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Study Finds World Warmth Edging to Ancient Levels
Krishna Dagli writes to mention a decades-long study by NASA scientists. According to the research, global temperatures are reaching highs not seen in thousands of years. From the article: "One of the findings from this collaboration is that the Western Equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans are now as warm as, or warmer than, at any prior time in the Holocene. The Holocene is the relatively warm period that has existed for almost 12,000 years, since the end of the last major ice age. The Western Pacific and Indian Oceans are important because, as these researchers show, temperature change there is indicative of global temperature change. Therefore, by inference, the world as a whole is now as warm as, or warmer than, at any time in the Holocene. According to Lea, 'The Western Pacific is important for another reason, too: it is a major source of heat for the world's oceans and for the global atmosphere.'"
Which agenda turns responses into trolls spreading only FUD against a whole scientific discipline?
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make install -not war
People who keep repeating that climate change is a conspiracy remind me of someone who has just been told they have a cancer and are in denial. WAKE UP! Ugh.
And another thing, how have we come to such a situation where these anti-evolutionist climate change deniers congregate to /.?
Not only do their numbers seem to be increasing, but I see people after all this time still engaging their mindless trolls!
This is the 21st century, we are a global society and as such I am personally confident that it is not a forgone conclusion that the human race is destined for a 'Bladerunner' future dystopia. However, the first step in avoiding such a fate is to acknowledge the true state of our reality. (...cue the trolls to say I'm somehow advocating the downfall of western civilization) ugh...
How do scientists determine the temperatures from millions of years ago. .
.and what range of error do these readings fall within?
From the article:
"The California researchers obtained a record of tropical ocean surface temperatures from the magnesium content in the shells of microscopic sea surface animals, as recorded in ocean sediments."
. .
When applied over thousands of years, not bad. It is clearly warmer now than during the last ice age, innit?
When applied over the past thirty years the margin is larger than the measurement. If the graph on the linked site were in whole degrees over the past thousand years it would appear to the eye as a straight, level line.
This is not to say that small changes cannot have pronounced influence. They can. But we are talking about very small changes against comparitively large margins of error. The trend has been warming for quite some time. We really do not have a very good idea about what is happening now, nevermind why it is happening.
One thing seems clear to me though (Warning! Warning! Incoming opinion. Get a grip), while man may well be able to destablize environment, he is absolutely powerless to stablize it.
KFG
Welcome to critical thinking where you have to gather info from various opposing sides and attempt to discern between the lies to gather what is often at best a blurry picture. But you're right in that you should pretty much never take what one side tells you for the truth, because then you're guarenteed to be wrong. (This goes along with the post above that says everyone lies, because everyone does by tilting it in their favor or framing it in their perspective)
- Kal`Goblez
This is true... there have been hot periods and cold periods in Earth's past. However, what many of these new findings are suggesting is that the current rate of change exceeds what happened previously. It's that things are heating up *really fast* that is being blamed on human intervention. Further, TFA notes that we are reaching the warmest Holocene temperatures... and we're *not slowing down* yet. That's a bit frightening.
And whether any of this is due to human action or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant. If you're sitting around the house with some friends and one of them points out that the drapes in the living room just caught fire, you don't sit there and argue over whether they caught fire because of faulty electrical, errant ashes from the fireplace, or the cat knocking over a candle. You do what you can to put out the #$(*#& fire! If valid science is suggesting serious problems ahead because of global warming, let's stop arguing and do something, anything, to try and stop it.
The reason it is a problem is that we aren't really prepared for it.
Well, sure, but the rate matters. A ten meter sea level rise over a thousand years means cities gradually pull back from the coasts. A ten meter sea level rise over a hundred years means cities are abandoned, causing national and international distrubances due to displaced persons etc.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And locusts are natural parts of the system too. And it is perfectly natural for their populations to skyrocket regularly. But it is also natural for those populations to crash soon afterward. Now with us, I would say you are correct in asserting that whatever we choose to do is natural and driven by our human instincts. However, we do have the high intellect that allows us to recognize that our natural actions may lead us to a natural, corrective crash. How we, as a species use this knowledge, is up to us.
