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.'"
temperature (Score:5, Funny)
Re:temperature (Score:3, Funny)
Re:temperature (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget global warming, worry about Judgment Day. If you don't accept Jesus, seriously, if only half what the biblical scholar consensus predicts is left to happen, you're all going to be pretty damn sorry you didn't do it sooner. The not giving a shit attitude isn't going to cut it when all hell breaks loose.
What, you don't believe in Hell? What, the amount of scariness of the claimed bad things that are purported to happen doesn't make it any more convincing?
Re:hot air (Score:5, Interesting)
It was NOT just like now 400 years ago (Score:4, Informative)
Let's try this analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine I see a line of people going on and on, until that line bends around a corner. Now, let's say I tell you that I'm taller than everyone in that line until it bends around that corner. Would you necessarily conclude that immediately after it bends around that corner you'll find someone taller? Because that's the kind of logic you're applying here.
Now, let's imagine that you do claim that. I now find a way to see around that corner and find tham I'm taller than everyone I can see there until it bends around yet another corner. Will you know claim that this claim means that there's someone taller right around the next corner?
Has it ever been hotter than it is now? Absolutely. Were we here to suffer the consequences? No. Has it ever heated up this quickly before? Probably not since the Earth first coalesced.
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.
Re:temperature (Score:5, Insightful)
Who was alive 13.7 billion years ago to confirm the Big Bang, or, if you're a creationist, who was around 6000-odd years ago to confirm Genesis?
If you want to know where these claims come from, try finding out [wikipedia.org] instead of just rubbishing something you clearly don't understand.
Anyone who thinks we, as humans, are big enough to affect this God given Earth in a permanent way, has a blown up ego.
Sure. Thing is, I don't particularly care about this God-given Earth. As you say, it can take care of itself. In the event of e.g. nuclear armageddon, the planet would barely notice and would carry on spinning round the sun in much the same way. Why, it wouldn't even wipe out all life!
But that wouldn't be much consolation to the folk left crawling around in the glowing ruins of what were once cities, dying slowly of radiation sickness.
I don't know about you, but I'm actually kind of attached to human civilisation, and I'm pretty damn sure we, as humans, are quite big enough to do quite a bit of damage to that. For example, by use of the aforementioned nuclear weapons -- or, according to some scientists, by the effects of our actions on the environment.
Global warming, if true, probably won't wipe out life on earth. But it could make it pretty uncomfortable for an awful lot of humans. Again, I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned, that counts as a Bad Thing. Now, yes, fighting global warming would cost money, money which would be wasted if it turned out not to be true after all. But what I want to know is why so many people seem to think that this makes it stupid to spend that money. Nobody seems to have any problem with paying for health insurance (you have no proof you'll get sick!), or car insurance (you have no proof you're going to crash!), or house insurance (you have no proof you're going to be burgled!). So what's wrong with planet insurance?
Re:temperature (Score:4, Insightful)
This makes a funny point, as well.
What do scientists have to gain by claiming global warming is happening/refusing the oil industry? A salary, at best. Climatologists and research scientists definitely don't make big bucks (maybe decent money on writing books, but hardly billions), relying mostly on NSF grants to do their research. Lying for a meager living is not something most people are willing to do.
What does the oil industry have to gain by refuting the scientists? Lots and lots and lots of money. Lying for a few billion dollars is something that even I would consider. Everybody has a selling point.
Re:temperature (Score:5, Insightful)
Being "apathetic" IS taking a position, it's supporting the current "going to hell in a handbasket" strategy. And the real case is, if you read this or any other FA in a scientific publication:
It's very much like the health issues of smoking. Billions of dollars spent lobbying to make it look as if there is doubt when the case is proved by any reasonable definition.
Re:temperature (Score:5, Insightful)
- Scientist 1: Global warming is for real
- Scientist 2: Right, here's why
- Scientist 3: If that is true, X should happen...oh see, it does!
- Scientist 5: Oh, but Y does not fit...ih, once we correct for the measurement error, it does!
...- Scientists 900-1100: Let's summarize all this in a number of reports
- National academy of science: Let's also summarize this...oh look, the summaries agree!
- Paid shill: But duh! Erm...no, isnt!
