Inconvenience

Does Doughbob Loadpants even read the articles to which he links? Here’s Jonah — who spends more time linking to time wasters than anyone I can think of — calling our attention to an article that, um, doesn’t really say what Doughboy thinks it says. Goldberg, sounding the alarum for all the people who believe exceptions actually disprove the rule, seems to think the latest Antarctic climate study actually represents some kind of refutation of Al Gore. Here’s the part of the article Loadpants evidently neglected to read:

“It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now,” [David Bromwich] said. “Part of the reason is that there is a lot of variability there. It’s very hard in these polar latitudes to demonstrate a global warming signal. This is in marked contrast to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth.”

Bromwich says that the problem rises from several complications. The continent is vast, as large as the United States and Mexico combined. Only a small amount of detailed data is available – there are perhaps only 100 weather stations on that continent compared to the thousands spread across the U.S. and Europe. And the records that we have only date back a half-century

“The best we can say right now is that the climate models are somewhat inconsistent with the evidence that we have for the last 50 years from continental Antarctica

[snip]

Bromwich said that the increase in the ozone hole above the central Antarctic continent may also be affecting temperatures on the mainland. “If you have less ozone, there’s less absorption of the ultraviolet light and the stratosphere doesn’t warm as much.”

That would mean that winter-like conditions would remain later in the spring than normal, lowering temperatures.

“In some sense, we might have competing effects going on in Antarctica where there is low-level CO2 warming but that may be swamped by the effects of ozone depletion,” he said. “The year 2006 was the all-time maximum for ozone depletion over the Antarctic.”

Bromwich said the disagreement between climate model predictions and the snowfall and temperature records doesn’t necessarily mean that the models are wrong.

“It isn’t surprising that these models are not doing as well in these remote parts of the world. These are global models and shouldn’t be expected to be equally exact for all locations,” he said.

It would be interesting to see how many ignoramuses link to this article via Goldberg today. I’d go to the trouble of keeping score, but that would be a huge waste of time, though not as great a waste as playing “Pac Man With Guns.”