The New Global Warming Thread

[GlobalWarmin]

Ok, final comment:

Globalwarmin, you realize that the level of proof required to prove "climate change" and the level of proof required to prove "catastrophic anthropogenic climate change" are very different, right? Since our reaction as a society to "catastrophic anthropogenic climate change" must necessarily be very different from our reacion to plain ol' ordinary "climate change", it seems important to clarify the difference. You seem to have a tendency to lump all the evidence for both together though, and just call the whole thing "proven" without bothering to debate the severity.

Absolutely, the proof required to prove catastrophic climate change is different than proving climate change. I don't have any certainty from anything that I've read that science can predict for sure that climate change is going to be the end of the known world. The evidence is clear though that it is happening, and the very likely predictions about the near future suggest that things could end up bad enough that time is running out. Things are bad enough now as it is. It's not just the media, the whole world really is holding it's breath waiting for huge natural disasters right now based on strong scientific evidence and personal experience.

It's just not so either that a lot of scientists are trying to scare people with crazy predictions. I don't mean to lump everything a couple of scientists have said with what I'm saying, which is backed by the scientific community. Everyone knows there are uncertainties. The scary thing is though, there are a lot of uncertainties right now that make scientists predict that things could get much worse, but we are just not able to tell what is going to happen yet when things get a little warmer and the C02 gets a little higher. So I'm not sure that our reactions should be any different, knowing that there is a reasonable chance that failing to act could be disaster.

All these problems with oil are not only causing environmental problems that could very well get even worse, but huge political problems too. We are already fighting for it, and people are using it to fund even more wars to come. To avoid WWIII is an even better reason than global warming to do everything possible to stop using oil. So the sooner we can be done with that black demon and move on to renewable energy the better for everyone in the world.

So it's very important that we are all together on this. This is not a cultural issue between left and right. We have so many things to divide us, we don't need anymore. This is an extremely complicated scientific issue that only scientists and professionals should discuss, and not journalists with agendas who are just stirring up debate for political reasons.

[marstein]

In the meantime - back in the arctic

Arctic Sea Ice Melting Faster Than Expected

The latest findings show that Arctic ice is melting even faster than expected. As the Guardian reported,

Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University in Denver which released the figures, said: "It's amazing. It's simply fallen off a cliff and we're still losing ice." The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began 30 years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002.

Dr Serreze said: "If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice, then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate.

[marstein]

Compare the last paragraph of your previous post to the first two paragraphs, and see if you notice any irony.

Sorry for going back so far. I don't understand where GW is wrong. In his first paragrpah he asks where the GW conspirators are. I don't see them either. Who would make a lot of money by saving energy?
In the last paragraph he talks about the incidence where a appointed politician (appointed by the administration) falsified a report about climate change.

[marstein]

I don't really care. As long as my life and the life of the ones that I love are quality lives, that's all I care about.

Does that mean I'm intentionally destructive and wasteful? No. But I'm not going to go to extremes because some scientists think that we can affect global climate change in a minuscule manner...

Going through reading the whole thread and couldn't resist to reply to some really outstanding remarks.

Worst case is that by the end of the century we'll all be moving to the arctic. And even if it is longer than that, if there is a good chance that this will happen - what do you say to your grandchildren and they to theirs. What if GW is only 90% proven today and you can do something small today, rather than doning nothing and move to the arctic tomorrow?
Maybe today all it takes is a minuscle effort. But what I hear people here say is that it's not 100% proven so let's do nothing.

[Nikolas]

I think we're skeptical about the theory's veracity. I doubt that either Lucky or Cing are 90% confident in the theory. Maybe more like 1-15%.

[marstein]

I think we're skeptical about the theory's veracity. I doubt that either Lucky or Cing are 90% confident in the theory. Maybe more like 1-15%.

It's a rhetorical game being played. Pick a sentence from the guy before. Rip it. Say you are right and cite some other article that proves something else. Makes me wonder if there will ever be a consensus. Also a thread is not the ideal medium. Face to face talks and removing the flamers and trolls would help a lot.
A democracy arrives at a solution sometimes very slow.

[Kerostasis]

I dunno, that seemed like a pretty important sentence to me. Not just some random sentence chosen for ease of refutation. Sure, if I was 90% convinced of CAGW (short for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Waming) then I wouldn't hold out for the last 10% before doing something about it. But I'm not anywhere near 90% convinced. I'm gonna go with Tybalt on this and say my level of confidence in CAGW is somewhere between 1 and 10%, which makes me much less eager to sabotage our economy now for some potential result 50 years from now.

[GlobalWarmin]

... Makes me wonder if there will ever be a consensus...
A democracy arrives at a solution sometimes very slow.

A consensus on this forum seems unlikely. In real life the consensus is old news. I think as much as some critics would like to believe that they have provided information to support the idea that there is no scientific consensus, I have yet to see a piece of information outside of provably false opinion that says otherwise. No study has ever been done that disproves global warming. Every source I have seen (even Wikipidia) clearly declares that global warming is the majority opinion. One doesn't need to take a personal survey of scientists to find the consensus. One only needs to read their joint statements to realize the entire world is supporting the claims about global warming. It confuses me as to how people in the US still can have doubts about a scientific consensus, as if that would undo any of the damage already done. Scientists don't agree however on what is going to happen 50 or 100 years down the road, because science can't predict our response to the issue or all of the unknowns that we will uncover as it gets warmer.

Democracy can be too slow. The Republicans I think are making a terrible political mistake by still using this as an issue to motivate their base. The science against them is so overwhelming, and even though a lot of Conservatives are enemies with science for religious reasons, this is a battle that they will not win when it comes to public opinion. It really exposes them as being heavily involved in anti-environmental causes and supporters of oil interests over the future of the entire human race. Republican strategists are good at what they do though, so I wouldn't expect them to play this issue any longer than this upcoming presidential election -- they do actually know what is at stake.

[GlobalWarmin]

...which makes me much less eager to sabotage our economy now for some potential result 50 years from now.

The people that are going to be hurt worse by this initially is the developing world. We are already rich from industry, so we'll be fine. What I think is alarmist is talking as if it would be a certainty that our economy would collapse because we aren't buying cheap assembly of stuff we don't need from the other side of the world. Sure there will be some bumps and bruises for a few CEOs initially, but we will adapt. This is going to bring all those manufacturing jobs we lost back here. And unless we let Japan do it first, we are sitting on top of a huge gold mine of new technology to be discovered. If we take this seriously, we could be the world's biggest supplier of clean technology. So thinking of this in terms of financial hardship on our economy seems a bit nearsighted.

[Pistos]

This is going to bring all those manufacturing jobs we lost back here.

really?

[AMosely]

The United States government's General Accounting Office (GAO) just submitted a pretty conclusive report on general readiness of natural resource-focused government agencies for the effects of climate change. It is basically saying no one is even close to being prepared.

To me, this speaks more to the issue of 'it costs more to do nothing' than the catastrophe debate, though. I'm offering this up as additional proof that we need to stop bickering about the causes of climate change and start focusing on the fact that warming is occuring, and it's going to change things. We, and our government(s), can help buffer those changes. This report is basically saying just that.

Climate change has implications for the vast land and water resources managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Forest Service (FS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and National Park Service (NPS). These resources generally occur within four ecosystem types: coasts and oceans, forests, fresh waters, and grasslands and shrublands. GAO obtained experts' views on (1) the effects of climate change on federal resources and (2) the challenges managers face in addressing climate change effects on these resources. GAO held a workshop with the National Academies in which 54 scientists, economists, and federal resource managers participated, and conducted 4 case studies.

According to experts at the GAO workshop, federal land and water resources are vulnerable to a wide range of effects from climate change, some of which are already occurring.

