Thursday, February 24, 2011

A Reasonable Perspective on Global Warming

I’ve read a lot about global warming, taught issues about climate in my classes, and have a decent (but not expert) understanding of the physics involved. Among my colleagues I’m the only one who even entertains the notion that the problem may not be as serious as the media suggests, and I’m the only one who criticizes the IPCC and the “hide the decline” and the extinct polar bears claims.

So it was refreshing to hear this talk by Prof Richard Muller at Berkeley, and to see the Berkeley Earth Project start up. It’s seems to be a reasonable look at what we know confidently, what we really don’t know, and many of the communications failures in the recent years between the climate experts and the public. I was pointed to this talk by Dr Judith Curry’s website, which also seems to be a breath of fresh air on this whole topic. It seems serious and scientific. It doesn’t resort to the hysteria of Al Gore or of Sarah Palin.

I’m looking forward to following these groups more closely in the future.

1 comment:

  1. Maybe I'm just a dyed in the wool old cynic... but I always look to see someones motivation for telling me something... I think this gives me a healthy scepticism when people who make careers and money out of global warming tell me its such a serious problem... and then people who make money out of selling news sensationalise this story to sell more news!!

    Maybe I'm missing something but the world has been considerably warmer in the past... and we didn't have a run away greenhouse effect... and indeed in the beginning all the CO2 was in the atmosphere just waiting to fixed by plants.. even if we burn all the fossil fuel on the planet we are only returning CO2 back from whence it came??

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