Climate Changes Shift Springtime in Europe

gollum123 writes to mention a BBC article on a study of Europe's changing climate. The study collated information from 17 nations and 125,000 studies involving 561 species. The results indicate that, at least in Europe, 'Spring' is coming earlier and earlier every year. From the article: "Spring was beginning on average six to eight days earlier than it did 30 years ago, the researchers said. In regions such as Spain, which saw the greatest increases in temperatures, the season began up to two weeks earlier. The findings were based on what was described as the world's largest study of changes in recurring natural events, such as when plants flowered. The team of researchers also found that the onset of autumn has been delayed by an average of three days over the same period."

Comments

30 years ago?

[ZakuSage]

Wasn't there a cooling trend in the 70s, that one that made everyone concerned about global cooling? Wouldn't that skew their results? How is it compared to say 50 years ago?

Re:30 years ago?

[Anonymous Coward]

The measurements were subject to errors in instrument calibration. Also the former models did not include the global dimming effect.

Re:30 years ago?

[slightlyspacey]

As a matter of fact, there was ... from Newsweek "The Cooling World" April 28, 1975, page 64:

In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant over-all loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually.

So, as a rough estimate growing seasons are about the same as they were in the 1950s. The researchers only went back 30 years so they wouldn't have to deal with this "anomaly". That is known in some circles as "cooking the data".

Re:30 years ago?

[93 Escort Wagon]

"Wasn't there a cooling trend in the 70s, that one that made everyone concerned about global cooling? Wouldn't that skew their results? How is it compared to say 50 years ago?"

North America's climate was cooler from roughly 1950 through about 1975; but I don't know that it was a world-wide phenomenon (it could have been; I just don't know.). However "cooler" is a relative term - it wasn't "Little Ice Age" cool or anything like that. It was just cooler than the period before and after. You might notice that a lot of your local record low temps occured in the 1950s; at least if you live in the US.

There have been a lot of fluctuations like this, and will continue to be whether global warming continues or not (that's one thing that bugs me - the debate shouldn't be "it is warming" versus "it isn't warming". The ice core records taken in the past two decades have established that IT IS WARMING UP. The question really is, is this observed warming trend caused by man's activity [anthropogenic] or is it a natural fluctuation?).

That's one of the problems with the global warming discussion. As the climate continues to warm year after year it becomes more and more likely that this is anthropogenic rather than natural; but by the time we are 100% certain it'll be too late to do anything. Unfortunately this sort of uncertainty is common in science, which means politicians can use their mad spin skillz to argue it whatever way their constituency wants.

Re:30 years ago?

[aichpvee]

It's especially ridiculous since it's pretty clear we ARE causing it and the fix is a) simple and b) cheap to implement relative to the cost of continuing as we are, damage to the planet not even considered.

Re:30 years ago?

[oohshiny]

Yes, it does "skew" the results and that's being taken into account. Particulate pollution did reduce temperatures, and as a result, global warming has been masked to some degree.

However, unlike CO2, particulates have a short half life in the atmosphere, so now that we have been reducing particulate emissions, we're seeing more of the impact of global warming.

(Note that deliberate particulate emissions would not be a feasible countermeasure to global warming: they are too unhealthy.)

Re:30 years ago?

[Ulfalizer]

I'm not looking to make an ad hominem argument here, but please take anything that comes out of junkscience.com with a huge grain of salt. Steven Milloy, the site's creator, has a long history of paid-for punditry, primarily for the tobacco industry ( http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2000Q3/junkman.ht ml , http://www.trwnews.net/Documents/Dow/junkscicom.ht m ).

Sites like junkscience.com take great care to mention only those few "prominent" scientists who share their view, while ignoring the distribution of views among researchers in the field. In reality, there's practically consensus that the recent global warming is a man-made phenomenon ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/570 2/1686 ).

Always do a background check on authors when hearing controversial claims.

Ulf Magnusson

Re:30 years ago?

[njh]

(Note that deliberate particulate emissions would not be a feasible countermeasure to global warming: they are too unhealthy.)

And they stop it from raining.

Re:30 years ago?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assume it is not clear to me. Please explain.

Re:30 years ago?

[Millenniumman]

Sears is having a discount on Global Air Conditioning systems.

Re:30 years ago?

[slightlyspacey]

No offense taken. I agree with you that it is *always* good to check the background of the authors. But what is more important, is to determine whether what they are saying is complete and accurate.

As is often the case in emotional debates, critics of the "one and only true viewpoint" get labeled as stooges for the other side, so their research is dismissed WITHOUT serious consideration given to their objections. This is a logical fallacy known as "poisoning the well". Politicians in general LOVE using this rhetorical device. I always make a habit of casting a skeptical eye and doing a bit of research when the media becomes emotional, panicy, and opposing viewpoints are underrepresented. It doesn't matter whether we're talking religion, global warming, gun control, or video games.

Now in the spirit of poisoning the well, let's look at the background of PRWATCH :):):):). PRWATCH is produced by a non-profit known as the Center for Media and Democracy which was founded by environmentalist writer and political activist, John Stauber. Their stated goals include:

Countering propaganda by investigating and reporting on behind-the-scenes public relations campaigns by corporations, industries, governments and other powerful institutions.

Informing and assisting grassroots citizen activism that promotes public health, economic justice, ecological sustainability and human rights.

"Economic justice" and "Ecological sustainability"????????? It sounds like they might have an agenda.
The Village Voice, known as a bastion of conservative opinion :):), once stated, speaking of the Center for Media and Democracy,in a review of a book co-authored by Stauber, "These guys come from the far side of liberal."

From the book itself:

Activism enriches our lives in multiple ways. It brings us into personal contact with other people who are informed, passionate and altruistic in their commitment to help make the world a better place. These are good friends to have, and often they are better sources of information than the experts whose names appear in the newspapers. Activism, in our opinion, is a path to enlightenment. - Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (from "Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with your Future")

So yes, the Center for Media and Democracy does have an agenda. Does that mean we should dismiss everything they report or say about a topic or a person? A most emphatic NO. You examine what they bring to the table and ask whether it is complete and accurate. That's the way it should be.

Re:30 years ago?

[Alioth]

Looking at English growing seasons is rather bogus for tracking global climate change. The whole British Isles weather is heavily influenced by the position of the jet stream, and Atlantic ocean currents.

For example, the reason why Britain is so much warmer now than it was in the 1970s is not due to the global increase in temperature (certainly not directly), but because the jet stream has moved south (it did so in the winter of 1975, starting a series of almost annual summer heat waves from 1976 and onwards). Prior to 1975, the position of the jet stream brought Atlantic lows into the British Isles during the summer (meaning cool, wet summers), and as the jet stream migrated northwards as it always does in winter, meant the blocking high pressure systems arrived in the winter, bringing clear and cold nights and more continental easterly winds.

When the jet stream moved south in the winter of 1975, this meant that Atlantic lows tended to come in the winter, and blocking highs in the summer. A rainy Atlantic low in the winter means mild westerlies and cloud cover so the landmass can't radiate so much heat at night. The blocking highs in the summer brought long spells of sunny weather, resulting in hot summers with those continental easterlies (which in summer, are warm).

Re:30 years ago?

[Reziac]

"...by the time we are 100% certain it'll be too late to do anything."

And what if we "do something" and that proves to screw up the longterm cycle, so a thousand years from now we plunge into an ice age?

Re:30 years ago?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point is exactly right, the question is why, not if.

Maybe I'm being facetious, but you know, another question no-one ever seems to ask is whether a warmer planet is, on balance, good or bad; the unspoken assumption seems to be that the status quo is the best possible environment. Perhaps a few more degrees will increase biodiversity, reduce our home heating costs, and expose more cleavage.

Re:30 years ago?

[non0score]

Sure, it's either that we take a chance and maybe screw up the long term cycle a 1000 years into the future, or we do nothing and get a much higher chance of screwing up the weather now. Which one would you pick?

Re:30 years ago?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The researchers only went back 30 years so they wouldn't have to deal with this "anomaly". That is known in some circles as "cooking the data"."

Or alternatively it might be how long they have reliable data for, and going back further would be difficult. It certainly demonstrates a trend over the period examined.

To go back further would require data that had been reliably captured for this entire period. Growing seasons from farmers might be one example. So for a bigger picture it is worth looking at both the 30 year data (which covers a wide variety of phenomena for a shorter period) and other data which covers a longer period but fewer phenomena.

Looking at a series of indicators is what climatologists often do, and then try to cross-calibrate, as humans have not collected data for a hugely long period of time using a consistent methodology.

Re:30 years ago?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I get to assume that you're an idiot and can't read also? If so, look here. It's a graph, that means pictures so you don't have to read.

Really?

[LordRPI]

I didn't know that climate change could affect the date of the equinox...

Re:Really?

[49152]

I know this is Slashdot and no one reads TFA.

But how about reading the provided summary at least, or what part of "study of changes in recurring natural events, such as when plants flowered" did you not understand?

Re:Really?

[richdun]

Yeah, but this is /., so of course if a technical definition exists, whether it's really what TFA meant or not, someone is going to quote it.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary's first half is misleading and you have to read the second half to understand. It's a marketing gimmick.

Another example was the article about an Iranian nuclear weapon plant. You have the read the article to know that there is no such claim, and you have to know about nuclear physics to understand that it doesn't imply nukes.

I think it's fair game to complain about inaccuracies, or at least make fun of the writer.

Re:Really?

[LouisZepher]

I, for once, did not read the article. Does it explain how the climate change is affecting the Earth's position in its orbit and angle of its axis as to change daylight hours? Last I knew, Equinox came from a Latin expression meaning "equal night", and is used in reference to how during the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes have equal number of daylight and nighttime hours.

Easy solutions...

[talkingpaperclip]

Either move the official start date of spring up six to eight days or remove that many days from the calendar. Personally, I vote for the first week of the year, I always hated the first week of school back from winter vacation when I was a kid.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it trolling to wonder if a flaw in their research would skew their results?

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[RsG]

The mods probably saw "cooling trend" and "1970" and assumed the poster was bringing up the tired old arguement that we used to think the earth was headed into a new ice age.

The arguement usually goes that before 1970 we thought there was a new ice age coming, due to a global cooling trend. This is usually followed by the arguement that climate scientists don't know what they're talking about, and that man-made global warming is a myth. What this "talking point" ignores is that the so-called "new ice age" never had much scientific credibility; it is primarily remembered because it had a great deal of press coverage. Further, IIRC the global warming hypothesis goes back to at least 1968.

In every single /. discussion involving climate change, the above arguement is made as a talking point by people who dislike the notion that humans are affecting global temperature. So, after a while I suspect that moderators get a wee bit trigger happy whenever someone mentions the words "cooling" and "1970" in a post about climate change.

Note that the GP's point is valid, as there was an observed period of lower temperature 30 years ago (which is what sparked all the media speculation regarding a new ice age). However, I'm sure the scientists who did this study took that trend into account, and in any case the cooling trend was both brief and comparatively small.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[kfg]

. . .the so-called "new ice age" never had much scientific credibility; it is primarily remembered because it had a great deal of press coverage.

Ahhhhhhhhhh, how ironic this could look in another 20 or 30 years.

KFG

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem, really, is the term "Global Warming" itself. It basically gives the naysayers plenty of easy (if faulty) ammo.

Perhaps "Global Climate Change" would have been better... or just "Global We're Fucked"

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Rob Kaper]

What this "talking point" ignores is that the so-called "new ice age" never had much scientific credibility; it is primarily remembered because it had a great deal of press coverage.

Making it a very good analogy for the global warming hype..

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[IWannaBeAnAC]

How is it trolling to wonder if a flaw in their research would skew their results?

Just in case anyone ever reads the stupid AC comment, disregard it. A cooling period in the 70's has no affect at all on their results, which are a direct measurement of the change in the change in the start of spring 1971 to 2000.

Now, maybe if the researchers had concluded from that result that it was caused entirely by man-made events, then that would be up for dispute. But no, from the article:

One of the paper's lead authors, Tim Sparks from the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), said the findings did not go as far as pointing the finger of blame at human-induced climate change. "We can't tell that from our study but experts have already shown that there is a discernable human influence on the current climate warming."

He explicitly says that his study cannot show that global warming was the cause.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[GreyPoopon]

A cooling period in the 70's has no affect at all on their results, which are a direct measurement of the change in the change in the start of spring 1971 to 2000.

Are you actually trying to prove yourself wrong (or did I miss sarcasm here)? Tell me how a direct measurement in the start of spring from 1971 to 2000 would not be skewed by the fact that there was a cooling period in the 70s? If in generally the climate was cooler during the 70s, the start of spring would have been later and the start of autumn would have been sooner. As the climate warms up through the last 25 years of that 30 year period, spring would being to start sooner and autumn would start later.

One of the paper's lead authors, Tim Sparks from the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), said the findings did not go as far as pointing the finger of blame at human-induced climate change. "We can't tell that from our study but experts have already shown that there is a discernable human influence on the current climate warming."

He explicitly says that his study cannot show that global warming was the cause.

This quote shows very clearly that Mr. Sparks did not want to have to defend his research against claims of bias but that he absolutely wanted readers to believe that his observations were a symptom of global warming.

I apologize if missed what was intended to be a sarcastic comment.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[KingArthur10]

I'm too lazy to go looking for the article, but I had read that due to a breakdown in the current from the Gulf of Mexico to Western Europe, Europe could be propelled into a Canada-like state (aka, much colder on average). So, the current is breaking down, but the temperatures are rising; I wonder who this is explained or if the link has even been studied.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Stephan Schulz]

What this "talking point" ignores is that the so-called "new ice age" never had much scientific credibility; it is primarily remembered because it had a great deal of press coverage.

Making it a very good analogy for the global warming hype..

Whatever "hype" may mean here. However, the mainstream opinion on global warming, as summarized in 2001 by the IPCC in the Third Assessment Report (and since refined - the Fourth Assessment Report will be out next year) has near unanimous support in the literature (and there is a lot), and has been explicitely endorsed by nearly every professional scientific organization, including the US National Academies of Science (and all the other Academies of Science of the G8). This is solid scientific consensus.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Rotten168]

I gotta admit, even I have been a GW "skeptic" in the past, I'm more of an agnostic now (I have no idea if it's occuring, that's for the climate scientists to determine and if they say so I agree)... but this argument is lame as hell. Just because we thought something was happening and it was wrong, doesn't have any bearing on whether or not GW is happening right now (and if it's manmade).

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

"Further, IIRC the global warming hypothesis goes back to at least 1968."

Actually it goes back to more like 1900.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Rob Kaper]

If any two terms indicate a lack of science, those must be mainstream opinion and consensus. Is the earth getting warmer? Yes, we're undergoing climate change. But global warming, as in "mankind is to blame", that's hardly scientific. No matter how many people agree.

Mankind only accounts for a fraction of greenhouse gas output on earth. Industrialisation does not explain historical temperature levels as recent as the Middle Ages. Variations in solar output and their impact are not entirely understood.

Worst of all: if all the global warming theories are correct, then combatting it seems futile. Kyoto only undoes a fraction of the alleged damage done. I'd rather invest in infrastructure to cope with climate change than silly projects that are barely effective even when the assumptions are right, let alone when they are not.

Re:MOD parent up

[njh]

EXACTLY. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm keeping that Feynmann quote :)

Now be nice, give it back when you're finished using it so others can enjoy it too.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Stephan Schulz]

If any two terms indicate a lack of science, those must be mainstream opinion and consensus. Is the earth getting warmer? Yes, we're undergoing climate change. But global warming, as in "mankind is to blame", that's hardly scientific. No matter how many people agree.

