Slashdot Mirror
Satellites Show That Earth Has a Fever
Roland Piquepaille writes "A recent study from NASA says that satellites are acting as thermometers in space. Contrary to meteorological ground stations which measure the air temperature around two meters above the ground, satellites can accurately measure the temperature of the Earth's skin. And this new study, which covers the 18-year period going from 1981 to 1998, shows that the Earth's temperature is rising 0.43C per decade instead of the O.34C found by previous methods. Unfortunately for us, if satellites can more precisely measure this rise of the Earth's temperature, they cannot cure this fever. This overview contains more details and a spectacular image showing the European heat wave of the summer of 2003."
Over the past there have been many different climates. It is said that flying dinosaurs couldn't have flown in todays enviornment. The air isn't dense enough or humid enough. It needed to be more tropical.
Even look at the earths poles. THere is evidence to show that the poles are reversed from a previous point in history.
THe point is the earth goes throgh changes in climate without any human intervention at all. The continents weren't the same way way back when. Why are we harping so much on this?
Evolution or ID?
Perhaps we need a sample size of more than 20 years?
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
We don't even know the earth enough to really be sure we are the ones causing these events. What if the planet is just due to warm up. Yes we mess a lot with the planet, humans are very good with messing with unlown stuff. There is so much we don't understand yet.
This is totally insecure, but very convenient.
use the butterfly theory to explain it.
define what is causing it.
is it nature or is it humans.
we do not know, all we have is correlational data which is far from proof of anything at all.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The one thing I've noticed about Slashdot is that a huge number of users seem dead set against the idea of global warming. Am I the only one who thinks that regardless of the exact status of global warming its reasonable to take steps to reduce emissions and so on?
Assume global warming is real, and then enviromentally friendly policies are needed.
Then assume it isn't. Its not like enviromentally friendly policies require you to sacrifice your first born son. We enact them, maybe have fewer SUV's, and live in a slightly cleaner world.
You don't stand to lose anything by assuming global warming is real and going from there. You stand to lose a lot by ignoring it and having it turn out to be real.
So, the Earth is getting warmer. Who says change is a bad thing??? Is it bad for the earth to be warmer than it is today??? I would guess not since it has been there before.
I would assume it's because we humans are resistant to change and like what we know. But we are highly adaptive so, I'm sure we will be fine.
Evolution or ID?
The problem isn't global warming, per se -- some like it hot. The problem could be better described as climate change. Sure the Earth's been through many cycles, but none where we were trying to have a technology-based civilization at the time, with food production concentrated in small areas, and the rest as cities/suburbs. All it would take to create major problems would be a major change in the pattern of rainfall. No one's going to want to tear down, say, New York, just because the climate there is suddenly good for growing crops, while California's went too dry and hot for that. And oak trees take a long time to migrate. Sure, the race will survive, but it might not be with as much fun as it could have been.
The fact that the parent wasn't modded as "sarcastic" is an affront to /.'s moderation options.
In seriousness, there are the 4 million brits who stand to lose their homes,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,120 0272,00.html
(Sorry I don't know how to highlight links), and that's just the impact in one place.
But I think the importance is that, although we are coming out of an iceage, there is a definite climate change being caused by human impact on the Earth. No, it won't wipe out all life on Earth or even cause us to go extinct, but (in the spirit that Earth day was yesterday) at least consider that we may be messing with things that we cannot control, and may be damaging things that we certainly cannot undo.
The temperature increases for a number of reasons:
* Chemicals, called cytokines and mediators, are produced in the body in response to an invasion from a microorganism, malignancy, or other intruder.
* The body is making more macrophages, which are cells that go to combat when intruders are present in the body. These cells actually "eat-up" the invading organism.
* The body is busily trying to produce natural antibodies, which fight infection. These antibodies will recognize the infection next time it tries to invade.
Taken together with Agent Smith's insightful words:
"Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague. And we are... the cure."
I think the message is clear - Mother Earth is trying to get rid of us.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The problem with this is that it really means nothing. It's useful data to have, but with our current state of knowledge, we can't infer anything from it.
The Earth's weather is a chaotic system. About the only thing you can be sure of is that things will be different tomorrow, compared to today. With a lot more research, we may be able to find strange attractors for some places at certain times, and use them to predict what is going to happen.
