DROWNING: The Souris River overflowed levees in Minot, N.D., as seen here on June 23.
Image: Patrick Moes/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
-
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...
Read More »
In North Dakota the waters kept rising. Swollen by more than a month of record rains in Saskatchewan, the Souris River topped its all time record high, set back in 1881. The floodwaters poured into Minot, North Dakota's fourth-largest city, and spread across thousands of acres of farms and forests. More than 12,000 people were forced to evacuate. Many lost their homes to the floodwaters.
Yet the disaster unfolding in North Dakota might be bringing even bigger headlines if such extreme events hadn't suddenly seemed more common. In this year alone massive blizzards have struck the U.S. Northeast, tornadoes have ripped through the nation, mighty rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri have flowed over their banks, and floodwaters have covered huge swaths of Australia as well as displaced more than five million people in China and devastated Colombia. And this year's natural disasters follow on the heels of a staggering litany of extreme weather in 2010, from record floods in Nashville, Tenn., and Pakistan, to Russia's crippling heat wave.
These patterns have caught the attention of scientists at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They've been following the recent deluges' stunning radar pictures and growing rainfall totals with concern and intense interest. Normally, floods of the magnitude now being seen in North Dakota and elsewhere around the world are expected to happen only once in 100 years. But one of the predictions of climate change models is that extreme weather—floods, heat waves, droughts, even blizzards—will become far more common. "Big rain events and higher overnight lows are two things we would expect with [a] warming world," says Deke Arndt, chief of the center's Climate Monitoring Branch. Arndt's group had already documented a stunning rise in overnight low temperatures across the U.S. So are the floods and spate of other recent extreme events also examples of predictions turned into cold, hard reality?
Increasingly, the answer is yes. Scientists used to say, cautiously, that extreme weather events were "consistent" with the predictions of climate change. No more. "Now we can make the statement that particular events would not have happened the same way without global warming," says Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo.
That's a profound change—the difference between predicting something and actually seeing it happen. The reason is simple: The signal of climate change is emerging from the "noise"—the huge amount of natural variability in weather.
Extreme signals
There are two key lines of evidence. First, it's not just that we've become more aware of disasters like North Dakota or last year's Nashville flood, which caused $13 billion in damage, or the massive 2010 summer monsoon in Pakistan that killed 1,500 people and left 20 million more homeless. The data show that the number of such events is rising. Munich Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, has compiled the world's most comprehensive database of natural disasters, reaching all the way back to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Researchers at the company, which obviously has a keen financial interest in trends that increase insurance risks, add 700 to 1,000 natural catastrophes to the database each year, explains Mark Bove, senior research meteorologist in Munich Re's catastrophe risk management office in Princeton, N.J. The data indicate a small increase in geologic events like earthquakes since 1980 because of better reporting. But the increase in the number of climate disasters is far larger. "Our figures indicate a trend towards an increase in extreme weather events that can only be fully explained by climate change," says Peter Höppe, head of Munich Re's Geo Risks Research/Corporate Climate Center: "It's as if the weather machine had changed up a gear.
See what we're tweeting about
107 Comments
Add CommentThis is great for the purveyors of the AGW theory. Every big weather event can now be chalked up to global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA few years back, Great Lakes water levels were down severely (but still within the variation of the past 100 years) and all the talk was that it was due to global warming. Further, it was going to be the new normal. Now, it's been more wet for a couple of years and levels are approaching the long term mean. And of course all the extra rain is attributed to global warming.
When others have pointed out unusually cold winters as counter evidence, these claims are dismissed as weather vs. climate. Now, I guess it's different.
So contratulations on adopting this new approach of attributing weather events to climate change. It will enable you all to write a lot more GW articles.
Whether scientists succeed in linking any one weather events to climate change may not matter if the pace of extreme weather events continue. The total body of evidence will make the case.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe pace of these weather events is increasingly disturbing and distressing. It's like someone is rubbing sandpaper on the planet.
And you wonder why intelligent people are questioning the scientific community's validity as they are. Look no further than the dreck I just read concerning extreme weather. Too bad you can't tie the earthquakes in Japan to GW. And please in the future do not assume we subscribers (I subscribe to the printed version) are so stupid as think GW and anthropogenic GW are one and the same. Reading Scientific American's left leaning scientific writers is like watching an Oliver Stone documentary/movie. One never knows where truth ends and fiction or obfuscation slithers in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne more thing, does anyone really read these comments? I am sure they have been going on for quite some time.
If you take a transparent kettle of boiling water off the stove, wait a minute or two, then put it back on the stove, you will be able to IMMEDIATELY notice how the activity of the bubbles changes. Our climate is literally the result of the same activity. Every incremental increase of energy trapped in our atmosphere has an immediate effect on the variability of our climate, both highs and lows.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe highs will be higher since the movement of wind and ocean currents will be stronger. Paradoxically, it will seem as though even the lows will be lower, since the Arctic and Antarctic wind currents will be pushed and pulled deeper into the temperate areas. More importantly there will be more ambient moisture in the atmosphere, which means there will be more and deeper low pressure areas and, what the article is noticing, MORE PRECIPITATION. All this will be an IMMEDIATE and INCREASING effect, even for a minor rise in ambient temperature.
What will kill therefore, will not be the higher temperatures, but the increased climatic activity in sea, wind, and overland areas. Sure, there will be ancillary benefits. The deserts will eventually bloom, but will mankind be sufficiently adaptable, especially politically, to take advantage of the benefits peacefully, or to overcome the overwhelming negatives which will result in shrinking coastal areas.
Clearly, I've left perhaps the most devastating effect for the last, the rise in sea levels resulting from the melting of polar ice. A one inch rise in AVERAGE sea level doesn't mean that the sea will recapture one inch more of the land around the world. The thing about averages is that they can reflect enormous variability in the highs and lows being measured. So a one inch rise in sea levels can just as well mean that waves will be 24 inches higher and 23 inches lower. Because of its elasticity of variation, there is perhaps no better model of statistical variance than water. It is the threat of water demonstrating this variability at the top of its highest waves that is the greatest economic threat America and the world faces, since in the modern world the most productive areas of any country are located next to the sea, like Manhattan for example. The statistical model reflecting the results of the melting of the polar ice caps means that Manhattan, and many other sedimentary islands, like Barbados for example, will be inundated. (corrections are invited.)
Are we so stupid as to believe that pumping billions and billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere will have no negative repercussions for life on Earth?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople who deny global warming must have some sort of mental disease and I have yet to figure out what it is.
It's similar to being in a large auditorium in which there is a rapidly spreading fire and some of the people there are yelling-----everyone return to your seats, there is no fire. If anyone survived then those fools would most certainly be locked up in a mental facility.
It is time to start prosecuting the climate change deniers and locking them away so that the rest of us can get busy and try to save this planet.
Left-Leaning?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn science there is no political left or right.
There is the scientific method which, in it's pure and uncorrupted form, is a powerful tool for ascertaining what is true and what is not.
We build fantastic Universities and send our best young minds to them so that they can learn the scientific method and then use that to bring to the rest of us the facts and accurate information we so desperately need in order to try to solve the urgent problems confronting us.
But then, amazingly, some of us ridicule and demean these scientists when they don't deliver the information that we want to hear because it doses not resonate in harmony with our religious beliefs or other types of ingrained disharmonious fears and biases.
From what I can see, humanity is not up to the job of saving itself or anything else in the biosphere.
I am resigned to that.
soccerdad doesn't want to give up his H2 (or Escalade, or whatever giant carbon hog it is that I bet he drives) so he hangs around SciAm waiting for a climate change article and then drags out the same tired misinformation. It's getting old.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNaturally it should be obvious to any rational person that the CO2 load caused by humans is sufficient to produce climate change, but humans are not rational. Especially conservatives.
Ad hominem attacks are the base arsenal of the craven, and mark the user as 'loser' as clearly as dropping a Godwin.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is possible to be simultaneously correct *and* poetic. Human sandpaper rubbing against the global grain: a lovely, if sobering, literary allusion. Is there no heart in your bilious demeanour, geojellyroll?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAd hominem attacks are the base arsenal of the craven, and mark the user as 'loser' as clearly as dropping a Godwin.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDreck? Researchers are using cutting edge statistical analysis to tease out patterns in weather records, and you see "dreck"? You are wise to worry that people may be reading your comments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe bridge of your flowers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA bright
melody is the
singing that
gives me the
trace of delicate
winds, with
a loving idea
near a persuasive
care.
Francesco Sinibaldi
I notice that the deniers on here complain about this article being "non-scientific" and "political" yet they offer ZERO scientific arguments for their side. Please deniers, I am SO desperate for a valid scientific argument against man-made climate disruption. I've been looking for YEARS and I've seen NOTHING that stands up to even the slightest scrutiny. Even just a little SCIENTIFIC conjecture that shows that human-induced global wierding won't be as bad as climate scientists predict would help me sleep better at night.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI might add that the Precautionary Principle demands that the burden of proof is on the deniers to show that billions of tons of fossil carbon emissions each year that have cumulatively raised the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by 40% since the Industrial Revolution DOES NOT cause harm. Really, how can you change the concentration of a major atmospheric gas that much, especially one that already kept Earth from freezing solid at its pre-anthropogenic concentration, and ignore the consequences?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate change deniers are no different than the lunatic fringe that still clings to primitive religions as being real.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBelief or dis-belief of something does not make it real or a fact. Believing Global Warming is a conspiracy is just plain crazy talk.