It's not just people, but essentially every qualified scientist. No matter what you think.

Mankind only accounts for a fraction of greenhouse gas output on earth.

...but it does account for nearly all of the imbalance. We know from e.g. isotopic analyis (as well as simple carbon mass flow analysis) that about 2/3rds of the increase in CO2 comes directly from the burning of fossil fuels.

Industrialisation does not explain historical temperature levels as recent as the Middle Ages.

Obviously not. Your point?

Variations in solar output and their impact are not entirely understood.

...but again, they are sufficiently well understood.

Worst of all: if all the global warming theories are correct, then combatting it seems futile. Kyoto only undoes a fraction of the alleged damage done. I'd rather invest in infrastructure to cope with climate change than silly projects that are barely effective even when the assumptions are right, let alone when they are not.

What are "all the global warming theories"? There is one prevailing theory that is likely to be correct to a reasonably degree. Yes, Kyoto only reduces warming by a miniscule way. But then, that has no influence on the science behind global warming.

Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Harmonious Botch]

They don't know. At least in this study they had the integrity to admit it.

But until we know, most of these studies are meaningless; we can't act on the information. If we knew for sure that we humans are causing changes, then we should mend our ways rapidly. But when history shows larger fluctuations than the current one, it could be easily inferred that the changes are all due to mother nature, and all our actions would be noise. And very expensive noise...

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[49152]

Meaningless? How can they be meaningless when quite a large number of people even denies they occure at all.

First step is to document that changes are indeed happening. Then, and only then, does it give any meaning to study *why* they happen.

You may very well be right that this might be nothing more than natural occuring changes, but it by no means make studying them meaningless.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[rtconner]

Thats a pretty big risk. What happens if we find out that we are causing global warming but it's too late to do anything about it?

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Amonimous Coward]

Look at this and this and tell me if it looks like mother nature action:

It'd be at least a pretty damn coincidence if Mother Nature suddenly reversed its slow cooling trend at the very same time humans started using fossil fuels, wouldn't it ?

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Coryoth]

If we knew for sure that we humans are causing changes, then we should mend our ways rapidly. But when history shows larger fluctuations than the current one, it could be easily inferred that the changes are all due to mother nature, and all our actions would be noise.

We do not, of course, know for certain what is causing the observed changes. The best evidence we currently have, however, indicates that human actions play a significant role in the current warming. Attribution is a tricky question, so considerable study has taken place. There is quite a lot of data stacking up in favour of human factors being a primary cause. Take some time and read through the IPCC summary of climate attribution studies and bear in mind that this was as of 2001 - we know even more now. We're not talking about simplistic correlation based guesses, were talking about serious quantative analysis by a number of different methods, in a large number of different studies. None of that, of course, rules out other possibilities entirely - but we currently know of no natural phenomena that can successfully describe the current degree of change, and there is considerable evidence and explanatory power provided by anthropogenic changes. By all means keep an open mind, but face up to the fact that, to the best of our not inconsiderable knowledge on the matter, anthropogenic changes are the primary factor in current climatic change.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Wavicle]

If we knew for sure that we humans are causing changes, then we should mend our ways rapidly.

I think most scientists tend to agree that there is certainly some warming going on because of us humans. There is disagreement as to how much. The bigger thing in my mind is "so what?" This is where the grant-hungry doomsdayers come in. The earth almost certainly contained higher CO2 concentrations and had higher temperatures in the past due to volcanic activity. Life survived then just fine.

The easy pickings for the Global Warming denialists is far and away the statements made by the doomsayers because they are truly using bad science to justify their existence. This is why Al Gore's dumbass movie was also an easy target. Instead of the sticking to the rather boring probably factual stuff, he jumped into the doomsday argument and started spouting reams of crap based on poor process.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[DiamondGeezer]

Take some time and read through the IPCC summary of climate attribution studies and bear in mind that this was as of 2001 - we know even more now

Yes. Now we know that the centerpiece of that summary, the "Mann Hockey Stick", turned out to be a scientific fraud.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[pipingguy]

"By all means keep an open mind, but face up to the fact that, to the best of our not inconsiderable knowledge on the matter, anthropogenic changes are the primary factor in current climatic change."

Earlier on, you write,

"Take some time and read through the IPCC summary of climate attribution studies [grida.no] and bear in mind that this was as of 2001 - we know even more now.".

Are you implying that more (reliable and relevant) data has been collected over the past five years or that computer climate modeling has gotten more sophisticated and impressive to the layman?

For someone who asks everyone else to "keep an open mind", you already seem to have made yours up.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Coryoth]

Yes. Now we know that the centerpiece of that summary, the "Mann Hockey Stick", turned out to be a scientific fraud.

Which is to say, you didn't read it. Honestly, have a look at chapter 12 (Attribution) of the IPCC Third Assessment Report. You'll find just a single mention, buried in the qualitative section, of Mann's study, listed amongst 5 other different palaeological climate reconstructions by different authors, and only to note that "the 20th century warming is highly unusual." You can see those reconstructions (plus several others) charted together if you're curious. Mann's studies, let alone the "Hockey Stick", far from being "the centerpiece", get scant mention. Instead the attribution factor considers many studies using indices and time series methods, pattern correlation methods, and optimal fingerprint methods. This table provides a summary of the attribution studies considered, along with the method, the uncertainty, the timescale considered etc. You might care to note that Mann is not involved in any of the studies considered.

Of course calling Mann's work a "scientific fraud" is rather unfounded too. You may note, in the chart linked above, that there are many other historical temperature reconstructions, done indepdently by different people, that arrive at a similar result to Mann. There is also the recent National Academy of Sciences report on the subject which concluded, with high confidence, that the earth was the warmest it had been in 400 years, and that while there was less confidence in reconstructions going further back, they still point to the earth undergoing unusual recent warming. On the other hand you have the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and an economist and someone from the mining industry claiming it is all bunk. At least McIntyre and McKitrick wrote some semi-respectable papers, though there is considerable dispute about their methodology (at least as much, if not far more, than there is about Mann's).

Let's cast all of that dispute aside however, and assume that Mann was full of crap - that still makes no difference whatsoever to the content of the attribution chapter of the IPCC report I linked to, and which you so very clearly didn't bother to read. I don't mind people having differing opinions, but when they are based on apparently willful ignorance I am a little appalled.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Coryoth]

Are you implying that more (reliable and relevant) data has been collected over the past five years or that computer climate modeling has gotten more sophisticated and impressive to the layman?

I'm simply saying that, since 2001, more data has been collected and further studies and papers have been published on the subject of attribution of climate change. Obviously all those studies are not going to be listed in an IPCC report from 2001. I'm not exactly sure what you're driving at here? Are you implying that perhaps no further work has been done? That recent studies have contradicted the general conclusion of past findings? Neither of those are the case as far as I am aware, but by all means if you have something I would be interested to read it.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[pipingguy]

Are you asking me to provide data or reliable cites that prove a negative? I think we both know how that works.

I'm claiming that climate change is natural and normal and nothing to be too concerned about.

You seem to be from the group that is hell-bent on "proving" that climate change is caused by human activity via anecdote, dubious, short-term data and FUD. More sophisticated weather modeling techniques based on only 100 years (or, for that matter, 1000 years) of data is still just speculation, given the age of the planet.

If your website is honest, you seem to be "into" math and fairly young. Both of these pursuits are honourable.

One's outlook changes with age and parenthood when previous matters of "earth-shattering importance" get sidelined due to more immediate personal concerns.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Coryoth]

Are you asking me to provide data or reliable cites that prove a negative?

I was hoping you could provide whatever evidence you've read to support your point of view. I was figuring maybe you would point to Solanki's solar variation studies, which are the best I've seen for evidence of natural factors being the primary cause of current warming, or preferably something better than that that I simply hadn't seen yet. I'm not at all averse to having my opinion swayed, I would just like a reason to do so.

You seem to be from the group that is hell-bent on "proving" that climate change is caused by human activity via anecdote, dubious, short-term data and FUD.

Which is to say, the best scientific data, analysis, and predictions we currently have. I'm not saying its conclusive, I'm just saying that it is evidence, and some of it is actually pretty good (and quite a long way from anecdotal - try reading it). On the other hand we don't really have any good evidence or theories that can explain recent warming in terms of natural phenomena at the moment. To me that means that, barring new evidence to the contrary, I'm going to have to lean rather more toward the anthropogenic causes camp.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[evilviper]

If we knew for sure that we humans are causing changes, then we should mend our ways rapidly.

Nonsense.

If the climate change is minor and tolerable, we don't need to do much of anything, even if it's man-made.

If the climate change is going to be catastrophic, we should do something serious about it, even if it is natural.

Whether it's natural or not, has little bearing on whether humans (society) will be able to survive it.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[10101001 10101001]

Are you asking me to provide data or reliable cites that prove a negative?

Showing that your data and other data, both collected with identical methodology, do not coincide calls into question the data of others but does not prove a negative. Using a different methodology that doesn't show climate warming and better explains all the data doesn't prove a negative. Where exactly is anyone asking you to prove a negative?

I'm claiming that climate change is natural and normal and nothing to be too concerned about.

Could you expand on this? Is all climate change natural? Are human actions "natural"? When you say climate change is nothing to be too concerned about, are you speaking of yourself not being concerned or that no climate change is something to be too concerned about? Unless you narrowly define your words, I can't see how your claim can be supported.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[DiamondGeezer]

Yep, another Hockey Stick denialist. This is going to be fun:

Which is to say, you didn't read it. Honestly, have a look at chapter 12 (Attribution) of the IPCC Third Assessment Report. You'll find just a single mention, buried in the qualitative section, of Mann's study, listed amongst 5 other different palaeological climate reconstructions by different authors, and only to note that "the 20th century warming is highly unusual."

You said the SUMMARY not the chapter. The centerpiece of the SUMMARY was the thoroughly discredited "Mann Hockey Stick" a piece of shit so bad that not even Mann bothered to defend it when he testified in Congress recently. It was Mann's study that was touted as the "Smoking Gun" of man-made climate change and it was Mann's study that was reproduced five or six times in the Summary for Policymakers.

You can see those reconstructions (plus several others) charted together if you're curious. Mann's studies, let alone the "Hockey Stick", far from being "the centerpiece", get scant mention.

Actually the Mann Hockey Stick gets scant attention now because it's been revealed to be a fraud, which was shoved down the throats of scientists, politicians and the public. The other studies in that spaghetti graph are siblings of the Hockey Stick, using the same flawed proxies over and over again, as the Wegman report made clear. Steve McIntyre has shown that ALL of those studies fail statistical verification tests just like the Hockey Stick.

Hockey Stick Denialism means rewriting history, and Wikipedia is the perfect medium to do it.

Of course calling Mann's work a "scientific fraud" is rather unfounded too. You may note, in the chart linked above, that there are many other historical temperature reconstructions, done indepdently by different people, that arrive at a similar result to Mann.

As Wegman noted, all of those studies used the same flawed proxies, and some used Mann's flawed PC1 as a proxy in itself, even though it had already been shown to be a product of bad data in 2003 and bad statistics in 2005. There's even a nice table in Wegman showing how they are all related. Wegman testified that Mann's study was a piece of "bad mathematics" and was meaningless.

The Mann Hockey Stick was a deliberate fabrication of the climatic record. It removed the Little ice Age and Medieval Warm Period as global phenomena and even last year Mann confirmed that the Hockey Stick did not have those events. It should be obvious that writing "Medieval Warm Period" and "Little Ice Age" across the top of a set of graphs that doesn't show them is not exactly evidence, but we're dealing with Denialism here.

There is also the recent National Academy of Sciences report on the subject which concluded, with high confidence, that the earth was the warmest it had been in 400 years, and that while there was less confidence in reconstructions going further back, they still point to the earth undergoing unusual recent warming.

What they effectively was re-establish the Little Ice Age, which Mann had said didn't exist and downgraded the rest of his crap to "plausible" which my dictionary defines as

1. having an appearance of truth or reason; seemingly worthy of approval or acceptance; credible; believable: a plausible excuse; a plausible plot.
2. well-spoken and apparently, but often deceptively, worthy of confidence or trust: a plausible commentator.

That the Mann Hockey Stick was deliberately fabricated and knowingly false was the discovery of

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[pipingguy]

Your Socratic method has defeated me. You are clearly the winner. Enjoy!

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[KDR_11k]

Life will always survive. If you nuke a country to the ground there will be life remaining. What most people are worried about is the fact that it's not going to be human life.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[sulimma]

>we can't act on the information.

Yes you can. Having incomplete information does not mean that not acting is the best strategy.
When leading a company or a country it is very rare that you have definite information about the
consequences of your action. For example you rarely know the strategy of your antagonists in advance.
You can not just sit around idly and do nothing until you know.

With climate change you have the classical 2x2 cost matrix that is so common with game theory:

The options are
1 act against climate change and either
  a Find out later that your money was spent for nothing
  b Find out later that you saved the world
2 do not act against climate change and either
  a Find out later that you were right and saved some money
  b Get hit by catatstrophic effects of the climate change

Putting all the inaccuracy aside that measuring the cost of these options in advanve has, it is clear that the expected cost of these options varies from country to country.
Clear a country like the maledives the would be wiped out by option 2b will opt for strategy 1 while it is unclear whether action is necessary.

A country that is large and rich and can pull ressources forcibly from other countries if needed can clearly risk more and wait a little. Just don't expect the rest of the world to love you for beeing the bully.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[The_Wilschon]

On the other hand we don't really have any good evidence or theories that can explain recent warming in terms of natural phenomena at the moment. To me that means that, barring new evidence to the contrary, I'm going to have to lean rather more toward the anthropogenic causes camp.

Based on my experiences in high energy physics (seeing how rare it is for theorists to come up with good effective models before there is an awful lot of experimental data in front of them), I'd have to say it probably makes more sense to lean toward the "our long-term climate models are based on very little reliable data and are therefore likely to be complete crap" camp. Do the studies you like to cite which attempt to attribute observed climate data to various models (anthropogenic and otherwise) include uncertainties on their theoretical natural climate models? If so, what are they? Once again, I could read the study, but it is probably much faster to ask you. If you don't know then I will try to find the time to read the study myself.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be misinformed on the extent of data available. There is fairly accurate data for many millions of years for several variables, including ice extent, oxygen content, temperature, presence of floating ice, type of plants where, etc. Our data on natural changes is thus very extensive and being refined considerably year after year, adding new data types as well as increasing resolution and precision. Models on climate change thus would have plenty of data to fall back on, however these arn't really the only ways to predict such changes. Forinstance certain types of greenhouse gases tend to correlate with certain levels of temperature shift and do so in very specific ways in the atmosphere, heating some parts cooling others. So if you find these kind of specific warming cooling patterns, the chance is pretty high you can pinpoint the type of gas doing it and how much it is responsible for the observed temperatures.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Coryoth]

Someone else gave a good response o=to most of what you had to say, so I'll simply let their response cover those points. There was also the matter of

Do the studies you like to cite which attempt to attribute observed climate data to various models (anthropogenic and otherwise) include uncertainties on their theoretical natural climate models? If so, what are they?

Yes they do include uncertainties, in fact I've seen entire papers devoted to nothing but refining the accuracy of the uncertainty estimates. As to what the uncertainties are - it varies considerably depending what exactly it is you're trying to measure, and which model you are using to do it. With regard to attributing warming this figure has model estimates of attribution based on various collections of factors, along with uncertainties. You might note that, right off the bat, it is clear that CO2 alone is quite inadequate at accurately describing the current warming. Uncertainties are almost always given and can vary from quite large to very small depending on all manner of details. It's a matter of actually reading the studies to see.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[NeutronCowboy]

Interesting. You manage to quote two people (two - out of a couple of thousand people who actually study this stuff), yet completely fail to acknowledge the subsequent discussion of McIntyre and McKitrick's critique. Furthermore, you present these as independent, when they are actually working for fields with a very heavy interest in presenting Global Warming as a farce (I'm sure you know which one's they are right? You'd never just take somebody's word for it). And I don't know where you get the idea that they're world-class statisticians. I can't find any papers they have written on statistics before this one. Care to point to some? Or did you just make that part up?

Finally, Mann isn't the only one who found a significant global warming that occurred in the past couple of decades. I won't bother with relinking the papers here, since I already posted them in reply to another one of your posts. But to claim that a) no one has talked about McIntyre's and McKitrick's critique, and b) Mann is the only one to have found a significant warming is ignorant at best. Considering the effort you expended in tracking down any and all critiques of one specific paper, but didn't bother continuing to find out whether the critiques were right, I can only assume that you are guilty of what you are accusing the rest of the world of: willfull ignorance. Oh, and nice personal insults, too. Idiot.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[NeutronCowboy]

True - our current models will most likely change over the next couple of years. And yes, there is still quite some uncertainty on exactly what will happen. But let's ignore for a second the conclusions of the IPCC that global warming is fairly likely man-made, and that we just don't know what's going on. All we know is that it's been getting warmer in the last decade or so. Just check your local weather channel for temperatures. So it's getting warmer, but we don't quite know why, or where it's heading. Reason would argue that if we don't the outcome, the only probability we can assign it is 50/50. So know we have a 50/50 chance that it will get warmer, just as it has gotten warmer in the last decade or so. Now we know what happens when global average temperatures increase beyond 1 or 2 degrees (even Fahrenheit) - massive ecological changes, which will entail massive population changes (both in terms of population sizes as well as quality of living). Personally, faced with these odds, I'd rather hope for the best and prepare for the worst - i.e., make damn sure that the temperature increases have nothing to do with me.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Coryoth]

You said the SUMMARY not the chapter. The centerpiece of the SUMMARY was the thoroughly discredited "Mann Hockey Stick" a piece of shit so bad that not even Mann bothered to defend it when he testified in Congress recently.

Sigh. I said to read "the IPCC summary of climate attribution studies" which was a link to chapter 12, the attribution chapter of the IPCC TAR, which was a summary of around 13 different attribution studies (not a single one of which was by Mann). The hint was to click on the link and to read what was there. The question is one of attribution, and in that discussion Mann is essentially never mentioned, and plays no role - the entire chapter only mentions him once. The quality or otherwise of Mann' particular study has no bearing on the results of the 13 studies considered in the attribution chapter. Feel free to actually read it this time.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[NeutronCowboy]

Are you asking me to provide data or reliable cites that prove a negative? I think we both know how that works.

You're confusing the philosophical problem of proving an absolute negative with the standard research practice of testing for the null hypothesis (i.e., that the data in question is random, or does not support the current hypothesis). The latter is part of any science study dealing with data sets. Not only that, but data sets can be tested for randomness and trends. Absence of trends is fairly easily shown via various methods, including PCA. As a result, it is entirely possible to use data to show that current temperature changes are merely random, and that no trend can be found. Which means I'll ask as well: where's your supporting data?

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[DiamondGeezer]

Dear Hockey Stick Denialist,

You manage to quote two people (two - out of a couple of thousand people who actually study this stuff), yet completely fail to acknowledge the subsequent discussion of McIntyre and McKitrick's critique.

As both the NAS Panel and the Wegman report noted, none of that subsequent discussion had any relevance as to whether Mann's study was a scientific crock of shit, which it was.

Furthermore, you present these as independent, when they are actually working for fields with a very heavy interest in presenting Global Warming as a farce (I'm sure you know which one's they are right? You'd never just take somebody's word for it).

Really? Ross McKitrick is an associate professor of economics at the University of Guelph - he had no financial interest in Kyoto. Steve McIntyre is semi-retired after working in the mining industry - he has no financial interest in Kyoto either. On the other hand, the originators of the Hockey Stick all have huge professional and personal interests in Global Warming and the politics thereof.

M&M are independent and the Hockey Team are certainly not. Wegman et al are independent as well.

Steve Mcintyre has made it clear repeatedly that debunking the Hockey Stick does not mean that Global Warming is not happening. But those with clear vested interests are those who have found fame and fortune promoting fraud, like Michael Mann.

And I don't know where you get the idea that they're world-class statisticians. I can't find any papers they have written on statistics before this one. Care to point to some? Or did you just make that part up?

Why certainly HS Denier. Try this and let me know when you reviewed them all. As I said "world-class" and I meant it.

Finally, Mann isn't the only one who found a significant global warming that occurred in the past couple of decades. I won't bother with relinking the papers here, since I already posted them in reply to another one of your posts. But to claim that a) no one has talked about McIntyre's and McKitrick's critique, and b) Mann is the only one to have found a significant warming is ignorant at best.

Mann isn't the only one to have discovered significant warming. He didn't discover anything at all because his pride and joy doesn't mean anything at all. Discovering warming isn't hard. Discovering whether the warming is a) significant b) deleterious and c) man-made would be, and nobody's produced anything remotely close to a "smoking gun" that is worth anything.

I didn't claim that no one has talked about M&M's critique - where did you get that from?

Considering the effort you expended in tracking down any and all critiques of one specific paper, but didn't bother continuing to find out whether the critiques were right, I can only assume that you are guilty of what you are accusing the rest of the world of: willfull ignorance. Oh, and nice personal insults, too. Idiot.

I spent much more time considering the relevant papers than you'll spend looking at Wegman's CV. I suspect that I won't be hearing any challenge to that claim.

Bye bye and Happy Denying!

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[middlemen]

What happens if we find out that we are causing global warming but it's too late to do anything about it?

Find all the hottest chics you can, explain global warming is ending the world and fucking you is the only thing they can do about it ...

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[QuantumFTL]

If the climate change is going to be catastrophic, we should do something serious about it, even if it is natural.

Well, there's basically two things we can do about global warming: Alter the climate artificially, or adapt to the changing climate. If this warming is anthropegenic, that tells us that we already have technology capable of making drastic climate changes, and that investing in more technology that can cause helpful (rather than harmful) changes is a good idea. If this turns out to be completely natural, then it casts doubt onto whether or not there's much we can do about it (short of inducing a "nuclear winter" or "nuclear fall"). It may turn out that simply adapting to the changing climate is an easier proposition in the long run.

That's the problem with these studies - we know enough scientifically to state with some confidence that there exists a problem, but we do not know enough about the risk/reward payoffs of various actions to make any kind of informed policy. I think we, as a planet, should spend a hundred billion dollars every year on the research and policy formation that will remove enough uncertainty that we can fix this issue.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[NeutronCowboy]

Nice. I ask for the resume of McIntyre and McKitrick, and you offer me Wegman. What's that called? Smoke and Mirrors? Try again. I'm still waiting.

Really? Ross McKitrick is an associate professor of economics at the University of Guelph - he had no financial interest in Kyoto. Steve McIntyre is semi-retired after working in the mining industry - he has no financial interest in Kyoto either. On the other hand, the originators of the Hockey Stick all have huge professional and personal interests in Global Warming and the politics thereof.

Let's see - McKitrick is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, and has a book out on Global Warming. Plenty of money to be made there by being one of the critics of it. McIntyre has worked for a long time in the Mining industry and was a Policy Analyst for the Canadian Government. Again, plenty of money to be made by being a critic of Global Warming. As for Wegman - he seems legit enough. All of this crap is still entirely irrelevant though - everyone can be found to have an axe to grind. Everything can be pretext for something. All that has zero impact on the data and the studies though. I do love though how much you pick and choose your qualifiers. That's impressive work.

Discovering whether the warming is a) significant b) deleterious and c) man-made would be, and nobody's produced anything remotely close to a "smoking gun" that is worth anything.

And yet, you only talk about Mann's papers. Fixate much? Come back once you've read the other studies I gave you.

I didn't claim that no one has talked about M&M's critique - where did you get that from?

Mmh.... you're right. That wasn't you after all. My bad.

I spent much more time considering the relevant papers than you'll spend looking at Wegman's CV. I suspect that I won't be hearing any challenge to that claim.

You're right. I spent about 30 seconds scanning his CV. I sure would hope you spent more time than that on the papers. How is this relevant to the discussion? Oh - right. It isn't. It's merely more distractions.

Man, I've read through all your posts in this thread, and there is not a shred of data, not a shadow of actual discussion in there. Nothing but empty statements and personal attacks on people who disagree with you. Quite sad that this is about as good as people get when they try to argue that Global Warming is a fabrication.

To some extent, I'm ok whith that. There's plenty of money to be made in the future from people who didn't plan for the various climate changes that are about to hit. It just sucks that the world will look a bit more like a desert than it does now.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[DiamondGeezer]

Dear Hockey Stick Denialist

Nice. I ask for the resume of McIntyre and McKitrick, and you offer me Wegman. What's that called? Smoke and Mirrors? Try again. I'm still waiting.

Yep and it was Wegman who wrote that McIntyre's critique of the Hockey Stick was "valid and compelling". Reality just sucks doesn't it?

Let's see - McKitrick is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, and has a book out on Global Warming. Plenty of money to be made there by being one of the critics of it.

McKitrick is an UNPAID fellow of the Frasier Institute and has co-authored a book attacking a popular consensus that is based on false premises. Hardly something to make money on. Reality just sucks doesn't it?

What? No attack on McIntyre's "vested interests"?

There's plenty of money to be made in the future from people who didn't plan for the various climate changes that are about to hit. It just sucks that the world will look a bit more like a desert than it does now.

Except that deserts decline during warming periods and expand during cooling ones. The Sahara is currently shrinking. Some deserts have disappeared (like the Sand Hills in Nebraska). So where did you get the idea that future warming would lead to the world "looking more like a desert"? Not from a science book that's for sure.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[shadowbearer]

The Sahara is currently shrinking.

  Um, no. The Sahara is growing, expanding into the Sahel region (which is shrinking) and Lake Chad is disappearing fast.

  I don't have any data about the Sand Hills (despite living not far from there) but nothing I've heard indicates that the region they encompass is shrinking. Dunno where you are getting your data from.

SB

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[AstrumPreliator]

And what happens if we actively try to combat global warming only to find out later it was a natural trend? I'm not saying global warming is or isn't happening, I'm just saying it's a bad idea to act on incomplete data.

Passively trying to combat global warming, however, isn't a bad idea. By active I mean blocking the amount of sun that hits the Earth or something such as that. By passive I mean carpooling to work or riding a bike if you're close enough. Small stuff like that.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[DiamondGeezer]

Um, no. The Sahara is growing, expanding into the Sahel region (which is shrinking)

Um, yes it is shrinking

The Sand Hills were real live dunes during the Little Ice Age. In point of fact, where you are living right now is reclaimed desert. Warming shrinks deserts and cooling expands them. Given the choice, I'd go for warming every time.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[NeutronCowboy]

Shit - I now understand how you get to the conclusions you do. You only read half of what people say. I suspect it's the half that reinforces what you already believe. BTW - it's changes in rainfall patterns that change deserts, not temperatures. But I'm sure you'll ignore this little bit of info just like everything else that doesn't match what you already believe.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[shadowbearer]

  Ah. Guess the information I had was old. Interesting, tho. Although I'm not sure we can put climatical causes to the Sand Hills, given the amount of cattle ranging out there, and the increased amount of irrigation in the last couple hundred years from farming; it's a fact that the Ogalla water layer is being rapidly drained.

  You are right about warming shrinking deserts - because it tends to cause increased rainfall, there's more moisture being evaporated and more being delivered thru the atmosphere to places where it wouldn't normally be. So I guess that means the climate is warming, overall.

SB

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Sloppy]

And what happens if we actively try to combat global warming only to find out later it was a natural trend?

Then we congratulate ourselves for, once again, defeating Mother Nature by bending Her laws to serve Our desires. Muahahaha!

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens if we find out that we are causing global warming but it's too late to do anything about it?

Q. What happens if we find out there is a two mile wide rock heading straight for Earth and it's too late to do anything about it?

A. Disembowel the bastards who spent all our telescope money on "Global Warming research." ;-)

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[NetNed]

The IPCC said the average global surface temp increased buy .6 celsius, yes .6c, over the twentieth century. That's highly unusual?

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The centerpiece of the SUMMARY was the thoroughly discredited "Mann Hockey Stick""

It is not thoroughly discredited. It was rebutted by some studies that have themselves since been discredited.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Bush Pig]

Anyone who takes economists seriously has a problem. As a rule, they have no understanding of either mathematics or science. To most economists, the real world is a special case.

I don't think you understand what "having a financial interest" in something means, either.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Bush Pig]

Just think - at some point, you're going to have to look your grandchildren in the eyes (assuming you have the moral courage, which I doubt) and say, "I'm sorry. I was wrong. I pissed your inheritance away through my willful ignorance and stupidity." They won't forgive you.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[evilviper]

It may turn out that simply adapting to the changing climate is an easier proposition in the long run.

That's easy for people in colder climates to say. In the deserts though, a few more degrees will make a large percentage of the land-mass of the earth absolutely unlivable...

If this turns out to be completely natural, then it casts doubt onto whether or not there's much we can do about it

That seems to be the whole crux of your argument, and it's just not true. Covering a few square miles of desert with mirrored-surfaces will make a big difference. For an example of the inverse of this, see Urban Heatsink Effect.

Re:Is it us or is it mother nature?

[Anonymous Coward]

White House report says people cause global warming

someone's going to blame 'greenhouse gasses'

[nido]

... when it's really the increases in underwater volcanic activity that are mostly to blame.

See Warming of the world ocean, 1955-2003, published in the Geophysical Research Letters.

The dead zone off the Oregon coast, last season's record-breaking hurricane season, the 2004 super-quake in the Indian Ocean, changes in long-standing weather patterns (because of the change in heat distribution in the oceans) - all are signals of increased techtonic activity.

Re:someone's going to blame 'greenhouse gasses'

[vruba]

I'm reading the article article you linked to, and it seems to support the greenhouse gas theory. For instance, in section 5 (split over pages 2 and 3):

In terms of the causes of the increase in ocean heat content we believe that the long-term trend as seen in these records is due to the increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere

I can't find any mentions of volcanism. Please point them out or provide a better source.

Re:someone's going to blame 'greenhouse gasses'

[HotBlackDessiato]

I'll be the someone you're referring to. Buddy....read your own info.

Re:someone's going to blame 'greenhouse gasses'

[nido]

This paper is notable in that the author says that the change in ocean temperatures is what's driving the climate changes we're starting to take notice of. As you note, he says that he /believes/ that the change is due to the boogeyman of the day, "greenhouse gasses". What's important is not his analysis of the data, but the data itself, which clearly shows that the world's oceans have been heating up over the last 50+ years..

[13] Our discussion here has not been to minimize the
impacts of warming of the lower atmosphere due to
increasing greenhouse gases, we are simply placing Earth's
heat balance in perspective. The response of the Earth's
climate system to changes in radiative forcing is often cast
as the response of the Earth's surface temperature to these
forcings. This is understandable because we live at the
Earth's surface and there has been a lack of subsurface
ocean data with which to conduct Earth system heat balance
studies. Improved scientific understanding requires that we
study the response of all components of the Earth's heat
balance, of which the world ocean is the dominant term.

(from pg 3 of the pdf linked to in gpp, emphasis added)

Increased volcanic activity is all over the news, but only if you know to watch for it.

There were reports that Mount Fuji in Japan didn't have any snow last winter, a volcano in Alaska that was erupting off and on for some time, Mt. St. Helens has been especially active over the last year, the dead zone off oregon, etc...

from my recent mailing list traffic:

BULLETIN ITEM: Dead Ocean Area Off Coast Of Oregon Continues

MWM: This is most likely caused by underwater volcanism along the Juan De Fuca Ridge, which is about 20% volcanic along its 500 mile length. Occassional volcanic eruptions occur along the Ridge (Rift) which can create gigantic megaplumes of hot mineral water. Could be there is very little oxygen in the plumes, it most likely would have reacted with the minerals, leaving dissolved oxygen at nil. If so, these is a hardbinger of what is likely to happen with greater frequency and magnitude as the Earth Changes accelerate.

(followed with text of an AP article)

The author of that bit said in another recent email:

Global Warming is unequivocably being caused by underwater volcanism which is heating the bottoms of the oceans which is changing currents and radiation and reflection characteristics of the oceans which is changing the climate regimes.

In March I could make strong claims related to such, but by spending more time slogging through the obscure sources of scientific information and reading between the lines, I CAN PROVE IT BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT. The oceanographers, bless them, for the most part do not undersand how the immensely important data they are sitting on adds up. I do and all of this is sitting in rough draft form in a new title, some 280 pages of text and graphs, called

Major World Trends 1875-2025: A Strategic Brief on Global Warming & The Eight Geophysical Changes Which Are Profoundly Altering The Earth

  I am VERY INTERESTED IN SEEING THIS BOOK TAKEN BY A MASS PUBLISHER, PRODUCED IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES, AND TOWARDS THAT END I WILL ENTERTAIN A RELATIONSHIP WITH AN AGENT. I VASTLY PREFER WEST COAST OR EUROPEAN RELATIONSHIPS, FRANKLY I AM ADVERSE TO DEALING WITH NEW YORK BUBBLEBRAINS.

As the book hasn't been published yet, I'm disinclined to share the source, as the materialist slashdot moderators will slander me for the messenger (who's definitely in the 'vitalist' camp), and not the message he's discovered...

Oil is still a dirty, dirty business, and we'll all be better off once we're free of the stuff. But better to crucify it on its real demerits, and not on false charges.

All I can think of...

[sardaukar_siet]

is the words "pending doom".

Re:All I can think of...

[legoburner]

Damnit man, playing doom 3 is just delaying the actions that should be taken! Get some priorities! ;)

Re:All I can think of...

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the doom is pending like Duke Nukem Forever is, it cannot HURD.

Early flowiering?

[EZLeeAmused]

I thought that plant flowering triggered by reaching a certain number of hours of daylight during the day. OMG, is global warming slowing the rotation of the earth?

Re:Early flowiering?

[shawb]

There are many different triggers that will initiate and control how much energy is put into different processes... they can include hours of daylight, total insolation (basically amount of energy recieved from the sun,) temperature, rainfall, other moisture related triggers, physical damage, grazing damage, fire damage, and so forth. And the various processes triggered include germination, leaf budding, leaf loss, growth, branching patterns, flower budding, flower opening, seed formation, fruit growth, dropping fruit, asexual division (runners, corm division etc) sap movement, stoma regulation, etc etc etc. The same plant will often use different triggers for the different processes, sometimes using multiple triggers for one process. A change in timing of the triggers could easilly result in sub-optimal performance in one of the plant's "actions" or lead to complete failure of a process, itself leading to plant death, reduced competitive ability or failure to create viable offspring, leading to extinction.

Like anything in nature, it's really not as simple as was taught in high school bio.

Re:Early flowiering?

[Dantoo]

Exactly! Heck it was a long time ago and far away when I did bot101 but as I faintly recall we did a whole heap of experiments showing that flowering was related to light and not heat. Now of course it's faded into the dimmest of memories.

We simply exposed various plants to various periods of light, amounts of light and types of light. We also used temperature control - hothouse and refrigerated air conditioning. No way can I recollect any detail, but I do remember that the purpose was to prove that temperature rises caused flowering and of course they didn't.

Germinating seeds was something that might be affected, but I can't recall that either. Dim memories about setting light to flowers and passing them through birds guts etc.. Do we have a botanist in the house that could elucidate?

Re:Early flowiering?

[NeutronCowboy]

That's what I thought I remembered from bio class as well. I'd have to dig into the articles to find out more though. Here's something else I remember though: hibernation periods are getting shorter, and migrations start earlier. And that's tied to temperatures, not daylight time.

Springtime for Europe

[NZheretic]

CHORUS:
Europe was having trouble.
What a sad, sad story.
Needed a new climate to restore.
Its former glory.
Where, oh, where was it?
Where could that man it?
We looked around and then we found.
The pollution for you and me.

LEAD TENOR SCIENTIST:
And now it's...
Springtime for Europe and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay!
Glaciers receding at a faster pace
Look out, here comes the heatwave race!
Springtime for Europe and Germany
Rhineland's a fine land once more!
Springtime for Europe and Germany
Watch out, Europe
Al Gore going on tour!

Re:Springtime for Europe

[HotBlackDessiato]

Watch out, Europe Al Gore going on tour!

It is just so depressing to view a 5-digit slashdot userID join the anti-Gore "climate change is just a myth" camp.

Re:Springtime for Europe

[bmo]

Climate change is not a myth. Anyone who has gone and looked at global average temperature over the past few million years knows that. Indeed, the fact is that change is the norm and we are at a low end on the chart of global average temperature. Global temperature _must_ go up if you look at historic trends. Only a lunatic would say that global average temperature should be static.

Indeed, Earth has gone from Global Snowball to the current temperatures and a slight downturn can send us right back.

The real kicker is that Humanity doesn't have to be there for that to happen.

So if Climate Change doesn't require Humanity to happen, what _does_ it require?

Eh?

Answer that definitively and you've got yourself a freakin' Nobel.

--
BMO

Re:Springtime for Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Afraid not, climatic change is to basic, it never was considered noble worthy. Reasons for change are numerous really, including atmospheric changes, solar output, orbital variation, inclination variation and combinations of these. Any case, if you look at the past millions of years of change, you'll notice the current one is abnormal, it doesn't match them. Now that I think is a real kicker, I mean, what is different this time compared to all the former millions of years?

Do NOT be alarmed!

[Icyfire0573]

Our president assures us that this is both not a problem, and not happening.

Re:Do NOT be alarmed!

[HotBlackDessiato]

Slashdot needs new mod descriptors. Funny doesn't quite encapsulate how I feel about your comment. (Soul-Crushing-Depressing-Funnny?)

But I'm still mostly concerned that GWB is the "leader" green aliens would "be taken to".

Re:Do NOT be alarmed!

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'm still mostly concerned that GWB is the "leader" green aliens would "be taken to".

Why? Anyone with a brain would know that, if they say "take me to your leader", the person they want to meet is Dick Cheney... ...Oh wait, nevermind, that's even worse :-(

Thats odd

[WatchTheTramCarPleas]

I thought there was supposed to be a cooling trend in Europe due to the disruption of the Atlantic currnets. I have heard such a disruption could be caused or worsened by global warming. So it seems that any change in Eruope's climate could be atrubuted to global warming.

Re:Thats odd

[NeutronCowboy]

Sigh. It always amazes me how quickly people pick up ideas that support their preconceptions, but are unable to actually investigate them to find out what really is going.

What you're referring to is thermohaline inversion - the process by which the North Atlantic current is thought to stop once enough sweet water is released into the ocean from melting ice in Greenland and the North Pole. It has not yet occurred. But there are signs that the current in question is slowing down, which is the start of the process. Cooling of the Western European countries (specifically Great Britain) will only occur once the current actually stops. Before that, effects will be negligible.

What about the other seasons?

[mveloso]

Do the other seasons move as well?

Re:What about the other seasons?

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging from the torrential downpours for the past three weeks, the Dutch autumn has definitely started...

Re:What about the other seasons?

[LilWolf]

Well, far from being scientific or anything, but over the twenty years or so that I can remember, winter in Finland has been coming later and later. When I was small we'd get snow around mid-late November, while now it seems like we're lucky if we get snow by christmas eve. Autumn seems to drag on longer as does spring. So from my observations(which are far from scientific) it seems like all the seasons have moved a bit and some of them have gotten a bit longer while others have grown shorter.
 
In any case, there has been a noticable change in the weather over the past 20 years.

Re:What about the other seasons?

[CAIMLAS]

I concur. I'm in South Dakota, USA, and usually the end of July and the month of August are hot - 90F/32C and warmer with a fair amount of humidity.

Since the middle of July, it's been uncommonly cool (50s F? 60s and low 70s?) for the most part, punctuated by a few very hot and humid days (quickly followed by a downpour of several days and coolness). It's odd behavior - the weather and climate has definately changed - but it's hardly "global warming" - at least locally.

It has felt like fall for a while here. I quite enjoy it.

Re:What about the other seasons?

[Eli Gottlieb]

I concur! Here in Albany, New York, United States of America (New York has several climate areas) the weather has freaked out like a seizure patient this summer. Normal July and early August temperatures keep between the high 80s to low 90s F with moderate humidity. They mostly did so, with the exception of almost a full week during which the range changed to mid-90s to 100s, with high humidity that pushed the heat index up to 105 degrees Fahrenheit! After that it reverted to normal, and late August temperatures of low-80s migrated in. Then, last night, we suddenly received a torrent of rain (normal rain, rather than the thunderstorms characteristic of summer) and the temperature will only cross 80 again once for the remainder of the month.

Fall has arrived here early, so at the very least I'm hoping winter will be cold enough to ski. Last year I had my first winter living her utterly without substantial snow that stayed on the ground till spring.

You know, I might have taken your post seriously..

[Anonymous Coward]

...If you could at least spell tectonic right. As it stands, I'm inclined to think you copied and pasted your response without reading your own links.

Climate changes or light changes?

[JonLatane]

If this study is based upon when plants flowered, it may not be as much climate change as it is light change. This is not to say that the climate has not changed, only to say that plants flowering is not most directly attributed to temperature.

Assuming I am not mistaken in my recollection of AP Biology, plants flower based upon the longest period of darkness that they percieve. That is to say, when certain enzymes in plants are not exposed to IR light for a certain period of time (varying based upon the plant), processes including flowering occur.

So, this may not be based as much upon climate change as much as light change, which could easily be caused by increasing urbanization (city lights and such providing enough light to change these processes).

Re:Climate changes or light changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very good point! Here in Kentucky it has definitely warmed up earlier every year for the last 6 years, but the flowers are not blooming any earlier at all. (It's weird for it to be 80 degrees in the afternoon and see all the redbuds still in bud and the naturalized yellow daffodils not even in bloom yet.)

Don't believe everything you read

[QuickFox]

Come on people, don't be so gullible. It's only 125,000 studies, how could that be in any way conclusive?

Re:Don't believe everything you read

[Anonymous Coward]

Darn right, I for one trust Microsoft's studies!

Um wait, this isn't a Microsoft story where they posts results over some unbiased & non-flawed study involving Linux, iPod, OS X, etc... Is it?

Ooops, never mind me then!

Past results are no guarantee of future returns.

[Kaenneth]

Once we run out of fossil fuels to burn, there won't be as much air pollution.

Plus, white styrofoam chunks, shiny aluminum cans, and glass bottles should be spread around outside, to help reflect sunlight away from the earth.

And bird flu/SARS will solve any overpopulation problem.

Nature can take care of itself, by taking care of us.

Vivaldi's gonna be pissed

[HotBlackDessiato]

Vivaldi is gonna be pissed about all concerti he has to re-arrange.

Re:It can't be global warming though

[Anonymous Coward]

global warming is over as all the gasses that cause it have been made under control.. something else may be.. http://www.eezytrade.co.uk/

And so is winter...

[will_die]

Cold weather and first snows have been moving up in the year also.
they are having to move events and festivals up days or weeks because snow falls are coming earlier.

Re:And so is winter...

[rtconner]

What? Please back yourself up with even just one example. Until then, that post is the most random senseless drivel I've seen all day.

Re:And so is winter...

[antifoidulus]

This is anecdotal, I know, but I moved to Germany last June. The temperatures in August both this year and last have been quite cold(Low is around 10, high only about 15 or so). I was told this is unusual, but that is damn cold for being August. Of course one of the worst heat waves on record in Europe happened in August 2003, so this weather could just be a freak occurrence.

Re:And so is winter...

[DigitAl56K]

Your statement seems to directly contradict the article summary which says that not only has spring been comming earlier but also autumn later. In the case of your opinion vs. the scientific study I'm going to have to go with the good folks in lab coats.

Re:And so is winter...

[StarfishOne]

August has indeed been rather cold this year in that area. In a country close next to Germany (Holland), there are rain fall records in August and two consecutive heat waves in July (first consecutive heat wave in 60 years). The latter with temperatures shattering all earlier heat records since measurements began in 1706(!)

It might indeed be a freak occurence, but (without discussing possible causes) I do have the impression that the weather patterns are changing the last 10 years. Admittely anecdotal evidence, but what I see happening in the garden and in the heavens above is different than, say, 15 years ago. I can't exactly put my finger on what it is though.

Re:And so is winter...

[NeutronCowboy]

Same here. We used to get actual snow fall in Paris - a good couple of inches, enough for snowball fights and sledding. Now, it's been at least 15 years since we had enough snow for that. Heat waves are getting bad enough that AC is becoming mandatory in stores, and seen more often in cars. Not only that, but they are getting longer as well. I can't say that this is proof of anything, but I know things are changing, and they are pointing to stuff getting warmer.

Re:Wish it would happen here!

[228e2]

redudant? maybe funny, or offtopic. re-up on parent plz.

Re:It can't be global warming though

[HotBlackDessiato]

Fewer hurricanes means global warming is over (or at least it peaked). What a relief! Either that or global warming believers just make wild claims without regard to reality.

Ouch.

So much for my high regard for 5 digit slashdot userID posters.

Re:Past results are no guarantee of future returns

[RsG]

Nature dislikes it when you anthrpomorphasize her :-)

And on a more serious note, you do realize that bird flu and SARS are far less serious than the black death in the middle ages and the 1918 flu epidemic right? Disease organisms that kill their host die themselves in the proccess, so there is a strong evolutionary pressure against fatal epidemics. If we were all going to die of some horrible plague, we'd have done so already. Plagues can cause great human suffering, but aren't likely to cause extinction, and even mass die-offs are unlikely.

There is no way that a few puny upstart viruses will solve the overpopulation problem. Birth control would, but those methods are the product of wealthy societies, and most of the current population growth is in 3rd world countries where people don't have the means to avoid conception. Plus, many of those same countries have strong religious objections to birth control, or strong cultural pressure to have large families, so even if they had the means to avoid overpopulation, they might not use them.

The Earth did cool 1940 - 1970

[puzzled]

      The Earth was cooler from 1940 to 1970 - this was due to diesel engines producing sulfate aerosols, which are highly reflective. Right now we gain about 4.0 watts/meter^2 due to CO2 and methane, but we lose about half of it due to the sulfate aerosols still in the stratosphere. The cleaner burning fuels we implemented in the 1970s resulted in lower amounts of that stuff in the atmosphere, hence the reversal of the cooling (dimming, actually) trend.

Re:The Earth did cool 1940 - 1970

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Earth was cooler from 1940 to 1970"

That's what my dad always said, but, you know, he wore lots of polyester and always drove Buicks, so I never really believed him....