Specifically, relating to global warming, maybe we are the cause. On the other hand, maybe it would be occuring without any human influence. But what really needs to be recognized is that it IS happening and that there are some potentially serious side effects. Given that, should we be thinking about what we can do to slow down global warming? Or should we just write it off as natural and accept that any resulting human population corrections are just as natural? I don't know... just a couple thoughts.
www.DIYTVAntennas.com
> It all depends on which agenda they're pushing, or who's funding them.
And even if accurate, facts are usually pretty easy to abuse into supporting a political position.
Consider. These guys want you to believe the Earth is at unprecedented highs, thus we MUST panic and DO something. Something usually being defined as harmful to Western Civilization. Note that Kyoto would only limit CO2 emmissions from advanced Western nations yet allow China and the 3rd world to spew unlimited amounts of the stuff.
Now consider the unescapable fact that the Earth HAS been hotter in the past, despite the FUD coming from the enviro political hacks. Greenland wasn't given that name as some sort of horrible joke. It used to be GREEN. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth it is thought to have been much warmer than today. Note also the evidence of melting polar caps on Mars, something unlikely to be caused by humans.
Fact #1: The biggest influence on global climate is a big semi stable fusion reactor that has only been studied in detail for a fairly short period of time but is already known to vary its output on multiple cycles measured in years. Several studies indicate solar output is currently increasing.
Fact #2: More and more evidence points to Earth getting warmer.
If you are a green who secretly yearns to eliminate humanity (or at least Western Civilization's share of humanity) because of our 'raping of the earth' you leap on global warming as a way to scare people into surrendering their technological civilization, thus making it easier to achieve your goal of if not 'killing all humans', at least allowing war, pestilence and famine to thin the herd 90%. Sane people notice the earth getting warmer, Mars getting warmer and the sun shining a little brighter and connecting the dots, figure it is natural. But if it gets bad enough to interfere with our lifestyle we will do something about it. Shouldn't be all that hard.
Democrat delenda est
Just because you can't see any clear motivation, doesn't mean their isn't one.
Their motivation may stem from any of the following:
Now I don't know how many of these motivations apply to how many climatologists... but I also know that I am not a climatologist (or even an academician) and so I cannot possibly imagine all of their pressures and motivations. And neither can you.
Therefore, the idea that "I don't see an obvious motivation to lie, so why are y'all so skeptical?" is perilously useless.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
There are probably some people who view environmentalism as a moral/ethical issue, that we are interfering with God's creation. However, I think most people do believe that what humans do to make a living is morally okay, if not 'natural'.
I think what people construe as 'BAD' is coastal cities flooding all over the globe ( think Katrina in New York, LA, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, etc. ), increasted desertification, famine, ecozone change, loss of farmland, etc. etc. The suffering, loss of life, destruction, displacement, famine and starvation are what people are concerned about and consider 'BAD'. Sure, in the course of human history there has been plenty of tours of the Four Horseman, but civilization is an attempt to mitigate these risks. I suspect a lot of people who think this kind of thing is no big deal because it has happened regularly, would change their tune is they had to flee famine or invaders.
Yes, it has happened in the past, and it certainly will happen again, but the whole point of civilization is to make life easier by removing or mitigating these risks. Some people are indifferent, and some people what to try to avoid this kind of catastrophe, for themselves and future people. Everyday that I get my fat, lazy ass up and get in the car to work on the internet, I thank god for all the technological advances that allow me to spend my life looking at pictures of naked women on the internet.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I suppose the same could be said of human civilization. We haven't evolved to it. The thing that puzzles me here though is what condition haven't we evolved to before? Slightly higher CO2 concentration? Slightly warmer temperatures? More or less rain? These are all well within the range of what the human race has evolved with.
Therefore, the idea that "I don't see an obvious motivation to lie, so why are y'all so skeptical?" is perilously useless.
