| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"Sam Wormley" |
| Date: |
04 Aug 2003 09:50:12 AM |
| Object: |
The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change |
Ref: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-8/p30.html
The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change
Only within the past decade have researchers warmed to the
possibility of abrupt shifts in Earth's climate. Sometimes, it takes
a while to see what one is not prepared to look for.
Spencer Weart
How fast can our planet's climate change? Too slowly for humans to
notice, according to the firm belief of most scientists through much
of the 20th century. Any shift of weather patterns, even the Dust
Bowl droughts that devastated the Great Plains in the 1930s, was seen
as a temporary local excursion. To be sure, the entire world climate
could change radically: The ice ages proved that. But common sense
held that such transformations could only creep in over tens of
thousands of years.
In the 1950s, a few scientists found evidence that some of the great
climate shifts in the past had taken only a few thousand years.
During the 1960s and 1970s, other lines of research made it plausible
that the global climate could shift radically within a few hundred
years. In the 1980s and 1990s, further studies reduced the scale to
the span of a single century. Today, there is evidence that severe
change can take less than a decade. A committee of the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS) has called this reorientation in the
thinking of scientists a veritable "paradigm shift." The new paradigm
of abrupt global climate change, the committee reported in 2002, "has
been well established by research over the last decade, but this new
thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider
community of natural and social scientists and policymakers."1
Much earlier in the 20th century, some specialists had evidence of
abrupt climate change in front of their eyes. The evidence was
meaningless to them. To appreciate change occurring within 10 years
as significant, scientists first had to accept the possibility of
change within 100 years. That, in turn, had to wait until they
accepted the 1000-year time scale. The history of this evolution
gives a good example of the stepwise fashion in which science
commonly proceeds, contrary to the familiar heroic myths of
discoveries springing forth in an instant. The history also suggests
why, as the NAS committee worried, most people still fail to realize
just how badly the world's climate might misbehave.
See: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-8/p30.html
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| User: "Evad Remlu" |
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| Title: Re: The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change |
04 Aug 2003 05:39:47 PM |
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"Sam Wormley" <swormley1@mchsi.com> wrote in message
news:3F2E729E.6043C3D@mchsi.com...
Ref: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-8/p30.html
The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change
Well, it about time, I been waiting all my life for something interesting
like this to happen. I hope I am still around to see the oceans rise or fall
a few hundred meters!
Change drives innovation!
{}
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