Global warming really is happening... (well, duh!)

[SaintBobby]

Id be interested to hear your list of recommended reading, thanks.

 

On the conventional side of the scientific argument http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_synthesis_report.htm

 

On the sceptical side, Nigel Lawson's book - A Cool Look at Global Warming (if I remember the title correctly)

 

On the outright denier side, anything by Fred Singer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer

[SaintBobby]

From the Daily Mail report:

 

"If Antarctica ever became as warm again, sea levels could rise 60 metres (197 feet)" .

That would put most of this country under water; Southampton, Portsmouth, London, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Belfast, Cardiff, Plymouth, Newcastle, etc, etc, etc would be mostly submerged, not forgetting New York, Sydney, Rio, Hong Kong, amongst the huge swathes of the current global land mass that would disappear.

 

If you go back far enough the Earth was a ball of molten rock and metal, several hundred degrees warmer than today, also within any human input - but I don't think it would have been a nice place to live. This report doesn't add anything to the debate, it merely re-iterates what we already know, that the Earth has gone through multiple periods of warmer and colder climate than it is currently experiencing. The issues we need to be addressing are (1) whether human activity enhancing or accelerating the current warming cycle, and (2) whether we can actually do anything to prevent it running out of control, which it may well do.

 

Again, this highlights the problem with media reports.

 

I'd hazard a guess that 60m is on the very high end of predictions - hence the use of the word "could".

 

I'm not saying a rise in sea levels on that scale in the next couple of years would be a doddle to deal with- but is there any thought as to what engineering solutions might be possible and over what time frame?

 

To give a very extreme (and very simplistic) example, if we have 1,000 years to build a 200 foot flood wall right round Britain, would it be impossible to do so?

 

Another, rather less extreme, example put to me by some engineers is that we could create enormous trenches in certain uninhabited parts of the world (such as the Sahara) which would become (potentially salinated) reservoirs as sea levels rose. I can't remember the details, don't have the engineering knowledge to really know about feasibility and wouldn't have a clue on costs and benefits of such a project.

 

But my point is we mustn't believe that we will have water lapping round our ankles in Southampton in the next few months and will suddenly be surprised a few weeks later that the whole city is under water. Our adaptability is so much better than that.

[Frank's cousin]

Thing is the talk of 60 metre sea level rises, and other catatrophic events tends to be media BS, based on extreme preditions and models. Scientists do not 'predict' these things WILL happen, but present the data from models which includes the extremes at both ends depending on the input variables... secondly, extreme climate change has happened over the earths 4500 years and over that time it is effectively cooling - and we will eventually see the end of volcanoes and the like in another billion years or so... and it was only 50,000 years agi we had another mini ice age, so why worry?

 

Well, its the SUBTLE impact that we need to consider - and the fact remains we still do not know what impact the relatively recent warming will have on the global climate patterns... we all joke about the Jet stream having shifted south for teh next 4 or 5 years which is why we are getting such crap summers, but the real potentila problem is the impact on grain belts etc. There are 7 bn people on this planet and if there is a shift what the land mass icapable of producing, dessertification etc... not sure teh political and social fall out will make this a very pleasent place to live. Over geological time, plate tectonices will see the continents move back together, albeit slower than in the past as the earth cools, but humans are unlikely to be left around then - will have evolved etc, but this is teh fundemental problem with out brains...we are simply not designed to appreciate time on these scales and only really think about/comprehend 100 years or so so tend to be looking for impact over that sort of time scale... and thats why the more sensible models tend to suggest minor impact if any over a time scale we are interested in/comprehend.

 

To those that put humans first and sod the rest.... well put humans first and recognise that many of our diseases etc are impacted on or the result of the **** we eat, **** we pump out, and **** atmosphere in many cities - we are nt exactly helpoing ourselves with the current way of going about things...

[badgerx16]

Again, this highlights the problem with media reports.

 

I'd hazard a guess that 60m is on the very high end of predictions - hence the use of the word "could".

 

 

The bit I quoted comes in the context of the previous post, not a 'prediction' but something evidenced from the geological record. It's an easy tactic for sceptics to throw out 'the Earth has been a lot warmer without human interaction' to belittle the possibility that our current activities might be accelerating an otherwise 'natural' geological cycle.

[TopGun]

A big problem is that the anti-climate change media such as the Mail, Telegraph and Express immediately print any old non-peer reviewed junk as soon as it is published by voodoo scientists who are usually backed by fossil fuel interests or extreme deniers. That then gets perpetuated. It's an unhelpful circle of media pandering to perceived reader views to sell papers which hardens attitudes without any balanced objectivity involved.

Edited 4 August, 2012 by TopGun

[SaintBobby]

The bit I quoted comes in the context of the previous post, not a 'prediction' but something evidenced from the geological record. It's an easy tactic for sceptics to throw out 'the Earth has been a lot warmer without human interaction' to belittle the possibility that our current activities might be accelerating an otherwise 'natural' geological cycle.

 

Hmmmm....which peer reviewed scientific paper is actually predicting a 60m rise in sea levels?

[buctootim]

Hmmmm....which peer reviewed scientific paper is actually predicting a 60m rise in sea levels?

 

Quite. Even some of the worst case scenarios tend to talk about 60cm by 2100 and maybe two 2metres by 2200.

Edited 5 August, 2012 by buctootim

[Hokie]

Enough popular press strawmen. Anyone check out this? "Perception of climate change", James Hansen, Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy. PNAS Early Edition. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.) http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/30/1205276109.full.pdf

 

"An important change is the emergence of a category of summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (3σ) warmer than the climatology of the 1951–1980 base period. This hot extreme, which covered much less than 1% of Earth’s surface during the base period, now typically covers about 10% of the land area. It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small."

 

"A warmer world is expected to have more extreme rainfall occurrences because the amount of water vapor that the atmosphere holds increases rapidly with temperature, a tendency confirmed by observations. Indeed, rainfall data reveal significant increases of heavy precipitation over much of Northern Hemisphere land and in the tropics (27) and attribution studies link this intensification of rainfall and floods to human-made global warming (28–30)."

 

"... global warming caused by fossil fuel burning may be a unique threat because of the millennial time scale of anthropogenic carbon within surface carbon reservoirs. It has been argued that a scenario phasing out carbon emissions fast enough to stabilize climate this century, limiting further warming to a maximum of several tenths of a degree Celsius, is still possible, but it would require a rising price on carbon emissions sufficient to spur transition to a clean energy future without burning all fossil fuels (33)."

[Hamilton Saint]

"A prominent climate change skeptic’s about-face on the subject is causing a stir in the world of environmental science."

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1238554--climate-change-skeptic-causes-a-stir-with-his-about-face

 

And the climate-change project this scientist, Richard A. Muller, conducted was funded, in part, "by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Koch and his brother David are the billionaire owners of Koch Industries Inc., the conglomerate with annual revenues estimated at $100 billion, and are known for bankrolling conservative causes."

[Hokie]

These would be very, very rough guesses by me, I'm not a scientist let alone a climatologist.

 

1. Is climate change happening? I'd say 85% YES.

2. Are man-made emissions a significant part of this? I'd say 70% YES

3. Are the consequences of climate change a net bad? I'd say 75% YES

 

So, I'm a pretty clear YES to these questions. But the chance I'm right on ALL of them is .85 x .7 x .75 = 44.6%. So, overall, I suppose that means that the chance that these three things are not all true is higher than 50%.

 

I don't accept that my questions 4 and 5 are "subsets" of point 3.

 

4, 5 & 6 are all about what we should do if 1,2 and 3 are all true.

 

Interesting. You don't say where our numbers come from though. (I'd also caution you, as a scientist, not to gain accuracy as you calculate.) Here are some numbers, from scientists, of their estimates of the product of 1 and 2.

[Hokie]

Interesting. You don't say where our numbers come from though. (I'd also caution you, as a scientist, not to gain accuracy as you calculate.) Here are some numbers, from scientists, of their estimates of the product of 1 and 2.

 

On the conventional side of the scientific argument http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_synthesis_report.htm

 

On the sceptical side, Nigel Lawson's book - A Cool Look at Global Warming (if I remember the title correctly)

 

On the outright denier side, anything by Fred Singer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer

 

Lawson is interesting in bringing up the challenges (and costs) of actually dealing with global warming, but gives short shrift to the science saying 1) the earth is warming, 2) it is caused by man, and 3) it will have drastic effects on mankind. It is worth noting he is a politician, with no formal scientific training. (We can debate if economics is a science or not. I'd say its not in the sense that it would be helpful.)

 

Singer was a scientist, but now is, and has been for years, a hired hack. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=S._Fred_Singer and http://www.desmogblog.com/s-fred-singer , not just on climate, but smoking, asbestos, DDT, etc. Check out this internal memo from the ciggie companies: http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2023266534.html Seriously, Bobby, do you really recommend this guy? Not trying to put you down, but surely you have better.

 

I've been working through this http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/ which seems quite authoritative. This pdf is a good summary http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/files/2012/06/19014_cvtx_R1.pdf

[Hokie]

"A prominent climate change skeptic’s about-face on the subject is causing a stir in the world of environmental science."

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1238554--climate-change-skeptic-causes-a-stir-with-his-about-face

 

And the climate-change project this scientist, Richard A. Muller, conducted was funded, in part, "by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Koch and his brother David are the billionaire owners of Koch Industries Inc., the conglomerate with annual revenues estimated at $100 billion, and are known for bankrolling conservative causes."

 

I was fascinated by this, but it doesn't seem to have attracted any attention from the skeptics here. I've posted two other links to articles about this and have heard nothing back. Odd.

[trousers]

@MailOnline: Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it http://t.co/19qfAoo2

[scotty]

a big problem is that the anti-climate change media such as the mail, telegraph and express immediately print any old non-peer reviewed junk as soon as it is published by voodoo scientists who are usually backed by fossil fuel interests or extreme deniers. That then gets perpetuated. It's an unhelpful circle of media pandering to perceived reader views to sell papers which hardens attitudes without any balanced objectivity involved.

 

@mailonline: Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals met office report quietly released... And here is the chart to prove it http://t.co/19qfaoo2

 

 

qed.

[Sheaf Saint]

@MailOnline: Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it http://t.co/19qfAoo2

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/02/05/global-warming-has-stopped-how-to-fool-people-using-cherry-picked-climate-data/

[alpine_saint]

A big problem is that the anti-climate change media such as the Mail, Telegraph and Express immediately print any old non-peer reviewed junk as soon as it is published by voodoo scientists who are usually backed by fossil fuel interests or extreme deniers. That then gets perpetuated. It's an unhelpful circle of media pandering to perceived reader views to sell papers which hardens attitudes without any balanced objectivity involved.

 

Oh, because Phill Jones and his mates at East Anglia have behaved impeccably all along, havent they ?

 

You either believe in global warming or you dont. The two sides are entrenched, and invariably get abusive towards each other, junking the data from the other side.

[alpine_saint]

I was fascinated by this, but it doesn't seem to have attracted any attention from the skeptics here. I've posted two other links to articles about this and have heard nothing back. Odd.

 

Just like the temple priests of Global Warming have tried to ignore Lovelock's about-face, you mean ??

[buctootim]

The Mail rehash this carp every few months. Sometimes the Met Office dignify it with a response, sometimes they dont. This is their reply last time it happened

 

http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/met-office-in-the-media-29-january-2012/

Edited 14 October, 2012 by buctootim

[Whitey Grandad]

Well, that says nothing much other than 'we don't know'. As to the report about reduction in solar activity, of course it would show no cooling because none of the climate models include the effect of high-energy solar output instead concentrating on variations in the sun's brightness. This is not surprising since the science of how the high-energy particles affect our weather is not yet developed. If their estimates are accurate then how do they explain the Little Ice Age during the Maunder Minimum?

 

Some interesting debates here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/06/what-if-the-sun-went-into-a-new-grand-minimum/

http://a-sceptical-mind.com/svensmarks-new-solar-theory-of-climate-change

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/breaking-news-cern-experiment-confirms-cosmic-rays-influence-climate-change/

 

Jasper Kirkby:

[aintforever]

@MailOnline: Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it http://t.co/19qfAoo2

 

That's typical Daily Mail interpreting scientific facts their own way for their own agenda. Pick a freakishly hot year 15 years ago and draw conclusions by comparing following years to that - I don't even think a GCSE science student would use that method!

 

Make you cringe thinking of the average Daily Mail reader taking in every word of that.

[derry]

Antarctic sea ice at record level, explain that!

[aintforever]

Antarctic sea ice at record level, explain that!

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2012/10/11/antarctic-ice-global-warming-climate-change/1626795/

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16988-why-antarctic-ice-is-growing-despite-global-warming.html

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100816-global-warming-antarctica-sea-ice-paradox-science-environment/

[Sheaf Saint]

Here's an interesting read, for all those skeptics who claim there is no consensus in the scientific community...

 

http://scienceprogress.org/2012/11/27479/

 

I searched the Web of Science, an online science publication tool, for peer-reviewed scientific articles published between January first 1991 and November 9th 2012 that have the keyword phrases “global warming” or “global climate change.” The search produced 13,950 articles.... By my definition, 24 of the 13,950 articles, 0.17 percent or 1 in 581, clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming.

[Viking Warrior]

Well Im not convinced its global warming. I have done no research , but Im old enough to remember various weather patterns

 

I believe the winds and rains we are seeing has more to do with Hurricaine Sandy and also councils drianing flood grounds in this country rather than global warming.

 

One day i will get time to do some research . But have been fobbed off about the ozone layer and that mended itself . I remain a sceptic about clobal warming , Carbon footprints etc

[Whitey Grandad]

Antarctic sea ice at record level, explain that!

Because the Antarctic snow had increased? Aren't the onland icesheets also thicker?

[Sheaf Saint]

Because the Antarctic snow had increased? Aren't the onland icesheets also thicker?

 

No...

 

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice-intermediate.htm

 

The sea ice may be increasing (supposedly due to the loss of the ozone layer over the antarctic, though this is uncertain) but overall the land ice is being lost at a much higher rate. Melting sea ice does not raise sea levels because the overall volume remains the same, but melting land ice not only means higher sea levels but it also brings into play the positive feedback effect caused by the release of stored methane into the atmosphere.

[Whitey Grandad]

You don't know who to believe these days.

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/antarctic_ice_not_melting/

[buctootim]

You don't know who to believe these days.

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/antarctic_ice_not_melting/

 

Theres no contradiction. The Eastern Antarctic isnt melting. The Western Antarctic and the Arctic, especially Greenland, are.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18959399

[Sheaf Saint]

You don't know who to believe these days.

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/antarctic_ice_not_melting/

 

Hmmm. The fatal flaw with the article you posted is that it only refers to the eastern ice sheet, which is acknowledged to be in a steady-state mass balance on the page I linked (up until 2009 at least). The rate of loss from the western ice sheet however, over the period of the study, was shown to be increasing so much that the overall increase in the rate of mass loss for the whole of Antarctica was around 26 gt per year / per year.

 

Nice try though.

[Viking Warrior]

Bloody cold in Orkney tonight . Must be global freezing . Even the common seal has be given a hot water bottle

[Sheaf Saint]

Bloody cold in Orkney tonight . Must be global freezing .

 

[Whitey Grandad]

I drove past a wind turbine next to the M25 last night. It was floodlit.

[Window Cleaner]

Apparently pack ice has been spotted much higher than ever before in the Indian Ocean

[Halo Stickman]

I haven’t read all this thread so my apologies if this has already been covered.

 

When scientists say things like ‘the global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880’ how do they actually arrive at a figure for global average surface temperature?

[Sheaf Saint]

I haven’t read all this thread so my apologies if this has already been covered.

 

When scientists say things like ‘the global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880’ how do they actually arrive at a figure for global average surface temperature?

 

By taking monthly readings from thousands of recording stations all over the world, in all different kinds of environments, and taking into account external factors such as the urban heat island effect...

 

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/

[buctootim]

I drove past a wind turbine next to the M25 last night. It was floodlit.

 

Those corporate PR 'look at how green we are' turbines really **** me off as they discredit wind energy omn the publics eye. Almost invariably they are located in an area of low wind but high public visibility.

[Halo Stickman]

By taking monthly readings from thousands of recording stations all over the world, in all different kinds of environments, and taking into account external factors such as the urban heat island effect...

 

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/

 

Thanks for that Bexy.

 

I’ve got no axe to grind either way regarding climate-change but the question as to how scientists arrive at an annual global average temperature - especially such an apparently accurate one - has intrigued me ever since I noticed some time ago that the daily temperatures given by three different recording stations for Plymouth, namely the Met Office, The Weather Channel and Plymouth University, often differ by up to 3 degrees C. I figured their recording equipment must be situated in different locations around the city, but with localised temperature variations such as these, I thought, how difficult it must be to come up with a definitive annual temperature for even just one location let alone the whole globe. For instance, I once went on holiday to Rhodes where the temperature in Rhodes Town was 84 degrees F but on the same day in Pefkos, a relatively short distance away on the sheltered eastern coast of the island, it was over 105 degrees F.

 

I suppose that as long as we’ve been using the same locations over the years and the records show that the temperatures have been consistently rising then that’s evidence of climate change. But, even with recordings being made continuously in thousands of locations around the Earth, there must be great swathes of the planet still without reading stations. Do we know, for instance, that temperatures in the middle of the Amazon aren’t actually falling? Could it be that the distribution of temperatures around the globe is changing but that the global average temperature is remaining constant?

 

I had assumed that perhaps there was a clever way of recording the planet’s average annual temperature using satellites; however, if this is the case, how then are we able to compare these temperatures with those before satellite technology became available?

[Sheaf Saint]

I suppose that as long as we’ve been using the same locations over the years and the records show that the temperatures have been consistently rising then that’s evidence of climate change. But, even with recordings being made continuously in thousands of locations around the Earth, there must be great swathes of the planet still without reading stations. Do we know, for instance, that temperatures in the middle of the Amazon aren’t actually falling? Could it be that the distribution of temperatures around the globe is changing but that the global average temperature is remaining constant?

 

I was actually reading this somewhere very recently and can't find the exact source I was looking at. But climatologists (in many cases volunteers) have gone to great lengths to ensure an even distribution of recording stations all over the globe - from the deserts of Africa, to the rainforests of South America and even the frozen wastelands of the Arctic / Antarctic.

 

[Whitey Grandad]

There was some discussion a few years ago about why there was a difference between ground-based and satellite-produced figures.

[Halo Stickman]

I was actually reading this somewhere very recently and can't find the exact source I was looking at. But climatologists (in many cases volunteers) have gone to great lengths to ensure an even distribution of recording stations all over the globe - from the deserts of Africa, to the rainforests of South America and even the frozen wastelands of the Arctic / Antarctic.

 

 

 

Agree, that’s a pretty comprehensive spread of monitoring stations!

 

I know Victorian naval vessels were required to record temperature readings etc every nautical mile and that we obviously have inland records from these times. Nevertheless, I do wonder about the validity of comparing this historical data with that acquired using today’s technology, especially when I see scientists quoting annual global average temperatures to fractions of a degree

[trousers]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2259012/Global-warming-Met-Office-releases-revised-global-temperature-predictions-showing-planet-NOT-rapidly-heating-up.html

 

The Met Office has admitted that global warming has stalled.

Officials say that by 2017, temperatures will not have risen significantly for nearly 20 years.

They concede that previous forecasts were inaccurate – and have come under fire for attempting to ‘bury bad news’ by publishing the revised data on Christmas Eve.

[buctootim]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2259012/Global-warming-Met-Office-releases-revised-global-temperature-predictions-showing-planet-NOT-rapidly-heating-up.html

 

The Met Office has admitted that global warming has stalled.

 

Officials say that by 2017, temperatures will not have risen significantly for nearly 20 years.

 

They concede that previous forecasts were inaccurate – and have come under fire for attempting to ‘bury bad news’ by publishing the revised data on Christmas Eve.

 

 

Daily Mail disingenuous shocker. To put it another way - the average temperature 2013-2017 will be higher than the hottest year ever recorded - 1998.

Edited 9 January, 2013 by buctootim

[badgerx16]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2259012/Global-warming-Met-Office-releases-revised-global-temperature-predictions-showing-planet-NOT-rapidly-heating-up.html

 

""However, Dr Richard Allan of the University of Reading said: ‘Global warming is not “at a standstill” but does seem to have slowed down since 2000, in comparison to the rapid warming of the world since the 1970s.

‘In fact, consistent with rising greenhouse gases, heat is continuing to build up beneath the ocean surface.’

He was backed by Bob Ward of the London School of Economics, who said it would be wrong to interpret that warming had stopped.""

 

Please remember that the graph of any rise will never be linear, and individual years may quite reasonably show no increase, or even a small drop. This would not, however, invalidate an extrapolation over perhaps 40-50 years.

[Sheaf Saint]

Meanwhile...

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20937509

 

The fires and warnings follow days of searing heat. In a statement, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology revealed that for each of the first six days of 2013, the "national area-average" temperature had been in the top 20 hottest days on record.

 

It was also the first time that average national top temperatures over 39C had been recorded on five consecutive days, the bureau said.

[buctootim]

Meanwhile...

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20937509

 

and

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/01/130109-warmest-year-record-2012-global-warming-science-environment-united-states/

[Thedelldays]

Meanwhile...

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20937509

when did records begin in australia..?

[buctootim]

when did records begin in australia..?

 

1840 first one, 1885 nationally.

[Window Cleaner]

Snowing in the Lebanon though, can't see that happens very often.

[Whitey Grandad]

Bit more about the effect of the sun here:

 

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/

[OldNick]

Bush fires in Australia, the good thing it might stop my cousin gloating about 40degrees on Christmas Day in Perth