Earth's Temperature at Highest Levels in 400 Years 1044
thatguywhoiam writes "Congress asked, and the scientists have answered: 'The Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, probably even longer. The
National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the 'recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.'"
CNN had a different figure (Score:3, Interesting)
Study: Earth likely hottest in 2,000 years [cnn.com]
please (Score:3, Interesting)
Right, just past the mini-ice age.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Baseline (Score:4, Interesting)
Didn't I just read.... ? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's nearly impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff in this discussion since it's so politically and emotionally charged, but who is the average citizen supposed to trust if both sides are trotting out 'climate experts' to disagree?
Lets be honest (Score:1, Interesting)
Look, I have no doubt that even if you were transported in a time machine and shown all the termperatures over the millimiums and were moved into the future and new research that proved it, you would still deny it.
A simple fact check would be that the ALL of glaciers that existed before christ are now in retreat. In fact, the only one undergoing growth is the center of antartica. On the edges it is falling off at rates never documented (or shown in side research). That alone should be enough to warrent more than interest in this subject. As to a cycle, yes, it is possible that there is a cycle of more than 60K years. OTH, there is no evidence to support that at all.
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Interesting)
What pisses me off is to see people dragging out the age-old fallacy of Pascal's Wager. We don't know, so let's reduce CO2 emissions just in case, because the downside is extreme? We don't know whether there is a Hell, so we had better become devout Christians, because the downside is extreme? It's BS.
What's the likely economic cost of reducing CO2 considerably? What's the likely economic cost of not doing so? If you want to make a rational argument, address the real questions.
Keep in mind that changing power distribution infrastucture takes decades. Replace all gas-powered cars with electric cars? Neat idea, but it will take years to build the new power plants, and decades to build the new transmission lines.
The plan I like?
Got a better plan that's actually practical given the need for infrastructure build-out, and the needmake profits for the companies that would do that build-out?
Re:Question: How do they know? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that any and all temperatures taken before 1860 (with a few isolated exceptions) come from things called "temperature proxies". The most common of these, and the ones that the "Hockey Stick" are based on, are tree-rings.
The theory of using tree rings goes like this: If the weather is warmer during a certain year, then the ring is wider. If it's colder, then the ring is more narrow. From a naive point of view, this seems valid. But there's quite a few problems with this.
First, at the very best, a tree ring is a measure of growth from spring through summer. Trees stop growing in the fall and don't grow during the winter, so the tree ring proxy is, at best, a measure of half the year.
Second, tree rings are not a 1:1 correlation with temperature. They are also affected by dozens of other factors, such as precipitation, nutrient availability, insect infestation, and, yes, CO2 levels in the air (since trees require CO2 for transpiration, the lower the CO2, the poorer the growth. Do you already see a dishonesty factor built in here?)
Third, there aren't a lot of trees that grow past a couple of hundred years, so you become extremely limited in your data sets, the further back you go.
Fourth, the trees that tend to live the longest, tend to grow in micro-climates. The Redwoods, the sequoias, the bristlecone pines, all live in very specific micro-climates that don't necessarily reflect the larger climate environment. Because these trees represent the only proxies for date ranges, the data can be skewed.
Fifth, there is no simple linear scale for tree ring growth. It's more of a curve, with the ideal temperature at the widest, and then hotter or colder being thinner, with no way to tell the difference. In most of the proxy studies, the numbers have "erred" towards the higher temperature, *if* they even take this non-linear scale into account.
Finally, there's downright dishonesty on the part of the researcher when picking data. Mann fought for over 8 years to keep from revealing the data he used to produce the hockey stick even though his research was funded with a government grant. Why? It turns out that for the entire 1500's (1501-1598) he used a single North-American Bristlecone Pine located at over 10,000 feet of altitude as the sole source of data for that century, a century which all other proxies pointed to as being much, much warmer then this single Bristlecone Pine points at. His "cherry picking" of the data represents a major flaw in his research, yet this group of "scientists" have backed up his results.
The congressman who commissioned this study (and he's a RINO [wikipedia.org] if there ever was one) responded to the "attack" on Mann by Joe Barton (R-TX) who wanted Mann to publish his data and methods for deriving the "Hockey Stick". What an attack. Mann was only violating the terms under which he received his research grants by not publishing his data and methods. So, we have one congressman complaining that this "scientist" didn't follow the rules of government research grants, and another attacking the first congressman for daring to question this scientist.
This is just another recycling of the "Hockey Stick". Blah.
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting note: if human population grew at 2% per year, and we were able to make use of all resources on all planets withing a sphere that grew at the speed of light starting today, we'd still exhaust all available resources within 1000 years or so (assuming the solar system isn't that unusual in our part of the galaxy). Exponential growth is really unsustainable. Since people seem to stop having a lot of kids once they become an economic negative, instead of a positive, for the family that looks like it won't be a problem, however.
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:5, Interesting)
It's well past the time that we pick a problem, and all attempt to fix it.
We can all clearly that noxious emissions are a problem. In some parts of the world, they've pushed the oxygen levels in the atmosphere down to almost unsurvivable levels. Producing lethal chemicals and dumping them into the environment is also clearly bad.
Depsite these obvious problems that we continue doing, we'll argue the finer points of theory until we're dead.
Hell, what's the worst that cleaning up would do? Cleaner air and water? I wouldn't complain.
Many countries agree that there's a problem, and want to fix it. Read up on the Kyoto Protocol. The #1 producer in carbon emissions is also one of the two countries who have refused to agree to the protocol.
Token things are done to clean up the air. For example, passenger cars were required to meet stricter requirements. Unfortunately, trucks and SUV's don't fall into the same rules. Marketing went heavy into putting every Joe-Consumer and soccer mom into a SUV. There's bigger money in oil than there is in clean air.
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Interesting)
Since we have no idea how the climate in general works, probably our best bet on that front is to not dump shittons of CO2 into the air.
No matter where you come down on what's really going on, I think rational people can agree than when confronted with an unknown dynamic system upon which the well-being of your children depend, it generally isn't such a great idea to introduce as many changes to the system as you can. Which is exactly what we're doing now.
Re:Queue up the proof by anecdote posts (Score:3, Interesting)
The global warming nuts have set up the argument real cute-like. They can't be wrong. Higher temperatures anywhere are proof of global warming. Lower temperatures anywhere are proof of global warming. Floods are proof of global warming, but so are droughts. More intense and milder seasons are both proof of global warming. Anything extreme is proof of global warming, but anything not extreme is not proof of the opposite. They're a bunch of nuts, really. It's funny to watch.
Personally, I'll take a warmer planet to a cooler one.
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:4, Interesting)
Over hundreds of millions of years, CO2 levels have slowly dropped because of natural feedback loops that sequester CO2 in hot periods and while accumulating it in the atmosphere during cold periods, so our climate has been kept remarkably constant compared to planets without life and plate tectonics on them. If CO2 levels return to where they were in those ice ages past, then the planet is going to be plenty warmer (10-20 degrees C) than what it is now because our sun is giving off that much more heat.
The story of wheat: Ears of plenty (Score:2, Interesting)
--
The story of wheat [economist.com]
Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition
The story of man’s staple food
[Image] [economist.com] (Still Pictures)
IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.
Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.
It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.
The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.
People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.
Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a she: women have primary responsibilities for plant gathering in hunter-gatherer societies. The time was certainly ripe for agriculture: the ability to make tools and control fire (cooking makes many plants more digestible) was already well established. But was it an act of inspiration or desperation? Did it perhaps happen by accident, as discarded grains germinated around human settlements?
so-fusking-what? (Score:2, Interesting)
So-fusking-what?
What they ARE saying, is that tt was hotter 500 years ago (or so). I don't seem to recall reading about any disasters which befell mankind because it was hotter then.
This is a complete load of shit.
Re:Queue up the proof by anecdote posts (Score:1, Interesting)
OK, fine, so maybe everyone's wrong, maybe nothing we do will save our food crops. So lets do nothing, right? Just lay down now and die?
At least if we try to clean up our shit, when we're breathing our last gasps we'll at least get to breathe clean air and not this smoggy polluted shit automobiles and companies spew now.
Re:temperature (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably not it's been disputed [sciencemag.org].
Re:Queue up the proof by anecdote posts (Score:2, Interesting)
certaintly you dont live nor have relatives/friends who are going to lose their houses/jobs when the cities they live on get flooded by the sea...
Re:Queue up the proof by anecdote posts (Score:2, Interesting)
In any case, it is absolute arrogance to think that we can cause or prevent anything on this scale from happening. We're ants arguing about what we can do to stop a boulder from rolling down a hill with very little real idea whether or not that boulder rolling down a hill is a good or bad thing--but the point is irrelevant since the ants can't do nothing to push it or stop it. If the boulder is going to roll, it's going to roll whether the ants want it to or not. If the boulder isn't going to roll, the ants aren't going to be able to make it start.
And, no folks, I'm not ignorant on the topic. I've read a heck of a lot of material on the subject. I'm just more skeptical about some of the motives and a bit more critical about some of the conclusions that are drawn. No, I have no investments in anything remotely related to energy, oil or global warming, I don't know any politicians, I don't know anyone that knows a politician, and I have never made a political contribution in my life.
Which, I'm sure, opens me up to the jokes such as, "Well I guess that just leaves ignorance and stupidity as the only possible causes for your position on the subject." Whatever, guys. You look like chickens with your heads cut off.
Re:hot air (Score:5, Interesting)
Then maybe.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Reputable as in not politically biased (ie, Al Gore would certainly not be reputable), published multiple papers on the subject and/or adjacent subjects in notable Journals (ie, Nature, Science, whatever, not "Wicca Quarterly," "The Limbaugh Letter," or other nonsense), and preferably a resident at a University (not their Mom's basement). Knowing who funds the research is a big plus.
And of course, by scientist, I mean people who actually, you know, do science. Not some quasi-science bullshit like most people injest and take as the truth, either. The person better have cited his sources, included his scientific data (and not summarized it like a fucking news paper article), and lastly, included error analysis. No PhD = not a reputable scientist. This isn't Coast to Coast.
I have not read any serious reports on the subject. I've heard PLENTY of media spin to the point where I wouldn't believe the truth if they told it to me. It's pretty easy to do a google search and find about 10^6 links from unqualified bloggers, cheesy geocities pages, and your typical array of leftist banter, all claiming the sky is falling but never citing just who determined that. Last time I checked, I'd file under the category of "ignorant" with most of the world (even if they don't believe it.)
Finally, let me say this (and recall I've already admitted my ignorance of the subject): I question just how accurately temperatures from 2000 years ago can be measured, relative to, say, satellite technology now. If the global mean temperature has increased 3C (and from I've heard it's less than that...) and your error is +/-5C then just how useful is that data?
Re:temperature (Score:5, Interesting)
Hypothetical question for you, You're crossing a road, first thing in the morning. You're still maybe half asleep, late night and all that.
Suddenly you hear a noise. You look up from your reverie to find there's a huge great truck barrelling down the road toward you, horn blaring.
So what do you do? Do you think "Hmm, this is an rare scenario. The truck could exist, but I also have to consider that I may in fact be still asleep and dreaming this encounter. What data can I collect to determine if actiion is truly warranted in this case?"
Do you do all that, or do you get out of the frigging way first and then run your analysis? I bet I know what most of your ancestors did in analagous situations.
See, the thing is that science never proves anything. That's not a flaw in science, it's methodology. Scientists have long discarded modus ponens [wikipedia.org] as the logical basis for the scientific method, in favour of modus tollens [wikipedia.org]. What that means is that we don't try to prove things, because we recognise that we may not yet have all the facts. Instead we propose a explanation that seem to fit the facts and we try and disprove it.
The thing to note here is that if e wait for science to prove that global is happening, we'll still be waiting in billions of years time. Even if the Sun the should expand to swallow the earth and engulf us solar plasma, we;ll still be waiting, because that's not what scientists, do!
What they do do[1] is get out of the way of oncoming traffic.
If you want to be scientific about this, you need a counter theory, and it has to be falsifiable. There has to be a test we can conduct that to prove it wrong. Preferably one that doesn't involve waiting a thousand years to see if the climate flips state back to the Cambrian Era.
Give me a set of criteria that, if they are satisfied, you will regard as sufficent evidence for taking action against global warming and I will accept that you may have a pont. Otherwise, all you're doing is saying "Bah! Youse scientist dunt never nothing nowhow" only in an fancy accent.
Me, I vote we get out of the way of the truck
[1] On the whole, that is. I'm not counting absent mindedness, scientific tests of experimental traffc-proof suits, or Bruce Banner when he gets angry. I don't really think this weakens my argument.
So... (Score:2, Interesting)
Was it all those sailing ships the European explorers used to exploit the world? Maybe they trapped the winds and caused a shift in global air currents!
For that matter, what was up with the Cambrian, Jurassic, and Cretaceous eras, when it was as much as 10 degrees C hotter than today (global average). Was that due to flatulent herbivorous dinosaurs?
The entire "global warming" sham is the most egregious abuse of science for political benefit since eugenics.
Same scientist fail to point out... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:sucks to be you if you live in the desert (Score:2, Interesting)
The fact is that everywhere there is a desert, that desert is growing. We know this and we have been watching it happen for a long long time. We plant crops, which eats topsoil, but we don't have a way of replacing the soil. Or we have cows that eat all of the grass such that it can't regrow. We pump oil out of the ground, burn it (which creates heat) and add CO2 to the air, and we know that the concentration of CO2 in the air is growing every year, causing the earth to be warmer. Where there were forests, now there are cities. We are constantly changing the landscape around us to meet what we think are our needs. But no one thinks about the needs fulfilled by an untouched piece of land. Such a piece of land is making topsoil, is cleaning the air, giving us oxygen. It doesn't seem like it is being useful, but it actually is.
What we should be doing is making it easier for our species to survive on this planet. Crops that use up less topsoil should be developed, other means of acquiring energy as well. More thought should be put into how and where cattle graze. We should be trying to first stop the spread of the desert, then trying to teraform it so that it is more useful to us. If we don't change what we are doing, the whole of the planet will be like the Sahara desert, which is already as large as the United States. And like all deserts, it is still growing. There's no reason why we can't make the whole planet lush and green. But at the moment, we are turning it into a desert.
John
Re:there's a lot of nonsense on both sides (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh huh. So clearly you did not read the actual Congressional Report, which summarizes all the findings, and concludes that about 50% of the increased energy dispersion in the Gulf (i.e. heat) was due to climate change.
You sound reasnable and all, except you just wag your finger and claim political bias. Read the report. Its real science. Honest.
Sudden jumps in temp? (Score:3, Interesting)