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NASA Says 2010 Tied For Warmest Year On Record
An anonymous reader writes "It may not seem like it, but 2010 has tied 2005 as the warmest year since people have been keeping records, according to data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. The two years differed by less than 0.018 degrees Fahrenheit. That difference is so small that it puts them in a statistical tie. In the new analysis, the next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007, which are statistically tied for third warmest year. The GISS records begin in 1880." Adds jamie: "This was the 34th consecutive year with global temperatures above the 20th century average — 0.62 +/- 0.07 C above, to be precise. It was the wettest year on record too, according to the Global Historical Climatology Network."
Let the flamewar begin!
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
NASA also put out a piece comparing different findings by different organizations, explaining the differences and why they aren't a big deal. The articles also states that year-to-year measures aren't particularly useful - not only are 2010 and 2005 very close, but the next six are also very similar to each other - but looking at it decade by decade (i.e. a larger sample size) gives far more meaning:
On that time scale, the three records are unequivocal: the last decade has been the warmest on record. “It’s not particularly important whether 2010, 2005, or 1998 was the hottest year on record,” said Hansen. "It is the underlying trend that is important."
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
We have reliable proxy data for much earlier than 1880.
It gets hot, steamy, wet and wild!!!
You think man can destroy the earth? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the complex creatures in the sea, on the land.
...
When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time.
A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
--Michael Crichton, Prologue to Jurassic Park, 1990
Where is the heat going???! The point is not enough of it *IS* going.
No detectable change in weather or climate? Where the fuck are you living? Not Australia right now for a start.
It was the wettest year on record. There you have it folks, Global Warming is an answer to our Fresh Water needs.
Your house is not the world. Sometimes it snows over your house, but that doesn't mean it's snowing over my house. It might even be sunny over my house.
Frankly you'd have to be a special kind of stupid to claim that global temperature averages aren't on the increase. That it's all our fault and we're all going to die? I'm still waiting to be convinced.
Here's the temperature plotted over the last 32 years http://reason.com/blog/2011/01/06/global-temperature-trend-upate not as dramatic as you might think.
Mods, before you mod me down simply because you don't like what I have to say, consider this: I have a friend with, among other things, a Masters in Statistical Inference. I ran this idea past him, recently, and he agreed. I'm not just throwing mud, or trying to confuse the issue, I'm pointing out a legitimate flaw in their methodology.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
And most of the places people like living were under water. See any problems with that?
No one is saying or has ever said that higher temperatures and levels of CO2 are bad for life in general. They are bad for how humans currently have their civilizations arranged.
Too bad about all that land we will lose to the sea though.
without some idea of the error in the measurments, hard to tell what a change of x deg F means
I keep seeing people saying that temperatures have not risen since 1998, but nobody ever cites any real data to back up that assertion. Care to step up?
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
I think your tinfoil hat is on too tight.
Summary is wrong: the difference was actually 0.018 degrees Rankine, not Fahrenheit.
Sheesh, don't these article-summary writers know anything about Science...?
Humans have had an undeniable impact on the global environment -- there is really no point in questioning that anymore. As for dying, well, nobody is claiming that our doom is near at hand, just that things are going to get a lot different and that we should be prepared for it, and perhaps taking steps to slow or halt the rate at which we emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We are already over the edge; it is a question of whether or not we want to worsen things for ourselves (or at least make things change more significantly than they are already destined to change).
Palm trees and 8
Whether it's our fault or not, greenhouse-gas caused or not, doesn't matter as much. The more important question is, can we do something about it before even bigger catastrophes occur?
When people say, "global warming is a myth", they can't prove it with any certainty, but they would still choose to do nothing. If they're wrong, Millions or Billions of people die.
If we choose to do what we can to try and keep it from getting worse, and in the end all the climate scientists were wrong, what are the consequences? We spent more money than we had to?
To me it's kind of like car insurance, you pay money and hope the worst doesn't happen.
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
Do these people have any idea how old the Earth actually is?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You might want read this link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/4436934/Snow-is-consistent-with-global-warming-say-scientists.html
In short: Do not confuse weather with climate change. weather is a short term event. like this winter. climate is the global trend over a long period of time.
On the good side. scientists are expecting big changes to happen within our life time. So you should see with your own eyes if you were correct or wrong. Hint: Rising seas, famine and large human migrations.
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
Couldn't have anything to do with the urbanization that occurred between 1880 and 2011 could it?
If by "urbanization" you mean "unprecedented emission of greenhouse gases combined with massive deforestation" then yes, that's pretty well supported by theory and observation. If by "urbanization" you mean "the false rumor that the presence of concrete magically makes thermometers in the ocean and in space register higher temperatures" then no, it couldn't
Warmest on record where they keep the thermometers over blacktop as well. LOL Where is global warming when we need it. Snow in every state except Florida.
And the summer was ridiculously hot, yes. Anyone who thinks that global warming means that temperatures will become uniformly higher, or less chaotic, is either dreaming or trolling.
Prepare yourself. Global warming actually means stronger hurricanes, drier dry spells, bigger floods, and more chaotic weather all around.
"Money" is just a medium here; it's a matter of where it makes sense to focus our efforts and resources. You're endorsing misallocation on an unprecedented scale.
Thank God man-made global warming was proven to be a hoax. Just imagine what the world might have looked like now if those conspiring scientists had been telling the truth. No doubt Nasa would be telling us that this year is now the hottest since humans began keeping records. The weather satellites would show that even when heat from the sun significantly dipped earlier this year, the world still got hotter. Russia's vast forests would be burning to the ground in the fiercest drought they have ever seen, turning the air black in Moscow, killing 15,000 people, and forcing foreign embassies to evacuate. Because warm air holds more water vapour, the world's storms would be hugely increasing in intensity and violence – drowning one fifth of Pakistan, and causing giant mudslides in China.
The world's ice sheets would be sloughing off massive melting chunks four times the size of Manhattan. The cost of bread would be soaring across the world as heat shrivelled the wheat crops. The increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be fizzing into the oceans, making them more acidic and so killing 40 per cent of the phytoplankton that make up the irreplaceable base of the oceanic food chain.
Oh, wait.....
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
I keep seeing people saying that temperatures have not risen since 1998, but nobody ever cites any real data to back up that assertion. Care to step up?
http://reason.com/blog/2011/01/06/global-temperature-trend-upate
We have reliable proxy data for much earlier than 1880.
No we don't.
Anything taken that far back was using vastly different equipment and methodology.
Depending which cycle you believe, 2010 was also predicted (I dont' think official numbers are out yet) to be a peak year in solar activity for not only this decade, but for the last 80 years. No matter which model you believe, the sun runs on an 11 year cycle, and we are at the peak of the current cycle right now. As I recall, that was a motivating factor for getting some of the more recent satellites up into orbit that have been monitoring the sun's activity the last few years.
Pretty cool insight into Solar Variation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation
Nah, we just need to craft and install cybernetic gills! Hail the return of the age of Atlanteans!
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
The data from NASA is located here http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20110112/.
The global average temperature went down from 2005 to 2008. It has gone up from 2008 to 2010. The nature of the data over the last hundred years shows an upward trend.
There are important questions that I wish everyone would consider when reading this. They are,
Is the cause is man made? (Consider volcanoes as a major CO2 source, sun energy output, etc)
Is the change significant?
Is the change preventable? (this is related to environmental factors that we have little control over, such as sun energy output)
What major sources of energy can we make available to replace oil and coal? One way or another, we have to answer this question eventually. Remember that we use close to the energy that the sun delivers to the Earth, so the combination of solar, hydro, bio fuel, and other sun energy sources will not be enough.
These questions are rarely answered, and will lead to a solution better than just using electric cars (which don't solve any problems since most power plants use coal).
12-14,000 years ago, while there were glaciers in the middle of North America, Europe and parts of Asia, the coastlines were 100-300 miles further out and there was a migration path from Asia to North America and likely land routes between what is now Yemen and Ethiopia, as well as many routes between islands in Indonesia.
Humans lost a ton of land then too and we survived and did well as a species.
Here in Alaska they are talking about how by 2050 the Mat-Su valley will be prime Hard Winter and Spring Wheat country.
Weather and climate are not the same thing. It's stupid to even bring them up in the same sentence.
I dare say we didn't have a proper summer... and may indeed be having a proper winter.
