As Climate War Intensifies, So Does Extreme Weather

Climate scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings. The 2009 study claimed that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report’s author now says true estimate is still unknown.

“It’s one of those things that happens.”

Mark Siddall

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings, The Guardian report. At the same time, extreme levels of snow is once again paralyzing major European countries.

Climate scientists withdraw their journal that claims rising of sea levels. The 2009 study claimed that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report’s author now says true estimate is still unknown.

The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study “strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results”. The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.

Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100.

Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper’s estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.

Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall said: “It’s one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science.” He said there were two separate technical mistakes in the paper, which were pointed out by other scientists after it was published. A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study’s conclusion.

“Retraction is a regular part of the publication process,” he said. “Science is a complicated game and there are set procedures in place that act as checks and balances.”

Full article at guardian.co.uk

World’s top firms cause $2.2tn of environmental damage, report estimates

Climate scientists admit fresh error over data on rising sea levels

Deep-sea trawling is destroying coral reefs and pristine marine habitats

Read the full story of the hacked climate emails

Moscow Burried By Record Snowfall

Thousands of snow-clearing machines have been working to dig the Russian capital Moscow out of a record-breaking fall of 63cm (nearly 25 inches), according to BBC News.

After a weekend of heavy snow showers, the regional weather centre announced that the previous record of 62cm, set in 1966, had been broken.

Snow ploughs were due to make three clean sweeps of the city on Monday.

Drivers were asked to leave their cars at home but rail services are said to have been unaffected by the weather.

A Moscow railway spokesman said that 4,471km (2,778m) of track had been cleared of snow on Sunday.

In all, about 15,000 snow-clearing machines were deployed in the city of about 10.5 million people, backed by 8,500 dump trucks and about 5,500 street-sweeping personnel.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The heavy snowfall is also resulting in canceled flights and delayed trains in Scandinavia and central Europe.

Here’s last nights TV news report from Moscov: