The British Med Office has released the latest data on global surface temperatures based on now more than 3,000 land stations; there is no room for scepticism unless it is based on better, i.e. more and more reliable data; anything else is gobble-di-goo.
There are three independent sources that pretty much match:- Met Office, in collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UK)
- Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is part of NASA (USA)
Carpe diem!
2 comments:
I fully support efforts to reduce global warming, but if I were to share this data, what's the answer to deniers who claim these trends are simply part of the natural cyclical nature of our climate?
Kevin
Valid point; in an earlier blog post I have tried to look behind what the temperatures really were during the last xx centuries. You will notice that CO2 levels and temperatures – or vice versa!? - are pretty much following each other. Professor Richard B. Alley explains the correlation between both values; rather interesting.
The historic dimensions are huge but while our human records are negligible to put things into any historical relation we need to relate and rely on what scientists are telling us. True, some mistakes are unavoidable but that's part of the human nature and experience; nevertheless, we made it so long and to the moon pretty much based on their knowledge.
For the rest it is easy to express scepticism, spread denial, never verifiable, mostly flippant, and irresponsible: what does any denier know better or more than the vast majority of those who work on the subject on a global scale?
In general what is called climate gate and even the CO2 discussion per se threatens to drown what we really have to find solutions for; I copy Walter Oechel and what he describes as the “Perfect Storm”
“I’m unaware of anyone dealing with this double-edged sword of an increasing population and an increasing resource use.” We are approaching the Perfect Storm, he says: Just as Earth reaches her limits of tolerance for carbon emissions, the developing world is about to explode in fossil-fuel-driven consumerism, led by China and India. “Over the 30 years I’ve been involved in climate-change research, China has gone from a per capita CO2 emission of 1/32 of that of America to about 1/3. I’m not picking on China. Most of the developing world wants to develop, and if the developing world reaches just 1/3 the U.S.’s resource use — and if you apply that to the current population of almost 7 billion, let alone a likely future population of 13 billion or more — it just explodes in terms of CO2 emissions and resource use.”
(here's the link)
Nice prospects!
Christian
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