Thursday, December 18, 2008

In case you hadn't noticed...

... the meeting of the American Geophysical Union is on at the moment, and this Nature blog: In The Field: American Geophysical Union Archives has heaps of interesting posts about the various talks and papers being presented.

There appears to be nothing substantial in the way of global warming scepticism there (sorry my band of conservative greenhouse skeptic readers). But here are some of the more interesting posts:

* the main protagonists in the "hockey stick" controversy were together still disagreeing. (I personally am of the view that it was not that important an issue anyway.)

* here's another confirmation that Arctic ice is not just melting more in recent summers, it's getting thinner too.

* what are the odds of really abrupt climate changes? There's some relatively good news in there (Atlantic ocean circulation that keep England warm isn't expected to stop this century, and massive amounts of methane from underground may also stay in place for that long.) But, they now think ocean level rises will be faster and higher than IPCC last reported.

Even so, I don't tend to get too worked up about this (rising sea levels) as an issue, although I suppose I should if a metre in a century is possible. Certainly, it hasn't started yet, and engineering at least has a chance of addressing it in many areas. It's not as if the large rises be detected as soon as they start happening, and they will take many years to be fully realised.

My hunch is also to not be so sure on the methane issue. It seems poorly understood.

* here's a novel suggestion for climate geo-engineering that sounds much more "do-able" than most other ideas. (It's about getting rid of high altitude clouds.)

No comments: