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Global Warming 'Undeniable,' Report Says
BergZ writes "Scientists from around the world are providing even more evidence of global warming. 'A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record,' the annual State of the Climate report declares. Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, including Canada, the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its analysis of 10 indicators that are 'clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.'"
Aside from that, I'm not really interested in making comments on this anymore because I'm so sick and tired of the armchair idiocy that follows (and somehow gets moderated up). Prediction: Not even 300 scientists from 48 countries and NOAA are going to convince everyone that global warming is real. At this point, I think it's just going to get worse [slashdot.org].
I think, unfortunately, that's the goal of a lot of the posting you refer to --- to frustrate reasonable people and make them get out of the business of commenting. I'd be all in favor of a reasonable, fact-based debate, but the comments on Slashdot rarely make it to that level. (I also tend to think there's a lot of multiple-account posting/moderation nonsense going on, but only the Slashdot editors themselves could prove that.)
I'm somewhat curious about why we got mentioned myself. I mean, I know us Canadians love any acknowledgment that the rest of the world remembers we exist above the states but really? Is it because we're stereotypically cold?
Does it matter if it's anthropogenic? I'm against a hot world with rising seas, melting ice caps and global drought. I'm against all of the other terrible nastiness associated with it. I don't give a damn who we blame, but let's find a way to halt/fix it, shall we?
When you look at it from a longer timescale the ice age isn't completely over yet.
Of course, we might not be able to stop it if it's anthropogenic either. I choose to believe that we have enormous tools and resources at our disposal, and could achieve quite significant change if we wanted to. Modern science is pretty damn impressive. Strictly speaking it is possible to affect the climate globally, whether or not you think it's realistic. And at this point, we'd better be seriously considering trying. Best that current trends not continue.
I'll always vote appropriately... but yeah, otherwise I guess they've won, I stopped caring.
Pretty much.
I have found that apathy is the best approach anyway. Personally, I can make virtually no difference. I limit my trash, try to compost what I can, buy what appears to be more environmentally friendly products (although I'm sure half the things that are marketed so are just lying about it or meet some EPA loophole) and cut my driving down as much as possible. (I don't own a hybrid or anything, but I figure the amount of energy used to create and ultimately dispose of a new car makes my old car energy neutral.)
I do these things because I don't want my own environment to be a dump. I don't want the air in my valley to be smog-ridden. It's that simple.
Is global warming man made? Is it natural? Is it both? Don't know. Don't care. If it's man made it will be solved ONLY when its effects damage the bottom lines of the governments and large businesses the pump out most of the pollution. Until then, a couple people like me trying to live cleaner and more environmentally friendly within our means won't do shit and neither will all the screaming and yelling about the eventual devastation it will cause.
While I believe humans certainly do contribute, what's to be done? Get the government involved? You mean the government that's bought and paid for by polluting companies to do something about it? Ha! If that's your solution, global warming sure as shit isn't your biggest problem. Not even close.
So... focus on your broken political systems, then worry about saving the planet. Global warming will effectively take care of itself when it begins to become costly. Heading it off at the pass will involve reasonable nations, governments and people... none of which actually exist.
How else would you propose to cut emissions and make ecologically friendly technology attractive for investment, other than by making it expensive to do so?
I'm genuinely interested rather than preparing to flame. That bit comes further down the post.
As for the liberal slurs... one can equally say that the other side is historically selfish and in the pockets of big business, the folks who have most to lose if any progress is made on the matter.
And what the fuck is the liberal agenda? (excuse my french) It's the same in the UK and in the US, people going on about liberals screwing everything up all the time, all the while there are few liberals in power in either country. The Democrats in the US sure as hell aren't liberal, they don't have the ethics for it. And the liberal party in the UK has only just become a minor member in a coalition. Yet people have been whining about 'liberals' for a decade now.
The problems I see with current western democracy is nothing to with liberalism. It's the damned authoritarians in charge. The opposite of 'liberal'.
You mean how people might be affected by the Arctic Ocean would be open all year and decrease shipping costs?? Or how growing seasons could shift so that some areas that can't grow much food will now have longer growing seasons, and in areas where people live so transportation costs could decrease? Or how winters would be less severe so fewer people might die?? Or how many low lying areas could be reasonably protected (increasing employment no less), there are already several examples where cities are below sea level. You mean those reasons?? Or how a new NOAA study say that hurricanes will be less severe if the oceans get warmer, so the Gulf of Mexico just might become a safer place to live.
.. for the sake of argument, let's say the earth is warming. Now the question is 'Why?'. If one is is to assume the 'man caused global warming' theory is correct, then decreasing CO2 production might help, but at a very high cost and life style change that will be forced upon people. If they are wrong, and it is just natural, then we might do all this for nothing, and still have to face all the issues.
