A Distraction

In early March I started to follow ‘IOPgate’, an episode which caused a good deal of comment on climate science blogs and a couple of items in the Guardian (2 March 2010 and 4 March 2010). Briefly, the Institute of Physics (IOP) made a submission to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry into the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which was interpreted in some quarters as implying that the IOP does not support the scientific consensus that the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere results in a rise in global temperature despite its official stance that the science is well-established and that there is no doubt that climate climate change is happening(IOP, 5 March 2010; IOP 31 March 2010; IOP Blog; physicsworld.com). This stimulated me to find out more about climate change, something I had always been meaning to do but had never had the time.

I would like to share with you the websites that I have found most useful:

• For a good overview: www.metoffice.gov.uk.
• For climate scientists’ views on the science behind the controversies: www.realclimate.org.
• For a summary of rebuttals to skeptics’ arguments: www.skepticalscience.com
• For accounts of climate change controversies: laymans-guide.com. The accounts especially relevant to the work of the Climatic Research Unit at UEA are No. 4 The Temperature Record and No. 5 Temperature Reconstructions.
• A good site for the history of the science of global warming is The Discovery of Global Warming at www.aip.org/history/climate.
• There are lots of pictures at www.globalwarmingart.com.
• Finally, The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports at www.ipcc.ch review the literature and provide an authoritative overview.