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Catastrophic effects of global warming are being felt from the deserts of Darfur to the island nation of Kiribati
December 23, 2008 | 54
Until the rains failed in Darfur, the region's pastoralists lived amicably with the settled farmers. The nomadic herders grazed their camels on the rocky hillsides between the fertile plots and fed their animals on the leavings from the harvest....[More]
Climate scientists may still be debating to what extent climate change is going to translate into stronger and more frequent hurricanes, but insurance companies aren't waiting for the final answer....[More]
In August 2007, an epidemic swept through Castiglione di Cervia, a small village in northern Italy. More than 100 of the town's 2,000 residents came down with high fever, rashes and crushing pain in their bones and joints....[More]
The warming of the globe has so far generally been good for the world's wine. It has allowed the fruit to come off the vine richer and riper. A study led by Gregory Jones, a climatologist at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Ore., and the son of a winegrower, tracked the impact of rising temperatures between 1950 and 1999, using as a measure of quality the values by the auction house Sotheby's, which rates wines on a 100-point scale....[More]
Not all the carbon dioxide we emit contributes to atmospheric warming. More than a third of what we have produced since the industrial revolution has been absorbed by the oceans, where it reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid....[More]
Last summer, the tiny Pacific island nation of Kiribati became the first country to declare that global warming is rendering its lands uninhabitable, asking for help in evacuating its population....[More]
According to the Red Cross, environmental disasters displace more people than war. The London-based Christian Aid estimates that by 2050, floods, droughts and famine caused by climate change will have driven 250 million people from their homes--more than the 163 million people currently displaced by wars, famine or ecological disasters....[More]
The melting of the Arctic has spurred a geopolitical race, as Russia, Norway, the U.S., Canada and Denmark press competing claims for the top of the world....[More]
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Alps have been warming at roughly three times the global average, and projections show more to come....[More]
In some places, efforts to address global warming are having a bigger impact than the changing climate itself. In the Mount Elgon National Park in eastern Uganda, a Dutch nonprofit group was reforesting the park's perimeter, earning carbon credits for airline passengers looking to make up for their emissions, and reinvesting the revenues to plant more trees....[More]
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54 Comments
Add CommentConsidering the extensive deforestation of the northern hemisphere since neolithic times, is it not surprising that sea levels have been so stable during this period?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhoto #6, Island Nations. I don't think that photo is appropriate to the subject. That photo I believe is not depicting land that is not usually flooded over during high tide condition as I think the islanders are harvesting some sort of salt water plant, not a normal land crop.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAside from that, it is strange that in some areas of the world's oceans, I have read there is a slight drop in average sea level. It would seem that if the world's oceans are in fact rising, it would affect sea level everywhere, not just in some ocean areas. Comments anyone?
Considering the extensive deforestation of the northern hemisphere since neolithic times, is it not surprising that sea levels have been so stable during this period?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe cost of flooding has nothing to do with climate change or no climate change. It depends on population size and the value of e.g. houses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen a house costs $800 it takes 110,000,000 houses to reach $81 billion in damages. When people build houses below sea level in a hurricane prone town (which has been flooded 21 times since it was founded) they must expect flooding every now and again.
E.g. the Snidejoch glacier has melted - again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHuman artifacts in the pass show that the Snidejoch pass has been devoid of ice at least 5 times during the last 7,000 years - up to 13 times, depending on how you count.
"During the hot summer of 2003, reduction of an ice field in the Swiss Alps (Schnidejoch) uncovered spectacular archaeological hunting gear, fur, leather and woollen clothing and tools from four distinct windows of time:
Neolithic Age (4900 to 4450 cal. yr BP),
early Bronze Age (4100-3650 cal. yr BP),
Roman Age (1st-3rd century AD),
and Medieval times (8-9th century AD and 14-15th century AD).
Transalpine routes connecting northern Italy with the northern Alps during these slots is consistent with
late Holocene maximum glacier retreat. The age cohorts of the artefacts are separated which is indicative of glacier advances
when the route was difficult and not used for transit. The preservation of Neolithic leather
indicates permanent ice cover at that site from ca. 4900 cal. yr BP until AD 2003,
implying that the ice cover was smaller in 2003 than at any time during the last 5000 years.
Current glacier retreat is unprecedented since at least that time.
This is highly significant regarding the interpretation of the recent warming and the rapid loss of ice in the Alps."
Grosjean, Suter, Trachsel, Wanner: "Ice-borne prehistoric finds in the Swiss Alps reflect Holocene glacier fluctuations", Harvard University, USA.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007JQS....22..203G
Full text: http://www.giub.unibe.ch/klimet/docs/climdyn_2007_grosjean_et_al.pdf
Many of the ski resorts in the European alps were free of ice in Roman times 2,000 years ago.
Why would anyone publish such unscientific drivel? You're right, the models are wrong, and badly wrong. They don't give any information about anything. Warmer is better in general. More CO2 is better in general. Weather forecasters' predictions are less than reliable, especially over 100 years. Very smart people studying nature's complexity will tell you that the weather is un-simulatable, i.e. can't be modeled - too nonlinear. To get anyone's interest in catastrophe you use situations so far afield and so unusual that normal intelligent people have trouble finding them on the map. Please think for a minute. You will realize that you are foolish and mistaken to hang your hat on such a flimsy branch. You can't be green without CO2. Get your science from a politician and your doomsday predictions from the weather man, but raise the price of gasoline because it's running out, not because it's causing global warming. I have part of a Nobel prize in physics, Al Gore and SPCC have a Nobel prize in peace. I hope the spectre of global warming is keeping them up nights, but it isn't causing me any concern.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmen. All this study about climate change and ways to curtail man's influence is nice and has a "feel good" nature to it, but really is fruitless when weighed against man's natural instincts and pursuit of comfort. The exploitation and use of the world's resources cannot be stopped by the threat of climate change. Basically, our lives are ruled by the "here and now", not by thoughts of possible consequences for future generations. Is changing the state of matter influencing the environment of this planet? Of course. Is knowing this likely to change human nature? Of course not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell said all. However, the Myth of human caused global warming still pervades the media. Unfortunately Scientific American has been hijacked by a group of these demigods and, as a result, the "religion" of global warming is alive and well in it's pages.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsider renaming the magazine Scientific Myth.
Careful now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe scientist who claim that there is a global warming and that we humans are contributing to it - small or grand scale - may be right.
But! if they are, then their arguments are sensational, unreliable and badly selected:
"the ice shelfs are melting" - but they were melting in the 19th century too.
"the glacier are melting" - but they have done that for millennia.
"Arctis, the North Pole is melting" - but Antarctis, the South Pole is gaining in ice cover.
"The glaciers in Greenland are melting" - but the interior has a net gain of 5.4 cm (2+ inches) a year.
etc. etc.
America Dust Bowl in the 1930's - oops doesn't count; predates Al Gore
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMayan decline - oops doesn't count either; same reason
Viking abandon Greenland- damn another one!
Science? We don't need no stinking science! We have faith in Al Above.
"America Dust Bowl in the 1930's - oops doesn't count; predates Al Gore
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMayan decline - oops doesn't count either; same reason
Viking abandon Greenland- damn another one!"
Who in the hell is saying that? Can you point out to me who is saying droughts did not happen in the past? Do you think that erecting strawmen that no one, but Deniers believe in, is going to convince anyone? Really?
Of course I am talking to a guy who thinks that an infinite amount of CO2 will be absorbed by the infinite amount of plant growth.
Btw, at roughly the same latitude the Vikings settled another piece of real estate BEFORE they settled Greenland: it is called ICELAND. Can you say marketing strategy?
"Mayan decline - oops doesn't count either; same reason"
Which is also of course explains why the southern civilizations in the Arabian Peninsula and south India collapsed too. Oh, wait that did not happen. I Forgot! You like to cherry pick your data for only those cases that support your ideology.
Then of course their is that inconvenient fact that the Medieval Warming Period was apparently a regional phenomena. NASA says the following:
"The various studies differ in methodology, and in the underlying paleoclimate proxy data utilized, but all reconstruct the same basic pattern of cool "Little Ice Age", warmer "Medieval Warm Period", and still warmer late 20th and 21st century temperatures."
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html
Got that? The late 20th and 21st century are warmer than the MWP. Disagree? Then stick to peer reviewed studies that have debunk it. Denier sites will not cut it. I want empirical evidence
Of course I am talking to a person who does not understand the difference between weather and climate. So my hopes for your self-education are admittedly small.
As I sit looking out the window at the snow on the Orange County mountains in Southern California a few miles from the ocean due to an unusually cool fall, I say bring on the global warming. NY City was a mile under ice a mere 15,000 years ago. A few degrees warmer is a welcome bit of insurance. Besides, even if there is global warming, there will be winners and losers. A few degrees warmer would open vast swaths of land in North America and Eurasia.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"As I sit looking out the window at the snow on the Orange County mountains in Southern California a few miles from the ocean due to an unusually cool fall, I say bring on the global warming. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWeather does not equal climate. If I promised you, that I would have positive thoughts about you, would that be an inducement enough for you to go learn the difference?
" NY City was a mile under ice a mere 15,000 years ago."
Have you bothered to inform the paleoclimatologist and other geologist of this finding? Who do you think found this fact out in the first place? Are you even remotely aware that their are mechanisms with empirical evidence that explain the coming and going of the Ice Ages? None of those mechanisms are in play here.
"A few degrees warmer is a welcome bit of insurance."
Insurance from the sudden onslaught of a Ice Age? Have you lost your mind? Have you given any thought to how changing the patterns of precipitation, sea level rise and species lost will affect other parts of the county that depend on say the glacier melt for water supply.
" Besides, even if there is global warming, there will be winners and losers. A few degrees warmer would open vast swaths of land in North America and Eurasia."
No you have not give it much thought at all.
Trent1492;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Of course I am talking to a person who does not understand the difference between weather and climate. So my hopes for your self-education are admittedly small."
Your attempts to invoke closure demonstrate that it is you who lack an understanding of science. In science, all items are open to question, at all times, always. "Final reports", "the science is in", "consensus", "it's all over..." all these phrases have no place in scientific discourse.
As to labeling persons who disagree with you. What I find most disappointing is that you can't recognize what this type of labeling does; it closes off discussion and forces battle-lines to be drawn.
Google Daily Sunspot Cycles" and see for yourself that the Sun has entered a dead period. You can scroll back many years and see that the present cooling period coincides very well with the sunspot cycle.
You can also Google Daily Arctic Sea Ice. Look back and start correlating data for yourself between sun-spot cycles and Arctic Sea Ice coverage if you want. No computer models needed, no need for anyone to interpret for you. You can see for yourself. Lots of Sun spots = Less Arctic Sea Ice.
Dear people,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe main problem is not science,
it is the belief in your mind about God.
will God destroy us ?
why good people should sustain bad consequences created by ignorant people? it is unfair !!!
let me guess, god is always right , god love us, so god will not destroy us with this kind of environmental doom, so the scientists are wrong,
so, let us waste all the natural resources and enjoy what exists now to express our love to God !!
Dear people,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe main problem is not science,
it is the belief in your mind about God.
will God destroy us ?
why good people should sustain bad consequences created by ignorant people? it is unfair !!!
let me guess, god is always right , god love us, so god will not destroy us with this kind of environmental doom, so the scientists are wrong, the earh is still as good as heaven!!
so, let us waste all the natural resources and enjoy what exists now to express our love to God !!
@shosin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Your attempts to invoke closure demonstrate that it is you who lack an understanding of science. "
Your babbling again.
" In science, all items are open to question, at all times, always. "Final reports", "the science is in", "consensus", "it's all over..." all these phrases have no place in scientific discourse. "
I am sorry but you apparently have mistaken this "discussion" on Global Warming with a postmodernist literature thread.
"As to labeling persons who disagree with you."
If the shoe fits.... Your in denial of reality. No other nouns is as honest.
"What I find most disappointing is that you can't recognize what this type of labeling does; it closes off discussion and forces battle-lines to be drawn."
Does that mean Shosin, that we can never expect to see the words of Eco-nazi, Alarmist, Warmonger, Eco-Romantic to click out of your keyboard again? Will I soon see you castigating with your might cyber noodle those on the Denialist side who do use of such terms? Hypocrisy much?
"Google Daily Sunspot Cycles" and see for yourself that the Sun has entered a dead period. You can scroll back many years and see that the present cooling period coincides very well with the sunspot cycle."
Ok then allow me to just that. Let me see, oh yes! If I limit my search to Google Scholar and peer reviewed journals what do I find?
Implications for global warming of intercycle solar irradiance variations
"The Marshall Institute report concludes that '...the sun has been the controlling influence on climate in the last 100 years, with the greenhouse effect playing a smaller role." Here we explore the implication that such putative solar irradiance variations would have for global warming. Our results provide strong circumstantial evidence that there have been intercycle variations in solar irradiance which have contributed to the observed temperature changes since 1856. However, we find that since the nineteenth century, greenhouse gases, not solar irradiance variations, have been the dominant contributor to the observed temperature changes."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v360/n6402/abs/360330a0.html
Can solar variability explain global warming since 1970?
"This comparison shows without requiring any recourse to modeling that since roughly 1970 the solar influence on climate (through the channels considered here) cannot have been dominant."
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003.../2002JA009753.shtml
You know we got those nifty little devices called SATELITES. They have been monitoring the Sun for decades.
Thank-you people of science! Yes, we have a disaster happening on our lovely planet and it is called global media not global warming. How can we possibly be so arrogant as to conclude, in our puny timescale of existance, that we are the cause of global warming? Yes, look at the dustbowl of the thirties - global media had not quite evolved at that point, thank god, we only had good old fashioned Catholic guilt to work with, not this new international blame throwing monster. And, yes again, look at the movement of glaciers throughout millenia - how on earth do we claim responsibility for that? Time travel? oh dear. Thank-you fellow scientific thinkers, I feel human again. Let us boogie like we are human beings: profit, profit, profit!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ Jan,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this" Yes, look at the dustbowl of the thirties - global media had not quite evolved at that point, thank god, we only had good old fashioned Catholic guilt to work with, not this new international blame throwing monster."
Two things:
1. Go learn the difference between weather and climate.
2. Erecting arguments that your opponents are not making is not only illogical, but makes you look like a tool.
Correction:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere I said, " Will I soon see you castigating with your might cyber noodle those on the Denialist side who do use of such terms? Hypocrisy much?"
I should have said, "Will I soon see you castigating with your mighty cyber noodle, those on the Denialist side who fling around such terms? Hypocrisy much?"
Hmm, sudden onlsaught of an Ice Age impossible. Yes, indeed, my friend Trent1492 , it is possible. The climate can cool dramatically is a very short time frame. The Vikings abandoned Greenland in a few generations perhaps even one and Europe suffered terribly during the Little Ice Age. When crops won't grow for a few seasons it's game over. Imagine a few consecutive summers without a grain crop in the Midwest. Now that would be real problem compared to milder winters in the US. Western civilization can easily adapt to a bit warmer. Cooler is another story. As for drought, I need some data. Warmer air holds more water vapor, not less, so drought is counter-intuitive. I hear more and bigger storms from global warming which equals more rain not less. Add in longer growing seasons in the Northern Hemisphere and the opening of the Northwest passage. I'm just saying I'd like to see data on how the Northern Hemisphere is affected both negatively and positively. This all assumes the warming data is indeed accurate, not to mention that humans caused it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisanother thoughtless article... how do these heretic writers such as Stephan Faris get published. Perhaps he should do a story about the 30,000 scientists including 9000 with PHD's headed by John Coleman, who founded the cable network who have challenged the heretic stories spewed out by Al Gore. Somehow a good honest debate cannot be entertaiened by these fools pushing forward global warming garbage science, I wonder if they have sued him yet,,,, just sickening propaganda by political control freaks wanting to redistribute wealth and destroy the middle class. Perhaps Stephan Faris could look at 10,000 years ... as stored in ice cores and find the truth.,, that we are actually in a cooling phase, Well,.,, I realize its alot to ask Scientific American to put out real science stories.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisanother thoughtless article... how do these heretic writers such as Stephan Faris get published. Perhaps he should do a story about the 30,000 scientists including 9000 with PHD's headed by John Coleman, who founded the cable network who have challenged the heretic stories spewed out by Al Gore. Somehow a good honest debate cannot be entertaiened by these fools pushing forward global warming garbage science, I wonder if they have sued him yet,,,, just sickening propaganda by political control freaks wanting to redistribute wealth and destroy the middle class. Perhaps Stephan Faris could look at 10,000 years ... as stored in ice cores and find the truth.,, that we are actually in a cooling phase, Well,.,, I realize its alot to ask Scientific American to put out real science stories.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps Scientific American and this fool Stephan Faris could do some honest scientific work and arrange for a debate with Al Gore and John Coleman, who founded the cable network weather channel and his 30,000 scientific backers... 9,000 of them with PHD's... all who have been ignored in their declaration of heresy of Global Warming... The last data I looked at over... consisting of a series of 10,000 year ice cores taken around the world show that we are definately in a world cooling phase.... Well, consider Al Gore is a politician,, we the sheeple could not really expect truth. The only truth in Al Gore and his wanna be a scientist fallacy is that wealth will be redistrubuted to those that maintain the global warming lie.. So Scientific American... do you have the kahunas to uncover the truth in this matter or are you part of the group getting paid off for churning out lies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am old enough to remember the time when Scientific American was the most respected scientific magazine outside the realm of the technical journals. I have picked up a few copies of its emissions recently and it is sad to see how far it has declined. The largest casualty of whatever editorial makeover the magazine has had is its objectivity, especially in the area of global warming. They are now fully paid-up members of the warmist alarmist community, and publish biased, unsubstantiated propaganda with no attempt at scientific accuracy or analysis. What fools they will appear in a few years when the world moves on and the global warming sham is exposed as yet another attempt by the environmental mafia to green us back to the stone age.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislet's get rid of all harmful pollutants, a widely agreeable goal, and then see where the debate on climate changes goes. Warren Chase
