The real holes in climate science
Like any other field, research on climate change has some fundamental gaps, although not the ones typically claimed by sceptics. Quirin Schiermeier takes a hard look at some of the biggest problem areas.
Quirin Schiermeier
The e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in November presented an early Christmas present to climate-change denialists. Amid the more than 1,000 messages were several controversial comments that — taken out of context — seemingly indicate that climate scientists have been hiding a mound of dirty laundry from the public.
A fuller reading of the e-mails from CRU in Norwich, UK, does show a sobering amount of rude behaviour and verbal faux pas, but nothing that challenges the scientific consensus of climate change. Still, the incident provides a good opportunity to point out that — as in any active field of inquiry — there are some major gaps in the understanding of climate science. In its most recent report in 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted 54 'key uncertainties' that complicate climate science.
Such a declaration of unresolved problems could hardly be called 'hidden'. And some of these — such as uncertainties in measurements of past temperatures — have received considerable discussion in the media. But other gaps in the science are less well known beyond the field's circle of specialists. Such holes do not undermine the fundamental conclusion that humans are warming the climate, which is based on the extreme rate of the twentieth-century temperature changes and the inability of climate models to simulate such warming without including the role of greenhouse-gas pollution. The uncertainties do, however, hamper efforts to plan for the future. And unlike the myths regularly trotted out by climate-change denialists (see 'Enduring climate myths'), some of the outstanding problems may mean that future changes could be worse than currently projected.
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NOTA CAUSTICANTE DESTE BLOGGER:
Quem te viu, quem te vê, Nature! Quando uma publicação científica do seu porte defende atitudes anti-éticas de cientistas, alguma coisa de ruim sinaliza: há algo de podre por detrás dos bastidores da Nomenklatura científica na defesa de posições ideológicas e políticas como se fossem a própria ciência, e o rei está nu, oops, e os atuais paradigmas demandam revisão ou simples descarte.
