When the issue of "Global Warming" and "climate change" first arose, I remember critics would constantly complain that because our climate models were so imperfect, we couldn't trust anything science was telling us. It turns out they were right. Our models really are far from perfect. They are way, way too conservative:
Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.
Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.
Summer melting this year reduced the ice cover to 4.13 million sq km, the smallest ever extent in modern times.
Remarkably, this stunning low point was not even incorporated into the model runs of Professor Maslowski and his team, which used data sets from 1979 to 2004 to constrain their future projections.
"Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC.
"So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."
Got that? The ice free 2013 summer itself is too conservative. Are you scared yet? Because you should be.
In other climate change news, Sen. McCain had the quote of the night at yesterday's debate with this response to a question:
Suppose that climate change is not real, and all we do adopt green technologies, which our economy and our technology is perfectly capable of. Then all we've done is given our kids a cleaner world. But suppose they are wrong. Suppose they are wrong, and climate change is real, and we've done nothing. What kind of a planet are we going to pass on to the next generation of Americans? It's real. We've got to address it. We can do it with technology, with cap-and- trade, with capitalist and free enterprise motivation. And I'm confident that we can pass on to our children and grandchildren a cleaner, better world."
That really is the ideal response. We know enough now to know that going green is a net plus for the economy. It improves efficiency and creates new jobs. Aside from ideology, there's no reason not to do this. And yet ideology, apparently, is all that matters.
Speaking of which, take a look at this from Ezra and Brad Plummer. That's about as clear cut a case as you are ever going to see that proves - and yes, I am deliberately using that word - that new environmental regulation can drive innovation.
There simply is no longer any reason for inaction. We know what we need to do. We know why we need to do it. Everything else is just noise.
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