New Satellite Data Confirms Global Warming 153
starannihilator writes "Researchers at the University of Washington have analyzed satellite data using a new and more accurate method (using channel 4 on the Microwave Sounding Unit satellite) to show that the troposphere has been warming faster than the Earth's surface for more than two decades. Nature reports that previous interpretations (using MSU channel 2) did not indicate such dramatic tropospheric warming because the data were compromised by stratospheric conditions. For years, the debate over global warming raged largely as a result of an incongruency between trends in surface and tropospheric temperatures. The new data gained by MSU channel 4 are consistent with the surface temperature's rising trends and indicate that global warming is, in fact, occuring in the troposphere. Read the full article in Nature, or similar stories in the Seattle Times and Newswise."
Global warming or global cooling (Score:5, Interesting)
The question is: What can we do about it?
The answer is: Unfortunately, not much. If we cut all the world's emissions of greenhouse gasses drastically in half, that wouldn't account for the other variations responsible for global warming like a more active sun or just the phase of the weather patterns on earth or the temperature of the sea. I have to think about it this way: If humanity did all it could to cool or warm the earth, what would we accomplish? The answer is that the earth is so huge and so complicated that we can't predict whether our actions would cause havoc or remedy. I mean, we could spend trillions of dollars on a system to cool the troposphere only to find out that by doing so we are causing more hurricanes and such.
The earth is a chaotic system, and chaotic systems for the most part are unpredictable. A variation of a few hundredths of a degree in one place in the world can be responsible for a hurricane in another.
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because some aspects of weather are chaotic doesn't mean nothing can be predicted. Global average temperatures don't go up or down independent of any contributing factors: ice coverage, atmospheric composition, humidity and other factors all have well-defined effects. There are some relationships we don't understand yet, but that doesn't make those relationships chaotic.
We can be certain that if we continue on our current path, growing emissions of greenhouse gases, we will change the climate dramatically some time this century. That's simple physics: changing the earth's energy balance significantly must lead to changes in something on earth. What we don't know yet is whether it will kick in a new ice age (which would be negative feedback), lead to gradual warming (no feedback), or runaway greenhouse effects (positive feedback). Even if negative feedback would magically keep the temperature constant, something (vegetation, ice cover, etc.) would have to make up for change in energy balance. But no matter what the change, it will end up being costly.
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, we can also be certain that even if every last human keels over dead, taking all technology with them, that the climate will change significantly over the next century.
Already I've noticed a climate shift starting in my area (Michigan)... we're returning to the type of winters we had 30 or 40 years ago, which had a lot more snow and cold weather then the winters we saw in the 90's, which typically had one hell of a snow-storm... but only that one, with temperatures reaching into the 50s sometimes in mid-December.
Human influence? Natural processes? The only answer is yes. Worth panicking over? I'm inclined to wait until something actually bad happens before panicking. (Note that "panicking" isn't isomorphic to "doing something"; I'm in favor of pre-emptive environmentalism, where on general principles we try to reduce our impact to the environment as much as possible. I don't see panicking as a valid reason to do anything, though.)
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing I am panicking over is will we be able to get the US administration to give a shit about the environment. We have seen enough evidence to the contrary that I believe this to be sufficient reasoning for a *panic*.
Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:5, Interesting)
This means China needs to radically boost its efficiency (not hard even with current technology), Indonesia has to prevent the drainage and burning of peat bogs, and all that. If things there continue as they have been going, the USA could cut emissions to zero and still not make things better.
This also means that the Kyoto system of quotas is fundamentally broken. It will not do to give each nation a quota; each emitter of CO2 and other climate-changing gases has to have an incentive to prevent those emissions, and the competitive advantage should go to those producers and nations which are doing it the best. This means something like a unified system of carbon taxes.
Re:Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:3, Insightful)
If an economic powerhouse (heh) like the USA goes zero-emissions, it's likely the technology would be cheap enough for use in developing countries as well. Deals like Kyoto push the task of developing this technology onto wealthy countries that can afford it; without them such technology won't be developed until economics force it to be, by which time <tinfoil hat=on> you have large, poor, but nuclear armed countries fighting over re
Game theory.... (Score:2)
But they won't do it until they have to. In the mean time, the industrial countries (or their industries) have to pay for the new technology while being undercut in price (WTO) by industries based in countries which don't have to.
This could actually increase emissions, as producers shut down operations in industrial nations in order to move them to co
Re:Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:2)
You know what would be even cheaper, though? Doing nothing and not paying anything at all, in which case you could undercut American production costs (probably even without accounting for cheaper labor).
Re:Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:3, Informative)
Handwaving. You have to look at total emissions:
CO2 emissions per year (tons)
China
2,893,000,000 (2.3 / capita)
USA
5,410,000,000 (20.1 / capita)
source: wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
To say that China needs to boost their efficiency rather than the US is ridiculous looking at those figures.
It's not enough to give a shit about the environment; we have to make sure they give a shit too, or at least give a shit about what the industrialized world will do if they don't a
Re:Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:3, Funny)
You used the wrong word. I made the edit for you. You're welcome.
Re:Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:2)
IIRC, the infections started when Carter was still president, albeit the nature of the illness didn't make itself clear until the Reagan years. Perhaps the most effective thing that Reagan could have done would have been to restrict the behaviors that lead to the spread of the disease - prevention is way easier than a cure.
If you're really serious about putting the blame for an epidemic on a US President - then focus your wrath on Woodrow Wilson for the influenza epide
Re:Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:2)
You right-wingers spew some idiot propaganda, but that really takes the cake. The most effective thing Reagan could have done was to treat it as a serious public health matter instead o
Re:Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:2)
A Google search indicated the first known outbreak was 221 infected, and IIRC 43 deaths. The same search indicates that over 10,000 cases of Legionnaire's disease occur every year in the US. The main reason for concern was the sudden outbreak - prompting fears that this was a very communicable disease (it wasn't).
One other thing to keep in mind is that Legionnaire's is caused by bacteria - which is a wh
Re:You are a racist (Score:2)
You don't know what you're talking about. The original outbreak of Legionairres in Philadelphia was confined to around a dozen old, white men. The government response was a stark contrast to the response (Reagan's response) to the AIDS epidemic.
Re:Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:2)
You're rewriting history to suit your own needs. The first outbreak of Legionnaires was an isolated event amongst some convention-goers. Conversely, AIDS (or GRID as it was originally known) showed up in multiple places at once - always a very bad sign.
It doesn't change the fact that the government response to Legionnaires was swift and capable. The government response to AIDS was
The Reagan administration, like the current administration, was heavily influenced by the radical right and had no i
Re:Woodrow Wilson - in retrospect, a bad president (Score:2)
The more I learn about Wilson the more I despise him.
Wilson also deserves quite a bit of the blame for the demise of the mass transit industry in the US - mainly due to prices doubling from 1916 to 1920 - while transit fares typically were held constant. Transit systems were typically profitable before 1916, rarely so
Re:Reagan vs Aids (Score:2)
Re:Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:2)
The arrogance of that statement you can evaluate yourself.
Interesting tactic you've got there (Score:2)
If it takes the Chinese twice as much CO2 to produce a dollar's worth of goods as it takes the USA, is it better for the world to have goods produced in China? China uses antiquated technology in many of its primary industries, but makes up for the inefficiencies with cheap labor. Many Chinese cities are terribly polluted from the byproducts of coal combustion without pollution controls (reminiscent of the Soviet bloc); many hom
Re:Interesting tactic you've got there (Score:2)
You are offcourse rigth that much of the industry in China is very inefficient, in the sense that it produces a lot of pollution for every dollar-worth of product. Improving this would have benefits both for China and the rest of the world.
On the other hand, there is something that stinks a little when you over and over and over get to hear people from USA state that the "real" problem is the inefficient industries in China, while at the same time having the highest CO2-pro-capi
Clarify something for me (Score:2)
Note that those figures prove that the USA produces 2.2 times the GNP per unit of CO2 than China does. So exactly what is the problem as you see it:
Re:Clarify something for me (Score:2)
Assume that our atmosphere has a finite capacity for absorbing various pollutants, such as for example CO2.
Now, I don't know how you see it, but to me it seems sensible that the atmosphere of our planet belongs equally to all people of the planet.
Thus, I don't see it as fair, or logical, that an American gets to "spend" 10 times as much of this, our shared, finite resource, as someone born in a poorer country.
A more fair way of doing it would be, for example:
Doesn't ANYONE think things through? (Score:2)
Your proposal would have all kinds of undesirable (and even evil) consequences.
Re:Doesn't ANYONE think things through? (Score:2)
It does not change the fact that when certain countries pollute much more than what is sustainable, it degrades a shared resource.
I see your point about population-changes though, it is true that it is probably not a good idea to encourage poor countries to have as large a population as possible.