It's funny how everyone concentrates on the bad effects, but fail to mention the positive effects. One might think they are just trying to push the argument their way instead of getting an unbiased look at ALL the issues.
Ok
The seas are not going to rise over night. The growing seasons are not going to shift next year. We can use reasonable measures to decrease CO2 production that won't destroy economies, and at the same time examine and prepare for the changes that could occur no matter what we do. Just stop all the fanatical fear mongering.
BTW -- I live in Phoenix and ride my motorcycle all year. Global warming?? Bring it on!!!! I'd love for it to be about 3-4 degrees warmer in the 'winter' here, and extend my pool season.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Yes. Artificially increasing the price of energy will harm the poorest of the poor, and increase poverty and misery throughout the world. Cheap energy means better lives for humanity, period. Telling a family in Africa that they have to watch their children die of malnourishment, exposure to the elements and disease because we're going to make it too expensive for them to afford energy is pretty drastic.
#2 might be a reasonable assertion, but #1 is falsified by the historical record. A warmer planet is a better planet for life, period. We've had warmer periods in the past that were not "irreversible", and humanity has flourished during warm periods.
Which Earth was used to conduct these experiments that provided the evidence?
The same Earth that was used to "conduct these experiments" which showed us that dinosaurs used to roam the Earth, that huge asteroids have hit our planet in the past, and that our planet is 4 1/2 billion years old. All fake too, I suppose?
You don't have to personally experience something to have compelling data that it exists. I didn't witness my own conception, but I'm pretty darned sure it actually happened and that I wasn't carried here by a stork or grew out of a head of cabbage. Why? Because all of the available data suggests that's how humans are born.
To go back to this case: there are many causes of climate change (all spelled out in the IPCC AR4, if you care to read it). The studies on each of them are presented, each with their own level of forcings and the confidence interval for each study. There are a wide variety of studies for each type of forcing -- for example, one paper might involve a physics model, while another might involve measurements using a satellite, another might involve a measurement using ground stations, another measurement using balloons with different instruments, and so forth. So you have multiple completely independent lines of evidence for the strength of each forcing. A consensus level of forcing and confidence interval is reached from each forcing. The consensus level shows that GHGs dominate the climate change forcings.
The other leading climate change forcings, such as land use changes, are clearly anthropogenic. But what about GHGs? There are several different approaches that study this. One is "old carbon versus new carbon"; carbon from coal, oil, etc has a different isotopic signature than carbon from decay and the like. Mind you, it's the same signature as with volcanism, but volcanism emissions are readily studied and are utterly dwarfed by manmade emissions. We catalog manmade emissions from different sources (with confidence intervals, of course), and that also shows that the overwhelming amount of carbon contributing to the relentless and steady rise is also anthropogenic and matches the rise very well in terms of magnitude over time. We look at changes in natural carbon sources and sinks and likewise quantify them. Furthermore, we not only look at totals, but where they're coming from; our latest satellites how have the resolution to see new carbon being added to the atmosphere and where it's coming from, and watch the anthropogenic plumes diffuse into the broader atmosphere. When you look at the numbers, there's no doubt where this new carbon is coming from; it's overwhelmingly anthropogenic, with nothing else even close.
Beyond all of this, we use a wide variety of physics models -- both global models and models for specific components. A model can be something as simple as a calculation of radiative heat transfer under different gas mixtures, or as complicated as something that models the sources and sinks over the entire planet and covers all of the various feedback mechanisms. Models are nearly all based on first principles in large part or entirity. Depending on the type of model, they're either validated with lab data or historic climate data.
All in all, the conclusion is the result of literally many thousands of peer-reviewed papers covering a wide variety of disciplines.
I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
Your facts are stale. Humans have consumed more food than we've produced for the last several years. Our global reserves of food are very low, and getting lower every year.
This will be exacerbated when we run out of cheap fossil fuels we use for fertilizer.
We'll see if Malthus can be held off another generation or two... but things aren't looking very rosy for the global food supply-demand equation right now.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Two questions then:
1) What can we actively do to mitigate risk that isn't "drastic"? Just give me an example, any example. If a few taxes, are "drastic" then every day we take "drastic" actions to keep the roads maintained, fund public schools and do a variety of mundane jobs that don't require drastic action. By Webster: Drastic: acting rapidly or violently; extreme in effect or action. Taxes are extreme? Jailing people who use gasoline is extreme, a tax isn't.
