Thank god man-made global warming was proven to be a hoax. Just imagine what the world might have looked like now if those conspiring scientists had been telling the truth. No doubt NASA would be telling us that this year is now, so far, the hottest since humans began keeping records. The weather satellites would show that even when heat from the sun significantly dipped earlier this year, the world still got hotter. Russia's vast forests would be burning to the ground in the fiercest drought they have ever seen, turning the air black in Moscow, killing 15,000 people, and forcing foreign embassies to evacuate. Because warm air holds more water vapor, the world's storms would be hugely increasing in intensity and violence -- drowning one fifth of Pakistan, and causing giant mudslides in China.
The world's ice sheets would be sloughing off massive melting chunks four times the size of Manhattan. The cost of bread would be soaring across the world as heat shriveled the wheat crops. The increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be fizzing into the oceans, making them more acidic and so killing 40 percent of the phytoplankton that make up the irreplaceable base of the oceanic food chain. The denialists would be conceding at last that everything the climate scientists said would happen -- with their pesky graphs and studies and computers -- came to pass.
This is all happening today, except for that final stubborn step. It's hard to pin any one event on man-made global warming: There were occasional freak weather events before we started altering the atmosphere, and on their own, any of these events could be just another example. But they are, cumulatively, part of a plain pattern where extreme weather is occurring "with greater frequency and in many cases with greater intensity" as the temperature soars, as the US National Climatic Data Center puts it. This is exactly what climate scientists have been warning us man-made global warming will look like, to the letter. Ashen-faced, they add that all this is coming after less than one degree celsius of global warming since the Industrial Revolution. We are revving up for as much as five degrees more this century.
Yet as the evidence of global warming becomes ever clearer, the momentum to stop it has died. The Copenhagen climate summit evaporated, Barack Obama has given up on passing any climate change legislation, Hu Jintao is heaving even more coal, David Cameron has shot his huskies, and even sweet liberal Canada now has a government determined to pioneer a fuel -- tar sands -- that causes three times more warming than oil. True, the victims are starting to see the connections. The Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has been opposed to meaningful action on global warming, until he found the smoke-choked air in the Kremlin hard to breathe. But if we wait until every leader can taste the effects of warming in their mouths, the damage will be irreparable.
Given the stakes, the reasons why so many people still refuse to accept the evidence can seem oddly trivial. A common one is: "It snowed a lot in the US and Britain last year. Where was your warming then, eh?" But scientific theories are based on patterns, not individual events. You might know a 90-year-old woman who has smoked a pack of cigarettes every day of her life and is totally healthy. (I do.) It doesn't disprove the theory that smoking causes lung cancer. In the same way, one heavy snowfall doesn't prove anything if it is part of a wider overall pattern of dramatic warming. And that snow probably was. While it snowed a lot in a few places, there were at the very same time harsher, more bitter droughts in many more places -- making it globally the fifth hottest winter ever recorded, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (All the others were in the past decade). And that winter is your punchline proof that warming isn't happening?
But the broader public mood, smeared like sunscreen over us all, isn't active denial. No -- it's the desire to endlessly postpone this issue for another day. In 1848, a 25-year-old man called Phineas Gage was working on constructing the American railroads. It was his job to lay explosives to clear rocks out of the way -- but one day his explosive went off too soon, and a huge metal rod went through into his skull and out the other side. Amazingly, he survived -- but his personality changed. Suddenly, he was incapable of thinking about the future. The idea of restraining himself was impossible to grasp. If he had an urge, he would act on it at once. He could only ever live in an eternal present. As a civilization, we are beginning to look like Phineas Gage on a planetary scale.
Yet scattered among us there is a fascinating group of people who are offering a path to safety. Every summer since 2006, ordinary British citizens have built impromptu camps next to some of the most environmentally-destructive sites in Britain and taken direct action to shut their pollution down. So far, it has worked: They played a crucial role in the cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow and a big new coal power station at Kingsnorth.
That's how earlier this week I found myself on a high wooden siege tower in a camp in the Scottish hills, staring down across a moat towards the glistening, empty offices of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). You own this bank: 84 percent of it belongs to the taxpayer after the bailouts. Yet it is using your money to endanger you by funding the most environmentally-destructive behavior on earth, like burning the tar sands. The protesters chose to come here democratically -- everything at the climate camps is done by discussion and consensus -- because they have a better idea. Why not turn it into a Green Investment Bank, transforming Britain into a global hub for wind, solar and wave power? Why not go from promoting misery across the world to being a beacon of sanity?
So the protesters risked arrest in marching on RBS' offices because they know the stakes. As Professor Tim Flannery, one of the world's leading climate scientists, explains:
My great fear is that within the next few decades -- it could be next year, or it could be in fifty years, we don't know exactly when -- we will trap enough heat close to the surface to our planet to precipitate a collapse, or partial collapse, of a major ice shelf... I have friends who work on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and they say [when a collapse happens] you'll hear it in Sydney... Sea levels would rise pretty much instantaneously, certainly over a few months. We don't know how much it would rise. It could be ten centimeters, or a meter. We will have begun a retreat from our coasts... Once you have started that process, we wouldn't know when the next part of the ice sheet would collapse, we don't know whether sea level will stabilize. There's no point of retreat where you can safely go back to... I doubt whether our global civilization could survive such a blow, particularly the uncertainty it would bring.
Nature doesn't follow political fashion. Global warming may not be hot today, but the planet is -- hotter than ever. When you stare out over the wave of Weather of Mass Destruction we are unleashing, who looks crazy -- the protesters, or the people who have yet to join them?
An excellent source of clear, accessible videos debunking denialist claims can be found here.
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here or here.
You can follow Johann at www.twitter.com/johannhari101 or email him at j.hari [at] independent.co.uk
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We estimate the effect of extreme weather on life expectancy in the United States. Using high-frequency data, we find that both extreme heat and cold result in immediate increases in mortality. The increase in mortality following extreme heat appears mostly driven by near-term displacement, while the increase in mortality following extreme cold is long lasting. We estimate that the number of annual deaths attributable to cold temperature is 0.8% of average annual deaths in our sample. The longevity gains associated with mobility from the Northeast to the Southwest account for 4% to 7% of the total gains in life expectancy experienced by the U.S. population over the past thirty years.
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/rest.91.4.659
And since
"This was the 304th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985."
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=6
... there is obviously, indisputably no "cooling trend" as argued by Republicans and other coal- and petroleum-owned deniars, there is an "increasing extreme weather trend" in addition to the global warming trend, just as predicted by the consensus -- and 97% _is_ a consensus -- of all legitimate climate scientists.
Weather is to climate as .....
.....................250 words is to the science.
Warming did not stop in 1998, in fact it has accelerated. 2010 is the hottest year ever recorded by humans. You can expect many more record high temperatures over the next few years and decades.
Per the NOAA, so far yes it is.
SFTor: "Let's say that 2010 beats 1998 as the hottest year in recorded history"
Per NASA 2005 was the hottest year.
SFTor: "although this is unlikely. (The July anomaly stands at 0.43 degrees Celsius, which isn't very hot.)"
Not according to the NOAA, which says July was the 2nd-hottest July globally on record --- 1.19 F above the 20th century average of 60.4 F, and the hottest July on land on record (1.85 F above the 20th century average).
Moreover and more importantly, this has been was the warmest January-July globally on record - 1.22 F above the 20th century average.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=7&submitted=Get+Report
SFTor: "Is there any climate model that predicts a drastic increase in extreme weather events at this temperature?"
There you go again, confusing the global average temperature with regional temperatures.
SFTor: "Are there any empirical studies that point to extreme weather events in this temperature anomaly range?"
The extreme weather events including the Russian heat wave and the Pakistan floodings are consistent with what is to be expected from global warming.
SFTor: "We know our current temperatures are well within the overall range for the Holocene"
Of the warmest point of the Holocene, several thousand years ago.
Publicola, the entire post above is based on relating local weather events to global temperature anomalies. You are honest enough to see that, aren't you?
