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Global Temperature Set To Reach 1 Degree C Over Pre-Industrial Levels (metoffice.gov.uk)
Layzej writes: Based on data from January to September, the HadCRUT dataset shows 2015 global mean temperature at 1.02 degrees C (±0.11 degrees C) above pre-industrial levels for the first time. The Copenhagen Accord recognizes "the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius (PDF)." Physicist Ken Rice points out that the next degree Celsius may be closer than we think. "It's taken us about 160 years to warm by about 1 degree C. This is associated with emissions of about 550GtC (550 billion tonnes of carbon, or ~2000 billion tonnes of CO2). Current emissions are around 10GtC/year. If we continue emitting as we are, we will double our cumulative emissions in about 50 years. If we continue to increase our emissions, it will be even sooner.
Have gnu, will travel.
It looks like we've seen a slow cooling of temperatures over the last 6000 years - since the peak of the current interglacial. There was an abrupt reversal over the last century: http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-c...
There is a target to keep warming below 2C as there is an expectation of large negative impacts at that level of warming. We're now 1C away from 2C. The next 1C will come much faster than the first at the current trajectory.
How accurate were the thermometers they used in pre-indistrial times? Even now most temperature sensors are +/- 1 Degree C or worse. For a few quid you can get something that is accurate to +/- 0.2 degrees, provided you have it installed properly and it's only guaranteed that accuracy for the first few years after it's made (Sensirion sht75 for example)
Also known as one degree warmer than the Little Ice Age.
& who indeed measured broadly enough to be statistically good measurement?
Scientists.
& who determined that it was not one of many long term cyclical changes that have occurred for millions of years.
Scientists.
& who will pay the cost of all the government activity? Every reader of Slashdot along with everyone else.
Yes, it's much better to pretend that nothing happens and then scream for the government help once your house is underwater or your tap runs dry in a drought.
& what if their efforts do not work?
And what if they do work?
So what?
1) Global Climate change is disruptive and people will unnecessarily die or live worse-off because of the resulting displacement of peoples.
2) We can be carbon neutral in 30 years if we create large scale subsidies in existing state of the art in nuclear power. (oh and throw in a few renewable sources for up to about 30% of the total requirements)
And
3) If you think we can be carbon neutral and meet the energy needs of civilization with just subsidized renewables then you are the same as a "climate denier" because pretending to solve a problem (to get your extremely inadequate pet projects funded) is in effect no better than denying the problem and just waiting to run out of economically viable fossil fuels.
After we start investigating every single motor vehicle manufacturer out there and find out how many of them (all of them?) have been cheating emissions testing to meet mandates, how much CO2 and other 'greenhouse gasses' humans are actually responsible for.
Oh, and all you climate change-deniers out there? Get yourself a CPAP mask, hook it up to the tailpipe of your car, and see how healthy it is for you to breathe that. Regardless of 'global warming' being a thing or not, isn't it time we started moving away from internal combustion engines? And burning coal? Even natural gas isn't that great in the long run. Time to grow up, everyone, and stop using these baby technologies that are poisoning us regardless. Redesign fission power plants so they're safer, operate them safer, build lots of them. Continue to develop fusion technology until it's practical. Better electric storage technologies so plug-in electric vehicles are more practical. Keep researching and developing high temperature superconductor technology, to eventually improve the efficiency of electric vehicles (and everything else that uses lots of power). Solar and wind to fill in the gaps while we're working on all the above (and by the way how would high temp superconductors improve solar?). Don't know about you but I'd welcome a motorcycle with a 500 mile-on-a-charge range and a superconducting powertrain, that would out-perform the best superbikes currently available.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Here's a comparison of the HADCRU data mentioned in the article to the satellite data (UAH) and to another surface station data set (GISS). They all show warming of about the same magnitude over the last few decades: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/g...
You do realize all of that climate gate conspiracy bullshit has been discredited and that you're linking to something from 2009, right? ALL of that drivel which claimed to show manipulation was pretty much bullshit.
So either you like to trot this out because you haven't kept up to date, or you know damned well you're posting links to stale information which has been discredited.
Because, really, a Telegraph article from 2009 about how the Russians have confirmed that climate data was manipulated? That's about the least quality source of information you could pick.
In which case I assume you know you're full of shit. If you don't, well, you should fix that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If we continue emitting as we are, we will double our cumulative emissions in about 50 years. If we continue to increase our emissions, it will be even sooner.
We all know the oil reserves will be severely depleted by 50 years from now if we just keep the current consumption rate. I doubt we can just keep the pace at which we are emitting greenhouse gases for 50 years. Before we reach the 50 years milestone, the oil price will skyrocket and consumption will collapse.
Achille Talon
Hop!
There was a slow cooling for about 6000 years, followed by an abrupt change in trajectory over the last century. The warming over the last century has been attributed to fossil fuel emissions.
...but what a load of hogwash. Today, we are one entire degree warmer than "pre-industrial temperatures", which they define as around 1850. Coincidental, I'm sure, that the "Little Ice Age" ended around 1850, meaning that they could hardly have picked a colder point in time. I should certainly hope that we are warmer than that! The Little Ice Age saw the largest glacier extents for thousands of years, devastating many communities as they were inexorably covered with ice.
Note, also, the temperature graph in that article - a lot more than one degree drop from temperatures a couple of centuries before, which brings us to the next point. They label today's temperature range as "uncharted territory", despite the fact that the planet was almost certainly warmer than this during the Medieval Warm Period, and before that during the Roman Climate Optimum.
The rest of the TFA is all about beating the panic-drum.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
So, up until now I understood this primarily as a problem that would really hit future generations, long after I die of old age. Now you are telling me that I might suffer from the consequences during my retirement???
I am officially angry, and will start demanding legislation to force other people to pay up to fix this.
I agree that moving away from IC engines would be good for the enviironment, and I agree that motor vehicles are a significant contributor to human-caused emissions of greenhouse gasses, but lets get this into persspective:
The entire transportation sector only accounts for about 27% of the total man-made greenhouse gas (MMGG) emissions:
http://www3.epa.gov/climatecha...
Of that 27%, Road transport accounts for 72%,
http://www3.epa.gov/climatecha...
the rest is aviation and marine. That means about 19% of all MMGG is road vehicles.
From http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/clima...
About 23% of that 19% is from heavy duty vehicles (so 18 wheelers etc are responsible for 4.37% of all MMGG), which means that all the millions of family cars on the road are actually only responsible for 14.6%.
Clearly we need to target electricity generation (31%) and industry (21%) long before just beating up on car drivers more.
Global warming pause Is now such a widely understood concept that even the IPCC talks about it.
first link is entitled: A Pause In Global Warming? Not Really - Forbes
Second link to wikipedia which notes:
While hiatus periods have appeared in surface air temperature records, other components of the climate system associated with warming have continued. Sea level rise has not stopped in recent years,[14] and Arctic sea ice decline has continued. There have been repeated records set for extreme surface temperatures.
It also notes that the start of the "pause" was an exceptionally high preiod, higher than expected. This makes the "pause" substantially shorter than you think, since the beginning of the pause is actually the measurements being hoter than expected. What remains isn't remotely outside the bounds of general statistical variation.
If you want to realy understand things, you have to stop overinterpreting short segments of noisy data.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you really want to understand things, you have to understand what you're reading.
The IPCC never said that global warming had paused -- it was merely increasing at a slower rate than expected over about a decade. The general trend was still upwards, and the decade where it trended slightly less steeply was interesting and unexpected, but it still fits with the general overall trendline of the previous decades quite well given the variation in sampling. If you're reading that trend as flat, there is something wrong with your eyes.... or at the very least something wrong with the software you're using to plot a trendline -- even if you only plot the data during the period mentioned by the IPCC.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
"The Pause was an idea from a 2013 UN report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that concluded the upward global surface temperature trend from 1998 to 2012 was markedly lower than the trend from 1951 to 2012."
