This Week in Climate News

Climategate 2.0 is the main climate news this week, right?  As it happens, there’s a study just out a couple days ago in ScienceExpress, which is the advance online venue for Science magazine, on a new study that blows the hinges off the catastrophic global warming scenarios.  The study concerns the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide concentrations.  The complete study (“Climate Sensitivity Estimated from Temperature Reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum,” Andreas Schmittner of Oregon State University, lead author) requires a Science magazine subscription for the complete text, was peer-reviewed, and was funded by the National Science Foundation.  But here’s the abstract:

Assessing impacts of future anthropogenic carbon emissions is currently impeded by uncertainties in our knowledge of equilibrium climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide doubling. Previous studies suggest 3 K as best estimate, 2 to 4.5 K as the 66% probability range, and nonzero probabilities for much higher values, the latter implying a small but significant chance of high-impact climate changes that would be difficult to avoid. Here, combining extensive sea and land surface temperature reconstructions from the Last Glacial Maximum with climate model simulations, we estimate a lower median (2.3 K) and reduced uncertainty (1.7 to 2.6 K 66% probability). Assuming paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future as predicted by our model, these results imply lower probability of imminent extreme climatic change than previously thought.  (Emphasis added.)

Bottom line: the “consensus” IPCC range overestimates climate sensitivity by almost a factor of 2.  No doubt the mainstream media will be all over this study, and the next UN climate meeting opening soon in Durban will take note of it, too.  Yeah–right after the Redskins win the Super Bowl, no doubt.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses