Baked Alaska

mithras the prophet writes "Global warming stories usually focus on the hotbutton politics, scientific debate, or latest disturbing anecdote of receding ice. A very interesting New York Times story takes a different tack, highlighting the reality of climate change for small-town Alaskans. Whatever the cause, temperatures in Alaska have risen by seven degrees in the last 30 years. This has very real consequences for ordinary citizens; the rest of us would do well to consider their stories. Lucy Eningowuk and her 600 fellow citizens of Shishmaref will vote next week whether to move their town to the mainland. Despite community efforts, thawing of permafrost and wave action from melting ice has eroded away most of the land the village is built on. Residents of Barrow (warning: MIDI-enabled page), on the North Shore, are swatting mosquitos for the first time in their lives. In an ironic twist, managers of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline are putting in supports to keep the pipeline from breaking as permafrost thaws."

Comments

you have got to be kidding me

[Edmund Blackadder]

every one of the improvements you cited is a result of government mandated pollution controls. So you give examples of the successes of government mandated pollution controls as a proof that we dont need government mandated pollution controls. hmm ok.

Re:Local Warming != Global Warming

[Bob McCown]

Ever wonder why Greenland is called Greenland? Hint: it used to be a greener when they named it a few centuries back.

BZZT, thanks for playing.

When Erik the Red discovered this odd country, he named it "Greenland" in an attempt to attract more settlers to it.

Days of denial are over.

[autopr0n]

It seems to me that anti-global warming advocates are made up of the same kind of people who are anti-evolution. Their main reason for doubt is that it conflicts with their biases (in the case of global warming, that's largely commercial or ideological, with evolution it's religious).

Of course both groups have lots of 'scientific' evidence that mostly amounts a few anecdotes in comparison to the huge reams of evidence that the supporters have, but are yelled very loudly.

Also, both groups demand from their adversaries 'irrefutable proof' that evolution/global warming is true, even though a 'logical proof' of an empirical phenomena is impossible. You can't prove evolution and global warming the same way you can prove that 1+1=2. You can't even prove gravity to that extent.

Finally, if this report is true, and these weather changes are happening all over Alaska, it really should be enough evidence that something is happening. Alaska is pretty big, and the effect can't really be called 'local'. It's at least regional.

Finally, it comes to the question of cyclical vs. artificial warming. Is the earth getting warmer just because it is, or is it getting warmer because of something we're doing? Certainly, humanity is producing lots of CO2, but the amount isn't really that much compared the naturally occurring water vapor. Honestly I'm not sure if science really has the answer. But I do really think we need to be cautious about it. The effects of global warming could be pretty dire.

A while ago I read a slashdot post about global warming, and the poster said he opposed any kind of change in regulation unless we could be 100% sure. If you ask me, that's pretty stupid. It's like driving towards a cliff and being opposed to a change in direction unless you were 100% sure there was a cliff there, the argument being the trip would be longer assuming there was no cliff (or something equally stupid).

Perhaps there would be some economic constraints caused by greenhouse gas controls, but they would probably be a lot better then the economic problems caused by global warming.

Re:Days of denial are over.

[bashibazouk]

Why is it when ever one of these "there is no evidence for global warming" posts pop up there is NEVER any proper debunking? There have been many studies on global warming, pick one and (this is the hard part) using logic, debunk it.

Why is it wrong?

Is there flaws in the data gathering?

Do the theories not match the data?

If so, what is a better theory?

There are two major parts to science. Observation/experiment and theory as to why. The research is usually done right. Why? Because science strives to ensure all experiments/observations are Reproducible and most are reproduced. Researchers caught fudging data fall from grace and have a very hard time being taken seriously again. The theory on the other hand is rarely right, at least 100% right. But it is usually close.

To illustrate: the theory of relativity has never been "proven" 100%. It has seen lots of minor changes and some major competing ideas. But the science behind it have made some pretty impressive bombs, yes? Should we ever have some form of unified theory, I would guess major parts of the theory of relativity will be part of it, some will be fine tuned, some will be found completely wrong.

The usual "global warming is wrong because I say so" is NOT an argument. "global warming is just a left wing plot" is NOT an argument.

If you don't think global warming is real, great, PROVE IT!

Your assertion that there is no evidence of global warming is total BS. There are many, many studies full of evidence that something is happening and well thought out reasons for linking them to the idea of global warming. They could be wrong. That is possible, but to say so without a good argument or referring to a good argument is nothing more than ideological posturing and should not be taken seriously.

Re:Days of denial are over.

[mesocyclone]

First, a note to moderators. The last time I tried an informative post on this topic, it was modded as a troll (although it ended up a 5 troll somehow). This post is an attempt to actually represent the opposing position, with an editorial at the bottom discussing the implications of current politics on this...

anyway... to respond to the previous poster..

You ask why it [the theory of global warming] is wrong. First of all, there is the issue of why it has to be wrong, as opposed to not proven. But let me at least throw some doubt on the science:

1) Much of the data is indeed flawed. It is riddled with assumptions and inconsistencies. It depends on long chains of assumptions. For example, sea temperature data has been inferred from characteristics of coral growth. And yet just in the last month a paper was published (Science) showing that the coral growth is significantly affected by other factors, blowing away that assumption. Tree rings are used as a substitute for temperature or precipitation data, but have been shown to be unreliable in many cases. Other data is significantly contaminated - I am using one such data set right now.

Refusal to accept that mankind CO2 is responsible for all or most of the warming we see is not the same as evolution denial, because the weight of evidence for evolution is enormous and rapidly growing. OTOH, the evidence of the effects of the human produced increase in CO2 is poor. It is based on poor data; good data is over too short a time period to be meaningful in a climate discussion; data may be contaminated by a number of factors (surface station urban heat island effect, for example), and even when known these contaminations are "adjusted" as best as possible.

2) Which "theory" are you referring to when you talk about global warming? As far as I know, the only theories are:
1) CO2 increases cause warming (trivial physics, but not a real hypothesis to test man-made global warming in this complex system).
2) Computer simulations show warming, and with enough tuning can sort-of match the past since temperature records were kept.

The latter is not a theory so much as a numerical computing based on known and unknown physics. However, if the predictions are accurate, who cares if it is a true theory or not? But one needs to understand the nature of climate models to understand the uncertainties. Let me list a few:

1. Resolution - due to computing limitations, the models have gross resolution, on the order of tens to hundred of kilometers on the surface and hundreds of meters in the atmosphere. Since weather, which is ultimately what is simulated (climate is the long term integral of weather), these problems are significant. The best known weather models in the world today are essentially useless beyond 5 days.
2. Parameterization - the physics of the atmosphere and the ocean are known very accurately on a small scale. But those physics do not scale well - it is like trying to predict a human from their genes... in theory you could do the simulation of the cells and proteins, etc... but you would never actually do so. Instead, one uses parameters to approximate effects that one does not want to compute. Thus one parameterizes the effect of topography, for example, because the model resolution does not allow actual representation of the details of topography. There are hundreds of the parameterizations.
3. Selection bias - models which predict the past are naturally selected. But with the large number of parameters, and the sensitivity of the models, it is pretty likely that some will approach an accurate forecast of the past. But that does not make them predictors of the future. To believe otherwise is to imagine that top stock pickers got that way because they can predict the market, when in fact they are just those selected that have a long run of luck!
4. Missing feedback - The system is unbelievably complex. For example, how does one simulate the response of the earth's biology to climate change, or even to CO2 concentration change? How much does this affect the resulting climate (hint - potentially a whole lot)> There are lots of other complex subsystems that also cannot be modeled.

As far as competing theories, how about changes in solar irradiance? Evidence that this is a significant climate forcer has become undeniable recently. This doesn't mean that the global warming hypothesis is wrong, but it certainly means that it *was* wrong in its mechanisms.

On another vein, modeling relies upon estimates of atmospheric CO2 dynamics and yet we still can't account for about 30% of the CO2 disappearance from the atmosphere. This is a huge uncertainty.

The burden of proof of a theory is on the proposer. Science works by constant refinement of theories, and outright refutation of some.

3)It is not necessary to propose a better theory to disprove, or more importantly, cast doubt upon an existing theory. Science does not require that! One could have refuted Newtonian physics by detecting gravitational lensing, without having any idea what caused the gravitational lensing!