This article clearly makes references to scientific observations and states that the evidence is compelling but not necessarily conclusive. What they are saying is that based on historical facts, scientific observations and the results of collected data are making a compelling argument for this to be real, warranting further investigation and evidence gathering to gain more clarity and understanding.
How can that be a bad thing?
Another thing I don't get from you "non-believers" is how in the FRAK can you justify not making the changes to a more clean end safe method of producing energy and fuels that reduce not only CO2, but Mercury, lead, cadmium, etc.... How can you be against reducing the amount of poisons that we breathe and eat and are exposed to every day?
If you happen to be pro-Life then you should by default be pro-environment and be advocating the drives to clean, renewable energy.
Anyone that is opposed to climate science and altering our ways is anti-human and anti-life.
Climate change deniers are no different than the lunatic fringe that still clings to primitive religions as being real.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBelief or dis-belief of something does not make it real or a fact. Believing Global Warming is a conspiracy is just plain crazy talk.
This article clearly makes references to scientific observations and states that the evidence is compelling but not necessarily conclusive. What they are saying is that based on historical facts, scientific observations and the results of collected data are making a compelling argument for this to be real, warranting further investigation and evidence gathering to gain more clarity and understanding.
How can that be a bad thing?
Another thing I don't get from you "non-believers" is how in the FRAK can you justify not making the changes to a more clean end safe method of producing energy and fuels that reduce not only CO2, but Mercury, lead, cadmium, etc.... How can you be against reducing the amount of poisons that we breathe and eat and are exposed to every day?
If you happen to be pro-Life then you should by default be pro-environment and be advocating the drives to clean, renewable energy.
Anyone that is opposed to climate science and altering our ways is anti-human and anti-life.
The only thing that this debate underlines is the vehemence with which some people deny the concept of a changing world. Not to say that their counterparts on the other side are always models of civility either, but the negative position of some on everything that has to do with this subject never ceases to fascinate me. Those who wish to deny this phenomenon base their arguments on the stumbles and mistakes made over time by very human researchers during their learning process. It's kind of like watching NASA's blooper reel and concluding that we would never get to the Moon after the 3rd rocket explosion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomebody's going to screw up. It happens. Sometimes the only part of the experiment that sticks is the egg on the face of the researcher. But at this point people have had 30 years of experience tackling this question and the numbers are coming in. This constant, endless lampooning of an entire community who have finally come to an agreement on something has got to stop.
Think about it. These are people who, by nature and design, disagree with each other. It's the scientific process. It's called peer review. You come up with something and then everybody else picks holes in it to see if they can redirect your funding to themselves. Whatever resists the picking, jackhammering, firebombing etc... wins. Getting the scientific community to come together on a common theory is kind of like getting the cats to collectively and rationally figure a way out of the bag. People are still actively arguing about GRAVITY for crying out loud. They've been on that one for centuries ! And if you really want to walk away from a conversation doubting your own sanity you should spend a half an hour getting one of them to try and explain the problem to you.
My point is that it's no wonder that theories have their wishy-washy moments. It's no wonder that the name has changed. It used to be global cooling, then global warming, then climate change. Because it's messier than people thought. You're not just going to get hot. You might also drown and freeze in midair during the tornado :) (ahh say,ahh say that was a joke son.)
People are mad because nobody can tell them what kind of insurance to buy. (A helmet ?) So why not concentrate on preventing the problem instead ? I don't see the downside here. Last I checked, US R&D and manufacturing needed something to do. Or did all those jobs come back from Asia while my back was turned ? Scientists have been milking this theory for funding for a whole career. It's time for you to get yours Amarica.
America. Amarica ... Potato ... Potahto.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople screw up I tell you :)
Earth: The Operators' Manual is a new series on PBS that provides facts on sustainability and climate change, with host Richard Alley, Geologist and Professor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGo to http://www.EarthTheOperatorsManual.com for TV air dates, info on the upcoming events, plus sustainability and climate change news.
Updates and news on
facebook http://www.facebook.com/EarthTheOperatorsManual.Page
and Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/earthtom.
Anger, cynicism and name-calling won't make extreme weather and global warming go away. What are you really afraid of? That the scientists may be right, and you'll have to change your lifestyle?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFascinating reading. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are ignorant of even the most basic scientific principles, so are easily bamboozled by talk radio hosts and other propagandists in the employ of polluting industries. They should probably stick to NASCAR and drinking cheap beer and let the grownups worry about the science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince there have NEVER been floods, hurricanes, tornados or typhoons before. It just has to be global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd those record lows in the winter and record snowstorms??? More extreme weather caused by global warming.
My cats hairballs- they're because of global warming too.
Had a day at the end of May with 29 degrees F. in the morning and 83 in the afternoon. A 54 degree difference in 8 hours. Now THAT'S extreme. I haven't been able to grow certain melons for 5 years now because of the colder nights. And the days are hotter. I'm seeing a trend that I don't like.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow, JamesSavic proves that ChairmanLMAO is correct about who the deniers listen to. But there's nothing wrong with cheap beer and NASCAR when it's too hot to go outside on a Sunday afternoon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>>Climate change deniers are no different than the lunatic fringe that still clings to primitive religions as being real.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGo ahead and tell yourself that if it makes you feel better about believeing in a flawed computer model of a system that is not well understood.
There are those who believe that AGW theory is incomplete and more work needs to be done.
There are cycles that the earth and the sun go through that are so long term that humans have never seen them through from start to finish. Volcanic out-gassing, Milankovitch cycles, Dansgaard–Oeschger Cycles- all of these are unanswered questions.
CO2 isn't even a highly efficent greenhouse gas.
I don't say that AGW is wrong, it's just not finished yet AND- it is too easy to assign blame to every odd ball weather phenemenon that easily falls with the "standard deviation".
Concerning natural disasters risk, we should listen to the real people who have big money on the line: the insurance companies, instead of self promoting left-leaning scientists. If AGW really made natural disasters more extreme, they would be quick to increase premiums, cancel too risky policies and join the fight against climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh wait. That's exactly what's happening.
"Climate change represents an ever- increasing risk, a risk far too great to ignore," says Clement Booth, a member of the Board of Management at Allianz AG, one of the world's largest insurance firms.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1013/p01s01-usec.html
I love all the AM-radio "experts", who are probably the kind of small-brained people that beat up the science kids in high school, swaggering around claiming so confidently that it's all just a hoax. We are at the birth of the next Dark Ages - a world run by corporate oligarchs with an army of jock meatheads at their beck and call.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNobody's saying that there have NEVER been floods, snowstorms, or hurricanes before. Your method of argument is the subject of the following Dilbert cartoon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://search.dilbert.com/comic/Bizarre%20Absolute
That's meant to be funny by the way. Just saying it's common enough to have it's own cartoon.
What people are saying is that we are getting more of the above, faster and it's going to get freakin' weird around here. Yes it's getting hotter. And colder. And windier. And wetter ... Cos it's climate change. Not global warming. Climate change. Now climates do change all by themselves. No arguments there. Climates don't change overnight all by themselves. That's where the problem is. Not weather. That does change overnight all by itself. The whole freaking climate though. Going from temperate to desert. Or from above water to underwater. That's a problem.
Hotter summers, colder winters. Both suck if you haven't had time to adapt to them. I'm from Switzerland. No problem with cold winters. I live in Florida now. Don't talk to me about summers here. I could use more cold. But if 5 years down the road I start seeing snow in the winter down here and it stops raining in the summer I'd be going WTF ? That's an extreme example but you get my drift. That's what we are seeing.
100 year floods just aren't supposed to happen EVERY damn year. Somehow they do though. Maybe not to YOU. Yet...
Nothing we can do about the hairballs though. Although when those start falling out of the sky I'm moving.
The fact is that the denialist crowd has a tiny number of studies they can point to, mostly of dubious origin and relevance and financed by the oil and gas industry, whereas climate scientists who have been seriously studying this phenomenon for decades have literally THOUSANDS of academic papers with the evidence of what's happening.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen considering the truth of a proposition, the evidence for a position is what causes it to be accepted as true. All these latter-day Eddington's will one day be merely embarrassed by their position, while the human race suffers greatly for the way these same people aided and abetted the climate polluters.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJames Savik Says: Since there have NEVER been floods, hurricanes, tornados or typhoons before. It just has to be global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou give good strawman. Tell me, did you bother to read the article?
James Saviv: And those record lows in the winter and record snowstorms??? More extreme weather caused by global warming.
Trent Says: Tell me more. You do realize that higher temperatures means more moisture in the air? More moisture in the air means more precipitation events in some places.
The study abstract says, "...including an assessment of the physical processes through which anthropogenic forcing may interact with or project upon natural variability."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo it does concede anthropogenic forcing, it just matters how much this forcing is.
Judy says, "JC comment: with all these uncertainties in the observations of ocean temperature, “unequivocal” and “very likely” in the AR4 seem overconfident." without any evidence backing her up. The previous snippet of the "paper" she is quoting offers NO evidence to back this value judgment up.
It really looks like Judy cherry-picked some snippets that made her value judgments look better. The conclusions of the paper she cites agree with this analysis fairly well:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Pacific-Decadal-Oscillation-intermediate.htm
In short, there's no news here on your first link. On the second link...yeah, it's just trying to cast doubt on the UK study that linked floods to climate change. Whether that study was right or wrong, we now have the evidence from this SA article we're all commenting on that has more up to date and relevant info.
These two sources aren't what I'm looking for. If CO2 traps heat and we're dumping billions of tons of it into our atmosphere, OF COURSE our planet's energy balance is going to be positive until it reaches a new equilibrium state. That state is dependent on the amount of carbon we take out of the ground and spew into the atmosphere. The climate is a chaotic system, so OF COURSE there's going to be uncertainty in forecasting how much it's going to change by a certain date. The fact remains however, that all that carbon we're dumping into the air is doing SOMETHING and those changes INCREASE the more carbon we release. Since climate change forecasts range from disruptive to catastrophic, I think prudence demands that we cut our carbon emissions as soon as possible as an insurance policy against the more dire projections. Besides, we'll get cleaner air, water and food, the pH levels in the ocean will stop declining and we'll get to tell the Middle East where they can shove their imported oil. And now that Google says this is an economic winner, " http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=google-study-projects-future-economic-gains-from-clean-energy ", there's NO REASON not to clean up our act!
No, a believer of a religion (see: your bathroom mirror) doesn't rely on evidence for their conclusions, everything is based on faith.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou probably also believe cigarettes don't cause cancer - the last cause taken up by the PR agencies currently attempting to besmirch the good name of client scientists the world over.
@Poker Player,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour first link is to a blog that comments on a peer reviewed study showing anthropogenic influences. I am sorry but blog comments are not peer reviewed studies.
Your second link I can not get the pdf to open.
What's your source for the assertion that we cannot "stop CO2 growth worldwide for at least 25 to 40 years."? Is that emissions growth or the increasing concentration of it in the air?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, if we shut down all our coal power plants, no one is saying that we do it overnight. You're the one being a little alarmist of this front. Where are you getting your cost and temperature projections from? Replacing the 45% or so of the U.S. electricity supply that we get from coal can actually be done at near zero cost by utilizing idle natural gas plant capacity, so your numbers seem suspect. You also have to consider that the .08C temp difference would STILL have a HUGE economic impact. On top of that, we wouldn't have to pay for all the externalities associated with pollution from coal like mercury, soot, NOx, SOx, acid gases, mine drainage, mountain top removal mining, etc.. The avoided health hazards and property damage we would enjoy could go a long way in zeroing out that $1.5T.
Generally, mitigation is WAY cheaper than adaptation. Why? Eating a healthier diet is much cheaper than heart surgery, right? Additionally, what set of conditions will you adapt to? The less scary IPCC4 scenario, or the REALLY scary predictions coming from James Hansen? We still have to adapt; there's already a lot of climate disruption baked into the cake from our historic emissions. This is what we're seeing with 95% of glaciers in retreat, season creep and this SA article. However, the cost of adaption will vary wildly and have a steep gradient in relation to how much more carbon we pollute our atmosphere with until we stop because of all the strong positive feedbacks in the climate we've discovered.
OMG he IS a spambot!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPoker Player Says: You have been a long term poster and fool on this subject.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: How so? Because you say so? I am sorry but I do not accept pronouncements from characters who mistake blog posts for peer reviewed science.
Btw, Do not think it has gone unnoticed your attempts at distraction.
Poker Player Says: Do I accept that a warmer world will be worse overall for humanity in the long term- NO- Trent, please provide evidence that a warmer world is necessarily worse for humanity.
Trent Says: I would think that most people would think that having a city above the water instead of underneath it to plus. I could be mistaken as far I know you are really Aquaman posting from Atlantis and looks forward to sister cities joining it beneath the waves.
Most people would hold that increasing the frequency of extreme weather events would not be a good thing. You know like flooding crops and the killing off of entire agriculture regions is a bad thing. Maybe you are of the opinion that changing the climate regime in which agriculture has developed over the past 10,000 years is a positive development for commodity traders.
I would think that the lowering of the Ph in the Ocean tot the point that it affects the bottom of the food chain would be a bad thing for human food production. Then again maybe in Atlantis you guys just feast on jelly fish and call every day feast.
Poker Player Says:Do I believe that current GCMs can accurately predict the future climate/weather- NO- they have been shown to be inaccurate? Trent can you site even a single GCM that can accurately predict the future rainfall and temperature anywhere??? NO you cant
Trent Says: Wrong:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-8-1.html
From the FTA:
"There is considerable confidence that climate models provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental scales and above. This confidence comes from the foundation of the models in accepted physical principles and from their ability to reproduce observed features of current climate and past climate changes. Confidence in model estimates is higher for some climate variables (e.g., temperature) than for others (e.g., precipitation). Over several decades of development, models have consistently provided a robust and unambiguous picture of significant climate warming in response to increasing greenhouse gases."
They have a pretty graphic with model predictions compared with observations and all peer reviewed.
It is ironic that in the USA the regions most affected by extreme weather disasters are dominated by voters who strongly oppose intelligent efforts to correct misuse of our natural resources and thus strongly contribute to massive death and destruction across our planet. Just as popular support for extreme right-wing regimes and their faux science at other points in our century resulted in their decisive failure, so will decisive failure be visited on the present despoilers. They who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the more interesting facets of the agw debate for me is that of the commenter who took me to task for confusing weather with climate on another Scientific American web page this past winter. Yet, what is presented here, seems to me a manifestation of a charge that looks back. Furthermore, this is only the first installment!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd here is Poker Player pretending that the U.S is the only one be asked to reduce GHG's. I also wonder why Poker Player is committing plagiarism? You can see this exact same post here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere on on comment #13 by one Sisko.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=diplomacys-meltdown
And by one Willis Eschenbach at Watts Up With that as a main article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/13/how-much-would-you-buy/
So Poker player are you Willis Eschenbach and if not why are you plagiarizing a nonsense article from WUWT? One more thing the whole idea of reducing carbon emissions is to reduce future CO2 rises not present temps.
Bill Crofut Says: Yet, what is presented here, seems to me a manifestation of a charge that looks back. Furthermore, this is only the first installment!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: That is because you did not read the article and see that it talking about TRENDS and about the frequency and likelihood of extreme events. You might want to at least try reading the section title Extreme Events.
Sorry for all the typos in post # 50.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe humans always perceive our current hardships as having no equals. While GW theory predicts increasing severe events, placing the correct limits on the measurement of these phenomenon is essential. As the population and its material wealth increase insurance losses will correspondingly increase. If we model past events over our current population we would see that what we view as catastrophic today are not much more than inconveniences. Simulations show the Broward County hurricane of 1926 hitting our coast today would dwarf Katrina in loss of life and wealth. By the same token, the flooding we see today has it precedent in the floods of 1926-27. This is the reason we have all the dams on the Missouri river. Last years Pakistani flooding; compare that to Bangladesh in 1970. Consider the tornados of today vs those of 74 or the Tri-State out break of 1925. Today these would be many times the damage of what we see in Joplin, Birmingham and Boston. So at least we can say the extreme events we witness today have more than their equals in the past. Add to this the public perception of weather from being fatalistic to sensationalistic and comparisons become all the more difficult. For example, of the 5 tornados I have been all too closely associated with over 50 years, only 2 ever were recorded. Both of these occurred after 1980 and made news because they caused property damage. Prior to cable TV weather events only made news outside of a locality if there was substantial damage or more than a few deaths. In todays connected world, I know if a single tree falls down in Brooklyn. I have seen photos of hail stones posted on the internet before the storm was even over. In such a media saturated environment how can we help but misattribute a perception of increased frequency to what in large part is actually sensationalistic reporting. Even Richard Wolfson, PhD, a prominent GW proponent who advocates the theory that severe events should increase, is unsure whether we are seeing a real increase regarding severe weather events. Our ancestors who lived closer to the land and did not have the mixed blessing of total connectivity learned to accept the fact that bad weather happens. Our job is to be prepared and deal with it,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@SSM,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn your entire post not once do you address the the data showing real increases in frequency of extreme events. Also you think that citing individual events that were worst somehow mitigates what is going on now.
I want to also point out NOAA has something rather different to say than what SSM has alleged about the record:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNOAA:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/2011_tornado_information.html
"April 2011 is ranked as the most active tornado month on record with 875 tornadoes. There were an estimated 361 fatalities.The previous record was set in April 1974 with 267 tornadoes.The average number of tornadoes for the month of April during the past decade is 161. The previous record number of tornadoes during any month was 542 tornadoes set in May 2003"
Darn, I can't get to the version of this story with 50+ comments! I'm missing out on all the fun...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPoker Player Says: My response- Since sea level is rising by 2mm per year in 100 years we would have roughly eight inches of rise the would hardly be a disaster.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Wrong. Sea level rise is not steady and has already accelerated to 3.1 mm and is forecast to continue to increase.
From
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.shtml
I suggest you stay away from blogs by retired weather presenters and see what the relevant scientist are saying.
Poker Player Says: My response: The changes to the climate will happen over decades and some areas would get more fertile and others would become less so.
Trent Says: I like how you pretend that it will be some random event which no one can predict. The fact is that the more hospitable temperature regimes will move more north but that does not mean that the areas will be just as arable. Here is a global soils map.
http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/order.html
I am sorry but Siberia and northern Canada are not going to be the world's bread basket.
Poker Player Says: On balance, somewhat more rainfall overall would generally good for plant growth.
Trent Says: Liebig's Law of the Minimum go look it up. You also need to control for temperature extremes and a plants tolerance for drought. I do not why you presume the precipitation is going to be evenly distributed. The fact is that our agricultural areas are established where the CURRENT climate is beneficial to them.
Poker Player Says: My response: The whole AGW scare tactic about ocean acidification is largely a hoax.
Trent Says: Evidence? I do not want a blog post but peer reviewed data by marine biologist and chemist who have relevant expertise. Primary data please. I am not interested in your unfounded declarations.
Poker Player Says: CO making the ocean acidicNO. 1st off the ocean is becoming slightly less basic and there is not any reliable evidence that AGW is the cause.
Trent Says: We have plenty of evidence. Some 60% of the the anthropogenic CO2 that is emitted is reabsorbed by the Earth. The vast majority of that reabsorption is in the ocean. Just exactly where do you think that billions of tons of CO2 goes? You think that it is a cosmic coincidence that the Ph level is failing as the carbon content of the ocean increases? Pull the other one.
Look! Science!
Oceanography: Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH:
Nature 425, 365 (25 September 2003)
Poker Player Says: I asked if Trent could find a single GCM that could accurately predict the rainfall and temperature in specific areas. Trent wrote that I was wrong and posted a site.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Let us all get this straight. You insist that the General Circulation Models do not predict temperature and I show you the model predictions vs observation with a peer reviewed source and you just declare it inaccurate? I am sorry but your declarations of accuracy carry no weight.
Btw, when are you going to admit to your plagiarism or sock puppetry? Which is it?
Poker Player Says: "As further evidence that AGW is not the cause of current weather-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://e360.yale.edu/feature/forum_is_extreme_weather_linked_to_global_warming/2411/"
Trent Says: The above link is not a link to peer reviewed science article in a journal but an opinion forum. When will you learn the difference?
Poker Player Says: I will offer you this challenge- I will put up $100K usd up for a challenge. I will pick 100 locations and you pick a GCM. If you can accurately forecast the temperature and rainfall in these 100 locations 5 years into the future with a 95% accuracy-you win the contest and I award the $100K. You must put up $20K to participate in the contest.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Why not just bet if the this decade is going to be globally warmer than the last decade? Why all the other noise? You in essence made a empirical claim about GCM's. Why not test it at it's simplest? Why not just fifty bucks?
But if you are serious how about you go here and make that bet offer here: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/
Do you know what the economic impact of 0.27C will be in 2100? I don't know either, but considering that the insurance companies are already getting fearful of the impacts of climate change, it will be big. I also offer that the economic impact of temperature change is non-linear since there are certain tipping points in all systems affected by the Earth's climate that bring the system into a new regime when crossed. Case in point, if a government is toppled because of rising food prices and faimine caused in part by climate change(see Somalia for a bad example and Tunisia for a not as bad example), the costs to deal with the ensuing humanitarian crises goes up dramatically. Or if the 0.27C difference means that two countries go to war over water rights or not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe amount of carbon that dissolves in the oceans or the biosphere will decrease as the planet's temperature warms. If deforestation and ocean acidification continue at their present rate, expect these carbon sinks to become sources in the next few decades, doubling your temperature estimates.
Also, you may be lowballing the costs for nuclear power a bit with your numbers, but $6/W of baseload equivalent for renewables sounds about right for now. Renewable Energy's costs are nose-diving every year and you have to take that into account when you project out to 2030.
Like I said previously, the now $5T for global phase-out of coal needs to be balanced against all the external costs that will be avoided once we stop burning the stuff. Good analysis otherwise.
"We build fantastic Universities and send our best young minds to them so that they can learn the scientific method and then use that to bring to the rest of us the facts and accurate information we so desperately need in order to try to solve the urgent problems confronting us."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut that is the problem with the AGW scam. The so-called scientists have not used the scientific method to support their claims. They have hidden data, made undocumented changes, used inappropriate methods, and drawn faulty conclusions that cannot be supported by credible empirical evidence.
"Whether scientists succeed in linking any one weather events to climate change may not matter if the pace of extreme weather events continue. The total body of evidence will make the case."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo far the evidence is against the AGW crowd. From a recent paper, (Maue, R. N. (2011), Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, LXXXXX, doi:10.1029/2011GL047711.), we read:
"Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40‐years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low. Here evidence is presented demonstrating that considerable variability in tropical cyclone ACE is associated with the evolution of the character of observed large‐scale climate mechanisms including the El Niño Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In contrast to record quiet North Pacific tropical cyclone activity in 2010, the North Atlantic basin remained very active by contributing almost one‐third of the overall calendar year global ACE."
For those that have paid attention we had the the IPCC self-proclaimed 'experts' predict the opposite; that warming would bring more storm activity and more Katrina type of storms. I am sorry but the alarmists can only cry wolf so many times before people no longer believe. Scientific American should know better than to play along with obvious lies.
"Case in point, if a government is toppled because of rising food prices and faimine caused in part by climate change(see Somalia for a bad example and Tunisia for a not as bad example), the costs to deal with the ensuing humanitarian crises goes up dramatically."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow ironic. Governments have nearly been toppled because the diversion of food to fuel has caused food prices to explode but you are worried about a possible increase in food prices due to longer growing seasons and more precipitation? Don't you know that plants like higher CO2 concentrations and longer growing seasons?
"The above link is not a link to peer reviewed science article in a journal but an opinion forum. When will you learn the difference?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut when will the alarmists learn that the IPCC report is not 'peer-reviewed' either? It uses sources that are dubious and has lead authors who make changes that are not approved by the scientists who are experts in the field. The summary, which is what everyone seems to want to quote, is written by political appointees that have links to environmental organizations and the alternative energy industry.
Now that I have gotten that out of the way I ask you to provide us with a link to a single peer reviewed paper that uses empirical evidence to show that human emissions of CO2 are responsible for more extreme weather conditions.
Vangel Says:But that is the problem with the AGW scam. The so-called scientists have not used the scientific method to support their claims.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Why yes, they have it is just that you are ignorant of the science. I am sorry but your personal ignorance does translate to universal ignorance.
Vangel Says: But when will the alarmists learn that the IPCC report is not 'peer-reviewed' either?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: When will the science ignorati learn that a simple Google search reveals the falsehood in your assertions? If I go to the IPCC web site I can see the chapter and *drum roll* the authors. Shall we take a look at the authors of say just one chapter?
Here are the authors for chapter 6 Paleoclimate.
Coordinating Lead Authors:
Eystein Jansen (Norway), Jonathan Overpeck (USA)
Lead Authors:
Keith R. Briffa (UK), Jean-Claude Duplessy (France), Fortunat Joos (Switzerland), Valérie Masson-Delmotte (France), Daniel Olago (Kenya), Bette Otto-Bliesner (USA), W. Richard Peltier (Canada), Stefan Rahmstorf (Germany), Rengaswamy Ramesh (India), Dominique Raynaud (France), David Rind (USA), Olga Solomina (Russian Federation), Ricardo Villalba (Argentina), De’er Zhang (China)
Contributing Authors:
J.-M. Barnola (France), E. Bauer (Germany), E. Brady (USA), M. Chandler (USA), J. Cole (USA), E. Cook (USA), E. Cortijo (France),T. Dokken (Norway), D. Fleitmann (Switzerland, Germany), M. Kageyama (France), M. Khodri (France), L. Labeyrie (France),A. Laine (France), A. Levermann (Germany), Ø. Lie (Norway), M.-F. Loutre (Belgium), K. Matsumoto (USA), E. Monnin (Switzerland),
E. Mosley-Thompson (USA), D. Muhs (USA), R. Muscheler (USA), T. Osborn (UK), Ø. Paasche (Norway), F. Parrenin (France),G.-K. Plattner (Switzerland), H. Pollack (USA), R. Spahni (Switzerland), L.D. Stott (USA), L. Thompson (USA), C. Waelbroeck (France),G. Wiles (USA), J. Zachos (USA), G. Zhengteng (China)
Review Editors:Jean Jouzel (France), John Mitchell (UK)
Let us take a look at the first name on the list, Eystein Jansen. Here is his C.V: http://33igc.org/coco/entrypage.aspx?t=climate%2Bchange&containerid=11714&parentid=11078&entrypage=true&guid=1&lnodeid=7&pageid=5002&ObjectID=11948
From the C.V:
osition: Professor/Research Director, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research and Dept. of Earth Science, University of Bergen, Norway
Education
Cand. real. (M.Sc.) degree in marine geology, Univ. of Bergen, 1981.Dr. scient. (Ph.D.) degree in marine geology, Univ. of Bergen, 1984.
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:
1981-1985 Research assistant (stipendiat), Dept. of Geology, Univ. of Bergen.
1985-1993 Assistant/associate professor in Marine Geology, Univ. of Bergen.
1993 - Full Professor in Marine Geology, Univ. of Bergen
1990-2000 Senior adjunct.scientist Nansen Env. and Remote Sensing Center, Bergen
2000- Director Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research
So why lie?
Trent Says: Why yes, they have it is just that you are ignorant of the science. I am sorry but your personal ignorance does translate to universal ignorance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere exactly is the empirical evidence that human emissions of CO2 are a material driver of temperature trends? The AGW crowd has no science behind it. All it has is a claim that false consensus about correlation is adequate to show causation. Well, it isn't. Even the editors of Scientific American know this.
Trent Says: When will the science ignorati learn that a simple Google search reveals the falsehood in your assertions? If I go to the IPCC web site I can see the chapter and *drum roll* the authors. Shall we take a look at the authors of say just one chapter?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou might like to see what is in the IPCC report and what is being cited by it. I will give you just a few examples.
Let us begin with the Himalayan glacier scam. We were told by the IPCC that they would melt by 2035. But the people who reviewed the report before it was published pointed out that the claim was not correct and that it came from a WWF report. Yet, it made it into the Assessment report.
Then there was Amazongate, the IPCC claim that said that up to 40% of the rainforest could turn to savannah if there was a small reduction of rainfall. That false claim also came from an environmental group, WWF, which went to throw the IPCC under the bus by making a statement that it was not responsible for how the IPCC misused its data.
And what about the discredited 'Hockey Stick?' An expert reviewer noticed that Mann and Jones had deleted the post-1960 Briffa data (of hide the decline fame) but his objections were dismissed by the Lead Authors, who were Mann and Jones.
Then we have the author/contributor scandal.
Michael Oppenheimer was the 'chief scientist' for the activist Environmental Defense Fund but somehow managed to be appointed as a lead author.
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is a coordinating lead author for AR-5. But he has been paid to produce reports (by Greenpeace, WWF, and other activist organizations) for nearly two decades.
As Donna Laframboise pointed out, "Richard Klein worked as a Greenpeace campaigner at age 23 was no impediment to the IPCC appointing him a lead author at age 25."
Bill Hare, a Greenpeace spokesperson for two decades, was appointed as lead author for AR-4. He was also an expert reviewer for Working Group I and Working Group II of the report one of the 40 people who wrote the Synthesis Report.
So if you want to argue that Greenpeace activists, alternative energy company shills, and political appointees approve the IPCC report that is fine. But what you can't show is that those frauds have addressed any of the legitimate points brought up by the scientists that reviewed the draft before they wrote the final report. Had they actually done their job the Assessment Reports would not have contained errors drawn from approximately one-third of the references that cited non-peer-reviewed sources.
Denialist comments are sounding especially shrill today. Enjoying it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVangle Iv Says: Where exactly is the empirical evidence that human emissions of CO2 are a material driver of temperature trends?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Chapter 9: Understanding and Attributing Climate Change http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9.html
Google is your friend.
VanglelV Says: Then there was Amazongate, the IPCC claim that said that up to 40% of the rainforest could turn to savannah if there was a small reduction of rainfall.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: False. That is a story that times was forced to retract.
http://www.realclimate.org/docs/ST_Correction_img007%5B1%5D.jpg
FTA: "In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence."
Got anymore lies to tell? You do? Well let us take a look:
Vangel Says: Let us begin with the Himalayan glacier scam. We were told by the IPCC that they would melt by 2035.
Trent Says: Let me see. In a 3,000 page report a typo is made in a subsection a typo that is not repeated in the summary on glaciers and yet you think that one typo condemns a century worth of science. Please.
Vanglel Says: And what about the discredited 'Hockey Stick?
Trent Says: You presume facts that are not in evidence. The Hockey Stick is now a a Hockey Team it has been now been replicated by a a dozen different studies using different proxies and methodologies.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipcc2007/fig6-10b.png
Vangel Says:Hogve Hoegh-Guldberg is a coordinating lead author for AR-5. But he has been paid to produce reports (by Greenpeace, WWF, and other activist organizations) for nearly two decades.
Trent Says: Logic Fail. You have engaged in a classic Ad hominem.
Vangel Says: Michael Oppenheimer was the 'chief scientist' for the activist Environmental Defense Fund but somehow managed to be appointed as a lead author.
Trent Says: Another Ad Hominem. You are really not up on rational thought are you?
Vangel Says: Bill Hare, a Greenpeace spokesperson for two decades, was appointed as lead author for AR-4. He was also an expert reviewer for Working Group I and Working Group II of the report one of the 40 people who wrote the Synthesis Report.
Trent Says: Color me surprise that score another Ad hominem. At what point are you going to figure out it is the content not the person that critiques need to be focused on?
@Vangel,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease do not think I am going to let you slide on the claim that the IPCC is not peer reviewed. Got anything to say about those authors and there credentials?
Old newspaper archives to the bad weather rescue: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/bad-weather
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have evidently made zero attempt to actually engage skeptics. Head over to WattsUpWithThat.com and ask some questions. You have a free voice there and thousands of people to bounce ideas off. For me, it's old thermometers, old tide gauges and global ice extent that cinches it: none of them show any trend change whatsoever, despite claims of suddenly surging data! If they did show an upturn from the usual trend, I'd have little basis for being a skeptic of alarmist claims.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe LA Times featured cold fusion in '89 before its debunking. Environmentalists were aghast!
“It’s like giving a machine gun to an idiot child.” – Paul Ehrlich (mentor of John Cook of the SkepticalScience blog, author of "Climate Change Denial")
“Clean-burning, non-polluting, hydrogen-using bulldozers still could knock down trees or build housing developments on farmland.” – Paul Ciotti (LA Times)
“It gives some people the false hope that there are no limits to growth and no environmental price to be paid by having unlimited sources of energy.” – Jeremy Rifkin (NY Times)
“Many people assume that cheaper, more abundant energy will mean that mankind is better off, but there is no evidence for that.” – Laura Nader (sister of Ralph)
CLIMATEGATE 101: "For your eyes only...Don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone....Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially? from UEA so he can hide behind that." - Phil "Hide The Decline" Jones to Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann
Here I present A Global Warming Digest:
Denial: http://bit.ly/m6xySt
Oceans: http://oi53.tinypic.com/2i6os4y.jpg
Thermometers: http://oi52.tinypic.com/2agnous.jpg
Earth: http://oi56.tinypic.com/2reh021.jpg
Ice: http://oi53.tinypic.com/wmav6g.jpg
Authority: http://oi52.tinypic.com/wlt4i8.jpg
Prophecy: http://oi52.tinypic.com/30bfktk.jpg
Psychopathy: http://oi52.tinypic.com/1zqu71i.jpg
Icon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmPzLzj-3XY
Thinker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92YenWfz0Y
-=NikFromNYC=- Ph.D. in Carbon Chemistry (Columbia/Harvard)
Sources, proof, Claims without data makes a liar in my opinion. Show us the facts to base you claims.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent1492,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: comment 54
Guilty! The reason for not comprehensively reading this offering is boredom with sameness. However, since the section to which you referred, "Extreme Events," does not seem to be part of this article, my decision was to assume a typo and read the section subtitled, "Extreme signals."
As impressive as the Munich Re database may be, even extending back to 79 A.D., here's a prophecy slightly older:
"And when you shall hear of wars and seditions, be not terrified. These things must first come to pass: but the end is not yet presently. Then he said to them: Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there shall be great earthquakes in divers places and pestilences and famines and terrors from heaven: and there shall be great signs."
[THE HOLY GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE 21:9-11. Catholic Bible. (c) 2000. Douay Rheims translation. Murray, KY: A production of Catholic Software]
The latter part of the paragraph seems to me to be mixing weather and climate as noted in my comment 51. The claim that "...an increase in extreme weather events that can only be fully explained by climate change..." has, for me, the earmarks of dogma: the ONLY explanation? Since, in my experience, weather cannot be predicted with any particular precision beyond a week, how is it that climate, a far more complex phenomenon, can be "predicted" with any more accuracy?
@pokerplyer: Don't think that, because no-one is talking to you anymore, you have won any arguments. Quite the opposite, actually.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd where, exactly, do you ply your poker, pokerplyer? Just asking.
Bill Crofut Says: The latter part of the paragraph seems to me to be mixing weather and climate as noted in my comment 51.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Which part of the word trend do you not understand?
Bill Crofut Says: Since, in my experience, weather cannot be predicted with any particular precision beyond a week, how is it that climate, a far more complex phenomenon, can be "predicted" with any more accuracy?
Trent Says: Because among many facets climate deals with frequency. I can tell you if a particular coin flip will come up heads or tails, but I can tell you the probability. Translating this to climate means that we can see the frequency and likelihood of events. Think of it like this: Are you being a fool if you fly into Fairbanks Alaska dressed in only sandals and shorts ready to go canoeing in January? If you answer in the affirmative you have taken the first step to understanding the difference between weather and climate.
I can not tell you what the weather is going to be like in Fairbanks, Alaska on January 12, 2012 I can tell to you to dress warmly though.
Pokerplayer: Says: the entire issue of ocean acidification by AGW alarmists is a false issue. http://sepmstrata.org/MARINESEDIMENTS...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Why do you not just tell us what you think your link says and why you will not link to peer review sources?
I am sorry but you declaring it an non-issue does not make it so.
Poker Player Says: Sea level is going up by maybe 3mm per year which is a few inches after 100 yearsso what?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: And it going to accelerate its rise and cause problems with salt contamination in sweet water reservoirs and increase damages from storm surges that is what.
Poker Player Says: if the world gets slightly warmer areas slightly farther north would be slightly warmer and would have increased food production capability that would more than offset any reduction due to a loss elsewhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Which part of that soils map did you not understand? All of it?
Poker Player Says: the changes will happen over decades. Dams can and will be built to protect areas and retain water for irrigation. The issue is not that there will be no water. Your fears are overblown.
Trent Says: Which part of Liebigs Law of the Minimum do you not understand?
Pokerply, I don't think you are in that community. Here let me google that for you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://lmgtfy.com/?q=General+circulation+model
Really, no agricultural worries? OK, fine, I'll let you bankroll the relocation of farmers, and their schools, homes, hospitals, highways, and railroads poleward. BTW, you are aware that the lands you'll be moving them too might not be as productive as the lands you are moving them too, correct? You might have some trouble negotiating border crossings between the Chinese and the Soviets, and where you do you intend to relocate the farmers in southern Australia?
Meh, I hate typos, *to-from.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBill,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow many times does it have to be explained to you that just because you can't predict what a die will roll several days into the future does not mean that you can't predict what its mean and variance will be?
Chris G Says: BTW, you are aware that the lands you'll be moving them too might not be as productive as the lands you are moving them too, correct?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: I showed this character a soils map of the globe and the unsuitable nature of the more northern latitudes to farming. He has chose to ignore it.
Chris G Says: You might have some trouble negotiating border crossings between the Chinese and the Soviets, and where you do you intend to relocate the farmers in southern Australia?
Trent Says: Does it ever strike that these clowns who speak of moving whole populations and agricultural communities with a wave of the hand are a free marketers version of Stalinist relocation policies?
Poker Player Says: showing a map is not evidence that farm production will go down due to potential global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Actually it is. Unless you think all soils are created equal which would be an incredibly stupid thing to say. Are you even faintly aware that such soils as gelisoils which is what covers most of the more norther latitudes is absolutely unsuitable to farming?
Further much of northern Canada and Siberia is covered by rocky soil. I invite to go learn about the Canadian Shield or the Siberian Traps. What do they have to do with agriculture.
Take a look at what a shield cleared forest looks like:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/buck82/873658159/
Go ahead try farming that.
Poker Player Says: The map you referenced described areas currently lacking in water that could be irrigated
Trent Says: Factually untrue. It is called a Global Soils Map and shows *drum roll* global soil distribution. Why lie about something so easily debunked?
Global Soils Map
http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/order.html
Poker Player Says: This is evidence to support there is no problem that can not be managed with proper infrastructure being build. Over the timescales of potential climate change infrastructure will need to be rebuild anyway
Trent Says: Tell me more about how infrastructure is going to magically transform gelisoils and rocky ground into the Mississippi Valley? Are you going to deploy arsenals of Ron Paul fairies to wave their wands?
Poker Player Says: The time frames involved would be similar to people slowly relocating from the northeast US to western states over the last 100 years.
Trent Says:
1. We are talking about agriculture and their communities being forced to move because of the inability to farm. So we are talking about involuntary relocation.
2. As has already been pointed out people simply moving north does not mean that you have similar soils up north. Matter of fact, we know the soils are unsuitable.
So in essence you are condemning people to lose their livelihoods, homes and more scarce food products because of ideological beliefs. I would say that calling this plan of yours a free market form of Stalin relocation policies very apt.
timjwilson sez "Naturally it should be obvious to any rational person that the CO2 load caused by humans is sufficient to produce climate change"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDancertiffy sez "Are we so stupid as to believe that pumping billions and billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere will have no negative repercussions for life on Earth?"
Translation: "We don't need no stinkin data to know that we are right"
Trent1492 (comment 90),
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: "I can not tell you what the weather is going to be like in Fairbanks, Alaska on January 12, 2012 I can tell to you to dress warmly though."
Why didn't you tell me there would be an unusually cold winter in northern Europe and the northern U.S. during this past winter?
Chris G (comment 96),
Your current explanation seems clear enough to me. What point were you making?
I've heard there are corporate paid trolls...Koch creatures... blogging and negatively commenting on sound scientific discussions like this. It's good to know there aren't really that many ignorant humans littering the landscape. Then again, becoming a traitor to all of humankind by selling your souls to the fossile fuel industries is rather disgusting. Quite sad, when nature is trying to tell us to get off poisons and harness the sun she offers all of us...clean, endless...peacefull energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou trolls disgust me; fortunately your ridiculous statements are quite transparent and show you for the fool you are. Dangerous fools...
There will come a time...
Totally agree. As to why they play this game, many are paid to do it by the dirty energy crowd which is threatened by scientific facts and the rapid advances in renewable technology. Their days are numbered and they are holding on... corruptly polluting the landscape of discussion... for their own short term greed. I consider them traitors to humanity... all of them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe analogy is not silly but your paid trolldom is sad
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe opponents of climate change want to believe that there are no consequences to our behavior as a species, as the corporations that have pedaled the lie of that cutting smoke stack emissions would not be "cost effective". For several generations industry was allowed to do what ever they wanted with no consequences to their actions. I grew up on the Great Lakes, Lake Erie, and saw the changes in weather that took place from the 1950's as I was growing up in Buffalo, New York. The snows ran deep in Lake Erie in the winter when the lake would freeze solid, and the shipping in the Great Lakes would grind to a halt. There were only two seasons in Buffalo, winter and summer (as short as it was). Now the Lake does not freeze solid and the boons that they used to keep the ice off the break walls, pushed by gale force winds would come onshore with Lake Effect snows. The winters around the Lake Erie got milder and less severe, although my ears were grateful for no getting near frost bite every year. Lake Erie, Lake Michigan has been shrinking for the past couple decades, and so have many bodies of water around the world. If we are not responsible for the world that we have created, then who is responsible for this mess.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen Lake Erie was so polluted that industry killed off all of the species of trout, bass, and pike that game fishermen loved so dearly. When the the Lake had so much sulfur and dioxin in it, that it caught on fire adding insult to injury. Whose fault was it? Are we to continue to act like spoiled children always saying,"it not my fault and it is not my responsibility." Whose fault is it and whose responsibility is it, then? If we are the cause of the problem then it is up to us to come up with the solution.
They've actually shown that conservative brains are different than liberals/progressives. They are easily threatened and unable to see or incorporate new information that deviates from their programmed rush Limbaugh driven psychoses. Furthermore, they are generally unemployed, by the same forces they idolize and when they are offered a job to spew their drivil on climate change... they jump at the chance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFortunately, most of them are old. I just hope we can survive these challenging times until they spew no more.
Poker Player Says: The changes to the climate will potentially improve and not hurt food production. Here are papers to read.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Your first link is irrelevant to the argument. for the following reasons:
1. It does not address climate change. Further it is a analysis of grain prices up to November 2008.
2. It is wrong in its prediction of price correction:
"If the current farm commodity scenario plays
out like earlier events, we would expect prices
to rejoin the long-term trend reduction in real
prices at some point over the next few years."
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=wheat&months=300
I did not check but I am pretty sure corn will look pretty similar.
Your second link is to a blog post. That is not a paper and in addition it is simply a restatement of your firs link with a anti-agw spin on it. You got to learn to do better.
Poker Player Says: The changes to temperature will be very minor and gradual.
Trent Says: Temperatures are predicted to rise four times as fast as did in the 20th century. If you take a look at a temperature graph of the you can plainly see that most of the warming has taken place just in the past 50 years.
Climate Model Projections:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-es-1-mean-temperature.html
Poker Plays: These slight changes would result in areas currently being slightly to cold for certain crops to be better producing areas.
Trent Says: So much wrong here. Perhaps you should take the time to read what is being projected first? Climate change is just not about temperature but changing precipitation patterns, the moving of the Hadley Cell and the Jet Stream, etc.
Poker Player Says: My response- Nothing, no one was discussing growing there- Trent again makes silly
statements.
Trent Says: I was and you argues right along with me. Hence your moronic statement about the global soils map.
Poker Player Says: 100 years ago we did not have farming in CA...we do now
Trent Says: Irrelevant.
Poker Player Says: BTW Trent-- you never outlined what mitigation plans you believe make sense for the US to adopt.
Trent Says: Go do some reading.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/spmsspm-e.html
Poker Player Says: That should be enlightening since I believe that mitigation is a bad approach.
Trent Says: If your beliefs are based on ideology and are fact averse....
Bill Crofut Says: Was global warming also responsible for the unusually cold winter in northern Europe during the winter of 2010-2011?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: There goes Bill once again mistaking weather for climate and one part of the globe for another. Yo, Bill it is global for a reason. Shall we examine what the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere actually looked like?
From NOAA's State of the Climate:
November:
"The November 2010 Northern Hemisphere land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest November on record, while the Southern Hemisphere land and ocean surface temperature was the 13th warmest November on record."
December:...the Northern Hemisphere combined global land and ocean temperature was the 20th warmest.
January: Land surface termperature in the Northern Hemisphere was the 37th warmest on record for January.
February: The February 2011 Northern Hemisphere land temperature was the 30th warmest
March:e March 2011 average temperature for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole (land and ocean surface combined) was 0.58�C (1.04�F) above the 20th century averagethe 11th warmest March on record.
All From NOAA State of the Climate:http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2011/3
Now keep in mind that I just showed you only the Northern Hemisphere for winter. A winter that was in a La Nina and with the sun's activity at its lowest since the early 20th century. Yet here we are with even the coldest month being the 37th warmest. Global Warming it is a reality.
I do wish you would go learn about elementary probability.
I have no problem with anything you are underlining here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy only concern is that smart people buy into the global warming koolaid as it's being dished out. In that regard, it would appear to me that SciAm is part of the greater scheme to get folks to fret over things. It throws them off balance and uneasy about the future, all the more easy for the plucking...
For an alaysis to be valid, believable, it has to take the long perspective, taking into account ALL factors that might impact on the equation. In this case, obviously, HAARP isn't even mentioned, hence given "0" credibility. If SciAm wants to get readership over and above the eggheads it services, it needs to seriously look into all matters that affect our reality and not handpick only those that fit its agenda/school of thought/expedient publishing.
As for water, it's quickly becoming a very large business. Never mind that the bottled water is of questionable quality/purity and that it doesn't compare favorably with tap water in a lot of cases. Folks still buy it as an insurance of good health. That too is buying into koolaid mentality.
Vastman sez "I've heard there are corporate paid trolls...Koch creatures... blogging and negatively commenting on sound scientific discussions like this. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere you go vastman - you've heard it so it must be true! Sounds like your motto.
For the record, I am not paid to post on this site. I simply enjoy lampooning the righteous zealots like you who worship at the altar of environmentalism and global warmism.
Trent1492 (comment 109),
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is not the first time you've accused me of mistaking weather for climate. When is it going to occur to you that your accusation has no merit? My question stands. Please explain to me what is driving the weather. As for the "facts" you've presented, i.e.,
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2011/3, here's an interesting piece of data:
"Note: The data presented in this report are preliminary. Ranks and anomalies may change as more complete data are received and processed."
You also seem to have lost sight of the fact that this essay is about weather. How does "the coldest month being the 37th warmest" fit on the charts? How is global warming the cause of the coldest month?
How's this for my first lesson in elementary probability?:
"Being smarter about how we use our resources, investing in cleaner types of energy, and studying the adaptation process now will not "save the planet," as some activists so breezily say; the planet is not in peril. What it will do is save ourselves from a lot of future hurt."
[Corey S. Powell, EDITOR IN CHIEF. 2011. The World is not ending. DISCOVER, June, p. 6]
I am amazed that that deniers of AGW think that Scientific American is run by a bunch of liberals with a socialist agenda. If having concluded that the science behind AGW is sufficiently convincing then virtually every other scientific organization in the world is similarly run by liberals with a socialist agenda. Why is it then that deniers trust doctors and aeronautic engineers with their lives? Both professions are guided by research conducted according to the scientific method. Often the drugs prescribed by doctors is far less thoroughly researched then AGW.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, but this article is not scientific and wouldn't have been accepted in the Scientific American of twenty years ago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI went to google maps to look at Minot ND and at Nashville. Why is there no mention in the article of Lake Darling above Minot? This is a flood control dam built by the Corp of Engineers. Didn't the engineers get the memo about the record snowpack from last winter? How do they decide how much to lower the lake level to anticipate spring rains?
The same goes for Nashville. There are three flood control lakes above Nashville and they are huge! There is also a small reservoir quite close to the city. The river has numerous oxbows and the city appears to be buit entirely on the flood plain. What was the flood control plan in effect by the Corp? You can't build a city on a flood plain unless you have a plan to control river flows properly.
There have been bigger rains and heavier snowfalls than the ones that contributed to these horrific floods. Where is the evidence that they are the result of climate change or global warming or whatever the buzzword of today may be?
I would like to see a serious investigation of the Army Corps of Engineers and their management plans for these and other watersheds. Have you noticed that we are having biblical floods in the midwest around Souix City as well, and there are six flood control dams above that poor town. Maybe what's happened is that the Corps has given lower priority to flood control and is more worried about maintaining certain flow levels for the preservation of endangered smelt and minnows and for recreational purposes. All of that is well and good, but our first priority should be flood control. That what's the money was spent for originally.
It might be useful to remind ourselves that the same Corps of Engineers was partly responsible for the flood control system that failed spectacularly in New Orleans. If George Bush were president today the entirety of the above referenced floods, Nashville, Minot and Souix City, would be his fault. Since we have a democrat in the White House at the moment it's not a federal problem.
As to the certainty of Global Warming, I would point that out that there is no proof of this, nearly all predictions based on current theory have failed to be validated, and that climate science has it's own very peculiar and loose standards of disclosure, competence and peer review. Both the late Richard Fehynman and Freeman Dyson of Princeton's School of Advanced Studies were "sceptics".
It is painfully obvious that there are folks running around loose who will spew disinformationalist propaganda until they drown - or dry up or blow away - or whatever...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe simple fact is that while this article uses specific examples of extreme weather to make a point, the central theme is that extreme weather events are now happening at an unprecedented frequency - albeit a frequency predicted by numerous independent climate models.
We (the planet) are on a very slippery slope and we are not handling the situation to our benefit.
It is painfully obvious that there are folks running around loose who will spew disinformationalist propaganda until they drown - or dry up or blow away - or whatever...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe simple fact is that while this article uses specific examples of extreme weather to make a point, the central theme is that extreme weather events are now happening at an unprecedented frequency - albeit a frequency predicted by numerous independent climate models.
We (the planet) are on a very slippery slope and we are not handling the situation to our benefit.
"People who deny global warming must have some sort of mental disease and I have yet to figure out what it is."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is indeed an exceedingly rare an anomalous condition described as strict adherence to logic and reason rather than belief in authority.
Today's view of this summer's "ice free" Arctic is here: tinyurl.com/icefreearctic
Basic data falsifies claims of surging seas, Ts and ice melt.
NASA: http://k.min.us/idFxzI.jpg
Thermometers: http://i.min.us/idAOoE.gif
Earth: http://k.min.us/ibtB8G.gif
Ice: http://k.min.us/ibBgw2.jpg
“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.” – Charles Darwin
Consensus: There is an ether that pervades space. Continents don’t move (despite an obvious jigsaw puzzle match between them)! Dirty hands don’t kill surgical patients! Children are a blank slate, personality wise with no genetic influence! The best therapy is to treat human beings as if we were shocking pigeons and ringing bells for dogs. Non-coding DNA is just “junk”. Man will never fly. Viruses have nothing to do with ulcers or certain cancers. Bacterial spontaneously generate. Dietary cholesterol dominates heart disease occurrence just as CO2 dominates the latest warming trend.
This oh so sophisticated site is the only only one around that fails to thread the conversation and which mungs text like crazy. It makes it rather hard to read when replies to early comments end up at the end of the list.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's try converting to text in Gmail which is where I keep my collection of quotes and links:
NASA: http://k.min.us/idFxzI.jpg
Thermometers: http://i.min.us/idAOoE.gif
Earth: http://k.min.us/ibtB8G.gif
Ice: http://k.min.us/ibBgw2.jpg
Why is it screwing up my links? How can a plain text letter come through wrong? Hidden characters? I'll re-type it from scratch.
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
"Why is it then that deniers trust doctors and aeronautic engineers with their lives? Both professions are guided by research conducted according to the scientific method. Often the drugs prescribed by doctors is far less thoroughly researched then AGW."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe issue here is that the globe is indeed warming and that those thousands of researchers studying the effects of this warming all rely on a single result to support their massive funding, a result put forth by a very small group of buddied up researchers who peer review each other's papers with rubber stamps. The result which is so central to AGW is the now discredited hockey stick graphs that claim that recent warming is in fact utterly unprecedented in thousands of years. For if it is not, then natural variation becomes the default assumption and all the gloom and doom becomes merely amusing grant seeking behavior, the likes of which you find in many fields.
The vast difference between AGW and doctors/engineers is that in medicine and engineering, dodgy claims are eventually outed. For example the falsified claim that vaccine preservatives cause autism. Yet, low and behold, numerous organizations and their web sites claim the noble researchers are being persecuted and that mercury chelation really is the cure for autism. Too many parent's world view attached to this 'it's not our fault" view that upon discovering that the major study implicating mercury was brazen fraud, their beliefs only solidify rather than be modified! Such is the case with AGW too.
Here is an enduring take on this problem, worth seven minutes of your time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92YenWfz0Y
By the way, the medical field had it's own "single bullet theory" version of AGW, in which Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann was played by Ancel Keys of the UofMN, who was so well connected politically that his theory that dietary cholesterol was the singular factor in heart disease (since cholesterol itself was found to make up artery clogging plaques) became an accepted fact by doctors worldwide and to some extent remains so to this day. Yet it was bunk. Not fraud, so much, but the whole government went with it, funded it, promoted it and helped ridicule and de-fund those who opposed it. That the body makes and regulates its own cholesterol, that it is central to life itself due to how it stiffens cell membranes that would otherwise not be as durable, was not appreciated. As it turns out, the types of carbohydrates one ingests has much more impact!
-=NikFromNYC=- Ph.D. in Carbon Chemistry (Columbia/Harvard)
"Anger, cynicism and name-calling won't make extreme weather and global warming go away. What are you really afraid of? That the scientists may be right, and you'll have to change your lifestyle?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTell this to all the newly minted college graduates who can't get jobs despite huge student loan debt. Tell them that the solution to their problems is to get a "green job" and to accept "skyrocketing electricity prices," and "gasoline the price it is in Europe." Tell them that capitalism is no longer acceptable, meaning that it must no longer be allowed for people who want to do something like invent a computer in their garage and then make a lot of them to do that, freely. That only a central planners will be involved from now on, or a vote by communal committee. After all that is what "changing you lifestyle" comes down to: the end of a barrel of a gun.
Also, tell them that consensus in *science* (the singularly most important development in human history besides ancient developments such as language and the use of fire), relies not on theory vs. empirical evidence, but upon *consensus* that supports convoluted statistical mash ups of temperature proxy data which have been shown to be an "artifact of bad mathematics" (Dr. Richard Muller of the Berkeley's new Earth Surface Temperature Study).
What am I afraid of? I'm afraid that the following type of behavior threatens to corrupt science. My self-image is very much wrapped up in being able to call myself a "scientist by training." Now? I feel embarrassed by it due to AGW involving clear cases of continuing fraud. The cover of Nature magazine that recently showed warming all over Antarctica, a paper co-authored by Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann, a result again obtained as an "artifact of bad mathematics," one that was debunked soon after in a peer-reviewed paper, demonstrates that to this day, peer review is *broken* in climatology.
Broken peer review in top journals scares the hell out of me for it represents the downfall of the classic corrective role that science has offered my society. I also fear that classic environmentalism has been shoved aside in favor of a single junk science hypothesis. I fear what children are being taught about the nature of science. I fear for our culture!
lol, no, no climatic events are not increasing in frequency. In fact, very recently a new study was released showing hurricane activity has at record lows in both frequency and strength.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCitation: Maue, R. N. (2011), Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, LXXXXX, doi:10.1029/2011GL047711.
This year being an exception,(because of the cooler weather generated by La Nina) but tornadic activity in both strength and frequency is is declining in the U.S. http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/tornado/tornadotrend.jpg
You know of any other studies that use actual numbers? No? I can't imagine why.
We're fine, quit reading the hyperbole ridden news and confusing it with science. Its not.
I ran a simple search on 'frequency of extreme weather' and got what you will get. Don't trust the trolls - look for yourself!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The result which is so central to AGW is the now discredited hockey stick graphs that claim that recent warming is in fact utterly unprecedented in thousands of years."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe 'hockey stick' has not been discredited or disproven, but rather re-inforced by further examination. Please stop spewing tired, refuted propaganda.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-hockey-stick.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-controversy/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-hockey-stick.html
For diehard hockey fans:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Kung-fu-Climate.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/South-American-hockey-stick.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/underwater-hockey-stick.html
These last 3 were lifted from the first link above.
Enjoy!
Actually, I don't read much news. As you say, its full of misinformation and hyperbole.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I do read is scientific reports and synopses. I just ran a search on 'frequency of extreme weather' again. 2,380,000 hits. And yes - many are from news outlets. Ignore them if you like.
This article has a lot of cliches that do not help much.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany contributors to this forum would do well to remove their comments as they add nothing of consequence to the discussion. Political ideology and left-leaning or right-leaning biases have nothing to do with this subject. I imagine that most of the contributors, like myself, are not scientists. We read this type of article because it helps to educate us in some way about a very real global problem. My personal belief is that the machinations of the natural world are cyclical, and that we are witnessing one of those cyclical changes. Couple this natural cyclical scenario with mankind's chemical intrusions on the air and water, and his wholesale destroying of ecosystems around the planet, and I believe that mankind has exacerbated this cyclical rhythm. I believe we have contributed to a large degree (I would not hazard a guess as to the percentage) in making the situation worse. The individuals who debunk the concepts of climate change and global warming have simply not read enough or studied this phenomenon enough and are simply fooling themselves and attempting to absolve themselves of feeling that mankind has made this situation much worse. We are living today in a situation which mankind must address. Mankind owes it to itself and the planet to do its utmost to make its residency here as unobtrusive and even beneficial as possible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHmmmm.... Okay, this is addressed to the apparent
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiscottage industry out there which believes that it has
(1) uncovered a plot of actual scientists who have
real degrees, years of hard won experience and
training in their fields, survive slathers of sharp
critiques by fellow scientists, and have built up a
healthy understanding and respect for the scientific
method... and (2) that scientists have entered their
fields of research under the impression that this is
how one gains great fame, riches and notoriety, if
one conducts oneself in an illegal and morally repug-
nant manner that we normally associate with Murdoch,
Nixon and most of Wall Street.
If this were the case, someone really should have
explained things to these naive academicians. That
said....
Do you have even the slightest notion of how laughably
impossible it would be for thousands of independent
minded and cantankerous scientists, all over the world,
to collude together to even agree on, let alone sustain
such a great, flabby and unwieldy outright hoax, based
on a crapulous desire for (ahem) more grant moola?
Scientists have going for them a method, eclectic, old
but still evolving, perhaps creaky in parts, but which
helps them stay true to their dream, a system easily
more reliable and self correcting than any other system
devised in the last ten thousand years of human history.
Think about it, kids...
Such a nitwit conspiracy among a large group of scientists
would have a half-life of about three seconds... tops. Do
some scientists fall prey to their own human frailty and
publish falsified work? Absolutely. But, unlike the corrosive lies, divisions and hatreds fostered by so many politicians, CEOs and newspaper publishers we all could name these sad days, scientific fraud usually comes undone
pretty fast and also, unlike other fields, gets a sustained white hot spotlight in the science literature, even spilling over into the mainstream press at times. Science is the stronger for this.
A Question/Challenge for conspiracy buffs:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this... Climate-change deniers seem to believe themselves to be honest torch bearers for real science. Alright. Then, to be genuinely and honestly scientific in any 24 carat sense, one must be able to state openly and clearly what kinds of evidence, minimally... MINIMALLY... would one need to see which could actually falsify one's own hypothesis that global warming or climate change is not real.
That is, what would it really take for one who denies the reality of climate change to actually realize and admit that there is now a good chance that he or she is wrong, and that, at least in its larger strokes, the climate change hypothesis is more or less correct? Just an honest kind of question one can (and should) ask of oneself and all who respect and value science, its body of precious knowledge and the methods and struggles which
arrived at this knowledge. I pose this 'smoking gun' kind of evidence issue because, if you cannot bring yourself to make such a list of 'deal breakers' which would toll the death knell for your favorite hypothesis,
you are not being even remotely scientific and you are being dishonest with yourself and all who are involved in the great discussion.
good hunting,
stargene
Climate change wouldn't matter if we could do something about weather.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thischalking it up to natural variation wont stop floods, or loss of life.
you girls are arguing over whether its a zebra or a horse... i think you should get out of its way and make plans to build a fence.
do you think bullets wont hurt you if you tell everyone they aren't real?
i truly dont give a fuck if global warming is true or not. I know how the world looks, i see how its built, and i know this cant last..
You all seem like idiots for logging on here so much thinking you can change the world.
This is not a source of real power... This is a lifesuck and the operators of this site are happy to throw arguments out and let you take each other out and do NOTHING to help. its facebook... this site runs based on you stupid docile cows logging on and enjoying the conveyor belt while you still have time on this earth
Fucking children. Fucking children. Fucking children.
this world aint ready for the most natural of natural disasters, and thats a fact. We've got bigger fish to fry
Climate change: weather we cant handle
No Climate change: weather we cant handle
can we move on? be inventive?
the earth was flat until it wasn't
remember? oh wait you weren't there. i guess no ones really that old and wise..
its a shame the bible made having a backup boat so unpopular :P opposition defiance disorder?
What would this message look like without a bit of ego or vanity?
The message wouldn't exist.
Behind your childish motivations i can see some really really bright people. You have to know that and stop trying to prove it. Maybe alot of you are actually doing something and we all will thank you for that someday.
(do recall posting here doesn't count as something unless your telling people to stop)
I wish i had one of those jobs where i could tell people there is not a fire, everyone please be seated lol..
maybe thats just my paranoia..
I am willing to bet the issue is just a matter of intelligent likewise people on the opposite sides of a coin.
just realize going against the grain, being a free spirit or a free thinker is a BEHAVIORAL DISORDER.
sometimes those help the world, but be honest with yourself here people...
guys i know how my message looks (vanity remember)
i like my message this say, it shows im not playing the game, or atleast the same game. Hopefully words like "aint" can be disarming enough to signal its something to be listened to, as if i were some wise cowboy.