New Independent Analysis Confirms Global Warming Is Totally For Reals Happening, OK?
Posted by Michael_Byrne on Tuesday, Oct 25, 2011
I know it, you know it, dogs know it — the planet is heating up. Three big projects from NASA, NOAA, and a collaboration between Britain’s Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, all confirm that the surface of the planet on which we reside and depend upon is heating up and heating up at an increasing rate. This is, of course, not enough for a small but influential crowd that would prefer to not admit that a planet of nearly seven billion terribly inefficient, rapidly consuming human beings can knock Earth out of stasis.
So, the University of California’s Richard Muller launched the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study, yet another analysis, this one independent and aimed at the skeptics. Muller’s crew devised a new statistical method that allowed them to use nearly every land temperature station on the planet, some 39,000 of them, rather than having to use subsets as used by the other groups. The group also used some different statistical techniques to help eliminate data skewing from things like the urban heat island effect, something used often as a counter-argument against climate change.
The new study lined up almost perfectly with previous efforts, according to a Nature post. Spoiler alert: the planet is indeed heating up. Not that a new study is going to win over science-denying “skeptics,” but this is what good science does: questions itself.
Connections:
- How Weather Influences Global Warming Beliefs
- Climate Scientist: Only Authoritarianism Can Save Us Now
- Inside NASA’s 15,000 Processor Climate Supercomputer (It Keeps Your Weatherman in a Job): Video
Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
Filed under:
About the author
Michael covers physics, climate science, the future of music, and assorted things fallen through cracks at Motherboard. A native of Colorado, Michigan, and Oregon, he currently resides in Baltimore...
