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2008 Is the Coldest Year of the 21st Century
dtjohnson writes "Data from the United Kingdom Meteorological Office suggests that 2008 will
be an unusually cold year due to the La Nina effect in the western
Pacific ocean. Not to worry, though, as the La Nina effect has
faded recently so its effect on next year's temperatures will be
reduced. However, another natural cycle, the Atlantic
Multidecadal Oscillation, is predicted to hold global temperatures
steady for the next decade before global warming takes our planet into
new warmth. If these predictions are correct, there must be
a lot of planetary heat being stored away somewhere ... unless the heat
output from the sun
is decreasing
rather than increasing
or the heat being absorbed by the earth is decreasing due to changes in
the earth's albedo."
It's La Niña.... not some chick called Nina.
Oh arse
we're seeing the best ski season since 1992. There are now around 4.5 metres of base snow at Mt Ruapehu http://www.mtruapehu.com/winter/turoa-report/
Those of us who are paranoid about the sun have got some justification for our beliefs. First off, the new solar cycle is somewhat late, depending on who you believe. Secondly, there have been very few sunspots this year. In fact, right now, we have gone 30 days without a single sunspot.
http://www.solarcycle24.com/
Fire up those SUVs and coal plants, little ice age, here we come.
This is my sig.
Short answer, yes.
Long answer, even a warmer climate has stretches of cold years. Sounds like thing are pretty much consistent with the currently accepted climate models, at least for the time being.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
A) It does affect them
B) Few that rejects it. less then 1%. I'm talking qualified people here.
C) It does have short term impact
D) It is impacting people right now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Even so, 2008 is set to be about the 10th warmest year since 1850, and Met Office scientists say temperatures will rise again as La Nina conditions ease.
I hate to point out the obvious, but global warming models do not predict a year over year increase in temperature. Again, from the article:
"The principal thing is to look at the long-term trend," said Dr Kennedy. "2008 will still be significantly above the long-term average. There's been a strong upward trend in the last few decades, and that's the thing to focus on."
I came here for a good argument
You forgot the link: http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/001857.php
Just callin' it like I see it.
Don't harm this person's karma. He posted during the same 60 seconds that the above poster did!
Nobody says that climate change isn't happening. The temperature data is fact. It can't be denied any more than it can denied that the sky is blue.
Any serious debate is over whether humans are causing the change, whether it's a problem, and whether we should try doing something about it.
The "problem" is that there are periods in history where it was warmer than it is now, without all of the man-made air pollution.
Maybe not
Perhaps you should cite your images.
The graphs I've seen generally seem to be full of local maxima and minima. A hot period, followed by a cool period but with the overall trend continuing being upwards (ie each hot/cold cycle is warmer than the previous hot/cold cycle).
The El Nino and La Nina temperature fluctuations seem to be fairly well understood.
Ten years is not that long a time in terms of geographical-scale phenomena. It's pointless to look at the last ten years outside the context of the last 100.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
That's right! Because taxi drivers and armchair geeks know better than the people studying the issues! Bunk! You tell 'em.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
Both of you are assuming that the Earth's climate has ever been stable, but even if it is stable, who's to say that it's becoming unstable now? We've seen evidence of relatively severe fluctuations in the climate, the ice age for example, which suggest that it's normal for the climate to change. To us it seems significant but when taken in the proper scope it's likely to be business as usual.
Getting people worked up about things nobody can change is simply an ace-in-the-hole for politicians.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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I think it's very telling that you call it "the ice age", as if there's only been one. There have been thousands of freezing periods throughout the Earth's history. So when people like you refer to "the ice age", I tend to dismiss them as not having much of a clue what they're talking about. Were you to say "the most recent ice age", then I'd listen. At least it shows that you at least have some idea about what the Earth has been through.
It's still redundant. The purpose of moderation is to improve the discussion.
Deposed two dictatorships, disarmed one nuclear nation (working on number two), saw Syria out of Lebanon, and joined a nation against a new foreign power. Yeah..... Horrible... Should have bombed a aspirin factory, a Yugo plant, and had foreign commanders set it up so that our troops corpse dragged through the streets. Now that diplomacy!
CO2 content 2x higher than it has ever been in the history of our planet? Where are you pulling this garbage from?
CO2 levels were [b]11x higher[/b] 500 million years ago. 3x as high just 100 million years ago. This is all through proxy measurement, but if it's even remotely accurate then atmospheric CO2 levels today are some of the lowest in the last 500 million years. There's a nice article all about it that you might want to read.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
The difference is that unlike a top, the climate will eventually begin to restabilize.
A top will also restabilize-- when it eventually comes to rest on its side.
Just sayin'.
"Nobody says that climate change isn't happening. The temperature data is fact. It can't be denied any more than it can denied that the sky is blue."
All that temperature data tells us is that temperatures have risen At Thermometers. GLOBAL WARMING SCIENCE HAS MOVED ON.
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
"The last ice age was before the start of the Holocene, over 11,000 years ago. Not, as you claim the "late 19th centure[sic].""
Uhh, the Little Ice Age ended in the late 19th century.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I'm fairly certain that the world is at it's peak production capacity of oil, making the supply portion of the argument a moot point. As for the demand portion, we're slowly making progress towards lowering our demand for oil by driving fuel efficient cars and using alternative forms of energy generation. It's convenient to blame someone for the problem, but the truth is we all knew this day was coming and nobody took steps to try and stop it until it was too late and all of a sudden we're paying four dollars a gallon at the pump... It'll get worse before it gets better.
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
Yes we do. We've been warming since 1830 as sunspots have increased after the Little Ice Age. For details, see the Svensmark book.
If his solar-driven model is correct, and if Solar Cycle 24 continues its petulant refusal to actually exist, then the entire-20th-C.-warming plunge over the last year and a bit is just a little foretaste and things are about to get very cold indeed.
No, he is thinking of an inconvienient truth and either the third or fourd IPCC assesment which both claimed sea level rises that would have put Manhattan largely under watter. The highest natural point in manhattan is around 265 feet above sea level. A good portion of the burrow is under 12 meters which makes it particularly vulnerable.
Skeptic didn't make the claim. They made fun of the claim.
Yep, and I've seen programs touting that that area of NY is way overdue for a hurricane to hit there. You think it was bad when NOLA flooded...it will be bad there, they have the same nightmare scenario as we do down here.
Some links here and here from NYC and this one that details in 1893 where a whole island off the cost disappeared....
I do have to guess....that emergency response will be a bit better for NY than it was here...just my guess.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
A 5 to 10 percent decrease in energy use will be offset by population growth in as little as 3-6 years. That the problem with thinking we can inflate our tires out of this as some people think. In case your wondering how an average of a 3% population increase can offset and savings, it is becuse population growth is exponential and not linear. This means that instead of having 9,030,000 more people next year and every year after, we will have to add the 9 million people and take 3% of that. So instead of having 310,030,000+ 9,030,000 in year two, you have 310,030,00+9,300,900, almost 300,000 more.
Your spot on about the third world countries too. There are generally two reasons for this. The first is that a third world citizen uses on average one sixth the energy as a fist world citizen. That means when they improve to first world status, even with a 10% more efficient world, they will increase their energy consumption 5 fold. The second reason for this is actually the Kyoto accords. Out of 150 some or more signatories, only 37 or 38 are capped and have to reduce emissions. This promoted development into those third world countries so the emissions don't count against you when the product is imported. Europe is doing this with China and India where they are increasingly relying on imports instead of opening or using their existing facilities. As a matter of fact, you can look at the percentage of increase in Chinese imports in say england and the increase is about 5 times as much as the US or any other country not signed onto Kyoto.
Anyways, this off shoring their way into compliance is actually raising the living standards of third world countries faster then their own sets of circumstances would allow. This thereby increases the amounts of energy they use in a greater portion then the population growth. So yes, we are being taken to task on all sides of the demand issue.
I personally don't know why our leaders can't get their thumbs out of their asses and do both, get more fuels as well as make things more efficient and less energy intensive. It's pretty horrid that that congress went on vacation when people wanted to discuss this issue and get something done about it. I understand that the republicans were showboating their commitment by staying in Washington and giving speeches to anyone who entered congress over the needs to do something sooner then later. But the gas prices weren't this high when they were in control and they were the ones wanting to do something about it when the dems decided a vacation was more important at the same time people where spending their mortgage payments on gas to get to work.
I say damn it all, take both sides positions and put them into effect all at once. It is like the big plan Kerry had for winning in Iraq that he refused to tell anyone about after he lost the election. If it is so damn good, then why waste it when your side doesn't win. Use it and for once, be about the country and the people in it instead of you and your parties success. Most races bring up good ideas and suggestions on both sides. It is time to stop using them for political advantage and just do what's good for America.
