More than 2,000 highest max temperature records across the USA were
broken in July 2012. Source:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Climatic Data
Center)
No, I won't ask whether it's hot enough for ya, as I'm sure you've heard that many times before. But how about if we ask you the next best thing: so, do you believe in global warming now?
Bryan Walsh of TIME Magazine wrote:
This isn't to say that climate change is directly causing the extreme heat that's been suffocating much of the U.S. this summer. Fingerprinting a single extreme weather event as evidence of global warming — be it a heat wave, a major storm, a drought or a flood — take years of intensive study, though researchers are beginning to make those connections. A 2011 study in Nature made waves by linking rising instances of extreme precipitation in the second half of the 20th century to man-made global warming — the kind of large-scale survey that needs to be done to make the climate change case authoritatively. The sheer number of factors that influence individual weather events is immense. But we do have a pretty good idea of what climate change will look like in the years to come — if it continues uninterrupted — and it will look a lot like this summer, this spring and this winter. "The frequency of hot days and hot periods has already increased and will increase further," says Oppenheimer. "What we're seeing fits into the pattern you would expect."
You can find out about the first law by Googling it. I learned about it in engineering school.
you wrote:
> I’ll try to at least respond to each of your points.
For which I thank you. I wrote:
>> Rising global temperatures: (...) In its First Assessment Report of 1990, the IPCC predicted that the average rate of increase of global mean temperature would be about 0.3 °C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C).
> What you’ve done is select the “worst case scenario” as your standard of proof.
You are IMHO misreading the 1990 IPCC report. What you refer to as "worst case scenario" is what the IPCC called "Business-as-Usual scenario (for the) emissions of greenhouse gases". According to this scenario, given in 1990, CO2 levels should have reached about 393ppm in 2011. This is exactly what they did reach. In other words, the scenario of CO2 emissions I used as my standard of proof is the scenario that actually happened and for which the IPCC had made a prediction of a temperature trand - a prediction which turned to be off by 100%.
>> Snowfall: All models predicted falling snowcover particularly in the northern hemisphere and during winter, (...)
> One decade does not constitute a long-term global average, and a decade-long graph that ends on a year with record high snowfall is misleading at best (...)
Ten years are not too short to establish whether there is a trend or not. The downward trend the models predicted is nowhere in evidence, even if you discount 2011. Nor was it just the winter of 2011 that was "misleadingly" rich in snow: so were the winters of 2003, 2008 and 2010.
> Rutgers does the plotting for us over a longer period of time.
The Gong and Frei paper used the year 2000 as the starting point for the models' snow cover predictions. Snow cover measurements before that date are hardly useful to judge the models' predictive power.
>> Water vapor feedback: (...) This positive feedback should be measurable as an increasing infrared opacity. No such increasing opacity is observed (...).
> It has been measured (see AIRS)
It seems to me that you are mistaking increased IR opacity, which the models predict and isn't there, with increased water vapor content, which the models also predict, Aqua/AIRS did measure, however isn't the point here nor is it contested.
> It is, however, your choice if you choose to believe a thoroughly debunked Physicist’s paper over empiricism.
You are replacing reasoning with name-calling. I am referring to the paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell of 2008, who were encouraged to publish by none other than Piers Foster.
>> Troposheric hot spot: (...) the HadAT2 radiosonde data showed a relative lack of warming in the tropical troposphere where all models simulated maximum warming.
> Again, we have short-term observation of this
What Santer tried to show in your cited paper was that if he implied enough large measurement uncertainties into the HadAT2 data, then a hot spot hiding somewhere in the error bars could not be ruled out. I leave it to the readers to decide if this indeed constitutes "short-term observation" of the hot spot. Sherwood at least conceded that direct temperature observations from radiosonde and satellite data have often not shown the expected hot spot. So, instead of using direct measurements he tried to indirectly infer troposheric temperatures from wind measurements. Again, I leave it to each reader himself to judge if that convices him. And by the way: that the HadAT2 radiosonde data showed a relative lack of warming in the tropical troposphere where all models simulated maximum warming is not just my own conclusion; I actually took this wording verbatim out of the US Climate Change Science Program's 2006 final report.
Finally, allow me to thank you for our short exchange and to conclude with a favourite quotation:
"Science thrives on errors, cutting them away one by one. (...) Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved. (...) Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise. (...) Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Sceptical scrutiny is opposed." (Carl Sagan)
Do you actually know what the first law of thermodynamics is? I'm curious to see how you think it applies to your argument.
And how, exactly, have I been fooled by politics? I don't pay attention to Al Gore. I pay attention to the consensus of experimentation and observation, which unswervingly points to Anthropogenic Global Warming. I have the entire body of scientific evidence to back up my opinion. How about you?
The scientific method is just fine. It's the politics that have a lot of people, like yourself, fooled.
Application of the first law of thermodynamics, the time-integral of sunspot numbers (a proxy for energy retained by the planet) and a generalization of ocean thermal cycles explains average global temperature anomalies since 1895 with an accuracy of 88%. Accounting also for the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide increases the accuracy by about 0.5%.
You'll pardon me if I don't take your word for it over the National Academies of Science of every major industrialized country and 97%-98% of actively publishing climate scientists (A.K.A. experts).
It is your prerogative if you wish to maintain a fundamental distrust of the scientific method, but you should know that it doesn't exactly help your credibility. Denialism usually boils down to irrational conspiracy theories anyway.
Again, I credit your willingness to dig deeper. Unfortunately I'm writing this before work and don't have the time to create as thorough a response as I'd like, but I'll try to at least respond to each of your points.
Global Temp: The IPCC creates models to account for best-case, worst-case, and likely scenarios. It's difficult/impossible to predict carbon emissions at significant periods into the future, so the practical way to account for this is to create multiple models based on multiple avenues of possibility.
What you've done is select the "worst case scenario" as your standard of proof. That's not even remotely a reasonable way to prove or disprove anything.
It turns out that the IPCC's "likely scenario" sticks pretty close to subsequent historical data.
Snowfall: One decade does not constitute a long-term global average, and a decade-long graph that ends on a year with record high snowfall is misleading at best. Rutgers does the plotting for us over a longer period of time.
http://tinyurl.com/6r6kn2d
Water vapor feedback: It has been measured (see AIRS). It is, however, your choice if you choose to believe a thoroughly debunked Physicist's paper over empiricism.
Tropospheric hot spot: Again, we have short-term observation of this, although the long-term is still pretty spotty until more data is collected. Is it a smoking-gun that casts doubt on AGW? Not at all.
http://tinyurl.com/e6roz
http://tinyurl.com/8aypyso
http://tinyurl.com/7cvcch6
http://tinyurl.com/75fmm2o
and hey, hows that ozone hole that was supposed to kill us all in the 80s? i keep forgetting to ask about that one, so did we all die?
Use of these sources avoids the delay, bias and de facto censoring of ‘peer review’. I compare the temperatures for validity and average them to avoid bias. The temperature trend has been approximately flat for over a decade while the atmospheric CO2 level has increased by over 25% of the total increase from 1800 to 2001. I wonder how wide this separation between the rising CO2 level and not-rising temperature will need to get for some people to realize that maybe they missed something.
your wrote:
> To your credit, you have a more thought-out opinion compared to most others.
> Unfortunately, an opinion based on misinformation is still tainted.
> (snip allegations)
Caveat: since this is no longer a scientific but a political topic, do not just believe me; check for yourself. With that in mind, here's how I convinced myself that catastrophic man-made global warming failed the test of falsification:
Rising global temperatures: With temperature predictions, we are admonished to look not at the short term but at the long term. In its First Assessment Report of 1990, the IPCC predicted that the average rate of increase of global mean temperature would be about 0.3 °C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C). To verify those 0.3°C per decade, I took the sattelite data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (http://tinyurl.com/5rhrso), used the years from 1989 to 2011, plotted a graph and calculated the linear trend per decade. Instead of giving you the result, I would encourage anyone who reads this to do this by themselves. The Hadley CRU temperature data, by the way, will give similar results. Just for laughs, you may try and calculate the trend just for the past decade.
Snowfall: All models predicted falling snowcover particularly in the northern hemisphere and during winter, which would have accelerated starting 2000 (see e.g. Boer et al 1992, Essery 1997, Gong and Frei 2005). The Gong and Frei paper (http://tinyurl.com/yermrz8) includes graphs useful for comparison. To do that comparison, I took the readily available weekly northern snow cover file from Rutgers University (http://tinyurl.com/d5vnn2w), filtered for winter weeks (48 to 9) starting in 1999, calculated the averages and plotted a graph. Again, I won't give you the results but suggest anyone here try it for themselves.
Water vapor feedback: To have man-made CO2 warm the globe catastrophically, the effect of just that gas alone would be insufficient. So, all models assume a positive feedback through water vapor, which would create a runaway effect after a cretain tipping point. This positive feedback should be measurable as an increasing infrared opacity. No such increasing opacity is observed (see e.g. Miskolczi 2010). Moreover, if there was such a water vapor feedback, it should have appeared at the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods and caused the very same catastrophic warming that is being predicted today. However, these warm periods peaked and then fairly rapidly cooled off.
Troposheric hot spot: A heating of the lower troposhere in the tropics would be a direct outcome of the alleged water vapor feedback. It was presented as a fingerprint for man-made greenhouse-gas warming (originally by Thorne et al 2003). However, the HadAT2 radiosonde data showed a relative lack of warming in the tropical troposphere where all models simulated maximum warming.
> Where are you getting your information from? Is it from random blogs and the WSJ opinion pages?
No, I do not frequent blogs such as RealClimate anymore. I found the people there to be insufferably arrogant.
The planet is a closed system? Could have fooled me!
And here all this time I thought the sun was located outside of the Earth, acting as an external source of heat. Since it apparently isn't doing that, I guess "man-made global warming" isn't real after all!
On a more serious note, I suggest you educate yourself. As it stands, you know just enough about things like the greenhouse effect and the carbon cycle to completely misunderstand how they work.
Seriously though... does anyone understand geological time? 100 years is a drop in the ocean.. 1000 years, even a million years is nothing in the scheme of things. This planet is a closed system, anything we release into the atmosphere is already here. If we make more C02, more plants grow! They make oxygen! Wow....
To your credit, you have a more thought-out opinion compared to most others. Unfortunately, an opinion based on misinformation is still tainted.
Global temp is continuing to rise, snowfall is in a declining trend (important word), positive water vapor feedback has been observed (not just predicted) multiple times by the IPCC and independent research, and satellite data show a tropospheric hot spot.
Where are you getting your information from? Is it from random blogs and the WSJ opinion pages?
The IPCC's models also made predictions, e.g. about how global temperatures would continue to rise, snowfall would decrease, that there would be a tropospheric hotspot, that there is a positive water vapor feedback to warming etc. None of these predictions turned out to be correct. And that is why I do not believe in catastrophic man-made global warming.
No it doesn't. You're a liar.
Analysis:
This proves it was hot last week.
Years and years of data do not prove a millenia.
5% of records being broken in July proves that 95% of records for July were not. Statistically, it proves the OPPOSITE (95% of country is not experiencing global warming).
Conclusion: Map does not offer proof of global warming. Also, cannot prove global warning is caused by man, as map does not address issue. Insufficient data. Hypothesis invalid.
http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/sample-page/panel-reports/americas-climate-choices-final-report/
Anthropogenic climate change is a fact, end of story. And the only hypocrites in this "debate" are those who deny the science of climate change why continuing to reap the benefits of everything else science has provided us with. Rank hypocrites, brainwashed by multinational oil companies.
