Climate Change Article
An interesting article (with an interesting footnote) on climate change by the Economist:
The world's climate has barely changed since the industrial revolution. The temperature was stable in the 19th century, rose very slightly during the first half of the 20th, fell back in the 1950s-70s, then started rising again. Over the past 100 years, it has gone up by about 0.6°C (1.1°F).So what's the fuss about? Not so much the rise in temperature as the reason for it. Previous changes in the world's climate have been set off by variations either in the angle of the Earth's rotation or in its distance from the sun. This time there is another factor involved: man-made “greenhouse gases”
Back in the 70s scientists were betting on the wrong horse:
If interest in climate change was lukewarm in the first half of the 20th century, it went distinctly chilly in the second half, for the good reason that the world was getting cooler. In 1975 Newsweek magazine ran a cover story entitled “The Cooling World” that gave warning of a “drastic decline in food production—with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth”—a prediction repeated with understandable glee by those who suspect the current worry is just another such scare.
Definitely a complex debate:
At a macro level, modelling what is one of the world's most complex mechanisms and projecting 100 years ahead is tricky. At a micro level, individual pieces of data contradict each other. One shrinking glacier can be countered by another that is growing; one area of diminishing precipitation can be answered by another where it is rising.
As I've said in the past, I'm moving to Canada. Or Tasmania. Not New Zealand.
The world's climate has barely changed since the industrial revolution. The temperature was stable in the 19th century, rose very slightly during the first half of the 20th, fell back in the 1950s-70s, then started rising again. Over the past 100 years, it has gone up by about 0.6°C (1.1°F).So what's the fuss about? Not so much the rise in temperature as the reason for it. Previous changes in the world's climate have been set off by variations either in the angle of the Earth's rotation or in its distance from the sun. This time there is another factor involved: man-made “greenhouse gases”
Back in the 70s scientists were betting on the wrong horse:
If interest in climate change was lukewarm in the first half of the 20th century, it went distinctly chilly in the second half, for the good reason that the world was getting cooler. In 1975 Newsweek magazine ran a cover story entitled “The Cooling World” that gave warning of a “drastic decline in food production—with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth”—a prediction repeated with understandable glee by those who suspect the current worry is just another such scare.
Definitely a complex debate:
At a macro level, modelling what is one of the world's most complex mechanisms and projecting 100 years ahead is tricky. At a micro level, individual pieces of data contradict each other. One shrinking glacier can be countered by another that is growing; one area of diminishing precipitation can be answered by another where it is rising.
As I've said in the past, I'm moving to Canada. Or Tasmania. Not New Zealand.
posted by Engels at 10:24 am
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