Interesting article about global warming. Thoughts?

[MatthewCarman]

your thoughts??



Hot tempers on global warming

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | August 15, 2007

First of two parts

INTRODUCING Newsweek's Aug. 13 cover story on global warming "denial," editor Jon Meacham brings up an embarrassing blast from his magazine's past: an April 1975 story about global cooling, and the coming ice age that scientists then were predicting. Meacham concedes that "those who doubt that greenhouse gases are causing significant climate change have long pointed to the 1975 Newsweek piece as an example of how wrong journalists and researchers can be." But rather than acknowledge that the skeptics may have a point, Meacham dismisses it.

"On global cooling," he writes, "there was never anything even remotely approaching the current scientific consensus that the world is growing warmer because of the emission of greenhouse gases."

Really? Newsweek took rather a different line in 1975. Then, the magazine reported that scientists were "almost unanimous" in believing that the looming Big Chill would mean a decline in food production, with some warning that "the resulting famines could be catastrophic." Moreover, it said, "the evidence in support of these predictions" -- everything from shrinking growing seasons to increased North American snow cover -- had "begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it."

Yet Meacham, quoting none of this, simply brushes aside the 1975 report as "alarmist" and "discredited." Today, he assures his readers, Newsweek's climate-change anxieties rest "on the safest of scientific ground."

Do they? Then why is the tone of Sharon Begley's cover story -- nine pages in which anyone skeptical of the claim that human activity is causing global warming is painted as a bought-and-paid-for lackey of the coal and oil industries -- so strident and censorious? Why the relentless labeling of those who point out weaknesses in the global-warming models as "deniers," or agents of the "denial machine," or deceptive practitioners of "denialism?" Wouldn't it be more effective to answer the challengers, some of whom are highly credentialed climate scientists in their own right, with scientific data and arguments, instead of snide insinuations of venality and deceit? Do Newsweek and Begley really believe that everyone who dissents from the global-warming doomsaying does so in bad faith?

Anthropogenic global warming is a scientific hypothesis, not an article of religious or ideological dogma. Skepticism and doubt are entirely appropriate in the realm of science, in which truth is determined by evidence, experimentation, and observation, not by consensus or revelation. Yet when it comes to global warming, dissent is treated as heresy -- as a pernicious belief whose exponents must be shamed, shunned, or silenced.

Newsweek is hardly the only offender. At the Live Earth concert in New Jersey last month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. denounced climate-change skeptics as "corporate toadies" for "villainous" enemies of America and the human race. "This is treason," he shouted, "and we need to start treating them now as traitors."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...les/2007/08/15/hot_tempers_on_global_warming/

 

[Doug Mitchell]

This article is better

Headline:

Climate change could be causing cougar attacks: expert

1st paragraph:

A combination of warm winters and Alberta's population boom is causing a recent jump in cougar attacks, says a spokesman for the government agency that collects cougar-related data.

5th paragraph:

No humans have been mauled by cougars in Alberta since 2005...

Later on:

More than 90% of all fatal North American cougar/human encounters since 1890 have taken place on Vancouver Island. Seven people have been killed by cougars between 1890 and 1990.

This just coming into the newsroom, Global Warming knocked up your sister and is the reason why your father drinks.

 

[Cris Schroeder]

This just coming into the newsroom, Global Warming knocked up your sister and is the reason why your father drinks.

LMAO!!! I'll look for it in the Telegraph, just below the article about how my cell phone is shriveling certain parts of my anatomy.

 

[Mike Smith]

TIME Magazine, 1974:

Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.


TIME Magazine, 2006

Late last year, for example, researchers analyzed data from Canadian and European satellites and found that the Greenland ice sheet is not only melting, but doing so faster and faster, with 53 cubic miles draining away into the sea in the last year alone compared to 23 cubic miles in 1996.

Of course, Greenland used to be farmed. Then, it somehow turned "cooler." Now, it is warming back up.

1. How did humans cause those climate changes? After all, it must have been caused by humans because climate, apparently, does not change naturally.

2. Would today's GCM's (had they been available in 1000 AD) accurately forecast extreme cooling that was in Greenland's future?

 

[Kevin Scharfenberg]

1. How did humans cause those climate changes? After all, it must have been caused by humans because climate, apparently, does not change naturally.

What scientist has ever claimed that climate does not change naturally?