The human concept of "climate" is entirely that: a human concept. Eighteen years of observations is a miniscule speck in the age of this planet, and we can't say with any certainty that any trends in those eighteen years will carry to the next eighteen years. A thousand years of observations falls into the same category - a tiny sample of a big and complex system.
The Earth's weather changes on many scales: years, decades, centuries, millenia, and more. At each of those scales, there is change. Until we can understand or predict its behaviour across all those scales, we are practising voodoo when we make predictions.
I have seen arguments and models that predict that the world will heat up dramatically in the next century. I have also seen others that predict that we will be entering a new ice age. The thing is, the models for both predictions are quite reasonable.
So. We have a little data, and that's all we have. Conclusions may follow in the indeterminate future. Until then we have speculation.
This is all fine and well, but the part that annoys me is that the media (in general) are treating the speculation as fact, and only covering the speculation that fits their agenda. Please beware!
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OMG, t3h w0r1d iz g3771ng h07, OMG.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Maybe the scientists do know, and this is just a case of bad reporting...
It's a case of bad reporting. The loss of ice in both the poles and Greenland is well-documented and goes back more than two decades, with some pretty spectacular and sudden melts or glacier break-aways occuring within the last half-dozen years.
However, as a number of people have pointed out, there's absolutely zero evidence that this is due to human activity. It could very well be natural, as was the case in human history for both the 'little ice age' and period of abnormal warming during the previous millennium which allowed the Norse to colonize the southern tip of Greenland. Both of these changes were more extreme than the changes we're currently seeing.
Hell, it could just be due to a tiny increase in our sun's thermal output. Most people don't know that our sun is a VARIABLE star, which means that it's energy output changes on an irregular, unpredictable basis. If the solar output were to increase by less than 1/10th of 1 percent over a sustained period of time, you'd get much the same thing we're seeing today - and since the alteration itself would've happened a couple of centuries back (it takes awhile for minute changes to broad impacts) we wouldn't know about it today, since two centuries ago there was no reliable way to accurately measure solar energy output.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Because, you know, one day Los Angeles will be ok, and five, ten years later it'll be submerged.
What kind of timescale do you think we're talking?
~Berj
Simple- glaciers are retreating everywhere and polar ice is melting too. This of course changes albedo...
As for the oceans? They are getting warmer too:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/observe/s
It is incredible that we are still asking whether warming is actually real.
[freak-out]IT'S REAL DAMN IT, IT's REAL![/freak-out]
I can understand people questionning what causes warming, but for chriss' sakes people- it's getting warm down here, and weather patterns have become rather erratic:
Even without the satelite data, we should know by now that things are changing, and likely not for the better.
Since I'm commenting... the next stage of uncertainty and doubt is what portion of climate change is caused by humans, with the implication that we shouldn't do anything about it. And the F of FUD, being we'll run the economy.
Well, none of this is true or relevant. Moving beyond fossil fuels can be good for the economy.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
The point is surely not that the Earth gets hotter and colder. I accept that (where I live I can look out the window and see some leftovers from the last glaciation or so.) /.ers announcing that everything is just fine does nothing for my peace of mind. You are the intelligent people, for the most part. If you aren't taking it seriously, what are the morons doing?
Rather, it is that the heating up is very, very rapid in geological terms. During the 19th Century when the age of the Earth was realised, it was understood that natural processes were very slow. Now they are happening really rather fast, and the satellite data suggests it is faster than previously believed. There has been, in geological terms, a step change in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and a lagging step change in temperature. (as an aside why can't a geek site manage subscript and superscript? Step changes are usually bad news. I have just become a grandfather and I can't help contrasting when I was born into a post-WW2 world rather full of optimism despite McCarthy et al, and my granddaughter being born into a world where accelerating climate change, population migration, hydraulic, food and energy wars may be the norm. A load of
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Given that we receive about 340 W/m2 of solar radiation, and given that the forcing due to human induced greenhouse gas emissions is _already_ 2.4 W/m2 and even if we stabilize CO2 concentrations at 550 ppm it will rise _another_ 3 W/m2, we are going to be effectively adding 1.5% or more to solar luminosity. (Yes, there is some cooling effect due to aerosol emissions, but aerosols are a flow pollutants, GHGs are a stock, which means that the aerosol influence won't grow the same way).
