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2014: Hottest Year On Record
Layzej writes Data from three major climate-tracking groups agree: The combined land and ocean surface temperatures hit new highs this year, according to the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United Kingdom's Met Office and the World Meteorological Association. If December's figures are at least 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit (0.42 degrees Celsius) higher than the 20th century average, 2014 will beat the warmest years on record, NOAA said this month. The January-through-November period has already been noted as the warmest 11-month period in the past 135 years, according to NOAA's November Global Climate Report. Scientific American reports on five places that will help push 2014 into the global warming record books.
closing eyes, plugging ears and singing naaaa naaa naaaaaaa. unbiblical! 'murrican dream for all
...it was the warmest year in the CET (Central England Temperature) record, which goes back to 1659.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/ha...
CO2 levels measured in the middle of the ocean, far away from most humans:
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_full_record.png
I'm not speculating what CO2 level is normal, what caused it, or how long it will take to go down again, but looking at that graph I would be very surprised if the average temperature temperature didn't rise.
But... but... all the science-deniers keep telling me there's been a "pause" in global warming, and ask me to explain it!
France went nuclear a long time ago, and they adopted it at a pace that if replicated around the world would cut C02 emissions to levels recommended by the IPCC. Nuclear energy is the only viable technology we have at the moment that can both reduce CO2 emissions meaningfully and avoid throwing an additional billions of people into poverty.
Could it be the literacy rate?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Siberia: Central Siberia defrosted in spring and early summer under temperatures more than 9 F (5 C) above its 1981 to 2010 average. Ice on the Ob River began to break up two weeks earlier than normal. The heat may have unleashed methane gas trapped in previously frozen permafrost, triggering underground explosions that formed spectacularly deep holes.
Take a completely average year with completely "normal" temperatures. Let's say that the average summer high worksout to be 80 degrees F. There are still numerous and NORMAL days in the mid to high 90 degree F range, temperatures 10 to 18 degrees F avove it's average.
I'm not making any statement on the validity of warming. I'm pointing out how even "Scientific" reports and journals like Scientific American paint a falacious picture with word manipulation. A single temperature 9 degrees higher that 19 average is NOT a meaningful statistic. It is ENTIRELY normal!
This is a legitimate question
Since the answer is a trivial google search away, I doubt that. I found this in 5 seconds: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
Was that before or after the historical data was fudged in ways the 'climate science" community won't disclose?
(And no, moderators, I'm not trolling. This is a legitimate question.)
Have you finally stopped beating your wife?
Stephan
Warmer? Are you crazy?
It's so hot I can't sleep - 12:38am right now and the temperature is 30.7C, with an expected high tomorrow of 41 (105.8F)
You pose a question but don't give enough information to answer it or even check for validity in the implied claim you're making. Try again.
The inability of the human species to extract itself from personal state to think globally is going to be our demise. If we can't recognize that we are responsible for maintaining our environment in a livable state we are in big trouble.
And it really is not "globally" any more. The entire planet is our personal space.
Of course it's a legitimate question. It's not that you're asking loaded questions in bad faith and have no intention of believing anyone who gives you an honest answer. And people who are asking legitimate questions always put climate science in scare quotes. And they would never ask a leading question that they could easily learn more about with some google searches. Nor is it trolling to make unfounded, baseless, and unsourced accusations about climate science being shadowy manipulators of data that refuse to provide any details about how they derive their work.
You're not a troll at all. Just a reasonable person interested in honest discourse. Exactly the kind of person I frequently see here on Slashdot.
(For those who are truly interested in learning more on the topic of how they correct biases in sea level temperature, unlike the guy "just asking questions" above, perhaps you might find this NASA paper informative and interesting)
Throwing around nebulous, 100% unsubstantiated accusations to start a flamewar, just to see what sticks? Yes, you are trolling.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
You pose a question but don't give enough information to answer it or even check for validity in the implied claim you're making. Try again.
Indeed - textbook example of a troll post.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Lets see what happens if we cut down the rest of the trees.....
Rick B.
No doubt man contributes to it, but Solar activity and earth history going back millions of years indicates this is a normal pattern shift.
The temperature seems to be defying its historical link to solar activity. Based on solar activity we should have been seen fairly severe cooling over the last few decades: http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...
So you missed the story from Australia? Several climate scientists were thrown in jail for getting caught changing historical data to fit their goals...
No, "fudging" means to adjust the data with intent to mislead. In this case, the data is adjusted to correct for errors. If you want to accuse the scientists with intent to mislead you need to substantiate your accusations with some proof.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energ...
There is a problem with public policy. even though the overall group could be better off because of government intervention, there still could be sub groups of winners and losers. I think that a lot of the deniers will only admit there is a problem when they are sure the solution does not make them a loser. So it could be beneficial to start implementing solutions and see which one get shot down because these 'denegotiators' think the cost is to high to their group.
Then move to the Sahara and stfu. Why should everyone suffer for you not wanting to move to a place that is more suitable to your needs?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just like 1991 and 2012. At least until it's quietly corrected and 1934 regains its title.
And I get to shoot you when you try to climb onto my mountain to escape the rising flood levels.
This is my plan, too, and I already have the means. Is it difficult to sneak into your country? Is there room on your mountain? I will bring tools, and equipment for food production :p
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No doubt man contributes to it, but Solar activity and earth history going back millions of years indicates this is a normal pattern shift.
The temperature seems to be defying its historical link to solar activity. Based on solar activity we should have been seen fairly severe cooling over the last few decades: http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...
This. We just had a Solar Maximum where you could (and I did) go out and look at the sun (with sun shades!) and see exactly no sun spot. At the maximum. The sun has been very cool lately. If it was at normal levels, global warming would be (very slightly) worse. Of course, the sun's variance is much smaller than the effect CO2 is having anyway.
No. I am an atheist.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Q. Why can't we use just raw data?
A. Just averaging the raw data would give results that are highly dependent on the particular locations (latitude and elevation) and reporting periods of the actual weather stations; such results would mostly reflect those accidental circumstances rather than yield meaningful information about our climate.
Q. Can you illustrate the above with a simple example?
A. Assume, e.g., that a station at the bottom of a mountain sent in reports continuously starting in 1880 and assume that a station was built near the top of that mountain and started reporting in 1900. Since those new temperatures are much lower than the temperatures from the station in the valley, averaging the two temperature series would create a substantial temperature drop starting in 1900.
Q. How can we combine the data of the two stations above in a meaningful way?
A. What may be done before combining those data is to increase the new data or lower the old ones until the two series seem consistent. How much we have to adjust these data may be estimated by comparing the time period with reports from both stations: After the offset, the averages over the common period should be equal. (This is the basis for the GISS method). As new data become available, the offset determined using that method may change. This explains why additional recent data can impact also much earlier data in any regional or global time series.
Another approach is to replace both series by their anomalies with respect to a fixed base period. This is the method used by the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the UK. The disadvantage is that stations that did not report during that whole base period cannot be used.
More mathematically complex methods are used by NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NOAA/NCDC) and the Berkeley Earth Project, but the resulting differences are small.
Do you honestly think the scientists are going to give you a signed confession reading "Yes, we mislead you!" or something?
No, I expect you to come up with some proof. That means you do your own research, and when you get different results, then you publish them. That's how science is done.
Just immigrate. Judging from how easily people get into the EU, all it takes is a sinking vessel.
Alternatively, if you speak a language that people can understand (English should do in 90% of Europe, except France) and have some kind of skill that can be deemed useful, just come in and look for a job.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But fucking the world up for everyone to keep yourself from having to lift your ass is?
I start to get into the mindset of the warming deniers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We care about survival
Do you really think that climate change poses an existential threat? Even if so, why should we not care about maximizing profits and minimizing costs rather than simply survival?
Nothing in the entire 'climategate' set of e-mail points to fudging the temperature records. Which is quite telling, actually. You'd expect that scientists that were really fudging the data would talk to each other about it.
I'm old enough to remember the first moon shot. There used to be a time when the US was willing to invest billions to achieve goals and conquer technical challenges. Funny, the economy didn't collapse. It wasn't considered socialist or un-American. In fact, it was a point of pride and helped established us as world leaders. Now "American Ingenuity" is becoming a thing of the past.
While we sit around arguing whether global warming is a real issue or not, the rest of the world is moving forward with solutions. We're getting left in the dust.
I'm not sure how so many modern conservatives still manage to think of themselves as patriots while sticking their heads in the sand. It's pathetic.
My company has stock price records back 1 year when it first went public. To determine the impact last week's announcement I'm looking at the entire record. Would it really benefit me to try to infer the stock price from back 10 years ago when the product was still under development? Should I be happy that the stock price now is still higher than what I infer the company would have traded for 10 years ago? Would my company last long if I only considered action after stock prices had dropped below what I infer the company would have been worth the day we first discussed the idea for the product?
After climate gate (Hide the decline !) the climate industry has lost credibility.
They are caught adjusting past temperatures down to make a bigger trend, and adjusting current temps up.
The adjustments are public, and in some cases controversial (like the urban heat island adjustment opposite from what you think).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/28/nasa-giss-adjustments-galore-rewriting-climate-history/
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/infilling-is-massively-corrupting-the-us-temperature-record/ -compares raw to adjusted data and data that has been manufactured by interpolating between stations.
This one shows the adjustments vs time
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/18/hansens-nasa-giss-cooling-the-past-warming-the-present/
Now why does a good scientist go back to 1911 and assume you know what temp measurements are needing adjustment down?
And other temp series getting adjustments
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/15/ghcns-dodgy-adjustments-in-iceland/
BUT in contrast the satellite measurements show no increase for 18 years from NASA and U of Alabama, and the best temperature measurement record in the USA, the USCRN (properly sited across the USA in rural settings with triple redundant SPRT sensors. So NO adjustments are made !)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/07/noaa-shows-the-pause-in-the-u-s-surface-temperature-record-over-nearly-a-decade/
Curious that you start with the seeming non sequitur: "what does sarcasm have to do with the conversation?" and then follow immediately with sarcasm. This is about the level of debate that I have come to expect from the contrarians.
Well. Sarcasm breeds sarcasm. Doesn't it?
I would like to avoid it.
I think we, as a species, are doing horrible things to our planet. I just think that mildly rising CO2 levels is trivial in comparison to the dumping toxic brews.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
A quote from Judith Curry's blog sums it up well;
"last week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a supposedly scientific body, issued a press release stating that this is likely to be the warmest year in a century or more, based on surface temperatures. Yet this predicted record would be only one hundredth of a degree above 2010 and two hundredths of a degree above 2005 — with an error range of one tenth of a degree. True scientists would have said: this year is unlikely to be significantly warmer than 2010 or 2005 and left it at that."
http://judithcurry.com/2014/12...
I was not being sarcastic in the least. We should be focusing on giving to our children the least debt and the most wealth - not merely survival.
Re: " We should be focusing on giving to our children the least debt and the most wealth - not merely survival." I could not agree more. And I may have misinterpreted the meaning and intent of your statement.
My point about survival is that many global warming people say that rising C02 levels are an existential threat - hence my use of the term survival. Sea levels change all the time, with or without industrial activity. Island chains appear and disappear; coastlines expand and contract. If C02 levels go up will life continue? Is it truly an existential threat?
