Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[57Chevy]

I'm no expert, but wouldn't that be due to an orbital change?

I am no expert either, but the explanation is pretty clear.
If it was due to orbital change (I think) it would be continually present
From the article:
Quote
Basically, the warmer layer of air over the Arctic is acting as a conduit for light from the south.
"It's the refraction of light where the warm air and the cold air meet that is creating this brightness," Davidson explained.
The bigger the temperature differences, the longer the light travels and shines, he noted.
"It's a slow but gradual process that doesn't seem to want to stop," Davidson said. "It's astounding, there's no other word for it."
_____________________________
IMO the global climate is changing due to such a great deal of reasons that trying to pinpoint the exact cause is impossible.

 

[Sapplicant]

Nature is capable of destroying us. We are not capable of destroying nature. Even if a worldwide nuclear holocaust occurred, a couple thousand years down the line, the world wouldn't even notice we were gone. We may be able to make very, very small contributions to climate change, but just look at what volcanoes are capable of. Like the "Year Without a Summer", or the Toba Catastrophe. We should worry more about how our society is destroying itself rather than how our society is destroying the world because, as I said before, we're just not nearly as awesome as nature. Awesome in the "awe inspiring" sense, not the coolness sense.

We're giving ourselves a lot more credit than we deserve in terms of worrying about global warming. The "great garbage patches" in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans deserve FAR more attention than global warming.

 

[vonGarvin]

Like the "Year Without a Summer",

1992.  I remember it well.  I had one week of warm weather, and that was when I went to Germany on my leave.  I got back to Canada, sometime mid-July, and the high temps were in the low 20s, if that.  And that was when I was stationed in London, ON.

 

[Sapplicant]

1992.  I remember it well.  I had one week of warm weather, and that was when I went to Germany on my leave.  I got back to Canada, sometime mid-July, and the high temps were in the low 20s, if that.  And that was when I was stationed in London, ON.

I was referring to the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, which messed up the summer of 1816.

You're referring to another great example of this effect, which was caused by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. Thanks for reminding me, I'd forgotten about that one. Especially since I was only turning 7 at the time.  :nod:

 

[Edward Campbell]

The idea of "Big Science" as having a motive is implausible, and the "17th-century agarian economy" is a strawman.

Perhaps not, but science, big or small, got behind this story and ran with it.

Source: http://parkhowell.com/green-advertising-and-marketing/a-floating-island-of-garbage-twice-the-size-of-texas


But, as it happens, that’s all it was: just a story, according to this report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Daily Telegraph via the Ottawa Citizen:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/incredible+shrinking+Pacific+Garbage+Patch/4070732/story.html

The incredible shrinking Pacific Garbage Patch

BY RICHARD ALLEYNE, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

JANUARY 6, 2011 3:02 PM

Environmental scientists have been criticized for exaggerating the size of an "island" of plastic waste said to be swirling around in the Pacific Ocean after a study found it was 200 times smaller than claimed.

Claims that the Great Garbage Patch between California and Japan was twice the size of Texas were "grossly exaggerated", said the research, which estimated it was one per cent of that size.

Further reports that the oceans were filled with more plastic than plankton, and that the garbage patch had been growing tenfold each decade since the 1950s, were equally misleading, the research said.

In reality, it often could not even be seen from the deck of a passing boat, said the analysis by Angelicque White, professor of oceanography at Oregon State University.

Prof White took part in a marine expedition to examine the mass of floating plastic. She said genuine scientific concerns at the problem were undermined by scare tactics from those proclaiming the garbage island was much bigger than was really the case.

Prof White said: "There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world's oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists.

"We have data that allow us to make reasonable estimates. We don't need the hyperbole.

"Given the observed concentration of plastic in the North Pacific, it is simply inaccurate to state that plastic outweighs plankton, or that we have observed an exponential increase in plastic." One popular claim is that the size of the patch is twice that of Texas - half a million square miles or the equivalent of 20 times the size of England. But while the plastic stretches across the ocean's surface, its mass compared to the amount of water meant it took up a tiny fraction of the proclaimed area, said Prof White. "The amount of plastic out there isn't trivial," she said. "But the patch is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size."

Prof White said plastic could be toxic to some marine life, and a danger to seabirds, but it could absorb other toxins. There is evidence that some organisms are breeding on plastic debris. However, "plastic clearly does not belong in the ocean".

