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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."
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?
I didn't know that climate change could affect the date of the equinox...
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.
How is it trolling to wonder if a flaw in their research would skew their results?
is the words "pending doom".
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!
Our president assures us that this is both not a problem, and not happening.
Do the other seasons move as well?
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).
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.
Come on people, don't be so gullible. It's only 125,000 studies, how could that be in any way conclusive?
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
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
So much for my high regard for 5 digit slashdot userID posters.
"If you don't have eyes you shouldn't have wings" -- Carl Pilkington
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?
023AD01("Child", "Evil");
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
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.
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.
Mr. Groundhog have to say about all this?
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
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.
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...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).
The Almighty was heard while overseeing His children; "Oi! Don't Make Me Come Down There!"
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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"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.
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?
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.
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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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.
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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_scie
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.
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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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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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
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.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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?
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