Well there was an incredible variety of life 55 million years ago with C02 levels far above the worst-case scenario put forth by alarmist. THEREFORE it is NOT an existential threat.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
It's very interesting that 2014 was so hot for most of the world, because 2014 was also the coldest year in Iowa for a long while. Which really is not good for food production; Iowa is some of the most fertile and most valuable cropland in the United States. It just goes to show why we say "climate change" instead of "global warming": sure, global average temperatures are rising, but in anybody's local area what we're actually experiencing is instability. They'd have known that in the 70s if the climate wasn't so hard to accurately model. It sure would be great though if we could know what the climate will be like in any local area after a global rise of 4 C.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
Information you don't like = Propaganda. Information you like = Truth. I get it.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Even contrarian economists such as Richard Tol agree that we should be implementing a revenue neutral carbon tax to mitigate the worst effects of rising carbon. Since this action is the least common denominator between the "sky is falling" and the "nothing to see here" crowd I suggest we all get behind it. A modest revenue neutral carbon tax would have minimal impact on the economy, would drive investments towards low carbon solutions, would do so in a market driven rather than government mandated way, and would decrease taxes on activities that we should be encouraging such as income and spending. It's kind of a no brainer.
In this sucking mud swamp of a debate, it is entirely possible to get completely opposite claims with lots of supporting data depending on which Google search terms you use to fortify your position.
Quote:
Numbers released today by NOAAâ(TM)s National Climatic Data Center show that not only has July been abnormally cool in the USA, but so has 2014 in general. For the last 30 days, there have been 574 record highest temperatures in the USA, and 1,726 record lowest. A ratio of 3 to 1, indicating that July was very cool. But, the year so far has also been cool.
So far for the USA year to date, the numbers of record lows outpace the highs two to one.
This year, here have been been 12,644 daily record lowest temperatures versus 6,615 record highest temperatures in the USA, a ratio of 1.91 to 1.0.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
Remember the "Polar Vortex"? It was a cold damned Spring and Summer through 2014...
From Wikipedia:
The 2013-14 North American cold wave was an extreme weather event extending from December 2013 to April 2014, and was also part of an unusually cold winter affecting parts of Canada and the Eastern United States.[6] The event consisted of 2 episodes, the first one in December 2013 and the second in early 2014, both caused by southward shifts of the North Polar Vortex. Record cold temperatures also extended well into March.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...â"14_North_American_cold_wave
Though, of course, this is blamed on AGW once again. "The planet is warming up, which is why you're freezing your tail off. Obviously."
Back in the debate swamp, "True Believers" claim that the "Deniers" are funded by the petro-chem industry to fudge data. That may be true. Truthfully, I've not checked. I *have* however checked to see that the AGW side can be accused of similar things; their funding comes from those who would benefit from carbon tax scams. Driven by fear of unemployment and professional crucifixion, they engage in all sorts of funny business...
BOM finally explains! Cooling changed to warming trends because stations "might" have moved!
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/...
But the thing I find interesting is that, as per usual, *nobody* in the MSM or really anywhere in the debate is looking at or discussing the other parallel trends. We've seen massive increases in comet/fireball activity and volcanic activity
"If you plot data from the last 200 years, there's a clear increase in the number of eruptions over time," Siebert said, "but that's not a function of the actual number of eruptions but rather due to reporting effects."
http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/are-volcanic-eruptions-increasing.htm
-You'll notice that while the up-trend is beyond denial every official volcano news site in the first few Google page returns races to assure us that incidence of mountains blowing up are not *actually* on the increase. -It's simply that we have only recently become better at noticing when MOUNTAINS BLOW UP.
You'll excuse me if I find this to be a rather tenuous bit of self-calming very likely (my opinion) linked to the official media directives telling us that any of the bad CO2 must be due to human activities and certainly not any natural events. -Which, please note, is NOT why I bring up volcanoes.
CO2 doesn't interest me because nobody has yet put forth a viable explanation for why it would cause any significant net heat capture. CO2 works in both directions. CO2 is opaque to IR; like the clouds of Nuclear
Well. In economic terms - what is the worst case scenario to the global economy? If we discuss things along those lines - fine. Then the question is less "chicken-little" then "how do we prepare for the following world events.
