More extreme weather events -- from snowstorms to hurricanes to droughts -- are likely side effects of a climate in transition, but most scientists maintain that any year-to-year variation in weather cannot be linked directly to either a warming or cooling climate.
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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Dear EarthTalk: Don’t all these huge snow and ice storms across the country mean that the globe isn’t really warming? I've never seen such a winter!
-- Mark Franklin, Helena, MT
On the surface it certainly can appear that way. But just because some of us are suffering through a particularly cold and snowy winter doesn’t refute the fact that the globe is warming as we continue to pump carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. And the National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Administration (NOAA) reports that recent decades have been the warmest since at least around 1000 AD, and that the warming we’ve seen since the late 19th century is unprecedented over the last 1,000 years.
“You can’t tell much about the climate or where it’s headed by focusing on a particularly frigid day, or season, or year, even,” writes Eoin O’Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor. “It’s all in the long-term trends,” concurs Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Most scientists agree that we need to differentiate between weather and climate. The NOAA defines climate as the average of weather over at least a 30-year period. So periodic aberrations—like the harsh winter storms ravaging the Southeast and other parts of the country this winter—do not call the science of human-induced global warming into question.
The flip side of the question, of course, is whether global warming is at least partly to blame for especially harsh winter weather. As we pointed out in a recent EarthTalk column, warmer temperatures in the winter of 2006 caused Lake Erie to not freeze for the first time in its history. This actually led to increased snowfalls because more evaporating water from the lake was available for precipitation.
But while more extreme weather events of all kinds—from snowstorms to hurricanes to droughts—are likely side effects of a climate in transition, most scientists maintain that any year-to-year variation in weather cannot be linked directly to either a warming or cooling climate.
Even most global warming skeptics agree that a specific cold snap or freak storm doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not the climate problem is real. One such skeptic, Jimmy Hogan of the Rational Environmentalist website writes, “If we are throwing out anecdotal evidence that refutes global warming we must at the same time throw out anecdotal evidence that supports it.” He cites environmental groups holding up Hurricane Katrina as proof of global warming as one example of the latter.
If nothing else, we should all keep in mind that every time we turn up the thermostat this winter to combat the cold, we are contributing to global warming by consuming more fossil fuel power. Until we can shift our economy over to greener energy sources, global warming will be a problem, regardless of how warm or cold it is outside.
CONTACTS: NASA, www.nasa.gov; NOAA, www.noaa.gov.
EarthTalk is produced by E/The Environmental Magazine. GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.
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28 Comments
Add CommentWith more energy in the atmosphere the Coriolis forces can have greater effects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis means that the boundary between the Tropical, Temperate and Arctic zones on the planet are less stable, so wide swings of weather from an adjacent zone can also affect areas with very unusual weather.
Oh come on! Now cold weather is evidence of global warming?????
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGet real guys, the movie "Day After Tomorrow" was NOT a documentary.
True, shoshin, it wasn't. It was a movie, made after the widespread acceptance of the situation. Which is why no one cites the entertainment industry as the leader of popular scientific opinion, except the small handful of you anti-climate-change guys who just can't seem to get over understanding it, while everyone else has already long since moved on to finding solutions for it. Hey know what, the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it, and people aren't really animals and don't evolve either. Enjoy your reckless world-view.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact that you have put your faith in conservative politicans and religious leaders who do not have a good track record of being well-informed or correct in matters regarding science is telling.
hotblack;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFine, then explain to me in little words why colder really means hotter?
oh boy-- this is as good as the atricle " Scientists know more than you even when they are wrong"-- that was a favorite of mine
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishotblack;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI put no faith in leaders, religious, political or otherwise. As to your attempts at personal attacks against my views, I interpret those to mean that you have nothing constructive to add to the topic.
At one point in time, I did give AGW the benefit of the doubt, but I changed my mind when I saw one piece of information. The graph that I saw shows that 80% of the heat trapping effect of CO2 occurs within the first 20 ppm of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, after which, the incremental effect of each additional CO2 molecule drops like a rock. By the time 350 ppm is reached, adding or subtracting 50 or even 100 ppm would have virtually no effect.
This graph disproves the AGW hypothesis as the AGW hypothesis requires relatively small movements in CO2 to cause large temperature shifts, and this is clearly not the case. Please refute this with experimental data (not computer models as they have no evidentiary standing) and I will change my mind.
And please let me know what would change your mind? 5 cold years, 10? 20? Or nothing at all? If your answer is nothing at all, then your belief is one of faith, as scientists feel no shame or remorse in changing their views when presented with facts that their present views.
Ok. Well, since you can't be bothered to either read or comprehend the above article, I'll try a couple analogies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen you heat up a bagel in the toaster, that's bagel warming. It all goes from cold to hot at once.