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are many pollutants in the air that most would agree directly affect people's health. Clearing the air of those should be the first goal and that may take care of a lot of the climate question.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(sorry about spiting this into two comments)
Trent 1492
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had hoped that you would bother doing some work for yourself, rather than relying on the articles published by people that you already agree with. In science, "Nullius verba" is a very powerful statement. It means "Don't take my word for it, go see for yourself".
I suggest that if you have an issue with someone's views, look at raw data yourself. No need for someone to interpret for you. No need to find some higher "authority" to quote. Look for yourself.
Trent 1492;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour "nifty little devices called satellites" also show no evidence of AGW.
We in Western Washington have been blanketed in snow for the last 10 days. When will the warming start?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOT: I'd like to point out that over the past 540 million years the available CO2 has diminished by about 95%. CO2 is one of the 4 essential gases for life. Sequestering it faster has negative ramifications for agriculture and our natural world. Once buried in the earth either as petrofuel or as carbonates, it would be very difficult in the future to replenish the atmosphere of this natural fertilizer. Mark my words, someday you'll be reading about The Carbon Deficit Disaster
Consider eco-politics. The lower we keep petroleum prices, the less likely a nuclear bomb will go off. Lower petroleum prices reduce the ability of our adversaries to fund terrorism. Russia is reeling from low prices and likely will reign in some of its military expansion plans. Iran funds most of its nuclear development with oil money. Venezuela, which also wants nuclear power, gives oil money to other socialist Latin American countries. Saudis fund many of the the madrassas, and Saudi Arebia wants the bomb if Iran gets it. Blocking US domestic oil production helps our enemies fund their anti-US agenda. For the sake of WORLD PEACE, we must develop ANWR, shale oil, (0 to 200 miles) off-shore oil, the Bakken, coal-to-oil, as well as alternatives, energy efficiency, nuclear, et. al.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisunity center: re your comment
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"There are many pollutants in the air that most would agree directly affect people's health. Clearing the air of those should be the first goal and that may take care of a lot of the climate question. "
I agree wholeheartedly about the need to fight pollution. My issue is when pollutants (ie. CO2) are being defined as such based on political meanderings rather than on science.
I always get transfixed looking out the the windows of airplanes -- especially over vast regions of human development. PEOPLE have done all that? I ask myself, disturbed. Into the smoking hot cities flows all manner of resources from the hinterlands. If oceans can be emptied of fish, if forests can be leveled for wood, why is it so difficult to imagine that the atmosphere and climate can be affected by human actions? The veil of breathable air is barely three miles thick after all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess Al Gore [and several thousand scientists] didn't spelled it so that youse-guys can read it -- "G L O B A L" warming -- it has nothing to do with local chills or brief anomalies. Oh, incidentally, snow is caused by moisture, and it is snowing in the Antarctic, quite correct, normally an ice-desert. And, it is snowing up on the Greenland plateau... and it is raining and raining here in Scandinavia where before we had snow several feet deep. Why is this? "G L O B A L" warming. The warmer the oceans become, the more moisture there will be in the atmosphere. My advice to youse-guys what don't believe in no global warming is to buy real estate in Holland. I am sure you will find quite a few Dutch willing to sell and move up here. In fact, they are moving up here already. Personally, I don't care if your SUVs guzzle up all the gasoline there is and add CO2 to the atmosphere (which of course is NOT the main source of it), because I love these warm winters and the fact that spring comes almost a whole month earlier. And, since I live at an altitude of over 650 feet, I won't be drowning. Global Warming rules! Too bad about the missing Arctic ice and all those polar bears having to swim to Svalbard and Spitsbergen, but they will survive as they did during the warm Bronze Age. They have already found a few new "snacks" on those islands in the shape of tourists who wander to close thinking them bears are cute.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlobal warming? Really? Getting your science from a politician or a priest is as valuable as getting your spiritual inspiration from a scientist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEnter Your Comment Here.It will be released just in time for the final debunking of the global warming alarmist...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore attention should be paid on this issue. Global cooperation must be realized to if we really want to solve this problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPleased to note the article says, "It is still difficult to confidently connect any given phenomenon to greenhouse gas emissions from our cars, factories, and power plants. The computer models used by scientists lack resolution and certainty."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMoreover, two of the examples actually present economic benefits of global warming.
