Extreme weather to increase with climate change - Page 3 - U.S. Politics Online: A Political Discussion Forum

Andrewl · #31 (**permalink**) 07-03-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve

The question has to be asked: If humans are to blame for global warming, how the fuck did the Earth ever come out of the Ice Age?

Milankovitch cycles, combined with positive feedback loops.

In fact, natural climate changes are caused by such things as solar variance, volcanoes, large asteroids, extreme geologic events (volcanoes, heinrich events, etc..).

Current observations eliminate all those factors from triggering present day global climate change, the only remaining cause is likely anthropogenic. I.e., deforestation and GHG emissions.

Andrew

kramer · #32 (**permalink**) 07-03-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by ViolaLee

People are just afraid. Some who are afraid want to try to stop the damage before it's too late. Others who are afraid just deny it's happening.

Either way, we have 380 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. 350 is the tipping point. We were there about 10 years ago. If we don't get back to 350 soon, we won't be able to stop the harm.

Millions of years ago, the CO2 was at one point, almost 4000 ppm which is over 10x what it is now. Nothing tipped back then. Nothing is going to tip now or in the near future from higher CO2 levels.

Kramer

daddio · #33 (**permalink**) 07-03-2008

not widely reported

inconvenient facts

Quote:

You've probably heard the permanent ice cap in the Arctic has receded considerably, because the people who are worried about global warming talk about it all the time.

You may not know ice in Antarctica is growing. This is an awkward topic for global warming alarmists, because if global warming were, er, global, this shouldn't be happening.

So how could ice be melting at the north pole while it's building up at the south?

"Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea," Agence France Presse reported June 25.

"The eruptions, as big as the one that buried Pompei — took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia," the AFP dispatch said.

A team of scientists led by Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachussetts have gotten a look at the ocean floor 13,000 feet beneath the Arctic pack ice.

"What they saw was unmistakable evidence of explosive eruptions rather than the gradual secretion of lava bubbling up from the earth's mantle," AFP reported.

Magma is molten rock. Most magmas have temperatures ranging from 700 degrees Celsius to 1,300 degrees Celsius. That's hot enough to melt ice.

According to the data gathered by scientists in the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, noted the Web logger "Sweetness & Light," the precipitous decline in the ice pack began in 1999, when the eruptions occurred. If this is a coincidence, it's a remarkable one.

But it's a coincidence that went unremarked upon in the AFP story. There is a tendency in contemporary journalism to attribute any adverse development in nature to anthropogenic global warming, no matter how strained the connection, and to downplay other, more plausible explanations for the phenomena.

Numberwatch, a British Web site, has a list of more than 600 things that journalists have linked to global warming, including the cold wave in India this February; the migration of cockroaches in Australia; an attack of killer jellyfish off the coast of Northern Ireland; staff shortages at brothels in Bulgaria; a snowstorm in Baghdad in January, and increased cougar attacks in Canada.

CBS and MSNBC posted on their Web sites June 17 a story linking global warming to earthquakes.

"New research compiled by Australian scientist Dr. Tom Chalko shows that global seismic activity on earth is now five times more energetic than it was 20 years ago," the story said.

"The research proves that destructive ability of earthquakes on Earth increases alarmingly fast and that this trend is set to continue, unless the problem of 'global warming' is comprehensively and urgently addressed."

daddio · #34 (**permalink**) 07-03-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by kramer

Millions of years ago, the CO2 was at one point, almost 4000 ppm which is over 10x what it is now. Nothing tipped back then. Nothing is going to tip now or in the near future from higher CO2 levels.

Kramer

as it was slightly before the Hockey Stick figures start.

Andrewl · #35 (**permalink**) 07-04-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by kramer

Millions of years ago, the CO2 was at one point, almost 4000 ppm which is over 10x what it is now. Nothing tipped back then. Nothing is going to tip now or in the near future from higher CO2 levels.

Kramer

Hardly a comparable time. This was the ordovician period of the early paleozoic era. The Oxygen level was at 68% of todays levels. The NA continental shelf was straddling the equator. Sea levels were far higher than they are today. The average global surface temperature was 2 degrees celsius above todays levels. There was only the first inklings of plant life appearing. And the climate in general was totally inhospitable to land mammals.

You cannot compare this ancient paleo cliamte to todays climate. The oceans and atmosphere were entirely different, and there were no forests to soak up CO2. Apples and Oranges. You cannot just cherry pick the CO2 ppm of the paleozoic and superimpose it on todays far more complex and evolved climate system.

Andrew

Imperator · #36 (**permalink**) 07-04-2008

yea well I cannot think of better place for tis article, a whack at the brainwashing sect. that has taken over science......

Global Warming as Mass Neurosis
July 1, 2008; Page A15
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").

But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science.

So let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.

The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.

A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.

And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.

Global View - WSJ.com

Andrewl · #37 (**permalink**) 07-04-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Imperator

yea well I cannot think of better place for tis article, a whack at the brainwashing sect. that has taken over science......

Global Warming as Mass Neurosis
July 1, 2008; Page A15
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").

But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science.

So let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.

The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.

A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.

And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.

Global View - WSJ.com

another ad hominem and massive strawman denialist editorial from the WSJ.

Yes, there is a tendency of global warming journalists and bloggers to be alarmist - that is nothing new or any different than the alarmism that is common to all sides of every debate where politics gets involved. You could hardly find any issue of the last 20 years that was not characterized in the popular media by religiously toned alarmism, be it the alarmism over Iraq, the alarmism over blow jobs in the oval office, or the alarmism currently shrouding Iran.... on and on it goes.

This does not change the underlying science of climate change (or the facts in any issue). This article does not even come close to educating its readers on the subject. It is merely a rather cheap characterization of global warming 'believers' as akin to people who believe in God. (the irony is rich, since the 'right' is all about respect and pandering to christians and jews, (but not the evil muslims of course, who they reserve their current alarmism for).

But if you actually read the science (or facts of any issue) you would see that there is no societal or moral critique of culture, no lamenting our immoral 'success', no doom and gloom. There is only science, mostly dry reading but usually very informative and most always responsible.

You could start here for a wonderful and exciting scientific background on the history of climate research. (with plenty of links to actual peer reviewed scientific papers).

Climate Change: Discovery of Global Warming

Andrew

TheStripey1 · #38 (**permalink**) 07-07-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by goober

You mean you are looking for a consensus?

BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change -- Oreskes 306 (5702): 1686 -- Science

No peer reviewed papers that disagreed with the consensus on Global Warming.

It's like evolution all over again...................

Nice find, goober...

TheStripey1 · #39 (**permalink**) 07-07-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Si modo

No, Goober. I'm laughing at the idea of a consensus in the scientific community. It's pretty funny.

seems that goober's link showed exactly what you were asking for and yet... it's still not good enough for you...

why? do you just like being contrary?

perhaps you could post a link or two by peer reviewed scientists that say climate change is NOT happening.

Doesn't matter though, cuz simodo, climate change doesn't need anyone's permission to be...

TheStripey1 · #40 (**permalink**) 07-07-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve

There's nothing in the OP which suggests that warming, if it's true, is not simply a natural occurance, which would happen if we were here or not.

There's an interesting table on this website: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001416.html

35 states recorded standing record high temperatures prior to 1940. Three states have standing record high temperatures which were recorded in the 19th century. Only six have standing records recorded in the 1990's, and not a single record high temperature has been recorded in this century.

California saw its' record high temperature recorded (134 degrees) in 1913, when there were roughly 2.3 million people living in the state. In 2007, there were over 35 million people here. I don't have the numbers, but I'd be willing to bet that there were more cars polluting the air in 2007 than there were in 1913, and far less industry.

If that table is accurate, it has to call into question the accuracy of the global warming argument. We're always told that the way we live; the way we drive and our consumption of fossil fuels, is contributing to global warming.

If that's true, why were the majority of record high temperatures set when there were far fewer automobiles on the road, less industry and, all around, less of the bad stuff that global warming fans tell us is causing it all?

The opening thread states that global climate change will increase the severity of our storms...

but just in case it is cyclic, as you claim it is...

can you tell me how civilization was adversely affected the last time we went through one of these?

how many people died in the flooding or in the famines caused by droughts... how many cities were swallowed up by the seas? how many countries were split apart by wars over their dwindling resources?

TheStripey1 · #41 (**permalink**) 07-07-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex

The answer is simple - because Al Gore said so. Refuse to believe at your own peril. Today's environmental AGW-zealots have nothing on the Spanish Inquisition. If you disagree with the AGW theory you are a branded a heretic and should be burned at the stake (A carbon neutral stake of course - they'll buy a carbon offset from Al Gore)!!!!

psssssst... this topic isn't about Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore.

Quote:

WASHINGTON - Droughts will get dryer, storms will get stormier and floods will get deeper with changing climate, a government research report said Thursday. Events that have seemed relatively rare will become commonplace, said the latest report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a joint effort of more than a dozen government agencies.

There has been an increase in the frequency of heavy downpours, especially over northern states, and these are likely to continue in the future, Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in a briefing.

For example, Karl said, by the end of this century rainfall amounts expected to occur every 20 years could be taking place every five years.

...snip

At the same time heavy rains increase, there'll be more droughts, especially in the Southwest, Karl said.

"When it rains, it rains harder and when it's not raining, it's warmer — there is more evaporation, and droughts can last longer," he explained.

The Southwestern drought that began in 1999 is beginning to rival some of the greatest droughts on record including those of the 1930s and 1950s, he added.

...snip

It's not getting as cold at night as it did in earlier decades and there are fewer nights with frosts, a trend expected to continue into the future, Meehl said.

"A day so hot that it is experienced only once every 20 years would occur every three years by the middle of the century," under the mid-range projections of climate models, the report said.

...snip

Do try to stay focused... thanks.

TheStripey1 · #42 (**permalink**) 07-07-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by ViolaLee

People are just afraid. Some who are afraid want to try to stop the damage before it's too late. Others who are afraid just deny it's happening.

Either way, we have 380 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. 350 is the tipping point. We were there about 10 years ago. If we don't get back to 350 soon, we won't be able to stop the harm.

America cannot turn the tide without the rest of the world, but the rest of the world can't do it without America on board. It's long past time our country took this seriously and started making some changes.

it seems, Viola, that some of those on the right don't really care about the planet... all they care about is their gadgets.

TheStripey1 · #43 (**permalink**) 07-07-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oreo

Our climate changes all the time. We have 4 seasons that prove it. The debate is: Is it man that is at fault for climate change, or now the hysteria over global warming?

My problem is--that man has only been recording daily weather conditions for the last 150 or so years. Our planet is millions of years old--according to science.

Yet--the global warming scientists base their global warming stats on a very minut amount of known intelligence regarding global cooling & warming periods.

We know we came out of an ice age, & the globe warmed. Man had nothing to do with that.

I don't believe man can stop hurricanes, tornadoes, or the snow from falling, or control heavy rains or drought periods.

With the lack of knowledge of what the climate was like from just 200 years ago, it's a little hard to put all this faith into the reasons for global warming today. Other than it is a natural part of the ever changing planet earth.

Who knows, in 10 years we may undergo a cooling period--& get hysterical over that too?

Did you read the TO, oreo? Cuz your response here sure doesn't seem like it.

It's at the beginning of the thread...

TheStripey1 · #44 (**permalink**) 07-07-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve

And the only way it works is if the rest of the world follows.

Spend some time in some of the world's less developed countries, and you'll quickly realize that it won't happen any time soon...

If what you say is true, steve....

then... we're doomed... pure and simple...

I don't have any kids to worry about how their future will be... do you?

TheStripey1 · #45 (**permalink**) 07-07-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by goober

One datapoint, the highest temperature ever recorded in a state, is a pretty small dataset, highly dependent on local conditions being just right to trap heat at one particular location.

So I don't think that 35 datapoints is enough to cast doubt on the amount of data that seems to indicate AGW is actually taking place.

and where was that highest temperature ever recorded in California?

Death Valley perhaps?