Beavers have had an undeniable impact on the global environment -- there is really no point in questioning that anymore. As for dying, well, nobody is claiming that our doom is near at hand, just that things are going to get a lot different and that we should be prepared for it, and perhaps taking steps to slow or halt the rate at which we beaver about. We are already over the edge; it is a question of whether or not we want to worsen things for ourselves (or at least make things change more significantly than they are already destined to change).
Also, bees, termites, algae, wrens, jellyfish, rats, trees, etc.
How about this from the NOAA?
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100915_globalstats.html
Hansen is known for tweaking the data, anything that comes out of his mouth is suspect.
But . . . But . . . drudgereport keeps pointing out stories all year long about how it's the coldest on record for a particular city here and there or how it's really cold today and how there's going to be snow tomorrow and, therefore, the weather this month proves a pattern over the last half million years and disproves all theories asserting otherwise!
You might want to read what "proxy data" means before posting again.
None of them have had as profound an effect as human beings.
The places were most people like living are at or near sea level. That is why there are so many sunken civilizations.
If the water level was 15 meters higher, guess where people would like to live. I will give you a hint as to how to find out: Figure out what land will be at or near sea level.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
There were far fewer people, and exactly 0 cities. Sure, humans will survive, but civilisation as we know it certainly won't. It's a lot easier for nomadic folks to just move than it is for modern humans to relocate their stubborn infrastructure. I don't know how you can seriously compare 2011 with 12-14,000 years ago.
Yeah and when life was the most abundant on earth, it was between 4-7C warmer and the CO2 was in the 20 times as much as today.
Agreed, life will adapt. Even we can probably adjust to hotter climates in a few hundred thousand years if the cull rate is high enough (but of course not too high.) Of course, there's a limit to how hot mammals can tolerate and still produce viable sperm but evolution has done wonders in the past.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
What makes humans more important than the rest of the ecosystem?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
NASA, GISS and James Hansen have been busted before (by amateurs) for being wrong several times :
Deja Vu All Over Again: Blogger Again Finds Error in NASA Climate Data
NASA'S Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is one of the world's primary sources for climate data. GISS issues regular updates on world temperatures based on their analysis of temperature readings from thousands of monitoring stations over the globe.
GISS’ most recent data release originally reported last October as being extraordinarily warm-- a full 0.78C above normal. This would have made it the warmest October on record; a huge increase over the previous month's data.
Those results set off alarm bells with Steve McIntyre and his gang of Baker Street irregulars at Climateaudit.org. They noted that NASA's data didn't agree at all with the satellite temperature record, which showed October to be very mild, continuing the same trend of slight cooling that has persisted since 1998. So they dug a little deeper.
An alert reader on McIntyre's blog revealed that there was a very large problem. Looking at the actual readings from individual stations in Russia showed a curious anomaly. The locations had all been assigned the exact temperatures from a month earlier-- the much warmer month of September. Russia cools very rapidly in the fall months, so recycling the data from the earlier month had led to a massive temperature increase.
A few locations in Ireland were also found to be using September data..
Steve McIntyre informed GISS (run by Hansen) of the error by email. According to McIntyre, there was no response, but within "about an hour", GISS pulled down the erroneous data, citing a "mishap" and pointing the finger of blame upstream to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)."
http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=13410&red=y#366381
NOAA has been singled out for calling 2010 the warmest year using faulty data
NOAA’s Jan-Jun 2010 Warmest Ever: Missing Data, False Impressions
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/17/noaas-jan-jun-2010-warmest-ever-missing-data-false-impressions/
I'm not endorsing anything except that action needs to be taken. But if you look at the reasons why people don't want to take ANY action, it mostly comes down to having to spend more money (better filtration systems, less air/water pollution, cleaner but more expensive power plants, etc.)
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
We do.. and we are.
To behave otherwise is to invite extinction.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is exactly right. If we swamp the world economy by the amount demanded by the AGWers then the impact on the third world from that will result in millions dying. Under no scenarios will billions die (other than the usual get old and die that everyone does.)
Which period are you referring to? Serious question.
Not really.
Human civilizations only really started forming about 10,000 years ago.
Which is less than 1 iceage cycle.
And things weren't dramatically different over atleast the last 8 iceages.
We'd have to go back billions of years for that.
Since as is, we're already 1/3rd higher in CO2 than it's been in 8 iceage cycles.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm
It's a lot easier to effect carbon-capture in power stations than it is to do so in cars. Regardless of whether it's man or nature that's heating the Earth, clearly it's in our best interests, and the interests of future generations, to try to do all we can at minimising it. We can't stop volcanoes from erupting, but we sure as hell can curb our emissions as a species.
Which is supposedly offset by the warmer air, which is causing all permafrost in the Arctic to melt, or at least the Canadian, Siberian, and Alaskan Arctic. Since the Atlantic currents are going to shut down, and stop "sending equatorial warmth", does that mean the glaciers will stop retreating?
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Worse then stupid. A liar and spreader of misinformation based on ignorance. I would rather deal with stupid then deal with people who not only insist on being ignorant, but insistent on making everyone ignorant.
It's a special kind of evil.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Global Cooling!!!
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
is the dollar per degree of temperature effectiveness given the state of green tech? Really, how many trillions do we have to spend to affect each .1 degree K?
Shouldn't be too hard to calculate, given that this is science we are talking about, right?
damaged by dogma
Incidentally, long range climate understanding can't be explained without CO2 either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hs4KVeiAU
The problem as I understand it is not change of temperature. It's pretty well documented that temperatures have varried on earth since it's existence. Yeah, it's even probably better for life to flourish when it's a little warmer... Think of all the corn you could grow in the antartic for example. And yes, climate change will transform the landscape of the planet and will destroy some habitats and create some new ones. The real issue is that evolution, being a slow thing, life is only able to adapt if the temperature shifts are gradual as well. So the analog of what's going on today is more akin to a cataclysm (3 or 4 C in a few hundred years is as abrupt as it gets on a planet with a life span of several billion years), than a regular fluctuation of temperature that the planet would experience under "normal" circumstances... Without those changes there would have not been such a need for evolution. But we are talking about a revolution. Revolutions are incompatible with evolution, and will lead to the world as we know it to change radically in short period of time. This puts a wrench in my hopes of a Star Trek Next Generation type peaceful, religion, money and war free future for mankind.
And millions of species have died in the past. Often due to climate change.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
life != species.
a lot of species can die, and a lot more can come in their places that are better adapted to CO2.
so what are we in those two categories? i believe we can adapt, but probably not without a massive "correction" in our population (read: billions may have to be shed from our population in order to reach an equilibrium. our only defense in this situation is better technology. some choose to work on mitigating this, others choose to bury their heads in the sand)
Sorry: A lot of species will go extinct too, yes, as fragile ecosystems disintegrate. This has happened over and over throughout the Earth's history. I tend to like the animals we have, so I think that sucks. But, other animals (usually the ones we think of as nuisances) will surely flourish, and new species would eventually rise again (provided we don't clear-cut and kill everything).
Well here for instance is a bit of understanding for that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDTUuckNHgc
You have to look at the global TOTAL amount of heat. Rather than just "It's cold near me, therefore it must be cold everywhere"
Since the first humans in America, the Clovis people came from Asia about 11500 years ago, there was nobody in the US to give a shit about temperature 12-14000 years ago.
It is also .37% between the time of the earliest known Cro-magnons and now.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Hmmmm. Life was most abundant? Do you really have measurements of biosphere mass?
But of course, I know what you think you're talking about. That was in the Carboniferous era when the sun was significantly cooler and high CO2 was necessary to maintain the surface temperature. Not to mention that those levels happened in relative chemical equilibrium. What we're doing is not in equilibrium, hence the acidification of the oceans.
Do you know what would happen tomorrow if CO2 levels went up by a factor of 20? First everything in the ocean would die due to acidification. Next, temperatures would start rising rapidly. Methane clathrates in the tundra would melt releasing bunches of methane into the air. Temperatures would rise even higher. Ocean temperatures would start rising leading to more methane clathrates in ocean sediments to release methane resulting in more warming. Water in the oceans would evaporate resulting in more warming. Runaway greenhouse? Depends upon who you ask. Destruction of most of the life on the planet in a short time? Undoubtedly.
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The fact that we are humans. Dolphins would care more about dolphins, of course.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
...temperatures have not risen since 1998.
Simply wrong.
Humans lost a ton of land then too and we survived and did well as a species.
As a species, we survived and did well after the Black Plague, the Thirty Years' War, and the Holocaust, too.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
when we know that this is a lie, and temperatures have not risen since 1998.
You've been claiming this for years even though it's been shown to be bullshit the entire time. Why don't you just post it again a little later. The more you post it the truer it becomes, right?
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The dolphins will just say 'so long' and thank us for the fish when it gets down to it.
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you are shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Stop spreading that FUD.
It's called GLobal climate change becasuse even thougn it's gett hotter, the world still has cycles.
Stupid people assume if the climate gets warmer, then there won't be and snow anywhere.
Or the 'It's false because it's snowed more this year.' In fact they fall prey to the same type of illogical thinking deniers do.
The world is getting hotter, and because of the increase in energy, weather is getting more radical. And not the good radical like King Radical, either.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I heard that CO2 level have been dropping for a very, very long time and look to continue to decline as carbon is sequestered at the bottom of the ocean. I ask because this is not my area of expertise, and I was hoping that someone who is more of an authority might be able to comment. The researcher whose perspective I am parroting here used Hawaii as an example, pointing out how the massive rainfall and runoff causes carbon to be washed deep into the ocean. It was enough to cause one to wonder about the future of plants! LOL! This might all be more junk science, but I thought that it was ironic. Ah well, let's have some pie.
That looks like an upwards trend since 1979 to me. You can also see seasonal variations in it which means it's not well averaged you should ignore anything less than a couple years in duration. That 13 month moving average should be replaced with a 36 month moving average.
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What, you mean the page that says "2010 tied with 2005 for hottest year on record"? That seems to agree entirely with TFA.
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The Polar Ice packs are breaking apart and that formerly collected and frozen moisture bound in Salt and more is being recycled into the Atmosphere and Global Heat Redistribution is running amuck in it's extremes [beyond acceptable tolerance ranges of historic data] and thus one day you have floods and massive snow storms followed by massive drought in areas that normally have none of these behaviors.
about how you can accept Jesus into your life. oops, wrong thread. I'd like to talk to you about the (reality|deceptiveness) of climate change. Funny how both raise the hackles the same way. Why is that?
I keep seeing people saying that temperatures have not risen since 1998, but nobody ever cites any real data to back up that assertion. Care to step up?
http://reason.com/blog/2011/01/06/global-temperature-trend-upate
Both sides of this debate _outside_ of the scientific community are disturbingly simplistic. On the one hand we've got the chicken littles who blame _every_ major weather event on global warming. The flooding here in Australia is point-in-case - we are in the grip of a very strong La Nina event, climatologists might argue that it is particularly strong because of an underlying warming trend but the floods themselves are due solely to La Nina. On the other hand we have the "temperatures haven't risen since 1998 crowd", well the graph provided here shows a clear upward _trend_ in temperatures since 2000 and when you take into account the local minima and maxima (Mt. Pinatubo and El Nino) there is an obvious upwards trend over the whole graph. Come on people, this is basic high school math.
News for nerds... I don't think so.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
Lots and lots of people have said that. You might not agree with them, but that doesn't change the fact that they exist. It's partially their over the top fear mongering that has caused so many, ehem, 'skeptics' to suddenly become skeptical.
> ... before even bigger catastrophes occur?
Bigger than what, exactly? Given that all the gloom and doom predictions haven't come true, I don't see where one could even argue that any of the big weather things that have happened are related to GW. And once you consider major historical events, there's nothing there.
> If they're wrong, Millions or Billions of people die.
Whoa there... Millions or billions, really? That's three orders of magnitude there, and a significant three at that. "Millions" (about 2) die every _month_, and billions? There are only 7 billion people on the planet, so that would be pretty much the apocalypse I guess.
And while I'm calling you on this vague emotional threat, what's the time scale here exactly? Is there just going to be a giant tidal wave that kills everyone instantly, or is it going to happen over the next hundred years? Which brings me to my real point:
> Whether it's our fault or not, greenhouse-gas caused or not, doesn't matter as much. The more
> important question is, can we do something about it...
O rly? Paraphrased: It doesn't matter what is happening or why, we just have to stop it.
How, exactly, do you propose we stop it then, if it doesn't matter what's causing it? I mean, are you proposing that we install giant air conditioners, or are you really just spouting BS and hope that some people will support draconian actions taken in the name of stopping it? It's "think of the children" all over again, it seems.
So, here's a thought. How about we actually approach this like a real problem, and not just some vague cause to fight for. The problem is complicated: For one, the world getting hotter _isn't_ a problem; it's the effects of it that are.
And then, you have to evaluate the effectiveness of your solution. If human created green house gases are contributing 10% of the warming effect, and the ocean levels will rise 1 m in 100 years, is humanity cutting emissions by half (which would be rather devastating), worth prolonging the 1m rise by 5 years? Answer: no
And this is why I have global warming: There is no real analysis. It's just this "don't ask why, but if you don't agree with me billions will die" crap over and over. And every time I look at the figures, even the worst case ones (though based in reality), I just can't help but find it to be anything but a minor detail that can be solved in due time.
Have you maybe read the huge reams of scientific research that have been published over the course of the last fifty years or so on the topic? That's a pretty good way to get convinced.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter3.pdf
Page 244
(warning: the pdf is 24 MB, so it takes a significant amount of time to download)
Studies that have looked at hemispheric and global scales conclude that any urban-related trend is an order of magnitude smaller than decadal and longer time-scale trends evident in the series (e.g., Jones et al., 1990; Peterson et al., 1999). This result could partly be attributed to the omission from the gridded data set of a small number of sites (1%) with clear urban-related warming trends. In a worldwide set of about 270 stations, Parker (2004, 2006) noted that warming trends in night minimum temperatures over the period 1950 to 2000 were not enhanced on calm nights, which would be the time most likely to be affected by urban warming. Thus, the global land warming trend discussed is very unlikely to be influenced significantly by increasing urbanisation (Parker, 2006). ... Accordingly, this assessment adds the same level of urban warming uncertainty as in the TAR: 0.006C per decade since 1900 for land, and 0.002C per decade since 1900 for blended land with ocean, as ocean UHI is zero.
:(){
A brief anecdote from current events. Western North American pine forests are being decimated by pine beetles that are thriving due to rising temperatures. Their historic range has grown because a lack of an adequately lengthy freeze during the winter is allowing them to live longer.
As a result, forests are turning gray and falling. The ecosystems they support are waning. Without tree coverage, snow melt will happen earlier and be more abrupt. Water typically stored in reservoirs will instead just flow downstream and into the ocean (unless we retrofit reservoirs to handle more capacity). This can also ultimately lead to desertification. It's also worth noting that millions of acres of decomposing trees releases quite a bit of CO2.
So, while it may be great for specific forms of agriculture in specific areas, there will also undoubtedly be terrible catastrophes caused by rising temperatures, and they have already begun.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Year-to-year?
http://www.surfacestations.org/
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You are confusing "Humans have had an undeniable impact on the global environment" with "global temperature averages [are] on the increase...[and] it's all our fault". It's like saying we know that people are killing plants by walking on them so we can safely assume that massive deforestation is due to people walking on plants. It completely ignores magnitude and uses a general concept of "we have an effect on the environment" to infer a claim "we cause all/most current global warming".
By all means.
That's UAH. That's not ground temperature data. That's atmosphere temperature data.
1998 in particular had a rather strong El Nino that year. And aside from having a large impact on ground temperature data, it had a huge effect on atmospheric temperature.
Despite that, El Nino events only last a fews months at a time. So trying to drag them out into some decades long "trend" would be the height of naivety or malevolence.
And considering the author of that graph is trying to make it look as flat as possible, seems they are trying to be "intentionally misleading" to me.
_
Or I guess one might be talking about the slight difference between GISS and HadCRU for that year. (But that's not the case this year)
Is the cause is man made? (Consider volcanoes as a major CO2 source, sun energy output, etc)
Yes. That it is predominantly man made has been conclusively shown.
Is the change significant?
Yes it is, and will be getting even more significant as time progresses.
Is the change preventable? (this is related to environmental factors that we have little control over, such as sun energy output)
Theoretically, yes. It is even economically feasible to do so. But I highly doubt that humanity has the collective brains to do anything about it. So no, the future changes will not be prevented. When things get bad enough, humanity will start doing stupid and dangerous things to try to repair the damage.
What major sources of energy can we make available to replace oil and coal? One way or another, we have to answer this question eventually. Remember that we use close to the energy that the sun delivers to the Earth, so the combination of solar, hydro, bio fuel, and other sun energy sources will not be enough.
What? Someone is giving you bad information. Incoming solar radiation (correcting for cloud losses) is 2.8 Million exajoules per year. Current human consumption is 484 exajoules per year, or about 0.017% of the solar input. So solar, wind, wave, hydroelectric, geothermal, bio, and nuclear will be fine.
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Well since humans are not natural, did not evolve here, were placed her by a (fill in myth du jours), it is only proper that we slaughter a zillion of us, then place the rest in peasantry under the Climate Lords. Excuse me...is that a glacier bearing down on the eco green house?
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
or are they still taking reading off of stations that are too close to AC vents, blacktop parking lots or similar things that would alter the temperature readings?
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/weather_stations/
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Would you mind cutting it out with those science-free strawman arguments?
And I know exactly where you got them from, since that volcano bit is unique to that science-free documentrary.
Cliffnotes debunk
http://greyfalcon.net/swindle3
Cross referenced list debunk
http://greyfalcon.net/climate
Line by line debunk (If you are some sort of sadist for detail)
http://greyfalcon.net/swindle
The Earth, dear old Terra, is around 4 billion years old. That is about 114,000 times older than modern humans. If one were to scale that time to an average human lifetime, modern humans have been around for the last 5 days of the Terra's life.
People looking at the last 100, 1,000 or even 100,000 years of climate aren't looking at a statistically significant sample of data. When one gets a statistically significant amount of data, one sees that we are living in a remarkably stable period and for most Terra's history, there have been massive climate changes.
What people are really saying is that they want things to continue on in a way favorable for themselves. The simple fact is that while climate change might kill off a lot of species including humans, but it won't end all life, let alone destroy the Earth.
There will life here again. It just won't be you and that pisses you off. This entire thing is about the over-sized collective ego of the human race.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Equatorial? in Norway? Slartibartfast would have a fit!
> People move and get on with life. The world doesn't end.
Um, no they don't. An hour or so south of where I'm sitting is a town called Cameron, LA. It has been wiped from the map three times in the last century. After the third one did they get on the cluetrain and move inland a few miles? Oh Hell no, Uncle Sugar was there ladling out the cash so they are industriously at work building it back yet again as we speak. The odds of a fourth total wipeout (wipeout as in part of the bank's vault and part of City Hall left standing) before hitting the century mark from number one is way better than fifty-fifty.
Most of New Orleans is below sea level. Common sense would have dictated taking the opportunity offered by Katrina to relocate some of the more vulnerable sections. Did they? Oh Hell no.
Go up the Mississippi river and count the towns that flood every decade or so and then count the ones that have finally got the hint and relocated. When river traffic was a town's lifeblood it made sense to take the risk, but nowadays?
Democrat delenda est
Um, no. When CO2 goes up by a factor of 20, it's partial pressure goes up by a factor of 20.
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Hippie eukaryote lover! We should never believe you!
Interesting.
Maybe the whole strategy of explaining was wrong. Instead of telling the scientific facts, they should have claimed: "God doesn't want us to burn so much fossil fuel. If we don't stop, He will send us a new flood." Make up an "explanation" from the bible. Find a charismatic person to tell that, and you might get enough followers to make a difference. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
the earth is 4,500,000,000 years old. We have only been keeping track for 100 years of that, or 0.00000002% of the time! Warmest year on record, please....... who cares, just live and wonder why. damn....
> Sure, humans will survive, but civilisation as we know it certainly won't.
Oh bullcrap. We can build a city in a few years and if we had to abandon all of the coastal anthills and start over we would be able to build better ones this time. Most of Europe was flattened during WWII and look how fast they came back. Assuming AGW alarmists are right we would still have decades to calmly and slowly move to higher ground. Decades for farmers to shift their planting patterns.
Democrat delenda est
You've come across the reason ice ages follow periods of rapid warming.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
For instance
Atmospheric temperature records
http://greyfalcon.net/rsstemps2.png
Surface temperature records
http://greyfalcon.net/globaltemps.png
All the temperature records compared.
http://greyfalcon.net/forcing2.png
But I guess if you want to play games with surface temperatures. HadCRU said 1998 was warmer than 2005, by the tiniest fraction. GISS said 2005 was warmer than 1998 by the tiniest fraction.
Either way, 2010 is basically tied for the hottest it's ever been this past iceage.
Everyone says that being more green or what have you would utterly destroy the world economy, sending us into a terrible depression, sky afire, cats and dogs getting along; have you seen any numbers... you know, anywhere, from any side?
The most reasonable I've heard is 1% of global wealth spent on environmental activities (mostly shouldered by wealth countries, so (0.01 / 0.90) * national GDP for wealthy countries). I'm no economist, but if 1% of the world's wealth suddenly vanished, would the economy spiral downward and destroy modern civilization?
Example. Compare the U.S. Iraq War (Operation Enduring Freedom), estimated at $1.9 trillion (admittedly, over several years), compared to the current estimate of world GDP, ~$58 trillion.
Interesting.
I like warm weather. I like water. Sounds like a win-win situation.
Well, I suppose this only applies to my opinions and perhaps to a small circle of friends around me, but, well, that fact that I am one of the humans makes humans a lot more important, IMHO.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
actually, both terms have been used to represent specific things since the beginning of the debate back in the 70s.
global warming means (you guessed it!), the simple increase in global average temperature.
climate change means the associated change in all aspects of global weather due to the increased global average temperature. you can think of it as just "what happens when you change the balance of gases in the atmosphere", where global warming is just a small aspect of that effect.
the media has been using these two terms interchangably, much to the chagrin of sane and insane people alike.
No doubt its been getting warmer for the past 200 years. But, as an engineer, I question our ability to measure average global surface temperature to +/- 0.07 C. Such a measurement system would be an amazing engineering accomplishment. I don't question that the temperature anomaly for 2010 was 0.62, what I question is the asserted measurement error of +/- 0.07. I would accept a number of something like 0.62 +/- 0.50 with only a bit of skepticism. At +/- 0.25 my BS detector goes off. At +/-0.07 my rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-that-people-could-be-so-gullible reaction takes over.
Right, which explains why the Global Accumulated Cyclone Energy index is the lowest in three decades.
Wait, what?
Maybe one of these days you warmistas will finally admit that you have no idea how man-made inputs ultimately affect the climate.
Wow. We can't build a city in a few years and have a seamless transition from one to the other. That is absolute lunacy to suggest. Most of Europe was not flattened, either. I have no idea what world you live in, but it certainly isn't this one.
Yeah anyone who does that must be stupid!
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
In other words, your own personal opinion. You, and I, are no more valuable than any other clever critter. We are just more clever than the others. This is not about what is best for the Earth, or nature, or other species. It is about what is best for humans, and a limited number of humans at that.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I may be confused, but the page that I linked to does have the string "2005" anywhere on it. The title is "NOAA: 2010 Tied with 1998 as Warmest Global Temperature on Record".
Regardless, my response was to provide a source that says 1998 is as hot as it's been (which is debatable since Hansen keeps manually adjusting the data until it supports his narrative.)
Now, where on the page I linked to does it say anything about 2005? My guess is you're arguing in bad faith.
So I'll count you in the "weather is not climate you moron" flamer contingent then, shall I?
...does not have the string "2005"...
Actually
Both Climate Change and Global Warming are unique terms that have specific meanings.
To put it simply:
Cause: Global Warming
Effect: Climate Change
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html
If anything, we should be talking about Global Warming more.
Because it's amazingly simple when you boil it down to it's bare constuients.
**"Is it the sun?"** Sometimes but definently not for the past half century.
http://greyfalcon.net/solar0.png
**"Are we certain that less and less infrared radiation is exiting out into space, almost entirely in the wavelength we'd expect CO2 and CH4 to block?"**
Yes
http://greyfalcon.net/greenhouse
**Is the rate of warming significant?**
Yeah, I'd say 100x faster than you'd expect from changes in earth's orbit alone is significant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bftcWQiZPPg
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-to-explain-Milankovitch-cycles-to-a-hostile-Congressman-in-30-seconds.html
http://greyfalcon.net/climate2
(^^ I need a better source for this comment)
**"Do we know that the CO2 is from fossil fuels. i.e. "Manmade CO2"**
Yes
http://greyfalcon.net/carbon3
http://greyfalcon.net/c14
http://greyfalcon.net/carbon2
DONE. That's all you need to know.
With absolute "manmade CO2" is the main cause global warming.
Because everyone knows that Orwellian conspiracy theories trump physics, in how we understand reality.
That's not how our effect on global warming was determined, so you building a straw man. I believe that the latest CO2 balance calculations indicate that we are responsible for at least 80% of the change in CO2 since preindustrial times is man made. (Although I'm not finding it on line right now, maybe because my subscription to Science has expired.) Analysis of recent data indicates higher percentages in the 20th century. So we're causing the CO2 increase. The CO2 increase is causing the warming. Ergo, we're causing the warming.
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Given the current fiscal situation in the US, I hardly think relocating all coastal cities is a project they're looking forward to.
Seriously, aren't we overdue for an Ice Age? Maybe we've indirectly saved ourselves from thousands of years of frozen tundra!
This is one scenario. Here's another.
1. pine beetles (highly specialized insects that prey on one species of tree) attack pine trees (to be more accurate, they attack the species of conifer that they specialize in).
2. Many pine trees die
3. Another species of tree moves in to take their place. The ecosystem adjusts.
- aj
take a breath windbag, your hot air alone is starting to make me believe in global warming.
The shit thing is, if the "correction" is disruptive enough, we may never get the chance to rebuild what we have now. There's only so much easily-accessible energy sitting around waiting for us to get it. If we deplete our oil reserves to low enough levels and then suffer a major global cataclysm, our descendants will be permanently stuck living an Amish lifestyle.
Not that it matters much to us, here and now - I'll be long dead before anything like that happens. But I still feel some responsibility to try and keep our species moving forward.
Sorry, I meant to post 1998, but other than that it is in full agreement with TFA. The 1998 had a strong El Nino event, so atmospheric temperatures are higher in this data than in the NASA data. So you could say 2010 is tied with 2005 and 1998. In any rate the trend has definitely been upward since 1998.
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http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2009/05/antony-watts-and-surface-stations-wait.html
Fandroids hate facts.
Well it's pretty clear that wealthy people are normal human beings and wouldn't spend a dollar to save the life of someone they don't know or, even worse, someone who hasn't been born yet. Money and who has it, that's all the argument has ever been about.
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Yeah and when life was the most abundant on earth, it was between 4-7C warmer and the CO2 was in the 20 times as much as today.
And dinosaurs larger much larger than your SUV roamed the lands, and the biggest mammal was a rodent somewhat bigger than your brain. So which role do you wanna play: the dino or the rodent?
Fandroids hate facts.
December was really cold in places in the Northern Hemisphere and blazing hot in places in the Southern Hemisphere.
Yep, a very special kind of stupid. And then they post graphs they don't even understand.
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People have always believed that it's perfectly acceptable to kill off other species to keep humans around. Why do you think the Grizzley bear and wolf populations got so low?
Who are you to say that we are more important than, say, the really clever octopods who will come after us?
What a stupid question. I'm more important because I'm me and I want to live, and if that motherfucking octopod thinks he's going to take my place he better bring a whole bunch of bros and some serious weaponry otherwise he's ending up on my plate for dinner. I think a better question is what type of self hating species WOULDN'T do anything and everything in their power to survive? If you feel a deep rooted urge to jump into killer whale's mouths in order to save THEIR species then by all means do so before you spread your genes and hurt ours.
How much data would you prefer?
How about a couple billion years?
Although at that range, everything besides CO2 and changes in Orbit don't matter.
http://greyfalcon.net/climate2
Strange how all those temperature records, despite very slight variations, are all in agreement.
http://greyfalcon.net/forcing2.png
Almost as if there was only 1 version of reality. (Or some worldwide CONSPIRACY!!!1)
http://greyfalcon.net/ideology.png
If/when this happens surely few prophets will pop out; denouncing our evil ways and enforcing a less technological age...
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
The hottest year game is of little use, the hottest year (until Hansen starting adjusting the old data down) was in the 1930s.
Another common denialist claim. Try something that hasn't been debunked. 1934 was the hottest year in the United States. I know a lot of Americans don't know it, but the US is much smaller than the world. It's only like 2% of it. You really need to try to include the rest of the world in your analysis.
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That's an extremely dishonest way to describe it. You make it sound like they threw out the less reliable data set and kept the good one, wow! what a great idea huh?!?!
In fact they used that tree ring data without caveat for most of the chart, then silently omitted it near the end of the sequence, substituting data from the other set only for those years where the data from the first set didnt fit their hypothesis. Then they labeled the chart so it looked like a single, reliable data set produced the whole sequence, and presented it to the world as such.
I find this line deliciously ironic. Perhaps you are not acquainted with the phenomenon of psychological projection?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I love these people that ramble on about how its snowing all across the US. That maybe so but here in miami it has been 80 degrees the last week and i dont think we have had more than like 5 days where it was below 40 in the past 2 months. This has been one of the hottest winters that i can remember in the 18+ years living here.
In other words, your own personal opinion.
Well, yes. That is, after all, exactly what I said.
You, and I, are no more valuable than any other clever critter. We are just more clever than the others.
Which is just your own opinion. In my opinion, yes -- I, my wife, my daughter, my friends, etc., have a greater value (to me) than other critters on this earth. If you want to put yourself on a level playing field with a cockroach or a slime mold (or even a chimpanzee or dolphin), then knock yourself out. I humbly disagree, but you are certainly entitled to your own opinion.
This is not about what is best for the Earth, or nature, or other species. It is about what is best for humans, and a limited number of humans at that.
Well, yes. Since I don't think we have yet devised the destructive potential of a Dark Star-type planet buster bomb, and since the ecosystem even around Chernobyl has shown to be remarkable persistent, I rather doubt that human beings have the capability to "destroy" the earth yet. We may make a bit of a mess of it, but life tends to be remarkably resilient. So, yes, this whole debate is about whether or not we can affect the earth's climate to an extent that we no longer can survive here. That's not exactly news, so I don't really understand what point you are trying to make here.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Under no scenarios will billions die
On the contrary. There are scenarios where everyone and everything dies. Usually they involve an unknown or underestimated reservoir of greenhouse gases (usually methane) being released due to melting permafrost or undersea ices resulting in a runaway greenhouse effect. The oceans boil and the solar system gets a Venus look alike.
It's very unlikely, of course, or someone would be yelling about it. But it would be a great time to say "I told you so" to all the denialists.
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Absolutely correct. This is not a localized phenomenon. From the southern CA mountains where I live, the Rockies, British Columbia and more. For a stark example, take a flight out of Anchorage, AK. You are likely to take off towards the south, over the Kenai peninsula. Look down and will you see 2.3 million acres of brown, the largest loss of forest to insects ever recorded in North America. I believe similar outbreaks are affecting Eurasia as well. Biologists who understand the cascading impacts inherent in ecological interactions don't spend much energy questioning the flaws in how weather reporting stations measure temperatures (particularly when results from satellite sensors and ocean buoys are congruent with those from ground stations). Next up: Malaria and/or any of a number of unforeseen consequences that directly impact human welfare.
This is not about what is best for the Earth.
Best for the Earth? What does that even mean? Does the planet itself care about any of this? If it did, it would probably be happy to get all this icky, troublesome "life" stuff off of it!
I just don't care what year is the warmest, coldest, wettest or driest. I'm tired of hearing about what the problem is and am now craving for people to talk about what we are going to do about it. Most of the time the "solutions" involve taxing me more so that the government can give that money to someone else. How about some real solutions.
First, the climate will change. The sea levels will rise and fall, ice will freeze and thaw. We need to develop the means to deal with that. It might be as simple as NOT doing something. Just don't rebuild in the part of the city that keeps getting flooded. Turn it into a park, a swamp, a cranberry bog, whatever. Just don't be stupid in city planning.
Next we need to come up with real solutions for not burning so much foreign oil. I personally think all this global warming rhetoric is a steaming pile of bullshit. What I can agree on is the need to become energy independent out of a need to grow our economy and avoid getting entangled in foreign matters that should not involve us.
