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'Half' of 2012's Extreme Weather Impacted By Climate Change
sciencehabit writes "2012 was a year of extreme weather: Superstorm Sandy, drought and heat waves in the United States; record rainfall in the United Kingdom; unusually heavy rains in Kenya, Somalia, Japan, and Australia; drought in Spain; floods in China. One of the first questions asked in the wake of such extreme weather is: 'Could this due to climate change?' In a report (huge PDF) published online today, NOAA scientists tackled this question head-on. The overall message of the report: It varies. 'About half of the events reveal compelling evidence that human-caused change was a [contributing] factor,' said NOAA National Climatic Data Center Director Thomas Karl. In addition, climate scientist Peter Stott of the U.K. Met Office noted that these studies show that in many cases, human influence on climate has increased the risks associated with extreme events."
Godfearing Christians are smitten by God and not by Climate Change.
Of course humans affect the environment, how is that disputable? It's the degree and duration of the affect that is not clear. Whether, or is it weather, these human changes are a significant factor is the debate..
I have noticed only people in NY call it a superstorm, anyone else would call it a cat 1 hurricane or TS. I feel this planet goes through cycles of extremes, pointing at humans without proof is just another way to tax people.
Didn't take long for the Anonymous "don't believe the scientists" comments to start filtering in, did it? How about, given the scientific consensus (http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus), I'm pretty skeptical of the motivations and accuracy of a denier.
The question should not be is warming/climate change aided by manmade endeavors. It should be, now that we realize we have the power to alter the climate, what do we want to do? Let it go as is? Change it for the better? Try to change it back?
Now I will go get my popcorn.. I need to have snacks for the ensuing battle.
Silence is a state of mime.
I remember an article in which it discussed that Climate Change denying is an American problem. While there are as many conspiracies to Climate Change being a myth as there are of who is starting and promoting them, the reality as shown by poll after poll is that people are not 'buying into it.' For example, my EXTREMELY Catholic parents love and agree with the pope(s). The previous pope, Benedict, was known (by some) as the green pope. A quick search easily shows how he spoke openly on the need to do something. When I say to my dad, 97% of climatologists agree on this issue (and let's be honest, in how many scientific fields do you see that sort of majority consensus on "controversial" topics) and that does nothing to persuade him, I am continued to be amazed when the pope angle doesn't do diddly either. The opposition is so engrained, reason no longer works...
"Debunkers"? You mean, like, frauds?
Sorry, but I don't believe any half respectable news organization should link to something just to show "two sides" of a debate. Science is science. The people actually practicing science seem to be largely in agreement about AGW. Asking Slashdot to link to oil-industry funded shills and kooks doesn't help advance knowledge in any way.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
With those hard numbers the remaining thing to see in this discussion is how many people is paid for Koch industries and similar ones, and how many got fooled by them into denying that human activity are causing changes in global climate strong enough to be responsible for the consequences of some of the extreme weather we suffered in recent years.
Scientific consensus by itself doesn't actually mean a whole lot. After all, scientific consensus once said the universe was static in size. Even Einstein agreed...
And of course, the exact details of that "consensus" are a bit murky (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/05/30/global-warming-alarmists-caught-doctoring-97-percent-consensus-claims/). The consensus is strong when the question is "are humans *affecting* the climate?" and that consensus starts to shrink one the question moves to "are humans the *primary* cause of the climate's change?" or "is this a disaster?"...
The trick is knowing WHICH half
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
The very set of studies this article is about exists to examine the impact (presence and magnitude) of global climate change on specific events.
That the line you quote doesn't say it's immeasurably small (hell 'small' isn't even in the article), it says that the models need to be improved, and you probably shouldn't say a new expansive set of studies is irrelevant because one *editorial* in Nature published a year ago says the models need to be improved.
Then again, denial seems to revolve around completely missing the point or endless deflection rather than addressing the facts and method of data collection, so you weren't out of the norm there.
Argument from consensus alone is also a fallacy. I'm skeptical of the motivations and accuracy of promoters AND deniers in politically contaminated 'science.' For example, your link points to a government funded organization. That's as biased as a study funded by exxon. Even if they're right, they're not promoting this for the right reason (telling the truth).. They're promoting it to push a political agenda (justification of center left politics, which means more funding for them).
Something as large as climate change is going to require more strict adherence to the truth (whatever it is) than political cheerleading usually allows. I guarantee that it is more complicated than "man influences/does not influence."