The earth is bigger and has a slightly more complex climate system than a bagel.
When you start to heat a planet up, parts of its climate start to spin off and quit working like normal, and this drive the cold parts into other areas that were warmer, and other parts that were cold get hotter, and you kill off the more sensitive life in those areas, as we're seeing, and you melt the ice in those other areas, as we're seeing, and you make predictions that say if this is really happening, then x and y and z will happen, and when they happen, and millions of people see it, and a handful of other people who don't see it, decide not to look, and see something else instead, well, then everybody thinks you'd better have some extraodinary evidence of your own, or you're just hopelessly stuck in a (possibly coincidentally) self-serving argument of being above consequence in the natural world, and thinks you're probably not very bright. But we could be wrong.
"At one point in time, I did give AGW the benefit of the doubt, but I changed my mind when I saw one piece of information."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd that right there, says it all.
hotblack;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not even sure how to discuss science with you, but I will try.
All I can tell you is that it is incumbent on the AGW supporters to prove their case, not the other way around. And that scientific standards of proof have not been met, regardless of what the popular media (including SCIAM) would like you to believe.
Yes, one piece of information did change my mind, as it struck at the heart of the AGW hypothesis and makes the whole hypothesis unlikely in the extreme. I don't need 5 or 10 or 100 pieces of anecdotal evidence, or millions of people to agree with me. Science cares not for consensus; 10 opinions, 100, or 1 million are all irrelevant in the face of one piece of hard evidence.
And that hard evidence is lacking in the AGW arguments. A case in point is the computer model predicted atmospheric hotspot. It has not been found. So the question is, are the collected temperature data wrong or was the computer model wrong?
In the AGW supporters views, real live balloon thermometer data and satellite temperature data are wrong, but a computer program (written by the scientist with a vested interest in proving that this hotspot really does exist) which uses wind speed measurements to infer temperatures is deemed to be correct, and more accurate than a thermometer.
Does that the sniff test to you? What do you use to check the temperature at your place in the morning; a thermometer, or do you look at how far a branch on a tree is bending and then write computer program to interpret it's degree of "bendedness" to see how warm it is? Sometimes as scientists we have to step back and say this is just silly.
The point I'm making is that there are simpler natural explanations, such as sunspot cycles and their effect on cosmic rays driven cloud formation that correlate far better with the recorded temperatures of today, and the inferred temperatures of 1000 years ago and 500 million years ago.
I know it's popular to blame ourselves for all of the ills in the world, but sometimes it just isn't us.
Shoshin:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf someone makes a scientific claim that goes against common knowledge then it is incumbent upon them to prove their case - I agree with this statement.
I would argue however that AGW is in a league of its own. We are witnessing climate change correlational to increased atmospheric greenhouse gases. The risk of this being a correct hypothesis (with predicted results ranging from severe global consequences to limited coastal or ecological problems) far outweighs the risk of accepting a false hypothesis. The risk of accepting a false hypothesis and limiting CO2 emissions has no catastrophic qualities.
I would think that this is common sense risk analysis; we should be wary of single studies. Although it has been mentioned that scientists have something to gain by accepting the hypothesis (correctly or incorrectly), there are also many billions of dollars behind the null hypothesis, from organizations known to commonalize cost and privatize profit. I am really surprised that many still think scientists are evil or moralistic false buzz-killers with the astonishing amount of evidence that science is in fact progressing steadily (and save me from examples of the contrary).
The bulwark of world interest lies in not assessing the real possibility of the risk too lightly (this is one thing liberals are usually conservative on!); and that is why you should expect to see the defence of AGW persist even if some countervailing evidence should crop up.
Squish, I couldn't have said it better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSquish:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The risk of accepting a false hypothesis and limiting CO2 emissions has no catastrophic qualities."
I would argue this statement is blatently incorrect as this false hypothesis is being used to drive scocial and economic policy. Calls for population control (As no country with a stagnent or negative population growth has ever or could ever survive) and wild market speculations that further drive the world economy into the ground.
These type of things set the stage for massive wars. How will that help the environment?
Scientific American has an agenda their pushing with Human Global Warming, not science. 1). Global warming is occuring and CO2 increasing, but no evidence the two are related. 2). Many (if not most) scientists don't buy human global warming. 3). It's literally impossible for trace amounts of ANY gas to influence world climate to the extent we're led to believe. Don't believe it? Do the math! The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was only 0.03% 200 years ago, now it's 0.036% - total increase = 0.006%. Gimme a break!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Scientific American has an agenda their pushing with Human Global Warming, not science."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat don't visit their site
"1). Global warming is occuring and CO2 increasing, but no evidence the two are related."
That is an out right lie. You are just not aware of, are unable to comprehend, or simply refuse to accept the evidence.
"2). Many (if not most) scientists don't buy human global warming."
