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Folks … the 150 years question that I’ve raised in the context of another debate that appears to have stalled is too important to leave in the doldrums. Let me therefore disaggregate this strand of the debate. The NY Times ran a potent critique of it, to which Joe Romm of Climate Progress has now responded below (see the NYT piece in Romm’s link, and with Romm’s piece, make sure you click “read more” to get the whole thing).
As it stands, I find Romm’s response rather underwhelming. The key question is whether the last big melt, in 1889, was regional or global warming. If it was regional, then there is no necessary conflict with global warming theory although doubt may be cast on the reliability of the Arctic as a global indicator. If it was global, then global warming theory as a whole may have a problem. The problem would be that if Greenland was able to surface melt in 1889 before the current high levels of greenhouse gases came about, who is to say that what we are seeing now is not also largely natural? Already the contrarian blogs are trumpeting this notion. Either way – whether regional or global - it all comes as a bit of a surprise, which is why the NYT has made a big thing of it.
If anyone out there has or can point to an informed perspective on this I’d like to hear … not least because I have to speak on a panel in the Edinburgh Book Festival next month about climate change, and this is precisely the sort of question that will come up and for which I currently lack a response more convincing than Joe Romm’s.
Incidentally, the political backdrop to this story could be relevant. I was in NY state 2 weeks ago, and in the sweltering weather and drought threating crops I observed little of the usual scepticism about AGW. This NYT story could therefore be read as an attemt to flip that drift back in the other direction … or eqally, it could be read as a simple unpaking of what the NASA spokeswoman had said. Either way, our concern should be with the truth(s) of the matter, and not with seeking to confirm prejudices, thus my interest in finding more science.
Alastair.
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