Of course this still underestemiates the degree of work and scrutiny that has gone into our scientific understanding of global warming, but you get the idea.Re:temperature (Score:4, Informative)
The reality is that the number of "Scientist 1"s is about 100 times greater than the number of "Scientist 2"s. The news media just amplifies the voices of the "Scientist 2"s for the sake of "balance". Most of the scientific debate is within the "Scientist 1" camp regarding the specifics of global warming (how much is human produced, how disruptive will it be down the road, what options do we have for controlling it). However, that doesn't make for a nice, ratings-boosting shouting match on Crossfire.
Fact is that the Earth is, on the whole, warming. Evidence suggests that it's mostly due to human activity (although that's far from proven). It's a strong hunch that a warming Earth will disrupt human activity -- we can be fairly certain that rainfall will shift, which will move food production and cause economic upheaval, although climate is such a chaotic system that we can't really say where the shifts will be. It's a strong hunch that it will result in more frequent hurricanes, more powerful hurricanes, or both (more heat = more ocean evaporation = hurricane fuel), which we might or might not be seeing already. It's a weaker hunch that, once we reach a certain amount of warming, the climate will abruptly swing from its current state to a different one -- evidence shows that historically there have been two climate settings ("hot house" and "ice age", with a 10 C swing between global averages), all of human existence has been in an "ice age" climate, and the swing might be caused by carbon sequestering (which we're currently undoing by pulling fossil fuels out of the ground and burning them).
Re:temperature (Score:5, Informative)
This has caused a renewed intrest in Deisel, which has always been traditionally lower in its CO2 emmissions, and with Petrol Pumps now also using BioDeisel blends in their fuel, as a pilot (They cannot use 100% biodiesel, as most cars are not adjusted for that)
This policy means that you are not penalised for driving a desirable car, just penalised for driving a polluting car.
To give you an example, I own a Jaguar X-Type Deisel, a very desirable, and pretty powerfull, responsive car. Yet I pay less tax than some people who have a fairly ordinary car, simply because my car pollutes less than theirs.
Queue up the proof by anecdote posts (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Queue up the proof by anecdote posts (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Queue up the proof by anecdote posts (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Queue up the proof by anecdote posts (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Queue up the proof by anecdote posts (Score:4, Informative)
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:Then maybe.. (Score:4, Insightful)
IANA(I Am Not Anything)
I'm just a dumb college kid. A layman. I only believe in the moon and stars because other people told me they're more than pictures on the ceiling of the world. I don't have any other evidence except
So when all
We have a problem because the media profits from reporting disasters. So we have a boy-who-cried-wolf problem. I'm still waiting for SARS to kill me, to be killed by human-borne bird flu, to be blown up by terrorists, to die of cancer, to die of obesity, to die of cancer(again), see economic disaster in social security, peak oil, man-made disasters from nukes, or anthrax... Because of the mostly BS catastrophes above, I get a very high noise-to-signal ratio, so much so that I'm increasingly disenchanted with listening at all.
Without real scientific reports that follow the filter requirements of the parent poster, I just have to listen to what the "experts" say. And there's so much crap out there that I have to pick and choose which reports to follow(but which ones?!) or just tune the whole deal out and get back to my job pumping out 401k distribution confirmations here in HR.
And if we do reach a good consensus(which the majority here says we have) what do
Me, Mr. Average Joe, lives on a diet of work, leisure, and sleep. The news is 90% entertainment, and maybe 10% relevant news. I don't feel like there's a whole lot I can really do at the moment with my meager resources, and there are more pressing issues. This "global" perspective stuff is great, but I
there's a lot of nonsense on both sides (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look at places like dailykos.com and other political proponents of "we need to do something", even mainstream ones like Al Gore, they're at huge odds with the scientific literature. For example, you now hear all sorts of nonsense about how increased hurricane frequency proves we need to do something, even though there is no evidence at all of a relationship (some scientists have hypothesized a relationship between warming and hurricane intensity---not frequency---but even that is highly speculative and not generally accepted).
In addition, I've heard claims that severe winters also support global warming, but the UN's general reports on the subject dispel that as a myth, and claim that global warming would result in, on average, slightly less severe winters. (Of course, severe winters don't *disprove* globl warming either---there are still plenty of year-to-year fluctuations even if the average is getting warmer.)
People are also conflating multiple trends. The important issue from a human-change point of view is the extent to which greenhouse gases and other human creations are changing climate. That's a separate question from the *aggregate* climate change. There *is* indeed good evidence for human-caused climate change, but it is still a separate question. For example, glacier retreat is often cited, but is largely a different phenomenon---Canadian glaciers have been retreating since about 1842, long before significant human-caused global warming. Current glacier retreat does appear to be caused or accelerated by global warming, but showing a picture of "glacier in 1840" and "glacier now" is just shady politics, when most of that recession happened from 1840-1930. And, of course, we should also take into account the estimates that about 30% of current warming is caused by an odd increase in solar output.
I think on the whole shoddy pro-global-warming argument is hurting the case. When the facts are on your side, there's no need to embellish them, and it damages credibility. This is why Real Scientists tend not to do it.
CNN had a different figure (Score:3, Interesting)
Study: Earth likely hottest in 2,000 years [cnn.com]
Both 400 and 2000 are true (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Both 400 and 2000 are true (Score:4, Insightful)
The temperature record isn't just that recorded as it happened over the past few years - it's recorded in arctic ice and other longlived stable deposits.
I'm not even going to dignify the rest of your garbage with detailed examination.
Keep revising reasonable paragraphs into gibberish lies. It's your least weak point, though it is a disgusting mess.
please (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:please (Score:3, Insightful)
Did they need "precautionary actions" the last time this happened 400-X000 years ago?
What about before that?
No? Hmmm...
There's no question in my mind that things like greenhouse gases and the decimation of the ozone layer are Bad Things, but I think there's more practical arguments that you can make for taking further measures against them than "ZOMG TEH EARTH WILL HEAT UP & KILL US ALL!"
Re:please (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time it happened the dominant life form wasn't industrialised and happily stuffing the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses
Thing is, it's going to be very difficult to remove greenhouse gasses and stop global warming in 100 years' time should the majority of climate scientists actually turn out to be right. It's really not going to hurt us that much to stop producing greenhouse gasses now, and it might even turn out to be the right thing to do. Why not do it?
Re:please (Score:5, Insightful)
If its A) and we worked on B), then we profit from less oil dependence and less smog, particulate matter,etc
If its B) and we assumed A), we all die.
Until we know more, I wish people would stop pretending they know what's happening. We have a couple theories, thats it, no proof. (correct me if I'm wrong)
Re:please (Score:4, Insightful)
For example: "I think the point is that, since rainstorms are either caused by A) water vapor in the atmosphere or B) aliens who want to drown us, we should start working on B in case it isn't A. If it's A and we work on B by creating a multi-billion-dollar network of space defense lasers, then we profit from being able to stay alive. If it's B and we assume A, then the aliens drown us all, take over our planet, and make it into a global resort/spa for the Pangalactic Federation."
South Park, anyone? (Score:3, Funny)
sucks to be you if you live in the desert (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and with much of China and India either already a desert or turning into a desert due to deforestation thousands of years ago, it's not going to get any better for them.
The desert is actually spreading too - look at China in google earth and see how much of China is sand, and with hunter/gatherer populations foraging for food and fuel, animals eating every plant that springs up from the earth, and pavement being laid down everywhere to speed rain runoff and reduce the amount of water that saturates the soil - the situation looks bleak.
Seriously, I hate to sound like a tree hugging hippie, but if everyone in the world planted a few trees, I believe we could have a positive impact on the global climate
Editors, please post flamebait stories in the AM (Score:5, Funny)
I love the smell of burning karma in the morning... It smells like slashdot!
You want Flamebait? I got your flamebait. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one side you have scientists with the historical and current data, and the liberals who cheer them on. On the other side you have those who say Global Warming is just made up by a conspiracy of scientists and liberals.
Discuss.
Warmer than... (Score:5, Informative)
I'll bet it's warmer than it was 10,000 years ago [thinkquest.org], too.
Right, just past the mini-ice age.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Right, just past the mini-ice age.... (Score:4, Informative)
Then you know a lot of people ignorant on the topic. I was, too, until quite recently. We are well outside the normal zone of the typical cyclical temperature and CO2 variations, going back for hundreds of thousands of years.
> Temperatures were warmer 1000 years ago.
Uh, no, at least if Wikipedia is to be believed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_o
Please to take note of when we started going well past that 1000 year temperature high. Go see "An Inconvenient Truth" while you're at it.
