Global Warming General Thread

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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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2011 Climate Change in Pictures and Data: Just the Facts

Peter Gleick,
CEO Pacific Institute, MacArthur Fellow, National Academy of Sciences

"...here are just a few simple and clear pictures (and links) showing how the planet continued to warm and change around us in 2011.
And these facts are just part of why all national academies of science on the planet and every major geophysical scientific society agree that
humans are fundamentally changing the climate."

LINK
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

Post by Ellen »

If you haven't read this book already I recommend it as a fascinating read. The very same people have been poo-pooing science from cigarettes causing cancer to climate change - and they have been alarmingly successful.

http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org



Also , a map reflecting changes (warming trends) in US plant hardiness zones can be found at
http://www.arborday.org/media/map_change.cfm

And the recently updated USDA hardiness zones are explained at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2012/120125.htm although the 30 time period used for data collection is explained as below the scale necessary to reflect climate change...

(Of course, these sites are just and aside to volumes of data documenting a warming earth, increased anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases and measured increases of such gases in the atmosphere, movements of species ranges, ocean pH deccreases, coral bleaching... etc. that one can access through reputable agencies and universities.)
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Buckets of temperature graphs from NASA:

NASA

Image

Image

Image

Much more here: NASA
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Ellen wrote:If you haven't read this book already I recommend it as a fascinating read. The very same people have been poo-pooing science from cigarettes causing cancer to climate change - and they have been alarmingly successful.

http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org
As I posted back in July in this thread, the National Center for Science Education has the chapter on Global Warming for free here:

http://ncse.com/files/pub/evolution/Exc ... hantsb.pdf
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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50 second clip on Heartland America:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DjPo0ew ... r_embedded
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Excellent resource for:

Myths vs. Facts: Global Warming

Myths vs. Facts: Global Warming

"Myths vs. Facts in Global Warming: This news and analysis section addresses substance of arguments such as "global warming is a hoax", "global warming is a fiction", "global warming is created to make money for Al Gore". The main fallacy noted is that most arguments are facts out of context while others are simply false representations. When the facts pertaining to the arguments are viewed in context relevance becomes obvious. Global warming is happening and it is human caused."
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Oceans' acidic shift may be fastest in 300 million years

MSNBC

"WASHINGTON — The world's oceans are turning acidic at what could be the fastest pace of any time in the past 300 million years, even more rapidly than during a monster emission of planet-warming carbon 56 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday."
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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"It is an empirical fact that CO2 and methane are greenhouse gases, transparent to light from the sun but opaque and highly reflective of radiant heat from the surface. It is an empirical fact that enormous CO2 emissions come from burning fossil fuels. It is an empirical fact that large scale ranching of ungulates produces copious amounts of methane. It is an empirical fact that the levels of both these gases are on the rise and that humanity is the only species that does large scale ranching of ungulates and that burns fossil fuels. Therefore anthropogenic climate change is real and is accelerating. These things are all just as settled, just as non debatable as the Earth being almost spherical and peanut butter crackers being sticky inside a dry mouth." LINK
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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In 1981, Hansen underestimated global warming:

Evaluating a 1981 temperature projection

Excerpt...

Image

"Given the many uncertainties at the time, notably the role of aerosols, the agreement is very good indeed. They only underestimated the observed trend by about 30%, similar or better in magnitude than the CMIP5 models over the same period (although these tend to overestimate the trend, still mainly due to problems related to aerosols).

To conclude, a projection from 1981 for rising temperatures in a major science journal, at a time that the temperature rise was not yet obvious in the observations, has been found to agree well with the observations since then, underestimating the observed trend by about 30%, and easily beating naive predictions of no-change or a linear continuation of trends. It is also a nice example of a statement based on theory that could be falsified and up to now has withstood the test. The “global warming hypothesis” has been developed according to the principles of sound science."

Real Climate
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Animated time history of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 800,000 years ago until January, 2009.

About two minutes: NOAA
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Past extreme warming events linked to massive carbon release from thawing permafrost

abstract

"Between about 55.5 and 52 million years ago, Earth experienced a series of sudden and extreme global warming events (hyperthermals) superimposed on a long-term warming trend1. The first and largest of these events, the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), is characterized by a massive input of carbon, ocean acidification2 and an increase in global temperature of about 5 °C within a few thousand years3. Although various explanations for the PETM have been proposed4, 5, 6, a satisfactory model that accounts for the source, magnitude and timing of carbon release at the PETM and successive hyperthermals remains elusive. Here we use a new astronomically calibrated cyclostratigraphic record from central Italy7 to show that the Early Eocene hyperthermals occurred during orbits with a combination of high eccentricity and high obliquity. Corresponding climate–ecosystem–soil simulations accounting for rising concentrations of background greenhouse gases8 and orbital forcing show that the magnitude and timing of the PETM and subsequent hyperthermals can be explained by the orbitally triggered decomposition of soil organic carbon in circum-Arctic and Antarctic terrestrial permafrost. This massive carbon reservoir had the potential to repeatedly release thousands of petagrams (1015 grams) of carbon to the atmosphere–ocean system, once a long-term warming threshold had been reached just before the PETM. Replenishment of permafrost soil carbon stocks following peak warming probably contributed to the rapid recovery from each event9, while providing a sensitive carbon reservoir for the next hyperthermal10. As background temperatures continued to rise following the PETM, the areal extent of permafrost steadily declined, resulting in an incrementally smaller available carbon pool and smaller hyperthermals at each successive orbital forcing maximum. A mechanism linking Earth’s orbital properties with release of soil carbon from permafrost provides a unifying model accounting for the salient features of the hyperthermals."

