Earth day

OverMyHead wrote: The cartoon was funny but but your line is funnier.

Well thanks. I'm here all night (literally) so try the veal.

Dave, I heard the same broadcast, and also found it timely to this discussion. what it clarified for me is that proof of a theory is a scientific process. Reaching a consensus on an unproven theory is a political process and thus subject to all the pitfalls of politicians such as greed, corruption, self promotion, and misrepresentation.

So much research these days is funded by special interests groups. Science has enjoyed a period of very strong credibility, and the special interest groups seek to purchase that credibility for their cause. These groups expect a return on investment, placing great pressure on researchers to produce that return in order to keep getting funded. This is leading to the scientific community loosing their credibility over time.

I was admonished this spring for referencing the cold temperatures as evidence against global warming, and told I could not draw such a conclusion from an isolated anecdote. But now that it is warm and we have tornado's .......

Excerpt from an interesting Newsweek article.

"Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather."

This sounds very similiar to Sheldon Whitehouses remarks yesterday on the senate floor, "So, you may have a question for me: Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together."
This after a 15 year period with no rise in global temperatures (Remember when they called climate change global warming? but then the warming stopped in 1998) Sadly as he was politicizing the weather on the senate floor, people were tragically dying from a tornado in Alabama.

While the two statements are similar, the Newsweek article is from April 28, 1975. It blamed the tornado's on a DROP in the earths temperature and gave a very dim outlook for the remainder of the century (1975 to 2000) due to global cooling.



Read the full article

Just 40 years ago (hardly the dark ages for science) a consensus of the best and brightest in the science community believed this to be our future and wanted us to act on it now to stop man made global cooling, but then from the 80's through 1998 we saw global warming. The climatologists wanted us to believe they could predict the weather 25 years ahead, but they were dead wrong in 5 years.

This is why I am a doubter of climate change. Any time a so called climate scientist or senator tells you something that contradicts your own experiences, your internal BS meter should go off the scale. Its politics, not science.

My heart and prayers are with the families impacted by this weeks weather events.

Jamin, ice out on lake minnetonka in the Twin Cities was in May. One of only three times for a May ice out in its recorded history. Weater records are only reliable for a few hundred years anyway. On a geologic time scale everything we have seen in our lifetime is well within the planets natursl cyclical variations both during and before humans were ever here.

What caused the glaciers to melt millions of years ago? Dinasaur farts? Just asking. But, it does make one wonder how that could have happened back then? Could it possibly be natural earth cycles? I don't know. I will rely on the experts to answer that.

Climate science is not based on the brief period that man has recorded it. There exists a host of evidence from paleontology to geology that provides us with indicators of past climate. Comparing the historical record with recent conditions strongly suggests that the rate of change in climate is unprecedented within at least the last 11,000 years. Indeed the rate of change from 1920-40 was as great as all global temperature increase during the first 4,000 years after the last ice age. I've even heard some estimates that the extra CO2 already added to the atmosphere will cause us to miss the next ice age or two.

It's true that the planet warms and cools on its own, believed in part to be caused by slight changes in the Earth's orbit, and this has been taken into account. Nearly all evidence tells us that the planet is warming very, very fast and that humans are very, very likely the cause. In the face of all the evidence why persist in practicing denial? Yeah, maybe it is just a natural cycle. But sticking with that is a very dangerous wager since if we are wrong we've toasted the only planet we've got. The stakes couldn't get any higher. There is no worst case scenario even half as bad for what could happen if we chose to do the prudent thing and reduce CO2 emissions.

I'm sure if 97% of doctors told you there was a 90% chance you had cancer you'd darn well pay attention to that warning. Well, 97% of climate scientists are telling us that there is a 90% chance that we're giving the planet cancer. Time to start taking these warnings seriously.

I didn't want to jump back in, but the whole "the climate is always changing" line is getting pretty old. Yes, it has always changed but the bottom line is that now we're causing it and we have the power to stop it if we so choose. Since our entire civilization is based on Earth "as is" I'd say the conservative thing to do would be to try to keep it the way it is for as long as we can. The cost of a climate "mistake" is just too great.

Jamin, Hold that thought!

Dave....Sorry to hear of your nieces illness! Will keep her in my prayers, and wish her a speedy recovery!

Jamin - What should we do about this?

It will take an economic reason for anything to change.

I don't see our government leaders cutting back on their transportation fuel usage. That must be for the masses only.

Chris,

I think that there is already a strong economic incentive to cut back. From the World Bank,

"Climate change is a fundamental threat to sustainable development and the fight against poverty. The World Bank is concerned that without bold action now, the warming planet threatens to put prosperity out of reach of millions and roll back decades of development."

The problem is that vested interests have confused the issue sufficiently to convince us to err in favor of short-term vs. long-term gains. In fact the government is cutting back on transportation, though not for reasons related to CO2. The sequester has taken a big bite out of federal travel budgets. And on that note I have to say that I don't care much for Al Gore either, and am generally of the opinion that he is just about the worst climate change "ambassador" possible.

What we should do about this is up to society and policy makers. Climate scientists are simply here to tell us all what we are doing to the planet. Maybe we do nothing, but that should be an informed choice. I'm just completely tired of the denials.

Andy,

I think I know what you are trying to say. I know a lot of climate scientists* and I can tell you that none of them are profiting off of climate change. Just how exactly do you think that they would? There is a much bigger incentive for oil companies, etc. to try to cover up climate change than the science community has for promoting it.

Saying that climate scientists promote climate change because it funds them is like saying that EMTs promote accidents because it employs them. It is somewhat crass. I don't know anything about Kenalog, but it seems that you've decided to side with your general practitioner over the allergist. That might be correct, but from my vantage point it is hard to see why you would believe one and not the other. It could very well be that the gen. practitioner is wrong. Hard to say without looking at the evidence.

Dave,

I am sorry to hear about your niece, and my best thoughts go to her and the rest of your family. She was probably seen by one or at most a few doctors, and the percentage that they gave is based on similarities between her symptoms and other documented cases.

Global climate change is totally different. It is like if a single patient were examined by hundreds of doctors, and nearly all of them agreed that the patient had cancer. Furthermore, in the case of climate change we are mostly talking about the downside of a false positive; that is saying you have cancer when you really don't. I think most of us would agree that a false negative like your niece recieved (oops! you actually do have cancer) is generally less desirable than a false positive (oops! we thought you had cancer but it turns out you don't).

What I've been trying to say is that nothing is 100%, but if you were a betting man/woman you would never bet against climate change based on the evidence. It is simply just too strong, and I am completely convinced that if you evaluated all of it honestly, without political or cultural bias, you would come to the same conclusion.

I must continue to ask, what makes you all think you know so much more than the hundreds of people who have spent their LIVES studying this? Again, I quote the World Bank,

"The science is unequivocal that humans are the cause of global warming, and major changes are already being observed. Current global mean temperature is about .8° C above pre industrial levels. The twelve years from 2001 to 2012 rank among the warmest since record keeping began 133 years ago."

*full disclosure I am a scientist, but I do not study climate.

Climate scientists are fudging data to support global warming because they profit off it?

That is some backward logic.

There is no doubt about global warming itself, it is an observable fact, the only studies that doubt man’s effect on global warming are funded by those that make trillions of dollars digging up dinosaur remains so they can be set on fire. They have infinitely more profit motive to distort the science than a scientist who by their very nature seeks the truth. An actual scientist willing to deny the facts about global warming would never have to worry about a job again the coal and gas industry will fund all their efforts, not to mention get them published at a level far in excess of what they would be as one of the 97% of rational scientists.    That is the facts, all the profit motive is in being a denier.

Anyone that has ever done any sort of risk assessment knows that you need to take into account both the probably and severity of the risk. When either get near 50% of your relative scale you are well past where you should put remediation efforts in place. The cost of man-made global warming is somewhere between ridiculously high, and infinite.   

The probability is as high as anything that can be scientifically conceived of, and the cost of remediation efforts going up exponentially with time.   Even if the probably was deemed exceedingly low the ridiculously high cost would require remediation.

Only a fool- or one of the Koch brothers would argue that we should do nothing.

As to hanicapping our economy, that is a false argument as well.   Ignoring climate change favors only a very small part of the economy, that which is controlled by old money, at the expense of those who innovate and invent, all while destroying the common resources such as the lakes and air we breathe. Who in their right mind would advocate doing that without even getting paid to do so?

Hi Dave,

It is estimated that CO2 levels prior to the Industrial Revolution were around 250 ppm, or 0.025%. When consistent record keeping began in the late 1950s CO2 concentrations were about 315 ppm. In 1998 they were around 365 ppm, and just a couple of weeks ago we crossed the 400 ppm mark, considered to be a significant milestone. You can see the increase in CO2 over the years from the record taken by Scripps at Mauna Loa.

Since an increase from 365 to 400 only represents a 10% increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, I'm assuming you meant that global CO2 output has risen 30% in the last 15 years, which is more or less the case from what I can tell. According to the EPA global carbon emissions have risen from about 25 billion tons to around 33+ billion tons today.

So yes, we have increased emissions by some 20-30%, but we've only increased the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by about 10%. It is awfully convenient of you to pick 1998 as the year upon which to hang your hat. 1998 was an El Nino year, and was the warmest year on record up to that time. I haven't done the math, but looking at a chart of global average temperatures by year if you chose 1997 or 1999 instead of the very convenient 1998 you wouldn't be able to make the claim that temperatures have not increased. You'll also notice on that record that ten year periods without significant warming are not that hard to find. That doesn't change the fact that 1998 is the only year in the top 10 warmest years from last century, or that the 1980s were the warmest decade on record until the 1990s because the warmest decade, until the 2000s became the warmest decade... Do you see a pattern here?

My guess is that the consensus would gladly go on the hook based on the evidence. Will climate deniers go on the hook if they are wrong? I hope they are ready to pay up...

You raise some good questions about the Little Ice Age and how we can know so much from such a small amount of time. While humans have only been keeping scientific records for about 150 years, there are some cultural records that go back a few hundred. However there is a strong paleoclimate record that uses indirect methods such as tree rings, ice cores, pollen, sediment, fossils, and rocks to recreate likely conditions in the past. Take a look at the paleoclimate Wikipedia page and the nice graph of estimated temperatures on Earth to get an idea of how climate has fluctuated naturally in the past.

Temperature is going up up up. This is consistent with the concept and predictions of anthropogenic climate change. It is real, it is happening. The fact that we can observe it happening over such a small time scale should actually cause you some serious concern. It is ironic that you find comfort in the fact that we've bumped CO2 levels to their highest in the last few million years and temperatures to the highest in 10,000 or so all in just a few centuries. I can assure you that no known natural process could do that. I'm afraid that leaves us as the culprits.

OverMyHead wrote: As a paramedic I learned cellular physiology,chemistry and pharmacology.

Haha, you are way too smart to be a medic.

Only kidding, what service did you work for?

I dispatch for the EMS agency that covers the vast majority Minnetonka...

As for the subject at hand, all I'll say is:

Global warming is crap.   And frankly, life is too short to not enjoy it. Some people enjoy life by wanting to ruin everyone else' way of enjoying life and eating rabbit food. I enjoy life by keeping to myself and burning dinosaurs by making them explode in the 16 synchronized chambers that my two vehicles split.

Hansel. I picked 98 because that is when the turn around started, but your refernce to 97 and 99 is significant. Man produced co2 was only slightly less in 97 and slightly more in 99. and man produced CO@ has increased by 30 percent since then. What we see is a lack of correlation to between production and temperature. Obviously much more is in play. Global warming, and later global climate change when the warming stopped has been a solution looking for a problem since the start. Even you "a scientist who by their very nature seeks the truth" to quote Joe end up quoting the World Bank, a political organization who's stated goal is to goal is to eliminate poverty, not to eliminate global warming, they just hijacked the cause to facilitate global wealth transfer. I don't hear many addressing the planets natural co2 buffers. Hypothetically (or maybe not)since plants convert CO@ to Oxygen could deforestation of rainforests be a bigger problem than CO2 production? Are we looking at our natural coping mechanisms as a part of the problem or the solution? Would the world bank be on board if the solution was for developing rainforest nations to stop developing? Nope!

The fact that the solutions were there before most of the research was ever done makes me skeptical. Add in the scandals, the fact that the climate models don't work, and that developing nations with the dirtiest industries are left out of the solution says this is political movement.

I will gladly take on the responsibility for doing nothing. Since we are already acting that bus has left the station and the liability is gone.