28 April 2012

A Great Example of The Difficulties In Measuring A Changing Planet

Posted by Dan Satterfield

The Climate Centre at Hadley has released an updated set of temperature data. This warming has caused the ocean to expand and sea level to rise. Local changes are much more difficult to measure as you can find out below.

Simon Donner at the Univ. of British Columbia has an interesting piece in EOS (AGU) this week about the difficulties in measuring the changes from climate change. These difficulties tend to be used by those wanting to make a political point to confuse people. A good reason to be very careful of accepting something you read online unless if it does not gel with the overall scientific consensus and the statements of scientific societies like the AMS,AGU, AAAS etc.

I am a regular reader of Simon’s blog posts here: http://simondonner.blogspot.com

Science is about gathering facts and observations. Science teachers- this should be a must watch video for your students in grades 7-12.