Seth Masia of Solar Today writes in response to Allen Best's "A Slightly Skeptical Look at Global Warming" (May 2009). Global Warming Is RealI enjoyed Allen Best’s story, “A Slightly Skeptical Look at Global Warming” (May 2009), but your headline, deck and pullquote mischaracterize his point. Allen reports that while there is uncertainty regarding the ability of climate models to predict the speed of climate change, data from the last two years shows that real-world changes in glacial and icecap melt are happening much faster than predicted by the models. In effect, the models are conservative and we should be very, very worried. I can quibble with several of Allen’s citations, but one strikes close to home. Allen quotes Dr. William Cotton of Colorado State University, to the effect that no one really knows why global warming has “stabilized” recently. In fact, the National Center for Atmospheric Research predicted this effect back in 2005, based on combining CO2 forcing with natural ocean surface temperature cycles. No less an authority than Ski Area Management reported this the following year, and you can read all about it at http://masia.org/globalcycle.html (scroll down to the chart and look at the curve for the ACACIA business-as-usual model, which flattens out beginning in 2008). Prof. Cotton is a well-respected meteorologist specializing in cloud physics. He thinks in terms of hours and minutes, not in decades and millennia. In short, he’s not a climatologist, and Allen should have pointed that out. —Seth Masia—Managing Editor, Solar TodayWe should add that Seth's article in SAM, "Are We Melting?" appeared in the March 2006 issue.
