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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.'"
So far, it's been a scorcher for folks all around the world. So it might come as no surprise that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a report revealing 2010 having the record for warmest June, warmest April to June and warmest year to date. The announcement said 'Each of the 10 warmest average global temperatures recorded since 1880 have occurred in the last fifteen years. The warmest year-to-date on record, through June, was 1998, and 2010 is warmer so far.' So far we are even surpassing 1998's records which held the warmest year (despite directly contradicting reports). It certainly seems the scads of winter precipitation we enjoyed were no indication of how we would swelter through our summer this year. Will 2010 turn it around or are we set to break more records?
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.
My work here is dung.
"The planet is fine...the people are fucked."
Living With a Nerd
Why do I get that sick feeling that the heat from this discussion will only make the global warming problem worse?
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
All sorts of facts are denied by those who refuse to change their positions. See cognitive dissonance
"well the basement is flooding but it's already STARTED flooding so why should we bother going down and turning off the tap? My pants would get wet and it's already a bit wet down there anyways. What do you mean 'structural damage if it gets worse?' That doesn't make any sense to me."
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?
There isn't an intelligent person the planet who denies that global warming is real. The debate is all about causation.
The deniers set up multiple goalposts. There are the ones who deny it's happening at all (a favorite tactic of this group is to start their time series with 1998, which was an unusally warm year, to insist that there's been no warming trend in the last 10^H^H11^H^H12 years) and then the "reasonable" ones who say it's happening but that human activity plays no part. This mirrors the pseudo-split between young earth creationists and "intelligent design" proponents almost exactly, and it's no surprise that there's a lot of crossover between the groups.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
This particular report doesn't specify causes. It just goes over the temperature data and factors directly related to it (like humidity and glaciation). Even if the deniers could pick out one of these datasets and show that's its problematic, there would still be 9 others going the other direction--a textbook case of the Strawman.
Anthropogenic factors are proven out in other studies. There isn't a legitimate debate about that anymore, either.
The debate that's left is in the exact effects and what we can do about it. Low levels of extra CO2 in the atmosphere may actually be beneficial, but we've almost certainly blown way beyond that. Then there are large scale geoengineering projects (like putting a solar shield at L1), which are both expensive and may have unknown consequences. They're being discussed because there aren't a lot of better ideas.
Not a typewriter
Am I the only one who thinks news of an impending rise in sea level is brought to us by a group called "NOAA?"
Currently hooked on AMP
He appears to be trying to argue that since the last major climate change was clearly not caused by humans that the current one must not be.
While not without some merit, this is logically akin to arguing that I didn't get killed driving home last night therefore it would be impossible for me to be killed driving home tonight.
Convincing the deniers is like arguing religion with a believer since their beliefs are not founded in fact, measurable science or sound theory.
One of the problems with the whole debate is that by the time we have definitive proof CO2 emissions are causing global warming it will be far, far too late. At some point I'd like to actually hear a coherent argument about why it could possibly be good to actively modify our atmosphere from the deniers, so far all I've heard is rote-repetition of nonsense arguments.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
First line of defence there is no warming
Second line of defence the warming is not manmade
Third line of defence I didnt cause the warning so I wont change my way.
Fourth line of defence come closer or I blow your head off.
Fifth line of defence praying will save the world - all stop working and pray with me.
Welcome to the second line.
Just saying it like it are.
The data as presented indicates a recent warming trend, but does not say anything about whether this is man-made or not; a 0.5deg rise in 50 years is extremely small in the scheme of things, and drawing the usual alarmist conclusions from this is quite unfounded.
So read the report itself:
The NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) shows radiative forcing relative to 1750, of all the long-lived greenhouse gases indexed to 1 for the year 1990. Since 1990, radiative forcing from greenhouse gases has increased 27.5%.
Nitrous oxide (N2O) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) are important atmospheric trace gases with significant man-made sources. Nitrous oxide has the third strongest anthropogenic climate forcing after CO2 and CH4 and is considered a major greenhouse gas (Butler 2009).
The atmospheric N2O budget is out of balance by one-third as a result of man-made emissions, primarily through emissions from nitrogen fertilizers (Crutzen et al. 2007).
Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continued to rise, with CO2 increasing at a rate above the 1978 to 2008 average. The global ocean CO2 uptake flux for 2008, the most recent year for which analyzed data are available, is estimated to have been 1.23 Pg C yr-1, which is 0.25 Pg C yr-1 smaller than the long-term average and the lowest estimated ocean uptake in the last 27 years. At the same time, the total global ocean inventory of anthropogenic carbon stored in the ocean interior as of 2008 suggests an uptake and storage of anthropogenic CO2 at rates of 2.0 and 2.3 ±0.6 Pg C yr-1 for the decades of the 1990s and 2000s, respectively.
In the tropics this increase has been formally attributed to anthropogenic change over the 1988–2006 period (Santer et al. 2007).
all the time series show an underlying rise in OHC consistent with our understanding of anthropogenic climate change.
I mean, the evidence is all over the report. The only thing stopping them from saying that it is conclusively man made is that 1) it's probably impossible to prove it and 2) there might always be some evidence of non anthropogenic warming contributing to the cause but not accounting for all of it.
My work here is dung.
I had an eye-opening experience the other day over at the Oil Drum, a blog run by folks associated with the industry. Not people you'd exactly think of as being against the consumption of fossil fuels. But the gist of this posting (which had nothing to do with climate change, and received a lot of favorable commentary) was that we're deeply, deeply fucked if we think we're going to continue burning fossil fuels into our old age. The argument was specifically related to the increasing cost of extraction. (In a nutshell, there's a reason we're now getting our oil from wells a mile underwater).
Now, the conclusion of that poster was pretty depressing, though I don't think he covered all of the options. But what struck me is that if you believe his arguments, it doesn't really matter whether you believe that humans are causing global warming. The actions we need to take now to ensure a reasonable standard of living in 40 years are exactly the same actions we need to take in order to deal with the global warming problem. Above all, to place a tax on fossil fuel consumption (and CO2 taxes do this pretty well) as a means to encourage the market to do something reasonable about the problem. The fact that we couldn't even pass the tiny little tax proposed in the recently defeated Waxman-Markey bill tells us something deeply frightening about our chances.
What kills me about the anti-global-warming argument is that its opponents think that it really matters whether AGW exists. It doesn't matter. For either reason we need to dramatically reduce our fossil fuel consumption and develop alternative sources (efficient, cost-effective nuclear, wind, solar, etc._ just to ensure that we and our children have a chance at living a decent life in the future. There's nothing in the universe that guarantees we won't face terrible consequences for our bad decisions, just because we've had a pretty good run for the past few decades.
> who are we to think we have that much power over the entire planet?
Ozone hole. Acid rain. Plastic Gyre. Rain Fores destruction. Species extinction. Desertification of large areas by agricultural practices.
We have done it many times.
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.
You don't understand the difference between weather and climate? Really? That's been a huge part of the debate for decades now, because every moron out there thought he could debunk climate research with weather anecdotes, and so other people have had to explain the difference, again, for decades now. So I'm surprised you have not had this explained to you before now.
Take a pot of water. Put it on a hot stove. Given that you know the temperature of the stove, the water, the air, the material of the pan, the humidity, and the altitude, you can predict exactly when the pan will boil (climate) but you will not be able to predict the location of the first bubble to break the surface (weather).
If that explanation helps, please take some of the burden off the rest of us and pass it on the next time you hear someone saying "But we can't predict the weather." Thanks.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton