Good News About Global Warming?

Tired of reading bad news and dire predictions about climate change? Here's some good news about global warming—or at least as good as it gets.

According to a new report by researchers at Duke University, the extreme global warming predicted by many previous studies is unlikely to occur.

But don't get too excited just yet.

Earth will certainly experience significant global warming over the next century. Probably between 2.5 degrees and 8 degrees Fahrenheit, if the new research is correct, instead of the 16 degrees some studies have forecast.

"This still commits us to quite a bit of climate change, but it leaves the door open to avoiding the largest and most devastating consequences," said Gabriele C. Hegerl, a Duke University climate expert who led the study, in an interview with The Washington Post.

That doesn't get us off the hook entirely, mind you, because an overall increase of even a few degrees could lead to massive storms, droughts and flooded coastal areas, but we should be able to avoid human extinction and the worst environmental disruptions if the new predictions hold true. Best of all, perhaps, Hegerl says the new research may convince governments that there is still time to take action to reduce global warming.

The Duke researchers used computer models to analyze historical climate data up to 700 years old and to predict "climate sensitivity," which shows how much the global average temperature is likely to change if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere double.

"This is the first use of several different independent data sets to come up with a constraint on climate sensitivity," said Reto Knutti of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "It's a very solid piece of science."

More information:

Climate Change Will Be Significant but Not Extreme, Study Predicts – The Washington Post