Global Warming

[1/21/13] Travis Holum pens this article for the Motley Fool.

Like it or not, the evidence that the Earth's climate is changing is no longer up for debate in mainstream scientific communities. In less-scientific communities, it's also becoming harder to make the argument that some sort of climate change isn't present (no snow in Minnesota in January!). 

As might be expected, lots of comments.

[8/16/12] Somehow a debate on global warming erupted over on chucks_angels.

There was a number of scientists who are skeptical of global warming and I was wondering what percentage of scientists believe in global warming.

According to wikipedia

Since 2001, 32 national science academies have come together to issue joint declarations confirming anthropogenic global warming, and urging the nations of the world to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The signatories of these statements have been the national science academies of 32 countries.

Since 2007, when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists released a revised statement,^[105] no scientific body of national or international standing rejects the findings of human-induced effects on climate change.

In an October 2011 paper published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, researchers from George Mason University analyzed the results of a survey of 489 scientists working in academia, government, and industry. The scientists polled were members of the American Geophysical Union or the American Meteorological Society and listed in the 23rd edition of American Men and Women of Science, a biographical reference work on leading American scientists. Of those surveyed, 97% agreed that that global temperatures have risen over the past century. Moreover, 84% agreed that "human-induced greenhouse warming" is now occurring. Only 5% disagreed with the idea that human activity is a significant cause of global warming.

This article (linked from the above wikipedia article) asserts that it's an American thing

As glaciers melt and island populations retreat from their coastlines to escape rising seas, many scientists remain baffled as to why the global research consensus on human-induced climate change remains contentious in the U.S.

The frustration revealed itself during a handful of sessions at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., this past weekend, coming to a peak during a Friday session, "Science without Borders and Media Unbounded".

Near the forum’s conclusion, Massachusetts Institute of Technology climate scientist Kerry Emanuel asked a panel of journalists why the media continues to cover anthropogenic climate change as a controversy or debate, when in fact it is a consensus among such organizations as the American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, American Chemical Society, American Meteorological Association and the National Research Council, along with the national academies of more than two dozen countries.

And here's an article summarizing a recent debate.

First an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, No Need To Panic About Global Warning, by a group of 16 scientists.

Then a courageous response by a Professor of Economics (courageous in the sense that a Professor of Economics tackles a groups of scientists in a field out of his specialty).

Then a response to the response by three of the 16 scientists (and a response to the response to the response).

[Don't know if there was a response to the response to the response to the response.]

[7/16/10 Brill] Critics, mostly nonscientists, were quick to pick out errors and falsifications in the original 2007 IPCC report that brought climate to the global stage, calling it "ClimageGate" and alluding to a worldwide conspiracy to "convince the public either with no facts or falsely created ones," as one source put it.

It is puzzling that the sparsest evidence will sway people to believe that the moon landings were faked; yet the abundant and competent evidence for anthropogenic climate change is disdained and discredited.

The existing data on the climatic system suggests a high probability that we are affecting the climate. Anyone with data to the contrary, this is the time to speak up and not just criticize that which you don't understand.

Climate change is arguably the most significant and difficult problem ever faced by the human race, and we are treating it like a political campaign. Are we the frogs who won't jump out of the boiling water, or are we the intelligent beings we claim to be who will continue to monitor as we hope for the best and plan for the worst?

Do I believe in climate change? No, what I believe is that our meager science has not afforded us an adequate understanding of nature, and I'll take the worst verifiable knowledge over the best unfounded speculation whether it supports my beliefs or not.

[5/7/10 Brill] Climate change is an issue that is likely to remain unsettled for an indefinite period of time. The geosystem is too big for us to understand at present with our puny minds and primitive computers.

If we are experiencing a catastrophic climate change, there is little doubt that the last humans left alive on the planet will still be debating and denying it.

But suppose we did discover that global climate change is occurring and there is the likelihood of a catastrophic future. What would we do?

There are several lines of mediation that geoengineers are studying. One is reducing the sunlight that reaches Earth's surface by reflecting it from mirrors in space or on the ground, or by dispersing reflective particles in the atmosphere. Another is removing pollutants such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides or whatever is deemed to be a cause that can be efficaciously mediated. A third is to reduce emissions and pollutants so that natural processes can re-establish a cooler equilibrium.

The first two present technical problems but are doable. The third presents sociopolitical problems that are unlikely to be solved in the near future.

[7/17/09 Brill] It might seem that to determine whether carbon dioxide influences Earth's heat budget is merely a matter of taking Earth's temperature, measuring carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, then looking for a correlation.

The correlation is there. Earth's temperature is increasing in concert with greenhouse gases. Can we be sure which is cause and which is effect?

Confounding the problem are multiple variables (carbon dioxide plays multiple roles in geochemistry) and nonlinearity of the relationship (at higher temperatures the oceans release stored greenhouse gases resulting in positive feedback). Because of these and other confounding factors and bias, we cannot easily determine causality and thus cannot predict with certainty what the effects of mitigation might be.

All of this and more is wrapped up into this complex political, social, scientific quandary we call global climate change.

[who knew Brill was a right-winger?]

[11/17/08] If the Greenland icecap melts, the Sahara expands and the Siberian permafrost disappears, don't blame carbon-emitting SUVs or billowing smokestacks, says a group of scientists who claim their research on global warming has been repressed. The explanation, they argue, might be simpler: Mother Nature is just going through her natural cycles.

Researchers from around the world have begun to question the growing acceptance among the public, the media and the scientific community that labels human behavior as the primary cause of global warming.

The researchers who go against the scientific grain on the climate change issue know their ideas are unpopular. In fact, many claim their research is so disliked the rest of the scientific community is working to suppress it in spite of convincing scientific evidence.

[2/17/07] Richard Brill states:

There is a nearly 1-to-1 correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature only for the past 450,000 years during the extremes of the ice age, but the correlation is much weaker for other stretches of geologic time.

Furthermore, carbon dioxide is not the only factor that correlates with climate change, and it is not the sole determinant of Earth's temperature.

[8/11/07 via brknews] Freeman Dyson says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.

[4/3/07] You probably remember the Doug Hornig/Brent Cook debate about global warming in these pages. Now the movie world has caught up to the discussion: a recent UK documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle (1 hr. 16 min.) presents evidence that counters the content of Al Gore's box office hit. Not CO2, but the sun, the researchers say, is responsible for global warming. Click here to watch.

[2/2/07] PARIS, Feb. 2 — In a bleak and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate change scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is "unequivocal" and that human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.

They said the world is already committed to centuries of warming, shifting weather patterns and rising seas, resulting from the buildup of gases in the atmosphere that trap heat. But the warming can be substantially blunted by prompt action, the panel of scientists said in a report released here today.

The report summarized the fourth assessment since 1990 by the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, sizing up the causes and consequences of climate change. But it is the first in which the group asserts with near certainty — more than 90 percent confidence — that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases from human activities have been the main causes of warming since 1950.

In its last report, in 2001, the panel, consisting of hundreds of scientists and reviewers, put the confidence level at between 66 and 90 percent. Both reports are online at http://www.ipcc.ch.

Many energy and environment experts see such a doubling as a foregone conclusion sometime after midcentury unless there is a prompt and sustained shift away from the 20th-century pattern of unfettered burning of coal and oil, the main sources of carbon dioxide, and an aggressive quest for expanded and improved nonpolluting energy options.

[2/2/07] PARIS - Scientists from 113 countries issued a landmark report Friday saying they have little doubt that recent global warming has been caused by man, and predicting that hotter temperatures and rises in sea level will “continue for centuries” no matter how much humans control their carbon emissions.

A top U.S. government scientist, Susan Solomon, said “there can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities.”

Environmental campaigners urged the United States and other industrial nations to significantly cut their emissions of greenhouse gases in response to the long-awaited report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“It is critical that we look at this report ... as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it,” said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.

“The public should not sit back and say ‘There’s nothing we can do’,” Steiner said. “Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible.”

Pressure on world leaders
The scientists wrapped up the various chapters of the report Friday, and then released a 21-page executive summary for policymakers. The full report will be published in May.

The report represents the most authoritative science on global warming as the panel comprises hundreds of scientists and representatives. It only addresses how and why the planet is warming, not what to do about it. Another report by the panel later this year will address the most effective measures for slowing global warming.

One of the authors, Kevin Trenberth, said scientists are worried that world leaders will take the message in the wrong way and throw up their hands. Instead, world leaders should to reduce emissions and adapt to a warmer world with wilder weather, he said.

“This is just not something you can stop. We’re just going to have to live with it,” said Trenberth, the director of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “We’re creating a different planet. If you were to come up back in 100 years time, we’ll have a different climate.”

The scientists said global warming was “very likely” caused by human activity, a phrase that translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that it is caused by man’s burning of fossil fuels. That was the strongest conclusion to date, making it nearly impossible to say natural forces are to blame.

It also said no matter how much civilization slows or reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and sea level rise will continue on for centuries.

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level,” the scientists said.

Hotter nights, killer heat waves
The report blamed man-made emissions of greenhouse gases for fewer cold days, hotter nights, killer heat waves, floods and heavy rains, devastating droughts, and an increase in hurricane and tropical storm strength — particularly in the Atlantic Ocean.

Sharon Hays, associate director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, welcomed the strong language of the report.

“It’s a significant report. It will be valuable to policy makers,” she told The Associated Press in an interview in Paris

* * *

[1/31/07] In response to Doug Hornig’s article, longtime friend Brent Cook, a seasoned geologist, has prepared comprehensive and well-thought-out arguments. We’d like to share them with you here, in the interest of fostering information not based on pseudo-science or exaggerated threats, but scientific data of merit.

[1/15/07] Al Gore and others, including most of the media, have been telling us there now exists a "consensus" viewpoint on man-made (anthropogenic) global warming (or AGW). For purposes of economy, let's call them the alarmist faction. Furthermore, we're told that the faction questioning the majority view--we'll call them the skeptics--consists of only a tiny handful of shills for the oil industry.

Not so. (My note: be ready for a deluge of letters to the editor)

[7/16/06] Tom Brokaw reports on global warming on the Discovery Channel

[7/16/06] As we learned last year in New Orleans, weather can be a weapon of mass destruction. With the 2006 hurricane season now upon us, scientists say the climate is changing in ways that could produce many more superhurricanes, as well as extreme floods, droughts and heat waves that could threaten our way of life.

Still, it’s easy to ignore the signs of global warming because we’ve always had crazy weather. Unfortunately, many of the predicted changes have begun, and they already affect our health and pocketbooks. We ignore them at our peril.

[7/7/06] "An Inconvenient Truth," Davis Guggenheim's new documentary about the dangers of climate change, is a film that should never have been made. It is, after all, the job of political leaders and policymakers to protect against possible future calamities, to respond to the findings of science and to persuade the public that action must be taken to protect the common interest.

But when this does not happen — and it is hardly a partisan statement to observe that, in the case of global warming, it hasn't — others must take up the responsibility: filmmakers, activists, scientists, even retired politicians. That "An Inconvenient Truth" should not have to exist is a reason to be grateful that it does.