If you’d like a chuckle, read Neal’s post about a gentleman who thought he’d demonstrate first hand just how bad global warming had gotten by yachting through all the arctic ocean’s melted ice. Unfortunately, he shouldn’t have been so selective in his research before setting off. Now he’s iced in off an island and trying to figure out how to get home.
In related news, a new study finds that just because people some people claim something over and over doesn’t make it true. That’s pretty much the conclusion of a study that found climatologists are far from reaching a consensus on global warming. A researcher found that of 528 peer-reviewed papers published between 2004 and 2007 , only 7% explicitly endorsed the human-caused global warming “consensus”. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. On the other end of the spectrum, only 6% reject the consensus outright. The largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus.”
Personally, I think many people would agree something is going on with our climate. Weather is different now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. But how much is human caused and how much is just part of the normal earthly cycle? I think climatology is still developing as a science, and computer models are still only as good as a) the data entered, and b) our limited understanding of how weather works. If you’re ready to put all your faith into those models, ask a climatologist to predict whether or not it’s going to rain in 3 months.
[...] increase in utility costs as a way to fight global warming. (The same global warming that recently iced in the ill-conceived yachtsman’s adventure.) It seems to me that higher utility costs are likely to affect utility usage very little, but [...]