Re:The Earth did cool 1940 - 1970

[Anonymous Coward]

And now we have a lot of ship traffic polluting the air with sulfate and other aerosols, due to increased global trade. Crappy heavy oil no one wants have used in neihbourhood power plants... A middle sized container ship polutes the air as much as a thousand trucks for comparison. Without that the earth would be around one degree warmer.

Re:The Earth did cool 1940 - 1970

[The_Wilschon]

he wore lots of polyester and always drove Buicks

Maybe I'm just missing something obvious, but WTF does this have to do with anything?

Re:The Earth did cool 1940 - 1970

[HeroreV]

Who cares? He made a pun, and puns are totally sweet.

Re:The Earth did cool 1940 - 1970

[Bush Pig]

It has a bit to do with his dad's sense of style.

Re:The Earth did cool 1940 - 1970

[The_Wilschon]

Oh gosh. I completely missed the pun. dang and it was a bad one too. grooooaaaaannnn.

Re:The Earth did cool 1940 - 1970

[stud9920]

Define "clean fuel". Isn't the cure (global warming) worse than the disease (chemical pollution)? Wouldn't it be possible to add a "clean" (chemically neutral) additive to fuel that would counter the effects of global warming ? Also, if such an additive existed and were used, it would mitigate direct solar power in order to mitigate global temperature. Would this impact be very nefast to our food source (i.e. photosynthesis) or only minimal ?

Re:The Earth did cool 1940 - 1970

[stud9920]

Define "clean fuel". Isn't the cure (global warming) worse than the disease (chemical pollution) in hindsight?

Wouldn't it be possible to add a "clean" (chemically neutral) additive to fuel that would counter the effects of global warming ?

Also, if such an additive existed and were used, it would mitigate direct solar power in order to mitigate global temperature. Would this impact be very nefast to our food source (i.e. photosynthesis) or only minimal ?

More research needs to be done

[bitrex]

I believe that more research needs to be done to determine whether human activities are having any effect on the global climate. As history tells us, it is usually the best course of action in the face of uncertainty to do nothing. For example, during the Cold War there was a great deal of uncertainty about what he intentions of the Soviet Union in East Germany were, and due to this fact we made sure to not "rock the boat" b,y sending any troops or weapons of any kind to West Germany. It was of course our steadfast dedication to non-involvement and careful scientific study, examination and research over many decadesof the massive arms buildup behind the Iron Curtain that eventually allowed us to witness the collapse of the Soviet Union and Germany's reunification.

Re:More research needs to be done

[Anonymous Coward]

As history tells us, it is usually the best course of action in the face of uncertainty to do nothing

Unfortunately, the economy and its associated consumption of fossil fuels does not stop growing to "wait and see".

'70's cooling trend - global dimming?

[BearRanger]

Given the amount of particulate air pollution from that period, the cooling trend was likely the result of global dimming. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming ] To some degree this may have offset the effects of global warming, but after 30 years of concerted effort to limit particulate pollution, that offset has begun to erode.

Re:'70's cooling trend - global dimming?

[jez9999]

Fry: This snow is beautiful. I'm glad global warming never happened.
Leela: Actually, it did. But thank God nuclear winter cancelled it out.

Yes....well......

[Vinegar Joe]

And in related news, scientists say Mars is emerging from an Ice Age. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age _031208.html I blame George Bush.

Re:Yes....well......

[Coryoth]

And in related news, scientists say Mars is emerging from an Ice Age.

Mars, just like earth, undergoes natural climate fluctuation. On Earth we have Milankovitch cycles, based on the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit. Mars also has interesting orbital variations, and significantly greater orbital eccentricity than the earth. This results in similar, though differently timed, significant variations in climate. Mars also suffers from severe dust storms which can have a large impact on climate due t changes in atmospheric opacity. Combine that with the current solar variation, to which the IPCC attributes around 30% of the Earth's observed warming, and it isn't that surprising that Mars might be experiencing some climatic change currently.

The real difference between climate change on Mars and climate change on Earth is that the degree of change currently observed on Mars is entirely explainable in terms of observed natural effects, while the climate change on Earth is not. Anthropogenic effects, to the very bestof our knowledge, are required to explain the currently observed warming on Earth.

Re:Yes....well......

[Vinegar Joe]

Of course there's always the problem of the Sun increasing its radiation output. I wonder if that has any effect.......and if so, how much? http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_0 30320.html

Re:Yes....well......

[Coryoth]

Of course there's always the problem of the Sun increasing its radiation output. I wonder if that has any effect.......and if so, how much?

Yes, there is that. Of course in mentioned that in the post you just replied to:

Combine that with the current solar variation [wikipedia.org], to which the IPCC attributes around 30% of the Earth's observed warming, and it isn't that surprising that Mars might be experiencing some climatic change currently.

So the answer is that solar variation is likely having an effect, and our best current studies put that effect at up to 30% of current observed warming on earth. It's not like this is being ignored or anything - I'm not sure what your point is exactly.

Re:Yes....well......

[DiamondGeezer]

The real difference between climate change on Mars and climate change on Earth is that the degree of change currently observed on Mars is entirely explainable in terms of observed natural effects, while the climate change on Earth is not. Anthropogenic effects, to the very bestof our knowledge, are required to explain the currently observed warming on Earth.

Simply not true. The climate changes on Earth are entirely explicable as natural variation as the IPCC TAR made clear in 2001. The man-made hypothesis is based upon the attribution studies based on climate models.

Re:Yes....well......

[Coryoth]

The climate changes on Earth are entirely explicable as natural variation as the IPCC TAR made clear in 2001. The man-made hypothesis is based upon the attribution studies based on climate models.

It's interesting you say that - could you provide me a reference for where the IPCC TAR concludes that the changes are "entirely explicable" as natural forcings? When I read through the conclusion of the attribution chapter I don't see anything about natural forcings providing adequate explanations. On the contrary we have

• "The observed warming is inconsistent with model estimates of natural internal climate variability."
• "The observed warming in the latter half of the 20th century appears to be inconsistent with natural external (solar and volcanic) forcing of the climate system."
• "The observed change in patterns of atmospheric temperature in the vertical is inconsistent with natural forcing."
• "Anthropogenic factors do provide an explanation of 20th century temperature change."
• "It is unlikely that detection studies have mistaken a natural signal for an anthropogenic signal."
• "The detection methods used should not be sensitive to errors in the amplitude of the global mean forcing or response."

The best I can grant you is: "Natural factors may have contributed to the early century warming." but the warming in the last several decades cannot adequately be attributed to natural factors alone.

Re:Yes....well......

[Vinegar Joe]

"It's not like this is being ignored or anything...." Yes....basically it has. "I'm not sure what your point is exactly." You seem to be the expert.......you figure it out.

Re:Yes....well......

[Coryoth]

"It's not like this is being ignored or anything...." Yes....basically it has.

Not by the people actually studying this. The IPCC TAR devotes an entire section to solar forcing of climate and, as I said, concludes it has had a significant (up to 30%) impact on the recent observed warming here on earth. Variation in solar radiation is considered in pretty much all climate models. I can't exactly see how you can call that ignoring it. If you want more then try some papers by Solanki and others.

Re:Yes....well......

[Pieroxy]

Don't feed the trolls

Re:Yes....well......

[DiamondGeezer]

Here we go again.

It's interesting you say that - could you provide me a reference for where the IPCC TAR concludes that the changes are "entirely explicable" as natural forcings? When I read through the conclusion of the attribution chapter I don't see anything about natural forcings providing adequate explanations.

The attributions and the assumption of the unnaturalness of 20th Century warming was made because of the Mann Hockey Stick, a known scientific fabrication, recently condemned by an independent study by statisticians as simply "bad mathematics"

Re:Yes....well......

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go again -- indeed!

Mister, you have been caught with your pants down!
You did not reply to the citations proofing you wrong!
So you just mention some other document to create a diversion. Did you study the Wegmann Report as "carefully" as you studied the 1st document ? Do you always apply your "there is no global warming" filter ?

Re:Yes....well......

[DiamondGeezer]

Dear Anonymous Coward:

Nowhere did I write that "there is no global warming".

Re:Yes....well......

[The_Wilschon]

How effective is the IPCC at predicting natural climate changes? How have they tested their climate models? What kind of statistics are they getting? I'm sure I could read the paper and find out, but it is probably quicker to ask, since you already know so much about it.

Re:Yes....well......

[Doc Ruby]

You don't believe that the (Republican) House Energy and Commerce Committee produced an "independent" study. These are the people attacking science everywhere that serves their corporate political agenda. And you are helping them.

Re:Yes....well......

[NeutronCowboy]

Besides the fact that you seem to think that the House Energy commission is somehow "independent", you're just plain wrong. Read the (peer-reviewed) articles at the bottom for your enlightment. Also, McIntyre and McKitrick are not statisticians, but simply people who work in the mining industry and as economists, with no known previous peer-reviewed articles related to climate change. Their critique of the PCA used by Mann et al has been widely dissected and found to be wanting by scientists who know PCA from a hole in the ground. In short, you seem to have readily swallowed the critique of the Mann paper, but never bothered to follow-up on what climatologists had to say about this entire deal.

Jones, P.D., K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett and S.F.B. Tett, High-resolution palaeoclimatic records for the last millennium: Integration, interpretation and comparison with General Circulation Model control run temperatures, Holocene, 8, 455-471, 1998.

Esper, J., E.R. Cook and F.H. Schweingruber, Low-frequency signals in long tree-line chronologies for reconstructing past temperature variability, Science, 295, 2250-2253, 2002.

Soon, W., and S. Baliunas, Proxy climatic and environmental changes over the past 1000 years, Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 2003.

Soon, W., S. Baliunas, C, Idso, S. Idso and D.R. Legates, Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, Energy and Environment, 14, 233-296, 2003.

Re:Yes....well......

[Coryoth]

How effective is the IPCC at predicting natural climate changes? How have they tested their climate models? What kind of statistics are they getting?

Generally pretty good. They test their models by training on one historical dataset and running it on a different one. For the most part the models use purely observed data - this gives a smaller range to play with, but results in much smaller uncertainties in the resulting model.

Re:Yes....well......

[DiamondGeezer]

You don't believe that the (Republican) House Energy and Commerce Committee produced an "independent" study. These are the people attacking science everywhere that serves their corporate political agenda. And you are helping them.

The House Committee asked these expert statisticians to look at the Hockey Stick, and the statisticians refused to be paid by the Committee and are not politically republican.

You're helping scientific fraudsters get away with an extremely expensive poltically inspired panic. "The 1990s were the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the millenium" - how many times did you hear that? And all as fake as a three dollar bill.

Re:Yes....well......

[Doc Ruby]

The House committee picked their favorite experts to back up their policy of denying the Greenhouse and claimed they were honest.

The pollution the committee is responsible for protecting makes "extremely expensive" and "politically inspired" look like a kids game. No matter how many times I hear you deniers lie about it, that doesn't make it true, even though ">that's your standard for truth.

Re:Yes....well......

[DiamondGeezer]

Well you're now incoherent and quoting google at random. Not to worry, those nice men in white coats will be arriving shortly to give you a nice warm injection and take your cares away.

Re:Yes....well......

[HeroreV]

He's not a troll, he's just not making his point very well. Even if the experts aren't ignoring this, the media is.

Re:Yes....well......

[HeroreV]

And all as fake as a three dollar bill.

Curse you, now more people will know! It was hard enough already trying to spend these fake 3 dollar bills!

Re:Yes....well......

[Doc Ruby]

No, I'm quite coherent. Quoting the Reagan PR chief who cited the Nazi propaganda model of repeating anything enough until it's true, and Bush describing his job doing exactly that, in discarding your Republican apologies for fabricating "official truth" out of repeated lies.

Your denial keeps you from seeing that. But you're leaking around the edges, projecting your nightmares of getting locked up for your insanity. Or maybe you're really just Republican junkie Rush Limbaugh, whistling in the dark for your favorite blast of "truth".

And you ask us to trust you and your Republican House committee's lies about the Greenhouse. I wish there were some way to leave you and your demented heroes behind as we protect ourselves from the pollution you pump, but you'll just have to be confused by your good luck, too.

Re:Yes....well......

[Coryoth]

...he's just not making his point very well. Even if the experts aren't ignoring this, the media is.

And that I'll readily grant. The media has done a particularly poor job on the issue of global warming, in a large part because, being the media they prefer sensationalism because it sells better, and simplified soundbites for a similar reason. That means you tend to get the extremist doomsayers, and very little in the way properly qualified statements. Of course just because the media is overselling, and excessively simplifying things doesn't mean that there aren't issues, nor that they aren't of some concern - for that you need to actually read the science.

Re:Yes....well......

[AllergicToMilk]

What is being ignored in the hypothesis of climate change is the gas with the most dominant heat effect in Earth's atmosphere. That gas is water vapour and none of the models used thus far reliably or consistently include it's affect. The reason is simple. Every time it is included the atmosphere models become unusable as predictors because the effect of water vapour is so great and also because it's effect is not fully understood. That is to say, we don't know to what degree it is insulative and reflective.

Due to volume, this gas dominates all others in the atmosphere and therefore has first order affects and yet, it is so poorly understood that it can not be included. How can we possibly make very expensive decisions without having a reliable enough model that at least considers first order effects?

Re:Yes....well......

[Lars T.]

Did you bother to read the article you linked?

The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Re:Yes....well......

[Lars T.]

Too bad that doing it the "right way" hardly changes a thing.

Re:Yes....well......

[OrangeTide]

Mars fluctuates between cold and damn cold. Mars could benefit from global warming.

Really the whole thing about "global warming" is not actually about the warming. I think we can all agree that the climate is constantly changing. And I think some of us can agree that currently average temps are going up, especially ocean temps.

The political pseudo-science that goes on in the whole debate is it seems people are split down the middle as to if humans significantly alter the climate or not. And if we do whether or not we can (or should) do anything about it.

It is quite sad that we often cannot have a rational discussion on climate change due to the political baggage that is attached to it. The "left" and the "right" should STFU and let science and the rational discuss the issues. Recommendation for action should not be based on political motives, but scientific ones. motives like the left trying to collect more votes or do what the assume is right (often without having facts to back up their decisions), or the right trying to shield industry and the economy. If we can scientifically determine that if everyone stopped using coal right now we could halt climate change in it's tracks (i'm skeptical) then we should recommend that, but likely other pressures would push back and make such a plan impossible. (you can displace millions of people by altering the market and economy so drastically)

Re:Yes....well......

[sean.geek.nz]

Your claims about water vapour being ignored in current climate models are 100% false.

We have quite a lot of people doing a lot of work to measure and model both its insulative and reflective effects.

" it is so poorly understood that it can not be included "

Untrue. Completely untrue. If you leave water vapour out the resulting model is gibberish - you get freezing temperatures in New York in July.

Re:Yes....well......

[Anonymous Coward]

The just attacked an outdated paper. The paper came out in 1998. There's been 8 years of better science since then, but this sham study only looked on this one paper.

Re:Past results are no guarantee of future returns

[Amonimous Coward]

According to these global-warming-denail Exxon ads, it's not polution. It's life.

Check them out. They're laughable. But the sad part is that many people will believe it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J70dlTY74o0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Aoua1lpDKA

Yeah right

[dekropisvol]

Hmmmm, here in NL was it this year very cold in the spring, everything came days later to flower. Maybe this year was just a coincidence

Re:Yeah right

[ClamIAm]

Over the 12 years I've lived here (Minnesota), the winters have become noticeably less harsh (for Minnesota, anyway). For the first 5 years or so, once we had snow on the ground, it stayed there until at least sometime in April. Now the snow will often melt once or twice during the winter.

My anecdote counters your anecdote :P

Seriously though, the winters here are sort of lead me to believe that yes, the earth IS warming up.

