Global Warming Dispute Resolved

[arwalden]

http://www.bobpark.org/

Friday, August 12, 2005

1. GLOBAL WARMING: ANOTHER DISPUTE SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN RESOLVED.

Homo sapiens has been around for maybe 50,000 years, but most of what we've learned about our universe, from how big it is to how small its pieces are, has been learned in the span of a single human lifetime. What made it possible was the development of a scientific culture that is open and conditional. The effect of homo sapiens on Earth's climate is perhaps the most complicated problem humans have tackled, and conceivably the most important. The system is working. We have a consensus on warming; disputes remain only over the details. One detail was records that were interpreted by a group at the U. Alabama in Huntsville as showing that the troposphere had not warmed in two decades and the tropics had cooled. However, three papers in Science this week report errors in the Alabama-Huntsville calculations. It seems that warming of the troposphere agrees with surface measurements and recent computer predictions. The group at Alabama-Huntsville concedes the error, but says the effect is not that large. That's the way it's supposed to work. It's a textbook example of science in the process of resolving a very complicated problem.

[rodeodance]

1. but did anyone tell the bushies?