Here blizzard, blizzard, blizzard!

[Red Arrow]

Still not getting it. The planet is clearly warming outside the range of temperatures we humans have experienced since the beginning of written records. The increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are also the proximate cause of ocean acidification which is already having a significant effect on sea life. Why is irrelevant. That these things are happening is what is important.

What does the why get us that we actually need to know to prevent the consequences?

I agree, YOU are still not getting it.

[guido911]

What is it with you insulting Hoss at every chance?

It's easy. It's fun. He's a parrot (look below your post). And he goes after Sauer as if he is any better--same as you. That's why. Next question?

[guido911]

I agree, YOU are still not getting it.

Just read that Obama is blaming the California drought on global warming...sorry, "climate change". If only those polar ice caps had not melted.

[nathanm]

I agree, YOU are still not getting it.

So why not explain? Given that the consequences of a warming climate are the same regardless of the cause, why are we still arguing about the whys rather than implementing solutions?

[Red Arrow]

So why not explain? Given that the consequences of a warming climate are the same regardless of the cause, why are we still arguing about the whys rather than implementing solutions?

Do you not understand that which solutions are chosen, or mitigations if no solution is possible, depend on why?  I do not know at this time which solutions or mitigations should be chosen.  I am only disagreeing with your statement that "why" does not matter.

I really don't want to stoop to insulting you by posting some "intuitively obvious to the most casual observer" examples of why why matters.

(The quote is relatively common among college professors.)

[Conan71]

It's a lot harder to fire a tenured professor than it is a geologist at an oil company.

It continues to amaze me that we argue about it anyway. What difference does it make why the planet is warming. The fact of the matter is that this is a thing that is happening, and it will cause hundreds of trillions of dollars in direct damage from sea level rise alone if left unchecked. Sticking our heads in the sand only serves to magnify the losses. It's not as if when faced with other challenges from mother nature we've just thrown up our hands and decided to do nothing. You may note that our country is thick with flood control dams, levees, etc. People build safe rooms. They build earthquake-resistant buildings. But when it comes to a warming planet, a large segment of our populace has decided to just outright ignore it.

Jesus take the wheel, writ large, I guess?

Point being, it takes a lot of hubris to believe that man can direct nature.  I agree, climate change is a very real phenomena, it's been changing for millions of years.  How was it the science was so perfectly accepted forty years ago that climate cooling was happening because of smog, and now that's not an accepted theory.  So what happened?  The government stepped in and directed that big industry would clean up the emissions from their plants and auto makers would put smog devices on vehicles that would convert CO to CO2.  Wait?  Isn't CO2 a greenhouse gas supposedly responsible for global warming?

It's estimated by NOAA to be .12" per year.  Over a century that's one foot.  Not exactly a cataclysm, that's assuming that it's progressive and consistent. 

[dbacksfan 2.0]

Point being, it takes a lot of hubris to believe that man can direct nature.  I agree, climate change is a very real phenomena, it's been changing for millions of years.  How was it the science was so perfectly accepted forty years ago that climate cooling was happening because of smog, and now that's not an accepted theory.  So what happened?  The government stepped in and directed that big industry would clean up the emissions from their plants and auto makers would put smog devices on vehicles that would convert CO to CO2.  Wait?  Isn't CO2 a greenhouse gas supposedly responsible for global warming?

It's estimated by NOAA to be .12" per year.  Over a century that's one foot.  Not exactly a cataclysm, that's assuming that it's progressive and consistent. 

Don't forget that nate also believes that the movies  "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012" are the best scientific documentaries of all time.

[nathanm]

Don't forget that nate also believes that the movies  "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012" are the best scientific documentaries of all time.

Things that aren't happening quickly aren't happening at all, I guess?

Conan, a couple of articles in Newsweek notwithstanding, there was nothing like the scientific consensus on the anomalously cool period 40 years ago that there is on the anomalous warmth today.

Global warming skeptics often cite contradictory reports from a generation ago warning of global cooling. In 1975 Newsweek wrote of "ominous signs" that temperatures were dipping, and a year later National Geographic suggested the possibility of a worldwide chilling trend. Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, recalls those stories well. "I was one of the ones who talked about global cooling," he says. "I was also the one who said what was wrong with that idea within three years."

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/feb/global-cooling

[Gaspar]

Politics nothing more.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Point being, it takes a lot of hubris to believe that man can direct nature.  I agree, climate change is a very real phenomena, it's been changing for millions of years.  

Not hubris, just a recognition of reality.  We know for a fact that the Sahara - and a good portion of sub-Saharan Africa has been affected by human activities.  Sahara is MUCH bigger than it was a few thousand years ago.

And in this country we had an extremely graphic example of exactly that fact - man can and does direct nature.  Who would have thought that millions of acres could be converted from lush prairie pasture to dunes of sand.  But that is what happened in about a 25 year period of intensely ignorant farming practices.  Throw in a couple years of drought, and you have a million Okies migrating to California!  Lasted for about a decade, but was reversible when farming practices changed.

And that was with NO additional carbon input.  We have put a substantial amount of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere - global average last year got to 400ppm (for the first time in about 25 million years!).  The official value is taken on Mauna Loa.  

http://co2now.org/

350ppm is the number I have used for many years as the "ball park" average when talking to people about their HVAC systems.  Commercial buildings might typically set an alarm threshold of about 1000ppm.  (Think WalMart with 4,300 people - exaggeration! - in the store on Black Friday)  This would trigger a response in the equipment to open the economizer to bring in outside air to thin it out.  Would then stop the outside air when it is down below some lower threshold - say 900ppm.  (How much 350ppm air combined with 1,000ppm air is required to get 900ppm....)  You really wouldn't want to stay in much more than 1,000ppm for an extended period....gets very nasty, very quickly.  5,000 makes you feel bad.  10k or more displaces oxygen in your bloodstream.  40k - you gonna die.

So if we get up to the 25 or 50 or 65 million BC levels, we are probably gonna be really unhappy with that.

But as I have said before, it either won't matter (what we are doing) or it's already too late!  There is no other viable third option - if we turned off every CO2 generator tomorrow, average atmospheric levels would continue to rise for another 50 years.  And if you look at the Vostok data, it's pretty obvious that temperature changes ahead of CO2....counter-intuitive, but just the way it really is.  So, warmer temperatures eventually mean CO2 going up.  And lower temperatures eventually mean CO2 goes down.  But the CO2 NEVER leads the temperature - at least not in the last half a million years.

[Conan71]

Interesting, a majority of broadcast meteorologists don't agree with the UN's global warming agenda.

Only one in four American Meteorological Society broadcast meteorologists agrees with United Nations' claims that humans are primarily responsible for recent global warming, a survey published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society reports.

The survey results contradict the oft-repeated assertion that a consensus of scientists believes humans are causing a global warming crisis.

Objective Methods

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) survey was limited to television weather forecasters who are also meteorologists. A prior survey of all television weather forecasters--including ones without meteorological training--produced a heavy percentage of skeptics. The new survey was designed to determine whether the meteorologists held the same opinion as the broader group of all television weather forecasters.

The survey was conducted by the congressionally funded National Environmental Education Foundation and vetted by an advisory board of climate experts from groups such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, and Pew Center for Global Climate Change.

Alarmist Claims Rejected

The AMS study found:

Only 24 percent of the survey respondents agree with United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assertion, "Most of the warming since 1950 is very likely human-induced."
Only 19 percent agree with the claim, "Global climate models are reliable in their projection for a warming of the planet."
Only 19 percent agree with the assertion, "Global climate models are reliable in their projections for precipitation and drought."
Only 45 percent disagree with Weather Channel cofounder John Coleman's strongly worded statement, "Global warming is a scam."
Others' Statements Undermined

The survey results support the claims of rank-and-file scientists who say global warming position statements by the bureaucratic branches of groups such as the American Meteorological Society (AMS) are out of touch with the scientific opinions of member scientists.

A position statement by the AMS Council claims, for example, "strong observational evidence and results from modeling studies indicate that, at least over the last 50 years, human activities are a major contributor to climate change" and "there is a clear consensus on projected warming rates from human influences among different models and different emission scenarios." The survey of AMS meteorologists shows only a small minority of AMS members agree with the AMS bureaucracy's position statement.

Meteorologists Defy Bureaucrats

Joe D'Aleo, executive director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project and first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel, is not surprised by the survey results.

"AMS has tried very hard to brainwash broadcast meteorologists by forcing them to attend conferences and teleconferences with one-sided presentations where global warming evangelism is preached," D'Aleo said. "Broadcasters send me notifications they get from AMS telling them they must attend these conferences where only the alarmist point of view is preached. This survey shows that broadcast meteorologists are not swayed by these one-sided presentations.

"This survey likely was conducted in an attempt to isolate a 'more scientifically trained' subset of broadcast meteorologists that could be touted as more scientifically knowledgeable than television weathercasters as a whole. The survey shows, however, that such an attempt has backfired," D'Aleo added.

"From my observation, the opinion of broadcast meteorologists on this is issue is similar to the opinions of all fields of practicing meteorologists," D'Aleo concluded.

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2010/02/01/meteorologists-reject-uns-global-warming-claims

[Gaspar]

Interesting, a majority of broadcast meteorologists don't agree with the UN's global warming agenda.

Do you need to be shown that pie graph again.  99.99% of all climate scientists that rely on grants to study global warming believe in global warming damn it!

[Conan71]

Do you need to be shown that pie graph again.  99.99% of all climate scientists that rely on grants to study global warming believe in global warming damn it!

Yes, the disconnect is pretty funny.  Swake points out that geoscientists have a vested interest to not buy into human-caused climate change because it's assume they are paid for by the oil companies, yet doesn't understand how those who believe in it have just as much a vested interest. 

[nathanm]

Interesting that a group of people who rely extensively on computer models' seasonal forecasts (and even more so on 14ish day models) don't believe computer models can reliably predict drought or precipitation. Even though they do almost every year.

[DolfanBob]

Bill Nye is starting to look like "The Amazing Randi" of the Global Warming community. But in reverse.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2560970/Now-Billy-Nye-Science-Guy-goes-head-head-Republican-congresswoman-climate-change.html