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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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Editor's note: This article is the last of a three-part series by John Carey. Part 1, "Storm Warning: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change," was posted on June 28. Part 2, "Global Warming and the Science of Extreme Weather," was posted on June 29.
Extreme weather events have become both more common and more intense. And increasingly, scientists have been able to pin at least part of the blame on humankind's alteration of the climate. What's more, the growing success of this nascent science of climate attribution (finding the telltale fingerprints of climate change in extreme events) means that researchers have more confidence in their climate models—which predict that the future will be even more extreme.
Are we prepared for this future? Not yet. Indeed, the trend is in the other direction, especially in Washington, D.C., where a number of members of Congress even argue that climate change itself is a hoax.
Scientists hope that rigorously identifying climate change's contribution to individual extreme events can indeed wake people up to the threat. As the research advances, it should be possible to say that two extra inches (five centimeters) of rain poured down in a Midwestern storm because of greenhouse gases, or that a California heat wave was 10 times more likely to occur thanks to humans' impacts on climate. So researchers have set up rapid response teams to assess climate change's contribution to extreme events while the events are still fresh in people's minds. In addition, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is preparing a special report on extreme events and disasters, due out by the end of 2011. "It is important for us emphasize that climate change and its impacts are not off in the future, but are here and now," explained Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, during a briefing at United Nations climate talks in Cancún last December.
The message is beginning to sink in. The Russian government, for instance, used to doubt the existence of climate change, or argue that it might be beneficial for Russia. But now, government officials have realized that global warming will not bring a gradual and benign increase in temperatures. Instead, they're likely to see more crippling heat waves. As Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the Security Council of the Russian Federation last summer: "Everyone is talking about climate change now. Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions."
Among the U.S. public, the feeling is different. Opinion pollsand anecdotal reports show that most Americans do not perceive a threat from climate change. And a sizable number of Americans, including many newly elected members of Congress, do not even believe that climate change exists. Extreme weather? Just part of nature, they say. After all, disastrous floods and droughts go back to the days of Noah and Moses. Why should today's disasters be any different? Was the July 23, 2010, storm that spawned Les Scott's record hailstone evidence of a changing climate, for instance? "Not really," Scott says. "It was just another thunderstorm. We get awful bad blizzards that are a lot worse."
And yes, 22 of Maryland's 23 counties were declared natural disaster areas after record-setting heat and drought in 2010. "It was the worst corn crop I ever had," says fourth-generation farmer Earl "Buddy" Hance. But was it a harbinger of a more worrisome future? Probably not, says Hance, the state's secretary of agriculture. "As farmers we are skeptical, and we need to see a little more. And if it does turn out to be climate change, farmers would adapt." By then, adaptation could be really difficult, frets Minnesota organic farmer Jack Hedin, whose efforts to raise the alarm are "falling on deaf ears," he laments.
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90 Comments
Add CommentIt is impossible to contribute any single weather event to a change in climate. That is like trying to figure out what happened before the big bang.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, it's more like noticing that the guy who has a habit of bring his own dice to the crap game tends to leave the game with more money than anyone else. After a while you get the suspicion that his dice aren't normal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think you mean 'attribute'.
Since you confused "contribute" with "attribute," I'm guessing you're a college freshman. Pay attention in that freshman English class. And in your science courses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mean attribute. I know the difference.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the idea is to use scare tactics to get the public to drink the kool-aid!?!?! My simple point of view is that whether or not mankind is causing any appreciable change to the global climate there are still going to be fluctuations. In my own humble scientific opinion there is not nearly enough modern climate data to accurately predict what has happened in the past nor what will happen in the future. What we do know is that we live on a dynamic planet and we have a very rudimentary understanding of the processes which drive the associated natural systems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUltimately, there is no way that mankind will be able to stop the naturally occuring climate change that has been occuring on this planet for the last 4.5 billion years so we had best be figuring out how it is that future generations are going to cope with the next glacial cycle or the next abscence of polar ice caps. There have not always been, nor will there always be, polar ice cover. Likewise sooner or later we will go back into a snowball earth setting. It is not going to be the CO2 that mankind emits that causes the next major swing but rather it will be an extra-terrestrical impact or another super-volcanic eruption that does the job. Then we are going to be seriously out of luck when it comes to survival.
So, the politicans and climate scientists best get their priorities straight and start planning for the inevitable climate change that is going to happen.
Hmm, please go study some physics. Start with some basic thermodynamics and proceed to the absorption/emission characteristics of atmospheric gases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe alternate events you mention probably will happen within a few hundred million years, but we can't control that. AGW is happening in the here and now; and we can. Let's deal with the here and now, shall we?
While you are at it read a newspaper; you might notice that climate scientists and the majority of politicians are at odds with each other.
ONCE UPON A TIME, decades if not eons, ago, I reviewed a book on hurricanes for the newspaper in Baton Rouge. The focus of my review was on the mathematical difficulty of predicting the path of a hurricane, given the inherent and irreducible uncertainties, and thus the personal difficulty of deciding, when faced with a 'cane which may or may not hit you, whether to stay or go. I remember the distilled advice of one of the scientists (whose name, alas, I cannot recall) which was, to follow "the course of least regret."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is to say, when faced with a stay or go choice which must be made on the basis of incomplete information, assume your choice to be WRONG. If you choose to stay, assume the hurricane hits. If you choose to go, assume it would have passed you by.
Now: which of these choices would you least regret? Take that choice.
We on the planet are faced with a similar choice. We must either stay (our course, of pumping CO2 into our atmosphere) or go (along another path). It seems to me that we, who are convinced of the reality of impending climate instability, should argue for the course of least regret.
An example: Rick Santorum has declared, there is no such thing as global warming. We are not going to be hit by this particular hurricane. We should stay our course.
If we stay our course, and we are wrong, we have a planet whose climatic instability will undermine our economies and threaten the survival of millions.
If we change our course, we invest in cleaner, sustainable energy and wean ourselves from the fossil fuels whose supplies are finite anyway. If we are wrong in this, we will have shifted our economies, but not destroyed their foundations.
Which of these courses would we least regret?
I could reinforce this argument and multiply examples, but this particular margin is too small to contain such elaboration. I would rather others did so anyway.
My point here is to offer to other readers of these pages that rarity of rarities, a sound bite soundly based; a phrase which maximizes the sense in a minimum of sound (thank you, Mr Clemens), a course I do not in the least regret.
Have you even read this article or the 2 that came before it? This is why we call you people deniers. It's nothing personal, it's just that you still bring up these long-debunked zombie talking points that JUST WON'T DIE!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, please tell me where you are digging up these fantastical ideas about climate change. I've been trying to find them in the scientific literature (you know, the one and only source people should use when making scientific decisions), but I've had no luck.
The second article : "Iowa is one of many places that fits the pattern. Takle documented a three- to seven-fold increase in high rainfall events in the state, including the 500-year Mississippi River flood in 1993, the 2008 Cedar Rapids flood as well as the 500-year event in 2010 in Ames, which inundated the Hilton Coliseum basketball court in eight feet (2.5 meters) of water . "We can't say with confidence that the 2010 Ames flood was caused by climate change, but we can say that the dice are loaded to bring more of these events," Takle says. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJune 8-9 Des Moines doppler rain est.
One foot of rain south Des Moines , (3rd image down)
Yesterday was the 3rd wettest 24 hrs on record in Des Moines. 4.53 inches added with the day before , 7.3 inches fell in the last two days.
http://coloradobob1.newsvine.com/_news/2011/06/10/6828119-la-nina-gone-a-foot-of-rain-in-iowa
First of all: are you a physicist? I use physics all day long in my job so I am reasonably certain that I have a pretty good grasp. Also, what is it in physics that I am supposed to study. I would think that you need to review statistics so that you can assess the validity of the analysis of temperature versus time as well as temperature versus CO2 concentration (both historic and modern and how they do or do not relate). Then you may have an actual basis for your conclusions. There is no statistically defensable PROOF that AGW exists. What does exist is a crossplot of average global temperature versus time that indicates a temperature rise over the 20th century that has a r2 value of 0.014. If you buy that a r2 of 0.014 is valid then I have some other correlations to sell you as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecondly, the events which I indicate are going to happen much sooner than the 'hundreds of millions of years' that you quote. As a matter of fact we are just now at the end of the last ice age. This ice age cause sea level change of between 120 and 140 meters. That means that if mankind had built cities on the coast 20,000 ybp then they would now be under about 400' of water. So get your facts straight and stop buying peoples analysis at face value and do some thinking of your own.
Loading the dice :
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(9/24/2010)
Seoul Metro Area Suffers Worst Rainfall in 102 Years
Rainfall of 261 millimeters fell for three hours in Gangseo, something which had last occurred 500 years ago.
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2010092422108
(6/29/2011)
Torrential Rains Take Heavy Toll.
Two people were killed and one remains missing in Seoul and the surrounding metropolitan region after torrential downpours of up to 231 mm on Wednesday. (9.09 inches)
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/06/30/2011063000946.html
In my city we have 4 times the annual rainfall per month now and have seen some of that deluge type rain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo news here though, when Hurricane Ike ripped through here over 1000 miles from the Gulf shore, I understood that we are in a new climate..one where extreme cold will be regular for winter, and the deluge of spring and early summer will be followed by months of drought.
This 3 part story was one of the best summaries of where we stand that I have ever read...I really thank Scientific American for publishing straight-forward analysis.
