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Droughts Linked To Global Warming
Layzej writes "Two new papers indicate that we are likely already seeing some of the predicted impacts of global warming. The first used Monte Carlo simulations to analyze how many new record events you expect to see in a time series with a trend. They applied the technique to the unprecedented Russian heat wave of July 2010, which killed 700 people and contributed to soaring wheat prices. According to the analysis, there's an 80 percent chance that climate change was responsible. The authors have described their methods and how they improved on previous studies. The second group studied wintertime droughts in the Mediterranean region. They found that 'the magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone. This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region's climate to normal.'"
It's called "climate change" NOT "global warming".
It's called both. It is anthropogenic (human-caused) emissions of CO2 causing global warming of mean land, sea, and lower atmosphere temperatures which is causing global climate change.
According to a survey, 90% of scientists from the relevant fields and 90% of all scientists ascribe to anthropogenic climate change. That is what we call a "scientific consensus", and you don't get a consensus that strong without an awful lot of data to back it up. I know, I know, the good pro-science guys at FOX News and on the Rush Limbaugh show and from the rightist think tanks keep saying this is "bad science", but let's take a look at the "science" the rightists use to make their arguments, shall we?
The most prominent, most cited, and most published climate change skeptic scientist is one Ross McKitrick, who is either an amazingly sloppy scientist, or someone deliberately engaging in fraud in order to promote a purely ideological view. I'll let you read for yourself: http://crookedtimber.org/2004/08/25/mckitrick-mucks-it-up/.
This guy who either literally doesn't know a degree from a radian or is deliberately doing bad science in order to deceive people is the best of the bunch. The others are even worse. It is on the basis of work by men of this caliber that you conclude that 90% of the scientists on the planet, representing people from every conceivable walk of life, economic status, nationality, set of political views, etc. is part of a vast international conspiracy to... what? Make American rightists feel bad? I was never entirely clear on what this vast, incomprehensibly complex conspiracy is actually supposed to do.
Few "academics" are on the payroll of oil companies.
Any academic in an even slightly related field that is prepared to speak, research or publish material that denies AGW can be on the payroll of Big Oil. They are more than happy to pay for it. There aren't many that do so because most scientists aren't charlatans. Most scientists are actually interested in the truth.