Re:Right, just past the mini-ice age.... (Score:5, Informative)
No, actually, that is not true. If you look at the report, they say there is data of sufficient quality to say we are hotter than we've been in *at least* 400 years. Before that, there is less confidence in the measurable proxies of temperature, yet it still appears current temperatures are hotter than any time going back to 900 AD. The data for previous times are even less reliable, and thus being careful scientists, the NAS is not willing to make statements about those times.
I don't know of anyone that does not accept global warming (as in the warming of regions of the earth). I know a lot of people which can't agree on the causes.
So you know a lot of scientifically ignorant people. Let's say this again for those in the back of the class: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." (From the National Academy of Sciences [wikipedia.org]). Or, if you prefer, "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" from the IPCC [wikipedia.org].
Cyclical Global warming != greenhouse effect.
True, that is why really smart scientists spend time examining the effect of anthropogenic climate change as a separate thing from cyclic climate change.
Greenhouse gases effect may play a part
Substitute do for may, and you are right.
For your edification, the report is available [nap.edu] in full format, and a 4 page executive summary.
-Ted
Some additional info (Score:5, Informative)
The chart at this site's page http://carto.eu.org/article2481.html [eu.org] , which is becoming a bit more frequently seen, shows the graph of C02 content in the atmosphere and temperature ranges over the last 400,000 years as derived from examining core samples, up to 1950. In that graph there is a strong corellation between C02 content and temperature change (increased C02 == increased temperature, etc.) The high point on the graph happened about 325,000 years ago when C02 content hit about 300 ppm.
In 1950 C02 content was around 285 ppm.
In 2006 C02 content was 383 ppm
That's nearly 100ppm greater than 56 years ago, nearly 83 ppm greater than the greatest peak currently recorded. We've had a 35% increase in CO2 content over the last 56 years. We're 28% above the previously recorded peak level from the last 400,000 years, and we're seeing record high temperatures for increasingly large spans of time into the past.
Given the nearly lock step relationship between C02 content and temperature change, the rate of increase and the extent of the increase over the last 56 years, and the absence of any other major contributor to CO2 content in the last 56 years, I find it really difficult to think that the human activities known to increase C02 emissions we've increasingly engaged in over the last 150 years have had little to nothing to do with the obvious increase in both C02 atmospheric content and resulting temperature/climate changes. The rate and amount of change seem to indicate that we're already beyond the normal range of variation, yet people still feel comfortable saying it's just the normal fluctuation of the planet's climate. I'd sincerely like to hear other viable explanations for the facts, but there haven't been any - the most well supported hypothisis remains that humans burning fossil fuels (in ever increasing numbers do to an also alarming rate of population growth) are truly affecting the climate.
What I'm also really curious about is why so many are so adamant about refusing to acknowledge what seems to be obvious, but that's a task for psychologists and philosophers I suppose.
Re:Right, just past the mini-ice age.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The parent wrote:
Although they do acknowledge the existence of a "mini-ice age", the press release put out by the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) specifically rejects the argument that it was warmer in the middle ages then now:
While it's true that "Cyclical Global warming != greenhouse effect", this does not mean that humanity is in the clear as far as global warming goes. I believe the concern is that there is no sign that the current heating trend is slowing down. The trending in the NAS report abstract [nas.edu] is pretty disturbing. When this is compounded by the above argument that it's warmer now than it has been in the past, there is sufficient ground to worry that we have broken out of whatever cyclical pattern may have existed.
Beyond this, I don't think it matters whether the current phase of global warming is caused by humans or by cyclical sunspots (or whatever). Rising temperatures have the ability to really throw a wrench into global systems (like economies). If we have the ability to even *try* to mitigate the trend, I think it is worthwhile to do so. Arguing that we have no reason to act because it's not our fault is, in my view, a cowardly way to pass the buck... so that we can continue to live extravagant lifestyles in the short term at the expense of the future.
Baseline (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Baseline (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for, you know...studies done on polar ice. Real problems with urban heat islands there.
Look, folks. We're clearly being astroturfed by someone. But no matter what your local Republican party shill tells you, there is no scientific dissent: global warming is caused by human-produced increases in CO2 in the earth's atmosphere.
Interestingly, (Score:4, Insightful)
Weasel Words: Scientists vs. Politicians (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose you ask the question: Is X happening?
When a scientist says that a phenomenon "X is probably happening", or "the bulk of the evidence indicates that X is happening", he means "I'm pretty damn sure about it, but because everyting in science is subject to further investigation, I'm open to hear evidence to the contrary."
When a lawyer says that "X is probably happening", or "the bulk of the evidence indicates that X is happening", he means "I haven't the foggiest idea, and I need wiggle room so I don't look like an idiot when someone who knows what he's talking about asks me."
Trouble starts when the two world views are mixed. The scientist hears the bolded words in his part of the speech -- and the politician hears precisely the opposite.
The qualifiers are necessary to the scientist, because they're part of why a theory is explanation falsifiable (and by extension, scientific). Science can't progress except for those areas in which there exists Reasonable Doubt.
The politician hears only the phrases "is probably" (as opposed to certainly), the "bulk of" (as opposed to all of the evidence), and the "indication" (as opposed to conclusive truth pounded out on the table before Judge and Jury) that something is the case. In an adversarial "justice" system, you can't use weasel words, because the holy grail is Proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt.
And the planet burns because people who don't grok science prefer oratory.
What the hell, the dinosaurs died because they didn't understand science either.
Unprecedented? No. (Score:4, Informative)
Unprecedented high temperatures in recent history, perhaps. Unprecedented in terms of Earth's history? I'm afraid not. [daviesand.com] Notice the three sharp spikes occurring at roughly 130,000 year intervals. We started such a rise about 15,000 years ago, right at the expected time if the pattern repeats, but something levelled it off around present-day levels and has kept it there for the last 10,000 years. Whatever cause the levelling-out it wasn't humans, we weren't doing anything on a scale large enough to cause global effects 15,000 years back. If whatever it is stops, I'd expect global temperatures to spike by another 2-3 degrees C, then drop sharply to 4-6 degrees C below "normal".
Re:Unprecedented? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
The hockey stick (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah yes, the infamous hockey stick (the chart). It was what convinced me that global warming was human-caused. Until of course I found that when you put random data into the analysis, you got a hockey stick [lbl.gov].
What it comes down to is that more than 200 years ago we didn't have accurate temperature measurement. Everything before that is an educated guess. And the precision necessary to show a fractional degree of change is simply unattainable.
Where are the error bars on the hockey stick? It's shown as if we had exact data for the last 1000 years--which of course we don't.
Re:The hockey stick (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, they would be right there on the chart on the page you linked to - the error is provided in gray. You'll note, as pointed out in the NAS report, that the errors are smaller for data since 1600 or so. Nobody is misrepresenting error tolerance here - it was calculated and is displayed clearly in the graphic.
Junk Science Clouding Real Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that this point is warmer then some other point in some arbitrary number of years means nothing. There have been literally countless points in time when you can point backwards and say that it has not been so warm for 400+ years. Any idiot can see that pointing out that we are in another of such periods where the last local max with 400 years ago is thoroughly and completely normal and uninteresting.
Flouting stupid statistics like this is what makes smart people believe that global warming is a crap political ploy by environmentalist/anti-globalist/leftists/exc. If your goal is to divide, crap like this is a great idea as it assures everyone that the opposing side are idiots who couldn't tell the truth if their life depended upon it. If your goal is to build a consensus and spawn action, throwing out junk science is a waste of everyone's time.
There are a lot of good reasons to believe that the Earth is heating in an appreciable way and that humans could very well be the cause of much of that heating. We don't need to throw out junk science and sensationalist crap like "OMFG hottest year in 400 years!" as any idiot with even an ounce of grey matter is going to realize that "hottest year in 400 years" is pretty damn normal during any heating phase, especially heating phases that happen on geologic time.
Reading the actual report is better than Yahoo (Score:4, Informative)
Now, notice something: we're talking about a "warming trend" over the last 400 years. That would be the interval from roughly the beginning of the "Little Ice Age" to now. So, in other words, we're now substantially warmer than the low point of a historically unprecedented low temperature interval.
Well, duh. Does the phrase "regression to the mean" ring any bells?
More
In other words, the conclusions of Mann et al. aren't very well supported --- and those are the ones most often used politically.
An Inconvenient Truth (Score:3, Insightful)
This congressional inquiry dovetails nicely with the documentary that features Al Gore, An Incovenient Truth [imdb.com]. I recently saw the movie, and while I was aware of the problem of Global Warming, I'm now truly worried that my later years (I'm currently 35) are going to be more about surviving in an even increasingly difficult environment instead of just living. Watching graphs with exponential progressions coupled with comparitive photographs taken over the last 50 years is turly sobering.
Get the NAS Report here (Score:4, Informative)
For those who want to bypass the dysfunctional reporting of the MSM, you can get the full report [nationalacademies.org] in PDF directly from NAS.
Also available from that link: The press release, audio of the press briefing, an abbreviated report and opening statement.
Stephen McIntyre offers interesting commentary on the report here [climateaudit.org].
Could someone update the Wiki? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you believe... (Score:4, Funny)
Everyone, the earth is dying because not enough people believe in global warming! Perhaps if we all clapped real hard to show it we believe, it might survive!
Quick! If you believe in global warming, clap your hands!
[monty python foot icon]
Oh shit. (Score:3, Insightful)
To All Naysayers (Score:3, Funny)
Resistence is futile. (Score:4, Informative)
CO2 emissions will keep rising. China is building coal-fired power stations at a tremendous rate, and will probably keep doing so for a few decades, at least; India - which will have a larger population than China in a couple of decades - will be doing exactly the same thing. They're doing this because they need electricity to modernise their economies, and coal is both plentiful and cheap. Between them, they will probably pump out enough CO2 to fully compensate for the CO2 not emitted by the developed world.
Conclusion: it doesn't matter whether global warming is man-made or not. If it's natural, there's nothing we can do about it, and if it's man-made, it isn't going to be arrested any time soon.
So we are just going to have to live with the consequences.
ice age (Score:4, Funny)
self correcting problem (Score:4, Insightful)
P.S. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:P.S. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Informative)
This is entirely correct. Bush has admitted that global warming exists (and that Iraqi WMDs don't, ho ho ho) but AFAICR (can recall) he doesn't admit a human influence and he doesn't believe that measures need to be taken by humans to prevent continued global warming.
I just wan
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:4, Informative)
Actually he has...
And 'human influence' doesn't really matter, we are just as screwed if it is caused by sunspots or volcanos as if it were caused by human beings. In fact concentrating on that is likely to make things worse as it only furthers the delusion that we are the sole source of anything bad happening, and that once we all switch to driving hybrids the Earth's climate will magically remain the same for thousands of years.
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.
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:4, Insightful)
If you believe the climate is stable, then of course it's bad! But we know better. Based on the data, we're towards the end of a brief (10k year) warm period toards the end of a 100k year warming cycle, but we're still in an ice age. We have 400k years of pretty good temperature and CO2 data now from the Vostock ice cores, and it's clear that a stable climate is an illusion caused by man's relatively short lifespan. This fact is as clear as the fact that global warming is happening.
So, let's assume that mankinds actions are capable of affecting the climate short term (for a few thousand years). Do we want to turn the thermostat up, or down, or try to keep global temperatures about the same? While the last option might sound good, trying to keep achieve stability in a chaotic system that we don't really understand and can barely model is probably pointless.
If we have to choose between sea level rising a bit, and glaciers covering England and most of Europe (on the upside, we'd lose Canada too), warming is probably a smaller problem to del with than cooling. Regardless of what we do, temperatures are certain to return to the ice-age norm long term (all the carbon in the air, water, and all fossile fuels still in the groud are completely trivial compared to the carbon cycle of the lithosphere), but that's a problem we can consider in another 10k years.
If you've never thought about global warming beyond "prevent climate change", you haven't really understood the issue. Preventing climate change isn't a long-term option.
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Insightful)
My big concern isn't global warming but all of the pollutants in our oceans and entire global food chain that could nix us all..
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'
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Insightful)
May sound odd.. but this is why I support putting bases on the moon and colonies on Mars. Not so much to actually ahve them there, but to start learning how to survive those situations so we can use the same technology here when we need it. Cuz when
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Funny)
Top Ten Good Things About Global Warming (from memory, plz excuse any fuckups)
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:4, Informative)
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
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Funny)
It was this hot 400 years ago.
Signed,
- W
While we're writing letters (Score:3, Insightful)
Please leave your particular country's ideological distinctions out of this scientific debate that they have nothing to do with. Also please acknowledge that there is more to the world than your narrow-minded battle against an ideological perspective that you happen disagree with.