No, while this did circulate in the news for quite sometime, it turns out to have been an artifact of coding mistakes. Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) are well below the entire 20th century.
You are kidding, right? You must have missed the quote by GORE that he intentionally LIED about Global Warming, justifying it by saying that it was necessary to engender the necessary degree of hysteria among the masses.
Obviously, you were too caught up in your stereotyping to notice.
As for Gore being in line with science, the vast amount of time it would take to list all of the websites that completely debunk An Inconvenient Truth tell me that you're intentionally ignorant, since the truth is available to us all.
Please tell AOL to revoke your internet account - it's obviously being wasted.
I live in foggy San Francisco and the solar panels on my roof turn the electric meter the correct direction on cloudy days.
For polar climates that have periods of minimal day time lack of light is an issue, but clouds are not much of an issue.
Diesel buses are a much bigger issue as they leave sediment that requires cleaning the damn roof.
If solar was given the same tax breaks as petro chemical fuels are the US would probably be about 50% solar.
Work bio at MMWD
If you actually look at how the models are constructed, it's really quite horrifying. If they do turn out to be anywhere even vaguely in the neighborhood of right, it'll be by pure chance, as they are literally guesswork. And embarrassingly simplistic guesswork at that.
Personally, I think Svensmark is on to something with his cosmic ray vs. cloud theories, and since Solar Cycle 24 is being considerate enough to conduct a real world experiment for us by steadfastly refusing to get started, we'll have solid verification (or falsification) of them within a couple years it's looking like and probable consequent showing up quite irrefutably of all the AGW alarmists.
That would be a rather Pyrrhic victory for the scientific method, mind you, since a new Little Ice Age would be a pretty much unmitigated catastrophe all around...
In 1908? More like 1800 :-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It really doesn't matter because a declaration of a state of emergency wasn't enough at the time for the feds to step in. All it did was expedite the process in which the state could ask for help because the state of emergency was already declared. Also, the link for the source doesn't provide a web page for the material;. If you follow the source, it prints something that on my printer that is nothing but gibberish. I don't even get a title that I can read.
Anyways, the Wikki article is misleading because the declaration of a state of emergency isn't or wasn't at the time, enough to send FEMA or troops in for assistance. This required a separate request afterwards. If you were to continue reading that page, it would clearly explain this. If you were to read even more of the article you cited, you would see the quote Nagin and Blanco were criticized for failing to implement New Orleans' evacuation plan and for ordering residents to a shelter of last resort without any provisions for food, water, security, or sanitary conditions. Perhaps the most important criticism of Nagin was that he delayed his emergency evacuation order until 19 hours before landfall, which led to hundreds of deaths of people who (by that time) could not find any way out of the city. ABC news reported that when natural disasters strike, it is the primary responsibility of state and local governments -- not the federal government -- to respond. and then state how that failed.
Of course Blanco took the position that Bush was sincere and honestly attempting to help in this PBS/Front line interview. She blames most of it on the chaos and time it took to move people around. Unfortunately, she doesn't acknowledge that she failed to follow the state disaster response plane and request help through the proper channels in a timely manor. This is illustrated in this CNN interview. I suggest that you watch all of it then edit your Wikipedia page to reflect the truth and reality that was. I'm not sure why you took the stand you did when the rest of the page you cited pretty much falsifies the part you quoted. This failure to ask for the proper help in the proper manor used to be right on the wiki page you cited. That is why wikipedia will never be a complete and valid source of information. I wouldn't rely on it as fact if I was you.
Quit your damn uninformed fear mongering. First of all, a national state of emergency needs to be declared first. The federal government can't declare one in an areas if the state support it because congress with remove the emergency. Secondly, congress reviews the state of emergencies or national emergencies(see both 1621 and 1622) and can revoke them just as they can revoke the ability to use troops if ever necessary by removing the national emergency with a simple joint resolution. Third, the administration, whoever is president, h
In sweden and increasingly here in Finland, people drill a deep hole (like a well) and have a rod in the hole with a heat-exchanger, pulling heat from the ground to heat the house. Works, even in cold winters - see, you don't need geysers for geothermal energy.
That thing on wheels is uncomfortable, slow, tough to start and needs that stinky liquid - I much rather use my old trustworthy horse. ;)
It's called progress, refinement and advancement in technology. We have to start somewhere instead of just dismissing as "if it was easy it would have been done already".
Then it turns out the world wasn't warming, so 'global warming' went out the window,
Yes, and the artic ice isn't disappearing.
The growing season isn't extending.
The birds aren't nesting earlier.
None of these things are happening.
Setting aside the fact that basically all oceans are outside national borders -- why they're called international waters
Yes, setting that aside.... uhm... because "international waters" begin 200 nautical miles offshore.....
have you heard of Enron and power "deregulation" in California a few years back.
Yeah, you can sell power to other states at market rates... neato.
In addition, are you aware of how large the US is? Do you know of any power lines that stretch over 1,000 miles between a power station and a home? The prices may be regulated, but electrical loss and electrical resistance do not give a rat's ass about in-state vs. out-of-state vs. international.
It is impossible to be more than about 1500 miles from a coast anywhere in the United States.
HVDC transmission lines remain economical, in terms of electrical losses, to a distance of about 4,000-6,000 miles. The longest currently operating singe transmission lines in the world are around 1,200 miles. Losses are not zero, but for the most part are relatively negligible.
I find this particularly ironic, seeing how you just blatantly misused any number of diciplines from electrical engineering to physics to geography AND probably economics and politics. America!! Fuck Yeah!!
Not all "nukes" are trying to replicate Chernobyl contrary to popular belief, and I don't see us running out of thorium anytime soon.
While thorium has slightly less transuranic byproducts, it still produces a number of radioactive wastes. I'll also point out this quote from the article you cited:
"This is a market economy so the economics will have to be in favor for thorium to move that way," said Kazimi. "It could take another 50 years for us to reach the level where uranium prices are so high that thorium looks attractive."
Bottom line: too many people. Conserve all you want, and I applaud you for doing so; however, unless we can reduce our population substantially, even the most efficient home times a few billion is more than wind and solar -- and maybe even nuclear -- can bear.
While I agree about overpopulation, electricity is NOT the reason for this problem, food is. The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will EVER be obtained from the all of earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas and fissionable elements combined.
Simply put, roofing houses with high efficiency solar cells would solve most of our issues. Areas of low sunlight coverage (which are ironically, mostly coastal) can rely on a lot of other things, such as hydro, geothermal or tidal resources.
Non-renewable fuels (Thorium included) are awfully nice short-term solutions, but are... by definition, non-renewable. They also have byproducts (even if they are slightly less noxious than what we currently use).
I don't see a huge number of people in the US putting up quite the same effort in staying childless, but I guess that's just a little too much to ask.
You DO REALIZE that in the United States, Canada, Europe, and much of Asia, the birth rate is below the replacement rate ? You knew that, right??? Or is that one of those "lazy social science" things?
Being smug and condescending is fun.
But you really sound like an idiot when almost every smug and condescending statement you make is factually incorrect.
already sitting there burning at the same rate underground right now
You clearly don't understand nuclear physics.
Thorium natural isotope has a half-life 13 billion years (yes, 13 billion).
Uranium's natural isotope has a half-life of 4.4 billion years.
Neither are "burning up underground".
Most fuel is created by modifying it to create less stable isotopes. Then, when you put a big pile of it together (and/or bombard it with particles, as in the previous article), it creates a chain-reaction that triggers rapid fission. This is VERY different than half-life decay.
You do, indeed, "burn" it up. I'm not arguing against nuclear power, but just pointing out that your post is pretty much 100% entirely made up gibberish .
People invented this thing called the "battery" about 100 years ago, look into it
The oldest known battery was found on a dig site in Iraq a few years back, and is around 2,300 years old. Technology has improved a little bit since then, fortunately.
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Yes, setting that aside.... uhm... because "international waters" begin 200 nautical miles offshore.....
Very few nations have decided their international waters go as far out as 200nm. The vast majority still observe a 12 mile limit, and quite a few still observer the old 3 mile limit. The few that have a 200 mile limit do so because they wish to lay claim to fishing waters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Do keep in mind, that ordering a city evacuation late is normal...you don't usually know till that far out where the storm will hit. And you get so many scares along the coast, that you can just flinch everytime a storm is out in the Gulf 48-72 hours away from landfall anywhere.