Re:Yeah right

[CAIMLAS]

this year, spring wasn't really readily observeable. it was a fairly consistent gradient from winter to summer.

but then, we didn't have much of a winter. it was barely cold enough for heavy jackets, probably not dipping below 20F but a time or two, with little snow.

and the summer has been pretty mild in general, too - very, very cool, with a very unusually high amount of rainfall.

Re:Yeah right

[B.D.Mills]

Here in Melbourne, spring is happening right now. It seems to have arrived about two weeks early this year. The buds are bursting, my nectarine tree is breaking into blossom and everywhere I look I see fruit trees in bloom. The birds also seem to be active. I haven't yet seen birds with nesting material but that's probably because I haven't been looking for them.

The winter was also early, and in some districts unusually cold. For about a week in June, the weather report was listing quite a lot of places in country Victoria that experienced record low temperatures. Some of the records even broke records that were set the previous night. Although lows of -8C and -9C are quite mild compared to winters in many places, they come as a bit of a shock when the lowest temperature each winter is usually about 0C to -2C.

However, that's just my local situation. As the parent poster suggests, the seasons are local phenomena.

Re:Yeah right

[RogerWilco]

I don't know where you live, but that's not true overhere, we hard a reasonably cold winter, and a very hot spring and summer. (average temperature of 23 instead of 17 degrees and 15 instead of 12)
http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/maand_en_seizoenso verzichten/index.html#jaar
rainfall has been 15 instead of 70 mm, so I don't know where you got that from either.

Only after the first of august have temperatures gotten more in the usual range again.

What does

[Ethan Allison]

Mr. Groundhog have to say about all this?

Re:What does

[Don_dumb]

He will answer tomorrow. . . . .

If there is one

Re:What does

[LouisZepher]

Given the socio-political/ecological/etc state of things, it's hard to tell if you're being serious, or just quoting Bill Murray...

Doom Awaits Us All!

[pipingguy]

A year passed ... Winter changed into Spring ... Spring changed into Summer, Summer changed back into Winter, and Winter gave Spring and Summer a miss and went straight on into Autumn ... Until one day ...

Nature emits more CO2 than humans...

[Sarcastic Begger]

...but the trouble with human emissions is that they coinside with destrction of the Earths natural Carbon Sink mechanisms, eg. deforestation of the Amazon which has reached a crutial tipping point and the so-called Mega-fires have already started, as not reported on Slashdot (sniff).

Re:Nature emits more CO2 than humans...

[sulimma]

This is not about the absolute amount of CO2 but about the change, especially a rapid change.

This is not about the absolute amount of CO2 but about a rapid change in the total amount.

Nature always has emitted lots of CO2 and also sinked a lot of CO2 and doing that achieved the temperature distribution that could be observed 200 years ago.

Now man is adding lots of CO2 on top of that, changing that equlibrum to another value. In pcrinciple neither nature nor mankind should have a problem with another temperature and water distribution on earth. It is just a pity if you allready built a city on a place that is soon to be within an ocean or under ice or if you spent ten thousand years growing a rain forest in an area that soon will have dry climate.

Once a new equlibrum is achieved you can spent some time moving your cities and crop and forest and animals around and everything will be in order again.

Re:Nature emits more CO2 than humans...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, the Amazon is not a carbon sink. If it was, where is all the carbon accumulating? At a steady state, carbon being fixed was matched exactly by carbon released in decay and termite metabolism. Deforestation releases carbon temporarily fixed in the wood, but the Amazon was not accumulating carbon before deforestation. Rain forest is only a carbon sink when actively increasing its biomass: i.e. regrowing after deforestation.

If you want carbon sinks, look for processes taking up carbon and not re-releasing it.
Like:
<serious>
* Peat Bogs
* Arctic forests -- all those shed pine needles don't decay in permafrost. Yet.
* Gigatonnes of concrete around the world, all of it ever so slowly absorbing carbon dioxide at an exponentially decreasing rate (with megatonnes of fresh concrete added yearly, unfortunately releasing CO2 in manufacture)
</serious>
* Megatonnes of paper buried in landfill (or libraries...)
Don't recycle paper -- keep it out of the carbon cycle!
* Net growth of human population. All those carbon atoms to make a human have to come from somewhere. You owe it to the planet to be overweight.

Re:Past results are no guarantee of future returns

[Anonymous Coward]

you're talking about the united states, right? we love it raw cause god said so

The funny part...

[jopsen]

The funny part is the it's America that's responsable for the climate changes... Most if not all of Europe takes part in international campaigns against CO2 polution. I Denmark (Europe) one Gallon of (car) fuel cost 7.12 USD. - What do you pay? - And how does that affect the environment?

Re:The funny part...

[ClamIAm]

Yeah, that's pretty hilarious. It would be even more hilarious if the US just kept increasing their CO2 emissions every year. The we might all die laughing.

Or if we don't die laughing, we'll all die from heat exhaustion :(

Re:The funny part...

[will_die]

Here in Germany gas costs less then that and the extra taxes we pay over what someone in the US pays does not go to reducing pollution it goes into the social programs.
BTW as for Kyoto the only countries in europe that have a chance of actually meeting it are UK and Germany, UK because they are spending alot on nuclear and plants and Germany because datawise they get to count old East German plants that got closed down as thier start point. However the chance of both of them actually meeting it are none.
According to various environmentist web sites Denmark have just barely decreased thier production and unless something changes they will actually generate " 20-25 million tonnes" above what thier obligation is.
However all is not lost since thier are alot of signers of Kyoto which do not have to decrease emissions amounts and can sell credits to thoses that are suppose to. So Denmark will probably end up spending 25 billion crowns by 2012 to reach its goal without actually cutting any emessions.

Re:The funny part...

[el_munkie]

You refer to the Kyoto protocol? The treaty that hasn't actaully changed the emissions output by any signing countries but has cost them oodles of money? Yeah, the US sure missed the boat on that one... They could have made a difference.

Re:The funny part...

[CAIMLAS]

THe funny thing is that you actually believe that.

Sorry, no. In western countries, CO2 output is roughly equivilant to the population count. In developing countries, it's even higher.

Re:The funny part...

[QuickFox]

THe funny thing is that you actually believe that.

Sheesh, where do you get your beliefs? On the contrary, rich countries have roughly ten times higher CO2 emission per capita than developing countries. And the US is indeed among the world's worst polluters per capita.

Re:The funny part...

[CAIMLAS]

You need to check out recent statistics.

China is much, much higher these days, and what's more, its rate of consumption is increasing faster than any other country's. Furthermore, their overall polution makes the polution/CO2 generated in the US look insignificant, regardless of petrolium consumption levels...

Re:The funny part...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ways of reducing carbon emissions need not be a net burden on an economy, nor on its people. For example, improved insulation of homes and offices has a relatively small associated cost compared when compared to the cost of a new building, but can have a significant impact on the amount of energy the building requires. After a few years (often less than 5) the improved insulation has paid for itself. It can often lead to more stable and pleasurable temperatures inside the building. Some forms of renewables (e.g. Solar thermal) also have payback periods of around 5 years or less. Thus the amount of additional cost is relatively small, for a benefit which may reduce the energy requirements of the building for heating, cooling, and hot water by one third. After this initial period the economy will then actually be BOOSTED due to householders having more money leftover after paying their energy bills.

There are various forms of insulation and renewables that can also be reterofitted.

Additionally more fuel efficient cars lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions but aid the economy as commuters will pay less per month for their fuel, leaving more for other purchases, more savings, or bigger pension contributions to offset the social security timebomb, or to invest in medical insurance. Again energy efficiency leads to a benefit, and a beneficial side effect is reduction in CO2 emissions.

A final point, in the last 10 years (roughly the period of Kyoto) the EU's per capita real terms GDP growth has been almost identical to that of the USA. The headline growth has been lower, but then the US's population has grown at a higher rate, and has generally experienced higher inflation. So if the measures to try and meet (although they haven't been entirely successful) Kyoto targets have had a drag on the European economies, it hasn't meant a big difference compared to the USA's economy.

Re:The funny part...

[Anonymous Coward]

UK because they are spending alot on nuclear ...

Not true. No nuclear plants have been opened for many years in the UK and the old ones are reaching end of life. Tony Blair has recently talked about a new generation of nuclear plants but these have not even reached the early planning stage yet because the companies who might build them want subsidies the government says it will not provide. Even if a decision was taken tommorrow no nuclear plants could be online in time to affect whether the UK reached the current emission targets.

What *has* made it possible (among other factors) for the UK to reach its emission targets is the so called "dash for gas" a few years ago when there was a large switch from coal fired to gas fired power stations, gas burning power stations emitting much less CO2 for the same energy output than coal.

If you're interested this BBC news item from 2004 touches on these issues and more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3581637.stm

Re:Past results are no guarantee of future returns

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm not talking about the US. Did you miss the part where I said "3rd world countries"?

Parts of the US also have problems with birth control for religious reasons, but unlike other some countries, America doesn't have a high fertility rate.

This can either be taken to mean that religious people do use birth control, even if it runs counter to what they're taught, or else that they aren't having sex very often. Probably a little of both actually - the hardcore fundies don't fuck at all, and the moderate Christians use birth control. Plus, not all Americans are religous, or are else they are religious, but not particularly observant.

There are more problems in the US with teen pregnancy and STD transmission than there are in other developed nations, but those are social problems, not overpopulation ones, and in any case those same problems are far more prevalent in the 3rd world undergoing major population increases (well, teenagers having kids is actually normal in many places, but the basic point remains).

(This is offtopic, so I'll post anon.)

... or something else?

[kripkenstein]

If this study is based upon when plants flowered, it may not be as much climate change as it is light change.

Good point (and good elaboration of it). Now, TFA mentions that they observed "542 plants and 19 animal species". Which doesn't go against the issue that you raise, since changes in plants can lead directly to changes in animals dependent upon them. So, it might not be climate change but something else that affects plants. However, I am not sure I agree about light being the necessary culprit; when you say

So, this may not be based as much upon climate change as much as light change, which could easily be caused by increasing urbanization (city lights and such providing enough light to change these processes).

- I am led to wonder how many plants are actually affected by light from cities. I'm no expert, so I won't venture a specific guess. But there are other options besides light: radio waves, noise (from planes), etc., which in theory might affect plants (again, not an expert here). I would guess that more plants are bathed by radio waves than by lights, FWIW. So, on the one hand, we know light affects plants, but don't know (I think) about the other factors; yet the other factors may affect more plants, and therefore might be easier to correlate with a mass change in plant behavior.

Interesting questions. Hopefully someone here knows more.

It's interesting to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

...how the USA is about the only country where there are a significant number of people who dispute global warming wholesale and/or the human cause for it and where such things are a "political issue".

This is what pisses me off about the GW thing

[Sycraft-fu]

All the dishonesty that happens with the studies. People cry about the dishonesty and corporate backing that comes from anti-GW studies, but it really doesn't seem to be any better on the pro GW side. It's just not science that's being done in many cases. Science isn't about finding evidence to support your position, it's a process of knowing things and to do it right, you always have to try to prove yourself wrong.

I think Feynman said it best:

"It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another."

(http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_scien ce.html)

This cherry picking of data, downplaying and/or ignoring of contradictory results and such is just not acceptable. It may very well be that there's something to the idea that humans are causing global warming and that it's going to lead to bad things, but the way to prove that is not to use bad science.

Because of all this crap floating around on both sides, I personally have just said "fuck it" in relation to global warming. I'm not looking in to it anymore, I don't know who to believe. I neither believe nor disbelieve the theory. I'll continue to conserve as much as possible in my personal life (biking to work, for example, which I highly recommend) since I believe in conservation for it's own sake and since it makes economic sense (use less, have more). However I'm not going to get all worked up about it because I just can't figure out if there's anything to get all worked up about.

Re:This is what pisses me off about the GW thing

[njh]

Because of all this crap floating around on both sides, I personally have just said "fuck it" in relation to global warming. I'm not looking in to it anymore, I don't know who to believe. I neither believe nor disbelieve the theory. I'll continue to conserve as much as possible in my personal life (biking to work, for example, which I highly recommend) since I believe in conservation for it's own sake and since it makes economic sense (use less, have more). However I'm not going to get all worked up about it because I just can't figure out if there's anything to get all worked up about.

I pretty much agree with you here. The facts are hard to verify personally, mostly relying on science by consensus and big computer models. But I do believe we are stuffing things up, so I to try to ride my bike to work all the time and drive a tiny car. I'm glad that it is possible/arguable to believe in environmental conservation without having to take all the baggage that some people attach.

Re:This is what pisses me off about the GW thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Riding your bike and driving a 30 MPG (instead of 15 MPG) car is a start, but barely does anything to help the environment. Not compared to moving to an apartment block in the city, walking everywhere, sharing central heat and air with 1,000s of neighbors, and collectively exploiting your economies of scale, scope, and agglomeration to live as light as possible but in all likelihood more comfortably than you'd be out in the boondocks. Lifestyle change is hard, though, and I don't condemn the generations who've been brought up to think suburbia is somehow more natural than urban life.

*sniff* ahh... smug's all mine, fellas :-)

Re:This is what pisses me off about the GW thing

[njh]

Our car already gets 40mpg (toyota starlet). I disagree about your other points, they are well meaning but based on false premises: Because we live in suburbia we can grow our own veggies and chickens (indeed we produce an excess to sell to others); we live in a fairly dense area (average space per person 4000 people/km), but don't incure the high energy cost of a high rise; bikes are more efficient than walking (about 5 times in fact); and we can collect and use our own water.

Suburbia is no less 'natural' than urban living. Our ancestors lived in small groups surrounded by hunting, then agricultural land. Cities create huge resource demands on the surrounding area and discourage self-reliance, separating people from their needs and making them indifferent to the problems they create. Which makes them unjustifiably smug.

Re:This is what pisses me off about the GW thing

[Pink Tinkletini]

Cities create huge resource demands, but are these demands any less than the same demands spread over 10 times the physical area? Just the opposite, actually. How much energy is wasted trucking food and finished goods to every last corner of inhabited land? Herbs and spices for that chicken you grow? How much gravel and asphalt, how much gasoline?

If anything, it's self-reliance that's "unnatural" (though I hate that word, I admit). Humans, like chimps and most great apes, are social creatures and we thrive in a social setting.

Don't get me wrong. I love backpacking, and I try to go hiking upstate or out of country a few weeks every year. But it's a mistake to pretend the let's-all-go-live-on-farms is sustainable for living conditions other than constant risk of famine and disease. Human history suggests otherwise. Until modernity, most people in cities were still drawing at least part of their nutrition from their (landlords') own soil and starving far less often than those abandoned in the countryside.

Re:This is what pisses me off about the GW thing

[Pink Tinkletini]

One more thing regarding your "high energy cost of a high rise." If you think about it, a 1,000 unit apartment building is always going to be more energy-efficient than 1,000 units (of the same size) spread out over many acres. With freestanding single-family homes, you end up radiating a lot of heat, or cold air in summer, to the elements outside. Same with light pollution. I'm constantly amazed that this shouldn't be immediately intuitive--I'd guess it has something to do with property lust, or some residual frontier mentality (I'm North American--are you?).

Re:This is what pisses me off about the GW thing

[njh]

Sorry, where did I say lets spread it all over the country? I mentioned the rather high density of 4000/km^2, and the fact that we could all grow our food locally. I did say that I didn't believe high rises are efficient.

