Global Warming/Climate Change/Global Weirding?

[swake]

DeCaprio was there as a featured speaker.  He's very passionate about renewable energy and encouraging people to just use less.  I'm sure he is as good a role model as Algore.  Of course Algore only has one home, and an old G4 that has been converted to run on Unicorn farts.  DeCaprio has 5 homes and likes to party on 500 foot yachts with his friend billionaire oil Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Attacking individuals as hypocrites and posting funny pictures of protestors isn't actually any kind of argument against the facts of global warming. You still have zero science on your side.

[Gaspar]

Attacking individuals as hypocrites and posting funny pictures of protestors isn't actually any kind of argument against the facts of global warming. You still have zero science on your side.

I thought it was Climate change?  Is it warming again?

[Hoss]

I thought it was Climate change?  Is it warming again?

You might stick to your day job as clairvoyant and let the climate scientists work on this.

[patric]

Sen. James Inhofe Claims Cold Winter Disproves Global Warming

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/environment/global-warming/sen-james-inhofe-claims-cold-winter-disproves-global-warming

Its all you need to know. 

[Gaspar]

You might stick to your day job as clairvoyant and let the climate scientists work on this.

Science has little to do with it.  This is ancient politics.
Metanoia- To change ones mind, intellectually, affectionally and morally.

They used to contract priests & astrologists to guarantee catastrophe and encourage subjugation.
Today the vocations have changed but the same contracts remain.

Repent, for the end is neigh.
To save the Earth we all gotta try, or else in the future we're all gonna fry!
We have a solution, Stop Pollution!
Your ambition should be to stop emission.
Snow is melting the Earth is crying!
It can mean disaster if the temperature rises faster!

It's all fun and games until someone loses their freedom. Global Warming Climate Change hasn't run it's course yet, but when it does, the religion science will shift to something else, that is if we are still around after the meteor hits.

"Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus."
Margaret Thatcher

[swake]

Science has little to do with it.  This is ancient politics.
Metanoia- To change ones mind, intellectually, affectionally and morally.

They used to contract priests & astrologists to guarantee catastrophe and encourage subjugation.
Today the vocations have changed but the same contracts remain.

Repent, for the end is neigh.
To save the Earth we all gotta try, or else in the future we're all gonna fry!
We have a solution, Stop Pollution!
Your ambition should be to stop emission.
Snow is melting the Earth is crying!
It can mean disaster if the temperature rises faster!

It's all fun and games until someone loses their freedom. Global Warming Climate Change hasn't run it's course yet, but when it does, the religion science will shift to something else, that is if we are still around after the meteor hits.

"Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus."
Margaret Thatcher

That's idiotic.

[TheArtist]

I thought it was Climate change?  Is it warming again?

Both are perfectly legitimate.

[Gaspar]

That's idiotic.

Perhaps.

The science was irrefutable back in 70's when the next ice age was coming, and Newsweek warned of the "grim reality" of global cooling.  And back in the 80's when we were all going to die because of a growing hole in the Ozone layer over the antarctic.  We were doomed in the 90s too, when the earth's rain forests held the keys to world survival, and were being mowed down at a rate of "20 football fields a minute."

If I live long enough, perhaps I'll get the opportunity to be an idiot about the scientific validity of next hobgoblin.  I rather look forward to that.

[swake]

Perhaps.

The science was irrefutable back in 70's when the next ice age was coming, and Newsweek warned of the "grim reality" of global cooling.  And back in the 80's when we were all going to die because of a growing hole in the Ozone layer over the antarctic.  We were doomed in the 90s too, when the earth's rain forests held the keys to world survival, and were being mowed down at a rate of "20 football fields a minute."

If I live long enough, perhaps I'll get the opportunity to be an idiot about the scientific validity of next hobgoblin.  I rather look forward to that.

There never was a consensus about a coming ice age. That's more propoganda that's been sold to you by the energy industry. In the 1970s there were some scientists that believed we were cooling the earth and some at the time that thought we were warming it. The science was not settled. Computer modeling the climate was new and the data we were getting on weather and climate was improving. Over time that science has continued to improve and the scientists that were skeptical of heating or that even thought we were cooling have changed their minds. Today we do have scientific consensus. This is how science works.

As for the Ozone layer, you might want to look up why that's not so dangerous anymore. Remember when spray cans changed and the type of freon we used changed? Science found solutions.

Science can find solutions to global warming too, but not if you reject it because it tells you something you don't want to hear.

