Who stole the warming?

[Howzit]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025


I'm sure you can find your own links if you don't like mine.

The question is what problems are we really trying to solve and could the attendant cost be better spent in the name of saving humanity?

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[anniebelle]

6. Really?

Sounds like the lines coming from Faux News.

[couriousg]

7. Sorry, Don't watch Faux News...

Just did some reading on the subject.

[Old and In the Way]

2. Right.....

<>

[Howzit]

23. I'd love to see data

all the way up to 2008. Know where I can find it?

[XemaSab]

3. .

[eilen]

8. Here in upstate NY

we have January weather, temps in mid thirties.... I'd like a little Spring please. This is NOT warm.

We have had less snow this year than in years past and the temps over the winter have not been as sub-zero as they have been in the the past BUT... we'd like some SPRING now.

Thanks.

[Old and In the Way]

11. We had record snows up here in Maine, too.

Obviously, localized weather patterns have no bearing on the subject of global warming.

[Xithras]

17. There are multiple publications about the sea ice anomaly not being tied to GW.

It may, in fact, be caused by the increased sooty emissions from China over the past decade as they have increased the number of unscrubbed coal burning plants several times over. It's already been confirmed that some of their sooty emissions (well known as the Asian Brown Cloud) are crossing the Pacific and are being found in the Canadian Rockies and the Pacific NW. At other times of the year, currents do pull air north across Siberia and into the arctic. If this soot is landing on the snow, it would cause a rapid meltoff as the albedo of the snow decreased.

Which could explain why the Arctic ice cover is breaking up while global temperatures have averaged flat for the past decade. It is of course ALSO important to point out that the very same Chinese soot and sulfur emissions may also be re-engaging the global dimming cycle that masked part of the global warming problem earlier this century. Basically, high altitude particulates reduce lightfall to the surface and lower atmosphere, dropping surface temperatures (or in this case, pausing the climb). Ceasing the particulate pollution would cause temps to begin climbing again.

The polar bears are screwed either way.

[Howzit]

4. For instance:

If the price of staple food becomes unaffordable to the impoverished masses because corn is being used to generate alcohol so that we can run our vehicles on it, is this really helping or hurting our fellow humans? If we take into account the dubious effect on CO2 and the apparently non-existent problem of global warming, the question becomes even more urgent.

[tom_paine]

5. Biofuels is a huge boondoggle and scam to line some more pockets

For the reasons you mentioned, it is immoral.

For others reasons, such as the fact that if all corn everywhere was used for EtOH, and humanbeings ate none of it, we could supply ourselves with 9% of our current oil usage.

That's if everyone stopped eating.

If we took all the corn, switchgrass and the rest of the agricultural production of the world, this time presupposing that 6.7 billion human beings not only stopped eating corn, but stopped eating period.

This would give us roughly 20% of our current oil usage in EtOH.

Finally, global warming is real. This is more denier bullshit and cherry picking of data. All over the world massive effects are now being felt. The ocean is acidifying, dates of blooms and leaves falling have uniformly moved later (or earlier in the spring on the front-end of things) and many other corroboratory pieces of evidence from a hundred different sources. Arctic ice is plummeting

Remember, the scientists tasked with finding out the scientific factual truth are padi about $40-$70K/yr. The public relations types, CEOs and "scientists" who's curriculum vitae seems to be not peer-reviewed journals but Captialism Magaizine and Fox News Spots, make $100K-$1,000K/yr.

You are right about biofuels but misled by denier cherry-picked data pyramided into half-truths.

Who has more to lose, the guy making $50K or the guy making six or seven figures?

But the deniers have the money, the corporate power, ownership of the corporate media, and really, full dictatorial (essentially) control of what used to be the United States Government but is now the Imperial Bush Governemnt.

In light of those facts, it is somewhat amazing that the deniers have even let the scientific truth be reported at all. A tip of the hat, perhaps, to the Old American Republic (1776-2000, RIP) where they used to respect scientific truth at least a little bit.

Not likle this dark and evil Empire, in which science serves the murderers, and scientific truth not approved by THE PARTY is reduced to the level of he-said/she-said, depending on who owns the biggest egaphone.

And trust me, no scientists making $75K/yr. AT BEST, own any big megaphones.

As I said, an amazing tribute to the nation and freedom we have lost that the scientific truth is even given it's tiny bit of due. The papers and airwaves should be filled with cherry-picked mislead bullshit with no alternatives.

Der Fuhrer says Global Warming is a Liberal Jew Lie. All the papers back him up. And that is that.

[Howzit]

30. I see this is being adequitely discussed here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=138650&mesg_id=138650

[NMDemDist2]

9. WTF???

:wtf:

did you bother to read the IPCC report? the very first paragraph states

Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among
the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global
surface temperature (since 1850). The 100-year linear trend
(1906-2005) of 0.74 <0.56 to 0.92>°C1 is larger than the corresponding
trend of 0.6 <0.4 to 0.8>°C (1901-2000) given in
the Third Assessment Report (TAR) (Figure SPM.1). The temperature
increase is widespread over the globe and is greater
at higher northern latitudes. Land regions have warmed faster
than the oceans (Figures SPM.2, SPM.4). {1.1, 1.2}
Rising sea level is consistent with warming (Figure
SPM.1).

Global average sea level has risen since 1961 at an
average rate of 1.8 <1.3 to 2.3> mm/yr and since 1993 at 3.1
<2.4 to 3.8> mm/yr, with contributions from thermal expansion,
melting glaciers and ice caps, and the polar ice sheets.
Whether the faster rate for 1993 to 2003 reflects decadal variation
or an increase in the longer-term trend is unclear. {1.1}

http://www.ipcc.ch/ from the "Summary for Policymakers"

read it and weep, then find a forum that will swallow this bullshit!

[NMDemDist2]

10. and.... the woman you cited is from a well known conservative/libertarian think tank

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

The IPA has affiliations with think tanks in the U.S., Canada, UK and Asia. It has a particularly close relationship with the American Enterprise Institute..........(snip) The IPA adopts a position of climate change skepticism.<6> It promotes the views of two of the prominent Australian climate change skeptics, Bob Carter and Ian Plimer. While the IPA supports elements of climate change science, including some link between the use of fossil fuels and rising carbon dioxide levels, it adopts a contrarian viewpoint in relation to many aspects of climate change. Jennifer Marohasy supports the view that many environmental issues, including climate change, are exaggerated, and that green groups promote solutions that ultimately do not benefit society.

just another right wing wack job.

[hatrack]

12. You were saying . . . ?

Vast Antarctic Ice Shelf on Verge of Collapse

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming's impact on Earth's southernmost continent.

Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events. Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles (41 kilometers by 2.5 kilometers - about 10 times the area of Manhattan) that appeared to have broken away from the shelf. Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that it looked like the entire ice shelf - about 6,180 square miles (16,000 square kilometers - about the size of Northern Ireland)- was at risk of collapsing.

David Vaughan of the BAS had predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if warming on the Peninsula continued at the same rate.

"Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened," he said. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we'll know in the next few days and weeks what its fate will be."


EDIT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080325/sc_livescience/vastantarcticiceshelfonvergeofcollapse

[NMDemDist2]

13. hehehe

:yourock:

[Howzit]

22. Are you saying that I have been misled

about volcanos in the area being involved in the Wilkins ice shelf melt?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=wilkins+ice+shelf+volcanoes

Are those volcanos real or is this RW BS?

[hatrack]

25. Well, considering that the volcanoes are on land, and Wilkins is suspended above the ocean . . .

And that the collapse to date has come from the Antarctic Ocean side of the shelf, I don't think it really strengthens your case.

[Howzit]

26. Shhh. Don't tell anybody but

there is land under the ocean.

