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James Hansen on the Warmest Year Brouhaha
Jamie writes "In response to earlier reports, Dr. James Hansen, top climate scientist with NASA, has issued a statement on the recent global warming data correction. He points out 'the effect on global temperature was of order one-thousandth of a degree, so the corrected and uncorrected curves are indistinguishable.' In a second email he shows maps of U.S. temperatures relative to the world in 1934 and 1998, explains why the error occurred (it was not, as reported, a 'Y2K bug') and, in response to errors by 'Fox, Washington Times, and their like,' attacks the 'deceit' of those who 'are not stupid [but] seek to create a brouhaha and muddy the waters in the climate change story.'"
I know it's hip to hate Fox News... But the actual article describes the people denying global warming is man made as a "fringe group" and includes quotes from British researchers pointing out that it really doesn't matter on a global scale.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
According to this article in Scientific American ($), they've come to the conclusion with 80% certainty that global climate change is not only real, but is caused by human activities. They're new 2007 assessment report isn't on the website yet, but it is discussed in SciAm, so it should be there shortly, I believe. Methodologies are discussed pretty well in the SciAm piece.
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This article does not sound like it was written by a scientist, it sounds like a poor little man who is outraged and upset that anyone would question his admitidly flawed data. I think he needs to take a pill. If Global Warming has increased the earths tempature from .3-.6 C then a .15C IS a big deal.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
Oops.
Link to the SciAm piece.
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The temperature in the US has little effect on the global mean value of the temperature (the US is only 2% of the area of the Earth). But the US is one of the top (or the top) polluter of greenhouse gases. That's why there's criticism, the US's share of the pollution is a lot larger than its share of land area or population.
Europe is getting icredibly hot in the last decade or two. Older people dying in scores from heat and the electricity supply networks need an overhaul because of millions of new air conditioning units added every year. Agriculture is taking a big hit. Most europeans would gladly convert to the religion of Manitou if he managed to vanish the yankee and their SUVs and replace them with noble redskins on their mustangs.
It really doesn't matter if I ride public transport and bicycle, use only one TV set, install CFL lightbulbs when a pig fat american fires up a six liter V8 hemi street tank just to go a to the grocery a few hundred yards afar. Some 60% of US air pollution is from traffic.
If America was humble enough to ask for high-speed railways, both France and Japan would build and run transcontinental superexpresses for free, just to get rid of USA's coast-to-coast car and plane traffic, which are major polluters.
What yankees spew chokes all other people on Earth. In Australia you essentially cannot leave the house now for much of the summer due to 43-47 centigrades hot every day, plus the huge UV dosage (the southern pole ozone hole still hasn't healed). People watch each other day and night, like in a police state, because there are so bad water tap restrictions as reservoirs evaporate faster than ever.
Globall, we are close to a tipping point, but you cannot see this from the USA.
Ok, I admit, I had to look this one up:
Usufruct is the legal right to derive profit or benefit from the property of others. It comes from the latin roots for "use" and "fruits," in the sense that you are using the fruits of someone else's labor.
Wikipedia
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary
a legal Dictionary
In the case of Hansen's second email, he is, I think, using it to describe how captains of industry are benefitting from the global warming nay-sayers' spin on this correction. He also uses it in the sense that successive generations have a right and claim to the enjoy the Earth, so we'd better take care of it, even as we benefit from it.
In fact, Media Matters has never received funding from progressive philanthropist George Soros.
See how easy that was?
It just went through Moveon.org first
"According to the March 10, 2004, Washington Post, "The Democratic 527 organizations have drawn support from some wealthy liberals determined to defeat Bush. They include financier George Soros who gave $1.46 million to MoveOn.org (in the form of matching funds to recruit additional small donors); Peter B. Lewis, chief executive of the Progressive Corp., who gave $500,000 to MoveOn; and Linda Pritzker, of the Hyatt hotel family, and her Sustainable World Corp., who gave $4 million to the joint fundraising committee."
and from Media Matters page on Wiki
"Media Matters has received financial support from MoveOn.org"
What a surprise, Media Matters lied.
More understandably, they neglected to mention that May 1934 was some of the worst weather to hit the US for a long time, and it wiped out the agriculture of many states, it was called the "Dust Bowl". And it was caused by agriculture concerns that had no concern whatsoever for the environment. So they are pointing back to an earlier environmental disaster.
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Of course he is trying to save face, but what he said was accurate. The hottest year in the US changed to 1934, from 1998, and the Global Temperature changed only 0.001 (C).
Honestly, if that wasn't sarcasm, then you are part of the problem. "Climate change" is the new buzz word. It, in my opinion, exposes, at the very least, the mindset of the people behind this. Those people are "buzzword hacks" and not "responsible scientist"
::insert common thing:: will kill you (or "the children")
::insert same common thing:: will kill you (or "the children")
Science in the media:
next news cycle:
lack of
It is only about the ratings.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Did you look at the graph? The error wasn't in anybody's favor. It was negligable.
The overall shape of the graph is the same - a 0.8 degree rise in average temperature over the last century with increasing slope.
I was in the Bahamas last year measuring water temperature, beach erosion and doing population counts to provide data on why coral is dying off all over the world. Its a complex topic but one of the leading culprits is ocean warming. Coral is adapted to a narrow range. Once the coral reefs are gone, which will be soon, say goodbye to fish diversity and sandy beaches.
