Nobel Prize and Climate Change

I couldn't be more pleased that Al Gore was just awarded the Nobel Peace prize this year. President Bush, for all his faults, had the decency to say that he was pleased that Gore had won the award. That was more than can be said for some other right wing commentators with less integrity and class who appear to still view this as an ideological struggle. Such politically motivated denial will go down as a sad chapter when the future history text books write about this time.

Global climate change will continue to grow as one of the key issues facing humankind in the coming decades. It's not a political or ideological issue, at least it shouldn't be. The scientific support for this is overwhelming and continues to grow each year. Yes there is some uncertainty, but remember that uncertainty cuts both ways. The official projections from the IPCC panel tries to project a middle ground. That means there is a 50% chance that the results will be worse than these projections.

A recent posting at the Daily KOS does a good job of reminding everyone of this, and points out that the most recent data on decreases in sea ice in the Artic is actually showing changes much more severe than the best official predicted changes. So yes, in this aspect of climate change the data clearly shows the best scientific projections were wrong. They were much too opptimistic.