On the Big New NOAA Global Climate Change Report
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report today on the effects we can expect that global climate change will have on the United States. Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States draws material from 13 US government science agencies.
- Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced
- Climate changes are underway in the United States and are
projected to grow - Widespread climate-related impacts are occurring now and
are expected to increase - Climate change will stress water resources
- Crop and livestock production will be increasingly
challenged - Coastal areas are at increasing risk from sea-level rise
and storm surge - Risks to human health will increase
- Climate change will interact with many social and
environmental stresses - Thresholds will be crossed, leading to large changes in
climate and ecosystems - Future climate change and its impacts depend on choices
made today
Josh Harkinson says that the press has overreacted:
The AP called it “the strongest language on climate change ever to come out of the White House” and the Washington Post pointed out that it called evidence of climate change “unequivocal.” Unveiled by Obama’s scientific advisor and packaged by a San Francisco-based environmental PR firm, the report…helped convey the idea that Obama was breaking from the Bush years to tackle climate change head-on. Nevermind that almost nothing of substance in the report is different from a draft that the Bush administration had released last summer.
Kevin Drum says yes but:
…surely it matters that we have an administration that actively and willingly releases a comprehensive report like this rather than one that fumes and delays and denies for four years before finally being forced to make it public with about the same enthusiasm that most of us reserve for getting a root canal?
Besides, even though it’s primarily a review of existing literature, it’s a pretty good review, covering everything from wildfires to rainfall to hurricanes to the fact that Illinois will look like Texas by 2100 (that’s on p. 117). Having a report this good, this comprehensive, and this authoritative may not save the planet, but it’s still a pretty worthwhile data source to have around.
What’s more, it’s a gold mine of colorful charts!
opinions powered by SendLove.to
31 Responses to “On the Big New NOAA Global Climate Change Report”
Yet more of this liberal conspiracy rooted in Al Gore's desire to force socialism on the U.S. using the most obvious hoax ever foisted upon the nation.
Sorry, I'm just practicing.
By the way, I've spent some time recently reading comments on Yahoo's science articles. Anyone else ever ventured in there? Wow! is all I can say.
“the strongest language on climate change ever to come out of the White House”
Well, considering that the last 8 years have been marked by a decided effort to relay the strong message that (sticks fingers in ears) “la-la-la-la-la! I can't hear you!!”, the bar wasn't set too high.
pacatrue, got a link to the Yahoo discussion?
“Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.”
I would love to see the scientific proof of this. It's a great political line, but such scientific proof does not exist, and anyone telling you it does is simply trying to sell you something.
I'm very pessimistic that we'll do much to avert global warming at all. We're talking about a problem where the consequences of current activity aren't felt for between 2-3 decades, and make an overall small direct contribution to the observed changes (messing with the feedback loops is what causes most of it). Also it's something that will be argued/denied/glorified/politicized right up to the moment until we pass through the bifurcation point and have a violent, unmistakable reaction that scares the bejesus out of everyone.
The earth will continue to warm (and cool in some places, and stay the same in others, and vacillate wildly in some places, while getting calmer in others) over the decade timescale, and have natural plateaus and pullbacks for several years, each of will be hailed as the end…then there will be a Lehman Bros. type event. And unfortunately the amount of energy in the system and timescales involved are way greater than the economic ones, so attempting to stabilize it won't be so easy.
It definitely doesn't help that most industrialized countries will have net neutral/slightly positive effects, and developing countries will bear the brunt of it…and that most of the political solutions proposed will have little actual effect, thereby reducing optimism that anything can be done.
It's ironic (or maybe the reason) that this was released and I got a call today to spearhead the technical aspects of a program that will hopefully link together all the databases and research capabilities that the government and government-supported labs are using to study the ocean. The Gulf of Mexico is warming so quickly that there may be an “emergency” declared in a few years as life will start dying off en masse and we're going to have to put in a lot of work to see if its possible to prop up the ecosystem. Cest la vie.
Pacatrue beat me to it.
I'm still amazed that so many people think science is somehow a political tool. It's really a disturbing commentary on the national IQ if you ask me. What's going to be politicized next? Architecture? Breakfast cereal? Gardening? The next influenza virus?
Hi, GreenDreams, I haven't been a part of discussions about this particular report, but I've gone through a few that you might be interested in. You are a biologist, no?
Anyway, here's a link to one about the Permian extinction
One about a microbe from a Greenlandic glacier
And I've wasted a lot of today on a fossil debate about dinosaurs and birds.
These were a real eye opener for me. I really had no idea how common the beliefs expressed here are (evolution is a hoax, the earth is 6,000 years old, scientists just make up stuff to get funding….). I think it's good for me. I hope to teach and so I need to learn how to handle this stuff productively rather than angrily.
Long-term climatology has always chased headlines and money. It is a VERY politicized science. A cooling trend has already started, but saying that won't get you research funds.
Just like in fusion physics – standing up and saying tokamak technology will never create a viable commercial power plant does not get you much grant money.
Wherever there are major federal dollars to be had, politics comes into the equation. Period.
Austin: If by cooling “trend” you mean the last few years have stabilized and then dropped ever so slightly due to the natural 7-10 year cycle in global temperatures…then yes. But the baseline is still above the 1999-2000 period which is the last time it dropped.
This is what I was referring to in my comment: “and have natural plateaus and pullbacks for several years.”
Seriously, if people as smart as AR fall for the complete BS “trend reversal” and ignore the completely predictable oscillatory pattern, then we're screwed. (Not withstanding the complete misconception about how grant money is allocated.)
pacatrue, the problem is that most people are completely ignorant and completely refuse to understand the scientific process….or they are highly intelligent and tend to be contrary for contrary's sake. The latter always tend to believe that they have thought of some amazing thing that no one could possibly be smart enough (or honest enough) to consider, and never bother seeing if it's right. I mean criticism is obviously right and good, and I don't think you need to be an expert (my economic posts should show that) but it should at least show a basic understanding of the fundamentals of the field and process used to derive them (i.e. a lot of my economic stuff was criticizing that the models and understanding they use treat hte economy like a thermodynamic homeostatic system with perturbations and such, rather than a dynamical system).
Out of all the global warming skeptics, there is only one that has a theory that properly criticizes the foundation of the understanding, which is by one of the big names in climate science and is his theory that the climate is so sensitive that land change uses through city development could be causing more of the effect than gas concentrations. This is a highly interesting critique in both substance (i.e. it fully acknowledges the dynamics of how the climate works) and research potential (can't just run statistics to investigate possible contribution like they did with the “sun output is the major cause” or “sensor data isn't uniform” critique). I hope it gets a lot of research and I know that they are starting to look at it more closely.
Pick your reports. As you know, the 'baseline' methodology is inherently malleable to provide the results desired by simply using different time frames:
http://www.nbcaugusta.com/weather/news/16011587…
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=…
Also, which sets of data one chooses to elevate over others makes a difference, as do the criteria used to make such decisions:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2009/20…
What truly bothers me the most about this whole topic is that the global climate is a chaotic system of massive complexity, with so many variables affecting short and long term prognosis, and subject to so many existing natural trends over varying lengths of time ranging form a few years to 100,000's of years, and everything in between.
Our ability to model and predict those systems and effects is still woefully below what we like to believe, and that is re-proven every couple of decades when the latest crisis de jour is claimed to be absolute, 100% predictable this time, and any dissent is dismissed as ignorance, and any debate shouted down.
All climate models, every single one of them, only focus on a small percentage of the variables, typically the ones that the researcher believes are relevant to his or her research (i.e., what they got funding to track). That is the hidden bias of all climate research.
p.s. – mikkel, do you know any scientists doing research significantly funded by the government, especially high ticket/high visibility projects? If so, ask them if the process is politicized.
Actually they're not sure whether “climate” is chaotic…weather patterns definitely are but climate itself may not be. Just like the Lorenz attractor has chaotic trajectories for some parameters but the set of all trajectories isn't chaotic because eventually they all converge to the same attractor. So if you are perturbating the parameters and trying to figure out whether the attractor has changed it's very difficult studying one trajectory; you'd have to have many observations, and with noise added in it could be nearly impossible to tell. Moreover, they are surely highly fractal, which complicates things due to all the different timescales involved.
As for your assertion that every few decades there is a crisis de jour…that has been repeatedly shown to be false on such sites as RealClimate which has had several posts with the overview of climatology over the last 90 years, complete with reference counts on things like the global cooling hypothesis that made a splash but never got close to the consensus.
Two points about the historical fluctuations. First of all, there is an over emphasis in the mainstream (which actually isn't shared by the researchers I've read) on the “extreme nature” of predicted warming. In geological terms it may not turn out to be much, but that's not the concern. The concern is that we have designed our civilization based on what we've been experiencing the last 100 years (particularly the last 50) and a rapid drop in carrying capacity due to climate change will have catastrophic consequences for billions of people.
In that Global Research thing there are two comments. First of all, they claim that there has “been no warming for 10 years” by comparing a spike in 98 due to the shorter term pattern I mentioned and the last year. This is completely misleading because it comparing two points at different parts of the cycle. You could say that there has been no warming because the average is at the same level as 98, but htat's comparing apples and oranges as they have have different timescales. It's obvious 1998 was picked because it had a dramatic one year rise…and if you look at the trends it's risen a lot from 1998.
Secondly, his own graph contradicts his conclusion. He mentions the 30 year cycle (which that and the 7ish are the most well known…I don't know any others off the top of my head) but in his graph the mean temperature is falling as it enters the 30 year “cooling” period (as defined by him) and it has yet to do so. His “research” consists of drawing lines based on what looks good and then claiming there is nothing to worry about.
He is also completely disingenuous by pretending that the whole effect is due to CO2. CO2 is a minor contribution as recognized by every single researcher and the worries are about the disproportionate effects in (especially the north) poles changing albedo and releasing methane. The permafrost has melted far beyond the worst projections and is releasing so much methane that it was creating anomalies in satellite readings. So yeah, if in 15 years the earth has considerably cooled back to what it was in the 30s, I'll reconsider (and it does provide some time to actually do something). But it's also possible that it won't cool much at all and then when it gets back to the warming cycle it will shoot up far faster than before. I'll still be alive then, so I care.
Yes I know dozens in many fields across both civilian and military oriented applications. The process is without a doubt highly politicized and there are some insanely stupid things you have to do to get grants and the whole process is very inefficient and needs to be overhauled because it seems like we spend more time trying to get funding than doing science. And yes, it's irritating that cancer or heart disease research gets money much more readily than respiration (what I'm in now) or that the naval research lab continually has to justify its existence, but in my personal (and related) experience, the politicization is about process, not results. I've never heard people complaining that they felt they couldn't dissent and keep their money. Never. Yeah when you get a result that isn't in with the consensus it can be intimidating because they require a lot more proof and are more skeptical of the setup/analysis, but if it stands up to scrutiny you'll get a lot more money being contrarian than not.
While there are some individuals that will try to shoot you down with inanities to protect their own turf, the community at large doesn't (at least I haven't heard anyone say that and a lot of them have had minority views) and I've spent a ton of time looking at climate research summaries and reading people that seemed on the ball — and they've all addressed critical arguments and were found wanting. The fact that there is so little peer reviewed research that was skeptical that has even provided a footnote is amazing to me. Maybe there is a vast conspiracy, but it'd have to be one of the largest ever known.
Plus, these scientists could go work in another field and easily make 2-3x what they do right off the bat. The vast majority do it because of a thirst for knowledge and understanding, and spend the good part of every day thinking about it. I've read a couple of compensation analyses that have researcher as the worst paid position in the entire US once you account for working hours and educational requirements. All they have is their reputations, and that's really the primary motivating factor (besides wonder). So no, the question isn't whether the grant process has highly political aspects, to me the question is how anyone could know a representative slice of scientists and think for a second that monetary considerations would affect their results on a mass scale.
mikkel – I was more making the point that political considerations by the keepers of the purse (looking for research that supports political goals) influences what gets funded in the first place, and where and what many researchers then ask to do research on.
I am not saying that there is a vast conspiracy on results, but you have to REALLY believe that maybe global warming isn't the be-all and end-all today, and wiling to risk you career/chance at tenure, to go down those paths in the first place.
Time, as we have both said, will tell. I continue to remain skeptical, just as I have on other 'proven' facts/theories in my personal field of interest, physics. I just see so many parallels between the two at this time in the area 'knowns' that are not, and suppositions built upon suppositions upon other suppositions, but treated as fact. Physics has gone through many upheavals of late, but it is still hidebound, too. Just to show you my level of skepticism, I am convinced that the Standard Model is in fact no more than another instance of Newton's Law of Gravity – a useful, but fundamentally incorrect, theorem. It will eventually be replaced by a more correct basic theory, but will continue to be used for all but the extreme cases (like Newton), simply because within certain boundaries it is an amazingly accurate predictive tool.
Don't get me started on Dark Matter and Dark Energy, either!
Bottom line – I think healthy skepticism on ALL global climate prediction models is still warranted, and I hate the tendency of 'true believers' to almost equate those of us who are skeptical as being like Holocaust deniers.
Haha well if climatologists conjure up “dark coldness” and say that it's not that their model is wrong, it's that the observations are being skewed by inherently indectectable particles that will surely disappear soon, then I'll be right behind you.
It really depends what you mean by “true believers.” Of course there is always cultish beliefs about anything, even if they start out objectively correct, it goes into crazytown. Those people should be downplayed by all sides. But the vast majority of scientists are. RealClimate was coolly receptive of An Inconvenient Truth because they said that while most of the facts were right, some of the more outlandish claims weren't well supported (like the 20 foot sea rise) and those got too much attention. I've read many people complain that they are having as hard of a time getting people to calm down as they are convincing others it's worthwhile.
I don't see any way around it though. Anything where humans are potentially heavy contributors as feedback loops and operate on long term timescales, with short term cyclical trends to obfuscate it will suffer the same problems. I'd be MUCH more generous to skeptics if they were leading the charge with adopting policies that would have long term economic positives regardless of the validity of human caused global warming. Raising fuel standards, doubling the basic research budget (to a mere 1/10th of the defense!), changing building design and construction practices, carpooling/public transit, changing stoplight timings, reevaluating city planning, smart electrical grid, geothermal power/temperature control so on and so forth. All of those things have very marginal extra cost that are at worst annoyances in the large scheme of things, but in 10 years could lead to 30%+ reduction in energy use and hence emissions…freeing up a ton of resources for economic growth. Incidentally, I think it's even more stupid that the advocates aren't focusing on those things and instead are focusing on inane “carbon offsets” and the like.
mikkel
I appreciate your knowledge in this area, and would like to hear your explanation for a couple of things I'm aware of concerning HGW.
As I mentioned in my post, I don't believe there has been any scientific test performed validating the hypothesis that global warming is man-made. What tests have I missed?
Secondly, all future projections of temperature rises have come from computer models, ( I've read there are 15 basic models cited). Is it or is it not true that none of these models have accurately demonstrated current and recent weather/climate changes? If that is correct, why place so much support behind these model predictions?
Lastly, at one point above, you mentioned that the cooling hypothesis as not having consensus. How does consensus fit into the scientific model?
I do appreciate any answers you give in advance.
mikkel – well, I cannot put everything into each post, but I have indeed said that despite my skepticism on global warming (which was indeed absolutely WAS occurring, even if MAYBE we are seeing a reverse of the trend now. I also question our ability to determine the types and severity of the effects mankind is having in either direction), doing those things that create sustainability and lessen our negative impact to the environment (without, like, outlawing electricity!) and that do not have severe negative short-term economic impacts are simply good things to do. We also have to stay realistic, and understand the need to find alternatives to base-load electricity generation if we want to reduce power plant emissions; wind and sun-based solutions cannot be counted on providing that solution.
I guess in a way it is analogous to my being an atheist, but still agreeing that the Bible, and other similar books, do indeed contain the rules of how to interact with our fellow man to ensure survival of civilization and the species (as long as you ignore the other silly stuff), and that being moral in your life, remembering and acting on right vs. wrong, accepting that good and evil people exist, and being a good person are all just the correct way to behave, without need a God, heaven, hell and the threats and promises of the eternal afterlife to follow those rules.
Thanks, pacatrue, and yikes. I see what you mean about the comments. Scary.
I'm not going to presume to change your mind, AR, as I think your position is ideologically driven. Your slander of scientists is insulting, but I try to live by the credo “never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by ignorance.” I know lots of scientists and not a single one of them sells out their adherence to the scientific method on behalf of grant funding. Indeed, they could make WAY more money being ideologically driven climate change deniers in the private sector.
For readers who are unsure of this issue, 95% of climate experts believe we have a serious problem and that it's driven strongly by increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Atmospheric CO2 and global average annual temperature are indisputably linked. They're linked by 780,000 years of data (from air bubbles in ice cores).
There is no doubt that we have increased the CO2 content of the atmosphere. The carbon in Oil and coal deep underground are permanently sequestered. They only enter the atmosphere if we bring them up and burn them. All combustion of carbon-based fuels releases carbon into the atmosphere. This is indisputable. Every carbon atom burned (oxidized) creates a molecule of CO2. (Burning wood also releases CO2, so clearing of forests also contributes.)
“Today, CO<sub>2</sub> levels are higher than at any time in at least the past 650,000 years because of increased fossil fuel burning.” Thomas Marchitto, University of Colorado<font face=”Times New Roman,Times,Times NewRoman”>.
How do we know we're responsible for that rise, other than the correlation with our use of fossil fuels? That's explained HERE. 1) Historical records and calculation of carbon released by our burning of fuel.
Independent of that analysis, we can tell how much we have contributed by measuring isotopes. Since carbon isotopes decay very slowly(that's how carbon dating works), we can determine how much CO2 in the atmosphere was from plants (last year's CO2) and how much from dead dinosaurs (millions of years of decay). All the calculations are available at the LINK.
You can see the illustrative charts on my blog HERE. Full detail of global warming history and science can be found HERE.
GD
Perhaps you can answer the questions I have addressed to mikkel in my post above.
You seem convinced of the science involved, so I would appreciate you explanation.
Thanks
Well AR, from a personal perspective I can't fault that position in the slightest. However it's really the minority position amongst self described “skeptics” who spend most of the time saying we don't need to change anything. Of course it's also a minority position amongst the alt-energy people, which I find troubling. A few months ago I had a post describing the impracticalities of all the current renewable energy ideas. Although bio-algae is seeming more promising; and I can't believe that they aren't devoting a ton more to geothermal.
GD – “For readers who are unsure of this issue, 95% of climate experts believe we have a serious problem and that it's driven strongly by increasing CO2 levels (and methane) in the atmosphere.”
And until the early 80's 99.9% of all medical doctors and researchers would have told you that peptic ulcers were caused by lifestyle stress, coffee consumption, or spicy foods. This, too, was a “known” fact.
You could not get research monies to investigate the possibility that they were caused by, say, bacteria, because they simply were not, as everyone knew. It was a 'consensus', and to say otherwise was to be a crackpot.
Except that indeed 90% or more of peptic ulcers were shown to be caused by bacteria. When Australians (because you could NOT get funding in the US for that research) Dr. Warren and Dr. Marshall released their findings in 1982, they were derided, to say the least. It was not until 1997 that the CDC finally accepted their findings, and they ended up winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2005 for this finding.
So indeed, funding goes where the 'consensus' is, and I smeared no one; I simply stated a fact for the majority of researchers – you cannot be a researcher without funding, so pick something that will get funded.
And consensus, no matter how prevalent, does NOT equal truth, only shared opinion.
Hemm, there is no way to “test” something like the environment or economy in the standard definition of the word. It's obviously impossible to create a control variable, run multiple experiments to test for consistency, etc.
For that type of work, you have to study historical records and come up with a set of “first principles” or in other words, figuring out what variables seem to have the most significance and trying to determine the inherent properties of those variables. Then the really hard part is creating the relationships between all the variables.
Moreover, it's impossible to include all the variables, so for most things (I'm not sure to what extent these are included in the major models) you may have black box variables that are just mathematical in nature and represent the “unknown” influences. This factor is what can really make or break some models, and creates an interesting dilemma. If you have it fit too much to the historical data, then you will get an “over-fit” which means that it will fully track the past observations, but do a terrible job with future predictions (or perturbations) while if it's an underfit then the model won't be as accurate.
As more and more contributing factors are added into the model, the weight given to the black box variables will inevitably decrease, and this is rapidly occurring. In the last decade, biological factors have been added to the models that were found to be extremely important, and this has done much to improve the accuracy of models over small domains. It's also why skepticism is so important. When someone says “well I'm not sure if the models are right, I think it's this other factor” (sun activity, not properly accounting for clouds, etc.) then it causes more physical research into how those factors act and a better approximation or in some cases even additions to the variables in the model.
Now the way to test a model is to develop it using historical data, then setting the initial conditions to some point and letting it run; then comparing that run to other historical data not used to create the model. This is hugely difficult to do for climate models, because it's only been in the last 30-40 years that we've had pinpoint precision in our observational data. Even if the models themselves were absolutely perfect in dynamics, the huge uncertainty in the initial conditions to set it to say 1900 would very easily create model runs that didn't track the latter half of the century completely accurately.
Then there is the question of how you determine accuracy. For example this thing claims that models do a terrible job regionally (although they are using specific places, which I've never heard anyone claim would work, the smallest region I've heard is like “western US”) by looking how fluctuations in the model correspond with fluctuations in the observations. Well I'm sure that's true if you look at it that way because the models are overdamped and show less variance (ironically another complete opposite fact of the claim that they are too sensitive to feedbacks). However the means of the models look to be fairly accurate except for the US locations, and indeed even the max deviation (they didn't how mean for some reason) falls within the variance of the models…so the actual values of the models are accurate even if the fluctuations aren't there yet.
You can see the same thing in a chart on this page . Notice the high inter-model variance that the observations never get outside of, then the mean of the models has less variance than the actual data, but the mean of the actual data over long periods is very close to the mean of the models over long time periods.
As someone that loves to pull apart established ideas and be highly critical of bad modeling, I am pleasantly surprised by how well they do. Although I admit I don't have the expertise to determine whether that's due to an overfit of historical observations or whether the dynamics are just that good. But I would definitely say that they are “accurate” in the sense that they reproduce values within a tolerance far below observed variance.
About consensus, I'm not sure what you mean “fit into the scientific model.” All consensus means is that a lot of people have looked at something and agree it is a reasonably accurate description that is more useful than the competing explanations. It doesn't mean that it can't be wrong (in whole or more often in part) and like AR referred to above, sometimes there are tweaks made to the consensus models — i.e. dark energy — because they are very useful most of the time but have glaring flaws. But that said, the consensus in the community about global warming approaches only that of physics and evolution…and shows that highly skeptical people are having a hard time finding holes in it.
It seems like to determine whether consensus is due to a theory holding up well under growing evidence (e.g., general relativity, common descent) versus due to some sort of sociological factor (AR's peptic ulcer example, perhaps flogiston or ether, the Ptolomaic model), one has to look at the broader picture. In the case of ulcers, were there many people, other than the finally vindicated group, proposing alternative models, continually testing new data, etc., which continued to hold up, or was there just one group with an alternate theory and they didn't get much of a hearing?
What I said remains true. Not one in ten thousand in the public really understands global warming. As to the science, it obviously has been tainted by politics and abused by leftists (who for years have practice far more dishonest and a far greater degree of alarmism than any claims that could be made for foreign policy of the USA during the Bush administration) and used as a political weapon for years. Even the now-commonplace details of discussions about the topic can be annoying, like the affectation for and even obscession with the word “anthropogenic” by the 1960s-radical-legacy self-loathing misanthropes.
Warming is no surprise given that we're in an inter-glacial period and we've had warmer weather than we are currently experiencing even in recent history, as well as periods with ice-free poles. We can be warming no matter what man does or doesn't do. Man can affect climate (the speed of warming much more than the amount), but there is no “crisis” as the shrieking scum would try to have everyone believe (and taint and misuse science, as it does with other means, politically for this purpose), and there is no excuse for an insistence on de-carbonization, de-industrialization, or any other the other goals long sought by Sixties-onward radicals who merely are using global warming as a long-popular rationale for long-held-before-global-warming, commonplace leftist-radical goals (socialistic, environmentalist and other left-causes, socialistic, totalitarian at their worst). (At one time it was the so-claimed “population explosion” and an eventual running out of resources, such as was claimed by the Club of Rome. Same goals, different “crisis” [sic] as the circumstances and means such as misused science afford!)
There's nothing wrong (and, in fact, much intellectually appealing and stimulating) about imagining and even eventually possibly experiencing the stable-state likely result of continued global warming, with or without assistance from man, an ice-free Arctic (except with possible ice along northern shorelines in winter, so the people rushing to develop the Northern Sea Route should also control their strongest urges).
With global warming, an ice-free Arctic as steady-state long-term “worst case” (the earth has had ice-free poles before; this is nothing abnormal), there will be winners as well as losers from the warming, which will of course be asymmetrical on the globe and affect largely the Northern Hemisphere. Warmer weather often is better, not worse (despite the hype and screeching by anyone trying to contrive any excuse for government intervention), and even here in North America large parts of this continent stand to benefit rather than suffer from warming. The changes on the earth due to warming have been known for decades (my own book collection includes discussions from no later than the 1960s and refer to earlier works) and are easy to understand if you are familiar with climate and climate zones, and the general circulation of the atmosphere, and the well-defined high and low pressure areas. The basic change will be a northward shift of the climate zones. The situation will be more complicated due to the terrain effects, but these, too, aren't hard to figure out. To better quantify (and more precisely identify) these changes would be a legitimate and appealing object of federal research, though susceptible to leftist political manipulation and misuse (subversion). I have little confidence or faith in research given the nature of Washington and much of academia. Smarter people are wary of what we're currently being told.
It's an interesting subject, this warming and eventual climatic change, but has been perverted by leftism as an especially handy political weapon as well as psychotic-at-the-extreme cause.
” I hate the tendency of 'true believers' to almost equate those of us who are skeptical as being like Holocaust deniers.”
It's worse than that. You're not only not fervently supportive enough, you aren't also a true believer, but are threatening heresy or apostasy. For the “global warming” political fad has not only lasted long, but has been stoked with alarmism and other idiocies to the point of being a religion, a “convenient religion” as one smart critic accurately called it in an obvious swipe at Al Gore's irresponsible, alarmist crowing. These people demonize carbon and industry (and the USA and to a lesser extent the rest of the West) and even misuse the global warming concept and scenario on Earth (hyped) as their horrifying Apocalypse.
Man's increasing of carbon dioxide in the air was noted not long after it began to be significant, as the processes of industrialization and urbanization took strong root around 1880. Arrhenius was the first well-known person involved in this; others, later, like Callender, studied it but not much was said or thought about it. It was in the 1960s and 1970s that anthropogenic increases in carbon dioxide, aerosols, and heat emission itself (from energy conversion), or “thermal pollution,” was studied more strongly. As with so much, the basics were well known by the 1960s and elaborated on by the 1980s. There is no mystery to what global warming would entail. The reduction in Arctic sea ice (not only receding latitudinally but in thickness, as submarine visits over decades have revealed) leads to a warming and to a reduction in the temperature gradient between the actual equator or “meterological equator” (the inter-tropical convergence zone) and the North Pole. Even the process of the ice reduction (the complement to ice growth during ice ages) and the “hysteresis” or “tipping point” (the latter term subject to leftist abuse currently) has been known for much longer; my copy of C.E.P. Brooks's book on geologically ancient climates explains this.
The basic consequence of global warming is a shift in circulation and in climatic zones in the Northern Hemisphere. There's no mystery here, no grounds for obscession, no grounds for childish, stupid panic and hysteria that we both see exhibited by many on the Left, and encourged by many of them as well.
There will be winners and losers among places here in North America and elsewhere. Some tropical wet climate zones will become arid, or “desertify” (actually, many might change instead to steppe or savanna but that's probably too much to challenge many people with). It's not that hard to understand what has been known for decades, what global warming will be like. There is no basis for panic, or for rushing to do anything, much less engage in self-harm and possible partial enslavement, in response to a non-”crisis.”
Aren't people here familiar with current climates in North America and elsewhere? How hard is it to understand the basic consequences of melting of Arctic ice? The subtropical highs in the Northern Hemisphere would shift from latitude 37 northward about 6-8 degrees. The inter-tropical convergence zone would shift from average 6 deg north to around 8-10 deg north, desertifying some humid land south of the equator. The climate zones in the Northern Hemisphere would tend to be shifted northward. In many cases, this is a _good_, not a bad, thing. Most warming and its effects will be in winter, not in summer. Warmer winters would be a _good_, not a bad, thing. An earlier-starting, later-ending, longer and, of course, warmer growing season is a _good_, not a bad, thing. Warmer is generally better for life. The substantial increases in termperatures (again, nothing to panic about or hype) will be in the higher latitudes. All latitudes will be affected by the climate-zone shifts; one book I have about the deciduous forests in the eastern USA includes diagrams showing now-vs-later vegetation distribution and “inversion” of conifer locations; currently it's deciduous in the southern Appalachians up to the higher peaks, which feature spruce-fir forest characteristic of sea level hundreds of miles farther north; the future depiction is of deciduous trees all the way to the peaks (no more conifer forest), but the lowlands overtaken by southern pine forest. (“Invasion of the pines,” I call the northward possible shift of the eastern pine forest.)
Note that with every passing year in places other than sub-Saharan Africa (which has experienced economic and developmental decline), the effects of the climate zone shift in some tropical rainforest and related areas (those with large populations, in particular) will be unpleasant, but they are reduced from past decades due to development and modernization. (To the extent man contributes to the problem, i.e., the developed nations primarily, that is an _actual_ instance where some kind of assistance from the developed nations to those affected by global warming are merited. Again, not to be hyped or misused.)
Trewartha climate maps (Trewartha is the de facto US standard, derived from Koppen)
http://fp.arizona.edu/kkh/climate/trewartha_map…
“I'm still amazed that so many people think science is somehow a political tool. It's really a disturbing commentary on the national IQ if you ask me.”
What's disturbing is that many who are subjected to political abuse of science are ignorant of it or don't care.
“What's going to be politicized next? Architecture?”
I believe that has been done already.
“Breakfast cereal?”
That's coming, if “food policy” advocates get their way.
“Gardening?”
See above, somewhat. Agriculture, certainly (has been for decades already).
“The next influenza virus?”
It's Bush's fault! Not enough money spent on research.
“Long-term climatology has always chased headlines and money. It is a VERY politicized science. A cooling trend has already started, but saying that won't get you research funds.”
We're in an interglacial, and we can be going up (there has been warmer weather in our own recent times, pre-medieval, and still warmer weather in earlier interglacials) or we could be going down. We can (with energy conversion and fuel combustion, primarily, as well as landform changes due to agriculture and other land uses) modify this somewhat (the speed even more than the amount), but it's largely out of our hands. Certainly there is no excuse for Gore-style alarmism and gross exaggeration (when not outright dishonesty), much less de-industrialization or flirtation with politically-motivated totalitarianism.
Science has been and continues to be politicized, in fact made a weapon by the Left as one of its tools to try to manipulate susceptible people and public opinion.
It's so bad even now that even the lib-Dem flagship New York Times accepts reporting at least some of it:
The new federal report on climate change gets a withering critique from Roger Pielke Jr., who says that it misrepresents his own research and that it wrongly concludes that climate change is already responsible for an increase in damages from natural disasters. …
“[Why] is a report characterized by [White House] Science Advisor John Holdren as being the 'most up-to-date, authoritative, and comprehensive' analysis relying on a secondary, non-peer source citing another non-peer reviewed source from 2000 to support a claim that a large amount of uncited and more recent peer-reviewed literature says the opposite about?”
“Until the climate science community cleans up its act on this subject it will continue to give legitimate opportunities for opponents to action to criticize the climate science community.”
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/…
Hate to miss a good argument, but was at a conference of treehuggers and health nuts all day
http://www.lohas.com
The ulcer example is interesting, AR, and the bacteria Heliobacter pylori. Shows how honest science is accepting of new evidence that challenges or destroys a widely held theory. There are a couple things about that example though. First, it's uncommon, and doctors can't just withhold treatment in case an “AHA moment” comes along to change everything. No such moments have come along for headaches, hypertension, diabetes or sprains for that matter. The ulcer treatments used in the 50s and 60s though, weren't useless or harmful. They helped patients. Same with pollution and environmental damage. We can't just let the patient suffer or die, waiting for some theory-busting new discovery. Cutting polluting emissions can't hurt and makes sense on many levels, and it's quite likely that the dominant theory is correct. Even if it eventually proves to be wrong, we can't hurt the environment by reducing pollutants that appear to damage ecosystems and acidify the ocean, damaging coral reefs and reducing biodiversity.
DLS, I can't comment on your tome, as I stopped reading at “screeching scum.” Whatever merit there might be in your points, descending into juvenile name calling makes it impossible to consider you a rational participant in this discussion.
“DLS, I can't comment on your tome, as I stopped reading at 'screeching scum.'”
You shouldn't have stopped. My word use is appropriate even though you attack and otherwise react illogically to it (if but as a feeble non-excuse not to address what is in my postings).
* * *
“Cutting polluting emissions can't hurt and makes sense on many levels, and it's quite likely that the dominant theory is correct. Even if it eventually proves to be wrong, we can't hurt the environment by reducing pollutants”
_Real_ pollutants, as opposed to greenhouse gases and other excuses for mis-intervention, that is.
In fact, we have done this, which has complicated the environment that is being studied to ascertain what is happening to the climate and what lies in store for us. There used to be a greater concern about what were commonly called “aerosols” than is the case today. (A review of older literature will show this if you feel like doing that rather than irrationally attacking me personally for no decent reason.) One reason is that a (valid) environmental concern was addressed beginning some decades ago, that of (_real_) air pollution, which we have been working to reduce. (This as well as coal use and energy consumption in general by developing nations such as China and India, the most newsworthy, too many activists seem to let slide in those nations' cases, even though it's been more than long enough for them to realize what they're doing and act to be as clean as we are.) We win no matter what by rationally (and sensibly, and economically, i.e., in a cost-effective manner) reducing air pollution (_real_ pollution, not obscession with “greenhouse gases” and not by stupidly de-carbonizing and de-industrializing and deliberately depriving, impoverishing, and oppressing ourselves).
DLS, I'm very open to civil discourse, but your diatribes and rude comments about those who disagree with you really detract from your arguments. When I think you're veering off into your spittin' mad denigrations, I stop reading. I don't care if you have a discussion with me or not, but I'm open to it if you'll just apply a modicum of respect for those who disagree with you. Those who disagree with your beliefs are not necessarily stupid or crooked, and it's extremely arrogant to assume you're just so much smarter than the rest of us.
On the other hand, those who disagree with me really are stupid or crooked. just kidding
You've made the point about CFCs before, which really surprised. Now you're acting like I'm not stupid for not looking at the older literature. In fact, global action on CFCs was highly successful at fixing the ozone hole problem. See? http://www.universetoday.com/2009/03/20/ozone-s…
“production of ozone-depleting substances was mostly halted about 15 years ago, though their abundance is only beginning to decline because the chemicals can reside in the atmosphere for 50 to 100 years. The peak abundance of CFCs in the atmosphere occurred around 2000, and has decreased by roughly 4 percent to date. Stratospheric ozone was depleted by 5 to 6 percent at middle latitudes, but has somewhat rebounded in recent years.
In retrospect, the researchers say, the Montreal Protocol was a “remarkable international agreement that should be studied by those involved with global warming and the attempts to reach international agreement on that topic.”"