Sunday, January 27, 2013

Much Ado about Nothing

When people set their minds against something, they'll use any excuse to pull it down. Even the smallest molehill is blown out of proportion to become a mountain. In "Much Ado about Nothing" Shakespeare poked fun at protagonists who duelled over a verbal insult. They were ready to risk their lives for something Shakespeare saw as little more than nothing.



Similarly today, climate change deniers make a big fuss about little more than nothing. They exaggerate the importance of small differences to deny the broad consensus that exists among climate scientists.

This NASA graph shows global temperature anomalies 1880-2012 according to four main agencies (click to enlarge).



The agencies are NASA GISS, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, the Japanese Meteorological Agency, and the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom. All four institutions tally temperature data from stations around the world and make independent judgments about whether the year was warm or cool compared to other years.

Though there are minor variations from year to year, all four records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other. All show rapid warming in the past few decades, and all show the last decade as the warmest.

Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) say 2012 was the ninth warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. The ten warmest years in the 132-year record have all occurred since 1998. The last year that was cooler than average was 1976.

Contrarians and deniers who have their minds set against climate change pretend that the overall pattern isn't real, instead they make much ado about minor differences.

No wonder they are regarded as figures of fun who can't be taken seriously.

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News from the Transformation tab.  

Australian carbon emissions fell 8.6% in the first six months after the introduction of a carbon price in July 2012. 

1 comment:

  1. "No wonder they are regarded as figures of fun who can't be taken seriously."
    Afraid they don't get a chuckle out of me Gillian.

    ReplyDelete