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Utah Assembly Passes Resolution Denying Climate Change
cowtamer writes "The Utah State Assembly has passed a resolution decrying climate change alarmists and urging '...the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its "Endangerment Finding" and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated.' Here is the full text of H.J.R 12." The resolution has no force of law. The Guardian article includes juicy tidbits from its original, far more colorful, version.
It would disprove global warming if the planet were not getting warmer. It may seem obvious, but global warming is proven by the fact that the globe is getting warmer. 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record. The real question now is the cause of global warming. Despite the fact that carbon dioxide levels are significantly higher than they've ever been since humans first evolved, and most of that CO2 is man-made, there are people who claim that mankind is not having an effect on climate. Still, much of the cause and effect evidence is circumstantial and therefore assailable. And rightly so if you've got alternate hypotheses. But to simply say "nuh-uh!" isn't very scientific.
As for how a warmer atmosphere affects local weather, it WILL both raise and lower precipitation. In cold months you'll get a lot more precipitation coming out of the atmosphere since there's a lot more moisture up there. It snows more near freezing than it does at -20F, so warming air, pumping it with water, then cooling it to just below freezing is a great recipe for snowstorms. But the cool air has to come from somewhere-- thus Alaska's record high temperatures this year and Canada's difficulty getting enough snow for the Winter Olympics. In the summer, though, the already warm air will now be that much warmer, which means it can hold more moisture without raining, meaning that you'll get droughts in tropical areas where there used to be rain. Add to that the devastation that will occur when the glaciers have melted and all that freshwater stops flowing, and we're in for interesting times.
E pluribus unum
There are some factors you're apparently unaware of. The long-term trend over many decades is roughly 0.15C or so, but on the scale of a particular decade, roughly 4 main variables influence warming: CO2 excess, El Nino cycles, solar radiance, and aerosol cooling (volcanoes, say). Over the last 12 years we've had, in combination, a decrease in El Nino heating from a record 1998 (which is why many "skeptics" pick this year as a starting point) as well as a cooling cycle in solar radiation. They both operate on roughly the same timescale. Underneath that, the CO2 excess from humans contributes a fairly constant 0.2C per decade of warmth, which is why the last decade and a half have shown roughly flat temperature increases instead of the expected cooling. If you look at the temperature plots, you can see this "wiggle" happening on a regular basis. We'd then expect, over the next decade, to have rapidly increasing temperatures as all the warming factors are positive, then probably a flat profile after that. The long-term trend, as shown in the plots, is still rising.