Getting rid of it was too expensive and could damage the fragile ecology under the ocean, she said. Preventing more from entering the water should be the focus instead. She added: "If there is a takeaway message, it's that we should consider it good news that the 'garbage patch' doesn't seem to be as bad as advertised.

"Since it would be prohibitively costly to remove the plastic, we need to focus our efforts on preventing more trash from fouling our oceans." Recent research by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that the amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean has not increased since the mid-1980s - despite greater production and consumption of materials made from plastic.

© Copyright (c) The Daily Telegraph

Now, all that plastic, even if the island is only 1% the size of Texas, is a problem, as is climate change, for some people, anyway, but the hyperbole didn’t help – in fact it harms the case of science that tries to change our behavior, especially whne the change might be for the better.

 

[ModlrMike]

I'm no expert, but wouldn't that be due to an orbital change?

I'm no expert either, but perhaps it's due to volcanic activity. Look at this timeline for example:

Volcanic Eruption Timeline

Perhaps an increase in volcanic dust is causing the light to scatter.

 

[Sapplicant]

They have all, using scientific process and life times of study, time and time again, come up with the same conclusion;  human caused global warming is a fact.  It's a fact.  This is what they are teaching in your schools, from kindergarten to university.

In 1492, the world was flat. It was a fact. This was taught as a fact.

There are many, many other examples over time of facts that were once taught later being discovered to be fiction. This just happened to be the most obvious. Who's to say that it won't happen again?

 

[vonGarvin]

In 1492, the world was flat. It was a fact. This was taught as a fact.

Not quite true.  Seafarers knew that the earth was curved.  So too did all those living near a coast.  They knew that when ships approached, the first they saw was the mast, followed by the rest of it, etc.  Eratosthenes even calculated the circumference of the Earth.  Now, the following quote is from Wikipedia, but I too studied this in university, along with some other stuff.  Anyway, have a read:

Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth without leaving Egypt. Eratosthenes knew that on the summer solstice at local noon in the Ancient Egyptian city of Swenet (known in Greek as Syene, and in the modern day as Aswan) on the Tropic of Cancer, the sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead. He also knew, from measurement, that in his hometown of Alexandria, the angle of elevation of the sun would be 1/50 of a full circle (7°12') south of the zenith at the same time. Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene he concluded that the meridian arc distance from Alexandria to Syene must be 1/50 of the total circumference of the earth. His estimated distance between the cities was 5000 stadia (about 500 geographical miles or 800 km) by estimating the time that he had taken to travel from Syene to Alexandria by camel. He rounded the result to a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia. The exact size of the stadion he used is frequently argued. The common Attic stadion was about 185 m, which would imply a circumference of 46,620 km, i.e. 16.3% too large. However, if we assume that Eratosthenes used the "Egyptian stadion" of about 157.5 m, his measurement turns out to be 39,690 km, an error of less than 1%.

(My emphasis in there regarding his accuracy).

Anyway, Columbus was trying to find a shortcut to Asia by heading west from Europe, not trying to prove that the earth was flat or round.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Just saying'........

http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2011/01/06/16792676.html
Maryland’s 2 million dead fish caused by cold water

By WENDELL MARSH, Reuters
Last Updated: January 6, 2011 8:50pm

WASHINGTON - The death of two million fish that washed up on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland appears to have been caused by a sudden drop in temperature, the state’s Environment Department told Reuters on Thursday.

The mass kill is the latest in a string of bird and fish deaths around the world. Around 5,000 birds fell out of the Arkansas sky over the New Year’s weekend and many dead fish were also found in a different part of the state.
Since then, reports of smaller-scale die-offs have been reported in Europe, Brazil, and Asia, causing many to speculate about the cause of the kills.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the Chesapeake deaths, the Maryland Department of Environment said.
“The cause of this appears to be the rapid temperature drop combined with the large population of the juvenile spot fish,” spokesman Jay Apperson told Reuters on Thursday.

The coldest December in 25 years caused cold water stress to the already overpopulated species, the department said in a statement.

There have been many such incidents in the past with 2,900 kills afflicting all fish species between 1984 and 2009 according to the department. The largest ever die-off was around 15 million in January, 1976.

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in North America.

 

[DBA]

There is a phenomenon in science called "confirmation bias" where an experiment/analysis/study is worked on until it produces results that align with what is expected and then less effort is applied to confirm that this final result aligning with what is expected is actually true. There are more things involved in climate variability than CO2 levels and the current practice of tying just about any climate variability to "global warming" should give anybody pause. A example would be the Met Office in the UK and the predictions for this winter where a mild winter was predicted in line with global warming but in fact it's been record breaking cold weather.

To gain insight we have to examine with as much effort and care the things we accept as true as those we believe are false. We often fail to recognize the same faulty reasoning patterns in our own arguments that we point out in others. We post things we believe are true as "facts" without references or double checking while calling out the exact same behavior in others because we don't agree with them.

Myself it sure seems like global warming has morphed for a lot of people into yet another "Doomsday cult" where their positions aren't arrived at by reason and logic but by listening to deceitful rhetoric of those who have decided the issue is settled. Hate to pick on Al Gore but when he pointed to a graph showing a correlation between CO2 and temperate and said it was "proof" of global warming I knew it was unscientific garbage as a fundamental rule of statistics is: correlation does not suggest causation. It's not proof, it's not an indication, and it' doesn't imply causation it only shows a correlation between the two variables plotted. By making such an argument Al Gore left people more ignorant and open to faulty reasoning. So if they see a graph plotting say Autism vs vaccinations and there seems to be some correlation they are much more likely to think in error that is some form of proof for causation.

 

[Sapplicant]

The coldest December in 25 years.

I wonder if the April 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland, among other volcanoes, combined with a lull in solar activity, had anything to do with it? Bit of a stretch, and I'm no scientist, but it IS a possibility, no?

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

A little light reading on Wind Farms in cold weather in the UK....

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows
By Richard Littlejohn
Created 9:55 PM on 27th December 2010


This is the season for quizzes. So ­fingers on buzzers, here’s your starter for ten. In percentage terms, how much electricity do Britain’s 3,150 wind ­turbines supply to the ­National Grid?
Is it: a) five per cent; b) ten per cent; or c) 20 per cent? Come on, I’m going to have to hurry you. No conferring.

Time’s up. The correct answer is: none of the above. Yesterday afternoon, the figure was just 1.6 per cent, according to the official website of the wholesale electricity market.

Over the past three weeks, with demand for power at record levels because of the freezing weather, there have been days when the contribution of our forests of wind turbines has been precisely nothing.

It gets better. As the temperature has plummeted, the turbines have had to be heated to prevent them seizing up. Consequently, they have been consuming more electricity than they generate.

Even on a good day they rarely work above a quarter of their theoretical capacity. And in high winds they have to be switched off altogether to prevent damage.

At best, the combined output of these monstrosities is equal only to that of a single, medium-sized, gas-fired power station.

.....continues.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1342032/You-dont-need-weatherman-know-way-wind-blows.html#ixzz1Akbb098z

Additionally, the BBC has just launched a Freedom of Information Act requesting all the Met Office paperwork, and Cabinet documents re: this winter as what the Met originally published to the public (showing average temperatures of >2 degrees higher than historical averages), and what they are now claiming they advised Cabinet in private, are exact opposites.


M. 

 

[GAP]

And to add to the wonderful politically correct confusion, there's this..........

Carbon injected underground now leaking, Saskatchewan farmer's study says
By: Bob Weber, The Canadian Press Posted: 01/11/2011
Article Link

A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world's largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases that were supposed to have been injected permanently underground are leaking out, killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken-up soda pop.

Cameron and Jane Kerr, who own nine quarter-sections of land above the Weyburn oilfield in eastern Saskatchewan, released a consultant's report Tuesday that claims to link high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their soil to the 8,000 tonnes of the gas injected underground every day by energy giant Cenovus in its attempt to enhance oil recovery and fight climate change.

"We knew, obviously, there was something wrong," said Jane Kerr.

Cameron Kerr, 64, said he has farmed in the area all his life and never had any problems until 2003, when he agreed to dig a gravel quarry.

That gravel was for a road to a plant owned by EnCana — now Cenovus — which had begun three years earlier to inject massive amounts of carbon dioxide underground to force more oil out of the aging field.

Cenovus has injected more than 13 million tonnes of the gas underground. The project has become a global hotspot for research into carbon capture and storage, a technology that many consider one of the best hopes for keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

By 2005, Cameron Kerr had begun noticing problems in a pair of ponds which had formed at the bottom of the quarry. They developed algae blooms, clots of foam and several colours of scum — red, yellow and silver-blue. Sometimes, the ponds bubbled. Small animals — cats, rabbits, goats — were regularly found dead a few metres away.

Then there were the explosions.

"At night we could hear this sort of bang like a cannon going off," said Jane Kerr, 58. "We'd go out and check the gravel pit and, in the walls, it (had) blown a hole in the side and there would be all this foaming coming out of this hole."