Again, an out right lie. Many (and by that I mean virtually all) scientists who specialize in climate change agree that global warming is occurring and that it is to some extent due to human activities.
"3). It's literally impossible for trace amounts of ANY gas to influence world climate to the extent we're led to believe."
If you think an increase in atmospheric CO2 from 280 parts per million at the beginning of the industrial revolution to nearly 380 parts per million today is trace amounts I would seriously hate to know what you think is a lot.
"Don't believe it? Do the math! The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was only 0.03% 200 years ago, now it's 0.036% - total increase = 0.006%. Gimme a break!"
You don't even know what you are talking about. You are worse that wrong, you are clueless.
OK, two lines of questions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) From the article: "According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. And the National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Administration (NOAA) reports that recent decades have been the warmest since at least around 1000 AD, and that the warming weve seen since the late 19th century is unprecedented over the last 1,000 years."
Soooo ... if the Industrial Revolution and Anthropogenic CO2 is causing global warming now, what caused it 1000 years ago? Isn't it possible that there are natural cyclic activities in the global climate that we don't even know exist, much less understand? How vain is Man that we assume a small bit of knowledge to be full understanding and wisdom and that every small action has big consequences?
2) How do we know that the current temperature of the Earth is the ideal temperature of the Earth? The planet thrived and survived much hotter temperatures in that past. Hasn't plant life expanded and thrived with more CO2 (their necessary fuel) in the atmosphere? I thought we wanted more rainforest?
I'm not pretending that either of these lines of questioning refute or even bring AGW into doubt. However, these sure seem like pragmatic and reasonable questions that need to be pragmatically and reasonably answered before I'll accept that Global Warming is caused by Man or is even, necessarily a bad thing.
As for the supposedly pragmatic approach of 'what's the harm in taking action?' the harm comes from the proposed solutions which are just thinly veiled attempts to tie the hands and bind the economies of the vile evil capitalistic Western civilizations, while doing nothing about developing countries like China and India who are 2 of the 3 top polluters. Collapsing the economies of the technological leaders of the world is not likely to aid in finding new sources of energy.
Squish:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCorrelation does not prove causality.
Natedog:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSCIAM editors have an extreme bias in their reporting. This is apparent from the articles that are selected for publication. Please count the number of articles in the past two months that have been pro-AGW (all of them). Now look at the number that have presented a dissenting view (none of them).
Do you consider this to be fair dispassionate and balanced reporting? Or is this pushing an agenda?
Squish:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe risk of "Fighting Climate Change" is not zero. Funds and resources, both financial and human that should be directed at real issues such as malaria, AIDS, poverty, and the legion of other real, worthy causes are being diverted and wasted. The risk is very real; people are dying because politically driven apparatchiks have sucked up funds and created policies that stand in the way of what real people need to live.
The risk of a single human dying from "Climate Change" is infinitesmal compared to the risk of someone in Chad dying because of drinking unboiled water. In Chad the government outlawed the use of charcoal for cooking in an asinine attempt to mollify some greenie group. And people are now dying from water borne diseases because of this. This is real and now. Am I angry? Damn right.
Yes, people are already dying due to "Climate Change" but they are dying as a direct effect of the application of politically driven climate change policies, not due to CO2 in the atmosphere.
shoshin" good show. But arguing with people who have are well brain washed is a waste of time. No amount of real facts will deter them and they are now in control of the governments of most of the world. Over the next few years the great deceiver will wreak the most of the world's economic system. Global Cooling will become so obvious after that, that a new world order will be needed to deal with the natural disasters that result. They wanted real change and they will get it. Global Cooling will result in Global Starving and pestilence. Take heart, Obama will be replaced by a wise old man who will set the world on a new and better path. Survival mode for a while. Good luck to you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA change in climate history data at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently occurred which dramatically alters the debate over global warming. Yet, this transpired with no official announcement from GISS head James Hansen, and went unreported until Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit discovered it Wednesday.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor some background, one of the key tenets of the global warming myth being advanced by Hansen and soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore is that nine of the ten warmest years in history have occurred since 1995.
McIntyre has been crunching the numbers used to determine such things as published by GISS, and has identified that the data have recently changed such that four of the top ten warmest years in American history occurred in the 1930s, with the warmest now in 1934 instead of the much-publicized 1998.
As McIntyre wrote Wednesday (emphasis added, h/t NBer dscott):
Story Continues Below Ad �
There has been some turmoil yesterday on the leaderboard of the U.S. (Temperature) Open and there is a new leader.
[...]
Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900.
Most importantly, according to the GISS, 1998 is no longer the warmest year in American history. That honor once again belongs to 1934.
