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FollowChrist34
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bbc.com/news/science-environment-28870988
Personally, I’ve hit the “enough already” point on the subject of global warming, but I do find this interesting. It’s an important issue.
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Personally, I’ve hit the “enough already” point on the subject of global warming, but I do find this interesting. It’s an important issue.
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Potter
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I hope this means that environmentalism will no longer be synonymous with global warming. There’s a lot more to the responsible stewardship of Creation than that.
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mdgspencer
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It is interesting to see that advocates of global warming have been making frantic efforts to explain how world temperatures have not gone up for nearly 20 years. If they find this theory does not work, no doubt they will come up with other ones explaining they are not wrong in spite of the failure of the world to warm.
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EasterBeagle
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Global warming is just a con game by democrats to institute a carbon tax. The only good thing about global warming is that it draws some of their attention away from pushing abortion:
youtube.com/watch?v=uMFAhW_ZmV8
youtube.com/watch?v=uMFAhW_ZmV8
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lynnvinc
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I know people are getting tired of this topic of GW, but unfortunately we are just in the beginning phase of something that may last 100s, even 1000s of years. In the past it generally lasted 100,000 to 200,000 or more years. It’s not that humans will be emitting GHGs that long, but that CO2 can last in the atmosphere up to 100,000 years or more, and that after initial warming this time by us, positive feedbacks will kick in (and are already in process of kicking in):
(1) decreasing albedo or whiteness – due to warming, ice and snow are melting, revealing darker land and oceans. These absorb more heat, which causes more warming, which melts more ice & snow, and so on…
(2) initial warming is melting frozen permafrost and ocean hydrates, which releases carbon. The carbon reaching the atmosphere, mainly methane, causes increasing warming. (Methane has a shorter life in the atmosphere, about 10 years, but it degrades into CO2, which then persists.) The greater warming causes greater permafrost and hydrate melting, causing greater carbon release, and so on.
For us now this topic of GW may be a fairly boring, overly worked, arcane thing, especially since not much has happened re GW effects. We’re not really experiencing at a personal level a higher levels of heat waves, droughts, floods, storms, sea rise and such. Only scientists using worldwide data can find increases in these. Plus in the northern latitudes food productivity has not yet been negatively affected by GW as it has in some poorer countries (it is actually increasing a bit due to longer growing seasons and carbon fertilization). It is only expected to decline in the North after 2050, and a lot of people in their 40s or older (the ones who make policies and have a greater say on matters) will not be around then.
And there are more immediate and pressing issues, like crime, terrorism, and economic ups and downs.
I know my husband hates to hear about GW. He knows it’s happening and is willing to go along with me on mitigating, but just doesn’t want to hear about it. When I tell him there are skeptics out there trying to dissuade people from accepting GW and prevent them from mitigating, he doesn’t believe me and tells me its just a few who in a few years will come to accept it’s happening, so shut up about it already.
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lynnvinc
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I also read a story about another recent study that suggests this deeper ocean’s uptake of heat is likely caused by GW rather than a “natural” cycle at enn.com/climate/article/47663?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClimateChangeNews-Enn+%28Climate+Change+News±+ENN%29:
“Atlantic Ocean warming linked to Pacific trade winds”
New research has found rapid warming of the Atlantic Ocean, likely caused by global warming, has turbocharged Pacific Equatorial trade winds. Currently the winds are at a level never before seen on observed records, which extend back to the 1860s.
The increase in these winds has caused eastern tropical Pacific cooling, amplified the Californian drought, accelerated sea level rise three times faster than the global average in the Western Pacific and has slowed the rise of global average surface temperatures since 2001.
Abstract for the study at nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2330.html:
An unprecedented strengthening of Pacific trade winds since the late 1990s (ref. 1) has caused widespread climate perturbations, including rapid sea-level rise in the western tropical Pacific, strengthening of Indo-Pacific ocean currents and an increased uptake of heat in the equatorial Pacific thermocline. The corresponding intensification of the atmospheric Walker circulation is also associated with sea surface cooling in the eastern Pacific, which has been identified as one of the contributors to the current pause in global surface warming. In spite of recent progress in determining the climatic impacts of the Pacific trade wind acceleration, the cause of this pronounced trend in atmospheric circulation remains unknown. Here we analyse a series of climate model experiments along with observational data to show that the recent warming trend in Atlantic sea surface temperature and the corresponding trans-basin displacements of the main atmospheric pressure centres were key drivers of the observed Walker circulation intensification, eastern Pacific cooling, North American rainfall trends and western Pacific sea-level rise. Our study suggests that global surface warming has been partly offset by the Pacific climate response to enhanced Atlantic warming since the early 1990s.
Both the study citied in the OP and this study are cutting edge single studies that may or may not pan out over time, but they do help in explaining the “slow down” or “pause” in GW. And that’s what science is about – explaining things. And I know some here expect that every aspect of science has been definitively settled decades ago, but there are new developments all the time. The greenhouse effect is based on the laws of physics and is well-established; so what then needs to be explained (so as to include it in GW considerations) are all the other factors beyond the GH effect. Climate scientists have been doing this all along and are aware of many factors, always open to the discovery of or better understanding of warming and cooling factors.
One point to keep in mind is that with these “cooling” effects (one could also throw in the cooling effect of solar irradiance being in a deep and prolonged minima for the past 15 years) the global atmospheric+land temps have not cooled, but remained much warmer than the past (pre-1980), and the total heat content of the earth’s system --atmosphere+land+ocean (incl deeper ocean) temps – has continued to rise:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Total_Heat_Content_2011_med.jpg
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EasterBeagle
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Actually we are seeing the opposite, the polar ice caps have nearly doubled, it is the second time in human recorded history that the great lakes nearly completely froze over, and we have four times more polar bears than we did in 1956, where a Russian expedition counted only 5,000. This is nothing but a big game play by George Soros as a means to create a Carbon tax.
ecnmag.com/blogs/2013/09/has-global-cooling-begun-arctic-ice-caps-grow-60-year
fondriest.com/news/great-lakes-ice-cover-hits-record-levels.htm
polarbearscience.com/2013/07/15/global-population-of-polar-bears-has-increased-by-2650-5700-since-2001/
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lynnvinc
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I totally agree. There are at least 9 major world environmental problems, GW being just one – see stockholmresilience.org/21/research/research-programmes/planetary-boundaries.html – and many local harms, like the 33 acre benzene plume under a residential area in a town near mine. Only now more residents are becoming aware (we’re helping them) and pressing for a clean up, but it has been there for many decades, causing leukemia and other health problems.
We need to be multi-tasking, working on all the ones for which we are responsible and also helping solve the ones for which we are not (more directly) responsible. Of course I’ve been driving ICE cars since I was a teen in the 1960s, so in a way I am at least indirectly connected if not to that benzene plume then to some other local harms elsewhere.
I’m actually spending much more time addressing that benzene plume issue than GW (tho I continue to mitigate GW to my best ability). And once that’s underway without my help, then there is a toxic site in another town I need to get involved with.
There is no shortage at all of many environmental problems beyond GW.
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EasterBeagle
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If it’s anything, its “Global Cooling”, but it’s just not politically correct to go against the liberal agenda. “Data from observation says global cooling” & “Science suggest a period of global cooling beginning about 7,000 years ago”:
sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140811165812.htm
“The climate is changing, but it’s not changing the way the climate change crowd predicted it would. Nature has made a mockery of global warming, so who are the real climate deniers?”:
iceagenow.info/2014/01/global-cooling-ice-age-coming/
“In its agenda-driven desire to promote yet another fictitious global warming scare – er, now it’s “climate change” scare”:
forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/05/29/global-cooling-not-global-warming-doomed-the-ancients/
sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140811165812.htm
“The climate is changing, but it’s not changing the way the climate change crowd predicted it would. Nature has made a mockery of global warming, so who are the real climate deniers?”:
iceagenow.info/2014/01/global-cooling-ice-age-coming/
“In its agenda-driven desire to promote yet another fictitious global warming scare – er, now it’s “climate change” scare”:
forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/05/29/global-cooling-not-global-warming-doomed-the-ancients/
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lynnvinc
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And the study focuses on the Holocene (past 10,000 years) with some say warming and some say cooling. [Frankly I’d always heard of it as a period of fairly stable climate, ideal for agriculture (and civilization) – compared to other more wildly-swinging geo times.]
From the article cited: “It does not, the authors emphasize, change the evidence of human impact on global climate beginning in the 20th century…Yet, the bio- and geo-thermometers used last year in a study in the journal Science suggest a period of global cooling beginning about 7,000 years ago and continuing until humans began to leave a mark, the so-called “hockey stick” on the current climate model graph, which reflects a profound global warming trend.”
So unless you are really into nit-picking paleoclimatology (which is based on proxies, which skeptics are extremely leery of), then this is really an arcane topic that has little to do with the current warming. But is it very interesting and time and more studies will tell who is right – the Holocene warming, cooling, or stable crowd. The Hockey Stick is intact with the business end of it (our current warming) going well above the past 10,000 yrs; and the question here being was the stem part of it slightly angled upward or downward.
RE the other sources cited – a blog site featuring discredited Strom and Forbes – these are not reliable science sources and perhaps do not even have the abilities to read science studies correctly, as in this case.
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EasterBeagle
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We are all going to die of Global Warming! Al Gore save us!! Ahhh!!!
http://forums.catholic-questions.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=20655&stc=1&d=1408988492
http://forums.catholic-questions.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=20655&stc=1&d=1408988492
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lynnvinc
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There are so many flaws in this video it isn’t even funny.
(1) For one thing, while atmospheric temps have not been significantly increasing over the past 15 years, they have NOT been decreasing – which is what one would have expected with the deep solar minimum we’ve been in over the past 15 years (and I don’t think it has reached a maximum yet - see chart below).
http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2013/01/08/tsi_composite_strip.jpg/image_full
Check how climate change disengages from solar activity after about 1980, 35 yrs ago:
http://www.mnn.com/sites/default/files/Solar_vs_Temp_basic530.jpg
As for the Little Ice Age, “…Several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, an inherent variability in global climate, or decreases in the human population” (from Wiki).
This argument that we’re headed for an Ice Age reminds me of skeptics loudly decrying such a 1970s claim (not based on scientific consensus at the time, but on a couple of outlier scientists’ speculations). It’s sort of like skeptics have formed a circular firing squad.
Now for their part those two “ice age” scientists back in the 70s were considering the cooling effect of aerosols. Back then they had less knowledge about their impact, plus bec of environmental improvements we are emitting a lot less aerosols than projected. So even those scientists were not “quacks” but just outliers to the general consensus.
(2) The total heat balance of earth system has actually been continuing to warm, it’s just that a lot of that warming has gone into deeper oceans. So the “pause” (which was never characterized as cooling, even by better informed skeptics) is only part of the picture. The whole picture is of continual significant warming:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Total_Heat_Content_2011_med.jpg
(3) It takes at least 30 years of climate data to show there is a warming or cooling trend, because there are so many factors that impact climate – solar irradiance, GHGs in the atmosphere (the natural GH effect actually keeps our world warm enough for life to exist), aerosol cooling (from fossil fuel emissions and volcanoes), earth’s wobble, orbital irregularities, etc. 15, even 20 years of data just isn’t enough to make any claims…so the IPCC did right not to make claims based on 15 years of data. And it would have been the scientists, not politicians who avoided making a claim of a “pause,” bec the politicians are pretty much on the side of their fossil fuel-based economies and would like to paint a rosier picture than reality.
Plus, as mentioned, the slowdown (OP) is only in regard to atmosphere+land temps, not the earth’s total heat content, which also includes ocean temps. It would have been renegade for the IPCC to suggest GW was not happening, when indeed it is.
(4) The cash cow is for people working for the well-oiled and slick, well-funded GW skeptic industry machine, like Dan Gainor (who made the claim in the video that GW is a cash cow for climate scientists). Gainor – with degrees in Political Science, Business, and Publications Design – is not a climate scientist, so he wouldn’t understand that when scientists get grants to do research, the grant money is used to offset their salaries and pay for research expenses. The scientists do not get a penny more in salary. But they do get a lot of harassment from skeptics and death threats to them and their small children.
(5) Steve Goreham, also partaking in that skeptic cash cow, has a degree in Electrical Engineering – not a climate scientist. He claims Al Gore claimed ice free arctic by 2014. Actually Gore (also not a climate scientist) cited two studies – one, an ice free arctic by 2029, and the other by 2014…which was done by US Navy Researchers. The Navy has this unique perspective – they can see the arctic ice thinning from below, so that may be why they are more alarmed than reg climate scientists.
The important point is that the ice is disappearing and faster than climate scientists had predicted.
For 2014:
The upshot is I wouldn’t worry about an ice age. But Santa better beware the melt
Don’t worry Lake North Pole froze over in time for Santa and elves to do their work and get the gifts to the kiddies at least for this last Christmas…
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EasterBeagle
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And who can forget Al Gore’s epic speech on December 14, 2009 claiming that the Polar Ice Caps would be gone in five years. And his claims that polar bears would be extinct in ten years. Polar Ice caps have grown 60% and now we have four times as many polar bears than in 1956. In fact the polar bear population is taking over becoming a nuisance, so much so that several countries including Canada allowed polar bear hunting for the first time in recorded history (attributed to ice growth).
freepatriot.org/2013/12/15/al-gores-inconvenient-truth-predicted-date-ice-cap-melt-marked-polar-ice-growth/
freepatriot.org/2013/12/15/al-gores-inconvenient-truth-predicted-date-ice-cap-melt-marked-polar-ice-growth/
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Lapey
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There are so many flaws in the hoax of MMGW that it is sad.
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EasterBeagle
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I couldn’t agree with your more completely! And the gullible people that believe these voodoo doctors are a total face-palmer!There are so many flaws in the hoax of MMGW that it is sad.
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freeRadical
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It is the height of hubris that people think they can forecast something as complicated and chaotic as the climate for years in advance. It is simply ridiculous.
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lynnvinc
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I know it sounds very weird but while weather is difficult to predict (and they’re getting better at it), climate is not hard to predict. In fact they have atlases with weather maps. I have one from the 70s and it is still pretty accurate, despite climate change, tho the plant hardiness zones have shifted a bit since then, a bit more than what the maps below indicate.
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
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Lapey
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More blah, blah, blah. Do you vote for democrats because of false MMGW issues in spite of the fact that they support abortion?
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manualman
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You underestimate the substance of the criticism. I’ve never heard anybody claim that grants are simply cash bonuses to researchers, so refuting that idea isn’t exactly an accomplishment! Sure, all they get is their salary, same as me. But everybody recognizes the fact of human bias EXCEPT when it comes to politicized global climate. Then folks like to pretend it doesn’t exist.
Come with me in a hypothetical world for just a moment. Let’s say that tomorrow I discovered something amazing that completely explained the global climate observations of the last 100 years and it has very little to do with CO2. What happens? Funding for CO2 driven climate research falls off a cliff and whole departments are downsized and eliminated from research institutions and universities. No grants, no salaries. But we insist that this fact has no bearing on the findings of said researchers. They’re better than the medical field and all other fields of research in which bias is hunted down relentlessly and systematically?
I do engineering analysis as a consultant for industry. Everybody knows that consultants’ work has a bias towards their client. It’s not insidious, it’s just a fact of life. Thus, our work is reviewed by consultants or employees of the public agencies that will ultimately be responsible for infrastructure my clients build and their bias is supposed to offset ours. We butt heads, argue, consider, bang the table with a fist and eventually agree on a finding and then a design that has been vetted against biases on all sides.
Nothing like that seems to happen in the AGW research industry. It’s run amok. Researchers’ livelihoods are based on public concern about the environmental problems we have, research is done and LO and Behold: we have big problems that need lots of research money… There is no counter to potential bias inherent to human endeavor. On the contrary, there is an entire political class cheering them on and rewarding whoever is willing to make the most dramatic and dire statements possible in their conclusions.
If this field of research had any real integrity, there would be INTERNAL demands for funding into research on potentially overlooked alternative causes for the observed climate information. Instead the scientific establishment has formed defensive fortifications and attacks anyone who seeks to look at things from other perspectives. It looks increasingly like a religious dogma rather than a working scientific theory being examined and challenged all the time. That scares me.
As an engineer (not a scientist) I use a primitive climate model all the time that quantifies how rain turns into runoff for drainage designs. It has very few (name removed by moderator)ut parameters and a long and clear set of guidance for setting those (name removed by moderator)ut parameters. But it’s widely known in our industry that one qualified engineer hired by someone opposed to a project will get significantly different results than an engineer hired by the supporters of a project. It’s that human bias. From what I understand, the IPCC global climate models have hundreds of thousands of calibrated (i.e. human judgment based adjustment is needed to get ‘predictions’ that match observed real world results) (name removed by moderator)ut parameters. When the de facto position of the field is that there is no need to worry about human bias effects, major alarm bells go off in my head.
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