Ultimately I think pollutants, habitat encroachment and over-population are a far greater concern than rising C02 levels.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
If this were true, should we pick just one of your concerns to address and ignore all others? What if there is a low impact solution to one of the others that even the most skeptical economist believes we should adopt?
It's been at least 10F above normal all year. It's supposed to be 55F tomorrow. And we've seen only trace amounts of snow so far but lots of rain. In a way as a commuter I'm kind of enjoying it - I walk to the train station, there's no ice or snow to contend with and a little rain is easily dealt with. So if that's climate change I'm all in. Plus the old gas bill for home heating has been very reasonable. Love it because I know it's making National Grid suffer - and of course my ultimate goal is to break them into a million little pieces.
Take your silly propaganda elsewhere.
Hey, what about that hiatus that didn't exist, and then it existed. Does it not exist again?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
no jail here but calls for dismissal:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/26/australian-scientist-calls-for-heads-to-roll-over-adjusted-temperature-data/
almost jailed here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246661/New-scandal-Climate-Gate-scientists-accused-hiding-data-global-warming-sceptics.html
not the OP AC, just a googler
Liberals start looking at this from ALL angles. Right now, the idea of allowing China, India, South Africa, etc to build coal plants at will, while trying to get just the west to cut, is INSANE.
When data is released from OCO2, it will show that China's and India's emissions are a great deal more than is acknowledged. In fact, China much closer to 50% of world's emissions, than is realized.
So yea, the neo-cons/tea* are idiots for refusing to look at science, but even more idiotic are those that KNOW that we have problems, but push 'solutions' that have ZERO chance of solving things.
The fact that Germany killed their nukes, while buying more electricity from Poland (heavy coal user), along with France (largest nuke in terms of %), and are now building new coal plants, speaks volumes about how foolish this liberal type solution really is.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Seriously? You can't fathom a world that is warming globally even while some places at certain times are quite cold?
Right. And I know that where I grew up on the Illinois-wisc border, we regularly had -30 to -35 F in the winter. Now, it has been 2 decades since they have seen -20F, and have only seen below -5 but a couple of days / year.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Good, then I'm sure you'll be the first to debunk the accuracy of the anecdotal "evidence" for 2014 being the hottest year EVAR that is linked at the very end of this post.... oh wait I forgot:
1. Does weather make Global Warming sound real and/or scary? WEATHER == CLIMATE
2. No to question 1? WEATHER == RANDOM EVENT STFU DENIALIST NON-BELIEVER.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Who thinks he's entitled to make life miserable for all of the grownups around you until you get things exactly the way you want them.
is better than the past is immoral, no matter how much you think you are entitled to crap on everyone else's head in order to avoid taking responsibility for your actions.
just so that I can continue doing what I am doing and hopefully die before the major shit hits the fan.
deliberately ignore in order to find someone willing to whore themselves out for you and your fellow denialists?
I think it's a little too early to completely rule out a connection.
The greatest variation in solar output over the course of a cycle is in the blue to ultraviolet part of the spectrum and that happens to correspond to frequencies of light that are the most penetrating to sea water.
It's possible then that the extra energy during previous vigorous sunspot cycles accumulates in the ocean over the course of many cycles and is slowly released later.
A weak cycle now might at the moment be partially masked by the release of decades of accumulated energy.
Unfortunately, since the data makes it impossible for you to deny the truth you feel entitled to waste everyones time with your denialist BS.
Why would we need anecdotal evidence? We have records from the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United Kingdom's Met Office and the World Meteorological Association all reporting that this is in fact the hottest year on their respective records. Do you think anecdotal evidence trumps hard data?
Bigfoot, pyramid power and Elvis being alive in Idaho, son. then again, being a denialist, your sites might pretend they are real.
