Warmer Oceans linked to Stronger Hurricanes

linguizic writes "According to Scientific American, global warming could be creating stronger hurricanes: 'Since the 1970s, ocean surface temperatures around the globe have been on the rise--from one half to one degree Fahrenheit, depending on the region. Last summer, two studies linked this temperature rise to stronger and more frequent hurricanes. Skeptics called other factors into account, such as natural variability, but a new statistical analysis shows that only this sea surface temperature increase explains this trend.'"

Comments

This can't be true

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming is a Liberal Myth. Rush and Sean said so!

Re:This can't be true

[WilliamSChips]

Rush and Sean said so!

That much, on any controversial issue, is enough to make me think something is false.

Re:This can't be true

[TroopaCabra]

Damn. You beat me to it. I was just going to say the EXACT same thing, almost. Anyone that talks of global warming is a liberal- and also likely a terrorist too. F'n Wackos! so why are we having more potent hurricanes again?

Re:This can't be true

[jadavis]

I know what you said was a joke, but there's a real issue here. Most people believe global warming is happening, and most people believe that a part of that warming is caused by humans. It doesn't really matter if it's caused by humans or not, if a natural cycle throws the environment out of whack it's just as bad as if humans do.

The question is what to do about it. We can:
(1) Totally ignore it.
(2) Put our entire economy on hold.

Or anything in between. To determine what we should do requires a lot more information than we actually have. What's the extent of the damage? How much of that damage will be prevented if we do something now? How much of our economy will be affected by doing something?

Re:This can't be true

[Levilprivateer]

I sigh.

Natural process of science used to forward political agendas.

Re:This can't be true

[MightyMartian]

It would seem to me, irregardless of the causes to global warming, and irrespective of whether there is a solution, the industrialized world weening itself of its oil addiction as quickly as possible is a damn good idea.

Re:This can't be true

[jadavis]

That's the whole problem I was talking about. How quickly is "as quickly as possible"? We could cap the oil wells, and decide not to use any existing oil products starting tomorrow. But everyone knows that's a bad idea.

So what is a good idea? What's happening right now is the "gradual" approach, more investment is going into alternative fuel sources that may be cheaper in the long run than fossil fuels. And fossil fuels are becoming more expensive. There will be a point when fossil fuels are no longer cost-effective.

It seems a little strange that we're facing two problems at once, and one seems to solve the other. If we're running out of cheap oil, then we're going to stop releasing it into the atmosphere. So what does the Kyoto protocol, or something like it, really accomplish? Does it just punitively deny the United States access to the cheap oil remaining, in favor of other nations? What is the result?

I have a hard time believing that we're not going to make use of the remaining cheap oil, so why bother slowing it down a little?

Re:This can't be true

[colmore]

I love how many people on one side of this debate (there are more than two) seem to think investing in new technology and researching effective ways of changing consumption patterns amount to "putting our economy on hold." Talk about futurephobia.

If I had a cent to invest, I'd be looking for the intersection for emerging consumer economies (that is, formerly 3rd world countries with rapidly growing middle classes) and alternative energy sources, particularly those that will survive increased international pressure as evidence for climate change caused by human carbon emissions masses (the evidence is already pretty rock solid, but as more amasses, fewer and fewer in the international community will be able to ignore it.) So look for zero carbon (wind looks to be the most promising right now) and carbon-neutral (biofuels, you only release as much carbon as what you grew absorbed in its lifetime - as opposed to burning carbon you dig out of the ground) power solutions in the former 3rd world. Invest across a handful of technologies and markets, and you're pretty sure to do well.

Put our economy on hold? WTF? Things are changing. Economies are always in states of flux. Don't deny science because it might be inconvenient to your pocketbook; reorient your pocketbook to the current situation.

Re:This can't be true

[crazyb24]

Try reading this Harvard article discussing what the major contributor to global temperature rise is. In short, its the sun. http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/11.06/Bri ghteningSuni.html Alarmist liberals never have any facts... the truth is that there are other factors that contribute to global rise in temperature. There has been reduced volcanic activity since the mid-1800's. Volcanoes reduce global temperatures by ejecting materials into the atmosphere that block the sun, and make the planet cooler. Air quality has been improving steadily over the past 3 decades, while emmisions have been reduced. Research will prevent you from being an uneducated liberal. That is what makes Sean and Rush the successes that they are and Air America the failure that it is.

Re:This can't be true

[urbazewski]

If we're running out of cheap oil, then we're going to stop releasing it into the atmosphere.

Not if we switch to cheap, dirty coal first. In the long run, price increases will induce people to search for alternatives. But as Keynes famously said, in the long run, both you and I will be dead. How much damage will be caused in the meantime?

Simply relying on the market mechanism to fix this problem won't work, because the costs of pollution are not included in the market price of oil. I get all of the benefits when I drive my car, but I don't pay all of the costs because I don't pay for the effects of the pollution on other people. Multiply that by every car, every airplane, every power plant that burns oil, coal or natural gas, every cow (which produce significant amounts of methane), and so on, and you have a massive market failure.

So what does the Kyoto protocol, or something like it, really accomplish?

It will address the market failure that arises from market externalities like pollution.

There are market-based solutions that use precisely the mechanism you describe; it's called a carbon tax. Tax every carbon-releasing activity, so that the price reflects the true cost, including the release of greenhouse gasses, and suddenly wind power and solar will be economically vible.

Reducing the emission of greenhouse gasses right now makes solid economic sense:

United States Needs Incentive Based Policy to Reduce Carbon Emissions

Economists' Statement on Climate Change

Re:This can't be true

[skahshah]

So, you acknowledge that Global Warming exists, but it's mainly a natural phenomenon. Good. Does that mean that we shouldn't do anything about it, at least for the part that isn't "mainly" ? Or maybe we can't do anything ? What is your solution ? Praying ? Now, to pretend that Rush and Sean are successful because of their research... Oh my God ! I'm replying to someone who believes Rush and Sean are educated and do research !

Re:This can't be true

[EsbenMoseHansen]

That somewhat old theory has long been discounted. It had some severe problems to begin with (like the cause coming after the effect), but more to the point the models that use the greenhouse gasses as the main contributer have accurately predicted presentday temperatures. Volcanic activity accounts for less than 1% of the total CO_2 in the air, and can therefore be safely discounted. Air quality is completely irrelevant to this issue.

Now I'm certainly not an alarmist. But nor am I a great believer in convenient truths. Usually, if a theory makes you happy, you should be extra sceptic. Like when "firefox usage will overtake IE in 5 years" is for me... that would be wonderful, but I do not trust myself with a theory like that. I think you are victim to the same fallacy... you oh so want this to be true (and who doesn't?), and so discount any evidence against. Very human, but nature doesn't care about humans.

Re:This can't be true

[DRM_is_Stupid]

Clip from the beeb: If existing clean energy and energy conservation technologies were applied in full, Mr Clinton said, the US could "meet and surpass the Kyoto targets easily in a way that would strengthen, not weaken, [its] economy". Okay, I know what you're (or someone else is) going to say. So he got a blow job, what's the big deal?

Re:This can't be true

[jadavis]

Not if we switch to cheap, dirty coal first.

If the government would let people build more nuclear plants, I don't think coal would be competitive. I live near several nuclear power plants, and I wouldn't mind living near more.

price reflects the true cost,

Again, nobody knows what those "true costs" are. Are you suggesting you can accurately place a dollar figure on something as complex as global warming? Is $1.00 a gallon too much or too little? Why or why not?

This is the entire problem here. Nobody knows the costs. If we reduce our oil consumption this year by 10%, will that help at all? How much will it help? The cheap oil will still sit in the ground, and likely still be consumed by someone in the near future. So it's still released in the atmosphere.

Real cost-benefit analysis is important. Not hand waving and arbitrary, out-of-your-ass figures. You can make global warming sound scary, I'm sure. And it is scary, you're right. But we shouldn't put our economy on hold for some completely made up tax, that's based on nothing other than "we should reduce our consumption of fossil fuels".

Re:This can't be true

[jadavis]

Economies are always in states of flux.

I've got no problem with investment in alternative energy. I have a problem when people start arbitrarily declaring oil "bad" and that we must place arbitrary taxes on it. Cheap oil will be pulled out of the ground and burned pretty much no matter what the US does.

If we do enact any policy, it better be based on sound cost-benefit analysis of the expected result. And I don't think anyone really knows those figures at all.

Re:This can't be true

[jadavis]

easily in a way that would strengthen, not weaken, [its] economy

You seriously believe that Clinton, or anyone else, can accurately predict the benefits of reducing global warming?

A lot of these energy ideas are happening in the free market, without government increasing taxes on oil. Some people want that to happen faster, but have no solid figures. We can't make arbitrary policies.

Re:This can't be true

[deKernel]

Do understand what the parent said? It is a natural progression. Do you really think that we humans can change the natural cycle?

Re:This can't be true

[mr_death]

but more to the point the models that use the greenhouse gasses as the main contributer have accurately predicted presentday temperatures.

How well have the models predicted temperature in the future, and for how long? We seem to get a "it's going to get EVEN WARMER" prediction every quarter or so, which suggests two things: one, the new scary model hasn't predicted anything yet, and two, the producer of the new scary model doesn't think the current models are good enough.

When we have an agreed upon stable model, and that model has predicted temperatures correctly for a long time (say, five years, or a decade), then we have something suitable for a rational policy. Until then, the new scary models are almost certainly nothing more than curve-fitting.

Re:This can't be true

[Phronesis]

The problem is that the year-to-year noise in climate means that you have to look over something like 20 years to get an unambiguous signal. If I accept your premise---that we don't have actual testable predictions in hand---we wait 20 years and find the models are correct, it will be too late to stop a lot of warming because we will have continued to pump CO2 into the atmosphere for that long (enough according to some predictions, to put us irreversibly over a tipping point for extreme climate change over the following century). CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases affect climate for more than a century afer they're emitted and it's much more expensive to try to remove them from the atmosphere after they're emitted than to prevent emissions in the first place.

The reason to start taking action on global warming before we're 100% certain about the consequences was most articulately stated by Condoleezza Rice: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The same arguments for applying the precautionary principle to Iraq's purported WMD applies even more so to global warming because whatever criticism you may raise about global warming, there is much more solid scientific evidence for this threat than there ever was for Iraq having WMDs.

Finally, I'd point out that according to your criterion for "prediction" we will have to wait tens of thousands of years before we can be convinced that evolution is a tested theory, because that's the time scale for macroscopic speciation to take place.

Re:This can't be true

[EsbenMoseHansen]

I should have been clearer. The models link the levels of various gasses, the distance to the sun and such factors and predicts the mean temperature. This is the models that has been remarkedly accurate on both historical data and near-future data (now current). They are based not on curvefitting, but theorectical calculations, and as such does not need as much time to prove themselves.

The fact that you call it the "scary model" lends credence to my fear that you have simply chosen to close your eyes to the facts and likely outcomes. I'm sure nothing I can say will change this, and therefore my remarks are entirely directed at any other reader that might yet be openminded enough to see this from a rational point of view :p

And yes, there are alarmists. I do not believe them. The human race will survive, not great food catastrophe is around the corner. What not doing anything about this will likely mean is less economic growth worldwide than would otherwise have been the case. Whether we should be prudent and bank our chances on the low-risk approach or reckless and go for the high-risk is a political decision, which we all participate in at some level (at least in the free world).

Re:This can't be true

[Phronesis]

There is mounting evidence that the natural water vapor cycle is the major cause of "Global Warming": You're confused. Water vapor causes about 50% of the greenhouse effect, but the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is controlled by other things, such as carbon dioxide concentrations. Because water vapor is close to saturation all over the world, water vapor concentrations can't grow unless something else is causing the atmosphere to change to raise the temperatures. There have been several elegant experimental tests of the water-vapor feedback that demonstrate that water vapor concentrations change on a global scale in response to other forcings, which include anthrpogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

As to the charge that global warming is a left-wing plot, how do you explain that John McCain, Paul O'Neil (George W. Bush's first secretary of the treasury and former CEO of ALCOA), Sherwood Boehlert (Republican head of the House Science Committe), and all seven of the living current and former EPA administrators (these include administrators appointed by Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes) all agree that global warming is a real threat to the environment and that it's caused by human activity? Even President Bush agrees that global warming is real and is caused by people.

Elsewhere, officials from 30 major corporations, including Ford Auto, ALCOA, American Electric Power, General Electric, DuPont, Whirlpool, and Intel, agree that anthropogenic global warming is a serious problem and have voluntarily pledged to reduce their companies' greenhouse gas emissions.

These people are not Communist or Green Party fanatics. They are mostly Republican capitalists who worry that their grandchildren will not have the same opportunities they had if they don't take care of the environment.

Re:This can't be true

[DRM_is_Stupid]

Putting universal tax on oil was what G. W. Bush wanted, and one of the reasons why he disagreed with the Kyoto Protocol, which did something a bit more complicated.

Re:This can't be true

[jadavis]

I'm not sure I understand your point. There already are taxes on oil, at least indirectly. I don't care whether GWB wants higher taxes or not, or universal taxes on oil or not. We shouldn't raise the tax on oil arbitrarily. Solid figures are required for a good policy decision. And solid figures are what we are missing.

Re:This can't be true

[Phronesis]

Jaworowski hasn't published his hypothesis that ice cores produce unreliable CO2 data in a peer-reviewed journal, so the details of his analysis aren't available for serious scholars to scrutinize. If he were correct it would be hard to see how, despite the gross errors he asserts, different ice cores from all over the earth would produce CO2 concentrations that agree so well with one another.

As to H2O, you're just wrong. I challenge you to cite a peer-reviewed scientific calculation that finds 95% of the greenhouse effect due to water vapor. It's pretty straightforward to do these calculations and if you posit that almost all the greenhouse warming is due to water vapor, you find much greater meridional temperature contrasts than we observe (because there is so much water vapor in the tropics and so little over the polar regions) and a greater environmental lapse rate than we observe (because water vapor falls off so quickly with altitude, while CO2 remains fairly constant, so radiative cooling to space would start at lower altitudes).

In fact, H2O contributes around half of the greenhouse effect and CO2 contributes a bit more than a quarter. See The Earth's Annual Radiation Budget," by J.T. Kiehl and K.E. Trenberth, Bull. Am. Meteorolog. Soc. 78 (2), 197-208 (1997) for details.

The Ordovician climate had significantly higher CO2 levels than today, but there were no significant glaciers during most of that period and the sea levels were much higher than today. If we transitioned into an Ordovician climate, all of Florida and the Gulf Coast would be underwater.

Re:This can't be true

[armb]

> It doesn't really matter if it's caused by humans or not
> How much of that damage will be prevented if we do something now?

Those two are connected in a way. If we caused (most of) the warming, we have a good chance of being able to stop it getting worse, or at least reducing the rate at which it gets worse, by not going on doing the same stuff (which might mean "put our entire economy on hold" or might mean "do different stuff").
If it is random natural variation and all our burning fossil fuel etc. really is insignificant, then we're probably stuffed, because any fixes we can manage will probably be equally insignificant.

Re:This can't be true

[zoephile]

If Rush and Sean are saying it's a myth then it's most definately true.

Re:This can't be true

[Phronesis]

In what fields of science does peer review entail detailed auditing? I have worked in many areas, from molecular spectroscopy to quantum optics to electrocardiology to stratospheric photochemistry and I have yet to see any field of science that satisfies your criteria for good peer review: paid reviewers who audit raw data, detailed calculations, and computer code. You seem to funamentally misunderstand the role of peer review in science if you think that this is what peer review is supposed to do.

The generally accepted purpose of peer review is to answer the questions: Does the paper ask interesting and important questions? Are the methods described appropriate to the problem at hand? Supposing the author accurately carried out the procedures described in the paper, do the data adequately support the conclusions?

Peer review is not supposed to provide an audit of the paper, but an editing function: if a paper passes peer review it is not guaranteed to be correct, but is deemed adequately interesting and plausible to be worth someone's time to read it carefully. The question whether it's plausible is in the eye of the reader.

The problem with Jaworowski is not that peer review of his work would constitute an audit of all his calculations, but that it would provide a document that meets the basic standards of plausibility, so others could try to replicate it or challenge its assumptions. Since Jaworowski doesn't publish his criticisms in serious science journals he denies others the chance to read detailed accounts of his methods.

As to the IPCC, its role is to review the published literature. It has no budget to fund original research or detailed audits of others' work. The way bad science gets corrected is for good science to challenge it. There have been many examples of people challenging and overthrowing popular but false theories by working within the system and there's no credible evidence that the commies have taken over all the science journals and funding agencies as you suggest.

About paleoclimatology: There certainly have been prior periods of global warming as well as cooling and you are also, no doubt, aware that past periods of rapid climate change generally coincided with mass extinctions. Hurricanes, volcanoes, and earthquakes also occur naturally, but that doesn't mean that they are desirable or benign. As I said in my last post, the Ordovician did indeed have greater CO2 concentrations, higher temperatures, and higher sea levels than the present, but that doesn't mean that an Ordovician climate would be desirable, especially for the residents of the Gulf Coast or Florida.

If I exaggerated your line of reasoning, I could say that if a bioterrorist were to release a large amount of weaponized smallpox virus throughout several major cities this would be no cause for concern because there had been many natural smallpox epidemics in the past. I don't think you'd really say this, but could you explain why your argument about global warming is different?

Re:This can't be true

[Phronesis]

Sure science is imperfect and subject to political bias, just as any other field of human endeavor, but science is much better at being self-correcting because unless you've completely swallowed the postmodernist ideology, you would agree that science is built on a bedrock of objective facts that don't change to suit partisan politics.

I disagree with your assessment of the connection between anticapitalism and belief in global warming. Communist nations despised capitalism, but were much more reluctant than Capitalist nations to believe that their industrial activities hurt the environment. Russia and its Eastern European satellites did much more harm to the environment than all the capitalist nations combined. China, the only surviving Communist nation worth considering, is second only to the United States in greenhouse gas emissions and appears to have no qualms about burning vast quantities of coal.

From a capitalist point of view, we can see the environment as a capital asset and see damage to the environment as economically equivalent to spending our capital on recurring operating expenses: it may work for a time, but eventually we'll have nothing left to invest for the future, but the recurring expenses won't have gone away. It's the same line of reasoning that says the United States is foolish to build up a multi-trillion dollar debt to pay for recurring operating expenses, such as welfare, other entitlements, and routine military expenditures (as opposed to wars, which are non-recurring).

My personal position, as an environmental scientist, is that only industrial capitalism can save us from global warming because only a market economy can produce the kind of rapid and economically efficient innovation that can drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions before it's too late. If we took a Communist, planned-economy position, we'd never get the job done in time and it would be much to expensive to afford anyway. The problem, as the libertarian economist Ronald Coase wrote back in 1960, is that a market economy can't manage global warming very well because there are no clear property rights to the atmosphere or the climate. If we assign property rights through auctioning emissions permits or if we correct for externalities via carbon taxes (many mainstream economists think these would be more efficient than the central planning necessary to determine the number of emissions permits to produce) then the market can allocate emissions efficiently and create incentives for entrepreneurs to develop and sell climate-friendly energy technology.

As to believing that humans cause global warming, there is a self-consistency to this theory that I don't see in contrarian pictures. We have models with source code that is available for public scrutiny, such as the GISS model used by Jim Hansen at NASA or NCAR's Community Atmosphere Model, that produce results that are quite consistent with historical data when and only when you include anthropogenic warming terms. If you include all known climate factors except anthropogenic warming terms, you get results that are inconsistent with historical data.

I haven't seen anyone demonstrating that Hansen's model or the CAM have serious scientific flaws, as you imply with your claims that there are big flaws that would be discovered if only scientists would open their code and calculations for detailed scrutiny.

Of course there are problems with the models: there are fudge factors that can be adjusted or manipulated to produce phony agreement between observation and theory and there are places where even with those fudge factors, the models disagree significantly with aspects of the observed climate, but still the agreement between model and observation is fairly close for the most part when, and only when, anthropogenic warming terms are included.

Meanwhile, so far as I am aware, no one who disagrees with th

Re:This can't be true

[Phronesis]

I disagree about environmentalism and communism. I know and work with many pro-capitalist environmentalists. You fall into the ad-hominem fallacy when you assert that because there are marxist-wacko environmentalists, therefore environmentalism is fundamentally communist/marxist. Remember that Benito Mussolini was a brutal fascist capitalist (his hero was the economist Vilfredo Pareto), but that doesn't mean that capitalism is the "new refuge of fascist thinking."