"Just like you shook up a bottle of Coke and had your finger over it and let it spray," added her husband.

The water, said Jane Kerr, came out of the ground carbonated.

"It would fizz and foam."
More on link

 

[Rifleman62]

How true.

 

[a_majoor]

More stuff that puts nails in the coffins of climate change alarmists. If they really knew and understood the science, then why are they keeping two sets of books (like a crooked accountant) and only releasing the predictions that fit the "narrative":

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/01/29/the-uk-met-office-oops/

The UK Met Office: “Oops!”

Meteorology is the engineering of climate science: while climate scientists try to understand the underlying processes that determine climate, meteorologists are expected to use that understanding to predict the short term variation in climate — what we call “weather”.

Like all engineering, meteorologists are judged on results: if you get the predictions wrong too often, or by too much, you’re not doing your job.  So when the Meteorological Office in the UK predicted “another warm winter” for this year, and got instead the coldest snowiest winter in perhaps as much as a thousand years, it was a bit of a scandal, and difficult to explain.

A Met Office source leaked an explanation to Roger Harrabin at the Telegraph: there was a secret report to the government that had predicted the cold winter, so it wasn’t the Met Office’s fault if Government hadn’t done enough.

Which raises another couple of questions: why are they making different predictions in secret than they are to the public, and when and how did this secret report get transmitted and what exactly did it say?

Intrepid bloggers in the UK extracted information with Freedom of Information requests, including this sentence: ‘The Met Office seasonal outlook for the period November to January is showing no clear signals for the winter’. What they had instead was two models that disagreed — one predicted cold (but only mild cold) and the other predicted warm. The secret government report said “we dunno” and the public report chose the “warm” prediction.

I hope to write more about this later today, but in the mean time, it’s worth having a look at Anthony Watts’ blog, and the two UK blogs that broke the story, Autonomous Mind and Katabasi

 

[Rifleman62]

Al Gore claims global warming caused this week's historic blizzard

By: Lynn R. Mitchell 02/03/11 6:05 PM

Listening to Al Gore explain that the current round of turbulent winter weather is really an off-shoot of global warming brings a grin to the faces of many while others just shake their heads in disbelief.

Consisting of ice, record snow fall, bitter temperatures, and blizzard conditions of historic proportions, one-third of America was affected this week in a 2,000-mile swath of Old Man Winter's fury as frigid and deadly conditions stretched south into Mexico and north to Maine. How could global warming be real with all this winter weather?

Fox News reported that Gore had an explanation:

    "As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now, and they say increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming," Gore write in a blog post. The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president was responding to a question posed by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who wondered on air why global warming was such an urgent science policy priority when the New York City area had become a “tundra” this winter.

Now comes word that a Greenpeace member fears Gore may have done untold damage to the environmental movement. Fred Pearce at Short Sharp Science attended a three-day conference in Portugal last week consisting of 28 bloggers, climate scientists, and what he called "professional contrarians" who gnawed over the looming issue of climate. He revealed:

    The meeting was the brainchild of University of Oxford science philosopher Jerry Ravetz, an 81-year-old Greenpeace member who fears Al Gore may have done as much damage to environmentalism as Joseph Stalin did to socialism.

Interestingly enough, no meeting of the minds was made at the conference as it was decided that the make-up of those attending was "too lopsided in favour of the sceptical camp."

Meanwhile, Fox News reported that meteorologist Art Horn noted a long history of devastating weather over the generations that had nothing to do with global warming:

    “The last 2,000 years is full of incredible weather events that dwarf what we see today,” said Horn. “Nature isn't cooperating with the global warming camp and theory.”

    He points to a New York Times story from the 1970s, which said the planet was getting so cold that humanity was in danger of starving to death. The article argued that the world’s weather would soon be so frigid that it could no longer permit the cultivation of crops for food. The Times’ headline on August 8, 1974, was simple enough: “Climate changes Endanger World’s Food Output.”

    “First we were told the world was cooling. Then it was getting hotter,” Dan Gainor, a spokesman for the Media Research Center, tells FoxNews.com. “Then cooling again. Then hotter. Now it’s just climate change -- so they can’t be wrong no matter what change occurs.”

Is all that evidence enough to change Gore's mind as the winter of 2011 continues and he moves forward with selling his idea of global warming by its new name, climate change?

