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NASA Says 2005 Could Be Warmest Year Recorded
Ant writes "CNN reports that a weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept in the late 1800s." From the article: "While climate events like El Nino -- when warm water spreads over much of the tropical Pacific Ocean --affect global temperatures, the increasing role of human-made pollutants plays a big part."
You apparently want Earth colder and Mars hotter. Make up your mind!
Sudden global climate change is a serious issue that should be dealt with, but it is interesting how on one side NASA feels it's possible to control and affect positive massive global climate change on Mars but fears comparatively tiny changes on Earth.
I'm a big tall mofo.
...we live on Earth!
the coldest year on record
the wettest year on record
the dryest year on record
the fewest storms on record
the most storms on record
Depending on where you live, your exact location could have any of these conditions. It's funny how the most generic weather predictions can always be proven true.
All in all, 2005 looks to be pretty scary. I wouldn't go outside, based on NASA's findings.
---gralem
It's interesting that the year following a strong earthquake or tsunami is usually slightly warmer than average. I wonder what will people do when thanks to foolishly burning oil and coal we will have no polar ice and ozone keeping us cool. Isn't it time to use hydrogen as fuel? Hydrogen + oxygen = pure water. Simple as that. Is there any other reason than shady business in the middle east that stops us from using clean and cheap energy today? Is it more profitable for certain people to start wars and control oil than to do something good for the entire humanity? I blame people who vote for immoral politicians. In democracy people can have exactly the government they want. So I ask: why do people want wars? Why do people want the greenhouse effect? This is something I seriously cannot understand.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
In the US, we allow people to call themselves neo-Nazis and salute Hitler while holding a sign proclaiming that "God hates fags." And, as nauseating as I find those points of view, I think people should have the right to express them (but not to act on them.)
The bottom line is that the right to keep and bear arms is directly linked to the right to free speech (which most of us cherish). And one could argue quite strongly that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from (todays) academic orthodoxy is itself a direct application of that same right of free speech.
If the rest of the world jumps off a cliff, should America join them?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
So, your argument is, since the Bush and his handlers and loony supporters expect good things from judgement day, they're not worried about looming disasters, in fact they welcome the end.
How is this sensible?
We know the temperature rises, we know know earth changes. - We think we might have something to do with it.
It won't be the hottest year on record for long.
The only uncertain thing about global warming is when mankind will realize that the end of that development is to be avoided.
We have a government that does pretty much what we tell it because we have two guns for every three citizens and a tradition of cleaning house when needed.
You mean the American revolution? As far as democratic change goes, that was a pretty lightweight and recent effort. Nations like France fought long and hard for democracy, other nations in Europe have had a tradition of democracy going back a thousand years, and yet others had democracies and lost them again. America is a newcomer in the area of creating and maintaining democratic government, and there is no support for the view that America's gun policies are responsible for the current existence of democracy in the US, in particular since attitudes towards guns and gun ownership were altogether different around the time of the American revolution.
Please feel free to show the evidence that the U.S. government is significantly more scared of its populations than other national governments. Feel free to work in references to legislation such as the Patriot Act, where appropriate. Or any legislative issues where gun ownership made a difference.
CNN's crediblilty has been on self destruction for the last year or so. Their stories have been filled with hype and falsehoods on the hope that their ratings will not continue to fall.
There are always options, never failures.
Yeah, funny .. but actually it's interesting to compare our behaviour to that of a deadly virus: the latter will also consume all available resources multiplying as quickly as possible until its host is completely destroyed, and unless it can find a new host, it will die along with the host.
Personally I'd like to believe that we're more intelligent than a virus cell, but all evidence seems against it.
hand in hand don't they?
Where I live crime went down and continue to stays down because of concealed weapon permits and a requirement that all homes should have a gun on the premises (people can get exceptions for that). Gun control only puts the control back into the hands of the criminal. However that is another argument.
Global Warming is happening but what defines global warming isn't agreed upon. So we have 50+ years of good recordings and they consider that a baseline? Just a few years ago they were attributing the drought like conditions here in Georgia as part of Global Warming, up until we started going back over our rainfall average. Now this upcoming predicted wetter than normal Feb is also because of Global warming?
Who the hell would buy such malarky?
El Nino's and similar oceanic events have drastic and measurable affects on the weather. If it moves we can see a nearly immediate effect. Man "might" have a similar strong effect on the environment but it cannot cause rapid shifts in the weather that changes in the ocean or the effects of the sun.
