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Article Tags: BBC, Met Office, Met Office Decadal Forecast, Opposing Views
In his column for the BBC News website, BBC Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin assesses the fall-out from the row over Met Office decadal forecasting.
Australia burns; the US rebuilds from Sandy and counts the cost of record heat; and the UK ponders its weirdest year of weather.
The UK Chief Scientist tells me weather extremes now worry scientists as much or more than overall global warming. “If this gets worse, how are farmers going to operate?” he asks.
Yet at the same time there’s a relentless spread of climate confusion in parts of the media. The Met Office, a world-leading purveyor of climate information, recently suffered reputational damage that will increase public confusion over whether climate change is important at all.
It happened after bloggers seized on a Met Office paper revising downward its decadal global temperature projection for 2017.
Scientists have been puzzling for some time over exactly what combination of factors is preventing the earth getting even warmer – maybe changes in solar activity, ocean currents or emissions of aerosol pollution.
Source: bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment
2013-01-18 14:16:44