Study: Global Warming Less Extreme Than Feared

It hasn't been a good few days for media members devoted to Al Gore's money-making scam called anthropogenic global warming.

Prior to Monday's revelation that heat from megacities is making for warmer winters on some parts of the planet, the Research Council of Norway issued a report last week titled "Global Warming Less Extreme Than Feared?":

After Earth’s mean surface temperature climbed sharply through the 1990s, the increase has levelled off nearly completely at its 2000 level. Ocean warming also appears to have stabilised somewhat, despite the fact that CO2 emissions and other anthropogenic factors thought to contribute to global warming are still on the rise.

Wow! And that's just the beginning:

Uncertainties about the overall results of feedback mechanisms make it very difficult to predict just how much of the rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature is due to manmade emissions. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the climate sensitivity to doubled atmospheric CO2 levels is probably between 2°C and 4.5°C, with the most probable being 3°C of warming.

In the Norwegian project, however, researchers have arrived at an estimate of 1.9°C as the most likely level of warming.

So once again, the IPCC estimates have been called into serious question.

The lead professor on this study Terje Berntsen offered the following comments:

“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.

“We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system – changes that can occur over several decades – and which are coming on top of a long-term warming. The natural changes resulted in a rapid global temperature rise in the 1990s, whereas the natural variations between 2000 and 2010 may have resulted in the levelling off we are observing now.”

Mr. Gore: clean up on aisle seven.

(HT Bloomberg)