Friday, May 9, 2008

Global cooling theories put scientists on guard

Politicians and financiers too, methinks.
From Reuters:

A new study* suggesting a possible lull in manmade global warming has raised fears of a reduced urgency to battle climate change....
...So the Nature paper has sparked worries that briefly cooler temperatures may take the heat out of action to fight the threat of more droughts and floods, while a debate about the article's findings has also underlined uncertainty about such forecasting....
...But worries about the impact on competitiveness by slowing carbon emissions -- by curbing the use of fossil fuels -- are already fraying those efforts. Russia said last week it would not dampen its economic growth....
...The reaction to the Nature paper has underlined uncertainty about climate forecasting, as well as the fact that a minority of global warming doubters has not gone away....MORE

For our quick and dirty thoughts on the Keenlyside paper see: Climate Models and Modeling.

And there is one of the reasons we had seven posts on computer modeling this week.