GLOBAL WARMING: It's Not the End of the World as We Know It (Four part article in DER SPIEGEL)

An in my mind very level headed article based on interviews with German climate scientists. This is not the there's-nothing-to-worry-about crop of scientists. For them, global warming is real and (largely) man made. But they argue that newer and better simulations show that the consequences are not as bad as the repent-or-die alarmists of the 90s wanted to make us believe.

The newer models show an increase of antarctic ice, rather a decrease of both severity and frequancy of tropical storm (has someone told Al Gore yet?), a smaller increase of sea level than the old models, more rain in the Sahel zone, less rain in the south of the USA, Australia and the Mediterranean Europe, and the Greenland ice sheet melting in millenia if at all.

I also recommend reading about the problems of modeling the future. All models predict more clouds, but whether that leads to cooling or warming is far from sure.

German climate researcher von Storch: "Unfortunately many scientists see themselves too much as priests whose job it is to preach moralistic sermons to people."

Wolfgang