When are you going to realize that the crap the right wing hot air machine keeps feeding you is wrong, over and over.  Stop believing the lies. Science can be wrong, but it doesn't lie. The energy industry however is funding lots and lots of lies to protect their profits and you lap it up like a puppy.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Perhaps.

The science was irrefutable back in 70's when the next ice age was coming, and Newsweek warned of the "grim reality" of global cooling.  And back in the 80's when we were all going to die because of a growing hole in the Ozone layer over the antarctic.  We were doomed in the 90s too, when the earth's rain forests held the keys to world survival, and were being mowed down at a rate of "20 football fields a minute."

If I live long enough, perhaps I'll get the opportunity to be an idiot about the scientific validity of next hobgoblin.  I rather look forward to that.

The rain forests continue to be lost at an increased rate from 20 years ago.  Strong likelihood that this is making the CO2 situation even worse.  We are releasing CO2 at a massive rate at the same time we are blasting the single biggest organism on the planet capable of binding some of it back up.  The FACT is - CO2 is twice what it was during the last 400,000 years of cooling/warming cycles.  A rational thought process would at the very least be concerned and interested in continuing ongoing study and action.  One huge thing - stop destroying the rain forest.

[Conan71]

Despite your protestations, the science of global warming, climate change, climate anomaly, etc. is far from "settled".  There's a school of thought that reforestation actually increases levels of V.O.C.'s thought to be contributors to global warming.

From that bastion of conservatism, NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/opinion/to-save-the-planet-dont-plant-trees.html?_r=0

Dr. Unger is assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at Yale

http://environment.yale.edu/unger-group/nyt-op-ed/

To Save the Planet, Don't Plant Trees

NEW HAVEN — AS international leaders gather in New York next week for a United Nations climate summit, they will be preoccupied with how to tackle the rising rate of carbon emissions. To mitigate the crisis, one measure they are likely to promote is reducing deforestation and planting trees.

A landmark deal to support sustainable forestry was a heralded success story of the last international climate talks, in Warsaw last year. Western nations, including the United States, Britain and Norway, handed over millions of dollars to developing countries to kick-start programs to reduce tropical deforestation. More funds are promised.

Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. The assumption is that planting trees and avoiding further deforestation provides a convenient carbon capture and storage facility on the land.

That is the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is wrong.

In reality, the cycling of carbon, energy and water between the land and the atmosphere is much more complex. Considering all the interactions, large-scale increases in forest cover can actually make global warming worse.

Of course, this is counterintuitive. We all learn in school how trees effortlessly perform the marvel of photosynthesis: They take up carbon dioxide from the air and make oxygen. This process provides us with life, food, water, shelter, fiber and soil. The earth's forests generously mop up about a quarter of the world's fossil-fuel carbon emissions every year.

So it's understandable that we'd expect trees to save us from rising temperatures, but climate science tells a different story. Besides the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, another important switch on the planetary thermostat is how much of the sun's energy is taken up by the earth's surface, compared to how much is reflected back to space. The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun's energy and raise the planet's surface temperature.

Climate scientists have calculated the effect of increasing forest cover on surface temperature. Their conclusion is that planting trees in the tropics would lead to cooling, but in colder regions, it would cause warming.

In order to grow food, humans have changed about 50 percent of the earth's surface area from native forests and grasslands to crops, pasture and wood harvest. Unfortunately, there is no scientific consensus on whether this land use has caused overall global warming or cooling. Since we don't know that, we can't reliably predict whether large-scale forestation would help to control the earth's rising temperatures.

Worse, trees emit reactive volatile gases that contribute to air pollution and are hazardous to human health. These emissions are crucial to trees — to protect themselves from environmental stresses like sweltering heat and bug infestations. In summer, the eastern United States is the world's major hot spot for volatile organic compounds (V.O.C.s) from trees.

As these compounds mix with fossil-fuel pollution from cars and industry, an even more harmful cocktail of airborne toxic chemicals is created. President Ronald Reagan was widely ridiculed in 1981 when he said, "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." He was wrong on the science — but less wrong than many assumed.

Chemical reactions involving tree V.O.C.s produce methane and ozone, two powerful greenhouse gases, and form particles that can affect the condensation of clouds. Research by my group at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and by other laboratories, suggests that changes in tree V.O.C.s affect the climate on a scale similar to changes in the earth's surface color and carbon storage capacity.

While trees provide carbon storage, forestry is not a permanent solution because trees and soil also "breathe" — that is, burn oxygen and release carbon dioxide back into the air. Eventually, all of the carbon finds its way back into the atmosphere when trees die or burn.

Moreover, it is a myth that photosynthesis controls the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. Even if all photosynthesis on the planet were shut down, the atmosphere's oxygen content would change by less than 1 percent.

The Amazon rain forest is often perceived as the lungs of the planet. In fact, almost all the oxygen the Amazon produces during the day remains there and is reabsorbed by the forest at night. In other words, the Amazon rain forest is a closed system that uses all its own oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Planting trees and avoiding deforestation do offer unambiguous benefits to biodiversity and many forms of life. But relying on forestry to slow or reverse global warming is another matter entirely.

The science says that spending precious dollars for climate change mitigation on forestry is high-risk: We don't know that it would cool the planet, and we have good reason to fear it might have precisely the opposite effect. More funding for forestry might seem like a tempting easy win for the world leaders at the United Nations, but it's a bad bet.

[Gaspar]

Despite your protestations, the science of global warming, climate change, climate anomaly, etc. is far from "settled".  There's a school of thought that reforestation actually increases levels of V.O.C.'s thought to be contributors to global warming.

From that bastion of conservatism, NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/opinion/to-save-the-planet-dont-plant-trees.html?_r=0

Dr. Unger is assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at Yale

http://environment.yale.edu/unger-group/nyt-op-ed/

[Conan71]

This scientist who worked at the DOE during Obama's first term also highlights the unsettled science of climate change and points out climatological  computer models are as much art as science and rely on supposition and estimation because the complex interactions of earth's environment is not fully understood nor agreed upon by scientists.  Hell, even most people who reject anthropogenic global warming agree the climate changes over time.  It always has.  The causes and solutions are hardly settled.

This is the crux of my skepticism with the global warming issue: policy initiatives seem to drive the scientific narrative when it's apparent we know far less about climate change than politicians and pundits want us to believe. 

Growing polar ice and a relative flattening of warming trends over the last 16 years, especially seem to have scientists at odds.

No matter your bent on climate change, the article is a very good read.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/climate-science-is-not-settled-1411143565

Climate Science Is Not Settled

The crucial scientific question for policy isn't whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will.

The idea that "Climate science is settled" runs through today's popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.

My training as a computational physicist—together with a 40-year career of scientific research, advising and management in academia, government and the private sector—has afforded me an extended, up-close perspective on climate science. Detailed technical discussions during the past year with leading climate scientists have given me an even better sense of what we know, and don't know, about climate. I have come to appreciate the daunting scientific challenge of answering the questions that policy makers and the public are asking.

The crucial scientific question for policy isn't whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will. Geological and historical records show the occurrence of major climate shifts, sometimes over only a few decades. We know, for instance, that during the 20th century the Earth's global average surface temperature rose 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries. The impact today of human activity appears to be comparable to the intrinsic, natural variability of the climate system itself.

Rather, the crucial, unsettled scientific question for policy is, "How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?" Answers to that question at the global and regional levels, as well as to equally complex questions of how ecosystems and human activities will be affected, should inform our choices about energy and infrastructure.

But—here's the catch—those questions are the hardest ones to answer. They challenge, in a fundamental way, what science can tell us about future climates.

Even though human influences could have serious consequences for the climate, they are physically small in relation to the climate system as a whole. For example, human additions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st century are expected to directly shift the atmosphere's natural greenhouse effect by only 1% to 2%. Since the climate system is highly variable on its own, that smallness sets a very high bar for confidently projecting the consequences of human influences.

A second challenge to "knowing" future climate is today's poor understanding of the oceans. The oceans, which change over decades and centuries, hold most of the climate's heat and strongly influence the atmosphere. Unfortunately, precise, comprehensive observations of the oceans are available only for the past few decades; the reliable record is still far too short to adequately understand how the oceans will change and how that will affect climate.

A third fundamental challenge arises from feedbacks that can dramatically amplify or mute the climate's response to human and natural influences. One important feedback, which is thought to approximately double the direct heating effect of carbon dioxide, involves water vapor, clouds and temperature.

But feedbacks are uncertain. They depend on the details of processes such as evaporation and the flow of radiation through clouds. They cannot be determined confidently from the basic laws of physics and chemistry, so they must be verified by precise, detailed observations that are, in many cases, not yet available.

Beyond these observational challenges are those posed by the complex computer models used to project future climate. These massive programs attempt to describe the dynamics and interactions of the various components of the Earth system—the atmosphere, the oceans, the land, the ice and the biosphere of living things. While some parts of the models rely on well-tested physical laws, other parts involve technically informed estimation. Computer modeling of complex systems is as much an art as a science.

For instance, global climate models describe the Earth on a grid that is currently limited by computer capabilities to a resolution of no finer than 60 miles. (The distance from New York City to Washington, D.C., is thus covered by only four grid cells.) But processes such as cloud formation, turbulence and rain all happen on much smaller scales. These critical processes then appear in the model only through adjustable assumptions that specify, for example, how the average cloud cover depends on a grid box's average temperature and humidity. In a given model, dozens of such assumptions must be adjusted ("tuned," in the jargon of modelers) to reproduce both current observations and imperfectly known historical records.

We often hear that there is a "scientific consensus" about climate change. But as far as the computer models go, there isn't a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences. Since 1990, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has periodically surveyed the state of climate science. Each successive report from that endeavor, with contributions from thousands of scientists around the world, has come to be seen as the definitive assessment of climate science at the time of its issue.

For the latest IPCC report (September 2013), its Working Group I, which focuses on physical science, uses an ensemble of some 55 different models. Although most of these models are tuned to reproduce the gross features of the Earth's climate, the marked differences in their details and projections reflect all of the limitations that I have described. For example:

• The models differ in their descriptions of the past century's global average surface temperature by more than three times the entire warming recorded during that time. Such mismatches are also present in many other basic climate factors, including rainfall, which is fundamental to the atmosphere's energy balance. As a result, the models give widely varying descriptions of the climate's inner workings. Since they disagree so markedly, no more than one of them can be right.

• Although the Earth's average surface temperature rose sharply by 0.9 degree Fahrenheit during the last quarter of the 20th century, it has increased much more slowly for the past 16 years, even as the human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen by some 25%. This surprising fact demonstrates directly that natural influences and variability are powerful enough to counteract the present warming influence exerted by human activity.

Yet the models famously fail to capture this slowing in the temperature rise. Several dozen different explanations for this failure have been offered, with ocean variability most likely playing a major role. But the whole episode continues to highlight the limits of our modeling.

• The models roughly describe the shrinking extent of Arctic sea ice observed over the past two decades, but they fail to describe the comparable growth of Antarctic sea ice, which is now at a record high.

• The models predict that the lower atmosphere in the tropics will absorb much of the heat of the warming atmosphere. But that "hot spot" has not been confidently observed, casting doubt on our understanding of the crucial feedback of water vapor on temperature.

• Even though the human influence on climate was much smaller in the past, the models do not account for the fact that the rate of global sea-level rise 70 years ago was as large as what we observe today—about one foot per century.

• A crucial measure of our knowledge of feedbacks is climate sensitivity—that is, the warming induced by a hypothetical doubling of carbon-dioxide concentration. Today's best estimate of the sensitivity (between 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) is no different, and no more certain, than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite an heroic research effort costing billions of dollars.

These and many other open questions are in fact described in the IPCC research reports, although a detailed and knowledgeable reading is sometimes required to discern them. They are not "minor" issues to be "cleaned up" by further research. Rather, they are deficiencies that erode confidence in the computer projections. Work to resolve these shortcomings in climate models should be among the top priorities for climate research.

Yet a public official reading only the IPCC's "Summary for Policy Makers" would gain little sense of the extent or implications of these deficiencies. These are fundamental challenges to our understanding of human impacts on the climate, and they should not be dismissed with the mantra that "climate science is settled."

While the past two decades have seen progress in climate science, the field is not yet mature enough to usefully answer the difficult and important questions being asked of it. This decidedly unsettled state highlights what should be obvious: Understanding climate, at the level of detail relevant to human influences, is a very, very difficult problem.

We can and should take steps to make climate projections more useful over time. An international commitment to a sustained global climate observation system would generate an ever-lengthening record of more precise observations. And increasingly powerful computers can allow a better understanding of the uncertainties in our models, finer model grids and more sophisticated descriptions of the processes that occur within them. The science is urgent, since we could be caught flat-footed if our understanding does not improve more rapidly than the climate itself changes.

A transparent rigor would also be a welcome development, especially given the momentous political and policy decisions at stake. That could be supported by regular, independent, "red team" reviews to stress-test and challenge the projections by focusing on their deficiencies and uncertainties; that would certainly be the best practice of the scientific method. But because the natural climate changes over decades, it will take many years to get the data needed to confidently isolate and quantify the effects of human influences.

Policy makers and the public may wish for the comfort of certainty in their climate science. But I fear that rigidly promulgating the idea that climate science is "settled" (or is a "hoax") demeans and chills the scientific enterprise, retarding its progress in these important matters. Uncertainty is a prime mover and motivator of science and must be faced head-on. It should not be confined to hushed sidebar conversations at academic conferences.

