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New estimates from a Norwegian research project show meeting targets for minimizing global warming may be more achievable than previously thought.

After the planet’s average surface temperature rose through the 1990s, the increase has almost leveled off at the level of 2000, while ocean water temperature has also stabilized, the Research Council of Norway said in a statement on its website. After applying data from the past decade, the results showed temperatures may rise 1.9 degrees Celsius if Co2 levels double by 2050, below the 3 degrees predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s,” said Terje Berntsen, a professor at the University of Oslo who worked on the study. “This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.”

The findings also show the effect of reduced airborne particulates from burning coal, which may decrease the cloud cover that cools the earth, probably has less of an impact on climate through indirect cooling than originally projected.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-27/norway-data-shows-earth-s-global-warming-less-severe-than-feared.html

bcspace wrote:

New estimates from a Norwegian research project show meeting targets for minimizing global warming may be more achievable than previously thought.

After the planet’s average surface temperature rose through the 1990s, the increase has almost leveled off at the level of 2000, while ocean water temperature has also stabilized, the Research Council of Norway said in a statement on its website. After applying data from the past decade, the results showed temperatures may rise 1.9 degrees Celsius if Co2 levels double by 2050, below the 3 degrees predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s,” said Terje Berntsen, a professor at the University of Oslo who worked on the study. “This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.”

The findings also show the effect of reduced airborne particulates from burning coal, which may decrease the cloud cover that cools the earth, probably has less of an impact on climate through indirect cooling than originally projected.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-27/norway-data-shows-earth-s-global-warming-less-severe-than-feared.html

“I Got it Wrong on Climate Change—it’s Far, Far Worse”

Nicholas Stern, the author of a 2006 report commissioned by the British government on climate change that has been used as a reference ever since, says he now realizes he “underestimated the risks” of rising temperatures. In an interview with the Guardian, Stern, who is one of the world's leading environmental economists, says that had he known then what he knows now, he would have been “a bit more blunt” about the risks that climate change poses to the economy.

Stern, who heads up the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, says that the “atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly.” Some of the effects of the rising temperatures are becoming evident more quickly than initially predicted. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change claimed there was a 75 percent chance that global temperatures would increase by two or three degrees above average. But now Stern believes the world is "on track for something like four.”

MeDotOrg wrote:In a year that saw the average temperature in the United States increase by a degree, something to ponder...

Brad Hudson wrote:Yeah, let's ignore all the studies published to date in favor of a press release for a study that hasn't even been published yet (or even accepted for publication by a scientific journal.) Details: http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate ... icero.html That's what denial is all about.

subgenius wrote:

Brad Hudson wrote:Yeah, let's ignore all the studies published to date in favor of a press release for a study that hasn't even been published yet (or even accepted for publication by a scientific journal.) Details: http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate ... icero.html That's what denial is all about.

nobody said to ignore anything....presuppose much?

denial is actually all about what you are doing....denying the validity of something because it disagrees with you...you would hardly have the same "attitude" if it were a yet to be published study that supported your position...you would simply exclaim that you are still "confident" with its results.

MeDotOrg wrote:

“I Got it Wrong on Climate Change—it’s Far, Far Worse”

Nicholas Stern, the author of a 2006 report commissioned by the British government on climate change that has been used as a reference ever since, says he now realizes he “underestimated the risks” of rising temperatures. In an interview with the Guardian, Stern, who is one of the world's leading environmental economists, says that had he known then what he knows now, he would have been “a bit more blunt” about the risks that climate change poses to the economy.

Stern, who heads up the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, says that the “atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly.” Some of the effects of the rising temperatures are becoming evident more quickly than initially predicted. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change claimed there was a 75 percent chance that global temperatures would increase by two or three degrees above average. But now Stern believes the world is "on track for something like four.”

In a year that saw the average temperature in the United States increase by a degree, something to ponder...