Do the idealogues find that so intolerable?
SINOJAY,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAGREED, YOU ARE CORRECT, WE SHOULD ALL PAY ATTENTION AND AGREE THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS A SHAM.
As a supporter of global warming, I encourage all of you to plant trees in North America so the planet warms faster. Also burn lots of coal and oil. I want to be able to grow warmer climate zone plants. I dislike cold weather so a warm spell of a few decades or even centuries is good with me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKoltrast - hehe :) polar bear snack tours!
I live between Greece and Spain, both in the Mediterranean. I also have a PhD in molecular biology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the past 15 years, I have seen both countries suffer from more extreme heat waves during the summer, with temperatures breaking previous records at an alarming rate. Last year, Greece suffered a full month of average day temperatures above 43 C, an unprecedented event in recorded history. Similarly, Spain had record warmth. The other seasons were also affected, with winters lasting approximately 90-100 days, with early entrance in spring, prolonged summer, and late exit from autumn. This, of course, influenced agriculture, animal farming, and most importantly, water reserves. Due to reduced snowfall in the mountains, both countries faced severe droughts, and their water reserves are dwindling. Already some areas are transitioning to semidesert. A very visible consequence of these draughts were the forest wildfires that burned so much of Greece in 2007 and killed 73 people. Similar wildfires have become alarmingly more prominent throughout the Mediterranean basin.
So, if this is not due to global warming, what is the cause? Why has the Mediterranean warmed up so much in such a little time? Why have the seasons changed to subtropical patterns over a period of only 15 years? Why is the Sahara spreading northwards, if there is no warming? Why did the average temperature of many cities rise 2-4 C? Why did the average precipitation fall by as much as 25%? Why have mosquitos from Ethiopia migrated into southern Europe for the first time ever?
'twould be good if the author of this piece were to respond to some of the more thughtful comments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMind you, I can understand any hesitancy - lots of opinion and very little documented science. Lots of doubts, very little appreciation of the precautionary principle. Lots of lionising of the latest apostate, little recognition of one of a solid scientific consensus by a vast number of experts, based on a vast body of peer-reviewed evidence and modeling results.
Could it be that some of these these highly vocal protesters would have less trouble with global warming if it did not affect their their comfortable lifestyles, their 20th century faith in the mirage of endless economic growth and perhaps even their obsolete stock portfolios?
Trent1492;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have reviewed your comments re: solar irradiance. They miss the point. The issue is not total solar output, but rather that lack of sunspots which decreases solar winds, thereby lessening the protective halo around Earth and the other planets against cosmic rays. Lab tests have demonstrated that increased cosmic rays produce increase cloud cover, and hence a cooling effect. These experiments are consistent with increased temperatures on Mars which is not subject to AGW.
In previous years, this effect was not understood, so scientists attempted to explain warming trends in terms of something which they did understand, greenhouse gas effects. An honest mistake, but a mistake nonetheless, and the implications of this error are massive. Politicians got ahold of the the AGW mistake and saw an easy way to curry favor with the public and the AGW myth and cottage industry was born.
Why? There are several explanations. First, if similar evidence had been presented for cooling, the true believers would have cried, "That's just weather! It's not climate change!" Second, people tend to see what they are looking for. Whether it's global warming, intelligent design, or astrology, they'll find evidence to support it . Third, now that there's policy to be made, people are gathering "evidence" of global warming to justify their own demands, whether or not they're really related (and again, no one knows for sure).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally, the underlying issue is not truly about global warming, but about how much money we're going to divert from catastrophes happening now toward catastrophes that are, as yet, hypothetical. A case can be made that fighting, say, childhood dysentery is a far better use for our money than fighting global warming.