2) What is realistically necessary to provide you with "convincing evidence"? Obviously, changing the CO2 levels on an earth clone isn't possible, so what -could- realistically be sufficient evidence for you? If there exist no intersection between realistically possible evidence and evidence you will except as sufficient, that leads to a problem... don't you think? Everyone should have such a intersection for any non-faith belief they have. And global warming defiantly counts as non-faith.
Don't you see difficulty of conversing in a meaningful fashion with you? It seems impossible to provide you with evidence. Without that evidence you call any action at all "drastic". So why don't you tell me, what do you need as evidence, and what action can we then take that meets your approval? Surly you concede that there is the _possibly_ of some situation which would provide you with enough evidence to feel confidant to act, and even without that evidence, surely there must be _something_ we can do to mitigate risk that isn't "drastic". Let me know what those are.
You said "anything that is being advocated may be meaningless and have no effect at all". Yes, that's true. But that is also true with many precautions we take every day. We buy insurance even though we "may" never use it. We still take the precaution because it makes sense. If we're speculating in possibilities you can also say "anything that is being advocated may be the only thing that saves mankind from extinction". What makes us rational creatures is that we don't think that anything that "may" happen is equally likely. We examine evidence, we consider the possibilities and we come to potential conclusions. We do this even when the evidence isn't 100%. I don't have 100% proof that gravity isn't going to give out any moment, but I make a ration decision based I the evidence I do have, which is strong. Therefor, I decide not to walk around in velcro. I don't have 100% proof that locking my doors deters burglars, in fact it "may" deter present-givers, or encourage burglars. Alas, I lock my doors. So tell me, what evidence do you need to take reasonable action given the potential risk? Let me know where your thresholds of belief are so that we can begin to have a meaningful conversation. What is you criterion of sufficiency, and is it realistically possible? As it currently stands, your statements make you out to be an irrational person, because you will take no action whatsoever without a untenable criterion of sufficiency. A rational discourse simply can't be had with someone like that. I'm sure you are in fact rational, so please, explain what evidence and actions you'll be OK with.
Personally, my threshold of belief is as follows: when a preponderance of scientists around the globe warn that human action has a fair-to-midsized chance of causing a cataclysmic event, I'm alright with playing a little bit more for gas and electricity, even if it has only small-to-fair chance of helping. Let me know where you disagree with my threshold, and what your threshold is.
Because even if you're a sociopath with no compassion, you have to deal with the fact that people don't just sit down and die when food runs out. They often pick up weapons and go to where there is food. They'll move, all right, but without the benefit of real estate transactions recorded by governments.
And many of them will be highly pissed at the nation most responsible for setting off the climate change that ruined their old homeland. You think the U.S. faces a terrorist threat now? Just wait until some third-world rabble rousers starts telling people that we're responsbile for turning their farms into desert.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This, for me, is THE issue, and the goddamn climate deniers are such a bunch of morons that have pissed off so many people with their stupid arguments that a thinking person cannot be openly skeptical about the popular theories anymore. The elephant in the room as I see it is that the theory of anthropogenic climate change skirts dangerously close to being completely unfalsifiable. We have no means, other than computer simulation, of teasing out whether the human contribution to CO2 emissions is tipping the system into instability, or simply being damped out and absorbed into the whole process. We won't even know in 200 years, you can't do a controlled experiment on this one. To top it off, the predictions made by the climate community are so random that its difficult to see whether you can falsify the main theory as well, the earth warms up: climate change, the earth cools down: climate change, more storms: climate change, drought: climate change. There are two truly falsifiable predictions as far as I can tell, firstly that the mean temperature is increasing (verified), and secondly that the sea levels are rising/will rise (not verified). With the former, how do you tease out the earth's natural cycle from the man-made part? The second, well we are going to have to wait a while yet, but the same question will remain when we know.
I'm not denying climate change, far from it, I am saying that there are aspects of it that smell of bad science, and the demonisation of skepticism is a very dangerous precedent. I'm sick of the whole debate honestly, but one thing I know for certain: climate scientists, a while ago and ever since, bought into the politics of the debate, and as far as I'm concerned they can go fuck themselves if they think this is a battle that should be fought in the 'hearts and minds' of the community, or one which should be fought with and against politicians. Politics and consensus are not aspects of good science, the fact that the majority of scientists believe the theories says absolutely nothing about the science. There was a time when the majority of scientists believed the earth to be flat, there was once a consensus that we won't find particles smaller than an atom. Science has nothing to do with consensus! This is a dangerous idea.
There is one more thing I am wholly certain of: There are far more pressing environmental issues than climate change, ones which we understand far more clearly, and have infinitely more capacity to reverse. That these issues have fallen to the wayside troubles me far more than the idea of living in a significantly more volatile climate.