What do you think ? When an island-nation in the pacific which pollutes very little still disappears under the waves because other, far richer nations pollute enormously m
Enough with the non-sequiturs already (Score:2)
Nope, they're victims of a tort. The common-law concept of torts is sufficient to give the victims grounds to sue for damages, such as money to buy lan
Re:Don't forget the rest of the world (Score:2)
The previous post is absolutely correct about Kyoto system of quotas being broken. This is for the fundamental reason that there are no quotas for most nations on the earth.
The flaws in Kyoto are deeper than this though. Kyoto refused to consider CO2 "Sinks." This is because the USA is a big CO2 Sink because of its vast agriculture and vast forrests, something that for all practical purposes other nations don't even have.
Another failing of Kyoto is the failure to consider "Final Product" efficiencies.
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:2)
While I agree that we should try to be as environmentally friendly as possible (face it, breathing in all that smoggy air in the Inland Empire sucks), we simply don't know what is causing it. There is almost no doubt the Earth is warming, but the question still remains, why?
The las
Average response (Score:2)
And that, my friend, is why we're all screwed. By the time something "bad" happens, it will be a little too late---much like hearing the ambulance a few blocks away, but not pulling over until he's right on your arse.
Re:Average response (Score:2)
Don't cut off my quotes and distort the meaning and then try to lecture me.
Re:Average response (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:2)
That's a bad argument. If you have two factors, they may cancel out, but they may also combine. Altogether adding the manmade factors to the natural ones makes bigger climate change more likely, and that is bad.
Maybe we are doomed as a species to be killed off by climate change anyway. But emitting large amounts of greenhou
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:2)
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:2)
Nobody insists that you "panic". Frankly, I don't care what you think or do as long as you reduce your use of fossil fuel.
People like you who lecture are on the wrong side of rationality, whether you like it or not.
You seem to be under the misconception that the right way to act is to act rationally. Of course, taking precautions to prevent climate change isn't rational. The rational thing for each individua
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:1)
Um...No? I've heard several people talk about how harsh this winter (and last) was and it wasn't. Take a look at the historical data and it wasn't anything ou
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:2)
To quote a semi-famous philosopher,
'You can observe a lot just by watching'.
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:4, Insightful)
First you say we are powerless over it because we have so little effect, and then you say a variation of a few hundreths of a degree can cause a hurricane. Of course it's so complex it also requires 'more study', and by the tone of you comments you seem to suggest that it will be impossible to predict nature.
Which is it? People: don't mistake this for anything other than it is, a bad ostrich immitation and an excuse to continue current habits because it is profitable - to the body and to the wallet.
so, you want to control a chaotic system? (Score:1)
This doesn't mean that conservation of the environment isn't a noble cause, because it is, I strongly dislike the smog here in Phoenix driving to work in th
Re:so, you want to control a chaotic system? (Score:2)
Pump in a few million gallons of water a year and it becomes habitable land. And now you're worried about the air pollution?
Phoenix is a REALLY bad example of trying to get back to some sort of natural ecosystem; if you did that, you definitely wouldn't be there in the first place.
Re:so, you want to control a chaotic system? (Score:1)
Order out of chaos (Score:5, Interesting)
Which brings me to my next point: if you change the characteristics of the attractor, the behavior of the system can change radicaly in a very sudden fashion. I fear that this is what we are doing with climate change, and we may suffer huge damages from the results.
Re:Global warming or global cooling (Score:2)
You have an extremely warped view of nonlinear system dynamics. Chaotic systems can be characterized and the state at a given time in the future stated with a degree of certaintly. Decreasing, yes, but still based on probability.
Just because the butterfly exists does not mean the bu
Chaotic? Exactly! (Score:2, Insightful)
Say what you will..... (Score:5, Funny)
I blame the sun!
Re:Say what you will..... (Score:2)
I have to support Mr. Burns on this one. Since the dawn of time, Man has yearned to destroy the Sun. I say go for it!
insert trendy anti-scientific comment here... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here... (Score:2, Insightful)
For instance, A volcanic erruption can cause so much more so called "greenhouse" gasses to be released into the atmosphere than all the polutants man has expelled since the first machine of industry.
Secondly, there are periodic climate changes throughout earth's history [tigtail.org] that have still yet to be explained. Also, the depletion of the green house gasses has not been proven to be solel
Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here... (Score:1, Interesting)
Now, the hypothosis of global warming has not been irrefutably proven and certain discrepencies have not been accounted for.
first off, very rarely does science abolutely proove anything, but you can draw very good conclusions in the face of overwealming evidence, which is what we have in this case.
For instance, A volcanic erruption can cause so much more so called "greenhouse" gasses to be released into the atmosphere than all the polutants man has expelled since the first machine of industry.
Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here... (Score:2)
So I am to believe that "manmade" CO2 is different than Volcanic "natural" CO2. Interesting... incomprehensible but interesting.
Re:did you read the link? (Score:1)
Please explain to me how that works. maybe I am dim, but your sentence seems to contradict itself. plants do _not_ produce carbon dioxide as a by product of photosynthesis, in fact it is used as a resource. How can a reduction in this rate of the production cause less of the input material.
Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here... (Score:3, Informative)
Then, how about looking at the various timescales?
Yes, earth has been warmer in the past, and over the 2-4billion years of its existance, there are longer periods warmer. Imagine the universe is only 3K warm. Great. What does that mean for our situation at hand?
Now have a look at the very same link you provided, which is probably more of our concern, the time of human civilisation. As you can see,
the climate has been actua
Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here... (Score:5, Informative)
If any actual research backs up your claim in any way, please share it with the rest of us.
What "dramatic shift" are you talking about? The dinosaur article mentions a temperature change of 10C over a period of 7 million years. That's a shift of a little over one millionth of a degree per year - not very dramatic if you ask me. Current climate research predicts the same amount of change over a period of several hundred to a few thousand years. Taking the more mild predictions, that means our climate is changing about 2000 times faster than the "dramatic shift" you refer to.
Here is an article [bbc.co.uk] about a National Academy of Sciences' report provided at the request of the Bush administration. It states plainly that "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise."
Here is a paper [agu.org] from the American Geophysical Union stating that "human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate... scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century."
Anyway, I could go on with pages of links from universities and scientific organizations who are increasingly making unqualified statements that, yes, the tons of pollution we pump into the air, water, and soil on a daily basis are having negative effects - including global warming. Most of the opposition to these views can be found on the websites of right-wing political think tanks, individual right wing politicians, and in "opinion" pieces with no links to actual scientific research.
Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here... (Score:2)
From the article cited as evidence for "skyrocketing cancer rates":
That is, cancer rates are predicted to go up primarily due to the fact that people are living lon
Mod parent down (Score:5, Informative)
That is, quite simply, crap. You're wrong and embarassingly so.
"There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity." - Scientific American [sciam.com]
Moderators, please don't mod up silly statements like these where sources aren't cited.
Re: (Score:3, Flamebait)
Yet there isn't (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, there is not. Stating there is does not make it any more true than saying that the sun revolves around the Earth. Bad science uttered over and over is still bad science.
"Your political bias may make you unwilling to read the evidence"
I have a scientific bias (toward actual facts). Thanks for bringing up politics (foremost on your mind, not mine). The camp making up the "man-made global warming" my
What's my problem? Bad science (Score:1, Insightful)
What did you find there? Warming caused by factory smokestacks in the year 120,000 B.C.E.?
"evidence is so strong that there is indeed a worldwide consensus amonst reasearch scientists"
Correction: there is a concensus among scientists who happen to believe this trendy view.
"that there is a great chanc that we are indeed causing massive global climate change and hence we should attempt to progress with caution."
Correction: we don't
Re:What's my problem? Bad science (Score:1, Insightful)
"Trendy" refers to the faddishness.... global cooling in the 1970s, global warming in 1980s-1990s, global cooling again by 2010...
It is like how cars go from being boxy to round to boxy to round in 22 yr cycles.
By the way, it is pretty clear that climate change is happening. It has always been happening. What is not clear at all is that "we" have anything to do with it. WAKE UP? Might as well go back to sleep; nothing we can do about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:i love it... (Score:1, Informative)
I have always loved that statement. Especially when it is connected to "greats." What other "greats" have you worked with on atmospheric systems? The leaders in the field of atmospherics and planetary atmospheres seem to be missing the Hoagland fellow. I wonder why...
To the unaware, there is a medal given out by Uppsala University in Sweden under the auspices of the Royal Swedish Academy called the Angstrom Medal. Pretty impressive stuff. Now there's this private
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Re:i love it... (Score:2)
This is pretty laughable. Ad homoneim it may be, but Richard Hoagland [badastronomy.com] is pretty much the worst offender in pseudoscience.
Re:Mod 'em high! (Score:2)
This is a classic fallacy of appealing to authority.
History is littered with majorities of respected scientists being embarassingly wrong.
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Re:Mod 'em high! (Score:2)
This is clearly an appeal to authority.
Next... a new ice age! (Score:1, Interesting)
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Re:Next... a new ice age! (Score:1)
I'm sure it will become "in vogue" for the equation for a linear regression to spit out a negative slope any day now.
