Global Warming. Local Cooling.

We are indeed getting some snow -- probably close to 2 inches so far.

I read this morning on cnn.com about a project to model global climate change that recruits people to donate their idle computer cycles with a background process, just like that extraterrestrial project everyone was doing a few years ago. Apparently 95,000 people are participating, and the combined computing power is greater than the fastest supercomputer, though I'm a little skeptical on how that's being measured.

http://www.climateprediction.net

The interesting thing isn't the software -- it's the results. It's predicting a rise of between 2 and 11 degrees C (which is 3.6 to 19.8 degrees F!) with CO2 levels doubled over pre-industrial levels, which at the current rate will happen in the middle of this century! That's much worse than previous models, and would be disaster at the low end, and a catastrophe at the high end.

This is of no small interest to me. Not that I give a crap about civilization or anything, but global climate is one area of oceanography I'm strongly looking at specializing in. (Another would be coastal oceanography).