Is that considered extreme weather? If so, which half is it in?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/30/a-head-scratcher-no-atlantic-hurricane-by-august-in-first-time-in-11-years/#more-92771
I remember an article in which it discussed that Climate Change denying is an American problem.
Climate change by itself is not under dispute. The question is: what causes climate change. And then there are three sides:
- It must be us, the human population, burning all those fossil fuels causing CO2 levels to rise;
- It can't be us, we are to insignificant. Climate change is caused by increased solar activity and oceans releasing vast amounts of CO2;
- It is a combination of both: we can slow it down but it is inevitable;
To be honest, I'm not a scientist and I don't give a rats ass who is correct. What I do care about is that we start taking the necessary measures to ensure that my daughter and her future children still have a place to live once I'm long gone..
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
All I can say about global warming is that when I was a kidd these same people where saying we where headed to and Ice Age.
No, they weren't. Nobody was ever seriously predicting we were heading into an ice age. That "next ice age" played well in the media-- it made Time and Newsweek--but it was never a scientific consensus. Check out "The myth of the 1970s global cooling scientific consensus" in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, or the discussion and links here: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2008/09/18/now-out-in-bams-the-myth-of-th/
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I rather giggle at "Man-Made Global Warming". Primarily, because the planet has been in an Ice Age for the past 2-3 million years: we are merely between continental glacial advances.
The HISTORIC climate for most of the US was hot and swampy for the past several hundred million years. Since genus homo has only been around for the last 2 million years or so, you can't even blame us for human-induced global COOLING. . .
I rather boggle at you giggling at observed effects of human activity on our climate, while at the same time taking as fact that our planet has been in an Ice Age for the past 2-3 million years, despite not having observed this yourself.
The other boggling thing is to see that you don't seem to understand the difference between natural global climate changes and temporally localized man-made climate change, and that both can happen *at the same time* and influence each other. When you want warm water from a tap, do you pour cold water and wait for it to warm up, hot water and wait for it to cool down, or just adjust the two to get what you want?
The fact that the planet is perfectly capable of getting really hot and cold on its own cycle is of no comfort to HSS when we realize that through our own efforts, we can quickly (geologically speaking) make this rock uninhabitable for HSS in a way that would take MUCH longer if left to itself. Of course, the opposite is also true: we can also make this rock MORE habitable for HSS for much longer - hopefully long enough for us to learn how to adapt/escape and continue on as a species.
Can we agree in future not to post news items having to do with climate "science" unless we are at the same time including links to debunkers of said news?
It's obvious to everyone that the wheels have come off this particular scam. Obvious to everyone, that is, except to those whose livelihood depends on them continuing to find new ways of makinjg hockey sticks.
Are you saying that it's not obvious to Canadians here? Probably not obvious to Alaskans either, or the Danish -- the three groups that can look outside and see the immediate effects of the climate "science" "scam".
Personally though, I'm more concerned with the dead zones in the pacific ocean (caused by human pollution); these are likely affecting climate (and ecology) way more than our GHG emissions.
To be fair, some of those who started politicizing AGW early on didn't help. Nor did the over simplification of calling it global warming (even though that is what it is).
People should not have picked results, out of context, that were convenient at the time. For example, when the ice caps start melting, it was pointed out that it was due to global warming. But when someone finds evidence that more ice is being formed somewhere else it looks suspect, even when it's part of a climate model. It looks suspect to not point that part out in the first place. Same thing with temperatures rising consistently in an area. As soon as they drop for a year, or two, before continuing to climb again, it's easy to confuse the discussion. Some of the loudest proponents of AWG, have done the most damage to the cause. After trying to simplify the situation for the greater population and then having the over simplification shown to be questionable a couple of times; laymen have a heard time knowing what to think.
To make matters worse, people start calling each other names and ridiculing each other. When you start labeling non-believers: deniers, Luddites, planet-killers, etc. what do you think is going to happen. Hell, how would most people react?
When I was younger, my father used to paraphrase Socrates by saying, "The older I get, the dumber I get". I finally understand how he felt. We have people on two different sides of this issue. Neither of them want to destroy the planet. But instead of taking a deep breath and discussing it like rational people, it's devolved into name calling. But that seems to be the way of things in the US anymore. I'm pretty sure that both parties in congress want what's best for the country. But instead of compromising, they both are throwing tantrums because they can't have their way 100%. It's truly sad.
