How Bad Is Global Warming?

[smiths]

wintler and joe, i respectfully suggest that you don't bother anymore, these guys are muppets, they've drunk the cool aid

post-modern paranoia where any one conspiracy is as good as the next

[wintler2]

I know what you're saying smiths and agree, but sometimes i just have to throw stones at the leviathon. Its like cocacola, everyone knows its bad for you, but its multibillion dollar sales continue - something to do with its huge advertising spend maybe. Every now and then i deface a billboard, even tho i know they'll just stick another one up with same lies on it. Same with AGW deniers - theres so much dangerously misinformed nonsense, i have to strike a blow occasionally.

OT- Joe, thanks for AusStory link, happy tho it isn't. Theres substantial plantations up here, but none in my catchment thank god.

[Joe Hillshoist]

That sort of shit has been going on forever tho, all over the country.

There's no such thing as organic, no matter where you grow your garden and what natural fertilisers you may use.

For example 30 years ago they (local farmers) used to get together and hire a crop dusting plane to spray the entire valley with arsenic and other stuff, possibly dieldren (for the bananas).

I can actually understand that ignorance, farmers will believe the bullshit big companies spin till they get screwed over.

But its appalling thats its still going on and ... I mean ffs Tasmania is facing the loss of its most iconic native animal, the Tasmanian Devil due to an emergent contagious cancer that hasn't been around that long.

Now this. The fuckers.

[Sepka]

So bad that Lake Erie has frozen completely over for the first time in 14 years. http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art ... /302129904

[nathan28]

So bad that Lake Erie has frozen completely over for the first time in 14 years. http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art ... /302129904

Yeah, because that whole unprecedented glacier melting is totally the work of dirty Muslims who only bathe once a week and their Cult of Death with HAARP weapons to help the ZOG force Christian people to stop driving thirty miles in SUVs every time they want to buy a quart of milk.

[norton ash]

In other local weather, bad enough to wreck the Vancouver olympics.

[wintler2]

Sepka, you need to try a little harder to understand, assuming that is your aim. There is no contradiction between 'global warming' and extremes of cold. Given the recent 'slight chill' in UK & US, it might be time for another survey of the Atlantic thermohaline conveyor. Its weakening was overblown a few years ago, but the accelerating melt of Greenland is just what it will take to slow the warming current and cool the UK & NE america.

[Simulist]

There is no contradiction between 'global warming' and extremes of cold.

That's right. It's a little stunning to listen to people still try to ridicule global warming by singing the old tune, "Baby, It's Cold Outside."

[MinM]

Vancouver Today

Welcome to the Winter Olympics

[Ben D]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 026932.ece

UN must investigate warming ‘bias’, says former climate chief ‘Every error exaggerated the impact of change’

The UN body that advises world leaders on climate change must investigate an apparent bias in its report that resulted in several exaggerations of the impact of global warming, according to its former chairman.

In an interview with The Times Robert Watson said that all the errors exposed so far in the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) resulted in overstatements of the severity of the problem.

Professor Watson, currently chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said that if the errors had just been innocent mistakes, as has been claimed by the current chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, some would probably have understated the impact of climate change.

[tazmic]

Missed emphasis:

if the errors had just been innocent mistakes, as has been claimed by the current chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, some would probably have understated the impact of climate change.

[smiths]

Waters from warmer latitudes -- or subtropical waters -- are reaching Greenland's glaciers, driving melting and likely triggering an acceleration of ice loss, reports a team of researchers led by Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

"This is the first time we've seen waters this warm in any of the fjords in Greenland," says Straneo. "The subtropical waters are flowing through the fjord very quickly, so they can transport heat and drive melting at the end of the glacier."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 163339.htm

[tazmic]

All nine climate models used by the IPCC, predicting winter snow cover, falsified by reality:

"A 2005 Columbia University study titled “WILL CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECT SNOW COVER OVER NORTH AMERICA?” ran nine climate models used by the IPCC, and all nine predicted that North American winter snow cover would decline significantly, starting in about 1990."

But, "As we know, winter snow cover has actually increased about 5% since it bottomed in 1989, and is now close to a record maximum."

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/19/north-america-snow-models-miss-the-mark/

Smiths, you might find this interesting:

"We provide an analysis of Greenland temperature records to compare the current (1995–2005) warming period with the previous (1920–1930) Greenland warming. We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods are of a similar magnitude, however, the rate of warming in 1920–1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995 – 2005."

http://www.joelschwartz.com/pdfs/Chylek.pdf

So maybe the warming is not unprecedented and it doesn't look like CO2 is the major player, at least locally.

But could it be: increasing co2 -> warmer water -> more melty glaciers -> slowing of the the er, warming current -> colder weather? Is AGW theory explaining colder weather and predicting less snow?

I'm wondering what evidence would amount to falsification here.

[Iamwhomiam]

I'm not getting sucked back into this. Just stopped by to post McKibben's recent article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021103895.html

Washington's snowstorms, brought to you by global warming

By Bill McKibben
Sunday, February 14, 2010; B01

RIPTON, VERMONT -- You want to hear my winter weather story? No, really, I know you do.

The cross-country ski race I've been training for, set for today high in the Green Mountains: cancelled, lack of snow.

Meanwhile, across the continent, backhoes and helicopters are moving snow down British Columbia's Cypress Mountain in an attempt to cover the Olympic ski courses, and technicians are burying cooling pipes beneath the moguls to keep them from melting. Some climate-conscious jokers put out a video pushing the sport of "bobwheeling" for future snow-challenged Olympiads.

And apparently there was some snowfall in the greater Washington area last week.

When you're trying to launch snowboarding tricks on dry ground and simultaneously shutting down the U.S. government because the snowbanks are casting shadows on the Washington Monument, something odd is going on. This isn't a good old-fashioned winter for the District of Columbia, not unless you're remembering the last ice age. And it doesn't disprove global warming, despite Sen. Jim De Mint's cheerful tweet: "It's going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries 'uncle.' "

Instead, the weird and disruptive weather patterns around the world are pretty much exactly what you'd expect as the planet warms. Here's how it works:

In most places, winter is clearly growing shorter and less intense. We can tell, because Arctic sea ice is melting, because the glaciers on Greenland are shrinking and because a thousand other signals send the same message. Here in the mountains of the Northeast, for instance, lakes freeze later than they used to, and sometimes not at all: Lake Champlain remained open in winter only three times during the 19th century, but it did so 18 times between 1970 and 2007.

But rising temperature is only one effect of climate change. Probably more crucially, warmer air holds more water vapor than cold air does. The increased evaporation from land and sea leads to more drought but also to more precipitation, since what goes up eventually comes down. The numbers aren't trivial -- global warming has added 4 percent more moisture to the atmosphere since 1970. That means that the number of "extreme events" such as downpours and floods has grown steadily; the most intense storms have increased by 20 percent across the United States in the past century.

So here's the thing: Despite global warming, it still gets cold enough to snow in the middle of winter. It even gets cold enough to snow in Texas and Georgia, as it did late last week. And the chances of what are technically called "big honking dumps" have increased. As Jeff Masters, the widely read weather blogger, pointed out last week, a record snowstorm requires a record amount of moisture in the air. "It is quite possible that the dice have been loaded in favor of more intense Nor'easters for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, thanks to the higher levels of moisture present in the air due to warmer global temperatures," he wrote.

The climatalogical climate is only part of the equation. The political climate counts, too -- and there's no question that it's harder to make legislative progress when Sen. James Inhofe's grandchildren are building an igloo next to the Capitol with a big sign that says "Al Gore's New Home." The timing here is particularly tough, for the snowstorms come against the backdrop of renewed attacks on the pillars of climate science -- charges that hacked e-mails show some researchers to be venal or that key scientists have financial ties to energy industries.

Looked at dispassionately, those political attacks essentially buttress the consensus around global warming. If that much money and attention can be aimed at the data and all anyone can find is a few mistakes and a collection of nasty e-mails, it's a pretty good sign that the science is sound (though not as good a sign as the melting Arctic). The British newspaper the Guardian just concluded a huge series on the "Climategate" e-mails with the words: "The world is still warming. Humanity is still to blame. And we still, urgently, need to do something about it."

Looked at dispassionately, the round of snowmageddons crisscrossing the mid-Atlantic carries the same message. But it's hard to be dispassionate when you're wondering, six hours of shoveling later, if there's a good chiropractor in the neighborhood and what kind of dogsled you might need to reach her.

It's almost like a test, centered on ground zero for climate-change legislation. Can you sit in a snowstorm and imagine a warming world? If you're a senator, can you come back to work and pass a bill that blunts the pace of climate change? If the answer is no, then we're really in a world of trouble.

Bill McKibben is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the co-founder of 350.org. He is the author of "The End of Nature" and the forthcoming "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet."

View all comments that have been posted about this article.

[tazmic]

I'm not getting sucked back into this.

I was not aware you were ever 'in it'.

GW propaganda, brought to you by the Washington Post.

But I'm glad you are not if this is your contribution. It really doesn't deserve any attention, but I like this bit:

"rising temperature is only one effect of climate change."

So we started with GW. Then it was Warming leading to Climate Change. Now it's Climate Change causing the Warming, and guess what?
Along with more drought and more rain, it causes the cooling too.

"a thousand other signals send the same message"

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

So what kind of signal would not send the same message?