[WOSG]

The Problem with getting your News from the New York Times is they only tell you what these Liberals think you should be told "all the news that fits" their Liberal agenda ... they forget the rest of the story

"Global Warming: Watson Indulges in Scare Tactics... Again

... Mind you, Watson is the same scientist who, in 1992, predicted an imminent ozone hole in the Northern Hemisphere. You remember the event; then-Senator and soon-to-be Vice President Gore called it "an ozone hole over Kennebunkport" (former-President George Bush's summer compound). Watson's (and Gore's) purpose was to stampede the U.S. Senate into a mandate that would reduce chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants. They succeeded, even though the ozone hole never appeared. "

This is Watson's second go at buffaloing a Bush Administration. Big Media's eagerness to go along is breathtaking. The January 23 edition of The Washington Post put this particular global warming story above the fold on its front page! The play could have been bigger only were it in the upper left-hand corner rather than the right.

A model of a model Neither the Post nor Watson mentions that this forecast of extreme warming is the result of a computer model. And not just any model, either. It is a product of the most extreme climate model run under the most extreme set of future emission scenarios. In other words, it's not a model based upon present trends; it's a model of a model! Putting a fine point on it, this particular result was produced by one (that's right, one) of 245 models the modelers ran.

In the backrooms at science meetings, the technique Watson and the IPCC have used in this instance is derided as a "toy model." This is because it treats the world largely as a uniform entity, one devoid of ocean currents, without mountains, and with no thunderstorms. Ocean currents, mountains, and thunderstorms just happen to be the three things that are the major movers of heat around our planet. They generally keep the Earth's surface temperature cooler than it otherwise would be.

It's not that there weren't other computer models available. There are. There were nearly 20 different sophisticated, but still flawed, models tested in the IPCC's TAR called general circulation climate models (GCMs). If Watson were forthcoming, he would have pointed out that the average for those models was a rise of only about 3.8°F--or some 2.75 times less than the extreme value Watson and the Post trumpet."

This is from: Global Warming: Watson Indulges in Scare Tactics... Again

It is a good thing the Bush administration will try to get a biased agitator out of harms way and seek slightly better balance in the IPCC.

[liberallarry]

Now I remember you from a previous thread. I've always heard, and believed, that the IPCC presented the dominant view in the atmospheric science community. You referred me to a petition circulated by a well-known scientist, and signed by several thousand people, to the effect that this wasn't so. The IPCC is a political, not scientific, organization and its views are not those of the atmospheric science community, says the petition. I tried to trace it down but couldn't. I don't know anyone in that community. I've not had a chance to ask those scientists I do trust.

If this is the position of the administration they should say so. Let's have the discussion in public.