The essential truth is that 98% of people who speak out on this issue are merely parroting back talking points and/or just being fanboys for the side that aligns with their politics.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Here is that NASA data you're referring to:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
or here, comparing various data sets:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/image/0/h/compare_datasets_new.jpg
I would not seriously characterize this as "the earth has been cooling for the past decade." Most notably, the increase in temperature observed from the 1960s has not reversed.
Here, from the BEST project, is the comparison of theory and data:
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/img/annual-with-forcing-small.png
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I am TEMPTED to reply with the short version of this argument, that goes as follows:
SCIENCE, bitches!
However, I'd tell you how I'm confident of my information. We call it "Geology", and it's what I studied and did 20+ years ago, before I evolved into an IT Geek. Specifically, Quaternary Geology, which, amongst other things, chronicles the glaciations of the past 2.6 million years. Which is proven by land structures, glacial remains like drumlins and moraines, and radio-isotopic dating of various types used to date those structures.
I also note the longer-term average climate based on the extensive fossil and geological record, as evidenced by not just radio-dating, but standard principles like "unless overturned (which can be detected easily by examination of the rocks), lower strata are older than younger strata. Paleomagnetic data yields approximate latitude, so we KNOW most of what is now the US and Europe were swampy jungles, which require a significantly warmer and wetter climate than they currently enjoy. And before you mention Continental Drift, paleomagnetic data was crucial in supporting that theory, as well.
So again, I say to your boggling: SCIENCE, bitches!!!
1) "compelling" - well, maybe, probably 2) "evidence" - not proof or anything 3) "contributing" - might be some part of it 4) "factor" - however small Don't discount me as a denier... I just don't like seeing "compelling evidence of a contributing factor". You can say that about anything and not be wrong....
I'm arguing against mixing politics with science. It's not enough to support the truth. It must be supported for being so, not just because it happens to be convenient or emotionally satisfying for someone's political beliefs. Otherwise, you get mixed support at best. Something with global implications will require more than that to deal with, if it is even possible.
Today, the problem is that a lot of scientists buy into leftist thinking because the universities are full of it, and because its political proponents support their theories with lots of funding for their own reasons (it justifies their power grabs). It's a positive void coefficient that needs reigning in. The truth, whatever it really is, is what matters the most, right? History has shown that while the state can make a scientist's career skyrocket, it can also send him to the gulag just as quickly, should his findings not support ideology. Scientists should be rewarded for correctness, not for political belief or any actions based on it Whether the neocons' industry or socialists' state is at fault doesn't matter much, because, in this case, both are essentially guilty of the same crime: encouraging emotional conviction over rational thinking, either in the scientists themselves, or in society by twisting their science into support of their world view, increasing their power and influence.
Look, nobody is stupid enough to believe that climate is static. It never has been in the past, and it certainly won't be so going forward. The big questions are what are the driving forces, what are the positives and negatives of climate change as it is currently occurring, what ought to be done, and what can be done. None of these questions are nearly settled.
As an aside, it's always interesting to me when the stereotypical political orthodoxy gets flipped. Republican doves and Democrat hawks on Syria? Likewise, liberals lampoon conservatives as being stuck in the past and afraid of change. Yet for many liberals, climate change is a great fear, a purely negative outcome, and has no conceivable positive results. ~shrug~
What's most interesting about your post is that you apparently find it wise to chastise your father for his foolish beliefs--and gosh darn it, the man just won't listen to facts! At the same time, it's pretty obvious you're throwing around statistics that you can't have read anything about.
I'm assuming the 97% statistic you are referring to is from Cook et al., Quantifying the Consensus on AGW. Cook et al. took two approaches to find the consensus number. The author team first searched databases for papers that had terms such as "global warming" and "global climate change" (I'm not a statistician, but I would think these terms would introduce some pretty intense selection bias right off the bat). Finding 12,465 match papers in the ISI Web of Science database, they tossed 520 (4%) and analyzed the results:
34.8% of these papers endorsed AGW
64.6% took no position on AGW
0.4% rejected AGW
0.2% were uncertain on AGW
Amongst ONLY those papers (34.8% of the total) that took a position on AGW, 97.1% "endorsed the scientific consensus."
The second approach was to mail out a survey to certain selected paper authors. The response rate of the survey was 14%. Again, I'm not a statistician, so I have no idea how good a result this is. Of these 1200 (14%) responses:
62.7% endorsed AGW
35.5% took no position on AGW
1.8% rejected AGW
This is all in the paper, so if I'm misinterpreted anything, or misrepresented anything, let me know.
