segunda-feira, agosto 25, 2003
GLOBAL WARMING: sexing-up the threat
"...is it true that the scientific evidence of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms that climate change is already taking place and that most of the warming observed during the last 50 years is attributable to human activities. Well eh .... not exactly. It depends on how you want to read the reports of the IPCC.
IPCC reports are inaccessible for ordinary people, including policymakers. Therefore, the IPCC has popularised its findings and presented a summary for policymakers...This summary has been heavily criticised in many columns on TCS for its slanted presentation of the underlying scientific reports -- and rightly so. But to its credit it must be recognised that it is also pretty frank about the level of scientific knowledge which climatologists believe to possess. In the summary, the word "uncertainty" or an equivalent occurs no fewer than forty times. This is probably unprecedented for such a short document. The most striking illustration of this uncertainty is IPCC's acknowledgement that it knows (very) little about nine out of the twelve mechanisms which are determinant for global warming.
Oh yea ... I forgot to tell that there is still another suspect about they know very little, but which has not been included in the graph. It is the most important greenhouse gas: water vapour. As Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick observe in their recent book ("Taken by Storm, The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming"): "[...] leaving water vapour off the list [...] is like describing the PC software industry and leaving out Microsoft."
What do we make out all of this? There can only be one conclusion: "The science is fatally flawed." Heard that one before? Well ... it is true. It is the translation into everyday language of what the IPCC itself writes in its reports."
posted by Joao 10:07 da tarde
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