Slashdot Mirror
2006 Was the Warmest Year Ever
kpw10 writes "Dr. Jeff Masters from Wunderground has a great summary of this year's rather abnormal weather (his blog is the best source on the net for in-depth weather analysis). The post discusses some of the cyclical climate forces at work this year and compares this year's record temperatures to records from the past. There are some interesting differences, particularly in the extent of the northern hemisphere seeing record highs this year." From the article: "December's weather in the Northeast U.S. may have been a case of the weather dice coming up thirteen — weather not seen on the planet since before the Ice Age began, 118,000 years ago. The weather dice will start rolling an increasing number of thirteens in coming years, and an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summertime by 2040 is a very real possibility..." Here is the The National Climatic Data Center's report announcing the entry of 2006 into the record books.
Its just that climate is changing, and there are loads.... okay one... decent scientist who says it isn't Man made or true or nothing. So I can still drive my SUV, I can still have gas at $2 and I can do what the hell I want. Hey those reduction things don't apply to China or India so they are just costing us jobs, sure people say we are worse, but we won't be forever and being only in the top 3 worse isn't so bad they just want to cripple our jobs, its a conspiracy from pinko liberals trying to bring down America.
The above was a transcribe of the standard "educated" response to climate change on Slashdot. One data point does not make a series... but we already have a series which has yet one more data point.
Climate Change is real, it is man made and only people who think New Earth Creationism is a good idea could be so dumb as to ignore it.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
....it might have been the hottest year somewhere, but where I live, we had the coldest year with the coldest summer. must be getting to extremes
are either closed or operating at significantly reduced loads. Hell, some of the places in Austria are suggesting hiking trips instead of skiing this year. Here in Bavaria, we had(so I'm told) one of the coldest winters in the past 20 years last year, and this year I have only had to deal with frost twice(which is nice because I am on a bike)
Meanwhile Colorado seems to be getting more snow than the rest of the world combined(I'm only being a tad dramatic there). They probably have the best skiing in the world this year, but the airports are always closed so nobody can get there!
Monstar L
You know, Michigan's upper peninsula. "Normally" we get about 200" of snow in a winter season. So far this season we've had one major snow storm, leaving us with approximiately 18". That's all. In December 2005, 77.5" fell. I would be surprised if we got a 1/10 of that in 2006.
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If it wasnt for Global Dimming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming this would be worse. However, since particulate pollution is being cut more than C02 global dimming is falling behind global warming.
Could this really be avoided? Is it still time to revert those climate changes?
Shouldn't we be preparing for the worse yet?
Instead of deciding whether or not it's really happening ?
I just watched "An inconvenient truth" yesterday. It was the creepiest film I ever watched, way scarier then "The Shining" or "The Ring". I hope most of you out there, have seen it already... I the film Al Gore shows multiple graphs illustrating the drastic changes in the climate - due to our smoking and scorching of Earth - in the last few decades. 2005 was the warmest year, now 2006 bits that questionable record. Are we all running towards the flames of self-destruction? I would say we are all to blame here - It's true, we can all contribute something to the cause. Drive less, own less - endorse global warming awareness in our community. But that will solve a fraction of the problem - America has to wake the hell up and say no to all those fat corporations and say (in the words of the great wizard) "You Shall Not Pass". I mean - we have the technology to turn into cars and motors running on alternative types of energies - we had that technology more than 20 years. Why is the fat fuck the suit - always louder than the suffering masses? Voice out people - let's start our own revolution here - make our children proud of this spineless generation.
Locksmith
Interestingly, summer 2006 in Japan was not as hot as usual. A surprise to a lot of people here. Coincidence?
the fact is, C02 isn't capable of producing enough warming to see these changes, and the maths on it shows this. by far the 2 greatest forces that effect our climate are water vapour and solar activity. i always love that they spout about 1998 - 2000 being the hottest on record, yet fail to mention most of that warming came from extra solar flare activity. it makes me wonder about these claims. frankly i think it's pretty concited to think we would be able put much of a dent in the planets atmosphere on a GLOBAL scale.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
It would be somewhat unfair to say that many people [slashdotters included] are biased; rather I'd say that they doesn't fully examine all the major candidates for the cause of the [now evident] warming. Remember, there was a planet and a climate and [most important] wide-scale climate changes before the U.S., industry or humanity ever existed; what's the reason for them to go away and never occur again? Just because they're scaring us? C'mon...
All of this is not to say that we do not harming the environment - we certainly do, and sometimes in irreversible [in the terms of our lifetimes] proportions. However we should fully understand the difference between chemical spills that damage our own food chain and other stuff, and green eco-activists' fantasies like the one about the Antarctic ozone hole. Some details on the last statement: a lot of eco-activists say that
- Ozon is good for environment and should be praised [partially true - stratospheric ozone absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation, but high concentrations of ozone irritate human respiratory system]
- There are huge ozon holes near the Earth's poles [true]
- Ozon is known to decay in reactions with CFCs [true]
- Thus, CFCs are responsible for the antartic ozone hole [not true]
The main reason that there always was and will be an ozone hole over the Antarctics is that ozone decays in the lack of sunlight, and it's pretty dark half of the year out there.P.S. This post has been made with my current understanding of the problem; if a more informed person can correct me wherever I am wrong, I'd be grateful.
In the Victorian Alps (south eastern Australia) the ski season was a dismal flop due to lack of snow. Due to the drought there wasn't enough water for snow making either. But on Christmas day (which is summer here of course), there was a large snow storm up in the mountains: more snow than there was during winter. My entirely unscientific impression of the recent weather is not just that it's getting hotter - it's getting weirder.
Think about it...Hot Eskimo chicks in BIKINIS!!! Just give it ten years.
First, the standard reply to your standard questions. global warming is about an average. But the locals will vary wildly from the norm. There will be many warmings, but there will be some cooling.
As to the hurricanes, Dr. Grey and his center noted after the downgrading that they did not know about the on-going el nino. Both El Nino and La Nino always has an impact on the current year.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
worst case scenario: end of the world
prepare for the worst: try and get some end-of-the world-petty-sex
So long, suckers!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Temperature in the UK has apparently been tracked for 350 years and last year had the highest average temperature of those 350 years.
yeah, in the early days of this planet there were years which were damn hot.
I think you take the word 'ever' a bit too serious. It is overstating, but we can be quite shure about the last couple of hundred years.
Idha khatabahum lijahiluna qalu salaman
Quoting from http://www.junkscience.com/ on this article:
"s it happens we're just reformatting the thermometer graphic to give people a better idea of global mean temperatures and trends. Using a thousand less-urbanized sites from the METAR database suggests the last year (calendar date to calendar date, in this case) was about as near average as can be expected, within a tenth of a degree of the calculated mean without any enhanced greenhouse forcing.
Is the world really hot and getting hotter? That's a very good question but one to which no one has a good answer. The urbanized record is a little warm but that doesn't mean very much. The planet? Well, that's an open question as yet."
Dammy
This just shows that people don'r really understand what global warming means. Sure, temperatures are going to be one or two degrees higher ON AVERAGE, but that does not mean warmer winters and hotter summers in general. It means that the system as a whole will have more energy, so weather phenomena will be more intensive and fluctuations will have higer amplitude. Think of more powerful storms, more destructive hurricanes, etc. Cold winter 2005 and warmest year 2006 is a nice example of such fluctuation.
I wonder why people start to worry about our environment now, when even 20 years ago it was obvious that something like that will happen.
But now, when it begins to get really expensive (think about damages caused by hurricanes, floodings etc.), people start to care. Before that, the attitude was "Uhh, greenhouse effect? Doesn't concern me, as long as I can live like I used to."
It's almost too late..
Inconvenient truth is pretty much boring for the educated people - there's nothing in it that I wouldn't know already. I can't help but feel sorry for people who find it creepy or shocking - that just shows they live in some dark basement or something :)
As always, were talking about _global_ warming. It means you can neither confirm nor infirm it by saying:
"Oh baby, It's cold outside!" in a given location at a given time. Though scientists can forecast global trends, they cannot tell you for sure "It's gonna snow in August in Alabama".
And global warming doesn't mean warming in every place on earth either.
Poles and winters will get more affected than summers and tropical regions.
You know what? Even the sea level can rise in some point while dropping in another.
Global Warming is a difficult subject because it can be difficult to understand, primarily because of the lies in the media about it not being our (humands) fault. I like to think myself an intelligent person, im not a genius however I am not an idiot. Since I was 18 (in 2002) I have been reading about GW as much as possible. I have tried my best to educate myself from scientific information that is unbiased however that can be very difficult because of all the rubbish printed in the American press. I am not really surprised that a lot of people do not believe in GW because all that they have read about it has been lies. Not many people will go out and educate themselves independantly like I have done. Now to the point of my post :) When I meet someone who does not believe in GW I always tell them the following -
60 years ago you had some doctors saying cigerettes caused cancer and others that didn't. Now it was difficult to get the truth back then because of all the lies spread by the tobaco companies. However what was the intelligent thing to do? Was it to blindly believe some doctors who said it was fine or was it best to quit smoking anyway "just in case"? The same is true now for global warming, you can believe the newspapers who saying global warming isn't man made and continue as you are however what if you are wrong, is it not best to try and reduce our emmissons "just in case"? Sure it will have an economic impact however that is nothing compared to the global impact global warming will have if we continue to pollute the earth like we currently are.
What shocks me is the number of people who just brush off what I havd just said and reply with "well i won't be alive in 100 years anyway so what do i care". I am totally disgusted by this attitude and I am sorry to say that I know a lot of American's who think just like this.
Now I applaud Al Gore for his documentary/movie (even if the bits about him are very boring) for his efforts but I wonder to myself how we are ever going to make any progress when so many people in the worlds most powerful country do not care about the continuation of the human race anyway. Global warming to them means changing their lifestyles just a tiny bit but they won't have any of it.
Now to be fair I have singled American's out here however they are not the only guilty party, I know a large number of people in the UK (where I live) as well who do not believe in global warming, thankfully the majority do and our government seems somewhat competent in this area (although they need to do a lot more).
Yeah - it's called waves and tides. If you meant anything else, you're an idiot.
The way that the warming effect manifests itself is in the spread of the regions, that is. towards the equator we have an hot arrid region, at the poles we have cold frosty regions and inbetween we have somewhat of a gradient in temperature but also the crucible of interaction between the two. This is how weather is "made": in the interaction between the hot and cold air and water of the equator (solar heated) and poles
Heat up the planet and the hot,dry band around the equator expands, initially the temperate zone is squashed, concentrating the effects of the cold/hot interaction and producing the "extreme" weather we are seeing.
Which is how a globally hotter climate can cause colder weather events in temperate areas.
basically the hotter the global temperature the steeper the gradient of temperature increase is from the poles. the poles themselves recieve little to no solar heating so will continue to sit there stubbornly trying to remain icy cold. steeper temperature gradient = wilder weather with greater extremes
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Well, come on... 2005 was the warmest year on record. Sure, it was the hottest our planet has been for thousands of years, but what year held the previous record... 2004! Which in turn beat out 2003!
Oddly enough, with the combined effect of the El Nino and the extra warming this year this 2007 is pretty much a lock to wipe out the 2006 record now established. However, it might actually be so warm as to make 2008 fail to take the record.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Firstly the hurricanes were dwarfed by the El Nino effect. This wasn't known at the time the predictions were made. As for the question about the deep freezes that's a misunderstanding. Global Warming is a misnomer, a more accurate name would be Global Climate Change. On average the earth is warmer, however in the short term you are going to end up with more extreme weather. You will end up with places that deep freeze, other places that face rather sudden flash floods, as well as extreme winds and drought. On average there will be less rain fall, but when the rain falls it should be extreme and sudden.
You can expect deep freezes and heat waves, no snow and blizzards. On average it will be warmer and dryer, but you can pretty much get anything day to day.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Nah.
with records that go back barely more than a hundred years...
Those are interesting charts. But what part has say El Nino played in them, given that it has an effect on global weather patterns not just those localised to the Eastern Pacific, especially since it's not caused by global warming. What's their correlation?
I'm asking because there have been a lot of environmental scares (Genetic modification, Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, damaged fragile food chains causing crops to fail, the build up of toxic chemicals leading to mass sterility) that were not true and have wasted a lot of time and money. There are several claims that much of the data suggesting global warming has been massaged (e.g. a climate scientist trying to remove evidence of a Medieval Warm Period when temperatures were as high as today - paragraph ten).
I don't personally doubt that there is a small global warming effect caused by CO2- about 1 degree per century judging by the last 30 years. What I am uncomfortable with is that scientists who oppose the consensus seem to get a lot of flak (ever heard of Bjorn Lomborg - all he did was write a book - that's supposed to be a good thing).
I'm not saying I believe my own theories, but these are just gray matter excersizes. I'm torn between "we didn't know!" and "climate changes are natural" and at this point will just assume (a) since we can all affoard to use less energy in our everyday lives. What if the human civilization looped? I mean what if humans pre-pre-big-Ice Age actually had working systems that were destroyed by the ice age and that caused said global catastrophie? Those mysterious "springs" found in uninhabited Russia. The steps found deep in the Jamacian seas where no land was thought to ever exist. The fact countless tons of crushing ice and rushing waves from the big meltdown would have destroyed a civilization if it was placed in just the ~wrong~ area. A lot of coincidenses. I know in the end scientific evidence proves this theory entirely false, but its just a brain excersize to get us thinking and nothing more. A fable or parable. On another note: bad architecture and buildings (i.e. poor energy unefficient designs and material types) account for MOST of the problems, or so I've heard recently. Too many studies with too many results. *sigh*
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Despite the fact that this is the warmest year since we've started keeping track, I do believe we are still geologically below the average temperature of the earth overall. I would never argue that we don't contribute to the warming of our current era, but to what extent is and probably always will be pretty inconclusive. We should be careful when we make these comparisons, and realize that even without our help the earth will be both warmer and cooler than it is now at different points in the future. So the penguins and the polar bears were going to be soggy toast eventually anyways, just perhaps not so soon. Besides there are plenty of other reasons to want to do something about our pollution problem. For example I just read on bbc news that there were 3600 deaths attributed to smog in Iran just last October. The problem with the Global Warming band wagon is that its hard to quantify, but who can deny air quality problems in urban settings. It seems to me that perhaps Global Warming is over emphasized in comparison to things it might be relatively easier to get people to care about. People are generally short sighted, and pretty much only care about what is right in front of them right now, not whats going to happen in 2040. Trying to get a signifigant portion of the earth's population to change their ways is probably a lost cause no matter how you present it, and the looming spectre of global warming definitely won't be signifigant enough in the herds mind until its way way to late. The problem should be attacked from a different angle. Thats my $0.02 anyways.
Global warming is making everything hotter, ice is melting, seas are rising. We're all in deep doodo. Now, back in the 80's we were all panicking about Nuclear Winters which would freeze us all in the case of a nuclear war (as if the radiation and big holes in the ground weren't enough hassle).
I notice in the news that Israel is thought to be preparing a nuclear strike on Irans nuclear facilities with Neutron bombs. That ought to kick of a nuclear war quite nicely so we're all saved!
Well, it sort of makes sense...
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
That movie was soooooooooo good, I cried when Gores kid got hit by a car. That was soooooo sad. Gore must be a really good father, the way he stayed at the hospital. That really changed my mind on the issue of global warming, I'm behind Gore 100% on this issue. Barf!
It has been ridiculously warm here in New York this winter. It is NEVER warm in new york in the winter. The last few days it has gotten mildly cold, but up until then, it has been almost spring like. It is simply amazing how different the weather has been this winter here in the north east.
This is the warmest winter i've ever experienced here in NY in 30 years.
Correlation does not prove causation. Yes, this is skeptical, and I am for environmental protection, but I must add that even 118,000 years of data does not even begin to understand the climate of an Earth that is millions of years old. There is no way to truly test global warming as variables cannot be isolated. ------------- What would a longitudinal study to test global warming entail?
Two things to consider, 2006 was only the 'warmest year in the United States' the 'Warmest year in the World' was 1998, and in 2006 North America was under the influence of El Nino. Now, there are a few things that need to be considered, one is Long term global climate change is happening (possibly man made or not) or we're seeing the effects of questionable data being used; consider that weather stations are not evenly distributed, there are several times as many weather stations located in Cities in North America which tend to be warmer because of the concrete (over the past 15 years, most 'small' and 'medium' sized cities have increased the number of weather stations for weather forcasts on TV while there have not been major increases in Rural areas).
The boss of Chrysler is questioning the climate change
From the article he attacks the ""quasi-hysterical" policies that smacked of "Chicken Little" politics - referring to the US children's story where Chicken Little runs around in circles saying "the sky is falling"."/i>
The point I would like to note on this subject is that in the uk (london) the workers struggled to put the christmas lights up arround the tree that would normally be leafless were still in full leaf. In my garden plants that haven't shed their leafs (but should have) are starting to bud.
The Forest Research people have a survey that notes that plants are starting to be affected and there is a consern that trees which are deciduous(sp?) will start dying off as they cannot shed leafs - and therefore will end up poisoning themselves!
Jaj
There is only one thing to see here and it's this fantastic graph.
. gif
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/2007/alldec
Climate change is real and we should be worried. However, drawing arbitrary straight lines through random data is not going to convince anyone.
Where the fuck did they grab that, I had some of the coldest days and night I've ever experienced in So.Cal this winter - sure do wish global warming would hurry up already.
This is what happens when you come out of an ice age. I've been expecting this since I was in 6th grade back in the 60s.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
Canada -- you know, the land of ice, snow and the Eskimo has been unusually warm this year. We are having the hottest winter on record (we hit 12*C in January when we are normally around -30*C). Not only that, but the East Coast is getting nice balmy climates as well. All of our ski hills in this area have been closed down and people are actively biking. I gotta say -- while I fear we might be running into the flames of our own self-destruction, we will be nicely tanned!
(Oh, and CAPTCHA: flushes)
Not to mention all sorts of fun deceases you are not used to. Warmer weather means some of the insects will migrate carrying fun stuff like malaria or sleeping sickness.
It's going to be real fun trying to survive in a few decades if we don't deal with the problems right now.
Where I'm from (Finland) the average temperatures for January range from -6 to -14 (depending on where you live) and it can often get as cold as -25 to -30 (all degrees in Celsius).
Currently it's a nice and balmy +5. If it wouldn't rain so much, I'd like it very much. Today is sunny and I can almost imagine the spring is here (for the record, January and February are the coldest months here).
Yes, I know. It's about as stupid as it gets to say: "I like the weather, let's ignore the warnings". If the gulf stream, which warms us up would stop as a result of the changes in the Great Conveyor Belt, we'd be pretty much screwed. If you look at the arctic circle, you can see it's not exactly the warmest region to be around.
Dude... that's going to more awesome than watching somebody get kicked in the balls!
I'm going to have to start summering in Antarctica.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Warmest. Year. Ever.
Nope, just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Summation 2
Everyone seems to go on about whether or not Global Climate Change is happening. Some (like myself) think it irrefutable. Others, prefer to take a more cautious stance. Regardless, I think it is reasonable to say that most people would agree that global energy consumption is sky-rocketing and it's causing problems everywhere. One of these "problems" is the advent of a new ice age in the imminent future (under 50 years if An Inconvenient Truth is to be believed). So what is to be done? What can we little people who don't affect governments or corporations in any meaningful way actually do? Write to your local member of government? Nah, no point - nothing ever gets done that way. The real answer lies in your choices of things to do in your day and what things you purchase. I'm going to get hammered for daring to suggest practical changes to others lifestyles, but some people may want some pointers so I'm going to step up to the plate and say my piece. * Reduce your air flights - take the ferry or train instead if you can * If you live in a city use public transport instead of your own (ideally walk) * Avoid buying gadgets just because they are the latest thing * Avoid buying excessively packaged goods * Think before buying something: do you really need it? OK, just my 2 penne'th.
Like the man says
I know I shouldn't allow this stuff to get to me, but the attitude of these multi-millionaire fat-cats who think that their poxy little business and the freedom for people to be as selfish as they want is somehow more important than the entire planet make me really pretty angry.
Deep breath.
Depending on the legitimacy of this chart
--
Ron, we smell poniez: http://www.techp.org/
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
"You can expect deep freezes and heat waves, no snow and blizzards. On average it will be warmer and dryer, but you can pretty much get anything day to day."
Why dryer? Warmer air holds more moisture. Some of the hottest places on the planet are rain forests. Yeah, some are deserts too, but I think that saying "dryer" is an assumption which may not be true. Maybe the entire planet will experience a monsoon season. I really don't think the models are accurate enough to work that out.
There is a nice recent RealClimate post on the anomalously warm U.S. winter this year, discussing whether it can be attributed to El Nino or to global warming. (The short answer: El Nino plays a large role this year, but global warming is still making winters warmer on average, although you can't really attribute anomalous warmth in any given year to climate change — due to statistical fluctuation, you can only see its definite effect over longer time periods.)
For those who point to the Colorado blizzard as evidence against global warming, they also note that Colorado temperatures have also been warmer than usual. You don't need very cold weather for a blizzard; you just need freezing weather — which will continue to happen even with global warming — and a lot of moisture in the air. Interestingly, warmer air carries more moisture, so some regions may experience more precipitation on average as the Earth continues to warm. However, a particular storm certainly cannot be attributed to global warming.
I'm looking at you Microsoft.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
January is the coldest month in Finland. Usually we have had snow cover by November/December. This year, there has been one freak snowstorm in the beginning of November, and right now it's raining outside. No snow cover for two winter months. Not your typical winter in Finland where temperatures in January can be -20 to -30 degrees Centigrade.
Disclaimer: I know weather does not equal climate.
My other SIG is a Sauer.
"Correlation doesn't equal causation"
No it doesn't. Thats not how science works. How it works is that *NON*-correlation equals *NON*-causation.
Scientists try to falsify various theories by finding a NON-correlation with the observed facts. The thing is, climate scientists are failing to falsify the theory that we're causing the warming, and succeeding in falsifying all the competing theories.
Except for "pirates" (or lack thereof).
(BTW I'm pretty sure that the pirates theory could be shot out of the water too if somebody could be bothered to pay it -- ooohhh -- a few thousand times more attention than it deserves. The reason it doesn't deserve it is because nobody has proposed a plausible *mechanism* for the pirate die-off causing the warming. Other theories -- eg the sun warming up explaining it all -- *have* plausible mechanisms, *have* recieved attention, and AFAIK *have* been falsified to the satisfaction of the vast majority of scientists in the field).
The pattern I see from those in the denial business is not one of serious honest skepticism, but of cheap shots, hazy generalizations, unsupported assertions, cherry picking research data out of context etc. There is no new facts that they wish to present. They only wish to undermine the facts of human influence on climate change.
To counter information about melting glaciers they will point out that certain parts of Greenland has accumulating glaciers, but they leave out the information that this was predicted as the edges of the glacier melt more rapidly and result in more snowfall inland. The also leave out that there is still a net loss.
Another ridiculous claim was that 1998 was the hottest year and we have not been getting hotter since and therefore climate models are broken (I saw this in a newspaper article in the last few months) It neglects that 1998 had a strong El Nino and thus was somewhat anomalous, and that 2005 was as hot or even hotter than 1998 (depending on data, google hottest year on record) or that 2006 was quite warm and turns out it will now have the record.
Bottom Line: We dump billions of tons of C02 (heat trapping gas) into the atmosphere annually and it is accumulating. How could this not be having an effect? Wishful thinking?
I think we owe to future generations to at least make an effort to slow the damage we are doing.
Higher energy taxes, more renewables, more nuclear plants, higher CAFE standards would be a start. The climate deniers will whine that this might cost the economy $$$, but seriously do you really think it will be that much of a net cost, how about the Trillion dollars spent on misadventures in Iraq? Would it cost more than that?
Consider the trade deficit benefits of importing less oil, the price for oil would probably drop along with this further improving the deficit. Conservation efforts will have offsetting economic benefits. Putting money into locally constructed nuclear or renewables is money kept in country and not sent out to purchase oil from volatile regions.
Until we find Earth 2, we need to treat Earth 1 with a tad more respect.
Think of it as Evolution in action.
Bye the end of this century we will have successfully evolved our way to extinction.
That or we'll have gills & flippers.
--- This meme is memory intensive
One of the many theories for GW I've heard, has been that the polar caps are actually shifting, not shrinking. I'm curious to see Russia's records. While all the US bureaucrats are shaking in their Armani suits claiming GW is happening, maybe Russia's been getting colder? I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case, since the US is notorious for blowing things out of proportion. "Domestic" and "international" seem to be interchangeable these days.
Blerg.
Same goes for the Netherlands. Monitoring started in 1706 and last year had the highest average temperature since that time.
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
I wonder why no one ever mentions how much heat we produce and how much this produced heat contributes into climate change. Even if we stop producing green house gases right now, more than 6.5 billion people on this planet won't stop producing lots of heat to make everything.
Beaten to death green cars? They still make heat. Anything requires warming or heating and results in producing heat. We can't survive without heat. That's a law. With the current and still rising earth population we can't do anything about global warming.
Good, _but_ what was effectively done to fix it.
We all, i mean you too, _need_ to do our part. I know it is hard
but we _need_ walk when we can, avoiding cars so often, avoid to buy wood furniture when
possible, save water as often as possible either and stop blamming each other.
I know Bush suchs, and India government suck too, and China government either but please
stop blamming each other and let's begin to effectively do something.
i do my part, i sold my car, i save energy and i save water and
i _do_ not buy w00d furniture any more. As more we talk as more we dig our hollow.
Look, I'm all for blaming global warming for the spring-like January month we're having, but we *don't* "usually have -30". We get -30 on special days when it is very very cold.
perception is reality
Normally we have around -15C to -25C and 50 cm deep snow here in Sweden in the winter. This winter we have no snow at all, and the temperature is around 5-10C. I have never experienced something like this in my whole life. I have never experienced a christmas without snow, except for this one.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Without even reading the article, I feel that I have to question the title. I mean, can 2006 actually be the warmest year ever? What about all those years when there were no ice caps? Does this author really mean the warmest year since the last unusual freezing of the planet? or since records started being kept? or since accurate records were maintained?
Anything you say will be held against you.
The Earth is 4 Billion years old. This talks about the weather over the last 120 thousand years.
That is 0.003 percent of the age of the Earth.
Maybe they should look a little farther back. Maybe 4 Million years. Of course, if we want to look at the last 1% of the age of the Earth, we would have to look back 40 Million years.
The fact is, the climate over the last 120 thousand years could be the exception and not the rule.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I think we should start with your company.
The climate is changing. There is no doubt about that. What a lot of people don't know is that the climate of the earth has changed many times in the past in ways far more radical than what we are currently experiencing. Climate changes were happening on earth long before there were any people to blame them on. That's just a fact of life on earth. Climate change happens. It will continue to happen no matter what we do. Are we accelerating certain aspects of it? Maybe. So what? If the price of modern civilization really is global warming and the extinction of sperm whales then I would still say it's worth it. Very much worth it.
The earth is a very dynamic system. It's *not* some delicate balance like many environmentalists try to paint it. There have been climate changes, mass extinctions, continents formed, continents destroyed, etc. throughout earths history. Life on earth is all about change. Those organisms that are able to adapt to earths changing conditions survive and prosper. That's called natural selection. Change drives the development of all life on earth. There is no getting around that.
Let's stop pretending that the earth will stand still if only we use less fossil fuels or some other such nonsense and accept the reality that life on earth will and must always remain in a state of flux. Let's take a lesson from natural selection and focus our energies into adapting to the changing conditions of life on this planet, instead of arrogantly and naively believing that we can freeze the earths state in time if only our civilization could get 'green' enough.
What a crap. How come it could be the warmest year ever if in Poland there was a winter of the century with the temperatures reaching the lowest measures ever! It should be clearly written that the author means "2006 Was the Warmest Year Ever in THE US".
As we all have been taught in grade school - glaciation occurrs when show build-up exceeds snow melt over a significant period of time.
What's this have to do with global warming? Well, to get enough increase in snow build-up to trigger glaciation on an ice age scale you need to have an abundant supply of liquid water in the polar latitudes. Liquid Arctic sea surface in January and February constitutes an abundant supply of liquid water in polar latitudes.
Think of it as an airplane increasing its angle of ascent until it stalls. If global temperature is compared to angle of ascent you get a very scary feeling that we're gonna get warmer for a while, then very cold.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
It's a mistake to be calling for more global dimming.
The biggest danger to humanity isn't the current small regular rise in temperature (+0.6 C in the past few decades, and worst case +2.0 C in the next few decades), but the massive drop in temperature (-10 C or so) when the current interglacial period ends and we return to the world's normal state of glaciation. That's due to happen any time now --- many people say that it's overdue already, as the current interglacial has already lasted 18-20ky or so.
This has been happening every 100,000 years regular as clockwork throughout the last million years. Although none of the GCMs are able to model this 100ky cycle of glaciations and interglacials correctly (mainly because climatologists don't really know why it happens at all, despite many tentative explanations like being triggered by fresh water from the melting of the Greenland ice), nobody is suggesting that we can in any way break this cycle.
If we can't break it, then we need to at least ameliorate its effects, or else current civilization is in for a frozen disaster of biblical proportions. And that means doing all we can to keep global warming high.
Why bother with all the excuses?
It's like trying to justify piracy, absolutely pointless unless it's infront of the jury.
I just don't care enough about the enviorment, The pleasure I gain from living easily far outweighs making my children's lives easier,
Sides', It sure would be funny to see half of Canada's Landmass just melt away.
The climate is changing. There is no doubt about that. What a lot of people don't know is that the climate of the earth has changed many times in the past in ways far more radical than what we are currently experiencing. Climate changes were happening on earth long before there were any people to blame them on. That's just a fact of life on earth. Climate change happens. It will continue to happen no matter what we do. Are we accelerating certain aspects of it? Maybe. So what? If the price of modern civilization really is global warming and the extinction of sperm whales then I would still say it's worth it. Very much worth it.
The earth is a very dynamic system. It's *not* some delicate balance like many radical environmentalists try to paint it. There have been climate changes, mass extinctions, continents formed, continents destroyed, etc. throughout earths history. Life on earth is all about change. Those organisms that are able to adapt to earths changing conditions survive and prosper. That's called natural selection. Change drives the development of all life on earth. There is no getting around that.
We need to stop pretending that the earth will stand still if only we use less fossil fuels or some other such nonsense and accept the reality that life on earth will and must always remain in a state of flux. Let's take a lesson from natural selection and focus our energies into adapting to the changing conditions of life on this planet, instead of arrogantly and naively believing that we can freeze the earths state in time if only our civilization could get 'green' enough.
And by "Ever" we mean since the 1860's, which is the limit of accurate records. If you try to estimate temperatures based upon other data (gases in ice core samples, tree rings, etc.), there were years warmer than this one including the medieval period and a time when the arctic circle was tropical, long before SUVs.
Warmest ever? Get real. Greenland was named by the Vikings because it had a temperate client and was so full of vegetation. When the ice melts from Greenland you may have a better argument.
we've saved this winter because of "global warming"....heating oil prices are way down this "winter" because it is so warm. Just the opposite was true in the winter of the mid 70's, when the media & scientist said we were headed to a new ice age. LOL
I demonstrated in the 1970 Earth Day and for over 36 years I did all that I could do to conserve energy. I recycled and I did most of things that I thought that I should do to be ecologically kind the planet. All of the conservation and ecological efforts that I have made during the past 36 years have made NO difference. Although many of our waterways have been cleaned up and the air quality in some cities has gotten better; overall the Earth is MUCH worse off now than it was in 1970. I am getting older now and have maybe 10 to 20 years left -- I don't give a fuck any more what happens to planet Earth, why should I?
I like warm weather during December and January. I like the fact that food and energy are relatively cheap, even though I can afford to pay more for food and energy if I have to. I doubt that the environment will have gone completely to hell in the next 20 years. Sure, I will still do the conservation and ecological things that are habits, but those habits will fade over time. I won't be buying an SUV, but my home's thermostat will be a few degrees warmer in the winter and a few degrees cooler in the summer. I won't feel guilty using more paper towels than I really need to, or washing only a half load of clothes. I won't make an extra trip back to turn off a (high efficiency compact flourescent) light that I left on, why should I?
This is a bunch of fud designed by the people with a vested interested in continued funding towards global warming research.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
I don't believe for a second that Man/Civilization is to blame for the current warming trend. It is known that the sun has gotten 30% hotter since it's birth and continues to heat up now. Higher solar output = a warmer earth. So I suppose we are all responsible for the sun getting hotter now? Riiigghhht.
>> a case of the weather dice coming up thirteen
/.ers (or a 19 if you're old-school).
That's like rolling a 21 for
New England is way too cold anyway, and think of the convenience of being able to freely navigate the arctic. I love global warming.
What was the temperature of the Earth for the first Billion years? It must have been colder than 2006 or the headline would be misleading. Maybe the headline should be "Warmest average surface (not atmospheric) temperature in the last couple of hundred years (for which we have accurate records).
We had other years back in the 80's were it was warm. It fluctuates. I feel, however, that their is only certain amount of decay the earth can recover from and we'll soon see affects.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
But NOT with accurate standardized thermometers.
JohnBull : It is colder than my balls care to be.
Lar : Seems warm to me.
Both wrote down the apparent temperature, NOT the accurate one.
"...And then he went back to playing his Wii."
Expecting others to begin a revolution, shame, Che would be so displeased with you.
Not true, the first mercury thermometer was invented in 1716 ( or sometime close to then ) but other types of thermometer exsisted for 200 years prior to this although with any standardised scale.
Dude, how do you EVER make a decision? :)
Blar.
this planet has already warmed itself out of 4 major ice ages - loooong before the Hummer was invented and George W Bush was born. the polar bears survived then, they'll survive yet another.
Let's say that instead of climate change, a large meteor was headed for the planet in, say, 2029. Would we argue for twenty years over whether mankind's radio emissions (or whatever) caused the meteor to near the earth or would we try to think up ways of doing something about it?
I personally think that climate change is caused by increased CO2 emissions from human industry because all of the theory supports it, but it honestly doesn't matter. We have a major problem. We can either point fingers endlessly like a bunch of 5 year olds, or we can try to solve it before it becomes a catastrophe.
The atmosphere of Mars is mostly carbon dioxide, if I remember correctly. The melting of the polar ice caps of Mars and the melting of the polar ice caps of Earth are unrelated.
...
You missed the point the Anonymous Coward was making
The fact is that no one knows what is causing Global Warming on Mars but we know for sure that it is not caused by Martians driving around their SUVs. There are several theories and some speculate that recent solar activity (the high levels of sun-spot and solar-flares) are having an impact on Mars even though there has been no increase in irradiance; being that Mars is further away from the Sun than Earh is it would be foolish not to assume that any impact from Solar activity on Mars would impact Earth.
The fact that you didn't even look into this before you dismissed it as "unrelated" demonstrates a blind faith which should never be associated with science.
Against the Mars canard:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192
If you're one of those who don't trust realclimate.org (after all, it is biased in favor of climatology!), feel free to follow the references. If you're someone who trusts junkscience.com more, then I guess you also think that smoking is healthy. (I'm just covering my bases here. I seriously doubt that you trust junkscience over realclimate, but there are those who do.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"Almost inconceivably big. Larger shifts in CO2 and temp have occurred historically, and just as quickly, long before humans showed up."
This we simply do not know. There is no way we could get 40-50 year resolution on prehistoric CO2 or temperature levels.
How are we to believe anything you say if you are willing to pass on your guesses as facts, when it suits you? This can hardly be an honest mistake.
Once again we are presented with an untrue sensational news title that is quickly debunked within the first few sentences of the actual article.
+1,000,000,000
a r/
Can't be said enough. There is irrefutable evidence that we are going to destroy the atmosphere, which in turn will destroy the planet. Gore has just summed it all up nicely for the layperson to understand. The most troubling thing (ya know, besides the imminent end of the world) is that the oil, auto, and other capitalist lobbies goddamn well know it - and instead of doing the right thing; innovating for leaner, cleaner products, they fud the hell out of it in the interests of padding their already astronomical bonuses.
If you haven't checked this one out, it makes a nice compliment to An Inconvenient Truth: http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectricc
Since I feel like preaching to the choir for a bit (arguing with ostriches can wear a person out), here's an analogy:
Will a bullet fired at your heart from a .357 kill you? .357s and lived. Those that die after being shot probably just died from other causes.
We're not sure. Several people have been shot at by
Will a bullet from a .357 travel faster than from every other gun?
Certainly not!
Is there anything we can do about it? - this is the biggie
No, because if you cover up your heart they can just shoot at your head, etc.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
A week or so ago it was gleefully "announced" on Slashdot that
Exxon is funding the global warming debunkers. Now we'd like
to know who is funding the proponents!
ENSO is the El Nino Southern Oscillation. If you'd like to simulate global warming and El Nino / La Nina cycles yourself you can do some of the experiments discussed in the article. The EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Space and Computers.
From the National Weather Service: The average temperature of 34.5 degrees tied 1996 as the second warmest December on record. The warmest December was 34.8 degrees in 2001. In contrast, the coldest December was in 1989 with an average temperature of 14.1 degrees. Normally December has as average of 27.6 degrees.
[...]
The average high temperature for the month was a record 43.3 degrees. The old record was 42.8 degrees in 1953. The coldest high temperature was 24.7 degrees in 1989 and the normal December average high temperature is 36.4 degrees.
[...]
The average low temperature for the month was 25.6 degrees, warm enough to be the 3rd warmest on record. The warmest average low temperature was 27.8 degrees in 1996 followed by 26.8 degrees in 2001. The coldest average low temperature was 3.4 degrees in 1989 and the normal December average low temperature is 18.7 degrees.
[...]
The temperature never got below zero degrees in December. In fact, the coldest reading was only 9 degrees and that didn't occur until the last day of the month.
[...]
The warmest temperature for the month was 61 degrees on the 1st. I'm going to have to move to Canada if I ever want to see a white Christmas again.
Estimated number of calls made to Californian Al Nino since last year by people asking, "Why are you doing this?": 100
Yeah, I don't think Nanpa was being sarcastic either (you'll notice the difference in authorship between the OP and the one claiming you missed the sarcasm), but perhaps I'm just not feeling very optimistic today.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The reminds me of last Sunday when happened to drive by the church that my family attended when I was a kid. (I haven't attended in my adulthood years; I never bought into the whole religion thing, but that is a different story.)
To get to the point, there was a Hummer parked in front of the church during the service. It made me realize that I have a different set of moral standards than that person with the Hummer. I don't know what it will take to push the moral zeitgeist along to include crimes against posterity. Perhaps the Pope or someone could put forth a modern moral position with regard to global warming, but I'm sure he's too old to understand the gravity of the situation.
Sam Harris often talks about how 44% of the American people believe Jesus is coming back in their lifetime or their children's lifetime (or something like that). I don't know what it will take to convince these people that it's not true. Even if Jesus is indeed coming back, it would be necessary to assume that he wasn't. It is clear to me that the Second Coming is merely a license to not give a flying fuck.
That's an interesting takeaway from that movie. Me, I was more struck by the graph of historical atmospheric CO2 levels vs. average temperature and the graph of projected CO2 levels. But different people bring different things to that movie and likely take different things away. I'm guessing you wanted to find reasons to hate Al Gore. Me, I was looking for solid evidence that atmospheric CO2 levels were really an issue.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Everyone knows global warming isn't really, jesus you guys. Ok, now stop laughing/crying and check out:
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1
Is there any reason we couldn't invest in this and solar RIGHT FUCKIN' NOW?!?
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
It was not globally the warmest year ever.
It may have been, in North America, the warmest year, by a small amount, for a couple hundred years. Its a bit different. We have also the Holcene Warm Period, and the Medieval Warm Period to worry about, before pronouncing last year the warmest ever.
Global warming may or may not be happening, but headlines like this do not help convince anyone.
Although I agree with you 100% that humans have caused global warming, to play Devil's advocate I would say the argument is that if global warming is not caused by humans, therefore a natural cycle, then there is NOTHING humans can do to fix the problem because they have no affect on the situation. (Longest run-on sentence ever :)
Re: the title... it wasn't the warmed year "ever". It was the warmest year on record. :)
Play me online? Well you know that I'll beat you. If I ever meet you I'll "/sbin/shutdown -h now" you. -Weird Al, kinda.
If this is what rolling a 13 is like, what happens when the world rolls a critical hit?
- Fact: Humanity is producing a considerable amount of greenhouse gases.
- Fact: Greenhouse gases cause more sunlight to be converted into heat.
Here is where the discussion usually breaks down into fisticuffs. We do know that this unnatural stress on the environment (global warming) will cause the global climate to change. However, we do NOT know exactly what will happen in response to this stress. In the past, global warming was a gradual process, as flora and fauna produce greenhouse gases naturally at a much reduced rate. This time the stress is acute, and we have no real past historical basis to predict what will happen.
Personally, I'm with the scientists on this one. (That this is most likely a "bad thing".) Earth has a nasty habit of responding with mass extinctions whenever it gets hit with something big and bad. However, there is a slim possibility that the earth will just "get warmer", which is not entirely a bad thing, but would make dwindling fresh water supplies a real cause for war and conflict.
So to sum up, "global warming" will most likely cause "global climate change". However, we don't know what exactly will change, but it's likely it'll be bad for us.
I think there are some dinosaurs who would disagree with that if they hadn't died a gazillion years ago.
Are you talking this Bjorn? Because he is not a scientist. He is not even a statistician who can validate what others have. He is simply a politician. In fact, he has been accused of scientific dishonesty. If he were a real scientist, his career would have ended immediately.
Scares are what you get from the media and politicians. That is somebody who whips things around.
BTW, Interesting what you pointed to. Genetic mods have had their issues. In particular, some of the genome from GM crops are being spread around. Then the company who develops it gets upset. But the real issue is that mods that were not suppose to leave a particular strain has. So once these are introduced, we will have issues. As to BSE, well, in the west, we have a large issue with CWD in the deer population. And CWD is nothing more than BSE. Sadly, it takes a number of years before the BSE really shows up in populations. Funny thing about a disease that is asymptomatic is that it can takes it toll before you are aware of it. As to the build up to toxic chemicals leading to sterility, well, if you like you can go ahead and switch your diet to shark and swordfish. In fact, go ahead and switch your children's diet to them. Have a steak a day. Somehow, I do not think that it will make a difference.
But then that wouldn't add the weight of "118000" years and an appeal to the ice age to the argument for "global warming". What a crock.
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
how do they know what the daily temperature was every day since the ice age in every single part of the globe? Aint no way. True its been warmer but I really am getting sick and tired of all these so call experts who claim they know what the exact temperature was years before man even had a way to measure the temperature.
And before someone says it, there is scientific means to estimate the temperature but there still the plus and minus factor thats a part of all estimates.
"It is sad that when i watch a speach of Bush on TV i can often name off many different logical fallacies he uses and people follow him."
Such as asking certain countries to prove they are innocent.
For years the Right in America tried to argue that there was no global warming. Finally, what was merely overwhelming research showing that there was indeed warming became impossible to argue, so now the Right tries to argue that "OK, there's global warming, but it's not our fault".
People who are trying so hard to pretend that there is no harm at all in fouling our environment can no longer be taken seriously by the rest of us. We're trying to patiently explain to these knuckleheads that there has to be something done to turn around the damage we're doing to the environment, and while we're arguing, nothing is being done. China will soon (maybe a decade) have a bigger economy than ours and how are we supposed to tell them to back off from all the growth so we don't destroy our environment when we can't even get our own act together?
The Right-Wing in America is being used by multinationals to stall on any sort of effort to change things, so for the foreseeable future, it's going to be more of the same. There's just no more time to waste trying to convince people who believe the Earth is 6000 years old and that Jesus is going to come any day now to take them home that we have to act to protect the world for our grandkids.
I mean really: "What about the Martian icecaps?"?? Is that the latest Investors Business Daily meme to try to keep record profits flowing into the coffers of Shell?
You are welcome on my lawn.
OK, so we all agree that GW is caused by an increase in planetary heat... AND the planet gets its heat from.... the Sun. I think everyone on the planet would agree that there is no way that anyone on earth is effecting the Sun. We also know that there has been an increase of sunspot activity in the past 20 years. There have even been cases of satellites being effect by the increase in radiation. No one really knows what the effect of those increased bursts of radiation are having on earths weather. Scientists can't actually physically measure the ozone layer... not with a measuring tape anyway. However they figure that it is weaker (thinner) IF they measure an increase in radiation (from the Sun) they can postulate that the protective layer must be weaker... However it might just be that increased radiation is coming through due to increased radiation coming form the Sun. Now think about this....What if we wreck the economies of the world, and millions of people die from starvation, thinking that we can save the planet, when in fact the problem does not actually stem from human activity? AIT only documents effect, not cause.
These guys really like to ignore the Medieval Warming Period, where temperatures globally were much warmer than they are today. They also like to ignore the fact that the current warming period started in conjunction with the end of the little ice age. Scientific theories are great when you include all of the facts, but poor when you sensationalize findings and ignore entire eras to make your case.
Dorpus, It's OK to have a -1 moderation on occasion. On some subjects in Slashdot, if you don't agree with the group, you will be modded down considerably. It doesn't matter if some of your arguments have merit. And I do remember the prediction that 2006 will be a "record year for hurricanes". And it was suggested that global warming was part of the cause. If it had been a record year, one can be sure that proponents of GW would have remembered the "record year" statement and used it as an argument. Obviously, some were hoping for massive destruction so that they could have more support for their ideas.
Does anybody remember the "ozone hole" problem that was prevalent in the late 80's and early 90's? No one talks about it much anymore. It went something like this: Because of the massive amount of air conditioning fluorocarbons being released into the atmosphere, we are making an ozone hole in the southern hemisphere. This hole will soon grow so large it will eventually cover most of the planet and we will all get sunburned and have skin cancer. The proving scientists showed that freon did indeed break down ozone, that humans made freon, therefore humans made the ozone hole and would have to take action to close it. Laws were passed. Selling older Freon refrigerants was strictly regulated in this country and replaced by newer refrigerants that broke down. Air conditioners were replaced by units that ran the newer refrigerants. According to a friend I knew in the AC business, the companies that made freon and similar products were about to do a massive lawsuit and expose on the whole idea stating that their scientists could show that most of the stats were pure bunk! But then they sat down with the government (and other insiders), and when they realized that a can of freon would go from $.99 to about $21.00 and how much money they would make by complying (and how much it would cost if they fought), they went along. Low and behold, a few years later, a scientific study showed that volcanoes released chemicals in quantities that would be thousands of times more effective in breaking down the ozone layer than freon. There was little fanfare or media attention as the cause was dropped. The laws stayed on the books.
Now I wouldn't want to stay in the way of progress or learning about the global climate, but let's cut the bull. A lot of scientists and their organizations will get a lot of kudos and make a lot of $money$ if Kyoto and future proposed legislation goes through. Why not hold these scientists LIABLE for these predictions. Money and status are big in scientific circles. If what they say comes to pass, why not reward them (if it can be proven by > 1 unbiased groups over > 5-10 years) that test their standards. If shown correct, give them $rewards and status. If not, kick them out of their scientific organizations and fine them.
Many managers in companies are held liable for their monetary predictions not coming true. They get bonuses or get fired. The fact that a person is smart or has multiple degrees is no proof of honesty. Truth is, it often shows that some of these people have cleverer ways of being dishonest. One should be suspicious if met with a condescending tone and an explanation of, "These are things only people with X number of doctorates can understand." Maybe. What I do understand is when predictions are made and don't come to pass and cost people $billions worldwide, someone ought to answer for it. If scientists had to sign contracts of reward/liability for predictions of gloom and doom, I bet a lot would walk.
Global warming has to prove (1) That it really is happening and will continue to increase(2) That People are causing it (3) That it is bad (4) If 3==True, then something [what] can be done about it. I've seen lots of controversy on #1, little proof on #2 - which is where the ozone hole theory collapsed, nothing but assumptions on #3 (On a global level, Canada and Siberia might benefit), and I'd hate to see the cost estimates on #4, when treaties and legislation is approved.
Feel free to mod according to opinion - no one will know, but have a nice day.
Well, I'll grant you that it's creepy. It's also completely full of s---. Now read "Climate of Fear".
I was wondering if anyone knows how "winter" is determined.
Does it start when the temperature drops below a certain point?
Is it just December, January and February (which is what I learned when I was 6)?
Is it based on an astronomical constant? And if not, does it get recalibrated (like leap year)?
Cheers.
Most of what I've read and seen indicates we're just near a peak of the cyclical process (or a low in the ice age, however you flip your sine wave). What they always seem to discount, though, is that 100,000 years ago when the world warmed up naturally (animal C02), there weren't 6 billion humans around with 2 billion+ (guess) mechanical sources of heat, C02 or fossil fuels. Most reports shrug human factors off as negligible. That fire ant mound of only 100k fire ants in my backyard is negligible, too, until they start multiplying.
What's really odd about this report is how inconsistent my local weather has been. The report shows Texas as recording many record high days. On an average over the year, yes, I guess we were, but this was one of the mildest summers and falls I've ever known in my 30+ years of living here. We had a handful (maybe three) days that hit 100 or higher, as opposed to a few years ago where we had over 100 consecutive days of 100+ temperatures. What's really been off is the lack of rain. Currently we're having an average winter of 50-60 degree days, but again it's not nearly as wet as it usually is.
With the GW what I expect over the next 10-20 years is that Texas will shift to a climate more like Central America (or northern Africa) and our Texas climate will shift to Nebraska and the Dakotas.
It's a definite concern that I feel many governments and the world have neglected for too long. All I can hope is that we'll be able to adapt like our ancient ancestors did to other "natural" disasters. I'm really hoping that I might see off world colonization in my lifetime. Get the people off the planet and let it return to a natural state.
Actually, I think it's a pretty good indication that almost anyone who understands science and the scientific method knows that this is a real problem. I find it odd that you think this somehow indicates a vast scientific conspiracy. (Yeah, I know you didn't use those words, but what else might you be implying by "something other than science"?)
Even those few scientists who denied it in the past seem to be accepting it now. For example, even Pat Michaels no longer claims that global warming is not due primarily to anthropogenic factors. However, he still believes that technology will automagically fix the problem so we don't need to worry about it. The fact that he receives most of his funding from fossil fuel companies has no impact on that opinion, I'm sure.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'm not trying to troll here, I just honestly don't understand something:
In the list of the 25 warmest years on record, dates from the 20s and 30s have prominent positions (3rd, 5th, and 6th). How is the theory of global warming reconciled with data that shows comparable weather 80 years ago? The article groups years into pentads, but I don't see any explanation as to why years must be grouped to get results that support their theories. Any help in understanding this would be much appreciated.
All your snow came down in Denver. Normally we get almost no moisture at this time of year but instead of we have a few feet of snow and fairly cold temperatures.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"I can still have gas at $2" I don't know where your living but its been a long time since I could get a gallon of gas for 2 bucks. 2.60 at the pump last night.
If 2006 was the warmest year "ever," then we can rest assured that global warming is over, since no year will ever be as warm as 2006 in the entire future of the planet!
My Quadra 950 can beat up your honor student.
Oh, a *sarcasm* detector. Oh, that's a *really* useful invention!
Being called an idiot by an ignorant is a true compliment
Please take a look at "4. Why is the sea level higher off the coast of Bermuda than New York?" and "14. How much does sea level rise if all the world's ice melts?" there
Melting ice caps? Flooding New Jersey? Heck, who wouldn't want that anyway? You kids these days have it too easy.
The warmest year ever => no major hurricanes in the U.S. Hmmmm...
Congratulations, my fellow
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
No it wasn't
I was kinda with Gore until he went into how his family owns a cattle ranch, one of the most inefficient sources of food that we have.
Except the oceans are currently a massive CO2 sink, not a net CO2 source.
Two decades of ocean CO2 sink and variability (abstract)
The Acid Ocean - the Other Problem with CO2 Emission
Direct observation of the oceanic CO2 increase revisited
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/96/tpxerror.html [ nasa.gov]
"Measurements of global sea-level rise from a U.S. instrument in space likely will be revised downward because of a recently discovered error in the data-processing software, mission scientists said. Initial indications are that sea-level measurements from the U.S. altimeter aboard the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon satellite likely will agree more closely with Earth-based tide gauges, as well as with the French altimeter on the satellite. Preliminary findings from TOPEX/Poseidon data..., indicated the Earth's sea surface was rising ... more than 5 millimeters per year. Data collected from December 1992 to April 1996 have been updated and suggest that the new sea level rise estimate will be revised to 1 to 3 millimeters per year."
The recent speculation that man is causing global warming and that sea levels will suddenly rise is the result of flawed computer models and flawed satellite data...and journalists and politicians being unprofessional. Let me review a few details with you.
In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, convened by the United Nations, said: "No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected."
Sea levels have oscillated on a century time scale over the past 1400 years. Professor Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University and past president of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, "Observational data obtained by our international team of experts shows conclusively that the sea level is not rising." "In the last 5000 years, global mean sea level has been dominated by the redistribution of water masses over the globe. In the last 300 years, sea level has been oscillation close to the present with peak rates in the period 1890-1930. Between 1930 and 1950, sea fell. The late 20th century lack any sign of acceleration." Sea levels were 25 cm higher in 1050 (Medieval Warm Period) than in 1650 (Little Ice Age). Since 1650, sea levels have risen at an average rate of 1 mm per year, with the exception of the cool 1800s, when there was little or no rise.
"The data does not support any sea-level rise at all. ... There is no evidence, over the last century, that suggests there will be an acceleration in sea level" -- Wolfgang Scherer, the director of Australia's National Tidal Facility at Flinder's University in Adelaide.
Over the last 3,000 years, there have been at least 5 periods of "global warming". The Medieval Warm Period was from 800 AD to 1400 AD. It ended around 600 years ago. This was followed by the Little Ice Age that started 500 years ago and ended just over 100 years ago. Not surprisingly, Greenland just harvested its first barley in 600 years. Barley and grapes for wine were major crops in Greenland until 1400 AD.
Don't forget to understand the influence of the Maunder minimum and thermal haline.
According to the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, global average temperatures did not increase between 1998 and 2005. Yes, there was a period of warming between 1970 and 1998 - but there was also a similar period of warming between 1918 and 1940, well before the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1964, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate. Of the 1.5 F in warming the planet experienced over the last 150 years, two-thirds of that increase occurred between 1850 and 1940.
The 1 degree increase in global temperature over the past century is nothing unusual. For example, the Medieval Warm Period, from A.D. 1000 to 1400, was warmer than the 20th century.
Human activities contribute at most only 3% of carbon
Runs Thursday to Saturday. Just like the good old days decades ago when there would be snow on the ground all winter. In between storms the side streets accumulate a foot of ice which wrecks bottoms of average cars.
Isn't global warming fun?
You can follow the links for the actual science. It's there, I promise. When I say "boilerplate argument", I mean that I'm not taking the time to tailor it to the particular post. However, as the post is just the typical "What about Mars?" question, it's not really necessary to tailor it.
If you think producing controversial science ends your career, I'd like to introduce you to my friend Albert. He got a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect despite having this crazy theory about space and time. (Yes, there were a lot of people calling his theories nonsense, but it didn't exactly end his career.)
Ben Hocking
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Hmm well I live in a desert. This past year brought a cold winter. So cold in fact that it snowed in the desert and covered the surrounding mountains with a lot of snow. This is at 1300 ft. above sea level. Sure seems warmer to me.
This has been addressed over and over again. It was the popular media, not scientists, who were talking about global cooling in the 1970's. Kind of like those shark scares we see today. (Yes, you might have found a small handful of scientists who were concerned. However, even back then climatologists were warning about global warming, not global cooling.)
Ben Hocking
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Time to scoop up some land in the Northern Territories, eh?
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
There are other metrics as well. Snowfall vs rainfall amounts for example, which would be easily done even with 10th century BC technology.
Well, your post certainly explains why Canada is the world's foremost superpower and America is only an odd place to visit. . .
An increase in record temperatures is a result of increased observations. As we increase the number of observations taken, we increase the likelihood of observing relative maxima (records). Additionally, global warming is a radiative process and would be observed through an increase in mean overnight lows, not specific instances of "hot" days. As an atmospheric scientist it bothers me when other meteorologists spread misinformation to the ignorant in order to get attention.
By the way, the coldest 10 years on record were in the last century too!
Mr. President, we must not allow a dimming gap!
I wish they all could be California girls...
True, the scientists could still be wrong. But they also have a much better chance of being right than non-scientists.
If most of the available evidence supports an Earth-centered universe, I'm going to believe in an Earth-centered universe. If most of the available evidence supports global climate change, I'm going to believe that, too. Why? Because it's the best we can do. Sure, evidence can be misinterpreted. But there's a huge difference between "We can never be sure" and "Physical truths are unknowable." When you make policy, you do it with the best available information because even if you're wrong every now and then, you generally come out in the lead.
Do we really have to keep arguing about epistomology every time global warming comes up? Suppose you're walking across the savanna and a bunch of photons hit your retina in a way that suggests that a large lion in front of you. Nobody would say, "The best evidence I has indicates that there's a lion in front of me but there is no way to be sure; it could be an illusion." You act under the assumption that the lion is real until something happens that suggests otherwise (i.e. it walks through a tree, as only illusions can do.) There is a general scientific consensus that human activities play an important role in the global climate changes. Read the papers---you will find precious few that disagree, and they haven't been enough to sway the majority opinion.
