Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Furcifer]

Weather is not climate

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091112121611.htm

Unless it's news worthy. I'm surprised at the number of people that have no problem touting the weather as climate related when it supports their views, but suddenly claim it isn't when it doesn't support their views.

Does anyone know how these extreme weather events affect climate model perturbations? I'm curious how they arrive at claims of more extreme weather events from climate models if the weather is not the climate?

 

[Furcifer]

Climate Depot??? Really, 3body?

It could be from Climate-Mart for all I care. I don't expect the pro-AGW propaganda sites to admit they fashion themselves religious just yet. And I doubt if the Pope cares just yet either

It was said years ago that the next religion would be activism. That's part of the reason I became less...active. While I realize the need for preservation on this planet, I found the leaders were becoming obsessed and fanatical. In the 90's you could see the direction it was taking, link preservation with Global Warming, and Global Warming with the survival of not only the planet but human civilization itself.

I think you'll be hard pressed to prove that isn't exactly how religion has propagated.

 

[Bill Thompson]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091112121611.htm

That article is transparently misleading. How do they define a "record high" and a "record low"? According to their chart, that would be a temperature warmer than normal or colder than normal but they have the liberty to define what the norm is.

This is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the warmest temperature ever recorded VS the coldest temperature ever recorded in the USA. This cuts to the chase. This cuts out all the fudging one can do to the statistics so that the results work out the way one wants to.

The fact that someone can hand select a chart that supports what they want to believe is not impressive.

The question remains, if global warming is true why is the warmest recorded tempature ever recorded in the USA recorded as happening prior to the coldest?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records

Your link shows this graph http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2009/11/091112121611-large.jpg
how can you say that this is scientific or conclusive or even accurate?

This graphic shows the ratio of record daily highs to record daily lows observed at about 1,800 weather stations in the 48 contiguous United States from January 1950 through September 2009. Each bar shows the proportion of record highs (red) to record lows (blue) for each decade. The 1960s and 1970s saw slightly more record daily lows than highs, but in the last 30 years record highs have increasingly predominated, with the ratio now about two-to-one for the 48 states as a whole. (Credit: Copyright UCAR, graphic by Mike Shibao)

It is not clear how these ratios are calculated. Also, even though they seem to have found a way to present the data as if things are getting warmer, the graph shows a dip suggesting randomness.
They seem to have selected a time frame that would present their case convincingly. Good political work. Bad science work.
January 1, 2000, to September 30, 2009 is a very small sample set. If they took a larger sample set, apparently things would look more random or maybe even show a cooler trend. If your article is telling the truth, why is the warmest recorded tempature earlier than the coldest recorded temperature?

To me, a "record high" would be the hightest temperature for a date ever recorded .... ever! This does not seem to be how your article defines it since it talks about thousands of recorded highs. That seems strange to me. One day it is hotter than it has ever been and then the next day it is even hotter and this continues day after day? Then, the next year many days are even hotter than the same date a year before? All this going on while there are also record lows many calendar days? Something does not seem right. Somehow, they have decided what is and what is not a "record high". I think they have decided what temperature shold be the norm and then they record anything above that as being a "record high". Otherwise, airports would be closed because of heat like they are for snow storms and there would be a lot more deaths from heat waves.

 

[Stray Cat]

So you agree that the fact that climate has undergone natural changes in the past, is irrelevent to the issue of the current climate change episode that is being driven by humans digging up sequestered carbon and putting it into the atmosphere?

I agree that to even start to understand what natural climate change may or may not be doing at the moment, we have to somehow counter the effect humans have had on the climate.
In short, stop doing the things that science tells us are bad for the climate (that's stop doing them, not taxing them) and once the man made stuff is out of the way, we'll have a better idea of the natural climate change we will have to learn to live with because there is nothing we can do about it.
So I don't agree that natural climate change is irrelevant. I believe it is inevitable. That doesn't mean of course we can abandon our responsibility to put right the damage we have caused.

 

[macdoc]

I think you need to understand the consequences of what we have already done.
There is no reset switch.
Stopping carbon emissions will not reset the climate anything short of thousands of years.

You seem very confused between local climate variability ( ENSO, NAO etc) and natural forcings which are primarily orbital ( very long cycle ), continental positioning ( even longer cycle ) and volcanic - very short cycle.

Local variability does not alter the radiative balance - the others do.
Local variability is simply the expression of energy in the atmosphere from changes in the crysopshere, hydrosphere - for instance shifts in ocean currents or pools of hot or cold in ocean basins.

This can have dramatic affect as we've seen with a strong La Nina in Australia but these variables lay on top of climate change induced by forcing.....in our case fossil carbon and to a degree methane.

So ENSO may magnify the forcing or mitigate it.....some call La Nina the air conditioner for North America.

Disruptions in the polar patterns ( this winter and last ) due to the consequences of a warmer Arctic Ocean with more open water mean deep continental cold.
This does not change the radiative balance - it simply is local change - natural variability some induced by the longer term forcing of orbital, continental placement, volcanic and now AGW

The latter cannot be stopped or reset - we have already altered the climate out to at least 100k years.....perhaps completely over riding the ice age that would have been part of the next 10k years.

Carbon is forever in human terms
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html

these changes are not reversable by stopping the carbon emissions

Abstract

The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends not only on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential for irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450–600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the “dust bowl” era and inexorable sea level rise. Thermal expansion of the warming ocean provides a conservative lower limit to irreversible global average sea level rise of at least 0.4–1.0 m if 21st century CO2 concentrations exceed 600 ppmv and 0.6–1.9 m for peak CO2 concentrations exceeding ≈1,000 ppmv. Additional contributions from glaciers and ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise are uncertain but may equal or exceed several meters over the next millennium or longer.

ttp://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.full

No foolin' guys we've made a mess of it ...and it's not going away.

 

[DC]

It could be from Climate-Mart for all I care. I don't expect the pro-AGW propaganda sites to admit they fashion themselves religious just yet. And I doubt if the Pope cares just yet either

It was said years ago that the next religion would be activism. That's part of the reason I became less...active. While I realize the need for preservation on this planet, I found the leaders were becoming obsessed and fanatical. In the 90's you could see the direction it was taking, link preservation with Global Warming, and Global Warming with the survival of not only the planet but human civilization itself.

I think you'll be hard pressed to prove that isn't exactly how religion has propagated.

name one religion that has a scientific origin, on which there is a scientific consensus and that has evidence to back it up.

Or i ask you the same i ask creationists.
When the theory of Evolution AGW is wrong, what hypothesis do you think fits the evidence? what is your theory?

 

[Pixel42]

I'm surprised at the number of people that have no problem touting the weather as climate related when it supports their views, but suddenly claim it isn't when it doesn't support their views.

Individual record highs and lows tell you nothing about climate trends. A gradually increasing ratio of record highs to record lows over a period of decades does tell you something about climate trends. To suggest otherwise is to fail to understand the essential difference between weather and climate.

I have never, and would never, suggest that any individual weather event is evidence that the world is warming. It seems clear to me, however, that - to give a different but similar example - the fact that 6 new hottest recorded month records have been set in the 350 year Central England Temperature record in the last 15 years but it's 60 years since the last time a coldest month record was broken does support that view.

You can't conclude anything about the link between smoking and lung cancer by looking at any individual case of lung cancer, but you can conclude something by looking at statistical differences between smokers and non-smokers over time. A smoker can wilfully refuse to understand that reasoning because he doesn't want to give up smoking, but it won't reduce his chances of getting lung cancer.

 

[Bill Thompson]

Pixel42,

That article raises more questions than provides answers. The more I think about it, the more questions I have.

• Is a trend for 9 years really indicative of direction where are really heading? The weather is fluid and dependent on a number of fluid currents that influence each other. Aren't there cycles that cause the temperature to go up and down over long periods because of this?
• In a way, the article you show confirms what I said rather than counters it. If record highs and record lows are a good way if determining if we are really experiencing global warming, then what I have said suggests that we are NOT experiencing global warming because, like I said, the highest recorded temperature occurred before the lowest recorded temperature in the USA.
• Also, why do the global warming people show graphs from crunched numbers and not the actual numbers? I would love to see the actual raw data that they got their colorful charts from. Just because information is presented in a colorful and slick article no longer convinces me. I worked in the Military Intelligence. I was shocked one day to find that articles in NewsWeek were complete fabrications. I no longer trust the press. Show me the data. You might ask, why would the press lie? It is simple. It is a kind of logical fallacy called "Pious Fraud". In their mind, it is ok to stretch the truth a little if it means that people will be more ecological friendly and recycle and all that good stuff. The ends justify the means. It is the same reason why the Catholics pull thier bleading statue and stigmata stunts.
• What about the last three years? Weren't these last three winters harsh and weren't the last three summers mild?
• Haven't doomsday forecasters for the last few hundred years been constantly wrong? And haven't they relied on the science and statistics of their times?
• Why aren't polar bears on the endangered species list?
• Aren't the hymalayian mountain caps melting because of soot instead of greenhouse gasses?

 

[Thunder]

Global warming causing more snow and cooler winters?

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2039777,00.html

Yep, that's a theory. The receding ice in the Arctic and Antarctica is allowing more sunlight to warm the water and air over the poles, which allows more moisture in the air and screw with the jetstream, allowing more cold air from the North Pole to dip into North America. And there is a similar theory of how more snow in Siberia is messing the with jet stream there....sending more cold air into Europe and North America.

Though I must say, the clear paradox of Global Warming causing more snow and even colder winters, will make skeptics frown and say:

"so when it gets hotter and more hurricanes, its cause of AGW. and when its colder and snowier, its cause of AGW. so what is NOT caused by global warming??? its like you guys have decided that any weather anamoly, no matter how paradoxical it may be, is due to global warming!!!!!"


its things like this that make me think we should lay off dire predictions of what AGW will cause.

 

[Furcifer]

God AGW works in mysterious ways.

 

[Furcifer]

Individual record highs and lows tell you nothing about climate trends. A gradually increasing ratio of record highs to record lows over a period of decades does tell you something about climate trends. To suggest otherwise is to fail to understand the essential difference between weather and climate.

To do so with presenting the number of record highs and lows before "AGW" or another warming period is to not understand statistics.

 

[DC]

God AGW works in mysterious ways.

what is mysterious about it?

 

[Thunder]

the most important thing is that the Earth's average temps are still going up.

but the Earth is a very large and complicated system, with probablhy thousands of micro-climates. Its a massive network of inter-connected climatic zones, oceans, seas, etc etc.

and yes, its very hard for someone who is not a climatologist to understand how supposed global warming could actually cause cooler temps and more snow.

I understand it. Many folks at JREF grasp it. But your average Joe is gonna have a hard time.

 

[jasonpatterson]

Global warming is the change in Earth's average surface temperature. It's been called climate change for a while now for a reason. It's also been a fairly regular prediction that weather would tend to become more extreme, with things like strong hurricanes and heavy snows to be expected. Changes in the Gulf Stream that would result in a very cold Europe were also predicted, though I freely admit that I have no idea what the current thinking is on that front.

 

[CapelDodger]

its things like this that make me think we should lay off dire predictions of what AGW will cause.

There are enough things already happening that "dire predictions" will become a bit redundant.

It'll be interesting to see if these cold intrusions we've seen in the last two years continue. This is a great opportunity to find out how the climate responds to much-reduced Arctic sea-ice. We're learning so much about climate change now we can watch it happening, instead of depending on palaeo-data and digital models. Since we're running the experiment, we might as well make the most of it .

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Seasonal weather is a rhythmic oscillation within a largely chaotic system. When such systems are left undisturbed they tend to even out the oscillation, minimizing differences between peaks. When changes are made to these kind of systems the maximums and minimums tend to become both more extreme and more erratic.

Expect hot summers followed by cold winters, and expect hot winters followed by cold summers.

The loss of Arctic ice cover leads to warming of the arctic water, leading to greater evaporation of water in the north Atlantic. Also, the warmer Arctic current water flows past BOTH sides of Greenland. Greenland's ice sheet has been thinning at unprecedented rates.

People keep trying to dismiss climate change because it doesn't fit their linear notions based on common small-scale phenomena.

"Weather is not climate."

 

[noreligion]

t
and yes, its very hard for someone who is not a climatologist to understand how supposed global warming could actually cause cooler temps and more snow.

How so? I am not a climatologist and none of my friends besides the one employed by NOAA are. We all understand that global warming causes cooler temperatures and more snow. Considering snow reflects upwards of 80% sunlight, that causes more snow and even cooler temperatures also.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

I agree with noreligion. I'm just a carpenter with a liberal arts education, and I get it.

 

[DC]

i am an ex truther and get it !

 

[CapelDodger]

Changes in the Gulf Stream that would result in a very cold Europe were also predicted, though I freely admit that I have no idea what the current thinking is on that front.

It never had much credence. The simple fact of having the Atlantic to the west, where the prevailing winds normally come from, far outweighs the Gulf Stream. With these "blocking highs" that have switched the winds to the continent and down from the Arctic we've seen all the cooling we'd see if the Gulf Stream turned off. Cold, but not outrageously so.

It would have an effect on Greenland, Iceland and Norway, no doubt about that. Maybe Labrador. If the warm water pooled in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean that would also have an effect, I'd have thought.

The consensus opinion has always been that it's very unlikely anyway.