Global Warming: On Hold?

[chewchoo]

This morning the BBC reports that ice drifts coming off Lake Huron are damaging houses in Michigan.

Read the rest of this entry »

this is hysterical. why is this news to the BBC or anyone? great lakes ice has been doing damage to the shorelines forever! and if anyone thinks they can build where ever they want and not be affected by their beautiful scenery, mother nature has some news for them. to this day we still have skeletal remains of boat docks along the shores from ice flows destroying them two decades ago. ice and water is nothing to play with. we even have huge ice sheets heeved upon the shores of the little rivers that feed the lakes and straits, and the volume of water there is nothing compared to lake huron. and to global warming affecting this… yeah, right.

 

[Calliso]

Someone posted that climate never changes unless it is ‘forced’. Are you kidding me?? You need to learn some basic science, big time.
Also, just because there are environmental problems, doesn’t mean that global warming…oh wait I mean global cooling…no no climate change…yeah that’s it…is real or manmade. It is political science, not real science.

So tell me then how does climate change unless there is a forcing. “Forcings” are things imposed externally on the climate system that can warm or cool the Earth.
If positive and negative forcings remained in balance, there would be no warming or cooling.

I will stand by what I said before that climate just doesn;t change on it;s own without something influencing it. It just can;t decide to get warmer or colder.

 

[Oren]

oh man. look at the geological record before human beings and their awful pollution ever existed. there were warming periods and ice ages. we have an atmosphere, our climate is not and has never been static or ‘balanced’ whatever that means.

 

[Non_sum_dignus]

I think you’re far too concerned about the politics, and not nearly concerned enough about the reality. Politically incorrect though it might be, warming continues. The consequences probably won’t threaten mankind, but it will bring some rather uncomfortable realities for those in the American West and the Gulf Coast.

Some countries might even improve with the warming trend. It won’t pay any attention to your political concerns.

It may or may not continue; my point is that the planet is capable of wide swings of climate over time, and we’ve suddenly decided that human industry is the cause. Without knowing what the variables are, we have tried to define human involvement in climate as a constant.

It’s not as though the scientific community is in lock step on this, either–but the political community sure is. Remember the 70’s, when Paul Ehrlich had folks convinced that our exploding population was heralding in a new Ice Age? Why would we take him seriously now when he stands next to Al Gore and says, “My bad–it’s really warming up.”?

Now, every time a hurricane hits a population center or a whale ends up on the beach, someone is there to tell us that it is the fault of humanity and we must change our ways, as though hurricanes and beached whales are a novelty. About the only real science involved in the whole global warming thing is the observation that temperatures a within a degree centigrade warmer over the past hundred years or so. That’s it. Everything else has been theorizing based on this one observable fact.

Since our past includes both an ice age and periods of warmer climate, it’s pretty radical to suddenly conclude that we’re destroying the world, whatever that means.

 

[gilliam]

Temperatures for winter, December 2008 – February 2009, across the contiguous United States were near average, based on records dating back to 1895, according to a preliminary analysis by scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/images/12-02statewidetrank_small.png
High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

 

[The_Barbarian]

“This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”

Other than the current La Nina:
Atmospheric and oceanic conditions during February 2009 continued to reflect La Niña. Equatorial sea surface temperatures (SST) across the central and east-central Pacific Ocean remained below-average
cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html

and the sunspot minimum:
03/11/2009 by Kevin VE3EN at 22:45
The solar flux remains below 70 and solar activity will continue at very low levels for the near future.
solarcycle24.com/

Double whammy of cold-producing conditions, and yet the last month checked was fifth hottest on record.

Disturbing, to say the least.

 

[Michaelo]

Wow, a whole 1.2 degrees difference from the coldest to the warmest between 1860 and 2000 ! Should I be terrified now or later?

sigh

That graph depicts average global temps, so some regions have experienced far greater rises in temperature.

 

[rlg94086]

Temperatures for winter, December 2008 – February 2009, across the contiguous United States were near average, based on records dating back to 1895, according to a preliminary analysis by scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/images/12-02statewidetrank_small.png
High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

Our local news just reported that we have had 46% more days below freezing than normal this year (November to March).

 

[Calliso]

sigh

That graph depicts average global temps, so some regions have experienced far greater rises in temperature.

Yeah and if I remember correctly often I will hear that you need to remember that much of that is the ocean which is a massive heat sink or something like that. But anyway that reminds of this article…it is yet another response to the whole it;s hasn;t warmed in years we are cooling blah blah blah stuff we hear all the time.

bravenewclimate.com/2008/11/23/what-bob-carter-and-andrew-bolt-fail-to-grasp/

earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/HeatBucket/ (another good link to look at too helps make the above even more understandable at least for me*

 

[Eucharisted]

“This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”

Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate. In 1997 and 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed rapidly in what Swanson called a “super El Nino event.” It sent a shock wave through the oceans and atmosphere, jarring their circulation patterns into unison.

How does this square with temperature records from 2005-2007, by some measurements among the warmest years on record? When added up with the other four years since 2001, Swanson said the overall trend is flat, even though temperatures should have gone up by 0.2 degrees Centigrade (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time.

dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/02/global-warming-pause.html

You know…we live on a planet. Planets have climates and temperatures. Just throwing that out there.

 

[PapaSquash]

This morning on the radio I heard Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman) say, in response to a comment on the coldest March day hereabouts in 90 years:

“Global warming causes ice ages. Oh yeah, I’m a real science geek, I follow stuff like that.”

The interviewer was struck dumb.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

This morning on the radio I heard Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman) say, in response to a comment on the coldest March day hereabouts in 90 years:

“Global warming causes ice ages. Oh yeah, I’m a real science geek, I follow stuff like that.”

The interviewer was struck dumb.

:hypno:

 

[The_Barbarian]

Did the computer models the GW scientists use predict this cooling trend (and I mean before the signs of cooling started…waskally scientists…)?

Nope. And it didn’t predict John McCain’s inaguration, either. For the same reason.

January 2009 was significantly hotter than January 2008. (64 to 37) February 2009 was also up again (62 to 33) Normally, “cooling” is when the temperature drops.
data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt

 

[ohioszo]

I read this in our Catholic Digest today! Use this link for more information:

“The New Catholic Initiative on Climate Change” at catholicsandclimatechange.org/

The Catholic Coalition on Climate Change will launch an initiative encouraging United States Catholics to pray and reflect on the duty to care for God’s creation and care for the poor and vulnerable. A “climate Covenant” and a “St. Francis Pledge to Protect Creation and the Poor” will be unveiled on Earth Day April 22, as a means to unite Catholics concerned about climate change. For information or to take the pledge, visit catholicsandclimatechange.org.

 

[Calliso]

Nope. And it didn’t predict John McCain’s inaguration, either. For the same reason.

January 2009 was significantly hotter than January 2008. (64 to 37) February 2009 was also up again (62 to 33) Normally, “cooling” is when the temperature drops.
data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt

But look it went from 64 in January to 62 in Febuary! Clearly this is global cooling!!!

 

[The_Barbarian]

But look it went from 64 in January to 62 in Febuary! Clearly this is global cooling!!!

Ahhhh! We’re all gonna freeze!

Nice parody. But you know, just because you wrote that, some denier somewhere, is going to use it as evidence that the world is cooling off.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
One of the predictions of the climate models is more precipitation at higher latitudes. The current warming indicates we can probably expect more snow in future years for the northern tier of states.

January, in spite of a La Nina, and a sunspot minimum, is the fifth hottest January on record. That’s cause for concern.

What record?

World GISS data from NASA. Only four Januaries have been hotter than the last one, and they were all after 2000. Worldwide average surface temp.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Temp in Feb is way down:

It’s way up.

The GISS surface temp for February 2008 was 33. This February, it’s 62.

RSS global temperature anomaly in the lower atmosphere

Apples and oranges. The lower atmosphere temps are different than surface temps (the ones we experience). Those are up considerably from last year. But so are the lower atmosphere temps:

Feb 2008 - 0.020
Feb 2009 - 0.350
vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2

 

[Calliso]

Ahhhh! We’re all gonna freeze!

Nice parody. But you know, just because you wrote that, some denier somewhere, is going to use it as evidence that the world is cooling off.

True I should have been more careful…

 

[ohioszo]

From “The World of Penguins: Protecting Penguins” Nature PBS

…scientists say even penguins living thousands of miles from the nearest city are at risk from a new threat: global warming caused by human alterations to the atmosphere. “Most recent changes in penguin distribution suggest that climate change is probably one of the greatest potential threats to penguins,” says Dee Boersma, a University of Washington biologist who extensively studied penguin colonies in Argentina and elsewhere. She notes that some studies have already shown that penguins are especially sensitive to climate changes. On one island, for instance, the number of breeding Rockhopper penguins dropped from 1.7 million in the 1940s to about 100,000 today, probably because surrounding seas became warmer.

Researchers fear such warming trends could be particularly hard on the penguins that live on or closest to Antarctica. Emperor penguins, for instance, nest directly on the South Polar sea ice, meaning an early thaw could endanger their chicks. And some researchers believe recent warming is responsible for the dramatic, 20-year decline in Adelie penguin populations on the Antarctic Peninsula. Researcher Wayne Trivelpiece of Montana State University suspects that warming has reduced winter sea ice, which hosts the algae that is the basis of the local food chain. Less sea ice means less food for the shrimp-like krill that is the Adelie’s major food source. The decline, he says, may be a disturbing “harbinger of what’s coming.”

But penguin experts hope that public fondness of these waddling torpedoes (what University of California biologist Gerald Kooyman calls “the cuteness factor”) will translate into strengthened protection efforts. The more the public learns about the remarkable world of penguins, researchers say, the more likely they are to understand that these elegantly clothed creatures aren’t on Earth just to provide comic relief.