Joe Joyce

The Japan Meteorological Agency has released its figures for 2014, making it the hottest year on record. It used to be 1998 was far and away the hottest year on record. Seven years later, 2005 was hotter. Five years after that, 2010 became the hottest. Now, four years later, 2014 has passed 2010. How many lies will deniers tell about the science in service of profit and politics? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/2014-off...

A recent answer in global warming contained this: "A wise king once said, 'Control the food supply and you control the people.' I think the modern equivalent is, 'Control the energy supply, and you control the people.' If the federal government had the power to dictate what kind of fuels we use, they could control our lives."

That's a good point. Who *now* controls our energy supply, what do they want us to do, and why? How would the government be different, and why?

This is a recent question with chosen best answer, and a follow-up comment by someone who actually read what the question and answer say:

"How long does the earths climate have to plateau before we decide global warming is over?

Global temperatures have plateaued for the last 18 years, and current predictions show that temps will continue to remain the same or even decline in the future. How long do temperatures have to plateau or decline before the science determines that they were wrong about so-called "global warming"?

Best AnswerAsker's Choice

Good point, Xxxx. The money will keep flowing as long as this is a dire emergency.

But to address the question, this plateau will last 30 years, and then moderate warming will resume. This is the pattern of the entire 20th century- 30 years of warming, 30 years of pause. It's the PDO.

Asker's rating ... 5 out of 5

1 comment, xxxxx 1 day:

That's what I don't get. If it was the PDO, wouldn't the warming and cooling be equal? Why is there more warming than cooling? (My open question)"

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That's a very good question. How is global warming over if the pattern is: the temperature goes up, pauses, goes up, pauses, goes up... Hmm? What am I missing here?

It seems to me that heat content is a better measure of what the climate system might be doing than a global air temperature. And that global warming is better demonstrated by heat content than air temps. Further, satellite measurements indicate that the Earth is adding heat consistently, year after year, despite temperature fluctuations. Therefore, given the basic physics of the situation, I predict that the heat content will still be going up in 5 years. And I believe it would take something drastic to make my prediction wrong, like massive amounts of light-reflecting aerosols injected into the atmosphere, or a noticeable drop in the solar constant.

So how about it? Who wants to predict heat content is up in 5 years, and who wants to predict heat content is down in 5 years?

Something I'd like to see is this:

Take the point where you are standing, and extend a line straight up to interplanetary space, and straight down toward the center of the Earth 1 mile/kilometer, whichever you're most familiar with. Tell me what goes on, climatologically, all along that line which is 1 molecule wide. Suppose you're on a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific - what changes?

That line becomes the center of a square column 1 mile/km across. What goes on in the air column, and what goes on at the surfaces of that column?

Increase the size of the column side to 10, 100, 1000... and tell me what goes on inside and at the surfaces, including the top and bottom.

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopt...

Trevor asked an excellent question in a recent comment. I think it's worth posting as a question. To make it simple and easy, we will use a scale that runs from 0 to 10, with 0 being no knowledge of science whatsoever, and 10 being up-to-date knowledge of research, thinking, speculation and implications of all science. I see 8 as an expert in his/her field, and a 9 as a polymath. Figure on this scale, I'm about a 4, with a basic idea of what science is, what it does, and how it works, some basic knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology, and a willingness to learn. I would like to ask everyone to rate themselves on this scale.

http://news.yahoo.com/rising-sea-levels-exposing-b...

"During United Nations-sponsored climate change talks in Germany, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands said 26 skeletons of World War II soldiers washed up after their graves were exposed by rising sea levels. Said Foreign Minister Tony de Brum:

There are coffins and dead people being washed away from graves— it's that serious. Even the dead are affected."

The soldiers are believed to be Japanese.

The Marshall Islands are particularly precarious in their perch; the nation, made up of 29 atolls, is roughly just six feet above sea level. With sea levels predicted to rise by three-to-six feet by the end of the century, the alarm is obviously growing."

Now you know that it's getting colder, the seas are going down in level, and these Marshall Islanders are lying through their teeth. Which one of you skeptics will be the first to tell those 26 Japanese soldiers they can't get away with what they are trying to do? C'mon, all you people who I was going to call by name - you know who you are - you tell them the seas aren't rising; you tell those Japanese to go back to where they belong,

For purposes of this question (only!) I will assume that all deniers are honest. (This is, of course, not true, but that's another question.) Just how dirt dumb or how brainwashed does one have to be to deny the science that we've built our civilization on? Because the same science that conceived the semiconductor, computer, and internet shows beyond any reasonable doubt that we have already seriously affected our climate, and are continuing to do so at an ever-increasing pace. That issue has not been in doubt for some time. So, what sort of person is an honest denier?

It isn't enough to blame denialism on a poor early education although all (honest - remember, we are assuming *honest* deniers here) deniers clearly show some sort of learning deficiency, even though many are intelligent and educated. So I figure it must be either brainwashing, seriously, or some sort of organic structural defect, if not both, that pinches reality so much for them. Honest deniers, it seems to me, must believe their personal beliefs somehow create their reality. Can people really think like that? If not, how does an honest denier reconcile his/her personal beliefs with all of science?

Can an honest denier answer this for me? I will take informed speculation from non-deniers. Finally, I will note this question would have been phrased far more politely if this Y!A section hadn't become so "rough and tumble" recently. But I'm flexible. Are there any honest deniers?

A recent study, published in Nature Climate Science, shows that since 1980, monsoons are becoming more extreme. What are the causes and consequences of this? Specifically, how will this affect food production and infrastructure planning going forward?

Reference: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/indian-m...

The American Geophysical Union released a study last week which documents increases in the size and number of fires in the US West.

http://news.agu.org/press-release/more-bigger-wild...

