Manmade Climate Change Discussion

[knocker]

A quote from a great man,

 

"Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled".

[Methuselah]

A quote from a great man,

 

"Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled".

No, but the public certainly can...

[BornFromTheVoid]

Thermokarst is a feature of permafrost environments, and thermokarst slumps are a feature of it melting. The number of slumps and other erosional features will increase as the Arctic warms. Melting permafrost is a massive cost across large areas of polar regions, it causes huge damage to different aspects of infrastructure.

 

Despite the cooling trend across much of Alaska in the last few years, much of the coastal west and north of the state are still warming due to the sea ice loss and Arctic amplification in general. There simply is no way that the warming of the Arctic isn't also thawing increasingly large areas of permafrost.

 

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_romanovsky.html

http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/permafrost.html

 

Some houses contribute to the permafrost thaw directly beneath them, but the majority is caused by air temperatures. With coastal permafrost thaw, there is also the added impact of sea ice loss which increases the erosion rate (as sea ice used to act as a buffer on waves and swells before). River bank erosion increases too as permafrost thaws, which only makes sense I think.

Edited May 23, 2013 by pottyprof

[knocker]

[Gray-Wolf]

I also thought we'd all seen , and digested, the report from last year that placed a 2c rise as the threshold for a total northern permafrost melt out (over time)?

 

With sea ice loss impacting temps over 1,500km inland how can sea ice loss not impact the lands beyond? Once we have turned 'seasonal' with sea ice I believe all attention will then turn to the plight of the North's permafrost and the impacts the loss of it brings.

 

It appears to be another 'domino' effect with melting permafrost ensuring a steady GHG output to further up the temps over time.

 

Personally I believe we cannot escape the 2c threshold with both the temp rises we see already and those we are told are already 'in the pipeline' taking us there over the next 30yrs or so?.

[knocker]

London and the East of England will by the end of the century be at a significantly higher risk of flooding than had been expected, according to projections by climate scientists.

 

A European project has predicted an average global sea-level rise of up to 69cm, with a 5 per cent chance of a rise of nearly a metre on British shorelines. In the worst case, the Thames barrier, which shields London from storm surges, would be breached every 12 years.

 

David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey, who is co-ordinating the programme, said that the findings added weight to a plan to upgrade the Thames barrier.

 

The project also gave the first detailed global mapping of estimated sea-level rises, revealing that Britain was likely to fare relatively well. Regions such as Western Australia and the Pacific, where there are many low-lying islands, are expected to have increases of up to 1.5 metres, but the rises on European coastlines are likely to be less than the global average.

 

© The Times.

 

Scientists warn of up to 70 cm of sea level rise by 2100, but is this better or worse than we thought?

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/05/scientists-warn-of-up-to-70-cm-of-sea-level-rise-by-2100,-but-is-this-better-or-worse-than-we-thought

Edited May 15, 2013 by knocker

[knocker]

I quite like this blog but haven't had chance to read this properly so no comment.

 

Truth is flooding out?

 

The Climate crisis in three easy charts.

http://thefrogthatjumpedout.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/truth-is-flooding-out.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Edited May 15, 2013 by knocker

[knocker]

In November, President Obama suggested that we needed a wide-ranging national discussion about climate change. But where to have that conversation? There are so many stories from communities that are on the front lines of climate change, grappling with ways to cope and looking for options. Here are ten places especially deserving of a visit from the President because they are dealing with consequences of climate change that affect many other parts of the country, indeed the world.

 

 

http://blog.ucsusa.org/10-places-president-obama-should-visit-to-see-climate-change-in-action-127

[knocker]

How unusual is it—and what happened to warming?

Bob Henson • May 10, 2013 | Bare trees and brown shrubs, freakish snows and harsh freezes: from Minnesota to Texas, it’s as if someone hit the “pause†button just ahead of springtime. The last month has seen a trail of smashed records across the central United States, as pulse after pulse of cold air careened down the Great Plains. Meanwhile, southern Canada has had record warmth. How does all this fit into the bigger picture of a warming climate?

 

 

http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/opinion/9534/putting-spring-s-cold-context

[knocker]

Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature Posted on 16 May 2013 by dana1981, John Cook

A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing global warming.