I think perhaps the surprising thing is that given the search parameters (such as terms that are now highly politically tinged like "global warming") and given AGW is absolutely the easiest way to get funding today as an kind of academic who remotely deals with environmental issues, is that there were as many "no stand on AGW" responses as there were.
It's like asking the Pentagon and the CIA to write papers on the threat to the US from Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. Regardless of whether there really are threats (or the magnitudes), you can bet when their jobs are on the line, they'll find something!
I completely agree with you. I think there's an entire new strand of luddites emerging today. This is party with good cause--we've learned a lot about chemicals, pollution, and health, that we simply didn't know 50 years ago. We SHOULD be cautious going forward.
But there's such a strand of "anything that has plastic is bad" and "anything that isn't all 'natural' is bad" that are followed by a belief that humans cannot possibly affect POSITIVE climate change, that I'm somewhat baffled.
Humans have in the last 100 years brought about a lot of positive environmental change. Let's going with what we can do, rather than what we're not able to do.
Climate scientist Peter Stott of the U.K. Met Office should have commented that these studies show that in many cases, excess human presence in areas where they have no business permanently living, has increased the risks associated with extreme events that randomly occur. Humans need to learn that life on Earth has not always been pleasant and the building of and living in flimsy structures in Earthquake fault zones, flood zones, and areas where tsunamis, hurricanes and tornadoes frequent will lead to unpleasant experiences.
"Endeavour to persevere"
You're using fallacies to criticize my argument. Yes.. scientists fall for political bandwagoneering too. They're are humans after all. They should know better, but a lot of times, they don't have a choice: tow the line or get no funding. Political correctness demands that the science 'agree' with the official position of the political party in question. This dynamic varies from country to country, depending on its politics, and also includes inter/intra university level politics as well. You cannot tell me that left wing governments don't milk/misrepresent global climate issues as potential tax cash cows in a similar way that exxon sees profit in 'debunking' it.
I don't trust either one at this point. Too much bullshit and not enough substance.
it's pretty obvious you're throwing around statistics that you can't have read anything about.
then you go and throw out statistics that you clearly haven't read into. Although, you're right, most papers take no position, but the ones that endorse it versus the ones that don't is a ratio of 30:1, which should write a clear enough message.
What you're advocating for amounts to stories saying "Opinions Differ on the Shape of the Earth" with one link to, say, the Geological Society of America and the other link to the Flat Earth Society. Sometimes, when there are two sides to an issue, one side is definitively wrong, and reporting it any way other than that is just plain stupid.
I am officially gone from
The question now is: will we be wiped out by global warming before the next ice age hits?
What's this mechanism for "wiping out" humanity by slightly getting warmer? Are we going to forget to take off our jackets and turn on the AC?
Why do you assume that we're only going to get slightly warmer before the next ice age? If you stick a frog in a pot and turn on the heat, it gets slightly warmer by the minute... until it boils. Humankind's interference in climate change is introducing a variable that, as far as we know, never existed before. It could be that the effect is so small that it gets completely overridden by the natural cycles -- or it could be that it's just enough to derail those cycles and send them down another path. The truth is, we don't know, and while climate science is getting more sciency, everything is conjecture at this point (on both sides of the argument). But as there's a measured change, we should take that change seriously and look into it.
This is beside the point that the climate is more than just the air -- if the world's oceans get slightly warmer, that's going to thoroughly mess with the ecology. We're already seeing migration patterns of sea life change significantly, and we're seeing extinction of some marine species. That will affect the entire food chain. So not only will we be turning on the AC, we'll no longer be eating many kinds of seafood, nor animals that consume that seafood, nor animals that consume them. This will also affect the global algae bloom, which in turn will affect the "natural" gas emissions/absorptions more than cutting down a bunch of trees ever would.
But the truth is, we really don't know how things will turn out, because we're only beginning to scratch the surface of how it all actually works.
Consensus? Oh, you mean that report by Cooks that erroneously claimed 97% consensus when in fact it was 0.3%? That consensus?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This is the case no matter what happens, whether through "green" tech or continuing pollution. That's not a climate policy problem.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm saying that the papers that endorse it vastly outnumber the ones that don't. Even if we threw out the papers that didn't say anything absolutely, its still 34.8% versus 0.4%, which is a 870:1 ratio. That is better than a 6 sigma result. If AGW was not real I would expect more papers to exist touting that idea. Your point about the government and jobs is redundant unless you can prove that all the studies came from the US, and even then you're insinuating that virtually every scientist there that exists is okay with falsifying their data.
