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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."
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.
/. 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.
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
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.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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".
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):
I can't find any mentions of volcanism. Please point them out or provide a better source.
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.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
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.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
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.
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.
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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.
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Judging from the torrential downpours for the past three weeks, the Dutch autumn has definitely started...
Yes, there is that. Of course in mentioned that in the post you just replied to:
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.
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
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.
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.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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?
There are only 6,863,795,529 types of people in the world.
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
"Economic justice" and "Ecological sustainability"????????? It sounds like they might have an agenda.
The Village Voice, known as a bastion of conservative opinion
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.
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.
FalconShould there be a Law?
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?
FalconShould there be a Law?