Topic: Global Warming

[Hts121]

Nor does ther idea of political correctness apply to the term climate change.

Just curious, without saying.it proves anything... but is it a 'fact' that the last decade was the warmest on record and that last year was the 2nd highest on record?  Not looking for the spin and/or conspiracy theory and/or slant, just whether those representations are true

[Loretto]

if the climate didn't change, weathermen wouldn't exist

Umm, no.  If climate somehow became an absolute constant we'd still need someone to tell us if it's going to rain tomorrow.

[tedolph]

Weather and Climate really are different.  The first can be and is demonstrably accurately modeled (out to about seven days, thereafter the models fall apart) the later can't, at least right now.

[kingfish out of water]

From the Time Article:

"Ultimately, however, it's a mistake to use any one storm - or even a season's worth of storms - to disprove climate change (or to prove it; some environmentalists have wrongly tied the lack of snow in Vancouver, the site of the Winter Olympic Games, which begin this week, to global warming). Weather is what will happen next weekend; climate is what will happen over the next decades and centuries. And while our ability to predict the former has become reasonably reliable, scientists are still a long way from being able to make accurate projections about the future of the global climate. Of course, that doesn't help you much when you're trying to locate your car under a foot of powder."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100210/us_time/08599196229400

[eastvillagedon]

Weather and Climate really are different.  The first can be and is demonstrably accurately modeled (out to about seven days, thereafter the models fall apart) the later can't, at least right now.

but they're interdependent, right?  Doesn't climate influence and characterize the weather? Or is it the other way around??

[eastvillagedon]

okay, let's consult an expert:
http://www.youtube.com/v/iKiq5EwkzDg&hl=en_US&fs=1

[Hts121]

^ Or, better put, an "expert" that agrees with your pre-determined conclusions.

[Hootenany]

Weather and Climate really are different.  The first can be and is demonstrably accurately modeled (out to about seven days, thereafter the models fall apart) the later can't, at least right now.

but they're interdependent, right?  Doesn't climate influence and characterize the weather? Or is it the other way around??

I believe it is correct to say that the climate influences the weather in any particular location.  My point (as KOW pointed out) is that you can't use yesterday, today, or tomorrows weather to prove or disprove climate change.  The very definition you posted states explicitly that the climate is, "the average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years as exhibited by temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation."

So please stop saying there is no climate change because of the snow on the East coast and stop saying climate change is real because there is no snow on one mountain in Western Canada.  It's counterproductive.

[Clvlndr in LV]

okay, let's consult an expert:
http://www.youtube.com/v/iKiq5EwkzDg&hl=en_US&fs=1

Actually EVD as simplistic as that is, it's an excellent example of why it is not melting sea ice that need concern us. Imagine if a second glass filled with nothing but ice was left standing with the first glass allowed to melt. That second glass would represent land ice; glaciers, ice sheets and such. If you introduced the melted contents of the second glass to the first would the first glass then overflow?

You also brought up the fact that more often than not the term Climate Change is used as opposed to Global Warming. I would prefer to leave politics out of it as I'm sure word manipulation is used by both sides however this term was originated by a Republican political stratagist in the late 90's who loved to research the effects of word choice. His findings were embraced by President Bush and his administration for their talking points on the environment and other issues. Use climate change not global warming, conservationist not environmentalist and my favorite "..we all need to be good stewards of our environment". There is quite a bit of info on him and his remorse for his efforts: His name is Frank Luntz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yz8UwRsWPA&feature=related

Hootenany you seem eager to learn more about real threats to New York. There is a great deal of information out there suggesting only modest increases in SL rise is bad news for NYC. Here is one:
 http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=31179
I'll see if I can dig up some of the others I've read.

[Sherman Cahal]

Snow foolin': Blame storms on the NAO?

So why has the Mid-Atlantic been Ground Zero for snow this winter? Climate patterns centered thousands of miles away are primarily to blame, according to Weather Channel senior meteorologist Stu Ostro.

El Nino, he says, but also lesser-known ones like the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and the North Atlantic Osciallation (NAO), which have all come together to mix just the right ingredients of moisture, storminess and cold air in just the right way to cause the huge snowstorms.

_{What? No global warming? OMG.}

[Ram23]

Snow foolin': Blame storms on the NAO?

So why has the Mid-Atlantic been Ground Zero for snow this winter? Climate patterns centered thousands of miles away are primarily to blame, according to Weather Channel senior meteorologist Stu Ostro.

El Nino, he says, but also lesser-known ones like the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and the North Atlantic Osciallation (NAO), which have all come together to mix just the right ingredients of moisture, storminess and cold air in just the right way to cause the huge snowstorms.

