Stunning New Development in Climate Change

[Scott A. Kampas]

ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE:
New Models Indicate Dramatic Global Cooling Imminent
Richard A. Kerr

The first results from the new GCM at NASA’s GISS lab are revamping the way we understand climate change. The new twist is shocking. Contrary to all earlier work, a dramatic, 5 degrees C cooling in the Northern Hemisphere is expected within 10 years. That shakes up what had seemed to be a consensus, although some balk at this new perspective.

Mark Cane, of the GISS lab, and 15 colleagues report the stunning findings. In similar studies by other GCM’s, anthropogenic greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere were predicted to result in global warming. In the Cane study, published this week in Nature, the modelers varied eight parameters –two more than any previous work- so that they could explore nonlinear interactions between parameters. The perturbed parameters did in fact interact nonlinearly to heighten climate sensitivity, in a stunning fashion. None of the simulations showed Northern Hemisphere warming for the next 50 years. And most simulations did not fall far from the model's sensitivity of 1.4ºC when run with no parameters perturbed. But the inevitable long tail of results on the high-sensitivity side ran out to 10 degrees C of cooling, an effect opposite any kind of study before it.

How likely is a dramatic cooling? "We can't yet give a probability for our results," says Cane. "Our results are very sensitive to our prior assumptions," such as which parameters are perturbed and by how much. Previous studies suffer from the same limitations, he says. “And frankly, we don’t want to believe these results.â€

Other climate researchers will take some convincing. "I just can't believe the climate will cool," says paleoclimatologist Thomas Crowley of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Climate's responses to past, natural changes in greenhouse gases or equivalent climate drivers, such as volcanic eruptions, have all reflected warming, he says. Until modelers can confirm the new results—as other researchers update their models to try to replicate the GISS work--Crowley will stick with a moderately strong warming.[/b]

 

[Jeff Snyder]

ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE:
New Models Indicate Dramatic Global Cooling Imminent
Richard A. Kerr
[/b]

Wasn't Nature the journal that's seen several dubious reports in the past couple of years? I think the most recent debacle was in the news a couple of weeks ago... Oh yeah, Encyclopaedia Britannica released a detailed study about how an article (about how Wikipedia has about the same number of errors as Brittnnica) in the journal Nature consisted of some completely made up and doctored things. The authors of the "study" release some more facts a few weeks after the article was published, but not as many folks noticed and the media didn't really pick up on it since it was old news by then.

"Almost everything about the journal's investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading," it read. "The study was so poorly carried out and its findings so error-laden that it was completely without merit."[/b]

--> 'Nature's' response to criticism far from pristine (USA Today)

Wasn't the whole debacle about the fake study about the genome project last year also from Nature? I know this isn't directly about the article, but it's tough to take the journal seriously when it has had a couple of flagrant errors in the past couple of years... It is a peer-reviewed journal, isn't it?

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

I believe you may have been the unwitting victim of an April Fool's story, Scott.

 

[Scott A. Kampas]

I believe you may have been the unwitting victim of an April Fool's story, Scott.
[/b]

Actually, I caught it as such on another forum, and passed it on here ;-).

 

[mrobinett]

Global Cooling? Theres no money to be made from Global Cooling, and that would mean someone's losing their grant money, after all mankind is fully responsible for Global Warming you know! Oh and the US not signing the Kyoto Accord, it got hotter the day after, hmmmm.

Truth is, no one has figured out the overall climatic pattern, those who claim to are just wanting grant money, when you think about it from that aspect it all makes sense.

"retract soapbox, please"
Mike

 

[Wade Starr]

Well, I don't have a position on this topic either way. I'm sure there is much more to learn and theories will be adjusted as the understanding improves, just like in Astronomy where accepted theories change as scientists learn more.

A great example of this is when it was confirmed that the T-Rex was a scavanger not a preditor. Of course, the prehistoric science world reacted in denial as they discovered that what they had believed for so long was wrong and they had to let go of their romantic attraction to the T-Rex being this hunt and kill monster. And many scientists still can't get over the hump.

The atmospheric science world faces the same challenges. In a field where scientists are continuously discovering new things and learning, there's the challenge of having to let go of what was a generally accepted theory and adjust when data and evidence confirms it.

I'm not a career scientist, just a weather science enthusiast. So, I say this from the outside looking in. One things I see happening with the atmospheric science community and the global warming issue is the developing romantic attraction to a world with all of this catastrophic weather like CAT 8 hurricanes the size of the U.S., 5 mile wide F 8 tornados and all of that. You see TV shows about this now which makes for very entertaining television, but is that reality?