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/opinion-zone/2011/02/al-gore-claims-global-warming-caused-weeks-historic-blizzard#ixzz1CwlhAs4x

 

[Redeye]

Why is it so complicated for people to see that climate and weather are not synonymous?  Part of what a number of climate change models have predicted are extreme patterns of weather in all forms.  That said, other things cause that.  But frankly, I consider the Examiner about as reliable as pajamasmedia (not at all), and once Bill O'Reilly can explain tides to me maybe I'll care about anything he anything he says about science.

I'm as willing to look at evidence that anthropogenic climate change is a myth as any skeptic - but the evidence has to be decent.  There remains as much evidence that it's a myth as there is evidence against evolution, or against the earth being spherical: none of any significance that I've seen.

Al Gore claims global warming caused this week's historic blizzard

By: Lynn R. Mitchell 02/03/11 6:05 PM

Listening to Al Gore explain that the current round of turbulent winter weather is really an off-shoot of global warming brings a grin to the faces of many while others just shake their heads in disbelief.

Consisting of ice, record snow fall, bitter temperatures, and blizzard conditions of historic proportions, one-third of America was affected this week in a 2,000-mile swath of Old Man Winter's fury as frigid and deadly conditions stretched south into Mexico and north to Maine. How could global warming be real with all this winter weather?

Fox News reported that Gore had an explanation:

    "As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now, and they say increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming," Gore write in a blog post. The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president was responding to a question posed by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who wondered on air why global warming was such an urgent science policy priority when the New York City area had become a “tundra” this winter.

Now comes word that a Greenpeace member fears Gore may have done untold damage to the environmental movement. Fred Pearce at Short Sharp Science attended a three-day conference in Portugal last week consisting of 28 bloggers, climate scientists, and what he called "professional contrarians" who gnawed over the looming issue of climate. He revealed:

    The meeting was the brainchild of University of Oxford science philosopher Jerry Ravetz, an 81-year-old Greenpeace member who fears Al Gore may have done as much damage to environmentalism as Joseph Stalin did to socialism.

Interestingly enough, no meeting of the minds was made at the conference as it was decided that the make-up of those attending was "too lopsided in favour of the sceptical camp."

Meanwhile, Fox News reported that meteorologist Art Horn noted a long history of devastating weather over the generations that had nothing to do with global warming:

    “The last 2,000 years is full of incredible weather events that dwarf what we see today,” said Horn. “Nature isn't cooperating with the global warming camp and theory.”

    He points to a New York Times story from the 1970s, which said the planet was getting so cold that humanity was in danger of starving to death. The article argued that the world’s weather would soon be so frigid that it could no longer permit the cultivation of crops for food. The Times’ headline on August 8, 1974, was simple enough: “Climate changes Endanger World’s Food Output.”

    “First we were told the world was cooling. Then it was getting hotter,” Dan Gainor, a spokesman for the Media Research Center, tells FoxNews.com. “Then cooling again. Then hotter. Now it’s just climate change -- so they can’t be wrong no matter what change occurs.”

Is all that evidence enough to change Gore's mind as the winter of 2011 continues and he moves forward with selling his idea of global warming by its new name, climate change?

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/opinion-zone/2011/02/al-gore-claims-global-warming-caused-weeks-historic-blizzard#ixzz1CwlhAs4x

 

[Haletown]

"President Obama has done the impossible. He’s proven that someone can deserve a Nobel Prize less than Al Gore!"

'nuff said.

 

[Haletown]

A very interesting examination of climate data and energy use . . .

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/12/david-archibald-on-climate-and-energy-security/#more-33809

The global warming end game is happening.  The Rex Murphy eulogy for Gore & Olbermann is Rex at his best.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/02/12/rex-murphy-gore-and-olbermann-which-one-is-gilligan/#ixzz1DlvzZa1M

 

[a_majoor]

More pushback:

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/9853/Another-victory-for-science-House-votes-244179-to-kill-US-funding-of-UN-IPCC-It-no-longer-wishes-to-have-the-IPCC-prepare-its-comprehensive-international-climate-science-assessments

Another victory for science!

House votes 244-179 to kill U.S. funding of UN IPCC! 'It no longer wishes to have the IPCC prepare its comprehensive international climate science assessments' Visit Site

Defund IPCC 'amendment was sponsored by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Missouri), who read aloud on the floor from the 2009 U.S. Senate Report of more than 700 dissenting scientists! (Written by Climate Depot's Morano) -- Luetkemeyer: Americans 'should not have to continue to foot the bill for an (IPPC) organization to keep producing corrupt findings'