As for it being a scare tactic... When the green leaves were ripped off the trees and blowing horizontal across my yard and there wasn't a drop of rain, and that wind howled for about 10 hours, I was actually scared as the siding flapped against the side of the house...
When my pond nearly evaporated last fall I was worried all my fish would die...
Unlike the people who are part of the Church of Denialism, quoting their psalms of denial..you know..follow the money...look at Al Gore's house...
I actually see the climate change and watch the repercussions ripple through our way of life...
I hate to be negative but I'mm afraid this snowball is already gathering speed...methane in the Arctic will be the straw that breaks this one-hump camel's back..that's all of us.
Welcome Republican Taliban..you know..like Bin Laden..they want America bankrupt for their political objectives...
What would you buy if you knew your country's currency would have no value in September?
See post #10 and so some science yourself. I am going to say this one more time for the cheap seats: I am neither for against AGW but I do know for a fact that there is no statistically defensible PROOF of AGW. What there does exist is a bunch of poor, at best, statistical analysis that does not prove anything.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd another thought while I am on the topic. Mankind has enjoyed a VERY stable time period within the Earth's history to evolve into what we are now. At some point sooner or later that stable period is going to come to a screeching halt and all hell is going to break loose and we had better be prepared, if that is even possible, or we are going to become extinct.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is pure folly to think that the events that unfold in a human lifetime have any bearing whatsoever on the overall system as a whole. The amount of destruction from one large impact or one super volcano is going to slap us back into our rightful place on this planet. We have neither technology nor the will to have any substantial impact upon the future of this planet. We are nothing more than spectators. If you do not believe me then go out and research the seismic energy equivalent of the largest atomic bomb ever detonated. You will find that the TSAR was about 50 mT which is something like a 8.4 on the Richter scale. Now take the fact that a 9.0 quake, a number of which have occured in recorded history, releases 10 times as much energy that single weapon and the Chixilub impact is estimated to have released approximately 2,000,000 times as much energy. In a single average year (1970 to 2010) there is an equivalent of 197 mT of dynamite released in the earthquakes between magnitude 5 and 10 (which are way less frequent that the 0-4.9 range). We are simply incapable of causing any effect upon the techtonic processes on our planet so what makes us so sure that we can do so to the climate system?
Furthermore, let's look way out into the far future. This mud ball that we call Earth is going to cease to exist and we have a finite volume of resources at our finger with which to get off and spread out into the rest of the solar system, galaxy and universe. We better be getting on to that program before we have exhausted all of our resources. If mankind has any hope to continue into the future past the next million or so years we had better get off of our petty butts and get to the business of insuring our future survival.
You can call me names all day long but until you have some concrete proof of AGW in terms of valid data sets of sufficent time that have been properly analyzed then you are just another one of the flock of sheep being sold something that may or may not be true.
And finally ... to prove my point about making conclusions from time series data from too small a time period. Go to the following link and look at the graphs, in the order indicated below, and make some observations:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level
1.First look at the graph labeled 'Recent Sea-Level Rise'. What you
Accidentally hit a wrong button ... so let's continue:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Look at the graph labeled Recent Sea Level Rise. What you would conclude is that there is a rapid rise in sea level over the past 130 years and we had better get to doing something about it. Coincidentally, this is the same time period that our 'valid' global temperature records cover.
2. Look at the graph labeled Holocene Sea Level. What you see is a rapid increase in sea level of about 14 meters over the past 8000 years. This means that the increase over the past 130 years is only representitive of about 1.42% of the overall rise in the past 8000 years.
3. Look at the graph labeled Post Glacial Sea Level Rise. What you see is that there is a rise of approximately 130 meters since the last glacial maximum. That means that the 20 cm in that past 130 years represents about 0.014% of the total rise in the past 20,000 years. As a note: this is probably the most confident time period in the sea level curve as it can be directly measured using the position of the sea level on the carbonate platforms in the carribean dated to that age. Also, it is this sea level position that is responsible for the blue holes in the carribean carbonate platforms so there is in fact direct evidence of this sea level position.
4. Finally, look at the graph labeled Global Sea Level Fluctuations. What you will observe is that there appears to be a conservative range of approximately 300 meters which sea level has moved in the past 542 million years. So that 20 cm over the past 130 years represents something like 0.0067% opf the total historic range. This seems pretty insignificant to me but maybe I am just crazy.
So the point of this whole post is that: (1) using short period data to predict either backward or forward is frought with peril and (2) the climatic system of the Earth is much more variable than can be gleaned from data taken in the past 130 years. Even if you take the ice core at face value that only gets you back +/-400,000 years which is only 0.07% of the sea level data analysis. Therefore, there is absolutely no way that mankind's influence upon the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is going to have any major influence upon the climate system.
Unless you can produce a point by point refutiation of the data presented here then you are arguing a point that cannot be substantiated with data which is a fully non-scientific emotional arguement that is driven by fear and herd mentality.
Your logic: Because big rocks hit the Earth, man has no power to change anything globally.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRight, got it.
Imagine how easy it would be to knock a large asteroid out of the asteroid belt and send it towards Earth. Just a tank of gas and the right timing and Earth would be crushed.
The brain is far more powerful than the strong nuclear force. That's how it split the atom.
How much does Lake Mead weigh? How about the Three Gorges dam in China?
Doesn't the mere weight of these bodies of water change the tilt of the Earth on it's axis?
Read the last post and then reply with a valid scientific arguement.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo your point is because sea level rose 300 meters from the last glacial maximum, mankind can't impact his environment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are on some tirade about sea level, which has about 100 or 200 meters to go if all the ice melts...I'm just confused how cutting and pasting some information about sea level history disproves the physics behind CO2 heat retention and water vapour concentration in a CO2/methane atmosphere.
The weight of the water in Three Gorges dam was calculated to tilt the Earth on it's axis. That is a valid scientific argument that mankind can change the Earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo my point is that if mankind is in fact impacting sea level through global warming that it our input is something like 0.014% of whatever process caused the last glacial cycle. Also the real point is that you cannot use the end of a time series data set to predict the future response of the system if you do not know how the system behaved in the past, which we do not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou did not even go through the logical though process that I presented did you? So therefore you are the one on the non-fact based tirade.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExactly what I am saying. There is not enough data in the 'valid' data set to predict what occured in the past much less what is going to happen in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see you make no attempt to disprove the tilting Earth from man-made lakes fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd what you are saying is it is OK to raise sea level faster than it normally would because it really doesn't bother you. OK, that is great. Very scientific.
And I suppose the extreme weather events which are spawned by excessive moisture in the atmosphere because of CO2 is OK with you too.
PS - I did not cut and paste anything. That is my analysis of the data presented in the graphs in aboput 15 minutes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's right. Go directly to the name calling without directly addressing the data and analysis that I presented. Go off on the tilt of the Earth's axis (which I do believe) is nothing more than attempt to steer the arguement away from fact and trry to disprove my logic by undermining me and not the data and analysis. Fantastic, did you take that one right out of the old Ilinski playbook. If you cannot win on merit then demonize the other party.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUntil you come back with a point by point refutiation of the analysis that I made then you have no ground to stand on.
Spoken in true PhD gobblygook.. she would do better to shorten the words and open her mind to the obvious...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore water in the atmosphere means stronger events...that's it.
A warmer atmosphere holds more water.
No societal desires or needs for chaos, just good old fashioned physics.
Actually, I believe that mankinds influecne on sea level (if you assume that all 20 cm in the past 130 years is due to AGW) is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme and there are probably a lot better things to be spending time and money on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can go on and believe as I can see that you are not going to see past the short term and understand that even if mankind is responsible for the 20 cm of global sea level (and the supposed increase in temperature) it will turn out to be nothing in the long term when the real climate system drivers shift again.
I could care less about the sea level rise. If you're dumb enough to build on the coast, see Japan tsunami.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suppose if you read what I actually wrote you'd notice that what you said isn't in my text...
You aren't from that Fox Universe where whatever you say actually happened, are you?
That's right. No need to read for content and understand that the points are valid. Just call names and dismiss the analysis because the arguement goes against your tidy notion. If it is such 'simple physics' then please explain it with data and interpretation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know where you get off saying that mankind can't have an effect on the Earth. Ever heard of the Pacific Garbage Patch? It's an area the size of the continental U.S. strewn with our plastic crap. No effect my @$$! Or what about ozone depletion? Good thing the government (under Reagan BTW) stepped in before the ozone layer got too thin because the vaunted "Free Market" would have been way too slow to recognize the danger and price it accordingly. Or how about the fact that most of the world's major fisheries have collapsed over the last century after millennia of sustainable harvesting by our ancestors? Or the nuclear fallout isotopes in people's teeth that can be linked to weapons tests? You can't claim that Homo sapiens (are we sure about the "sapiens"?) has negligible effect on our planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI still don't understand why this is such a problem for the deniers. CO2 traps heat and we're causing it to build up in the air. The added heat retention by the atmosphere from this increased CO2 can and HAS been measured. That added heat has SPECIFIC consequences on our climate system that can be modeled. Climate models that DO NOT incorporate this anthropogenic forcing FAIL to reproduce our current climate while models that do incorporate the forcing line up rather well with what we observe today. That there is such uncertainty in sea level rise (due to the non-linear response and feedback of glaciers) or regional temperature predictions is the greatest motivator to start cleaning up our act right away. We'll also clean up our air, water and stop importing foreign oil as we switch to a clean and efficient economy. Fossil fuels will eventually become scarce and are already a HUGE point of geopolitical contention. Having a clean and efficient economy saves us the trouble of trying to stabilize the Middle East when all they want to do is fight each other apparently. I just don't get what you're actually opposed to, really.
My simple point (which is backed up by previous posts and what follows) is that if you assume that the temperature increase in the past 130 years increase is 100% attributable to mankind then then overall effect is so small that it indicates that mankind has a VERY small influence upon the climate system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor the details:
Read post #16. The simple point is that you CANNOT predict past behavior of a complex system with such a small data sample.
My main issue is that there is a problem in the temperature versus time versus CO2 concentration as follows:
1. There appears to be a statistically valid correlation between the modern CO2 concentration and the tempertature.
2. There appearts to be a statistically, but non-linear, corrlelation between CO2 and time.
3. There appears not to be a statstically valid correlation, either linear or non-linear, between time and temperature.
Therefore, there is a break in the logic that increasing temperature due to CO2 over time is occuring. If this were in fact the case then there would be a clear, albeit non-linear, increase in CO2 versus time.
An additional problem is that the CO2 versus temperature in the modern data set and the ice core record do not correlate so there is a problem with one of the two analyses which is a major issue all on its own.
Now, as for the climate models. They do indeed work on the modern record data when AGW is included and they do not when it is excluded. Whay is conviently left out of that discussion is that the current models fail miserably in the history match when they are ran backward. This is by no means a small issue as the proof of a time series model (which the climate models are) is the ability to history match. So therefore the current climate models and their results are suspect.
Finally, putting emotion surrounding fossil fuels into your arguement does not further your case.
I look forward to a reply that refutes all of the points that I have made in this post and my previous posts regarding time series analysis.
I apologize for being a poor conversationalist, and I am not interested in name calling...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe record of man's impact on his environment is what the 3 articles are about, not sea level rise or CO2.
When you build levees, dams, and dykes, you channel water, speed water, and increase erosion.
When you build roads and buildings with parking lots, you accelerate and multiply runoff.
When you clear-cut forests and put in massive mono-cultures you eliminate biodiversity.
When you burn stuff, pollution fills the air.
If you burn enough stuff you make the sky darker reducing solar radiation.
When you leak radiator fluid into a gutter it makes it's way into the water and back into the creatures that live in the water.
When you dump toxins directly into the water, or pump them deep into the earth they make their way into the water table.
CO2 is but just one way man has influenced his atmosphere, he also spews CO, methane, and tens of thousands of known aerosols into the atmosphere.
In Russia, Moscow, last year, CO poison led to tens of thousands of deaths.
This article is not about sea level rise although it would appear to matter to Bangeladesh and the Maldives, nor is eliminating CO2 going to matter much from this point forward.
It isn't the humidity, it's the 30 inches of rain over the weekend that washed away the homes and dreams of those who witnessed the Nashville event, or the tornado survivors, the wildfire evacuees who look back at their decision to move to a region that is no longer a good bet for their kids or livestock.. the 3rd generation farmer who sees his wells run dry...
I know denialists always want to talk about CO2 and sea level rise, but deforestation of the Brazilian rainforest to grow beef for China is my favorite nominee for the Darwin Awards for the human race.
We are but 8 meals away from anarchy and Mother Nature could care less. Live by centralized food and energy...die by it.
Why do we build nuclear power plants in flood plains, along major faults, and near tsunami prone regions?
As prior comments demonstrate, climate denialism requires ignorance of how statistical analysis handles randomness. Consider radioactivity as a easy-to-understand example. Radioactive materials emit ionizing particles that can be measured with a GM probe. These materials emit particles randomly and background radiation will also cause random hits that are counted one by one. Even though the particles are emitted randomly, the time between ionized particle hits has a normal or Gaussian distribution. This distribution looks like a bell-shaped curve centered around the average interval between hits along a horizontal axis of time with counts shown on the vertical axis. The shape of the bell curve can be low and wide, or taller and narrower. This quality of width is precisely described by the standard deviation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you were near a large clump of radioactive material, the average time between clicks would decrease as you brought the probe in closer to it. Your ears would notice because the occasional random clicks would gradually become a frantic rattle turning to a buzz. The crackpot rationalization of climate denialists would ignore this reduction in the average interval by assuming that because the clicks are random, they cannot be analyzed to prove the presence of radioactivity. This proves more than merely their incompetence in any subject requiring mathematical skill to understand. It proves that climate denialism is entirely lacking so much as the slightest modicum of common sense. Anyone who makes such an assertion certainly has no claim to education or competence in physics, mathematics, or statistics. They are simply parroting something they've been told without understanding how to use a normal distribution to analyze measurements that have an appreciable degree of randomness.
The arrogant ignorance of such people would make them unfit to work in any capacity with jobs that require measurement where unknowns and measurement error must be handled in a logical and effective manner. As such, I would never hire a climate denialist to work around radioactive materials or any endeavor that requires honesty and competence.
--to be continued--
The facts are as presented in the feature. If we plot intervals between storms of specific intensity in their seasons around the globe, droughts of unusual duration and timeliness (such as those occurring in spring), and resulting floods and forest fires, the average of the distribution shows that the intervals between such destructive weather events is decreasing significantly and directly correlated to human emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe causality is proven. If the Sun were pumping out more heat then daytime temperatures would rise. Nighttime temperatures have risen much more, which corroborates the old and well established optical experiments showing that carbon dioxide intercepts heat that would have radiated into space and keeps it in the atmosphere. At no time in the past 800,000-years prior to the industrial revolution did C02 exceed 300-ppm. Now it exceeds 400-ppm while rising significantly each year. QED.
We are changing the climate through negligence because of the arrogant ignorance of climate deniers who've hired a few mentally deficient scientists to crank out pseudo-scientific nonsense for them to parrot in this forum and others all over the Internet.
Are you kidding? What on Earth does a statistical measurement of a radioactive material have to do with the ability of scientists who do not share your view point to understand how to perform such analyses. If you had bothered to read my posts for content (which by the way are all based on my own analyses of the data that has been presented not a regurgitation of statements someone else made without checking the validity of those statements) and you still think that an r2 value of 0.014 is a valid regression then I would say that you are the one who does not know anything about any science or mathematical analysis. I make my living, and a good one at that, performing just such analyses and I can say with an expert opinion that if I turned in work of the quality being sold as fact by the climate change folks I would fire myself before anyone got a chance to see the insanity of my conclusions. You are either awfully naive if you think that plotting the frequency and intensity of storm events over the last 130 years and comparing them to each other is indicative of the Earth's climatic system as a whole. Also, please tell me that you are not looking at the distribution of hurricanes over the entire reported period without stating that there is error in that data set in the time before satellite weather monitoring. Since not all of the storms were known about the numbers before satellite monitoring those totals are too low, which by the way has been pointed out by the folks that monitor hurricanes for a living.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-continued-
Also, nice job on quoting Wikipedia in terms of the 800,000 year CO2 concentration without reference. However, I see that you failed to indicate the entire CO2 story in the Earth's atmosphere. Then description of the graph that you forgot to mention is: 'Changes in carbon dioxide during the Phanerozoic (the last 542 million years). The recent period is located on the left-hand side of the plot, and it appears that much of the last 550 million years has experienced carbon dioxide concentrations significantly higher than the present day.' So what is your reply to that fact?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you had any scientific competency yourself you would have addressed the points that I made in a logical manner and if you had evidence to the contrary I would be happy to consider it. However, just as with the rest of the 'world is going to end' folks you would rather attack peoples character than their data analysis based conclusions. Admittedly it is pretty hard to argue against sound scientific reasoning and much easier to call names and then state your indefensible opinions. So keep running plays out of the Rules for Radicals, or maybe you are just another lemming going over the cliff without stopping to ask why.
In either case stop making yourself look uneducated by attacking the person and not the analysis. If you are so smart then point of the flaws in my logic regarding the relatively short time period of valid climate data and the issues with the statistical analysis of that data as it pertains to Earth's historic climate record as well as the issues with the history matching of the currently employed models.
Also, nice job on quoting Wikipedia in terms of the 800,000 year CO2 concentration without reference. However, I see that you failed to indicate the entire CO2 story in the Earth's atmosphere. Then description of the graph that you forgot to mention is: 'Changes in carbon dioxide during the Phanerozoic (the last 542 million years). The recent period is located on the left-hand side of the plot, and it appears that much of the last 550 million years has experienced carbon dioxide concentrations significantly higher than the present day.' So what is your reply to that fact?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you had any scientific competency yourself you would have addressed the points that I made in a logical manner and if you had evidence to the contrary I would be happy to consider it. However, just as with the rest of the 'world is going to end' folks you would rather attack peoples character than their data analysis based conclusions. Admittedly it is pretty hard to argue against sound scientific reasoning and much easier to call names and then state your indefensible opinions. So keep running plays out of the Rules for Radicals, or maybe you are just another lemming going over the cliff without stopping to ask why.
In either case stop making yourself look uneducated by attacking the person and not the analysis. If you are so smart then point of the flaws in my logic regarding the relatively short time period of valid climate data and the issues with the statistical analysis of that data as it pertains to Earth's historic climate record as well as the issues with the history matching of the currently employed models.
So, in summary, evosburgh evokes the 'correlation is not causation' argument, but fails to acknowledge that the basic physics of greenhouse gases, which would cause that correlation to exist, were worked out over 100 years ago by a guy named Arrhenius. That's right; the cause was identified, and the correlation predicted a long time before the correlation became so apparent as it is today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvosburgh, you might want to start with a review of the work of Tyndall, from 1861, and work your way forward from there.