You mean your religion. Climate change denialism isn't based on science, it's based on faith. And yeah, you try bringing faith into a discussion of science, you're going to be mocked.
And deservedly so.
Personally, I wonder why, if another 1C increase would start a feedback causing temperatures to rise another 20C, why we don't see this happen on parts of the planet that are already 1C hotter than average. It's an average, so there are places that are far above and far below that average. Why aren't we seeing cases of mini-global-warming where, for example, some part of Arizona, due to high humidity (which has many times the greenhouse effect of CO2), enters this deadly feedback mode causing the temperature to rise to 150 only to be saved by nightfall?
I think you fundamentally misunderstand what global warming/anthropogenic climate change means. Very few scientists think it means runaway warming or even 20C rises (unless we continue BAU for another century). The changes are subtle (especially over short time periods) but profound. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the loss of land based ice from warming and the sea level rise that results. From year to year or even over a decade the rise in sea level is not alarming. But it will take several hundred years for the major ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica to reach a new equilibrium point with the new temperature. The last time CO2 levels in the atmosphere were as high as they are now sea level was around 70 feet higher than it is today so it wouldn't surprise me if that much SLR is already locked in. It will just take time to manifest.
The only realistic solution to global warming is to bring greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2, down to a net zero level. Anything else is just window dressing.
Look, nobody is stupid enough to believe that climate is static. It never has been in the past, and it certainly won't be so going forward. The big questions are what are the driving forces, what are the positives and negatives of climate change as it is currently occurring, what ought to be done, and what can be done. None of these questions are nearly settled.
You make it sound like we don't have a clue, which is incorrect. Research on anthropogenic warming goes back about 120 years or so. Greenhouse theory goes back almost 200 years. These concepts are not new.
As an aside, it's always interesting to me when the stereotypical political orthodoxy gets flipped. Republican doves and Democrat hawks on Syria? Likewise, liberals lampoon conservatives as being stuck in the past and afraid of change. Yet for many liberals, climate change is a great fear, a purely negative outcome, and has no conceivable positive results. ~shrug~
Political ideology doesn't factor into it. The science does. And the result of tat science paints a grim picture of the future if we don't get our at together. No credible scientist is predicting the end of human civilization as a result, but the change and the speed that it happens is going to present some serious obstacles. Even the DoD has released several reports on the subject, including projections of future "hot spots" where rising sea levels, droughts, depleted watersheds, etc. may cause unrest.
It takes time and resources to respond to change. Our current civilization is built upon a certain expected climate. A shift in that climate is going to cause problems EVEN IF the overall outcome would be beneficial (current projections show it won't be, especially the worst case scenarios).
What's most interesting about your post is that you apparently find it wise to chastise your father for his foolish beliefs--and gosh darn it, the man just won't listen to facts! At the same time, it's pretty obvious you're throwing around statistics that you can't have read anything about.
I'm assuming the 97% statistic you are referring to is from Cook et al., Quantifying the Consensus on AGW. Cook et al. took two approaches to find the consensus number. The author team first searched databases for papers that had terms such as "global warming" and "global climate change" (I'm not a statistician, but I would think these terms would introduce some pretty intense selection bias right off the bat).
Selection bias? That's what they were looking for. They wanted papers explicitly researching aspects of climate change. However, there are a lot of climate research papers that don't deal with climate change. So what would you recommend as a filter? Global cooling?
Finding 12,465 match papers in the ISI Web of Science database, they tossed 520 (4%) and analyzed the results:
34.8% of these papers endorsed AGW
64.6% took no position on AGW
0.4% rejected AGW
0.2% were uncertain on AGW
Why did you bold the papers that took no position? Do you think all climate research is about global warming? Global warming is one, just one, subject of study in climatology. And since they were trying to determine what scientists thought on the subject of global warming, there's no point in including those papers which had nothing to do with global warming research.
Amongst ONLY those papers (34.8% of the total) that took a position on AGW, 97.1% "endorsed the scientific consensus."
I'm not sure what point you are trying to convey here. Of the papers that were related to global warming research, there was a 97.1% agreement. Given the number of research papers and scientists that represents, that's pretty good agreement.
The second approach was to mail out a survey to certain selected paper authors. The response rate of the survey was 14%. Again, I'm not a statistician, so I have n
~X~