Not news (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm fairly sick of new studies coming out every couple weeks proving once and for all that the earth is getting warmer. Maybe some more of those research dollars should be devoted to understanding why the warming is occuring and developing ways to cope with a warmer earth, rather than redundantly measuring the temperature via every possible method and then shouting: "GLOBAL WARMING!!!!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not news (Score:2, Interesting)
Because there is no evidence of man-made atmospheric changes contributing to anything. So what you end up with is 100% political efforts like Kyoto which requires that "bad" countries decrease CO2 emissions and requires that "good" countries increase them. If these efforts were in tune with the phony environmental theories instead of ve
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Contrails? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Contrails? (Score:1)
The contrail effect is likely to be greatest over the US anyway as you are all so busy flying around (and emitting voluminous quantities of greenhouse gases in the process, I might add). I don't think it's as pronounced in the rest of the world - certainly not in the Southern Hemisphere.
Rush Limbaugh's take on this (Score:5, Funny)
I think he's exagerrating.
Making it more Rush-like (Score:1, Informative)
Do we need ... (Score:1)
English Wine Industry (Score:2)
It seems the earth continues to change temperatures well within its historical range.
Anyone who wants me to punish people for doing far less "harm" than a single volcanic eruption, just demonstrate that this change in temperature is anything other than natural. Go ahead, I dare you.
Until you can, keep your ego-stroking self-centered "if it's not exactly l
Re:English Wine Industry (Score:1)
The English Wine Industry being non-existent? Hmmm... that's news to these folks [english-wine.com] then.
Certainly I got a nice little crop of grapes off the vine growing up my wall last year, but then it was the fifth warmest year [met-office.gov.uk] in the Central England Temperature series.
Regards Luke
OK, I'll bite (Score:1)
I understand that we use other indicators, but you have not convinced me that we even know that global warming, beyond any "normal", cyclic variation, IS occurring - yes it seems to be so, but science is about proof, not postulate.
As an engineer and a scientist, I am trained discern fact from fiction, but let's face it, if I'm trying to get research money
Re:English Wine Industry (Score:1)
Go ahead and look it up. Locally produced wine in England throughout the middle ages.
I'd love to say that to all the doom-and-gloom GlobalWarming fruitcakes. "Go Look It Up." Stop depending on Time magazine to tell you what to think.
Bob-
Re:English Wine Industry (Score:2)
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Oh, the low-down (Score:2)
2) #1 aside, the average surface temperature of earth over a year and over the entire earth is not static. See, we are not in a perfect circle of an orbit. As the planets tug at us, we vary our position from the sun year to year. Charting this for the last nexeral million years and looking at the trend for the past few thousand, we see that we are in the middle of a period of being pulled to the sun.
3) It is mearly impossible to un
Re:Oh, the low-down (Score:2)
This is just another datum that got turned into 'sky is falling' mantra for a few years untill scientific analysis showed it to be perfectly normal.
Mycroft
And moral, boys and girls... (Score:2)
i knew that... (Score:2, Interesting)
this is almost exactly like what happened to the climate 1000 years back. it got warm enough that Greenland was usable for farming. that just seems like to much similarity to be a coinsiance.
but still, what is causing it??
Not so fast... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:.... (sigh) (Score:1, Insightful)
So, those smog warnings when they warn people with respiratory conditions not to go outside were all in my head.
Just because someone thinks that we aren't causing the warming doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to cut down on emissions.
Re:.... (sigh) (Score:1)
Smog warnings and global warming are not directly related though. There's plenty of pollution that needs to be cleaned up down here at our level before we worry about the upper atmosphere.
Re:.... (sigh) (Score:2, Flamebait)
So you admit that they contribute, but you don't think they are a problem? If you have enough "contributions" they eventually add up to some nasty effects.
Now stop the panic and go do more research.
Hey great idea! Maybe we can finish the research just in time to show conclusive evidence that we did indeed mess up our planet beyond repair. Or maybe we could just try to cut down on those "con
Re:.... (sigh) (Score:2)
Not agreeing or disagreeing, but can you cite some references to back that statement up?
Re:.... (sigh) (Score:3, Informative)
Any discussion of global warming as a climatic cycle needs to extend in a timespan of tens of thousands of years to look at a single cycle. The problem with the "global warming" as being a man-made effect is the localization of the time period were talking about. Most of the data being used to "prove" the theory are on the order of a decades and at best centuries. From a historical perspective we are in a regular warming trend that is situated inside of the end of an ice age. To this end it i
Re:.... (sigh) (Score:1)