Re:This is what pisses me off about the GW thing

[njh]

High rises require high energy materials such as steel and concrete, small single and two story dwellings don't. The fact that people could build 2 storey houses a thousand years ago, but not 40 storey ones is a big hint. We keep our house warm with just the heat generated by our electrical applicances: this is easy to confirm - we don't have any heaters; yet I'm sitting here in late winter in my shorts (about to ride to work). Large buildings, on the other hand, require large airconditioning plants just to provide fresh air. You can get most of the heat sharing behaviour with apartments, without the expensive materials. Modern insulations make the heat sharing idea fairly moot anyway (build your house with SIPs and the energy loss through the walls is less than that required for fresh air).

A housing model where people live in a tower surrounded by productive farmland is plausibly better, but it will never happen because of the vast cost of highrise living (another hint that highrise living is not energy comparible with short houses).

I'm not north american, something you could have deduced very easily. (perhaps something to do with laziness in fact checking?)

Re:This is what pisses me off about the GW thing

[Pink Tinkletini]

Sorry about not intuiting your nationality, I guess I was overeager to reply. But I do know for a fact that holding quality of life constant, city residents use less energy per capita--electricity plus gas--than rural residents, due to the fact that large buildings are more energy-efficient to maintain and build, again per capita, than single-family dwellings. All the statistics I've ever seen (and believe me, this field is full of statistics) confirm this observation. None contradict it. It's such a self-evident tenet of urban planning as to be a truism. I suspect you're forgetting the "per capita" part, which is key.

Moreover, this pattern applies to habitation on every continent in the world, North America or no. Where city dwellers do use more energy per capita--Freetown (Sierra Leone) vs. rural central African farm communities, for example--you'll immediately note that the discrepancy is due to that aforementioned quality of life thing. To bring the same goods and services already available in Freetown to rural Sierra Leone would take a comparatively enormous amount of energy, both in infrastructure maintenance and development. Per capita, natch.

I know I'm not explaining this very well, so here's perhaps the best explanation I've seen: "New York is the Greenest City in America." If you're interested, and you seem to be, that article will be worth the read.

Re:This is what pisses me off about the GW thing

[njh]

Yes, I read that a while back. And I agree with what he says. You need to look at the numbers I'm posting - I live in an area with 4000 people / sq km. That's not rural! I would describe our area as dense suburbia. Yet we provide our own food, and use only 5800kWh/year electricity. I get to work by bike, my wife by train. We use 1000l of petrol a year in fuel, including our extensive driving (we travelled 10000km of highway in one trip last year). That article also does not consider the energy invested in moving all the food, consumer goods and water in and out of the city. I suspect that is at least of the same order of magnitude as personal transportation cost. Most people I know pay a lot more for food each year than fuel, and in a way food needs as much fuel as it costs (particularly when you include farm subsidies and the like).

I think we do pretty well compared with a manhattan dweller (at only 2.5 times higher density). But our house required just 3 mature Eucalyptus regnans to build, about 400l of petrol to make and when it goes down the soil will be immediately available for crops. The only concrete is the new stumps and the shower base (less than a tonne total) and the only steel nails, screws and door hinges :) Insulation is old phone books and polystyrene foam boards. Being old, we don't have much glass either.

I believe that the most efficient housing will incorporate food production at the house. Paris was a net exporter of food until the war, and Paris has (had) more than double the people density of NYC! I'm imagining something akin to techno-villages, population say 60000, packed into clusters of houses perhaps as circuses or crescents, joined on the sides, with a village green in the center and individual cropping gardens radiating away. Each circus might have 27 apartments, with two families in each (say 4 ave per family, 8 per house, 216 per circus. The total area of a circus might be 2 hectares, or a circle radius 80m. We can put 40 of these comfortably to the square km, getting a population density of around 8000/km^2 (almost NYC). We have 2160m^2 taken up by the houses, and in cool temperate/mediteranian climates 50m^2 is enough per person to feed themselves over a year. That leaves 40m^2 per person free space (we might take 10 of these up for road, and the rest a shared green). This is without requiring a new technology or putting crops on the roofs. (flaws: won't collect enough water to be self sufficient, nor PV electricity, but energy and water are easier to move than people and food) We could run some kind of public transport through this so that nobody needs to travel more than 500m. I propose computer collated minibuses seating say 8 people that provide door to door service.

Between villages we might have a few kms of farmland, bush land or factories forming a patchwork. People could commute to work on bike in many cases (I ride 10km to work, covering at least 160000 people) (manhattan also has a large population of people commuting considerable distances in to work from surrounding areas) or by intervillage mass transit. 216 people is small enough that people can get involved, 60000 is enough to provide intellectual stimulation. Different towns can focus on different interests, be that sport, industry or fiction. With modern transportation I could visit something 500km away for the day, or cross the USA for the weekend.

Ok, I'm dreaming again.

Mod up Parent & GP (counteract mod abuse)!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some idiot is modding these two down. It's obvious that the moderator in question disagrees with them, but doesn't want to post a rebuttal, and is instead abusing the moderation system by moding them "overrated", in order to escape being metamoderated into oblivion.

Mod these two up! And if you disagree with them, then post instead of hiding behind the moderation system to downmod facts & opinions you don't like.

Old News! My Bonsais think it's spring already

[old_kennyp]

In Sydney here, we have been having warm spring weather since the start of this month. All the Deciduous plants here have started to bud out, and spring flowering plants are all blooming Must be Global warming! Ken

No Way!!!

[nebbian]

Man,

That's right in the middle of our summer holidays, usually heralding a trip to the beach with our new christmas presents, and lazy summer days. You can prise that week from my cold dead fingers! The first week in July would be much better.

Damn northern-hemisphere-centric views...

Thoughts

[el_munkie]

This story is sure to bring about the usual Leftist vs. Rightist flamefest which is fought out every time a story on climate change is posted on Slashdot.

Certain factions of the rightists will tell you that the Earth has remained the same for it's 6,000 years of existence. No new species have evolved, dinosaur bones were placed in the ground to test our faith, etc. They will then be flamed by the leftists, who will tell you that the Earth and the species it contains have been changing throughout the planet's history, but that such change is somehow unnatural now since every bit of climate change and every extinct species is directly the fault of George W. Bush, who cackles as he kills pandas, pours arsenic into lakes, and makes white people idle their Suburbans just for the sake of adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.

Here's what I think (if you care): The Earth has been in a constant state of flux since it cooled from a molten ball five billion years ago. The climate would change whether humans existed or not. Yes, we may accelerate such change, but life, including human life, by its nature changes its surroundings and adapts to such changes. The Earth is a system with billions upon billions of inputs and outputs, and climate change is just a convenient way of attributing various events to whichever political groups one opposes. A bad hurricane comes around and disproportionately affects minorities? It was caused by global warming. The summer is hot? Global warming. There's an unseasonable late blizzard in the Northeast? Crickets, even though the logic behind the global warming argument could attribute it to human sources, the public wouldn't be swayed by it.

difference in winter start?

[CAIMLAS]

I wonder what the difference is from when winter started back then until now.

Just to hazard a guess: it was about the same period of time earlier then than now.

I don't agree

[LKM]

we can't act on the information. If we knew for sure that we humans are causing changes, then we should mend our ways rapidly

This I disagree with. I doesn't matter whether we know that the temperature change is (partially) man-made. Let's assume that the probability that human behaviour can't influence the climate chance towards a more positive outcome is 80%. That means the probability that we can make a difference is 20%. Isn't 20% enough to at least try?

The simple fact is that whether we have proof of our influence doesn't matter at all. The people who could "mend our ways" won't do it regardless of whether we know that the climate change is our fault. There's simply too much money involved.

If all it took was proof, by now they would have more than enough to act on it.

there are no "two sides"

[oohshiny]

People cry about the dishonesty and corporate backing that comes from anti-GW studies, but it really doesn't seem to be any better on the pro GW side.

It doesn't have to be "better". Because the potential downsides are so huge, it's sufficient for people who are concerned about global warming to demonstrate that it is a plausible possibility and that it has significant costs. That has clearly been done. Furthermore, we know that the costs of carbon emission reductions are small in comparison to the costs resulting from global warming if global warming is occurring.

In the face of such a huge downside, to continue carbon emissions at current levels is reckless. The burden of proof is simply not symmetrical; we must reduce carbon emissions until opponents of reductions can demonstrate unequivocally that continued emissions are safe.

Your kind of insistence on "balance" is a debating strategy. Don't pretend that it has anything to do with science--it's nothing more than a carefully crafted PR message.

Re:there are no "two sides"

[cagle_.25]

It doesn't have to be "better". Because the potential downsides are so huge, it's sufficient for people who are concerned about global warming to demonstrate that it is a plausible possibility and that it has significant costs. That has clearly been done. Furthermore, we know that the costs of carbon emission reductions are small in comparison to the costs resulting from global warming if global warming is occurring.

First, the GP was not talking about "better" in terms of correctness; he was talking about "better" in terms of intellectual honesty. So, no, anyone speaking to this issue or any other should never get a pass just because he's on the right side.

But let's suppose that GP were talking about correctness, as you assume. Does your analysis hold?

I don't think so. Let's say that the cost of reducing carbon emissions is $1e12, and that the cost of global warming would be $1e14. Now, let's suppose that the % contribution of human activity to global warming is %30. So far, reducing carbon emissions saves us $2.9e13.

But ... we aren't guaranteed those numbers; instead, we only have a "plausible possibility." Indeed, we have three different "plausible possibilities"

1. the projected cost of reducing carbon emissions (which might have hidden downsides, like preventing developing countries from being able to develop, or leading to wars over oil or emission quotas; or else might have hidden upsides, like leading us all to go solar or hydrogen fusion, thus shutting off the flow of money and arms to the Middle East)
2. the projected cost of global warming (which might have hidden upsides, like longer growing seasons; or hidden downsides, like sending Europe into another 14th century-style cold snap), and
3. the projected contribution of human activity to global warming.

If either (1) is significantly higher than expected, or else any of (2) or (3) is lower than expected, then your analysis fails. In particular, if (3) gets highballed, then we will spend money on carbon emission reduction, only to have to turn around and spend even more money on mitigating global warming.

In short, "plausible possibility" is not enough. You need numbers, and they have to be right.

So yes, there are two sides: the one side must demonstrate conclusively that global warming will cost us thus-and-so, and that doing X, Y, and Z can cost-effectively solve the problem. The other side must demonstrate conclusively that doing nothing is more cost-effective.

Where we can agree, I think, is that getting off of oil would be a Good Thing regardless of which side is correct. Go fusion!

Re:there are no "two sides"

[oohshiny]

First, the GP was not talking about "better" in terms of correctness; he was talking about "better" in terms of intellectual honesty.

Yes, he made a bunch of unfounded assertions in that regard. In fact, the evidence for global warming is compelling, there is widespread scientific agreement on the matter, and his charges of intellectual dishonesty are baseless. My point is that even if his charges were true, it still wouldn't matter.

Let's say that the cost of reducing carbon emissions is $1e12, and that the cost of global warming would be $1e14. Now, let's suppose that the % contribution of human activity to global warming is %30. So far, reducing carbon emissions saves us $2.9e13. [...] In short, "plausible possibility" is not enough. You need numbers, and they have to be right.

Your basic assumption is wrong in that reducing carbon emissions actually has economic benefits to society at large: it means more investments, more jobs, more economic activity, higher productivity, lower defense expenditures. Therefore, we know that reducing carbon emissions is the right course of action.

Where we can agree, I think, is that getting off of oil would be a Good Thing regardless of which side is correct. Go fusion!

We don't need fusion, and we'll likely not get it any time soon. Existing technologies are more than sufficient. The world would already get off the US's case if the US reduced its per capita carbon emissions to European levels.

Re:there are no "two sides"

[cagle_.25]

Yes, he made a bunch of unfounded assertions in that regard. In fact, the evidence for global warming is compelling, there is widespread scientific agreement on the matter, and his charges of intellectual dishonesty are baseless.

I tend to agree in general that there is much more data to support human influence on global warming. In *this* specific case, the charge seems slightly better than baseless.

My point is that even if his charges were true, it still wouldn't matter.

I understood your point and responded to it. Intellectual honesty matters, and *if* his charges were true, it would matter, if only because bad behavior provides ammunition for the other side.

Your basic assumption is wrong in that reducing carbon emissions actually has economic benefits to society at large: it means more investments, more jobs, more economic activity, higher productivity, lower defense expenditures. Therefore, we know that reducing carbon emissions is the right course of action.

I don't disagree, but I'm not willing to fully agree until I see hard numbers. For example, it would matter who received the economic benefits over against who would pay for them.

Re:there are no "two sides"

[khallow]

Your basic assumption is wrong in that reducing carbon emissions actually has economic benefits to society at large: it means more investments, more jobs, more economic activity, higher productivity, lower defense expenditures. Therefore, we know that reducing carbon emissions is the right course of action.

I disagree. A lot depends on whether it's necessary (ie, do the costs of global warming mitigation exceed the benefits?) and how carbon emissions are reduced. I gather that you probably know various economically sound ways to encourage carbon emission reduction. But there are also unsound ways to do it so a blanket assertion that it will be better is incorrect.

Further, these are all hypothetical long term benefits. In the short term, there will be pain in carbon emission reduction unless by some unlikely circumstance the scientific work is incorrect and either human activities really don't contribute to global warming or there is some low cost way to reduce global warming.

A final consideration is the timing of carbon emission reduction. It's not clear to me why carbon emissions need to be reduced now rather than later. It may indeed be better to put off the effort till later even though it raises the cost of implementation. My take is that current economic growth has a profound effect on reducing global poverty while global warming is currently a small problem. And a bigger global warming problem later when the world is far wealthier and more technologically advanced, can be managed.

EXACTLY!

[p51d007]

One of the problems with the so called "global warming" (among others) is that the so called "science" that says global warming is a serious danger, is that it is based on 50 years worth of data. Now, considering the earth is millions or billions of years old, what is 50 years in the scheme of things? Couple that with the proven FACT that the output from the sun has been on the increase in the last 10 years and wouldn't a somewhat intelligent person conclude that if the output from the sun has been on the increase, that the temperatures would be also on a increase? There is a well known time magazine cover from the 70's about global cooling. http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/printout/0 ,23657,944914,00.html It's like anything else "scientist" come up with.......eat oatbran, don't eat oatbran, drink alcohol, don't drink alcohol.....geez! No wonder everyone is screwed up!

Not true...

[mjbkinx]

You refer to the Kyoto protocol? The treaty that hasn't actaully changed the emissions output by any signing countries but has cost them oodles of money? Yeah, the US sure missed the boat on that one... They could have made a difference

I don't know where you have heard that, but it's definitely not true. Granted, by 2003 the EU15 only managed to achieve 1.7% out of the pledged 8% by 2010, but major economies like Germany are on their way (18.5% out of 21%) or already have met their goal like the UK (13.3% out of 12.5%). In the same timeframe, the US gained 13.3%.
Source here.

Oh, please

[rubeon]

We had a frost in June this year here in Germany. The first warm day was the opening day of the World Cup, on June 12th, I think it was. Do they just say stuff like this to scare people, hoping that nobody remembers that there *wasn't* a spring this year?

Re:Oh, please

[Alioth]

Well, in the middle of the north Irish Sea, we didn't have a Spring either - it went straight from winter to summer in about Feburary. You can't really state a trend from one year's conditions.

global warming shift springtime

[rs232]

s/Global warming/Climate change/ ...

That's what religion does...

[Belial6]

Lets just replace global warming with eternal torment in Hell. Guess what. Using your logic, everyone should instantly become Christian, "Just in case". This is faulty logic. There is a very large 'Global Warming' industry. There are plenty of people making a lot of money off of scaring other people. There are also a lot of people who have a social/religious agenda aginst comfort and progress. Given that, saying that we should all do without because maybe some fearmongers are right seems kind of silly.