4) Casting doubt on anthropogenic global warming does not make one a nut. True, there are nuts who cast doubt on it. And there are prople who tend to doubt it based on their political leanings, just as there are people who tend to support it based on their own political leanings.

To gather from the hysterical reporting (each event of something warmer is reported as "casting more evidence for global warming" or something stronger), I would suspect there are more of the latter than the former.

A truly scientific viewpoint is that the earth has warmed about a degree in the last 100 or so years, but that the links between that warming and human activity are insufficient to establish a strong cause-and-effect relationship. Thus one should suspect that anthropogenic CO2 may contribute to warming, but not conclude that it does.

Finally, to move on a little bit. Even if we accept that global warming is caused by humans, and that the (ever changing) climate models are providing an accurate forecast, there is a complete lack of critical thinking about what to do about it! For example, recently on here we had a debate about the Kyoto treaty. Few of the debaters realized that the best climate models (that are accepted by the IPCC and the treaty community) show that Kyoto would only retard warming by 6 years in 100 years (or in any year make a difference of a tiny fraction of a degree). And yet most advocates of doing something about global warming jump on the Kyoto bandwagon. Without the (hidden from most of the public) agenda that Kyoto is only the start of significantly more onerous and costly measures, this is completely illogical.

Equally illogical is the resistance of the global warmists (if I can coin a term) to measures that might be taken to ameliorate the negative effects and maximize benefits from the positive effects of the putative warming. This trend illustrates a strong ideological agenda - a strong bias towards forcing solutions upon unwilling mankind without a real cost-benefit analysis.

Finally, what is really illogical is the idea that we, as the people currently on earth, can do much about global warming. We have already seen that the US will not sign onto a basically symbolic (if expensive) measure: Kyoto. We must know that more significant measures will face much stronger resistance. We excuse China and India from Kyoto and yet somehow in the next 100 years imagine that they will not make up for the CO2 emissions reduced by Kyoto.

We have the arrogance (or some do) to believe that we can change the behavior of mankind, against the near and medium term benefit of most, and maintain that change for 100 years. I have seen no evidence that humans are better behaved now than they were 100 years ago, when people were then postulating utopian ideas (before WW-I, WW-II, Soviet Communism, Einstein's theories and the consequences, etc).

Even worse, we have the arrogance to assume that we should punish people today in the blind assumption that those in the future will not come up with technologies that will make the whole issue moot! Amazingly, this is even strong here on this board where most of the participants have been involved in remarkable technological transformation over short periods of time.

You are in denial

[Anonymous Coward]

"But I do really think we need to be cautious about it. The effects of global warming could be pretty dire."

Since there is zero evidence of human activity having an effect, there is no point in being "cautious" in regards to global warming.

"It seems to me that anti-global warming advocates are made up of the same kind of people who are anti-evolution."

True, only if by "anti global warming advocate" you mean the whackos who fight against "global warming".... which is like fighting against a mountain with a wet noodle: human activity does not effect it.

"A while ago I read a slashdot post about global warming, and the poster said he opposed any kind of change in regulation unless we could be 100% sure. If you ask me, that's pretty stupid"

No, what is stupid is changing regulation while having NO evidence at all that regulation will change anything. That is real stupid: the un-informed change of public policy based on nonscience.

Re:I live in Alberta

[TMLink]

How long till the masses realize climate is long term?

Exactly. And how many years of good data do we have on the earth's climate? 150? 200? So who can say for sure the reasons for Global Warming.

The temperature is increasing...but does that mean we're heading for disaster, or is this the earth working as it always has?

Re:I live in Alberta

[EvilAlien]

Ya, me too... and I would like to know where you get the facts to support your claims.

<humor>Unless you experienced a vastly different winter than I did, I'd say getting warming is a good thing. Sucks for Alaska tho =)</humor>

As for actual scientific support for the assertion that our society's fossil fuel use is "warming the planet", I'd sure like to see some. If I'm expected to take it all on faith, I won't. I didn't ignore the bits in science class where they talk about climatic change cycles, so I'm not convinced. I don't see these effects you refer to, every day or any day, and unless you have a Ph.D. or three in whatever it takes to be an expert in global climatic change, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that you see alleged effects due to global warming.

