VitalAccurateThinking

Global Warming: Newspaper Versus Journal

This is an example of a newspaper article written on Global Warming.

The Earth has been warming at a rate of 0.36 degree Fahrenheit per decade for the last 30 years, according to the research team led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

That brings the overall temperature to the warmest in the current interglacial period, which began about 12,000 years ago.

The study said the recent warming has brought global temperature to a level within about one degree Celsius — 1.8 degree Fahrenheit — of the maximum temperature of the past million years.

Notice how it relies on authority and name recognition over actual data and analysis. There are no graphs, there are no actual data. Not good enough for me. Time to start googling.

The inquisitive person can go here for the full, scientific paper published by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One thing I find interesting about the full article is that it acts as if the current warming trend began 12,000 years ago instead of almost 20,000 years ago. They discuss how the temperature has changed approximately 0.2 C per decade in the last 30 years. This is a case of picking their time period correctly to give the result they want. Considering there was no temperature increase between 1929 and 1976 when humans emitted a large amount of C02, I would conclude there are other factors involved betsides just C02 concentration.

There is never discussion of the sharp trend between 19,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago when the earth warmed about 8 C (ref Volstoc Ice Core Data). Presumable, that temperature rise was not related to human activity on planet earth. Personally, I want an explanation of historical rises in temperature and CO2 concentrations before humans had a chance to impact the climate through the burning of hydrocarbons.

Here is an interesting tidbit: August 2006 was the coolest August since 1997. Don't believe me? Go look at the NASA data. (Update 13-Oct-06 - The NASA data has changed as a result of an update in temperature data from Australia and Antartica. Dr. Sato of GISS gave the plausible explanation of the data revision.)

Update: The Nasa

posted by Jim VAT @ 9:11 PM