US Climate Report Says Global Warming Impact Already Severe 627
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Darryl Fears reports in the Washington Post on the U.S. government's newest national assessment of climate change. It says Americans are already feeling the effects of global warming. The assessment carves the nation into sections and examines the impacts: More sea-level rise, flooding, storm surge, precipitation and heat waves in the Northeast; frequent water shortages and hurricanes in the Southeast and Caribbean; more drought and wildfires in the Southwest. 'Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Insurance rates are rising in some vulnerable locations, and insurance is no longer available in others. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the spring, last later into the fall, and burn more acreage. In Arctic Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and autumn storms now cause more erosion, threatening many communities with relocation.' The report concludes that over recent decades, climate science has advanced significantly and that increased scrutiny has led to increased certainty that we are now seeing impacts associated with human-induced climate change. 'What is new over the last decade is that we know with increasing certainty that climate change is happening now. While scientists continue to refine projections of the future, observations unequivocally show that climate is changing and that the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases.'"
sigh (Score:1, Informative)
It's Weather, not Climate.
Also reviewed by the Bad Astronomer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Frequent hurricanes? (Score:5, Informative)
That's why they changed it to "Global Climate Change". Literally every possible observation is confirmation!
Hmm.... (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting that just today, I also read this article:
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
It claims that a full 1/3rd. of the warming in the 1990's, on record, was actually due to water vapor in the air, vs. CO2 emissions and the like. Yes, it's not saying this is cause to deny the phenomenon, but it shows how we're still really in the early stages of understanding the details..... The statements of fact about exactly what's happening are largely premature.
Lots of other human-created reasons too (Score:2, Informative)
At least here in the west, the increased wildfire issues are also partially caused by lack of proper forest-management. Wildfires are a natural phenomenon that allow forests to rebuild themselves - but in our zeal to prevent them, and also to prevent forest thinning via logging over the last few decades, we are breeding wildfire territories.
As for water shortages in California - we have been court-ordered to drain reservoirs and dump extra water into our rivers in order to flood the delta so that "endangered" smelt can survive. As such, we have also depleted agriculture of the much-needed water to grow plants - water that floods the land and seeps into the ground to refill the water table that is used for wells.
We are messing with things every year in the name of "environment", and causing other unintended consequences - but yet when these problems crop up, we just label them all "climate change" and blame something else.
Re:sigh (Score:2, Informative)
The science was in for "peak oil" scare all the way back to 70s and the same kinds of people were calling deniers "stupid" and "cowards" and calling for urgent massive government spending on green projects and massive destructive regulation of job creating industries as a response. 45 years later and the peak oil has been exposed as a hoax, only for global warming to take its place.
Re:sigh (Score:5, Informative)
Cooling trend? Not sure where you come up with that. Here is the temperature trend over the last 15 years: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/g... [woodfortrees.org]
That's a change of + 0.18 C over the period. That is a rather large increase for 15 years.
Re:sigh (Score:2, Informative)
Who the fuck mods this +anything, much less "interesting"?
Aside from the fact that it's a wildly ignorant and blindly regurgitated talking point that we've all seen a trillion times, it fails to address the even remotely basic question of what this report actually studied, which is about long term trends outside of the inter-annual noise levels, of specific classes of negative climatic events like flooding and drought.
How does anyone see something that profoundly and purposely ignorant of the very basic of what is being discussed and go "oh how clever!". I need someone to explain to me what possible mental process leads to this kind of post being treated as anything other than purposeful flamebait that adds less than zero to the discussion.
Help me out here.
Re:sigh (Score:3, Informative)
Peak (US) oil happened. It's part of why we're doing the whole hydraulic fracturing thing.
The historical data of actual oil prices maps pretty damn well to the supposedly "bogus" Hubbert curve.
Re:sigh (Score:5, Informative)
Oil production has been plateauing despite more drilling in even more remote areas and deeper waters, with new methods of extraction being deployed (shale fracking - it's not just for gas y'know). We keep drilling more holes just to keep up with the diminishing returns.
The quality of the crude has declined, and it's gotten so bad in the past few years that now tar sands are economically viable because there's no place else to get it.
Or did you think "peak oil" means it would all run out in one night?
=Smidge=
Re:Still denialists, no surprise. (Score:5, Informative)
There is a point where a species cannot adapt and change fast enough.
And for those interested, that point is approximately the speed of AGW divided by 10,000:
http://news.discovery.com/eart... [discovery.com]
Re:sigh (Score:3, Informative)
Anything that advances the anthropogenic global warming agenda is climate. Anything that doesn't is weather. Keep up!
According to the government's own figures, 78% of the United States has been experiencing the coldest year (i.e., 2014 so far) since 1937. About the only exception has been the SW like the LA region right now. Great Lakes have record ice for this time of year. Arctic is at normal sea ice levels and Antarctic levels are above normal. Which wouldn't be worth mentioning if it hadn't been a strong trend for well over a year. But what's really educational is to look at the actual record of past years, rather than just taking other peoples' word for it.
This guy [wordpress.com] is a very good source of historical comparisons to todays weather AND climate.
When you know a little actual history of our climate, you look at these "warming" scares and go "Pffffft. Baloney."
He posts some really great, actual historical stuff like THIS [wordpress.com] and THIS [wordpress.com] and THIS [wordpress.com].
Alarmists can say what they want about skeptics, but the historical record is the historical record.
Good luck trying to rebut the actual thermometers in, say, 1940 for example. They said what they said.
Re:sigh (Score:5, Informative)
You don't know what peak oil is.
We are not finding new oil reserves faster than the rate of growth of oil usage.
We are always finding new oil, but the Chinese and other emerging industrial countries are consuming it faster than we are finding it.
New forms of energy are being stifled / legislatively hindered by oil interests. Why else are states trying to pass laws to tax solar panel installations?
Re:sigh (Score:2, Informative)
That first link is quite amusing, because it explains nothing in what the data actually is.
What I think is amusing is that you think nobody can follow a link or spend 3 minutes on Google, or even just go up a level on the same website to see what that UIUC arctic timeseries is. Must everything be spoon-fed to you?
First, monthly anomaly has been used by global warming alarmists to show trends for many years now. Are you saying nobody else is allowed to do the same?
Second, it is NOT "troposphere" anomalies, it is sea ice extent anomalies. Since when does the troposphere vary by "millions of square kilometers"? Have you ever read a graph before?
I think the rest of us might be even more amused than you.
If you look at the very site he uses, WoodForTrees.org, pretty much every other graph, again using the simple linear approximation at play here, shows an increase
What he uses WoodForTrees for is their graphing tool, not the source of his data. He CITES the source of his date (right there on that page, and it is NOT "troposphere temperature anomaly", it is SEA ICE extent anomaly, as you can see directly from the source if you know how to navigate.) And he uses the WoodForTrees publicly available graphing tool to construct a lot of his charts from the DATA he links you to right there on the page.
So please learn what you're even criticizing before you criticize it.
I knew this would bring some goofballs out of the woodwork.