Of course, you could argue that it is in our best interests to find an alternative for a non-renewable resource. I would probably agree with that, because it is a logical idea, and therefore has merit. There are facts to support the assertion that these resources are non-renewable. If you want to push the idea that we should change our habits "just in case the global warming theory is correct", I would say thats akin to agnosticism... "better sorta believe in a god just in case he/she/it is real... wouldn't want to go to hell"... go read Life, the Universe, and Everything: An Interview with Douglas Adams.

However, I suspect your views are merely formulated to support an anti-free market political stance, in which case you might have more luck in Eastern Canada or in BC. I don't see Alberta embracing socialism any time soon.

Interesting quote

[krogoth]

"2001 was the warmest year since 1653 (or thereabouts) which begs the question, exactly who or what was emitting CO2 at present day levels back then?"

(dates may be off)

NEWSFLASH!!!!

[night_flyer]

We've been in a global warming cycle since the ICE AGE!

and in the 1970s they said we were heading for another ice age...

the scientists say "we cant look at localized warming or cooling, we must look at the whole picture" yet here they are pumping localized warming... why dodnt they come to OKLAHOMA? its cooler than it has been for a while AND there are LESS tornadoes...

Why Global Warming Is A Bitch

[CoderByBirth]

Environmental science is pretty damn complex. We don't have the statistical models and processing power to even predict tomorrows weather accurately. The scientists are basically throwing guesses around. Maybe global warming is caused by an increase of carbon-dioxide in the athmosphere. Maybe a sufficiently large amount of carbon-dioxide will have the exact opposite effect. What we do know is that Earth currently is in equilibrium. If the balance is disturbed, a new equilibrium will be found. Some scientists will say that this new balance just means malaria in Quebec and some new places to spend your vacation. The truth is, this is just a guess. It is also equally possible that the new balance means ice-covered landmasses and an athmosphere with 2% oxygen. Maybe I can sit alone on my ass in my Chevrolet Impala and drive to work every day, and keep the engine running when I stop at the McDonald's drive-in, and we'll all be alright anyway. Who knows? I for one though, am not willing to gamble with Mother Nature.

Oh please . . .

[dlharper]

Whitley Striber writes some great stuff (WarDay for example is one of the best books I've ever read). He also wrote "Breakthrough", which is described as:

With the same curiosity, awe, and undeniable credibility, the author of the million-copy bestsellers Communion and Transformation again crosses barriers into the unknown and recounts his experiences with extraterrestrials, providing very compelling proof of their presence here on Earth.

Ya, this is THE person we need to listen to about Global Warming all right . . .

Re:I live in Alberta

[macdaddy357]

Businesses can't police themselves because in business, greed is good and the almighty dollar is god. Strict government regulation is neccesary. Savings and loans were deregulated, and destroyed themselves with predatory greed. Utilities were deregulated, and energy prices went through the roof. People lost home just trying to heat them , and Enron still self destructed, crushed under the weight of it's greed. The big problem with capitalism is that it has become a cult, and it's followers are brainwashed into believing in the myth that business can regulate itself, and that prosperity will trickle down. This cult caused the great depression of the thirties, and is causing another, while raping the earth.

Sigh.

[hage]

Changes in global temperature couldn't possibly be due to things like ongoing cyclical climate fluctuations.

Obviously, environmentalists are always right.

decadal variability must also be considered..

[rhetland]

Recent numerical simulations of Arctic climate suggest that the recent Arctic ice melt (and generally warmer temperatures) may be caused by decadal variability, instead of (or, more likely, in addition to) a general warming trend. This cycle is about to switch, so that in the next ten years, the ice may reform and temperatures could drop. That is, until the cycle switches again, when ice melt and warming could come back with a vengance.

What does this mean for long term climate variability? It means it is much harder to detect permanent changes in climate when there is so much noise in the signal and so little data. It is important not to put too much stock on short term changes -- i.e., an unusually hot summer is not evidence of global warming, and global warming will not have stopped even if it gets cooler for ten years in a row.