 

[David Wolfson]

I think everyone wishes global warming turns out to be a false alarm. But folks it's not looking that way. Unfortunately the collapse of the Arctic Ocean summer ice is running way ahead of predictions. This is a major positive feedback that the GCMs don't have a very good handle on I'm afraid. We're now conducting a worldwide uncontrolled experiment on our future generations. The canary is dying real fast and we need to as a world community get a handle on what's happening or we're in deep doodoo.

 

[Terry Tyler]

personally, my opinion on global warming is...

aint nobody knows whats really going on...even if your sitting on a good piece of 100 years of RELIABLE records...a 100 years is just a tiny jigsaw pussle piece of the extent of the maxes and minimums of the earths climate...

hell, depending on how secular or spiritual your beliefs on the world are...this place could have been here for billions on billions of years...

its similar to a pair of ants making theories on a gas stove...

you can look at all the ice cores and tree rings you want...but personally, i think these people dont know anything more about the future weather, then they do about fornicade...

sure, you can make an educated guess...but thats about it...kinda like NOAAs hurricane outlook for last year...

climate is really not my bag, so i cant claim to know anything about it or its operations...but i find it hard from a scientific standpoint to make generalizations based on 100 years of data...its a mans science...

some people just cant come out and say...

"i dont know"...

 

[Mike Smith]

Unfortunately the collapse of the Arctic Ocean summer ice is running way ahead of predictions.

Clearly this is a major concern. But, it does not validate CO2 as culprit. Several have hypothesized that pollution (soot, especially) from China has darkened the ice cap. If so, the rate of melting would increase even if world temperatures were/are stable. China is exempt from Kyoto as is India.

 

[Bill Tabor]

We're now conducting a worldwide uncontrolled experiment on our future generations. The canary is dying real fast and we need to as a world community get a handle on what's happening or we're in deep doodoo.

That sounds pretty alarmist, and assumes a lot including that we as humans have the ability to reverse a very long term global warming trend just by what actions we take.

 

[David Wolfson]

Re. arctic summer ice: http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html
These are our folks -- the same top scientists in their field that bring you the SPC, the NCDC, and the NHC. Alarming? Hell, yes! Reputable scientists are starting to use the word catastrophic this month; and that does get my attention.

CO2, soot, whatever.... My point has always been that we need to find out fast and as precisely as possible what's going on. That needs an IGY++ that would be chump change compared to all the crap being funded nowadays.

 

[Dan Robinson]

The sea ice site is an interesting read, but the data only goes back to 1979. According to the site, the sea ice melts faster when more water is exposed to the sun, which results in a vicous cycle of melting-more water surface-warmer water-less ice. But you would expect that type of cycle to happen naturally given a period of natural earth warming.

Kind of like when the Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire collapsed. It took that feature millions of years to form but only seconds to collapse, once natural erosion took its toll. Once the rock erosion reached a critical point, the final stages of destruction were rapid compared to the centuries before. It is possible that the natural critical stage of the ice pack melting has been reached, resulting in a much more rapid deterioration in recent years.

Still no clear evidence that man is responsible nor that this is cause for concern, IE something that has occured on earth many times in the planet's history.

 

[David Wolfson]

"No clear evidence" is a rather non-scientific misjudgment of the facts. Rather there is remaining doubt. How much doubt? Pick your confidence limit. We're above two-sigma now which is plenty for me.

The eventual cost of True .and. DoNothing is a lot more than False .and. DoSomething. While the cost of False .and. DoNothing is certainly attractive it's not very smart.

This whole "debate" is kind of like when you start to hear a squeak in the wheel of your car, which gets progressively worse. There are insignificant possible causes and significant ones. How long do you wait to check it out? Until it is unambiguously a Bad Thing, e.g. the wheel falls off?

 

[Mike Smith]

David,

What, exactly, do you think we should do at this point?

Mike

 

[David Wolfson]

I said it. We need an IGY++ together with major R&D thrown into low-impact energy technologies. How about 10% of what the world's nations are currently throwing down the "defense" rathole, i.e. $110B? A tithe for the future... what a simpering liberal wussy concept.

 

[Mike Smith]

David,

I am not trying to be argumentative.

Your suggestion is to spend $110B on low-impact energy technologies, if I understand correctly. Would this include the expanded use of nuclear?

There is no "trick question" here, I would like to know how you would fight GW.

Mike