It is beyond ridiculous to imply the temperature change was flat for decades given any real data. It may even be premature to describe the temperature change as slowing without more data points to corroborate it wasn't merely an anomaly -- likely brought about through unusual El Nino, La Nina, and other weather patterns which have multiple year cycles.
NOAA investigated this pause/slowdown and used blind studies and multiple statistical methods to prove the cherry-picked period is well within statistical noise and the slowdown or pause is bunk:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Scientists? Which Scientists? What equipment did they use. Where is their raw data collected from pre-industrial times?
Answer: there isn't any. You are lying. The claim isn't being made through measurements from the pre-industrial age. It is arrived at by MODELING. More misleading crap.
Really? Here is a graph you should really have a look at. Ice core samples show that CO2 levels have not been at current levels in the past 650,000 years.
http://climate.nasa.gov/eviden...
While it is pithy and simple to set a target temperature goal, like 2C, i think it misses the overall implications of a changing climate. As the Nature article today on slashdot points out, even a mild temperature change could possibly do something like turn the entire Middle East extremely humid making it basically uninhabitable. Something this trivial, like a local increase in moisture over a relative small region, could provoke war, even nuclear war.
There could be a change in ocean currents, or moisture content/cloud cover of other regions, or any number of other effects from relatively small changes in temperature that in themselves aren't dangerous but human reactions to them could actually be a 'doomsday' level.
So lets do something about it.
Unless doing something about it is worse than doing nothing about it - such as crippling your society in order to make a barely measurable change in CO2 emissions. There is a lot of profoundly bad policy aimed at mitigating global warming.
Droughts are natural and they havent been increasing in frequency or intensity, unless you can otherwise prove it.
Same goes for hurricanes.
Tropical disease spreading has not been linked to an increase of 0.8c, that would be rediculous.
Food prices have skyrocketed because of so called GREEN initiatives like wasting maze/corn for fuel production.
Look it up. The rise in world wide food prices is directly linked to the idiotic ethanol projects.
I'd like to think that I do. I went to school for Software Engineering, but I would say that I do like science. But science to me is usually about the hard, provable facts. I'm more inclined to trust the mathematics where things require indisputable logical proofs.
For example, do you have any reading on anything like the math behind how much CO2 we have released and any scientific experiments that show that that amount of CO2 should be expected to raise the temperature of the planet by 1C?
To me, science is about the experiments used to verify reality. All I ever hear is data like the globe is warmer, we have released all this CO2, but does it really add up correctly in practice? From what I have read, it seemed like we really don't know whether or not the increase in global temperature we see is really what we should have expected to see given our measurements. It seems like too much uncertainty yet for the topic of global warming because there is too much data that we don't know and too many variables that we can't accurately isolate the one we are testing.
I don't take the specifics of the post seriously, but the idea that this fear-mongering in the press about global warming is really a power grab by statists at the national and international levels isn't new.
It isn't new, but "this is a conspiracy by statists to grab more power" is a conspiracy theory that doesn't make a lick of sense.
Saying "be afraid of terrorists! We need to put policemen armed with tanks and bazookas in every schoolroom, and strip search everybody who ever gets on an airplane"-- now that's a power grab. Saying "we need to make changes in the regulatory system that will, over the course of decades, change the distribution of new power systems and will encourage more efficient use of energy" really is not-- that's pretty much the most incompetent "power grab" ever.
The belief that there are "statists" out there who are trying to increase the power of government not for any particular reason, but just to increase the government, is really quite silly. There are many many people out there who want to use the power of government to accomplish specific goals-- both left and right-- and those can be frightening. But the idea that there are statists out there who simply want governments to have more power for no reason at all other than power: no, that's a boogeyman. Not real.