Full summary (with link to full report)
http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstrac...tno=GAO-07-863

[Lucky Shot]

The problem is that there has been consistently these predictions that the earth is going to melt from global warming and the only consistent thing about them is that they have been wrong. James Hansen has a long and consistent history of being wrong on his predictions.

This is why informed people are skeptical of NASA now, not Hansen (he's one of the good ones):

ABC’s Bill Blakemore wrote an article posted at the network’s website Tuesday citing global warming alarmist and NASA scientist James Hansen as stating that the earth is at a tipping point “with dangerous consequences to the planet” (emphasis added):

With just 10 more years of "business as usual" emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas, says the NASA/Columbia paper, "it becomes impractical" to avoid "disastrous effects."


Unfortunately, Blakemore chose to completely ignore decades of hysterical predictions by Hansen that have already proven wrong, and that this is not the first time the NASA scientist has referred to ten years before disaster strikes.

For instance, here is what the Washington Post reported last January (emphasis added):

"It's not something you can adapt to," Hansen said in an interview. "We can't let it go on another 10 years like this. We've got to do something."


Yet, maybe more comically, USA Today reported earlier this year that Hansen made such claims in 2004 (emphasis added):

He echoes a warning by NASA scientist James Hansen in 2004 that the window for action is only 10 years.


So, when does the clock start ticking? After all, if it began in 2004, shouldn’t the window for action now be down to seven years?

Clearly, Blakemore chose not to challenge Hansen on this.

Maybe more surprising, Blakemore didn’t bother looking at some of Hansen’s previous claims, and how they’ve panned out.

For instance, on June 23, 1988, Hansen was invited to speak to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. At the time, the Midwest was mired in a terrible drought sending commodities prices skyrocketing.

Here’s how the Associated Press reported Hansen’s testimony the following day (emphasis added):

"Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and the observed warming," he said.

He said there is only a 1 percent chance that he is wrong in blaming rising temperatures around the world on the buildup of man-made gases in the atmosphere.

[…]

Computer models predict more frequent droughts in the American Midwest and Southeast, and the latest models predict a best-guess estimate of an increase in global average temperature of about 0.54 degrees Fahrenheit each decade into the middle of the next century.


Interesting prediction concerning increased droughts in the Midwest, as just five years later, the region experienced record rains and floods as reported by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (emphasis added)

From May through September of 1993, major and/or record flooding occurred across North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Fifty flood deaths occurred, and damages approached $15 billion. Hundreds of levees failed along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.

[…]

During June through August 1993, rainfall totals surpassed 12 inches across the eastern Dakotas, southern Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, Wisconsin, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. More than 24 inches of rain fell on central and northeastern Kansas, northern and central Missouri, most of Iowa, southern Minnesota, and southeastern Nebraska, with up to 38.4 inches in east-central Iowa. These amounts were approximately 200-350 percent of normal from the northern plains southeastward into the central United States. From April 1 through August 31, precipitation amounts approached 48 inches in east-central Iowa, easily surpassing the area's normal annual precipitation of 30-36 inches.


*****Update: As one can see from this NOAA chart, the Midwest is not currently in a drought condition, either. In fact, since NOAA created this tracker in 1999, at similar points of the year to when Hansen made his prediction in 1988, the Midwest has only been considered to be in a drought condition in 2005 and 2006, which appears to have ended.

As such, nice call on the continued droughts in the Midwest, James. Unfortunately, Blakemore didn’t bother calling Hansen out on these numbers, or how wrong he ended up being just five years later.

However, ten years later, as the U.S. was considering involvement in the Kyoto Protocol, the Cato Institute’s Patrick Michaels did (emphasis added):

Ten years ago, on June 23, 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen testified before the House of Representatives that there was a strong "cause and effect relationship" between observed temperatures and human emissions into the atmosphere. His testimony coincided with a very hot, dry period (much worse than the summer of 1998), and subsequent polls showed that, as a result of his testimony, the public believed that the 1988 drought was caused by human-induced global warming.

At that time, Hansen also produced a model of the future behavior of the globe’s temperature, which he had turned into a video movie that was heavily shopped in Congress. That model was one of many similar calculations that were used in the First Scientific Assessment of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ("IPCC", 1990), which stated that "when the latest atmospheric models are run with the present concentrations of greenhouse gases, their simulation of climate is generally realistic on large scales."

That model predicted that global temperature between 1988 and 1997 would rise by 0.45°C (Figure 1). Figure 2 compares this to the observed temperature changes from three independent sources. Ground-based temperatures from the IPCC show a rise of 0.11°C, or more than four times less than Hansen predicted. Lower atmosphere temperatures measured by ascending thermistors on weather balloons show a decline of 0.36°C and satellites measuring the same layer (our only truly global measure) showed a decline of 0.24°C.

The forecast made in 1988 was an astounding failure, and IPCC’s 1990 statement about the realistic nature of these projections was simply wrong.


Interesting, wouldn’t you agree? After all, if Blakemore and others are going to continue to quote Hansen as an expert on predicting future climate events, shouldn’t they look at his past forecasts to determine accuracy? Or, is that just too much like journalism?

Yet, maybe more delicious were predictions made by Hansen in 1986. The following comes from an Associated Press article published June 11 of that year (emphasis added):

Hansen predicted that global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years, "which is about the warmest the earth has been in the last 100,000 years."


How close was Hansen on this one? Well, as the following chart shows, he was probably off by roughly 1.4 degrees, or almost 70 percent!

[img]http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2005/ann/global-blended-temp-pg.gif


Also of note in this AP piece:

Hansen said the average U.S. temperature has risen from 1 to 2 degrees since 1958 and is predicted to increase an additional 3 or 4 degrees sometime between 2010 and 2020.


Well, as we are now in 2007, and we’ve only risen about 0.6 degrees since Hansen made this prediction, we’re going to have to rise at least 2.4 degrees in the next thirteen years for him to be right. As we’ve only increased by 1 degree since 1976 when the previous cooling cycle ended, it seems quite unlikely we’ll spike two and a half times as much in the following thirteen.

Sadly, Blakemore didn’t challenge Hansen on this either.

Unfortunately, what we see here from Blakemore and others who use Hansen as a resource is that the accuracy of his previous predictions are totally irrelevant. All that matters is what he is saying about the future without regard to the past.

Of course, none of this should surprise us as the media use exactly the same tactic when they allow Democrat political leaders to make statements today that completely contradict statements made yesterday without any challenge.

How disgraceful.

*****Update II: For those interested, 1986 wasn't the first time Hansen had hysterical predictions published. The following comes from an August 22, 1981 New York Times article (emphasis added):

A team of Federal scientists says it has detected an overall warming trend in the earth's atmosphere extending back to the year 1880. They regard this as evidence of the validity of the ''greenhouse'' effect, in which increasing amounts of carbon dioxide cause steady temperature increases.

The seven atmospheric scientists predict a global warming of ''almost unprecedented magnitude'' in the next century. It might even be sufficient to melt and dislodge the ice cover of West Antarctica, they say, eventually leading to a worldwide rise of 15 to 20 feet in the sea level. In that case, they say, it would ''flood 25 percent of Louisiana and Florida, 10 percent of New Jersey and many other lowlands throughout the world'' within a century or less.

[...]

If fuel burning increases at a slow rate with emphasis on other energy sources, the study predicts a global temperature rise in the next century of about 5 degrees Fahrenheit. If fuel use rises rapidly, which some believe may occur as the developing countries industrialize, the predicted rise is from 6 to 9 degrees.

[...]

He's consistently used computer models that have been wrong. The IPCC use similar computer models and due to weather climate being very chaotic, they will also likely be way off but I won't be able to tell you until 2050.

Lucky Shot

[Lucky Shot]

Statisticians poke holes in the IPCC methodology, but because the IPCC does not publish the peer review process or the methodology used to derive their computer models, it is more difficult to point out the flaws. Clearly the IPCC is more interested in the result then ensuring they have the correct methodology.