And to say that "the extreme weather events are consistent with" is just way too vague. The specific reasons that have been suggested for the Russian drought and the floods in Pakistan are that they are related to blocking events around the jet stream. That has nothing to do with man-made AGW.
SFTor, you are honest enough to understand that per the NOAA this is so far the hottest year on record, aren't you?
You are also honest enough to understand that your misleading conflation of an atmospheric temperature increase over a the past 3-decade average does not in any way contradict or otherwise undermine the fact that here on Planet Earth - and for that matter in the lower troposphere too - that this could easily end up the hottest year on record, aren't you?
Given the above, why did you misleadingly say that this is "unlikely" to be the warmest year on record, SFTor?
Global affects local, but local does not affect the whole planet.
"Russian drought and the floods in Pakistan are that they are related to blocking events around the jet stream. That has nothing to do with man-made AGW."
Sure it does. You don't think the jet stream is affected by global climate? What do you think instigates change in the jet stream?
Uh, you do understand that you are referring to atmospheric data and not Earth surface data... right?
Again down here on planet Earth per NOAA July was the 2nd-hottest July on record, and 1.19 F (0.66 C) above the 20th century average.
SFTor: "is at .49 degrees Celsius. "
Your correction of your previous inaccurate statement aside, you do understand that the 0.49 C (0.88 F) increase you are talking about here is only in relative reference to the average UAH lower tropospheric data since that data started being collected in 1979, which was after the current global warming trend of recent decades started... right?
Which is to say what you are talking about here is a close to 1 degree F increase above an average that was and is already above the 20th century average... right?
You also know that your source, Dr. Roy Spencer, also says in relation to said atmospheric data that "the race for warmest year in the 32-year satellite period of record is still too close to call with 1998 continuing its lead by only 0.07 C"... right?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/08/july-2010-uah-global-temperature-update-0-49-deg-c/
You knew all these things before you posted your incorrect and misleading statement below... right, SFTor?
The gist of the article is that this is the hottest year ever (presumably she means "in recorded history,") that the heat is man-made, and that this man-made heat has caused a series of extreme weather events.
On to the questions:
• Is this the hottest year in recorded history? Of course we can't say, there's another quarter to go.
• Let's say that 2010 beats 1998 as the hottest year in recorded history, although this is unlikely. (The July anomaly stands at 0.43 degrees Celsius, which isn't very hot.) Is there any climate model that predicts a drastic increase in extreme weather events at this temperature? Are there any empirical studies that point to extreme weather events in this temperature anomaly range?
• Have we seen extreme weather during other summers when the temperature was about the same? Again 1998 comes to mind. Did we see extreme weather in 1998 or other years where the temperature anomaly was on the high side? Have we seen extreme weather in cold years too?
• We know that our current temperatures are well within the overall range for the Holocene, at least if we base our judgment on the GISP 2 ice core record. What justifies the current temperature anomaly as extreme or worthy of "climate catastrophe" status?
Don’t you commie pinko liberals understand that any attempt to in any way interfere with the ability of the world’s power elite to properly lead people by their funding of things like global warming denialism and tea parties is the height of ingratitude? People like the Koch brothers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get out messages like “belief in global warming is stupid”. Why shouldn’t we believe them? How much money do YOU spend on getting your point of view across? Eh? See? These guys have all the answers and it is pointless to in any way counter their arguments, so why don’t you just give up?
Snark now off....
This is exactly what is happenning.
Indeed when one looks at the predictions the models make, (for example the RATE of ice melt) -- when there is an error in the model, it has been on the conservative side.
In other words, the warming (and resultant effects) is happenning FASTER than originally predicted.
So is Antarctic sea ice inversely related to the growth in CO2? Is the world cooling? Maybe the southern half?
Thanks for the information.
The question I had about El Ninos, was whether or not global warming was causing an increase in the FREQUENCY of El Ninos.
I had heard that or read that somewhere -- that there has been an increase in how frequently they are occurring, and that the hypothesis was that global warming was playing a role.