Society's choices in the years ahead will necessarily be based on uncertain knowledge of future climates. That uncertainty need not be an excuse for inaction. There is well-justified prudence in accelerating the development of low-emissions technologies and in cost-effective energy-efficiency measures.

But climate strategies beyond such "no regrets" efforts carry costs, risks and questions of effectiveness, so nonscientific factors inevitably enter the decision. These include our tolerance for risk and the priorities that we assign to economic development, poverty reduction, environmental quality, and intergenerational and geographical equity.

Individuals and countries can legitimately disagree about these matters, so the discussion should not be about "believing" or "denying" the science. Despite the statements of numerous scientific societies, the scientific community cannot claim any special expertise in addressing issues related to humanity's deepest goals and values. The political and diplomatic spheres are best suited to debating and resolving such questions, and misrepresenting the current state of climate science does nothing to advance that effort.

Any serious discussion of the changing climate must begin by acknowledging not only the scientific certainties but also the uncertainties, especially in projecting the future. Recognizing those limits, rather than ignoring them, will lead to a more sober and ultimately more productive discussion of climate change and climate policies. To do otherwise is a great disservice to climate science itself.

Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama's first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, as well as chief scientist of BP, BP.LN -2.99% where his work focused on renewable and low-carbon energy technologies.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Despite your protestations, the science of global warming, climate change, climate anomaly, etc. is far from "settled".  There's a school of thought that reforestation actually increases levels of V.O.C.'s thought to be contributors to global warming.

From that bastion of conservatism, NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/opinion/to-save-the-planet-dont-plant-trees.html?_r=0

Dr. Unger is assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at Yale

http://environment.yale.edu/unger-group/nyt-op-ed/

My "protestations" have always been two fold - if Human activity is creating climate change, one of two things is possible;

1.  It won't matter in the overall scheme of things, OR

2.  It is too late to do anything effective about it.


Again, did you read what he said??  Especially in relation to what I said... it IS a fact that we have lost a massive amount of rain forest world wide - a process that has gone on for thousands of years of human activity and accelerated dramatically in the last 75 years or so.  (The Sahara was once much smaller than it is now...could that have been from overgrazing, like it is today??)

It is another fact that the amount of biomass represented by that loss has some effect on binding CO2 form the atmosphere - that's how plants work.  Another fact - as I stated - we are releasing CO2 at a massive rate at the same time we are blasting the single biggest organism on the planet capable of binding some of it back up.

And then, again, there is that other pesky little FACT - CO2 is twice what it was during the last 400,000 years of cooling/warming cycles.

We do need better models of what is happening, especially since the CO2 level is so massively different from previous cycles - that is throwing some carp in the eggs that just wasn't present previously.  And that level is massively different directly due to human activity.  Yes...that IS settled science.


With the billions of gallons of soft drinks consumed every year planet wide, you would think there would be some uptake of CO2 that would at least spend a little time bound up in the people drinking them...

[swake]

Despite your protestations, the science of global warming, climate change, climate anomaly, etc. is far from "settled".  There's a school of thought that reforestation actually increases levels of V.O.C.'s thought to be contributors to global warming.

From that bastion of conservatism, NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/opinion/to-save-the-planet-dont-plant-trees.html?_r=0

Dr. Unger is assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at Yale

http://environment.yale.edu/unger-group/nyt-op-ed/

What is settled is that we are warming the earth, what Dr Unger is disagreeing with is forestation as a solution.

Her position has been strongly rebuked by 30+ leading scientists:
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0922-scientists-respond-to-dont-plant-trees-oped.html

Here is her response to the rebuke, she hardly sounds like someone who is a climate change denier:

Global climate change is real and the greatest threat to humankind and the biosphere.

Nations have agreed that the global average temperature must not exceed 2 deg C above the preindustrial value to maintain a safe and healthy planet. We are dangerously close. There is no time to waste.

Protection and restoration of tropical and other forests is essential regardless of their effects on climate. Currently, global climate modeling is not sufficiently advanced to predict reliably the effects of changing forests on the global average surface temperature.

The primary key to solving the global climate problem is the transformation of our energy system into one that does not use the sky as a waste dump for our greenhouse gas pollution.

Land-use change effects a redistribution of carbon among land, ocean, and atmosphere reservoirs while fossil fuel emission adds carbon to these combined reservoirs. The long-term climatic effects of these two processes are very different. A primary reason for wanting to avoid human-induced climate change is to protect natural ecosystems. Protecting natural ecosystems is an important goal, regardless of their climate effects.

http://environment.yale.edu/unger-group/nyt-op-ed/