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2011 Was the 9th Hottest Year On Record
The Bad Astronomer writes "Last year was the 9th hottest year out of the past 130, according to NASA and the NOAA. That's no coincidence: nine out of the ten hottest years on record have been since the year 2000. It's long past time to face facts: the Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in fantasy."
If you're Canadian or Ukranian, buy agricultural stocks. Your growing season is about to get a lot longer (enabling multiple harvests per year which used to be limited to lower latitudes), several of your competitors in agricultural products are going to be less productive, and your agricultural lands a LOT more productive.
For every loser, there is a winner.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Ice ages, hot periods, floods, land scape changes, saltier oceans. The climate and Earth is always changing. Always has been and always will be. With or without us.
And this is the real crux of the issue. The only way we're going to be able to support 9+ billion people on this planet is if we keep things running pretty much the way it is now. Even then, the odds aren't in favor of human beings maintaining Business As Usual given the typical political, economic and social miseries that we tend to inflict upon ourselves and each other.
Now, add some major shifts in food production, water availability and the ability of the coastal areas to support large populations then you make it even less likely that we'll see unicorns and ponies in our future.
Of course, the rest of the planet might consider this a major plus. Your kids, not so much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
We didn't "just dodge" an event over a millennium in the future. Wrecking our arable land over the next century by turning up the heat will kill actual people. Let the people of 3000 AD worry about an imminent ice age, if humanity manages to live that long.
Funny that that's the one climatology study you trust...
You said it wouldn't get warmer. It did. Quit whining about being labeled a denier.
I love it when amateurs try to second-guess experts.
"Mr. Einstein, are you sure it's not just an issue of measurement?"
"Billions of people in the world? You expect me to believe that? Have you actually met them all? I thought not!"
97% of scientists who are experts in this field are sufficiently convinced. They may end up being wrong, but they are in the best possible position to assess the evidence. You are not. Even if you *are* a climate scientist, you don't get to overrule the rest of your peers just because you think you're smarter than they are.
If you're not a climate scientist, please SFTFU with your denial. If you are a climate scientist, then do good research and talk to your peers.
You do know it doesn't take humans a century to build a farm, right? It's also a very parallelizable activity. There's simply no basis in facts for your statement, which makes me wonder what your intention with posting it would be.
it's in my head
Why are you under the impression that global warming won't increase the amount of arable land?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
Bingo. One of the things that has always bothered me about the global the warming/climate change thesis that its advocates predict nothing but negative consequences. That's extremely improbable. Even if we grant that these theories are correct, it's clear that their proponents stress the negative impact because they need to induce fear to motivate funding and to justify the additional bureaucratic power that they crave.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Funny, because a lot of real scientists disagree with you. We know humans have influenced it. It's pretty simple, really. You get into politics when you start claiming "nobody knows" when, in fact, we have a damn good idea. Are you a creationist?
Great Intellect...
That and some volcanoes.
Without those, we're talking an ice free passage in the Arctic from Greenland to Alaska, the melting of enough of Antarctica to raise sea level 4-5 meters (that's 20 feet GW deniers), and hurricanes with enough energy input to make Florida look like a 24/7 disaster zone.
That said, I will bet Mittens' $10,000 that GW deniers will try to mod this entire topic down, using some of the $50,000 I have invested in energy stocks to pay for the posters.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
And this is the real crux of the issue. The only way we're going to be able to support 9+ billion people on this planet is if we keep things running pretty much the way it is now.
I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.
Xerxes ordered his slaves to whip the waves to keep the waves from coming in. He was trying to control something he couldn't in a way that wasted time and energy and probably lives. People who ignored the fact that the sand spit they were building million dollar houses on wasn't there 100 years ago are demanding that something "be done" to keep the spit from eroding today.
As a society, humans are very good at seeing "how things are today" and leaping to "this is how they should always be", even if that means "doing something that doesn't change what's happening".
Now they just claim it isn't caused by humans. Global warming deniers are the new creationists - moving goalposts every time they are proven wrong because they can't stand what science is telling them. They have zero credibility.
Great Intellect...
Half a degree Celsius is quite bigger than margin of error. It is about 1 degree F, which is well within the ability to be detected by dollar store thermometers. Stop grabbing at straws: it is happening and you were wrong, now it's too late to fix it.
Great Intellect...
Farmers, maybe? Their profession is only...you know...the foundation of modern civilization and intimately tied to climate conditions.
Porquoi?
doesn't make it pseudo-science.
First the Republicans denied that the earth was warming
Now they're denying it's man-made
Next they'll say it's too late to do anything
Why have Republicans become the party of ignorance?
- denying man-made climate change
Probably 95% of all climatologists support it
- denying evolution
Probably 99% of all biologists agree it is central to Biology
- denying stimulus economics
Probably 95% of all economists (like me) agree it got us out of the Great Depression
Do they honestly believe Faith trumps Facts? Whose Faith? Only evangelical Christains? What about other Christians (I heard the Vatican doesn't have a problem with evolution), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or (gasp!) Atheists?
Or, on the other hand, why does anyone who claims to stand against ignorance and (to be honest) superstition remain a Republican?
I shudder to think what would happen if these views gained (even) greater credence in the U.S. Would we start segregating women like ultra-orthodox Jews want in Israel? Or deny them an education (and many rights) like in Islamic countries? Why can't all these religious people keep their Faith to themselves? And for issues that affect us all, stay with Facts not Fiction.
Only when the last tree has been cut down,
the last river poisoned,
and the last fish been caught,
will people realise that they can't eat money.
18th century Cree Indian proverb.
Although some people might benefit by the changes, there will probably be more losers than winners.
Our society has been optimized based on the way things were. People farm where crops grow well. Ports are built at sea level near the places where comodities come from.
Rising sea levels are going to cause problems for people who live near old coast lines. I think this will outweigh any other gains.
If we are entering another warming spell, as in the Middle Ages, then Canada definitely stands to benefit. Canada is the second largest country in the world, but a large area is only sparsely inhabited because it's simply too cold. In all likelihood, a warmer north with allow greater exploration and uncover new oil reserves. Canadians who want to stop global warming (assuming it's possible) are working against the country's best interests.
no you just won't admit that the weather is far more complex than you can imagine.
the thing is not that the earth is getting warmer but why?
Most of the ice sheets that are melting are only 5-10 thousand years old. that means 10,000 years ago it was warm enough that they didn't fucking exist. We also know in the past the earth was a lot warmer than it is now.
So how come it is humans warming up the planet when the planet not only has been warmer in the past without humans, but has done so in the last 10,000 years before humans even had domesticated animals.
I can believe our burning CO2 into the atmosphere is bad. the smog is a great example of that. However that doesn't mean that this isn't part of a normal warming and cool trend the planet goes through. In fact not a single person who supports Global warming will even look at such data.
So water levels increase? It will be disastrous, but the majority will survive.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
And without knowing how individual regions are affected...there's really reason to think you'll be affected. Sure... some people think Greenland will melt and shut down the Gulf stream and cause Europe to ice over. Which is a nice theory with no way to know if it will pan out or not.
I live in Florida and all we plant in is sand. All of those oranges tomatoes and strawberries are grown in sand.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
There have been many significant climate changes over the billions of years since the Earth was formed. And you know what? They have usually been *really* bad for the dominant species at the time.
I don't trust any form of science when it's delivered in a political context.
Your words "funny that's the one study you trust" is an example of confirmation bias.
The short story is that there isn't a single pundit who won't happily grab the one "study" that confirms all his beliefs and croon it to the world while simultaneously ignoring every other story.
This problem is worse than it might first appear. It is practically intrinsic to the inferential statistics used in modern studies such that 1 in N studies will, with a degree of reliability, produce exactly the wrong conclusion. The statistics aren't perfect. Drawing random samples from a normally distributed population will sometimes indeed produce samples not representative of the distribution itself. It happens.
So normal science, even when practiced well, will occasionally throw the confirmation-bias favoring pundit and other Joe Schmoe a bone, and we end up with a nation of smug ignoramuses who preen about their confirmed beliefs, but who in fact know very little at all.
Meh.
...for all we know.
That is the crucial part of your post. It is obvious that the scientists who study this field know more about it than the average person. So why do the people who admit they don't understand the issue keep wanting to claim that the scientists are wrong.
They claim to be sceptics, but they invariably accept without question the findings that match what they want to believe - that we might have dodged an ice age or it might not be warming as fast as predicted (even though they have to gloss over the part where it is getting warmer).
Then they will make simplistic claims to argue against the scientific world as if the scientists never thought of that aspect, like that the temperature rise is just within the margin of error or that scientists hadn't considered that the temperature changes could be due to the sun. If only just one scientist would study the sun then we could settle this quickly. Oh wait, they do!
Finally, they attempt to trivialise the problem by saying that all this fuss is just about being a tiny bit warmer, or that it is just about being less snow in the world. This ignores all the things that scientists predicted that is already occurring, like increased extreme weather events and various species dying out.
My point is that this debate tends to be those who know what they are talking about and those who don't. If you were a sceptic, which side would you consider to be more trustworthy?
In reality, farmers care a great deal. Even a few days' change in the growing season, or an increase in the temperatures during the hottest part of it, will change what crops are able to grow and the taste that'll come from them. Wineries in particularly are heavily affected by even one or two days' difference in warm or cold temperatures at the right or wrong time for the grapes.
Civil traffic engineers should care, since temperature changes impact what planned maintenance needs to be done on roads. A colder or snowier winter (one doesn't necessarily mean the other, oftentimes a severe cold snap removes enough moisture from the air to limit snowfall while a milder winter can mean more snowfall) means a need to stock up on road salt and gravel. A hotter summer means a need to resurface roads more often and a need to plan against using looser surfacing that can fall apart in high heat (ever noticed a freshly pave asphalt road in midsummer a bit too far south?).
Tourism? Shifting weather conditions can reduce the skiing season in many regions. Even one lost week can mean going out of business if it happens 2-3 years in a row for the smaller operations such as restaurants or private home renters, and the employees suffer too since they don't just lose tips; most of them lose working hours. Too-hot summer weather makes people avoid some destinations in the middle of summer as well.
Don't forget your power bills. Use a lot of air conditioning?
And Florida produces some of the most bland, tasteless, fertilizer and pesticide-laced oranges, tomatoes, and strawberries in the world...
I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.
It isn't clear that we don't have control over at least some of the major inputs. We could drop carbon emissions fairly rapidly which might mitigate some of the change. We most likely won't.
My point is that, given that the population of humans is either very close to or above the carrying capacity of the environment, then the only way to keep mass human die offs from occurring is to keep Business As Usual humming along. By doing that we have a small chance of dropping the human population over the next century or two to a more reasonable (for the earth) value. Any major change in the economic or resource environment is likely to change things rather quickly. Quickly is going to be unpleasant for a whole lotta folk. You might think it's a problem when you can't get an iPad, but just wait until someone wants to kill you because you have some canned vegetables.
Now, a couple of centuries from now, our progeny will look at the early 21st Century a bit differently but we're faced with a potential Big Mess within our lifetimes. Of course, since the dawn of the nuclear area, we've been at that point but climate change is going to be just another tool in our basket of tricks for messing up things.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The real deniers are the ones who think the earth can be saved and that humans can and should inhabit it indefinitely.
So, short term changes are weather, not climate, except when they "prove" something you agree with.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I do predict, however, that eventually the terms of the debate will change, and the deniers will start changing their argument
You got the tense wrong - I've been noticing a steady shift in online arguments over the last few years. The sequence goes approximately like this:
At this rate, in a few years I expect to see the "skeptics" claiming that we have a profound moral duty to avoid public transportation, run our SUV engines and AC in the parking lot, and convert all of our solar and wind facilities into coal-fired plants. (Think of all the Eskimo children who will be saved from hypothermia!)
Are you serious? You'd better learn some things about your car, so that you can take what he's telling you with an appropriately sized grain of salt. If your mechanic is at a deanship, it is practically guaranteed he is trying to sell you maintenance your car doesn't really need.
This is nonsense. You have no ability to property vet information presented to you unless you have a well rounded scientific background. But you know what? That's not as difficult to get as it sounds. And it beats the shit out of blindly trusting "experts". You should always look into claims being made, and come to your own understanding of evidence presented. Nothing short of that is effective. Taking things on faith, no matter how much you trust the source, makes you a tool.
Changing it back might be foolish, but it'd be nice if we could at least try to stop the change that is still occuring.
Dilbert RSS feed
Ice ages, hot periods, floods, land scape changes, saltier oceans. The climate and Earth is always changing. Always has been and always will be. With or without us.
Yes. Obviously. The question is how much is it changing, and why. Is it a change that would happen without us anyway, or is it a change that is due to our behavior that can be changed? And is it sufficient that future changes will be occurring without us because we won't be around?
