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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.
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.
That's quite a strawman you've got there.
and there are loads.... okay one... decent scientist who says it isn't Man made or true or nothingExactly correct. Everyone knows that the present of a specific scientific principle is decided by a central committee and then approved by the electorate at large. It's an excellent system, look how the Catholic church managed to keep us at the centre of universe!
Well said, refreshing to read that.
/.er to see past the techno-fix as this is the general mindset here.
I just read in 'Revenge of Gaia' that this period of warming may take 100,000 years to subside. R'uh-oh.
A critical fact in Al Gore's film: after compiling the results of 1,100 serious scientific papers about GW not one suggests that it is anything but man's fault. The percentage of journalistic articles suggesting that it may not be man's fault: 53%.
That's where this argument stems from I think. That and big oil sponsored research. Additionally It's very hard for a
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
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
What amuses/terrifies me is the people that argue that global warming isn't humanity's fault, and as such we don't have to do anything about it. I mean, the apocalypse may be coming, but if we didn't cause it, no point in us trying to stop it *shakes head quietly*
Any proposed solution that involves hurting the economies of the nations with resources to actually deal with the problem is not the answer.
Whilst it would be desirable to have a solution to climate change that does not involve hurting the economy (and I believe this is certainly possible), we should get our priorities straight. I would not want a bigger television at the expense of living in a filthy polluted desert.
The first thing I thought when I saw those charts was 'correlation doesn't equal causation'.
You're joking right? Correlation does not *necessarily* imply causation but it gives you the right to be damned suspicious that it does. And this is a very good correlation, with a known scientific model that points to causation.
So the choice is:
1. Try. Make the environment cleaner in the process and more friendly to other species. Develop technologies that will also help human survive the hotter environment as a side effect.
2. Don't try. Either hope maybe - just maybe - it's not happenning at all or that all the effort is useless anyway. Blindly carry on as far as possible without inconvenciencing oneself and either get *really* lucky and all the statistical data was just an error, or die happily as one of the two hundred last humans on the Earth.
Well... I guess it's a question of personal values and philosophy.
(The bottom line is: how does it matter if humans actually were the major cause, and how does it make it bad to try to reduce human environmental impact? So if it's 50-50 (very optimistic for you) we still have answer that works great in _both_ cases, so why still argue against it?)
It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end. -Douglas Adams
A critical fact in Al Gore's film: after compiling the results of 1,100 serious scientific papers about GW not one suggests that it is anything but man's fault. The percentage of journalistic articles suggesting that it may not be man's fault: 53%.
This is an extremely important point. From reading regular articles, many people believe that the scientific community is evenly balanced on the question of whether human activity is causing global warming.
There's a trap in journalism that can cause this. In an effort for scientifically untrained reporters to report "fairly", they may try to get both sides of a story, even if the other side is not scientifically valid. This leads to the disproportionate number that you quoted above.
That said, there are enough reports that news articles and supposedly scientific studies have been influenced by corporations that I can't blame the journalists entirely.
AFAIK the industrial economy of the USA is heavily subsidized by the government, especially the heavy industry, like metallurgic plants.
With such subsidies, industries tend to invest less on their infra-structure, use less than optimal processes, be less productive and pollute more.
I think that the real problem here is that the USA don't want to pay the price that everybody else already payed to be able to compete on the global market. Take for example the metallurgic industry, here at Brazil we have the most competitive, and efficient, plants... yet the Brazilian steel has a hard time to enter into the USA market because of the subsidies.
If anything, investing on more modern equipment, that pollute less and is more efficient, would drive the USA industry forwards and probably increase the number of jobs. But its easier to rely on governments subsidies.
Just my $0.02
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
It's a multipart question, and the people who either have a vested interest in the answer or a political motivation (ie because they enjoy attacking Republicans/Bush, usually forgetting it was Clinton that refused to sign Kyoto...) cheerfully build strawmen to ignore this.
1) is there climate change?
2) is it caused to a significant degree by human activity?
3) is the result of climate warming bad?
4) can the human activity be changed such that the effect is altered, and what is the opportunity cost for doing so?
(each question is followed by an "if yes, then...")
Few people debate 1; as the poster(s) above pointed out, climate has *always* changed, and is changing. It appears to me that only eco-nuts are claiming that climate should somehow be static from here forward (apparently to remain convenient for humans, ironically). Yet eco-nuts nevertheless like to claim that the 'neanderthals' of the Right are constantly denying 'global warming'. No, as a likely member of this cohort, we don't deny the warming we merely deny your nutball hysteria and most of your solutions, swampie.
2 seems likely, although I haven't seen conclusive proof. We're putting a LOT of heat out, as well as large amounts of CO2. So anecdotally it seems credible to me. But the earth is a BIG system. Almost inconceivably big. Larger shifts in CO2 and temp have occurred historically, and just as quickly, long before humans showed up. It's NATURAL for humans to try to correlate events and their own actions - that's how we got dryads, superstition, and arguably, God - but that doesn't mean they are actually connected causally. Further, it's not impossible that something happens for the first time; it doesn't mean that the observer somehow caused it, no matter how politically convenient he'd find it.
3 NOBODY seems to know, although we managed to live quite successfully at lower tech levels and higher temps at regular periods in our history.
And 4 is what's really under argument. Environmentalists stamping their sandal-clad feet and crying that "we have to" is unpersuasive. And a report claiming that global warming is going to cost X is (nearly) meaningless unless it's compared to the Y cost of mitigation.
Environmentalists' arguments are only going to convince the choir until they first acknowledge that their history of 'global prediction' is really quite bad. Have we run out of clean water? Space for landfills? Food? Trees? Oil? No. None of the 'sky is falling' predictions have come true, so pardon me if I am somewhat skeptical of your latest crisis cry.
-Styopa
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.
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.
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?
This is an excellent point, but it cuts both ways. As you've pointed out, the available evidence during the Middle Ages made an Earth-centered universe viable. Thus, it was entirely possible to rigorously follow the scientific method and still conclude we are at the center.
Rigorously scientific, and quite wrong. This is something that's overlooked all too often -- Science can never promise Truth. The best any theory can hope for is to be very well verified. Please don't get me wrong -- the Scientific Method works better than any other method known to us. We can never know with absolute certainty that our conclusions are true, but using any other method is much worse. I'm not advocating that we replace Science with something else; I'm just pointing out that the conclusions are never absolute.
This is something to keep in mind with the current global warming debate. The evidence suggests that human burning of carbon fuels is a big part of the problem. A strong majority of Scientists across multiple disciplines are convinced we need to do something about it. But they could be wrong.
Your argument is that our data are statistically insignificant. Your general position, I assume, is that people should be rational and not panic. I agree with the latter but the former is a flawed argument.
Much of the planet's 4 billion years has been spent in a slow process of stabilization. Complex life is relatively recent (and therefore, you would say, "statistically insignificant"). Human existence is even less statistically significant among all life. However, the conditions for human life have been favourable during this "statistically insignificant" period. So it ~is~ a reasonable inquiry to analyze this period and conclude that something is changing in what we can prove has been relatively constant for us and other creatures.
Since I doubt that you breathe car exhaust and eat plastics, I assume you understand the threat to the environment and biodiversity that 6-8-10 billion humans represent, that the collapse of the food chain is no fantasy, and that man-made pollutants have permeated the biosphere.
There are several points of interdependency between living things and climate. We are affecting both in ways that must be evident to people who give themselves the trouble to think, observe, and read. It is reasonable to conclude that human activity is at least a significant contributing factor in any remarkable change, because our impact on the environment has been significant.
There are planetary processes that we cannot control. But we are affecting things that affect planetary processes.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
- 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.
Yes, but when scientists "across multiple disciplines" are all weighing in on what the right conclusion should be on a question of climate science, that's a pretty good indication that something other than science is going on.
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.
Trouble is...this isn't just a happy world of cooperating peoples. It is made up of countries in competition for everything! Competition for land...resources...food....economic power. Until there is some kind of one world order (God forbid), this will be the way of things. If something, while good for the world at large, will be detrimental to a country economically, then, it won't be done.
I don't personally see the 1st world countries willingly sacrificing their lifestyle and world position for the 'greater good'.
No one claws their way to the top, just to willingly let go and slide back down, no matter what the cause....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
First of all the planet can easily sustain a populous double our current size, if people would just use the grey matter known as our brains that we have been greatly blessed with.
Of course we can, we just have to be more efficient and cooperative and/orreduce our quality of living. But, since that isn't happening because people like you revile the concept of cooperation claiming it is opposed to natural selection, expect to be naturally selected and removed from the populace or have your quality of living greatly reduced.
I hear so many of the far leftists say "stop breeding" and such mantra to that effect...
"Leftists? Left and right are artificial political assignations used to oversimplify politics so it can be superficially reported to people with below average IQs. Trying to imply that those assigned to the left end of the spectrum think others should stop breeding is a big stretch. It sounds a lot more like you're looking to vilify a group, out of mental laziness.
Umm, I don't think you are properly using the word "unquestionably." Promiscuity has a strong positive relationship with poverty, low education rates, and adherence to particular religions including catholicism and some protestant sects. Those traits have a negative correlation with members of political groups generally assigned to the "left." I'd say it is more than questionable. Just as a side note, calling groups "hypocritical is meaningful only if you can demonstrate that contradictory actions are those of an individual, or large number of individuals. If half of the people in a town publicly claim guns are evil and half are gun owners the town is not hypocritical.
It will be a very long time before we have discovered all of the species of the ocean, let alone consumed said species.
Perhaps you're misunderstanding the meaning of "sustainable." It means live in such a way that our supplies will not run out in the foreseeable future. If we're gradually reducing the number of species by consuming them, we're not behaving in a sustainable manner.
Again, there are laws of selection that nature lives by, and if left alone all will balance out.
This is a weak cop out. It is simply a denial of responsibility. "Nature" will take care of things. It is true, but the way it takes care of things might be to eliminate our species or kill off large portion in a slow and painful way, like starvation. One of the defining traits of humanity is intelligence. Thus we define goals and then logically address how best to achieve those goals. Depending upon your definitions that may or may not be "natural."
This 'make everyone equal (financially) so they can all have the same lobster dinner' and such mentality...
Wow, way to cram a lot of logical fallacies into a small amount of words. Argument by association is where you assume people that hold one view must hold another (worried about global warming means you must favor extreme socialism) and then you argue against the second point without ever addressing the first point. This is wrong because people don't all hold the same sets of opinions and because even if the second opinion is wrong, it does not mean the first one is.
The "left" is a nebulous assignation. By definition it cannot crete propaganda. More importantly, propaganda requires a deceitful motivation. What is the motivation of marine biologists and fishing organizations around the world to misstate the facts about fishing harvest sizes. How come most of the fish I can now buy in the supermarket was considered to be "junk" 50 years ago and not suitable for people to eat since other types were plentiful and better? Is i
You can't infer any correlation [...] with the limited dataset provided above.
Exactly. So let's fill out the known facts in that situation.
Planetary Fact Sheet
Venus
- CO2 by volume: 96.5% (965,000ppm)
- Surface Pressure: 92 Bars
- Distance from Sun: 108.2 million km
- Average temperature: 464C
Earth- Distance from Sun: 149.6 million km
- Surface Pressure: 1 Bar
- CO2 by volume: 350ppm
- Average temperature: 15C
MarsGiven those facts, it is very easy to come to substantiated conclusions about CO2's effect, as well as solar intensity's effect, on temperature.
My point is that there are more factors affecting temperature than the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Your point was made by ignoring key facts and going "well, gee... what if?"
I would be interested to know how you justify that claim. We do have decent historical carbon dioxide records via ice cores, and temperature proxies, but the high resolution short term data doesn't support your claim at all, and the longer term data which does, at least, provide significant changes in carbon dioxide and temperature are simply of far too poor a resolution to make any claims about "just as quickly": ice core co2 records that cover previous interglacial periods have resolution of around 500 years; moreover they don't show changes in carbon dioxide as large as what we are currently witnessing; records that go further back to periods with significantly higher carbon dioxide levels have resolution that is orders of magnitude worse.
When mankind lived through previous changes in glacial/interglacial change the rate of change was more than likely slower. More significantly the lower technology levels of the time (and, equally importantly, lower populations) likely actually helped: humans were sparsely spread and nomadic - if climate changed then groups ould easily move to new areas. What we face now is a far denser population where any movement of significant percentages of population with have dramatic effects, and significant amounts of investment in fixed non-moile infrastructure. We can't just pick up and move all our farming infrastructure somewhere else at the drop of a hat - any transition would be costly and significant. Ultimately if you want an accounting of costs then ask an economist. The UK government did, and the result is the Stern Review from Nicholas Stern, a world respected economist. By his accounting (and it was an extremely detailed and in depth study - some 700 pages of report) the effects will be detrimental. Expect more such reports from other economists in the near future.
At this point I would again direct you to the Stern Review which is specifically what you ask for: an accounting of the costs of both inaction, and a comparison of those costs with an equally detailed accounting of the costs of mitigation. The results were that, providing mitigation action was taken sooner rather than later, the costs of mitigation efforts would more than repay themselves within 50 years. Indeed, costs of mitigation could amount to around 1% of global GDP if taken now, while inaction was expected to cost between 5% and 20% of global GDP by 2050. And just to reiterate: this was a detailed report from a respected economist (former chief economist for the World Bank), not a bunch of "sandal clad hippies".
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