eriposte, good layman's explanation of sudden climate change. This is what we really should call it. First, some local areas will actually get colder. Second, many people actually think a warmer winter would be worth a hotter summer.
Hello civilization, it's good to be back. Having spent some time in the woods of east Tennessee I am an even bigger advocate of hydroelectricity and public power.The TVA has managed the area that it has been entrusted with well, the forest has greened up well this year and I have hope that we amy still have a little time.
Activism will matter, these creatures of disgust that call themselves the government will not leave without a fight. But, good things are worth fighting for. Take a little time, get out of the city and refresh yourself when you can. We have a lot of work to do and it will take all of us!
Posted by rlprather at June 14, 2005 06:07 AMhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/comics/images/Toles/20050608.gif
Posted by mlhm5 at June 14, 2005 06:41 AMThere is a huge up hill battle on global warming in the United States. The forces of evil bought and paid for so much junk science, that was then used to saturate public consciousness with that junk science, that they (the evil undead) believe the crap they know to be false, thinking it is true because they hear it repeated so often.
As with so many other areas of science, and in so many facets of life in general, the United States has fallen well behind the rest of the world. When an administration can undo decades of progress towards clean air and water, all to support some corporation getting a few pennies more profit, we've crossed a line we may never get back from. There is science and there is belief. When beliefs control good scientific findings you doom this civilization to being unconscionably backwards. The only thing we have going for us is lots of military stuff that makes big booms and kills people. Holy shit, even South Korea is one-upping us in stem cell research. Stupid fucking neo-cons and republi-cons. I can't wait till you have to sell your children into slavery to pay your debts.
This is a good explanation of why the rise in carbon is due to us, but that is not the hard part of global warming. The way I explain it to friends and students is to say it is an immutable law of chemistry that for almost every hydrocarbon burned, one carbon dioxide is produced, and if you just do the bookkeeping on a year by year basis, that accounts for more than the annual increase in carbon. Also, since carbon dioxide is pretty unreactive, it hangs out for decades in the atmosphere. There is no question the carbon rise is due to us, and the sinking by oceans and plants only reduces the annual rise.
The hard part about global warming is convincing people that the atmospheric carbon rise is responsible for the temperature rise. There you need a little more work, inevitably involving a discussion of models and circumstantial evidence from observations (glacier melts, species migrations, increase in extreme weather events....) and the argument from the East Anglia scientist in this post does not get there, excellent though it is.
Posted by calphysicist at June 14, 2005 10:39 AMActually, despite increasing CO2 emissions since 1979, the satellite data shows that the earth has been cooling the past 26 years. Most of the increase in temperature over the last 100 years occurred before 1940.
Don't be sucked into some political-ideological battle. Just look at the data.
Posted by muckdog at June 14, 2005 11:35 AMTo the Editor:
The good news is that by 2050 AD global warming will just be a memory because we will have burned up virtually all of the oil. The bad news is that we will have burned up virtually all of the oil. Total world oil production probably peaked about five years ago; now we are on the downside of pumping out the remaining world's oil reserves. This is based on a simple bell-shaped oil production curve: production starts out low, climbs, peaks, declines and ends. It is true for both an individual oil field and total world oil reserves.
Check out some of the future attractions coming our way at some useful web sites such as: www.oilcrash.com, www.oilcrisis.com, www.peakoil.org and www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net.
Life in 2050 A.D. will not be pretty if you are used to the oil-based petroleum-dependent consumer economy of the last one hundred years or so. Try no gasoline (or try gasoline priced at twenty-seven dollars per gallon ($27.00/gal), basically the same thing). Try life without cars, SUVs, delivery trucks, commercial fertilizers (from natural gas, which will also be nearly all gone by 2050 AD), pesticides, pharmaceutical drugs, computer chips, personal computers and plastics for starters. All of these products are grossly dependent upon petroleum-based energy.
To possibly avoid the worst and most terrible aspects of this looming disaster, humans will need to all work together as they never have worked together before. We need to immediately cut our reproduction rate by at least 90%. We need to greatly intensify our basic and applied scientific research to convert solar radiation (sunshine) into electricity in an economical manner. We need to research how to switch our petroleum-dependent industrial and consumer infrastructure to some alternative energy sources. Right now, we can begin to phase out our wasteful use of plastic food containers and to replace them with traditional paper bags, tin cans, glass bottles,wood boxes, cloth bags and waxed-paper containers.
This rapidly looming end-of-oil crisis will be studiously ignored by Republicans, Democrats and the corporate media until this unprecedented disaster hits big time and when it is much too late to do much to protect ourselves.
Yours truly,
James K. Sayre
Muckdog,
"Most of the increase in temperature over the last 100 years occurred before 1940."
Ha ha. Thanks for the entertaining fiction. Michael Crichton is surely looking for an "apprentice" - make sure you get in touch with him.
Posted by eriposte at June 14, 2005 01:03 PMThat's what the data actually says. So you know.
Posted by muckdog at June 14, 2005 01:44 PMmuckdog and eriposte,
The climate scientists know exactly what the data says, and almost 100% of them take climate change very seriously. Yes there was an big increase in temperature in the first 40 years of this century but there has been a big increase since the 1990.
As for the satellite, it is in agreement with the surface measurements, and there is no longer any doubt that the earth has been warming over the last 26 years. There were some questions but they have been settled.
RealClimate.org does go into both of these questions in depth.
The climate skeptics do a good job of picking facts which out of context appear to discredit the climate scientists but in fact don't (e.g. the temperature increase in the early 1900's). They also don't stop using "facts" after they are discredited (hence continued use of the argument that the sattalite data shows the earth has cooled--it doesn't).
Yeah, I've read realclimate, and their CO2 and "other things" idea that cause global cooling the last 26 years. Whatever. Sounds like they're grasping for straws. I do keep up on it, because it's an issue that politicians like to grandstand on from time to time. But that's about it. I haven't seen any Democrats or Republicans who get in office who are serious about "Global Warming."
Clinton didn't do anything in his 8 years. I doubt Bush will. So there's your answer. Vote for the Green Party. Maybe they'd be serious about it. I don 't know.
But I am for reducing the burning of fossil fuels and building more nuclear plants. I think that's a good idea for lots of reasons.
I think we should have a national poll regarding nuclear energy, and all of those in favor of it get to drive their cars and keep their lights on after 6pm. Those not in favor of it should have a 6pm curfew on driving their cars and using electricity in their homes.
Posted by muckdog at June 14, 2005 03:55 PMThere has been reconciliation of the satellite and surface data, and it has received wide press in the last couple of years. That is not an issue anymore. Unfortunately, 2050 is not the year we will forget about global warming because the CO2 stabilization will not have happened by then.
I beg to differ that Clinton did nothing. He was a broker of incremental steps, true, but let us not forget that Al GOre went to Kyoto and pulled the treaty out of the fire at considerable personable risk to his political fortunes. He was Clinton's VP at the time and would not have been able to do that if the Big Dog didn't go along. Let us also not forget some other things Bush has let slip by the wayside--such as the million rooftops plan for photovoltaics. That would have lowered the price for PVs to nearly fully competitive with conventional electricity if it had been pushed through.
Clinton could have done more--but he actively sought an international agreement while Bush trashed it. THere is an enormous difference between the two men as presidents on this area as well as many others.
Posted by calphysicist at June 14, 2005 10:18 PMDon't be sucked into some political-ideological battle. Just look at the data.
I'll bite. Link it.
The science I have read, not interpretation from EXXON, shows me the poles are melting and the Earth has warmed at a greater rate over the past 30 years than at any other time in our known history. Do your satellites show the poles refreezing? Who funds your scientists?
Posted by phidipides at June 15, 2005 08:24 AMmuckdog,
"Yeah, I've read realclimate, and their CO2 and "other things" idea that cause global cooling the last 26 years. Whatever. "
Either you don't mean this or you didn't read realclimate. The earth has not cooled over the last 26 years. Not even close. It has warmed quite rapidly.
As for politics, I'm stay out of that for now.
There was a scientist, John Christy, at NASA Huntville who pushed the satellite data for a long time. The essential problems with the satellite data are these: (i) the warming is not uniform through the atmosphere, and the satellites sample temperature via microwave emissions over the whole atmosphere. In fact, there is predicted cooling in the upper atmosphere due to global warming induced by us.
(ii) The discrepancies are within error bars of the separate measurements. (iii) The sampling of temperature via satellites is still relatively new and subject to biases.
A good discussion can be found at the National Academy of Science circa 2000 -- I seem to recall an update since then, and if I find it I will post it-- but check out especially the pages of the NAS report beginning at
Posted by calphysicist at June 16, 2005 12:04 AM