Please at least learn to control your memes to the point that they no longer lead you to infer things that clearly aren't being implied. A phrase like "Please accept that Global Warming Exists." does not i
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:4, Informative)
Scientists have proven that carbon dioxide emissions from human actions have caused the temperature of the Earth to increase. They have collected evidence which demonstrates this within the margins they find to be acceptable as proof.
Having proven it to other scientists, it is not their responsibility to now come to your house and prove it to you according to your rules, nor are they obligated to sponsor a cartoon version for your consumption. Every scientist who has studied this topic, and does not work directly for an oil company, has come to the same conclusion. There is more debate among experts about the validity of the proof of the Poincare conjecture than there is about the evidence for global warming.
However, I do not suspect that you will be persuaded by this. You will endlessly try to debate and complain about this, and you will simultaneously avoid actually studying the facts or researching more information.
You are ignorant by choice, and I hope you get full blown aids or melanoma.
Signed,
Another Guy
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Insightful)
The scientific consensus is that global warming has been caused by people. It is the politicians and their devoted followers who think that there is some sort of controversy. Secondly, from TFA, solar fluctuations and volcanic activity cannot explain the increase in temperature alone. Finally, you're asking scientists to conclusively PROVE that global warming has been caused by humans. This is impossible. Likewise, it's impossible to PROVE that quantum mechanics and general rela
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:5, Informative)
Download this: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html [nap.edu]
Flip to page 103 for Figure 10-6: Model-based estimates of global sufrface temperature compared to observational estimates with contributions of natural (volcanic and solar) and anthropogenic forcings for 25-year periods shown as color bars.
The anthropogenic bar in the last 25 years totally dominates all of the other bars. I haven't read the entire article, but it sounds to me like you haven't even bothered to read any of it and yet you feel totally comfortable spouting off about it.
Scientists will never clame to PROVE anything, so stop using political motivations to attack scientific findings.
Signed,
The Voice of Telling You To RTFA
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:5, Informative)
Clue-bat: scientists don't try to prove things. Scientists have never tried to prove things. People who prove things are called logicians and mathemeticians, usually abstract math.
Instead, what scientists do is provide explanations for observations. If the explanation explains enough observations, the explanation becomes a "theory", defined as "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena."
(As opposed to a very different meaning of the word theory that is often incorrectly used by anti-science advocates: " An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.")
Proof is a mathematical concept. It isn't found in the real world. What is found is a quantity of evidence sufficient that it would be foolish to withold agreement. So, Mr. Fairness and Reason, what you're asking for doesn't exist. As such it's not very reasonable or fair to require it as some minimum threshold of something worth learning. But then again, perhaps that's exactly why you are the way you are...
Finally, it doesn't matter all that much if we're to blame. What matters is if we can alter current trends to prevent a forseeable worldwide ecological disaster. Unfortunately, humans lack the political will to prevent disaster (Katrina). Traditionally, we only act collectively to repair disasters. And for ecological disasters on this scale, the only thing that is clear is that by the time global warming really begins to hurt the wealthiest countries on the planet, there will be almost nothing anyone can do about it. As such, things are likely to get very, very bad before any substantive effort is made to change things.
Regards,
Ross
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Insightful)
Please read the document you are commenting on before spouting empty rethoric. It strongly suggests that "global warming" is linked to man, oil, and other favorite donors of the right. The Earth goes through cycles regularly, but the rate of the current rise in temperature is unprecented as far as scientists can check back. Until you can PROVE that someone has WMDs, or that homosexuality destroys families, or that use of marihuana turns innocent children into crazed killer, or that storing ev
Re:No, some glaciers are growing. (Score:5, Informative)
A similar effect is true of global temperature. Despite global warming, there are areas of the earth that are coolear. However, the global average is up. Note that temperatures at the poles can be affected very dramatically, the average at the north pole by as much as 8 degrees [nytimes.com]. This obviously has a greater impact on the polar ice than a 1 degree rise would have had.
Re:To: Mr. George W. Bush (Score:3, Interesting)
What pisses me off is to see people dragging out the age-old fallacy of Pas
Re:This just in . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I'll tell you to look up the term Milankovitch Cycles and be done with you.
Re:This just in . . . (Score:4, Informative)
"Millions of years ago, the Earth was a great, molten mass, called Pangaea."
Re:This just in . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Errm... there wasn't anyone around to name the Earth anything a few hundred million years ago, unless you count the Vogons and the mice.
