[ExI] Next Decade May See No Warming

[Damien Broderick]

At 12:42 AM 5/1/2008 -0700, Lee wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7376301.stm

>it's not out of place at all to bring up the other
>side of the story, or data that might support it,
>(whether or not I am myself an entirely unbiased
>source).

Lee, can't you see what you're doing in these sorts of posts? Isn't 
your clear implication "Here's more evidence that global heating due 
to human activity is bullshit"? Yet, as usual, a moment reading the 
BBC item you cited will find this:

< His group's projection diverges from other computer models only for 
about 15-20 years; after that, the curves come back together and 
temperatures rise....

The projection does not come as a surprise to climate scientists, 
though it may to a public that has perhaps become used to the idea 
that the rapid temperature rises seen through the 1990s are a 
permanent phenomenon.

"We've always known that the climate varies naturally from year to 
year and decade to decade," said Richard Wood from the UK's Hadley 
Centre, who reviewed the new research for Nature.

"We expect man-made global warming to be superimposed on those 
natural variations; and this kind of research is important to make 
sure we don't get distracted from the longer term changes that will 
happen in the climate (as a result of greenhouse gas emissions)." >

What comfort do you get from this?

The comfort *I* get is the possibility that this countervailing or 
offsetting cooling gives us a little more time to do something to 
correct the longer-term disruption (should we choose to do so), and 
that due to the predicted accelerations of technology over the next 
15-20 years we'll be better able to do that in 2030, and less 
expensively, than we can now. Is that what you had in mind? (Bearing 
in mind that during those years, anthropogenic factors will also 
increase *drastically* as the Third World tears headlong into 20th 
century industrialization.)

Damien Broderick