If we are going to stop pumping so much CO2 into the air then we need to focus on the energy sources that are low in CO2. The energy sources in order of least CO2 output to highest are:
- Hydro-electric
- Nuclear
- Geothermal
- Wind
- Natural gas
- Solar (PV or thermal)
- Other fossil fuels
We've already dammed all the rivers worth a dam. Geothermal is very sensitive to location and cannot be useful everywhere. Iceland is full of good spots, the American Midwest is not so much. Nuclear reactors can be built just about anywhere and are safe, powerful, and reliable. New designs produce next to nothing for waste and can run off cheap thorium.
Wind and solar are not reliable, are expensive, and not really all that low on the CO2 output compared to other sources. They are also very sensitive to location. There is a lot of wind in the American Midwest and a lot of sun in the American Southwest, which is good for Chicago and Dallas but not so much for New York or Miami. With such long power lines there would be much lost in just the transmission lines. The materials for efficient wind and solar power requires highly refined materials such as silicon and aluminum which means a lot of energy in the front end to gain it back later. That means plenty of CO2 expelled to produce these energy sources. The CO2 output for the energy produced might be improved in time but RIGHT NOW nuclear power really outshines them all.
Some sources claim that even natural gas beat out solar power for CO2/energy ratio. Some claim it is a parity. Solar might beat out natural gas in CO2 produced but the cost of solar power is somewhere around double that of natural gas. Another great thing about natural gas is that we, in the USA, have plenty of it. We don't need anyone's permission to get it, we just need to go get it.
All the problems here are political. The government needs to do their damned job at let Americans produce power here so we aren't shipping our jobs and dollars to countries that don't like us so much. I don't give a fuck about global warming. I'm tired of hearing about global warming. We need people to shut up about global warming and start working on solutions.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Wow, it takes shit for brains to ignore the evidence from multiple sources, miss the point of the video (Carter "found" the trend using a horribly naive and wrong method) and then focus on one source to post a link to the well-known denialist web site "wattsupwiththat".
You know, my Grandfather lived in Cameron during Audrey. He (finally) listened to my Grandmother and left literally only a couple hours before the storm surge hit. When he went back, all that was left was a slab with two dinner plates on it. He took the hint, they lived in Lafayette for the rest of his life.
I really think we should establish a time period, wherein if your property gets wiped out by the same natural disaster twice in that period you get your insurance money and then we condemn the property as not fit for permanent habitation, because this is getting ridiculous.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
I think you are too much of a pessimist. There are a lot of way we can use a lot less energy and still maintain our standard of living. For instance I believe with advancement in building techniques we will find that it is cheaper to build underground than it is to build above. This alone will decrease home use of energy by more than half. We will be a lot safer in those home too. If we could build our roads underground too we could easily have automobiles that drive themselves since they would not have to contend with either humans or animals. There is also a lot of new energy production methods that have not yet come to fruit. Fusion is just one. Are you saying that there is no way that we are ever going to solve that. How about space energy? Are we never going to have mirrors in space that beam down energy? Either the invention of a space elevator or a large rail gun could vastly help with that. Than there is fuel from plants. I read a study that states that we could get enough energy by using marginal lands growing certain plants without increasing the cost of food. I agree with that since farm land in my county in Michigan is a small per cent of the total land available. The reason that we have not already solved this problem is that we have not yet reached the point where we absolutely need to. Only when we are about to reach that point will the demand be great enough to put enough manpower into it.
61,000 square miles of roads and parking lots have been paved in the US. That's 1.6% of the total area, including Alaska, and not counting rooftops and such. Somehow, I suspect that this global trend might have an effect on albedo...
But I guess that's just magical thinking. Anthropogenic CO2 is solely to blame for climate change, and simply decreasing the rate of CO2 emissions to historic levels (i.e. where pCO2 will still be increasing) will stop the positive feedback loops that caused the cyclic nature of climate in Earth's history.
In case you haven't noticed the only US state without snow this week is Florida.
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/, I'm sure that'll put a dent in those little beetles.
you know even Phil Jones says there hasn't been any statistically significant warming for 15 years, and 15 years is half a climatic period.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
But how can the ice form and last through the summer, when the summers are too warm for ice to form and last now? Especially in Canada and SIberia, where the Atlantic current doesn't flow? If it's too warm for ice to last from season to season, then glaciers can't grow, and so an "ice age" can't happen.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
except that this isn't a failure of winter to be cold enough, or long enough, because those criteria have been met in those location despite "global warming" (or at least they haven't been any worse than "pre global warming"). It is instead a failure of forest management, specifically the fact that any time a fire starts in a forest we humans rush to put it out. Forest fires are a necessary and natural part of the forest eco-system. They eliminate problems such as this, and renew the forests, they happen naturally on a reasonably frequent basis.
In fact the usual solution to pine beetle infestations is forest fires. Done now as controlled burns, but it provides the same role that a traditional forest fire would in eliminating the pest and renewing the forest.
Not every issue on earth is caused by "global warming", there are many that actually are legitimately caused by humans.
I'd still argue that the pyramids have that beat
Regardless of whether "global warming" exists or not, or what causes it, or anything else, I had a wonderful laugh while visiting the Columbia Icefields.
They have a sign up talking about how the glacier is shrinking, and how this is a horribly bad thing because many people down stream from it rely on the water coming from the glacier. My first thought was "and just how do they expect to get water from it if it DOESN'T shrink??"
We are all going to die. Over 50 million people die each year.
That's catastrophic by any measure. Something must be done.
While it is a factor, it isn't the sole cause. The Canadian Government issued a ton of grants and a lot of material was published. From people I knew that worked directly on those papers, they said the general problem was global warming and warmer winters coupled with other factors as you have mentioned (forests of the same age, lack of fires, etc.).
Here is a list of the publications:
http://mpb.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/archive/projects/completed_e.html
Interesting.
Because if it's shrinking, they mean year after year. As in, you get 1000 m^3 of water the first year when summer comes around and there's melt. The next year, 800 m^3, etc.
Glad you asked the question and weren't misled by interpreting the language incorrectly.
Interesting.
Asphalt and asphalt shingles
I'm sure that'll put a dent in those little beetles.
I sure hope that's sarcasm. It takes a lot more than snow to kill these beetles (if all it took was a little snow, an insect called Mountain Pine Beetle that lives in Canada and the Western US wouldn't be around, would it?). The temperature needs to get down to about -30F for a week or two to kill these things.
Besides, it's nice and all that snow is in every state except Florida, but the first measurable snow here in Denver didn't occur until after Christmas, and the highs during December were regularly in the 50's and 60's F. Not exactly what I'd call a frigid winter, and in fact this is by far the warmest and driest winter I've ever seen in Colorado.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
If warming is not a contributing factor, how can it be explained that this insect's range is growing?
It is showing up at latitudes lower than previously common. If temperature wasn't a factor, they'd have been here a long time ago.
The only thing the forest fire and mono-culture has contributed to is the extent of the devastation. Instead of a low percentage of trees being susceptible (because of species diversity, age diversity, etc.) all the trees are susceptible because they all are the same age and species (because of no fires).
Overall, current MPB outbreaks are caused by both, warming and human determination to stagnate the forest.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Ouch, that bullet in your foot must hurt!
Well, the plants should be happy.
Yeah.. I guess. If car insurance cost billions of dollars a day and there was a good chance that the insurance carrier wouldn't pay out in the event of an accident. (Oh wait, the second part is true)
Retooling the entire planet's infrastructure won't be cheap, isn't guaranteed to prevent a catastrophe (and a catastrophe isn't even guaranteed to occur), and while we only "spent more money that we had to" we're consuming funds and resources that could've been applied to other human endeavors. Like health care, so people don't die of disease. Or energy efficiency so that people who currently can't afford electrical infrastructure may be able to afford power so that they don't freeze to death in winter or heat stroke in summer. Or maybe we spend some money on cleaning up manufacturing processes (or just spending it on proper post-manufacture disposal of waste) so that they don't require so many nasty toxic chemicals which get dumped into waterways and seep into aquifers, poisoning people.
But yeah, you're right. Its only money.