In a previous post, I pointed out that lots of conservative Republicans and CEOs of large industrial businesses have stated that they are very concerned about global warming and believe that it's real and that it's caused by human activity. These include John McCain, Sherwood Boehlert, Paul O'Neill, all living former EPA administrators, including those who were appointed by Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes. I pointed you to a list of many major US industrial companies, including DuPont, Alcoa, and American Electric Power, that are working to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions because their CEOs think global warming is a big problem. These people convince me that environmentalism is much more than a refuge for nutty former commies and hippies.

You also show a fundamental confusion when you get weather and climate mixed up. Predicting climate is much easier than predicting weather. I can't predict the weather for this coming July 15th, but I can predict the climate for July. Where I live, it's much sunnier and warmer than March. Because climate, by definition, is the statistical distribution of weather over time, it's much easier to make climate predictions than weather predictions.

As to an accurate anthropogenic number, we know that the bulk of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere in the last thousand years is anthropogenic. We know this because the timing of the increases almost exactly matches the timing of burning fossil fuels. We also know it by observing changes in oxygen balance and isotopic composition---living carbon sources have different 12C and 13C ratios from fossil fuels. We then put a term into the model to include or not include the greenhouse effect from known anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide, methane, aerosols, etc. If we take this term out and only include known natural sources of variation we don't get good agreement with models.

These models only include known sources and sinks. How would you include an unknown one? Thus, they don't, so far, include the newly discovered natural methane sources. It's possible that including these sources would make the models more accurate regarding observations, and if so this would argue for a larger natural contribution. However, the fact that you can get pretty good agreement between theory and observation without including this term suggests to me that it's a small detail, not a big error. If it were extremely important, surely leaving it out of the calculations would produce garbage!

On the other hand, if someone, such as you, would do these calculations using the newly-discovered natural sources of GHGs and found that the natural sources could account for observed climate variations without needing to put anthropogenic sources in, this would be a strong argument against anthropogenic global warming.

My point is that the models are available to anyone who wants to download the source code, but no one has published calculations that simulate observed climate variations reasonably well without including the anthropogentic contributions. Also, no published calculations that simulate observed climate variations well fail to predict serious warming over the next 200 years.

If the models were full of errors, they wouldn't produce output that agrees well with observed climate variation. The burden is now on greenhouse skeptics to produce models that accurately model past climate observations and that don't predict future warming.

Re:This can't be true

[Phronesis]

It seems to me that you're approaching the atmospheric CO2 growth not as a scientist with an open mind, but as an ideologue who's already made up his mind.

The idea that CO2 growth comes from unknown natural sources is very contrived If the growth in CO2 were coming from unknown underwater sources, and fossil fuel CO2 is not accumulating in the atmosphere, then where is the CO2 from fossil fuels going? Perhaps it's being absorbed by unknown sinks. But then I ask why those sinks that absorb fossil fuel CO2 don't absorb the CO2 from your mysterious undersea sources.

You're asking me to believe that most of the CO2 from fossil fuels is absorbed by natural sinks and that growth in CO2 is due to natural sources, whose CO2 is not absorbed by those sinks that are eating the fossil fuel CO2. I don't see how you expect the natural sinks to recognize fossil fuel CO2 and absorb only that.

If you look at the growth of atmospheric CO2, it almost exactly matches the growth of fossil fuel use. We know fossil fuel consumption because the energy companies keep records and publish sales in their annual reports (detail: about half of fossil fuels burned are absorbed by various sinks, while about half remain in the atmosphere as CO2). We know CO2 growth before the 1950s from ice cores and other records and we have continuous real-time measurements from many stations around the world starting in the mid-1950s. All of these sources agree that growth of atmospheric CO2 almost perfectly matches the growth of fossil fuel consumption. More than half of the increase in atmospheric CO2 in the last 10,000 years occurred since 1970.

So now you ask me to assume that these natural CO2 sources, which remained quiet for the last 10,000 years, suddenly turned on in the last two centuries, and that they turned on at a rate that mirrored the growth of fossil fuel consumption.

I know that atmospheric CO2 growing at rates that closely match fossil fuel consumption. I also know that fossil fuel consumption produces CO2. I also know that the changing isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 agrees with the isotopic ratios measured in fossil fuels. Now you ask me to choose between two hypotheses: either the CO2 comes from fossil fuel or it comes from natural sources that no one can identify, while the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels disappears into some sink that you can't identify and which only consumes fossil fuel CO2, not CO2 from your mysterious undersea sources. Ockham's razor tells me that the more probable answer is the simpler one: the growth in CO2 comes from fossil fuels. There are just too many arbitrary assumptions in your alternative explanation.

If you look at this as a scientist, how can you justify your alternative hypothesis on the grounds of simplicity, elegance, falsifiability, or any other measure of scientific merit? Your preference for a very elaborate and untested hypothesis over a much simpler one that has been tested (if the growth of atmospheric CO2 over the last 200 years did not match the growth of fossil-fuel consumption, my hypothesis would have been proved wrong; if the changing isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 didn't match the isotopic composition of fossil fuels, my hypothesis would have been proved wrong; etc.) doesn't make any sense to me, especially since you seem to be a practicing scientist.

I have given you many examples of tests that could disprove the anthropogenic warming hypothesis to my satisfaction. Can you tell me what tests you would accept as proving it (or disproving the null hypothesis that observed climate variation in the last century is purely natural)? If your hypothesis of natural causes is scientific, then you should be able to specify some clear criteria for falsifying it.

Re:This can't be true

[Phronesis]

Now we're getting to clearer, more scientific issues. I agree that there are three separate questions: First where is the CO2 coming from? Second, what are its effects on climate? Third, what are these effects likely to do to the quality of human life? The first question is much simpler and is settled. The second is much more complicated because climate is a complex nonlinear beast, but I think we have made a lot of progress over the past 20 years in understanding these effects so we can now make pretty reliable predictions. The third is the most difficult of all and I am not convinced that we can make useful detailed predictions about the effects of global warming on human life.

Climate is constantly being changed by natural phenomena and we've seen from paleoclimatology that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are part of complex feedback cycles that control natural climate variations. I agree that past CO2 variations grossly exceed anything we expect from anthropogenic activity. However, the more clearly we understand these cycles, the more it seems (to me) clear that adding a forcing term to any part of a feedback cycle can perturb the system and if we look at the nature of the CO2 cycle as we understand it (imperfectly), the past correlations between CO2 and temperature argue strongly that increasing CO2 levels artificially will warm the climate in the same way that natural increases in CO2 during the Pleistocene caused warming and natural decreases in CO2 caused cooling.

The difficult part of climate prediction is that the direct forcing terms are usually small and most of the effect is due to amplification by positive feedbacks, which may be modified by negative feedbacks. All the discussion in serious scientific circles, both among those who believe in global warming and those who doubt it, are about the relative magnitudes and interactions among the feedbacks. Even the most adamanat climate skeptics, such as Richard Lindzen and Patrick Michaels, agree that anthropogenic CO2 will warm the planet up, but Lindzen and Michaels think that there are more negative than positive feedbacks, so the total anthropogenic warming will not exceed about 0.5 Kelvin. People like Jim Hansen tend to think that positive feedbacks are more significant and that many of Lindzen's and Michaels's proposed negative feedbacks have not been demonstrated convincingly, so the same amount of anthropogenic CO2 will cause more like 3 Kelvins of warming.

I tend to find Hansen's arguments more convincing, as to most people who work full time in climate science, but there are those who prefer Lindzen's and Michaels's arguments.

The hardest part of the equation is not figuring out mean temperature rise, but the practical consequences of that. I am quite confident in the estimates of climate warming by Hansen et al., but I am more doubtful about the detailed predictions of precipitation patterns, tropical disease extent, species extinction, etc. The thing we can predict most confidently is the sea-level rise due to thermal expansion, but the more important question on sea-level rise, ice-cap melting, is very poorly understood at this time.

I don't think these things are well-enough understood for us to make confident predictions and we should approach the global warming question understanding the limits of our ability to make detailed predictions of the impact on our quality of life. I favor a more precautionary approach and others favor more of a "no regrets" approach, but this is a political question, not a scientific one.

Although I disagree with the no regrets position, it's intellectually defensible and deserves respect. What bothers me is that instead of having the real argument we should be having---whether the costs of avoiding global warming are even remotely justified by avoiding the harm we think it might cause---too many people are engaged in ad-hominem attacks on the honesty and character of decent hard-working scientists. We really ought to be able to have respectful arguments, such as you and I are having, without name-calling. Both sides are very guilty of descending into ad hominem invective and I don't think that serves any useful purpose.

Um. . .Duh?

[Limburgher]

Didn't we already know this? Was it a total mystery that having a patch of water over which hurricanes generate, say, the Gulf of Mexico, will serve to strengthen them? Was it a total mystery that climate change might bring about nasty consequences?

Ok, well, for some people it was. :)

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[fm6]

Well, you may think there's an obvious connection, as do I, but there are still many doubters. The article (which the Slashdot headline, as usual, mischaracterizes) simply reports that there's a little more evidence on one side of the argument.

Of course, it's all irrelevent if you're already convinced that this whole global warming thing is just a fantasy by tree-huggers and Bush-haters (no pun intended).

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were similar numbers of hurricanes in the decade of the 1890s, even though the global temperature was about 1 deg F cooler.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[syntaxglitch]

Didn't we already know this? Was it a total mystery that having a patch of water over which hurricanes generate, say, the Gulf of Mexico, will serve to strengthen them? Was it a total mystery that climate change might bring about nasty consequences?

None of that was unknown, no, but they're not logically connected by necessity. Global warming is an overall average temperature increase, and is quite capable of lowering average temperatures in some locations. Thus the jump from "global warming" to "zOMG HURRICANES" still strikes me as unlikely, and blaming last season's monsters on it even moreso.

Oh, and just to make things clear--despite what some people like to think the world IS warming, the only question is by how much and how responsible humans are, and even if it's NOT our fault it isn't going to make our lives any better.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[cluckshot]

The fact of Global Warming isn't really in question. The place is warming up. The real question is why? There are people who take a warming trend to be evidence of human activity etc. There are others who question that. The rise in temperature really is not in doubt.

There is extremely good evidence that the process is substantially if not entirely natural. I know that some will argue against this but there are several very good indicators. The sun has gotten brighter and in particularly it has also been much more electrically active in the last few years. There were 2 massive solar flares only a few days before Hurricans Katriana and Rita flared up. Wilma has a strong match to several solar flares.

I know this ticks off the tree huggers but the process probably is entirely outside human control. Mankind probably has no hope what so ever of stopping or even mitigating the processes. At the same time the Bushies (a religious cult with G W Bush as their God and who live in a Karl Rove induced state of mind.) really cannot excuse off their policy of craping the planet up with their waste.

The Democratic idiots on this issue and the Republican party idiots both need taken to the wood shed and whacked until dead with a 2x4 spiked with 20 penny nails. Since this is unlikely to happen, we are just going to suffer on.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[hazem]

Global warming is an overall average temperature increase, and is quite capable of lowering average temperatures in some locations.

The problem is that there have been measured increases in ocean temperatures. Hurricanes require energy to keep going (from a site about El Nino, about 81 degrees F). Warmer oceans mean more energy. It's not much of a leap to link stronger hurricanes with warmer oceans.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[GooglePlexity]

Then why do the overwhelming majority of climate scientists think that global warming is influenced by human activities? Yes, there are natural trends that cause cyclic temperature change, but in the last 100 or so years, we have seen a dramatic departure from that trend that couldn't be cause by natural effects.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[GooglePlexity]

and even if global warming was not mainly caused by human activity, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything possible to slow its rate.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Coryoth]

There is extremely good evidence that the process is substantially if not entirely natural.

And in practice there is a lot more damning evidence that a significant portion of the warming is anthropogenic. Here's a rief summary of some of the most quickly explained information:

Atmospheric carbox dioxide correlates very well with temperature. We know this by many methods, but the one with the longest historical record is that of ice-cores, which provide data on historical CO2 levels and historical temperature going back 650,000 years. Over that time span there is an extremely close correlation of atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature.

More recently there is, again, very good correlation between the recent rapid (and accelerating) rise in temperature and recent rises in the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. By recent I mean the last 150 years or so.

Correlation, of course, does not prove causation. However we know from completely independent study that, based on its absorption spectra, atmospheric carbon dioxide will tend to trap heat. We therefore not only have very powerful correlations, we also have very good reasons to expect and anticipcate causation.

Further studies of the change in ratio of different carbon isotopes in atmospheric carbon dioxide shows that the recent (last 150 years) spike in carbon dioxide is almost entirely caused by humans.

Based on all of that we would certainly expect human carbox dioxide emissions to be a factor in recent global temperature increases. When models attempting to predict the rise based on historical data are run the expected warming trend is remarkably well accounted for.

The sun has gotten brighter and in particularly it has also been much more electrically active in the last few years.

Solar variation gets brought up often, and certainly there is solar variation and we can expect it to have some impact on global temperatures. The observed solar variation alone is, however, not sufficient to properly account for the observed warming. The IPCC claims that around 30% of the observed warming can be accounted for by solar variation, but the remaining warming is almost entirely accounted for by human factors, particularly human CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emissions. So yes, solar variation most certainly matters. To the best of our knowledge however solar variation is not the primary factor - anthropogenic factors are.

Jedidiah.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[syntaxglitch]

The problem is that there have been measured increases in ocean temperatures. Hurricanes require energy to keep going (from a site about El Nino, about 81 degrees F). Warmer oceans mean more energy. It's not much of a leap to link stronger hurricanes with warmer oceans.

Well, yes. "Warm oceans -> hurricanes" is well established. I'm saying "global warming -> warm oceans" isn't necessarily accurate, especially since a significant increase in hurricane activity would probably require an ocean temperature increase in excess of the global average temperature increase that has been measured. There are other climate effects that could cause temporary increases in ocean temperature.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[codguy]

The fact of Global Warming isn't really in question.

Let me applaud you on getting this correct because some still deny it is even occurring.

There is extremely good evidence that the process is substantially if not entirely natural.

But I won't let you get away with this because it is simply incorrect. The vast majority of the scientific community that has studied this has reached the conclusion that it is related to human activity. Even George W. Bush finally admitted before the start of the G8 summit last year that global warming was linked to human activity.

Science, not just climate science, is overall a very conservative discipline. For the majority of the scientific community to have arrived at the conclusion that our planet is warming related to anthropogenic activity is not simply because a couple of scientists or even hundreds or thousands of scientists have said so. It is because an overwhelming amount of evidence from every corner of the globe has led them to this conclusion.

Yes, there are still some climate scientists, by far a small minority, that still claim that either global warming is not occurring, or if so, it is not related to human activity. That's ok, that's part of the scientific process, and everybody has a different understanding of reasonable doubt. But as evidence continues to pour in day after day from around the globe, I think eventually even that small majority will have a change of opinion.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Red Jesus]

The sun has gotten brighter and in particularly it has also been much more electrically active in the last few years. There were 2 massive solar flares only a few days before Hurricans Katriana and Rita flared up. Wilma has a strong match to several solar flares.

Pardon? Solar flares? What's this "match" you're talking about? I can understand how human-generated carbon dioxide can trap heat in the atmosphere -- we've established the greenhouse effect. I can also understand how warmer water makes more intense hurricanes, given that hurricanes form as a result of moist air rising over the ocean. These results match the rest of science. But solar flares?

Lomnicky Coronal Index

Accumulated Cyclone Energy Chart

The first chart isn't exactly solar flares... It's more along the lines of sunspots because I couldn't find a good solar flare chart. But at first glance, I don't really see the correlation. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong charts and maybe I'm not looking closely enough at the charts I have, but I think the warm ocean theory matches the data better than the solar flare theory.

RJ

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[2marcus]

Hurricane generation and intensity is a complicated and poorly understood subject matter. We know that factors involved include, but are not limited to, upper sea surface temperature, temperatures below the surface (the best hurricanes thrive on cold deep waters under hot surface waters, I think), wind shear, and upper troposphere atmospheric temperatures. Certainly, a higher sea surface temperature leads to higher potential hurricane intensity, but hurricanes rarely come anywhere near their maxiumum intensities. And it is only in the last couple of years, with studies by Emanuel at MIT and Judith Curry at Georgia (cited in the article), that researchers have found good statistical evidence that sea surface temperatures are linked to high intensity storms (worldwide) and higher frequency storms in the Atlantic. Note that outside the Atlantic basin there are no obvious trends in hurricane frequency.

So we didn't already know this. Admittedly, for the purposes of making policies, we did know we were playing with variables that were _likely_ to make things a lot worse. But evidence that it is already happening is much more convincing that projections that it might happen in the future.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[VP]

I don't think that the humans causation of global warming is an open and shut case to the extent that we should trash our economy on uncertain science.

And what is the evidence that reducing greenhouse gases will trash the economy? Keeping the satus quo means that the US economy will expand based on extensive factors (more energy consumption, more polution, more waste) instead of based on intensive factors (higher productivity, closed cycle manufacturing, less energy consumption, higher efficiency). There was once a superpower that developed on extensive factors, its initials were U.S.S.R....

Not improving technological processes into more efficient and environmentally safer ones is a path alredy walked...

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[WoodstockJeff]

Then why do the overwhelming majority of climate scientists think that global warming is influenced by human activities?

I don't know - maybe because they are ignoring the evidence NASA has that global warming is also occuring on Mars, which doesn't have any SUVs to speak of, or coal-powered electrical plants, or any of those other nasty human-caused things?

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Coryoth]

You are talking about the last spike in carbon dioxide. How big is that in relation to other spikes found in the ice record and what were their causes?

The current level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is completely unprecedented in the last 650,000 years - the current spike is twice as large as any previous spike in the last 650,000 years and occurs over a shorter time frame than any previous significant spike. According to historical ice-core records the recent spike really is huge, and really is unprecedented in human history.

How does this record correlate with the fact that we find evidence warm climate life forms having flourished in now arctic places? Historical records tell of much warmer periods also.

That depends on exactly what you're talking about. Certainly in the distant past the earht has had much higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and much higher average global temperature - but that really is the distant past. How warm the planet was in the Jurassic certainly tells us the planet as a whole and life in general will deal with whatever happens, but it says very little about what the impacts will be for humans and other creatures currently adapted for the much narrower climate range of the last million years or so, nor what the impacts of the rapidity of the change occuring currently will be.

Jedidiah.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[DesireCampbell]

Saying that the majority of the scientific community believes that global warming exists and is caused by humans is like saying the majority of the scientific community agrees that second-hand smoke causes cancer.

How many studies are there about the subject? How well were they conducted? These are the questions that aren't asked about global warming. People want to believe that human actions cause global warming, but the science isn't there.

Studies like this one are put out to remind people about global warming exists. Warm waters create stronger huricanes? Well, duh! That's nothing new. Saying this is only an excuse to talk about global warming.

It just doesn't seem logical to think that human actions cause global warming. This article uses data from, what 40 years? And the Earth is 4 billion years old? How can you make any kind of assumption on 0.000001 % of the total data?


Remember: it doesn't matter how many people believe you, it only matter that you're right.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Coryoth]

"The last peak was in 1950, the next is in 2025," she adds. "We're only halfway up [the cycle] and we're already 50 percent worse [in terms of storms]. To me, that's a compelling issue that needs to be confronted."

Simple math shows that we are over 75%, rather than "half way up" and so we also should be 75%+ up on the storms.

I don't know exactly how you did your math - perhaps a little too "simply", but my rough calculations run like this:

Peaks are at 1950 and 2025 with 75 years between the peaks. Assuming the cycle is roughly symmetric the trough - low point of the cycle - should occur half way between in 1987. Half way up the next peak is half way between 1987 (the trough) and 2025 (the next peak). That works out to be ... 2006.

We are 75% of the way through the cycle, but a cycle has troughs as well as peaks.

Jedidiah.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[GooglePlexity]

Even George W. Bush finally admitted before the start of the G8 summit last year that global warming was linked to human activity. He did? Really? That's news to me. So why isn't anything being done about it?

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Xyrus]

"Thus the jump from "global warming" to "zOMG HURRICANES" still strikes me as unlikely..."

A sea surface temperature increase of even a half-degree represents an enormous enormous amount of additional energy feeding into our planetary weather systems.

It doesn't strike me as unlikely at all.

~X~

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Millenniumman]

You think Mars doesn't have those? Hah. They've been importing them from us for years now. Bill Gates is, in fact, a Martian. The only way to avoid their mind control powers is a tinfoil hat and Linux.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[No_CO2_warming]

The statement that CO2 correlates well with temperature is incorrect. CO2 has been steadily increasing over the last 100 years, while temperatures rose from the 1880's to about 1940, cooled until about the 1970s, and has risen again of late.