I do understand that the event itself is unrelated to global warming.
According to 'global warming' advocates,
You have a 'greenhouse effect' when more CO2 gas is added to the atmosphere and it absorbs more heat that is then emitted causing changes in the climate.
My argument is:
It is the sun that changes the temperature absorbed by the CO2 gas, the more CO2 man supposedly adds in net content to the atmosphere (debatable), the longer it would take for all of that gas to absorb and emit heat. If the sun was to go through any period of less intensity, then the CO2 would emit what heat it has left and become cooler. If the sun was to return to its previous intensity, it would actually take longer for the warming of the temperature to occur because now supposedly there is more CO2 gas in the atmosphere.
This all assuming that the earth is completely devoid of trees and other plant life that absorb CO2 and that the sun never goes through periods of intense solar flares and heat cycles or the fact that one volcano eruption can cancel out any new reduction emision of CO2 from all of mankind in one generation.
OK.. here is the translation, for people who have degrees in science or at least a basic scientific education, and might not understand what you are talking about.. here it is, here is the translation.....
"I have no idea what I am talking about but if I repeat or concoct enough nonsense, I will help prevent understanding of this issue by others so folks such as the Koch brothers can continue to lead us around on a string like a bull with a ring through its nose."
Got it.
Thanks........
The burden of proof is on you.
The earth has endured various forms of changes in the climate, perhaps because of some of the factors you argue about.
However we have to be clear about identifying the real problem, it there is a problem at all.
Mankind does have a problem, it's called pollution.
We need CO2 so plants can use it in their processes of photosynthesis.
That's why when an island volcano finishes a major eruption, plant life begins to grow, this has been proven even after a nuclear blast.
We don't need to tax carbon, we don't need to trade carbon, we simply need to break up the mega-corporate international conglomerates, like GE and BASF, so that when a company violates regulations over pollution then they are quickly SHUT DOWN and put-out-of-business.
If you are serious about pollution then I'm sure everyone is ready to join a cause to stop it.
However if you are looking to create a new derivatives bubble over a substance that everyone is forced to live with, then the sane members of humanity must stop that.
wm08:
"You have a 'greenhouse effect' when more CO2 gas is added to the atmosphere and it absorbs more heat that is then emitted causing changes in the climate."
You have exhibited a glaring misunderstanding of how emission and absorption spectra are related. That is the only hint I will give you about that error. You must do your own homework.
I can't help you if you don't understand your own arguments.
The hotter the world gets the more precipitation
The more precipitation the more CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere
In earth's history the world was an ice ball. No Clouds, No water. Life was rare and microscopic 60 feet below ice. This was a big puzzle for a while in the scientific community in how the world ever heated up because the whole world was white and light reflected. Eventually a breakthrough, volcanoes were spewing 100s of tons of co2 into the atmosphere. And over millions of years eventually the whole world heated up and ice melted. Why isn't the world much hotter than it is now? co2 is released into the atmosphere in 100s of tons by volcanoes. The % of co2 in the atmosphere should be increasing. But rain takes co2 out of the atmosphere, and the hotter the world gets the more rain there is.
my answer to global warming is we heat up the ocean more than normal, and make it rain more, and that way it will counter act too much co2 in the world.
http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi3990226457/
do you know when we the humans start to use fossils and coal...?
do you believe that Moses and Jesus used cars ,trains and airplanes and they had their rallys in convention centers with electricity and A/C...
Using the same fear tactics, dogma, absolutism and self important arrogant language.
No Thanks
Not sure if i qualify as a denier. I do not deny that global warming or global cooling does happen, just if mankind's contribution is a significant part of climate change.
KOS "do you know when we the humans start to use fossils and coal.." No, but humans have been around for 40,000 years, civilized for 4,000, so I would throw out 4K as my guess on coal.
KOS "do you believe that Moses and Jesus used cars ,trains and airplanes" No, but...can we bring in where scientists are predicting arctic melts and the ocean rising?
