The sobering July 16 news briefing by Susan Solomon - senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) caught many slack-jawed. As reported in EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (Vol. 91, No. 30, 27 July), Solomon warned that because CO2 is so long-lived in the atmosphere (~ 100 years for each molecule from the time deposited) and so much has been injected by humans, "it could effectively lock the Earth and future generations into warming not just for decades or centuries but literally for thousands of years."
This came on the heels of an earlier report by the U.S. National Research Council to the effect that Earth is evidently now entering a new "geological era" which they have dubbed the "Anthropocene" (i.e. human-originated) during which "the planet's environment will largely be controlled by the effects of human activities."
Incredibly, despite these reports and the new data (see charts above) there remain legions of otherwise sane and sober humans who can't conceive one species can overturn the climatic dynamics of one planet. The ongoing meme seems to be that humans are "too puny" or "too inconsequential" to do much to affect global climate. Evidently, this lot hasn't been paying much attention as the human population has exponentially increased in the past 150 years. Each such increase introduces more humans with ever more powerful pollution inducing effects, from despoiling the oceans (already running on empty in many places as far as oxygen content) to the atmosphere - where so much CO2 has already been absorbed it's now being transferred to ocean absorption increasing the pH or acidity. That acidity is now 30% greater than at the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
Most of these doubters cite percentage proportions of CO2 in the atmosphere (e.g. 0.03 % or less), as if a piddling percentage confirms their view that CO2 can't be a major player. They seem to ignore, or discount, that even small differential concentrations can majorly impact projections. For example, we are now just passing 390 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, and most climate dynamics models suggest a runaway Greenhouse Effect if that surpasses 450-475 ppm.
Indeed, a National Research Council document issued in 2000, showed CO2 with the highest forcing component of all greenhouse gases, at 1.3 to 1.5 W/m^2 . Methane came next at 0.5 to 0.7 W/m^2 , then tropospheric ozone at , 0.25 to 0.75 W/m^2 . DO any of the "man can't change things" brigade even glance at these reports? Are they even aware they exist? One wonders!
As the charts attached confirm (source: Financial Times, July 29), study after study confirms temperatures on land and at sea are increasing. Meanwhile the Arctic ice sheet has diminished more than ever, in both extent and thickness, even as sea levels have risen. The chart graphs shown come from numerous sources, including: the UK Hadley Center, the NOAA, the UK Met Office, Oxford University and the National Climate Data Center. Moreover, the NOAA alone gathered much more new data beyond the last IPCC Report issued in 2007.
The warp and woof the trends disclosed in the data enticed Myles Allen of Oxford University to comment (FT, ibid.): that it was clear from the accumulated work of climate scientists that human-engendered greenhouse gases were the problem. In his words (ibid.):
"Climategate never really brought climate science into question at all."
And what about all the hullaballo and kerfuffle with "Climategate" and the great email flap that supposedly exposed chicanery and manipulation of data? According to an EOS Transactions article on the outcome ('Report on Climate Change Emails Exonerates Scientists', Vol. 91, No. 29, July 20, 2010):
"The report (Commissioned by the University of East Anglia) specifically refutes a number of concerns raised about tampering with scientific data and notes that allegations about CRU (Climate Research Unit) scientists misusing the IPCC's process 'cannot be upheld'"
The main fault lodged against the scientists was the failure to share information with critics. (Somewhat understandable when the would-be sharers beheld how so much earlier data, as appeared in a 2003 paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, was misrepresented to either hide trends they didn't like (greenhouse CO2 increases) or exaggerate those they did (solar irradiance). For example, in one paper Soon and Baliunas used 50-year data increments when the IPCC scientists already disclosed anthropogenic warming appears at 30 -year levels.)
The American Geophysical Union's own take on the email flap was reported in December, 2009, noting:
"The AGU finds it offensive that these emails were obtained by illegal cyber attacks, then exploited to distort the scientific debate about the urgent issue of climate change".
In the meantime, as noted in the FT piece, two new pieces of research have found that the first half of this year has been the warmest on record, thereby refuting claims of many climate skeptics that global warming has "stopped" or reached a "plateau". As I also pointed out numerous times before, this misinterpretation is a direct result of not paying serious attention to the paper of Noel Keenlyside et al that started the "warming has stopped" bilge. In fact, their ('Nature') paper showed nothing of the kind. Had the skeptics not been so quick on the draw they'd have seen that each point in the hindcast-decadal forecast graph represented a 10-year centered mean. Thus, each datum represented the average temperature of the decade starting 5 years before that point and ending 5 years after that point. Thus, the statistics for potential “cooling” could not possibly have been justifiably extrapolated beyond 1998 + 5 = 2003. Yet imbeciles all over the place have insisted it is "ongoing". My point again, statistics usually don't lie, but careless or reckless humans, if not judicious in reckoning them, can create statistical fabrications where none exist ab initio.
This came on the heels of an earlier report by the U.S. National Research Council to the effect that Earth is evidently now entering a new "geological era" which they have dubbed the "Anthropocene" (i.e. human-originated) during which "the planet's environment will largely be controlled by the effects of human activities."
