2005 Will Probably be Warmest on Record

Nilmat writes "A Washington Post Article notes that 2005 will probably have the highest mean global temperature of any year since the advent of systematic temperature records. At the moment, the mean temperature is about 0.75 degrees C above the global mean from 1950 to 1990, approximately .04 degrees higher than 1998, the year of the previous record. Only something dramatic, such as a major volcanic eruption, could cause enough cooling to miss setting a new record."

Comments

Volcanic eruption you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like this one?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/10/12/alaska. volcanoes.reut/index.html

Grapes in Sweden

[Henriok]

Wild grapes were groing in Sweden during the neolithic age, about 6000 years ago. We'd be lucky to even grow them in green houses now.

Re:Grapes in Sweden

[Misagon]

Wine is grown on Gotland today and there is information on that site which you can use to compare the growing conditions to other parts of Sweden.

You should also consider that many of our cultivated species are not as resilient to weather conditions as the older variations they originate from. It is quite possible that the grape found in Sweden in the neolithic area could survive the present-day climate.
Humans have also wiped out entire species in prehistoric times. Grapes are tasty. :)

Science is hard

[jfengel]

No, correlation is not causation. But when you have correlation and the most accurate models imply causation, you definitely have to think hard about what you're doing. The fact that global warming was predicted by the models before the data could be taken further suggest that it's not simply alarmist readings of the data.

Science is hard; in many fields it's impossible to prove causation completely. But when you have a theory, and the theory holds up to all the available data, you act as if the theory were true and make decisions based on that. You don't over-react as long as there are competing theories that imply otherwise, but this is one more piece of data to suggest that global warming is very real and quite possibly man-made.

The "quite possibly" means that we shouldn't over-react; as you say, the correlation need not imply causation. But as the burden of evidence falls on the side of man-made global warming, it becomes increasingly dangerous to rely on "Yeah, but are you really, utterly, totally, completely sure?" arguments against action.

Re:Science is hard

[jnaujok]

Those models do not "predict" global warming. They show a trend towards warming with an increase in atmospheric CO2. However to call these models "the most accurate" is quite a stretch. I ask you to look into the quality of these models and ask simple questions, such as, "do you accurately model the largest heat sink on the planet, or are your oceans just a thin slab of water that is basically a rigidly driven model that doesn't adjust to changes realistically." Ask if they solve their fluid model for all variables, or do they just solve for two of the three (pressure and temperature, but not volume). I can go on for hours about how completely inaccurate these models are.

But I don't have to. The models show that CO2 causes an increase because the modelers set up the model so that CO2 holds more heat in the model. Good golly, what a shock.

On the other hand, we have data that all of the inner planets are now heating up. The Twin MER rover teams were shocked at how warm the Martian winter was this year on Mars. They never expected their rovers to make it through the winter, yet both survived without a problem. In just the 30 years since the Viking missions, the temperature of Mars has increased substantially. In fact, it's done so by very nearly the exact same percentage as the temperatures seen on Earth. Similar remote measurements of Venus have shown the same increase.

Now, unless you want to claim that Dick Cheney is secretly driving his SUV's on Mars, that means the cause of the rise in temperature must be mainly external. And, oh look, here's a study that's found just that.

Science is hard, Climatology is very hard. We have no hard evidence to support anthropogenic global warming theories. We have computer models. The same people on this list who would scoff at the idea of a computer predicting the weather one week in advance, will accept, without the slightest hesitation, the prediction of a computer 100 years into the future. And, no, don't give me the "it's climate, the little changes disappear into climate" because that's bullshit. It's been disproven time and time again. The "best model" in 1995 mispredicted the temperature in 2000 by 300%. That's not a minor mistake, that's not within one standard deviation, that's a wild-ass guess that was totally wrong.

Trillions of dollars and Millions of lives will be lost if the "we should take action just in case" crowd wins. Some of the best estimates say that cutting CO2 by 50% will cost 1.5 BILLION LIVES by 2100. Are you so eager to pull the trigger?

Global Dimming

[crabpeople]

I saw a program, i believe from the BBC on Global Dimming a few months ago. The idea being that at the same that we have been upping the greenhouse gasses we put into the atmosphere, we have also been blocking out the sun with the various soots and particulate matter that goes with it. This drove us into a net cooling period during those years, as the sunlight was reflected back into space. The researcher explained that this may be why global warming hasnt been as evident as it should have been in the past 30 years.

Now that we burn cleaner gas, and try and be more environmentally friendly, this reflective layer of the atmosphere is getting thinner. this then compounds the global warming aeffect already in motion. perhaps that is what we are seeing today.

 

It's getting pretty hot on mars too!

[TheNarrator]

Those irresposible Republicans! They're screwing things up across the entire galaxy.

Article

And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.

Blame the volcanoes

[dada21]

The author must realize that having record low eruptions in 1998 and 2005 is the cause of the temperature hike.

See what happened in 1816.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Erioll]

How about This Site?

Some excerpts:

Myth 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.
Fact: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures.

Average ground station readings do show a mild warming over the last 100 years, but well within the natural variations recorded in the last millenium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas ("heat islands") which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas ("land use effects").

And this:

Myth 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.

Fact: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. The CO2 increase was only 0.4% over the last 50 years, rather than the 5% per 100 years quoted by Kyoto. However, as measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this. There is solid evidence that as temperatures rise naturally and cyclically, the earth's oceans expel more CO2 as a result.

And don't forget the worst greenhouse gas of all: WATER VAPOUR!

Myth 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.

Fact: Water vapour or clouds, which makes up on average about 3 % of the atmosphere by volume, and - according to several researchers - about 60% by effect, is the major greenhouse gas. 97% of greenhouse gases are water vapour by volume. Moreover, because of its molecular weight and absorptive capacity, water vapour is 3000 times more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Those attributing climate change to CO2 rarely mention this important fact.

Better start campaigning to remove all the water vapour emissions. Oh wait, water covers 71% of the earth's surface. No dice there...

Yes there are advocates for global warming, and "evidence" therein, but there is much evidence against it, and ESPECIALLY against man-made warming. Today's Calgary Sun article by Licia Corbella also has some things to say on the topic.

Re:Let me be the first troll to say

[clayasaurus]

Because it can trigger the next ice age, like a less dramatized version of "The Day After Tomorrow." "if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age - in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset - and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world." http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_age s.html http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/articles/02/101014 0.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12 374,1083419,00.html http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm Or just google it yourself.

Whoa, hold on a second

[benhocking]

Are you actually suggesting that a web-site called "friendsofscience.org" wouldn't actually be friendly to science? Next thing you're going to tell me is that the Clear Skies Initiative allows for increases in pollution...