Re:That's what religion does...

[oohshiny]

Lets just replace global warming with eternal torment in Hell. Guess what. Using your logic, everyone should instantly become Christian, "Just in case".

Your analogy doesn't work. First of all, "eternal torment in hell" isn't a plausible scientific possibility, it is exclusively an article of faith. In contrast, there is significant scientific evidence for the occurrence of global warming and its human causation. Secondly, whether you condemn yourself to hell is your own business, but carbon emissions put everybody at risk.

There are plenty of people making a lot of money off of scaring other people.

Yeah, people like you, who try to scare the world into continuing the status quo by painting apocalyptic scenarios of economic collapse if we just reduce our carbon emissions to European levels.

Given that, saying that we should all do without because maybe some fearmongers are right seems kind of silly.

You're quite right: fearmongers like you need to be recognized for who they are.

Re:That's what religion does...

[falconwolf]

There is a very large 'Global Warming' industry. There are plenty of people making a lot of money off of scaring other people.

There are also very large industries who make lots of money while denying global warming. The petroleum, coal, and power, industries may have much to loose if there are restrictions on greenhouse gases. Money isn't a one way street, er people don't only make money on one side of the street. I'd say let the freemarkets work but if someone's property gets flooded by rising sea level who's s/he going to sue? Or who can the family of an Inuit sue who died while trying to gather food for the family but broke through thin ice? And yes, the Inuit of Nunavut in northern Canada and Iceland are dependent on the ice for their lives. They are already suffering from manmade chemicals they neither make nor use such as PBCs. PCBs are a "Growing threat to children" of Inuits and are damaging their intelligence. Maybe because they are so "backwards" no attention should be paid to them?

Falcon

Hope Springs Eternal

[Doc Ruby]

The Earth has an opinion.

Start from scratch

[wytcld]

Pretend you don't know anything more than:

1. There is a complex system involving equilibrium in which for a relatively long time period the proportion of X in a gas suffused throughout the system has been Y. That gas plays an active role in interaction with many other parts of the system.

2. Over a relatively short period the proportion of X is increased towards 2 * Y.

Would you venture then, having a general background knowledge of complex systems in equilibrium, that the doubling of Y would:

A. Dissrupt the equilibrium, with diverse changes throughout the system.

or

B. Have no effect?

If B is your choice, is this because you believe that complex equilibriums are not in fact properties of interactions within systems (and in relation to their inputs and outputs) but instead are maintained magically, perhaps by nature spirits or gods?

Sometimes I wish those who have beliefs which preclude putting their bets on scientific reasoning would just come out and say so, rather than couching their own arguments as if they were within scientific discourse. Carbon dioxide playing, as it does, an important role in many natural processes, doubling it as we're doing is much more likely to dissrupt the equilibrium than do nothing. Absent specific models and proof of elaborate homeostatic mechanisms capable of specifically compensating for each of the projectable disruptions from doubling X in this system, the default assumption should be that we're in for a rough ride.

If you want to bet there's a God in Heaven capable and willing to fill the role even if such elaborate homeostatic mechanisms prove lacking, get to praying. With an attitude like that towards science, prayer may be the best the world can ask of you.

Re:Past results are no guarantee of future returns

[fritsd]

Thanks, that was VERY enlightening (to a naïve european).
Is this actually allowed on national TV in the USA?
The mind boggles.. BTW I don't understand why parent comment was downmodded to 0, I found it quite funny.

Re:It can't be global warming though

[NeutronCowboy]

If you had actually paid attention to the discussion, you'd have noticed that the only people directly tying number of hurricanes to global warming are the talking heads on news shows. All scientists interviewed were actually very cagey about that, and offered all kinds of qualifiers and caveats (not directly linked, difficult to say, etc.). Furthermore, if you look at any chaotic system graphs (ANY graphs related to climate, whether it's CO2, temperature, salinity, etc), you'll notice that there is never a strictly linear graph. To assume that number of hurricanes being related to global warming implies a straight line up, year after year, is offering up a straw man of the worst kind.

Re:MOD_PYTHON

[HeroreV]

or just "Global We're Fucked"

Obviously we can just stay inside in the air conditioning, so Global We're Fucked must just be a bunch of bullshit to get research money.

Re:It can't be global warming though

[Kohath]

...the only people directly tying number of hurricanes to global warming are the talking heads on news shows. All scientists interviewed were actually very cagey about that...

So global warming cheerleaders do tend to make wild statements without regard to reality.

That was my point. If the serious global warming scientists want to be taken seriously, they need to kick the stupid talking heads out of the club.

Re:MOD PARENT UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT

[tubapro12]

Wow, its amazing how much credit people give scientists these days; from being heretics to being infallible superbeings...

Making it a very good analogy for the global warmi

[falconwolf]

Not much scientific credibility? Thousand of scientists have said the climate is warming and that humans are at least partially responsible. Are you saying none of the scientists are credible?

Falcon

Wrong!

[falconwolf]

One of the paper's lead authors, Tim Sparks from the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), said the findings did not go as far as pointing the finger of blame at human-induced climate change. "We can't tell that from our study but experts have already shown that there is a discernable human influence on the current climate warming."

He explicitly says that his study cannot show that global warming was the cause.

Maybe you read it wrong but Tim Sparks explicitly states "the findings did not go as far as pointing the finger of blame at human-induced climate change". He doesn't say "his study cannot show that global warming was the cause", he does say humans do have an influence on climate warming.

Falcon

Re:Wrong!

[IWannaBeAnAC]

What part of "We can't tell that from our study" do you not understand?

He goes on to say that experts have already shown that there is a discernable human influence on the current climate warming, but, at the risk of repeating myself, he said "[He] can't tell that from [his] study"...

By the way, Tim Sparks does NOT say "the findings did not go as far as pointing the finger of blame at human-induced climate change", that sentence was invented by the journalist. The quote starts with the next sentence: "We can't tell that from our study".

He does state that humans have an influence on climate warming, but that has been established by countless other studies in the past. Its like saying "humans evolved", or "light travels at a constant speed", or "the earth is flat". It isn't a conclusion he reached from that study.

Re:Wrong!

[falconwolf]

By the way, Tim Sparks does NOT say "the findings did not go as far as pointing the finger of blame at human-induced climate change", that sentence was invented by the journalist. The quote starts with the next sentence: "We can't tell that from our study".

You're right I was wrong in saying that Tim Sparks said the findings did not point the finger at human induced climate change but I was still right in that he didn't say "He explicitly says that his study cannot show that global warming was the cause." Guess I made the same mistake as the one I said made a mistake.

Falcon

MOD parent up

[slightlyspacey]

EXACTLY. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm keeping that Feynmann quote :). Here's one from Asimov that I think applies as well.

Asimov's Corollary: "If a scientific heresy is ignored or denounced by the general public, there is a chance it may be right. If a scientific heresy is emotionally supported by the general public, it is almost certainly wrong ... It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong....It is those who support ideas for emotional reasons only who can't change." (from 1977 essay "Asimov's Corollary," reprinted in Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright, 1977)

Re:It can't be global warming though

[NeutronCowboy]

You do realize that the talking heads on news shows are the news anchors, right? Or did you miss the distinction I made between interviewers and interviewees?

Re:It can't be global warming though

[Kohath]

And politicians. And lots of people posting on blogs and on Slashdot. And numerous others. Even some scientists who especially want attention.

Yes...but...

[woolio]

To a degree [bad pun], you have a point.

However, it depends on what the relationship between X and Y are... Not all complex systems are linear!

Furthermore, the region of stability for the current "X" may include much greater values of Y than 2Y...

But yes... I'm not waiting for any god to fix things for us. And I also believe that humanity will destroy itself eventually... OTOH, politicians can be much more destructive in terms of affecting civil rights and people's quality of life (for the immediate future) than slow-changing natural processes. Are people in Iraq really concerned about global warming?

I believe most people reach an age where they to stop looking out for the distant future and start looking at the near future... This may go against many ideals, but I think it happens nonetheless.

hidden downsides

[falconwolf]

I noticed you used "hidden downsides" of carbon emission reductions but you didn't use "hidden upsides". Yes there can be downsides but there can also be upsides. Then you used "hidden upsides" for global warming without correspending "hidden downsides" to it. Therefore one conclusion I can reach is that is that you want global warming no matter what the results to people's lives are. I won't reach it but I will say your post has a big bias tilting towards more global warming, having left out any analysis what could economically be positive if steps are taken to curb global warming.

Falcon

Re:hidden downsides

[cagle_.25]

Re-read the post.

Re:hidden downsides

[falconwolf]

Re-read the post.

I did, and appearently I missed a couple of things in your post so I owe you an appology. Such as the hidden cost of warming being "like sending Europe into another 14th century-style cold snap" and the upside of reducing carbon emmissions, "like leading us all to go solar or hydrogen fusion, thus shutting off the flow of money and arms to the Middle East".

Falcon

Re:hidden downsides

[cagle_.25]

I felt bad for being terse and snippy. Sorry; my only excuse is that dinner was on and my daughters were eager to eat.

The possibilities mentioned there are intentionally fanciful; a much more realistic set, like forcing us to build more efficient cars, could better serve a cost-benefit analysis.

Anyway, no blood, no foul.

Re:MOD PARENT UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT

[RsG]

Where did I say scientists are infallable? I didn't, and I dislike the accusation.

My point was more that a scientist with years of schooling and anywhere from years to decades of practical experience (and the wherewithal and curiosity to keep at it) is likely to know what he or she is talking about in their field. I allow for the possibility they are wrong, hence "likely" to know, rather than "will" know. There is also the possibility they can be maliciously wrong, if there is money or some other incentive involved.

Conversely, a politician is not likely to be right about science, especially since they always have some incentive to warp the truth. Note that this applies to all politicians, not just the ones on the left or the right. So, I will not pay any attention to what Bush or Gore say on global warming, but will instead look at what the scientists are saying (and where they are getting their funding). I will take a scientist's word over a political leader's.

Likewise, while slashdotters are much more informed than politicians on average, we're hardly experts. When someone here posts a one-line rebuttal to a long and detailed scientific paper, I tend to assume it's the scientists who know what they're talking about, not the slashdot poster. When someone here posts a detailed analysis of the situation, preferably with some sound external links, then I take them seriously.

Re:MOD PARENT UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT

[erice]

That's becuase the science supports a pre-existing popular viewpoint.
Rest assured. If the scientific evidence ran contrary, it would be
ignored and so would the scientists who discovered it.

Where's that tunderous outcry in support of nuclear power?

You are beyond redemption.

[jotaeleemeese]

What is next? Earth is flat?

Holocaust did not happen?

Jeez...

Re:You are beyond redemption.

[Rob Kaper]

What is next? Earth is flat?

This was in fact the "scientific" concensus until actual science disproved it.

Spring's definition not related to local weather

[canadian_right]

Warmer weather does not change when spring starts. See Wiki Spring definition.

You might be able to plant a little earlier, but the first day of Spring doesn't change.

Oh really?

[jotaeleemeese]

Names please.

Ogalla water layer is being rapidly drained.

[falconwolf]

Aquifers throughout the world are being drained, water is pumped out much faster than rain can replenishe it. The Ogala isn't the only aquifer in the US being drained. The Black Mesa aquifer under Arizona, Southern CA, and Utah has seen a sharp drop in water levels. Part of the reason was that Peabody Coal was pumping out millions of gallons of water to operate a slury line from the coal mines on Black Mesa in AZ to the Mojave Generating Station at Laughlin, NV. In northern China they've seen aquifer water level drop has as India.

Falcon

Re:Ogalla water layer is being rapidly drained.

[shadowbearer]

  Then there's LA sucking water downhill to the tune of billions of gallons

  Out where I'm at it's just the worst drought in history combined with a lot of expansion, new homes, luscious lawns, the well drillers are pretty busy :-(

SB

Why do you need to lie to support your argument?

[jotaeleemeese]

Scientists have dug up ice cores in glaciers all around the world which have allowed to plot climatic changes globally for thusends of years.

Thousends.

Other studies have looked and tree's growth rings, which allows to study longer periods of time than the ridiculous 50 years you are mentionting.

potency of greenhouse gases

[falconwolf]

it is clear that CO2 alone is quite inadequate at accurately describing the current warming

Though CO2 gets most of the press it's not a very potent greenhouse gas. Other gases are more potent. Like methane, CH4, it about 20 tymes more potent than CO2. If the world keep warming up there will come a tyme when nothing can stop it. In places in Syberia, the permafrost is thawing and when that happens the methane trapped underneath will be released. Actually that gives me an idea, I wonder how hard it would be to start a business to capture the methane to sale on the open market, afterall methane is used in chemical processes and can be used as fuel for electrical generation.

Falcon

How many people on here are climate scientists?

[Rotten168]

If you're not, why do you think you're qualified to engage in this debate? This is directed to both sides, btw.

Re:How many people on here are climate scientists?

[loqi]

One can challenge an argument (especially one made by a non-expert) on the basis of its reasoning and factual support without being an expert in the relevant topic. "Global warming is real because of ponies" and "global warming is a conspiracy of scientists with a big spooky agenda" are both debateable points, climatological details aside.

If you think otherwise, why bother with /. at all?

Global warming changes the equinox

[Sloppy]

what part of "study of changes in recurring natural events, such as when plants flowered" did you not understand?

The part where the all the suddenly flowing plants shot a massive geyser of pollen into space like a giant rocket, thereby shifting the planet's orbit. Duh! ;-)

The good news is that if you have the same effect on the part of the planet directly opposite Europe, you can move the equinox in the other direction. And Europe's antipode is somewhere around .. um .. R'lyeh. So, when the stars are right...

Re:Past results are no guarantee of future returns

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a strong evolutionary pressure against fatal epidemics.

Screw natural diseases and their tendency to be subject to evolutionary pressures. Give Captain Trips a chance.

Bizarre

[Petersko]

"I believe that more research needs to be done to determine whether human activities are having any effect on the global climate. As history tells us, it is usually the best course of action in the face of uncertainty to do nothing. For example, during the Cold War there was a great deal of uncertainty about what he intentions of the Soviet Union in East Germany were, and due to this fact we made sure to not "rock the boat" b,y sending any troops or weapons of any kind to West Germany. It was of course our steadfast dedication to non-involvement and careful scientific study, examination and research over many decadesof the massive arms buildup behind the Iron Curtain that eventually allowed us to witness the collapse of the Soviet Union and Germany's reunification."

Say what? I can't connect the dots here. Help me understand how these are comparable.

Sentient rivals may both choose to do nothing. That's dandy. But in the confrontation between man and environment, the environment IS changing. It's putting missiles in Cuba right now. Do we let them launch, or do we rally? We don't have a passive situation - it's deteriorating. Now is not the time for the collective doing of bugger all.

Global temperatures and ocean circulation

[Randym]

There are two different trends going on here, both being driven by global warming.

One trend, which the article refers to, is the fact that global warming is making spring come earlier in Europe. However, the other trend is that the melting of the glaciers of Greenland, with a subsequent release of billions of tons of fresh water into the North Atlantic, will eventually choke off the current of warm salt water that streams, from the Gulf of Mexico, up the east coast of America, then down the west coast of Europe. It is this constant stream of warm water which has contributed to a livable environment in Europe over the past 10,000 years. Without it, Europe may very well return to an average temperature considerably colder than today. The "gains" it is now enjoying from a global-warming early spring may become irrelevant as the oceanic patterns of warm-water circulation shift. This shift may also affect the warm-water hurricane forming conditions which now consistently exist off the west coast of Africa.