Looking at the location of the Wilkins ice shelf on top of a line between strings of volcanos, it seems likely
that some heat from magma is making its way into the surrounding ocean, melting the ice.




Red dots mark volcanos

[hatrack]

27. Apparently, you can't read maps, either . . .

If you'll note the location of the Wilkins Shelf at the base of the Antarctic Peninsula, in the first map you've pasted above, you'll notice that it's near the base of the thumb (so to speak) pointing up towards Cape Horn.

From the location of the Wilkins on the west side, it's at least 400 kilometers to the nearest peninsular volcano at the Seal Nunataks Group, and at least 300 to Peter I Island. Just scroll back and forth between the two maps, and you'll see what I mean - I trust.

USGS classifies four Antarctic volcanoes as "Major" as you'll see by linking to this USGS page - Erebus, Buckle Island, Penguin Island and Deception Island.

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Antarctica/Maps/map_antarctica_volcanoes.html

Interesting data here as well:

From: Simkin and Siebert, 1994, Volcanoes of the World: Geoscience Press, Tucson, Arizona, published in association with the Smithsonian Institution
Although the continent of Antarctica was not discovered until 1840 (by the Wilkes expedition, 12 hours before the French), several nearby island groups were recognized earlier. The northernmost of these, the South Sandwich islands or Scotia Arc, was discovered on Captain Cook's 1772-75 voyage, and one of the group -- Zavodovsky Island -- was issuing a black ash cloud from its summit when discovered by Bellinghausen in 1819. Several other eruptions were reported from these islands in the following years, when fur sealing was at its peak in the region. Sometime between 1825 and 1828, sealers documented an eruption at Deception Island, a natural harbor formed by caldera collapse. And in 1839 an eruption was in progress in the Balleny Islands when they were first discovered by whalers. Two years later, Mount Erebus was erupting when this, the most active volcano in the region, was first sighted.

There followed nearly 60 years of little exploration, although whaling ships continued to work the region through the 19th century. Exploration resumed with a vengence in 1895, with the next two decades known as the "heroic age" in Antarctica. Additional exploration between the World Wars, during the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year, and since the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1961 has contributed greatly to understanding this vast region, but it is clear that its historical record of volcanism is both short and very incomplete.
The Antarctic plate, largely aseismic and immobile, is broken internally by large rift structures which have produced one of the world's largest alkalic volcanic provinces. The 3,200-kilometer-long West Antarctic rift system is comparable in size to the better-known East African rift. Volcanic constructs range from large basaltic shields to small monogenetic vents; the presence of the continental icesheet has resulted in a larger volume of hyaloclastite rocks than perhaps any other subaerial volcanic region. The only subduction-related volcanoes within or adjacent to the Antarctic plate form the South Sandwich and South Shetland Islands.


Despite its size, Antactica ranks below all other regions in number of dated eruptions, and only the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean regions have fewer historically active volcanoes. It's historical record is brief, and 75 percent of its eruptions are from this century. Precise dating of past eruptions is difficult -- much of the landscape is glacier-covered, travel is daunting, and the wood needed for radiocarbon dating does not grow in this extreme climate -- and the region has the highest proportion of volcanoes with uncertain status.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Simkin and Siebert, 1994, Volcanoes of the World: Geoscience Press, Tucson, Arizona, published in association with the Smithsonian Institution
Andrus, Shields, 2,978 meters, Holocene ?
Buckle Island, Stratovolcano, 1,230 meters, Historical
Deception Island, Caldera, 576 meters, Historical
Erebus, Stratovolcano, 3,794 meters, Historical
Hudson Mountains, Stratovolcanoes, 749 meters, Uncertain, possibly 1985 ?
Paulet, Cinder Cone, 353 meters, Holocene, 1850
Penguin Island, Stratovolcano, 180 meters, Lichenometry, possibly 1905 ?
Peter I Island, Shield, 1,640 meters, Holocene
Royal Society Range, Cinder Cones, 3,000 meters, Holocene ?
Seal Nunataks Group, Pyroclastic Cones, 368 meters, Historical
Siple, Shield, 3,110 meters, Holocene ?
Tony Mountain, Shield, 3,595 meters, Holocene ?
Unnamed Scoria Cones, 2,987 meters, Holocene ?
Unnamed Submarine Volcano, -500 meters, Holocene ?
Unnamed Submarine Volcano, Uncertain, possibly 1876
Waesche, Shields, 3,292 meters, Holocene ?