I have no idea how anyone can actually think this "the earth has always been changing" is an answer to anything. Would you say "People have always been dying" to either discount the existence of murderers, or to suggest murder isn't a big deal? It's insane!
The enemies of Democracy are
Ah but you see, the argument is that this time it's the dominant species' fault. So let the climate alarmists be consistent, take the blame like the higher human beings they claim to be and at long last shut the fuck up. Meanwhile the rest of us can adapt to the change like nature expects us to do or die trying. The earth doesn't need saving from us... It can shrug us off. In fact, we barely register on its lifespan just like the current warming period doesn't stray much from its long term average. Sure if you want to narrow it down to 130 years, it's a terrible upward slope. Zoom out 100 000 years and have a little perspective, will you?
Mind the frickin' laser...
So let me put it to you this way: The Earth's temperature is rising. So fucking what? It has been much higher in the past. Life not only survived - it kicked ass.
What are you, some kind of earth-mother-worshiping hippie?
Yeah, of course life will survive. It's survived far worse than we've thrown at it -- the KT event, the Oxygen Catastrophe -- and yet life kept on ticking.
"So fucking what?" says the dinosaurs, says the anaerobic bacteria, says every species that went extinct while life went on.
Life on earth is extremely robust. Individual species, not so much. Or just our societies. Frankly there's a wide range of consequences that I care about from the extinction of the human race to simple political upheaval as the locations of arable land change that I don't want to face; the fact that "life" will continue on blissfully uncaring not making one fucking bit of difference to me.
The enemies of Democracy are
Humanity has, undeniably, the capacity to rapidly change the climate on Earth. Consider what would happen if all nuclear warheads in existence were suddenly detonated.
Just because "natural" processes take eons to effect change does not imply that processes driven by humans must also take long time periods to unfold. Humans
Humanity has the power, and is indeed, rapidly changing the Earth's environment. You can argue about the effects that we might have, but this argument that the Earth is too big, and changes in timescales too lengthy for us to observe, is at best disingenuous, and at worst vastly harmful to our collective prosperity.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Actually, the third world countries tend to care the most... This (I'm an American) First World country is usually the one holding everything up.
Go look at the handy map on Wikipedia about which countries wouldn't get behind the Kyoto protocols...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol
Yeah. And they all managed that without a world government or death squads. No destruction of all human life. So.. bascially, you're an idiot.
Ohs Nos! Those poor kids in Canada are going to go without 20 feet in snow!
That 20 feet of snow becomes our drinking and irrigation water in the summer.
Without it, there could easily be a month of no irrigation. That's a big fucking deal.
And the further south you go in NA, the more months without irrigation / drinking water. Hope no-one plans on moving north when the water runs out in the south during the summers; by then the border might be as well guarded as the US / Mexico border.
Ah but you see, the argument is that this time it's the dominant species' fault. So let the climate alarmists be consistent, take the blame like the higher human beings they claim to be and at long last shut the fuck up. Meanwhile the rest of us can adapt to the change like nature expects us to do or die trying.
Do you think evolution works like an X-Men comic? Are you expecting to grow gills, or absorb infrared radiation in the next couple of decades?
Most climate "alarmists" (aka scientists) are not worried about "harming Gaia" or somesuch bullshit (though *you* were the one to anthropomorphize "nature", which doesn't "expect" anything, so I'm not sure what that's all about). They are pointing out that yes, many of the changes ARE the dominant species fault, and are collectively blaming that species of which they are members. And they are hoping that the data they provide will help this species - through technology, and not fantasy - better understand just *how* to adapt (both by reducing the change and compensating for it) to what's happening.
Of course the world won't end. But if you don't think it's a good idea to plan ahead and try to reduce potential disaster to the human race long term, you might as well just restate your position as "fuck everyone else". But then don't be surprised when everyone else tells you to go fuck yourself...
I'm not worried about misspellings as much as the fact your entire post is a giant straw-man. Special native American dance? Really?
The drastically oversimplified correlation was that the 1C "slight rise" in temperature was perfectly aligned with the modern industrial era: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png Causation? Not by itself. But there are plenty of other research in that area as well.
And if you think "minor" changes like that can't have drastic effects on ecosystems you obviously have not read enough research on the topic to make your opinion count for anything. Same with your opinion on whether the THOUSANDS OF CLIMATE RESEARCHERS may have actually thought to consider natural causes before doing YEARS OF RESEARCH and coming to the firm conclusion that it's due to man-made causes.
