Global warming is it our fault?

[Claymore]

Indeed, you could probably go back a few centuries and there would have been similar occurences of extreme weather, I dare say. I've always suspected the government is making a nice little earner out of all this with taxes of one sort and another.

I'm not really sure what to believe from climate change 'experts' frankly. I remember about four years ago when we had a heatwave, some guy was on TV predicting that long, hot, dry summers would be a regular occurence thanks to global warming. The following year we had a lousy summer, nothing but rain and drizzle! And the last couple of summers haven't been much better either.

The point is I'm sure this has always happened. Some summers warm and sunny, others colder and damp, and the same goes for winters - some years are mild, others are more severe.

Totally agree! This is something that's aways gone on and to say its all caused by us using cars etc is total rubbish, what killed the dinosaurs? did they choke on smog created by cave mens Harleys or Hummers?
Where i live in Scotland over many thousands of years there's been a tropical forest with with critters only found in places like Africa etc and there's also been Glaciers all in the same area and then it warmed up again. In early 1900's here they had a major drought with no rain for months, in 1937 they had major floods and also artic conditions! all within 2 years.
I think the governments are really concerned about climate change due to the fact that all the bombs they drop around the world are churning out god knows toxic substances and its these that have damaged the ozone layer, they tell you to get rid of your 4x4 to save the planet and then drop 2000 ton bombs on Iraq? How many MPG do you get with a Tank? bit less than a 4x4 i guess?

 

[The23rdman]

How do we expect people to see the big picture when most never have an original thought in their lives.

"Fairness and decency? How do you expect fairness and decency from a race of sleeping people? " G.I. Gurdjieff

This isn't a dig. Why would anyone wake up when they don't know they're asleep? Buddha didn't say life is suffering for nothing...

Tell you what, why don't we do some actual research rather than taking a blog at face value?

First, lets find the source. Turns out to be this
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039186.shtml

Then lets look at the abstract in full, rather than the small section quoted in the blog



I have highlighted the appropriate section of text from the article.
Note what the goal of this particular letter is. The goal of this letter is to highlight the roles that ENSO (El-Nino Southern Oscillation) and and SAM (Southern Annular Mode) play on short term ice melt, and to highlight that in recent summers (Oct-Jan in the southern hemisphere) there has been a positive Sam trend.

This article does not say anything about total ice melt at the antarctic, it discusses a short period of the year and the goal of doing so is to highlight the variability caused by two of the natural cycles on earth, in particular El-Nino which I mentioned earlier, and SAM. The goal of this paper is the better understand the mechanisms at work that influence antarctic climate.

The blog you linked to says that NASA has been quiet about this paper. There is a reason for that, the paper doesn't make any loud noises worthy of attention for climate change, and it certainly doesn't say what the author of that blog wants it so say.

I suppose I should have been more specific about "the poles" though, since data does suggest (and has for a long time) that temperatures in and around the antarctic are relatively stable. Lets look instead at the north pole, at the arctic.

And now I must admit I am struggling to choose an article. There are literally hundreds, in the peer reviewed literature, documenting sea ice retreat. Let's pick a few examples.

http://psc.apl.washington.edu/linds... 2009 JClim - 2007 follows thinning trend.pdf

R. W. LINDSAY, J. ZHANG, A. SCHWEIGER, M. STEELE, AND H. STERN

Published in the journal of climate.

Title of the paper is "Arctic Sea Ice retreat in 2007 follows thinning trend. "

Let's start with this one, which shows data up to 2007 and shows not just ice coverage and temperature for a given period of each year, but shows maximum arctic ice retreat for every year from 1980 onwards, and compares it with ice retreat from the area before.
The purpose of the paper is to discuss the extremely low sea ice coverage in 2007 and show that far from being a one off the 2007 ice retreat was only slightly lower than would be predicted by the previously seen trend. I draw attention in particular to the graphs on page 4.

To save everyone the effort of wading through a fairly dense paper I would suggest that those inclined to do so jump to page 10 and just read the discussions/conclusion, which is the summary given by the article authors.

Further, i wish to highlight this section from the discussion.



The authors then go on to discuss a wide range of reasons for the change and cite various other articles which the curious around here may like to read.


The second paper I wish to highlight I unfortunately can't get full access to as I don't have a subscription, but you can read a summary of the article published by the journal here.

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/2009-19.html

The reason I am keen to site this particular article is the subject matter is exactly that at hand. The title of the paper is
"Thinning and volume loss of the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover: 2003–2008" published in the Journal of geophysical research-oceans.

I'll highlight this paragraph from the summary provided


Hmm, I realise this is not a science board so I am not inclined to keep citing articles, but for anyone interested I recommend searching for the phrase "arctic annual mean ice extent" or else "arctic ice thickness" in google scholar to see what the science is actually telling us.

So no, I don't have my ears covered, I search the peer reviewed literature and form my conclusions based on the papers themselves.

That is why I am annoyed at the apparent dishonesty of the people at CRU, because it may be that some articles have been supressed. The articles/data that have been published show anthopogenic climate change, a trend to warming, and ice loss.

Thanks.
The problem here is that science has to be disseminated to the public. The public at large are ignorant of science. That is not a criticism, it is an acceptance of reality. The vast majority of scientists are ignorant of other branches of science because they don't study them, there is too much information out there for anybody to be an authority over multiple disciplines.

However, the findings of science are important to the masses and so have to be presented somehow. This means newspapers and television, and now we have a problem. People get bored easily, we live in a world where everybody wants instant gratification and yes/no answers.

Science doesn't work like that, and indeed you will never hear a scientist talk about proofs, definitives, definitely. They don't do it, because it's not responsible. Instead they assign levels of confidence and predictions with ranges. Actually they might do it, but only when forced to by the media. You won't find it in a journal anywhere.

The warming of the planet is predicted to be between 2 and 6 degrees by the end of the century, given to a given confidence level. This isn't a guarantee of what will happen, it is a statisitcal analysis of the data examined when fed into a climate model. It's the best we have available.

Is it true? Dunno, wait till the end of the century to find out. What it is is a true representation of the information we do have.

But tell that to the general public. Warming of 2-6 degrees is a huge range in relative terms (why not -2 to 2, say?). The majority are not interested in discovering the reasons. They don't want to know about the factors discussed here (El Nino, La Nina, SOM, NOM etc), sun spot activity, orbital variations, feedback loops, thermahaline circulation and what not.

The truth is that the earth is complex, extremely complex, indeed far more complex than any models we have right now. But, the models are what we have, and the models tell us that the earth is going to warm to levels that will bring problems.

Couple the difficulty of explaining this information to the public at large with the association of politicians with the science and trust gets flushed down the toilet. I dislike politicians as much as the next guy, and I particularly dislike their stance on climate. Everyone knows (...) politicians lie for their own ends, once associated with science the public at large are instantly skeptical, and rightly so.

People seem to fall into one of two camps. Either acceptance of global warming, or denial. I doubt whether 2% of the public have ever read a peer reviewed article from a recognised journal, and yet they speak with far greater certainty than the leading climatologists on the matter.

I'm just a layman, I have no pretentions of being a scientist, but I know enough to know what my limitations are. I do read the peer reviewed literature where possible (some of it requires a subscription), though I confess my reading is usually linked to evolutionary biology as I find it fascinating.

The only justified conclusion as of right now, based on the peer reviewed literature, is that the world is warming and humans are partly responsible. This might be wrong, and all scientists would agree with that as they would about any other aspect of science, but that is the way the evidence points and I follow that evidence.

As mentioned before, if the CRU scandal really does turn out to be a scandal I will be the first to re-assess my position.