Post Reports Global Warming Wont Be As Devastating As Predicted
Published: 4/20/2006 2:00 PM ET
Ten days after hinting the Earth could end up roasting at a toasty
900 degrees Fahrenheit like the planet Venus, The Washington Post
reported on a new study which finds that the more extreme estimates
of global warming that have been hyped in the media are unlikely to
manifest.
In the April 10 Post, staff writer Guy Gugliotta dramatically said the second rock from the sun is apparently condemned to an eternal cycle of global warming, but that Venus may have been the gentle, tropical paradise that Earthlings once imagined a long time ago before a berserk greenhouse effect boiled away the water.
While Gugliottas report centered on a scientific probe of Venus, not the study of global warming on Earth, his alarmist language fits into a pattern the Business & Media Institute observed in March of the medias coverage of climate change.
But a new study published in the journal Science downplays the sky-is-melting alarmism of other scientists.
In the April 20 Washington Post, staff writer Rick Weiss documented a study from a group of scientists led by Duke climatologist Gabriele Hegerl who anticipate increased global warming, but not, as Hegerl put it, the largest and most devastating consequences that other scientists have predicted.
The new work, wrote Weiss, extends a difficult line of research that uses historical climate data and computer models to predict warming patterns based on carbon dioxide output. Weiss noted that the study reaches back 700 years and accounts for sun-blocking volcanic eruptions among other things.
The bottom line, Weiss wrote: theres only a 5 percent chance that global average temperatures will rise more than 11 degrees Fahrenheit in the next century.
In the April 10 Post, staff writer Guy Gugliotta dramatically said the second rock from the sun is apparently condemned to an eternal cycle of global warming, but that Venus may have been the gentle, tropical paradise that Earthlings once imagined a long time ago before a berserk greenhouse effect boiled away the water.
While Gugliottas report centered on a scientific probe of Venus, not the study of global warming on Earth, his alarmist language fits into a pattern the Business & Media Institute observed in March of the medias coverage of climate change.
But a new study published in the journal Science downplays the sky-is-melting alarmism of other scientists.
In the April 20 Washington Post, staff writer Rick Weiss documented a study from a group of scientists led by Duke climatologist Gabriele Hegerl who anticipate increased global warming, but not, as Hegerl put it, the largest and most devastating consequences that other scientists have predicted.
The new work, wrote Weiss, extends a difficult line of research that uses historical climate data and computer models to predict warming patterns based on carbon dioxide output. Weiss noted that the study reaches back 700 years and accounts for sun-blocking volcanic eruptions among other things.
The bottom line, Weiss wrote: theres only a 5 percent chance that global average temperatures will rise more than 11 degrees Fahrenheit in the next century.