EDIT

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Antarctica/description_antarctica_volcanoes.html

Got any data on ongoing eruptions? Please feel free to post at your leisure.

[jimlup]

14. As the ice sheets melt....

One would expect the ocean to show cooling. I would assume however that the models take this and other effects into account. Does anyone else have data on this ocean temperature phenomena. I've been getting flak from the right wingers and I don't have a reference for this other than the NPR report posted here.

[Viking12]

15. LOL. Since everyone's piling on, I'll add some more

Falsehoods like this are able to survive and spread due to the efficiency of the disinformation cycle shown below. Notice that there is little chance of actual facts about the world getting in.





http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/03/the_disinformation_cycle.php

[hatrack]

16. Bwa-hahhahhahhah!!!

:rofl:

[XemaSab]

18. Where's DailyTech in that cycle?

:shrug:

This is an incomplete model.

[Viking12]

24. See the pimple on the cow's ass? That's Daily Tech.

It's an Aussie oriented model so we'll have to cut Deltois a little slack.

[Nihil]

19. You still here?

With all the right-wing climate-change-denier reports you keep
posting , I'm quite surprised your still not tombstoned.

FWIW, you're a wanker and the "attendant cost" is only a minor
dent to your profit margins so suck it up ...

[Howzit]

20. Exactly how many of these reports did I post, old chap?

Does this qualify as "one of those reports": http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025 ?

So your solution to anyone who dares disagree with you on any point is to have them killed?

How about establishing common ground - perhaps there is much that we do agree on.

[Howzit]

21. In response to post #19

XemaSab posted this at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x140254 , thereby encouraging who knows how many gullible people to read it. Yet, when I questioned one of his links, you hold that against me?

[XemaSab]

28. Yeah, I posted that because one of my idiot "friends" sent me that as an email

and I totally tore him a new one. :thumbsup:

[tom_paine]

29. The whole OP is based on a logical fallacy, misdirection and willful ignorance of long-term data

Considering we are talking about climatology, which suggest long, decades or centuries long, perspectives (just as discussing geology would require millennia and millions of years of perspective to be relevant), don't you think is is a BIT disingenuous, a purposeful LIE, even (not for you personally, but perhaps the people who fed you this) to point to an eight or ten-year span?

And even doubly so considering, over the longer period of global temperature rise, there have been these tiny dips, natural variations of a biological cycle, even one in steep increase, along the way?



Which makes your whole OP and everything you have said, a complete distraction and lie, or to be charitable, a grain of truth (yes, global temperatures have briefly dipped, as they have all along the way, for brief periods, of the overall century-long warming trend) around which an odious and misleading fallacy is pumped out as rapid-fire sound byte, to fool disinterested or scientifically illiterate parties. Latest in a long line. Billions of dollars buys a lot of sophistry and squid ink.

Squid ink is what your dealing here. Just squirting some squid ink into the waters to make things murky.

Who knows who the hell you are? Who knows who I am? (I mean, besides NSA and Total Information Awareness)

You could be one of these professional creeps practicing your skills for your next presentation.

Or you could be just a DUer, who has genuinely been taken in by the squid ink and sophistry on this issue.

Let me explain: Biological systems and major complex systems as studied by climatology and geology can NEVER yield the kind of 100% proofs we see in the more basic sciences, chemistry (mix this much sodium with this much chloride and you get this much salt 100% of the time) or physics (boil water at sea level to 100 C and it boils 100% of the time) by their very nature.

Therefore, when studying the distant biological or geological past, or in this case, a mega-complex system like global environment, the evidence and proof builds. 10% 30% 70% 90% 95% 99% 99.9%

This leaves a giant loophole into which paid propagandists and deniers come in. Because there will always be, by the very nature of the science being performed, a doubt. 10% 1% 0.1% 0.001%. It will always be there until it finally and fully happens (when it is too late to do anything more but weather the storm).

The bigger the object the more time and energy required to change it's state...stopping a freight train vs. stopping a motorcycle.

Global Warming was once a 50-50 proposition. In the early 1980s when people were first noticing. But it has been studied and now we have much more corroboratory data. Now the proof is probably 90-95% and higher every day lately, it seems.

But the Deniers are spending billions in PR and sophistry to confuse the issue. And it is working. Using that grain of 5% remaining doubt to wrap a sophists' pile of misdirections and obfuscations

(like reading the last tiny tip of this graph - if it went out to 2007 - as if it contradicted the previous century of data)


This eighth-truth you are spouting also ignores that a vast storehouse of ice all around the world has been evaporating into the atmosphere and the cold fresh water altering the oceanic currents such as the Gulf Stream, creating brief, localized cooling.

Which can also be used by sophists and paid propagandists to deceive, distract, and mislead.

"If a man's paycheck depends upon him making a "mistake", then you can count on the fact that same mistake will be repeated every day."
-Unknown

Yes, there is still doubt. It's down to 5% (if such a thing could be quantified). In a decade, when the Arctic Summer Ice minimums are a hockey rink's width, metaphorically-speaking or zero, and many other things have occurred also "faster than expected", then the doubt will be down to 1%.

It is still also possible that, through some climactic deux ex machina that we haven't foreseen and which paid deniers and propagandists don't bother trying to postulate (it's cheaper and more efficient for them to fabricate eight-truth-style lies and distractions), this trend reverses even in the face of massive amounts of heat, pollution, and CO2 we will continue to pump into the atmosphere and oceans in the coming decades, even if we began reversing course this minute on a global scale.

Which we won't.

So is it possible that the eight-truth you have posted in your OP indicative of some failing in the 95% proof of the empirical data on coral reefs, ocean temperature and acidity, satellite measurement of global ice (in mass, not square area, which can also be used to deceive) showing ice mass dropping radically, and all the rest of it, dozens of more pieces of corroboratory data?

Is it possible that little bit of bullshit in your OP, examining one tiny tip of a centuries, even milleanial, sized graph and ignoring the rest of it, ignoring the whole massive edifice of empirical data to the contrary, is is possible that Global Warming will somehow not happen in some form or another over the long-term of the coming century?

Possible. Yes. Probable? No. Not probable at all.

[Shoelace]

31. Right On Tom Paine

seems we here are being infiltrated by the usual suspects. Thanks for such a lucid reply with all the graphs that really do tell the tale. I sorely wish I'd have had you with me on a few other forums whilst trying to deal with these folks who are making the huge mistake of taking one area wherein winter snow has fallen in record amounts not knowing that simply because "it's cold in Wagga Wagga" does not global cooling make.

The science of climate change is at once an intricate, elegant study of a multitude of data. I remember a time in the mid 80s when scientists awaited the actualization of larger computers since the one, missing data stream was how the ocean currents worked. Now they have it mostly but it's a work in progress as is all science.

How I wish/pray/hope that our youth will have a better science education than they now have. We are seeing here the results of decades of scientific pablum in our schools which is more often than not provided by Exxonmobil and the Coal Industry, etc. Imagine what goes into those young minds with that claptrap of disinformation!

Thanks again and may our original poster learn that this is NOT fecund ground for spreading seeds of doubt.

Further, may I suggest that we be very leery of such posts since the well financed campaign by said corps is by now well known to us all.
Astroturfers funded by PR groups are not welcome here, period!