Good point - except that the oceans are currently accumulating energy. If your theory were true then the oceans would currently be releasing their energy to the atmosphere. In fact the oceans have never (in the record) been hotter: http://www.skepticalscience.co...
Here is a more up to date graph of ocean heat content. The recent data shows increased warming: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3...
Temperature goes up, goes down as it always has. It is normal. Now if they will just stop blaming humans for it. http://www.globalclimatescam.c...
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver --Proverbs 25:11
that means absolutely nothing.
As a liberal, I strongly believe that altering the stoichiometry of a mixture changes its thermodynamic and heat transfer properties.
Well there was an incredible variety of life 55 million years ago
life which was completely different from people and adapted for a much, much hotter earth.
remember that human beings start to die from heatstroke when the wet-bulb temperature hits about 95F. now remember that 55 million years ago the earth's mean temperature was about 30F higher than it is today.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Everyone? Really? It's climate change not climate fucking. It might actually be better not worse, at least in the long run. When Canada, Russia and Alaska are the premier places to live how can you complain? I say getting humans more comfortable with migration (again) is a good thing. It will spur technology/development and investment and give us a chance to finally let loose of some of those nationalistic bindings. The entire wold population could easily live in a warmer Alaska-Canada or Russia.
Where's the alarmism in calmly stating a true fact?
Stating that a year is warmer than other years is not a Fact if your margin for error could mean it's not actually warmer than the other years.
Which is the original point made...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://climate.gov/news-featur...
Looks more like it's getting colder to me.
Need Mercedes parts ?
What may be done before combining those data is to increase the new data or lower the old ones until the two series seem consistent.
I sure hope they are not actually doing something like this anywhere, as airflow can dramatically affect temperatures at the top of a mountain in ways that do not correspond or correlate to temperatures in allies below...
Even just the fact that larger cities build up around stations over time really means you can't treat the data as from the same sensor, since a very large city has substantial effects on weather in the city itself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, and it wouldn't be so packed like in India (which will probably be uninhabitable by then, but hey, we could resettle them all a few miles further north where it would be a-ok ... well, aside of still not getting any rainfall).
Turning Sibiria from a cold arid place to a hot arid place isn't going to solve a lot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hey, I won't have a problem. I'm sitting up here a few 100 meters above sea level, that should keep my feet dry another year or two.
Sorry if I tend to think beyond my own nose tip and care about people other than me...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You have no idea what you are talking about, when you say there is a "mildly rising carbon dioxide level". The ratio of carbon dioxide produced by human activities is already nearly 100 times that generated by natural processes. This is simple enough to demonstrate given the isotopic composition of the carbon in the atmosphere.
What you and those who share your optimistic and erroneous assumptions suggest is that we have as much as few hundred years to tackle this problem. The amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere is causing the Earth to warm at a rate 36 times faster than it ever has in the past 100,000,000 years of Earth History, including the Paleocene Thermal maximum that saw the growth of palm tree forests in Wyoming as well as a total change in the composition of North American mammal species. This, not to mention the most rapid drop in oceanic pH at any time in Earth history, which has already placing oyster fishing in the Pacific Northwest in jeopardy of total extinction in less than 50 years. Few recognize that the pH drop has been steep, about 20% in the last 100 years (remember the pH scale is logarithmic) or that humans extract about 50% of the protein they consume from the oceans, so oysters won't be the only losers.
Life can cope and evolve if change is slow enough. However, when it occurs too rapidly one sees extinction instead and as all indications of studying the biodiversity of just about any taxon on the planet indicates that extinction of most life forms is the path we are headed toward at an every increasing speed. Ecosystems are simply not things that humans are good at understanding, much less putting back together, even though we depend upon them for our survival. Such ignorance, is easy to demonstrate. Simply step outside and identify a hundred species in your immediate surroundings. Most people will be unable to identify 20 or tell you much about their biology, much less one hundred, even though even in the harshest of environments there are typically thousands of species, many of them beetles.