"On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction.—The Bakerian Lecture."
http://tyndall1861.geologist-1011.mobi/
So, unless you can effectively counter/overthrow radiative energy physics as it has been understood for the last 150 years, you are wasting our time. If you can, please publish it. The rest of us will be enlightened, and you will rich and famous.
As the article states, we have loaded the weather dice, and the rolls are becoming harder to predict. We can continue to deform the dice, or we can try to stabilize them not to far from where they are.
Meme, pardon, but your cognitive dissonance is showing.
Mmm, in my quick Google search for Tyndall, I stumbled across a seemingly popular, though dubious, interpretation of Tyndall's 1861 work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is a less adulterated source,
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~vijay/Papers/Spectroscopy/tyndall-1861.pdf
and a better in-context, history,
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
I am not failing to address anything. It is a fact that increases in greenhouse gases do in fact cause temperature increases. The point that I have made is that IF all of the warming and relatede sea level rise for the past 130 years is 100% attributable to mankind then: (1) the overall effect is pretty small in terms of the overall historical variability of system as we currently understand it, (2) using a data set that contains only 130 years of data is pretty sketch at best and (3) the statistical analysis is poor at best as the R2 value on the time versus temperature analysis is 0.014.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo once again, please poke holes in the arguements that I have made and not in a perceived lack of knowledge on my part. I am reasonably certain that my understanding of time series analysis and the issues that I have pointed out are valid. If not I will stand corrected when my logic is proven as flawed. Until that point all you are doing is trying to argue around the analysis and distract from those conclusions because either you cannot do so or do not comprehend the information as presented.
It seems Denialism has all but evaporated minus people who jumped in at the very end like Evosburgh. Even the most devout Denialists are quietly concerned when they see Germany close down all nuclear power, Nebraska has a few reactors holding off flood waters, and the extreme weather one way or another has actually arrived in their hometowns regardless of where they live.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's like Senator Mitch McConnel holding on to the No-Revenue stance even though the rest of the Republican Taliban are onboard with eliminating tax loopholes...
It is sad that the goals of Denialists and Republicans are to crash the economy and the ecology of the planet for their own private quest for power and wealth.
But worse still is that they may have already succeeded at both.
1. There appears to be a statistically valid correlation between the modern CO2 concentration and the temperature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt looks like we agree that humans CAN affect the Earth in a meaningful way. I don't care if you think there's a relationship between time and CO2 or not, the only thing I'm arguing is that our CO2 emissions affect the Earth's temperature. That it doesn't correlate with time means, if I read you correctly, is that there's a lot of noise in the system depending on your time horizon. PDO, El Nino/Nina, Solar Cycles, all of these keep the temperature signal from marching up constantly. There might be a few decades where the warming apparently stops, like 1950 - 1970, but then it picks back up again once the Anthropogenic warming signal begins to overwhelm whatever cooling is happening.
That modern temp vs CO2 and the paleoclimate temp vs CO2 don't line up is a testament to how profound our influence on the climate is becoming. I think you're using the "CO2 lags behind temperature in the past, so why is it leading temperature now?" argument if I am not mistaken. Well, CO2 can be both a forcing and a feedback. In the past, major climate shifts were caused by orbital shifts mostly, especially in the past 30Myrs. When the ocean warms, it can hold LESS CO2 and can eventually become a carbon source if it warms enough. The added carbon is a positive feedback on the initial solar forcing of the climate. However, the climate doesn't really care where its forcings come from. We can produce an equivalent forcing through our CO2 emissions that an orbital cycle will do, and 1000s of times faster by the way, and then we have to deal with all those positive feedbacks that occur any time there is warming. The Earth's climate sensitivity to the FORCING of 2x CO2 is actually DOUBLE the W/m2 that the initial CO2 doubling produces, meaning we might be tipping the climate into a totally new regime.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
Since you agree that CO2 causes a warming, I may have misinterpreted your argument. Now it sounds more like a mix of "Climate's changed before" and "Climate sensitivity is low".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Personally, I find these to be somewhat contradictory arguments. How can you have low sensitivity and wide variability at the same time?
I'm willing to believe that you are reasonably competent technically; I'm not willing to believe that you are more competent than every major national scientific body.
Wow, way to keep emotion out of the debate Evo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWait, you said,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"There is no statistically defensable PROOF that AGW exists."
and later,
"It is a fact that increases in greenhouse gases do in fact cause temperature increases. "
So, what do you mean? The two statements are incompatible unless you hypothesize that human CO2 emissions are somehow being absorbed by some mysterious force, while at the same time, some other source is injecting carbon into the atmosphere that just happens to match the isotopic signature of fossil fuels.
Hmm, I also see that you are using what looks like a reference to an r-squared correlation coefficient. Maybe you aren't so technically competent, because while that is an appropriate test of a best-fit line, but it is not an appropriate test of non-linear relationships. It is pretty well established that the relationship is non-linear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExactly. The graph that I have seen hundreds of times that 'proves' that there is a AGW based increase in temperature is a linear fit through time series data which is som wrong that I want to puke each and every time I see it which is yet more proof that nobody on this board has read my posts for content. Also, I think that I pointed out that you cannot apply a non-linear fit either. So what is your reply to that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe is experimental proof that increasing greenhouse gas in correlatable to increased temperature (in the lab) however when that is applied to the natural system something is breaking down. It is either in the modern record or more likely in the historic record. In any case the effect in the modrewn record is pretty small when compared to the historic co2 levels so something is wrong in the analyses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, when you increase CO2 the polar ice caps melt and then you have shallow inland seas created which then tend to sequester the CO2 in carbonate rocks. This is how the extremely high CO2 concentrations in the past have been taken out of the atmosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, there is no mystery process but yet another natural process that does in fact have the ability to correct any additionaly CO2 that we put into the atmosphere.
And to close my fianl post because apparently nobody on this board wants to read for content this is my simple point: the statstical analysis of the time series data that has been done to date is flawed and even if you assume that 100% of the increase in temperature over the last 130 years is directly attributable to mankind then that increase is insiginficant with respect to the past climate swings that Earth has endured.
End of discussion until someone explains how the past swings, which were not influenced by mankind, are not germain to the argument or current climate change.
My reply is that your arguments continue to be internally inconsistent; you say now that a linear test is not appropriate in these circumstances, and yet you used one earlier to demonstrate how poorly CO2 correlated with temperature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, the past climate changes provide the best estimates of what to expect in the near future, and paleoclimate studies tend to put sensitivity to a CO2 doubling in the 3.0 to 4.5 C range.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIDK, see any relationship here?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/plot/pmod/scale:0.2/offset:-273.6/plot/gistemp/from:1978/trend/plot/pmod/scale:0.2/offset:-273.6/trend/plot/gistemp/mean:396
Or maybe you would like a sampling of the hockey league
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison_png
next to the CO2 record
http://www.youtube.com/user/CarbonTracker
(Stop at about 2:17 to see the temperature link above over the some time period as the CO2.)
Look, you can even see a rise in CO2 about the time of the MWP and a dip around the LIA.
"This is how the extremely high CO2 concentrations in the past have been taken out of the atmosphere."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, we know. And this process takes thousands of years, which is one of the reasons why we should not be significantly increasing the CO2 over the course of decades. If this process were able to keep pace with anthropogenic emissions, how would you explain the rise in CO2 content in air and sea?
As for "...until someone explains...", that is another zombie argument that has been answered many times before. Try,
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"..that increase is insignificant with respect to the past climate swings that Earth has endured.."
All you are saying is that the ~0.7 C change that we've seen so far is mild compared to the variation we've seen in the past. So? What, you expect the earth to instantaneously come to a new equilibrium temperature? There will be a substantial lag if for no other reason that it takes a while to heat the whole ocean.
Earth endure? Sure.
Modern society with 6-9 billion people? Not so sure.
When you take in consideration that there is thermal lag, and considering the past swings you are found of, what you are saying is that we can expect larger changes to come than we have seen so far. I don't see that we should take comfort from that.
Please do not return to the correlation-is-not-causation argument; you have already agreed there is a causative link based on physics.
Of course, AGW climate deniers failed to notice that my previous comment refers to a first order approximation of intervals between events that occur with an appreciable degree of randomness. A better approximation could be had using a gamma probability distribution. This is because none of the intervals in question will be less than zero.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAny discussion with a climate denier who fails to acknowledge the role of human greenhouse gas emissions is bound to be sullied by incoherent and self-contradictory thinking. A prime example is their tendency to pull out numbers such as "R2=0.014" without any description of what is being correlated. R2, also known as R-squared, is used to describe how dependable a linear correlation is.
Diurnal and seasonal heating and cooling of the Earth is certainly not linear. The power of heat input during the day depends on local albedo and the sine of the angle of the incident solar irradiance. Integration over the function of this incoming radiation renders the heat coming in during the day. Nighttime outgoing heat is related to the temperature of the surface to the fourth power minus the temperature of overlying atmosphere to the fourth power in some part and minus the temperature^4 of space to the other part. Increasing the infrared opacity of the atmosphere by adding CO2 certainly forces the atmosphere to block some surface irradiance into space. It causes the atmosphere to warm, which makes the pathway for heat to exit into space seem warmer. Because the rate of heat transfer is proportional to the difference in fourth powers of the absolute temperatures, a little bit of opacity and warmth goes a long way. This is the well known greenhouse effect that AGW climate deniers fail to understand.