 

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1994&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[Methuselah]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=2024

[Gray-Wolf]

I'd even applaud the Koch Bros if they did similar! I'm still stuck with the old Rio "Think Global, act local" so every little helps. If much of the developing world could 'skip' carbon fuels and move straight into renewables that would surely be a help (and silence those voices who claim we seek to hold down development there)?

[knocker]

Good background to Pliocene sea level discussion

 

How High Could the Tide Go?

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/science/earth/seeking-clues-about-sea-level-from-fossil-beaches.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Edited May 19, 2013 by knocker

[knocker]

Energy budget constraints on climate response

To the Editor

 

The rate of global mean warming has been lower over the past decade than previously. It has been argued^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5} that this observation might require a downwards revision of estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity, that is, the long-term (equilibrium) temperature response to a doubling of…

 

Free access with registration. http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1836.html

 

Supplementary information.

 

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/ngeo1836-s1.pdf

 

[knocker]

Heartland Institute wastes real scientists' time – yet again

 

Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where armchair experts gave up fighting over whether climate change is occurring?

 

This spring, I began receiving calls and emails from colleagues about a strange little book that was mailed to environmental science professors around the country. This was a big mailing, in total, a reported 100,000 copies were sent out. What was it about this little book that got us talking? Many things. First, a coordinated mailing of a book is unusual. But what is more unusual is a book that purports to be the "real story" about climate change, with graphs, figures, and tables. It came with a foreward by Senator Harrison Schmitt who is well known for misrepresenting the science. There was also an accompanying letter by Fred Singer. Many of us already know of Fred Singer; he was focused on in an excellent book by Dr Naomi Oreskes who catalogued his history of undermining the science and concerns related to second-hand smoke, ozone depletion, and acid rain. The letter from Fred Singer was on letterhead from the Heartland Institute which is a radical organisation that had compared belief in global warming to murder.

 

While author of the book, Mr Goreham, is described as a "researcher on environmental issues", a literature search for scientific publications revealed nothing.

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/may/20/heartland-institute-scientists?CMP=twt_gu

Edited May 21, 2013 by knocker

[knocker]

I read Ridley's article in the Times and I think he must have been hyperventilating at the time. I like Otto's response.

 

Myles Allen in the Guardian following the paper on climate sensitivity by Otto et al.

 

Matt Ridley has joined the real climate debate

 

The climate sceptic's interpretation of my study as final endorsement of his position means we can move on.

 

It isn't often, as a climate scientist, that you find your research being enthusiastically endorsed by climate sceptic Matt Ridley in the Times. We published a paper in Nature Geoscience  on Sunday giving a new best estimate of 1.3C for the warming expected due to increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the time when carbon dioxide levels reach double what they were before the industrial revolution (known as Transient Climate Response, or TCR).

 

Ridley is excited about this, because he feels it means that until his teenage children reach retirement age, they won't have to worry about global warming. And he is worried that government policies are misguided because they place their faith in climate models, like one of the Met Office models that puts the warming instead at 2.5C, almost twice our estimate.

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/may/21/matt-ridley-joined-real-climate-debate

Edited May 22, 2013 by knocker

[Methuselah]

http://logicalmisery.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/generic-article-about-disagreeing-with-science-with-opinions-and-anecdotes/

[Methuselah]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/magazine/why-rational-people-buy-into-conspiracy-theories.html?pagewanted=all&_r=5&

[knocker]

El Nino’s effect on CO2 causes confusion about CO2′s role for climate change

Are the rising atmospheric CO₂-levels a result of oceans warming up? And does that mean that CO₂ has little role in the global warming? Moreover, are the rising levels of CO₂ at all related to human activity?

These are claims made in a fresh publication by Humlum et al. (2012). However, when seeing them in the context of their analysis, they seem to be on par with the misguided notion that the rain from clouds cannot come from the oceans because the clouds are intermittent and highly variable whereas the oceans are just there all the time. I think that the analysis presented in Humlum et al. (2012) is weak on four important accounts: the analysis, the physics, reviewing past literature, and logic.

 

 

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/09/el-ninos-effect-onco2-causes-confusion/

[knocker]

Is Australia the Face of Climate Change to Come? Extreme weather Down Under may foreshadow events on a global scale.

In early 2012 once-in-a-century floods submerged swaths of Great Britain and Ireland, causing some $1.52 billion in damages. Then in June record-high temperatures in Russia sparked wildfires that consumed 74 million acres of pristine Siberian taiga. Months after that, Hurricane Sandy pummeled seven countries, killing hundreds and running up an estimated $75 billion in damages. Just this week, a tornado of virtually unheard of size and ferocity tore through a small city in Oklahoma, leaving 24 people dead.

Each of these one-off traumas was bad enough, wreaking havoc, but in Australia such events seem to be becoming commonplace.

The Lucky Country has experienced a major spike in extreme weather in the past few years, with a string of devastating incidents just since January.

 

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130524-australia-extreme-weather-climate-change-heat-wave-science-world/?now=2013-05-10-00:01

[Gray-Wolf]

Some folk call Australia 'the second arctic' due to the speed at which change is impacting there?

 

Once the Arctic Sea ice has gone all eyes will be on Australia to see how AGW consumes a continent.

[knocker]

The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial

All movements that reject an overwhelming scientific consensus show 5 inevitable characteristics. They celebrate fake experts, cherry pick the data, argue using misrepresentation and logical fallacies, indulge in conspiracy theories, and demand impossible expectations of what research can deliver.

 

These characteristics are seen in the movements that deny the scientific consensus on vaccination, HIV and AIDS and the link between smoking and cancer. They are also abundantly evident in the movement that denies the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming.

 

Industry and conservative groups have been attacking scientific consensus for decades. As far back as 1991, Western Fuels Association launched a $510,000 campaign to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)" in the public perception. A memo from communications strategist Frank Luntz leaked in 2002 advised Republican politicians to "continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate." In a recent analysis of syndicated conservative opinion pieces spanning 2007 to 2010, the most popular myth was “there is no consensusâ€.

 

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/5-characteristics-consensus-denial.html#.UaTZZtHt7HF.twitter

[knocker]

Comparing global temperature observations and simulations, again

A recent comparison of global temperature observations and model simulations on this blog prompted a rush of media and wider interest, notably in the Daily Mail, The Economist & in evidence to the US House of Representatives. Given the widespread misinterpretation of this comparison, often without the correct attribution or links to the original source, a more complete description & update is needed.

 

 

http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2013/comparing-observations-and-simulations-again/

[knocker]

Seeing as Tim Yeo is being quoted in the other thread. From the same link.

 

Tim Yeo: humans may not be to blame for global warming Humans may not be responsible for global warming, according to Tim Yeo, the MP who oversees government policy on climate change.

The chairman of the Commons Energy and Climate Change committee said he accepts the earth’s temperature is increasing but said “natural phases†may be to blame.

Such a suggestion sits at odds with the scientific consensus. One recent survey of 12,000 academic papers on climate change found 97 per cent agree human activities are causing the planet to warm.

 

 

Last paragraph.

 

Asked about the comments this afternoon, Mr Yeo said: "It is possible there are natural causes as well, but my view has always been that – for twenty years – I have thought the scientific evidence has been very convincing. The strong probability is that it is man-made causes contributing to greenhouse gas concentrations."

 

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10086694/Tim-Yeo-humans-may-not-be-to-blame-for-global-warming.html

Edited May 29, 2013 by knocker

[Gray-Wolf]

The thing those warmist commie (fatherless children) don't have data on is how the instant uploading of CO2 will have on the planet and in what time scales!

 

In the past we see CO2 going up at like 56ppm per million years (or so) but we have done way more than that in less than a hundred years (now what's a hundred as a percentage of a million?).

 

Surely great goddess climate won't notice the change at that rate of knots???

 

Prior CO2 forced warmings (like the PETM) had millions of years to accrue CO2 and so temps could keep pace with the game but this time??? Nah! Man is far to clevah, inject it in and by the time impacts take hold we're either long dead or some brain nut has it all sussed and we're sorted?

Edited May 29, 2013 by Gray-Wolf