You have to either accept the computer models, which are based largely on ice core data, or reject it. The computer/ice core indicates the earth was much warmer in Roman times ( Jesus) as well as the medieval warm period. What the alarmists are attempting is to only count the information that supports their conclusion/agenda. By the data, it was warmer in the past than present day, and had to be natural.
And a question for you, what is the largest (by volume ) greenhouse gas, and what percentage of the greenhouse gases does in comprise?
Sure - Arctic melting and rising sea levels were predicted by climate scientists as a consequence of man-made global warming, and so far said predictions have been correct.
Illusion: "You have to either accept the computer models, which are based largely on ice core data, or reject it."
Wrong on two levels:
1: Computer models are not "based largely on ice core data" - they are instead based largely on scientific theory.
2: Anthropogenic global warming theory predates computer models by on the order of a century.
Illusion: "The computer/ice core indicates the earth was much warmer in Roman times ( Jesus) as well as the medieval warm period."
Wrong again. Far from "much warmer", for example per state of the art science the medieval warm period was slightly cooler than today.
Illusion: "it was warmer in the past than present day, and had to be natural."
Cancer was "natural" before cigarettes, too - in your mind does that mean cigarettes don't cause cancer?
Illusion: "And a question for you, what is the largest (by volume) greenhouse gas, and what percentage of the greenhouse gases does in comprise?"
H2O; ~99%.
And a question for you: Can H2O, like anthropogenic greenhouse gases including CO2, be a multidecadal global warming forcing agent?
Or do anthropogenic greenhouse gases instead influence atmospheric H2O concentrations, which in turn amplifies anthropogenic greenhouse gas-forced global warming?
fill up a pot of water and put it on the stove , turn on med-high and let boil ...
it takes for ever to get to the boil point, right ?
now put the cover on the pot and let it boil ...
2-3 minutes and the water is boiling.....
so the greenhouse effect from the corbon dioxide produced by the emmisions of burning
fossil fuels and coal is having the same result on the Planet as the cover of the pot, to accelarate the water to rich the boiling point faster..
yes our planet has hot or cold periods but this time we meesing up the normal timing process
BTW, the fossils and coal burning really start with the Industrial Revolution( 200 years ago only???) and the last 40 years is unbelieveably crazy, plus add up the mindless deforestation around the globe, our future is pitty much srcewed.
So called “scientists” like Fourier, and Tyndall, and Arrhenius claimed that there was global warming in the 1800’s, before there were even computers, so you can be sure that THEIR ideas were right, right? I mean, come on, you are using science from the 1800’s to make claims in 2010? Give me a break.
No I will stick with absolutely fair and balanced sources of information like FOX Newts. FOX Newts is real American Newts, and is not in any way influenced by the fossil fuel industry. FOX Newts is not corrupted by foreign influence. FOX Newts sponsors and encourages Real Americanism, practiced by real Americans. True American geniuses like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity don’t need a stupid college degree to know what we can all see. There is no global warming, and humans have nothing to do with the rising temperatures around the world.
SNARK OFF
NOAA has repeatedly denied the existence of underwater oil plumes (see this and this), calculated the spill to be only 5,000 barrels a day, and buried core data on the oil spill.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20575
As NOAA Denies Oil In South Florida Hundreds Of Tarballs Wash Ashore In South East Florida.
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/07/05/noaa-denies-oil-south-florida-hundreds-tarballs-wash-ashore-2009/
NOAA denies findings from Gulf oil research vessels it funded
http://coto2.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/noaa-denies-findings-from-gulf-oil-research-vessels-it-funded/
Senior NOAA Scientist Admits He Lied That Gulf Spill Oil Is Gone, Puts Administration's Spill-Disclosure "Credibility" In Question
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/senior-noaa-scientist-admits-he-lied-gulf-spill-oil-gone-puts-administrations-spill-disclosu
Is it your impression that the entire agency participated in that deception? We all know that untrue, falsely optimistic statements have come out of NOAA hq since BP's Gulf disaster began. But do you know whether it was the entire agency, most of the agency, or a few private contractors who lied in NOAA's name? In short, have you done your homework on this story?