Friday, October 21, 2011

Global warming is for real. Any which way you measure it.

The Economist reports about the latest study (Berkeley Earth):

as described in four papers currently undergoing peer review, but which were nonetheless released on October 20th, offer strong support to the existing temperature compilations. The group estimates that over the past 50 years the land surface warmed by 0.911°C: a mere 2% less than NOAA’s estimate.


Perhaps the deniers don't read The Economist too? :)

Out in the Republic of Texas, Rick Perry and his dashing cowboys wouldn't care:

Two Texas lawmakers have accused the state's environmental agency of censoring information about global warming in a state-commissioned report about Galveston Bay.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, who has questioned the validity of man-made global warming during recent presidential debates and appearances. Officials defended their actions, saying they did not censor mentions of global warming and that the information was not relevant to the focus of the report.

A researcher from the group writes in the Wall Street Journal:

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.
Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate. How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that.

Perhaps the deniers self-censor this WSJ piece too?

Greg Mankiw, who was in Bush's economic team and is now advising Romney, yet again endorses the idea of a carbon tax when he approvingly cites this:

The need for taxes on energy externalities such as carbon emissions is central to our ability to reduce the harmful side effects of economic growth. It is striking how the political dialogue in the US has ignored a policy that has so many desirable features. Perhaps, in the near future, faced with the deadline of a dire economic situation, negotiators will formulate such a policy. It would generate substantial revenues while bringing so many long-run economic and environmental benefits. Simply put, externality taxes are the best fiscal instrument to employ at this time, in this country, and given the fiscal constraints faced by the US.

I am sure the deniers think that Mankiw is a liberal hippie :)

No comments: