Global Warming General Thread

[Dardedar]

Regarding those models:

2010 updates to model-data comparisons

"...here is the update of the graph showing the annual mean anomalies from the IPCC AR4 models plotted against the surface temperature records from the HadCRUT3v, NCDC and GISTEMP products (it really doesn’t matter which). Everything has been baselined to 1980-1999 (as in the 2007 IPCC report) and the envelope in grey encloses 95% of the model runs."



The rest at the award winning science site Realclimate

[note: I used the graph from the 2009 article because the 2010 pic was very large. See the updated graph at the link]

[Dardedar]

The National Academy of Science and it's Members Have Repeatedly Urged Action On Climate Change

255 Members Of NAS: "Taking No Action Poses A Dangerous Risk For Our Planet." In a May 2010 letter published in Science, 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences stated:

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.

[...]

[T]here is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

Much more can be, and has been, said by the world's scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business- as-usual practices. We urge our policymakers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels. [Science, 5/7/10]

LINK PDF

[Dardedar]

Pew Research Center

"The public is divided on the question of whether scientists themselves agree that the earth is warming because of human activity: 44% say scientists agree, and 44% say they do not. In July 2006, when a much higher percentage of the public said there was solid evidence of global warming, 59% said that scientists agree that global warming is caused by humans, while just 29% said scientists do not agree." ...

"Tea Party Republican voters also overwhelmingly believe that there is no scientific consensus on global warming. Just 19% say that scientists agree that the earth is getting warmer because of human activity, while 71% say that scientists do not agree."

http://people-press.org/2010/10/27/litt ... l-warming/

[Dardedar]

Canada has rightwing bastards too. And they usually live in Alberta.

Canada Hides 20 Percent Tar Sands Annual Pollution Increase from UN

"The Canadian federal government deliberately excluded data documenting a 20 percent increase in annual pollution from Alberta's tar sands industry in 2009. That detail was missing from a recent 567-page report on climate change that Canada was required to submit to the United Nations.

According to Postmedia News, Canada left the most recent numbers out of the report, a national inventory on Canada’s greenhouse gas pollution. The numbers are used to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions and prevent catastropic climate change. It is certainly not the first time that Canada has dragged its feet on its international climate obligations, but omission of vital information is a new low, even for them.

While Canada's report reveals a six percent drop in annual emissions for the entire economy from 2008 to 2009, it fails to account for the extent of pollution from tar sands production, which is greater than the greenhouse gas emissions of all the cars driven on Canadian roads.

Canada's attempts to greenwash Alberta's tar sands are increasingly brazen. Last week we reported that the Canadian government was complicit with industry in the creation of an "Oil Sands Team" to lobby abroad to aggressively undermine European environmental standards."

LINK

[Dardedar]

Concise. Passed along from an acquaintance.

***
Notes about our climate:

Every day, we use 85 million barrels of oil, 19 million tons of coal,
and 300 billion cubic feet of natural gas. As you will probably
recall, C + O2 = CO2, so burning these fossil fuels creates a lot of
carbon dioxide: http://photos.mongabay.com/09/forecast_co2.jpg

Does all that CO2 just dissipate? Nope. It is building up in the
atmosphere: http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so the extra CO2 warms the planet. There is
a great outline of the physics atwww.uchicago.edu. Just search for
"PhysTodayRT2011"

What about other factors that influence the climate? Here is a
comparison: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/RadF.gif. The
spikes are volcanoes, which have a short-term cooling effect.

The effect of the additional CO2 is a few extra watts per square meter
added to earth’s energy balance. Can that tiny amount of extra energy
warm the planet? Sure looks like it: http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/u ... S-nino.gif

So will everybody just get a few more days of summer? Doesn't look
like it. Different locations are seeing different effects. For
example, a cold winter on the U.S. East Coast could go along with
record highs in northern Canada: http://www2.ucar.edu/currents/cold-comf ... mashing-mi...

And a warming planet can have feedbacks. Ice sheets reflect light and
help keep the planet cooler. If they melt, more warming occurs: http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenew ... igure3.png

Permafrost holds a lot of methane (another greenhouse gas), which is
released if the permafrost thaws: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YegdEOSQ ... re=related

The effect of clouds is an area of active research and debate: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/featur ... rming.html
"but, but, but ..." Yes of course you have questions. Try here first: http://www.skepticalscience.com

You can follow trends at: http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/

One simple way to do something to move us toward clean energy is to
sign up for green power through your electric utility: http://apps3.eere.energy.gov/greenpower ... ower.shtml

P.S. one more outrageously awesome piece of science: http://arx¬iv.org/abs¬/0804.1126
(link to download is in upper right)

List of references: http://www.zvon.org/eco/ipcc/ar4/index.html#a_0

Great history of the science: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

[Dardedar]

MediaMatters has done a comprehensive analysis of TV news guest
intereviews from 12/09 to 4/11 on the EPA's role in regulating GHGs:

"Driven largely by Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network, results
show that in 76 percent of those appearances, the guest was opposed to
EPA regulations while 18 percent were in favor. Of the appearances by
elected officials, 86 percent were Republican. Only one guest in 17
months of coverage across nine news outlets was a climate scientist --
industry-funded [denier] Patrick Michaels."

On both Fox channels, the interviews exceeded 80% opposed. Fair and
balanced.

http://mediamatters.org/research/201106070010

[Dardedar]

James Hansen and Makiko Sato
(NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University
Earth Institute)
"Paleoclimate Implications for Human Made Climate Change"
05/2011

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/ ... cPaper.pdf

Excerpts from the paper here:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/01/27/nas ... -disaster/

and here

http://climatecodered.blogspot.com/2011 ... ready.html

Abstract

"Milankovic climate oscillations help define climate sensitivity and
assess potential human-made climate effects. We conclude that Earth in
the warmest interglacial periods was less than 1{\deg}C warmer than in
the Holocene. Goals to limit human-made warming to 2{\deg}C and CO2 to
450 ppm are not sufficient -- they are prescriptions for disaster.
Polar warmth in prior interglacials and the Pliocene does not imply
that a significant cushion remains between today's climate and
dangerous warming, but rather that Earth today is poised to experience
strong amplifying polar feedbacks in response to moderate additional
warming. Deglaciation, disintegration of ice sheets, is nonlinear,
spurred by amplifying feedbacks. If warming reaches a level that
forces deglaciation, the rate of sea level rise will depend on the
doubling time for ice sheet mass loss. Satellite gravity data, though
too brief to be conclusive, are consistent with a doubling time of 10
years or less, implying the possibility of multi-meter sea level rise
this century. The emerging shift to accelerating ice sheet mass loss
supports our conclusion that Earth's temperature has returned to at
least the Holocene maximum. Rapid reduction of fossil fuel emissions
is required for humanity to succeed in preserving a planet resembling
the one on which civilization developed."

[Dardedar]

Global warming since 1995 'now significant'

Climate warming since 1995 is now statistically significant, according to Phil Jones,
the UK scientist targeted in the "ClimateGate" affair.

Last year, he told BBC News that post-1995 warming was not significant - a statement still seen on blogs critical of the idea of man-made climate change.

But another year of data has pushed the trend past the threshold usually used to assess whether trends are "real".

Dr Jones says this shows the importance of using longer records for analysis.

It just shows the difficulty of achieving significance with a short time series”

By widespread convention, scientists use a minimum threshold of 95% to assess whether a trend is likely to be down to an underlying cause, rather than emerging by chance.

If a trend meets the 95% threshold, it basically means that the odds of it being down to chance are less than one in 20.

Last year's analysis, which went to 2009, did not reach this threshold; but adding data for 2010 takes it over the line.

"The trend over the period 1995-2009 was significant at the 90% level, but wasn't significant at the standard 95% level that people use," Professor Jones told BBC News.

"Basically what's changed is one more year [of data]. That period 1995-2009 was just 15 years - and because of the uncertainty in estimating trends over short periods, an extra year has made that trend significant at the 95% level which is the traditional threshold that statisticians have used for many years.

"It just shows the difficulty of achieving significance with a short time series, and that's why longer series - 20 or 30 years - would be a much better way of estimating trends and getting significance on a consistent basis."

LINK

[Dardedar]

Infamous climate change denier wingnut columnist quote of the day:

"It is not my job to sit down and read peer-reviewed papers because I
simply haven’t got the time; I haven't got the scientific expertise...
I am an interpreter of interpretations."
-- James Delingpole

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/01/2 ... te-scienc/

[Dardedar]

***
"Regarding scientific facts, climate science deniers like to claim that "nothing in science is ever settled" just because there is always more to learn. Incorrect. Master sci-fi author Isaac Asimov, who was also an accomplished scientist, dealt with this question of philosophy of science in 1989, and revealed the fallacy of that line of reasoning as well as or better than anybody else ever has."

The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong...

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

http://www.thescienceisstillsettled.com/

[Dardedar]

"Top Climate Change-Denying Scientist Found to Be on Exxon, Koch Brothers’ Payroll"

Dr. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, was paid $1 million over 10 years
to express the view that CO2 emissions are not the cause of global warming.

"Dr. Willie Soon is certainly entitled to his theory that global warming is caused by solar variations rather than CO2, especially given his field of study within astrophysics—Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences. But getting paid to $1 million by the Koch Brothers, Exxon and a fleet of other energy industry giants makes Soone a stooge.

Now, it is possible that Dr. Soon developed the theory that solar variations cause climate change before the $1 million in grants began to arrive in his bank account, but it’s just as likely that he was approached by the energy industry and developed the theory for the express purpose of earning his keep."

LINK

Bonus:

"The first author of this paper, Dr Willie Soon, is an astrophysicist by training. In U.S. congressional testimony, he identified his “training” in paleoclimatology as attendance at workshops, conferences, and summer schools. (The people who teach such summer schools, actual climate scientists, published a scathing rebuttal of Soon’s paper.)
Undaunted, Dr Soon has since become an expert on polar bears, publishing a paper that accused the U.S. Geological Survey of being “unscientific” in its reports about the risks faced by polar bears from climate change.
Most recently, Dr Soon has become an expert on mercury poisoning, using the Wall Street Journal as a platform to assuage fears about mercury-contaminated fish because, after all, “mercury has always existed naturally in Earth’s environment.”
Lest one wonder what links paleoclimatology, Arctic ecology, and environmental epidemiology, the answer is not any conventional area of academic expertise but ideology."

Denial and abuse of peer review

[Dardedar]

Excellent climate science links, strung together as a narrative:

Every day, we use 85 million barrels of oil, 19 million tons of coal,
and 300 billion cubic feet of natural gas. As you will probably
recall, C + O2 = CO2, so burning these fossil fuels creates a lot of
carbon dioxide: http://photos.mongabay.com/09/forecast_co2.jpg

Does all that CO2 just dissipate? Nope. It is building up in the
atmosphere: http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so the extra CO2 warms the planet. There is
a great outline of the physics atwww.uchicago.edu. Just search for
"PhysTodayRT2011"

What about other factors that influence the climate? Here is a
comparison: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/RadF.gif. The
spikes are volcanoes, which have a short-term cooling effect.

The effect of the additional CO2 is a few extra watts per square meter
added to earth’s energy balance. Can that tiny amount of extra energy
warm the planet? Sure looks like it: http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/u ... S-nino.gif

So will everybody just get a few more days of summer? Doesn't look
like it. Different locations are seeing different effects. For
example, a cold winter on the U.S. East Coast could go along with
record highs in northern Canada: http://www2.ucar.edu/currents/cold-comf ... g-mildness

And a warming planet can have feedbacks. Ice sheets reflect light and
help keep the planet cooler. If they melt, more warming occurs: http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenew ... igure3.png

Permafrost holds a lot of methane (another greenhouse gas), which is
released if the permafrost thaws: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YegdEOSQ ... re=related

The effect of clouds is an area of active research and debate:http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/featur ... rming.html

"but, but, but ..." Yes of course you have questions. Try here first: www.skepticalscience.com

You can follow trends at: http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/

One simple way to do something to move us toward clean energy is to
sign up for green power through your electric utility: http://apps3.eere.energy.gov/greenpower ... ower.shtml

P.S. one more outrageously awesome piece of science: http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126
(link to download is in upper right)

List of references: http://www.zvon.org/eco/ipcc/ar4/index.html#a_0

Great history of the science: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

--Put together by "Climate Hawk"

[Dardedar]

U.N. Goal of Limiting Global Warming Is Nearly Impossible, Researchers Say

"International negotiators at a United Nations-sponsored climate conference ending today in Bangkok repeatedly underscored the goal of keeping the amount of global warming in this century to no more than 2˚C. But results from a Canadian government climate modeling study published last month suggest that “it is unlikely that warming can be limited to the 2˚C target,” the scientists who wrote the study say.

The paper finds that reaching that goal would require that greenhouse emissions “ramp down to zero immediately” and that scientists deploy means, starting in 2050, to actively remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Previous modeling efforts have already highlighted the difficulty of reaching the 2˚C goal. But the new study is unique in several ways. Most important, it relies on the first published results from the latest generation of so-called Earth System climate models, complex programs that run on supercomputers and seek to simulate the planet’s oceans, land, ice, and atmosphere. The model in this study, Canadian Earth System Model 2, also incorporates updated data on volcanic eruptions, and it simulates in a more sophisticated way the biosphere’s ability to take in or emit carbon.

In the study, scientists with Environment Canada, a government agency, fed their model various scenarios of future greenhouse gas concentrations out to the year 2100. In the scenario with the most carbon emissions, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere skyrocketed from its current level, about 390 parts per million, to 920 ppm, and global land surface temperature rose by 4.9˚C above 2005 levels. But even in a scenario in which emissions cuts caused CO2 levels to peak at 450 ppm in 2050, temperatures rose by 2.3˚C by the end of the century, above the 2˚C goal."

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... warmi.html

[Dardedar]

This is from the Heartland Institute (climate science deniers).

Useful when deniers claim there is no correlation with CO2 and temps.

[Dardedar]

The National Center for Science Education has the chapter on global warming hosted online for free:

http://ncse.com/files/pub/evolution/Exc ... hantsb.pdf

[Dardedar]

A scientist and acquaintance on Huff Po did some calculating and figured out an example to express how much CO2 we are blasting into the atmosphere. Instructive for those who like to pretend that the earth is too big to be effected by human actions:

Based on a starting point of 951 metric tons of carbon dioxide per SECOND that humans are combusting into the atmosphere­, I come up with this visual to illustrate what is going on. If someone wants to check my arithmetic I will be happy to share it.

Picture an exhaust pipe almost a quarter of a mile in diameter, around 1200 feet across. The exhaust coming out of this pipe is about 15% carbon dioxide. It is coming out of this exhaust pipe at 65 miles per hour, or a nearly hurrican strength wind. That is how much carbon dioxide humans are putting into the air, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

Or...

"Or maybe this is easier to visualize. Picture a very large garage door... say, seven feet high and, oh, 31.7 miles long.... with exhaust spewing out of the whole thing at 65 miles per hour.

Think that might be enough to effect the climate?"
--StephenBP

[Dardedar]

Nice:

***
"...if the satellite record is so reliable but the surface record is so useless, why do they agree so closely?



"One also wonders — why is it that when the influence of exogenous factors (like el Nino, volcanic eruptions, the solar cycle) is accounted for, the match is even better, not just between NASA GISS and UAH satellite data, but among all five best-known global temperature data sets?"



More excellent roast of a profoundly dishonest climate science denier (Heartland Institute) here.

[Dardedar]

Is There a Consensus?

"We hear the phrase “climate change consensus” tossed around all the time. But what does that even mean? And does it actually exist?

In Part 1 we discussed the concept of a scientific consensus: overwhelming agreement (but rarely unanimity) among experts. Of course, such a consensus could be wrong, but it wouldn’t be very sensible for the public to ignore it or bet against it. If 19 out of 20 doctors said you needed surgery to save your life, would you sit in the hospital bed and argue about their motives?"

***

More Intense, More Frequent, and Longer Lasting Heat Waves in the 21st Century
Gerald A. Meehl and Claudia Tebaldi

Science 13 August 2004:
Vol. 305 no. 5686 pp. 994-997
DOI: 10.1126/science.1098­704

Abstract:

"A global coupled climate model shows that there is a distinct geographic pattern to future changes in heat waves. Model results for areas of Europe and North America, associated with the severe heat waves in Chicago in 1995 and Paris in 2003, show that future heat waves in these areas will become more intense, more frequent, and longer lasting in the second half of the 21st century. Observatio­ns and the model show that present-da­y heat waves over Europe and North America coincide with a specific atmospheri­c circulatio­n pattern that is intensifie­d by ongoing increases in greenhouse gases, indicating that it will produce more severe heat waves in those regions in the future."

[Dardedar]

Excerpt from the August 2, Peak Oil Review:

"The most interesting development in Japan in recent weeks has been the story of how Tokyo is coping in the middle of a heat wave with less power available due to the closure of 19 nuclear reactors since the tsunami struck on March 10th. By embracing conservation practices, the economic disruptions that would be expected from such a large drop in energy production have not taken place. To quote the Wall Street Journal, “saving electricity has become a national religion” in Japan. With air conditioning set above 82o, business men in short sleeves, lighting reduced to a minimum, and car makers working on weekends to save power for the weekdays, electricity consumption is down 23 percent from last year, rolling blackouts have stopped, the economy is returning to normal, and economic damage appears small.

Old and inefficient thermal plants have been brought online increasing emissions and the bill for imported fossil fuels will increase, but the bottom line is that due to conservation, the available supply easily outweighs demand. A debate in raging over the long term, and so far proponents of nuclear power seem to be on the defensive. Some argue that in the near term, the country should step up its imports of LNG and plans to build new LNG facilities in Japan and abroad are underway. Over the longer term the emphasis is to increasing renewables.

The major lesson for now, however, seems to be what can be accomplished through widespread adoption of conservation practices."

LINK

[Dardedar]

Irene’s Potential for Destruction Made Worse by Global Warming, Sea Level Rise

Excerpt:

"The question: is this weather disaster caused by climate change?

Wrong question.

Here's the right question: is climate change making this storm worse than it would have been otherwise?

Answer: Absolutely

For one thing, sea-surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean are higher now than they used to be, thanks to global warming, and ocean heat is what gives hurricanes their power. All other things being equal, a warmer ocean means a more powerful storm. It’s hard to say that all other things are exactly equal here, but it’s certainly plausible that Irene would have been a little weaker if precisely the same storm had come through, say, 50 years ago.

What we know for sure, however is that thanks largely to climate change, sea level is about 13 inches higher in the New York area than it was a century ago. The greatest damage from hurricanes comes not from high winds and torrential rains — although those do cause a lot of damage. It’s from the storm surge, the tsunami-like wall of water a hurricane pushes ahead of it to crash onto the land. It was Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge, not the wind or rain, that destroyed New Orleans back in 2005."

LINK