--continued next comment--
Climate and weather are inherently non-linear. Using a linear R2 correlation factor produces only nonsense. Some of the non-linearity comes from the cyclic nature of weather and seasons. Some of the non-linearity comes from the thermal mass of the Earth with its atmosphere, land, and oceans, which at this time moderate global warming. Some of the non-linearity comes from reduction in albedo as glaciers and polar ice continue to melt, which constitutes a positive feedback that exacerbates the greenhouse effect. In addition to exacerbating the greenhouse effect by loss of albedo, as permafrost melts, the organic deposits below taiga forest and arctic tundra rots at much faster rates. This produces methane. Although methane has a 7-year half life in the atmosphere, it is 72 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSometimes, I wish we could write a few equations here to save some verbosity and this is one of those times.
However, I've hereby addressed the points of the present climate change deniers. But I will admit that because they failed to describe what their number means, I'm taking a big leap assuming they're talking about something relevant to the in-depth feature with which they are presumably so upset.
For those who aren't convinced that humans have put so much CO2 into the atmosphere, I invite you to see http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html
It's an animated graph from NOAA that even a child could understand. And children will need to after the present generation screws up the planet by steadfastly remaining stupid about this problem.
Every day now, SciAmer cranks out a new alarmist article. Here it is claimed that post 1985, AGW kicked in big time. Uh, not according to sea level data, temperature data and global sea ice extent data!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA: http://i.min.us/idFxzI.jpg
Thremometers: http://i.min.us/idAOoE.gif
Earth: http://k.min.us/ibtB8G.gif
Ice: http://k.min.us/ibBgw2.jpg
"Hmm, please go study some physics. Start with some basic thermodynamics and proceed to the absorption/emission characteristics of atmospheric gases."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreenhouse theory is not the point. It's water vapor feedback, which basic physics cannot speak to any more than basic physics can explain heart disease in a useful manner.
This article appeared a year prior to Al Gore's 1988 congressional testimony that put this whole movement in motion. It points out that climate models fail to consider that higher temperatures and humidity due to CO2 create strong negative feedback due to increased reflective cloud formation:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v329/n6135/pdf/329138a0.pdf
Not much has changed in the climate models since then as concerns clouds!
"It seems Denialism has all but evaporated minus people who jumped in at the very end like Evosburgh"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAustralia is the canary in the coal mine for AGW enthusiasm, for it is the country suddenly the most serious (despite the "now carbon tax under my administration" lie!) about instituting a carbon tax. And public opinion is plunging as per support of addressing AGW unilaterally:
http://junksciencesidebar.com/2011/06/26/australians-rapidly-catching-up-to-americans-in-climate-skepticism/
Here is the main reason why (China dominates not Australia!):
http://oi55.tinypic.com/s6rk1j.jpg
Your technical sophistication has very little impact on remaining fence sitters as you continue to refer to those who disagree with you as the equivalent of neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers. The word "cloud" does not appear in any of your statements. In fact it has not appeared once in these comments except in my last post. Not bringing up the elephant in the AGW room tells me that you are just another activist spinning tales with technical mumbo jumbo, screaming about "look at how CO2 is rising!" It's the effect of clouds (and precipitation) on climate that is the central problem of climatology because it cannot be accurately modeled so far. It's similar in a way to the protein folding issue plagues computer modellers in the field of chemistry. Your approach is like that of forensic and sci fi movies in which the full 3D structure of a protein pops up on a computer monitor seconds after the sample is inserted in the tray. That's the fiction here too: the implicit claim that current computers can predict climate. Let's have a look at Jim Hansen's prediction from 1988 then shall we?:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProphecy: http://i.min.us/idEHdo.jpg
My point is that when you use the CO2 versus temperature from the modern you cannot apply that to the historic or vice versa. I actually took the time to find and analyze the data. I did NOT take someone else's work at face value. Question everything. Dogma is dangerous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI actually said that temperature versus time cannot be correlated with either a linear or non-linear method which is exactly what the climate change people are doing. Even if you do believe that the linear correlation between historic CO2 (as is estimated from the oce core data) and temperature is valid and the modern correlation is valid they do not match so what do you do then? Obviously the two data sets have inconsistencies and I think that the issue is with the ice core data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTry going out and finding the data and doing the analysis yourself as I have. I will take nothing at face value when politics are involved.
Onced again you have missed the point. Even if 100% of the temperature, and threrefore sea level rise, in the past 130 years is attributable to man then it is still only a very small fraction of what is already occuring in the natural system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStop giving mankind so much credit for the ability to change the climate system because even if I take it for granted that mankind has increased sea level 20 cm is 130 years it is still a drop in the bucket.
What I am saying is that we WILL see larger swings in the future regardless of what we do. We had best get off of our behinds and start getting to how we are going to deal with those.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou shgould be scared because as I pointed out previously mankind has enjoyed a reasonably calm environemt in which to evolve and that will end. I actually read that we have no more than few hundred million years left of habitable Earth before the solar luminance evaporates the ocean and the inorganic carbon cycle depletes the atmposphere of CO2 so that plant life cannot survive.
I never disputed that mankind had put CO2 into the atmpsphere but only the magnitude of the effect with repsect to past climate fluctuations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that I have sufficiently pointed out that the r2 analysis is invalid yet that it the basis of the temperature rise quotes used by the IPCC so my point that the datya analysis seems invalid as you pointed out.
I make n-dimensional models for a living and I can tell you with certainty that there is no sucg thing as a unique solution. Anyone that claims that there is such a solution either: (1) does not fully understand the tools that they are using or (2) outright lying.
I have yet to see a monte carlo analysis of the climate model results. If there is one I would love to read the reference and if not then the analyses are not complete. The monte carlo simulation allows the modeler to get an idea of the inherent inaccuracy (or range of outcomes) in their model. Without that analysis there is no way to proof check the model.
For example the last model that I built (which is 8 dimensional) attempts to predict a value of x. My solution for a given point in time is that x=0.25. In that model I am reconstructing the imput data to within an average of 1.5%, which I think is pretty good. However, when I run the monte carlo simulation, which varies my input arrays to account for the statistical variance inherent with the measurement, I find that the answer is 0.25 +/- 0.06 from P10 to P90. Now, I know that this lies just about in line with the statistical repeatibility of my input measurements so I know that my model is stable. Even though the product is a non-unique solution when I compare it to the ground truth, which in this case is alboratory measurements (which by the way also have inherent inconsistencies) I find that I am in compliance.
Until this discussion is presented with repesct to the climate models I am going to keep questioning.
Now for all of you that think that I am a denier and that I do not know how to perform (or how these analyses were performed) I say at least I have the tool kit to question the statements that have been made by the scientific community on this topic. If you want to take their conclusions at face value and assume that manind has the ability to destroy this planet then do so. As for me I am going to keep quesitoning science until I am satisfied that the proper solutions have been met.
Exactly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn another note: is the term 'denier' meant to be a derogatory insult of someone's intellegence because they dare to question someone else? If I read the usage that seems to be my conclusion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI personally think that everyone that says it is no better than a racist bigot. My explaination is simple: when you label someone as a denier you are placing them in a group which you assume has a lower intellegence. How is this different then applying a racially charged term to a person of color. Answer: it is not. So each and every time that you use the term 'denier' you can go ahead and lump yourself in with the rest of the population that thinks that it is acceptable to use sterotypes to define a group of people. If you want to have a scientific debate then you can feel free to debunk my work based upon scientific facts, which hopefully you have taken the time to verify all on your own (the internet and excel will do a long way). However, if you think that by calling someone a 'denier' it furthers your cause it does not. It just makes you look like an uneducated bigot, which consequently is not how you are going to convince those of us that are going to question everything that is said until we can believe that the conclusions are based in sound scientific reasoning.
Now for the best part: I just like playing the devli's advocate because ultimatley I believe that there is no way to prove or disprove that mankind can cause global climate change. Sure we can effect the atmospheric chemistry and that may or may not have an impact upon the global climate that is significant. I do believe that mankind has been able to increase CO2 but I also believe that one supervolcanic event is going to eclipse that volume and that sooner or later that event is going to occur.
The real problem is that we do not have the means to build any mathematical models, no matter how sophisticated the computer simulation is, that can be adequately checked for validity as we do not have the data precision in the historic (read ice core and other paleo-climnate data) to serve as ground truth. The past climate records are not much more than a best guess and therefore any model that we build to replicate a best guess is likely to be doomed from the start.
I would love to be proven wrong on this standpoint. However, since I run this type of model each and every day (and I know the manner in which I sell my soul to the devil each time I run one which is based on as accurate as possible modern data) I am going to be a skeptic.
AGW climate change deniers are obviously eager to espouse fictitious premises to gussie up their disproven hypotheses when facts refuse to agree with nonsense. Human emissions of CO2 alone top 35 gigatons (metric) per year. Volcanic activity totaled for the entire planet averages only 0.26 gigatons per year. Saudi Arabia alone emits almost twice the total CO2 output of all of Earth's volcanoes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php
If anything, volcanic emissions tend to cool the Earth. Sulfur dioxide emissions are blown into the stratosphere where they ultimately form sulfate particulates that reflect sunlight back into space. Volcanic dust contributes little to the cooling because it stays aloft for only a few months. Sulfate particulates remain aloft for two to three years. This might lead one to suggest that if we inject enough sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, we could offset global warming by fighting pollution with pollution. While this is true, sulfur dioxide combines with water to form sulfuric acid. So, if you want those "No Fishing" signs to become obsolete then this might be what some would consider a good solution. The result would be acid rain in which neither man nor fish is likely to thrive. We both need fresh water with a neutral pH.
