Sahara becoming a savanna

[Mike Davis]

I found this at climate depot:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...ahara.html
Excerpt:
This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.
Excerpt:
Max Planck's Claussen said North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modelers.

Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen added.

"Half the models follow a wetter trend, and half a drier trend

This is what I would call models that we can believe in to be wrong half of the time or more. Bet against the models!

(Edit to correct minor typo in title - JW)

[Itscoldinhere]

So let me get this straight...an empirical result that runs counter to conventional alarming wisdom has to be supported by models to be believed?  :

The fact that the Sahel has been greening, in no small part thanks to CO2, is anathema to the AGW crowd-until it suggests that half their models are qualitatively correct in one instance, apparently.

http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Sahel.htm

[Mike Davis]

ICIH:
That is the same as admitting that all the models are wrong if they each only get a portion right then overall they are wrong. The average of 22 wrong answers can never be the right answer no matter what IPCC writers claim useing Post Normal Science. PNS! Help me here folks can that be misconstrued as a bad word? I actually read that phrase as comeing from Mike Hulme out of his new book. Post Normal Science which is necessary because normal science is to slow to support agendas of certain groups. At least that is how I read it! PNS! I wonder if they will provide petroleum jelly with the restrictions they offer? Or is that a hydrocarbon product and we would need an organic substitute?

[Itscoldinhere]

PNS is a lot like PNAS, or "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences". I've sense some "post normal" pieces make it into that, too.

Hm, you know, when I first heard of Mike Hulme's book, I knew I wouldn't like it. I hate it when people try to psychological analyze "why people don't agree with my (correct) view, which inevitably ends with the communist analyzing you concluding you always wanted to kill you father and marry your mother.  :

"Why we disagree about climate change"-maybe because some people have a tendency to believe baseless but frightening things, and the rest of us tend to question because, frankly, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"?

[Mike Davis]

With NAS now being a political activist group funded by taxpayers they seldom allow any normal science to appear in their paper: PNAS so then it would be correct to compare them with PNS. ;D
I think it was Pielke jr who did a review of the book and another site also where I read about it. Someone attempted to claim Hulme was right showing we don't know and should listen to the experts. I think if the guy used to be a PERT what is he now? EX-PERT!

[Derek]

Great find Mike.

A couple of quotes from the National Geographic article.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...ahara.html

" "The nomads there told me there was never as much rainfall as in the past few years,"
Kröpelin said. "They have never seen so much grazing land."

"Before, there was not a single scorpion, not a single blade of grass," he said.

"Now you have people grazing their camels in areas which may not have been used for
hundreds or even thousands of years. You see birds, ostriches, gazelles coming back,
even sorts of amphibians coming back," he said.

"The trend has continued for more than 20 years. It is indisputable."

"coming back" - Oh, it's happened before then..
Y' don't say...

and another quote,
" Max Planck's Claussen said North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement
among climate change modelers.

Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and
the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen added. "

" unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains "
- So how did they model it then, guess........

I well remember the desertification fears so alarming told us all a few years back,
funny the exact opposite HAS happened.
Yet, somehow, inevitably seemingly, it is still attempted to be portayed as "man's fault".
Why don't I feel guilty. ?