Is It Getting Warmer?

EurActiv.com  - September 26, 2007

As anyone that has read this site regularly can attest, I am disappointed in the state of our technology when it comes to understanding and predicting our climate with computerized models.  I have repeatedly called for the dedication of more funds and more brain power on this problem. The entire global warming discussion is based on the use of computer models and it seems foolish to me that we should spend billions of dollars on preventing global warming when we can’t first spend a few millions to improve our ability to forecast and model the climate.

I am not alone in this thinking and this article discusses the pros and cons of making policy decisions based on these models.  It is a great article and we need to have more discussion on this subject.

As world leaders gathered in New York for a high-level UN meeting on climate change, a new report by some of the world’s most renowned scientists urges policymakers to keep their eyes on the "science grapevine", arguing that their understanding of global warming is still far from complete.

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…leading climate-physicists’ views on the reliability of these models differ. The IOP is also urging world leaders "to remain alert to the latest scientific thought on climate change".

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Richard S Lindzen believes that the "current climate models exaggerate the impact of CO2 on temperature because of a poor understanding and representation of the feedback effects due to clouds and water vapour".

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"Even though there is evidence around us of climate change, and we need to continue to take action now - greater computing power and further debate is needed in order to make the modelling processes more robust to remove current uncertainties," said Tajinder Panesor.

You can read the rest of this article here as well as click thru to a variety of supporting documents.

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Filed under: Greenhouse gas, Politics, Weather science

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