So if you are sticking by your "1/10th of 1 percent" would make big changes, then you have to admit that we're making HUGE changes.
would the Earth still be getting warmer even if we weren't creating manmade polution? It may just be that even if were we able to eliminate all of the anti-ozone polution in the world, the global average temerature might still go up anyway
Sigh, the ozone issue and greenhouse gasses that cause global warming are 2 different environmenal issues. They are both atmospheric pollutant issues, but they are not the same.
Ozone stops ultraviolet rays from reaching the surface, greenhouse gasses stop infrared heat from escaping to space.
You can't take the sky from me...
We simply can't wait to collect a geologically significant body of data.
If pollution is causing unnatural global warming, then we can't wait until said warming is undeniable fact before we act.
I suggest an experiment: let's attempt to drastically reduce our emissions, as if we were addressing a real global warming problem. Then we can study temperature changes. If the rise in temprature decelerates or reverses, we could reasonably conclude that our pollution was the cause. If not, then we've made our air and water cleaner for no good reason, but at least we'd know!
The enemies of Democracy are
Are you an environmental scientist? Have you read the papers, articles, and books written by those who are, and share the concerns I've outlined?
I'm not saying those are opposite ends of a spectrum. I'm saying that they are identified possible consequences of climate change; I'm saying that the best science on the subject to date suggests that we are contributing to that change; I'm saying that we should act now on what we strongly suspect while trying to find out more. What's so unreasonable about this one particular aspect of environmental science that Slashdotters don't seem to get it? It's like fundies and evolution.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Actually they can tell the temperature of the past 2000-5000 years depending on which scientist you talk too. Tree's have rings which grow with age, and can tell you a lot about the climate of that year, that's one method, another are rocks/lava, the cooling and formation can tell you a lot about the environment and with carbon testing you can tell when the lava formed. There are many other methods as well.
Mod +5 Drunk
Now someone with a Nobel prize in physics is going to be a very smart person, but he or she will be no more able to assess claims in climatology than myself.
How thick is the crust where these measurements are made? Crustal thicknesses, thus the depth to which solar energy or other radiant source can penetrate, vary considerably throughout a continent - and between different continents.
.
How much geologic activity is occurring in the region sampled? Is it active, like the Pacific Rim areas, or is it relatively inactive, like the cratonic regions of the continenets?
I consider this pretty important information if one is evaluating this kind of data.
The first-blush inference drawn from the article summary is that mechanisms contributing to global warming (i.e., anthropogenic sources) are driving surface temperatures on the Earth in the same way as air temperatures. No mechanism is described in either the long article from Goddard or from the summary on exactly how surface temperatures could be affected by human activities.
The Earth's crust varies from one or two kilometers to several kilometers in depth and there is a great deal of geologic activity that is going on all over the planet irrespective of man's presence. While the evidence of global warming continues to point to a strong antropogenic contribution, both article and summary fail to explain how this paticular information is realted to anything
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
then you have to admit that we're making HUGE changes.
I have to admit no such thing. What I'd like to see is some empirical evidence in favor of human intervention over naturally changing conditions. So far no such evidence exists.
The Earth has warmed up and cooled down many times in our geological past. Some of these changes have been gradual, others have been rather dramatic. It could very well be that humans are at least partially responsible for the current changes, but as yet this is merely speculation and nothing more. The yahoos who keep going on about the 'evils' of industrial society are grossly oversimplifying the complexity of the problem (and the equally complex task of determining responsbility) in favor of their own black hat/white hat world-view.
In any event, the changes have been made and there's no reasonable way to reverse them. Regardless of the cause what we should be looking at is how we adapt to the new conditions, not futile attempts to maintain stasis or turn back the clock. Either of these options is far beyond current technology in any event, as any attempt to 'reverse' the trend is just as likely to cause some other disaster our primitive understanding of the situation couldn't foresee.
We can wail, and gnash our teeth, and feel morally superior to everyone else because we just *know* that it's The Evils of Technology and Greed(TM) that's the root of the problem, but this doesn't help the situation and ultimately just makes the finger-pointers look like idiots. Or we can prepare for the worst and try our best to ride out the storm, without wasting energy trying to decide who's to blame - if anyone is to blame.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
And yoe said more than that. You said: "there's absolutely zero evidence that this is due to human activity." That isnt true. Not even close. Right now, there isnt bulletproof, conclusive evidence. But there is a mountain of circumstantioal, mechanistic, theoretical, field-observation, and model-derived evidence in support of anthropogenic causes for at least a good part of observed warming. When you make a dogmatic statement like "there's absolutely zero evidence," please dont come back with nitpicking about how you are being misread.