The 500k year Vostok ice core data: http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.htm shows CO2 either in phase or lagging temperature by up to 1000 years, over four temperature oscillations. This means the CO2 does not drive temperature, but that temperature drives CO2. The most likely explanation is that the ocean outgases and releases more CO2 when temperature increases, and holds more dissolved gasses as the oceans cools. Since we are near an alltime CO2 low over the last 250 million years, it is worthwhile to note a few things:

1. CO2 is not a pollutant. It is, in fact, the lifeblood of the planet, required for growth of vegetation. It is the cornerstone of the food chain. The increased CO2 aerial fertilization effect has contributed to the greening of the planet, as confirmed by satellite photography.

2. Water vapor is by far the primary contributor of the greenhouse effect, accounting for 96 to 99%. CO2 accounts for 1 to 3%. Methane and others trace gasses account for less than 1%. The greenhouse effect lets solar radiation in, but, like a blanket over the planet, absorbs some IR heat that would otherwise radiate out. This keeps the Earth's mean temperature somewhere around 15 C, instead of roughly -15 C. This vital 30 C swing is the reason that the Earth is habitable.

3. During the current interglacial period, the Earth has been about 2C cooler (The "Little Ice Age" around 1600-1700, when the Thames regularly froze over), and it has also been about 2C warmer (The medieval warm period around 1000 - 1200, when Greenland was colonized by the Vikings and exported surplus crops.) We are currently about in the middle of this natural variation, which occurred without manmade CO2.

4. The best protection against climate change is a rich, technologically advanced society that can adapt to natural variation. Don't damn the 3rd world to extended time in poverty by crippling the world's economy with a meaningless Kyoto type treaty, that will cost billions, but will have no measureable impact on real world temperature.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[No_CO2_warming]

For your edification, a graph of global mean temperature plotted with CO2 concentration showing the CO2 - temp "correlation" http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/NCDCanom1880. htm

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Coryoth]

The statement that CO2 correlates well with temperature is incorrect. CO2 has been steadily increasing over the last 100 years, while temperatures rose from the 1880's to about 1940, cooled until about the 1970s, and has risen again of late.

The 30 year dip is potentially contributed to by a number of factors including solar variation and less solar energy reaching the surface due to greater cloud cover (partly due to particulate pollutants but for other reasons too). Yes it represents an abberation in the correlation, but that does not prevent the existence of generally good correlation otherwise (particulrly over things like rate of increase and the fact that the current warming trend stands out as anomolous - just as the current atmospheric carbon dioxide spike.

CO2 is not a pollutant. It is, in fact, the lifeblood of the planet, required for growth of vegetation. It is the cornerstone of the food chain.

And no one said carbon dioxide was, in and of itself, bad. The fact remains that there is a natural carbon cycle that has, for the last several million years, been keeping a great deal of carbon sequestered and out of the atmosphere. The problem is not carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the problem is dramatic abberation from the natural cycle caused by our release of the previously sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. We are providing a new forcing to the natural cycle - a new forcing to a complex system: it is reasonable to expect that this forcing, differing from the natural fluctuations, could introduce significant new changes in the behaviour of the system. While changes will have both positive and negative effects, the reality is that for humans in general rapid change is, in and of itself, a negative effect.

Water vapor is by far the primary contributor of the greenhouse effect, accounting for 96 to 99%.

I would like to know where you got that figure - I can't find any respectable sources that give a figure anywhere near that high. For example this paper on the subject gives a figure of 60% clear sky contribution for water vapour and 26% clear sky contribution for carbon dioxide. The 1990 IPCC report estimates around 60%-70% contribution from water vapour.

The fact that water vapour contributes significantly to the greenhouse effect is, at least, not in dispute. The point is not that the greenhouse effect is bad, but that humans are providing a forcing on the system that has the potential to destabilise it, or at the least create significant change: The water cycle, like the carbon cycle, is a natural process that maintins a rough equilibrium (there is, of course, some fluctation due to all manner of other causes and factors), and the introduction of massive amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is not a part of that natrual system, thus we can reasonably expect significant change.

During the current interglacial period, the Earth has been about 2C cooler (The "Little Ice Age" around 1600-1700, when the Thames regularly froze over)

Again I'll have to ask you for sources on that because all the reputable sources I can find put the little ice age as at most 1.2C colder than 2004 temperatures, while most studies (which the IPCC sumarises well) put the figure at less than 1C. More importantly, while there were local fluctuations, the actual degree of fluctuation in mean global temperature was a lot less. Certainly Europe experienced some cold years - that does not mean that everywhere did.

and it has also been about 2C warmer (The medieval warm period around 1000 - 1200, when Greenland was colonized by the Vikings and exported surplus crops.)

I've seen nothing claiming the medieval warm period was as warm as that! Greenland was indeed settled by the Norse around that time - they settled in a couple of fjords that offered some

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Captain DaFt]

Best part of the whole controversy is that now everyone and his cat seems to be coming out with a theory why global warming is not caused by humans.

A couple of the latest blame things like cosmic rays http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html ?id=13ef7006-c549-4543-8ed8-89b8f4ca63d6&k=42927
, and the Tunguska Event http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/umw elt_naturschutz/bericht-56600.html .

(I'm willing to bet bet someone, some where has a tie-in between global warming, the Kennedy assasination and bigfoot.) };-)

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[gutnor]

"I don't think that the humans causation of global warming is an open and shut case to the extent that we should trash our economy on uncertain science."

Trash our economy ? We don't know if it will *trash* our economy, it will change our economy. But nothing we need to do for this change is actually bad: most efficient energy production, most efficient business processes, less environmental impact, ...

In fact, I don't understand why people are not happy to have the opportunity (even if later it appears manking had nothing to do with global warming) to dump all the old crap technologies still around by some state-of-the-art solution everywhere ? It would be a good way to use the truckload of overly qualified professionals our "First world" countries produce.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[linzeal]

It is really really simple. Any system in which you add more energy will have more force. So when the oceans warm up OF COURSE the hurricanes will be stronger.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[bagsc]

Geologic evidence shows the Earth has a long history of cooling dramatically then heating dramatically in a cycle. I don't know if its our fault (though I'm sure we're helping), but why should we try to alter this part of Nature? The world only has so many resources to throw at this "problem" that no one has ever shown can be "fixed."

I am all about reducing pollution and improving energy efficiency, but not to impact "climate change." We may have cooled the climate by mass deaths in the Great Plague to create the Little Ice Age - but I doubt it was worth the cost.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Jeremi]

Any system in which you add more energy will have more force. So when the oceans warm up OF COURSE the hurricanes will be stronger.

Given the above, I wonder about the wisdom of rebuilding New Orleans "back the way it was". Are we going to spend $89 billion+ on reconstruction, only to have another Katrina happen in a year or two (and repeat the process every few years)?

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Jeremi]

maybe because they are ignoring the evidence NASA has that global warming is also occuring on Mars

You think Mars is bad, check out the greenhouse problems they have on Venus...

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[2marcus]

2) Direct CO2 forcing is responsible for 9 to 26% of radiative forcing depending on how you do your calculations (realclimate calculations)

Warming due to CO2 will also lead to more water vapor in the atmosphere in a positive feedback.

3) I have no idea where you are getting your numbers. Please cite some sources? Again, realclimate has reprinted a figure showing 6 different temperature reconstructions of the past 1000 years. None of them have medieval warm periods that are even as warm as today's temperatures, much less your absolutely ridiculous 2 degree C number.

Finally: Yes, historically CO2 has not been the prime mover in Ice Age oscillations - that would be orbital variations (Milankovitch cycles). However, given that the forcing changes due to orbital wobbling are small, most paleoclimatologists believe that there was a nice positive feedback loop: slight warming leads to CO2 outgassing leads to more warming leads to ice sheet retreat leads to more warming leads to more CO2 leads to... you get the picture. And our evidence for the CO2-warming link is not just "mere correlation" - there is significant science that goes into measuring all sorts of forcing agents from volcanoes to aerosols to GHGs to solar variations - and studies using these forcings find it very, very hard to explain the last 40 years of warming without taking into account anthropogenic GHG changes.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Jeremi]

People want to believe that human actions cause global warming

Really? Everything I've seen indicates that people really really want to believe that (a) global warming doesn't exist, or (b) if it does exist, it's not really a problem, or (c) if it is a problem, it's not humanity's fault.

It just doesn't seem logical to think that human actions cause global warming. This article uses data from, what 40 years? And the Earth is 4 billion years old? How can you make any kind of assumption on 0.000001 % of the total data?

If the Earth has been behaving one way for millions/billions of years, and then in the last eye-blink of time (~150 years), both the Industrial Revolution and a sudden change in climatic behaviour occur simultaneously, I'd say that's at least a hell of a coincidence. Note that ice core data goes back much longer than 40 years.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[arminw]

.....And what is the evidence that reducing greenhouse gases will trash the economy?......

The question is: How much will it cost and will it really make a difference in global warming? There are some equally well qualified and educated scientists who dispute the notion that the warming is human activity related. They point to warmer and colder periods in recorded human history, not only in distant ages before humans were here.

The fact of the matter however is that you're still right that new energy efficiency and renewable sources should be vigorously pursued by the modern technological nations. The major reason for this is not global warming, but depending on politically unstable countries for energy is unsound and there is also the fact that fossil fuels are not inexhaustible.

Fossil fuels represent solar energy stored from long ages ago. Technology to use the energy the sun sends our way each day is the only long term solution. Now largely useless deserts may one day be the planet's energy sources. Sun generated hydrogen should get economically more and more feasible as the oil supply gets more expensive because of both decreased production and increased demand. New advances in bio-diesel technology from vegetable matter may also become a viable alternative having the advantage that the existing infrastructure for fuel distribution exists. Trucks and trains can be made to run on such fuel and since such fuel contains no sulfur, it can be quite clean also.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Jim_Callahan]

Yeah, the GP had a misprint:
 
  People want to believe that other humans' actions cause global warming
 
I know the schtick about 'culture glorifying victimization' is old hat by now, but it's still more or less true. People want to believe that other people are screwing things up for them. That's why people that ride bikes blame emissions on the people that drive cars, people that drive cars blame them durned SUVs, people that drive SUVs blame those industrial folks, and industrial fellows point out that six billion humans and the domestic animals to feed them, plus razing forest for housing and infrastructure, isn't exactly a small contributor to CO2 levels, and it's all a conspiracy to make them look bad. And actually making sure the science is done right doesn't enter the picture.
 
Seriously, people hate being optimistic, with a few exceptions. They need to blame someone for something, because knowing the thing that's going wrong ('cause there's obviously just one, or a few) means that everything else, aka everything they're doing, is perfectly all right, and if things go awry it's not their ball.
 
Don't knock it, though. It's actually a socially positive force in most cases, as pretending small problems are big ones means the small problems get fixed (nobody's going to complain about better emission controls, or at least having cleaner air, regardless of wether OMFG we r all gunna dy3 scenario would actually result from a lack of such controls). However, it's good to be aware of the strong effect of the 'blame the other guy, wether there's actually a problem or not' impulse, on the principle that self-knowledge leads to self-control, which is generally productive.
 
In conclusion, the increase in ground-level ozone is going to kill us all by next wednesday, and it's all the fault of those damned kids and their 'Rap' music.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[mstone]

If you want me to take the hypothesis of anthrogenic global warming seriously, show me some ANOVA figures. Statistics is a subtle business, and it's easy to move from hard, provable fact to absolute fallacy without noticing it.

Let's say we're dropping water balloons off a 10-story building and measuring the width of the splash pattern. That value correlates well with the force of impact, and force of impact depends directly on the baloon's speed at the moment of impact. That speed, in turn, depends directly on the force of gravity.

Now.. the force of gravity acting on an earthbound object changes relative to the position of the moon. If the moon is directly overhead, its gravitational pull cancels some of the Earth's gravity. If the moon is on the opposite side of the Earth, its gravitational pull adds to that of the Earth.

So.. basic physics tell us that a water balloon dropped from 100' will be moving faster or slower at the time of impact relative to the position of the moon, and that the difference in speeds will be reflected in the size of the splash patterns. The correlations are theoretically indisputable, and each effect can be demonstrated, repeatably, in the lab.

That incredibly solid grounding does not give us the power to say, "this splash pattern is wider than that one, so the difference must be due to lunar influence," though. The actual difference in speeds will be very small, and its effect on the width of any given splash pattern will be much smaller than the natural variance in the samples from a given day.

ANOVA gives us the tools to look at an effect and make meaningful statements about its probable cause. It also gives us the tools to decide whether the provable difference between two causes us worth talking about at all.

We have plenty of data to show that teenage boys score about 5% higher on math and science tests than teenage girls, but an ANOVA analysis says that the difference is basically meaningless. We certainly can't say, "the top 5% of test scores were boys," or "the lowest 5% of test scores were girls." Nor can we take two tests scores and reliably say, "the higher one was a boy, and the lower one was a girl." When it comes right down to it, we can't use that indisputable fact to prove much of anything at all.

Superficially, the hypothesis of anthrogenic global warming has all the earmarks of being in the same boat as the water balloons and the difference in test scores between teenage boys and girls. Yes, we can prove a chain of causation; no, the effects of that chain aren't large enough to exceed the margin of observational error. And broadly speaking, there's no set of global weather conditions that can occur in the next twenty-five years that proponents of anthrogenic global warming will accept as a refutation of their hypothesis.

Science is a process of testing refutable predictions against observable fact. As far as I can tell, the preliminary hypothesis that 'this period of global warming is completely unlike any other period of global warming in terrestrial history' in unproven and will remain conveniently irrefutable for a few centuries. The secondary hypothesis that 'the anomaly (if it exists) is the effect of anthrogenic causes' seems even less provable, and equally difficult to refute.

When I took stat in college, the professor told us three things:

1. Be VERY cautious of data that 'proves' something lots of people want to believe.
2. Never discuss causation unless you have a good, solid discriminant.
3. Never trust 'science' that doesn't doesn't state its conditions of refutability up front.

By my count, most public discussion of anthrogenic global warming scores zero-for-three on that scale. That's not to say I reject the hypothesis out of hand, but I don't respect a lot of the information that's made it to street level.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[WindBourne]

I don't think that the humans causation of global warming is an open and shut case to the extent that we should trash our economy on uncertain science.

Amazing that you say this. Historically, change actually helps the economy, not destroys. Consider that when we introduced automobiles followed by roads, we destroyed the horse industry. But how many jobs have been created by automotive industry? Far more than horses would have. Even now, if we were to convert away from Oil and Coal, we would have to move to Nukes, and probably alternatives. In doing so, it would ultimately lower the cost of electricity to what we had eons ago. Why? Because alternative energy is much cheaper. In doing that, we would see automation come on strong. Basically, we would see new industries and a major expansion of jobs.

As to wrecking an economy, well, it is when you try to keep things static that we destroy it. Look at an dictator who trys to control things; think cuba or old USSR.

You can not show me any crediable evidence that moving away from Oil/Coal will hurt us long term.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[kesuki]

Listen, we have the technology we could turn the sahara into an icebox. how you say? simple, http://solarcooking.org/funnel.htm "As a result, the cooking vessel now becomes a small refrigerator. We routinely achieve cooling of about 20 F (10 C) below ambient air temperature using this remarkably simple scheme."

and that's without designing the solar cooker specifically to 'cool' water into ice, using a 'heat pump' type device to accelerate the radiation of heat from say, water in a vaccume 'insulated' snow formation chamber etc. once you've got a few thousand of these machines creating 'snow' all night long, the snow itself will 'reflect' enough heat back, especially if the device can focus 'away' from the sun to 'continue' to draw the cooling power of space to maintain a 'cool draft' to preserve the snow from melting. all without using electricity. imagine if the devices did utileze small photovotaic piezeo electric coolers by 'daylight' hours to further enhance the 'radiation' of heat into space.

yeah, we could hold the winter olympics in cairo ;)

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[caffeined]

Well, although it's a rare thing, the scientific consensus can get things wrong. And, in fact, they have goofed fairly badly on this same subject in the past. Have a look at this pdf from Newsweek in 1975 which warns about global cooling - it talks about the fact that the "evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it." It also says that meteorologist are "almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century." That time, the consensus was wrong.

Here's the link:
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/newsweek- coolingworld.pdf

Although I agree with you that many people are just burying their heads in the sand, there are actually reasons to be a little bit wary of the dire predictions.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[john83]

Thus the jump from "global warming" to "zOMG HURRICANES" still strikes me as unlikely, and blaming last season's monsters on it even moreso.

It has been shown that hurricanes require an ocean surface temperature of ~27 C to appear at all. If the ocean surface temperature is less than 27, no hurricanes. It's not so terribly hard to imagine they can find even greater correlations.

I don't have any data to say anything firmer than that (IANA Meteorologist, but I've spoken about this in depth with one), but it seems that the people in the know think there's something to it.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[angel'o'sphere]

There is extremely good evidence that the process is substantially if not entirely natural.

Care to point one out?

I know that some will argue against this but there are several very good indicators. The sun has gotten brighter and in particularly it has also been much more electrically active in the last few years.

Ah, forget it ... electrical sun, that explains a lot.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[angel'o'sphere]

No, you are absolutely right.

Solar Flares have nothing to do with atmospheric warminf, global warming or what so ever.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Coryoth]

A lot of the data, particularly ice cores, is all publicly available. Look it, do your own analysis.

Solar variation data: http://sidc.oma.be/DATA/
Ice core data: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/
Detailed Greenland ice core Data: http://www.glaciology.gfy.ku.dk/pages/data.html

Jedidiah.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Burz]

Didn't we already know this?

When so-called skeptics (i.e. steadfast deniers) will even cite butterfly wings as an alternate explanation, then anything which can properly connect the dots from different perspectives is worthwhile IMO.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[WalksOnDirt]

"Now.. the force of gravity acting on an earthbound object changes relative to the position of the moon. If the moon is directly overhead, its gravitational pull cancels some of the Earth's gravity. If the moon is on the opposite side of the Earth, its gravitational pull adds to that of the Earth.

So.. basic physics tell us that a water balloon dropped from 100' will be moving faster or slower at the time of impact relative to the position of the moon, and that the difference in speeds will be reflected in the size of the splash patterns. The correlations are theoretically indisputable, and each effect can be demonstrated, repeatably, in the lab."

I would be very suspicious of any lab that could show splash patterns that were smaller when the moon was directly overhead than when it is on the opposite side of the Earth, since Newtonian mechanics shows they should be roughly the same. This is for the same reason that high tides occur at both new and full moons.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[DesireCampbell]

If the Earth has been behaving one way for millions/billions of years, and then in the last eye-blink of time (~150 years), both the Industrial Revolution and a sudden change in climatic behaviour occur simultaneously, I'd say that's at least a hell of a coincidence. Note that ice core data goes back much longer than 40 years."

The point you're missing here is that there is no "sudden change in climatic behaviour". The Earth is getting warmer... yeah, it does that. A lot. The "sudden climate change" is one freakin' degree? Fahrenheit?! That's absolutely nothing.

One degree in a hundred years does not a catastrophe make.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Although I agree with you that many people are just burying their heads in the sand, there are actually reasons to be a little bit wary of the dire predictions."

Only if you ignore the fact that there's a vast difference over what the scientists could do in the 70's and what they have been able to do for the last 15 years or so.

Data analysis *alone* has leapt in sophistication and its ability to handle large volumes of data, because of advances in technology since the 70s.

Just consider what kind of primitive computational tools they were using in 1975. A few climate scientists with a laptops and modern software probably have more horsepower available than was available to all US climate scientists in 1975, combined.

It should come as no surprise that they were wrong in 1975, given their limited capabilities. I'm sure there were plenty of as-wrong doozies in other sciences and in medicine. Consider the difference between the state of neurology in 1975, and where it stands today, after so many advances in imaging technology.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[arminw]

.....You can not show me any crediable evidence that moving away from Oil/Coal will hurt us long term......

