Obama Announces New Climate Plan

[Ridgerunner]

And Obama’s plan has just that – adaptation programs & funding (excerpts from pp. 12-13):
The President will direct federal agencies to identify and remove barriers to making climate-resilient investments; identify and remove counterproductive policies that increase vulnerabilities; and encourage and support smarter, more resilient investments… in sectors from transportation and water management to conservation and disaster relief. Agencies will also be directed to ensure that climate risk-management considerations are fully integrated into federal infrastructure and natural resource management planning… [HUD] is already requiring grant recipients in the Hurricane Sandy–affected region to take sea-level rise into account.

Establishing a State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness: To help agencies meet the above directive and to enhance local efforts to protect communities, the President will establish a short-term task force of state, local, and tribal officials to advise on key actions the federal government can take to better support local preparedness and resilience- building efforts…

Supporting Communities as they Prepare for Climate Impacts: Federal agencies will continue to provide targeted support and assistance to help communities prepare for climate- change impacts…

Boosting the Resilience of Buildings and Infrastructure: The National Institute of Standards and Technology will convene a panel on disaster-resilience standards to develop a comprehensive, community-based resilience framework and provide guidelines for consistently safe buildings and infrastructure – products that can inform the development of private-sector standards and codes…

Rebuilding and Learning from Hurricane Sandy: In August 2013, President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force will deliver to the President a rebuilding strategy to be implemented in Sandy-affected regions and establishing precedents that can be followed elsewhere. The Task Force and federal agencies are also piloting new ways to support resilience in the Sandy-affected region…

This is not a plan. It’s just talking points. Obama doesn’t have a plan other than to administratively obstruct energy production. He has done a pretty fair job of that, hampered only by the fact that he doesn’t control private land just yet.

His general “plan” is to make energy more expensive. He said that. What he has not done is promote any legislative measures to actually do it. Why? Because he knows even his Democrat partisans in congress will have to explain their complicity to their voters, and he knows they won’t go along with things like his favored “cap and trade”. He has never proposed it to congress.

He does it unilaterally to the extent he can. He has proposed nothing at all to lessen the well-known and certain impact on the poor and the elderly by his attempts to make “utility bills skyrocket”. But as I said before, and have said many times on many threads, Obama has done nothing whatever for the truly poor in all the years he has been in the White House. Even when he had total control of the government, he didn’t. After nearly five years, it is ridiculous to expect him to change.

What he has done is implement a lot of middle class welfare like “cash for clunkers” and Obamacare. Well, and he did loan Petrobras (in which Soros has heavily invested) millions of dollars to drill offshore oil wells off Brazil. And he did loan or give a lot of taxpayer money to various political supporters for “alternative energy” programs that tanked.

For the truly poor…nothing. In fact, he has implemented changes in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement reducing payment for care of “chronic” patients. That includes all of the disabled, of course, which is why providers are dumping them. But he did make contraceptives and abortifacients free at taxpayer expense.

Well, he also wants to impose heavy fines on nuns like these www.sistersoflife.com because they won’t pay for insurance for contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilizations for THEMSELVES. Of course, their work is with poor women facing abortions or their aftermath, so why not?

The man has a heart of stone. He cares nothing about the poor. There will be deaths and a lot of suffering at his hands if he has his way. He knows it. The only remaining question is whether his supporters know it and simply don’t care.

Those who supported Obama have the blood of aborted children on their hands. Do they really want more deaths on their consciences?

 

[Ridgerunner]

However that’s not the whole story, because if the subsidies and tax-breaks were removed from fossil fuels, our savings and return on investment would be a lot higher, even without solar and wind subsidies.

Except of course that there are no “subsidies” on fossil fuels, and the only tax breaks are depreciation, the same as all other companies and individuals get. The sole exception is the oil depletion allowance which is accelerated depreciation on small operations, like farmers and small businesses get on small investments in productive capacity.

You have been reminded of this, but you ignore it, claiming falsely that they get subsidies and some kind of special tax breaks. The only real subsidy Obama has ever given to oil production is a multimillion low-interest taxpayer loan to Petrobras of BRAZIL to do offshore drilling off Brazil. But George Soros has a lot of money in Petrobras, so I guess that’s really a subsidy to multibillionaire Soros, not Brazil, exactly.

The subsidies to robber barons with all of this, and at the cost of the poor, is really sickening.

 

[Ridgerunner]

However that’s not the whole story, because if the subsidies and tax-breaks were removed from fossil fuels, our savings and return on investment would be a lot higher, even without solar and wind subsidies.

Except of course that there are no “subsidies” on fossil fuels, and the only tax breaks are depreciation, the same as all other companies and individuals get. The sole exception is the oil depletion allowance which is accelerated depreciation on small operations, like farmers and small businesses get on small investments in productive capacity.

You have been reminded of this, but you ignore it, claiming falsely that they get subsidies and some kind of special tax breaks. The only real subsidy Obama has ever given to oil production is a multimillion low-interest taxpayer loan to Petrobras of BRAZIL to do offshore drilling off Brazil. But George Soros has a lot of money in Petrobras, so I guess that’s really a subsidy to multibillionaire Soros, not Brazil, exactly.

The subsidies to robber barons with all of this, and at the cost of the poor, is really sickening.

 

[Ridgerunner]

That’s not what they are saying. They are saying that they did not account for the possible impact of increasing CO2 concentrations on crops, mainly because there are doubts that those higher concentrations will be helping crops much, with some studies suggesting they might even harm some crops.

I know I myself have read some studies that indicate higher CO2 concentrations may lead to higher toxicity of some crops, lower nutritional levels for some crops, and increased weed harm for some crops…as well as increases for other crops. So results are mixed.

However, they did right to mention this caveat.

RE: Schlenker, W., and M. Roberts. 2009. “Nonlinear Temperature Effects Indicate Severe Damages to U.S. Crop Yields under Climate Change.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. 106.37: 15594-15598. pnas.org/content/106/37/15594.long

As I said before, the back and forth can go on forever. I’ll probably stay with it intermittently. But the plain fact is that disaster MMGW is NOT a majority opinion among scientists. It is NOT held by a majority of the population in the U.S. It is on the decrease. All assertions to the contrary are just false.

What I do realize is that you have connections with environmental groups that provide you with information. That’s why you disappear now and then and come back with yet more articles after awhile.

But I think perhaps you have erred in all of this. In the course of it, you have admitted that you support contentless and meaningless Obama talking points. Obama doesn’t have any “plan to save the world from MMGW”. He just wants to tax more and support his financial supporters by administrative fiat. He has proposed no legislation. He has no plan to lessen the impact of his “skyrocketing” of utility bills on the poor. He just gives taxpayer money to environmental groups and they give him some of it back in political contributions. It would be cheaper for the country just to let him take bagfuls of money out of the Treasury directly.

That’s all that’s going on with this. You support Obama. Okay, we get it.

 

[lynnvinc]

All I can say from personal experience is that we looked at doing an aggressive solar build out 2 years ago at the large housing community where I live. Minus tax rebates, the time to break even was, no joke, 25-30 years.

Both our friends who have solar and just installed more panels and the certified installer told us the prices had come down drastically in the past few years, and would be coming down further in the future. Pay back time is probably about 20 years now without subsidies (8 year, with them) – still better than regular bank interest rates.

For our friend, however, it is a lot less and much more lucrative, because he has his set so he can change their angle a couple of times a year and got all his supporting equipment from junk yards, etc., and did it himself.

The Volt is a symbolic vehicle at best. I won’t denigrate those who wish to purchase it but I would firmly put it and the subsidies associated with it as welfare for rich people. It’s a half-measure, at best, and I am leary of embracing these machines with so much toxic metal, and manufacturing going into them.

Didn’t have time to do an EV conversion, so it was the best we could do. With subsidy it will be paying for the difference between it and the car hubby wanted within 6.5 years; without subsidy, about 14 years. But we didn’t expect that.

We were able to afford it because we’ve been saving money hand over fist doing the EC (environmentally correct) things for over 44 years of our marriage, over the past 23 years reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 60% or more, and we’ve been getting by with used car clonkers all along, just waiting for EVs to come along so we could plug into our 100% wind-generated electricity.

But we didn’t do those EC things for the great savings; nor did we did we buy the Volt for its savings. We did it to reduce our harming and killing of people and others of God’s creation, and found to our surprise that when you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all things are added unto you.

With our friends it was the same. They are much more concerned about reducing their environmental harms than the money they are saving.

And I do feel somewhat bad subsidizing on April 15th other people to drive around harming and killing people. I really wish they’d take away all the subsidies and tax-breaks from fossil fuels and put even more into alt energy and EVs, so maybe the poor could buy into them.

I’ve read there are some projects, like in California, where they are putting solar panels on poor people’s homes, thereby reducing their electric bills, and taking a portion of that savings to pay partially back on the panels; the program is subsidized, but at least for a very good cause. Would love for my tax dollars to go for programs like that.

Yes, there is pollution involved in manufacturing nearly everything, and I’d hope they do better re local pollution from rare earths mining for EV batteries. Like I hope they’d stop killing off of Navajos from uranium mining due to blatant disregard for their lives; and coal and oil extraction, processing, burning (local pollution, acid rain, global warming), and disposal also have their very high costs in human health and lives. So I’ve guessimated the harms we’d be off-setting with the Volt would be greater.

And BTW, those GHGs China is emitting – a good portion of those actually are Americans’ GHGs, since we buy quite a few products from China – check the labels.

To really reduce emissions and quick, you need to really turn down the screws on economic activity.

Need to read Natural Capitalism (natcap.org). We can reduce energy consumption in the US by more than 75% without lowering productivity or living standards, which I know that is true from experience and investigation.

Problem is people & businesses really don’t care about saving money OR saving lives. Or perhaps they don’t know they could be saving money and lives. Or perhaps they don’t want to know they are harming and killing people.

 

[lynnvinc]

Another issue re coal power plants – they use up a tremendous amount of water. However, AGW, largely caused by burning fossil fuels, has enhanced droughts in certain areas and reduced water sources, which are sometimes inadequate for operating the coal-burning power plants which are contributing to the AGW, which is contributing to the droughts and lack of adequate water.

Who knew? I find out stuff everyday.

Solution: we really do need to get onto alt energy more and as much as possible for many many many many reasons, and even more so in drought-prone areas, like Texas, where luckily we have lots and lots of sun and wind .

The news item: “Burning Fossil Fuels Imperils Our Ability to Burn Fossil Fuels” at grist.org/climate-energy/burning-fossil-fuels-imperils-our-ability-to-burn-fossil-fuels/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed

The report: Water-Smart Power: Strengthening the U.S. Electricity System in a Warming World at ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/Water-Smart-Power-Full-Report.pdf

 

[lynnvinc]

Another issue re coal power plants – they use up a tremendous amount of water. However, AGW, largely caused by burning fossil fuels, has enhanced droughts in certain areas and reduced water sources, which are sometimes inadequate for operating the coal-burning power plants which are contributing to the AGW, which is contributing to the droughts and lack of adequate water.

Who knew? I find out stuff everyday.

Solution: we really do need to get onto alt energy more and as much as possible for many many many many reasons, and even more so in drought-prone areas, like Texas, where luckily we have lots and lots of sun and wind .

The news item: “Burning Fossil Fuels Imperils Our Ability to Burn Fossil Fuels” at grist.org/climate-energy/burning-fossil-fuels-imperils-our-ability-to-burn-fossil-fuels/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed

The report: Water-Smart Power: Strengthening the U.S. Electricity System in a Warming World at ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/Water-Smart-Power-Full-Report.pdf

Just found a more comprehensive report: U.S. ENERGY SECTOR VULNERABILITIES TO CLIMATE CHANGE AND EXTREME WEATHER at energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/07/f2/20130710-Energy-Sector-Vulnerabilities-Report.pdf

And Texas is really in trouble on many AGW fronts.

 

[lynnvinc]

I am still trying to figure out how any proposed mitigation steps involving curtailing energy use and/or making it more expensive could probably prevent specific weather events and how on earth you would know your efforts are working.

That’s a good concern. There’s no way of knowing how many people I’m responsible for harming or killing thru AGW over my lifetime, or how many I am harming and killing now with my added contributions to the GH effect – tho I do understand a portion of my CO2 emission can remain in the atmosphere up to 100,000 years. But God knows, and he knows my desire to reduce my harms.

What I know is that AGW is & will be contributing to serious harms, as will the emissions from nature that arise from the warming we have caused, which are also ours…as if we are pulling a trigger on a huge methane release.

I pray my small actions have some impact on reducing these, and hope and pray more would join in the effort, so it could add up to a larger reduction in harms.

Mother Teresa has told us that it doesn’t matter how much or how little we do, as long as it is done out of love, that our love makes it infinite, so I trudge on in my Little Way of Environmental Healing, even taking a hanky for wiping hands in public restrooms (nothing is too small), with contrition for my harms and faith that God will take my good intentions and insignificant deeds and multiply them as He multiplied the loaves & fish. My mother used to tell me that when you do a good deed you may never see the impact, but like dropping a pebble in a pond, its impact spreads out.

Here are things I’m striving to reduce, at least some of which can be attributed to AGW. I’m beholden to God, who knows the reality better than the scientists, who can’t always claim attributions. Note that most of these factors are naturally occuring phenomena, but AGW is increasing their frequency and/or intensity and risk. Some involve other natural factors beyond AGW, which doesn’t reduce my part thru blame-shifting. We are just in the beginning of the harms, which are projected to be much worse in the future:

Impacts from AGW:

• heat deaths (esp the hotter minimum diurnal temps, which are a clear fingerprint of AGW); they attribute about half of the 70,000 deaths from the European heatwave of 2003 to AGW, esp the high night temps, which are needed for people to recouperate. Also crops, such as rice paddy, are negatively affected by the increasing night temps (see below*).
• droughts (harming agriculture and causing famines)
• floods (harming property & agriculture)
• land and mud slides (e.g. the one that caused 6000 to perish in India last month)
• sea rise (some of the best agri lands are in low-lying coastal areas and deltas)
• disease spread (WHO figures AGW is responsible for 200,000 deaths per year just from this)
• receeding/melting snowpacks/glaciers (grossly harming agriculture in the many areas of the world that depend on water from this – right now there is increased flooding from these as the glaciers melt and moraine dams breach)
• increasing wildfires (from warmer atmosphere desiccating plants & causing fiercer winds)
• increasing storms & hurricanes
• species loss (incl species helpful to humans, such as bees); including loss of sealife (1 billion people depend on food from sealife)
• stronger neg arctic oscillations and anomalous weather patterns (e.g., more north-to-south or east-to-west or stalling, rather than the typical west-to-east pattern – these do happen, but they are projected to become stronger and more frequent – see below**)

Then there are the concomitant harms from buring fossil fuels and doing things that involve GHG emisions:

• local pollution – causing health harms and early death (some 60,000 per year from small particulate matter, and more from mercury, benzene, local ozone, and other pollutants); this includes birth defects and miscarriages
• acid rain from NOx & SO2 from ICE cars and fossil fuel power plants, etc, that under certain weather conditions become nitric acid and sulfuric acid, killing lakes, forests, harming soil, property, lungs and hearts.
• ocean acidification from CO2 becoming carbonic acid, harming and killing ocean species
• crop harm from increased CO2, aside from CO2 helping crops a bit – decreased nutrition, increased toxicity, increase harm from C3 weeds (which do better with more CO2) outstripping C4 crops (that don’t do as well).

---

*Welch, et al. 2010 Rice yields in tropical/subtropical Asia exhibit large but opposing sensitivities to minimum and maximum temperatures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(33): 14562–14567. pnas.org/content/107/33/14562.long

**This is based on fairly new and cutting edge research, so time will tell if it pans out:

• journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2010JCLI3372.1
• marine.rutgers.edu/~francis/pres/Francis_Vavrus_2012GL051000_pub.pdf
• climatecentral.org/blogs/closer-look-at-arctic-sea-ice-melt-and-extreme-weather-15013?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climatecentral%2FdjOO+Climate+Central±+Full+Feed
• tos.org/oceanography/archive/25-2_greene.pdf
• tos.org/oceanography/archive/26-1_greene.pdf (re Superstorm Sandy)

There is also some discussion about the current highly unusual pattern involved in the current heatwave in the northeast. At least part of it – the warmer than the past night or minimum diurnal temps – is a clear signature of this being an effect of AGW. The weird east-to-west pattern and stalling, etc could possibly be related to AGW.

 

[Kevin_B]

But the plain fact is that disaster MMGW is NOT a majority opinion among scientists.

Proof?

It is NOT held by a majority of the population in the U.S.

Neither is the idea that our earth is over 10,000 years old. Relying on the scientific illiteracy of the American populace to prove your point is not a very good strategy.

I also need to agree with the Pascal’s Wager for climate change. If we work to come up with a replacement for petroleum, and it turns out AGW was false, then we’ve

1. solved a problem our grand kids were going to have to solve anyway, since petroleum is a finite resource.
2. eliminated smog
3. probably given a better quality of life for developing countries, since with solar or wind power, individual families could have electricity (assuming they are provided with the means to do so) without a nation having to build entire infrastructures to transfer energy

If we don’t switch, and AGW is true, then in addition to still having smog problems and passing the energy problem to our children, we’ve also forced then to deal with rising sea levels, increased desertification, and more powerful natural disasters. All to save a couple bucks. How can people actually argue for taking this gamble?

I’m a big proponent of nuclear power. Despite the accidents it has been involved with, I have read numerous places that it is probably still responsible for less deaths than global warming (due to more frequent and aggressive natural disasters). Not sure if that is true or not, but it sounds about right.

 

[estesbob]

Proof?

Neither is the idea that our earth is over 10,000 years old. Relying on the scientific illiteracy of the American populace to prove your point is not a very good strategy.

I also need to agree with the Pascal’s Wager for climate change. If we work to come up with a replacement for petroleum, and it turns out AGW was false, then we’ve

1. solved a problem our grand kids were going to have to solve anyway, since petroleum is a finite resource.
2. eliminated smog
3. probably given a better quality of life for developing countries, since with solar or wind power, individual families could have electricity (assuming they are provided with the means to do so) without a nation having to build entire infrastructures to transfer energy

If we don’t switch, and AGW is true, then in addition to still having smog problems and passing the energy problem to our children, we’ve also forced then to deal with rising sea levels, increased desertification, and more powerful natural disasters. All to save a couple bucks. How can people actually argue for taking this gamble?

I’m a big proponent of nuclear power. Despite the accidents it has been involved with, I have read numerous places that it is probably still responsible for less deaths than global warming (due to more frequent and aggressive natural disasters). Not sure if that is true or not, but it sounds about right.

If global warming were taking place shouldn’t some warming be taking place?

 

[lcburgundy]

Impacts from AGW:
heat deaths (esp the hotter minimum diurnal temps, which are a clear fingerprint of AGW); they attribute about half of the 70,000 deaths from the European heatwave of 2003 to AGW, esp the high night temps, which are needed for people to recouperate. Also crops, such as rice paddy, are negatively affected by the increasing night temps (see below*).

Yeah, so why haven’t there been statistically significant increases in droughts, floods, or hurricanes thus far? The normalized costs of weather-related natural disasters have actually trended down over time. The data is out there.

I would also argue against philosophical ideas that we should pick an idea and do the heck out of it no matter how small or nominal the real benefit is. That is so opposed to good science I’m not even sure what to say to that. Which brings me to the last point…I have no issue with individuals taking steps, no matter how extreme or how minimal their benefit, being taken. I do have a problem when someone says others need to just spend more and more of their money chasing down less and less energy because we might manage to forestall a 0.01degC increase in global temperature. That is just a really hard sell to me.

There is also some discussion about the current highly unusual pattern involved in the current heatwave in the northeast. At least part of it – the warmer than the past night or minimum diurnal temps – is a clear signature of this being an effect of AGW. The weird east-to-west pattern and stalling, etc could possibly be related to AGW.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._Oscillation.png/250px-Arctic_Oscillation.png

So how exactly are, well, most of the 1930’s explained in the U.S. with this view of what causes weather? Why on earth was there a near decade of unrelenting, record heat across the U.S. then? What about the Great Hurricane of 1780? That wrought absolutely extreme destruction unobserved in any modern record. If those events recur, is it only because of MMGW this time? I mean, this whole let’s link climate change to specific weather events just seems so speculative as to be misleading. And seriously, now it’s causing retrograding weather patterns? You can’t be serious. If that was occurring and could be modeled at all, I suspect weather models would be better as opposed to the near uselessness they enjoy at about 10 days out now.

 

[SamH]

That’s a good concern. There’s no way of knowing how many people I’m responsible for harming or killing thru AGW over my lifetime, or how many I am harming and killing now with my added contributions to the GH effect – tho I do understand a portion of my CO2 emission can remain in the atmosphere up to 100,000 years. But God knows, and he knows my desire to reduce my harms.

What I know is that AGW is & will be contributing to serious harms, as will the emissions from nature that arise from the warming we have caused, which are also ours…as if we are pulling a trigger on a huge methane release.

I pray my small actions have some impact on reducing these, and hope and pray more would join in the effort, so it could add up to a larger reduction in harms.

Mother Teresa has told us that it doesn’t matter how much or how little we do, as long as it is done out of love, that our love makes it infinite, so I trudge on in my Little Way of Environmental Healing, even taking a hanky for wiping hands in public restrooms (nothing is too small), with contrition for my harms and faith that God will take my good intentions and insignificant deeds and multiply them as He multiplied the loaves & fish. My mother used to tell me that when you do a good deed you may never see the impact, but like dropping a pebble in a pond, its impact spreads out.

Here are things I’m striving to reduce, at least some of which can be attributed to AGW. I’m beholden to God, who knows the reality better than the scientists, who can’t always claim attributions. Note that most of these factors are naturally occuring phenomena, but AGW is increasing their frequency and/or intensity and risk. Some involve other natural factors beyond AGW, which doesn’t reduce my part thru blame-shifting. We are just in the beginning of the harms, which are projected to be much worse in the future:

Impacts from AGW:

• heat deaths (esp the hotter minimum diurnal temps, which are a clear fingerprint of AGW); they attribute about half of the 70,000 deaths from the European heatwave of 2003 to AGW, esp the high night temps, which are needed for people to recouperate. Also crops, such as rice paddy, are negatively affected by the increasing night temps (see below*).
• droughts (harming agriculture and causing famines)
• floods (harming property & agriculture)
• land and mud slides (e.g. the one that caused 6000 to perish in India last month)
• sea rise (some of the best agri lands are in low-lying coastal areas and deltas)
• disease spread (WHO figures AGW is responsible for 200,000 deaths per year just from this)
• receeding/melting snowpacks/glaciers (grossly harming agriculture in the many areas of the world that depend on water from this – right now there is increased flooding from these as the glaciers melt and moraine dams breach)
• increasing wildfires (from warmer atmosphere desiccating plants & causing fiercer winds)
• increasing storms & hurricanes
• species loss (incl species helpful to humans, such as bees); including loss of sealife (1 billion people depend on food from sealife)
• stronger neg arctic oscillations and anomalous weather patterns (e.g., more north-to-south or east-to-west or stalling, rather than the typical west-to-east pattern – these do happen, but they are projected to become stronger and more frequent – see below**)

Then there are the concomitant harms from buring fossil fuels and doing things that involve GHG emisions:

• local pollution – causing health harms and early death (some 60,000 per year from small particulate matter, and more from mercury, benzene, local ozone, and other pollutants); this includes birth defects and miscarriages
• acid rain from NOx & SO2 from ICE cars and fossil fuel power plants, etc, that under certain weather conditions become nitric acid and sulfuric acid, killing lakes, forests, harming soil, property, lungs and hearts.
• ocean acidification from CO2 becoming carbonic acid, harming and killing ocean species
• crop harm from increased CO2, aside from CO2 helping crops a bit – decreased nutrition, increased toxicity, increase harm from C3 weeds (which do better with more CO2) outstripping C4 crops (that don’t do as well).

---

*Welch, et al. 2010 Rice yields in tropical/subtropical Asia exhibit large but opposing sensitivities to minimum and maximum temperatures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(33): 14562–14567. pnas.org/content/107/33/14562.long

**This is based on fairly new and cutting edge research, so time will tell if it pans out:

• journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2010JCLI3372.1
• marine.rutgers.edu/~francis/pres/Francis_Vavrus_2012GL051000_pub.pdf
• climatecentral.org/blogs/closer-look-at-arctic-sea-ice-melt-and-extreme-weather-15013?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climatecentral%2FdjOO+Climate+Central±+Full+Feed
• tos.org/oceanography/archive/25-2_greene.pdf
• tos.org/oceanography/archive/26-1_greene.pdf (re Superstorm Sandy)

There is also some discussion about the current highly unusual pattern involved in the current heatwave in the northeast. At least part of it – the warmer than the past night or minimum diurnal temps – is a clear signature of this being an effect of AGW. The weird east-to-west pattern and stalling, etc could possibly be related to AGW.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._Oscillation.png/250px-Arctic_Oscillation.png

It seems when ever its hot it’s a sign of global warming. When ever its cold/cool (not even going to hit the 90s in Kansas this week - unusually cool for July) it’s just isolated weather and shouldn’t be confused with climate change.

 

[SamH]

If global warming were taking place shouldn’t some warming be taking place?

You are confused - its now climate change - even if the climate isn’t changing all the much.

 

[lynnvinc]

If global warming were taking place shouldn’t some warming be taking place?

AGW has NOT stopped. It is continuing full speed ahead (which is lickity-split in a geological time frame – much faster than any great warming in the past).

Right now there is a lot more heat going into the deep ocean than into the atmosphere, and the problem is no one really looks beneathe the surface to get at the facts, perhaps because they don’t want to face the facts.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

“We haven’t hit the global warming pause button”
guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/jun/24/global-warming-pause-button
…[G]lobal surface air warming has slowed, but the overall warming of the Earth’s climate has sped up…When the warming of the Earth’s entire climate system is considered, global warming continues to rise at a rate equivalent to about 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second, faster over the past 15 years than the prior 15 years.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/pdf
skepticalscience.com/nuccitelli-et-al-2012.html
skepticalscience.com/levitus-2012-global-warming-heating-oceans.html

 

[lynnvinc]

It seems when ever its hot it’s a sign of global warming. When ever its cold/cool (not even going to hit the 90s in Kansas this week - unusually cool for July) it’s just isolated weather and shouldn’t be confused with climate change.

You need to actually read the articles, which are not based on whim, but both evidence and good theory (the hallmarks of science). The scientists put a lot of hard work and effort into figuring out what is going on; they should not be dismissed so lightly and summarily.

 

[SamH]

You need to actually read the articles, which are not based on whim, but both evidence and good theory (the hallmarks of science). The scientists put a lot of hard work and effort into figuring out what is going on; they should not be dismissed so lightly and summarily.

Your post:

There is also some discussion about the current highly unusual pattern involved in the current heatwave in the northeast. At least part of it – the warmer than the past night or minimum diurnal temps – is a clear signature of this being an effect of AGW. The weird east-to-west pattern and stalling, etc could possibly be related to AGW.

Deliver a credible message.

 

[lynnvinc]

Your post:

Deliver a credible message.

I said in a perversely overly cautious way (the scientific way), “could be related to climate change.” This “climate change causing more frequent and stronger neg arctic oscillations” is cutting edge science and only time will tell as more studies come in and it either becomes robust, or fizzles out as a theory/finding.

The scientists always point out that single weather events cannot be attributed to climate change. That is because they are working from the null hypothesis, and because climate is the sum of weather events and at a more macro-level. As Mark Twain said, “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” Or, it sometimes does rain in sunny Southern California.

Policy-makers and people concerned about life on earth or becoming a victim should be working from the alternative or research hypothesis that we are living in a globally warming world, so in a sense global warming is affecting nearly all weather patterns … unless proven at 95% confidence that it is not.

People concerned about life would be striving to avoid the FALSE NEGATIVE of failing to consider a serious true problem as real and failing addressing it (like failing to treat a real and dangerous cancerous lump). You’d think.

 

[lynnvinc]

I just started a new thread re a newsstory on a poll that found 80% of voters under 35 support Obama’s climate change plan, and many think Republican climate change dissenters are ignorant, out-of-touch, or crazy. And nearly half of young Republicans are even less likely to vote for Republican climate change dissenters.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=11022511#post11022511

 

[estesbob]

AGW has NOT stopped. It is continuing full speed ahead (which is lickity-split in a geological time frame – much faster than any great warming in the past).

Right now there is a lot more heat going into the deep ocean than into the atmosphere, and the problem is no one really looks beneathe the surface to get at the facts, perhaps because they don’t want to face the facts.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images...013/6/23/1372014656659/Nuccitelli_OHC_450.jpg

“We haven’t hit the global warming pause button”
guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/jun/24/global-warming-pause-button
…[G]lobal surface air warming has slowed, but the overall warming of the Earth’s climate has sped up…When the warming of the Earth’s entire climate system is considered, global warming continues to rise at a rate equivalent to about 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second, faster over the past 15 years than the prior 15 years.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/pdf
skepticalscience.com/nuccitelli-et-al-2012.html
skepticalscience.com/levitus-2012-global-warming-heating-oceans.html

I see we never changes definitions one again.So now global warming is the oceans warming-not the atmosphere.

 

[SamH]

I said in a perversely overly cautious way (the scientific way), “could be related to climate change.” This “climate change causing more frequent and stronger neg arctic oscillations” is cutting edge science and only time will tell as more studies come in and it either becomes robust, or fizzles out as a theory/finding.

Which follows the observation I made with my post.