Monday, December 31, 2012

Looking ahead in 1992, Revkin wrote about a "nine-degree rise in average temperature over 50 or so years"

The nine-degree quote is on page six of Revkin's 1992 book (below).

Views of Global Warming in 1992 and Now - NYTimes.com
When you have time, give the text a sift (it’s short; the book was heavily illustrated) to see what still holds true

2 comments:

Kip Hansen said...

Tom,

Andy Revkin says this just ain't so.

"[5:26 p.m. | Update | After @tan123 tweeted a passage that sounded dreadfully wrong, I check the final printed version and it's not there. Note that I marked the text as a draft, not the final fact-checked book. The published version of that page is here.]"

Here is : http://www.scribd.com/doc/118529894/Final-version-of-1992-Global-Warming-book-page

I questioned this in comments and he replied:

You may not have seen that I posted the actual printed page (pdf). Basically wrote that, given short-term temperature variations, 4.5 degrees C. over 100 or so years may not seem like much (the high end of IPCC range then and now).

PDF is here : http://www.scribd.com/doc/118530190/WarmbookCh2page

Page 36! Not Page 6.

Can you please clear this up with him and let the rest of us know what the deal is?

Tom said...

I fact-checked the version that Revkin asked readers to fact-check on 12/31/12, and the main body of Revkin's post still points to that version.

Now he's suggesting that his own view of this highly "settled science" evolved in 1992 from expecting maybe 9 degrees F. of warming in 50 years to 8 degrees F. in 100 years?

Given that we've seen no statistically significant warming since the mid-1990s, what is Revkin's expectation now, and why should we have any more faith in that expectation than his "first" guess in 1992?