Stop saying "they could be wrong." I'm tired of it. If you think they're wrong, tell us why you think they're wrong. Find a better explanation for the temperature increases, back it up with evidence, and refute the challenges that the rest of the scientific community presents to you. Otherwise, you have nothing to say. Scientists know they can be wrong. That's why scientists ultimately did reject geocentrism. That's also why they rejected heliocentrism and a million other ideas that turned out to be incorrect. Stop cluttering up the public debate with philosophical musings about certainty. It contributes nothing but gives ammunition to the FUDmongering interest groups who are trying to keep us from fixing the problem.
The same thing applies to global war
We routinely ignore and brush to the side any evidence that does not fit the current Evolution/Big Bang model. That's not to say the Catholic church didn't do the EXACT same thing with the Flat Earth-Centered Universe (often to the point of killing detractors).
But like the Flat-Earth situation, it will take a long time to find the truth if we say things like, "Students are not allowed to even investigate whether it appears man has been designed by a higher intelligence." Why not? What better way to teach kids to examine and weigh evidence. After all, if Intelligent Design truly is hogwash, then what is everyone afraid of? Won't the scientific method disprove it quickly anyway?
But throwing out potential evidence because we don't agree with the lifestyle or religious beliefs of the people it is coming from is NOT using the scientific method at all.
Which takes us back to people doing anything to maintain their kingdoms, even at the expense of knowledge and truth...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
According to the BBC, Chrysler's chief economist Van Jolissaint has launched a fierce attack on "quasi-hysterical Europeans" and their "Chicken Little" attitudes to global warming (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6247371.stm).
Listen to the man, damnit! Just because he works for an industry whose product is a major contributor to greenhouse gasses and has a vested interest in denying the role of internal combustion engines in Climate Change, doesn't mean that you're not all both mistaken and needlessly concerned about all this....
Oh, hang on a minute...
yes, it must be the council of evil scientists, liberals and tree huggers (CESLATH) that has been funding this propaganda to try and topple the good and saintly engergy Companies!
... hi bingo
A power fluctuation killed it a few days ago. Until I can get the time to restore it, you'll have to hip yourself via the Google cache.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
thank you for the comment and the link - I'll watch it later. cheers
Locksmith
And what was it's accuracy? What scale did it read in? Did it use the standard celcius scale: water freezes at 100, and boils at 0 (no that isn't a typo, look it up).
At what point were thermometers reliable enough to be accurate within 1/100th of a degree celcius, which is the range that global warming is being measured with.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Because we have accurate yearly temperature records going back 118,000 years right?
And why was it warmer 118,000 years ago than it is today? Too many cavemen polluting with their Flintstone cars?
I, for one, welcome our new reptilian overlords.
It is seriously not right when the grass is bright green from Nov to Jan in Sweden. And that despite the fact that the days are six hours long.
Mars does have stable rotation along it's axis. It may have experienced True Polar Wander early on, but that would be difficult today. However, Mars does experience significant shifts in obliquity (axial tilt), which causes the rotational axis to point in a different direction in inertial space. The obliquity shifts happen on a much larger timescale (I want to say tens of thousands of years, but I could be misremembering) than a Martian year, so it's not quite right to say that Mars "tumbles over itself as it goes around the Sun." However, you are quite correct to say that this may have huge effects on the climate of Mars.
What about disease related deaths? I've read that global climate change will increase the range of tropical diseases such as West Nile virus and malaria. This is predicted to cause 500,000 or more additional deaths every year, swamping the miniscule reduction in heat/cold related deaths.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
2006 has not yet been determined to be "the warmest year ever" worldwide. That data is not out yet, although it may turn out to be true. The statement was, "The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was the warmest on record..." So it only applies to the contiguous 48 states. Whether the entire world was the warmest on record will take a little more data gathering and analysis.
Another point I haven't seen made, perhaps because it is so obvious, is that warm winters are by and large good for humanity. Normally thousands of people freeze to death every winter. With these warm winters, we must be seeing far fewer deaths and illnesses than we usually do. Granted, heat waves do kill people in summer, but I think on balance more people die due to weather in winter than in summer, at least in the U.S. and Europe, which are temperate-zone climates that extend into some very cold regions. I'd like to see some analysis comparing the number of lives saved due to warmer winters to the lives lost due to warmer summers.
Everything I read about global warming emphasizes the harm. Of course, that's what sells newspapers. But still, it can't all be bad, can it? Does anyone think that if we were suffering global cooling, sliding towards an ice age, that we'd be reading nothing but articles talking about how good this is? With killer blizzards sweeping across the globe, would we be reminded of how many lives were saved due to the mild summers? Would truncated growing seasons be turned into a positive, the way extended growing seasons are somehow being described as harmful? No, I don't think so.
Global warming has got to be better than global cooling, and undoubtedly has some good effects. It may be harmful on balance, but I don't think we are seeing that balance being presented clearly and honestly.
I must admit I based that statement on the less rain fall prediction. In a general sense I cannot support it. Also, with the extra water from melting snow and the flooding of low coastal areas it seems to be more likely to be wetter.
F*ck! We can't even hope for a dry heat.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
What a callous statement, not to mention childish, ungrammatical, poorly spelled and punctuated. My advice: if you don't want everyone here to assume you are twelve and ignore you, try phrasing your criticism more contructively and start paying more attention to the little details that act as a kind of shibboleth for the intelligent and well educated.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
to... " 2006 Was the Warmest Year EvAr!!!" Yar.
It would have been a standard mercury thermometer and it was measured in farenheit and whilst I'm sure it wasn't recorded to 1/100th of a degree the records would still be accurate enough to obtain meaningful data from.
The important measurements for the comparison talked about in this article is the average yearly temperature for the country which is a perfectly feasible data point to get from the records based on data gathered by these type of thermometers.
Oh, wait a minute...
Damn it!!! My great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandkids are going to be having the time of their lives in a great planet wide orgy. And it will probably be cool and futuristic, too!
Why the hell did I have to be born right now... with these stupid non breeders who won't even hook me up with a little hand job on the first date!
RTFA. It's about 48 U.S. states (what about the other 2?). The December report was that 2006 was the 6th warmest on record for the world (cooler than 2005). The articles have links to the global report.
Speak for yourself. I don't call -40C with ice fog a warm winter.
Good thing I'm wearing two jackets today else my tits would freeze off.
> Personally, I never subscribe to the "we can't possibly understand it" argument. That also explains my deeply atheistic beliefs.
Shannon's law + entropy implies that the universe is insufficient to store all the information of its own history. I sometimes wonder if this is connected to Heisenberg uncertainty.
Further, the energy available for use decreases monotonically (entropy), thus there are some incredibly high-energy regions of physics we will *never* be able to test.
Lastly, the human brain is finite, as are all our resources. Entropy will inevitably kill off all life in the universe, so our time as a race is also finite no matter how adept we or our successors are at survival.
Therefore, based on what we do understand, I conclude that there are inevitably things we will never know and it seems quite likely that we might not even know that we don't know them. And if we do not even know of them, how then can we understand them?
So I conclude, based on all that we do understand, that there must exist some things we can never understand. That said, I don't think that Global Warming is one of those things we will never understand, if only because scientists are working diligently to iron out all the details in our understanding of it.
...actually, smoking is healthy. It prevents certain types of strokes. Sure, I may not be able to breathe, but at least one side of my body is not paralyzed! I just need to hide the oxygen tank to make pictures look good! Stroke victims? err...did you get my good side?
we didn't get touched by a single hurricane!!!
weren't we supposed to be swamped by them this year?
Warm, Schwarm, we don't know jack but the press needs sensationalist headlines to sell
Cool, 53F is the average, 2.2F above average, what is the standard deviation??? anyone???? plus or minus 2.2F
We live now - not then.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Isn't relevant to his point.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
CWD in deer - it seems rather odd that BSE should spread to deer since the mechanism of transfer to cows was supposed to be eating offal. Either you have serious carnivore deer - or it's a naturally occurring problem which has been labeled an environmental issue. Now can you understand why I don't trust the environmental lobby?
The sperminator Schwartzenbugger wants to have "low cabon fuels" to reduce "global warming".
o n/dimming_trans.shtml"
I'm sorry to break it to you gubbernor but it's the "carbon" aka particulate matter thats keeping us from cooking in our own sweat. See this article "http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horiz
Or google "global dimming"
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I think that if one is familiar with the science, the science can stand on its own irrespective of the funding. However, for people who are not science literate (or even people who don't have time to wade through the details), it is helpful to point out why one might expect expert A to disagree with experts B-Z when expert A is being funded by fossil fuel companies. Also, as others have pointed out, even honest researchers are affected by their source of funding.
Ben Hocking
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I was vacationing in Europe over Christmas and Finland had no snow. And the news said that ski resorts in the alps were experiencing a lack of snow. It was all over the Earth and in many places in the US besides the Northeast. How someone can single out the Northeast is beyond my comprehension.
I have a degree in physics (two, actually), and I know that my understanding of physics helps me to understand climate science. Sure, one should trust the (average) opinion of climatologists over the opinion of physicists on matters of climatology, but when they agree I don't see what the problem is.
Ben Hocking
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Thank you for wasting our time.
weather not seen on the planet since before the Ice Age began, 118,000 years ago.
What the fsck? The hottest day of the year in my location was announced as "the hottest on this date in thirty years". That's a 117,970 year discrepancy.
The global warming claim is that the earth is warming up by a couple of degrees. Well WITHIN normal statistical variation. If this were the hottest year in 118K years, then it's way the hell outside of normal (or even abnormal) statistical variation.
Call me skeptical, but I want to see the weather data for the year 97,324 BC.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Interesting. So that brings our data set from .00000327% of the Earth's estimated age all the way up to .00000778%?
All right. Now I'm convinced.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
and go hunting.
/. arguments immediately correlate warmest USA with warmest planet. This on both sides of the fence. Dumbasses!
Why all the man centric angst over some small change over a very short time period?
The planet has carried a much greater atmospheric CO2 load in the past and is quite capable of doing so again.