...My point in focusing on government in this case is because I too often see cognitive dissonance regarding "following the money," with people only doing so when private firms/individuals are involved, but never governments.
Because the "follow the money" trail is very clear when looking at climate change deniers: they are massively funded by fossil-fuel corporations or by lobbying organizations which are funded by fossil fuel corporations, and the fossil fuel industry is literally a multi-trillion dollar industry. It's easy to follow the money: you can see who's paying, you can see who they are paying, and you can see what they are asking for and why they want it. It's so not-secret an agenda that you can find the actual memos written by the American Petroleum Institute laying out their strategy.
But the "follow the money" trail just peters out when looking at climate scientists. They're funded by a range of government agencies, true, ranging from NASA to NOAA to the Max-Planck Institut für Aeronomie to the Japanese Meteorological agency, but now you're telling me that they all have the same secret agenda... to do what, exactly? Really, the Max-Planck Institut für Aeronomie does not have a secret desire to increase the amount of regulations in the world. Even if the German government somehow did have this goal... how do they it tell the Max-Planck Institut? Memos saying "make sure that the scientists you fund are instructed to only give results saying climate change is real?" Do you really think that dozens of scientific agencies in as many countries are all going to be getting this memo (why? From who?) and not a single person is going to leak it?
You can try to follow the money... but when you do, there just isn't anywhere it goes. And then, how exactly do the thousands of scientist get their instructions?
There are indeed a lot of people who want to influence government-- plenty of them. But they all do so to anticipate actual, tangible benefits.
The only thing that is unusually big (actually it is just a little bit over the mean of the recent decades, there where bigger ice shelfs, so this is by far not a record), big in terams of area, not kn terms of actually ice.
Actually, the latest NASA paper says that the total Antarctic ice mass is increasing overall, not just the area or in a small location. The total ice locked up is at a new record.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
And the Artic has again a record low ..
NASA says otherwise, 2007 and 2012 were both lower - significantly - than 2015. So the Arctic is rebounding, Antarctica has record ice mass. That seems to be the trends from measurements - increases in ice off of lows rather than decreases.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
it is a false statement that only nuclear will meet those needs.
it is equally false that renewables are only pet projects and cannot meet those needs.
Nuclear is the only proven technology. With nuclear power you have France having demonstrated for many decades that nuclear can provide nearly all the electrical power for a large modern country. Hydro is a proven technology, but it has already been largely tapped out in much of the world and hydro can disrupt river ecosystems. Solar and Wind just don't cut it without either some other large scale supplies of energy... which hydro can't provide... or a massive overbuilding of Solar and Wind to account for the variability. Solar and Wind just can't cut it alone by a long shot, so its either Natural Gas, then coal or Nuclear.
If you can't offer a realistic solution then you are part of the problem.
The Antarctic ice sheet contains ~61% of all fresh water on the planet, and about 26 million cubic km of ice, which would be well above the rest of the ice held everywhere - including the Arctic. IF you were talking about just sea ice, you'd be correct - the Arctic is slightly above Antarctica. But include the full ice sheet of Antarctica, including that on land, and you find that the volume of ice in Antarctica greatly exceeds that of the Arctic, including all of Greenland (which itself is about 3.5 million cubic km of ice).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You really know nothing about the procedures and methodologies we're discussing here.
Yes, I do. The procedures and methodologies that were recording temperatures in a handful of specific pre-industrial spots on the planet cannot be used to extrapolate a precise single "global temperature" within 1 degree C. There isn't enough data. There's no there there, there is only subjective modeling, at best. Suggesting that such a model is hostorically accurate to within a fraction of 1 degree is silly. You know it, I know it, and every scientist worth their salt knows it. The only people who hold that laughable position are those who need the hype. The situation could be WAY worse than a 1 degree change, or nowhere near that bad. It doesn't matter which position you embrace, the point is that talking about "a" global temperature is nonsense in that context.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
From the NASA article:
A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.
