Goddard/UCSB Study - Planet Warmest In At Least 12,000 Years - BBC

[hatrack]

The world is the warmest it has been in the last 12,000 years as a result of rapid warming over the past 30 years, a study has suggested. Nasa climatologists said the Earth had warmed by about 0.2C (0.4F) in each of the last three decades.

Pollution from human activity was pushing the world towards dangerous levels of climate change, they warned. As a result, plant and animal species were struggling to migrate fast enough to cooler regions, they said. "The evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution," warned James Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York.

The study by researchers from Nasa, Columbia University and the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), showed that warming was greatest at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and was more pronounced over land than the oceans.

EDIT

Simon Tett, a scientist at the UK's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, said the findings supported Dr Hansen's earlier predictions, which had been criticised in some quarters. "The results of this study show that James Hansen's predictions of the late '80s are consistent with what has happened," Dr Tett said. "Modelling has moved on since then, but the idea that early predictions were done to cause panic and were wrong has been proved to be not the case."

EDIT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5381456.stm

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

1. UCSB Gaucho Grad Here! nt

[phantom power]

2. 55 million is >= 12 thousand, right?

[hatrack]

3. So I hear . . . . I just think they're being really, really conservative

This isn't necessarily inconsistent with the PETM comparative estimates from other studies. The phrase "at least" is getting a lot of play (at least in this report) and I just think they're really lowballing it.

[Boomer]

4. It's the wild-eyed nutball factor

Scientists, with some validity, are wary of earning the reputation for being unhinged alarmists. Because, of course, even the most oblique reference to global catastrophe is dismissed out of hand as the ravings of a lunatic.

Unfortunately, these men and women of science will soberly and sedately meet their doom, reputations untarnished, muttering softly under their breath, "Oh dear. This was exactly what I feared would happen...."

Every once in awhile, screaming panic really IS the appropriate response. :hide:

[phantom power]

5. Reminds me of the novel "Zodiac"

the main character is an environmental activist, and there's a scene where he describes his strategy for telling people about pH violations. He'll measure a pH violation of -5, which of course means some company is generating 100,000 times the legal concentration of acid-X in the water. But when he reports it, he will report it as something like "more than twice the legal limit," which is still true, but is a number that the average person off the street will actually believe.

If you try to tell people how bad things really are, they just won't believe it.

I think climate scientists are in a no-win situation. The public is now conditioned to hear any prediction of disaster as over-reaction and/or some kind of liberal plot to take away their infinite freedom of consumerism. They are true 21st-century Cassandras. Given a vision of the future, but cursed with the fate that nobody will believe them.

[Boomer]

6. And when all Hell breaks loose...

...people will look around with bewildered faces, whimpering "Who could have seen this coming?"