2011 Was the 9th Hottest Year On Record 877
The Bad Astronomer writes "Last year was the 9th hottest year out of the past 130, according to NASA and the NOAA. That's no coincidence: nine out of the ten hottest years on record have been since the year 2000. It's long past time to face facts: the Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in fantasy."
The open question... (Score:5, Interesting)
Denial. (Score:1, Interesting)
Not everyone denies that the earth is getting hotter (facts), but some related claims like that it's getting hotter because of human activity, greenhouse gases, etc.
That it's getting hotter is science: you can't disagree with measurement.
The rest is a mixture of pseudo-science and politics.
Fact is that nobody knows why the Earth is getting hotter.
Making leaps (Score:2, Interesting)
It's long past time to face facts: the Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in fantasy.
Nobody is denying that it got like 0.2 degrees hotter [drroyspencer.com] in the past 10 years, it's the fact that some people seem to be making the leap between it getting hotter and humans not trading enough carbon credits, now that is an exercise in fantasy.
Re:Minnesota (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in Minnesota. We're presently at -12C with a forecast low of -21C tonight. If this is what you call a warmer Earth you could have fooled me. However, I for one would very much welcome a warmer Minnesota--during the winter at any rate.
Global *averages* are rising. And by the models I've heard it means that winters don't necessarily get warmer (yet), but they get shorter. I live in Ontario, and I can remember having snowball fights before Hallowe'en when I was young. This year, we didn't start getting lasting snow until mid-December, and we have had winters in the past few years where we didn't get lasting snow until mid-January. It still gets down to low temperatures (it was -35 here this morning, with the wind chill factor... -21 without), but it does it less often, and it doesn't stay cold for as many months. It's "good" for northern latitudes (for varying definitions of "good"... the reduction in permafrost is wreaking havoc on the transportation network in northern Canada, as we discover that some of the landing strips on fly-in communities are in swamps), but it's really bad for those in equatorial latitudes.
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Interesting)
If only the deaths due to famine could be limited to those who are most responsible for causing the problem - but it will be limited to the poor people mostly in the third world.
Meanwhile we have all the climate change deniers to help prop up the corporations and countries who are causing the problem and ensure that it gets worse faster.
4th coldest year? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Even through the smoke you can see something (Score:4, Interesting)
There were also giant forests and jungles and ocean ecosystems supported by that carbon. That meant a lot of it was in the midst of the metabolisms of plants and algae and stuff, not floating free in the atmosphere. It was a generally thicker atmosphere, making more OXYGEN available, that let the world grow ____ing great lizards (also, they weren't lizards).
We, on the other hand, have increasingly small jungles and forests, and increasingly puny ocean ecosystems, which means that carbon doesn't spend much time trapped in living things. It stays in the atmosphere, which leads to something beyond "warm and cozy."
We also have this lovely whirlpool of tiny plastic molecules filling the upper current of the Pacific Ocean, which is effectively choking increasing numbers of life at the bottom of the foodchain. Can't see it from Iowa, but it's there.
Re:The open question... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things that has always bothered me about the global the warming/climate change thesis that its advocates predict nothing but negative consequences.
You are confusing two different groups of people.
Climate scientists are pointing out that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere increases the temperature, and that this is well known, although the amount still has large error bars-- about plus or minus fifty percent, actually. These aren't "advocates;" this is science: ordinary, messy, plodding, data-intensive, science.
For saying this, however, climate scientists are being attacked relentlessly. It's a politically driven argument, not a scientific argument, which means that it can't be refuted by any amount of data.
There is another question, which is, what will the effects of this warming be? Since the deniers won't even credit that carbon dioxide has a warming effect at all, the odd result is that the ONLY people discussing the effects of temperature increase are the ones looking at negative effects. It's a one-sided debate because the other side has abdicated. They find it easier to attack the scientists than actually look at what the effects will be.
I do predict, however, that eventually the terms of the debate will change, and the deniers will start changing their argument to "well, we may be increasing the temperature, but that's a good thing. We want to increase the temperature."
Actually, I'm looking forward to that shift. First, I really would like to see both sides looking at effects. But, mainly, iI\t's a lot better than the "scientists are frauds and scientific results are a hoax and global warming is a scam" that is currently the argument.
No, the Earth isn't getting warmer latey. (Score:3, Interesting)
There has been no statistically significant warming in the last 15 years. The Earth is not getting hotter, it got hotter and then, a decade and a half ago, it stopped. This may well be a blip; noted climatoligist Professor Phil Jones, Director of Research for the University of East Angliaâ(TM)s Climatic Research Unit certainly thinks so. But claims the Earth hasn't been getting warmer for the last 15 years are not fantasies; they are the actual consensus of real, respected climate scientists, based on the best data available.
Re:The open question... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are good effects of global warming, and there are bad effects. It's sometimes hard to predict which are which. What we do know is that it is change, and a major one, to the support system which keeps the human race alive. Unmoderated change is likely to be a bad thing, and we know that lots of the effects will be bad. Best not to run the experiment with our only life-support system.
Take the article you linked to: Ok, so that's an increase in arable land. This will be offset by other lands becoming less useful. The total might be higher or lower: Hard to say for sure. However, the Sahara doesn't have great soil, so even if it's wet enough to grow crops, it's unlikely to be as productive as, say, the American mindwest. Also, many plants are fairly picky about the conditions they grow in. Temperatures, elevation, type of soil, total rainfall, rainfall pattern, length of growing season, ratios of daylight to darkness during the growing season, all of these are known to impact the productivity of many crops. Taking a crop that grows well in one place and moving it someplace else often cuts yield significantly. Even if the total amount of arable land goes up, that doesn't mean we'll be able to grow more useful crops.
Global warming is a massive uncontrolled experiment, and if it goes badly humanity will suffer for it. We don't necessarily know it will go badly, but it appears at least as likely as it going well. (In fact, it appears more likely, overall.) I'd rather avoid that type of situation.
Re:The open question... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:There is no denying the Earth is getting hotter (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:There is no denying the Earth is getting hotter (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There is no denying the Earth is getting hotter (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it would be even more foolish to try to "change it back" than it would be to just learn to adapt. What happens if you change it back and end up going slightly too far? What about all those areas that are going to become better farming land due to a warmer climate?
Re:There is no denying the Earth is getting hotter (Score:2, Interesting)
Civilization itself is unusual. Could it be related to stable weather?
ah, Denier idiots. (Score:4, Interesting)
so many uneducated fools going on like there ignorance should hold the same value as an experts.
For those people saying 'there will be a benefit because of more [whatever]. You might want to wonder why you think after there is more arable land, or warmer Canada, the temperature wont continue to rise?
What the cap are gone, are only buffer will be gone. Right not, they are acting as a heat sink. SO all the new land continue to with :
a) get get hotter and then drier, or
b) so much cloud cover appears plant find it difficult to grow.
Oh, and there is less sunshine hitting the ground, and it has started to impact plant growth. granted a tine amount, so far.
read up on why you are wrong:
http://ncse.com/climate [ncse.com]
Re:The open question... (Score:4, Interesting)
The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago and was going on for about 100,000 years before that. I think you're a bit confused about the age of those ice sheets that are melting. So, what data precisely is it that you believe "not a single person who supports Global warming" will even look at? You haven't actually asserted any particular set of data, just speculated that the current trends are part of a normal warming trend and that the people studying climate haven't considered that possibility. You'll have to do a little better than that. It is possible that the climatologists are wrong, but at least they seem to be putting the work in.
Also "So water levels increase? It will be disastrous, but the majority will survive.". Considering how heavily leveraged the human race is in all sorts of ways right now (and how many live on the coasts), I don't have that much confidence that it will be the majority that will survive. In any case, the callous attitude you display that, sure a huge chunk of the human race will suffer and die, but it probably won't be you, so you don't really care is just really swell. Really great, you know. It seems to be the one a lot of denialist types fall back on in the end. They don't care if they're actually right or wrong, or what the consequences are. They've chosen their position, and that's it. I just don't understand why you bother.
Re:"Trust" is for idiots, look at the evidence. (Score:3, Interesting)
Who cares who is at fault? (Score:4, Interesting)
All this talk about whether global warming is natural or is caused by burning things doesn't really matter. Why are we looking for a scapegoat? All that matters is whether or not the earth is getting warmer. If it is, whether it's natural or not, we had better start preparing. I have yet to hear a single credible plan about how anyone is going to stop the billions of humans on the planet from burning stuff to survive. Let's face it. It's just not going to happen.
Maybe SUVs will get outlawed in the US. Hooray! I hate the things. Maybe a 70 mpg minimum will be required for any non-commerical vehicle sold in the US (if you tried that for commercial vehicles you'd have mass starvation which could be another 'solution' I suppose). Maybe we'll build a few more nuclear power plants although I think NIMBY will prevent most of that.
Maybe England and Canada and Australia will follow along as they so often seem to do with whatever silly idea the US comes up with. Or maybe not. In any case the rest of the planet representing the majority of land area and population will just laugh and continue to burn things until they run out of things to burn. And yes this includes trees and coal. And those laughable drop-in-the-bucket schemes that the US will come up with wouldn't have delayed the end by much anyway. People are going to do what they must to survive and that usually involves burning things.
So if AGW is true then our species is doomed and there is no way around it. I propose a possible solution. The end will take at least a millenium. That gives us (especially the US) the chance to start putting all the money that would have been spent catching, imprisoning, and executing millions of climate criminals and building hundreds of thousands of nuclear power plants everywhere and cleaning up the inevitable accidents into a new era for the space program.
See how I did that? The greens have their agenda (although they are pretty vague about what exactly that is), and I have mine. Let's start devoting every dollar we now spend on the defense budget into building an interstellar generation ship big enough for a few thousand people to live on. That will be a start. Maybe by the time the end comes in 1000 - 100,000 years we will be fully prepared to live off world and will have colonized other star systems. It is funny that the very thing that allowed us to flourish as a technological species, heat engines which create electricity and do the work that we used to require things like horses or rivers to do, will have become our doom.
While the US and maybe a few close allies could Francify their electricity production by going nearly 100% nuclear and introduce bumper car like transportation systems with electric cars that are powered by nuclear powered overhead wires once they reach the major highways, is the rest of the world going to be able to do that? Maybe eventually but not right now. I think much of AGW is based on the idea that we will essentially never run out of fossil fuels, but nuclear fuel will eventually run out. There is only a finite supply of uranium etc on this planet. So then it's either burn or face massive die offs of just leave the planet. So we should start preparing for that. We have no idea whether intelligent life in the galaxy is rare, but it may be. We should do everything we can to preserve our species regardless of what may happen to this particular planet.
Re:The open question... (Score:2, Interesting)
So "a couple years" without widely available grains doesn't strike you as potentially problematic?
Re:The open question... (Score:4, Interesting)
It may be the shipping that kills the product, but only indirectly. Because the product was designed around shipping, it was never good from the start...
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-farming-destroyed-the-tasty-tomato [npr.org]
(I have a 30 ft orange tree and plant at least 3-4 tomato plants in my backyard and will never buy either of those products if they come from Florida. Nothing against the state, just the industry. I'm sure your homegrown oranges in FL are as awesome as mine are in CA :)
Re:There is no denying the Earth is getting hotter (Score:4, Interesting)
It has nothing to do with people's skin melting off, or even being comfortable outdoors. It has to do with polar ice levels, seasonal weather stability and farmland stability. The world population may inflect at 9billion in a few decades, but that doesn't give us unlimited carrying capacity.
American (and global) policy today may direct decide the life or death of billions of people 100 years from now. It's really interesting to consider. If there is a 1% chance that your decision will kill 500 million people over the next 200 years, what is the economic value of that choice?
Since according to US actuarial tables, a human life is worth about $13 million, 500 million people is worth about $6,500 trillion. Given a 1% chance of this happening, this is an opportunity cost of $65 trillion. Given the time value of money over 100 years (the average between now and 200 years from now), it's worth about $3.3 trillion today to prevent those deaths.
Obviously, I'm just making these numbers up, but it illustrates the point. This is a rough calculation that a rational liberal economist might put on the value of trying to reduce the impact of anthropomorphic climate change.