Nature
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Game Over for the Climate
By JAMES HANSEN
Published: May 9, 2012

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change."

The rest... New York Times
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Global Warming: An Exclusive Look at James Hansen’s Scary New Math
A new analysis by the NASA climatologist for the first time
ties specific weather events to human-induced climate change


Excerpt:

"In the paper, which Time.com confirmed has been peer-reviewed, the authors show that extreme outliers of more than three standard deviations above the mean temperature covered between six and thirteen percent of the globe during the years 2003 to 2008. If they were normally distributed and similar to the climactic record, that should have been just a 0.1-to-0.2 percent frequency of an extreme heat event. (That’s about exactly as often as a perfect bell curve predicts they would occur.) Hansen dubs this difference a “three-sigma anomaly,” for the Greek-letter symbol for standard deviation. And in the world of statistics, these anomalies represent a stunning 10-fold increase in extreme weather events.

Hansen says the heat wave that struck Texas and Oklahoma last summer and the Moscow heat wave of 2010 (which caused 11,000 deaths in the city) are examples of three-sigma anomalies. In a paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, wrote that it was 80 percent probable that the Moscow heat wave had been caused by global warming.

“These three-sigma anomalies,” Hansen says, “we can now say are due to global warming.”...

Back in 1988, when Hansen was among the first and most credible scientists to sound the alarm about global warming, he, Ruedy and several co-authors came up with the concept of “climate dice.” Imagine dice with two sides red (for hot), two sides blue (for cold) and two sides white (average temperatures). If you roll the dice, you’re equally likely to get any result. With continued emissions of greenhouse gas, however, the authors predicted that by the early 21st century, four of the sides would be red.

“The climate dice are loaded now, just as we said back in the 1980s that they would be,” Hansen wrote to Time.com. “People should be able to recognize the change, especially the increasingly extreme events. Don’t be surprised if there are more examples this summer.”

TIME
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400 ppm now & Colbert makes fun of NC

Post by Ellenl »

Monday June 4, 2012
The Word - Sink or Swim
Scientists predict an economy-destroying, 39-inch sea level rise, but North Carolina drafts a law to make it eight inches

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... nk-or-swim
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Sea level increase hotspot on NE US coast:
http://www.nature.com/news/us-northeast ... ls-1.10880
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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"It’s easy to break an individual record because the weather system happens to be at that particular location. With an unchanging climate you expect that the number of highs and the number of low temperature records are about the same. And that was the case in the 1950′s, 60′s and 70′s. And then by the 2000′s, we were breaking high temperature records at a ratio of 2 to 1 over cold temperature records. But this year, we’ve been breaking high temperature records at a rate of about 10 to 1. Ironically, there are still some cool spots — mainly in the Pacific Northwest and cold temperature records continue to be broken. So breaking records is not an indication of climate change, but breaking records at a rate of 10 to 1 versus the cold records, that’s a clear indication of climate change.”

LINK
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Passed along from Larry W.

Atmosphere of Distortion

When is it OK to blame climate change for a heat wave?
by Joshua E. Keating in Foreign Policy

"As Washington, D.C. endures a record eighth straight day of near-triple-digit temperatures, it might be hard for the city's residents to remember that just two years ago, when the capital was blanketed with record snowfall, Republican senator and noted climate change skeptic James Inhofe and his family were building an igloo on the national mall to mock former vice president and leading environmentalist Al Gore. That winter, Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh gleefully noted that a Senate conference on climate change had to be canceled due to snow.
......
Mann also notes with some satisfaction that the year after Inhofe's igloo stunt, his home state of Oklahoma had the hottest month of any state in U.S. history, with an average temperature of 88.9 degrees in July 2011. The senator himself became ill after swimming in a lake that suffered from unexpected algae growth, likely due to the hotter temperatures.
.....
In fact, more than 2,000 U.S. heat records were broken just in the past week. Climatologists argue that while there's certainly nothing unexpected in periodic record-breaking temperatures, the rate at which these records are being broken year after year can't be explained away by coincidence.

"There's a randomness to weather, but what we're seeing is loading of the weather dice to the point where sixes are coming up 10 times more often," says Mann. "If you were gambling and you saw sixes coming up 10 times more often you'd start to notice. We are seeing climate change now in the statistical loading of these dice."
article here

Amy Goodman, writing in the Guardian, quotes Dr Jeff Masters, ""Our TV meteorologists are missing a big opportunity here to educate and tell the population what is likely to happen."
Goodman's July 5 column is here.
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Image
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Two of my science heroes duke it out... Michael Mann takes Nate Silver to the woodshed:

FiveThirtyEight: The Number of Things Nate Silver Gets Wrong About Climate Change

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e ... 09482.html
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Scientists: ’93 percent’ of Fox News climate change coverage is ‘staggeringly misleading’

"When it comes to reporting on what scientists say about climate change, the Union of Concerned Scientists told Raw Story that their research shows Fox News can be counted upon to mislead its viewers.

In a study (PDF) published Monday, the group takes Fox News and The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page to task for consistently misleading their audience on climate change. Data collected over six months showed that Fox News was the worst offender on climate issues between the two, allowing misleading statements to permeate “93 percent” of its broadcasts on the subject from February to July 2012. The Journal‘s editorial page did not fare much better, however: the Union said “81 percent” of their climate coverage from August 2011 to July 2012 was “misleading.”

“[Fox News and The Wall Street Journal] both were staggering in the levels of misleading information about climate science,” Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Raw Story. “We found that both Fox News and [The Wall Street Journal] opinion page have staggeringly high levels of misinformation.”

Raw Story
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