Most climate "denialists" (aka psychopaths) are worried about earning even more profits. Profit is driven by politics, politics are driven by public opinion and lobbyists, public opinion is used to driven by mass media. Mass media and lobbyists are owned by and controlled by a handful of psychopaths. A handful of billionaire psychopaths get beaucoup money/power on keeping the existing consumption and pollution with out limit business model. Irony: Energy conglomerates (oil) have very deeply vested interest in keeping the old consumption and pollution with out limit business model.
There you go fixed it for you ;D.
Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in psychopathic GREED." Fixed the heading too. Basically the core of global warming denial are psychopathic billionaires who don't give a crap about the world beyond their own personal existence, their self aggrandisement, their insatiable greed and their truly bloated egos. As far as they are concerned it can all burn as long as they are on the top.
So let's do the comparison scientists who can generate income working in a whole range of areas currently work in climate change (which provides zero opportunity for huge patent bonuses) versus billionaires who derive billions in profits by maintaining the existing insane model of consumption and pollution without limit. Now who has the greater motivation and which in reality is the most likely.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Please tell me what the "correct" average temperature is for the Earth? Even if you could, based on 130 years of temperature data why would you pick the temperature today as the point at which you would stop the change as "correct", when the Earth has been around for 1000s (throwing the biblical types a bone here) to billions of years and based on THAT scale the "correct" temperature might be some thing far different (much hotter, in fact, even if you only include the last 65 million years?).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png (ok, not billions of years, but the geologists are working on improving that, I am sure, and it won't look any better for warmists)
I am all for reducing for man made emissions as it is economically feasible to do, I am all phasing out the use of petroleum products for transportation and other purposes as we find ways to do it that don't require making Peter destitute to subsidize Paul to do it. But I just don't have the hubris to say today (or any in the last 30 years) is the "correct" average temperature for the earth and not 2 or 3 degrees warmer or 2 or 3 degrees colder based on a starting date for data that makes today look bad when other examinations of data based on different starting dates make it look like today is really cold compared to where the Earth more commonly has been. I also can't ignore the fact that ice ages come and go and they tend to do so with great rapidity. The only constant is change. If scientists and engineers actually could create a stable environment at a particular temperature set point, chances are we would find out the results of that would be far worse for people than any predictions of anything short of a runaway greenhouse effect.
Most people unable to do even simple calculations or totally unfamiliar with basic biology simply have no idea of just how significant a seemingly small increase in the global mean temperature will be or that fact that all indications are that it will increase 3-6 C within one hundred years. They tend to think in terms of extremes and given the large differences between daytime and night time temperature, or between winter and summer temperatures and think this small change is insignificant. However, as all models show the effects over time will be staggering, completely ignoring sea level rises of more than 1 m within 100 years. Presently Kansas City, roughly near the center of the conterminous US, experiences several days on average above 100 F per year. With a 3-6 C global mean rise, Kansas City will experience temperatures over 100 F, 50-100 days out of the year. If you are a farmer, or if you only appreciate eating, that is a very big deal.
Next time you hear a climate change denier, recognize them for what they are extremists advocating for dramatically higher food prices.
"What about all those areas that are going to become better farming land due to a warmer climate?"
The reality is that there will be very few such places, because historically they have been very poor for growing things and consequently have very poor soils. Just because the Greenland ice sheet is soon to melt does not mean the ground underneath is going to be great for farming. There is also the problem that most plants are extremely sensitive to the duration of day and night, particularly for flowering. Higher latitudes may have very long days during the summer, but have very long nights in the winter. Consequently, many plants will not grow under such conditions without massive amounts of additional energy for artificial lighting. Replicating the disastrous Biosphere II experiment on a planetary scale is not going to turn out well.
Ending carbon dioxide pollution is the only realistic thing that humans can do to assure their survival. The sooner we get started the better our chances of success.
It would be interesting to see the responses on Slashdot if the title of the submission were "Global Climate Continues Its Self-Correcting Trend"
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
The poorest people are hit hardest. It's altogether different to live in a nation which produces industrial foodstuffs than to try to cope with the change with what you have by yourself. The international treaties are there to prevent mass migrations and the crash of social order.
It's this why the third world countries are so eager to support global action. They experience the effects first.