Extreme winter weather linked to climate change

[onehandle]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – This winter's heavy snowfalls and other extreme storms could well be related to increased moisture in the air due to global climate change, a panel of scientists said on Tuesday.

This extra moisture is likely to bring on extraordinary flooding with the onset of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, as deep snowpack melts and expected heavy rains add to seasonal run-off, the scientists said in a telephone briefing.

As the planet warms up, more water from the oceans is evaporated into the atmosphere, said Todd Sanford, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. At the same time, because the atmosphere is warmer, it can hold onto more of the moisture that it takes in.

Intense storms are often the result when the atmosphere reaches its saturation point, Sanford said.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110302/ts_nm/us_climate_winter_5

[trotsky]

1. Climate change deniers can't understand this.

"Lookit all that snow out there! Where's yer global warming now, librul? Hyuk, hyuk!"

[Lastactiongyro]

9. They refuse to understand.

[arbusto_baboso]

13. Yes. Willful ignorance.

It seems to be the hallmark of righties.

[FLPanhandle]

2. I hate these reports.

"This winter's heavy snowfalls and other extreme storms COULD well be related to increased moisture".

Climate change is macro and linking one bad winter in one part of the globe to it is not very scientific. It's that same thinking that has deniers saying "Where's the global warming" after one mild summer or extreme cold winter in one place.

Yes, it COULD be related, but it also might not be.

[OnlinePoker]

3. I agree

Where was the snow the past couple of years when there was drought through most of the U.S.? There may be some extra moisture in the atmosphere, but from what I've read, this has been a fairly normal La Nina year.

[Uncle Joe]

4. That's true about one season, but increased atmospheric moisture is one symptom of global warming,

as temperatures warm up the atmosphere soaks up moisture like a sponge and when that heavily laden moist atmosphere comes in to contact with colder air, you get blizzards.

[nalnn]

12. inorite

The headlines reads to me like, "Duh. Water is wet."

Can't vouch for their scientific methods, but their mastery of the language sucks. Much like mine lol

[notesdev]

5. And the non-falsifiable hypothesis rages on...

It's time that belief in this nonsense was classified as its own religion.

[Uncle Joe]

6. This is science pure and simple based on overwhelming evidence and supported by

the vast majority of the scientific community, many of the dynamics re: heat trapping gases have been known since the 1800s.

I contend that knee-jerk denial-ism may be more based on faith than reason.

[notesdev]

7. That statement is self-contradictory

It is anti-scientific to claim that a scientific assertion is valid because of who supports it. Galileo knew all about the claim to authority fallacy.

All true science contains falsifiable hypotheses, some statement that can be proven correct or incorrect. We could debate this all day, or all year, or all decade, and believers in global warming will not be able to state any such hypothesis. I certainly invite you to try, if you can.

It is a testament to the awful state of science education that global warming arguments are taken seriously. It is not science, because it does not meet the criteria set forth in the scientific method.

[Uncle Joe]

8. I said this was science base on overwhelming evidence and supported by a vast majority of the

scientific community.

This is science pure and simple based on overwhelming evidence and supported by

the vast majority of the scientific community, many of the dynamics re: heat trapping gases have been known since the 1800s.

If it's proven false I will go with the evidence wherever it leads, if the vast majority of scientists come to the conclusion that their theory is wrong, I will reconsider my position.

It is you; that's bucking the trend of the overwhelming scientific evidence, Galileo was using science, the authority that made him recant was religious/faith based.

If you must bet on a horse race, you might occasionally win big by betting on the long shot as you prefer to do, but logic dictates that you will lose far more often and in the case of global warming climate change, the stakes are simply too great to be betting; on the dark horse, to do so requires an extreme act of blind faith.

[intaglio]

10. And you misunderstand Falsifiability

or possibly mis-state it deliberately.

For example in early 18th C Europe the statement "All swans are white" was a falsifiable hypothesis and it was proven false. Equally "All swans have webbed feet" is a falsifiable hypothesis yet to be proven false.

One falsifiable hypothesis behind theory of Anthropogenic Climate Change is that human activity has led to an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This statement has never been shown to be false even though it is falsifiable and most evidence points to it being true.

Another falsifiable hypothesis in the same theory is that the increase in CO2 levels attributable to human action leads to an increase in the amount of heat retained in the atmosphere. This too has never been shown to be false and evidence again leads to it being thought probably true.

There are also abundant falsifiable hypotheses springing from the theory of Anthropogenic Climate Change but the really important ones have never been falsified. Some of these are:
1) Human activity has brought about an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere;
2) This increase has increased the amount of heat retained in the atmosphere;
3) The increase in heat retained within the atmosphere leads to a general increase in global sea temperatures primarily, at first, in the upper layers;
4) The heat retained by the atmosphere will lead to an increase in extreme weather events due to changes in the patterns, and speed, of circulation;
5) The heat retained by the seas will lead to a small increase in global sea level and slow warming of the abyssal waters;
6) The global rise in temperature will cause an increase in glacial flow rates and in many cases a retreat of the glaciers;
7) A retreat of the glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will lead to a rapid, in geological terms, rise in sea level on the order of many metres.

Now which of these wrong, ie falsified.

I do wish Karl Popper had used a different word.

[Ratty]

11. Oh God. Not this Popperian nonsense again

1. I don't think you understand how falsifiability actually relates to science

2. Anyway, AGW certainly is falisifiable. Certain predictions have been made with respect to very technical (i.e. not flashy things you'd see on Fox) aspects of AGW and those predictions have borne out. AGW is a model as much as it is a theory and if those predictions had turned out false, the model would have needed to be adjusted. If enough of these adjustments had occurred then eventually the theory underlying it would need to be revisited. I'm just not motivated to hunt it all down for somebody who I guess gets all ther AGW info from O'Reilly or wherever. Here's a good primer (not that I think it will make any difference). Warning, it's over two paragraphs long: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=258

[arbusto_baboso]

14. Exactly. More extremes of ALL weather fit the AGW model.

Too bad so many are so ignorant.