Unfortunately for humanity, the rate the Earth is warming is accelerating exponentially and we are now beginning to see several predicted effects that will further propel the exponential rise in temperatures: 1) arctic amplification caused by the loss of polar ice cover that will accelerate heating in the relatively shallow Arctic Ocean, 2) incipient release of about 2-3 trillion gigatons of carbon as the permafrost melts primarily as methane, which is already occurring throughout Seberia and Northern Canada, and 3) elevated release of carbon dioxide trapped in near short and shallow Arctic clathrates, which will add another few trillion gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. As Edward Teller aptly noted, humans will perish because they fail to appreciate the nature of exponentation and its consequences.
With just the few degrees of warming that we have seen so far in the past 100 years, the critical link between plants and their pollinators, which is highly sensitive to temperature, is already being disrupted worldwide, one of the major reasons crop yields are declining globally. Many species, such as humans, simply won't be able to cope with the consequences of the loss of pollination within 100 years time, which will almost certainly occur as we see another 5-10 degree temperature rise within the next 100 years. Entire governments and economies are collapsing already and the temperature dial has only moved about 1-2 degrees and equilibrium temperatures with the existing carbon dioxide load has still yet to be attained, even without considering the release of more than 5-10 times as much as can be expected in the next 100 years given existing trends.
Because carbon dioxide levels were higher in the distant past than they are now is hardly an indication that we don't face an existential threat. The issue is one of what is the rate of increase, since it is the rate of change that will determine whether or not species have enough time to evolve.
Currently, we are tracking a rate of increase of about 36 times that which took place during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal maximum that you are referring to. This spike occurred over a period of about 30,000 to 60,000 years and in the process the flora of North America changed from largely coniferous forests to a situation where palm tree forests grew in Wyoming and the composition of the vast majority of species the native mammal fauna changed entirely.
You might ask yourself, what is going to happen if it gets so hot and dry in Wyoming that palm trees will again flourish there, or when places like Las Vegas, already less than 50 feet away from water levels in Hoover Dam when no power will keep the lights on the strip? Where will the folks who live in Southern California go, when there no longer enough runoff from the Sierra Nevada or when the Colorado River runs dry further upstream than it does now? You would think that this alone would get republicans thinking more seriously about the consequences of global warming.
Three major immediate threats beyond sea level rise, which will result in the migrations of hundreds of millions of people globally in the next 100 years given the many very low lying countries, will be 1) the rapid alteration of existing freshwater resources 2) and the disruption of pollination caused by an increasing mismatch between flowering times and the seasonal activity patterns of their pollinators that are extremely sensitive to temperature changes, and 3) the rapid acidification of the oceans, which provide about 50% of human protein and which are the sink for the bulk of the carbon dioxide humans are producing. World oceans are seeing a rapid drop in pH (remember its a logarithmic scale) and virtually the entire marine ecosystem is built upon species with either calcareous exoskeletons (many if not most invertebrates) and virtually all vertebrates that have calcareous endoskeletons, both groups being particularly sensitive as larvae.
Too bad its carbon dioxide that is producing most of the forcing of ecosystem change. You seem to be worried about the cost of mitigating the economic losses to those who generate lots of carbon dioxide. These losses pale in comparison to the loss of agricultural production and fisheries resources, as well as the cost of dramatic changes in freshwater resources that will occur over the next 50-100 years as a result of elevated carbon dioxide levels. Ask yourself, how much will it cost to rebuild or retrofit every port in the world? You think that won't be expensive? However, in 100 years time it will be a necessity.
There was an incredibly diverse biosphere 55 million years ago. The problem for us humans is that it wouldn't have been hospitable to us as a species nor will it be should carbon dioxide rise to those levels again.
It will take a couple of weeks to do the quality control on December's numbers so the official notifications should come out toward the end of January.
