Norwegian Study: Global Warming Less Severe Than Feared

Numerous news outlets are reporting the findings of a study from the Research Council of Norway — a government agency — which concludes that (in Bloomberg's version) "After the planet's average surface temperature rose through the 1990s, the increase has almost leveled off at the level of 2000, while ocean water temperature has also stabilized." The New York Times' Dot Earth blog offers some reasons to be skeptical of the findings.

Comments

So let me see if I have this...

[RogueWarrior65]

The so-called "global warming deniers" are to be scorned, ridiculed, and otherwise have their professional reputations destroyed by any means necessary but it's just fine and dandy to be skeptical of this study.

Re:And yet ...

[ceoyoyo]

And why are the climate change alarmists vilifying this study?

Because both groups are driven by political agendas and personal beliefs that are largely unconcerned with science or figuring out what is actually going to happen or how best to fix it.

Re:Surprise

[terec]

Welcome to stage 3 of AGW denial: It's taking place, it's us, but we don't know how bad it is.

That's the scientific method: we don't accept things as fact until they have been convincingly proven through reproducible experiments and logical arguments.

And it's not a question of "how bad it is" (global warming is obviously not very "bad" so far), it's a question of "how bad will it become".

Questions 1 through 3 have been answered at nauseam, so I'll leave you to google that for about 30 seconds

I don't have to "Google it", I've read many of the papers.

All of them pretty much agree though that it is cheaper to mitigate CO2 emissions than to just continue with our current approach.

Even the last IPCC report didn't reach that conclusion. Furthermore, all those studies have methodological errors. And, finally, agreement is irrelevant in science; what matters is sound, logical arguments and reproducible experiments.

Re:Surprise

[superwiz]

The "debate" is between evidence and special interests

That is an outrageous lie. Given how often the counter position is stated, there is no way that you are now aware of it. So you must be telling what isn't truth despite the fact that you know that it is false. That's a lie. The interests on the side of AGW theory are much better funded and have much more at stake than the skeptics. So as far as the funding is concerned, it is the skeptics who have an uphill battle. As far as calling the collected data "evidence", that is also a lie, because most of the skepticism is of the conclusions drawn from the collected data. You don't need evidence to counter a bad conclusion if you can show that the interpretation mechanisms are flawed.

specifically, giving up fossil fuels

How do you fail to grasp that this is a multi-trillion dollar endeavor and an unprecedented power grab? How do you shill for a study which might even slightly question the extremes of AGW predictions. AGW is a theory which is used to make calls for drastic dystopian change to the world. How do you possibly ask to do that without at evidence even when it is presented?