Global Cooling? Pound vs. Euro




A letter to Nature in the May 1 issue by a group of German scientists postulates a slight cooling trend for the current decade. The climate scientists at Real Climate question the reliance of Keenlyside et al., the German group, upon short-term decadal data at the expense of the persistent 20th century warming trend. The Real Climate authors also cast their critique as a "wager," which has caught the attention of bloggers at the German blog Klimalounge as well as such familiar voices as Andy Revkin, Anna Barnett, William Connolley, and James Annan. If Keenlyside et al. decline to pony up, perhaps they will find their mark in Roger Pielke.



P.S. I wrote initially that it might be a sign of the state of the U.S. economy that the Real Climate authors, most of whom hold university positions in the United States, made their wager in British pounds sterling. It looks as though the wager is actually in euros. The slip-up may just be a sign of my own ignorance of world economic affairs.