Re:This just in . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
If you put it next to the age of the Earth, the meteorite-induced disruption to the world's climate that put the nail in the coffin of pretty much every large land animal on Earth (including the dinosaurs) doesn't seem that significant.
Nevertheless, to the dinosaurs it was pretty significant.
Likewise, the question with anthropogenic global warming and other alterations to the environment induced by man is not "are the disruptions a huge deal on a geological timescale", but "do the disruptions pose an intense danger to the continuation and quality of human life on earth." To which the answer, for global warming, seems to be a pretty clear yes.
Re:This just in . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
But sure, let's sit back and watch what happens. Big experiment in social restructuring, could be fun. Could be hard for someone, but that's the breaks. And maybe in 100 years, after the migrations have started in earnest and whole continents empty into whole other continents, rivers of human flesh and misery passing each other in hopeless crawls from one ecological disaster area to another, maybe our grandchildren won't be digging up and violating our corpses in blind rage at how stupid and cynical we were at the very moment in 400 years of screwing up when we could have turned this ship around and saved them a lot of human misery.
Cuz you know, it's just 400 years of history. Blip in the continuum man. Not my problem.
Re:What caused the warming 400 years ago? (Score:5, Informative)
They said it was unprecedented within the last 400 years, at least. That's not the same thing.
Re:What caused the warming 400 years ago? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What caused the warming 400 years ago? (Score:5, Informative)
1. It wasn't this hot 400 years ago... we only have 400 years of reliable temperature data.
2. From the fucking article...
Re:What caused the warming 400 years ago? (Score:5, Insightful)
As to the greenhouse gas hypothesis, there are a couple of real problems with it:
(1) about 60 percent of the temperature increase happened between 1500 and 1900. The notion that there was a lot of unusual greenhouse gases in that interval is questionable at best.
(2) there is significant data suggesting "global warming" of similar order of magnitude on Mars and other planets.
(3) most of the argument that greenhouse gases are causing the warming are based, first and foremost, on the assumption that there is unusual warming, which is not a very strong conclusion, as noted by the report. Reasoning from "there has been global warming" to "there is an anthropogenic reason for global warming" to "anthropogenic causes for global warming are proven by the global warming" is circular.
Re:What caused the warming 400 years ago? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What caused the warming 400 years ago? (Score:5, Insightful)
The data shows a flat line for several hundred years, then a "hocky stick" increase coinciding with our use of fossil fuel, to use the term in TFA.
It's a little off to call those data. Those curves are reconstructions of temperatures from proxy data, like tree rings. What's more, as was pointed out above [lbl.gov], feeding statistically appropriate noise to the reconstruction methods used by Mann et al. rsults in a statistically indistinguishable "hocket stick."
Now, this doesn't mean there has been no warming --- in fact, we're pretty durn certain that it's warmer now than it was when Isaac Newton was alive. The Thames doesn't freeze solid like it used to. What it does mean is that the methods of Mann et al. can't distinguish data that shows warming from data that is uniformly random. In other words: warming, yes; hockey stick, no.
That is the crux of the issue.
Except for the part about "not true."
Now I know people who would probably fire back with the cliche "correlation doesn't imply blah blah blah", and then shut their brains off. The cliche is overused, and correlation ABSOLUTELY DOES point fingers at possible sources of the observed trend (that's called the Conclusion of the Results, or rather the interpretation of the experts).
Except the actual report doesn't say that.
The "actual interpretations of the experts" are that they have little confidence in the conclusion that global temperatures have actually increased dramatically or unexpectedly. (Again, that doesn't mean they haven't. It just means that we don't know, and the actual data and the reconstructions from the data don't tell us.)
Since NO OTHER MEASUREMENTS trend the same way, the choices are fairly limited as to what could be causing it.
On the contrary, since reconstructions of plain random numbers provide the same "hockey stick" results as the data, the reconstructions of Mann et al. don't actually tell us anything.
Sadly, I don't think four misstatements in four paragraphs is a
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I'm anonymous coward, so it's harder to get the coveted +5 blessing, but really, sometimes the wisdom of anonymous cowards is better than the Wisdom of Cowards.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
A few degrees will screw the world's climate (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Idiotic and Evident Lies (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Idiotic and Evident Lies (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are going to say with a straight face that global warming as evidenced by hotter and hotter summers for instance is not a fact, I suggest yo
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 thi