_{What? No global warming? OMG.}

Well, the leftist New York Times already blamed the blizzards on Global Warming.  Don't worry:

Climate-Change Debate Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze

Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events.


That is one hell of a stretch.

[tedolph]

Weather and Climate really are different.  The first can be and is demonstrably accurately modeled (out to about seven days, thereafter the models fall apart) the later can't, at least right now.

but they're interdependent, right?  Doesn't climate influence and characterize the weather? Or is it the other way around??

Nope, neither.  Durring the last ice age some places in Canada and Alaska were warmer than they are now!  Ohio was a lot colder.  The Glaciers dropped down like long fingers with distinctly warmer areas in between.  It was weird.  I have never seen a good meteorological explanation for this.  Not to say it doesn't exist, just I have never seen it. 

Dare I say it?  Maybe we can't expalin it because we can't model it!

[tedolph]

Well, we have all gotten way off course again.  I thought we agreed to steer the discusion towards the costs of and ways of adapting to climate change rather than whether or not it is occurring because we all agree don't we that the climate changes, don't we?

Last time I was there Manhattan was not on the ocean, it was in the middle of a river and it was substantially above sea level.  The water level was way below the docks.  It is not going to flood anytime soon under any realistic scenario.  Same  is true for almost all of the coastal U.S. except for Florida, Louisiana and parts of the Carolinas, Virginia.  I say let them move.  Worst case scenario we will have at a minimum decades, and most likely centuries to make adjustments. 


Ooo... I feel like I am channeling Dick Cheney!

[Boreas]

...adapting to climate change ..
Last time I was there Manhattan was not on the ocean, it was in the middle of a river and it was substantially above sea level. 

Wrong-O.  The Hudson River *is* the ocean.  The Hudson River has tidal flow for at least fifty miles upstream from New York City.

 

Same  is true for almost all of the coastal U.S. except for Florida, Louisiana and parts of the Carolinas, Virginia.  I say let them move.  Worst case scenario we will have at a minimum decades, and most likely centuries to make adjustments. 

It is worse than that.  Pentagon planners believe that flooding will displace millions of Asians and cause conflicts and revolutions unless we do something to prevent global warming.

[Gramarye]

I'd like to see the source for where you say the Pentagon actually believes this.  (I'd also like to know how confident you are that the Pentagon is in fact right.  They have a lot of resources, but they've been wrong once or twice before.)

[EagleFan]

She only believes the Pentagon when it is convenient.

[Keith]

I'd like to see the source for where you say the Pentagon actually believes this. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

[Hts121]

Since no one responsed, is there no refuting that last decade was the warmest on record and last year was the second warmest on record (both global temp avg)??  I find it hard to believe a counter (not saying one is necessary to disproce GW, CC, whatever you want to call it) has not been concocted to these 'facts'.  We have core samples going back several millennia which are capable of verifying/disproving these points, no?

On another point, this debate kind of reminds me of the 2nd Amendment 'flip flop' I commented on in another thread because the political wings have once again grasped on to some basic principals the other side holds in general.  Basically, from reading up on this subject, the Right Wing wants us to thrive now and is willing to take a gamble on the future, shifting the 'potential' costs of adaptation to future generations (think the talking points of 'bankrupting our children and grandchildren').  The Left Wing, on the other hand, is often accused of focusing on the here and now with little to no regard for the future consequences of their actions.  But, here, the Left would rather face economic hardships now to ensure those costs are not shifted to another generation.

Of course, this does not tell the whole story and does not take into consideration the possibility that this is one giant conspiracy to make us all turn into gay vegans, who hold in our farts and french kiss at least one tree a day.  We can debate semantics, but it never ceases to amaze me how funny politics is sometimes.

[Hootenany]

^There are rebuttals to the claim that the 2000s are the warmest decade on record.  I recently read a paper by Joseph D'Aleo that refutes the claim.  His basic assertion is this:

There has clearly been some cyclical warming in recent decades most notably 1979 to 1998. However the global surface station based data is seriously compromised by major station dropout. There has been a clear bias towards removing higher elevation, higher latitude and rural stations. The data suffers contamination by urbanization and other local factors such as land-use/land-cover changes, and improper siting. There is missing data and uncertainties in ocean temperatures. These factors all lead to overestimation of temperatures. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in the last several years have shown this overestimation is the order of 30 to 50% just from the contamination issues alone. The cherry picking of observing sites and the increase of interpolation to vacant data grids makes these estimates very conservative. The data bases on which so many important decisions are to be made are “Non Gradus Anus Rodentum!”

And his conclusion:

SHOULD YOU BELIEVE NOAA/NASA RANKINGS FOR MONTH AND YEAR
Definitively NO! Climate change is real, there are cooling and warming periods that can be shown to correlate nicely with solar and ocean cycles. You can trust in the data that shows there has been warming from 1979 to 1998, just as there was warming the around 1920 to 1940. But there has been cooling from 1940 to the late 1970s and since 2001. It is the long term trend on which this cyclical pattern is superimposed that is exaggerated.

Everyone can read the paper here:  http://icecap.us/images/uploads/NOAAroleinclimategate.pdf

He uses a number of pretty graphs to make his point.  It is well reasoned and worth a read.

[Ram23]

...adapting to climate change ..
Last time I was there Manhattan was not on the ocean, it was in the middle of a river and it was substantially above sea level. 

Wrong-O.  The Hudson River *is* the ocean.  The Hudson River has tidal flow for at least fifty miles upstream from New York City.

 

Same  is true for almost all of the coastal U.S. except for Florida, Louisiana and parts of the Carolinas, Virginia.  I say let them move.  Worst case scenario we will have at a minimum decades, and most likely centuries to make adjustments. 

It is worse than that.  Pentagon planners believe that flooding will displace millions of Asians and cause conflicts and revolutions unless we do something to prevent global warming.

This is my general, natural reaction to the "do something to prevent it" statement.. No one knows what would happen even if we completely stopped all CO2 emissions.  The ocean levels are probably rising naturally, we may be speeding it up, and it's impossible to honestly, scientifically say to what tee our emissions are speeding it up.  Would the massive economic and social damage caused by stopping emissions completely be worth the extra 50 years until massive displacement?

If we really want to "do something" should we consider and even embrace the proposals that regulate temperature by geo-engineering of a stratoshield? 

[Loretto]

Little did we know that the Three Gorges Dam project was a cover up for a test of China's rising sea level contingency plan.

I'm feeling lazy and don't care to look back right at this moment, but wasn't there an article posted her talking about how the last decade was indeed cooler but because of unexpected amounts of moisture is some level of the atmosphere?

[eastvillagedon]

http://www.youtube.com/v/qJUFTm6cJXM&hl=en_US&fs=1

[Sherman Cahal]

Little did we know that the Three Gorges Dam project was a cover up for a test of China's rising sea level contingency plan.

I hope you are kidding.

[tedolph]

...adapting to climate change ..
Last time I was there Manhattan was not on the ocean, it was in the middle of a river and it was substantially above sea level. 

Wrong-O.  The Hudson River *is* the ocean.  The Hudson River has tidal flow for at least fifty miles upstream from New York City.

 

Same  is true for almost all of the coastal U.S. except for Florida, Louisiana and parts of the Carolinas, Virginia.  I say let them move.  Worst case scenario we will have at a minimum decades, and most likely centuries to make adjustments. 

It is worse than that.  Pentagon planners believe that flooding will displace millions of Asians and cause conflicts and revolutions unless we do something to prevent global warming.

Don't know much about Asia.  Also, if you really believe all this man made global warming stuff we can't do anything about it anyways.  The Chinese will be producing a lot more CO2 than we do (they probably are close to that now) and they have already told us it wouldn't be fair for them to limit CO2 output while we had the last 100 years do do so without limits.. 

[tedolph]

...adapting to climate change ..
Last time I was there Manhattan was not on the ocean, it was in the middle of a river and it was substantially above sea level. 

Wrong-O.  The Hudson River *is* the ocean.  The Hudson River has tidal flow for at least fifty miles upstream from New York City.

 

Same  is true for almost all of the coastal U.S. except for Florida, Louisiana and parts of the Carolinas, Virginia.  I say let them move.  Worst case scenario we will have at a minimum decades, and most likely centuries to make adjustments. 

It is worse than that.  Pentagon planners believe that flooding will displace millions of Asians and cause conflicts and revolutions unless we do something to prevent global warming.

We are not going to have 20 foot tall tides in the Hudson river!  Come on man!

[Loretto]

Little did we know that the Three Gorges Dam project was a cover up for a test of China's rising sea level contingency plan.

I hope you are kidding.

Yes, it's just what came to mind when I thought about massive population shifts in Asia.

[tedolph]

"The ocean levels are probably rising naturally". The Oceans are not rising. 

[Sherman Cahal]

Little did we know that the Three Gorges Dam project was a cover up for a test of China's rising sea level contingency plan.

I hope you are kidding.

Yes, it's just what came to mind when I thought about massive population shifts in Asia.

Pshew. Because I've actually had someone tell me in seriousness about why the Three Gorges Dam was built in preparation for inland flooding from rising sea levels due to global warming.