Climate models do not use temperature observations as input. The observational data is compared to the output of climate models to test them.
John Coleman has a Bachelors Degree in Journalism and no peer reviewed published work in climatology.
The basic "classical" climatological period is 30 years as defined by the World Meteorological Organization. So to answer your question by definition 30 years or more.
The daily climate clickbait has the normal count - close to 500 posts - all the same people, making the same arguments.
God God Slashdot is the CPI revenue that fucking important that you have to run this crap every 2 days?? Color me sick to death of it. So let's run a pro Obama Care story tomorrow (500 posts assured), followed by some "Corporations are Evil" story (500 posts assured), outsourcing I.T. jobs (500 posts, assured), followed by the ever popular "My I.T. manager is a clueless dolt" (500 posts every time)......
Murphy was an optimist
Call me a skeptic. Mother Nature will do what she damn well pleases with this planet and doesn't give a rip about us humans. 99.5% of all life on this planet has gone extinct and the other .5% will including us. A good old fashioned volcanic eruption like Mt. Tambora in 1815 will cause "climate change". That was called the year without a summer in 1816. I am not so vain as to think we can do anything to this planet that she will even notice, short of a full and total nuclear exchange. Even then I'm certain that a portion of the ocean life won't even notice that anything has happened and will continue to live, evolve & go extinct as Mother Nature sees fit. As time marches on we will see cooling cycles and warming cycles and a year to year comparison is irrelevant, or as relevant as comparing sports teams team stats year after year. Rules changes and personnel changes will alter the numbers significantly. For those of you still firmly on the "global warming" bandwagon then read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... either one will confirm your belief or refute your belief.
"If stupid things work...then they are not stupid."
The Sun is of course the source of essentially all of the energy on the Earth's surface but we've been monitoring it intensely since after WW II and continuously since the launch of satellites in the late 1970s. There has been no observed change in the Sun's output that would fully account for the temperature changes we've seen. The Sun's effect on the Earth's surface temperature is modified by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere such that the surface temperature is around 58 degrees F greater than it would be without them. Water vapor is of course the most important greenhouse gas but it is controlled by the temperature of the atmosphere and there is essentially nothing humans can do to change it. That leaves the 2nd most important greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide as something we can exercise some control over.
The effects of a Krakatoa sized eruption would last for 2 or 3 years with maybe some lingering effects for 4 or 5 years. It would have little effect in the long run. Even the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, the largest eruption in the last 100 years only had 2 or 3 years of effect on temperatures. (BTW, the word you want is "moot" as in "moot point".)
If you allow your fear of socialist redistribution to color your opinion of climate science then you've got it backwards. Political opinions have no effect on science. Understand the science first then develop your response to its implications. Anything else is wishful thinking.
The data's only "untrustworthy" if you're a fucking dipshit anti-science luddite like mister Maynard here.
This is the kind of guy who puts "some college" on job applications because he once worked at one.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Science is complex and verifying others research is the fundamental basic for science.
Making science more like science is good though.
And, no, the actual issue is people believing the Oil industries FUD.
Cause, you know, scientists making a decent wager are obviously more corrupt than people making a fortune.
So the atmosphere is getting more heat retention and our sun is getting hotter on its way to going red giant and swallowing us.
What did I miss ?
Call me in a few billion years. The trend will be more obvious than our stupid life spans we look at.
The loudest people who 'disbelieve' science tend fall on the right side of the political spectrum. That isn't to say everyone who believes in global warming does so because they are thinking about the science, but at least most of those people respect scientists and science. That being said, I meant some snark there, too.
When it comes to AGW it's true that most of the science deniers are on the right side of the political spectrum. But for anti-VAXers it appears to be more spread out over the political spectrum. For most I think it has a lot to do with how the implications of the science conflict with their ideology.
But as a liberal myself I pretty much agree with you. Unfortunately snark doesn't come through well in written prose unless you make it obvious.