Well, compare that to the opposite view (that climate change is not happening). Here there is a quite understandable incentive to lie, since many of the corporations whose use of fossil fuels is the alleged cause of climate change are extremely valuable funding sources.
Both groups make claims, more or less, to scientific credibility and objective truth: one is claiming X and the other not X. (I should say that many of the claims are only qualified support: "studies support X" rather than "X is true", etc.)
One then has to make a choice. One view, the absolutist one, is that no conclusions are trustworthy for the reasons you stated and I expanded on.
Another (potentially error-prone) approach requires making a choice and determining who is more likely to be correct. With this in mind, choosing the group that has the least motivation to lie (rather than no motivation) seems like a plausible strategy.
Scientists can lie just like anybody else. The key lies in the level of punishment that results from lying:
When a politician lies, they get elected. And *maybe* impeached later on. (Bill Clinton)
When a corporation lies, they lose a tiny fraction of the income generated by the lie. (Enron, Big Tobacco, Microsoft)
When a scientist lies, they get about a year or two before they're caught. At which point they lose all standing among fellow scientists, get barred from all reputable journals, and often lose their university/institute jobs.
Summarized: when a scientist gets caught in a lie, their life is over. When a corporation is caught in a lie, they lose a small part of their illegitimate gains. Who has more incentive to lie?
The implied question is, "If that sort of climate change was possible ten thousand years ago, what makes you so sure that humans are the cause of current climate change?"
Which is the same question I keep seeing get asked over and over again. Here's the answer: it doesn't freaking matter. Here are two questions that I think people should spend more time mulling over:
1) Do we, as a species, WANT global temperatures to reach levels not seen since the Holocene period ?
2) If the answer to the above is "No", is there anything that we, as a species, can do to help PREVENT that from occurring?
How we got here doesn't matter. What we do now does. Some think we're helpless and that the climate's gonna do what the climate's gonna do whether or not they buy an SUV, so they buy an SUV.
Personally, I disagree.
"UNIX" is never having to say you're sorry.
How can we evaluate data which is probably at least partially false. Several times studies like this have been caught ignoring data that didn't fit the viewpoint they were trying to advance. Several times studies have been discounted because big oil/tobacco backed them (even tho facts are facts, right?).
Ahh, but this data and the methodologies are presented and they are supported by hundreds of other studies that found the same.
Long term- science works- facts are facts. Short term- it is subject to group thinking, politics and even basically religious belief that certain concepts are right.
It has been several decades now that we've been looking at this issue and the community and studies do a good job of showing certain reliable facts, especially once studies that have been discredited when their results were refuted by dozens of people who tried to reproduce them are taken out. I think if you simply look at the studies and ignore all the press articles, it is pretty easy to see what is going on.
I don't actually believe there is any evidence of England's wine production threatening France. English wine has a long history, with the historical peak of English wine production occuring with the arrival of the wine loving Normans during the medieval warm period. The Domesday book, a census taken at that time, recorded 42 vineyards in England, all restricted to southern England, and mostly coastal southern England. It can hardly have been a threat to French wine production given that vast amounts of imported wine were available in England during that time. Wine production in England declined after that, possibly due to some climatic cooling, and possibly also due to changing cultural factors (such as an increasing taste for beer and ale), and was practically non-existent through to about the 19th century. Since then there have been various flirtations with wine growing in England, and a flowering since about 1950. There are currently far more vineyards in England than at any time in history, currently over 400 - about 10 times the number of medieval England - and extending further north than at any previous time. From this we can, at best, conclude that the medieval warm period was probably warmer than the 13th to 20th century, but then we knew that, and historical temperature reconstructions clearly show that anyway. If you're going to consider volume of production and location of vineyards as a good proxy data source for climate, however, then you would have to conclude, given the vastly increased volume and more northerly extent of modern wine production in England, that it is warmer today than it was in the medieval warm period - again, as historical temperature reconstructions show. And let's be honest, wine growing is hardly a clear sign of a warm climate in the area the wine is grown. Canada has a large wine industry, and there are even vineyards in Alaska!
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