I think it makes sense that mosquitoes in northern climes are worse than more temperate regions. They have a shorter season to deal with and have probably evolved to be more aggressive in order to get done what they need to get done. It's kind of like humans in tropical regions tend to have a more laid back attitude about life since they don't have as many challenges to deal with as humans who live where the seasons are more pronounced.
You may not be a damned farmer but you ought to care about things that affect them since you are entirely dependent on the things they produce for the food you eat and some other things as well.
The first graph compares observed temperatures to the CIMP3 ensemble. The gray area is not exactly error range. It is the range that 95% of the model runs fell within. How pertinent that is to your point I'm not sure. I'll leave that to the guys who study that stuff for a living.
Actually, most scientists in the climate field believe in AGW. They will continue to do so as long as it is easier to get funding for projects intended to prove it exists. They will cease doing so when it's easier to get funding for projects intended to prove it doesn't exist.
What an opportunity for the fossil fuel companies! If they got together they could easily provide a $1 billion fund to provide grants to prove AGW doesn't exist. They ought to try it and see who bites.
The reality is that any scientist who tries to get grants based on false premises sooner or later will find themselves shut out from the process. That's the beauty of science, it's self correcting. It may take a while but eventually reality wins out. With a few notable exceptions scientists are smart enough to know this and avoid promulgating science the know is wrong.
We don't need to cool the place down so much as we need to stop accelerating the warming.
If the present ice age* were to end sea level would eventually rise by well over 200 feet (60 meters). It would likely take thousands of years for all of the ice to melt but melt it would.
BTW, the last time CO2 was at 400 ppm, the current value, sea level was about 60 feet higher than it is now. It's possible that much sea level rise is already baked in to our situation although it will take several centuries to get there.
*Ice age as defined by geologists include any times there are significant ice sheets on the planet such as what we currently have on Greenland and Antarctica. What most people commonly call an ice age, when glaciers and ice sheets advance on North America and Eurasia is called a glaciation by the geologists and what we have now is an interglacial period.
Gilbert Plass published a paper in 1956 titled "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change". When did it change from Climate Change to Global Warming?
Here's a comment from Gavin Schmidt on the difference between weather models and climate models:
Weather concerns an initial value problem: Given today's situation, what will tomorrow bring? Weather is chaotic; imperceptible differences in the initial state of the atmosphere lead to radically different conditions in a week or so. Climate is instead a boundary value problem — a statistical description of the mean state and variability of a system, not an individual path through phase space.
Predicting the average climate sometime in the future is a totally different problem than predicting the weather in the short term.
The temperature difference (on a global scale) between the last ice age and the current interglacial was 4-7C, not your 15-20C.
The human race is not the only source of climate forcings but lately the effects of the known natural forcings would point to a slight cooling trend but it's been warming so it's probably fair to say humans are responsible for more than 100% of the warming.
For several years Gavin Schmidt, one of the principals of the NASA/GISS Model/E climate model, has been doing a comparison of model output to observations. There isn't an update for 2013 yet but the comparison through 2012 is available here.
Those giant dragonflies and other large insects existed when the oxygen level of the atmosphere was considerably higher than it is now. It wouldn't be possible for them to get that big at the current level of oxygen because of the limitations of insect respiratory systems.
Sure but that's true of all science, not just climate science. The amount of money spent on medical research dwarfs that spent on climate research. Should we just cut off the gravy train and stop doing scientific research entirely?
By measuring changes in gravity the GRACE satellites have documented the loss of land ice in Antarctica, mostly in the West Antarctic ice sheet. The rate has been around 50 Gt/year and appears to be accelerating.
You don't have a clue what they do with that grant money do you? It goes in to equipment, transportation, computer time, paying post-docs a stipend. Most of the time none of it goes in to the grantees pocket and if some of it does it's in lieu of the salary the scientist would be paid by their employer.
No, the ice bridge between Asian and North America forms every winter (for now). What got flooded out as sea levels rose was the land bridge between the two.
As climate change deniers like to frequently post, the sun drives energy input to the planet and we are in the longest, most extreme solar minimum in recorded human history.
I agree with what you say but that statement is little over the top. So far we've had one exceptionally low solar maximum in the 11 year cycle. I think that has to continue for another cycle or two before you can make that statement. Even though it wasn't measured as accurately as we can today I think you have to give the crown to the Maunder minimum for now.
Really? It can't have anything to do with the massive ball of fire that we call the Sun having record low activity [newscientist.com]?
Yes, really. The current total solar irradiance (TSI) is about 1361 W/m^2. For the satellite era (1979 to the present) it has varied between a low of around 1360 to a high of around 1364 W/m^2 so it's not outside the norm. Changes in solar irradiance such as we've seen have a small effect on the climate that mostly cancels itself out when averaged over several cycles.
NOTHING is threatened by sea level rise of around a foot over 100 years.
You're just doing a linear extrapolation of the current rate of sea level rise, ~3 mm/year. But sea level rise was ~1 mm/year in the early 20th century, ~2mm/year through the middle and ~3 mm/year since the 1990's, tripling in less than a century. What if that trend continues? We'd certainly see well more than 1 foot of SLR. Assuming a linear trend is the simplest of science and is more often than not wrong.
The fact that a number of those claims have fallen is further evidence that it needs further study not immediate action.
What claims have fallen? When I hear specific claims from the contrarian side they're mostly 3rd hand misinterpretations of what was actually said and sometimes totally made up. If you want to know what the scientists really think read the IPCC reports paying close attention to the time scales and uncertainty they attach to the claims. We can argue about those claims but not the straw men I commonly hear.
Clouds have both positive and negative effects on global warming. They can reflect sunlight reducing insolation but they can also block IR radiation holding heat in. There's a lot of uncertainty but the overall effect of clouds appears to be slightly positive. In the Arctic due to the high incidence angle of the sunlight they may actually reflect it back to the surface and during the winter when it's dark 24/7 clouds will definitely hold heat in. I wouldn't count on clouds to save us from global warming.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps I should have said "Whoosh!"
Nevermind.
I think it makes sense that mosquitoes in northern climes are worse than more temperate regions. They have a shorter season to deal with and have probably evolved to be more aggressive in order to get done what they need to get done. It's kind of like humans in tropical regions tend to have a more laid back attitude about life since they don't have as many challenges to deal with as humans who live where the seasons are more pronounced.
You may not be a damned farmer but you ought to care about things that affect them since you are entirely dependent on the things they produce for the food you eat and some other things as well.
The first graph compares observed temperatures to the CIMP3 ensemble. The gray area is not exactly error range. It is the range that 95% of the model runs fell within. How pertinent that is to your point I'm not sure. I'll leave that to the guys who study that stuff for a living.
Actually, most scientists in the climate field believe in AGW. They will continue to do so as long as it is easier to get funding for projects intended to prove it exists. They will cease doing so when it's easier to get funding for projects intended to prove it doesn't exist.
What an opportunity for the fossil fuel companies! If they got together they could easily provide a $1 billion fund to provide grants to prove AGW doesn't exist. They ought to try it and see who bites.
The reality is that any scientist who tries to get grants based on false premises sooner or later will find themselves shut out from the process. That's the beauty of science, it's self correcting. It may take a while but eventually reality wins out. With a few notable exceptions scientists are smart enough to know this and avoid promulgating science the know is wrong.
We don't need to cool the place down so much as we need to stop accelerating the warming.
If the present ice age* were to end sea level would eventually rise by well over 200 feet (60 meters). It would likely take thousands of years for all of the ice to melt but melt it would.
BTW, the last time CO2 was at 400 ppm, the current value, sea level was about 60 feet higher than it is now. It's possible that much sea level rise is already baked in to our situation although it will take several centuries to get there.
*Ice age as defined by geologists include any times there are significant ice sheets on the planet such as what we currently have on Greenland and Antarctica. What most people commonly call an ice age, when glaciers and ice sheets advance on North America and Eurasia is called a glaciation by the geologists and what we have now is an interglacial period.
Maybe you could help us out by showing us where we can find predictions from past IPCC reports.
At the IPCC website of course.
Gilbert Plass published a paper in 1956 titled "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change". When did it change from Climate Change to Global Warming?