I think that we will have to move away from fossil fuels in the future, but NOT because of global warming. Those energy sources are exhaustible and as there are less of them and more demand for energy, these will get more expensive. That will force more efficient use of what's left of them and make renewable sources economically feasible. The Kyoto protocol is a political instrument that will do nothing to stop global warming even if the assumption that this warming is caused by humans were true. Letting market forces determine how and where energy gets created and used will in time foster alternative sources and innovative efficient consumption. A good example of this is the semiconductor and computer industry. Governments have largely kept their interfering ways out of it. As a result, the capabilities of integrated circuits have made things possible which nobody even dreamed of as little as 15 years ago. There may be many reasons why governments have largely kept their distance. I personally think it is because politicians and bureaucrats do not understand the technology and are unwilling to look foolish and show their ignorance. Many other fields are much less arcane and easier to understand and therefore regulate to death.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[WindBourne]

And yet, the current admin modifies the market conditions, by

1. Offering major tax breaks for oil drilling.
2. Increased the Oil research that oil companies would do anyways.
3. Opened up all sorts of lands.
4. Removed numerous considerations on these lands esp. on the water pollution.

And then they actually CUT alternative energy research while saying that we need to move that way.

Look, I really wish that the dems and libertarians would get together and realize that the lands need to be opened to drilling. Both of these parties care about the land (interestingly, the old republicans do as well). In the Libertarian world, we would say that you can drill anywhere that you have the rights to. But if you cause any pollution, you will be held responsible. Right now, major oil companies are drilling throughout Wyoming and Colorado. Cool. But they are now dumping water that they do not own rights to. In colorado, they are injecting numerous inorganic solvants to loosen the oil. Numerous cancers have shown up in coloradoans who live by these; cancers that are known to only occur via those solvants. Bush has changed the law to allow both.

Bush has changed the market and is not protecting his buddies. Basically, this economy is actually worse than a true market economy. Even Kyoto would not do the damage that is currently being done to us. Long term, we are in real trouble due to this growing dependancy on oil as well as the outrageous deficits that he seems to wish to saddle us with.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Glock27]

I would be very suspicious of any lab that could show splash patterns that were smaller when the moon was directly overhead than when it is on the opposite side of the Earth, since Newtonian mechanics shows they should be roughly the same.

Nope, GP is correct. The 1/r^2 value for the Moon is different (and has different signs) for the two cases. It's a simple sum.

This is for the same reason that high tides occur at both new and full moons.

"Tides" are caused by "tidal forces". Tidal forces have nothing to do with dropping objects.

Re:Um. . .Duh?

[Glock27]

And what is the evidence that reducing greenhouse gases will trash the economy?

None, unless it's linked to a fundamentally flawed scheme like Kyoto. In case you haven't noticed, market forces are already pushing the development of alternative fuels, hybrid cars, solar etc. We ARE moving to lower emissions. We need to build more nuclear plants, so support that at your local level.

There is no need to "trash" anything as we improve our emissions picture. What will be tough is to get the developing countries like China to develop in a clean way. Kyoto doesn't address that at all.

Uh, isn't this obvious?

[ChowRiit]

Warmer sea leads to more viscous water, containing more energy. I don't see why it's any suprise...

Re:Uh, isn't this obvious?

[brian0918]

"Warmer sea leads to more viscous water, containing more energy. I don't see why it's any suprise..."

Warmer doesn't always mean more vicious storms. Uranus and Jupiter have constant winds over 300 mph (500 km/hr), because they have less energy--there is nothing to slow the winds down or dissipate the storms.

Re:Uh, isn't this obvious?

[thedogcow]

Um, last time I checked water is pretty viscous. No, you're answer is wrong.
Hurricanes derive their energy from latent heat via condensation. Nothing to do with how viscous water is.

Re:Uh, isn't this obvious?

[SLOJava]

Interesting theory, especially since the viscosity of sea water *decreases* with temperature. See: http://www.marine.maine.edu/~jumars/classes/SMS_48 1/Viscosity.pdf

Re:Uh, isn't this obvious?

[hazem]

Is that why it sounds different to pour hot water into my coffee cup than cold water?

Re:Uh, isn't this obvious?

[pomo monster]

Viscosity has nothing to do with it. Chop out that little bit, you'll be right: "Warmer sea leads to ... more energy."

As for the "surprise," I think they just didn't want to jump to the obvious conclusion that warmer seas cause stronger hurricanes. For example, one theory could have been weaker hurricanes, but more often. Just a guess, though.

Re:Uh, isn't this obvious?

[al912912]

Warming would cause expansion of any liquid which will cause it to be less vicious, not more. That said, I don't know if the maximum possible molarity of water would increase with a raise in temperature, which could make sea water hold more salt and therefore make it more dense.

Finally, contrary to what the parent post says, there's no relation on the energy a hurricane can have and the increase in mass, although there is one with the increase in temperature. (I know E=mc^2, but no mass to energy, or viceversa, convrsion happens in a hurricane)

Re:Uh, isn't this obvious?

[Jim_Callahan]

Bah, you beat me to it. I'll note that there's a competing effect from the reduction in density with temperature, as well, since the reynold's number is a length scale times a velocity vector over the kinematic viscosity, and kinematic viscosity is the ratio of viscosity to density. Really, though, neither property is going to change enough in the liquid phase to alter the flow characteristics significantly, so, yeah, GP is full of it.

I don't understand...

[saigon_from_europe]

...ocean surface temperatures around the globe have been on the rise--from one half to one degree Fahrenheit...

Err... how many hogheads is that?

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hogshead is a measure of volume not temperature. If you are talking about volume of water large quantities are traditionally measured in acre feet. None of these measuring systems are really adequate to calculate ocean volumes. A more important number would be how much energy it takes to raise that much surface water by one degree. That would give you some idea how much energy was being added to the hurricanes. One degree doesn't sound like much until you take into account the volume of water involved. I doubt the entire United States uses that much energy in a year and I'm just figuring the Atlantic not all the world's oceans.

Re:I don't understand...

[Jim_Callahan]

GP is mocking the use of the Fahrenheit scale, which is rather nonstandard because apparrently the freezing point of ice, water, and ammonium chloride and the human body temperature aren't arbitrary enough landmarks for a european temperature scale... they prefer to base their scale on the melting and freezing point of a pure substance that's a famous solvent, and thus basically never pure in nature. Thus the reference to "hogsheads", another horribly nonstandard measurement, because it's a measure based on the size of something with a definite volume rather than a unit weight of said pure substance. It's very important that standard units be observed, because this 'multiplication' thing is far too advanced for the minds of a messageboard of 'techies' to comprehend.

Now that I've explained the joke and thus spoiled it, I'm off to steal some candy from a baby or something! To destiny!

Re:I don't understand...

[albalbo]

The artificiality of a temperature read from a pure substance is nothing really compared to the inaccuracy and value-fudging the Farenheit scale needed to get those "landmarks" in place.

Wouldn't it be nice?

[hunterx11]

It sure would be nice if people could discuss science and not politics, especially for something so important. But I'm not holding my breath. Not as bad as evolution debates, I suppose.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[saforrest]

It sure would be nice if people could discuss science and not politics, especially for something so important. But I'm not holding my breath.

Uh, is climate change not a political issue? Should we avoid political discussions whenever an issue is "important"? Seems like a strange idea to me.

I think what you mean to say is that we should avoid political discussions that consist of braindead mudslinging (e.g. "Everyone who drives a car is a guilty of ecological genocide!", "If you criticize car culture, you're with the terrorists", etc., etc.).

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[revery]

It sure would be nice if people could discuss science and not politics

Science and politics are both shaped by a individual's worldview. The problem with your statement isn't so much that you've devalued politics, it's that you've overvalued science.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[thorndt]

Well....

Yes and no.

Climate change, in order for MEANINGFUL political discussion to take place, needs to be preceded by scientific study and debate thas is as unbiased as possible.
Otherwise, it's just a bunch of talking points and hot-button topics.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[uncadonna]

While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, nobody is entitled to their own facts. (I need an atribution for that; it isn't original.)

Muddling the population's grasp of the facts is not hard, as there is too much going on for us all to be an expert on everything. It nevertheless is cheating. There is much organized cheating going on, intended to confuse the population. The effects of this cheating are visible in any online conversation where science impinges on policy, and slashdot is hardly immune.

Whether or not human activity is substantially changing climate, for instance, is not a speculative matter. Its truth or falsehood is established science. Nevertheless there is organized activity to convince you of the plausibility of impossible propositions.

Splitting the difference is not as reasonable as it might appear, as the side which is lying is totally unconstrained by facts.

Any debate on whether humanity is substantially changing climate constitutes a failure of the society to use the information it has, of the scientific community to convey it, and of the special interests to restrain vicious antisocial activity on the part of some of its key members.

I do not specify which side is lying on this matter. It won't be hard for you to track down my opinion, but that's beside the point I'm making here. The point is that we are debating facts and not values or policies, which means that democracy is not functioning effectively.

This is occurring in the context of a number of similar failures to come to grips with reality in the absurd noise that passes for public discourse in America, and the irresponsible power games that pass for politics. Climate change probably isn't the most harmful case, yet, though it's competitive...

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[Lars T.]

It sure would be nice if people could discuss science and not politics, especially for something so important.

Well, that's how "conservatives" are - when science gets in the way of their beloved "truths", they cry "Leave the politics out of science!"

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[node 3]

I realize you were trying to be fair, but your two examples:

(e.g. "Everyone who drives a car is a guilty of ecological genocide!", "If you criticize car culture, you're with the terrorists", etc., etc.)

Are not fair. The first is exaggerated to almost comical proportions (very few liberals would actually say such a thing). While the second is something that would not be out of place at all on Limbaugh or Fox News.

I'm not saying the left doesn't have it's silly bromides, or that the right is nothing but absurd lunatics, but your examples really state that the mainstream right is just as bad as an overly-exaggerated caricature of the left, even though your intentions were clear that you were trying to be fairly compare the two.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[revery]

nobody is entitled to their own facts

If by this, you mean that I can't change the world by wishing, I'll agree with you. If though, you mean that facts are not subject to perception (and are not byproducts of its very processes), you are fooling yourself and that's a fact (though it may be one that I'm not entitled to)

Furthermore, what you state is only true if there is such a thing as Absolute Truth (for the record, I think there is - but Absolute Truth is tricky, because it won't just live in the world of numbers and formulae, it will affect everything.) But even if there is such a thing as Absolute Truth, everybody in the world still has their very own set of facts. They started compiling them the moment they were conceived and they will keep on, at least up until the moment they die (maybe longer).

The way I see it, the problem is that people seem to think that scientists are a special breed of people who are trained to only see things the way they actually are. And journalists are unbiased.

Everything gets filtered or shaded or whatever you want to call it. Everything. Noone has an unbiased thought at any moment in their lives.

Whether or not human activity is substantially changing climate, for instance, is not a speculative matter. Its truth or falsehood is established science.

It is nothing but speculative. If by, "not a speculative matter", you mean that there is an answer that might be attainable at this present time in history, I might agree with that. But whether anyone has been able to perceive all of the relevant data, accurately, and then assemble it into a reasonable proof? Give me a break. The issue of whether or not we can even ask the question correctly might be speculative.

The point is that we are debating facts and not values or policies, which means that democracy is not functioning effectively.

No the point is that apart from everyone accepting the same Absolute Truth, "facts" are just as flexible as values and policies and therefore must be debated. Even the definitions of the words describing the facts must be debated. That is the whole game.

What you are trying to do is to get everyone to accept the same premises and then to argue things out. The guy who is able to walk into a room and get people to use his "facts": that guy wins.

Thanks for the discussion.

Charles Churchill
Account Executive
Datatek, Inc.
800 536-4835 ext. 145
1 919 425-3145 (international)
churchill@datatek-net.com

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[vjzuylen]

I believe it was U.S. Senator Pat Moynihan who said that.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[node 3]

"cars are evil" does not equal "Everyone who drives a car is a guilty of ecological genocide!"

The mainstream left does not even claim "cars are evil". The mainstream left drives cars daily.

The mainstream right does claim that if you are not with us, you are with the terrorists. Criticizing "car culture" (not my words) is equated with the terrorists, by the right.

In other words, the original poster compared an exaggerated comment from the left (from your "cars are evil", to his/her "If you criticize car culture, you're with the terrorists," which is nowhere near the exaggeration as the other. I would bet you could find such a comparison on Limbaugh or a Fox News host, in less than a week, whereas the "ecological genocide" comment would be very rare, and not by said by a mainstream leftist host, but by an oddball guest, if it's said at all.

Or to put it numerically, the poster said, the left and right are equally bad, because the left says +10, while the right says -10 (saforrest tried to make it a fair comparison), except that the mainstream left says +3 while the mainstream right says -9. It's not a fair comparison. To pretend it's fair hurts the left and harms the right, in this case.

I'm sure there are cases where the opposite is true, but in recent years they have become less and less common. The right has truly become an exaggerated parody of itself, and in its current state, it's bringing us all down.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[uncadonna]

Man, if that attitude doesn't hit the bullseye for why our society is falling apart I don't know what does. Admittedly, there is a spectrum; opinions on one side, incontrovertible facts on the other. And you can armwave frantically about epistemology. Still, whether you choose to philosophize about it or not, we have a rich and precise (though incomplete) mathematical description of reality that is true enough that we can exchange messages on the internet, launch satellites to other planets, design drugs, etc. The attitude that there is nothing that is for practical purposes incontrovertible subverts the competence of democracy and bizarrely presumes away the existence of science and engineering. mt

Re:Wouldn't it be nice?

[saforrest]

Are not fair. The first is exaggerated to almost comical proportions (very few liberals would actually say such a thing). While the second is something that would not be out of place at all on Limbaugh or Fox News.

Well, I should say it wasn't my specific intent to be fair: I just wanted to pick two clearly absurd positions from "either side". I wasn't trying to perfectly balance them.

I must say, I still have only an academic understanding of what is said on American right-wing radio and on Fox News. I've only seen about five minutes of Fox News ever, in a hotel lobby in Texas. I suppose the fact that my first example would rarely be said at all while the second is commonplace might serve as evidence of just how absurd Fox News/American right-wing radio is.

Statistical Contempt.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Skeptics called other factors into account, such as natural variability, but a new statistical analysis shows that only this sea surface temperature increase explains this trend.'""

Causality,Correlation, nuff said.

What now?

[gcnaddict]

Granted the fact that, as someone already mentioned, we already knew this, we still don't have a definite explanation as to why the waters are warming up. Environmentalists say global warming thanks to oil. Oleum (latin for oil... it's where the term "Petroleum" comes from) companies say it's a result of excess water in the atmosphere or that it's part of a constant cycle. Each side needs to defend their cred, but one better turn out to be right, because these hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons are killing more and more people by the year.

Re:What now?

[jcr]

Well, water vapor is far and away the most significant greenhouse gas, but there's no obvious way to make it precipitate any faster than it does, unless you want to try orbiting a vast sunshade to reduce the amount of light striking the atmosphere. Occluding an area the size of Texas should do the trick.

-jcr

Re:What now?

[gardyloo]

Each side needs to defend their cred, but one better turn out to be right, because these hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons are killing more and more people by the year.

      That wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that there are more people to kill, now, would it? Or a shift in population density?

Re:What now?

[blakestah]

Bloody hard to fathom what source of energy could be elevating ocean and air temps...

Maybe this one?

Re:What now?

[slashkitty]

Well, maybe we shouldn't be covering the skys with vapor trails from jets. Put less up there, and less would have to come down.

Re:What now?

[Bing Tsher E]

Each side needs to defend their cred, but one better turn out to be right, because these hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons are killing more and more people by the year.

Why does one or the other side have to be right. There are many positions that can be taken on the issue, and there is and always will be more to learn about it and how we can affect it, if we can at all.

This isn't a 'bipolar' issue with two sides. It's a complex issue that needs to be treated as such. There is more to it than consumers sending contributions to one political body or another. There is more to it than people making 'basic changes' to how we act.

However, there are opportunists all over the place, using the issue for various reasons.

Re:What now?

[jcr]

Well, maybe we shouldn't be covering the skys with vapor trails from jets.

They should have modded you funny, but in case you were serious...

Jets aren't adding any significant amount of water to the atmosphere, and at any rate, cirrus clouds reduce the solar heat gain.

-jcr

Re:What now?

[pomo monster]

Have you seen this study (and the spate of related studies that came out around the same time)? The links on the right there also make for an interesting read.

Re:What now?

[Triffid_Hunter]

The hurricanes killing many members of the species whose activities are likely exacerbating them could be seen as a natural cycle approaching a balance I suppose...

Currently, there are too many people for our current economic and political climate to support, so while mass deaths are rather unfortunate I don't see it purely as a bad thing. A personification of the earth would suggest that she's just defending herself, and increasingly violent weather is unlikely to kill everyone - there are plenty of survivalists in the woodwork waiting to jump out and say "I told you so".

Even if we were to be thrown back into the stone age by war or weather, humanity would survive, and there is evidence to suggest that this has already happened at least once before.

Re:What now?

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Well, water vapor is far and away the most significant greenhouse gas, but there's no obvious way to make it precipitate any faster than it does, unless you want to try orbiting a vast sunshade to reduce the amount of light striking the atmosphere. Occluding an area the size of Texas should do the trick."

There's also the problem that we need the water vapor because it's what rain is made out of.

The problem is getting it to condense.

I would like to see more corroboration

[linguizic]

This article seems far from conclusive. But it certainly doesn't show evidence of absence in determining whether or not rising sea temperatures are contributing to more deadly hurricanes. I would like to see some more people from the field corroborate (by this I don't mean anecdotal evidence, of which I have plenty myself) this simply because it seems like people are ready to hit the panic button on this matter. The article itself says more work needs to be done:
The link between rising ocean temperatures and overall climate change remains murky because of the overlap between natural cycles and any global warming. "But if you buy the argument that global warming is causing the increase in sea surface temperatures--and everybody seems to be buying this--then it's a pretty small leap to say global warming is causing this increase [in hurricane frequency],"

Re:Kyoto

[cnelzie]

It will take the entire state of Florida to be destroyed along with most of the coastal regions of the south. At that point, though, working the Kyoto protocol will be a moot point.

    By the time that happens, it would take massive Carbon Dioxide reclamation systems to attempt to turn back the clock.

So it was not so wise to invest in Florida :)

[faramir_fr]

One of the major origin of hurricanes is the ocean temperature. If enough water is above 27C you are likely to see hurricanes poping on the radar. If some still want to believe that it was bad luck/fate/god's vengeance/*pick dump excuse* that braught the south of the USA to the ground... let them do.

Re:So it was not so wise to invest in Florida :)

[reub2000]

Hurricanes still pop up on the radar below 27.

Re:So it was not so wise to invest in Florida :)

[reub2000]

Link I meant to post.

Re:So it was not so wise to invest in Florida :)

[megarich]

If some still want to believe that it was bad luck/fate/god's vengeance/*pick dump excuse* that braught the south of the USA to the ground... let them do.

What brought the south to the ground was the levee's breaking because *surprise surprise* no one wanted to fix them. If the levee's were properly maintained the south would of survived the hurricane.

This isn't Global Warming

[rapierian]

The Earth is getting warmer currently, but the primary cause of increased ocean temperatures in the atlantic is from the fact that we're entering the warm part of the 50 year cycle. If you want a very good write up of the study check out this:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031606F

Re:This isn't Global Warming

[linguizic]

Quote from the SciAm article: "Her team will now focus on clarifying the mechanisms at work in the North Atlantic by separating out the 75-year natural cycle and climate change. "The last peak was in 1950, the next is in 2025," she adds. "We're only halfway up [the cycle] and we're already 50 percent worse [in terms of storms]. To me, that's a compelling issue that needs to be confronted." Though no one can yet claim that the 75 year cycle isn't responsible for Katrina et al, Dr. Curry there seems to think that this new data presents the possibillity that Katrina et al cannot be explained by the Atlantic cycle.

Re:This isn't Global Warming

[delong]

I think Dr. Curry isn't up on her NAO research. The NAO has a 40-50 year variable decadal pattern. The beginning of the 20th century was a cold pattern, with rapid warming in the 1930s followed by 30 years of warm cycle, followed by another cold period up until the 1990s. The 90s were a sustained cold period with minimal hurricane activity, and now we're cycling into another warm period.

The decadal periods are bookended by monster hurricane cycles. See the 1900 Galveston hurricane (which destroyed Galveston), the 1964 Betsy hurricane (which destroyed New Orleans), and the 2005 Katrina hurricane (ditto). There was a rapid ramp-up in the 1930s, and there appears to be a rapid ramp-up in the 2000's.

Re:This isn't Global Warming

[Wavicle]

Are you suggesting that the good Dr. let something as simple as an incorrect base assumption get in the way of a good headline?!

Someone pointed out in another thread this link. Looks like a cyclic pattern with a mean substantially less than 75 years to me.

But then, how would you draw attention and grant funding to your research with a headline like "Warmer oceans follow expected hurricane cyclic trend, increase in severe hurricanes to follow in the coming years without needing to blame global warming." Gah, almost put me to sleep just writing it.