[tedolph]

Heard a radio interview with a climatologist last night (forgot his name).  He said that the East Anglia (?) people (whoever they are, apparently the custodians of the Global Warming data) just admitted that the last decade was not the warmest on record, that in fact the 1930's were.  It was late, I was sleepy and I didn't get enough contact information to independently confirm.  He also suggested that the whole Man Made Global Warming "house of cards" is collapsing in that the scientific proponents are now backtracking.  Any public confirmation of either of these points?

[Ram23]

Heard a radio interview with a climatologist last night (forgot his name).  He said that the East Anglia (?) people (whoever they are, apparently the custodians of the Global Warming data) just admitted that the last decade was not the warmest on record, that in fact the 1930's were.  It was late, I was sleepy and I didn't get enough contact information to independently confirm.  He also suggested that the whole Man Made Global Warming "house of cards" is collapsing in that the scientific proponents are now backtracking.  Any public confirmation of either of these points?

There has been a series of recent developments in which the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit is unable to produce the supposed data it had collected, and also admitted there is no sign of global warming at all over the past 15 years.  They also admitted midevil times were warmer than current times.

This should get you caught up on the recent developments: The Continuing Climate Meltdown

here's a brief part of what you're referring to:

The Continuing Climate Meltdown

Meanwhile, one of the scientists at the center of the climategate fiasco has called into question other issues that the climate lobby has claimed are indisputable. Phil Jones, who stepped down as head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit amid the climate email scandal, told the BBC that the world may well have been warmer during medieval times than it is now.

This raises doubts about how much our current warming is man-made as opposed to merely another of the natural climate shifts that have taken place over the centuries. Mr. Jones also told the BBC there has been no "statistically significant" warming over the past 15 years, though he considers this to be temporary.

[Clvlndr in LV]

^ Would it suprise anyone that Jones' comments are taken out of context?

http://www.realclimate.org/

... Finally, the article intentionally distorts comments that Jones made about the so-called “Medieval Warm Period”. Jones stated in his BBC interview that “There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia” and that “For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.”

These are statements with which we entirely agree, and they are moreover fully consistent with the conclusions of the most recent IPCC report, and the numerous peer-reviewed publications on this issue since. Those conclusions are that recent Northern Hemisphere warming is likely unprecedented in at least a millennium (at least 1300 years, in fact), and that evidence in the Southern Hemisphere is currently too sparse for confident conclusions. Mann et al in fact drew those same conclusions in their most recent work on this problem (PNAS, 2008).

Unfortunately, these kinds of distortions are all too common in the press nowadays and so we must all be prepared to respond to those journalists and editors who confuse the public with such inaccuracies...."

Furthermore would it be so shocking that the errors by the IPCC mentioned in the article posted
are blown out of proportion and some discovered and reported by the IPCC themselves.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/ipcc-errors-facts-and-spin/#more-2832
"...Himalayan glaciers: In a regional chapter on Asia in Volume 2, written by authors from the region, it was erroneously stated that 80% of Himalayan glacier area would very likely be gone by 2035. This is of course not the proper IPCC projection of future glacier decline, which is found in Volume 1 of the report. There we find a 45-page, perfectly valid chapter on glaciers, snow and ice (Chapter 4), with the authors including leading glacier experts (such as our colleague Georg Kaser from Austria, who first discovered the Himalaya error in the WG2 report).  There are also several pages on future glacier decline in Chapter 10 (“Global Climate Projections”), where the proper projections are used e.g. to estimate future sea level rise. So the problem here is not that the IPCC’s glacier experts made an incorrect prediction. The problem is that a WG2 chapter, instead of relying on the proper IPCC projections from their WG1 colleagues, cited an unreliable outside source in one place. Fixing this error involves deleting two sentences on page 493 of the WG2 report...."

[Sherman Cahal]

Or, he's trying to backpedal and retract statements he made to the reputable BBC in order to save face and credibility in the face of mounting skepticism about the IPCC.

[Clvlndr in LV]

Or, he's trying to backpedal and retract statements he made to the reputable Wall Street Journal in order to save face and credibility in the face of mounting skepticism about the IPCC.

He made no statement to the WSJ opinion page. His comments were made in a BBC interview and as any scientist would, he made a candid comment on what we understand and what  requires further research. Sorry, IMO backpedal does not apply.

[Sherman Cahal]

Sorry, amended it to read the BBC, which is reputable. That said, when the same scientists once claimed we were going through global cooling in the 1970s to global warming in the 2000s, and now some are retracting that... it puts into question the validity of their research.

[Hts121]

^ Would it suprise anyone that Jones' comments are taken out of context?

Nothing suprises me when a scientific issue gets perverted into a political one (see the past 35 pages of this thread and line up opinions with those rendered on other political topics).  Either people are stubbornly simply aligning themselves with their respective voting block.... or we have ourselves one BIG coinky-dink.