Another fictitious premise of the AGW climate change deniers is that climate change is being driven by water vapor or clouds. The problem with this idea is that water is neither being added nor subtracted from the global system in any significant amount. The source of CO2 is continuously being dug up out of the ground, burned, and blown into the atmosphere. Clouds do reflect sunlight but only during the day. At night, clouds are like a blanket that traps heat in the troposphere. I often drive on treacherous roads in freezing conditions. When there's cloud cover and the roads are wet, they stay wet. I've seen those wet roads turn to ice in a matter of minutes if the cloud cover goes away. The remaining latent heat keeping the roads from freezing radiates into space. You can stand there and watch the ice grow from the edges on into the middle of the pavement.
--continuing from 75 above --
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe water cycle, which we call weather, is driven by energy from the Sun and trapping more of that energy by adding greenhouse gas to the atmosphere is changing the climate and the weather, not the other way around. Warmer air can hold more moisture. This is the basic principle behind the hair dryer. The cold air entering the hair dryer has the same amount of moisture as the hot air coming out. The hotter air absorbs moisture faster. A fan might also work, but you will be tapping your toe for an extra half hour waiting for your date to get ready.
The moisture holding ability of hotter air means that some regions will experience prolonged drought because the air passing over will not release its moisture. Then it gets interesting when that hot moist air finally hits a colder air mass. Because the air is holding more moisture, it has more to give. So other regions experience blizzards, torrential rains, and floods.
All of these results have been modeled on computers since the 1980s. Since then, the models for predicting both weather and climate have gotten more precise. More powerful computers can process models with more nodes. It's both ignorant and dishonest to say that our computer models are incapable of making predictions when the fact that these predictions are coming true shows that they're actually very good at it. There is nothing magical about any of the physics that I've described. All of it can be modeled and approximated with enough accuracy to constitute grounds for serious law and policy changes.
Scientific American is merely reporting on the research. Most of that research has been peer-reviewed and when it is not, the articles invariably provide contrary scientific opinions. Paid shills and crackpots are clearly devoted to their faith in nonsense. While considering the wreckage that our collective stupidity is likely to inflict on posterity, I reckon the word "deniers" is too polite but there's another point of view.
Perhaps we should be more sympathetic to those who cannot find it in themselves to change their established beliefs no matter how much contrary information proves them wrong. I think Michael Shermer has them pegged in:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-believing-brain (The Believing Brain)
First, see post 74. There is no room for name calling or derogatory terms in scientific debate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow to address your points:
- Volcanic emissions: yes the yearly average is way below the anthropogenic volume. However, current emissions pale in comparison to a single super-volcanic eruption. There is a reason that the atmospheric CO2 concentration was way higher than it is now during the Eocene and mankind had nothing to do with it. It is all related to volcanism and the breakup of Pangea.
- on the topic of the break up of Pangea: the current
climate models do not/can not include the changes
in oceanic circulation because nobody has any idea
what the oceanic circulation pattern was and how it
was effecting the atmospheric CO2 budget. This is
a huge fatal flaw in the computer simulations.
- The CO2 emissions from volcanism have a much longer residence time than either the SO2 or particulate matter, so while the short term effects of a huge eruption is to cool the Earth the long term is likely a warming.
- Using non-snese arguments like injecting SO2 into the atmosphere to fight AGW does not add to your arguement and appears to be a way to make 'deniers' look dumb. Nice try but it is pretty obvious where you are going with this statement.
- Agreed on the Sun being the driver for the Earth's climate. However, didn't I read a few 'peer reviewed' articles that concluded that the Sun has nothing to do with global warming and it is all due to us evil people here on Earth messing with atmospheric chemistry? Intersting that when the climate change advocates are wrong it gets swept under the carpet pretty quickly. Much like that little ethics problem they had in the UK concerning their analyses and attempt to skew the peer reviews in their favor. Well, I guess since it is all for our own good the ends justify the means and since the arguement is over according to the non-scientist we should just overlook gross breaks in scientific reasoning and ethics.
- The warm air thing versus cold air is just a question of relative humidity and the ability of the air to hold more moisture. However, the moisture must first be available because hot air that is dry (read desert) hold no more water than cold air (read polar caps).
-cont.
First, see post 74. There is no room for name calling or derogatory terms in scientific debate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow to address your points:
- Volcanic emissions: yes the yearly average is way below the anthropogenic volume. However, current emissions pale in comparison to a single super-volcanic eruption. There is a reason that the atmospheric CO2 concentration was way higher than it is now during the Eocene and mankind had nothing to do with it. It is all related to volcanism and the breakup of Pangea.
- on the topic of the break up of Pangea: the current
climate models do not/can not include the changes
in oceanic circulation because nobody has any idea
what the oceanic circulation pattern was and how it
was effecting the atmospheric CO2 budget. This is
a huge fatal flaw in the computer simulations.
- The CO2 emissions from volcanism have a much longer residence time than either the SO2 or particulate matter, so while the short term effects of a huge eruption is to cool the Earth the long term is likely a warming.
- Using non-snese arguments like injecting SO2 into the atmosphere to fight AGW does not add to your arguement and appears to be a way to make 'deniers' look dumb. Nice try but it is pretty obvious where you are going with this statement.
- Agreed on the Sun being the driver for the Earth's climate. However, didn't I read a few 'peer reviewed' articles that concluded that the Sun has nothing to do with global warming and it is all due to us evil people here on Earth messing with atmospheric chemistry? Intersting that when the climate change advocates are wrong it gets swept under the carpet pretty quickly. Much like that little ethics problem they had in the UK concerning their analyses and attempt to skew the peer reviews in their favor. Well, I guess since it is all for our own good the ends justify the means and since the arguement is over according to the non-scientist we should just overlook gross breaks in scientific reasoning and ethics.
- The warm air thing versus cold air is just a question of relative humidity and the ability of the air to hold more moisture. However, the moisture must first be available because hot air that is dry (read desert) hold no more water than cold air (read polar caps).
-cont.
- The computer models that you indicate have been run since the 80's have actually been run since the 60's. No matter when they were created and refined the accuracy is a not really that well defined as is indicated in this thread which is an interesting read:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/roundtables/the-uncertainty-climate-modeling?order=asc
The physics that are employed are reasonably simple, but therin lies the problem. The complex system being simulated is dynamic and the ability of computer models to simulate such a system is constrained in many ways that bring the reuslts into qeustion. Those constraints are: computer processing power, upscaling, knowing all of the required inputs, interactions between the components(meaning dependancies between variables and equations), etc. There is no way on the face of this planet (or any other for that matter) that a computer simulation can yield an absolute answer and therefore until the models are run through rigerous uncertainty analysis then the results are highly questionable.
Furthermore, while the models may be able to reasonably recreate the past 130 to 150 years they are completely unable to recreate the historic climate spanned by the ice core data. This means: (1) the models do not have the correct parameterization or (2) the past climate is not correctly understood and the models CANNOT be properly parameterized. In either case these facts mean that the climate models are not robust enough due to the fact that there is not enough reliable data to history match the Earth's past climate system. Simply, nobody was there to take accurate measurements and understand the error in those measurements. Therefore, the estimates of past climatic fluctuations are frought with error that cannot be accurately characterized within the current climate models.
- Finally, trying to make yourself look superior by saying that you should be sympathetic to the 'deniers' (once again see my previous post) just highlights your ignorance/arrogance. There is no room in science for this type of flippant dismissal of valid critique of scientific work. The skepticism that accompanies my questioning of the methods and results is has nothing to do with any of my beliefs other than the one that indicates that you should question any scientific research until you are satisfied with the result. Any less is sheer wrecklessness and I would be in violation of my professional license in terms of ethics.
Claiming that "the models do not have the correct parameterization" without specifying which parameters you're talking about is a load of highfalutin nonsense, a cheap dodge without any merit. You call that a scientific critique? It's puffery, a lie spread for whatever profit a liar may hope to obtain. This isn't derogatory. This is calling out a fraud.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust because you have no idea how to set up a computer model does not mean that no one else does. One thing that has been proven here is that the cute weather lady on TV knows infinitely more about computer modeling than the smartest AGW climate denier on Earth.
The pretty weather lady on the 10 o'clock news presents a nice looking map with colored blobs moving in fast motion to show the approximate location of precipitation forecast for the coming day, hour by hour. She says things like, "There's a 30% chance of rain showers over Denver by 5 PM and a possibility of flash flooding in Boulder and Larimer counties later in the evening."
Her references to "chance" and "possibility" are an honest admission that her work is not perfectly precise. But I will give credit where credit is due: her work is good. She's right a lot more often than she's wrong. The reason why she's a better at forecasting weather than the previous generation is that her education and her tools are superior to those used ten years ago, which were better than their predecessors and so on.
The other proof of AGW climate denier fraudulence is that flat-Earth inability to understand how small changes in the composition of a substance can produce larger changes in the physical properties of that substance. Pure iron is strong. Adding small amounts of chromium or vanadium followed by heat treatment can double the strength and increase the hardness by multiples. Human emissions increasing the CO2 composition of Earth's atmosphere is proven to increase the greenhouse effect significantly. This proof has been shown in the laboratory at small scales, in the recorded temperature readings of thermometers all over the world, and in the vast repertoire of warming effects known to those of us who read the news.
