US Scientists (Including Thompson, Trenberth) Say New IPCC Assessment Too Optimistic - IHT

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON: Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that may be the sugarcoated version. Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers. Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations:

They "don't take into account the gorillas — Greenland and Antarctica," said Ohio State University earth sciences professor Lonnie Thompson, a polar ice specialist. "I think there are unpleasant surprises as we move into the 21st century." Michael MacCracken, who until 2001 coordinated the official U.S. government reviews of the international climate report on global warming, has fired off a letter of protest over the omission.

EDIT

The early versions of the report predict that by 2100 the sea level will rise anywhere between 5 and 23 inches (12.7 to 58 centimeters). That's far lower than the 20 to 55 inches (51 to 140 centimeters) forecast by 2100 in a study published in the peer-review journal Science this month. Other climate experts, including NASA's James Hansen, predict much bigger sea level rises. The report is also expected to include some kind of proviso that says things could be much worse if ice sheets continue to melt.

The prediction being considered this week by the IPCC is "obviously not the full story because ice sheet decay is something we cannot model right now, but we know it's happening," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate panel lead author from Germany who made the larger prediction of up to 55 inches (140 centimeters) of sea level rise. "A document like that tends to underestimate the risk," he said. "This will dominate their discussion because there's so much contentiousness about it," said Bob Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a multinational research effort. "If the IPCC comes out with significantly less than one meter (about 39 inches), there will be people in the science community saying we don't think that's a fair reflection of what we know."

EDIT

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/28/america/NA-FEA-GEN-US-Climate-Report.php

At this point, I pretty much just have to start laughing. The alternative makes me look so damned ugly.

[NMDemDist2]

1. while they argue about deck chair placement on the Titanic

nobody is doing anything except us poor tree huggers switching to CFLs and trying to make a smaller footprint

:banghead:

[phantom power]

2. Clearly, we cannot act until we fully understand ice sheet decay.

I mean, is it going to be 54.8 inches, or 55.3 inches?