PUH-LEEZE Tell Me People Can't be THIS Stupid!

Al Gore is a charlatan, and “O’Bummer” just plain lies and wants to take your money. So writes a Reich wing nut on one of his latest blogs where he takes up global warming and proclaims: “There AIN’T NONE – since we can see a BLIZZARD breaking out now!” Then referring to the blizzard dumping up to 36” of snow in some places, including CT, RI and MA.

First clue, Sherlock: blizzards are SUPPOSED to occur in the winter! Last I checked, the calendar still said FEBRUARY – not July, so your ridiculous claims that Gore is a charlatan or Obama’s climate change remarks (at his Inauguration) are seriously misplaced. Maybe where the Sun doesn’t shine?

Second, singular events like this blizzard in the NE and 'Sandy' back in November, do not in general denote evidence for global warming-climate change or lack of evidence, although the increase in storm intensity over the past three decades does suggest it. The point is that in determining global warming –climate change we don’t merely look at one or two odd statistical anomalies but overall trends. Those trends as we see them are for higher and higher temperatures globally, not lower.

Our confused blogger perhaps missed the news from two months ago (at the DOHA Conference on Climate Change in Qatar), that nearly all the attendees agreed that the original goal of halting warming to a 2 degree increase is essentially fruitless. As I noted in an earlier blog: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/11/bill-mckibbens-prediction-of-nightmare.html

this level is the tipping point beyond which we're all for the high jump. But the consensus now is that the international goal cannot be reached. Last year alone, the combined nations of the planet pumped out nearly 38.2 billion tons of CO2 into the air from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. This is according to new calculations published in Climate Science journal.

This amount is more than the previous year and translates into 2.4 million lbs of CO2 released into the atmosphere each second.

The cumulative effect is even more dire, given most CO2 remains in the atmosphere for at least 100 years. Thus, the CO2 now heating our world via the greenhouse effect has been accumulated since at least 1912. Given this time burden, and what's still to unfold, it's preposterous to believe temperature increases can be held to less than 2C. This is according to Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway.Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria, Canada, put it in even starker terms:

"We are losing our ability to get a handle on the global warming problem."

Translation: we are on the cusp of a massive climate catastrophe for which humans will have no solutions and for which all of humanity will pay a steep price in the coming decades....until the runaway Greenhouse turns the planet into another Venus, see e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-did-once-good-planet-go-bad.html


All of these dire reports, such as the 2C limits exposed at DOHA, were confirmed in the recent issue of Physics Today (p. 17) noting the trepidation with which climate modelers are viewing the rapid melting of the polar ice. See also: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/12/w-antarcrtic-ice-sheet-melting-at-twice.html
The Physics Today report asserted that scientists’ alarm is justifiably based on the fact that the Arctic is the “thermostat” of the planet. Once that ceases to function, we are basically open to not just wild variations of climate (such as extreme blizzards in the winter, and extreme drought, or downpours-hurricanes and heat waves in the summer) but a progressive heating that will not only melt both polar ice caps adding meters to the ocean depths but also possible runaway heating.

The blogger may also have missed the news, or maybe he’s educationally unable to process it that 2013 had barely started but the photo image shows in an earlier blog http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-vision-of-humanitys-near-future.html

showed what we may likely face in the Northern hemisphere come June, July. For the record (no pun intended) July 2012 was the hottest ever recorded in U.S. annals with a mean tempeature of 77.6F. The average annual U.S. temperature for 2012 was 55.32F or one full degree higher than the old record set in 1998. (So much for the codswallop that all temperature increases ceased in 1998. But as I showed in earlier blogs, 2011-12 and onward would bring even higher temperatures if all the graphs presented in a 1998 Nature paper were properly interpreted.)

Even more eye-popping, the year 2012 displayed an average temperature a full 3.2 degrees hotter than the average for the entire 20th century! Meanwhile, nineteen states set yearly heat records - though Alaska was a bit cooler than average.

According to the National Climate Data Center (whose completed data comes out this coming week) through the first 11 months of 2012 the world was on pace to have its eighth warmest year ever. More disturbing still, 16 consecutive months have seen the U.S. with higher than average temperatures. This year promises to be no different, and we can expect not only severe heat waves such as transpired last summer and which erupted in Australia last month, but many more wildfires here in the Rocky Mountain West, as well as more intense hurricanes or superstorms like Sandy.

Instead of mocking global warming on account of  blizzards occurring in February (which  is a seasonal month for them to naturally occur in the northeast - even big ones) and making fun of Al Gore, the Reichie blogger would do better do open up a few actual physics books – because then maybe….MAYBE…he will understand climate change better, instead of making a moron of himself.

Better yet - maybe he can show he's qualified to even comment on physics issues (e.g. Big Bang, dark matter-energy, climate change) by taking and passing the physics test shown here:

http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/10/basic-physics-test.html

The time limit is one hour and thirty minutes and obviously, no googling! Score less than 70% and better stick to comic books or Bibles!