Global Warming

I just read that 2005 was the second warmest year since the measuring started in the 19th century. In the northern hemisphere 2005 was the warmest year since the measurments started. Especially Russia, Scandinavia, Canada and Alaska have been a lot warmer than usual, but also areas in China, Africa, Brazil and USA have had very anomalous temperatures. The North Pole ice has decreased heavily since the satellite measurments started in 1970 and is now smaller than ever. (www.dn.se; Hadley Center, Great Britain; NOAA, USA)

I read in Illustrerad Vetenskap ("Science Illustrated"??) a couple of months ago that the top ten warmest years during the latest 1000 years or so have been during the last 20 years.

What are your thoughts about this? Are you worried? I am particularly interested what the common view among Americans is since George W. Bush up to recently denied the existence of global warming. Here in Sweden it's officially a big issue and even if some politicians are prepared to do more than others, everyone agree that it is indeed an urgent problem. So I tend to believe that there is a possibility that Swedes in general worry more than Americans about these things. Am I wrong?

Have you seen any effects by global warming in your own surroundins? In Sweden up north the permafrost has begun to melt. Permafrost is called that because the temperature in it simply never gets above the freezing point. Now it has begun to rise and it's effecting the entire ecosystem including plants, birds, insects, berries, and so on.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

US climate scientists are certainly paying attention...

New Scientist - 17 December 2005 - 'Climate meeting may turn out to be a pyrrhic victory'
Personally, yeah, I believe human-affected global warming is happening. And that not enough is being done about it...

The editorial that quote is taken from bemoans the lack of progress made at the Montreal meeting concluded the other day. On the plus side, many of the decent (if minor) gains of the Kyoto treaty were reinforced between signatory countries (carbon-trading, including 'green schemes for poor nations' etc). But Kyoto doesn't do nearly enough, and this meeting was also supposed to be about moving beyond it.

The only diplomatic progress made with non signatory countries was a commitment to future "open and non-binding dialogue". The US only signed up on the understanding that the dialogue "will not open any negotiations leading to new commitments". Great. Considering the technology-share pact made by the coal-heavy non-Kyoto bunch (US, Australia, China etc) is also basically "open and non-binding" as well, very little progress is being made.

And as for noticable signs of climate change, here's a list from that same editorial...

I can tell you that i ain't best pleased by the current slowdown that's been measured in parts of the gulf stream. Changes that could signify a massive drop in temperature across the UK and other areas of NW Europe (sooner than would have naturally happened).

All of these changes are documented and are happening, but the cause has not always been fully demonstrated, so there's still some scientific controversy about a few of them. All of them have strong links with recent global-temperature-rises which can't be disproved as well, however.

If anyone wants to talk through the more debatable ones like hurricanes etc, i'll happily throw in the links and quotes that i've got .

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I would say that the common view among Americans would depress you. It does me. Only since I started interacting daily with people from outside the US have I realised how incredibly isolationist our country is. Our news is very different from what people in UK see, I witnessed that myself last winter. News there has a lot of world-scale issues and a much more positive outlook. What Americans typically encounter as news (without going out and putting a lot of effort into getting world news) is absolutely certain to include celebrity gossip, and highly unlilkely to include anything about global issues. It's not that Americans hear the same facts, trends and opinions and simply shrug. The news here is very much a propagandist tool, and a commercialised business, despite what we're all taught in school about it being free press. We get the flash and flattery (look how stupid these people are, you're smarter!) but not always the facts.

As to global warming, it's long been one term among many for the faceless threat. We're barraged with a cacaphony of nucances about which no individual can do anything. Other items would include killer bees, high cholesterol, the dismantling of Social Security and unliklihood of real retirement for an increasing number of americans, the list goes on. All these things are real and concerning, but the result of their combined force is apathy. Look at the bird flu thread I made for some illustrations. "There's nothing I can do about it." These things influence the disparity of attitudes you rightly notice.

Oh, and Bush is in office to protect the short-term financial interests of the wealthy and powerful. There are people who know this, and there are those who don't. We're pretty evenly split in the US on that, as witnessed in the last election.

As far as visible effects, I dunno. The statistic you cite about the hottest 10 years in the last 1000 being in the last 20 years is certainly sobering. As for as observable phenomenon though, I've lived in Los Angeles for the last 7 years. The weather here is relentlessly gorgeous - haven't noticed it being warmer but am not in a position to have noticed it, really. California has laws and systems to fight emmissions, but it's not enough and it's not universal. State-sponsored vehicles and some corporate-sponsored ones get a free pass. I think most americans see the "smog-check" stuff that we put our cars through as just a reason for the govt to collect more fees from average joes. The most swearing I've ever heard from my pink-wearing-kid-raising-midwestern-mom friend has been in merely noting that her car was due for a check.

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Yeah, the winters in Scotland are pretty mild compared to those of my childhood, we haven't had many good seasons for snow, not so long ago it was possible to still be snowboarding in certain parts of Scotland in April, we haven't had a good skiing/snowboarding season in about 6-7 years.
It still rains all the time, but it's definetly milder now, other than that I haven't noticed much else.

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Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour?

If the recent increase in severe hurricanes and tsunamis isn't evidence enough of global warming, I don't know what is.

Current and future rises in sea levels and temperature make for increasingly devastating Tsunamis, for sure.

Hurricanes are a bit trickier though. There definitely is a strong link between rising sea temperatures and the rise in the number of category 4 & 5 hurricanes (see graphic below).

But... there is an ongoing clash amongst hurricane/climate specialists over how this can be the case...

It's happening, they just can't decide why, or explain the discrepency with standard GW models. So that's a puzzle.

Hurricane Catarina, which hit southern Brazil in March 2004, provides another puzzle. Why? Because hurricanes shouldn't form in that region. At least not yet...

Climatologists predicted that increased sea temperatures would lead to hurricane formation in this region of the South Atlantic, but not until 2070. [see New Scientist - 24 September 2005 - 'South Atlantic hurricane rings climate alarm bells'].

So, Catarina has got them edgy. They got it both right and wrong. If the reason they're 65-years out is that GW is occuring faster than expected/hoped, then it makes matters even more pressing. (And unfortunately, there have been a swathe of studies recently that suggest the GW process is increasing, and will increase, much faster than previously thought. Anyone want more info? Heh, probably not ).

Graphic and quote are from: New Scientist - 03 December 2005 - 'Is global warming making hurricanes stronger?'

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Not to worry. A simpler theory has just come in.

It's not us, it's him

hee!

So true, i deliberately sampled US TV on my 3 visits and it's ssooo bad. I wept tears of blood.

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Global warming is crap, another thing invented by the media to scare people. The earth is fine, it's been around for a long time and it goes through natural cycles of warming and cooling. It's all hype, mother earth will kill us all and heal any damage we have done before we kill her and she will be here long after we have gone the way of the dinosaur.

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The Matrix Has You

You're basing this on what?

Anomaly, nobody is saying the earth is going to be destroyed - but scientists are saying that a huge number of humans and other forms of life may get plunged into adverse situations and/or wiped out by climate change.

The earth does indeed go through climatic variation, the argument is simply that we are accelerating the transition between the (mainly benign) phase we're in now and the more tempestuous one that will follow it.

As for the media inventing global warming - no. They exaggerrate everything, sure, they're sensationalist. But they didn't 'invent' the idea of human-assisted climate change. That idea has been around for a long time, and every year that goes by more evidence emerges that supports it.

I am sure many of us do not wish our future generations to end up the way of the dinosaur, though I must admit we will most likely deserve it if we continue taking our earth for granted

These issues seem to come up in the media every few months, I am sure the vast majority of people do not become overly concerned about it as they are not always the beings who are being directly affected by the deviant changes in the weather.

For example, Ireland needs a few more sunny days, we wont be complaining when we get them. But someone who depends on colder climates, like Mr Polar bear, will not be happy once his home starts floating away.

There does seem to be alot of speculation surrounding global warming, but then again, there is no harm in improving our public transport, generating power via turbines/solar plates, lowering pollution emissions, recycling etc. if we have the ability to do it. Sustain what we have already.

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I know we are slightly damaging the earth with our arrogant wasteful ways, but what I am trying to say is after we are all dead and gone and there is nobody left the earth will heal it's self and become pristine again. Though I do think all you hear about Global warming and the ozone layer is crap for the most part. Whatever damage we have done it’s miniscule, I really don't believe it's as bad as these scientists say it is. I have a hard time believing anything all these so called educated people have to say. How do you know they are not saying all this to scare people into giving lots of money for research and then sit on there butt and pretend to research all of this knowing full well that it’s nothing really to worry about. Then after a while of finding nothing, come out and say, "Oh global warming is getting worse we have to find a way to stop it, give us MORE money and we will conduct more research to find a way." I am not buying it.

I think this changing in the weather is a natural thing for the earth just a cycle it's goes through every so many hundred years nothing more.

We're not dead yet. It's worth caring about

Well, you're speaking from a point of ignorance, so your opinion counts for very little.

We don't know that there isn't pocket-lining going on. There normally is. But there's another side to academia and scientific research that's worth bearing in mind. It relies fundamentally on a structure of trust and honesty as well. This system is frequently abused (see the recent Korean stem-cell debacle), but it is also still operating - and it's pretty damn healthy, all things considered. (It also forms the 'belief system' of many scientists in many ways)

Read the words of climate scientists, from the most-sceptical (few), to the uncompromising die-hards (almost equally few - coz that style of dogma is anathema to many scientists)... and you'll see that they all care about accuracy still. And that they worry about themselves and their families being affected by climate change too. (Meet some of 'em, and you'll know this even more ).

Ignoring the scientific strength of the core (human-assisted) Climate-Change theories, as you do, there are still other reasons to believe that it's 'good science'.

There is a far more profitable route 'money-lining' scientists could choose - IE - trying to prove that humans don't affect climate change. The energy companies have got a lot more cash to spare than the other funding options available - and they'd like to have proof in that area. (Also, don't forget all the other areas of industrial/R&D investigation that are much more profitable avenues of research for the scientist etc).

Oh yeah, and governments (responsible governments that is ) - don't set out on things like Kyoto etc, which do put limits on profitability - if they don't have some trust in the science themselves. (And you can bet they would've looked into it first - to the most rigorous and 'non-biased' extent possible).

Well, there is something more. Those cycles can be affected. By random events like volcanoes etc, and... by the cumulative effects of human actions. The details will never stop being refined, but just get with the fact - coz the evidence is strong enough to call it that.

I read in the National Geographic how the hunters of Greenland are being greatly affected by the change in temperature.

"During the past decade temperatures have risen in Greenland by most than 2 degrees fahrenheit, twice the global average. The islands massive island sheet, almost two miles deep in places, has been melting faster than at any time during the past 50 years."

This means that in many areas where the hunters would make their kills are too unsafe to travel on....the winter hunting does not last as long as it should, their way of life directly affected.

In the article an elderly woman from Greenland stated "If you want to live up here, you have to be a hunter", "But I know humans are changing the world. I heard they're even changing the weather."

What an amazing statement.

Interesting debate guys

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We've had 2 snow falls this year (the second one is happening right now), both of which actually stuck to the ground. This one may reach about a milimetre deep by the end of the day, but the first was a good 3 inches.

That's pretty unusual, it's usually milder in West Wales this time of year.

We are a good 10 to 15 degress above average here in N.W. Florida for the last few weeks. I know when one thinks of Florida they think year round warm weather. Not for us in Pensacola, we get below freezing on many occasions and have even had wind chills below zero. Nothing compared to what it was like when I was living in Germany or Illinois, but cold none-the-less. Anyway it has yet to get below freezing in my area and if it does not do so a few times before winter is over then the bugs will overun us come spring.

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