Climate Change
I was reading New Scientist (18th March issue) on climatic change, and it was interesting to me because I just had a short discussion with a friend of mine on climate change and global warming. This came from some issue of TIME that was on her coffee table when I visited her.
It is one of those things which people debate a lot about, in part because if global warming really were caused by our modern actions (e.g. using too much power, burning too many fuels, industrialisation and all...), then to reduce the effects, we have to make really drastic and costly changes to our lives. Maybe not costly, but definitely drastic, and coutries don't want to fall behind in development. So if you want to stop global warming, it has to be a global effort.
So I'll say to read whatever comes your way with a pinch of salt. Information that gets disseminated often have the author's agenda disguised within. Even when you read what I write here, it's going to be biased in some way. And global warming is affected by lots of politics too.
Anyway, the article I read was quite balanced, giving both views, and I've found blogs which were referenced in the article. One of them is RealClimate, whose Michael Mann was featured in the article. He's made "one of the first serious attempts to work out the average global temperature over the past millennium". And he came up with this "hocky stick" graph which showed that the climate has been rising sharply over the 20th century.
Well, his approach has been under scrutiny, in part of it's implications and assumptions, which was what the article was on about. But every methodology has flaws anyway, so I'm not surprised by that. In the New Scientist article (just so you don't think I researched all this myself and give me any credit), some criticism to Mann's work can be found at Climate Audit.
It is one of those things which people debate a lot about, in part because if global warming really were caused by our modern actions (e.g. using too much power, burning too many fuels, industrialisation and all...), then to reduce the effects, we have to make really drastic and costly changes to our lives. Maybe not costly, but definitely drastic, and coutries don't want to fall behind in development. So if you want to stop global warming, it has to be a global effort.
So I'll say to read whatever comes your way with a pinch of salt. Information that gets disseminated often have the author's agenda disguised within. Even when you read what I write here, it's going to be biased in some way. And global warming is affected by lots of politics too.
Anyway, the article I read was quite balanced, giving both views, and I've found blogs which were referenced in the article. One of them is RealClimate, whose Michael Mann was featured in the article. He's made "one of the first serious attempts to work out the average global temperature over the past millennium". And he came up with this "hocky stick" graph which showed that the climate has been rising sharply over the 20th century.
Well, his approach has been under scrutiny, in part of it's implications and assumptions, which was what the article was on about. But every methodology has flaws anyway, so I'm not surprised by that. In the New Scientist article (just so you don't think I researched all this myself and give me any credit), some criticism to Mann's work can be found at Climate Audit.
You know, I never said my own opinions on this. I'm not sure how severe the climate change is - whether it's part of the usual climate variations, or if this (if there is a drastic change) is due to our actions. Fact is, to extrapolate beyond the 1860 (when direct temperature measurement started) requires plenty of assumptions, and we scientists always work within assumptions because it's almost impossible to cover every possible factor. It's not taking the easy way out, but it's about being practical about research. I don't know what we should do though. At the end of the day, the governments have more say than I do. And we definitely need global unity on this matter, because there is no point one country cutting emissions while another persists on it. But I'll do what I can on a personal basis: take public transport, reduce my consumption of unnecessary (this is debatable!) power... At least I know we're definitely running short on coal and the non-renewable resource. So global warming or not, we still ought to be cautious of our power consumption.
posted by Female Fizzicist at 5:59 PM
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