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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."
Seeing as how I live 30 miles North of Yellowstone, I'm not rooting for that option.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
Like this one?
. volcanoes.reut/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/10/12/alaska
With each damning new report and every shred if indicting evidence that indeed the earth is entering into massive warming because of human activity it scares me a little more. As an average citizen, I am trying to help by:
I only wish others would wake up and smell the coffee and be diligent too.
It's all lies, I tell you, all lies! It's a conspiracy by the atheistic climatological establishment to make us all buy small cars and turn off our lights. It's every American's God-given right to puke greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But thank God that George W. Bush, His faithful servant, is making sure that these foul secularist reports are altered, so that we can continue our God-sanctioned practice of driving large vehicles, burning fossil fuels for electricity and all those other things that a proper Christian country ought to do.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Don't count out a huge volcanic eruption. With all the natural disasters so far this year, a nice big poof out of a volcano would round things out nicely.
How long until my House in the Canadian Rockies becomes tropical beachfront?
It's nice and cool in my new Hummer v2.
How many other 2005s do they have records of? If this is the only one, it will be the warmest, coldest, shortest, and longest 2005 on record forever!
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
On a non related note real estate valuations in Siberia and Canada are rising to new highs.
**Life is too short to be serious**
It has come to our notice that you have been using the registered trademark of our client GOD(TM) for justifying Mr George Bush's actions. This is a cease and desist order as our client has never authorized any of Mr George Bush's actions and frankly considerd such advertising offensive as Mr George Bush happens to be an employee of our rival firm.
Thanking You
The only lawyer in heaven
**Life is too short to be serious**
This sounds great until you realize that more atmospheric energy implies more extreme weather. And that it will shift climate zones so that regions which were once temperate become deserts, or deserts become rainforests. A shift in the atmospheric equilibrium will lead to more water vapor in the atmosphere, and more intense rains and flooding. The sudden melting of vast quantities of land-locked ice will release pressure from the earth and potentially lead to earthquakes (did you know that the island of Great Britain is slowly tilting because of the enormous weight of ice that was lifted during the last Ice Age? And that happened gently over thousands of years.)
You know, maybe humans are responsible for global warming, and maybe they're not. But it's happening, and perhaps it would be prudent to do what we can to not enhance the warming any further. Because you know, why fuck with the one planet we've got?
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.
Try telling that to people living in low lying coastal areas or on small islands.
Read this book The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery, if you are genuinely interested in doing something about climate chnage.
It is brilliant and timely call to action for everyone to reconsider their energy use as it applies to C02 emmissions.
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.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
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...
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
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.
No, that's not true at all. All terrestrial measurements have shown a steady increase - the satellite measurements were the exceptions, and showed a much slower increase in temperature.
Until last year, fossil fuel advocates pointed to the satellite measurements as refutation of the warming trend. Then, a bunch of clever guys realised that the problem was that the satellite measurements were taking an average of a rapidly heating troposphere (where we live) and a cooler upper section of the atmosphere.
There's a great discussion of this in the rather frightening book The Weather Makers by Australian scientist Tim Flannery, which is due for release in the US about now.
I'd rather listen to a scientist than to a "friend" of science.
It seems very suspicious than an organization could be dedicated EXCLUSIVELY to deny claims about global warming.
Plus, why is it called with such an emotionally moving name like "friends of science"?
I searched google, and the only references to friendsofscience.org were forums inside that same site. Plus, I checked the hosting company, and it's "reveal.ca", a BUSINESS SEARCH company.
Can you spell "Astroturfing"?
Look, it's MORE THAN OBVIOUS that companies will lose A LOT OF MONEY if the U.S. abides by the Kyoto Protocol. Don't you think that they will start creating phantom organisations to dismiss the idea of global warming?
Look, we all know what companies like Microsoft are capable of. You think companies that produce huge emissions of CO2 and other pollutants wouldn't do ANYTHING to keep earning money?
I'm sorry but you seem to naive to believe the "friends of science".
Record highs?
/ mars_snow_011206-1.html
Hmm. I don't think so.
After all, they're still finding Viking farms under the ice in Greenland.
I suspect that we have people looking at short term changes and ignoring the geological evidence about cyclic changes in world temperatures.
As another data point look at: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem
Somehow, I don't think what man is doing on Earth has much of an effect on Mars.
Suppose the temperate band moves 5 degrees towards the poles, what happens? Would there be the same amount of arable land, or more, or less?
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY has the slightest idea.
And even worse, nobody will ever have.
You see, climate is the poster child for dynamic complex systems, and is inherently unpredictable beyond a few days.
Climate is obviously affected by global mean temperature, but is not the same thing.
A lot of people here seems to think that a warmer Earth will be just like now, but you know, warmer.
In reality, even a small change of mean temperature is going to cause massive disruptions in climate patterns, but we have no way to predict them.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
"Myth 4" is another mixture of truth and falsehood. Yes, water vapour is a greenhouse gas. However, relative humidity is more or less a constant in the atmosphere. Thus, the amount of water vapour (absolute humidity) is driven by the temperature. In this way water vapour increases the effect of any other heating - its an amplifier, but not a cause of global warming.
If you look over the site, you find more gems. "Myth 6", for example, not-cites the 1996 IPCC report, totally ignoring the current (2001) and upcoming reports.
Wikipedia has a reasonable good set of articles on global warming.
Stephan
Sometimes it is. But quite often, it is the main thing leading you down the wrong path.
In this case, the "I know what's happening crowd" is looking at some very tiny variations from a very abbreviated data set and drawing some very large conclusions from them, and then clamoring for some very profound and difficult reactions on the part of, well, just about everyone.
It is well to keep in mind that that the .04 degree quoted in the article is not .04% (it is much less) and that the highest recorded temperature means that we've got a number which should be evaluated as one sample out of 1x10^6 if we want to understand what this year's temperature stats mean in terms of human history.
Yet... it can only be evaluated as one sample out of 2x10^3, which can be fairly characterized as what it means to my grandfather and not a lot more.
That's not to say that global warming is, or isn't, happening. Just that these temperature measurements are woefully lacking as good quality signposts. We can add to that a few core measurements and some general knowledge, which doesn't significantly improve the quality of the data for our current situation.
We should keep in mind that the earth sees huge temperature swings without the aid of man's actions. At one time, North America was tropical here in Montana. I live not even 15 miles from where you can dig T. Rex skeletons from the ground as well as tropical vegetation. At another time, this area was covered by glaciers. Neither circumstance required or depended upon man's intervention or activity.
Yes, the world changes without our approval. Yes, we'll have to adapt if it does. Yes, we'll have to be clever about it when the changes are major. No, this year's temperature isn't a certain sign of any such change. Yes, we should continue to pay attention. No, we shouldn't start running around like chickens.
We now return you to your usual sensationalist ravings. :-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
*cough-katrina-cough*
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
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