Re:This isn't Global Warming

[2marcus]

My understanding is that Figure 3 in that graph involved first subtracting out a linear trend (sadly, I am not near my library right now, and I don't think JGR is online so I can't go to the original study). There is a growing body of experts who believe that the so-called "Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation" does not even exist. It will be interesting to see the experts fight it out in the literature in the next few years... but from the data I have seen, I personally am now leaning to the belief that the increased Atlantic hurricane frequency is due to sea surface temperature increases due to global warming.

Re:This isn't Global Warming

[rapierian]

It's always possible that any of the data we're looking at either way could be shaped a bit to support either side. I've read several other papers about the Oscillation recently that would lead me to think that the theory is gaining in prominance. I would suppose that this means that you are correct, and that both sides are building up to a fight to hammer this one out soon. Which means of course that there's not much debate that we can have about this that doesn't boil down to seeing who's correct 10 years from now.

Re:This isn't Global Warming

[rapidweather]

Don't forget Hurricane Rita. Another cat 5 storm within a month of Katrina. Here's a link to a Rita blog that has a lot of informative stories and videos.

The data don't support your claim

[amightywind]

Long term statistics suggest that the number of hurrican strikes is at a cyclic low. Kyotoists tend to use sensational single incidents to bolster their hysterical, political claims. Kyoto was rejected because it is an economic Jonestown that will do nothing to affect global warming.

Re:The data don't support your claim

[metalogic]

In what way does the table linked suggest "the number of hurrican strikes is at a cyclic low"? Perhaps you haven't notice that all except the last entry are for 10-years periods, while the last is only for 3?

Re:The data don't support your claim

[Lars T.]

Well, "Kyotoists" look beyond just hurricans striking the US.

Re:The data don't support your claim

[Wavicle]

I think what the parent post meant was that we've had 30 years of unusual low numbers of hurricanes. The table certainly suggests that we are due for an increase in the number of severe hurricanes. In the 30 year span from 1971-2000 there were 14 severe hurricanes. There is only one other period of time (1861-1890) with fewer hurricanes, which was followed by the 1891-1900 decade with an unusually high 8 severe hurricanes.

If there's a recurring pattern, I would expect 2001-2010 to have between 7 and 10 (inclusive) major hurricanes. In the four years spanning 2001-2004, we've had 3. I would say we're right on track with where we should expect to be. The question is, will have another 30 year stretch like 1931-1960 or something more reasonable? I'm sure if we did have another 1931-1960 hurrican "peak" period, it would get blamed on global warming even though such an event would not be unheard of.

In my opinion, the research in question made a VERY SERIOUS statistical error. They said there is a 75 year recurring hurricane pattern when we only have reliable data for at most 2 cycles. Effectively they have a sample size of 2 - if their 75 year hurricane periodicity hypotheses is correct.

Re:The data don't support your claim

[2marcus]

The numbers you are looking at are too small to make valid statistical claims. That is why real scientists use total hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin, or even better, global hurricanes. Oh - wait, but you are trying to make a hysterical political claim by using data sets that are too small to draw valid conclusions from! mmm, the flavor of hypocrisy...

Hmm. Cautious I am.

[daeg]

I'm cautious reading stories like these. TFA indicates that statistical analysis says the 1 degree warmer water increases hurricane intensity. That makes sense. Now what can they do with that information? Does it help prediction models? Even if we were a totally rational and science-founded world (which we are not), this study shouldn't sway us either way. Obviously we can't directly control ocean temperature. Can anyone quantify changes humanity can make and implement to lower ocean temperature directly? Nope.

Maybe the study answers it, but what does the increased temperature do to other weather? Does it change, speed up, or slow down the oceanic currents and trade winds? Is the water temperature becoming less entropic, with higher temperature but smaller surface area or volume, or more? Is the depth of heating increasing or decreasing? "More hot water means stronger hurricanes" doesn't add much to what we already know.

Obviously more study is warranted before we all go spaztastic.

Re:Hmm. Cautious I am.

[node 3]

Obviously we can't directly control ocean temperature. Can anyone quantify changes humanity can make and implement to lower ocean temperature directly? Nope.

I can think of a handful of science-fictiony-but-doable ways of doing both. Nuclear winter and seeding clouds are the most obvious.

But I don't see why direct manipulation is such an important point in your post. We can indirectly do a lot. Chaos theory proves that small changes can have large consequences in chaotic systems (the weather is a chaotic system).

Here's an example: The dynamic of the north atlantic and gulf stream currents keep Europe warm. That system can be affected by ice melt in Greenland--a single well-placed nuke in the western hemisphere could send much of Europe into a mini ice age.

I also don't understand what you mean by that "this study shouldn't sway us either way," because you don't list which "either way" you are talking about. Is it, "is global warming real or not?" Is it, "is global warming caused/affected by humans or not?" Is it, "do warmer sea temperatures explain this recent hurricane season or do they not?"

As for the rest of your concerns (how deep do the increased temperatures go? how does this affect our models? how does this affect the ocean and wind currents? etc), you can sure that these questions are all being asked by scientists. The truly convincing thing is that no matter where we look into those questions, the overwhelming answers we find indicate global warming is a real phenomenon, and that historical trends and patterns are insufficient to account for the current rate of change.

I do applaud your skepticism and apparent rationality, but the breadth and depth of data and modeling is really quite convincing on most of the questions listed. The only one that is really in contention is whether human contribution to global climate change is relatively minor, or if it is significant.

The big question, though, is what do we do about it? Even if it turns out we can't do anything useful, we can still benefit from knowing what to expect and encourage people to understand the risks in cities like New Orleans, and have Federal and local contingency plans for likely disasters.

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless. Everyone would need to sign the Kyoto treaty some 50 times or so to even NOTICE changes in the environment. Secondly, the way the treaty is arranged no one who's signed it is actually meeting the requirements it sets, they're just trading their excess productions in each field with people who do. So why sign a treaty that's economically damaging since it's so useless? The only thing that will reduce our environmental footprint is creating and using cleaner technologies, and the best way to do that is to have as efficient and powerful an economy as possible, but direct it in the ways that we want to.

Re:Sick of schools brainwashing lil kids with theo

[syntaxglitch]

Well, it's a pity the schools didn't brainwash you into believing in "paragraphs".

Hollywood knows.

[babbling]

So many people already knew about this that Hollywood had pumped out a cheesy, un-original movie about it over a year ago!

Re:Hollywood knows.

[g-doo]

It wasn't all cheesy. Scientists really are looking into the possibility that fresh water from melting glaciers might be diluting the ocean's salinity. That makes it increasingly difficult for cooling water to sink and return south towards the poles to pick up more heat. This kind of disruption could cause Europe's climate to cool down. We're already seeing signs that a component of the current system powering the Gulf Stream might be slowing down. Besides, the subject could use a publicity, and a high profile film provides just that.

if i'm reading this right .. natural cycle my ass

[atarione]

~~~~ Curry says. Her team will now focus on clarifying the mechanisms at work in the North Atlantic by separating out the 75-year natural cycle and climate change. "The last peak was in 1950, the next is in 2025," she adds. "We're only halfway up [the cycle] and we're already 50 percent worse [in terms of storms]. To me, that's a compelling issue that needs to be confronted." ~~~

as i'm reading this they are saying the storms now are 50% worse than the storms in 1950 (which should have been the high point of storm activity based on natural cycle)... and that the natural cycle would point to natural warming for next 20~years........

I'm honestly starting to wonder if humanity even has time left to get our stuff together or if we've already taken things to far, with our climate impacting activities.

I was reading the other day about artic wild life...seals ..etc that were moving further north.. leaving local indiginous people that had lived in the areas affected for well..... a LONG ASS TIME. for the first time w/out the food recourses to survive as they have for centuries...

human caused global warming is close enough to completely proved for me.

Let's fix it

[Tablizer]

Obviously all the hurricanes are causing the warmer water. If we want to stop this nasty problem of warm water, then all we have to do is stop the hurricanes and then we can go back to freeze-your-dick-off water, like the good ol' days.

Re:Let's fix it

[tedpearson]

Thank you, that was the answer I was looking for. Just because hot water and hurricanes correlate doesn't mean one necessarily caused the other. There could be another factor that caused both.

Re:6th Grade Science and Bullshit Politics

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Yet the article then jumps from there to "It's America's fault for creating all this global warming!!" No real science. Just politics. Why is this even posted on /.?

Because America accounts for 25% of all the world's energy consumption.

Re:No, this isn't obvious

[rtshrubber]

Last time I checked, the viscosity of water decreases when the temp is raised.

Another day, another disaster

[FishandChips]

Oh well, coming on top of famine, drought, peak oil, bird flu, hiv, cancer, global warming, wars, the North Pole melting, earthquakes, resurgent Islam and thermo-nuclear trouble in Iraq - news always available in a newspaper near you - I guess I'll just have to put this one down to yet another paragraph I failed to read at the bottom of the End User's Licence Agreement called life.

doesn't make sense

[dominator2010]

I don't have numbers to justify it, but what about everyone complaining about ice caps melting? It would seem to me that warm waters might explain this, but then wouldn't the melting ice cause the ocean to cool? I guess it depends on how much ice is melting and the range of warmer ocean water.

Re:doesn't make sense

[hazem]

The energy has to go somewhere. If you put an ice-cube in a glass of water, the ice cube will melt and the water will be cooler. But the overall energy in the system will be the same (not accounting for heat transferring from the glass to the environment).

To compound the problem of melting ice caps is that the ice caps tend to reflect a lot of sunlight back into space. Ocean water does this less. This means that more sunlight/energy stays in the Earth system - which contributes at least a little to the warming of the whole system.

Re:doesn't make sense

[ddimas]

I don't have numbers to justify it, but what about everyone complaining about ice caps melting? It would seem to me that warm waters might explain this, but then wouldn't the melting ice cause the ocean to cool? I guess it depends on how much ice is melting and the range of warmer ocean water.

CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) has an absortion spectrum which is completely transparent in the visible regions of the spectrum but has a huge absorption peak at about 5.2 microns (~1900 cm-1 for the spectroscopists among us), this is well within the infrared portion of the spectrum and translates into heat.

This means that as we burn more fossil fuels we are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (petroleum is underground). More CO2 means more heat is retained by the Earth (heat in is fairly constant, heat out is decreased, the object becomes warmer until a new equilibrium is reached).

When you place a pot of water and ice on a burner and turn it on what happens?

Re:doesn't make sense

[PermanentMarker]

The icecaps melting is a resulting action. It's not a reaction that balances something else. But you got an intresting point as this water would indeed be quit cool. While they measure warmer water, it could thus mean that the flow of water streams inside the oceans slows down. Giving water at the equator more time to warmup,.. what's next iceage ?

Re:Sick of schools brainwashing lil kids with theo

[temojen]

I don't know what stypraphone is, byut Styrofoam has little to do with global warming. The CFCs used to expand styrofoam until the mid-1980s deplete ozone in the stratosphere. This causes an increase in UV radiation at ground level, not global warming.

Recycling reduces the energy consumed in industry. On one extreme, aluminum takes huge amounts of energy to smelt from ore, but relatively little to melt and re-cast. On the other, seperating, transporting, and recycling paper products takes slightly more energy than using new material, BUT reduces deforestation, thus preserving the CO2 absorbtion capabilities of the worlds forests.

Global warming is a global phenomenon, and weather patterns are changing over the whole world. There may be some areas that have lower temperatures, but this does not disprove global warming, since the aggregate temperatures are still higher.

I suggest you go back to school and get brainwashed with grammer, critical thinking, composition, the scientific method, the meaning of a scientific theory and hypothesis, but mostly critical thinking.

floridians knew this already

[chasingporsches]

how is this a "new" report? this is all we hear about during hurricane season in florida on the radio.

Re:Kyoto

[Tablizer]

I wonder how many huracane disasters it will take the US to adopt the Kyoto Protocol they have rejected...

I don't think you get it. Despite right-winger's appearent hatred of Darwin's ideas, they actually embrace dog-eat-dog everyman-for-himself view of things. Their belief is that if nations/people cannot handle and adapt to global warming, it is their own problem and that they "deserve" to parish. This fits nicely into their no-welfare, no gov'mt help, 3rd-world Phd wages and visas, reward the wealthy, let "permiscuous" aides patients die, might-makes-right, etc. approach to things.

The only thing they have not done is openly stated that this is their formal policy (because they would lose the moderate conversatives if they admitted it publicly). They are essentially closet Darwinists. One of their slogans during the last Republican convention was "don't be afraid to compete". Well, don't be afraid to compete in a warm, flooded world.

Re:6th Grade Science and Bullshit Politics

[jcr]

America accounts for 25% of all the world's energy consumption.

That energy is not all consumed by Americans. Much of it is used in manufacturing products and raising food which is in turn exported all over the world.

-jcr

Re:Kyoto

[dkleinsc]

One, that does to Crawford, Texas what Katrina did to New Orleans, Missisippi, and elsewhere (assuming George W. Bush is still in charge at that point).

Re:6th Grade Science and Bullshit Politics

[cliffski]

and the energy used in china, malaysia et al to make products that the US imports has to be factored in as well. I cant remember the last time I saw "made in america" on pretty much anything, except software.

Hurricanes happen over warm water

[NigelJohnstone]

"But it certainly doesn't show evidence of absence in determining whether or not rising sea temperatures are contributing to more deadly hurricanes."

Wikipedia:

"Hurricane aka Tropical Cyclone.
"In meteorology, a tropical cyclone is a storm system with a closed circulation around a center of low pressure, driven by heat energy released as moist air drawn in over warm ocean waters rises and condenses. The name underscores their origin in the tropics and their cyclonic nature. "

Re:Kyoto

[rolfwind]

Let's just say Washington, D.C. instead....

Re:Sick of schools brainwashing lil kids with theo

[Sircus]

How your comment should look:

Seriously, when I was 10, it was easy to tell kids, "Oh, to prevent global warming, don't use Styrofoam", "Oh, recycle!", and "Save the rainforests!". This stuff is brainwashing kids who are so young that they can't form their own opinions. Schools shove their own agenda down the kids' throats until they believe all these crazy theories (especially global warming) which have no merit based upon anything that's going on and (in the case of global warming) has even been proven incorrect in several parts of the world, which have had the lowest temperatures of all time. Obviously global warming's not happening; I'm sick of people teaching theories when there's no proof. Luckily, I've learned the truth, ten years after being brainwashed.

It's cost me 5 minutes to correct this gibberish. Wasted time, perhaps, considering that all I've ended up with is more grammatically correct gibberish. At least I now know two things I didn't before: a) what kind of person believes global warming isn't happening b) how that idiot got re-elected

Re:Global warming and hurricanes, whatever.

[Aardpig]

What, and we can trust the NOAA, after the recent evidence that the administration censors what they say?

Re:Sick of schools brainwashing lil kids with theo

[SamBeckett]

Looks like you were fortunate and skipped the grammar brainwashing. Thank God!

Hopefully, we won't

[lheal]

ratify it.

It's a stupid treaty, whose primary beneficiary would be the suits on the carbon exchanges.

Other Headline:

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid Republicans Linked to Warmer Oceans

uuber liberal FTW

Re:Kyoto

[Tablizer]

One, that does to Crawford, Texas what Katrina did to New Orleans, Missisippi, and elsewhere (assuming George W. Bush is still in charge at that point).

"Still"? He wasn't in charge during the first one ;-)

Re:Kyoto

[blackdragon7777]

I have no clue what republicans you are talking about. George Bush and members of the Senate are the biggest spenders in the history of this country and it's not all to military or homeland security either. They have spent more than even Jimmy Carter. Not to mention it's liberals that have dismissed the ideas of social darwinism. Your arguements don't hold water at all. Besides we will never live to see a warm flooded world (barring an asteroid hitting antarctica). I believe that we will be off of our oil dependencies well before any major change in the earth's environment can happen.

PS. I am not a republican.

Re:BRAINDEAD

[temojen]

Oceans are really big. Q.E.D.

Re:Kyoto

[Bing Tsher E]

It's amazing how fully you understand the conservative point of view without even asking any of them.

I would say "I don't think you get it" but you already used up that line.

No, I don't fully embrace one 'side' or the other. I think, however, that polarizing dogmatists like you make the discussion worse.

Re:Global warming and hurricanes, whatever.

[barawn]

"We have not observed a long-term increase in the intensity or frequency of Atlantic hurricanes. Actually, 1991-1994 marked the four quietest years on record (back to the mid-1940s) with just less than 4 hurricanes per year.".

Which is what makes this new study actually news.

Note that NOAA is saying "we haven't seen a long-term increase in hurricane intensity".

This study now says "well, now you have, because there is one."

It should also be noted that this study studied all hurricane regions, not just the Atlantic region.

Re:Normal Cycle

[barawn]

This is the normal cycle of hurricanes.

Are you sure? From the article...

"We're only halfway up [the cycle] and we're already 50 percent worse [in terms of storms]. To me, that's a compelling issue that needs to be confronted."

Yes. They do, in fact know about the cycle.

Many scientists have studied past hurricanes

Yah, sure. That doesn't mean these guys are wrong. Scientists, y'know, discover stuff. And while a link hadn't been found before, it's entirely possible that it has been found now.

Re:Sick of schools brainwashing lil kids with theo

[temojen]

Would it suprise you that I spell Colour colour too? And pronounce about about, not abaaawht.

Known vs. known to idiots

[CarpetShark]

Well, it was obvious to some of us. But most people are in denial about this stuff. Hell, most people haven't admitted global warming is a problem yet, due to greed or stupidity or plain old laziness, or probably a hundred other reasons.

Re:Known vs. known to idiots

[ElectricRook]

Most of us with some years behind us, have seen worse environmental scares than this. In the 70's we were running out of oxygen don't you know that we will be dying off in the millions of low oxygen levels predicted to occur in the late 90's. Of course, this was going occur before the comming ice age. Yes, we were warned of the ice age, and the big crash too. No, not the stock market crash, but a meteor was going to smack the earth. Oh yes, I forgot about running out of food too. Yes, us old-timers have seen lots of disasters on a global scale. That all never seemed to materialized after the book sales slumped. This is just the next round, and we are hardened by the frights of the past.

Re:Known vs. known to idiots

[WindBourne]

As an old-timer, what running of oxygen are you talking about? I do remember that we were concerned about pollution causing issues, but I never heard that we would run out of an element?

And yes, there were stories about ice ages in the register papers (what was it; National enquireor or something like that was a biggie).

And yes, possible meteor strikes were brought up during the 70's. Of course, that is very real. It was not a liberal myth.

Running out of food? No, back in the 70's, it was predicted that there would be future famines throughout the world. Some said that we would have them due to inablity to grow enough (national enquir again). Others said that we would not be able to dispense it . And where are we today? Overall fine, but with growing famines in various areas;

Re:Known vs. known to idiots

[Alioth]

Well, the ice age may still be coming to western Europe due to (ironically) global warming. There is strong evidence that the Atlantic Conveyor (which brings western Europe its mild weather) may slow down to an extent where there is a localised temperature drop of several degrees in a 2-decade time period).

Warmer oceans linked to stronger hurricanes

[thethibs]

The horsepucky in this is the part about stronger and more frequent hurricanes.

It seems like they are getting worse because more people are moving into the areas the hurricanes like to play, so they do more damage.

The data, on the other hand, shows no significant change in the overall hurricane pattern.

Re:Warmer oceans linked to stronger hurricanes

[slavemowgli]

...which is why we ran out of letters for them for the first time, too, right?

Keep your eyes closed all you want, but things are changing for the worse, and if you don't like that, maybe you should stop your "lalala-I-can't-hear-you" and try to change something (a process that necessarily has to start with understanding why there is a problem).

Re:Warmer oceans linked to stronger hurricanes

[2marcus]

You might want to check out the analysis by Prof. Kerry Emanuel at MIT. If you look at the statistical analysis, there is a very clear link between global hurricane intensity (as measured by area, duration, and wind speed) and ocean temperatures. While there has been no change in global hurricane frequency, Atlantic hurricane frequency _has_ been linked to ocean temperatures. Skeptics are still trying to claim that this is a result of the AMO, but many ocean experts are of the opinion that the AMO is a data artifact and not a good explanation for hurricanes.

To sum up: the data DO show a change in hurricane patterns. (Of course, if you look at property damage caused by hurricanes, it is skyrocketing mostly because people are dumb and build lots of expensive property by the beach, but that doesn't mean that hurricanes aren't getting worse at the same time as people are building more stuff in their path)

Re:Kyoto

[roman_mir]

I wonder how many huracane disasters it will take the US to adopt the Kyoto Protocol they have rejected... - I am a Canadian and Canada has signed the Kyoto protocol. Since the time we have signed it, we have increased the overal output of CO2 more (percent-wise) than the US has within the same time period, while our previous liberal government has attacked the US on its decision not to sign the protocol. Come again and tell me how signing that protocol is useful?

Re:Kyoto

[johansalk]

Hurricanes harm the poor far more than they harm the rich. An unrestrained economy on the other hand benefits the rich far more than it benefits the poor. Even if the US had a thousand hurricanes, the rich won't change their mind on this.

Re:Normal Cycle

[anubi]

Here's the science as I see it.

Global warming is going to result in more water in the atmosphere, as increased temperature permits air to hold more water. ( Decrease the temperature, as on the surface of a glass of cold beer, and you will see the atmospheric water condense out on the outside of the glass.)

Water goes through a significant change in volume between the liquid and vapor phase. Enough to explode boilers or vacuum-collapse cans of steam which are capped then cooled.

Couple the volume change of water passing from the vapor phase to the liquid phase, and throw in the velocity change as polar air is drawn equatorially by the sling of centrifugal force ( as cold air is heavier than hot air - hot air rises ), and you have the makings of hurricanes.

Remember, polar air is moving about 0 mph at the exact North pole, but will have to be accelerated to ( circumference of the earth/24 hours )MPH as it goes to the equator. We have a significant coriolis effect here.

I have cited my observation the very laws of physics themselves - which I understand govern this situation. It is my strongest belief that we are indeed making one helluva mess by messing with our planet's thermal systems.

Re:Normal Cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, polar air is moving about 0 mph at the exact North pole, but will have to be accelerated to ( circumference of the earth/24 hours )MPH as it goes to the equator. We have a significant coriolis effect here.

I want whatever you're smoking. Polar wind is 0mph at the north pole? Huh? And the air molecules up there somehow get accelerated towards the equator? Double huh?

Re:Kyoto

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless."

That's oil-company FUD. First: While reducing CO2 emission may not do anything in the next five years, it will do something for long term climate change. CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas because of its quantity. Reducing it will have an effect, just not immediately.

Second: Russia are meeting their requirements. Those are the only ones I know of, but they're also the only ones I've read about.

Re:Kyoto

[fm6]

Uh, no, since every politician these days campaigns as a "Washington outsider". Including Bush, who's a third-generation federal politician!

Global warming is just a myth

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, Global warming is just a myth until a hurricane hit Washington DC or New York City

Then you can bet someone will declare, it is global warming

Re:Global warming is just a myth

[bagsc]

Right. A Hurricane has never made it to New York. And certainly not in the last 100 years...

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050601_h urricane_1938.html

Re:Global warming is just a myth

[megarich]

Thank youm I was about to say something like that. And granted it's not the city but long island, the outskirts of the city, can, will and have gotten hurricanes. Not nearly as often as the south does and not always as strong but I figure we average one hurricane in every 10 years. The one we had in the mid 80's, hurricane gloria did alot of damage and we were without power for a week.

The view from the Gulf (LA)

[Dr_Ish]

Well, as a resident of Louisiana, I can attest that more hurricanes are a bad thing. We were not hit by Katrina, but we had the refugees staying in our houses. New Orleans is still on hell of a mess. On the other hand, we did get hit somewhat by the hurricane everyone forgets, Rita. That really trashed our coastal parishes and poisoned the land with salt (for details see here). A warmer Gulf means the risk of more storms and stronger storms. From where we sit, we really do not give a proverbial 'rats arse' about the politics. We just do not want hurricanes. If ANYTHING can be done to lower the temperature of the sea and thereby reduce the risk, I am for it. The politicos like to carp on about the causal link not being proved -- this was the line used by tobacco companies for years. Anyone who knows anything about the philosophy of science knows that it is almost possible to prove causation. What matters is strong correlation. This we seem to have, although I am sure whilst Haliburton runs the Whitehouse, nobody will pay any attention. Sorry, I needed to vent on this...

Re:The view from the Gulf (LA)

[Simonetta]

Good to get a reply from someone who is actually affected by the original news story. Slashdotters go on and on with irrelevant scientific trivia and poor attempts at wit. None of that means anything to the people who actually live in the hurricane zone.
    I'm a former resident of New Orleans. I lived in one of the buffer areas between the black and white checkerboard sections where the rent was cheap in Uptown Garden District (Between St. Charles and Carrellton Ave). Or to be more realistic, on the flood line between the above-sea-level ground and below-sea-level ground.

    Now permit me to be cruel: I don't believe that New Orleans should be rebuilt. If the flood areas are subject to destruction as a result of broken levees and strong hurricanes can break the levees, then we are creating a cycle of destruction and rebuilding. New Orleans is a great city sure, but the money that is to be spent rebuilding the city would better be spent lowering the Gulf Coast offshore oil platforms below the surface. This would be better for USA in general. The USA needs the oil from these platforms; it doesn't need New Orleans or its hair-trigger lunatic suburbs. The port functions of New Orleans can be moved to Baton Rouge, with the river dredged or deepened as necessary.

    If the prevailing science indicates that the hurricanes are going to get more frequent and stronger in the coming decades, we need to start planning for the consequences now. I'm even open to wild ideas, like dragging huge icebergs from the Arctic and placing them in the path of an on-coming CAT-5 storm, hopefully diverting it to someplace inconsequencial, like Cuba.

Re:The view from the Gulf (LA)

[Dr_Ish]

Well, I am facinated by the comments of the Anonymous cowards. They are very silly. Some of us have responsible jobs which makes moving out of Louisiana a little difficult. We could abandon the people of Louisiana, but that would be disloyal. This State is full of good people. We/They do not want to move to New York, or where ever (even though many thousands have been forced to by the storms and FEMA). If the anonymous cowards even read this, I just ask that they come to Louisiana and meet some people. They will find strength, pride, resiliance, and (as they say in Quebec) a distinct culture. This culture is worth preserving. Hurricanes are bad for this. So, this is the reason I wish that they could avoid us in the future.

Re: The view from the Gulf (LA)

[Black Parrot]

> A warmer Gulf means the risk of more storms and stronger storms.

Interestingly, scientists don't seem to be blaming "more storms" on global warming, only "stronger storms". From what I've read, they seem to think "more storms" has a different cause.

Re:Normal Cycle

[anubi]

The earth rotates 1 revolution per day.

I was considering a situation like on a merry-go-round, where the center post is rotating, but is considered to have no velocity, however the further out you go, the faster you go.

Something at the pole just rotates.

Something at the equator travels one equatorial circumference per day.

Of course, its all a matter of whats moving in relation to what.

I was considering the center of the Earth as my reference point.

Relating to the merry-go-round, I considered the center of the merry-go-round as the reference point.

Re:Kyoto

[Tablizer]

I have no clue what republicans you are talking about. George Bush and members of the Senate are the biggest spenders in the history of this country and it's not all to military or homeland security either.

Other than military and homeland security, what have they jacked up the spending for?

Re:Kyoto

[Tablizer]

It's amazing how fully you understand the conservative point of view without even asking any of them.

You are welcome to give your counter point. I did not stop you. However, I would note that there is often a difference between behavior and words. The spoken mantra of right-wingers does not quite match that of their actions. Thus, words have limitations.

that polarizing dogmatists like you

Let me clarify the scope; I am talking about the more extreme side of conservatives, not the moderates. By that definition, they are already "polarized".

Re:Kyoto

[blackdragon7777]

Medicare is the biggest off the top of my head. Also disaster relief in the sense of replacing people's homes that didn't have home owners insurance. There have also been tons of pork projects from this senate. There are doubtlessly more and all probably a short google search away.

Re:Kyoto

[bizitch]

Wow - that's hilarious!

An "unrestrained economy" is exactly what scares the left.

I'm sure that you have plenty of success stories to tell about "restrained economies".

Here are a few - North Korea, Cuba, The Soviet Union, China

btw - The Soviet Union and China are some of the biggest polluters ever!

Jam that in you bong and smoke it - hippie!

Re:Kyoto

[Lars T.]

The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless.

Yes - thanks to the watering down the US demanded.

Like I'm not the millionth person to say so...

[RoffleTheWaffle]

... but no shit, Sherlock. That's like saying that we just discovered that severe weather is more likely to occur in zones of low atmospheric pressure. I thought this was supposed to be news for nerds, not news for people that flunked out of middle-school Earth science class.

Re:Like I'm not the millionth person to say so...

[flyguy79]

Mod parent up! In other news: food and lack of exercise linked to obesity. Story at 11.

Re:Kyoto

[chromozone]

Even the enthusiasts of Kyoto describe only a temperature decline of 0.02C and 0.28C by the year 2050 - and that is optimistic. Kyoto is just boutique science. The model (hockey stick) used to justify Kyoto was proved wrong at MIT long ago. We have societies with corrupt and degenerate masses that have abandoned real character and they use stuff like kyoto to feel pseudo-virtuous about caring for things. Of course its it mostly used as justification to hate the US which people pseudo virtuous people addicted to judgement are prone too (and of course they feel sympathetic to the actual bad guys). Don't forget China, India and Australia also won't sign that rubbish. Now the Bird flu is going to kill millions and people better get focused on that and not be preoccupied with George Bush and Kyoto. The communist/liberal left has a lot of you folks conditioned to self destruct and feel heroic about it.

Re:Kyoto

[Tim C]

Tell me something - if it's that bad, why did any country sign up to it?

Or could it be that it's not as bad as you're making it out to be, and actually is worthwhile?

The topic at hand is hurricanes

[amightywind]

The topic at hand is hurricanes, Atlantic tropical cyclones, and their frequency through time. If I am not giving equal time to whatever harmful weather strikes your eurotrash location, I do apologize.

Re:The topic at hand is hurricanes

[Lars T.]

Actually, the issue at hand is your lack of argument.

Re:if i'm reading this right .. natural cycle my a

[arminw]

.....human caused global warming is close enough to completely proved for me...

So when are yu going to get rid of your car and use a bicycle?

Re:Kyoto

[shmlco]

I agree, we'd be stupid to sign Kyoto and become involved in making transfer payments to other nations because we polute more than they do. Better to simply vow to reduce our own CO2 emissions, and spend the dollars here doing so.

Re:Kyoto

[node 3]

Just because something doesn't have guaranteed benefits does not mean there are none.

Here are three ways that, assuming your assertions are true, it still helps:

1. Having to trade emission output with other nations is a negative force (you have to negotiate, you may even have to pay), and therefore will want to avoid it. At some point, it will be more cost-effective to actually cut emissions.

2. Agreeing to it requires a nation to take stock of its contribution to global pollution. This may highlight problems not currently known or well measured. It also puts into place a system of actively addressing the issue of pollution, even if the treaty requires no changes to the nation's current industries.

3. (And this is the very reason America hasn't signed the treaty) It legitimizes the concern of pollution as a global issue that nations need to work together on. Signing Kyoto sets the stage for the world to address it again and work on Kyoto II. Additionally, you do not know that your assertions are actually true. Your assertions may turn out to be unfounded, but in the case that they are correct, the signatory nations will be motivated to work on another treaty to address those shortcomings.

Re:God?

[Fritzed]

It's not "god", it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The Flying Spaghetti Monster started this cycle a very long time ago by aimply killing a few pirates. Immediately the earth started warming, following the well documented relationship between pirates and the earth's surface temperature. This has over the years spiraled out of control because every time a pirate dies, the temperature goes up, causing more hurricanes, which kill more pirates, which causes the earth's temperature to go up, and so on.

The "scientists" need to stop wasting their time trying to stop carbon emissions, and they need to spend it helping undo our pirate shortage. This is a problem that I've worked on for quite some time (almost 5 minutes now), and I think the answer is quite simple. We need to take all of the members of the current administration (and their friends) and set them adrift on pirate ships in the middle of the ocean (preferably without sails or oars). They would make great pirates, they are already adept at raping (metaphorically) and pillaging (literally). This would help us correct the delicate balance of nature and would save an innumerable number of lives.

Please, help spread the word, before it's too late.

-> Fritz

Re:Kyoto

[bheer]

> Tell me something - if it's that bad, why did any country sign up to it?

Practically speaking, many signed it because it made them look good to voters back at home. Especially in Europe where being _seen_ to be green == votes.

Do some reading and find out how well Germany, one of the biggest Kyoto-boosters, is _actually_ implementing Kyoto (along with the rest of Europe, I might add).[1] You'll find that for the flack the US gets over Kyoto they are being less hypocritical than many countries who've actually signed it.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4561576.stm

> Or could it be that it's not as bad as you're making it out to be, and actually is worthwhile?

Appeals to authority are a lousy way to win an argument btw...

Why is it?

[AlienGoods]

Whenever something happens in nature its attributed to global warming. Could it be scientists just looking to grab the next headline to secure a grant? While I believe in global warming and do think we need to take measures to curb it (I think its too late to stop it...just my opinion), it gets blamed every time something happens. In that respect its kinda like smoking. I never realized smoking could cause foot fungus, but I'm sure theres a moron who made that link too.

I'm not trolling, but it seems the cliff has gone off the deep end in this politically correct world.

Re:Kyoto

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Russia are meeting their requirements. Those are the only ones I know of, but they're also the only ones I've read about.

That's because they are using the levels from the Soviet era for industrial production and carbon emissions. They have plenty of room before the return to those levels of production. Everybody else is not able to meet requirements, and China and India have several years before they start worrying about emissions.

Re:Kyoto

[Millenniumman]

Even if the Kyoto Protocol had been signed by the U.S., it would never have had any impact on the recent hurricanes. Even if one believes that most global warming is caused by humans, a few years enforcing the rules in that agreement are not going to make enough of a difference to stop hurricanes.

Re:6th Grade Science and Bullshit Politics

[Millenniumman]

I agree. The label "Made in the USA" is a lot more common than "Made in America".

Typical reporting - read Prometheus instead

[Skippy_kangaroo]

You should all go and read Prometheus and in particular, this post.

There are many respected scientists who are not 'sceptics' (as that term is so often used - pejoratively) who doubt the link between hurricanes and global warming. Repeat after me, correlation does not prove causation.

Re:Kyoto

[Tablizer]

Medicare is the biggest off the top of my head.

True, but that was a long-time coming giving the nature of medicine and the influence of seniors on elections (they show up).

Also disaster relief

These are "acts of God" situations that a president has no control over (other than perhaps reducing global warming).

There have also been tons of pork projects

There have always been. Pork is not new.

So far only the medicare increases count. A lot of other social programs, perhaps most, were cut. Science and space were also cut.

The budget problems that are (were) controllable during W's term are mostly caused by Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy. If these didn't happen, we would not have such a big deficit.

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

There are many better solutions. Tax breaks for companies that operate cleaner, Tax breaks for companies that invent cleaner technologies. Research funds and market incentives for companies that create or implement cleaner technologies.

If you can think of ANYTHING that is stronger and more amazing and better at creating solutions to problems then capitalist economies, ESPECIALLY the U.S. economy, please tell me.

Since that's the case, let's use that and not fight it!

Re:Global warming and hurricanes, whatever.

[a302b]

It should also be noted that this study studied all hurricane regions, not just the Atlantic region.

I hate to be pedantic, but hurricanes only occur in the Atlantic. When they occur in the pacific, they are called Typhoons, and when they occur in the Indian Ocean, they are called Cyclones....

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

Yes, Russia get's a free pass, as do India and China. And since everything can be traded, that turns Kyoto into a charity for those countries, rather than any sort of reduction in the actual level of pollution anywhere in the world.

Secondly, as I asserted in the beginning, it would take about 50 Kyotos just to reduce emissions enough to have a noticeable effect, meaning, to have any sort of difference we can actually measure. There are prodigious amounts of CO2 in the world, and many of them are from quite natural sources. Such a tiny reduction in percentage of emissions we create isn't going to do anything useful, especially when it slows down our economy and is therefore less than useful. Fostering our market to create and use technologies that are better for the environment will have much more of an effect.

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

No, it's useless because it's a politically based and minded treaty rather than an environmentally or economically based treaty.

Since everyone can simply trade their various pollutions to people who don't produce said pollutions or who are developing nations, it amounts to so much political kudos, and not much else. If you wanted to actually reduce pollution levels through a cap sort of system you can't have those two holes in the system.

Re:Sick of schools brainwashing lil kids with theo

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously when I was 10 its easy to tell kids, oh don't use styraphone to protect global warming, oh recycle! ...

But now that you are 11, you have clearly got it all figured out.

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

Not to mention that the Kyoto protocol was rigged to be much worse for the U.S. than for pretty much everyone else. It's no great secret that the rest of the world is envious of the U.S. economy, and so tying penalties to our productivity gives everyone else a chance to catch up to the U.S.

The U.S. actually is far more efficient and less polluting than any other countries when you compare our production to our pollution.

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

A great way of phrasing it, nice and simple! Especially since we're the best when it comes to figuring out how to turn our money into something useful. Why in the world would we even CONSIDER spending giving money to some third world country to help pollution there when we could be spending it on researching better powerplants or something? Styrofoam eating bacteria!

Spending the money here to develop better solutions to our problems is going to do so much more for the world in the long, and probably even in the short run that it's laughable to consider spending it anywhere else for the same reason.

Re:Kyoto

[node 3]

In other words, you agree with me that the Kyoto treaty would have an effect, and disagree with your original statement that "The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless."

I've pointed out ways it will help, and you've agreed that they would. You still don't think it's worth it, and really, I don't care if you think it's worth it or not. That's your own decision to make. I was only pointing out your premise was demonstrably wrong.

You can say the Kyoto Protocol doesn't do enough, or that it does more economic harm than it does environmental good. I disagree, but that's another topic altogether. But what you can't say is that it does absolutely no good.

If the treaty would change absolutely nothing in America (as you claim), then why don't we sign it? It would garner good will, and cost us nothing in return, right? Wrong. The reason we don't sign it is because the Bush administration does not want to legitimize the issue it addresses.

You mischaracterized my third point. I wasn't talking about "political brownie points" (a belittling term and in poor taste on your part). I wasn't talking about the government paying lip service on the PR front. I was talking about the government agreeing, in a meaningful way, that greenhouse gas emissions is a legitimate global issue that must be taken seriously. Even if the treaty would change nothing in the US, just signing the treaty would mean something, and it would pave the way for Kyoto II.

The US is not keeping out of the treaty because it would be "useless". No one in the Bush administration is saying, "we really need to do something, but the Kyoto Protocol doesn't do enough". They are saying that it does too much and that we are beholden to no one. Whatever happened to responsibility for our actions?

Again, I don't care if you agree with my support of the treaty, just don't mischaracterize it.

Re:Sick of schools brainwashing lil kids with theo

[daverabbitz]

Would it surprise you to learn that grammar is always spelled with an "a", and that regardless of whether you are british or american or something else you spelt grammar wrong.

Re:Kyoto

[mike2R]

You don't think that the measures implemented by developed countries to meet their Kyoto commitments count as "Fostering our market to create and use technologies that are better for the environment"?

Re:if i'm reading this right .. natural cycle my a

[atarione]

I actually do commute via bicycle frequently... i also use the train to get to work regularly...

the car my g/f and i have is fuel efficent~ish (we're looking at getting a hybrid.... we use energy saving light bulbs and appliances in our house...

in short ..... step the fuck off, I'm doing pretty much as much as i reasonably can to reduce my energy consumption.

Re:Kyoto

[Jeremi]

The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless.

Sort of like how Goddard's toy rockets were completely useless as a means of getting man to walk on the moon. I think the main benefit of the Kyoto Protocol was to show that the human race was taking the problem seriously and was capable of co-operating (technically and politically) to try and solve it. Once we had Kyoto as a working prototype/test bed, data could be gathered on what works and what doesn't, and more advanced/effective protocols devised based on the experience.

Of course, some might argue that Kyoto demonstrated mainly the opposite thing, but I suspect that if/when the human consequences of the environmental problems get worse, the world will have more incentive to face up to the problem.

Re:Kyoto

[Jeremi]

There have always been. Pork is not new

True, but the quadrupling of pork projects during the last 5 years has been quite impressive (especially considering that Republicans, ostensibly "the party of fiscal restraint" have been in control of the government for that time). And of course, Bush has yet to veto anything....

socio-economic aspect

[asidrephlux]

"and even if global warming was not mainly caused by human activity, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything possible to slow its rate."
Maybe your right, but getting there as a society is a long way off. With ozone layer issues, the fear of excessive sun rays, cancer,etc. was a good motivator for the average joe. Global warming however does not pose much of a danger as a whole to the human race, so therefore, you dont gain such a motivational response.

Re:I think what he means is

[hunterx11]

What I mean is that we shouldn't discuss the implications of something as though the implications have any impact on the truth. Saying something like, "We shouldn't worry about pollution because the costs of reducing it outweigh the impact of global warming," or, "Rapid climate changes in the past have led to mass extinctions," has nothing to do with the empirical evidence for climate change.

A meteorologist replies

[ctwxman]

OK - this is what I do for a living - forecasting the weather. I've been doing it for better than 25 years.

Most operational meteorologists I know feel human induced global warming is a bad theory, based on really bad modeling. The equations are incomplete as is the data set. Maybe we're worried because we use numeric weather prediction models on a daily basis and understand we can't always get the temperature right to within 2-3 degree over 24 hours, much less 24 years!

Academicians and theorists seem to support the idea in great numbers. These are people who haven't had to answer for a bad forecast in the supermarket.

Surely, human induced global warming is a political argument. Ask yourself, why have I never heard even one positive influence from global warming? In science, you should hear the good and the bad. In this argument, it's only the bad that gets publicized. If everyone in the Northern Plains, Northern Europe, New England, Canada and other cold weather climates get a longer growing season with lower winter heating costs, shouldn't that be weighed against tidal rises on Vanuatu?

Recently, after Katrina and the others, there has been a chorus trying to connect more hurricanes with global warming. Here's what Dr. William Gray says (he's the guy you hear quoted every year with seasonal hurricane predictions):

There is absolutely no solid evidence that the recent US hurricane disasters of 2004-05 and of Japan in 2004 are 'directly' attributed to the impact of global warming. Landfalling major hurricanes have occurred in earlier periods when the globe was cooler. The two scientific papers in Nature and Science have been largely discredited by myself and others.

Most of the warming of the last 30 years (1975-2005) cannot possibly be due solely to greenhouse gas increases. Although CO2 amounts have gone up by about 378 ppm/330 ppm = ~15% during this period, the net energy forcing (of about 0.65 w/m2) from this CO2 increase is considerably less than the other energy forcing changes of long wave radiation (LW), evaporation-precipitation, and ocean thermohaline circulation change that have been measured by the reanalysis data over the last 30 and 55 years. For instance, various rainfall measurements indicate there has been a small global average rainfall decrease of 0.5-1.0 mm/d. This is equivalent to global evaporation decreases of 1.5-3.0 w/m2 - 2 to 4 times than that can be attributed to CO2 increase. There are similar energy variations in the last 30 years in OLR and in the global thermohaline circulation. I believe that the global surface warming of the last 30 years is largely due to a small decrease in ocean surface evaporation cooling brought about by ocean deep water circulation changes.

Blaming all the warming of the last 30 years on CO2 requires that one believe that all the other larger energy source-sinks sum to zero. It is naive to think this is the case. Most warming of the last 30 years has to be of natural origin.

You can read more of Dr. Gray's thoughts in this excellent paper "Global Warming and Hurricanes."

I have posted this late. Positive modding to make it more visible would be appreciated.

Re:A meteorologist replies

[at_18]

OK - this is what I do for a living - forecasting the weather

No you don't. Forecasting the weather and forecasting the climate are two completely different things.

Re:A meteorologist replies

[Burz]

Statistical models (used by climatologists) are bound to increase in accuracy as they deal with average temperature of the entire globe over larger time scales.

This is not about determining whether it will snow or rain in Peoria on Dec. 11, 2006.

Some links that may interest you:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1 517946,00.html
http://www.begbroke.ox.ac.uk/climatebasics/?style= plain
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=270

Re:Kyoto

[Tablizer]

That appears to count the quantity, not monetary amount, of pork. Further, the definition of "pork" can be fuzzy, so the results may depend on who is doing the classification.

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

No, I've said that the Kyoto treaty is useless environmentally, worse than useless economically, and only slightly useful politically. Don't try and twist my words against me, read carefully what I've typed before trying to make that argument.

It's funny what you think the Bush administration says. The justification for the Asian-Pacific Partnership for on Clean Development and Climate was pretty close to what you claim they're not saying, and what you claim they're saying I've never heard in regards to Kyoto. Rather, I've heard the Bush administration, and come to think of it, just about all of congress during the Clinton administration _including_the_democrats_ (remember, Kyoto was turned down before Bush!) say that Kyoto was harmful to the economy and not very effective for the environment.

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

Take a look at how the Europeans are actually doing on reducing emissions, and how they're actually planning on meeting the Kyoto requirements. You'll find two amusing things.

1: We've done a better job with emissions than they have, and we didn't even sign the stupid treaty (We haven't reduced to the amounts demanded by the treaty, but they would have been pretty harsh for us to meet. Also, we still have more total than anyone else, but only because there's no comparably sized developed countries. When you compare production vs. pollution we're far far more efficient than anyone else in the world.)

2: None of the developed countries who have signed Kyoto are actually doing much significant reduction. They're all just trading the rights with each other so that they all get a free pass w.r.t. Kyoto.

So if the measure being implemented that you're talking about is buying the rights to pollute, no, I don't count that, since all that's happening is paper trading hands. Probably lots of paper, made at the expense of lots of dead trees, in fact.

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

Except that Kyoto is like if we were to tax everyone who fooled around with rockets. We'd end up with no rocket scientists, and wouldn't have gotten to the moon.

Kyoto was not the first global environmental effort, or the first political treaty or legislation. Plenty of other policies have been tried and tested, with several already showing what works and what doesn't, primarily I'm thinking of emissions trading, which can work great if implemented properly, and ironically is one of the primary things that makes the Kyoto Protocol useless when implemented poorly. Why sign a treaty that's broken and harmful to us to test policies we've already tested? Do you really think that the political show of unity is worth that much?

Re:Kyoto

[Jeremi]

That appears to count the quantity, not monetary amount, of pork.

True, but I suspect the growth in monetary amount is similar.

Further, the definition of "pork" can be fuzzy, so the results may depend on who is doing the classification.

In this case, it was the Club for Growth, a Republican organization.

Re:Sick of schools brainwashing lil kids with theo

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>The CFCs used to expand styrofoam until the mid-1980s deplete ozone in the stratosphere. This causes an increase in UV radiation at ground level, not global warming.

It's a pity most people don't know the difference. Just to add to the confusion, though, CFCs are both catalysts for ozone depletion and greenhouse gases as well. One of the proposals for terraforming Mars is to pump chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere in the hope of triggering a self-sustaining runaway greenhouse effect.

So why doesn't it work in reverse?

[mstone]

My question is: "Where's the missing mechanism?"

We have 30-odd years of data that show a strong correlation between ocean surface temperature and the force of hurricanes. Fine. We also have a very long history of periodic fluctuation in the force of hurricanes over time.

So why does this correlation only work today, as a 'result' of global warming? Why can't we use it to infer the existence of a periodic variation in ocean surface temperatures that corresponds to the observed history of strong hurricanes? More specifically, why can't we use this correlation and the history of strong hurricanes to show that ocean surface temperatures were rising and falling as much as they are today, long before the 150-year period associated with global warming?

If this round of strong hurricanes are the result of global warming, but none of the others in history were, what 'missing mechanism' produced all those previous cycles of strong hurricanes, and why isn't that mechanism working today?

Re:So why doesn't it work in reverse?

[DaveV1.0]

Do you really need to ask? It is GCS (Greed, cynicism, self-grandizement)

What will get you more notice:

World enters high activity party of 30-year hurricane cycle.

or

Global warming may cause stronger hurricans

Basically, a self-appointed expert can now go on TV, write a book, and charge big money to say "I believe global warming is responsible for the increased strength and frequency of hurricanes. Never mind the data behind the 30 year mark."

Re:So why doesn't it work in reverse?

[2marcus]

On his webpage, Kerry Emanuel has some data going back to 1930. But North Atlantic data isn't reliable until 1949, and global data (eg satellite era) in 1970. We have data on landfalling hurricanes going back further, but that is such a small sample that you can't make statistically significant arguments based on them.

We would _love_ to be able to apply this statistical methodology back in time, but we just don't have the data. That's the simple answer.

It should be illegal to live in dangerous places

[jesterzog]

Now permit me to be cruel: I don't believe that New Orleans should be rebuilt. If the flood areas are subject to destruction as a result of broken levees and strong hurricanes can break the levees, then we are creating a cycle of destruction and rebuilding.

Thanks for stating this -- as far as I'm concerned, there are a lot of places where people simply shouldn't be living. As I understand it (I'm not from the area so correct me if I'm wrong), New Orleans used to get lots of hurricanes similar to Katrina, and there's simply been a remisssion for about 50 years. People became complacent during that time, property near the coast was subdivided, and everyone flocked to it. 50 years later big storms are back. Apparently the solution isn't to move away -- it's to spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding?? Trying to protect a region below sea level?? There are some things that are just ridiculous.

As far as I'm concerned, people whose homes and properties are wiped out like this should be given a chance where appropriate. I live in New Zealand, and while not on as-large-a-scale as some disasters in the US, we do have several places that have been wiped out by serious weather events.

These disasters have resulted in substantial amounts of money that, essentially, comes out of my taxes. I don't mind this the first time, but bailing people out over and over again just because they like to live in a place that's clearly vulnerable to forces of nature seems silly.

We also have plenty of examples of disasters-in-waiting, which are simply being ignored. One of them, for instance, is an expected Tsunami to hit Kaikoura in the near future. There's an underwater landslide down the coast that's just waiting to happen, and almost certainly will cause the place to be at serious risk. The attitude of the locals is to ignore the risk, claim that they'll get through it like any other day, and keep on living there.

I really do sympathise with people who are living in places like this, especially if they have roots there but I also think that governments should be making it very clear about significant danger zones, and if appropriate, preventing people from living in them. I'm tempted to say that people should be allowed to live in such places at their own risk, but I don't think it's realistic to expect that help won't be offered if it's needed. I also think that such a policy would victimise poor people, by making those areas much much cheaper to live in (as well as other areas more expensive).

Re:Kyoto

[mike2R]

I'm not sure where you have got the idea that the US is particularly efficent in terms of its CO2 usage - ranks number 40 in terms of GDP/CO2 ratio - well behind Europe.

There is a fair amount the US could do without real ecoonmoic pain, the obvious example being vehical fuel prices. A year-on-year rise of fuel tax of maybe $0.20 per year would change the cars Americans buy I'm sure. These cars already exist because European governments have been doing this very thing for a long time.

There is a problem with emisions trading due to Russia having far more credits that it needs after its industrial collapse, to be sure, but its actually a good system IMO. It allows countries to get a real benefit from becoming more efficent, in that they can trade unused carbon credits with those who lag behind. The real benefit is that investment goes into carbon efficent technologies somewhere.

I'm not claiming that Kyoto will have a noticable effect in and of itself, even with US participation, however it is forcing governemnts to take steps (often distorting their domestic market with false costs) to encourage investment in carbon efficent technologies and techniques, and this is what's really needed.

New Engines negate any need for Kyoto Faster

[RabidTrucker]

Previous SlashDot post about non-combustion engines >

http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1 80074&cid=14916003

Re:Is the sky blue?

[jholzer]

No, it isn't blue. That is an over-simplistic descrition of the sky just like this artical is an over-simplistic description of the link between global warming and hurricanes.

You guys are all wrong

[freedom_india]

You guys are all wrong. All the scientists are all wrong.

Dont' you realize that according to super-secret reports of studies conducted by paid researchers of Exxon and Castrol that fossil fuels do NOT cause global warming?

Someday washpost and NY times et al are going to shout that Bush had amazing foresight and Vision in fighting this war in Iraq, he was absolutely right in NOT signing the stupid Kyoto treaty, and that there is a new super-secret way where all these hurricanes and global warming crap would be reversed in a decade.

We would forget all these silly mistakes he has done so far (murdering 2383 soldiers is a small price, considering Hitler murdered millions).

Not only that, US would be the beacon of democracy and freedom for all world, while gushing oil reserves from Alaska would bring down oil price to $10 a barrel. Take That You Saudi Arabia !!!

Re:Kyoto

[Lars T.]

And who do you think brought up trading? Like I said, the USA.

Indian and Pacific Oceans hurricanes down

[ebvwfbw]

If what they say is true then the Indian and Pacific oceans' hurricane activities would have also increased. That is, "global warming" would have to ... well be global. The trouble is, those two oceans have seen a decrease in activities.

The sciam article mentions they used a statistical analysis for this conclusion. Samuel Clemmons once stated their are liars, damn liars and statiticians. If you noticed, they only used data from 1970 on. Why not data from 1940 on, it is out there.

This last year we ran out of names for hurricanes. The naming system was based on the maximum number of hurricanes we have had in the past (80+ years ago it seems) in on season. This means that we have indeed had that many hurricanes, when they say it was cooler. So how can that be? I'm not trying to be a troll here, I'm genuinely curious if anyone knows.

The reality that I have seen shows that it has far more to do with a new weather pattern than GW. In fact we are seeing that today with more strong winds in America that have set unprecendented fires in Texas and around the country. Even in places like Maryland that has seen a greater than average rainfall. I have seen a direct coorolation between the Sun's activies and the winds here. I'm not a scientist in this field, however there definately seems to be something there to me. A lot of people don't realize that our star called the SUN is a very well behaved star relatively speaking. It could wipe life out on earth in a matter of minutes and hours otherwise.

The "Scientific American" article doesn't seem to take a new weather pattern into consideration. By the way, weather patterns tend to last 20 years. On the other hand, if they are right then we need to convince our elected officials to allow Nuclear Power plants to be built. One of those suckers takes a lot of the greenhouse gasses away. Also, many people have no idea that coal plants emit more radiation than any other American nuke plant ever has. Turns out coal is often located near Uranium deposits. In fact we have been lied to for years about the dangers of nuclear power. Even in Chernobyl, the dire consequences they told us about haven't come about. Same thing with Three Mile Island. These dire consequenes were once published in the Scientific American as well.

Re:Indian and Pacific Oceans hurricanes down

[PermanentMarker]

perhaps GW does play a role, but what they did was just measuring the sea temp what causes isn't their topic. In a way sea temp (wherever it occurs) seams to have an effect. If you remember physics you would now that temperature of air makes a difference in how much vaporized water could exist in air. The speed of vaporizing is also effected by the temperature of the liquid. So these small changes play a role in the creation of bigger events. (could be similiar to utterfly effect) i hope it explains, personaly thinking of GW i think a big cause is our sun next is our industrialization, but i don't now how to stop either of them.

Styrofoam and Global warming

[abb3w]

The CFCs used to expand styrofoam until the mid-1980s deplete ozone in the stratosphere. This causes an increase in UV radiation at ground level, not global warming.

Mostly correct. The additional UV contributes a trivial increase in surface recieved energy, which in turn contributes a trivial amount to retained energy near ground level. The ozone depletion in itself does not make CFC's a global warming concern. The problem of CFC's is that the C-F bond is a better infrared absorber than even the C=O bond, meaning CFC's have a much higher global warming potential (GWP) than CO2: easy-to-find Web page with CFC GWP table.

The good news is that increases in CFC GW contribution are falling since the ban of R-12 and others of the worst suspects; the bad news is that the CFCs put out before the ban will be contributing to global warming for a long time to come. The gripping hand is that the sheer volume of CO2 levels has always made it the #1 global warming contributor.

There are lots of sensible things we can do ...

[golodh]

To me the parent post sums up the atitude in the US. It says this:

[...] The question is what to do about it. We can: (1) Totally ignore it. (2) Put our entire economy on hold.

3)Or anything in between.(my emphasis)

4)To determine what we should do requires a lot more information than we actually have. (my emphasis) [...]

Well ... option 1) is what the US have been doing for the past 10 years or so. Satisfied with the results? Option 2) has been cited all along to argue that it made no sense to a) find out if there really was a danger, b) why actually doing anything about it was out of the question anyway, and c) all this talk about climate was a load of bunkum purveyed by starry eyed doo-gooders and jealous pinko's out to rob us of our economic leadership anyway.

So I'm very pleased to see that the poster actually caught on to option 3) "anything in-between", despite the traditional catch-all excuse for doing nothing voiced in the same breath under 4). Tradition is hard to shake off, I know, but it can be very misplaced. There may be lots of residual questions relating the connection between global warming and catastrophic climate change, but why would we want to wait until all the t's are crossed and all the i's are dotted? What would that gain us? At most it would tell us that some measures would be unnecessary, allowing us to save some effort and some money. Great, but is that worth the risk of missing out on a hard or soft window of opportunity w.r.t. climate change? Personally I think not, but that's just my opinion.

I put it to you that being as energy-efficient as feasible is the obvious thing to do. It may not be a total solution, but it helps. Let others (e.g. the government) worry about the large-scale issues (after all that's what they're paid for) ... but make sure that they _do_ worry about it and don't pass it off as "counter to our economic interest". But being a little more energy-efficient is something that all of us can do, starting today. Both at an individual and at a national level. Not just because it would reduce CO2 emissions that would otherwise take place, and hence contribute to one of the probable causes of global warming, but also because our main energy source, mineral oil, is an increasingly scarce resource. And one which (in my personal opinion) currently is way too cheap in the US.

The only additional information you'd need is: how do I identify and implement measures that make sense from an economic, practical, and technical point of view?

On an individual level there are lots things (ranging from small to ambitious) that can be done in and about the home. Home-owners, renters, and small businesses can find detailed information on how to save energy (and money) here: http://hes.lbl.gov/hes/vh.shtml.

There are government subsidies (see http://www.dsireusa.org/) for energy-saving measures, that can reduce the financial burden of implementing energy-saving measures for businesses and individuals.

What more information would you need to get started?

Re:There are lots of sensible things we can do ...

[jadavis]

Well ... option 1) is what the US have been doing for the past 10 years or so. Satisfied with the results?

It doesn't matter whether I'm "satisfied" or not. What matters is whether a better option exists. If we're past the point of no return on this global warming, then it produces 0 benefit to try to stop it.

but why would we want to wait until all the t's are crossed and all the i's are dotted

I can turn that question around and ask why we should jump to conclusions and assume that arbitrarily punitive oil taxes would lead to any actual benefit.

On an individual level there are lots things (ranging from small to ambitious) that can be done in and about the home.

As energy gets more expensive, more people will do those things. I'm pretty energy efficient right now. I have no idea whether it helps though, or how much.

What more information would you need to get started?

Information that could be used to craft economically sound policy. We need cost-benefit analysis, and that seems to me to be as difficult as predicting the weather. That's the problem.

Re:There are lots of sensible things we can do ...

[golodh]

It doesn't matter whether I'm "satisfied" or not. What matters is whether a better option exists. If we're past the point of no return on this global warming, then it produces 0 benefit to try to stop it.

You seem to admit that there may be a point of no return, and yet you seem to be prepared to risk overshooting it by insisting that we research precisely how far we have or haven't gone towards that point. Your motive for this to avoid the possibility that we might accidentally do something that's not strictly necessary. In doing so you allow for no safety margins of any kind as regards the potential effects. May I call that irresponsible?

Re:There are lots of sensible things we can do ...

[jadavis]

It's not that I don't allow margins. It's just that nobody has any idea what the margins are. Any estimate anyone would give about the costs or benefits would be off by orders of magnitude.

Anything may have a point of no return. If we let an animal go extinct, we may have missed out on something that could cure cancer. But animals go extinct all the time, with and without the involvement of humans. I am willing to pay some price to prevent extinction, but I am not willing to pay any price to keep every animal in the world from going extinct. Sure, there are programs that try to balance out some flora and fauna with minimal expense. But when you talk about oil you're talking about policies that could break multi-trillion dollar economies.

So, no, not at any price. I'm not giving a bunch of environmentalists a blank check on a trillion dollar account. That's irresponsible.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that global warming is happening, and that it's bad. Does that mean that we can effectively do something about it at a reasonable price? Maybe. But no blank checks coming from me.

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

Umm, no. The EU wanted a model similar to their own trading scheme. All Kyoto is IS a greenhouse gas trading scheme, which is fine, greenhouse gas trading schemes can be a great way to reduce pollution. It's the holes in it for developing nations and former soviet countries that make it useless.

A study needed for basic meteorology?

[angel'o'sphere]

Last summer, two studies linked this temperature rise to stronger and more frequent hurricanes.

Thas basic meteorology. Sicne when do you need a study for that? This is known since > 40 years.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Kyoto

[node 3]

No, I've said that the Kyoto treaty is useless environmentally, worse than useless economically, and only slightly useful politically. Don't try and twist my words against me, read carefully what I've typed before trying to make that argument.

No, you said, "The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless."

I pointed out that it's not useless, and you agreed.

We disagree on the breakdown, but I wasn't addressing that. I was *only* addressing your assertion that the treaty is, was, and always will be "useless". You may have meant otherwise, but you didn't write that. I can only address what you've written, and how I've interpreted it.

The justification for the Asian-Pacific Partnership for on Clean Development and Climate was pretty close to what you claim they're not saying

No, the justification for that agreement was that it doesn't have any requirements and isn't binding. We could pollute 1,000x the rate we do today and not be in violation of the agreement. The reason we signed it is because it says we can do whatever the hell we want. If you want to criticize Kyoto for being useless, this is even more so.

Rather, I've heard the Bush administration, and come to think of it, just about all of congress during the Clinton administration _including_the_democrats_ (remember, Kyoto was turned down before Bush!) say that Kyoto was harmful to the economy and not very effective for the environment.

1. Al Gore signed the treaty. The Clinton administration did not "turn it down". We were part of the process up until the time the Bush administration walked away from the treaty altogether. The Clinton administration wanted the treaty, but they wanted to work on it before signing it.

2. I never said that the Democrats had no criticisms of the treaty. *All* that I'm saying is that there are benefits, even if it were to change absolutely *nothing* today with regards to greenhouse gas emissions (which is a contention I dispute, but the point being even worst-case there *are* benefits).

We have already determined that you and I disagree on whether the pluses are worth the minuses in this case. But you can't say, in one breath, that there are absolutely no pluses, then in the next that there are some that you so casually dismiss, which is evident in your complete misunderstanding of my original third point: even if the Kyoto Protocol changed nothing at all, now or ever, even if it adversely affected all of the member nations' economies, there would *still* be the benefit that it would make Kyoto II more likely. And I don't mean it has to be actually another treaty in Kyoto, it could be that all the nations have, by formally entering into the treaty, admitted concern for, and legitimized the threat of, global greenhouse gas emissions, and will, upon seeing the flaws with Kyoto, clamor to meet again and sign a new treaty, having learned from the mistakes of the current one. However, if we walk away from Kyoto, saying it's not a legitimate concern worthy of meaningful action, then we end up with lesser agreements, if we end up with any at all, like the AP6 (which, by the way, is not a treaty, and therefore not ratified by Congress).

Re:Weather != Climate

[snookumz]

Yep! That's cause they've seen that cycle a couple dozen times. If they hadn't they'd probably develop some crack pot theory about how it was just going to keep getting hotter and never go down. Or they'd come up with some bullshit reason that something they did caused it. Then they'd find something unrelated to do to get rid of it. They'd probably think they suceeded once it started cooling down again. Look into history, this is how harvest rituals get started. Don't fool yourself sunshine. You're not that important to the universe. It just doesn't care.

Re:Kyoto

[rapierian]

Okay, let me explain to you how the English language works.

We write things in paragraphs, and each paragraph should have a topic sentence, and then several sentences that back up that topic sentence. Usually the topic sentence is at the beginning, but depending on the writing style it can also be at the end, or even the middle of the paragraph.

"The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless" is one of these fairly strong sentences we call topic sentences. Now, I meant w.r.t. the environment, but did not say so explicetely in that sentence. But let's look at the rest of the paragraph, shall we? The next sentence I mention that there wouldn't be a noticeable change from the environment, so okay, I'm definitely saying it's useless environmentally, and qualifying useless to mean not any change that we would notice, NOT there is no change that occurs at all. The third sentence is more of the same. The fourth sentence, I infer that it has an effect beyond the environment (our economy) and that it's a negative effect, but re-iterate that it's useless and this time directly bring back the useless description with how I mentioned it in the previous two sentences. All of this together makes the implications that I was only calling the Kyoto treaty useless w.r.t. the environment quite strong.

Now lets look at some other statements you can't read.

Did I ever say that the Clinton administration was opposed to Kyoto? Here's what I said:
"and come to think of it, just about all of congress during the Clinton administration _including_the_democrats_"

Oh look! I said that CONGRESS during the Clinton administration was opposed. Huh, that's kind of different, isn't it?

Did I ever agree with you that Kyoto wasn't useless? Well, let's take a look, shall we?

On point 1: I say, "Sort of." Hmm, that probably means I somewhat agree with your point. Let's see how I qualify it. Hmm, my first sentence is a question implying that your statement only works for some of the countries, which would also imply that the opposite of your statement might be true for other countries, resulting in a net wash. My second sentence I point out that the entire scheme is messed up in such a way that environmental effects rarely happen. My last sentence takes the point I percieve you making about Kyoto and talks about such schemes in general, not about Kyoto at all. So this entire point response amounts to me saying that there is barely any effect from this point, which fits pretty closely to how I was qualifying the word "useless", didn't it?

On point 2: Not only do I first say that Kyoto isn't doing anything for us w.r.t. this point (and so signing it really doesn't make a difference, does it?) but then I say, "That being the case, if this was all that Kyoto was doing" which directly implies that it's not all that Kyoto was doing, and that what else Kyoto is doing isn't positive, doesn't it?

On point 3: Here I do say that Kyoto isn't useless _politically_, but with the direct statement that it's not worth very much politically even so. I've already gone through that argument, so I'm not going to again.

I'm done arguing with you, it's not worth it for me to have to explain simple English and how logic works in it for every post I make.

Re:Kyoto

[node 3]

Did I ever say that the Clinton administration was opposed to Kyoto? Here's what I said:
"and come to think of it, just about all of congress during the Clinton administration _including_the_democrats_"

Liar. What was the text immediately following your quote above? It was: "(remember, Kyoto was turned down before Bush!)"

In other words, Clinton turned down the treaty. He did no such thing.

Oh look! I said that CONGRESS during the Clinton administration was opposed. Huh, that's kind of different, isn't it?

The treaty was never put before Congress.

You're a liar. You don't stand by your own words. There's nothing wrong with saying something you didn't mean. It happens to everyone. But when called on it, at least have the courtesy to admit so and say, "I worded that poorly".

It's plain and simple that your true stance does not agree with the sentence, "The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless." Don't bother denying it, because it's just more lies. You have already agreed that the Kyoto Protocol has benefits. You just don't think they are worthwhile. That's fine, it's a valid opinion, but lying to me will not work, and lying to yourself is a fool's errand.

Good day.

Re:It should be illegal to live in dangerous place

[djpenguin808]

I love seeing this argument, especially on /.

I live in one of these so-called "dangerous places", the San Francisco Bay Area, and have for my whole life. I've seen a big quake in action, up close and personal, back in 1989 (Loma Prieta). Although it took as long as ten years for full repairs to be completed on every structure damaged in the quake, life was largely back to normal about a month or so after it hit.

Of course, Loma Prieta is not the only big quake to have struck the area, there was the famous quake in 1906 that caused a fire so large it almost destroyed San Francisco. If the people back then had listened to naysayers like you instead of making risk-taking into a way of life, the Bay Area would be a very different place today. The Silicon Valley would likely never have come into existance, and you might well have typed your message on a fine IBM electric typewriter. Intel Corp. may have never invented the 4004 microprocessor. Compaq may have never reverse-engineered the IBM-PC. Apple wouldn't exist. Nor would Sun, Creative Labs, BSD-Unix, or AMD. Do I really have to keep going?

The unique culture that exists in the San Francisco Bay Area helped encourage many people to take some big risks that have changed the face of our planet and the lives of everybody on /. And yet we still have to listen to people tell us that our home is too dangerous, and we should leave. The tax argument isn't even a valid point in this instance, as California pays more federal taxes than the feds give back, so nobody else in the country is subsidising our choice of location.

A climate scientist replies

[2marcus]

I have serious doubts about how this so-called "excellent" paper got through peer review - oh, wait, was it not published in a peer-reviewed journal?

I recognize that the man may be one of the world experts on hurricane skill prediction, but the man clearly needs some basic education in climate physics. To start with, the man doesn't even realize that forcing from increases in CO2 concentration aren't linear!

Quote: "and from 1975 to 2005 it [CO2 energy forcing] was raised by 46/290x4.2 = 0.67 w/m2". Now, the standard CO2 forcing approximation (ideally, you use MODTRAN or the equivalent software package, but this will do) is F = f(c)-f(c0) where f(c) = 4.996 ln (c+0.0005c^2). For the same 330 ppm to 378 ppm increase that Gray claims is 0.67 w/m2 (or, in your excerpt, 0.65 w/m2), I calculate about 0.78 w/m2. So Dr. Gray is off by a whopping 16% on what should be an elementary calculation that I would expect any competent first year grad student to be able to do.

Now of course, CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas. Other gases have contributed some 1.5 W/m2 forcing increase since preindustrial. Nor does he seem to ackowledge the cooling properties of sulfate aerosols (extremely important when understanding the difference between the 1950 to 1975 period and the 1975-present period), or the fact that climate models do an extremely good job of matching the cooling resulting from volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo that his theories would clearly totally fail on, various fingerprinting routines to look at temperature change patterns, or any one of a hundred other issues.

So how about I don't call myself a weather prediction expert unless I want to do some serious research into your methodology, and you (or Dr. Gray) don't try pretending to be experts on climate science unless you can understand at least the elementary issues?

Re:Kyoto

[2marcus]

What do you mean by saying that the Mann "hockey stick" was proved wrong at MIT? The MIT climate scientists I know mostly agree with the following realclimate article...

Observations of hurricane frequency

[amightywind]

The numbers you are looking at are too small to make valid statistical claims. That is why real scientists use total hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin, or even better, global hurricanes.

Don't the NOAA statistics I linked go back 150 years. The issue is the frequency of hurricane strikes on the US and how much global warming is supposed to affect it. This is the relevant data that is available. What deep statistical reasoning do you propose? You are not thinking clearly.

Oh - wait, but you are trying to make a hysterical political claim by using data sets that are too small to draw valid conclusions from! mmm, the flavor of hypocrisy...

That the US has been hit by a historically low number of hurricanes in the last 5 years is a simple observation. Observations of 60 previous 5 year periods bear this out. That is a pretty good statistical sample. I draw no conclusion except that the nefarious global warming does not seem to be causing an uptick in hurricane strike in the US. This is why I criticized the initial post and drew the ire of the Kyotoists. If you are a Kyotoist see the bogeyman of global warming in every whirlwind, then you will be disappointed. I can't help that. I can only be honest.

Re:Observations of hurricane frequency

[2marcus]

Prof. Emanuel, MIT: "Data on U.S. landfalling storms is only about 2 tenths of one percent of data we have on global hurricanes over their whole lifetimes. Thus while we can already detect trends in data for global hurricane activity considering the whole life of each storm, we estimate that it would take at least another 50 years to detect any long-term trend in U.S. landfalling hurricane statistics, so powerful is the role of chance in these numbers."

So I'm saying that your statement of "we don't see trends in these numbers, therefore nothing is happening" is equivalent to a global warming alarmist saying "the last couple of years have been hot, therefore the world is ending!"

We do see statistically significant trends in increased frequency of Atlantic hurricanes overall. Now, it is possible that the long term trend will show that despite increased Atlantic hurricanes, we are actually getting decreased US hurricanes... but we don't have enough data to say that yet!

In addition, when we do have data, I would suggest that number and category of landfalling hurricanes are not the only factors that need to be considered, but also duration and size of storm.

Finally you state "That the US has been hit by a historically low number of hurricanes in the last 5 years is a simple observation." This is a simple but WRONG observation. I count 13 landfalling hurricanes in the last 5 years, 6 of which have been category 3 or higher. That looks quite exceptional in historical terms. The data you pointed us at convenientally leaves out 2005 with its 4 landfalls and 3 majors. But again, I will point out that 13 hurricanes in 5 years is a number small enough that we can't make statistically confident statements about whether this is the sign of a trend or an abberation.

Expecting data, got anecdotes

[amightywind]

Prof. Emanuel, MIT: "Data on U.S. landfalling storms is only about 2 tenths of one percent of data we have on global hurricanes over their whole lifetimes. Thus while we can already detect trends in data for global hurricane activity considering the whole life of each storm, we estimate that it would take at least another 50 years to detect any long-term trend in U.S. landfalling hurricane statistics, so powerful is the role of chance in these numbers."

This is an anecdote. Speculation. Fog. Given your haughtiness I was expecting an argument bolstered by better statistical evidence than I got from NOAA. I would welcome a link worldwide data on the size and duration of hurricanes. This is not it. You are not strengthening your argument. I am still quite content in my original observation that global warming is not correlated with hurricane formation.

Re:Expecting data, got anecdotes

[2marcus]

Kerry Emanuel's home page

Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment. P. J. Webster, G. J. Holland, J. A. Curry, and H.-R. Chang (2005). Science 309: 1844-1846

Emanuel, "Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones Over the Past 30 Years" Nature 436, 686-688 (4 August 2005)

Trenberth et al., Science: "An important measure of regional storm activity is the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index (see the second figure) (1). Since 1995, the ACE indexes for all but two Atlantic hurricane seasons have been above normal; the exceptions are the El Niño years of 1997 and 2002. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the hurricane seasons from 1995 to 2004 averaged 13.6 tropical storms, 7.8 hurricanes, and 3.8 major hurricanes, and the ACE index was 169% of the median."

Good enough?

Re:Kyoto

[chromozone]

I was referring to an article I read in Technology Review - an MIT publication. It was a couple of Canadians who actually did the first work.

Technology review
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/wo_ muller101504.asp

October 15, 2004

Global Warming Bombshell
A prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.

By Richard Muller

Progress in science is sometimes made by great discoveries. But science also advances when we learn that something we believed to be true isnt. When solving a jigsaw puzzle, the solution can sometimes be stymied by the fact that a wrong piece has been wedged in a key place.

In the scientific and political debate over global warming, the latest wrong piece may be the hockey stick, the famous plot (shown below), published by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann and colleagues. This plot purports to show that we are now experiencing the warmest climate in a millennium, and that the earth, after remaining cool for centuries during the medieval era, suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago--just at the time that the burning of coal and oil led to an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.

I talked about this at length in my December 2003 column. Unfortunately, discussion of this plot has been so polluted by political and activist frenzy that it is hard to dig into it to reach the science. My earlier column was largely a plea to let science proceed unmolested. Unfortunately, the very importance of the issue has made careful science difficult to pursue

But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.

But it wasnt so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? Let me digress into a short technical discussion of how this incredible error took place.

In PCA and similar techniques, each of the (in this case, typically 70) different data sets have their averages subtracted (so they have a mean of zero), and then are multiplied by a number to make their average variation around that mean to be equal to one; in technical jargon, we say that each data set is normalized to zero mean and unit variance. In standard PCA, each data set is normalized over its complete data period; for key climate data sets that Mann used to create his hockey stick graph, this was the interval 1400-1980. But the computer program Mann used did not do that. Instead, it forced each data set to have zero mean for the time period 1902-1980, and to match the historical records for this interval. This is the time whe

Re:Kyoto

[2marcus]

I encourage you to take a look at the realclimate analysis of the Hockey Stick controversy. McIntyre & McKitrick is by no means the last word in this discussion, and the general consensus among climate scientists (including those at MIT) is that the broad brush of the hockey stick is correct.

Valid reference, spacious conclusions

[amightywind]

Thanks for providing a reference, but you have done your argument further harm. You lecture me on the inadequacy of 150 years of regional NOAA data then offer up some spacious, pseudo-statistical conclusions based on 10 years of the *same* data? Perhaps you should get into marketing.

Re:Valid reference, spacious conclusions

[2marcus]

No, my point has been and continues to be that _landfalling_ hurricanes as a small percentage of total hurricanes do not offer enough data to make significant conclusions. These studies look at full basins, or even global frequencies, in order to examine trends.

They also chart said trends against actual sea surface temperatures so they can make statements about the potential links between them, which gives more data than just looking at a temporal trend.

I think you misunderstood me

[jesterzog]

It might be that I wasn't clear enough, and it's also that you seem to have misunderstood me to some extent. If this was the case then please accept my apologies.

If you live in San Francisco, then you should know that the 1989 quake, as did the 1906 quake, resulted in some significant changes to building regulations, including highway bridge regulations, after it was noticed that several standard precautions already known about hadn't been implemented properly or effectively. If you live there, you're already paying extra to live in buildings of a higher standard than you might live in elsewhere. Also as much as they demand attention for preparation, earthquakes simply don't occur as often as severe storms. I also live in an Earthquake risk zone, and I pay extra for it too. Will my government bail us out if an Earthquake strikes? Sure, at least I hope so, but the chances of that actually happening are still considerably average over the next several hundred years. We might be hit tommorrow, or not for a thousand years. Like you, we also pay our way, and I'd like to think that a bailout cost every few hundred years would be insignificant compared with the economic return of being here.

It's completely true that sometimes there are very good reasons for living in dangerous places, especially when it's economic to do so. Maybe there's a big and very accessible harbour there, for instance. Alternatively, volcanic ash that surrounds volcanoes is great for producing crops efficiently. I'm not trying to suggest that people shouldn't be allowed to live in dangerous places across the board, or that a fence should be put up to stop people visiting on the off-chance that a disaster will strike. (For hurricanes it's not too difficult to predict their impact in a reasonable time, anyway.) But I think there should definitely be some restrictions on building in the places that are obviously most at risk, and likely to be subject to natural disasters again and again.

But come on, the coast of New Orleans is going to be hammered by big hurricanes over and over again from now on. The only difference between now and 50 years ago is the recent 50 year lapse in the standard weather pattern. During this time people became complacent and started building in places where they really shouldn't have built. Now that the pattern's resuming and they've finally been hit again, the response isn't to say "Oops, we shouldn't have done that.. we'd better pull back to where we were". On the contrary, the response is to spend billions of dollars trying to devise ways to let people continue living in places below sea level that will be repeatedly exposed to severe hurricanes, and that people never would have wanted to live in if they hadn't had an opportunity to establish themselves during an inconsistent patch of climatic conditions. To top it off, the methods being devised are probably not going to work with any certainty or effectiveness, and the area will continue to be a sink for other people's money that could otherwise be spent on much more useful things -- or alternatively given back to them if you happen to think that way.

Really, to be honest, New Orleans is in the US and I'm not deeply concerned about how you choose to run your internal affairs except when they have spinoffs that affect me. If you want to spend billions of dollars on subsidising people's poor choices of living locality, by all means do so and who am I to argue? It's not even my money. I do find it quite perpelexing to look at, though.

Locally, in New Zealand, I am concerned, because the places that cost the most to bail out of disasters are the small coastal towns that are demonstrably in locations subject to severe conditions (between their attractive sunshine). These places don't provide a lot of tax anyway. With a few exceptions, they tend to be full of people living there in retiremen

Re:It should be illegal to live in dangerous place

[CrimsonAvenger]

As I understand it (I'm not from the area so correct me if I'm wrong), New Orleans used to get lots of hurricanes similar to Katrina, and there's simply been a remisssion for about 50 years.

Umm,no. New Orleans has been hit by ONE hurricane even closely comparable to Katrina since 1900. Betsy, in 1964, also flooded the city.

Since I've been living there, two or three little hurricanes have passed close enough to give us a "Hurricane Day" at work. One of those hurricanes actually caused RAIN in New Orleans. Almost 1/4 inch of it, if you can believe that.

Fact is, any given spot on the Gulf Coast doesn't get hit all that often. And big storms don't happen all that often. So being hit by a big storm is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, usually. Well, twice for older people in New Orleans now, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

We're expecting a busier than usual Hurricane season this year too. But the odds of New Orleans being hit by a big storm this year are low. About the same as the odds of Gulf Shore, Alabama being hit twice in a row by monster storms...oh, wait, that didn't happen, did it?

Re:Global warming and hurricanes, whatever.

[CronScript]

Read both articles! What idiots modified this as insightful and my prior as flamebait? The quality of analysis on Slashdot has gone down to about zero over the past few years.

This study claims that frequency of hurricanes is directly correlated with temperature of the Atlantic. The study made NO claims about "long-term increases in hurricane intensity," and the global warming comment was pure speculation, not backed up by any science included in this study - at least as described by the linked article.

The study ONLY examined data from 1970-2004. The researcher mentions a 75 year cycle, but the NOAA site explains that there are many more. NOAA is also examining all known data and has a detailed explaination of how they reached their conclusion in the above linked FAQ question.

As for the other reply, dismissing data because NOAA is a branch of the present govenment is complete nonsense. If you don't believe the NOAA conclusions then please provide scientific references which show why you believe them not to be true.