I agree that this blog post does a disservice to actual science and that one warm season can't be directly linked to global warming as the cause.
However, you are wrong when you say there are no "real hard facts." In reality, the entire body of scientific evidence points to man-made global warming as a reality. Meaning: the argument against man-made global warming has no fact/experimentation/observation to upon which to stand.
Don't just assume that the only "hard facts" are the ones that support your pre-conceived beliefs.
"Do I believe that our current warming trend is caused by mankind? I have seen no proof whatsoever that the warming trend is linked to human activity."
All you have to do is look. The consensus of scientific experimentation/observation conclusively points to human activity as the cause. Unfortunately the average person is still fairly out-of-touch with the scientific community and thinks that there is still a lively scientific debate over that point (there isn't).
When scientists look back at historical evidence of climate around the world, it shows that the Earth in the past has been warmer than it is now, and also colder. These swings in climate occurred long before man occupied this planet, or at least were of numbers that all agree were too small to have any influence at all on the weather. If anyone could offer substantial proof of a link between humanity and the current warming trend, I would certainly rethink my position. However all I read and hear is that humans have more technology and create more carbon dioxide therefore they must be the cause. All too often we hear of studies that show a possible causal link without proof that the two events are linked. This is another such situation. Just because B follows A, it does not prove that A CAUSED B. Anyone who has taken an elementary logic course would understand this.
Over here we had droughts in winter and now have floods in summer - if the US wants to know who stole their rain, it's been falling all over the UK for the past few months, the wettest summer (so far) on record. You'll be seeing a lot of it during the Olympics coverage!
Oh, so now we can't draw conclusions from data... that's a problem. I guess we'll have to assume your opinion is right then.
Nah, just joking. Claiming that the data is "falsified" and that it had been "exposed" is is the conspiracy lunatic's final defense. Unless you can show evidence for this falsification, but you can't because it isn't true.
I'd like to just be able to ignore the nutters, but public policies are usually decided by democratic means. In a country like the USA, which should be leading the way in terms of "green" technology, if a large number of people can hold idiotic opinions an not be laughed at, they'll end up falling behind.
"Perhaps one reason preachers of climate change aren’t always taken seriously is because they tend to take bits of data (which may or may not point to a changing climate), draw all sorts of fear-mongering conclusions and then try to force their belief-system down everyone’s throat."
Sounds exactly like every religious fundamentalist I've ever met. :D
"1860…it’s hard to blame industry emissions when there was very little at that time."
So the fact that the global temperature has been getting steadily hotter at a rate never before seen in nature since the industrial revolution(!!!!) when human industry(!!!!) started.... that doesn't suggest some sort of cause-and-effect relationship to you? Let me say this again: Human industry starts --> global temperatures start to rise during that exact period. Hmmmm.
And why do you assume there's no logical data? On what evidence do you base that conclusion? In reality, evidence and experimentation from multiple branches of science point to humanity as the culprit for the current warming trend.
Are you perhaps referring to the so-called "Climategate" incident which was debunked by at least 8 independent investigations? (Meaning no evidence of wrongdoing was found, nor were there any problems with the data and conclusions drawn by the targeted scientists).
Is that what you're referring to? Because global warming deniers love to cling to to that nugget since there is literally nothing for them to support their beliefs on.
And I do mean literally nothing: there is not one peer-reviewed paper with evidence/experimentation/data to refute or even cast compelling doubt on the finding that the current global warming trend is largely due to human activity. Not a single one.
There is, in fact, no debate about this within the realm of science.
Don't believe me? Do your own research. NOTE: blog articles, Fox News, and "research" funded by oil companies and/or fundamentalist Christian "institutes" do not constitute evidence upon which you should form your opinions.
Yes it is getting hotter, maybe our great great great grandparents are to blame but some of us will not believe that we are to blame. Theories are hard to accept when there is no logical data to back it up.
Humans will ride out this climate oscillation like all the others, yay!
Way to keep that mind open, Hypocrites.
'Warming' = "in the month of July"
Ah, yes. It all makes perfect sense now and there IS data to back it all up. Count me in!
BTW what's the climatologists explanation for the current 15 year temperature plateau we're in? Their models definitely didn't see that coming ahead of time. Have they figured out what's wrong with them yet?
Truth is not a popularity contest although by the time some of these people come around it will likely be too late.
as george carlin said, the planet (and life) will be just fine, thank you. it's the humans that are fcked.
Fictional christ on a bike, get an education.
You mean all that falsified data they have published over the past 10 years or so?
Nope.
I believe the mechanics of the climate were already producing an upswing in temps over the last 30 years (anyone remember the Mini Ice Age scare in the 70's) and that the damage we did is exasperating things.
That being said, I have noticed that Europe is in the same hemisphere as us (I checked a globe to be sure) and I seem to remember that they had many deadly heat waves summer 2011. They are now dealing with cooler temps and too much rain in the west and heat in the east and we are dealing with deadly heat waves. I'm no nostrodomus, but I would be willing to bet that we will have a wet and cool west of the Miss next year with heat in the east. Just sayin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26cohen.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage
Me! Me!
You should look up an article entitled "A link between reduced Barents-Kara sea ice and cold winter extremes over northern continents", by Pethoukov and Semenov.
Here's a short excerpt:
"Our results imply that several recent severe winters do not conflict with the global warming picture but rather supplement it, being in qualitative agreement with the simulated large-scale atmospheric circulation realignment."
But they're probably part of the global conspiracy to make you feel bad! With names like that, there's no other explanation.
We live on a massive ball of fire. We live under a massive ball of fire. But we, the lonely species of Lex Luthorians in our speck of universe, control and manipulate the heat of our planet by CONTROLLING a single gas that's 300 parts per million in our atmosphere.
I guess Lex Luthor must have "conveniently" eaten the massive centuries-old data sets for those 2 massive balls of fire before the IPCC could account for them in their Annual Disco Ball of New Year's Predictions.
Believers of Climate Change are the Westboro Baptists of science.
Personally, I think it's a perfect storm scenario where man's tiny contribution to it has been exponentially magnified by a natural heating period. What I am more worried about is not the heat now, but that it will stay too warm to set off the next "little ice age" cold spell and thus we'll see actual global warming.
One thing that scares me though is that most of the people that want to stop global warming suggest plans that would cut short term pollution immediately. A lot of that heavy, nasty pollution is a savior in disguise because it reflects light and heat back into space. If you cut all the emissions they want, you'll still have the light greenhouse gases heating us up for decades while the heavy contaminants would be out of the air in years or even months. It would make the problem a lot worse and probably set off natural reactions that would spiral out of control, especially from the then even more overheated oceans.
"It is the height of hubris to think that we have much impact on climate or could somehow bend it to our will"
If we could bend the climate to our will, there wouldn't really be a problem. Just bend it a bit colder.
And I don't see how thinking that we emit CO2 is in any way pretentious, because we just do. It's not good or bad, it's a fact. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that's another fact. Put those two together, and lo, we may have an effect on the climate.
And if you look at a picture of the Earth at night, all the artificial light you can see should tell you that we're not such an insignificant force on this planet.
I'm feeling like quoting a favorite comedian, the late George Carlin: "The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas." The rest of his skit is funny cause its true.
That said, I too am amazed at the number of commenters on here who don't accept reality because they don't like it. I thought this blog was frequented by rationally-minded people.
Weather is not climate. Those trying to use weather to support an argument for anthropogenic global warming just undercut their position.
Sometimes it's hot. Sometimes it's cold. There is climate change over time (little ice age, medieval warm period). It is the height of hubris to think that we have much impact on climate or could somehow bend it to our will.
Uh...
No.