There is no one global cooling or warming model. There are many global warming or cooling models. Most of the models have been used to process quantitative data from past observations, crunch the numbers, and produce charts, graphs and fascinating multicolored animations that show what has already happened.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is often associated with “global cooling or warming models”, but according to its own website, the IPCC is “…a scientific body. It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters.”
The IPCC takes in information and produces assessment reports. The fifth report is due in 2013 and the fourth report was done in 2007. As for climate change modeling, the IPCC’s mandate is to focus on “…understanding of human induced climate change, potential impacts of climate change and options for mitigation and adaptation.”
According to Classzone, the IPCC collected data from many sources and used three models, the A1B, A1F1 and B1. The A1 and B1 series models are scenarios that are described by Climate Impacts Group. From those models, the IPCC predicted that,
The projected rate of global warming in the future is much larger than the rate of global warming during the 20th century.
Predicted rates of global warming are greater than any seen in the past 10,000 years.
After all of that, here are some other studies and problem areas where the conflicting maze of global warming or cooling predictions, assumptions and understandings originate:
In one research situation, the predictions are that overall global warming could actually cause some specific regions of the planet to become colder. According to Science AAAS, “In general, global average temperatures have been rising since the late 1800s, but the most rapid warming has occurred in the past 40 years. And average temperatures in the Arctic have been rising at nearly twice the global rate, says Judah Cohen, a climate modeler at the consulting firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts.”
In other research, the MIT Center for Global Change Science understands that the Earth’s climate system has so many different parts and processes that interact with each other that no computer is currently able to represent everything with accuracy. MIT associates progress with understanding all of the processes, biological, chemical and physical, that control climate. Here are several MIT reports.
Ametsoc.org discusses impact models and the need to generate inputs in time for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.
According to Truthout, ALEC, the controversial law writing organization, wrote boilerplate legislation that is actually a global warming denial model. ALEC wants the model incorporated into state school K-12 science courses. Louisiana, South Dakota and Texas have already passed the ALEC legislation.
The confusion is enormous, the flaws and problems are many, and the conflicting predictions of cooling or warming are meaningful only when a reader looks into the source of the prediction and finds out what the source would prefer to “prove”. Scientific opinion on global warming or cooling is not unified and the entire topic is a controversial one.
In summary, the IPCC is the one unifying, singular and international model based reporting source. In 2013 or 2014, the next set of information, collected from many legitimate sources, will be pored over, then used to support one side or the other in the human caused greenhouse emission wars.
