Friday, July 26, 2013

Bringin' the Climate Change blogging

No, not me, but Mrs. Doubletrouble, the lovely and gracious hostess of the New England Blogshoot.  She emails to point out Yet Another failed ZOMG Thermageddon!!!1!!eleventy!! prediction:
Three academics have written an opinion piece in hefty boffinry mag Nature, saying that humanity must reduce carbon emissions hugely or methane belching from the Arctic seabed will do $60 trillion of economic damage. But the latest research suggests that Arctic methane emissions are nothing to do with rising temperatures.
Gail Whiteman (professor of "sustainability, management and climate change"), Chris Hope (an economist) and Peter Wadhams (an oceanologist) present their arguments in the Comment section of Nature, here (pdf). They start off by suggesting that disappearing ice and warmer seas in the Arctic (caused by human carbon emissions, they say) are already causing methane emissions, and that further warming - with associated ice loss - will see these emissions increase hugely.
Not only is Mrs. Doubletrouble bringing the Climate Change blogging, but she's bringing a pointer to The Register, one of my daily reads (when I'm not too busy, like I am now).  El Reg should be a stop for you, as they blog frequently and excellently on the whole hockey stick schtick.

This is a very good take down of the scare mongering, dealing with not only uncertainties in the science itself, but in the engineering of the solutions you'd need to address any real problem and a cost/benefit economics analysis of the situation.  In fact, it follows the template to a T.

Thanks, Mrs. DT!

2 comments:

SiGraybeard said...

Is that first link wrong? The "Mrs. Doubletree" links to a block post dated Nov. of 2012. The thermageddon post links to the Register.

Que?

Borepatch said...

Graybeard, Doubletrouble hasn't posted in a while, but she is indeed the one and only Mrs. Doubletrouble.