David henderson is an economist and former head of economics at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

As Mr Henderson's new article makes clear, the episode was symptomatic of a wider pattern of error (often, in the case of economics, elementary error) and failure to correct it. How can this be possible? The IPCC prides itself on the extent of its network of scientific contributors and on its rigorous peer review. The problem is, although the contributors and peers are impressively numerous, they are drawn from a narrow professional circle. Expertise in economics and statistics is not to the fore; sympathetic clusters of co-authorship and pre-commitment to the urgency of the climate cause, on the other hand, are.

Add to this a sustained reluctance - and sometimes a refusal - to disclose data and methods that would allow results to be replicated. (Disclosure of that sort is common practice these days in leading scholarly journals). As a result, arresting but subsequently discredited findings - such as the notorious "hockey stick" chart showing the 1990s as the northern hemisphere's hottest decade of the millennium - are left to be challenged by troublesome outsiders.

Underlying it all is a pervasive bias. From the outset the IPCC network was fully invested in the idea that climate change is the most pressing challenge confronting mankind and that urgent action far beyond what is already in prospect will be needed to confront it. In the minds of the panel's leaders and spokesmen, this conviction justifies public pronouncements that often go beyond the analysis which the IPCC's own scientists have presented.

A lot of the skepticism rises due to the belief that the IPCC is more interested in the result and not the science. (cmon, do we need to look at the science, it's settled, let's just move on without discussing the science. Gotta have faith that we did it right.)

Lucky Shot

[Lucky Shot]

Dr. Seitz, former president of the US National Academy of Sciences has revealed that the UN has been cooking the books.

It is good therefore to have on hand an editorial from the international science journal Nature (June 13). Even though the writer openly takes the side of the IPCC in this controversy, impugning the motives of the industry group that first uncovered the alterations in the text, the editorial confirms that:

1) A crucial chapter of the IPCC's report was altered between the time of its formal acceptance and its printing.

2) Whether in accord with IPCC rules or not—still a hotly debated matter—"there is some evidence that the revision process did result in a subtle shift . . . that . . . tended to favour arguments that aligned with the report's broad conclusions." (Critics of the IPCC would have used much stronger words.) The editorial further admits that "phrases that might have been (mis)interpreted as undermining these conclusions have disappeared."

3) "IPCC officials," quoted (but not named) by Nature, claim that the reason for the revisions to the chapter was "to ensure that it conformed to a 'policymakers' summary' of the full report...." Their claim begs the obvious question: Should not a summary conform to the underlying scientific report rather than vice versa?

The IPCC summary itself, a political document, is economical with the truth: It has problems with selective presentation of facts, not the least of which is that it totally ignores global temperature data gathered by weather satellites, which contradict the results of models used to predict a substantial future warming. It seems to me that IPCC officials, having failed to validate the current climate models, are now desperately grasping at straws to buttress their (rather feeble) conclusion that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate." In this crusade to provide a scientific cover for political action, they are misusing the work of respected scientists who never made extravagant claims about future warming.

It is clear that politicians and activists striving for international controls on energy use (to be discussed in Geneva in July when the parties to the Global Climate Treaty convene) are anxious to stipulate that the science is settled and trying to marginalize the growing number of scientific critics. It is disappointing, however, to find a respected science journal urging in an editorial that "charges . . . that [the IPCC report on global climate change has been 'scientifically cleansed' should not be allowed to undermine efforts to win political support for abatement strategies."

Why are people skeptical of the results when they cook the books?

Lucky Shot

[Lucky Shot]

ABC News reports that the hottest years were in the 30's, not the 80's. But current computer models don't account for this. Why haven't others heard about it? Dunno, it was in the news.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/CSM...3523859&page=1

The IPCC SHOULD go back and re-edit their computer models unless of course as Global Warmin asks, perhaps they considered this already when they started their data several years ago. Somehow, I don't think this made it in their "soon to be released report."

Lucky Shot