"The researchers found that most areas that saw increases in fire activity also experienced increases in drought severity during the same time period. They also saw an increase in both fire activity and drought over a range of different ecosystems across the region.

"Twenty eight years is a pretty short period of record, and yet we are seeing statistically significant trends in different wildfire variables -- it is striking," said Max Moritz, a co-author of the study and a fire specialist at the University of California-Berkeley Cooperative Extension."

...

"Looking at the ecoregions more closely, the authors found that the rise in fire activity was the strongest in certain regions of the United States: across the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada and Arizona- New Mexico mountains; the southwest desert in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas; and the southern plains across western Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and eastern Colorado."

What about Canada? What do our neighbors to the north see happening?

Regardless of your feelings about the cause, this is a worrisome trend. Are there any plans to do anything about it, or do we wait and see if it really continues to get worse, even though the trend is statistically significant now?

Solutions?

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/climate/200...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weathe...

I see people saying scientists can't prove human-caused climate change. I see people asking for irrefutable proof. Can anybody here show me proof, irrefutable proof, for *any* scientific theory?

Back in the 50's when I was growing up, there were a number of articles on ice ages in the popular press, and, as I grew up in the snow belt, I found them believable. Got interested in science at age 10, and started subscribing to the popular science press at 15. Took chemistry in college, and got a bachelor's in it, and got into the habit of buying college texts on topics that interested me. Bought a climate science textbook in '79, and it was that book (Climatic Change; J Gribbon, editor; Cambridge University Press; 1978) which first taught me about human-caused global warming. By this time, I was reading the science press consistently, and climate was one topic I followed closely. By the 90's, the sheer preponderance of evidence in favor of human-caused global warming was overwhelming. Only a few scientists cast doubt on AGW. By 2000, I'd seen all those scientists' anti-AGW work shot down, and much of it was shown to be poor or sloppy work. And the amount of evidence for AGW was truly overwhelming. So I can say that in 1958, I thought there would be an ice age soon. By 1980, I realized I was wrong, and by 2000 or earlier, I knew we were clearly seeing the effects of human-caused global warming.

So that's my trajectory, going from ignorance and expecting an ice age to knowledge and seeing the effects of "excess" heat. Other commentators here have stated they have changed their minds on AGW. That climate change textbook changed my mind. What changed yours?

First, I ask that you define science. That's "simple". The next part is more complex. Who should do science? How should it be supported? How should it be judged? Those are the 3 main components of the second question, although there are more. Finally, how should science inform public policy and public/policy debates? What are the roles of science and the scientist in passing the information of science along to the larger public?

Is it positive, negative, or neutral? Does the energy coming in exactly balance the energy going out? If not, which way is it unbalanced - is more energy going out than coming in, or is more energy coming in than going out? If possible, please provide numbers and references.

Dr. Roy Spencer is repeatedly held up as a major figure in climate change. No one is perfect. How does Dr. Roy Spencer's work compare to that of other scientists, in particular climatologists, but also top-rated scientists in general? Please give evidence.

From materials provided by CU at Boulder:

"Average summer temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic during the last 100 years are higher now than during any century in the past 44,000 years and perhaps as long ago as 120,000 years, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study."

"The study is the first direct evidence the present warmth in the Eastern Canadian Arctic exceeds the peak warmth there in the Early Holocene, when the amount of the sun’s energy reaching the Northern Hemisphere in summer was roughly 9 percent greater than today, said CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Gifford Miller"

The university team headed by Miller carbon dated dead mosses that had been exposed by melting ice and used ice core data from nearby Greenland to determine the ages of 145 plants found in the highlands of Baffin Island.

"[T]he indications are that Canadian Arctic temperatures today have not been matched or exceeded for roughly 120,000 years, Miller said."

“The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is,” said Miller, also a fellow at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. “This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

See more at: http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/10/23/c...

The last time the Pacific Decadal Oscillation reinforced global warming was 1998, and we had a spike in heat that was way above the average, higher than any year before it in the global temperature record. Some 15 years later, we are in a cold phase of the PDO and that record-breaking year is now pretty average, just one of the bunch. What happens when the PDO swings back to its atmospheric warming phase? How high do you think *that* spike will get? And how high do you think the average temp will be 15 years after that? How long can the temperature keep ratcheting up like this? After all, the PDO is cyclic, so it shifts between La Nina and El Nino. What will the next several shifts bring?

In honor of all the non-questions asked in this section.

A short playlist for a warming planet:

Blue Man Group Earth to America

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snPdEl0Duoo&feature...

Marvin Gaye What's Going On?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fETIjVvv1Ds

David Holm My Water's On Fire Tonight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=timfvNgr_Q4

Marvin Gaye Mercy Mercy Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WxgeYXCjM8&feature...

David Roberts remix Climate Change Is Simple

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pznsPkJy2x8&feature...

Martha and the Vandellas Heat Wave

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZFPbhmTa3E

"Suggestions are welcome." :D

The climate conditions that brought the Medieval Warm Period, while giving Europe some nice weather that encouraged more productive crops and helped create one of the conditions that produced the Renaissance, also produced a 500 year drought in the Americas that brought about the collapse of at least 2 civilizations, the Anasazi and the Classical Mayans. This cursory look leads to the question of just why some claim warming is good for us, as by my initial count, the warming, spotty as it was, helped 1 civilization, the Europeans, and killed off 2 others, making the total -1, or a net loss of one civilization. How is this good? To those who've said it is, will you explain or renounce your positions?

"A 3,000-year record from 52 of the world’s oldest trees shows that California’s western Sierra Nevada was “droughty and often fiery” from 800 to 1300, the University of Arizona said"

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2010/03/18...

"Droughts, Floods, the Medieval Warm Period and the Rise and Fall of Civilisations in Central and South America" https://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/