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.

Comments

Its not climate change...

[MosesJones]

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.

Re:Its not climate change...

[Kyeev]

Is it not true that in the 1300's and 1400's, the overall global temperature was about 2 degrees warmer than it is now?

Thats only 600 years ago, which is nothing in planetary terms.

Re:Its not climate change...

[dingDaShan]

either that or no serious scientist agreed with ol' Al

Re:Its not climate change...

[RancidMilk]

Greenland used to be farmable. Until you can prove that before the automobile and before the industrial age, the white man was pulluting enough to cause Greenland to not be under ice. I'll believe you. However, since the world could go into an ice age. It is obvious that the world was a lot colder, greenland was a lot warmer, and global warming is just a naturally occuring event. The earth has ways of regulating itself, and that is just what it will do.

Re:Its not climate change...

[jmichaelg]

The grandparent post is correct. Correlation is not causation.

Look closely at Gore's CO2 chart and you'll notice that the CO2 levels can lag the temperature rises. If CO2 was *causing* temperature to rise, CO2 level rises would precede temperature rises.

CO2 is a heat trap as your post suggests (known scientific model...) but water vapor beats the hell out of it in that regard. Rising temperatures lead to more water vaporizing. When water vaporizes, it forms clouds which increase the earth's albedo which reduces insolation which reduces temperature. Climate change is a hell of a lot more complicated than "rising CO2 levels equal higher temperatures."

The climate modelers want you to think they understand earth's climate. But their models have huge lag times between modeling and verification. Contrast the climatologist's problem with the meteorologist's. Both run models as to how the atmosphere is going to behave but the meteorologist's models are constantly being revised in the face of Nature doing something other than what the models predicted. Hell, Katrina hit New Orleans a few days after 6 out of 7 models said she'd harmlessly veer into the Atlantic. It's impressive that even one model made the right call about Katrina but the fact that 6 out 7 "scientific models" were wrong on that particular hurricane should make you cautious about believing forecasts. Climatology models run on much longer cycles and so get much less feedback as to their accuracy. Moreover, climatologists are building their models on very sparse, inaccurate data.

The number of weather reporting stations reached an all time high in the early 90's. When the USSR collapsed, a lot of meteorology stations shut down due to lack of funding. What's interesting is that their data was suspect because due to the USSR's central planning mechanism of allocating fuel based on where the temperature was the coldest, weather stations had an incentive to shade their temperature reports. "Ivan - you wouldn't believe how cold it was here yesterday!" "How cold was it Boris?" "Cold enough to warrant another lump of coal..."

Despite fewer feedback cycles and lousy data, Climatologists claim to be able to forecast global temperatures to the fraction of a degree. It's nonsense and yet a good number of slashdot denizens seem to believe it.

Re:Its not climate change...

[cayenne8]

"Yes, the US should take the lead, especially in research given our position. But that doesn't mean the rest of the world should wait around for some miracle technology to solve the problem."

Well, by the time the world runs out of oil, and blows up from global warming. I'll be dead and in the ground.....so, what do I care?

As Jim Morrison said: "I just want to get my kicks before the whole shit house goes up in flames."

The other side the matter

[rumith]

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

1. 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]
2. There are huge ozon holes near the Earth's poles [true]
3. Ozon is known to decay in reactions with CFCs [true]
4. 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.

Re:If you can't stand the heat, get out of the pla

[Pegasus]

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 :)

All these reports for US?

[zyl0x]

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.

EVERYBODY PANIC

[SiliconJesus]

This is a bunch of fud designed by the people with a vested interested in continued funding towards global warming research.

118,000 years ago huh?

[Dr Kool, PhD]

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?