Slashdot Mirror
New Satellite Data Confirms Global Warming
starannihilator writes "Researchers at the University of Washington have analyzed satellite data using a new and more accurate method (using channel 4 on the Microwave Sounding Unit satellite) to show that the troposphere has been warming faster than the Earth's surface for more than two decades. Nature reports that previous interpretations (using MSU channel 2) did not indicate such dramatic tropospheric warming because the data were compromised by stratospheric conditions. For years, the debate over global warming raged largely as a result of an incongruency between trends in surface and tropospheric temperatures. The new data gained by MSU channel 4 are consistent with the surface temperature's rising trends and indicate that global warming is, in fact, occuring in the troposphere. Read the full article in Nature, or similar stories in the Seattle Times and Newswise."
The earth is a chaotic system, and chaotic systems for the most part are unpredictable. A variation of a few hundredths of a degree in one place in the world can be responsible for a hurricane in another.
Just because some aspects of weather are chaotic doesn't mean nothing can be predicted. Global average temperatures don't go up or down independent of any contributing factors: ice coverage, atmospheric composition, humidity and other factors all have well-defined effects. There are some relationships we don't understand yet, but that doesn't make those relationships chaotic.
We can be certain that if we continue on our current path, growing emissions of greenhouse gases, we will change the climate dramatically some time this century. That's simple physics: changing the earth's energy balance significantly must lead to changes in something on earth. What we don't know yet is whether it will kick in a new ice age (which would be negative feedback), lead to gradual warming (no feedback), or runaway greenhouse effects (positive feedback). Even if negative feedback would magically keep the temperature constant, something (vegetation, ice cover, etc.) would have to make up for change in energy balance. But no matter what the change, it will end up being costly.
First you say we are powerless over it because we have so little effect, and then you say a variation of a few hundreths of a degree can cause a hurricane. Of course it's so complex it also requires 'more study', and by the tone of you comments you seem to suggest that it will be impossible to predict nature.
Which is it? People: don't mistake this for anything other than it is, a bad ostrich immitation and an excuse to continue current habits because it is profitable - to the body and to the wallet.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
We can be certain that if we continue on our current path, growing emissions of greenhouse gases, we will change the climate dramatically some time this century.
The thing is, we can also be certain that even if every last human keels over dead, taking all technology with them, that the climate will change significantly over the next century.
Already I've noticed a climate shift starting in my area (Michigan)... we're returning to the type of winters we had 30 or 40 years ago, which had a lot more snow and cold weather then the winters we saw in the 90's, which typically had one hell of a snow-storm... but only that one, with temperatures reaching into the 50s sometimes in mid-December.
Human influence? Natural processes? The only answer is yes. Worth panicking over? I'm inclined to wait until something actually bad happens before panicking. (Note that "panicking" isn't isomorphic to "doing something"; I'm in favor of pre-emptive environmentalism, where on general principles we try to reduce our impact to the environment as much as possible. I don't see panicking as a valid reason to do anything, though.)
Maybe some more of those research dollars should be devoted to understanding why the warming is occuring and developing ways to cope with a warmer earth, rather than redundantly measuring the temperature via every possible method and then shouting: "GLOBAL WARMING!!!! GLOBAL WARMING!!!!"
Similar in concept to women learning to cope with rape rather than shouting about it, right? Rather than trying to "cope" with global warming, why not try to exert some control over man-made atmospheric changes that have a strong likelihood of contributing to it? What's the worst thing that happens? We reduce pollution and it doesn't solve the global warming problem? That seems a lot more desirable than assuming that pollution is not the cause of global warming, in which case being wrong could mean an ecological disaster.
Who the hell cares if we have to pay a few cents more for a banana or stack of CD-ROMs due to costs associated with reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (in manufacturing and/or transportation)? It beats the hell out of mass extinctions and ecological disaster.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.