Guardian, USA Today, NYTimes, wires..: MIT study sees global warming’s pace even worse than we’d been told
One post down is discussion of those in Congress who see global warming as some kind of hysteria based on nothing (except socialism, maybe). A piece of contrariwise news from that citadel of lefty politics, MIT, won’t change those firmly decisive minds. It is getting wide pickup in MSM – albeit much of it in their on line blogs. The study, in the Journal of Climate, relies on a heavily computerized tool called the Integrated Global System Model. It uses a huge variety of varied but plausible parametric values for both a coupled ocean, atmosphere, and land climate model along with input from representations of human economic, agriculture, sea level change, and gas emissions,. The conclusion is that the degree of warming by century’s end will probably – if humankind keeps doing business as usual – be twice what a previous such exercise six years ago saw in the cards. So says the press release written by former newshound David Chandler, who also wrote it up for the MIT pub Tech Talk.
Stories:
- USA Today – Doyle Rice: Global warming may be twice as bad as previously expected ; Rice also quotes two outside experts, each a well-known academic authority on climate science.
- Telegraph (UK) Louise Gray: Global warming of 7C ‘could kill billions this century’ ;She calls a man from Friends of the Earth for reaction. FOE is a good enough outfit, and inherently a political advocacy org. Calling it for reaction to a climate science piece is akin to calling somebody at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
- Guardian (UK) George Monbiot (blog): Price of doing nothing costs the earth / MIT scientists forecast a global temperature rise of 5.2C by 2100 – but climate change deniers reject models devised by the world’s finest minds. So what do they suggest instead… seaweed? ; More of an exasperated essay than news story ;
- NYTimes – Andrew C. Revkin (Dot Earth blog): High Odds of Hot Times ; Links to his previous reports on the MIT team’s work, and explains the Roulette wheels in this post’s illus. Those gambling devices are be a good idea, in principle. But in practice don’t seem to work so well for lay public use where most graphics should be grasped in one glance.
- Washington Post – Andrew Freeman (blog): MIT Climate Study Garners More Attention ; And, he reports, the Post had it first – back in Feburary.
- Reuters – Felix Salmon (blog): Global warming could be twice as bad as forecast ;
- Wall St. Journal – Keith Johnson (blog): Climate Changes: MIT Study Temperatures Could Rise Twice As Much ;
And for one with a broader perspective:
- Christian Science Monitor – Judy Lowe (blog) : Americans don’t agree about global warming ; Lowe used the MIT study as springboard into one, recent poll on US attitudes toward greenhouse policy. Most favor action, but a significant fraction either reject that, or don’t care.
Grist for the Mill:
MIT Press Release, MIT Integrated Global System Model ; Yale Project on Climate Change survey Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009 ;
-CP