Here's a comment from Gavin Schmidt on the difference between weather models and climate models:
Weather concerns an initial value problem: Given today's situation, what will tomorrow bring? Weather is chaotic; imperceptible differences in the initial state of the atmosphere lead to radically different conditions in a week or so. Climate is instead a boundary value problem — a statistical description of the mean state and variability of a system, not an individual path through phase space.
Predicting the average climate sometime in the future is a totally different problem than predicting the weather in the short term.
The temperature difference (on a global scale) between the last ice age and the current interglacial was 4-7C, not your 15-20C.
The human race is not the only source of climate forcings but lately the effects of the known natural forcings would point to a slight cooling trend but it's been warming so it's probably fair to say humans are responsible for more than 100% of the warming.
Milankovitch cycles! Learn about them!
For several years Gavin Schmidt, one of the principals of the NASA/GISS Model/E climate model, has been doing a comparison of model output to observations. There isn't an update for 2013 yet but the comparison through 2012 is available here.
The difference between the depths of the Little Ice Age and the mid-20th century is only about 1.0C and look at how much of a difference that makes.
Those giant dragonflies and other large insects existed when the oxygen level of the atmosphere was considerably higher than it is now. It wouldn't be possible for them to get that big at the current level of oxygen because of the limitations of insect respiratory systems.
Sure but that's true of all science, not just climate science. The amount of money spent on medical research dwarfs that spent on climate research. Should we just cut off the gravy train and stop doing scientific research entirely?
By measuring changes in gravity the GRACE satellites have documented the loss of land ice in Antarctica, mostly in the West Antarctic ice sheet. The rate has been around 50 Gt/year and appears to be accelerating.
You don't have a clue what they do with that grant money do you? It goes in to equipment, transportation, computer time, paying post-docs a stipend. Most of the time none of it goes in to the grantees pocket and if some of it does it's in lieu of the salary the scientist would be paid by their employer.
Ah, you've discovered the variability of weather.
No, the ice bridge between Asian and North America forms every winter (for now). What got flooded out as sea levels rose was the land bridge between the two.
As climate change deniers like to frequently post, the sun drives energy input to the planet and we are in the longest, most extreme solar minimum in recorded human history.
I agree with what you say but that statement is little over the top. So far we've had one exceptionally low solar maximum in the 11 year cycle. I think that has to continue for another cycle or two before you can make that statement. Even though it wasn't measured as accurately as we can today I think you have to give the crown to the Maunder minimum for now.
Really? It can't have anything to do with the massive ball of fire that we call the Sun having record low activity [newscientist.com]?
Yes, really. The current total solar irradiance (TSI) is about 1361 W/m^2. For the satellite era (1979 to the present) it has varied between a low of around 1360 to a high of around 1364 W/m^2 so it's not outside the norm. Changes in solar irradiance such as we've seen have a small effect on the climate that mostly cancels itself out when averaged over several cycles.
NOTHING is threatened by sea level rise of around a foot over 100 years.
You're just doing a linear extrapolation of the current rate of sea level rise, ~3 mm/year. But sea level rise was ~1 mm/year in the early 20th century, ~2mm/year through the middle and ~3 mm/year since the 1990's, tripling in less than a century. What if that trend continues? We'd certainly see well more than 1 foot of SLR. Assuming a linear trend is the simplest of science and is more often than not wrong.
The fact that a number of those claims have fallen is further evidence that it needs further study not immediate action.
What claims have fallen? When I hear specific claims from the contrarian side they're mostly 3rd hand misinterpretations of what was actually said and sometimes totally made up. If you want to know what the scientists really think read the IPCC reports paying close attention to the time scales and uncertainty they attach to the claims. We can argue about those claims but not the straw men I commonly hear.
Clouds have both positive and negative effects on global warming. They can reflect sunlight reducing insolation but they can also block IR radiation holding heat in. There's a lot of uncertainty but the overall effect of clouds appears to be slightly positive. In the Arctic due to the high incidence angle of the sunlight they may actually reflect it back to the surface and during the winter when it's dark 24/7 clouds will definitely hold heat in. I wouldn't count on clouds to save us from global warming.