Saturday, October 22, 2005

More Evidence Against Global Warming

Greenland's ice cap is thickening. What is most amusing about the article is that it does it's best to say that thickening ice is consistent with global warming.
However, they [scientists at Global Ocean Studies and Operational Oceanography in Norway] said that the thickening seemed consistent with theories of global warming, blamed by most experts on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

Warmer air, even if it is still below freezing, can carry more moisture. That extra moisture falls as snow below 32 Fahrenheit.
I really don't follow this. It's warmer air, but still below freezing, so how can this cause the melting that some fear? My favorite phantom fear is this one:
Most models of global warming indicate that the Greenland ice might melt within thousands of years if warming continues.
A thousand years? Certainly there won't be any technology or societal changes in the next 1000 years, so it makes sense to run models based on current conditions out for ten centuries. Global warming theories would be easier to take seriously if they weren't based on scientific theories that so often ignore good scientific practice.

1 comment:

Neil said...

I'm confused Dan. The "anti-global-warming" community has said for years "there's not enough evidence that global warming is real, show us more", and they have been shown this over the last few decades to the point that every respectable scientist things it's a real danger. But, now one little piece of evidence shows up to the contrary and you believe it proves that global warming isn't happening? I'm not suprised by this evidence. Climates are such complex systems it's difficult to predict every single outcome. That one small subsystem had results contrary to existing models isn't suprising.