And the Pew report is not the only research to examine regional impacts.
Stronger Storms—Much of the country will experience severe thunderstorms, but major eastern and southeastern cities are likely to see the largest jumps in storm frequency, according to Purdue's Trapp—a finding buttressed by a NASA study earlier this year. "Our analysis suggests the possibility of an increase of up to 100 percent or more in locations such as Atlanta and New York," the researchers wrote in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As a result, these experts say efforts to combat climate change must focus not only on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming but also on adjusting to the changes already underway. "The challenge we have with adaptation is trying to understand the specific impacts of climate change on a region," Boesch says. Nevertheless, "adaptation is going to be essential because we cannot avoid climate change entirely."
See what we're tweeting about
27 Comments
Add CommentThis is shamefully shoddy, sensationalistic, populist reporting, not worthy of the label "Scientific".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuppose I wrote an article describing all of the various negative effects that a common substance, injested regularly by millions, causes: increased risk of gastric bleeding, risk of Reye's syndrome, tinnitus, ... And suppose I never mentioned that in addition to these nasty negative effects, for SOME people, in SOME circumstances, aspirin actually provides POSITIVE benefits? Wouldn't you rightfully accuse me of "grinding an axe" rather than trying to present a scientific picture?
Indeed I would. Would you care to list the postives of global warming? I've heard a few: fewer deaths from cold and potentially enhanced plant growth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut that's paired with the return of the dust bowl and other extreme weather events, among other things.
I don't know. Is it balance to mention that gun manufacture provides jobs in a murder story?
I thought this was supposed to be a SCIENCE publication, not the 11 O'Clock news...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll take that as a no, on the listing of the positives...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislike i said before, SA has officially jumped the shark.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is not 'research', it is fortune telling, pure and simple. talk about taking the gypsy's crystal ball to another level...SHEESH!
the idea that a warmer climate will be a calamity is contrary the history of the planet, since cool periods have been the disastrous periods, and warm periods have been the times when life has absolutely flourished, including human life.
this is insanity and mass delusion and hysteria run amok.
the computer climate models are so crude and so incomplete, that any prediction of future climate and weather scenarios based on their results is pure fiction. to present the model results on the same level as REAL findings from scientific investigation is ignorant at best, purposely deceitful at worst.
please take science 101 again, and pay special attention to the requirements of the scientific method.
i suppose, my hallucinating friend, that's why the warm tropical oceans are so crystal clear (i.e. dead) whereas the colder waters of higher latitudes are murky with life?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislast time i checked, the scientific method involved making a hypothesis, testing it and then further refining that hypothesis until said hypothesis makes it all the way to theory or law. i don't know about you, but the last time i checked, mathematical models have made up a big part of that in recent decades. or perhaps you don't think nuclear weapons work? the models seemed to work pretty well there...
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Edited by dbiello at 12/07/2007 11:04 AM
Approximately 20 years ago i read in Discovery Magazine a article about weather and the human impact, in which notables were forecasting in the foreseeable future an increase in storms and the power of said storms. These knowageble persons did not want to seem as prognosticators just speaking of thier respective specialties. If, I choose to close my mind and eyes to the facts presented me, that does not mean the science is wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdavid--WOW!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisare you seriously making the apples to oranges comparison of computer engineering models which are used to build physical models of very limited size and scope, versus highly simplified models of chaotic systems with complexities that are orders of magnitude larger!?!?
its not even close to being comparable.
also, how completely evasive can you be--you and i both know that the great extinctions during earth's history have been during cool periods, and that great diversification occured during the warm periods.
how was life for humans during the dark ages compared to the renaissance? hmmmmm....i prefer a warming trend.
too bad for humans, though...indications, especially in the southern hemisphere (decreasing ocean temps, increasing ice pack, decreasing temperatures) are that we are entering a cooling period, right on schedule.
Oh, and David, there's this little problem with the models:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Part of the scientific consensus on global warming may be flawed, a new study asserts.
The researchers compared predictions of 22 widely used climate "models" — elaborate schematics that try to forecast how the global weather system will behave — with actual readings gathered by surface stations, weather balloons and orbiting satellites over the past three decades.
The study, published online this week in the International Journal of Climatology, found that while most of the models predicted that the middle and upper parts of the troposphere —1 to 6 miles above the Earth's surface — would have warmed drastically over the past 30 years, actual observations showed only a little warming, especially over tropical regions.
"Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? It seems that the answer is no," said lead study author David H. Douglass, a physicist specializing in climate at the University of Rochester.
Douglass and his co-authors S. Fred Singer, a physicist at the University of Virginia, and John R. Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, are noted global-warming skeptics.
However, Christy was a major contributor to the 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and is one of the world's premier authorities on collection and analysis of satellite-derived temperature data, having been commended by both NASA and the American Meteorological Society for his efforts.
"We do not see accelerated warming in the tropical troposphere," said Christy. "Instead, the lower and middle atmosphere are warming the same or less than the surface."
The difference between the climate models and the satellite data has been known for several years.
Studies in 2005 found that improper compensation for temperature differences between day and night was the cause of most of the satellite-data discrepancy, a correction that Christy has accepted.
No explanation has been put forth for the weather-balloon discrepancy."
have you no shame?
you must truly be hallucinating. the basic fluid dynamics in the climate models are derived in part from the highly complex hydrodynamics of the nuclear models.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfurther, the study you cite upon review is simply to point out how much more complex the actual climate is than any model. well, duh. but we don't need climate models to tell us warming is occurring, just look at the obsevational temperature records, sea ice cover, glacial shrinkage, tropics creep, etc.
ultimately, i suspect your objection is not to the science of global warming but rather the solutions on offer. all well and good. i suggest offering alternative solutions that fit your particular political desires rather than trying to overturn basic physics, chemistry and reality-based reality.
i'm not hallucinating, but am truly toreadoring...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisas far as model comparbility goes, how would you compare the models used to generate all these dire predictions with the models used to forecast tropical storm development in the atlantic basin!?!?
good grief, even very refined computer models used to generate predictions of deep water groundswell propagation in the pacific are prone to serious errors, and these utilize very high resolution surface wind data generated by scatterometer satellites combined with surface low data and known bathymetry, checked against reams of historical data.
there is no way of knowing what climate changes will occur if the planet warms significantly over several decades, it is just far too complex to model accurately.
SA is now in the fortune telling business....do you also read palms?
sadly no (that would make predicting breaking news so much easier). but we do rely on the best understanding of scientists, in this case climate modelers and their brethren from other disciplines, who have mapped out what is happening and what is likely, very likely and unequivocally happening.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisno model is perfect. my point is, they don't have to be to provide useful information.
Posted on Steve McIntyre's
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIPCC & Glacieor Audit
This entire blog was triggered by one catalyst, Michael Manns failure to disclose code. The plain fact is he has still not disclosed that code despite congressional hearings and many other requests. Similarly Jones has not disclosed how he calculates the warming of the last 130 years. I am also waiting for similar disclosure from the modelers, but the track record suggests we will see the same obfuscation and refusal to disclose the assumptions and machinations they used to build their models. Only after all those disclosure are subjected to peer review and prove or disprove whether the positions taken are valid can a reasonable, rationale, logical, apolitical scientific debate occur. In the meantime we have the tyranny of the minority with people on this blog who keep shifting the target of the debate. I have run graduate seminars, I know how easy but unproductive it is to keep playing the games a few on this blog play. If they really want to remove the skepticism why dont they spend their time pursuing Mann and others to produce the goods?
I strongly feel there is a real need for more articles on actual "down at home" climate effects to get the point across to the general public.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLEE--
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisoh, you mean like the largest ACTUAL snowfall in over a decade in iran that just left scores dead! is that the sort of example you're looking for!
the forecast is for even more snow in iran in the upcoming week, which will put the totals into the realm of the records for the last century.
i guess that's AGW for ya! record cold across the southern hemisphere in the winter of '07, record snow falls in south america and south africa, increasing snow pack on antarctica, record setting snow storms across several regions of the US and canada in december '07, and a forecast of more snow and more record lows across the same region in early '08.
nothing like global warming to bring on the blizzards!
we're heading into an easily predicted cyclical period of global cooling, and there's nothing that the weakest of all greenhouse gases can do to stop it.
invest in heating oil futures, folks.
I really really can't believe that there are pro-pollution people. Yes, those of you who don't believe there are negative effects of global warming that need attention are pro-pollution people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see references here to science 101 (not a real course by the way) and in the same paragraph people tearing apart the idea of prediction. Here's a newsflash: Science IS prediction. That's what we do. We look at evidence and predict. We can never truly know what will happen with anything 5 seconds form now. We can only predict.
now, that being said, why is it so difficult to believe predictions of the negative consequences of global warming. We know that pollution is connected to disease, birth defects, quality of resources, species extinction, and so many other negative things. We know that pollution and global warming are linked. So, why is the prediction that global warming is negative so difficult to understand?
Yes, we have only been on the planet during a fraction of it's existence. yes, there have been multiple life cycles on the planet. Yes, we are responsible for a short amount of time on this rock.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut, that does not dismiss our responsibility for our actions and what we are doing to the world around us. Species are going extinct for our LUXURIES. People are getting cancer for our LUXURIES. Habitats are being destroyed for our LUXURIES.
It is our responsibility to go the extra mile. We can have our computers, our cars, and whatever else we need. But, we must pursue the most efficient and least detrimental ways to do this or else our existence on this planet will be shorter lived than we thought and the existences of millions of other species will stop just because we wanted to drive a hummer and eat a cheeseburger.
memo to Rex:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisco2 is NOT a pollutant! pollutants are generally atmospheric cooling agents, not warming agents. co2 is a required component for plant respiration! higher co2 levels result in higher plant-life density (larger agricultural yields per acre). the further we can increase co2 levels in the atmosphere now, the better, because we are about to enter a cyclical, solar driven, planetary cooling period which will decrease agricultural yields as the planet's population continues to grow.
co2 is almost completely transparent to IR radiation, save for two small areas of bandwidth, and so it is inconsequential to larger warming and cooling trends driven by solar activities and variations in earth's orbit and orientation.
you are correct about science making predictions. a hypothesis is formulated, experiment developed to test that hypothesis. the scientific method demands that the experiment and results be verifiable. computer models do not meet this criteria, and hence, are not scientific in their predictions. period.
in any case, all models over the last several years predicted a vastly warming troposphere and oceans, and both predictions were shown to be erroneous, completely. the model predictions further out were largely based on these factors playing significant roles in further warming.
got it?
Memo to Hallucinogenic Toreador (just because your name is one of my fav Dali paintings doesn't mean I'll let this slide):
The CO2 balance is not that simple. To say, "more CO2 yay for plants" is just being ignorant. Too little CO2 is just as bad as too much CO2. Right now we are getting closer and closer to too much co2. With too much co2, we don't get more plants because it disrupts the eco-system including it's temperature. Many plants are not fit for this and will die. As a result, animals that eat them will die. As a result, animals that eat those animals will die, etc.
As for the predictions, you are right. The predictions about the warming were way UNDER what actually happened. The warming right now is accelerating at a much faster and greater rate than was predicted by usual patterns. That is why the conclusion is drawn that humans are having a negative influence on global warming. Either we are having a negative influence on it, OR everything that has happened so far just happened to lead up to a completely random rise in temperature that is much greater and faster than that of the past.
Since the simplest explanation is usually the best one, I am going with man-influenced climate change. Otherwise, you are assuming a magical coincidence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRex, Rex, Rex--
The simplest explanation is NOT an anthropogenic cause for accelerated warming as compared to freakin' models! You are pointing to computer simulations as some sort of baseline, when they are not.
In any case, data problems aside, the globe is quite obviously giving us a preview of coming attractions. The southern hemisphere just emerged from one of the coldest winters in several decades, and the northern hemisphere is following suit.
A quite predictable cooling period is due no later than 2012, but by all indications, may already be upon us. The Greenland ice-sheet has been accumulating at a very fast pace this winter, Asia is experiencing the coldest winter in several decades, and North America is well on its way to setting records across many regions for sustained lows well below average (makes one wonder about the urban heat island effect and other data problems at the surface level, too).
The very minor effect of co2 concentration levels on global climate are completely swamped by the solar cycle, atmospheric water vapor and cloud formation. The oceans and troposphere have been observed to be contrary to model predictions, which does not bode well for mankind, because a warming trend is far preferable to a cooling trend.
In a few years, nobody is going to be talking about global warming, except as a punchline. That's because we will be more concerned with home heating oil prices, energy costs, and unfortunately, potential food shortages due to loss of agricultural yield on our cooling planet.
At that point, we'll be looking towards the potential of an actual greenhouse agent, methane, as a possible solution.
-- Edited by hallucinogenic toreador at 01/23/2008 8:08 AM--
Edited by hallucinogenic toreador at 01/23/2008 8:09 AM Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
NEWSFLASH - anthropogenic climate interference predicted to cause drought, deluge, heat waves and terrible cold snaps. In other words whatever happens anywhere it is no longer nature that is causing it because back in the late 1970s or so man fired nature and took over as the primary cause of everything.
That is it. we are surely doomed.
Wait a second. Did anyone else notice that 1998 was supposedly the hottest year EVER and 10 years later it seems at best we are holding steady if not cooling despite the fact that CO2 in the atmosphere keeps rising? How can that be if Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change Alarmists (I call them the CACCA crowd for short) are right? I mean, they sure were right when the oceans were warming and they said it was proof that anthropogenic warming is real and now that the oceans are cooling...
OOPS!
No wonder they stopped talking about global WARMING and now they are so scared of "climate change" instead! They are trying to avoid looking bad as it becomes clear even to the chowderheads at the IPCC and the Nobel PEACE prize office that the world is indeed in the predicted COOLING trend despite ever continuing increases in GHG production by man.
Climate change can best be summed up in any of the three following words: Normal Natural INEVITABLE
Folks, the Earth has been warming for 10,000 years. We are in the tail end of an ice age. The alternative is ice MILES THICK covering Canada and much of Europe and Asia. Or we can have more frequent thong weather - your choice. I want door #2.
CLASS DISMISSED - HIT THE BEACH!
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Edited by Greg001 at 01/27/2008 1:30 AM Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Alright guys. Whatever you say. But, you do know that 10 years ago people were saying the same crap. 'Oh, in ten years you'll be embarrassed."
Yeah, so in ten years from now when there are more storms, species going extinct, and more habitats beings lost, will you say "Ten more years and you guys are going to look dumb." How long are you guys going to pull that for? I mean, you use the natural heating and cooling argument (something that (when "natural") takes millions of years) and then use the argument "In ten years, blah blah". Right. Sad part is, the rest of us trying to do something suffer as a result.
Also, we are chopping down forests and drilling in wildlife preserves while we drive to the occasion and chomp on burgers. How does it not make sense that we are altering the cimate?
Lastly, you bring up the idea that they changed it to "cimate change". Yes, they did. Because it's not just warming. Due to currents and the way warming works, you can wamr one area and it will cool another area. So, they changed "warming" to "cimate change" because it makes more sense. But, what they learned is that warming is having a much GREATER effect on the eco-system because it's not only causing rapid warming, it's causing rapid ups and downs which assault the ecosystem even more.
So, go ahead and drive to the beach. Enjoy it while you can. Too bad your children, grandchildren, and all of the nonhuman animals will have to suffer the consequences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisParapraxis, you seem to assume there is some value to animals beyond their utility to us. Your post indicates there is an "intrinsic" value in the world. I don't understand why you would make that assumption, why we should grant it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour expression of your position against greenhouse gas emissions seems based on some standard of "values" that would need some justification besides "society says so" or "but it would be bad" before we accept your conclusions.
Do you honestly believe that the only value animals have is their value to us?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this*cough* ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM *cough*
I don't think I will say anything more than that.
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Edited by Parapraxis Rex at 03/19/2008 12:45 PM
This article was written in 2007. By then it was already known that this decade is one of the coolest in some time, all while CO2 levels continued to rise. To ignore data and write a fear-mongering piece is a despicable act for a publication with 'Science' in it's name. Also, new studies show that there really is no good way yet to measure global temperature. Many stations have been proven unreliable, placed near heatsinks and unmonitored. Also, many portions of the earth have no stations at all. Absolutely typical of reaching a conclusion and then finding 'science' to back only that conclusion. This is not science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe one thing that is clear is that mankind is affecting the the planet.To what extent is not completely clear,as for polutions of many kinds,we are to blame,and should take measures to reverse and clean up the mess,as for global warming,climate change,or what ever else you might call it,man is putting Co2's in to the atmosphere that would not be there otherwise,now how much of an influance this is having is still unknown.When a single volcano can change the climate more than everything mankind has done in the last 500,000 years,one has to wonder if all the facts are in.the debate isn't over as some are saying,its only just begun.Much more research needs to be done,before we even come close to understanding the variables ,much less making accurate predictions about whats coming next.So let us do some more study before we do something we might regret later.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArguments of this kind are about humans and money. Humans and money will go away eventually and this planet will still be here. Humans aren't going to give up stuff to save the planet. Proponents on both sides of this argument are just arguing because they want to be more important than everyone else. So keep arguing, prepare your will, and leave all your money to... I don't know...a rock in Utah.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this