I live in New England, the recent scare is over West Nile virus. According to the CDC, over 15,000 people in the U.S. have tested positive for WNV infection since 1999 and over 500 have died.
Don't make the mistake of assuming that a small change in temperature won't have a significant effect.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
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Compare two hypotheses: (1) Global warming is primarily caused by the sun, cosmic rays, or some other external factor. (2) Global warming is primarily caused by humans. (Yes, there are other possible hypotheses.)
If hypothesis 1 is right, you would expect most of the planets to be showing warming over any small period of time. If hypothesis 2 is right, you would expect approximately half of the other planets to be showing warming (and the other half to be showing cooling). Unfortunately, with 7 other planets, it's hard to rely on the law of large numbers to distinguish between these two hypotheses. (If you got 5 heads out of 7 coin flips, would you assume the coin was biased? The only thing you could say for certain was that heads weren't on both sides of the coin.) Of course, we don't even have data from all 7 of the other planets for a small period of time.
Global warming theories aren't based merely on the correlation between increased CO2 and increased temperature. They're based on fundamental science and complicated models. The fundamental science has been known for over 100 years - complicated models weren't necessary for that. The complicated models are necessary to determine the scope of the greenhouse gas phenomenon (feedback cycles, etc., are non-linear and hence can be very difficult to predict with detail). These models have actually done a pretty good job, and they're getting better. Some people are actually saying now, "In 20 years, this warming will be over, and then the scientists will see how wrong they are." Some people were saying that 20 years ago, too.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Remember, in the distant past the Earth was MUCH warmer than it is right now. It's happened before naturally, and is likely to occur again naturally.
True, global temperature does tend to change naturally over time. But it doesn't usually happen so rapidly. And when it does, it tends to suck for all us organisms living here.
Happy people make bad consumers.
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In fact, your information about Media Matters is outdated.
It would be even easier if you were more thorough.
How could someone like me, familiar with instrumentation, go out and gather data and submit it to the community for inclusion in reporting? You didn't actually look at the NCDC material on the NOAA website did you? It is a collection of a wide variety of climate related data, not simply NOAA data or work. Let's have a little tour. In the ice core section we have Vostok, and Dome C ice core data from Antarctica, GRIP data from Greenland, ice cores from Kilmanjaro, and a glacier in Kenya, and even Peru among many others. How about tree ring data? Why yes, we have tree ring data from innumerable studies from all over the world. Coral data? Got it! Pollen data? Got it! All from many different studies by a wide variety of different people, all providing their data for the archive. There's also cave data, borehole data, and lake data. And that's just the paleo-data. Lord forbid that you should actually have to spend a little while looking for things.
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To wit:
Or to put it another way,
"Sure you can stay at my house for the summer. Just don't trash the place."
1. fewer people dying of cold.
Worldwide, malaria is a leading cause of death. Freezing deaths are negligable.
2. easier/quicker ocean navigation due to new polar routes
You don't mention the accompanying sea level rise and coastal flooding which is a somewhat more serious effect.
3. less road/bridge corrosion due to less salt usage
and less need for roads and bridges with a lower population.
4. coral reefs can be planted in new areas that haven't had them before
Corals are highly adapted to conditions of nutrients, temperature and salinity so this may not work out real well.
5. New agricultural lands in Asia and N. America will open up that should be a net positive on food balance
Where? Agricultural land needs soil. Soil exists where plants have been growing for a long time. Sand and rock are not arable.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
For that matter, the Earth's actual temperature also exceeds its maximum possible temperature according to such energy balance considerations, and that too is because of the greenhouse effect, which adds about 30 degrees C to the global mean temperature. But Mars can throw a wrench into the whole theory Mars is much further from the Sun than is Venus, and more importantly, has almost no atmosphere to speak of. It doesn't matter if it's pure CO2 if there just isn't much of it in the first place. The greenhouse effect depends on the amount of CO2, not just the fraction. Earth's atmosphere contains the following gasses (by volume): nitrogen: 78%, oxygen: 20.95%, argon: 0.93% and finally - carbon dioxide: 0.038% - wow, that's a pretty high concentration - I think we're all going to die. We're not going to die, but that amount of CO2 does contribute to the greenhouse effect. 0.038% looks like a small number, but it's meaningless out of context. You can ingest a small amount of cyanide and still die. You have to multiply the amount of CO2 by its potency as a greenhouse gas.
And again, it's not the relative concentration that matters, but the actual amount. You could dilute the atmosphere with as much non-greenhouse gas as you want, making the GHG concentration arbitrarily small, but the greenhouse effect will be the same since you have the same actual amount of GHGs. (Not exactly true because eventually the atmosphere will turn opaque to visible light, but you get the idea.)
Note, too, that the direct greenhouse warming of CO2 so far only amounts to about a 0.1% increase in the planet's temperature. While that's not big as far as the planet's temperature is concerned, it's important as far as we are concerned. A 10% increase in the planet's temperature would wipe out most life on Earth. We may see an eventual increase of 1 or 2% or more.
Speed.
Corals are slow, human pollution is fast.
If climate change is slow enough, corals will die off at one end and expand at the other, essentially moving as the niche is displaced. If the change is very fast, say two degrees per 100 years or so, the coral won't be able to catch up with the displacement of its niche.
/ Per