Respectfully, Gortenbull
The U.N. report says it is "very likely" or more than a 90% chance that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are to blame for warming since 1950. How much of the recent warming are they claiming is due to human activities?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of it? Almost certainly. (Since there is clearly more CO2 in atmosphere due to humans and this is known to have some effect.)
All of it? Very unlikely. (Since there are known natural cycles of warming/cooling.)
In other words, the scenario where 1% of the warming trend is attributable to humans and 99% is due to natural causes is very different than the scenario where 99% of the warming trend is attributable to humans and 1% is due to natural causes. I would think this would be important to quantify (with probabilities of course) in order to further the discussion on global warming.
Squish
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with the "global warming theory" is that it reeks of politics It's a theory not the "law" of global warming. For the loose canons running off at the mouth (mainly in the Democratic party) that means that it's still open to debate and opposing view points should not be shouted down but welcomed .... if the object is finding the truth. After all if we have to wreck the economy that feeds the planet (the United States) to fix a still debatable problem let's make sure it's real and not a wet dream of a bunch of socialists or screams of joy from the "Chicken Little's" that the sky is falling.
Whatsup
Squish
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with the "global warming theory" is that it reeks of politics It's a theory not the "law" of global warming. For the loose canons running off at the mouth (mainly in the Democratic party) that means that it's still open to debate and opposing view points should not be shouted down but welcomed ...... if the object is finding the truth. After all if we have to wreck the economy that feeds the planet (the United States) to fix a still debatable problem let's make sure it's real and not a wet dream of a bunch of socialists or screams of joy from the "Chicken Little's" that the sky is falling.
Whatsup
I'm still waiting to hear the explanation of the ice core data that shows the temperature rising about 600 years before the CO2 concentration increases, implying that higher CO2 concentrations are a result of warming, not the cause. Remember A>B does not mean B>A.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisshoshin, I must say you proved you point well and I am impressed with the number of people that came and added more to your comments, as for HotBlack, he is just full of that hot air. He came out strong trying to make a point that well he never defended (if we suppose there is real science to back up his claims) or even provided more evidence to support his claim.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat was a very embarrassing attempt to canonize popular belief, NOT SCIENCE.
Jaime
Squish:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou mentioned that we are "witnessing climate change correlational to increased atmospheric greenhouse gases." That's not true. The current meteorological conditions have nothing to do with 'climate change.' It says so in the above article. I can't think of any other current phenomena that could systematically and scientifically traced to AGW, so that climate change you're "witnessing" is most likely not happening.
As to hotblack's statement of climate change skeptics putting our "faith in conservative politicans and religious leaders," I am a liberal atheist. I agree that there are some wackos out there who don't have good reason to disagree with AGW, but before you say stuff like that, consider those who are making an informed and calculated decision.
I just posted on all the dead Mongolian goats because the temp got down to -40 C. last winter and killed off whole herd. Northern China also got severely cold.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's going on in Asia illustrates how people confuse the picture when they don't take into account the fact that a cooling climate is usually a drier climate (because cold air just doesn't carry as much moisture.) One consequence of this is that glaciers can actually shrink because they lose ice during normal summer warming but a cold, dry winter does not replace the snow needed to grow the glacier.
So glaciers end up dessicating away, just like the ice shrinks in your refrigerator trays if you never use it, turning into the frost that forces you to periodically do that nasty refrigerator chore.
I just watched a special on Nat Geo channel about 2012 which argued that 5,200 years ago some tropical plants at about 16,000 feet on an Andean glacier were suddenly flash-frozen in what seemed to be a sudden onset Ice Age.
At that point the reasoning of the documentary's editors got real confused, because they started arguing that humans are provoking a 2012 Mayan type disaster through AGW, rather overlooking the more startling facts that somehow the planet was so warm when the last Mayan cycle started that tropical plants were growing at 16,000 feet and that sudden COOLING was the disaster that the Mayans may have had some type of ancestral memory concerning.
Personally, I think we are on the cusp of a New Little Ice Age, but unfortunately the AGW crowd may very well get away with blaming the cooling on humans causing global climate change (which used to be called warming.)
The reason the "blame humans" story will succeed is the same reason that Roman Emperors succeeded in blaming several natural disasters on the Christians--it is the nature of mobs to look at their fellow humans as somehow being to blame for all misfortune. His fellow travelers blamed Jonah for the storm that put them all in the drink.
Seems like a real stretch to make a claim "National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Administration (NOAA) reports that recent decades have been the warmest since at least around 1000 AD, and that the warming we’ve seen since the late 19th century is unprecedented over the last 1,000 years."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI did not realize we had accurate algorithms, computer models, etc. that existed 1,000 years ago to verify that claim.
Somewhere there is a burden of proof missing for such claims.
Seems like there needs to be a little more restraint in AGW making claims as the lack of observable evidence makes the whole theory suspect and one of more of a political maneuver than a scientific study.