But that being said...my experience with Katrina was (and let me preface this by saying "I" historically have split town 48+ hours early when any storm got close)...sitting in a bar on Friday afternoon-evening watching Katrina as a small possibly Cat 1 storm tops hugging the west coast of FL. I was awakened Sat. morning about 9am with people asking what I was going to do...I asked "do about what?". Then turned on the news, and saw that overnight, the storm somehow had moved VERY rapidly across the Gulf to threaten us at Cat. 5 strength.
I heard on tv while packing and trying to get ready to leave...the Mayor and most all officials saying to leave town, and leave now. To me, that is more than official enough.
I left town to Slidell, met up with friends and hit the road east about 5am Sunday morning.
That's how much notice we had...
But anyway, please don't think that "Oh, they knew 3-4 days in advance that the hurricane was coming". It wasn't that way, and it is never that way.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Batteries are absolutely fucking awful at storing energy.
However, there are plenty of natural 'batteries' you can use. Here in the UK we have massive reservoirs on top of mountains. We pump water up in a glut, and generate in a demand surge. Plus you get free energy from all the rain we have.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Can someone point me, with no magical PhD to set me straight, where I've gone wrong?
Certainly...
First, we had global warming which was supposed to obviously describe the global increase in temperatures affecting climate everywhere...
No, I don't think anyone has ever seriously pushed that except perhaps some VERY misguided media. "Global Warming" (better referred to as Climate Change) causes a gradual and non-linear rise in average global temperature. If it's 0.1 degrees cooler there, and 0.2 degrees warmer here, then the global average is higher. So, it's quite possible for some places to be colder.
It's ALSO quite possible for some time periods to be colder. If it's 0.1 degrees cooler this year, and 0.2 degrees warmer next year, then over 2 years, the temperature has increased by 0.05 per year. Some places may even be completely unaffected for long periods and experience a very stable climate, while others have more drastic effects. When you're talking global averages, there's a LOT of room to move on smaller scales.
...and was supposed to already be in effect.
It is already in effect - things are warmer now than they would be were we not affecting the environment.
However, another natural cycle, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, is predicted to hold global temperatures steady for the next decade before global warming takes our planet into new warmth.
Now with this it seems global warming isn't actually supposed to be here, yet.
That's not really right either. The temperature is currently warmer than it should be - let's call it "warm". It will REMAIN "warm" for around 10 years, and will then get WARMER. That's a flat point on a graph, but it's definitely not saying that we haven't started warming yet! Also, as with any chaotic system, it may have fluctuations within the next 10 years as well - it may be REALLY hot in 2012, and REALLY cold in 2015, but these alone would mean nothing at all. If it was ALSO really cold in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and onwards, and we saw a trend of it getting colder and colder during those years, then we'd need to seriously rethink our ideas about climate change. That may happen, although it's more likely not to.
Of course, the big difference between the 21st century global climate change and the pre-Ice Age global climate change is that somehow the humans are at fault for the present predicament
Yes, that is one big difference (we're not the SOLE cause, but we're not helping). The other big difference (and in fact, the one which leads to the conclusion that is the first difference) is how quickly it's happening... the pre-Ice Age climate change took a long time, and was very gradual. This climate change is happening MUCH more quickly.
And here I thought warming and cooling were just normal climate changes which have occurred irregardless of human existence.
They are perfectly normal, and would happen "irregardless(sic) of human existence". However, that doesn't mean that our activities can't ALSO have an effect on the environment.
All clearer for you now?
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Ok, no need for the acid tongue please. You guys are proving to be really good at misconstruing just about everything I have said.
Point out to me where I have suggested we do nothing? Point out to me where I have said modeling is useless? Don't patronise me, I know full well the usefulness of advanced modeling. This does not mean we should not USE CAUTION when making predictions with computer simulations.
Furthermore, the examples you cite are not even remotely as complicated problems as modeling the behaviour of all the gasses surrounding our entire planet. All of the examples you cite involve models that can make predictions which can be directly tested in a short time period. Invariably the models are found to be lacking and are corrected as needed. With climate modeling it is a case of 50 years or more before the predictions can be tested against our models. Then they will be corrected, then another huge gap and we might start to get a clearer picture. And you want politicians to formulate policy based on this vague understanding of nature?
Either way, you have more or less proven my point. I make the mere suggestion that we err on the side of caution when using a simplified computer model to predict the behaviour of a poorly understood physical phenomenon and this invites me to be ridiculed. This is precisely the problem I have been talking about.