How Reliable Are Predictions of Future Climate?
Glikson: Rapid climate change is happening in the present time, as manifested by polar ice melt, sea level rise, prolonged droughts in Australia, China, Argentina and the US, extreme weather events and acidification of the oceans. M of B: The climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years, ever since the planet first came into existence. The question is whether the changes in today’s climate are beyond its natural variability. The answer, in each of the instances of “rapid climate change” mentioned by Dr. Glikson, is No. Polar ice melt: Ice has been accumulating in Greenland (at a rate of 2 inches a year, averaged across the entire ice sheet) for 11 years (Johannessen et al., 2005). Antarctic has cooled throughout the period of the satellite record, though a single paper (Stieg et al., 2009) has unsuccessfully tried to argue otherwise, by inventing data that were not actually measured. In fact, the extent of sea ice around Antarctica has grown steadily throughout the satellite record,