Incredibly, despite these reports and the new data (see charts above) there remain legions of otherwise sane and sober humans who can't conceive one species can overturn the climatic dynamics of one planet. The ongoing meme seems to be that humans are "too puny" or "too inconsequential" to do much to affect global climate. Evidently, this lot hasn't been paying much attention as the human population has exponentially increased in the past 150 years. Each such increase introduces more humans with ever more powerful pollution inducing effects, from despoiling the oceans (already running on empty in many places as far as oxygen content) to the atmosphere - where so much CO2 has already been absorbed it's now being transferred to ocean absorption increasing the pH or acidity. That acidity is now 30% greater than at the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
Most of these doubters cite percentage proportions of CO2 in the atmosphere (e.g. 0.03 % or less), as if a piddling percentage confirms their view that CO2 can't be a major player. They seem to ignore, or discount, that even small differential concentrations can majorly impact projections. For example, we are now just passing 390 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, and most climate dynamics models suggest a runaway Greenhouse Effect if that surpasses 450-475 ppm.
Indeed, a National Research Council document issued in 2000, showed CO2 with the highest forcing component of all greenhouse gases, at 1.3 to 1.5 W/m^2 . Methane came next at 0.5 to 0.7 W/m^2 , then tropospheric ozone at , 0.25 to 0.75 W/m^2 . DO any of the "man can't change things" brigade even glance at these reports? Are they even aware they exist? One wonders!
As the charts attached confirm (source: Financial Times, July 29), study after study confirms temperatures on land and at sea are increasing. Meanwhile the Arctic ice sheet has diminished more than ever, in both extent and thickness, even as sea levels have risen. The chart graphs shown come from numerous sources, including: the UK Hadley Center, the NOAA, the UK Met Office, Oxford University and the National Climate Data Center. Moreover, the NOAA alone gathered much more new data beyond the last IPCC Report issued in 2007.
The warp and woof the trends disclosed in the data enticed Myles Allen of Oxford University to comment (FT, ibid.): that it was clear from the accumulated work of climate scientists that human-engendered greenhouse gases were the problem. In his words (ibid.):
"Climategate never really brought climate science into question at all."
And what about all the hullaballo and kerfuffle with "Climategate" and the great email flap that supposedly exposed chicanery and manipulation of data? According to an EOS Transactions article on the outcome ('Report on Climate Change Emails Exonerates Scientists', Vol. 91, No. 29, July 20, 2010):
"The report (Commissioned by the University of East Anglia) specifically refutes a number of concerns raised about tampering with scientific data and notes that allegations about CRU (Climate Research Unit) scientists misusing the IPCC's process 'cannot be upheld'"
The main fault lodged against the scientists was the failure to share information with critics. (Somewhat understandable when the would-be sharers beheld how so much earlier data, as appeared in a 2003 paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, was misrepresented to either hide trends they didn't like (greenhouse CO2 increases) or exaggerate those they did (solar irradiance). For example, in one paper Soon and Baliunas used 50-year data increments when the IPCC scientists already disclosed anthropogenic warming appears at 30 -year levels.)
The American Geophysical Union's own take on the email flap was reported in December, 2009, noting:
"The AGU finds it offensive that these emails were obtained by illegal cyber attacks, then exploited to distort the scientific debate about the urgent issue of climate change".
In the meantime, as noted in the FT piece, two new pieces of research have found that the first half of this year has been the warmest on record, thereby refuting claims of many climate skeptics that global warming has "stopped" or reached a "plateau". As I also pointed out numerous times before, this misinterpretation is a direct result of not paying serious attention to the paper of Noel Keenlyside et al that started the "warming has stopped" bilge. In fact, their ('Nature') paper showed nothing of the kind. Had the skeptics not been so quick on the draw they'd have seen that each point in the hindcast-decadal forecast graph represented a 10-year centered mean. Thus, each datum represented the average temperature of the decade starting 5 years before that point and ending 5 years after that point. Thus, the statistics for potential “cooling” could not possibly have been justifiably extrapolated beyond 1998 + 5 = 2003. Yet imbeciles all over the place have insisted it is "ongoing". My point again, statistics usually don't lie, but careless or reckless humans, if not judicious in reckoning them, can create statistical fabrications where none exist ab initio.
As we wait and watch the world slowly burn, one has to wonder now many more prolonged heat waves it'll take before the purblind skeptics wake up and smell the ashes. How many more scorching years of drought - as now being experienced in Russia (where the wheat crop is threatened and may provoke a global food shortage- see today's WSJ, p. A1), as well as raging fires such as we beheld in Australia last year. Denial can only work for so long, and it seems to be the time (finally!) for the skeptics to shut up with their false science, and admit their whole agenda is an economic and political one. They and their capitalist benefactors dislike the prospect of higher carbon emissions taxes or cutbacks, so exploit pseudo-science to make a specious case to back away.
They'd earn much more respect, certainly from me, if they just came out and openly said they fear the economic costs and THAT is why they are fighting the IPCC, the AGU, the NOAA and others in the scientific - reality based - realm. But don't come back with specious crap that the "warming mongers are doing it for the money-grants". Believe me folks, the grant money isn't all that much and pales beside what the capitalist think tanks (like the American Enterprise Institute, or George C. Marshall Institute), are offering their resident and assorted adjunct drones to write denial codswallop.
Thanks for this update on the warming data as well as the email fake flap! This is some mighty serios stuff and I hope the flat earthers are paying attention for once, especially to how this summer the temperatures are sizzling worldwide. It's time they really stopped their fraudulent arguments, especially the one about just jumping on board a bandwagon to get money for grants.
ReplyDeletePeople that still refuse to accept human induced global warming, like that idiot Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, really need to either have themselves committed for mental treatment or therapy, or shut up.
They are making the whole country look like the morons they are.