I agree that we cause changes in our environment. I do not agree that we do as much as most politically charged scientist think, let alone the bash-Bush/America crowds that infest the Global Warming debate.
Having had relatives who visited Eastern Europe I suggest Europeans look in their own backyards for some of the worst abuses ever recorded. If they were in that condition in the 90s I cannot imagine what some areas in Russia are like. Follow up with visits to certain Asian cities which have such pollution the air is hard to breathe yet mysteriously Kyoto barely mentions curtailing them.
If you want America's cooperation then apply the same rules worldwide. Do not attempt to single out America just because its more successful than your country.
Except that he never said that. That one is from MAD magazine 1991.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/candidate.asp
Think of the dirty '30s dustbowl as being the norm, not an exception.
Think of Europe having much colder winters because of the lack of a thermocline to drive the gulf stream currents.
Think of rising oceans as the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps melt, and as the waters around the earth rise due to thermal expansion.
Think of recurring global catastrophies that make the recent tidal wave look like "just another day".
Think of what we're handing our kids.
Think - everyone said "don't worry, it won't happen in our lifetimes anyway."
I think they were wrong.
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I am in the middle of reading Michael Crichton's book State of Fear. It is a novel but based on solid science. In the book there is an eco-terrorist group trying to create some disasters to make its point that dramatic climatic change is going to destroy the world. The good guys point out that while while the average air temperature at the Earth's surface has increased by 0.06 C per decade during the 20th century, and by 0.19 C per decade from 1979 to 1998, the average temperature in Antartica has decreased and the thickness of the ice there is increasing. See article in Nature. This is important since Antartica has 90% of the world's ice. Greenland has 4% and the rest of the world combined has only 6%. So even if the world's temperature rises, there appears to be no danger of the sea level rising dramaticly.
Crichton overall message is that the scientific evidence for global warming is thin and that the environmental movement, ignoring science, has gone off track. He thinks we live in a 'State of Fear,' a 'near-hysterical preoccupation with safety that's at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism'.
Personally I think there has to be a balance where we work to protect the enviroment but do not have to tramatize our kids with scary tales of the world ending in their lifetimes.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
(1) Anyone who seriously studies history will recognize that giving all the military power to the government is a bad thing. Out weapons stance gaurantees we will never be invaded. It also empowers each American to defend tiher life, liberty and proper ty.
(2) Smart people recognize that all change is not bad change and that knee-jerk reactions often cause problems worse than what is being reacted to. Smart Americans also recognize that certain treaties written in Europe are little more than scams to force the US to pay Europeans for their failure to dominate the world economy.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I am not American but European.
What comes to the first issue: it is U.S. internal politics, so I don't worry about it that much. If the Americans want to let any nutjob out there to have guns, it is their problem, as long as it happens within their borders, i.e. they are only killing each other.
Not that I wouldn't find it insane, though. The pro-firearms people always say that "guns don't kill people, people do" as their main defense. But same applies to cars, and still driving a car is not a constitutional right, but a special privilege granted only for those, who have obtained a driver's license. And yet killing living things -- including, but not limited to humans -- is the primary function guns are actually designed for, but this is definitely not the case with cars.
The problem with global warming instead just seems to be that when people are not absolutely sure that global warming happens and that CO2 emissions caused by humans are actually contributing to it, they are willing to do nothing, as they feel that the preventative measures are too expensive to take without certainty of their necessity and effectiveness.
Unfortunately, this viewpoint is just as shortsighted as quarter-year capitalism -- and like that, it seems to be most common in the U.S. The problem is that these people do not realise two facts about the measures that should be taken to stop the expected global warning.
1) That if the humans have, in fact, contributing to global warming, as is assumed, the preventative measures must be taken now to be effective. If we postpone this until we have the bulletproof evidence, then it means that large-scale global warming is already happening, and it will be too late to take any preventative measures; we would have no option left but to deal with the conseqences, and we already know that that would become helluva lot more expensive than any preventative measures as the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica would melt in large scale, raising the sea level several metres and the extreme weather systems would become even much more common than they are now. Over time, it would probably cost a lot of human lives, too.
2) That if we take the preventative measures, and we'll find out later that we could have never done anything to stop the global warming, or that it wasn't actually even happening in first place, the technology we had developed wouldn't still be in vain; first of all, we wouldn't be dependent of oil anymore, which problem would need to be solved anyway, as oil is not really renewable energy source.
