A controversial new study suggests global warming may be trending more toward "lukewarming" than the kind of significant temperature rise projected in other models.
University of Dublin meteorologist J. Ray Bates’
study warns "that to disregard the low values of effective climate sensitivity (1°C)… is a standpoint that needs to be reconsidered" – a challenge to findings from the United Nations that doubling human emissions would cause anywhere from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius of warming, the
Daily Caller reports.
"As a lukewarmer, I am always enthused by new works that tend to add more evidence to that conclusion," Chip Knappenberger, a climate scientist at the libertarian Cato Institute, tells the Daily Caller, "This work definitely does so, as it now stands."
According to the Daily Caller, the new study also reaffirms work by Richard Lindzen, an MIT climate scientist who found in 2011 that less than 1 degree Celsius of warming would occur from doubling atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
"There are a lot of uncertainties behind some of the critical quantities that go into the [low] sensitivity calculation in this work," Knappenberger concedes, the Daily Caller reports. "Until they can get rectified, it’s hard to know how much faith to put into the final result."
According to the Daily Caller, Knappenberger’s own research has shown climate models have overestimated global warming for the last 60 years.
Many climate scientists assume climate sensitivity – how much warming may occur with a doubling of CO2 – to be 3 degrees Celsius, an estimate given by the UN’s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, the Daily Caller notes.
Related Stories: