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Dec 4, 2008 03:12 PM | 24
As world leaders meet in Poznan, Poland this week and next to discuss efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming, it's worth remembering that scientists have known climate change could be a problem for a long time.
Irish scientist John Tyndall first speculated that human-induced global warming might be possible back in 1861 and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Svante Arrhennius had confirmed climate change (with laborious pencil and paper calculations rather than the shortcut of computers) by the end of the 19th century. And a little magazine called Scientific American published an article on the phenomenon back in 1959 that holds up today.
Even back then, the rudimentary outlines of the much-maligned "hockey stick" were visible, showing human-induced warming temperatures over time, despite the fact that U.S. geochemist Charles Keeling had only begun his annual measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere in Hawaii a year earlier. And the outcome was clear: average global temperatures would rise much the way that a closed car heats up in the sun.
Some things have changed since the article appeared: Scientists today know more about the interaction of sunshine, or solar insolation as they like to call it, and the atmosphere as well as the role of the ocean in absorbing excess CO2. Humans are pumping out a lot more that CO2 through fossil fuel burning, agriculture and deforestation than in the 1950s. And average temperatures rose by only around 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit (0.72 degree Celsius) rather than by 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) by 2000 that Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass had predicted in the article (though parts of the Arctic and Antarctic have heated up more than that).
It wasn't just the scientists who knew either. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson noted the looming problem in a message to Congress back in 1965 after being briefed on the issue. Question is: will President Barack Obama take steps to forestall those dangers? And, if so, what will his administration—and, more broadly, the world's governments—do?
Credit: ©Kutay Tanir/istockphoto.com
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24 Comments
Add CommentThe President can only do so much. it's people as a whole who have to change their way of thinking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEverybody HAS to get involved w/ trying to reverse what we've done to our planet but we need ALL governments to give the people a good kick in the ass to get us started and push us in the right directions. Some of us sort of will do our own research but the mass just is too lazy really.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article fails to mention that during two periods in those past 100 years, scientists have claimed anthropogenic global cooling to be a problem instead of global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven a broken clock is correct twice a day...
The article also conveniently forgets to mention the slowing down of warming over the past decade, with 2007 actually reversing the trend. Additionally, it doesn't mention the research being done regarding the impact of sunspots on the Earth's temperature, which is a grave oversight for a magazine of Scientific American's reputation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn regard to the "dramatic loss of sea ice" over the past decade, we really don't have enough information to draw any conclusions. We know from shipping records that those northern passages were open earlier in the twentieth century, which suggests other periods when the same phenomena was going on. Again, further research is needed, including research that looks for other causes, before we draw any conclusions, or, especially, make critical decisions that will be difficult to reverse.
If this research is somewhat slow in coming, that's probably due to the government's total focus on providing funds to those researchers who are trying to prove the relationship between global warming and humanity. It is difficult to do extensive research without funding and the amount of money global warming "deniers" can get is insignificant to the work that is needed in order to discover what is really going on and what, if anything, humanity can do about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe strongly in everything we can do to limit pollution. In fact, I drive a car that easily gets over 35 miles to the gallon (over 40 on long trips), and I have a plug-in electric lawn mower. I just think it’s foolish to spend trillions trying to fix something that we are not at all sure we can fix, or even need to. It’s quite possible that the world will be better off with warmer temperatures; it is definitely a better alternative than global cooling, which could easily kill millions of us.
Finally, there’s nothing humanity can do to the Earth that is anywhere near more catastrophic than hasn’t already been done by volcanoes and rocks from outer space. … And, the Earth has always come back with a new and better ecology (at least from our point of view). So … since we can’t hurt or save the Earth, we should think seriously about how our efforts might hurt humanity in the long run. I’m really quite tired of the unintended consequences of “do gooders” who make decisions that affect my life without doing the proper research, without listening carefully to those who have dissenting views.
The analogy comparing the earth's recent warming to a closed car heating up in the sun is more revealing than the author knows. Nothing changes in that scenario except the amount of light energy from the sun being converted into heat energy inside the vehicle: the more powerful the sun's rays, the hotter the car becomes. The windshield isn't growing thicker or or becoming a better insulator. And, by the way, the windshield mataphor, like the greenhouse metaphor, is off to begin with. Greenhouse gases do not block heat convection like a car windshield does. Rather, greenhouse gases convert invisible light energy into heat energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The article also conveniently forgets to mention the slowing down of warming over the past decade, with 2007 actually reversing the trend."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's because that's a fallacy. 2005 was the warmest year on record and 2007 tied 1998 for second-warmest. Besides isn't the "time period isn't long enough" one of the main arguments against anthropogenic climate change?
2005 was the warmest year on record: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11009001/
2007 tied 1998 for the 2nd warmest year on record: http://environment.about.com/b/2008/01/14/2007-second-warmest-year-on-record.htm
"Rather, greenhouse gases convert invisible light energy into heat energy."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry. They let light through almost unscathed and trap heat, just like car windows. And, since we're adding a little less than an additional 1% of total CO2 back to the atmosphere every year, the windows ARE getting thicker.
"The basic proposition behind the science of climate change is so firmly rooted in the laws of physics that no reasonable person can dispute it."
"As the Nobel Prize–winning chemist Svante Arrhenius first explained in 1896... CO2 is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun, which heats the planet during the day. But it is relatively opaque to infrared, which the earth tries to reradiate back into space at night."
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=global-warming-beyond-the-co2
So called global warming from GHG emissions does not actually work like your enclosed car heating up from the sun (or like a greenhouse). Greenhouses work because they constrict convection currents, which carry away the heat. The term "greenhouse effect" is a misnomer. The way it works is that the atmosphere is mostly transparent to the incoming solar radiation because is is higher frequency tha infrared. But some of the solar radiation that actually hits the planet is absorbed and then REEMITTED as infrared. Certain components of the atmosphere, specifically the CO2 molecule will absorb infrared and then quickly reemit that. About 1/2 of these reemissions are directed generally downward back to the earth and this process is repeated, building up a heating feedback loop of infrared radiation. That at least is the theory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately the record of CO2 concentrations in the air does not track very well the increases in temperature over the past century or so. Most of last century's ~.6 degree C increase occurred before 1940, but most of the increase in CO2 emissions happened after 1940. Causes don't ever follow effects, do they? Think about that. In fact global warming seems to have halted as of about 1998, which by some estimates was the warmest year (so by definition, there hasn't been any warming since -- or 1998 wouldn't be the warmest). Indeed, there's a recent article in Nature that suggests there will be actual global cooling until perhaps 2015-20.
Actually the alleged global warming is an artifact of the incredibly flawed land-based climate stations. They show warming, but the two other independent temperature measuring technologies (weather balloons and satellites) don't show any warming. Why do the land based systems show warming? Well they've never been audited so no one really knows, but many have suggested (e.g., John Daly) that urbanization is the main reason -- greenfield stations that might have been pristine at one time have had towns and then cities grow up around them with the attendent heat island affect and voila warming!!
But these are just the facts. Warming is really a religious issue, impervious to empirical considerations.
Dear Sub Nav,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems you are getting your data from a newspaper man with a global warming agenda ... sounds like a great source for this blog.
You might want to check out a few other sources, it could broaden your knowledge. Here's a story from the World Climate Report people who have a good reputation for doing proper research. Below that is a story from DailyTech.com, which is at least as good a source as you've presented. As you can see, the facts reported by these sources fly in the face of your reporters pronouncements. It could be he was confused by the British article that suggested that 2007 would be extremely warm, only to have that prediction fall by the wayside.
But, you probably won't take the time to read either article, even though I read yours ... because as Coloradoman says, "... it's a religous issue ..."
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/11/a-2000-year-global-temperature-record/
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Widescale+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm
The science of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere serving as a greenhouse gas was well established by Svante Arrhenius in 1896, but observations over the past few years suggest that everything is happening a lot faster:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA's top climate scientist, James Hansen, says that the release of methane clathrates from permafrost regions and beneath the seabed will unleash powerful feedback forces that could produce runaway climate change that cannot be controlled - the so-called methane time bomb - a prediction of radical environmental transformation far worse than the worst-case scenarios theorised by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Food is the key issue, even a one degree C rise in average global temperature will take a major bite out of food production in almost all the countries that are closer to the equator than to the poles (and that includes nearly all of the planet's bread-baskets):
"Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them." --Dr James Lovelock's lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. '07
"By the year 2050, the Census Bureau projects that our population will be around 420 million. This means per capita emissions will have to fall to about 2.5 tons in order to meet the goal of 80% reduction. It is likely that U.S. per capita emissions were never that low even back in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood. " --"The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change," WSJ
"I'm going to tell you something I probably shouldn't: we may not be able to stop global warming. We need to begin curbing global greenhouse emissions right now, but more than a decade after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, the world has utterly failed to do so. Unless the geopolitics of global warming change soon, the Hail Mary pass of geoengineering might become our best shot." --Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine, 17 March 2008
"The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state." --Dr James Lovelock, August 2008
Global warming is the increase in the average measured temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century, and its projected continuation. The major cause of global warming is the emission of green house gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide etc into the atmosphere.
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pruepraizy
<a href="http://www.widecircles.com">http://www.widecircles.com</a>
Global warming is the increase in the average measured temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century, and its projected continuation. The major cause of global warming is the emission of green house gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide etc into the atmosphere.
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pruepraizy
<a href="http://www.widecircles.com">http://www.widecircles.com</a>
Let's step back a moment and respond to the comment "2005 was the hottest year on record." Perhaps so, but you're only considering a period of time from the late 19th century to the present. Scientific evidence shows periods of warmth that exceeded present-day climate patterns. I believe we're finally becoming aware of cyclical climate patterns that have been happening since the beginning of time. The present lack of sunspot activity has quite obviously been responsible for a diminished amount of heat energy reaching the Earth, and in fact, various locations around the globe have recently been experiencing unusually cold temperatures. Average Earth temperatures have actually dropped by 0.7 degrees C from Jan 07 to Jan 08. This phenomenon should speak volumes! It should at least be included for consideration. But rather than accept this information as part of the scientific examination of climate change, we receive daily reports from the adherents to the global warming theory who explain that the Earth grew even hotter yesterday, and we're all on the road to Armageddon. Any evidence that contradicts the pervasive global warming theory is discounted as "junk science." Serious scientific inquiry looks at both sides of the equation, not just the side that receives the most attention and government funding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazingly we all miss the truth. If you watched the movie "The Day after Tomorrow" you would see that the breakup of the ice caps is directly linked to ice core drilling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNoone thinks that a 1 mile deep hole in a solid layer of ice that took hundreds of thousands of years to develop wouldn't introduce warming at the bottom. That is why they drill, baby drill.
Now we understand that water running down to the bottom hydroplanes ice sheets and we still continue to drill air vents that allow for pressure to vent during water infiltration.
Nice to see the old Y2k and global cooling spam is still floated to give the oil lobby their dose.
If repeated study of observable phenomena is religion, then all science is a religion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't discount sunspot impact, it accounts for a distinct repeated observance over an 11 year cycle. Nor do I doubt wobble and erratic orbit clearly impact ice ages.
I also don't argue a blanket of aerosol and soot can and does reflect solar radiation back into space.
Methane time bombs are real.
Deforestation is real.
Dead zones are real.
Many of these realities are impacted by human behavoir. Having faith God exists doesn't impact CO2 production.
Trying to kill the messenger is just a human trait that allows for the brain to adapt to new information. What better way to prove something than by making fun of the messenger.
I'll bet you could find good evidence the earth is flat from volumes of writings in the dark ages. Their pseudo-science spawned the drive to prove them wrong.
Neanderwarmin-reclinitus, soon to be extinct.
Global warming is the increase in the average measured temperature of the Earth' s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century.
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pruepraizy
<a href="http://www.widecircles.com ">Social Bookmarking </a>
Well, if there is more carbon dioxide then the window is getting thicker.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that the Global warming deniers need to be taken to task and the troubled media as well for believing them and not doing real reporting on this important issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHmm. What scientists were these? How about a citation? From a journal. i do recall discussion of a nuclear winter but other than that, i did not read the articles of these "scientists". And a cooler 2008 does not make a trend. It seems as if there is a person out there posting the same misleading information on a variety of web sites along with the smear about "religion". If the climate does become a crisis I hope that people such as him are found and prosecuted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPardon me. My comment went to the wrong comment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHmm. What scientists were these? How about a citation? From a journal. i do recall discussion of a nuclear winter but other than that, I did not read the articles of these "cooling scientists". Yet they are constantly being mentioned in blogs. You would think they were famous they are mentioned so much.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat people do not seem to understand is that we can tolerate some increase in global temperatures. It will increase the worlds usable water supply. Increased temps will result in higher crop yields. ie. we can feed more people. The point being, we have room on the upside.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe do not have the same wiggle room, however, on the downside. Even a modest decrease of a half degree would mean that Canada could no longer grow corn. The world would begin to starve IMMEDIATELY!
Relax people. There are many benefits to a warmer, kinder planet. Our main risk is that the planet may suddenly reverse its trend and cool. With 7 billion people expecting dinner tonight, this would be the real nightmare.
It is always prudent to err on the safe side. Our fail-safe direction is a slowly warming world. Fortunately, despite manipulated panic, the planet seems to know what we need, better than the so called experts.
Always remember, frozen water is no good for any living animal or plant.
If Bill O'Reilly remembers that Long Island is not as cold as he remembers from when he was a child, is the world warming beyond control?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI challenge any of you Church of Global Warming subjects to show us doubters that any warming between (1880 to 2008 ) is outside of the statistical margin of error.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this