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2012 Another Record-Setter For Weather, Fits Climate Forecasts
Layzej writes "The Associated Press reports: 'In 2012 many of the warnings scientists have made about global warming went from dry studies in scientific journals to real-life video played before our eyes. As 2012 began, winter in the U.S. went AWOL. Spring and summer arrived early with wildfires, blistering heat and drought. And fall hit the eastern third of the country with the ferocity of Superstorm Sandy. Globally, five countries this year set heat records, but none set cold records. 2012 is on track to be the warmest year on record in the United States. Worldwide, the average through November suggests it will be the eighth warmest since global record-keeping began in 1880 and will likely beat 2011 as the hottest La Nina year on record. America's heartland lurched from one extreme to the other without stopping at "normal." Historic flooding in 2011 gave way to devastating drought in 2012. But the most troubling climate development this year was the melting at the top of the world. Summer sea ice in the Arctic shrank to 18 percent below the previous record low. These are "clearly not freak events," but "systemic changes," said climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute in Germany. "With all the extremes that, really, every year in the last 10 years have struck different parts of the globe, more and more people absolutely realize that climate change is here and already hitting us."'"
A lot of people's expectations for the consequences of global warming is the sudden deaths of hundreds of thousands, not wide-ranging low-grade economic impacts that risk hundreds of millions in property damage and puts a strain on global food supply.
We're trained to notice disaster, not statistical drift. There will never be the "event" from global warming, which means denial will continue as the costs keep ramping up.
I thought none of the climate change models allowed for accurate short term forecasting? I've been told not to expect short term forecasting (as in, the next five years, the next year, and certainly not the next few months) to be accurately predictable from the models and predictions of climate change experts. Are we working off predictions made ten years ago? I guess I'm confused as to why 2012 was perfectly on track with predictions.
I would rather here about this from Fox News than most anyone else. Just like I would rather hear about Obama issues from MSNBC and the NFL being the best American sports league from the MLB & NBA.
Science is not a religion, it is not less valuable when it gets updated. Your belief not withstanding.
Time magazine & researchers were telling us what to do about the upcoming ICE AGE, and how to survive it. Now, the same idiots
[citation needed that these are the same people]
are telling us about global warming (whoops...climate change).
Boy you sure are clever. And alone. Climate science and models have progressed extensively since 1975.
The earth goes through cycles....and it is billions of years old. 5-10 years of data is but a blink in cosmic time.
Those cycles you speak of normally take thousands of years to progress, giving larger life forms enough time to migrate and evolve and gradually change their patterns so that they can, you know, survive. When you start to see those averages change more quickly, you should be worried about the larger life forms (hell, bacteria and cockroaches will probably benefit). But, you know, I'm asking you to pull your head out of your ass and yet even when Fox News reports that things were pretty shitty this year, you dismiss it with parroted narrative.
You're a serious part of the problem when others are trying to discuss rational ways to curb this disturbing trend. But, hey, you read a TIME magazine article in 1975 and that makes you smarter than people who devote their lives to this.
My work here is dung.
Time magazine & researchers were telling us what to do about the upcoming ICE AGE, and how to survive it.
Yes, but that was when they measured temperatures using a few dozen thermometers spread around the country and wrote the data in little log books using pencils. They also hadn't developed any decent methods for gathering historical temperature data.
Now we've got weather satellites providing real time, worldwide temperature data with a resolution of a few meters. We can measure polar ice coverage from the sky, polar ice thickness from underneath, Greenland's glacier flow rates, etc., etc. We also have millions of years of temperature/CO2 data from ice cores in the Antarctic, all cross referenced with other data sets like ancient tree ring data so we can make fairly accurate guesses about past temperatures.
No sig today...
I'm guessing the cheque from the denialists was late this month. This is just a warning shot and normal service will be resumed fairly soon...
No sig today...
Global temperatures have not risen - they have risen more slowly than predicted. Well, that's me convinced!
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Really,
You think an ice age is preferable to a gradually warming climate?
I don't think you understand just how gradual a natural climate cycle has been for Earth. Look at this graph of antarctic temperature changes. Notice how it is windowed to -6 to +4 degrees Celsius within today's temperature and how long those changes normally took. If we speed that same change that took 10,000 years up to 200 years and it only ever increases, what exactly do you think will happen to Earth?
Animals and humans aren't going to have time to adapt or evolve in predicted scenarios.
My work here is dung.
'In 2012 many of the warnings scientists have made about global warming went from dry studies in scientific journals to real-life video played before our eyes
Or "reality," as us old geezers prefer to call it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The denialists have shifted their arguments as the evidence for climate change has become stronger and as we have been subject to daily "weather" that shows that climate change is happening and actually exceeding the "worst case" models.
At first they were just denialists stating that it isn't happening. As the climate has actually started to change and we have record heat, drought, flood, etc. they it has become harder to deny that climate change is happening. So, they have shifted their arguments to "we didn't cause it and there is nothing we can do about it". They cite a lot of dubious "evidence" (all of which has been debunked by actual scientists).
There are a lot of sensible things we can do to stop burning fossil fuels (such as the telecommuting idea you propose) but the denialists take the position that it's not our fault and we can't do anything. As usual, it pays to follow the money and you find the fossil fuel industries behind all of the denialist "science" and find them spreading all of this FUD.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Because that is how science works. If science is "painful" to them maybe they shouldn't be doing it. I'm probably more educated in the field than most being a scientist doing other stuff and having read much of the IPCC reports, and I would agree that AGW is currently the most plausible explanation for the observed rise in global average temperature. The rest of the stuff is interesting but not predicted with any accuracy at all (in the models I have seen). For example, from the news article (which probably misquotes the actual researchers), here we see the failure of the model to predict things taken as evidence of its success (wtf):
"There were other weather extremes no one predicted: A European winter cold snap that killed more than 800 people. A bizarre summer windstorm called a derecho in the U.S. mid-Atlantic that left millions without power. Antarctic sea ice that inched to a record high. More than a foot of post-Thanksgiving rain in the western U.S. Super Typhoon Bopha, which killed hundreds of people in the Philippines and was the southernmost storm of its kind."
Even with regards to global temps, the fact the "believers" needed to be forced to double check the validity of their sensor readings belies an unscientific attitude.
That is a meme big carbon has been pushing for a while, and is likely nonsense. We have seen, with moderately little effort and in a reasonably short time, significant rejuvenation of the great lakes, replishment of the ozone layer, reductions in acid rain and particulate emissions.
None are worthy of a âoeMission Accomplishedâ banner yet, but we already experience the benefits of the work in progress.
In each case, the conventional wisdom was that the damage wasnâ(TM)t reversible and the efforts would be herculean.
The herculean effort was over-riding the well paid campaigns to suppress any effort to address these problems. In retrospect, executing all of the advertising professionals and Phd-for-hires would have saved a lot of time, money and damage.
People have a history of innovation, and I doubt that this is beyond us. We have to get fat, dumb and happy out of the way.