Second, we would likely have developed lots of new high technology stuff along the way, creating many entirely new businesses. These businesses and the value they would have added to the economies of the countries that would have developed them wouldn't be going away.
Car is a good analogy again, as Americans love their SUVs; consider, that in future SUVs would all be using fuel cells. Now, to avoid CO2 emissions, the hydrogen used in those must not be produced using fossil fuels. Nuclear is a good option, of course, but fission is not renewable either, and then we'd yet have to deal with all the waste, which still seems to be somewhat problematic. So how about if U.S. would just invest so much money to fusion research (still pocket money comparing to the war in Iraq), that it would become the leading provider of fusion technology in the world, for example? An entirely possible scenario. Lots of extra research among renewables would not be bad idea either. The way to turn all this into good business will be there, if political will is.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Think long hot DRY summers - crop failure, famine, death and disease.
Ah....long hot summers, I can't wait. As for dry and crop failure, that's what we have water for. It generally counteracts the effects of dryness. Also, there are countries with warm sunny climates and they haven't died of famine, in fact they'r thriving. What are you talking about? Are you saying that Italy for instance is an arid wasteland, where not even olives can grow?
Think of Europe having much colder winters because of the lack of a thermocline to drive the gulf stream currents.
That comment lacks a basis in reality. You have no evidence of the gulf stream being disrupted. Please stick to facts in this discussion.
Think of rising oceans as the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps melt, and as the waters around the earth rise due to thermal expansion.
That will be insignificant. Also the temperature will not have to rise high enough to melt the ice caps in order to give us a nice climate.
Think of recurring global catastrophies that make the recent tidal wave look like "just another day".
That is pure speculation, the same as your comment about cold winters. You have no evidence for this, you have given no details. Claiming the sky is falling doesn't make a coherent argument against global warming. You have nothing to say.
Think of what we're handing our kids.
A warmer, nicer place to live? What a great legacy.
At any rate, there's nothing we can do about it anyway, so just sit back, crack open a cool can of beer, warm up the barbecue, slap on the sun-cream and enjoy it.
You honestly think the government is more responsible because you have guns? You actually believe your government is afraid of you? Talk about an inflated sense of self-worth :-)
Seriously though, your "tradition of cleaning house when needed" would come to an abrupt end when that small gathering of armed civilians gets an Apache-helicopter-beatdown. Don't kid yourself about being able to wrest control of the government away by force.
Funny enough, do you know what the US would look like if this scenario were to play out?
Iraq.
There was an article in a 1975 edition of Newsweek where scientists were sure of a global cooling. Now it's a global warming?
Scientific hypothosi(sp?) evolve; religious nut jobs stay the same. That's the big difference. I'd be a lot more worried if thirty years of scientific research resulted in no changes in theory.
So what source do you cite that says Christians think it's okay to ignore global warming because of the Second Coming? I'd like to see that article.
You seem to be considering the relationship. Here's a link to your Rapture Index on your site. You have climate at "5" in your "waiting for the end of the world" chart. To be fair, your do say "We cannot take a defeatist attitude and just let things fall apart. Each of us has a responsibility to one another to care for the world around us.". But for us liberals out there, we don't actually see the fundamentalists doing much except burning books and bombing things. Maybe if the fundamentalists occasionally tried to save an endangered species or kept a national park from being turned into a stip mine or simply lobbied for higher fuel efficiency standards, we might think your words meant something.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Your picking of Italy as an example shows you know little on agriculture. Olives (and wine) do not need much water to grow. But you can't live on wine and olives. You need grass to feed the herds on, you need a lot more water to grow crops, vegetables and fruits. Southern Italy is becoming really dry by now, esp. Sicily.
Hot summers can be dangerous to old people, as over 10,000 dead in France during the 2004 (or 2003) summer show.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
First I admit my tendency to believe global warming is blown out of proportion, that more is made of it than is merited. This wouldn't be the first time scientists have given too much focus to something that turns out to be not a big deal. Not that there is no concern here, to put it mildly pollution is a bad thing that we need to stop, global warming or not.
That being said, I am honestly curious how climate shift = global warming? The earth goes through trends, there's no question about this. Climates do shift. If one place gets hotter and another colder, how is this global warming? Do the models show an overall warming trend or are we just seeing shifts of hot and cold to places we're not used to it?
I love my sig.
