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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."
Just a one- or two-degree change in temperature can lead to disease outbreaks." -- Drew Harvell, Cornell University Marine Ecologist
I find Americans to be, on balance, very intelligent and well-informed. They tend to hold views similar to those of intelligent, well-informed people of other countries, with two exceptions:
(1) Gun control. Way more smart Americans believe in the right to carry a weapon than smart non-Americans. Most of the rest of the Western world thinks the US is kind of insane on this issue, actually.
(2) Global warming. It is near-universally accepted outside the US that this is happening, and that humankind is responsible. But many smart Americans doubt this.
I resist the urge to inject my own views here because I simply wanted to point this out. It's odd.
I should buy some cement.
There may exist controversy around the topic of global warming and global warming may just be part of this planets natural way of evolving into whatever global climate is next. There were many types of global climates in the past and there is no proof that humans are the ones causing this temperature change.... and I read somewhere that termites and cows produce more green house gases than humans....
But if the fear of global warming causes people to adapt a cleaner and healthier lifestyle then so be it and i'm all for it and infact there should be active participation by all people to keep the enviornment clean.
People should, however, learn to share their concern about global warming with other global disastors happening.. or waiting to happen.. Illiteracy rates, population explosion, terrible health care for people, etc.. should all be taken care of and they all pose a huge short term risk which is much greater than the risk of global warming.
One can say "only a 1 or 2 deg. Celsius". In fact, first it is a mean temperature, second, the climate might turn out to on the verge of some major deterministic chaos state.
As an example, during the so called Little Ice Age the global temperature dropped by about 1 deg. C, but it caused the following: (from Wikipedia)
Glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, gradually engulfing farms and crushing entire villages. The River Thames and the canals and rivers of the Netherlands often froze over during the winter, and people skated and even held fairs on the ice. In the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing that island nation's harbors to shipping.
The chaotic nature of weather patterns might, in turn, hypothetically cause that some very small change causes a major switch, i. e. in sea currents. I do not know if anyone now either predicts or excludes for sure any such event, though.
So, concluding, I think that we do not really know how much serious to the climate the global warming is.
Global warming is deadly serious business and anyone with half a brain sees it coming.
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There was an article in a 1975 edition of Newsweek where scientists were sure of a global cooling. Now it's a global warming?
I think it's foolish to think that us humans can have such an impact of the climate. I'd hedge my bets that volcanic eruptions and other natural occurrences play a far more significant role that cars and buses.
You're thinking of the Christian right behind Bush - they believe in this thing called 'the end of days'
Yes. The return of Christ to set up his kingdom on earth for 1000 years. It's not because I'm a Christian that I feel I can ignore long-term issues like global warming. I personally think global warming is a farce as far as it being controlled by humans is concerned.
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.
We're hoping they're the first to starve when the troubles begin
I'm sorry you have such a negative view of Christianity. There are lots of people around this planet that profess to be Christian that don't act like them. My apologies if you've been slighted by someone who has made you hate Christians so much.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
> The Earth's 'normal' temperature isn't what we are used to anyway. Our civilisation has developed entirely in the aftermath of an ice age, and the Earth is still warming up after that.
I don't know what the concensus of scientists is on that, but I've read several articles lately that say we would already be freezing up again, if not for anthropogenic global warming. The problem is, we're warming things up too much, so in additon to neutralizing the onset of an ice age we are actually warming things up compared to what we had in the Neolithic.
By chance there's an article by William F. Ruddiman in the March Scientific American (arrived yesterday). His position is that you can model the long term fluctuations of temperature, CO2, and CH4 on the basis of several astronomical cycles, but something has gone awry in the past 8,000 years. Apparently early agriculture and the associated deforestation started driving the CO2 up about 8,000 years ago, and the invention of wet rice farming started driving CH4 up about 5,000 years ago. Each had been declining on the curve predicted by the astronomical cycles up until then, but suddenly started increasing when the should have kept on decreasing. (The article has some interesting plots; look it up if you get a chance.)
The astronomical cycles also predict that reglaciation should have started about 5,000 years ago, but instead the temperature remained essentially flat from then until the start of the Industrial Revolution. (The global warming increased as agriculture spread, fortuitously keeping temperature flat when it should have been dropping - until the Industrial Revolution kicked in.)
Thus at the start of Industrial Revolution things were already warmer than we had any right to expect, and then we started really driving it up from there. Regarding the present delta between actual temperature and expected temperature, Ruddiman attributes about half of it to historical agriculture and half to the Industrial Revolution, though like most other scientists he expects the I.R. component to keep going up (until we run out of cheap fossil fuels).
In a side bar he makes an interesting suggestion that the major cooling periods of the past 2000 years have followed plagues and depopulation of the Americas, both resulting in farmland reverting to forest (a CO2 sink). Frankly his graph for this effect doesn't look as convincing to me as the ones supporting his main thesis, but perhaps we'll be hearing more for or agains the idea in the future.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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What the "models" show is exactly what kind of results are required to receive more grants to study climate change.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
What that should have said in order to be meaningful was "simulating nuclear weapons". But you knew that. :-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Depends on how the equilibrium is reached. If the equilibrium falls on an attractor point it is indeed not easy to move something out of the equilibrium, because you have to overcome the attractor force. But there are also eqilibrium points at repulsors, points where the balance function diverges in every environment except for the repulsor point itself.
An interesting question is how the emissions break down, and especially why particular countries differ from each other.
Like (examples, just guessing) perhaps the US number is greatly increased by the heavy use of cars, Finland's number is increased by heating, France is fairly low due to significant use of nuclear power etc.etc.