On Global Warming

Polls say more people think that Global Warming is happening. Is this a chicken or egg thing? The media latches on to the meme that we're indeed witnessing global warming, and various reports claim that it is human interactions that are bringing this on.

Of course, reports that indicate that fluctuations in the sun's output can affect the weather are not nearly as widely disseminated as those that tout mankind's effects.

Then, you've got the New York Times, who runs with this attention grabbing headline that is false on its face: Climate Data Hint at Irreversible Rise in Seas.

Within the next 100 years, the growing human influence on Earth's climate could lead to a long and irreversible rise in sea levels by eroding the planet's vast polar ice sheets, according to new observations and analysis by several teams of scientists.

One team, using computer models of climate and ice, found that by about 2100, average temperatures could be four degrees higher than today and that over the coming centuries, the oceans could rise 13 to 20 feet — conditions last seen 129,000 years ago, between the last two ice ages.

The findings, being reported today in the journal Science, are consistent with other recent studies of melting and erosion at the poles. Many experts say there are still uncertainties about timing, extent and causes.

Did you get that? Lots of assumptions that suggest that temperatures could rise, and oceans could rise as well. If you cherry pick your data and provide some of the most fearsome sounding outcomes, it sounds like the sky is falling.

Step back for a moment and consider the following: ocean levels rise and fall in cycles and scientists don't have a good handle on all the forces that interact to cause climate change. They're making assumptions based on incomplete data and that does no one any good. Are temperatures currently rising? Yes. Are they going to continue rising? That depends on the timeframes we're looking at. They might continue rising for another decade and stabilize or drop off, or they could continue rising. No one has any idea, and no one has invented a time machine to verify whether any of these predictions will come to pass.

Yet, the Times thinks that the rise in sea levels is irreversible. That's patently false as ocean levels have risen and fallen periodically as the second paragraph of that very article states.

Way to muddle the science as these phenomena need to be studied more closely but don't let your agenda get in the way of the science. That's precisely what the Times has done.