Warmest year ever? RTFA, maybe not with 'better' data set. "Ever" = past 112 years of record keeping in the USA.
So, USA has been warmest in 2006 or 98 depending on data set, in the past 112 years.
How assinine that half the
Palms once lined the streets of Savannah and Charleston. Oranges used to grow in Savannah. This since the "fuck the non-whites" europeans colonized those places.
We've had glaciers in NC and tropical swamps in Canada.
BFD. It would be one effed up place without change and you wouldn't be here to fret over it because without stress, there is no evolution.
Fair enough. I was recalling what he said and didn't have the article in front of me at the time. His other comments imply that the human contribution is at least significant however, if not dominant. If you feel that I'm being too generous with Pat Michaels, I can guarantee you, it is not my intent.
My problem is with anyone saying that it's a logical fallacy to mention the source of funding, when non-science-literate people are trying to decide who to trust. I'm a scientist and I think it is very valid for me to support my position in anthropogenic global warming by pointing out that almost all climatologists agree that it is a real phenomenon, and that the very few who don't are all receiving money from fossil-fuel companies. What's really idiotic is when the deniers chime in with "oh yeah, well those who don't receive money from fossil-fuel companies receive money from the government, and everyone knows that the Bush administration is all about AGW." (OK, they neglect to mention the Bush administration. That was just a lame attempt at humor.)
Well, what immediately comes to mind is a recent study done with respect to drinks. One thing worth mentioning is that studies with disparaging results are allowed to be suppressed by those doing the funding, unless the scientist demands otherwise prior to doing his research. (I.e., unless he carefully reads the fine print.) Demanding such freedom is likely in many cases to result in not being funded. Note that this is not true when your funding comes from NIH, NSF, etc.Ben Hocking
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Your proposal to accelerate opaque particulate pollution to catch up with greenhouse gas pollution is most wise.
That is fools logic. CO2 is less of a greenhouse gas than water vapor.
We know that the greenhouse effect is real because without it, earth would be frozen solid.
But the contribution and origination of the C02 in our atmosphere is something debatable.
And the current weather is also definitely debatable as to whether it is abnormal or caused by global warming, or if it is a seasonal change due to the long range climate cycles like El Nino.
Using your logic
Fact, people who get their science from the news media instead of scientific reports are stupid.
Fact. Stupid people who watched a 2 hour movie about global warming will believe they are climate experts.
And now that the permafrost is beginning to melt we can only pray the the gods that it turn out for the better. We've already seen in recent years what a little kinetic energy placed into the weather system can do and this energy is only going build up and amplify. Maybe if we are lucky the trend will somehow slowdown, maybe we missed something in the equation, but for all intent purposes this should be a code-red priority because if we do not prepare for the worst then it will be carnage.
First the natural disasters will come, and the governments will be burdened with the cost of rebuilding. People will point fingers at their leaders (cf: Katrina). States will weaken as their economies do, most of this damage will be from crop disasters. Skirmishes will break out and nations will may declare martial law. Then resources begin to run low due to the destruction of infrastructure and that's when the wars will start... it plays out like a bad "B" movie.
You have to remember that people have a tendency to panic in such situations and panic only makes things worse. And to top that off people are greedy, and the temptation for one to profit off of their fellow man's burden is one of our nastiest traits. With global warming you have to consider that it WILL change societies and probably not for the better. Disasters can bring out the heros, but as we saw with Katrina it can also expose the wickedness inside us. Plus to top that off, Iraq has shown us that if you make a man desperate and he can be convinced to do anything.
Pagan? Geek? Check out #paganism on Freenode IRC
We would make are children proud but are heads are so far up are ass we've created a new type of paradox and we can't have any intelligent discussion on the matter because we are too busy fulling our ears with blasphemous ultra-conservative consumer-culture oriented propaganda while screaming and kicking at the floor like an autistic kid having a hussy fit when ever anyone tries to tell us about the real world.
Pagan? Geek? Check out #paganism on Freenode IRC
For every Galileo/Einstein/etc., there are probably > 10,000 Modern Geocentrists/Timecubers/etc. The world is a mighty big place.
Also, as with the modern geocentrists/flat earthers, the global warming deniers aren't trying to present new theories. Rather, they're trying to return to old theories. That hardly makes them mavericks. Correspondingly, you'll notice that most (if not all) climatologists who are used to support the global warming deniers (the climatologists themselves aren't necessarily deniers) are usually fairly old. (Unlike geocentrism, the old theory has been replaced by the new within their lifetime.)
Ben Hocking
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on the manhattan project they didn't just have "nuclear scientists". there were mathematicians, engineers, and physicists who were experts in different areas. Same goes for climate change: a physicist or biologist can make educated statements about climate change.
I see this largely as a response to organizations funded by fossil fuel companies (such as junkscience) that are spreading disinformation. I haven't seen anything similar at realclimate (and I haven't been following UCS). Most people who are trying to "disprove" (really, most of them are just trying to muddy the waters) these theories are enemies of science in that they are dishonest about their science and their motivation.
Most of the grandstanding is happening in the popular press (you won't find it in scientific journals - even the climatology journals), frequently encouraged by groups such as junkscience. I don't blame realclimate for defending climatology any more than I blame evolutionary biologists for defending evolution. I don't really see the difference between defending climatology and defending evolution. Do you?Ben Hocking
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Good article. My thanks to SlashDot for being more honest than the Government. The dots began adding up like dominoes around 1901 as the world population started to escalate faster. Duh. Population growth was rather slow and controllable. Each year went by and more smart people comes along to dismiss it, reinforcing the idea it was under control. So we got ingrained within our esteemed scientific textbooks and literature that everything was under control. So now the dots piled up suddenly and a certain number want to cling to the "EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL" LINE. What does observable evidence tell us?
The Earth has been having an increasing amount of quake activity, which also has caused a few tsunamis. Population and combustion engine usage increased some more. The surface temperature of the water increased. Hurricanes increased for 2005 topped off by a large tsunami. Suddenly the hurricanes withdrew their attack. Did the water surface suddenly cool? If it did I didn't hear anyone saying so. So what th' heck happened?!
Is it possible that a large amount of heat from the Earth's core moved outward > transferred into the ocean floor > conducted into ocean bottom water > rising up through the water > finishing its path into our global atmosphere, like some kind of a vertical "temperature quake". So even though the hurricanes let up enough to fool us, the air temperature was then increased, causing chunks of glacial ice to fall faster from glacier sides. So the coming 2007 season should show a reduced ocean surface water temperature readings from the extra water ice (hurricanes dormanted by the cooled water surface) but the air will still be warmer? It looks like this planet is undergoing a vertical shell game, temperature-swapping from underneath the ground into the aboveground > progressing into the atmosphere carrying a giant bucket of extra water > increasing atmospheric energy > fueling more tornadoes in 2007. Can a "solid inversion" of solid ground|crust|mantle swallow us, the Earth starting anew, using all our humans/animals bodies by the billions plus our homes to form new deposits of crude oil & natural gas for the next attempt?
Increasing of the ocean surface area will cause an increasing evaporation rate, meaning a corresponding increase of the total amount of H2O suspended in our atmosphere (increasing of water-laden warm air-fed tornadoes?) It looks like next year will be one heckuva ride. If these patterns continue into 2010-2012 when the solar rays blast the Earth, that could cause an exponential everything to happen that will make the current spiking look like nothing. The only conceivable positive to any of this is that an incoming "killer asteroid" might be bounced back out into Space by increased atmospheric storming (increased skip).
IF we point to separate issues trying to keep them separate enough to where we think we can still say EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL then we have become as dumb as the dinosaurs who kept munching the grass til it froze inside their bellies where they stood MUNCH; that's dinosaur for the 2007 tornado season > CRUNCH . Hmm. Maybe someone would like to pay me for my tornado-proof home design now? I accept.
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
I usually lump FICA/Medicare together since 1) they were created in the same month, 2) they come out of my paycheck as a single item (Fed OASDI/MED) and 3) since I'm 36, I can expect to never see either of them.
I agree with you about MediCare - the whole issue of taking care of a rapidly aging population is a HUGE issue, but why don't you think that you'll never see any Social Security? It's a pay as you go system, and even if NOTHING is done to it except only using the funds that are being paid into it, it will still pay out at least 70% of its commitments through 2056, based on studies by the Social Security Trust Fund using very conservative economic growth models. The biggest threat to Social Security, IMO, will come in the form of a government attept to "save" it.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
Watched it, loved it. Not so much a scientific journal as it is popular media.
Um, did you watch it? He never made such a claim. He did say that if all of the ice on Greenland melted or if the West Antarctic Ice Shelf melted, most of Manhatten (including the site of the twin towers - yes, that was grandstanding, but hey, this is a movie, not a journal article) would be flooded. Not quite the same thing you're saying he claimed, however.
Really? Which labs?
Can you give me a single example of this? Just one?
Actually, until recently you would find comments like this from Pat Robertson. Of course, now, he too is a convert, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
Perhaps that's all you're suggesting, but that's not what I call being a denier. To me, being a denier means believing that either (a) it's hubris to assume that man could change the climate (if I had a dime for every time someone said this...), or (b) there's a conspiracy to spread global warming theories and that the temperature will return to normal "real soon now". Again, if you look at what Pat Michaels and Richard Lindzen (two poster boys for the AGW denier camp) are saying, they don't deny that AGW is real. They merely say what you're saying - namely, that the popular press (and, yes, some scientists) are over-stating the problem. (Well, they do sometimes couch those statements in ways that a non-careful reader might think they were actually denying AGW.) On that issue, you will not find me in denial.
Ben Hocking
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Now remember, you have to use real tin. Aluminum does not protect you from the Government's mind-control rays. ;)
Seriously - with a Republican controlled Congress (until very recently, of course) and a Republican in the White House this "conspiracy" is still going on? Must be some powerful stuff.
Ben Hocking
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