I said that _if_ "you are sticking by your '1/10th of 1 percent' would make big changes" _then_ you would have to admit that we are making huge changes. Or are you saying that the sun changing by 1/10th of 1 percent is significant, but humans changing its effective radiation by 1 percent is small? Or are you saying that humans haven't effected the radiation budget of the earth?
It is quite likely that humans are responsible for much of the last several decades of warming. There have been plenty of attribution studies attribution studies that have shown this statistically. More to the point, if we maintain a business-as-usual path, we are very likely to radically warm the earth over the coming centuries. We can't stop change from happening, but we can take actions that would reduce the rate of the change that we are causing. And yes, we need to balance the costs of emissions controls against the expected value of the environmental benefits we will receive - I believe that economic growth is vital to improving the health, happiness, and well-being of humans, but not without regulation.
The yahoos who keep going on about not doing anything to reduce emissions until we are absolutely certain about its impact are ignoring the fact that decisions are made under uncertainty all the time. There is certainly enough evidence that we are impacting the earth's climate, and enough basic scientific understanding to know that we will continue to do so, and enough economics understanding to be able to make some guesses about what the right balance of controls are, that we should be at least implementing starter policies (not necessarily Kyoto - I'd prefer a carbon tax, and real scientific investments into fusion and zero-carbon technologies)
Or we can stick our fingers in our ears and chant mindlessly that "its not happening" and "its not our fault" because, after all, this is a long term problem and who cares if future generations curse us for our short sightedness?
There is a chance that you are right, maybe we'll luck out, maybe the climate sensitivity will be at the low end of the model results. Are you willing to take the greenhouse gamble for the next generation? I prefer to take the optimal path given our level of understanding rather than saying "maybe nothing will happen so let's do nothing".
-Marcus
The vast majority of the models out there agree with the "emissions folk" (here I include, in no particular order, the GFDL labs, the PNNL labs, Wigley et al, the AGU, the MIT Joint Program on Climate Change, NOAA, the NAS, the IPCC, Schneider et al, the Hadley Center, etc. etc.). The "no impact" folk on the other hand - Christy, Lindzen, Baliunas, Singer - are a real minority.
Wasn't it back in the late 70's and early 80's that everyone was freaked out about what looked like an upcoming ice age? We just do not have enough historical data to know what a "normal" temperature pattern is. No question that pollution is not good, but we just don't know what effect it's having on global temperatures.
To all those repeating the old mantra "you can't prove that we are causing the warming -- it might be natural".
Yes, the fact that global warming seems to be correlated with our spewing of CO2 into the atmosphere may be a coincidence. It might all just be part of some natural planetary cycle.
But add to this the fact that we are currently seeing a mass extinction unlike anything in the last 65 million years, and you've got quite a conspicious coincidence.
I'm surprised how few anti-warmists (or would it be anti-anti-warmists?) see this.
I seem to remember global warming described as a self correcting phenomenon. The argument wnet as follows:
1. Earth warms. Could be due to pollution, increased solar activity or increased volcanic activity.
2. Ocean evaporation increases. Warmer air and water means easier evaporation.
3. Increased levels of water vapor in the air leads to increased global cloud cover.
4. Increased cloud cover raises the Earth's albedo (measure of reflectivity) causing less solar gain.
5. Less solar gain leads to global cooling trend.
So the atmosphere seems to be a feedback system, like a thermostat or buffer solution. Note that the reverse happens when the Earth is too cool. Also, the increased ocean evaporation mitigates somewhat the rising sea level due to melting ice caps.
It's also interesting that SUVs don't appear to actually be any safer for the driver, despite being more dangerous for everyone else, not to mention polluting at about double the state-of-the-art.
But then I realized that you're a total nut-job:
However, a reasonable person might make the point that SUVs are probably not the biggest problem we've got as far as pollution goes. How about coal power, which still produces about half of the US electrical supply? Electric vehicles will never really be "zero emissions" until we do something about the coal problem.