In your country, disasters may (or may not) not have come yet. But the Med has literally been changing at an ever increasing rate, with many human casualties. Forest wildfires are a factor of the local biosphere, and many species have adapted to them, but not to the extent we had in the past few years. Whatever the cause, these disasters have been happening more frequently, more intensely and more out of the blue. The local climate has become quite unstable, with many sudden temperature shifts that were not found before (increases or decreases of up to 15 C in two days). Tropical species that were previously unable to colonise the Mediterranean, like african mosquitos and jelly fish from the Red Sea that have not only arrived, but are thriving. The local marine crustaceans, although not harvested extensively, have declined in population. The aquifer has dropped in many places from -20 to -350-400 metres. All these are good indications that something major is happening, and that it requires immediate attention.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlongside our exchange, on the same SciAm page, was a link to an article entitled, "Dual HIV/TB infection common in S. African infants." Right now 1,596 of every 100,000 HIV-infected infected infants contracts TB. That infant HIV cases can be measured in the hundreds of thousands is bad enough. That they are 24 times more susceptible to TB is even worse. By comparison, the rate of deaths from global warming is insignificant and will remain so for decades. Diverting resources from real, present casualties to speculative ones 30-50 years in the future reveals a serious and puzzling distortion of individual and public priorities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndeed it does. But are you quite sure that the resources that are now dedicated to fighting climate change would have been diverted to helping the african countries fight their plights? Personally, I am not. After all, the majority of biomedical research is done by for-profit corporations, which so far have shown no indication that they would be willing to lower their profit margins in order to help the developing world. Since you mentioned AIDS, I assume you know that, although it is not treatable, there are medications for it, and as long one takes them, there is no disease progression. The problem is that these medicines cost the approximate annual salary of a european unspecialised worker, meaning they are totally beyond the reach of poor countries. As there has been no major initiative to make them more accessible to Africa, I seriously doubt that the situation would be different if there were no efforts to fight climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen I think we agree that, when it comes to the money being spent on the fight against global warming, its highest and best expenditure would be on other more pressing problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhether the affects of global climate change can be attributed to human activities or not isn't really the biggest question. The biggest questions are:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan anything be done to change what is happening?
Can anything be done economically to change what is happening?
What are the effects of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere and what would be the benefit of different courses of action from this point onwards?
It may be that there is value in making small individual differences. It may be that there is value in cutting emissions within particular, willing countries. And there may not be value.
Too many people are asking: "What can be done?" and not enough people are asking "What should and can realistically be done?"
I hope climate scientists are wrong, not because I have a selfish desire to carry on living the life of a polluter, but because if they're not and there is nothing that can realistically be done, all these articles are seriously bad news.
The USA produces about 10^9 tons of coal per year. All is used each year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen combined with oxygen this produces megatons of co2. When combined with the rest of the worlds production of coal we're talking some big numbers.
If you don't think this affects the climate, you've got your head where the sun don't shine.
While I believe the climate is changing nothing on this site has prooven it is man made. Please explain to me if there is global warming why would the arctic ice be coming back? http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/02/brrrr-disappearing-arctic-ice-is-back.html.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere is the DIRECT proof that man is the cause of global warming? While I do not believe man is responsible for global warming I do believe we need to take care of the planet.
I think most people should definitively take a diet before talking about those subjects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease get the facts before commenting - waste is a concern here too.
I don't think Darfur should be included as place afflicted by global warming. That conflict is about surprise...land and racial conflict. This is what happens when you get this many people on one little planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen there is no global warming. Just a small point, no place is afflicted with global warming.
hi im from the sixth grade miami florida in the u.s.a and im in carver middle and have ms.Driggs first period and im using this article for a project on climate change and global warming. just so you know im 12 years old and i have a crush on a girl named sofia sellar i love her very much and my name is felipe acosta i whould like to mary her in the future plan to be an architect so buy the houses i design or might become a famouse scientist or actor go to my blog at www.masterxgaming.blogspot.com thanks and post a comment i love her she cute any ways please remeber to visit my site by thanks any ways
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