do anything.
Post a Comment