So there are some losses, but the accumulation is still growing faster. That's straight from NASA. How you debunk that without completely ignoring their results is a mystery to me. But you seem determined to do so! No thanks, I'll take NASA's statement and study that say ice volume is actually accumulating. Slower, but still accumulating overall.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
During the Pliocene three million years ago, the climate was 2 to 3C warmer and the seas were 25–35 meters higher than today (Dowsett et al., 1994; Rahmstorf, 2007). I'm sure the critters of the time loved it, but our coastal cities would not. The last 10,000 years is of interest because that represents the birth of our civilization. It is the climate that we have adapted our infrastructure to.
For example, do you have any reading on anything like the math behind how much CO2 we have released ...
A crude calculation can be made from the amount of fossil fuel we use. We have fairly good statistics on global fossil fuel use. A chemical formula can tell you how much CO2 is released by any particular type of fossil fuel. For instance consider coal. The average coal is somewhere around 70% carbon. So if you burn a ton of coal that's around 1400 lbs. of carbon. The chemical formula is C + O2 ==> CO2. The atomic weight of carbon is 12 and of oxygen is 16. So you end up with a CO2 molecule that has an atomic weigh of 44. 44/12 = 3.667 so you end up with that much more CO2 than the carbon you started with. 3.667 * 1400 = 5133 lbs or 2.567 tons. Therefore burning a ton of coal produces around 2.5 tons of CO2. The same kind of calculation can be done for gasoline, diesel, natural gas, etc.
So you are saying that CO2 has no effect on warming? Really? Hint: If you are scientifically illiterate, it doesn't help for you to goatse your ignorance all over slashdot for people to point at and laugh.
CO2 is the main driver of warming. Without human activity, CO2 levels would be decreasing, as the natural sinks for CO2 are greater than the sources. We know it's industrial CO2 emissions which are driving warming. We know this. You simply stating that it's erroneous is pathetic, as you have no evidence to support your claim, yet you think your claim somehow trumps the actual scientific findings.
What is wrong in your head?
'solar and wind cant cut it alone'
Again.
That statement is purely false.
We know that more solar energy lands on the Earth in one hour than all of humanity consumes in an entire year ( it actually only takes ~40 minutes ). We need only harness a small fraction of that. and you also conveniently ignore any and all potential storage solutions, or advancing grid technology.
We also already know that, using current mainstream solar technology (therefore excluding advanced panels under development that are even more efficient), it only takes ~25k square miles to power the entire planet with solar. If located in a single location, that's a square ~158 miles on a side, which isn't terribly large given the size of the planet. Some real world engineering proposals based off that call for multiple arrays located in the planets barren locations, distributed around the world. combined with emerging smart grid electrical systems, distribution between generation, storage, and consumer, while being one of the largest infrastructure projects ever proposed, becomes simple, and raises the standard of living across the entire world.
but, even that, a centralized and interlinked system, isn't required.
distributed generation, with every structure independent is also possible, if somewhat less efficient.
or a combination of the two, combining independent generation at individual structures, with a smart grid for distribution, which is actually the most realistic way forward.
analyses have already shown that if every residential structure in the United States alone were equipped with panels, we would generate roughly 140% of the entire worlds' electricity needs. Which translates into meeting America's needs, and thus energy independence, with only a small fraction of that. Similarly most any other country could also achieve total energy independence in similar fashion. This also excludes commercial (nonresidential structures), which while less numerous, tend to be larger, and even better suited to panel installation.
Therefore, I see little reason to proceed with nuclear, given all its drawbacks, when we already have the world's (nay, solar systems) greatest nuclear reactor shining on us every day. If we didn't have the sun, if we were further out, say at Mars' distance or further, yes, nuclear would be the way to go. But we aren't.
So again, I reiterate: while I get that you want to cheerlead for nuclear, what you said is patently false.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.