I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
After being wiped out twice in the last 5 years, I don't think Cameron is coming back this time, almost all of the long term residents have moved away. The big thing that has driven the nail in its coffin are all the new state coastal building codes (requiring up to 8 feet of fill dirt to be brought in for houses in many locations), the effect is making these new replacement homes cost 5 to 10 times as more than the ones that were wiped off the map (even with government help financing) , and yet would still likely not do enough to keep the new houses standing when the next big storm hits. There will always be some industry there being at the mouth of a river, and there will be basic housing for the industrial workers, maybe even a gas station or two, but don't expect a community and all the little things that come together to make one, for the simple fact that common people can't afford to live there anymore and can't afford to commute from the nearest dry land not subject to these regulations 35 or so miles away down a narrow shoulderless 2 lane highway with water on either side.
Humans can survive in all of the harshest environments on this planet. Humans will be able to survive long after almost everything else has died.
I envy those humans! What a live they'll live!
If we choose to do what we can to try and keep it from getting worse, and in the end all the climate scientists were wrong, what are the consequences? We spent more money than we had to?
Let's destroy the world economy and the Western civilization just in case!
Ok, just a few points here, most of the people predicting a rise in sea level claim it will occur on a time scale of many decades or even centuries, with a worst case rise of about 180-200 feet, and many projections call for a fraction of that. For some places like southern Florida this will be very bad, but for many others like the U.S. west coast which has mountains within site of the ocean in many places it will hardly be noticed as the cities slowly crawl inland. Even Manhattan's famed central park is located more than a hundred feet above sea level, and the highest point on the island is at 265 ft.
The problem is that we have about as much chance at getting developing countries to reduce GHG emissions as we do of making them "democracies" - or stopping them from producing illegal drugs.
Given the current fiscal situation in the US, I hardly think relocating all coastal cities is a project they're looking forward to.
Well it would certainly "Get America Back to Work". Sounds like the perfect Keynesian project to me!
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Weather and climate are not the same thing. It's stupid to even bring them up in the same sentence.
No they are not the same. However you obviously don't understand what the distinction is.
Go up the Mississippi river and count the towns that flood every decade or so and then count the ones that have finally got the hint and relocated. When river traffic was a town's lifeblood it made sense to take the risk, but nowadays?
I'm not too familiar with the Mississippi or New Orleans, but a lot of trade still happens by river. There can still be very good reasons to live below sea level. The richest parts of Netherland lies below sea level. It has fertile soil, major rivers, important traffic routes, direct access to the sea. It's good living here.
The big difference with the Mississippi, Bangladesh, Queensland, etc, is that we have decided that we don't want more than one major flood every 10,000 years, and have built massive flood protections all over the place, and we continue investing in it. That makes this economically important area safe to live. It costs money of course, but it's easily worth it. It might not be worth it for small towns on the Mississippi that flood every couple of years, though.
Unfortunately, Keynes isn't as popular as he used to be.
The octopods don't have bring an army. They just have to wait for us to die out, like we are going to do.
Humans are not doing "anything and everything in their power to survive". That would involve killing off or preventing the births of billions of humans instead of letting nature or the climate do it.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Yes, a couple of billion. Even 1 billion. Hell half a billion is still significant.
A couple of hundred or even a couple of hundred thousand years just isn't a significant time frame on geological scales.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Then, why do environmentalists claim they are doing all this for the Earth? That is all I hear "Save the planet! Save the Earth!" Bah. It is really "Save me in a manner that doesn't involve me making major changes to my life even thought we really have no idea what we are doing!"
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I guess it is a good thing we can get started now and have hundreds of years to deal with it, now isn't it?
And, I really don't care about the coastal cities and I live in one.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Global warming is so last year. Global cooling is the next big thing (with which they'll rob us all) :D
But lets see what they'll do - with global cooling it might be hard to rationalize important agenda like water and food scarcity which they desperatly need so they can gain more power wordwide.
however - its smart to call it climate change these days...
People use words as they see fit. Global warming meme is falling apart so they need to be smart and talk climate change now. The point is they want to profit from it. Earth is getting hotter because the sun is hotter - it has nothing to do with CO2, that's just fabricated nonsense. We are just being fuck*d so we willingly give up our wealth.
It has been conclusively shown that global warming is manmade by proved-to-be-corrupted scietific entity called EPA. They intentionally reported wrong numbersv and they are supported by large corporations and governements. The result is that taxpayers are being robbed massively and the big corporations profit hugely!
In short, no. That doesn't change Earth's albedo nearly as much as you might think, and changing Earth's albedo doesn't affect the temperature by much.
Funny how the 2 warmest years followed by the next 5 warmest years are all within the last 10 years or so....global warming DOES EXIST, and whether because of all the methane from cows, or the cars people drive, or the hairspray...or even natural occurrence in the earth's climate system, it is here, and we now have to start realizing we need to figure out how to deal or live with it..
I'm going to try to inject as little politics into this as I can.
If there are 80,000,000 single family homes in the US, wouldn't it have been a far better use of that non-sense stimulus money (if it was to be spent at all) to buy a net metered solar system for all those homes? The US spent 1.2 T dollars on nothing. If you re-routed existing solar related federal funds to this program as well the feasibility gets even better. This would have created 'green' 'high tech' jobs while which makes everyone happy. This would have cut our 400,000,000,000 dollar oil trade deficit over time since energy demands would decline and domestic sources would make up more of a percentage of what we use. This would also please the global warming crowd by reducing C02 over time. Conservative minded people would not like the money being spent at all, but if it were to be spent this would be the most palatable (you could also tie in some opening of oil fields in currently locked out places to sweeten the deal). If people are still uncertain about the math, we spent 5.xx T in the past 2 years total so it's not like there isn't a piggy bank, but I think the stimulus and related funds would be enough.
Any thoughts?
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
And, in other news, there's snow on the ground in 49 of 50 states. Florida being the exception
The headline writer in TFA said 2010 was the warmest on record, not James Hansen. He said that it was equal top. The second paragraph in your first article states that the NOAA agrees with NASA's results, that the surface temperature for 2010 was tied with 2005.
The second article shows that the delta of the temperatures was the second highest (meaning the change in temperature not absolute temperature). That measures something different than NOAA and NASA.
Your third article shows that the lower atmosphere was tied with 1998. Once again, that is measuring something different than NOAA and NASA, and therefore does not conflict with their findings.
Yes, that's the way to survive... Kill everyone off. :-|
Bigger Catastrophes, hmm, let's see . . . More and bigger hurricanes? More flooding like what is going on in Brazil and Australia, and what happened in China last year. Even more massive amounts of snow dropped on Atlanta, New York, Washington D.C., until people are buried alive in it? Yeah, more of those.
O rly? Paraphrased: It doesn't matter what is happening or why, we just have to stop it.
Where did I say it doesn't matter what is happening, and I never said we have to stop it. It doesn't matter as much what is causing the Earth to warm up, but we need to do something about it. Should that "something" be move all coastal areas further inland, evacuate all islands smaller than Ireland, and find a better way to deal with all the floods and hurricanes that will continue to increase? I'm guessing there might be better solutions, including ones that don't involve ONLY reducing CO2.
The problem is complicated: For one, the world getting hotter _isn't_ a problem; it's the effects of it that are.
So we should treat the symptoms, and ignore the cause?
And then, you have to evaluate the effectiveness of your solution.
I never suggested a solution, I'm saying we look for some solutions and implement them, instead of fighting over whether it's happening or not.
And this is why I have global warming: There is no real analysis. It's just this "don't ask why, but if you don't agree with me billions will die" crap over and over. And every time I look at the figures, even the worst case ones (though based in reality), I just can't help but find it to be anything but a minor detail that can be solved in due time.
I don't know why you have global warming. But since climate change is gradual, how long do you think countermeasures will take? And as to it being a "minor detail" that can be solved in due time, it's much more difficult to solve a problem if people say it doesn't exist, and therefore fight all measures to counteract it.
So, are you just being stupid, or a jackass?
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
Why do you assume I suggested something to spend the money on? I said we do what we can.
Maybe we get the coal plants to stop polluting as much. Maybe we find ways to remove methane from the atmosphere, and prevent more of it from being released to begin with. I don't really have the all the solutions, and never said I did. But instead of fighting over whether Global Warming is happening, or whether it's mostly man-made causes, or only 20%, we do what we can.
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
Is anyone monitoring the global barometric pressure? Everyone who goes to college, including Democrats, typically learns that pressure and temperature are effectively the same thing. Anyone have the stats? preferably overlaid on temperature statistics? --edfardos
The shit thing is, if the "correction" is disruptive enough, we may never get the chance to rebuild what we have now. There's only so much easily-accessible energy sitting around waiting for us to get it. If we deplete our oil reserves to low enough levels and then suffer a major global cataclysm, our descendants will be permanently stuck living an Amish lifestyle.
