HURRICANE KATRINA battered New Orleans in 2005
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Editor's note: This article is the second of a three-part series by John Carey. Part 1, posted on June 28, is "Storm Warning: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change".
Extreme floods, prolonged droughts, searing heat waves, massive rainstorms and the like don't just seem like they've become the new normal in the last few years—they have become more common, according to data collected by reinsurance company Munich Re (see Part 1 of this series). But has this increase resulted from human-caused climate change or just from natural climatic variations? After all, recorded floods and droughts go back to the earliest days of mankind, before coal, oil and natural gas made the modern industrial world possible.
Until recently scientists had only been able to say that more extreme weather is "consistent" with climate change caused by greenhouse gases that humans are emitting into the atmosphere. Now, however, they can begin to say that the odds of having extreme weather have increased because of human-caused atmospheric changes—and that many individual events would not have happened in the same way without global warming. The reason: The signal of climate change is finally emerging from the "noise"—the huge amount of natural variability in weather.
Scientists compare the normal variation in weather with rolls of the dice. Adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere loads the dice, increasing odds of such extreme weather events. It's not just that the weather dice are altered, however. As Steve Sherwood, co-director of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Australia, puts it, "it is more like painting an extra spot on each face of one of the dice, so that it goes from 2 to 7 instead of 1 to 6. This increases the odds of rolling 11 or 12, but also makes it possible to roll 13."
Why? Basic physics is at work: The planet has already warmed roughly 1 degree Celsius since preindustrial times, thanks to CO2and other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. And for every 1-degree C (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in temperature, the amount of moisture that the atmosphere can contain rises by 7 percent, explains Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the U.K. Met Office's Hadley Center for Climate Change. "That's quite dramatic," he says. In some places, the increase has been much larger. Data gathered by Gene Takle, professor of meteorology at Iowa State University in Ames, show a 13 percent rise in summer moisture over the past 50 years in the state capital, Des Moines.
The physics of too much rain
The increased moisture in the atmosphere inevitably means more rain. That's obvious. But not just any kind of rain, the climate models predict. Because of the large-scale energy balance of the planet, "the upshot is that overall rainfall increases only 2 to 3 percent per degree of warming, whereas extreme rainfall increases 6 to 7 percent," Stott says. The reason again comes from physics. Rain happens when the atmosphere cools enough for water vapor to condense into liquid. "However, because of the increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the troposphere, the radiative cooling is less efficient, as less radiation can escape to space," Stott explains. "Therefore the global precipitation increases less, at about 2 to 3 percent per degree of warming." But because of the extra moisture, when precipitation does occur (in both rain and snow), it's more likely to be in bigger events.
Iowa is one of many places that fits the pattern. Takle documented a three- to seven-fold increase in high rainfall events in the state, including the 500-year Mississippi River flood in 1993, the 2008 Cedar Rapids flood as well as the 500-year event in 2010 in Ames, which inundated the Hilton Coliseum basketball court in eight feet (2.5 meters) of water . "We can't say with confidence that the 2010 Ames flood was caused by climate change, but we can say that the dice are loaded to bring more of these events," Takle says.
See what we're tweeting about
48 Comments
Add CommentUsing random weather events and saying it is because of global warming is unscientific.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow, an unusually high number of trolls on this story.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust mention "climate change" and sit back.
Hey - record high temps have been outpacing record low temps by 13 to 1, is every person with a thermometer in on the conspiracy?
Yup! There's TONS of money in it too! I mean all you have to do is say 'climate change' and your IRA is full to overflowing, you have grants coming out your ears, stock options, wow!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJesus what a bunch of mental pygmies.
Deniers have yet to propose a counter-theory to AGW that can withstand a rigorous peer review process; it's all a FUD campaign to discredit the science (and scientists) since they can't refute the science itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.skepticalscience.com/
Enjoy!
I'm always shocked at the comments that follow articles like this one. Whether or not you agree with the notion that mankind is to blame for climate changes, it seems intuitive (to me, anyway) that we're at least not doing the environment any favors. And given the increasingly evident consequences of the continuing trend of climate changes, I think it's a very worthwhile pursuit to try and identifiy nail down mankind's role or lack thereof. If we can act to prevent or slow it the progress of this change, shouldn't we? And if you can't incent people to act without do that without definitively identifying what our role is in the problem, then shouldn't we pursue that too? Most science starts out as a compleeing theory. The theory that mankind has a causal role in global warming and climate change may not have yielded unshakable proof, but it has yeilded very compelling data to compliment the compelling theory. Many compelling theories never mature to that stage. I think it is a mistake to be so dismissive as to compare this kind of analysis to fortune telling. Not all environmental studies are politically motivated. Some are just the pursuit of fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr you can just stick your head in the sand and say "Climate Change isn't happening!" and watch the money roll in:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=american-climate-skeptic-soon-funde
Ok, I really need to know. WHAT PART OF CLIMATE CHANGE DO YOU DENIERS NOT UNDERSTAND? That CO2 traps heat or that were dumping billions of tons of it into the atmosphere every year and have increased its concentration by 40% over 150 years? If you agree with these two statements, every other gripe about climate science is just splitting hairs. We need to reduce our effect on the Earth or we'll have to pay the consequences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismememine69 said 'You selfhish lab coat consultants are not saints, you polluted the planet with pesticides and your cancer causing chemicals in the first place'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm pretty sure you are talking about two distinctly different groups of scientists. Were you wanting to blame science? Even that is pretty much off base. More likely, if you want to point fingers, you should point at the engineers who applied the science, or, even more accurately, at the marketing and accounting people who paid the engineers, and often forced them to minimize their safety efforts in the interest of maximizing profits.
Even then, it's really hard to pinpoint the blame for unintended consequences without blaming humanity in general. That's a pretty broad pinpoint, and it requires you to accept some miniscule sliver of the blame yourself.
I, for one, have taken action on global warming...I warned my son that buying beachfront property is not a good long term investment.
Anyone not already familiar with the stance of geologists towards the global warming scare would have been shocked by the conference at the University of Ottawa at the end of May. In contrast to most environmental science meetings, climate skepticism was widespread among the thousand geoscientists from Canada, the United States and other countries who took part in GAC-MAC 2011 (the Joint Annual Meeting of the Geological Association of Canada, the Mineralogical Association of Canada, the Society of Economic Geologists and the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpeakers included Bob Carter and Ian Plimer as well as Henrik Svensmark, along with many others who talked about water vapor, the role of the sun, satellite radiation measurements and many other approaches. One speaker spoke along lines that the IPCC would have been happy about, but none of the other IPCC supporters accepted the invitations.
Where were all the other scientist supporters of climate alarmism? Did they not know that climate was a major focus of this, the largest geologic conference in the country?
They knew. According to Miall, even though some were directly invited, they either refused to participate or ignored the invitation. “The people on the IPCC side generally will not debate,” explained Miall. “Anything that’s brought up that they disagree with, they say has been dealt with and is no longer considered important, or is a minor effect. This is often quite wrong.”
In the Q&A following the public lecture at last June’s Canadian Meteorological and Ocean Society (CMOS)/Canadian Geophysical Union Congress in Ottawa, the prospect of a public debate between the two sides was put to keynote speaker Warwick Vincent of Laval University. Vincent was supportive, as was a CMOS past president communicated with later. Yet, when I approached CMOS executives and directors about taking the steps necessary to arrange such a public event, the responses were negative to the point of abuse and nothing transpired.
This was perhaps not surprising. Proposals for a proper climate science debate have been opposed by CMOS leaders for a long time. As early as 1990, the chairman of the CMOS congress scientific committee, Tad Murty (then a senior research scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ Institute of Ocean Sciences) tried to arrange a global-warming debate. But it never happened. Murty cites a “lack of enthusiasm” from other committee members as the reason.
LOL. We are not climate change deniers. The climate is in a constant state of change. We disagree with the mass panic part of AGW. Just because we have an effect does not necessarily mean it is a bad one or a good one. This article is unscientific even if AGW is the end of times. Random weather events are not climate period. There are many variables in the climate system. Just saying that CO2 increased 40% does not really mean much. There are hundreds of variables left out of the equation. One variable does not control the entire complicated climate system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou must consider the fact that if you hold a debate in front of a bunch of "economic geologists" whose very livelihoods are threatened by the necessary measures we will have to enact to preserve a liveable climate, there will be little chance that their minds will be changed. Economic geologist is a fancy name for petroleum geologist or a geologist involved with coal and natural gas extraction. Never count on a person to understand something if their paycheck depends on them not understanding it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy do people like Bob Carter, Ian Plimer and Svensmark continuously try to short-circuit the peer review process by taking their little publicity stunts direct to the public like this? I'll tell you why. Their crackpot theories have not and never will stand up to the accurate and proper scientific scrutiny that peer review would bring.
As far as the few long-debunked zombie talking points they brought up, there's nothing there worth note. Water vapor is a FEEDBACK, not a forcing. The amount of water vapor in the air is highly dependent on temperature and cannot exceed 100% relative humidity without condensing out as a liquid. Water vapor AMPLIFIES the initial warming due to CO2; it CANNOT be responsible for the pattern of warming we've observed. As far as the Sun, it is true that the climate generally tends to follow the Sun's output. That held true until the 20th century when the climate and forcing from the Sun started going in opposite directions. That the decade 2000 - 2009 was the hottest in the global record while there was a lull in sunspot activity should disprove the inane notion that the Sun is causing Climate Change.
That's Science, my friend. What these hucksters are doing is something else.
I am relatively convinced that, in the end, we will come to understand that climate change, global warming and extreme weather increases will be more directly attributed to our sun and the changes it is beginning to undergo right now more than any other singular factor being considered here. Does CO2 in our atmosphere help? Certainly not. But we are heading into a new age for our ancient planet regardless of what we do and the effects do not bode well for humanity. This paradise we inherited.. the lease is up my friends.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this40% change isn't that much? Decrease the oxygen content of the atmosphere by 40% and you'll have a mass extinction. You can quantify the impact of the 40% extra CO2 in the air based on its observed physical properties. The extra heating by this 40% is incorporated into climate models and they reproduce our current climate rather well. If you don’t include this heating, the climate models completely fail to hindcast our current climate. In fact, our current climate is totally UNEXPLAINABLE unless you include man-made climate warming. You can't dispute these established facts. That the deniers still do dispute them is what gave birth to the denier label in the first place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article showed that there is CLEAR SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE in increased weather disasters linked to climate change. This is a BAD effect, is it not? 1/3 or Pakistan being under water last year was a BAD effect too, right? It's good to know that you have some idea of the difference between weather and climate. But then again, you're probably one of THOSE people that, when it snows anywhere, has a good laugh and asks, "Where's Al Gore's global warming now? Harharhar..."
Yeah, we might not know ALL the variables in the climate system to an acceptable level of certainty, but that doesn't mean we can't know ANY of the variables that are acting on our climate. This is the same as the "god-of-the-gaps" argument that Creationists use when forming their silly arguments against Evolution. We don't know everything about heart disease either, but we do know that a healthy diet and exercise tends to lower someone's risk of getting a heart attack. You're not about to go around sucking down fried Twinkies all the time just because we don't know every little molecule or whatever that plays a part in clogging your arteries, are you?
So, what bit of SCIENTIFIC evidence made you "relatively" convinced that the Sun is causing the changes in the Earth's climate that have been observed? I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but it's actually not the Sun causing climate disruption:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-advanced.htm
Nicpet: "Using random weather events and saying it is because of global warming is unscientific.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrue. This is because many the GW groupies don't have even basic understanding of scientific methodoly.They think once eveyone drinks enough of the Kool Ade that they will 'believe'.
Thanks for the link to your cartoon website. Enjoy the new Transformers movie.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt really would be refreshing to be presented with some hard evidence of the so-called peer review process employed in what has been termed "climate science." For example, from the first two paragraphs on page 3 is the following:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"This idea was already in the air in 2003 when Stott traveled though the worst heat wave in recorded European history on a wedding anniversary trip to Italy and Switzerland....In fact, the signal of a warming climate was quite clear in Europe, even using data up to only 2000."
Was global warming also responsible for the unusually cold winter in northern Europe during the winter of 2010-2011? Redundancy intended, a participant in the comments on another Scientific American web page took me to task for posting the question. His criticism was my confusion of weather with climate.
Near the bottom of page 3 is the following statement: "This science of attribution is not without controversies." The last sentence of the following paragraph reads: "What we can say is that, as with Katrina, this would not have happened the same way without global warming." How would it have happened without global warming? What is the source of peer review for the assertion regarding Katrina?
Bill Crofut SaysL 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 average—the 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 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 with even the coldest month being the 37th warmest. Global Warming it is reality.
If Bill Crofut and friends could just grok one passage from the article it would be this:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Whereas day-to-day weather remains enormously variable, the underlying human-caused shift in climate increases the power and number of the events at the extreme. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Deke Arndt puts it more colorfully: "Weather throws the punches, but climate trains the boxer," he says. By charting the overall shift, then, it's possible to calculate the increased chances of extreme events due to global warming."
If only....
Ok, I just have a few questions for those who are sure that climate change is nothing but propaganda:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Why do you believe that? ("Because Glenn Beck said so" is not a valid answer.) Think for yourself! The real way to find the truth about something is through careful research of both sides, not by letting some over-enthusiastic nut brainwash you.
2. Do you know how difficult it is to report false findings and the kind of consequences a scientist would face by doing so??? And you think that more that a hand-full of scientists would try and risk that? Absolutely not.
3. What exactly do you think scientists have to gain by publishing false data? You think they get a kick-back from car companies selling hybrids? Or how about manufacturers that specialize in recycled or upcycled goods? I think not.
Conclusion: think a little more before you act like you know anything about a subject.
Katrina was not a particularly strong storm. It was just exactly in the wrong place to push water into New Orleans. Add into the mix a city that considered it someone else's duty to protect them and you had a recipe for disaster. To use this as an example of climate change is an exercise in dishonesty. AGW is already such a well proven reality that articles like this only give ammunition to deniers of that reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut if the science says that the sea surface temperatures were a few degrees higher and the air had 7% more water vapor because of climate change, you have to accempt the fact that Hurricane Katrina had that much more energy when it hit New Orleans than it otherwise would have. I don't know how much energy exactly, but even just a 1C change in sea surface temperature over the area that the storm drew energy from is an INSANE amount of energy. I also dont' know if the levees would have held if there was 1 inch less rain or the wind was 5 mph lower or the storm surge was 1 ft lower, but the added energy definitely didn't help the situation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere will we get all this carbon so that "by 2080, such events are expected to happen, on average, once every five years"? I thought we were going through peak oil and natural gas within this decade.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBill 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.
Ken Sez: Trent, normally I find your dogmatic, didactic, condescending presentation to be sadly amusing, but here you are just being ignorant.
The correct answer to Bill's question is yes. Just as global warming is responsible for the cold August we hade here in Indiana last year (or was it the year before?)
I've seen plenty of NOAA maps showing temp deltas and some areas WERE cooler than normal. The NOAA reports you cite for the northern hemisphere are primarily driven by temps up in the higher latitudes, like Canada, the polar ice cap. Everything I've seen about global warming models (other than SciAm comment wars) says that the models do, in fact predict that some areas will be cooler as a result of weather patterns generated by the warmer areas.
It seems counterintuitive, and when it's 20 degrees colder than normal and one's teeth are chattering, it's easy to joke about how "this global warming sucke, eh?" But, to use anecdotal evidence from the midwest again, all we have to do here is ask ourselves how often the weather has been "normal" in the last couple of years. Our weather is "unseasonably" warm,or cold and/or dry or wet nearly half the time, it seems. Last autumn it was like summer till almost the end of November, then it was brutally cold for longer than normal.
Maybe it was not what you meant, but it sounded like you were saying that climate and weather are unrelated, and that sounds pretty stupid to most folks. They are not the same thing, certainly, but don't pull punches just because the truth isn't comfy.
Yes, Bill, global warming does predict extreme weather. Cold, hot, floods, droughts...just not all in your neighborhood at the same time.
Ken Says: Ken Sez: Trent, normally I find your dogmatic, didactic, condescending presentation to be sadly amusing, but here you are just being ignorant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Irony alert. I like how you commence doing exactly that in your post.
Skeptical Ken Says: The correct answer to Bill's question is yes. Just as global warming is responsible for the cold August we hade here in Indiana last year (or was it the year before.
Trent Says: Actually Ken you would need a trend to show that. You do know how trend are ascertained do you not Ken? Which leads me to wonder if you know how climate is defined. You do know that global climate is not defined by a few months is in northern Europe?
Ken Says: The NOAA reports you cite for the northern hemisphere are primarily driven by temps up in the higher latitudes, like Canada, the polar ice cap.
Trent Says: Yes, and that means Bill's "thoughts" that a colder European winter for 2010-2011 means global warming is bunk, how?
Ken Says: I've seen plenty of NOAA maps showing temp deltas and some areas WERE cooler than normal.
Trent Says: Key Phrase: "some areas". And I think it is important to keep on reiterating that global trends are not decided by single area or areas over a very short period. Speaking of trends for a area here is the daily highs versus the daily lows for the U.S over a 50 year period.
http://www2.ucar.edu/news/1036/record-high-temperatures-far-outpace-record-lows-across-us
Ken Says: But, to use anecdotal evidence from the midwest again, all we have to do here is ask ourselves how often the weather has been "normal" in the last couple of years. Our weather is "unseasonably" warm,or cold and/or dry or wet nearly half the time, it seems. Last autumn it was like summer till almost the end of November, then it was brutally cold for longer than normal.
Trent Says: That is where the neat branch of mathematics called statistics comes in. You should try it. Then maybe you learn how noise is distinguished from a signal in a system.
Ken Says: Maybe it was not what you meant, but it sounded like you were saying that climate and weather are unrelated, and that sounds pretty stupid to most folks. They are not the same thing, certainly, but don't pull punches just because the truth isn't comfy.
Trent Says: Where is the truth being pulled? Name it. Is it your contention that a single cold winter in Europe is climate? I do not think that is what you are saying but you are coming perilously close to saying it. And that would be stupid.
Trent Says: Yes, and that means Bill's "thoughts" that a colder European winter for 2010-2011 means global warming is bunk, how?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust as I thought. You are a dogmatic idiot. I tell you that you communicate like a jerk and you assume I am on "Bill's side". You must be too busy composing your rants to actually read, and instead just skim for keywords.
What I said in my previous comment was that, conterintuitive as it may seem, that cold winter in Europe SUPPORTS global warming claims. It's not a different subject, it's not a trivial example that merely fails to falsify global warming models, but rather it's more evidence that global warming IS happening, because such things ARE predicted in the models.
Just because I say you are a flaming jerkwad doesn't mean I disagree with your entire position. I only posted because, whether out of ignorance or cowardice, you bungled your reply to Bill regarding the counterintuitive aspects of global warming.
And yes, I'm being every bit as rude as you...I thought you liked it like that. Look at the bright side. Deniers will suffer the irony of hating what I say while loving the way I treat you.
"Wow, an unusually high number of trolls on this story. Just mention "climate change" and sit back.Hey - record high temps have been outpacing record low temps by 13 to 1, is every person with a thermometer in on the conspiracy?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are acting as a troll here, numskull. You are trying to provoke a reaction, basically, without adding any actual links to useful information that might change somebody's mind. That temperature is rising at the same old pace of course means that record high temps are fully expected. The question is what is causing the warming.
Every person with a thermometer, at least in the world's grand old cities that contain the oldest records, show utterly no trend change, so you statement has been true for the last 350 years:
http://i.min.us/idAOoE.gif
Why do you come here and debase the debate?
"Ok, I really need to know. WHAT PART OF CLIMATE CHANGE DO YOU DENIERS NOT UNDERSTAND? That CO2 traps heat or that were dumping billions of tons of it into the atmosphere every year and have increased its concentration by 40% over 150 years? If you agree with these two statements, every other gripe about climate science is just splitting hairs."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you really this mis-informed and yet so SCREAMINGLY confident of your view? That CO2 traps heat is not the issue at all. It's the unfounded claim that water vapor feedback amplifies the mild warming by 3X to thus become alarming even though very probable negative feedback due to that water vapor forming more clouds is arbitrarily discounted.
See: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v329/n6135/pdf/329138a0.pdf
The article : "Iowa is one of many places that fits the pattern. Takle documented a three- to seven-fold increase in high rainfall events in the state, including the 500-year Mississippi River flood in 1993, the 2008 Cedar Rapids flood as well as the 500-year event in 2010 in Ames, which inundated the Hilton Coliseum basketball court in eight feet (2.5 meters) of water . "We can't say with confidence that the 2010 Ames flood was caused by climate change, but we can say that the dice are loaded to bring more of these events," Takle says. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJune 8-9 Des Moines doppler rain est.
One foot of rain south Des Moines , (3rd image down)
Yesterday was the 3rd wettest 24 hrs on record in Des Moines. 4.53 inches added with the day before , 7.3 inches fell in the last two days.
http://coloradobob1.newsvine.com/_news/2011/06/10/6828119-la-nina-gone-a-foot-of-rain-in-iowa
"Wow, an unusually high number of trolls on this story."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou wrote that after there were only two comments has appeared. Hmmm.... A talking point, perhaps, merely?
"40% change isn't that much? Decrease the oxygen content of the atmosphere by 40% and you'll have a mass extinction."
On a pie chart a doubling of CO2 from 400 ppm (0.04%) to 800 ppm (0.08%) which represents a 100% increase would be barely visible, since neither tiny sliver would show up to the eye, whereas the same 100% doubling of O2 would represent a huge change in the character of the atmosphere. Plants are starved for CO2 exactly since it is a trace gas due to the fact that most of it dissolves in the oceans and precipitates out as rocks (and the skeletons of dead animals and diatoms etc.).
I'm not saying that a trace gas can't cause warming, but that doubling of a trace gas is certainly not comparable in kind to a halving of a predominant one. Minus massive water vapor feedback acting on the greenhouse effect, a highly speculative idea, doubling of CO2 represents a huge boost for the planet's biosphere.
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_0oNRupXJ4-A/SfsDu9yAP9I/AAAAAAAAAyg/q4d0z4RHjfA/%5BUNSET%5D.jpg
In response to sault, SpottedMarley wrote: "thanks for the link to your cartoon website."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is in reference to SkepticalScience.com a minor laughing stock site run by a cartoonist. What is also a fun fact is that his major site partner works for a nuclear weapons design firm in Sacramento that now receives $330 million green energy contracts. The site's founder, John Cook claims his main mentor in life has been Paul Ehrlich of the 60s "population bomb" scares who was quoted in '89 about cold fusion, prior to it being finally debunked:
“It’s like giving a machine gun to an idiot child.” – Paul Ehrlich
He was in good company with other haters of humanity who were aghast at the possibility of abundant energy:
“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)
Misshapen people like John Cook (http://oi56.tinypic.com/2ngcz8j.jpg) are prone to nasty thoughts about those with more vitality. AGW was the perfect excuse to hide this shameful rage behind a facade of haloed science. His undergraduate degree in physics allows him to present technical presentations to laymen that appear vigorous but are simply not so.
-=NikFromNYC=- Ph.D. in Carbon Chemistry (Columbia/Harvard).
"From NOAA's State of the Climate: 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." Global Warming it is reality."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh bejesus stop droning on and on about how CO2 causes warming and it's hotter than last decade, so change you lifestyle!
Classic greenhouse theory would claim that only a fraction of current warming is from CO2 and that it will max out at a degree or two (minus negative feedbacks that are very likely to exists do to water vapor forming more low lying clouds). These arguments put words in skeptical mouths that vastly simplify the real skeptical argument and in fact avoid it altogether!
The NOAA's own web site shows that the recent down/up variation in T has near perfect precedence earlier in the century:
http://oi45.tinypic.com/5obajo.jpg
[Ok, I just have a few questions for those who are sure that climate change is nothing but propaganda:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Why do you believe that? ("Because Glenn Beck said so" is not a valid answer.) Think for yourself! The real way to find the truth about something is through careful research of both sides, not by letting some over-enthusiastic nut brainwash you.]
You are sadly uninformed, quite understandably, if you have only been reading what remnant of Sci Amer is left from when my dad's stack of them from the 50s-70s contained articles by scientists for other scientists. On the biggest skeptic's site of all, WattUpWithThat.com there was a collective shudder when the Climategate story broke and Rush Limbaugh followed by Glenn Beck ran with the story. Serious skeptics, ones who had spent years studying the statistical details of climatology claims, were very worried about the bad PR their support would cause. And your question is evidence that it indeed has caused a setback of sorts, though politically it has helped change AGW from having 100% of the political equation on its side to 50%.
[2. Do you know how difficult it is to report false findings and the kind of consequences a scientist would face by doing so??? And you think that more that a hand-full of scientists would try and risk that? Absolutely not.]
There has been *no* consequence so far for quickly debunked papers especially by Michael Mann. A massive funding and PR boost has been created by the biggest "corporation" of all, the Federal Government, due to a simply and natural desire to increase government control over the economy via energy policy. This is currently the left's agenda. It used to the the province of the right, before the mid-sixties. AGW was the perfect excuse. You do make a good point though. It may not be outright fraud, but more of a sort of effect of over-specialization of science plus one group of about two dozen scientists who has simply and sadly strayed from the rigors of classic science.
[3. What exactly do you think scientists have to gain by publishing false data? You think they get a kick-back from car companies selling hybrids? Or how about manufacturers that specialize in recycled or upcycled goods? I think not.]
They have something so much more grand than financial gain (but that too, as tobacco farmer Gore's six fireplace palace attests to). They have the worshipful attention of Greenpeace chicks worldwide and they are considered by many to be saviors! Money alone can't buy that!
"What exactly do you think scientists have to gain by publishing false data? You think they get a kick-back from car companies selling hybrids?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, a railroad engineer by training is a great example for you. He now is worth many millions and jetsets all over the world, all thanks to falsely exaggerated claims (not even based on real data). He wrote a very graphic novel about a "fictional" climatologist's spiritualized sexual exploits.
The guru career path is very popular in India with guys who look as weird as this:
http://topnews.in/law/files/rk-pachauri.jpg
"May slipped his clothes off one by one, removing her lips from his for no more than a second or two. He was excited by the sight of her heaving breasts which he just could not let go of as she breathed in and out deeply. Afterwards she held him close. ‘Sandy, I’ve learned something for the first time today. You are absolutely superb after meditation. Why don’t we make love every time immediately after you have meditated?'"
Trent1492,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: comment 21.
Your charge, "There goes Bill once again..." would seem to be one that looks back:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=extreme-weather-caused-by-climate-change
comment 109.
Re: comment 22:
"If Bill Crofut and friends could just grok one passage from the article it would be this"
Wrong:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=extreme-weather-caused-by-climate-change
comment 114.
SkepticalKen,
Re: comment 27
Please provide me the climate science reference that explains how global warming produces cold.
Bill, I know what I've read, but I don't save all the links for petty arguments on SciAm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can tell you that weather and climate are very complex systems, and even more complicated on a global scale. Are you familiar with El Nino and La Nina weather patterns? The temperature of ocean currents in the Pacific affect weather patterns all over the world, causing above or below average temperatures and above or below average precipitation, depending on the location and which of the two systems is at play. The effects are very pronounced in some places and negligible in others, but the amount of effect is not proportionate to distance from the Nino/Nina current.
I can't provide you the climate or weather science on how that works either, but we are talking about a similar level of complexity.
Have you ever looked at the temperature maps showing change in temperature, or deviation from the norm? They never indicate uniform change, and they always (unless they're REALLY tweaking the data to prove a point) show some areas cooler than normal.
The point is, global warming does not mean that it will get hotter everywhere. It means that the behavior of this vast, complex system will change as the average temperature of the entire system goes up. Some places will be more prone to drought, some more prone to floods. Some will be warmer than normal, some cooler.
As I've said, when I am freezing my butt off on an August evening, it FEELS pretty stupid to say it is caused by global warming. But, the facts are the facts. The average, overall temperature of the entire system is going up, and that can cause all sorts of wierd stuff. Like a tornado in New England in March. It wasn't huge, didn't kill huge numbers of people, but tornadoes in March are unusual, and so are tornadoes in New England, so I'd call that very peculiar.
The dice analogy in this article is actually pretty decent, but it's not quite complex enough to cover the fact that cold is yet another extreme that can come from the distorted dynamics in such a system.
So jellyroll, what - besides an overabundance of opinion - do you have to offer as an alternative explanation?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWeather is the basic interaction of cold and warm air with water vapor. If you look at the planet from space you can see we share one atmosphere and if we heat the atmosphere it changes weather.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem has been seeing it because the world is literally blind to temperature. We did several years of advanced temperature work to find the mechanism causing urban heat islands and why billions is used in energy costs each year responding to them. The results contradicted our own educations in the calculator but the science was accurate and we documented buildings in 7 provinces, 26 states during the summer as well as winter.
We protect our skin from UV and we are supposed to do the same with building development. If we don't the buildings will "burn" and generate extreme heat they aren't designed for. Here is what it looks like in the infrared spectrum. http://www.thermoguy.com/blog/index.php?itemid=61
Here is an infrared time-lapsed video showing the impact of shade. http://www.thermoguy.com/blog/index.php?itemid=62
a) No, you're not 'deniers'. You're diseminators, witting or duped, of politically driven misinformation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisb) The only people I see ranting about 'mass panic' are right wing politicians and their industry bosses. Oh yes, and those mentioned in a) above.
c) Evidence that the impact of our civilization on climate is less than salubrious is the huge and growing body of evidence from multiple, independent lines of empirical evidence.
d) I submit that this article is an example of journalism, science journalism, but journalism none the less. Perhaps if you would take the trouble to read a few actual scientific papers you might have a little better idea of what you're talking about...
e) Weather is not random. Chaotic (in the mathematical sense) yes, but never random. Climate is the sum of weather over time.
f) That CO2 has increased 40% is huge. Water vapor is the most powerful and prevalent of the major greenhouse gasses, but were it not for sufficient CO2 in the primordial atmosphere there would be no water vapor - the planet would be frozen solid. It's happened before. Look up 'snowball Earth'.
g) That there are many more variables than just CO2 in climate science has been known from the beginning. Are 100% of the variables effecting the climate included in the 8 or so different major climate models? No, but many are and as others are identified and quantified they are included too.
a) No, you're not 'deniers'. You're diseminators, witting or duped, of politically driven misinformation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisb) The only people I see ranting about 'mass panic' are right wing politicians and their industry bosses. Oh yes, and those mentioned in a) above.
c) Evidence that the impact of our civilization on climate is less than salubrious is the huge and growing body of evidence from multiple, independent lines of empirical evidence.
d) I submit that this article is an example of journalism, science journalism, but journalism none the less. Perhaps if you would take the trouble to read a few actual scientific papers you might have a little better idea of what you're talking about...
e) Weather is not random. Chaotic (in the mathematical sense) yes, but never random. Climate is the sum of weather over time.
f) That CO2 has increased 40% is huge. Water vapor is the most powerful and prevalent of the major greenhouse gasses, but were it not for sufficient CO2 in the primordial atmosphere there would be no water vapor - the planet would be frozen solid. It's happened before. Look up 'snowball Earth'.
g) That there are many more variables than just CO2 in climate science has been known from the beginning. Are 100% of the variables effecting the climate included in the 8 or so different major climate models? No, but many are and as others are identified and quantified they are included too.
Well Bill, first off SA is not actually a scientific journal and so review here is limited to a pass from the editor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo get accepted for publication in a true journal, say "Science" or "Nature" to name a couple of the most respected, one must submit one's manuscript to a committee of (usually) anonymous experts in the field of interest. They will determine if the paper is worthy of publication, ask questions and perhaps request expansion of certain aspects of the research.
SkepticalKen,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: comment 39
My reason for skepticism on the issue of agw is assertions without evidence.
Le Spaz d'Argent,
Re: comment 44
According to the good folks here, SA is part of NATURE.
That by no means means that SA subscribes to the same editorial or peer review policies as "Nature". Their missions are different, as are their editorial requirements.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSA is journalistic outreach publication - news of current science. Nature directly reports the findings of science, with full peer review protocols. These protocols do not apply to SA.
Allow me to refer all of you to the peer review process as applied to some Australian authors:
http://theconversation.edu.au/whos-your-expert-the-difference-between-peer-review-and-rhetoric-1550 and
http://theconversation.edu.au/climate-change-denial-and-the-abuse-of-peer-review-1552
The term 'peer review' has been bandied about by pseudo-scientific commentators for some time now - apparently in the hope that they can bamboozle their readers with the misuse of poorly understood scientific protocols.
It has been shown previously (see links above) that the disinformer community avoids peer review (not always, but...).
Science thrives, indeed requires, debate of contravening ideas, but it also requires that those ideas have some basis in credulity - and integrity. This is the function of the peer review process.
The publication of papers describing study results that present evidence contradicting or even claiming to disprove existing theory is welcomed in actual science, but it does not, a priori, disprove anything until validated.
Debate is the lifeblood of science. Peer review keeps debate within the realm of reality - or so it is hoped.
It is incumbent on all of us, in the presence of the most powerful tool of learning in all of history (that would be your computer (sorry, but some folks don't seem to get that one)) to get down, sift the industrial-politico chaff from the grains of truth and deal with reality.
Le Spaz d'Argent,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: "The publication of papers describing study results that present evidence contradicting or even claiming to disprove existing theory is welcomed in actual science, but it does not, a priori, disprove anything until validated."
As time permits, it's my intention to check out the two url's you provided. In the meantime, please provide an example of a published paper contradicting agw.
Le Spaz d'Argent,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: http://theconversation.edu.au/whos-your-expert-the-difference-between-peer-review-and-rhetoric-1550
The following statement seems to me to sum up the gist of the entry:
"So the number of peer-reviewed papers that adequately expose the ideas of Carter and co-authors to the scientific peer-review system on the climate change issue is 0, 0, 0 and 0."
That statement does not indicate if any of the four submitted papers for peer review anywhere but Quadrant Online. Did they? What was the result? We're not told. It seems to me we lack the necessary information to make a reasonable assessment of the insinuations.
Re: http://theconversation.edu.au/climate-change-denial-and-the-abuse-of-peer-review-1552
QUOTE:
"Mr. Barton, however, relied on a report by a certain Professor Wegman, who claimed to have identified statistical flaws in the analysis underlying the original hockeystick. (Even if correct, that criticism has no bearing on the overall conclusion of Professor
Mann’s paper or on the numerous independent hockeysticks produced by other researchers.)"
COMMENT:
Prof. Wegman is not the only hockeystick skeptic:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/03/03/hockey-stick-1998-2005-rip/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html
http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/03/sorry-deniers-hockey-stick-gets-longer-stronger-earth-hotter-now-than-in-past-2000-years/
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3332616/that-famous-consensus.thtml
http://www.icecap.us/images/uploads/MANNDEBUNKING.doc
Prof. Mann did provide a description (not a definition) of at least part of the basis for the hockeystick graph: ‘”Multiproxy” methods exploit the complementary strengths of each of these proxies to reconstruct large-scale climate changes in past centuries.’
[Michael E. Mann. 2002. The Value of Multiple Proxies. SCIENCE, vol 297, 30 August, pp. 1481-1482.]
Yet, he admitted the proxies used—tree--ring data, coral data, ice core data and historical documentary climate records—-each has limitations. That does not seem to me to provide a significant level of confidence.
The lack of understanding what random means is ignorance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre these people paid to post idiocy denying mans role in climate change? This is a science site - even the denier who the Koch brothers funded ended up changing his mind. The scientific models are too consistent to deny mans role in climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat deniers omit from their very minds is that there are few "panicked" scientists nor are there very many "panicked" laymen. It's the political right which trades in panic talk: "If you don't vote Republican, you will all die because..." (insert their favorite hate target here). No, climate scientists have found many confirming patterns which suggests that we must change our ways (meaning: change the way corporations make money). Corporations provide energy in various forms, but the technologies they persist in using are what is causing climate change (warming, dammit) which in turn causes increases in severe weather phenomenon (and now: EARTH QUAKES).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat the deniers call panic is in fact just the urging that we take unified action to CHANGE what we're doing to produce energy. Being extremists themselves, they quickly adopted the extremist terminology and have been applying it ever since to things like unified efforts to improve energy production (and improve education, improve [lower] medical costs, improve public services, etc.). It's the deniers who are panicked and who use panic inducing propaganda - to avoid change of or improvement over what is (the status quo).
What's needed is for everyone to be aware that the conservatives are all about phony advertising to promote their own agenda and to attack anyone else's agenda. Their primary principle is self interest and self promotion. We must push them aside, since they're obstructing unified action. We must override their efforts to sabotage this country and this planet for their own profit. We must punish them: since they alone are accountable for the damages already done. If they love coal mines, deep water drilling and fracking so much: put them all to work in the mines and on the drilling platforms at the same wage they insist the rest of us must be paid- minimum wage. Give them lifetime employment at these jobs, let their children inherit their parents' jobs. Make them all buy individual PRIVATE medical insurance policies (at the going rate of $12,000 / year). Put them all in towns without tax paid garbage collection, road construction, police or fire protection: just like they want for the rest of us.