Global "warming" isn't going to just raise everyone's thermostat by 5'C. It's cranking up the chaotic fractal dimension of the atmosphere. Some places will get colder. Like when the Greenland ice melts, flushing fresh water into the North Atlantic, it will push the "Thermo Haline Circulation" farther south, making the warm Gulf Stream flow more directly from America to, say, France, instead of warming the Baltic. The UK will plunge into an arctic climate like northern Scandanavia, along with the rest of northern Europe. Other places are likely to also freeze or drop, though the average will be higher, meaning some places will become hellishly hot. And the kinds of storms we'll see in the ongoing transition will make hurricanes look like mist.
--
make install -not war
We've noticed.
Some so-called "statistician" had the gall to tell me that the odds in roulette are stacked in favor of the house! He mumbled some nonsense about "probability" which I was too stupid to comprehend and told me that while I "might have short-term, unpredictable changes in winnings, the long-term trend favored the house by several percent."
But I don't believe him anyway (we all know there are liars, damned liars, and statisticians). I asked him what number the ball would land on next, and he didn't know! He just gave me some lame "forecast" with a bunch of percentages. I may not understand this "probability," but I've been around the block a few times and know a quack when I see one.
How can he claim to predict what is likely to happen to my money in the long term if he can't even predict exactly what number the ball will land on next?!
Alright, croupier, I've got my kids' whole college fund to invest here, so let's start with a thousand on black! Wooo!
That's just typical. It takes the arrogance of some NASA rocket scientist to proclaim world shaking doomsday scenarios based on a single transitory fluctuation like 30 years of data. President Bush says we don't know enough to be able to make predictions about the changing climate one way or the other. And who are you going to believe? A man who told us that 'God talks through him' or some ivory-tower egghead who studies weather satellite data all day?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
- The actual cause of rising temps here ; from the Danish Meteorological Institute, Solar-Terrestrial Physics Division.
- Debunking the myth of consensus by the scientific community on GW here; from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- More GW debunking goodness here from the University of Virginia.
There are more reputable sources out there, these will just get you started. Geeks/nerds don't typically buy into things without having the facts. I find it amazing that when it comes to global warming, however, too many simply accept what their told by the media as true.SUVs are not bad, they are the result of quite a lot of evolving engineering that has revolved around peoples needs and wants. You don't NEED a later model computer to surf the net, you can surf just fine with a 486, but do you want to? Are you still on a 486 era computer, or are you driving something bigger/better/faster/fits your needs better machine right this second? I own solar PV and a wind genny, do you? I think anyone with a gram of brains should own some, and if they don't they are evil and stupid. Whoops, sounds elitist doesn't it? I advocate people do, but I wouldn't say they are evil and stupid if they don't. I'm still on a computer that most slashdotters would chunk in the rubbish, an old pp200, yet it fits my needs enough I don't have to junk it or pollute to get a larger/faster/ more energy hog one at this second. That will change obviously, but everyones needs are different, yes? So what is "evil"? what's stupid really? Is it because it's just different? Glass houses and stones.
People will naturally switch to practical alternatives once they are, to use the expression, "on the shelf' for purchase. Practical is the keyword there. Some of the hottest best selling vehicles in the US are the hybrids now, including SUV hybrids that are just now hitting the market. You look at what is hot at the car shows, look at what is being demanded at the dealers. I'll tell you if you haven't looked, Hybrids are hot, besides in small cars like the Prius, they are coming in the SUV design and pickups, and new design high mileage cleaner burning diesels are hot and coming on strong in the near future, as well as the increasing interest in such things as biodiesel. Those are the two really large trends now you can readily see with a little research.
We are such a physically large nation that mass public transportation is not near as practical as in other nations, so we use roads and private vehicles more, just the way it is and no amount of complaining is going to put light rail to everyones doorstep or back yard mr fusion reactors in everyones aprtament or home. The tech and money isn't there yet for that. Neither. Nor would it even be remotely practical, that's why it isn't being done, there's little demand for it, because it just plain wouldn't work. It would be a humongously impractical polluting expensive lame idea to try and put some sort of light rail everyplace that humans need to go to.
We have "cars" of various types. that is what suits our needs in the US presently as a universal general concept in transportation. Primarily this is what we use. Those few areas and niche markets that absolutely can be better served by light rail or walking, ARE being served with light rail and walking right now, daily millions commute on light rail, IF it serves their needs, and everyone has different needs. When I lived urban I frequently took the commuter train, except when it didn't serve my needs, then I drove the approriate vehicle, or occassionaly rented a large truck, say when moving.