Climate modeling manages compute cycles by focusing on long term effects. It is improving because experience with climate change is improving the values put in to parameters like wind vectors, pressure, humidity, albedo, oceanic surface temperatures, currents, insolation, greenhouse effect, and so forth.
If you can't even name a single parameter, you're just blowing smoke.
Based upon your last post it is you in the church of climate change doom (yes I am now going to bring emotion into this discussion because you keep using denier as a derogatory term in attempt to characterize me as some kind of idiot I am now calling toy a dogmatist) that appears to know nothing about the climate models that are being discussed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince I construct and run precisely this type of model on a daily basis, although with a different use, I would suspect that my opinion is infinitely more qualified than yours. Additionally, your continued evasion of the simple issues that I have brought forth, in terms of the validity of the statistical analysis, and then attempted misdirection does not further your point it just makes you look ignorant of the facts.
As to the weather lady: her models are not the same models that are being used to predict the future climate (opps), which are based upon 4 dimension cellular models of the atmosphere. If you had read the last reference that I posted you would see that there is a good deal of discussion around the accuracy, and reporting thereof, in the climate models.
As to the record temperatures: that is an issue of the time range of the data. The longer the data spans the less likely that a single high temperature day is going to be a record. Since I suspect that you are not going to understand what I am saying I challenge you to go out and find the daily temperature data for a single station. Take that data and analyze it versus time and see what you find in terms of average highs, low and record highs and lows. Since I suspect that you are not going to bother here is what you are going to find: as time goes on the number of record high and low days in a given year decreases with time. Why you may ask. The answer is because there is more data to compare the current reading with. So we are back to time series analysis which I suspect you do not comprehend. Otherwise you would not make such ridiculous statements.
Now since I am never going to convince you that you are not correct I want you to answer one simple question regarding the climate models. Why is it that the current climate models cannot simulate the change from greenhouse Earth to icehouse Earth starting in the mid Cretaceous?
What is of interest is that prior to the Quaternary glaciations CO2 concentrations were 2.5 times higher than they are now (in the Eocene). So please explain how increased atmospheric CO2 causes increased temperature when immediately following 1000+ ppm CO2 glaciation occured?
cont.
I will give you the simple answer: because the climate models will NOT HISTORY MATCH PRIOR TO THE MODERN TEMPERATURE DATA SETS. Why is that the case? The answer is that the modern models are created to match the modern data and to do so the models are built and parameterized (meaning atmospheric gas concentrations, water vapor concentrations, temperature, solar radiance input, inter-relationships between variables, etc.) and then tuned to provide a result that matches the current record. The secret is that there is no single correct answer output from such a probabalistic inversion model but rather an answer that makes for a low error mathematical reconstruction of the input data. There are an infinite number of models that can come out with a low error reconstruction so it is the history match that proves the validity. While the current models match the modern data they do not match the historic data and therefore there is an issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real reason that the models cannot history match the past climate is because they do not include the correct parameters and relationships to recreate Earth's past climate. This is not the fault of the models or the modelers but rather an unfortunate fact that we do not have accurate data nor a comprehensive enough understanding of the true drivers of the climate system to facilitate the construction of reasonable simulators.
Now I guess that I am a stupid know nothing denier (according to your vast knowledge) but I do know one thing: I am not going to take someone's word at face value when there are as many holes in their logic as are present in the current climate models (especially when they are employing the same technology that I have expertise in using). You can go on and believe that the debate is over and that those of us who are skeptical of the current analyses are just plain idiots. However, it is you who is blindly following others without even bothering to question the methods and results, and if you are willing to allow others to do your thinking for you without questioning them when things look odd then you are the denier and I am the skeptic. I would much rather be a skeptic than a lemming blindly jumping off of a cliff because someone else told me it was in my best interest.
So in your next post please address my points from posts 16, 72, 78 and 79 as well as the simple question in the first half of this post regarding the Eocene CO2 concentrations. Until then it is you my friend that is blowing smoke and attempting misdirection.
I forgot: one more simple question. If the 20 cm of sea-level rise is 100% attributable to anthropogenic causes then what is the big deal?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBased upon the quick analysis I did in post 16 (publicly available, Excel and about 15 minutes) this is a very small portion of the total swing since the last glacial maximum so even if we are affecting the climate it is a pretty small change compared to what the system can do when left to its own devices.
I really do not see the big deal in the grand scheme. I mean that sort of change (0.014%) is not compelling me to disconnect all of my utilities, get rid of my cars and go back to the stone age (which is still not going to completely erase my dreaded carbon footprint).
However, if this is so compelling to you and your kind then go ahead and get rid of your house, cars, clothes, etc and don't even think about building a fire to keep warm or cook your food. Otherwise you are KILLING THE PLANET!!!!
P.S. - There is no such thing as green energy. Solar panels, batteries (which are particularly nasty to build, recycle and dispose of), wind mills, etc all have an impact upon the environment so lets not kid ourselves that we are making anything better by using them.
P.P.S - Simply, we have a limited amount of resources on this rock and if we as a race want to go on after couple of hundred million habitable years we have on this planet we better be get to using them to get off and start colonizing the rest of the solar system and at some point galaxy. If not we are doomed to die right along with the inevitable death of this planet we call Earth. Either way I am not going to be here to see it but I would like to know that mankind is going to endure past just living here on Earth.
As to volcanic effects on the climate, the Mount Tambora eruption of April 1815 caused a volcanic winter event that, when combined with an historic low in solar activity, caused the "Year without a Summer" in 1816. This was probably due to the effects of sulfur dioxide emissions overwhelming the volcanic carbon dioxide warming effect. So, saying that a "super volcano" could warm the climate contradicts over two centuries of direct observations on the climate effects of volcanism. This includes the climate cooling effects of the 1883 Krakatau eruption. The healthy ecosystems of those days easily absorbed the carbon dioxide produced by those "super" volcanoes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVolcanoes have been active through geological history as the Earth went through ice ages and periods of warmth. The one thing we know that hasn't been a factor during the 800,000-years prior to the industrial revolution is human activity busting the Earth's carbon budget to the tune of 400-ppm and rising as opposed to a 300-ppm high end.
Ironically, it happens to be AGW climate deniers who incorrectly claim that volcanoes are the source of CO2 that changes the climate. With volcanoes emitting less than 1% of what humans emit, that seems unlikely but it nice to know that they're willing to admit that CO2 contributes to global warming in this case. The funny part is that they're suggesting that the CO2 that volcanoes emit is somehow 100-times more potent than the CO2 that humans emit. Someone should bottle the stuff.
Let's take a quick look at the suggestion to colonize space. We'll start by ignoring the federal budget and the intransigence of wealthy billionaires and corporations when it comes to paying for all that. Let's go for it. Damn the budgets and full speed ahead.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpace has loads of resources. Trouble is that they're very far away. You can't get there from here because the way is an awful big space filled with a lot of nothing. We're not talking Nevada-level nothing but literally zero material resources. Spare parts? Nope. Run out of air and you're out of luck. And it's cold. We're not talking Antarctica-level cold. It's hundreds of degrees below zero on either scale.
Didn't they teach you that on Star Trek?
I always wondered how they kept the Enterprise so nice and toasty. The windows must've had some serious defrosters keeping them clear. It's no surprise that Captain Kirk hit on anything with a pulse and legs. The only surprise was that the logical Mr. Spock did not. A warm bed mate would be a good thing even if she or he had three eyes. It's cold outside.
Our progress into space isn't going so well. When Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, pink slips were being printed for the people who made it possible. The only organizational machine that has survived longer than any space craft, including Voyager, is the machine that cranks out layoff notices.
Our propulsion system is essentially the same thing that they put in V2 rockets to bomb London in 1945. There's no impulse drive, no warp drive. We're not even close and no one is working on any of that.
So guess what? Keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere like there's no tomorrow and there won't be. Not for humanity.
To seriously suggest that beings who can't even take care of a beautiful resource-rich planet like Earth can survive a long voyage in deep space where there's nothing is a childish fantasy like training new born babies to operate nuclear submarines.
I think that we have already covered this but once again: yes current CO2 emissions are way below what we are putting into the atmosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, the volcanism that I am talking about is not the relatively small event that you noted (which are NOT super volcanoes) but rather the actual super volcanic events like the Deccan Traps, Columbia River flood basalts and Yellowstone (VEI 7 and 8 scale). Since we haven't had one of these in the past two centuries I guess we don't really know what the effect would be do we (or maybe we do). The Deccan Traps seem to coincide with the Cretaceous rise in CO2 concentration I wonder which point of view is correct? Is it your short time scale skewed view or the long term geologic record?
So yes the relatively small modern events, which do seem kind of catastrophic as we have not really seen the real big ones that happened in the past, have been buffered by the climate system, but what I (and the other people discussing volcanic gas input) are talking about are HUGE eruptions that pumped out a LOT of CO2.
The cooling is a short term effect due to SO2 and particulate matter (which I think I pointed out in an earlier post) and the CO2, which has been found to have much longer residence times in the atmosphere, which has the potential to cause long term warming. Another point that I had not considered is the huge amount of thermal energy given off by a volume of lava like the Deccan Traps. 512,000 cubic kilometers of lava at an average of 1750 degrees farenheit is a lot of thermal energy to dissipate into the atmosphere. I am going to compute that in terms of solar input in a given time period and see how it compares (sometime tomorrow).
You are right the CO2 does not appear to have gotten over 300 ppm in the past 800,000 years but just prior it was over 1000 ppm. So I ask again: why did it get so high and why did we then enter a icehouse condition when current AGW logic would dictate that the polar caps should melt due to warming? My guess: volcanism and continental drift both of which, along with a whole bunch of other stuff like orbital dynamics, caused the icehouse and the depletion of CO2 from the atmosphere. Also, it could be that more moisture in the atmosphere causes more precipitation at the pole which causes glaciers to grow.
-cont.
I once read an article about some military planes that were abandoned on the Greenland ice fields due to encountering a storm. When they were recovered in 2007 they were dug out from under 100 meters of snow and ice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.smh.com.au/news/World/WWII-plane-recovered-in-Greenland/2007/06/23/1182019412243.html
Interesting that while we were warming the climate there was still 100 meters of snow and ice deposited on the Greenland ice cap.
So once again back to one of my original points: we do not have a long enough climate record nor record of the really large volcanic events and their impacts to judge their relative effect on the climate system. The CO2 from the modern volcanoes is relatively minor but the modern volcanic emissions pale in comparison to the historic super eruption volumes.
So I guess it is the lack of knowledge by the climate AGW fanatics of the true scale of prior eruptions that is coloring their opinion of the relative contribution of volcanic CO2 in the overall climate system (or at least yours).
Give me a break. So your point of view is that we should just go ahead allow our species to die with the planet? OK, I don't really have any skin in the game as I will not be here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, that is what you are going to argue. Not all of the other valid points that I have posted. Pretty smart on your part to not face the facts.
Quick back of the envelope (or Excel) computation which I am not entirely sure I did correctly (units conversions).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI estimate that the heat energy released from the Deccan Traps flood basalt is something like 1.31x10^21 kcal. Taking that the current average insolation is something like 10.4 W*h/meter/day the amount of heat released into the climate system following the flood basalt emplacement is something like an extra 692 days of solar input (in today's terms).
Also, another quick back of the envelope calculation indicates that if you assume 1.4 wt% CO2 in the magma, which doesn't seem like much, and a 96% outgassing as the magma cools (both of which are in line with a couple of quick google searches so quality ?) then the Deccan Traps added something like 70.5 trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is about 2600 years worth of anthropogenic emissions. This kind of makes me think our contribution is sort of insignificant but that is just me.
To place this volume in terms of ppm in the atmosphere: if you assume that the 80 ppm from 1960 through 2010 is all mankind then a ratio of the Deccan volume and the current volume indicates that there should have been and increase of something like 897 ppm from the traps alone. Since this did not all occur at once then the climate system was able to absorb some and therefore the values for the historic CO2 concentration during this time period begin to make sense.
So, the point of all this is to complete what I set out to determine in terms of a super volcanic eruptions potential impact upon the climate system as well as the volume of CO2. Kind of interesting considerations and I am now going to see if they are built into the climate models. If not then I am claiming this as my idea and it had better be referenced to me and this post:)
Guess that is the end of that discussion and facts prevail over feelings.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLets call climate change a super bug. We speculate, with some evidence indicating our speculations may be correct, that things are getting worse. The use of medications is creating superbugs; industry is creating climate change. Do we sit back and wait to see what happens? Or having this knowledge do we try to ease those it will affect, and adjust our ways to get through it in the best way our new knowledge allows.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you ask me it likes walking away from a cure for cancer. It's like letting people die that you know you could save. It's like doing nothing when you have the knowledge to do something. Philosophically the question always is, is it morally right to intervene? Is it morally right not to? But no one is talking about climate change, or superbugs, or cancer morally. They are choosing to believe in it's existence, and it's solutions subjectively. Choosing to believe in evidence or not. Choosing.
I would say go back to acting and thinking morally, what is the right thing to do? If someone told me "I think this is a possibility, and here is a solution," well, what is the harm in that? It may not be true, but if the solution is not hurting anyone, and may prevent harm, than morally I think I am obligated to consider it.
More and more people have opinions without considering what may be the best outcome for themselves, for their neighbour, and for a future. Even without feeling committed to those things, when did moral obligations become irrelevant?
Well, this has been an interesting, if depressing, cat fight to read.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisevosburgh - I read all the way through your reference from the Journal of the Atomic Scientists (thanks for the link, BTW.). All the way through. Aside from quite a bit of sesquipedalian turgiversification - which may have been necessary to render the subject - I found the discussion interesting. Here's what I took away (very distilled):
All of the discussants absolutely accept the fact of global climate change.
They all agree that the confidence levels of then current (2008) climate model projections are too broad to provide accurate predictions of coming events.
They seem to disagree on how best to rectify this problem.
They disagree on the particulars of how to communicate the risks of climate change to the public and particularly to planners, who may well be under both temporal and financial guns.
They all agree that as it is evident that some manner of fecal matter is on it's way to, or is already in, the fan, the 'customers' of the climate prognosticators must be apprised, with appropriate and well defined caveats, of the probable and possible dangers.
All this brings to mind the Precautionary Principle.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/precautionary+principle
I seem to recall some discussion of the precipitous drop in CO2 concentration at the end of the Middle Eocene. I found, quite by accident, this:
http://my.opera.com/nielsol/blog/the-azolla-event-dramatic-bloom-49-million-years-ago Lots of links here for further investigation.
That plants of similar habits still exist today, there is this:
<http://sites.duke.edu/aquaticinvasives/tag/giant-salvinia/
I submit that to deny the existence of climate change on the basis of statistics - or at this point, divine revelation - is at best ill informed and at worst, deceitful.
sure this global warming scares most of us. during last glacial period, only 10,000 to 15,000 yrs ago, Behring Strait was covered with ice. Sahara Desert in ice, Central Park was under the glacier, all these were melted by carbon dioxide, generated by too much smoking from American Indian? I live in New Jersey shore, sailing 50 to 70 miles will lead into canyon with steep cliff. Asian Indian migrated from south western part of Europe to current land due to climate change. Who were the smoking culprit for this change? Al Gore? He will be a first billionaire from this Green movement and global warming scare story. With money being wasted for this scenario with no solid scientific base, it would be much worth much more by trying to solve the known global hunger, starvation, disease and social injustice we witness every day of life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI actually spent my tender years, until I was old enough to escape, on the Jersey Shore. Sure, there's the Atlantic Highlands, The Keansburg 'Cliffs' and up the Hudson R. a ways there's the Hudson Palisades (but they're only on the west bank), but there're NO CANYONS. None - unless you want to count the one dug by the Hudson R. into the continental shelf during the last glaciation and that's under several hundred feet of water just now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook it up on Google Earth.
"Asian Indian migrated from south western part of Europe to current land due to climate change." ????? I'll bet there's a few archeologists that'd like to hear your theory of the migrations of paleo-Indians! Well, maybe not...
"...during last glacial period, only 10,000 to 15,000 yrs ago..." Might want to check your dates there.
Will somebody PLEASE tell me what Al Gore has got to do with anything - I mean besides he got a Nobel prize and Bush II didn't?
"With money being wasted for this scenario with no solid scientific base..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo solid scientific base? Look, science is seldom 'solid' Albert Einstein's theories are still being challenged and tested, but you might want to ask around Hiroshima or Nagasaki to find out if they work. Is all the science in on climate change? Of course not, in realistic terms it never will be. Are there credible scientists out there arguing against climate change? Sure. That's how science works. Point, counterpoint. The vast weight of evidence is on the side of climate change. Else why would all those tree hugging hippies over at the CIA and the Departments of Defense and Energy be making plans for it?
Money wasted? Tell you what - I'll put my bets on conservation, efficiency and alternative energy research and you bet on the interminable wars we'll need to fight to maintain our supply of oil. Let's see who's money ahead in 50 yrs. Better yet - how 'bout you just trot down to the recruiter's office and enlist. I hear they're hiring.
Anthropogenic global warming is a fact of contemporary life. The tedious naysayers with their half-baked arguments are only seeking attention here that they can't get in their daily lives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen you see them on the street corner in a few months screaming angrily at the local disaster that the government, science, climate researchers, the Federal Reserve or the U. N. has dealt them so unfairly, pat them on the head and give 'em a buck and dry their tears.
Their congressional representatives are a different problem, of course. Politicians have a large constituency that they must entertain in order to distinguish their candidacies from those communists who insist on presenting bad news and want to spend THEIR money to forestall what they say is looming disaster. Those constituents know the science better, just ask them.
Mounthell -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The tedious naysayers with their half-baked arguments are only seeking attention here that they can't get in their daily lives."
I have become convinced that, while there are plenty of honest climate change deniers, there are elements of the online discussion who launch their posts from the air conditioned offices of the several industry funded 'foundations' that are hell bent on convincing America that the climate change issue is a scam perpetrated by some shadowy elite to a) fleece taxpayers to line their pockets and, b) to overthrow the Constitution and establish some kind of 'socialist' government. All personal incentive would be crushed and power would be administered by some central cadre. Much like Sweden or Canada.
All of this is, of course, so much twaddle, but it harmonizes with the need of many for the comfort and security of the good old status quo.
As for those politicians who toe the company line, they are a corrupt scourge on democracy. Unfortunately, they will continue to win office as long as the industry propaganda goes unrefuted.