Many could argue the Amish-type lifestyle would lead us to better human relations and sense of community among everyone as well as reduce our wasteful use of resources.
Not that it matters much to us, here and now - I'll be long dead before anything like that happens. But I still feel some responsibility to try and keep our species moving forward.
Moving forward? To what exactly?
I believe that Hansen's is the ONLY one of the 3 or 4 tracking studies that shows this.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The how about we don't spend as much as "the AGWers" demand? How about we look for other solutions?
I haven't seen any proof that removing as much CO2 from the atmosphere as possible will have any effect, and while it wouldn't hurt to do so, there are probably better things to do.
What percentage of the population, do you think, live in coastal areas? More than 15%? You know, those coastal areas that are prone to flooding, and hurricanes, and massive storms that kill people? And then what about all those people that live in dry, arid areas, without much water? Higher temperatures can't be good for droughts, could it?
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
So, yes, this whole debate is about whether or not we can affect the earth's climate to an extent that we no longer can survive here.
And even if we're not the most important species on the earth, um, climate change tends to, you know, kill other animals also.
There's no logical reason that us undoing something we did to the earth, which will kill us and a bunch of other life, could ever be considered us claiming we're 'the most important species'. This is an argument made by total morons who want to look like they're contributing to the conversation.
We need a list of threads posted somewhere that are automatically redundant. Talking about how we can't really 'destroy' the earth (When of course no one has suggested we can) when talking about climate change would be near the top of that list.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Thanks for proving me right. When I saw the header, I bet my coworker a cup of coffee that someone in 10 posts or less would try to use this data to attack 'deniers'.
You DO understand that the debate really centers on ANTHROPOGENIC global warming, right?
And GW != AGW, not by a long shot.
By the way, could you please point to a period in time when the climate DIDN'T change? Because I can point to several where it was significantly warmer than it is now...in fact, the vast majority of Earth's history. We're kind of in a cool-weather slump, so I challenge your implied assertion that this is abnormal for anything but modern man's conception of what the climate "should be".
-Styopa
Obviously installing scrubbers in a coal plant, or changing legislation for car emissions, or putting up a wind farm, or researching battery technologies, upgrading electrical infrastructure, rebates for locally grown food/greenhouses, green-houses, reducing water use, recycling e-waste properly, reclaiming tailing ponds, etc. will destroy the economy.
Nothing can be done! The only obvious solution is to OBLITERATE EVERYTHING!
I realize you see everyone else around you as an extremist. However, as others have eloquently pointed out, why not start somewhere and work to improve. Like middle ground, like every argument everywhere at any time. How many things that are complex are simply yes/no?
Interesting.
How many pro-AGW people have you heard on ; radio, TV, internet forums, blogs, magazines, journals, mail correspondence, e-mail, ... Twitter?, ...
advocate genocide as a viable solution? There are some environmentalists who advocate having a shrinking population would be a good thing (say gradual reduction through natural means down to 1 billion, or 3 or 5 or whatever), but how many actually say; grab your rifle and shoot your neighbour. Drink some locally grown organic yam juice to celebrate?
Compare; how many people who aren't pro-AGW, or deniers, or anti-AGW, or contrarians, or libertarians, or free-thinkers (or whatever group you/they/whoever wishes to associate with; rather than get into a semantic war) attribute this "solution" to the first group?
Interesting.
OK you said:
then I said :
and you followed with
now I'm going out on a limb here but if it takes -30F for a while to kill these little suckers, and it has to be that for a week or two, and there range is the forests of western North America from Mexico to central British Columbia. ; in a good sized chunk of their range, the beetles have never been killed due to low temperatures since the last iceage.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The beetles have never been killed due to low temperatures since the last iceage
Which is why the species still exists...?
Also notice that the ranges of the trees they inhabit are predomimately more northern where they are denser, where the problem is much more widespread (BC, AB, WA, OR). Trees like Ponderosa species live in little islands (where they extend southward to Mexico).
The range isn't growing southward, but northward (i.e. towards the Canadian boreal forest, which is very dense, mostly pine and would be a huge problem), where it used to be colder, longer - on average.
(And as we've both seemingly agreed on, there are other factors which I mention previously).
Interesting.
Why do you post as AC, surely someone with such strong views about the "pro Global Warming Climate Change Agena", masturbation, the human race and Buzz Lighttard would like to attract followers?
Interesting.
Your last link goes to a 404 page BTW.
Same in most of southcentral Alaska. Another commenter references Anchorage. Do you know how often it gets down to -30 in Anchorage? Basically, never.
- AJ
On a whim I looked up Anchorage's weather and Port Huron MI and your 17 to -4F and we are 14 F right now. 19 degrees of latitude between us and the temperature is about the same. Around here the weather men add "and it's 10 degrees warmer by the water" right now, I bet you get the same.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
the water flow is not shrinking, and they were very definitely NOT talking about the amount of water coming off the glacier.
Their concern was specifically that people would be ok, until we ran out of ice, and then there would be no more water to flow downstream.
Problem is, if the glacier was GROWING (or even staying the same) they ALREADY wouldn't have water downstream from it.
So they are asking for the glacier to stop shrinking, but to keep melting and therefor providing water. You can't have it both ways, that's just not how physics works!
The climate in Southcentral Alaska is moderated by the Japan Current, a movement of warm water that rotates up from the eastern pacific.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_current
Don't get me wrong, interior Alaska is a complete bitch in winter. But southcentral isn't really that bad.
I will say, though, that when it gets down to around zero here, the extra humidity in the ocean air can make it feel a lot colder. Add in a good breeze and it can feel respectably brutal.
- aj
Yeah and when life was the most abundant on earth, it was between 4-7C warmer and the CO2 was in the 20 times as much as today.
You welcome your new tyrannosauroid overloards, I suspect? Sure, "life" will do fine in 5 million years (unless we put on other pressures). The main problem for humans is the rapid change from a relatively stable state that has persisted through most of human history.
Stephan
Well.. firstly.. I didn't assume you suggested something to spend the money on. Nor did I assume, or state, that you had all the solutions.
You said "we do what we can" ... which I am saying "costs money" ..
If we spend money doing what we can and didn't need to .. what follows is what I said before. Spending more money than you need to on a problem causes a whole host of other problems that can and do degrade the quality and/or length of human lives. I am not unaware of the tradeoffs. You seem to have not even considered them.
I wouldn't have thought that I would need to explain the downsides of wasteful spending, or as you so eloquently called it spending "more money than we had to" ..
I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
The very idea that the human race could affect a planetary ecosystem would mean we would have to conclude we are in possession of technology that could express energy equivalents that equal natural forces.
We don't have technologies that express the energy equivalents of natural forces. What we do have is the ability to reduce the efficiency of infrared radiation by the earth by a small amount. When you multiply that small amount by the energy of sunlight reach the earth and accumulate it over many years it becomes a very large amount.
In essence your argument is that because a nuclear explosion is much larger than the energy in a 9V battery, you can't trigger a nuclear bomb with a 9V battery. Which is both wrong and idiotic.
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It has been conclusively shown that global warming is manmade by proved-to-be-corrupted scietific entity called EPA.
A plain and simple lie. The EPA doesn't do that sort of work. Where do you get this crap?
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Sorry, I meant IPCC not EPA. But they are the same bunch. IPCC receives money from big corps who like global warming, even oil companies - do not get mistaken, people behind the corporations seek global governance and increased power, its not about short term profits. Global warming meme is an important theme they need to push on us because it is then easy to advocate food and water scarcity memes which they can of course solve by global governance. Just take a look at all the help the western world is sending to the poor countries - it doesn't help - the power is just spread through mercantilistic paractisies based on fiat money. Another thing about IPCC is the climategate scandal - you get the idea how does one manufacture data because unfortunataly we are heading probably for som 10 years of global cooling and it doesn't fit their plan.
"Climategate" was a non-scandal. Totally manufactured by the right wing media. You should choose more trustworthy sources.
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That's not what he is saying. If through some disruptive event we go back to the pre-industrial age this time there would not be enough easily accessible resources like coal and oil to build up again. It's all used up, so there won't be another opportunity for industrial age for the next billion+ years. Can't jump straight to fusion from fishing and masonry.
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