It's just how we socially evolved, and those sorts of SUV styled vehicles are practical for a lot of people, millions and millions of people. SUVs caught on because they are just a latter version of the old "family station wagon",just with even better features, and more useful features. These got popular because they filled a "needs" niche so well, people (a lot of people, not all but a lot) needed a "universal" designed vehicle that could function to get dad to work (a commuter vehicle), haul the family to the beach(a very large car or van to fit all the family and their gear), bring home the lumber and bricks and bags of cement for the back yard weekend patio project (some sort of truck), and etc. You can buy three specifically designed vehicles for those purposes, or one vehicle that covers all the needed uses. If you don't believe it, go to any Home Depot on the weekend and look at the parking lots. You'll see huge numbers of SUVs packed with stuff that would normally
I would suggest you are someone that also needs to read more. We are heading into our 6th year of your nice hot and dry summers. As a result we are having to greatly curtail irrigation in most parts of the state and we aren't the only state having to do this. Unless major rains fall this spring and summer, many irrigators in the western part of the state will run out of water around the end of June and beginning of July. This amounts to about 1/3 to 1/2 the water needed to fully raise a crop. Last summer we were fortunate in having one of the top 5 coolest summers on record to spare some of the impact but it was a minor blip on the screen. At the current pace of drawdowns, the largest reservoir in the state is in danger of growing dry. This was a lake that not 3 years ago was over 20 miles long and 4 miles wide. Some groundwater irrigators have had to either look at drilling much deeper wells or giving up irrigation due to the large drops in water levels created by the increased pumping. The comparison to areas such as Italy is a specious arguement at best as the crops you cited are indigenous to their part of the world. Olives require an arid climate. Also, you don't have to go very far afield to exotic parts of the world to find devestation in local populaces due to hot and dry climates wiping out crops. In parts of Russia and former Soviet states, they have had and most likely will continue to have crop failures due to the changes in climates in their parts of the world. To believe that we are somehow immune to it happening here is akin to sticking your head in the sand.
Granted, most of the global warming being recorded can be traced to increased solar activity warming the oceans but some recent studies I've read show a shortfall in that impact that could only be accounted for by human activity. And actually, most indicators that scientists are looking at to explain the the Florida hurricanes this past season point to influences or warming. Glacier depletion also started before the increases in solar activity began. The only account for this has been the increase in overall global temps. It would be wise to remember that global warming does not mean increases of several degrees. What seem like small increases of a degree or 2 to the average person are enormous changes to the climate. To believe that there is nothing that can be done is similar to the same diatribes put forth not that long ago that there is nothing to be done about air and water polution. Last I was aware, great strides had been made in both areas in this country and abroad. And since many of the same strategies also reduce carbon releases into the atmosphere, I would posit that there is something "we" can do rather than instead being so flippant as to say oh well have a beer and enjoy.
Personally I'd like to believe that we're more intelligent than a virus cell, but all evidence seems against it.
Humans have demonstrated the ability to alter the host to serve it's needs such that it can support an increasing numbers. On a local scale areas of the earth that were not habitable were developed through irrigation, building, etc, to support humans. On a macro scale, there were those that said the earth could never grow enough food to support billions of people, however techniques have progressed where we in fact can.
All life works the same way, reproduce and grow until you maximize the resources at hand, what most life then does is evolve to take advantage of new resource pools, humans have been able to intelligently create to take advantage of new resouce pools.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
When you hear the US talking about a "war on [fill-in-the-blank]", you have to realize that the main philosphic drivers of the attitude are a belief that a zero-sum game is in play. The US has excelled, in the private sphere, at pareto-optimal games, but politically, has never gotten the hint.
I forget what 8 was for.
I recently moved away from Florida. While there, the drinkable ground water level dropped significantly each year.
The aquifer that supplies that region extends up into Georgia and slopes downhill into Florida. As more water is sucked out for use by Floridians (for lawns, golf courses and industry) brackish water is drawn in, permanantly contaminating the aquifer. This trend is moving steadily south as the water level drops each year and can be seen by maping the increase in private wells contaminated by salt water (something I was involved in when I lived and worked down there). The trend is startling and rapid. Any increase like the one mentioned in the article will only exacerbate this growing problem.
The aquifer cannot recover from this and increases in temperature (already barely tolerable down there, in my opinion) combined with Florida's constant growth in population (inexplicable to me :) all point to trouble in the future with the water supply down there (although some of the worst water abusers were paper pulp mills and golf courses, rather than private citizens).